Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment - Stundin

[Karl]

On Sat, Jul 3, 2021, 7:27 PM David Barrett <dbarrett at expensify.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 2:50 PM Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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!
>>>
>>
>> Did you get the email at this link containing a reference to the bombing
>> of MOVE?
>> https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2021-June/088677.html
>>
>
> Yes, in the past 250 years, our nation -- which was founded on slavery,
> fought countless
>

Sorry for being unclear.  Are you able to verify whether or not your
received the email I linked to?  Your reply demonstrated only knowledge of
my link to it, not its contents.

wars over the globe, is the only country to use nuclear arms in battle,
> etc, etc -- has done terrible things.  There have probably been *billions*
> of individual court cases, and maybe a trillion interactions between law
> enforcement and the general public.  Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, there
> are countless examples of horrible atrocities to point to and select out.
>
> But that would be to cherrypick the evidence to suit your needs.  The
> overwhelming number of court cases are completely boring, mundane, and
> non-controversial.  We are choosing to select the most politically charged,
> complicated cases and shine a light on them -- and yes, if you are
> suspected, accusted, and convicted of the most deadly, damaging, or
> complicated cases the world has ever seen, yes, the system is not optimized
> for those.
>

Assange has clearly been one of the horrible atrocities and not the mundane
ones, no?  When you find all your injured courts have people who speak out
widely against the established norm, and you have an injured person who's
spoken out widely against the established norm, what conclusions do you
draw?

I remember recently going on a date with a woman that spent her whole life
> trying to move to the US, talking in horrifying detail of the vastly,
> vastly more common problems experienced elsewhere in the world *on a daily,
> mundane basis*.  It's easy to criticize the US for imperfection, or lament
> that the
>

Such stories are so valuable, crucial, precious.  We hear them so rarely,
and we desperately need to hear them to participate in making things better.

real world hasn't lived up to your dreams.  But what is the point?
>

... to help with situations like that woman's history, they're the majority.

The US exists.  You can either change that, through revolution, or improve
> it through voting.  Those are your choices.  It doesn't matter if you like
> them.  That's just physics; if you don't like it, find a new dimension.
>

There are many new dimensions!  Like making friends with your
representatives or building a new technology!

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
>>>
>>
>> Stundin article?  Did you see the Stundin article?
>>
>
> About one of the witnesses maybe falsifying testimony?  Sounds great, I
> can't wait for Assange's lawyer to mention that, if he eventually shows up
> in court.
>

You already said that ... I feel upset that we're not communicating ..

The witness was coerced by the U.S. to falsify testimony.  This harms
Assange.

It sounds like you're upset that things are coming out outside of court.
If Assange had come to court earlier, this crucial new evidence would never
have come out.  Do you disagree?

What is the difference to you between supporting courts with assange in
them, and supporting courts deliberating on whether assange reaches them?


>
>> 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
>>>
>>
>> It is obvious that those are not the accusations that governments are
>> concerned with.
>>
>
> So to confirm, you think that Sweden doesn't care about sexual assault?
> Or are you saying
>

I didn't say that at all, David.  I talked about what is obvious, regarding
Assange, to a normal human being.

that you are so personally convinced of Assange's innocence that you have
> no interest in seeing him go to trial for it -- his accusers are beneath
> your notice and have no right to justice?  Or are you saying that it's
>

I did not attempt to convey that either.

ok that he sexually assaulted others, because of the righteousness of his
> cause?  Saying
>

Nor did I try to convey that.

"it's obvious" doesn't make it so.  There seems truly nothing at all
> obvious about Assange's potential crimes... precisely because he has
> refused to stand trial.
>

Here's another thing that's obvious: you are spending many sentences,
paragraphs, and ascii-hours ignoring whistleblowing, controversial
journalism, "slander" or "espionage", talking instead about crimes that
happen all the time and are unrelated to hiding in an embassy for years and
nation states clamoring to extradite you.

