Here’s what I thought I knew about WikiLeaks prior to this
assignment….
1.
Bill Hader played Julian Assange on SNL
2.
Julian Assange is a French guy
3.
Julian Assange is on house arrest somewhere
4.
WikiLeaks was the work of Julian Assange and it
leaked private financial information about American businesses and employees
That’s all I knew. That’s all I wanted to
allow into my brain, be it accurate or not, but now I am being forced to look
into it so I will at least take those 4 things listed above and find out just
how accurate they are.
1.
YES, Bill Hader did indeed play Julian Assange
on SNL in 2010, several times. Here’s one of those times… http://www.hulu.com/watch/202005
2.
NO, Julian Assange is Australian.
3.
NO, “Since 19 June 2012, he has been residing in
the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has since been granted diplomatic
asylum.” (Wikipedia, Julian Assange)
4.
YES, WikiLeaks was his website and it leaked
that stuff but also private military information and other confidential
international information.
Here’s a quote that I like from Wikipedia’s WikiLeaks page, “In
an interview on The Colbert Report, Assange discussed the limit to the freedom
of speech, saying, "[it is] not an ultimate freedom, however free speech
is what regulates government and regulates law. That is why in the US
Constitution the Bill of Rights says that Congress is to make no such law
abridging the freedom of the press. It is to take the rights of the press
outside the rights of the law because those rights are superior to the law
because in fact they create the law. Every constitution, every bit of
legislation is derived from the flow of information. Similarly every government
is elected as a result of people understanding things"”
I see, through some links provided for this assignment, that
a lot of countries want to prosecute him and kill him and I don’t know if he
has broken any laws. If he has, then I guess he should be tried, fairly. I like
his philosophy as stated up above in his Colbert Report quotation. I feel like
if that was all he was intending to do, then he should remain a free man. He
sounds reasonable, progressive and forthright and I respect that. Let him be
free and he’ll just fend for himself in the world where people idealize or
demonize him. He’s made his bed. But if he needs protection, I hope that he is
receiving it and will continue to receive it.
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