Donald Trump has fulfilled the promise he made to the Libertarian Party’s National Convention in May by pardoning Ross Ulbricht. The Silk Road founder had been a few years into a life sentence for founding and running the famous dark web marketplace…
Trump said “the scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern-day weaponization of government against me.” Silk Road allowed anonymous Bitcoin-using free exchange of (often illegal) items in safety with an escrow service. None of the seven charges levelled at Ulbricht, a student of Murray Rothbard, related to the sale of an illegal substance or harm to life or property…
Ulbricht’s judgement was marred by questions surrounding unproved allegations made by the prosecution involving his apparently planning murders for hire. Trump’s decision to release him has been praised by figures including former Binance chief Changpeng Zhao. He’s free now…
Shadow national security minister Alicia Kearns told Times Radio she would have put a precondition on a China trip if she were PM:
“I would have put a precondition that I was not going to go if I was prime minister, unless Jimmy Lai was coming home with me. I would also put a precondition in the six months leading up to the visit that I wanted a reduction in hostile acts against our country. But that’s not what we saw. And actually, in contrast, what we saw was clearly the Chinese Communist Party did put a precondition, which was that the new embassy in London had to be signed off. So why is it okay for China to set preconditions and to make very clear red lines about what they require for a visit, but we go without having put any ourselves?”