After long tug-of-war, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police and carried out of the Ecuadorean embassy, where he has been holed up for nearly seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation. A video posted online showed an agitated, frail-looking man with white hair and a white beard being carried out of the central London building by at least seven men. He was taken into custody at a central London police station and to be brought before Westminster Magistrates’ Court later. Sweden later dropped the investigation, but Assange was arrested for breaking the rules of his original bail in London. Assange’s relationship with his hosts collapsed after Ecuador accused him of leaking information about President Lenin Moreno’s personal life. Moreno had previously accused Assange of violating the terms of his refuge. There is outrage on social media after his arrest, because to some, Assange is a hero for exposing what supporters cast as an abuse of power by modern states and for championing free speech. However, for others, he is a dangerous rebel, who has undermined the security of the United States. Supporters of Assange had argued that living in the cramped conditions without access to sunlight had damaged his health. Many feel pangs of concern for his wellbeing. The stretch between the rooms he inhabits now and an American detention facility may become the most eventful in his life.
For his supporters, he is a hero who has highlighted the failings of modern corporate-controlled journalism. For others, he is nothing more than a modern-day Ida Tarbell, the investigative journalist who unearthed and publicised the practices of Standard Oil at the beginning of the 20th century. There is a section in media known as investigative journalism. This may sound crazy, but people are actually hired to investigate and find out the truth, and were paid to do it!
Julian Assange character has somewhat filled the role, which once was occupied by investigative journalism. Sure, one can argue that he has disclosed state secrets, but that was also done with the Pentagon Papers in 1971, and that highlighted how useless and bad America’s involvement in the Vietnam War was.
So, Julian Assange was ironically made possible by the big corporation’s wiping out investigative journalism. Those who miss and support investigative journalism should support him. The debate regarding Julian Assange and his development of WikiLeaks, is one that is very heated and controversial. Assange is an infamous Internet activist for his involvement in politics, social activism and journalism.
He founded WikiLeaks, a website meant to have the accessibility to international news sources, responsible for leaking them to the general public. It was launched in 2006, and to date has leaked over 1.2 million confidential documents beyond the hands of the government. The site has leaked various controversial government plans, secret documents, unknown videos, and front-page news headlines over a period of six years. Within recent years, many of the documents have been pertaining to the US war in Iraq, releasing documents such as mapping, prisoner information, and details as well as deals with media regarding coverage of the war.
The heated debate is over whether or not Julian Assange is a hero for obtaining and publicising this information or a villain. Assange has been arrested numerous times, on a large number of hacking charges. He’s been caught hacking into school systems, government systems, police systems, etc. He identified himself as a hacker at an early age, and this is where the debate of hero vs. villain comes into play. By hacking into files and obtaining this information, does that make him responsible for any negative outcome that occurs?
Leaving apart hacking and investigating any stuff, Julian Assange is fenced with so many charges of molestation, rape. His team is in desperate need of money and on their pages, they are begging for money. They are making very hard efforts to collect donations.
A few years back also, WikiLeaks team and its support group campaigned against the handful of financial groups and perusing people by asking for donations. However, as we all know, there is no excuse for stealing the documents of the governments, commercial establishments, banks, credit card companies, and individuals. WikiLeaks has to spend millions of dollars to defend the legal problems of Assange and the WikiLeaks in England and the rest of the world. Meanwhile, other hackers too attacked WikiLeaks the same way Assange attacked others. There are many hackers still languishing in jail for supporting Assange, but so far he never realized his moral duty towards them. Hackers strongly feel that Assange has betrayed them. Assange is not someone who is trying to hunt out a scandal, with honest journalistic approach and efforts, like the Bofors scandal, Harshad Mehta or Telgi scam. He mainly collects information from some disobedient employees in administration and publishes them to get an unsavory reputation. My question to forthright media is why are they forgetting that Assange has been arrested for sexual crimes, not for standing up for the truth, although one may try to make it look like that? Let us not make this guy some kind of pioneer for truth seeker or bringing controversies as truth. This happened even earlier and this will continue. The only difference Assange used different modus operandi all together. Finally, he’s now only wanted in the UK for breaching his bail and not even likely to be extradited to Sweden but following whatever sentence he served in the UK for breach of bail, would then be set free in the country he fled to! No one should think Assange is doing anything other than using this whole extradition and death-penalty claim other than as a smoke-screen to avoid facing serious charges of rape. Many people see him as a hero because he sticks two fingers up at the US. But people need to realise he’s abusing that “hero” status to avoid very serious charges. Meanwhile, have several pre-recorded tapes of Assange released at regular intervals to keep up the impression he is still holed up. By the time he is discovered, he will be sipping Colada Moradas on the beach.
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