Democracy Now! Interviews Julian Assange

Amy Goodman is the US compare on Democracy Now! an online democracy news program.  She interviews Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. If all government departments and servants are in truth working for the public, then how is it the public have no right to know what is done in their name and with their funding?  Does it advance freedom or curtail it? What is democracy? Do we live in one? How important is visibility and openness?

Interesting to observe how the court process works. Can they determine justice? Are laws just? Is law used to enforce fairness or is it used to shutdown dissent?  Is the court about punishment? Is asylum another way of imprisoning a person to punish and deter others? He is not able to go into the sunlight and many restrictions on seeing people including his family. So he is held in limbo in a waiting game.

He states the legacy of Wikileaks has been the public onfrontation where people saw history unfolding in real time that they are part of, young people see the internet as their place to exchange ideas. He believes they have educated a new generation and created the internet as a political space. He believes they have widened the envelope of what is acceptable to publish. He sees his work as revealing abuses in government.