RQ Spring Issue Launch Party

Root Quarterly magazine is coming out with another issue. According to the announcement, the launch party will be adultist parent-friendly until 7:30 pm.

 

 

 

Suspect in custody after arson attack at Shapiro home

"While we wait to learn more, this much is clear: the targeting of a public official and his family — especially a prominent Jewish official on a major Jewish holiday — is unconscionable and has no place in our country,” said former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

The story: https://metrophiladelphia.com/suspected-arson-shapiro-home/

On Primary Election Day, Protesting the Exclusion of Independents

 

I'll be indoors serving as a poll worker, but not far away (Tenth Presbyterian). 

Informational Picket Time!

Independent Pennsylvanians and Ballot PA

 

When:  Tuesday May 20th, 2025 / 8:00 am to 11:00 am

Where: Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia a 18th and Walnut Streets

What: Friendly and fun public demonstration letting the public know that full voting rights for all helps us all.  We hand out informational fliers, offer an opinion survey, hold up signs like “I can’t vote today ask me why” and have conversations with voters on their way to / from voting.

Why: Independents can’t vote in PA’s publicly funded primary, the first round of elections. Let’s make our voice heard to bring PA into the 21^st century.

Voting rights = healthy democracy

More info/Contact: Jenn Bullock paindependends@gmail.com / 215-852-1718 / www.paindependent@gmail.com

Independent Pennsylvanians Statewide Zoom Meeting

 

(click to register)
 

Monday April 14th at 7 pm

Here about exciting plans for 2025

Our monthly statewide meetings are welcoming and friendly discussions, where we explore and strategize how WE can strengthen the power of Pennsylvania's 1.2 million independents & make our election system fair, open and democratic. 
Let's change the culture of how we do and talk about politics



#votingrightsforall  #letallvotersvote  #RepealClosedPrimaries  #peopleoverparties

Sick of our choices?  Concerned about our country? Regardless of how you affiliate politically, support open primaries. We need to fight against voter suppression of any kind. Independents are a plurality of voters in our country but are second class citizens. 

Stripped of Her Vote for a Facebook Post

This news from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression:

Maine's House of Representatives voted along party lines to strip a legislator from her ability to vote on legislation or speak on the House floor.

Why? They disagree with a Facebook post she made criticizing the decision to allow a transgender teenager to compete in a female sport competition.



Just days after Rep. Laurel Libby's post, the Maine House speaker and majority leader demanded she take it down. When she refused, the majority leader introduced a censure resolution to punish her because the post included photos and the first name of the student, who is a minor. (The photo and name were publicly available — including from media outlets.)

Maine's legislators can't make up their own rules as an end-run around the First Amendment. Elected officials are constantly posting photos of minors in sporting events — and when those photos touch on hotly debated public issues, as the photo Rep. Libby posted does — the First Amendment squarely protects them.

When Rep. Libby refused to apologize for her protected speech, the House speaker declared she would be barred from speaking on the floor or voting on any legislation until she capitulated, effectively disenfranchising her constituents.

If political majorities can impose draconian sanctions on political minorities, then no viewpoint is safe.

Members of the majority party could have responded in many ways: Criticize her for her post, make posts of their own, or just ignore it. But they can't strip her of her ability to vote or speak on the floor.

By punishing her, they veered into blatantly unconstitutional viewpoint-based retaliation.

That's why FIRE just filed an amicus brief arguing that a district court should reverse the punishment. Because Rep. Libby's unconstitutional punishment — and the threat it highlights — are an affront to our liberty, no matter our politics.

FIRE

Demand the Release of Mahmoud Khalil

 

First they came for the Palestinians. Speak up now!

“The extent to which this administration is willing to trample on people’s basic rights is scary and should be a worrying sign for all Americans. The detention and possible deportation of a legal permanent resident who has no criminal record is a precedent that can set in motion the brutal targeting of political dissidents in the United States.”

I’m linking below to the petition, as well as to FIRE’s statement on the Trump administration’s assault on the First Amendment.

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-the-immediate-release-of-columbia-student-pro-palestine-advocate-mahmoud-khalil-from-dhs-detention

https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-demands-answers-trump-admin-officials-arrest-mahmoud-khalil

Tomorrow at Penn: You Can't Say That: American Higher Education and the War on Free Speech

Philo at Penn announces:

 

 

Our next Afternoon Professor Tea of the semester will be hosted next Tuesday on February 11th at 3:30 PM in the Philo Halls. Philo will host Dr. Jonathan Zimmerman for a tea and discussion titled "You Can't Say That: American Higher Education and the War on Free Speech." This is part of our 2025 Kojo Minta Memorial Tea Series. 

