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Interview With the Man Behind WikiLeaks
An anonymous reader writes "Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, explains why he feels it is right to encourage the leaking of secret information. He maintains that the more money an organisation spends on trying to conceal information, the more good it is likely to do if leaked. For Assange, leaked intelligence reveals the true state of governments, their human rights abuses, and their activities, it's what the 'history of journalism is.' On the media's role in making information available to the public, Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"
I wonder how he deals with the obvious truth that there are hundreds of governments that
1) violate human rights
2) do not hide this fact
China, India, Morocco, Algeria, Tunesia, Egypt, Chad, (the entirety of North Africa), Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, ... the list goes on and on and on ...
Most governments that really violate human rights do not claim they don't. They just claim human rights are unjust (all muslim nations), or that they know better what human rights are because they're ... (insert Chinese, North Korean, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Taiwan, ...)
The population of these countries easily exceeds 3 billion human beings.
How exactly will documenting abuses help against this ?
And I wonder how human rights can even be applied at all worldwide.
Human rights match make some serious demands on a country's law : ...
-> right to private property *psssst* no communist human rights, and at what point does socialism begin to violate human rights ?
-> right to roof *psst* no human rights in (very) capitalist countries
-> right to not be discriminated by religion
a) this includes the right to marry : neither muslims nor hindus can respect human rights *and* their religion, even if they live in a country that does (and I think this goes for most religions)
b) this does not include the right to marry : islam and human rights do not mix (since sharia demands separate rights per religion)
c) this includes the right not to be criticized/insulted (as the UN seems to want) : let's go convict Christopher Hitchens (and all these pesky atheists) for crimes against humanity !
-> right to not be discriminated by sex : again obviously islam violates this, so does sikhism and the Japanese "religion"
-> right to representation in government : no communist human rights, no dictatorial human rights, or in a (real) kingdom,
And that's ignoring the tangled mess that is human rights in warzones, and how ridiculously difficult they are to respect (and ignoring that only the US even tries to respect them, most US adverseries just routinely violate human rights even in peacetime)
And apparently violating human rights, even in big ways, does not justify ANY reaction by anyone. Example : Iran gets to execute minor girls (12yo) for the crime of being raped as a matter of policy, and this does not justify an incursion (but there are easily thousands of cases like this)
Its so nice to actually see someone other than myself on Slashdot who has any clue whatsoever as to what lead up to the war in Iraq.
+5 Informative
Usually informative posts such as yours leads to significant negative moderation and massive ignorant, verbal lynching by the general population here. So kudos on the positive moderation!
(Score:5, Insightful) Mod parent UP! Where the hell are the Mod points when ya need 'em?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.