On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 6:54 AM Karl <gmkarl@gmail.com> wrote:
You wouldn't know you hadn't received it if you didn't. You reply to most of my emails. Did you receive an email from me that you did not reply to, in which I referenced MOVE?
I'm sorry, I'm not intentionally ignoring it, I just don't know which you are referring to. Please repeat the point so I don't miss it. Thanks! I'm not trying to make a grand point, other than it's hard to criticize the
justice department's treatment of Assange given that he has done everything in his power to avoid it. Any perceived wrongs against him
If it is illegal to try to avoid an appeal, it would be a separate crime. If we were to punish people for unrelated crimes at trials, everyone would have their suffering mathematically squared. That is definitely not the intent of the law. The law defines the punishment for crimes, not the irritation of its enforcers, David.
I'm sorry, I'm not quite understanding your point. Can you re-state it succinctly so I can respond to it better? To repeat my point, I'm merely saying the US has done precisely nothing to punish Assange yet: he hasn't been on US soil, in US courts, or really touched by the US at all. The US has *attempted* to extradite him for trial, but so far has been unsuccessful. Assange has been accused of breaking a variety of laws in different countries (sexual abuse, immigration violations, etc) , and has done his best to run from all of them -- going so far as effectively imprisoning himself in an embassy for nearly a decade -- all to avoid showing up in *any* court for *any* of these. To a very large degree, nearly all of Assange's suffering has been entirely self-imposed hardships caused by running from the long arm of the law. Again, the only point I'm trying to make is that you can't blame the US court system for being unjust when it's been denied the ability to do anything at all. This isn't to say that Assange is guilty/innocent -- I genuinely have no idea. And thanks to his extraordinary efforts to avoid trial, nor does anybody else either (at least, nobody who believes in the concept of justice being decided in courts, and not in the press). Yes, let's make sure those laws are properly interpreted and enforced.
But all of that *starts* with him showing up in court so we can all actually hear the charges and see the evidence for real, and see what our institutions actually do about it. Running
This of course rarely happens. Trials are held half-privately and then people are locked up in prison and communications with them are censored. By the time they come out they are totally different people.
That is the situation right now. Julian has no way to prepare for a trial fairly because he is imprisoned elsewhere. Can the USA get him his writings so he can prepare a defense with his lawyers that is backed by evidence?
"This of course rarely happens" -- are you sure? There's something like 400 thousand federal trials every year; and *millions* of state trials. Are you saying that it is *rare* for people to get justice? My sense is that the overwhelming majority of cases are executed competently and reasonably -- even if imperfectly -- and are just so boring that nobody talks about them. We are talking about single-digit numbers of court cases in this thread; we are explicitly talking only about the most extreme of the most extreme outliers. Please don't misinterpret these extraordinary edge cases to be the common case. Unless of course you have just given up on our nation entirely and think
even attempting to enforce our laws is inherently unjust. But at that point, you've taken such an extreme position, nothing less than revolution will satisfy you.
We actually have restorative justice programs in many areas. There are cities and states where an accused criminal can opt for mediation rather than punishment today, David.
I'd love to learn more about this; I'm not familiar with mediation as an alternative to trial for criminal cases (I thought that was only an option for civil suits). Can you link me to some good resources you recommend to read more? Thanks! -david