The Halls are located on the 4th Floor of College Hall. Enter through the East side of the building (closest to Fisher Fine Arts Library) and walk up the stairs to the 3rd Floor. There, a member of Philo will be present to direct you to the Halls. 

Registration is required for this event. Please register as soon as possible using the link below or scan the QR code on the flyer. We are excited to see you there.

Register for Dr. Zimmerman Tea Here

 

Platypus Philadelphia reading group meeting: Lenin and the Vanguard Party

The group is meeting at the same time, day, and place as last week. I didn't have to show Penn ID to be buzzed in.

Platypus Philadelphia
Introduction to Revolutionary Marxism Reading Group

February 8, 2025
1 PM
Houston Hall
Houston Market (basement level with restaurants! Keep an eye out for the Lenin cardboard cutout)
Philadelphia, PA


Week 13. Lenin and the vanguard party | Feb. 8, 2025

• Spartacist League, Lenin and the Vanguard Party (1978)
+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)

Biden: I Hit Him Cuz He Was Gonna Hit Me First

 

 

The latest liberal hypocrisy is discussed by Glenn Greenwald in this video. Once again Democrats do exactly what they denounced Trump for (allegedly) wanting to do. The quote above concerning Presidential pardons is from a Supreme Court decision a century ago.

https://fstube.net/w/1rKLf5zHxTTWCB2NKqxqNX

Open Primaries Discussion with Chloe Akers

 

 

From Open Primaries:

On Thursday January 30th at 2pm, we’re hosting our first Primary Buzz Discussion of 2025 and it’s one you don’t want to miss. Open Primaries Founder & President John Opdycke is swapping roles and will be interviewed by our guest moderator Chloe Akers–the Founder and CEO of The Best of Tennessee–an organization focused on educating voters about the importance of participating in primary elections and bringing more “complexity” to political conversation.

Opdycke and Akers will have an honest, open and forward-looking discussion on where we are as a movement and how we build a powerful going-forward strategy.

SIGN UP

Sign up, bring your questions and join the conversation to get us off on the right foot in 2025.  It’s also recommended that you read John’s year end report in advance.

See you there,

The Open Primaries Team

President Biden and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland: Exonerate our mother, Ethel Rosenberg

 Please join me in signing this before President Biden leaves office.

 

Written by Rosenberg sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol

Our parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed on June 19, 1953 during the anti-communist hysteria of the Cold War Era. They had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, in what was called “the crime of the century.” We were six and 10 years old when they were killed.

We have said for years that our mother was not a spy, and her execution was wrongful.

A newly declassified NSA memorandum dated August 22, 1950 – ten days after our mother’s arrest – confirms that the U.S. government knew Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy long before her trial and execution. Authored by then-chief analyst of the NSA Meredith Gardner, the memo reveals that he concluded from reviewing Soviet Intelligence that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy.

This final release serves as the capstone for an overwhelming body of evidence that the U.S. government knew Ethel Rosenberg never spied for the Soviet Union.

Her conviction was based on perjured testimony and prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. The only evidence against Ethel at trial was given by proven liars, David and Ruth Greenglass. US Government files state there was insufficient evidence to indict Ethel but that she could be used as a "lever" against her husband. The KGB gave all its agents in the US code names, but Ethel had none. After her arrest the National Security Agency’s chief analyst, Meredith Gardner, wrote, that Ethel, “knew about her husbands work, but that due to ill health she did not engage in the work herself.” In 2001, David Greenglass admitted on national television that he lied about Ethel’s involvement to protect his wife. Never have the elements of a government frame-up been so clearly revealed.

The trial took place during a time of widespread panic about communism. The sentencing judge went so far as to blame our parents for the Korean War. In denying clemency, President Eisenhower accused them of causing future nuclear wars. These outrageous statements and our parents’ executions helped fuel a dangerous climate of fear and intolerance which permitted political opportunists like Senator Joseph McCarthy to poison our society.

A formal acknowledgement of the wrong done to our mother and our family will help prevent similar injustices in the future. A healthy democracy requires that the government acknowledge and correct its transgressions. The government cannot return our mother to her loving family. But it can admit this miscarriage of justice.

Please, join us in calling on President Biden and Attorney General Garland to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg now. More than 70 years after her unjust conviction and execution, now is the time to right this historic injustice, redress the harm done to the Rosenberg/Meeropol family and finally clear her good name.

