Assange Has Signed Book Deals Worth $1.5 Million+ 452
cold fjord writes "Julian Assange has signed a major book deal for his autobiography worth more than one million pounds (1.2 million euros, 1.5 million dollars).
Assange told Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that the money would help him defend himself against allegations of sexual assault made by two women in Sweden.
'I don't want to write this book, but I have to,' he said. 'I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat.' The Australian said he would receive 800,000 dollars (600,000 euros) from Alfred A. Knopf, his American publisher, and a British deal with Canongate is worth 325,000 pounds (380,000 euros, 500,000 dollars).
Money from other markets and serialisation is expected to raise the total to 1.1 million pounds, he said.
Assange is currently out on £240,000 bail under what his lawyer refers to as not so much 'house arrest' as 'manor arrest', fighting extradition to Sweden for questioning. The Telegraph adds, 'Mr Assange said he regarded himself as a victim of Left-wing radicalism. Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism,' he said. 'I fell into a hornets' nest of revolutionary feminism.' .... A full extradition hearing is due in London on February 7th."
Re:Without specifics, I think we should be wary... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why did Assange want to move to Sweden? (Score:5, Informative)
Sweden has stronger protections for free-speech than his other options for residency. Look at The Pirate Bay - if it were in the U.S. or Russia or UK it would've been taken down long ago. As a resident of Sweden, he may also get the freedom to travel throughout the European Union, which would be useful as it gives him easy access to the 24-hour media of the West. Australian politicians have been signalling that they may want to prosecute him and confiscate his passport, so returning home isn't a wonderful prospect.
Perhaps now ... (Score:3, Informative)
Now that Mr Assange has his own income again wikileaks will release the money they collected for Private Bradley's defence. It's funny how Assange seems to have forgotten about this entirely [cryptome.org]. Apparently they'd just forgotten to be formal about it, but, assuming they've finally gotten around to it, it appears the money is less than half [wired.com] what was expected/promised.
Yes wikileaks is a good thing, however the focus on embarrassing the US and not anyone else these days does make one wonder about an agenda, and the focus on Assange rather than the work they're doing is starting to split the organisation [cnn.com]. Maybe it's running a wiki that turns people messianic, after all Jimmy Wales has gone through the same thing [p2pnet.net] with wikipedia money.
Re:Rape allegations (Score:5, Informative)
Many falsehoods have been spread about the allegations against Assange. In addition, the circumstances surrounding the allegations, as well as certain actions by the women who made them, have been used to discredit those women. But these are, as Kate Harding puts it, "tactics used to discredit rape victims every day, and not Really Convincing Special Facts About This Particular Case." [1] (I very strongly urge you to read her piece in its entirety.)
I've read that post in its entirety, and most of the comments as well. I'm close to throwing up. By her own admission Harding is "an arrogant, man-hating cunt who hates free speech, can’t tolerate dissenting opinions, and lives to preserve [her] echo chamber of brainwashed sycophants". I agree fully. Most of these women advocate locking Assange away indefinitely without trial or hearing; anyone who mentions the evidence against the women (like those oh-so-caring/admiring Tweets about him the day after the alleged 'rape') gets immediately banned by Harding.
Given the apparent echo-chamber nature of reactions to the allegations on these feminist sites, I start to seriously lean towards discounting the women's statements and assuming innocence, given that word stands against word anyway.
Re:Why did Assange want to move to Sweden? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Without specifics, I think we should be wary... (Score:4, Informative)
I was accused of rape by an ex girlfriend when I was 17. She did it for revenge. It cost my family 10 grand and fucked me up so much I dropped out of college (this got drug out for two years). In the end, she admitted to making it all up, and she received no punishment whatsoever. I didn't even get an apology from the prosecutor that did this nor the one cop that threatened to kill me (over the phone).
Thankfully, she ruined her own life in doing this because my family and I started a massive truth campaign that turned the community against her because her story kept changing. She is now a fat washed up cunt who's husband is in prison.
Well that was all 10 years ago. But the experience will always be with me. The FACT is that women lie about things like this all the time. People that defend it have never had it happen to them. I have a daughter that is 4 years old. I would would question such an accusation coming out of her mouth as well. Probably because of how well she has been parented, she would never make such an accusation. As she grows older, she will fully understand the consequences of doing something like this to someone. Andrea, my ex, obviously didn't. It looks like the idiot prosecutor (who lost the next election after this) now has his own law office in Riverside CA on Orange ST. He used to practice about 1500 miles due east from where he is currently at.
Here's hoping more misfortune befalls Andrea and Steve, everyone in their family, and their childrens' children for generations to come. My life has been great since this incident and hopefully will continue to get better.
Re:Without specifics, I think we should be wary... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, they do in a way. Look up jury nullification. Certain people don't like it but its one of the few functioning forms of democracy we have left.
Re:Without specifics, I think we should be wary... (Score:5, Informative)
Your logic reported you to the UN for torturing it. Besides, if you really think soliders aren't capable of, and encouraged to, think of shooting someone in a warzone as an almost orgasmic experience, you really need to talk to a few more soldiers.
Well, being a veteran, a few combat veterans actually opened up to me, and none of them said anything remotely like that.
While in, I formulated a rule that if someone claimed something that sounded over the top, I would divide by ten or drop it an order of magnitude, whichever made more sense. If someone was a great mechanic, it meant he could probably change the oil on his car. If his girlfriend was a model, she was probably average. One story about 200 confirmed kills turned into 100, then definitely 30, and BTW it was indirect so not "confirmed kills" as much as "estimated BDA." And damned near every National Guard idiot has a collection of combat patches of units he knows nothing about, and they all claim to be infantry because they were slotted as infantry for six months.
So, really, if someone is talking about how shooting someone was "orgasmic," first of all, I'd be suspicious as to whether the person really was a combat veteran, because that's just not how I've ever heard it described on the *rare* occasion they talk about it. And even then, I'd take it with a huge fucking grain of salt, because I guarantee you that there are guys who will lie their asses off about that, and do it with a tone of total reverence.