It's nice to go crazier at a slower rate.  I'm receiving emails that appear strange to me.

On Mon, Jul 5, 2021, 7:14 PM David Barrett <dbarrett@expensify.com> wrote:
Thank you for this:

Maybe Assange did something in poor judgement, not sure.  Maybe conviction of something is appropriate.  Regardless it's pretty clear that other things are more important, and anybody working on pursuing him is either coerced, confused, misled, otherwise stuck, or hoping to actually help him somehow.

So you acknowledge that there is a reasonable chance he should in fact be convicted of one or more crimes.  But you are saying that we *shouldn't even have a trial* -- and instead Biden should "pardon

I didn't say that, and you put asterisks around it?

assange as being obviously hounded and targeted for trying to help everyone".  And

Not Biden: that should be normal for due process.  I don't know the laws to know that well, but there's probably one there already.  I can't imagine the police hunting down a half-dead person full of bullets to their back because a well-known-criminal said their victim was the one shooting people.

you are concluding he's been "obviously hounded" based on social media and news reports?  

The Assange situation has been going on for some time.  We've had a lot of exposure to it via different channels.

So you know, for certain, that there is no substance to Sweden's claims of sexual assault?  And you are saying, if the tables

How would I ever know that?  Didn't I say specifically that I didn't?

were turned, and it was your daughter who had accused him of assaulting her -- and

I can't roleplay that respectfully.  The situation is too complex, you'd have to do whatever your daughter needed in a situation like that, which could be either choice, man, but obviously is most likely prosecution.  I haven't even seen the accusation to feel out whether it was made under duress or personal urgency.

What if it came to light that somebody was forced to rape somebody else, like in MKUltra, which was sanctioned for years and years?  Drugged and suggested?  What happens legally then?

everything else in the news reports were the same -- you'd feel that justice was served by him being pardoned *despite you him having are reasonable chance of being correctly convicted if he went to trial*?

I think I said before that we would charge him with sexual stuff _after_ the higher stakes stuff was resolved if needed.  I suspect it is inappropriate to charge him with sexual stuff, but I suppose I can't know.

I just cannot believe you are serious.  It feels like you are ignoring any kind of "equality under the law" argument to pick and choose who gets justice, based on what you *want* to be true, without following any actual process to determine what *is* true.  That feels an irresponsible position.

This is not true, is it?  Aren't you doing this more than me?

You say you want to investigate all the criminal things: how is it "equality under the law" in the slightest to focus only on Assange and not all the things he revealed that could inform his proceedings?

How is it "equality under the law" to bring him to trial without fair opportunity to form a defense?

I feel like you have some meaningful points here, but you build them so large and ignore all the other points, that I can't imagine fair decisions being made from them.

So "cop" is just a guess?

Why are you skeptical of Punk's assessment of my guilt being "obviously some kind of US cop pushing chat malware", when you wholly

It doesn't make sense to me that you are saying this.  Do you use PGP or any other kind of message signing that can work over an airway?

agree with his assessment of Assange's innocence?  He's saying I'm "obviously" guilty, and also saying that Assange is "obviously" innocent.  It feels that he is very comfortable deciding absolute truth based on his personal instincts as to what is obvious.  Are you?

I am obviously not comfortable with that, but at this point I'm more concerned with being pushed to hold an absolute truth, than having my personal instincts make it up.  I'm probably not alone in that concern.

 
-david

I've deleted the top-posting cruft.