Sign the Petition : Exonerate Ethel

Braver Angels to Screen The Red Pill

A couple hundred people attended the world premiere of this film in 2016, but I was just one of a handful at the first afternoon screening and got to meet several of those involved with the film, including director Cassie Jaye, co-producer Nena Jaye, A Voice for Men's Paul Elam, and Honey Badgers Alison Tieman and Karen Straughan. It will be interesting to see it again and discuss it with other Braver Angels.

Date: Jan 29 • 8:00 pm

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/film-discussion-national-film-club-discussion-of-the-red-pill-ba-nati-registration-1143411818529?aff=ebdsshother&utm_share_source=listing_android

A Common Principle to Unite Political Reforms

A recent article in The Fulcrum says it was a mistake for recent referendum campaigns to combine proposals for open primaries and ranked-choice voting because voters were confused about why they were being proposed together, and argued that future campaigns should simply drop RCV from the package. I think that's the wrong answer. Here's what I wrote them:

There may be no logical connection between open partisan primaries and ranked choice voting, but there very much is for nonpartisan primaries. That connection is the principle of majority rule.

Nonpartisan primaries are superior for a couple reasons. One is that they avoid the perception that members of one party are intruding on the internal decisions of another, since everyone of every persuasion is equally free to vote their preference from a single field of candidates. Another is that it removes the obligation on voters to choose one major party over another even temporarily, and the burden of having to formally affiliate with a political body in a way that may feel insincere and rather like lying about their beliefs.

But if nonpartisan primaries are adopted, there's no guarantee that one candidate will receive a majority of the votes; all other things being equal, this is even less likely than in a partisan primary. If the principle of majority rule is to be upheld -- if there's to be assurance that the ultimate winner reflects in some sense a majority preference -- a straight runoff may not suffice, since the "top two" may have received less than half the total primary votes.

An example is the French presidential elections of 2002. The votes in the first round were divided up among a great number of parties, but more so on the left than on the right. As a result, even though the majority of voters had chosen left-of-center candidates, the top two were both on the right -- Jacques Chirac for the traditional right and Jean-Marie Le Pen for the far right. So in the runoff, many voters felt they had no choice but to "hold their noses" and vote for Chirac in order to defeat Le Pen.

But this scenario would be avoided with RCV. All that's required is the proviso that the candidates included in the second round are just those top vote-getters required to account for a majority of first-round votes. Especially with the aid of examples like the one above, it would be quite simple to explain this principle to people in a referendum campaign. Not only would they not be mystified about why the two issues were being combined, they would welcome this measure to prevent the election of candidates who don't represent the true preference of a majority of voters.

 

 

Philly March to Save Immigrant Lives

On Wednesday, 18 December, people rallied and marched to fight President-elect Trump's mass deportation plans. I made my own sign for the occasion. Follow the link below for a video of one of the speeches at the opening rally plus a pan of the crowd.

https://fstube.net/w/31rwnnfwSdbeb3HjSgRsDU

Join Open Primaries' End of Year Review

 

Tomorrow, 17 December 2024 at 3 pm, Open Primaries will hold its last discussion of 2024, reviewing what was accomplished and learned this year.

Description:

 

In 2024, our movement saw 8 open primary initiatives on the 2024 ballot across the country. Millions of voters voted for open primaries, and 2 campaigns garnered enough votes to win (Washington DC & Alaska).

In poll after poll, open primaries consistently get 70%+ of the public’s support but translating that support into votes is not automatic. It takes work -- a lot of work. Both parties oppose us and they’ve become experts at sowing doubt among voters.

Our final Primary Buzz Discussion of the year will be a deep dive into where we are right now as a movement: what’s working? What’s not? How can we effectively grow in 2025 to set us up for success in 2026?

On Tuesday, December 17th at 3pm EST, Open Primaries President John Opdycke will interview Lisa Rice, Juli Lucky, Sarah Smallhouse & Chuck Coughlin. Get ready for an unfiltered conversation on how the open primaries movement fared in 2024. 

Register here: https://openprimaries.org/virtual-discussions-series/

Puberty Blocker Findings Withheld

 

Political interference with science: a paper on puberty blockers is withheld because it doesn't support the researchers' assumptions, and one of the leaders of the research lies about the baseline data in an attempt to cover this up. The link here should go to the relevant part of Dark Horse podcast #249.

https://fstube.net/w/iKubrQfxaj97WuZuQ8rf9V

 

It should come as no surprise that a scientist who would withhold her own findings for political reasons is now being sued for malpractice by Kaya Clementine Breen, a former patient who says her main aim is to “help dismantle the rumor that no one is ever fast-tracked into gender treatments": https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/ucla-student-sues-california-doctors-says-was-fast-tracked-transgender-rcna183815

 

Such political interference with scientific integrity also operates on the level of policy-setting by professional organizations, as was demonstrated by sexologist Dr. James Cantor in his paper "American Academy of Pediatrics and trans- kids: Fact-checking Rafferty (2018)."

