The latest issue of the Time magazine is out and with comes the revelation of TIME Person of the Year. It has been given to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. It is in fact a worthy choice. But this year, 2010, has been not a year which has been dominated by Facebook alone. In fact an Australian by the name Julian Assange totally stole the show. He is apparently the founder of Wikileaks a whistleblowing site which enables people to anonymously submit documents. Till last year it was publishing documents sourced from all around the world. But this year they changed the whole game. First they published around 90000 documents pertaining to the Afghan War. Then they followed it up by pubishing over 250000 Iraq war logs. But like a cherry on top a double decker cake it is in process of releasing over 200000 US diplomatic cables. Doesn’t this outshine Facebook by a zillion times? Hasn’t this impacted the world more than Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Alright Facebook has about 500 million members but don’t you think that exposing of double standards and selfish and senseless policies which affect us, our lives, our loved ones, our comfort is more important that a site engaging in social networking? All this happened despite the fact that Assange was leading the online polls by 90%. In fact not just TIME, several other companies have engaged in defacing Wikileaks. Amazon pulled the plug on Wikileaks’ site hosted on its servers after intense pressure by US Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
I see a poetic irony in this case. US went to war in Iraq “to LIBERATE” the citizens. All US has given the Iraqis is nothing but anguish, pain, suffering, violence, death. US went to war with Vietnam despite warnings from France that they’ll never win it. It resulted in the deaths of over half a million deaths. There’s no one to hold account of these gross crimes but there is always someone to blame, someone to kill, someone to threaten, someone to blackmail, someone to assassinate when “something” goes against the Old Sam. Why Dear Old Sam you afraid of criticism, you afraid of your “secrets” being let out? You never bothered to think about all those poor Chileans when you took out Salvador Allende, about the Iranians when you removed a democratically elected PM, Mossadeq from power. In the early twenties your companies (rings the word “Banana”?) looted the Latin American nations’ farmers, even killed them when they protested. But when a company of vital importance to you (how can we forget “OIL”) was chucked out by a country who nationalized oil business, you had the entire government tossed out in 1953.
You know I really want to ask- has D.C forgotten on what principles and ideals its founding fathers gave away their entire lives to see an independent country? US was freed from imperialism of UK by all those who wanted to taste and live freedom. But it seems that US or rather Washington has been diagnosed with amnesia who seem to forget what one of the greatest men who lived told- “Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.” This was said by Abraham Lincoln(an American “President” I guess).
