Assange™ to present own TV show Famous WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange™ says he will soon be presenting an unnamed weekly TV show via unspecified channels to a vast global audience. According to a press release "authorized by Julian"*, Assange™ is "one of the world’s most recognizable revolutionary figures ... a pioneer for a more just world and a victim …
Umm, you're confusing embarrassing with hard hitting. There is a difference.
Example:
Asking a UK MP about a mistress is embarrassing but is not quite as "in the public interest" as the press makes it out to be. Asking them about their expenses and not letting go until you have the answers, THAT is hard hitting.
Having said that; i may not like Piers Morgan much but he has proven to provide the occasional entertainment. Assange(tm) has kept himself rigorously to a standard of boredom I have only ever seen surpassed by a Microsoft sales presentation - which, incidentally, shares that relentless focus on self enrichment...
"......a pioneer for a more just world and a victim of political repression".
You have to wonder how the people who are now in fear of their life, due to Assange's self promotional release of classified material, think about this one. Oh and the young ladies in Sweden, and I guess Bradley Manning .........
Memoirs, pay wall, chariddy donations, money from rags and now the famous, intergalactic Julie Assange channel. Perhaps we'll see him arrested on television... ...oh, but wait, could Jules be counting his chicken before they are hatched? After all he may find himself bunking in a Bubbery before too long. "I'm just saying".
There will be more and more like him popping out of the woodwork and there already has!
That neocon reporter who suggested putting out a hit on certain people or persons and then the secret service pays him a visit.
Thats what happens when you give certain people too much power that they take it and get abusive with it and they act like they have no remorse as if they themselves think of themselves as little godlings. THAT! is the type of persons we need to watch out for.
"I suspect his celebrity will skyrocket now that he has a show on Telly. I mean just look at OJ Simpson and they way he... Oh right. Nevermind."
I splorfed all over my keyboard and screen when I read, digested and understood a perhaps unintended implication here. I started out thinking of the televised chase of OJ. OK, fine; then I remembered the episode, in court, where OJ tried on a glove (allegedly bunching up his fist to make it too large for the glove), and I thought of Assange and a ripped condom. In court. On TV.
No, perhaps we don't want to go there. :-)
Putting a trade-mark icon after every instance of Mr Assange's surname is indeed a stroke of rare genius - only to be compared to those we see coming from the compromised keyboard of a certain poster to these threads who no doubt will soon show up here. Persons, however, who wish to read a less biased - if also less self-satisfied - piece on Mr Assange might instead want to consider turning to Michael Hasting's interview with him in a recent issue of Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/julian-assange-the-rolling-stone-interview-20120118). But then journalism is a pedestrian trade, is it not, when compared to the products of the divine afflatus with which you seem to be filled ?...
Henri
I'm perfectly happy with El Reg lampooning idiocy. What bizarre mind tried to trademark their own name? What good does that do? To stop rampant piracy of a *cough* bestseller *cough*?
The only difference between George Michael and Assange(tm) is that George Michael actually got arrested for being a w*nker..
... that Wikileaks was created for anything other than Assange's ego must be on a burning platform by now.
If there is anyone at Wikileaks interested in justice, credibility and proper journalism they should be mounting a massive publicity campaign to distance themselves from Assange ASAP, the guy is a complete fool.
Will our Julian decide to wash?
One of the titbits from reading about his association with the 'gentlemen of the press', was that he had a tendency to turn up for long meetings, in small rooms, without having bothered to shower (possibly for several days)...
Those hot TV lights won't help. Still, I guess it's no problem if he conducts all his interviews via satellite link.
The mind boggles. However, and moving on quickly from the look of dread that I imagine would occupy his face, if the man actually gets as far as broadcasting I'm sure that he will crash and burn. It is not only written in his arrogant personality, and his lack of knowledge of how the world works, but also written in his attempts to interface with the world of news. Just listen again to the interview conducted by John Humphrys on the Today programme: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9308000/9308216.stm . There is a transcript here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9309000/9309320.stm .
I expect it will actually gain quite a large viewing number, in the same way those shows like "Bigger Than <insert popstar's name here>" do, mainly because you end up having to watch because you're just so gobsmacked that anyone could be so seriously "challenged". Anyone that saw the "Bigger Than Lady Gaga" episode will know what I mean when I call it exploitation of the disturbed. At least we can all have a good (if slightly uneasy) laugh as A$$nut lays out all his paranoid neurosisses with what will no-doubt be a group of just-as-reality-challenged guests. Time to stock up on popcorn!
A good lawyer never asks a question he doesn't know the answer to and never predicts the performance of a witness on the stand but is prepared for anything.
There is a lot of money supporting Assange at the moment. Buying talent to advise him on how best to be seen on English tv. If you don't like him, don't dismiss his abilities. I know you aren't the prosecutor of record but calling his potential viewers "challenged" and "disturbed" and him a "paranoid neurotic" and his future guests "reality challenged" is, um, silly.