 

Actions like Breen's are exactly the right way to confront this issue. Rather than fall back on authoritarian measures like age restrictions, simply require professionals to actually conduct the careful, comprehensive evaluation they were trained to do -- and eliminate any obstacles to accountability such as liability caps and statutes of limitations.

 

 

The Interested Party Behind the Nobelists' Letter

"It should be evident that science, like everything else, has a political economy. And in the case of 'biodefense' — read: biowarfare — the corruption is off the charts." In his latest Substack post, Sam Husseini shows that concern for public health isn't the motive for this letter -- which a critically minded person should already have suspected just based on the fact that many of the signatories' prizes weren't even in medicine or physiology, the only area where their expertise would be relevant to the merits of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s appointment.

In fairness to the signatories, I should point out that their behavior is likely just the product of normal processes of social influence rather than conscious corruption.

https://husseini.substack.com/p/are-75-nobel-prize-winners-all-grifters

Born on this Day: Flamenco Singer José Monje Cruz

 

José Monje Cruz (5 December 1950 – 2 July 1992), better known by his stage name Camarón de la Isla, was a Spanish Romani flamenco singer. Considered one of the all-time greatest flamenco singers, he was noted for his collaborations with Paco de Lucía and Tomatito, and the three of them were of major importance to the revival of flamenco in the second half of the 20th century. Many consider Camarón to be the single most popular and influential flamenco cantaor (singer) of the modern period.

The above information comes from Newgon. In the book Positive Memories we read:

"In 1976 he married a gypsy girl, Dolores Montoya, whom he nicknamed La Chispa (the Spark). He had first met the girl about a decade before and he asked for her hand in marriage when she was only fourteen. Together they had four children. [...] The Reportaje de TV del entierro de Camarón (TV Report on Camerón's funeral) consists of a video about Camerón, his funeral, and La Chispa. In it she says that he was 'a very good person and a very good husband and artist.' [...] La Chispa also used to visit (or still visits) his grave for years after his funeral."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10wxc1Fou9g

Independent Pennsylvanians' December Statewide Meeting Is Coming Up

 

The announcement:

Monday December 9th at 7 pm

2024 in review & What's next in 2025

Our monthly statewide meetings are welcoming and friendly discussions, where we explore and strategize how WE can strengthen the power of Pennsylvania's 1.2 million independents & make our election system fair, open and democratic. 
Let's change the culture of how we do and talk about politics

Register here: https://independentpa.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=63f7d4230a13b61729c735a5f&id=2acf4e9d1d&e=26ba9583aa

 

 

 

Virtual Update on the Campaign to Exonerate Ethel

This important announcement from the Rosenberg Fund for Children:

 

 

This Saturday, December 7th, you're invited to join Rosenberg Fund for Children Founder, Robert Meeropol, and Executive Director, Jennifer Meeropol, for a virtual discussion about the recently relaunched campaign to Exonerate Ethel. This event is hosted by the World Fellowship Center.

Ethel Rosenberg (Robert's mother and Jennifer's grandmother) was accused of spying for the Soviet Union and, in 1953 at the height of the McCarthy era, was executed alongside her husband, Julius. Her sons have worked for decades to prove that their mother never spied, securing the release of hundreds of thousands of pages of previously secret files. The most recent includes a bombshell memo, written by a top U.S. codebreaker who decrypted secret Soviet communications, dated three years before Ethel's execution, confirming that the U.S. government knew she was not a spy; yet the government allowed her execution to go forth anyway knowing her conviction was wrongful.

History must be corrected, Ethel's good name must be cleared, and what happened to her and her family must never be allowed to happen again. This is why Ethel's sons, together with the Rosenberg Fund for Children, have relaunched this campaign to ask Biden to Exonerate Ethel before he leaves office.

 

Program Details

Date: Sat., Dec 7th at 10:30am (eastern) About: Join RFC Founder Robert Meeropol and RFC Executive Director Jenn Meeropol for a virtual program about the ongoing campaign to call on President Biden to exonerate Ethel Rosenberg. This program will have time for Q&A and will conclude with a discussion of lessons learned from intergenerational organizing. This event is free and open to the public. Please register to receive the login information.