WorldView: Embarrassment Leaked

Call him a "James Bond", a hacker, a mathematician, a programmer, a cryptanalyst, a journalist, a whistle blower, an activist - Julian Assange is a package of all these in one. The list of qualities can continue further to several more for this man is truly amazing. An Australian, Assange shot into prominence for his whistle-blowing website - WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange - Profile

Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland, northern Australia, in 1971, and led a nomadic childhood while his parents ran a touring theater. From his early teen, he was interested in hacking and was member of several hacker's group although he got caught also many times for his adventures. In 1995 he was accused with a friend of dozens of hacking activities and was fined several thousand Australian dollars. He then underwent course in physics and maths at Melbourne University, where he became a prominent member of a mathematics society, inventing elaborate mathematics puzzles. He is described by those who have worked with him as intense and highly intelligent - with an exceptional ability to crack computer codes. On August 20, two Swedish women accused Assange of raping them. Assange denied all charges and claimed that the sex was consensual not an offense according to the Swedish law.

WikiLeaks

Assange started Wikileaks in 2006 with a group of like-minded people from across the web. It was not destined to remain just of the many ordinary discharge portals on the Internet. Within a short span of two years it published several sensational leaks from Guantanamo Bay procedures to Sarah Palin's Yahoomail inbox. And in in July Assange Wikileaks shook the world by publishing the "The Diary of the Afghan war." Then the site published over 90,000 records and intelligence reports on the status of NATO forces in Afghanistan. The report uncovered a number of civilian death at the hand of NATO troops which never came into media and also showed that the Taliban is gaining back the footing in several areas of Afghanistan. Things aggravated further for US with the publishing of the "Iraqi dossier" featuring nearly 400,000 documents on October 23, 2010. The documents disclosed that during 2004-2009 as a result of war 109,000 people were killed, most of them civilians.

Collateral Murder

One of the most famous release by the WikiLeaks is the killing of 12 people and wounding of 2 children by the US Apache AH-64 attack helicopter. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh. What was shocking is that the pilots had reported that they opened fire because they were engaged by the Iraqi insurgents. The US army's press release on this issue read - "there is no question that the coalition forces were clearly engaged in a combat operation against a hostile force". The Washington Post's report corroborated it - "During the fighting, an Apache helicopter fired bursts of 30 mm rounds towards several people who had been directing machine gun fire and RPG at US soldiers". But the video revealed the facts to the contrary, showing an instance of sadistic violence committed by US soldiers. The US attack helicopter had fired unprovoked and upon unarmed civilians.

US Diplomatic Cable leaks

On Sunday Nov 28, 2010, WikiLeaks came up with its latest release the 251,287 cables - 15,652 of which are classified "secret" from 274 US missions around the world. The cables could cause a diplomatic brouhaha revealing behind the scene ugly face of diplomacy. Some of the epithets given to different world leaders in the cable are really amusing:

Russian PM Vladimir Putin - An Alpha Dog
French President Nicolas Sarkozy - Emperor with no clothes
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Adolf Hitler
Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi - Feckless, vain and ineffective as a modern European leader
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev - Robin to Putin's Batman
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il - Flabby old chap
Afghan president Hamid Karzai - Paranoid

Even the countries are not spared - India is described as "a self-appointed frontrunner for permanent UNSC seat".

The point to note here is that the intention of this article is not to cover about Julian Assange or the WikiLeaks. There are a plenty of better sources on the web for this purpose, giving a greater detail about both Assange and WikiLeaks. The purpose of all the above information is just to give the reader a background before we proceed further with our analysis of the issue.

Sources:

www.bbc.co.uk

www.guardian.co.uk

www.nytimes.com

www.spiegel.de/international/

Assange and his leaks have drawn and are drawing a variety of reactions. Many people are seeing Assange as hero – a champion of right to information and freedom of press exposing the realities of wars and behind the scene diplomacy, to many which common people have absolutely no access at all. The Vietnam war whistle blower Daniel Ellsberg hailed Assange for his audacious work telling that “he has waited 40 years for this”.

However, Some people are criticizing the leaks arguing that the leaks could further fuel the fire of terrorism. But would the reaction of those who have been wronged be any different irrespective of whether the WikiLeaks would have published these reports or not? The reaction of Saeed's son - "I will not let the Americans get away with it" clarifies this. There would be many more like him who did not get the privilege of coming into the news. Us has asked WikiLeaks to remove all the published reports because it could endanger many lives since many of the reports might contain US military strategic details. The reports could also cause a diplomatic crisis for it. US has too much at stake. Could it then be possible that the women accusing Assange for coercion and rape were actually CIA “Mata Haris”?

Still others are wondering whether all these are real or Assange is yet another CIA ploy for US to achieve its strategic goals. The option cannot be ruled out. Would not CIA with its army of spies, assassins, mathematicians, hackers and a world wide network be easily able to stop this? If the fact is otherwise then the credit really goes Assange and his team. He knows the consequences of messing with the sole superpower on earth.

But the bigger question, keeping all these aside, is that - is it right to kill and despise and exploit others just because they belong to a different country. Is this some form of collective Individualism or Egoism? Are all these wars and deaths and exploitations Ok ? Or a majority of us in this world are really lacking some thing seriously fundamental?

Some older Videos of interest on youtube: