During the acquisition justin would not clarify to the community what his intentions were with the SteemIt funds

Imagine if Zuckerberg sold Facebook, would the new owner have any obligation whatsoever to you or any user to tell you what his plans were?

nor would he acknowledge the prior agreements made between the community and SteemIt regarding those funds

Those prior 'agreements' were a joke, Ned used that stake how he pleased, and nobody said anything when he cashed out $30 million dollars worth to his personal bank account, or used them to vote in and out witnesses of his choosing.

like how they would not be used to vote.

They have been used many times, how do you think @freedom was powered up?

The duly elected witnesses agreed that this back-handed deal and justin's silence on these important matters was a threat to the entire Steem community and made a last-resort decision to temporarily freeze SteemIt's funds until we could get some answers.

Of which they had no right to do, Justin bought something, and because of something he might do, they effectively stole his money.

Saying that they would give it back after gaining assurances, is essentially blackmail. If I take something of yours and say I'll only give it back if you do something for me is extortion, and is wrong (and illegal).

If Justin thought this was an unjust decision, he could have taken the moral high ground by appealing to the community to vote for his witnesses and reverse the soft fork.

True. However that is like saying; you should have reacted better to me punching you in the face.

His actions and those of the exchanges go against the basic principles of decentralization.

First of all, as I've said in many articles, Steem isn't, and never was decentralised. The Steem IP is owned by Steemit Incorporated, a company registered in the United States.

The Steem blockchain is controlled by 20 witnesses who were voted in by the Steemit witness @freedom, without those votes, they would not have been top witnesses.

Decentralisation as far as Steemit's concerned, is an illusion at best.

Don't forget, that anyone with enough money could do what Justin's doing at the moment. Maybe that's what you mean by democracy, if you have enough money, then you're in charge.

He has another chance to take the moral high ground by removing his sock-puppet witnesses and returning power to the community.

You mean give power to the community for the first time. Because as I've mentioned a few times now, the only way to be a top 20 witness in the days of Ned, was to have his vote via the @freedom account.

So you see, there's a lot of misinformation surrounding this subject which is getting repeated over and over again. we need to move past all of this, and start making moves to make sure this place doesn't die.

Cg