It is impossible to live as a responsible human within a society without knowing truth. Julian Assange, distributor of the truth, rightfully shares a basic characteristic of truth-whether you like it or not, you cannot deny its presence (and trust me, many a politician have tried. Whoops.) Assange’s brain child, wikileaks.org, is a plethora of highly sensitive information, “sensitive” in the fact that the government will blatantly lie to you. While the media and other figures have negatively viewed Assange, questioning the motives behind his actions, Assange has more notable honorable qualities than negative. Why else would Time magazine place Assange in the running for the Time’s “Man of the Year”? This is because Assange’s main platform, if you will, on promoting transparency is “You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making based on lies or ignorance can’t lead to a good conclusion”.
It leads to the question, can an ill-informed society produce and elect leaders on issues society is unfamiliar with or better yet knows not of? Not without deceit and n
ot without repercussions. While wikileaks offers a variety of information, some of it fairly useless to the public, the more ground breaking and secretive ones, such as the so called “Collateral Murder”, report the death of the two Reuter news casters who died among of over a dozen Iraqi civilians. The Iraq War Logs, one of the biggest leaks, offer up the truth. Truth in deaths reported, such as the 60% or 66,000 deaths of Iraqi civilians, of the war crimes and torture, of inhumane practices and procedures, and much more. Even if the sources are compromised and the whistleblowers are silenced, it will not bring justice to those who suffer. Their voices should not be silenced. The government is essentially acting as our parents when we were little, tricking us into believing that facade of Santa truly does exist. That is, if Santa went around doing secret operations and killing people before he shimmied his big red bottom down your chimney.Assuming Assange is a criminal for his cause, let us play the “who said what” game. Who said, “We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” If you answered Julian Assange, you’re wrong. This is President Obama’s memorandum to the United States stating that the government should be transparent, participatory, and collaborative. Why then is Assange being persecuted for enabling the public to utilize transparency in its purest form when the President himself promises the same thing? Right, I forgot, it’s because at the very bottom of the memorandum it states that the document is basically useless and its only credibility is an empty promise. On December 16, 2010, the government launched the Foreign Assistance Dashboard, a public site displaying how much and on what the State and US Aid has spent on foreign assistance, in order to improve transparency. This is a smart act on the government’s part, seeing as how this site highlights and puts their
achievements on a pedestal (that is, if they are even reporting accurate numbers). If you cannot trust a governmental source however, you need things like wikileaks or transparency.org, a global coalition against corruption, to tell you the truth. It all breaks down into a metaphor- you don’t break the TV if you don’t like the shows that air, just like you don’t blame Assange for being the medium of information. Rather than blaming Assange, blame the sources (and by sources I don’t mean the whistleblowers). Blame the corrupt politicians and officials who keep the public in the dark or blame the murderers who kill innocent people (because it still amazes me that the difference, and let me be politically correct, between “murder” and “killing”, depends on what side of the fence you’re on).

Assange himself is merely the poster boy of wikileaks, but his presence represents and is symbolic in the sense that he is the face of transparency. Assange behind bars is not just putting a man in jail, but making a global statement against all he represents. Fallacies oppress truth, liberties, promote injustice, and is exactly the thing that is keeping Assange’s trial behind closed doors, away from the public eye, and without the pressure of an unbiased opinion in order to swerve from ethical or moral standards. It is not a secret that his trial consists of more than just a rape charge, but is garnished by ulterior motives. The U.S. Intelligence, specifically cyber counterintelligence and army counterintelligence, planned on destroying Wikileaks by claiming their existence was a threat of terrorism. Other countries aren’t jumping the gun to give Assange a proper trial either, but are simply looking the other way to these proceedings. Even people like Glenn Beck are public about their distaste about wikileaks, but maybe he thinks that by speaking unnecessarily slowly and pronouncing wikileaks as “liki-leaks” will do the trick in order to sway the masses. The fact of the matter is, that the United States does not have jurisdiction to control or shut down wikileaks since it is hosted by a Swedish-based company called PRQ whose policy is not to question, only host. So Glenn Beck, the problem struggles on, how will liki-leaks and Assange be silenced? Apparently not ethically.
Wikileaks is not “anti-American” because it does not just target American intelligence but any global intelligence that may mislead or misguide its people. Assange, originally from Australia, still posts about leaks in his own country, as well as from Germany (which wouldn’t matter to only English speakers anyway since it’s all in German...), Kenya, and several other countries, people, or stories. There are even leaks for (are you ready for this) the cheating Tiger Woods! But really, who is even surprised by this?
The fact of the matter is that the use of transparency is a something used much like how a buffet functions, people pick and choose what they like in order to suite their particular tastes or in this case, beliefs. However, how does one determine what is suitable for the rest of a society since their are so many controversial issues? Not one person has the jurisdiction to decide what is right for the general population to know the truth about or when to lie, and that is why we cannot allow other people to choose the information we are fed, but rather sort through it ourselves to form our own opinion. In order to know what we must do to ensure the wellbeing of our future, we must first take look into the history books. Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany commenced with the genocide of all people of Jewish descent after proclaiming that the Aryan Gene was superior during World War II. Sound familiar? A whole nation brought down by a leader’s word. Such is the power of false information. Things like this will be our consequence if we simply accept and absorb all information given to us without question.
