Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, will be taking questions at the Guardian website at around 1pm GMT, to answer questions about his now famous/infamous site. (Unless, of course, the Illuminati shut down the Guardian site, a Russian assassin shoots him dead, or he doesn't have a wireless connection wherever he is.)
Should be a very interesting discussion, regardless of your views.
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At 2.30 pm, Mr Assange will be heading over to Silkworms Ink, to answer questions about Jonathan Franzen's glasses, the state of English poetry, and his favourite Nick Cave song. Be here.
GLADIATOR 2 IS VIOLENT BUT RARELY IF EVER DEPRAVED
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Anyone who has ever seen a sword and sandal epic from the great period of
the 50s and 60s will know that at some point, someone camp and perverse
lik...
2 days ago
1.06 and the Guardian site keeps crashing, though whether this is due to the interference of any nation's secret service or just the Grauniad's inability to handle more than 40 readers remains to be seen.
ReplyDelete40 minutes in and, between the site's nervous collapses, 900 questions of varying quality, all we've had so far was a one-word response to the second question ('Is there anything we can do to help?') from someone called JAssange.
ReplyDeleteThe response was, 'Yes'.
Was removed almost immediately, so possibly it was a fake. The Guardian's now closed the comment section and said they'll post Assange's answers forthwith.
Overwhelming impression = the underground-style idea of the outlaw hero speaking directly to the citizens of the world through his own medium is certainly inspiring, but perhaps not practical.
Particularly when a good hundred of the comments are asking him if he knows whether E.T. is real.
Answers are going on one by one. Nothing unexpected so far (no direct evidence that anybody's died as a result of the leaks, Bradley Manning may not be a mole, but if he is, he's a hero). But then there's this;
ReplyDelete'Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.
However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.'
Tease.
Assange hints that Wikileaks have taken 'appropriate precautions' to protect his organisation's lives against the actions of super-powers. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteHe's really having a go at answering these questions. I half-expected a stifled cry of 'Fight the power!'.
ReplyDeleteDown-marks so far:
Poor grammar. International whistle-blowing figureheads are supposed to use commas correctly, damn it!
Batting back a question about the effects of the leaks on international trust by claiming it was too long.
Up-marks:
The coolly-mentioned insurance gambit of mentioning that all of the leaked files are encrypted and in the hands of 100,000 people, so that the game will go on even if something happens to him.
A reference to the collective pseudonymous mathematician Nicholas Bourbaki. Nice.
...and, with Assange gone, the usual CiF shouting match commences, as the politically-informed people of the world call each other fascists, 'retards', twelve-year-olds and so on.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the Grand Inquisitor was right, after all...
keep in touched
ReplyDelete