ASSANGE
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Julian Assange Doesn't Do Irony Well: Threatens His Own Internal Leakers With $20 Million Penalty | Techdirt
from the that-seems-just-a-little-hypocritical dept It's no secret that Wikileaks' Julian Assange is a man of many contradictions, who has what appears to be a vindictive and angry streak against those who disagree with him on certain plans. However, now reports are coming out that he made his own associates sign an incredibly draconian non-disclosure agreement which threatens anyone who leaks documents from within Wikileaks with the potential for a $20 million penalty. I guess, you could argue that since he recognizes how much leaking goes on, that it makes sense to put in place extreme penalties.Vote for Julian Assange in The 2011 TIME 100 Poll, here ! As of today, April 8, 2011, Julian Assange is ranked number 8, behind Susan Boyle at number 4, Beyonce at number 3, Jay Chou at number 2 and Rain at number 1. Bradley Manning is ranked at No. 38 out of 203 nominees. The poll asks its readers to: "Cast your votes for the leaders, artists, innovators, icons and heroes that you think are the most influential people in the world.
2011-04-08 Vote for Julian Assange (Again) in The 2011 TIME 100 Poll, closes April 14 | WL Central
AUSTRALIA
The house on Grettisgata Street, in Reykjavik, is a century old, small and white, situated just a few streets from the North Atlantic. The shifting northerly winds can suddenly bring ice and snow to the city, even in springtime, and when they do a certain kind of silence sets in. This was the case on the morning of March 30th, when a tall Australian man named Julian Paul Assange, with gray eyes and a mop of silver-white hair, arrived to rent the place. Assange was dressed in a gray full-body snowsuit, and he had with him a small entourage. “We are journalists,” he told the owner of the house. Eyjafjallajökull had recently begun erupting, and he said, “We’re here to write about the volcano.”
WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange : The New Yorker
Assange chased by Turmoil
He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own the way other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends. “By being determined to be on this path, and not to compromise, I’ve wound up in an extraordinary situation,” Mr. Assange said over lunch last Sunday, when he arrived sporting a woolen beanie and a wispy stubble and trailing a youthful entourage that included a filmmaker assigned to document any unpleasant surprises. In his remarkable journey to notoriety, Mr. Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowers’ Web site, sees the next few weeks as his most hazardous.I was interested. The adventure that ensued over the next six months combined the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of handling a vast secret archive with the more mundane feat of sorting, searching and understanding a mountain of data. As if that were not complicated enough, the project also entailed a source who was elusive, manipulative and volatile (and ultimately openly hostile to The Times and The Guardian); an international cast of journalists; company lawyers committed to keeping us within the bounds of the law; and an array of government officials who sometimes seemed as if they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to engage us or arrest us. By the end of the year, the story of this wholesale security breach had outgrown the story of the actual contents of the secret documents and generated much breathless speculation that something — journalism, diplomacy, life as we know it — had profoundly changed forever.
The Times's Dealings With Julian Assange - NYTimes.com
SWEDEN
Union Bags Assange
Face of WikiLeaks Julian Assange is set to star at the Union a week on Tuesday in his first public address for four months, The Tab can exclusively reveal. In a jaw-dropping scoop, president Lauren Davidson will confirm the appearance of the face of the high profile Aussie in an email to Union members today. Davidson was understandably elated, telling The Tab, “ I’m delighted. One of our main purposes is to bring the most important and interesting people to Cambridge , and Assange is undoubtedly one of the most influential people in the world today.” Just two weeks ago Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court ordered Assange to be sent back to Sweden, to face charges of sexually assaulting one woman and raping another last August. Assange however – believing the claims to be just part of a bigger plot to discredit him – has appealed the ruling, thus prolonging his stay, and the Union snapped up the opportunity to bring him to Cambridge.
Julian Assange speaks at a press conference on the Iraq war logs, which were leaked last year. Picture: AFP Source: AFP JULIAN Assange has told the story of his childhood and adolescence twice - most recently to a journalist from The New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian, and some 15 years ago, secretly but in greater detail, to Suelette Dreyfus, the author of a fascinating book on the first generation of computer hacking, Underground, for which Assange was the primary researcher.
Inside the brain of J.A.
Support J.A. in his quest for Freedom
Socialist Alliance gay and lesbian rights spokesperson Rachel Evans spoke in Sydney on April 24 at a rally calling to free accused WikiLeaks’ source Private Bradley Manning from prison in the US, where he is being held in solitary confinement. The protest was part of an international day of protest for Manning, who faces a court martial and possible life in prison if convicted. Evans’ speech is below.Mr Assange, who's on bail in the English countryside during his fight to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, has taken a battering in the media in recent weeks as his personal life is scrutinised. He's appointed London public relations firm Borkowski, owned by master publicist Mark Borkowski - which has a four-member team dealing with media enquiries about him - and an online weekly media conference to deliver messages from him and WikiLeaks.
J.A. hires PR team
Borkowski - blog
However much we hate him, anyone even vaguely interested in the saccharine world of Saturday Night Telly needs to say a quick prayer at the altar of Simon Cowell. Whatever side you came down on, the whole BGT/The Voice battle proved that, as an individual and a brand, he drives the whole weekend entertainment market more or less single handedly. With both sides claiming victory and analysts still picking over the remains, the ratings battle between BGT and The Voice was a close call. While BGT won the peak ratings prize with 11.5m viewers, The Voice managed to sustain figures during its 20 minute overlap with BGT, showing that Cowell’s property didn’t entice many viewers away. However, the publicity battle was clearly dominated by one man alone. You can’t manufacture, train or interview for a showbiz force like Cowell.