The price of freedom

What makes a leader? Is it the ability to inspire? or is is merely old-fashioned didactism?

I don't know.

Fear, shock, anger - This week's events on the global stage have been outrageously horrifying to say the least. Are we well and truly free? Or is freedom a state-controlled myth? Does a leak of "sensitive" documents really give anyone, even the most powerful state in the world, to hound, threaten, coerce and as some leaders have suggested "assasinate" an individual for merely publicising something?

Is big brother just a television show? or did Orwell get it right and what he saw is no longer limited to the pages of his seminal work, 1984?

Is freedom of speech a myth? maybe the notion of freedom itself is a myth. For if, the United States as the biggest power needs to protect its "national security" so fiercely, what happens to the rest of the world?

Is this really about Wikileaks leaking sensitive documents or is this about how-could-one-organization-dare-to-bare-global-leaders-in-front-of-mere-mortals? How dare you, a fly, challenge the power and the flight of the eagle? 

I feel sick, saddened and sorry. This is the legacy we pass on to our children. Be powerful and you can do anything you want. Afterall, the world is a regulated, well-ordered stage where all the men, women and children are merely performers and the human race, though seemingly unshackled from the leagcy of imperialism and narrow caste-class-colour-based biases, remains a mute spectator to whatever has been decreed - whether by China (don't you dare attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honouring Liu Xiaobo) or US (just google wikileaks and the angst of US policymakers will flood your search). We are evolved you see and far superior to our poor ancestors who neither had the gifts of technology nor the ease of life we are used to. If in the process of an "easier", taken to be a synonym for 'happier', life we have to consent to minor adjustments like surrendering to state control, then so be it. Afterall, there really is no lasting harm.

Acton got it right, way back in 1887 - "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely!" 

Though he noted his this for individuals, and the effect of power on men in power, the phrase sums up the life and times of today as the distinction between leaders and states gets blurred - it is the individuals who define the character of the state.

Arm-twisting is the new norm and just as the line between individual power and state power gets blurred, the line between democracy and totalitarianism too becomes a blur. Afterall big brother does know best.

Is it Assagne who dictates the freedom of the press or is it Clinton?

You decide.