Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
You did say this was your job. If it is really your job, then it is your responsibility to file charges if there are criminal acts. So are you going to do your job?
I filed a police report way back in 2002. I called them and they came to the house and I told them about the death threats. They asked to see links and I showed them links. They asked me whether I truly believed that one of you Goons was going to come to my house and murder me or one of my loved ones. I said that my persoanl view is that you were advancing the death threats to scare me, to shut me up. I added that anyone who would make a death threat is by definition a crazy person and that there is really no way of knowing what a crazy person will do. They put all that in their report.
The important thing here is that every site on the internet be opened to honest posting re the last 42 years of peer-reviewed research. I will tell the story in a full and fair way. Millions of people have been hurt in a very serious way because of the ban on honest posting. So we need to come to terms with it as a nation of people. So, yes, part of my job is to tell that story. If the people of the United States want criminal charges to be filed, they will be filed. I will not object if they are filed. I can see why some would feel that the filing of criminal charges is needed. But that is not going to be my focus.
The full reality is that it is not only you Goons that caused the problems. All of the humans have a Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge residing within them. That’s why you Goons got away with what you got away with. If we had all been acting in our self-interest, we all would have called you out on your b.s. when you advanced your first abusive post and things never would have reached a point where there would have been any death threats or acts of extortion. That’s part of the story too and I see it as my job to report that part as well.
If my telling of that part of the story results in you Goons not going to prison, I am fine with that. I am happy either way so long as every site is opened to honest posting and we all get to live richer and fuller and freer lives from that point forward. My job is to tell the story in a full and fair way. It is up to the people of the United States as to whether there are prison sentences and as to how long those prison sentences extend.
All that I can control is my part. I am not going to say that I believe that Greaney included a valuation adjustment all along because that would put me on the wrong side of the felony line, which cannot possibly be the right answer. But I am not going to make it a personal cause to see that you Goons go to prison. My personal cause is to open every site to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research.
The criminal stuff hurt millions of people, not just me, so it is up to those millions of people to determine what is to be done about it. One aspect of the question that needs to be taken into consideration in my view is that the millions of people played a role in creating the circumstances that permitted all the bad stuff to happen. So, as a journalist, I see it as being part of my job to tell that part of the story as well as the other part.
I hope that that helps at least a tiny bit.
Rob
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