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