The most powerful man in the world
CP Surendran
CP Surendran
10 December 2010, 08:53 PM IST
The most powerful man in the world is not Barack Obama. It is Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, who is making America think again about big words like democracy and free speech, the kind of stuff that country prided itself on.
Allegedly Assange is promiscuous. There are rape cases filed against him. Since he is one way or the other stealing information that the US government considers classified, he could be called a thief. And since what he does can be easily interpreted as seditious, he could have been accused of treason if he were a US citizen. Enough stuff then to put him behind bars or keep him on the run. In short, a man of many failings. Just like and you and me.
Yet news about him drives newspaper sales. Every time WikiLeaks puts out apparently sensitive documents, the print world follows up on the act and in the short term at least does well. You could be forgiven to think that on a good day the net is print's benefactor.
Washington has done all it can to shut down WikiLeaks' operations. But the leaks keep popping up on mirror sites. There are any number of online debates and discussions happening on WikiLeaks. Most of them seem to think this is a clash between cultures, of the new net-based and truly democratic generation and the old posers in power, who mouth the good words and then pull the trigger.
Maybe it is. Equally, it is how the balance of power is shifting back to the individual in his fight against the system, here the state itself. Assange is powerful, because like Mahatma Gandhi, he is using truth as a strategic weapon. But unlike Gandhi, he has the unique advantage of the net, one of the most democratic of technologies. The US is a technologically driven country. It's perhaps justice then that it has met its match in a man who knows how to use technology with such subversive impact.
That Assange can disprove stated positions of a superpower and hold it accountable to its actions virtually single-handedly is good news to all those who believe patriotism and national identities must be subservient to human rights and ethics. The first is politics. The second is poetry. The individual is finding his voice again. And he is forcing the system to respect him. The power of one is now. And Assange is the man.
The most powerful man in the world is not Barack Obama. It is Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, who is making America think again about big words like democracy and free speech, the kind of stuff that country prided itself on.
Allegedly Assange is promiscuous. There are rape cases filed against him. Since he is one way or the other stealing information that the US government considers classified, he could be called a thief. And since what he does can be easily interpreted as seditious, he could have been accused of treason if he were a US citizen. Enough stuff then to put him behind bars or keep him on the run. In short, a man of many failings. Just like and you and me.
Yet news about him drives newspaper sales. Every time WikiLeaks puts out apparently sensitive documents, the print world follows up on the act and in the short term at least does well. You could be forgiven to think that on a good day the net is print's benefactor.
Washington has done all it can to shut down WikiLeaks' operations. But the leaks keep popping up on mirror sites. There are any number of online debates and discussions happening on WikiLeaks. Most of them seem to think this is a clash between cultures, of the new net-based and truly democratic generation and the old posers in power, who mouth the good words and then pull the trigger.
Maybe it is. Equally, it is how the balance of power is shifting back to the individual in his fight against the system, here the state itself. Assange is powerful, because like Mahatma Gandhi, he is using truth as a strategic weapon. But unlike Gandhi, he has the unique advantage of the net, one of the most democratic of technologies. The US is a technologically driven country. It's perhaps justice then that it has met its match in a man who knows how to use technology with such subversive impact.
That Assange can disprove stated positions of a superpower and hold it accountable to its actions virtually single-handedly is good news to all those who believe patriotism and national identities must be subservient to human rights and ethics. The first is politics. The second is poetry. The individual is finding his voice again. And he is forcing the system to respect him. The power of one is now. And Assange is the man.
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