It's entirely possible that Assange is a small footnote in history that is
> being magnified out of proportion, who the grinding, faceless, mundane
> bureaucracy of justice is just trying to run through the system.  He's just
> a guy, who is refusing to show up in court for a variety of cases, whose
> life will be defined not for what information he supposedly brought to
> life, but how he spent his entire life in hiding from justice for his
> actions -- actions that only a tiny, shrinking set of people can even
> remember.
>

This can become true with great suffering and death.  But today we know
Assange for having been mysteriously painted as the "wikileaks bad guy" who
was persecuted, imprisoned, and abused on a national scale.

He's not some grand hero, he's just a dude who is refusing to show up in
> court to answer for his actions.
>

Can you concisely state your point in a way that includes what I know and
believe?

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.
>>>
>>
>> So, the Stundin article reported that the USA had actually gone to great
>> efforts to _frame_ Assange.  This was very difficult to learn.  It was the
>> person doing it who shared it, and they may have put themselves at great
>> risk.
>>
>> If it is a government that is trying to frame you, is attending court in
>> their country a good idea?
>>
>
> Who is "the government"?  It's literally a million separate employees.
> That's why there
>

It's a powerful system capable of affecting people's lives, where a million
employees each know how to direct its behavior far, far better than you do.

are separation of powers; the court system has literally never spoken to
> this witness, *because there has never been an actual trial*.  Furthermore,
> the article makes it sound like the witness lied, not that the evidence was
> fabricated or the government was trying to frame anyone.  Regardless,
>

Did you read it?  It doesn't come across that way to me.  Here's a quote:

> The man in question ... was recruited by US
> authorities to build a case against Assange

You're saying it is a complete coincidence that the person the US
authorities recruit to build a case against Assange, was aftewards full of
discrediting lies regarding claims of Assange participating in illegal or
immoral -sounding things?

The person they recruited seemed to be saying things that supported the
reason they were recruited.

unless you truly believe that Stundin is somehow an absolute arbiter of
> truth -- and their reporting is so pristine that it should be taken as
> gospel without any formal process -The - then you should agree with me that
> this is great reporting, that will be made available to the defense.
>

I hope a defense would get more than the article.  They would need to get
the actual person who made the false accusations on the stand.

But regardless its clear you'd personally like Assange to go straight to
the USA and a courtroom.  A court is deciding that.

 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.
>>>
>>
>> ==> People run because they are in danger <==
>>
>> Let me find and paste a quote for you.
>>
>> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7316471/
>>
>> The ongoing torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange
>>
>> On Feb 17, 2020, Doctors for Assange demanded an end to the torture and
>> medical neglect of Julian Assange.[1] Yet no responsible authority has
>> acted. Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel,
>> Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and two medical experts
>> visited Mr Assange in prison in May, 2019, concluding that his treatment
>> constituted psychological torture, a form of torture aimed at destroying
>> the personality of an individual.[2] The situation has deteriorated since
>> then, with continued abuses of Mr Assange's fundamental rights and the
>> medical risks posed by COVID-19.
>>
>
> Just to confirm, he is in a UK prison right now
>

Yes.

-- one that is *denying extradition to the US*, right?  Can you elaborate
> on how this is the US's fault?  The US would gladly take
>

I didn't say it's the US's fault at all.  Like you said, a government is
full of millions of workers.  The world is full of governments.

Caps to help you remember I hold this opinion:  NOTHING IS ANYBODY'S FAULT.

We were talking about Assange running or hiding.  Given multiple nation
states have expressed interest, his danger could be from just about
anything, but it is real and present.  Dangerous things can influence
trials in dangerous ways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amicus_curiae

The reason to not extradite Assange is because Assange requests it, and
Assange and his people know more about the non-just danger he is in than we
do.  The process goes through court to protect your kind of justice, which
has happened and is happening.

