Ming’s Wisdom

People who want WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange assassinated really have lost their minds to a moronic daze. Well known journalists and politicians (1) have been calling WikiLeaks an “illegal” operation that should be shutdown “forcibly” and calling Julian Assange a “terrorist”. They have called out the government to try Julian Assange for treason, and give him the death sentence. It’s sad to learn that there are people (very respected by the general public) who could think so ignorantly about the world’s current state of affairs.

First of all let’s go back to a statement made a couple hundred years ago: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This would be the First Amendment, protecting the freedom of speech, for both people and the press. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks should have the right to free speech, especially because what they are speaking is… the truth. WikiLeaks is, through their own description, an organization that “Publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct.” They publish an inconvenient truth: each article on WikiLeaks is simply a document detailing actions that the government has done, but wants to keep secret. In this regard, all of WikiLeaks past actions are legal, while the politicians’ calls to mandate an execution of Julian Assange is illegal by the first amendment. By the way, assassinations are not legal either.

Next, let’s consider the mob mentality of the public’s reaction to accusations of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Their immediate reaction is that WikiLeaks is a threat to national security of the United States. The politicians do not want documents about government behavior leaked out, and want to take forcible action against Julian Assange. What is wrong with this picture? The foundation of how this country is supposed to work, is through a democracy where all people should have the right to speak up about anything that grieves them, then policies and practices are changes to improve the way things are. Then why should the United States single Julian Assange out? Is it because he’s not a US citizen (Assange is an Australian citizen) and therefore does not have the right to publish facts to the public? The more practical answer of course is that the government finds WikiLeaks’ information to be very inconvenient for them, showing the public what corruption their is in the government. What is the correct reaction then? People really should look back on this situation and realize that corruption exists, and WikiLeaks is doing us a service by exposing this corruption. It is up to the government to feel bad about this corruption and take steps to fix it. After all, if you don’t want bad things to be said about you, then STOP DOING BAD THINGS.

I believe that there should be steps taken to encourage corrupted organizations to change for the better. There should be an open-source, P2P platform for publishing information for better organizational transparency. Practices and laws should be tracked in revisions, with each revision being peer reviewed by experts in the field, as well as with public opinion. An open discussion of policies should be fostered. One of the rewards, of course, for being a good company or government organization would be that leaked documents detail last week’s efforts to save endangered birds, instead of last week’s attempt to coverup war atrocities.

1) http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/meet-the-people-who-want-julian-assange-whacked.ars