Sources of truth like Wikileaks are necessary in order to keep the power balanced between the people and its figureheads, and people like Julian Assange need to exist to counterbalance and look past all the deceit. The main problem, however, is not that the information is available to the public, but that people tend not to care enough of the truth and would be content being lied to if it were for the sake of comfort and a clean conscious. But how does it feel to know that there a difference between the war that is actually being fought, and the war that is reported by the Pentagon and media? It is important to be aware of the truth and be progressively active and participatory in what is going on in the world around us. Do not be blinded by all you are told and let injustice sway your opinion. As Julian Assange said, “It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.” Through controversy, we will enrich our lives by learning the truth and using the truth to make informed decisions.
Assange himself is merely the poster boy of wikileaks, but his presence represents and is symbolic in the sense that he is the face of transparency. Assange behind bars is not just putting a man in jail, but making a global statement against all he represents. Fallacies oppress truth, liberties, promote injustice, and is exactly the thing that is keeping Assange’s trial behind closed doors, away from the public eye, and without the pressure of an unbiased opinion in order to swerve from ethical or moral standards. It is not a secret that his trial consists of more than just a rape charge, but is garnished by ulterior motives. The U.S. Intelligence, specifically cyber counterintelligence and army counterintelligence, planned on destroying Wikileaks by claiming their existence was a threat of terrorism. Other countries aren’t jumping the gun to give Assange a proper trial either, but are simply looking the other way to these proceedings. Even people like Glenn Beck are public about their distaste about wikileaks, but maybe he thinks that by speaking unnecessarily slowly and pronouncing wikileaks as “liki-leaks” will do the trick in order to sway the masses. The fact of the matter is, that the United States does not have jurisdiction to control or shut down wikileaks since it is hosted by a Swedish-based company called PRQ whose policy is not to question, only host. So Glenn Beck, the problem struggles on, how will liki-leaks and Assange be silenced? Apparently not ethically.
Wikileaks is not “anti-American” because it does not just target American intelligence but any global intelligence that may mislead or misguide its people. Assange, originally from Australia, still posts about leaks in his own country, as well as from Germany (which wouldn’t matter to only English speakers anyway since it’s all in German...), Kenya, and several other countries, people, or stories. There are even leaks for (are you ready for this) the cheating Tiger Woods! But really, who is even surprised by this?
The fact of the matter is that the use of transparency is a something used much like how a buffet functions, people pick and choose what they like in order to suite their particular tastes or in this case, beliefs. However, how does one determine what is suitable for the rest of a society since their are so many controversial issues? Not one person has the jurisdiction to decide what is right for the general population to know the truth about or when to lie, and that is why we cannot allow other people to choose the information we are fed, but rather sort through it ourselves to form our own opinion. In order to know what we must do to ensure the wellbeing of our future, we must first take look into the history books. Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany commenced with the genocide of all people of Jewish descent after proclaiming that the Aryan Gene was superior during World War II. Sound familiar? A whole nation brought down by a leader’s word. Such is the power of false information. Things like this will be our consequence if we simply accept and absorb all information given to us without question.
Sources of truth like Wikileaks are necessary in order to keep the power balanced between the people and its figureheads, and people like Julian Assange need to exist to counterbalance and look past all the deceit. The main problem, however, is not that the information is available to the public, but that people tend not to care enough of the truth and would be content being lied to if it were for the sake of comfort and a clean conscious. But how does it feel to know that there a difference between the war that is actually being fought, and the war that is reported by the Pentagon and media? It is important to be aware of the truth and be progressively active and participatory in what is going on in the world around us. Do not be blinded by all you are told and let injustice sway your opinion. As Julian Assange said, “It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.” Through controversy, we will enrich our lives by learning the truth and using the truth to make informed decisions.
The typography is still clumped into print-style paragraphs. It makes it hard to read online. You can keep virtually the same kind of thoroughness when discussing a topic, but figure out how to break it up a bit more.
ReplyDeleteGood qualification -- more honorable than negative.
Truth is a tricky word to work for without getting cynical or linguistic. It tends to oversimplify the subject in question. It's one of the God terms, along with Democracy and Freedom. You can handle it right, but it's hard.
The question at beginning of paragraph two is a good example of a question TS followed by answer. But I don't think paragraph truly proves that ill-informed society cannot choose the proper leaders. It just goes into our lack of knowledge, but never makes the transition between how that lack of knowledge incapacitates us. If you think that's rhetorical, then you should state something in TS which is authentically argumentative.
It's clever, the who said what game. I suggest you bullet point it and offer four multiple choice questions. This will help break up the text and make it easier to read.
I'd be interested to hear whether you think Transparency.org does as good of a job as Wikileaks, or how they differ.
Good point about not blaming the medium.
The "Assange himself is merely" paragraph has a wonderful flow of sentence variety and word choice. But it seems to drift from a topic of how Assange is the face of transparency into a discussion of Glenn Beck's desire to shut the site down. Perhaps these are different paragraph topics? Don't muddle multiple topics.
Good to counter argument the notion that Wikileaks is anti-American.