Assange into prison here if Assange would allow it, and then I think you
> would have a more credible complaint against the US court system.
>
> Additionally, just to confirm, is this the torture you are referring to
> that you feel justifies him running from the law (including isolating
> himself for 7 years in an embassy), and that
>

Is torture the law?  He seems to be running from something able to
influence the law.  Something like that is frightening and dangerous, and
also normal.  The law is influenced all the time by people with wealth etc.

you feel is so shocking that he should (presumably -- I'm not sure what you
> are proposing) be let free without any trial?
>

That hadn't occurred to me, but it would make sense that if somebody had
already severely punished somebody else, that further punishment would be
unwarranted.

"He has been held in a bulletproof enclosure unable to fully hear
> proceedings and denied meetings with his lawyers. He was strip-searched,
> handcuffed 11 times, moved to five different holding cells, and had
> privileged client–lawyer communications seized."
>
> I don't know how many times a typical person is handcuffed, but 11 doesn't
> really sound like a lot to me.  And yes, being unable
>

Handcuffs can leave wounds on the wrists, which are very painful like
somebody forcing you to have your knee skinned repeatedly.  It usually only
happens when being forcibly transferred from place to place.  A typical
person is never handcuffed.  Inmates are often legally abused.

It's hard to talk clearly about psychological torture.  It has to do with
timing and personalizing things in ways that confuse people.  It was a
formal paper accepted by a judge.  I believe Assange was legally tortured.


to hear well does sound bad, they should definitely improve the audio.  ...
> but torture?
>

I didn't read the whole paper to see the bit about audio, what was that?

You feel this treatment, as bad as it is, is so bad as to justify
> (presumably) just letting him off the hook without any trial for any of his
> accused crimes?
>

I didn't say that, but doing so would help everyone trust their governments
a lot more.

"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
>>>
>>
>> Well, I'm mostly exposed to political convictions.  Everyone I know who
>> has gone behind bars (aside from the people I met when I was behind them
>> myself) was in there politically.  (At my trial I was released, but I was
>> influenced to accept a needless guilty-plea for charges unrelated to why I
>> was jailed.)
>>
>> Political convictions can go reasonably nicely or severely inhumanly
>> poorly.
>>
>
> So just to confirm, everyone you've met that was convicted, told you they
> were wrongly convicted?  And you feel they are the most
>

No, for example I was at the start of a planned protest and we were
crossing the street to put up visual imagery.  A police car stopped and
arrested many of us in the middle of the street, before we had even put up
our display.

At another event groups of people were engaging in civil disobedience
against a project, the same behavior credited with causing civil rights
laws.  These are small crimes (generally publicly trespassing so as to
communicate with people), but everyone in that area was given the very
maximum punishment at their trial.  The numbers of the group kept dwindling
because everyone was spending months or even years in prison for doing what
was normal in other areas.

reliable source of truth, and are so reliable that on your first hand
> experience and the
>

My first hand experience did not belie this.

word of your fellow convicts, you are
>

I've never been called a "convict" before.  Don't people usually reserve
that word for when the word "felon" also applies?  I guess a plea deal is a
big thing?

But yeah, think of how I responded to that word.  It's scary.  Conviction
carries a lot more punishment than just the word of the law.

Are you a convict?

rejecting the justice of the entire government?
>

Here's another information about me:  I DO NOT FULLY REJECT ANYTHING AT ALL.

Sorry for caps.  Language model fears and all.

It's great governments want to be just, to include that they need to act on
injustice that they stimulate themselves, too.

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!
>>>
>>
>> I likely conflated civil and criminal.  But if you can figure out who
>> your accuser is, you can mediate with them to resolve the reason they're
>> accusing you (or alternatively so that you turn yourself in), humanly.
>>
>
> That's not true.  Civil suits are disagreements between people, but no law
> was broken -- this is why you can mediate them, because "justice" is "the
> two parties have found an agreement out of court".  There is no
>
equivalent of that for criminal law.  When you break a law, punishment is
> determined by the court system.
>

Mediation is something that happens between two human beings, not static
written laws.  A human being can do anything.  Anything at all.

It is completely fine to drop charges against somebody when there is sound
reason to do so.


> -david
>
>>
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