The World's Most Important Political Prisoner

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Tom, you are still going a bit too fast for my taste, but I am sure we can soon start the real conversation.
Before I give you and everybody my understanding of Assange and Manafort, I want to clarify some formalities.
1. Everybody, including the NSA is allowed to listen to and permanently record this conversation.
2. Everybody who broadly conforms to the Forum rules may join or leave the conversation at any time or start another conversation
3. I do my best not to leave the conversation permanently without notice, since I am genuinely interested in it
4. Timing is not very important on this issue, whether I take a minute, or an hour, or a day to respond, may depend on the other things I do in my life.
5. For listeners not speaking English I could provide a German simultanous translation, since I am a German native speaker. But I do not think that is a good idea, because it takes away from the conversation.
6. You and I are allowed to correct our texts for Spelling or Grammar, but not change the meaning retroactively.
7. If Spelling or Grammar issues remain, that is not important, as long as we get the meaning.
8. If we do not get the meaning of something that is said, we should ask for clarification.

Do You agree with that, or do you find it overly complicated?

Yes. I agree completely. I consider all of your points reasonable. I admit I do sometimes stop participating in forum threads because
of frustration with other participant(s) but I will inform you if I decide to stop replying.

Very good. one or two more things, quickly.
This may seem to the listeners and to you, Tom Scully, like verbal Jiu-Jitsu. Someting like the google terms of services. I refrain from quoting them here, and since they often change retroactively, it would also be of no use.
And I openly admit that I am very often frustrated from conversations, even with my best friends, because words are used that have no clearly defined meaning or bullying tactics are applied or blatant propaganda is sold as an honest opinion,or statement of fact. No medium, not even the alternatives, are free from that. Even good people, which are in the majority everywhere, even in media and government, sometimes use these unfair practices.
Definitely some of the worst words, that serious speakers should only use as bad examples, are "conspiracy theorist", "counterfactual", "conspiracy", "conspiracy theory", "extreme left", "extreme right", "Nazi", "Antisemite", "radical" in the political sense and a couple hundreds more. These words are used in all or nearly all contemporary media, but I dare anyone, to bring up a sensible and agreeable definition for them. Instead they are all used as weapons. By good and bad people alike. Without even recognizing it.
Tom Scully, good man, would you agree to that state of affairs, or do you have a different world view?