Remember Richard Nixon's "Checkers Speech" in 1952. Nixon wasn't fighting extradition, but he changed the perception of the people about him. Assange has to sell himself to Supreme Court Justices and not the people.
You are mistaken if you think that a good performance won't do help him plead his case. :-)
I listened to your John Humphries interview link.
Previously I had thought him a bit of an arse, but the man's own words suggested otherwise. I didn't find him arrogant.
I agree with him that if Sweden wants him extradited it should charge him. If Swedish plod just wants a chat it should go to him, especially as it had the chance to chat already when he was in Sweden.
Uncle Sam is certainly unhappy with him, so I reckon we should make allowances for diplomatic arm twisting, smears, etc.
Don't know about a TV show though - he's probably a bit too serious.
1) The man put forward his own ideas of how to conduct criminal justice system procedures - in Sweden, never mind here - saying it should be done by video link. This is not the standard (legal) procedure for conducting interviews, a procedure that is founded on decades of feedback from practise and court findings/outcomes. It also deprives the interviewers of the usual range of techniques, including use of assessments of the non verbal of behaviour. Jules is here again guilty of taking his attachment to IT to encompass the legal system, which is in spite of his facile claims bound to terra firm, in this case that bit of earth called Sweden.
2) He claimed he'd been around for the interview and that it could have been done, wrong; his solicitor was (erroneously, when they should have swooped on Assange) advised that the police wanted to interview him *prior* to making an arrest and charging him (this is the usual order of events both in Sweden and most other European countries; interview, then arrest and charge); mysteriously Assange left the country overnight. When his solicitor denied being in contact with the police in the UK extradition hearings, he eventually looked at his mobile phone and coughed up; they had been in contact. Assange fled the country after the police had informed his counsel that they intended to arrest him and wanted him for interview; judging by the response of his professional body it's felt that he had a hand in Assange's premature departure from Sweden.
(You can be certain that, in the event that he is successfully extradited [and there's no reason to suppose that a properly submitted EAW will fail], charged and prosecuted his flight from Sweden will not go well for him. Presumably his legal counsel's role in the affair [now documented in a UK court as a part of the same legal procedure, do note] will fall under the same court's jurisdiction, and I have difficulty in believing that mere contempt will do his alleged offence justice.)
3) Assange now claims that the Swedish legal system is of banana republic standard; to be a member of the EU it's necessary to conform to certain standards, legal, electoral and so on. I'm not surprised that Assange used the argumentum ad hominem, but it will not work.
His continual deflections throughout the interview were of the fantasy, I don't have time to be interviewed by opportunists variety. Wrong; he knew before he fled that he was wanted. Everything else said after that is a feeble attempt to appeal to gullible onlookers who take his argumentum ad hominem as acceptable.
As far as the Yanks are concerned they do not come into the question; the Swedish CJS have stated they cannot extradite Assange to the US because the EAW is not for that purpose, and offered to forgo extraditing and charging Assange if the US wants a turn; the US stated they do not as yet have firm chances, lacking an evidential link; there is no magical way for the US to whisk him out of Sweden, in spite of the conspiracy theories offered by Assange's supporters who are, oddly, declining in number. It would in fact be easier to extradite Assange from the UK than from Sweden.
If Assange is prosecuted and sentenced for the offence of rape, I will not be surprised to find that, by the time his sentence has been served and he is released from the prison gates, the US has finally brought enough convincing evidence together to merit an arrest. How they will go about it is a matter for conjecture, just as it would if he had been held and sentenced in any other country for any offence at all.
You may now depart for your Montana complex to mint a new conspiracy theory.
"If Assange is prosecuted and sentenced for the offence of rape, I will not be surprised to find that, by the time his sentence has been served and he is released from the prison gates, the US has finally brought enough convincing evidence together to merit an arrest."
They're feverishly working on it now. And they have been day and night. It's almost ready. Cross my heart. (wink wink nod nod)
" How they will go about it is a matter for conjecture."
Probably the old fashioned way: through dishonesty and pretense.
Oh really? Personally I am not surprised to hear that they are trying to find a link between Manning and Assange; what government would not, especially since the material taken from Manning has appeared on Assange's outlet, all the more a fortiori given that Assange was convicted on 25 counts in or around 1991 for stealing passwords from US Air force 7th Command Group in the Pentagon, hacking the police investigation into his illegal activities, and so on. He was given the lightest of sentences on grounds that he'd had a rough life (you know the sort of thing, the film Mad Max parodied it with the societal blame bit) and warned that if he was ever caught again he would be in receipt of the custodial sentence of which he would ordinarily have under (then) Australian law. The judge made a bad decision. Moreover, offenders begin small and work their way up (do notice that the handle adopted by Assange, namely Mendax, is an explicit acknowledgement of his status by him and has in it a built in excuse, along the lines of the Platonic myth).
