Tweaks and Leaks: An experiment with truth

[a version of the following was published here: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/122854/tweaks-leaks-experiment-truth.html ]

Bringing out the “ghee” by tweaking one’s finger is an age-old Indian way to assuage difficult situations. It is apparent that it is indeed used in non-Indian pastures too. With respect to the recent hullaballoo in arresting Julian Assange, the owner of wikileaks, tweaking the finger (or the “reasons” to catch him, if one can) is the only recourse when faced with the impunity of not being offered the customary “ghee” as part of being the rulers of an established status-quo. Indeed, wikileaks among its other endeavours, had been raging a cyber jihad against the equally revered and hated nation of the world—the United States—through strategically timed, leaking of “truth” and thereby debunking the nation’s credibility across eyes that behold. The U.S had to do something—albeit that “something” was shrouded in legal and technological confusion as to what could be done—since Assange had been claiming it as “investigative journalism”, and wikileaks has fought and won over 100 legal challenges since its inception in 2006. Finally, the god of lady luck smiled on hurt parties like the U.S., as Julian Assange was recently arrested, but on charges of various sexual offences, which, he claims to be not true; quite, in the same vein the U.S and U.K. organizations have been claiming news leaked by wikileaks as not true.

Consequently, Assange’s arrest has brought off on the forefront not only a cyber gang war, as visa and mastercard websites were hacked in supposed retaliatory reactions, and the editorial in the Washington Times by Jeffrey T. Kuhner saying that Assange should be treated “the same way as other high-value terrorist targets”, but also the question as to who should control the representation of “truth” and how. Should everybody know everything? Or should news/facts/truth be privy to powers that be? As a recent nationally renowned journalist claimed, it is within every media person’s powers what should transpire and what should not, the overlap of moralistic prescriptions and dominant preferences on “truth” notwithstanding. Post-Matrix (the movie) and post postmodernism, it is common understanding that there is no single truth. Truth is subjective and dependent on agreement by two or more individuals on the experience and interpretation of a particular event, leading to the formation of an emergent consensus on reality. Assange sought to strike on this consensus, and while his arrest on irrelevant (that is, irrelevant to the “real” grounds on which he was most sought after) grounds has led to media and mass speculation on what would happen next, whether one could continue to receive the forbidden pleasures of having sneak peeks in the green rooms of the major powers, the audacious question meekly raised is: whether the U.S. or hierarchical superlative powers could really do anything to silence voices against it?

To revisit this question from a Foucauldian perspective, through punishment, a disciplining process is attempted. It is expected that this disciplining attempt would create docile entities—that would work in unison in economics, warfare, politics and the media—and be subjected to continuous surveillance, recordings and notes for subsequent internalization of the principles of the status-quo. Jeremy Bentham might be dead, but his Panopticon design of the prison, framed in 1785, still continues in latent form, as lesser hapless mortals are watched by bigger mortals without being informed of the process. Is it then really surprising and illegitimate, given the circumstances, that bigger powers would retaliate when the gaze is reversed/directed at them?

Despite the arrest of Assange, wikileaks declares that it will be back and continue to show the true facts. After all, facts exist independent of human perception and/or experience. Whether a statement is true or not, is largely dependent on certain other facts presented as supplementary evidence. Holding the control and access to those evidence adds on to one’s position in any hierarchy, local, international or informational. To clarify, supervisors hold facts/truth from their subordinates in the office, adults contain truth from children, friends keep secrets too, and percolating these small, restricted scenarios of taking liberties to the broader level, holding down of facts or truth become a classic and fascinating display of power struggles. Changes in regime and powers happen not when one power is overthrown but as Vilfredo Pareto said, one elite takes upon the other. We’d like to believe that the media would behave like the famous character in the cult movie “Gunda” who always professed that he keeps everything open (“mera naam hain bulla, main rakhta hoon sab khulla”). However, the role of the common man is but to accept such transformations in power struggles without much ado, as supporters or followers of one elite or the other and less as initiators or reactors to the proceedings.

They used to say, whoever goes to Lanka, becomes Ravana. As for finding the truth behind things in general, in this such-called age of information, the fun has just begun. Welcome to reality as it continues to ruin our lives, as Calvin says and get more bites, sorry bytes out of it.