By A M Radhika:
Kids, there’s a leaky season within the winter season. The entire terrene has manifested into Gossip Girls, the pilot episode of course being the 2006-07 launch of the Big Brotherisms of WikiLeaks offering highly classified information of various countries on its menu with ‘who gave special names to whom’ to go with it. Every piece of land is alerted into now thinking, “Ab mera kya hoga?” (now what will happen to me?) Please refer to The Guardian for an articulate summary if you are not yet enlightened (Where are you, Jupiter?). As far as average mortals are concerned, opinions and reactions are completely divided.
Rushing to conclusions though, is definitely not expected of us. It’s very interesting though how certain ‘couch confessions’ have given us so many things to worry about. Which nuclear weapon is going where paid by whom, change in the ‘friendship’ status quo, individual attacks on accountability, entirety of defense strategies of nations, brutal killings which would never end, torture stories of soldiers, election results, terror attacks and a plethora of bad influences to choose from. All the more notable a factoid is how more than 800 volunteers and 5 people have given a heavy amount of work to the diplomats who have allegedly been casual in their approach (tongue in cheek so to say). There is an astronomic load of damage control to be done. Go figure.
Julian Assagne, known to be founder, spokesperson and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, the whistle blower on International water cooler moments, is now Red Cornered by the Interpol for his alleged Swedish crime apart from being sought by the US for interrogation, separately, claimed to have violated the Espionage Act is divided between the ‘real hero’ and ‘dangerous troublemaker’ tags. Impactful information or redundant/false alarms, whatever it is, you got to agree on one thing. Internet is the big bad wolf here. These probably are the marks of your so called ‘pencil and notebook’ journalism concepts. They are definitely more widespread, more impactful, more ‘voicy’ and may or may not be more blood ridden.
Leaks pertaining to India as of now focus on intelligence information pertaining to impending terror attacks, comments of a bureaucrat regarding military execution being ‘slow & lumbering’ and so forth. On the diplomatic front, a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council is supported, as mirrored in the US President’s speech to the Indian Parliament recently. But we are to keep our eyes and ears open. Apparently more than 3000 cables from India are to be released on WikiLeaks. Actions and changes in status quo shall depend only on the impact that those leaks may create. As of now, Ministry of State for External Affairs was quoted saying, “This is a very sensitive issue. We have good bilateral relations (with the US) and they had already warned us… So, I think it is not the right time to comment on it and we want to continue having good relationship with the US that. So, I think let us wait and work this out.”
What do you think of having a ‘SpookyLeaks’ of our own; have some interesting discussion running around us. A local network for our workplaces where so called ‘whistle-blowing’ can be done anonymously, in every office, educational institution, corporate houses, etc (Yes, SpookyLeaks is the new water cooler). In classrooms for example, who stole whose notebooks or a not-invited-to-my-party list. May be even a tagger, to typecast people we know and like/hate as the ‘’. See some catfights happening. Reality, of course on the other hand, is and will be a disturbing picture.