Assange, with his conviction on 25 counts, the way that he's been using his supposed pursuit of truth and justice to make money (the pay wall plan, relations with newspapers over 'his' data (yes, *his*!), the substantial advance he took for his memoir publication of which he *blocked*, while claiming the publisher had no right to go ahead and publish, plus his latest televisual venture, backed by no less than a Kremlin (that font of truth, democracy and justice) sponsored media outlet... ...there is a lot more here and very little space, but all in all the only person in the world who is right is Julian, who is not cash greedy, does not draw some £80,000 for his post, and has done Manning proud with a well endowed defence fund.
Anyhow, when you have changed your nappies and dried your eyes do report back and, given that you evidently have crystal ball evidence into the US investigation, do tell the world why it is the US government did not extradite Assange in 1991 or thereabouts.
The old fashioned way? Do adumbrate for us all please. I can think of a few options; most obviously they can have an extradition application prepared prior to his release; or arrange for most of the world to reject him, and ensure that he is delivered to a country that will look favourably on extradition to the US.
There is absolutely no need to speculate in some labyrinthine conspiracy theory. When they have the data - and they currently say that they do not - they can grab him by the balls and yank him off to Gitmo land. Oh yes. Then you will moan and whine about how unfair this is, or some other infantile twaddle.
Julian Assange may well at last have to pay for the things that he has done. It would seem that his erratic education, primarily from home with an emphasis on the opposite of the rule following behaviours that make people co-operate (unlike psychopaths, though I'm not saying our Jules is one) gifted him with the belief that the world ought to conform to his eccentric beliefs (do read his cod philosophy, it's available on the web), and that he does not have to be accountable.
In short, Assange would appear to be everything that he claims to oppose (read the insider accounts on his decision making process and treatment of Wikileaks insiders), and I'm sure there are a few Afghan informants who would agree with that. If they are still alive.
I don't know the English system but in America, the Supreme Court sits en banc. Has the week-ends off and, oh yeah, they can watch tv after dinner.
Their take-away from the Julian Assange Hour could determine the outcome of his ordeal. The best evidence of Jullian Assange's character is Julian Assange, himself. Sometimes that witness is never called to the stand. If I weren't a card carrying paranoid schizophrenic, I'd say that some of JA's influential friends and lawyers have told him that I'd he did an interesting show, it might get some judicial revue during some judicial pop corn and judicial peanuts.
The judges will won't be taken in by JA. But we will all see a side of him no one has ever seen, including me and a few of you.
Julian Assange up close and in your face on tv.
I would love a "non-celebrity get me out of here episode" where you could vote to keep Assange(tm) locked up in a damp concrete bunker. You could also do a followup where you'd host a big guy called Bubba with Assange(tm) after mounting the shower soap dispensers about a foot off the ground, but that may happen anyway when Assange(tm) hits prison..
For added irony, donate the proceeds to Wikileaks..
"How odd.
On Slashdot (browsing at level 4 and above) it seems the general consensus is that whatever his personal failings, he's done A Good Thing for freedom and openess - and deserves support."
It sounds to me as if you are an advocate for the consensus theory of truth. If the people believe it, then it must be true. Shades of the 1930s all over again.
Must go, I'm off to the 5 minutes hate.
Just in the interests of truth and completeness:
"The Kremlin launched the RT network as Russia Today in 2005 as a counterpart to CNN in reaching international viewers in Europe. Detractors, though, consider the network a tool of Russian propaganda.
"Has Julian Assange ever heard the story of the Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky," Claudia von Salzen, a journalist with Germany's Der Tagesspiegel, tweeted, according to the BBC. "He died in jail after accusing officials of fraud.""
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-finds-network-air-tv-show-kremlin-backed-rt-article-1.1011581
As we all know the former USSR has a state Duma packed with former KGB and FSB placemen favoured by Putin. I would find this opportunism risible, were it not for the fact that Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated by means of polonium (the trail literally led back to Russia and the accused was 'elevated' to be a member of said Duma so that he cannot be extradited), the attempt on Gordievsky's life, the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, and many, many other people who exposed the activities of people in the Russian government and Duma; Litvenenko's disclosures are said to have impacted directly on the former Lt Col of KGB, Putin. Litvenenko's story is very interesting; he was charged with the task of uncovering corruption, only he went too far for some.
I wonder how Assange sleeps at night, as I remember the disclosure of Afghan informant data, right down to the GPS data, and his cold, insightless remarks about informers in general. In front of witnesses. Oh sure, Assange is one of the good guys, right? Including his help from an anti semitic Russian; and the list goes on.
And I thought my conspiracy theories were bad. Yours are real led zeppelins. Woo. Hoo! (Let's have a beer sometime.)
So the Russians are going to eliminate the guy that embarrassed America? And before America is forced to make some very unpleasant moves against Assange. Moves which will create very negative PR for America which will last a long time. Putin ain't that dumb.
Here's my latest conspiracy theory: If Sweden extradites Assange to America, it will get a boycott by the world wide gay community which, during the downturn in the global economy, is nothing to
sneeze at. With their immense discretionary spending, the gay community can make or break a small vacation spot not far from the Arctic Circle.
Kool, huh?
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