Julian Assange is going to write a book

A few years ago someone in my family was having problems paying their mortgage and it was suggested that I might buy into the property. That suggestion was soon discarded, however, with the said family member deciding that they wanted to hold onto the whole property by hook or by crook. You might guess what ultimately happened?

Now, if the answer to that last question is somehow implied the original motivation behind the choice is, nevertheless, explicit enough and when I read in today's 'Guardian' that Julian Assange expects to earn more than £1m from a book he is about to write and that he has decided to write the book because the money is needed to keep WikiLeaks afloat and cover his legal costs, then we suspect that he, like the subject of the first sentence, is trying to hold onto "his property" by hook or by crook. After all, it is difficult to imagine that considering Wikileaks fame, Mr Assange could not get enough financial backing from elsewhere.

However, this is Julian's show, it is Julian's produce and now he is out to make it his property. Furthermore, if that statement appears like a cheap shot on my part to discredit the message by attacking the messenger, then we might want to consider for one minute, what exactly is the message up until now?
Americans kill innocent civilians in Iraq, some US diplomat thinks that Guido Westerwelle is vain, another American diplomat doesn't like Sarkozy etc. etc. Well, I am not about, and indeed I cannot, cover the thousands and thousands of documents which have been released, but just for starters; most of us know that the Americans kill innocent civilians in Iraq and elsewhere and personally I also think that both Guido Westerwelle and Nicolas Sarkozy .......... Well, do you get the point?

If you don't, the point is that there really isn't a lot we didn't know or suspect that has come out in these disclosures, at least, up until now. Moreover, we might be a little suspicious at how this information has just been dumped on the mainstream media which can then edit and publish it as it likes. Still, Mr Assange does appear to have found himself a nice little business and with the charges against him in Sweden more than likely trumped-up and with any pending US charges against him having absolutely no legal basis, we might assume that it is a little business, which he is going to do well from.

Indeed, that last point would seem to be confirmed by the news that a number of  Daniel Domscheit-Berg, alias Daniel Schmitt, the ex-German spokesman for Wikileaks, is one of the leaders of the new whistleblower undertaking . Well, done Daniel and my biggest regret, having not bought into the said property discussed at the beginning of the post, is not going out and buying property of my own.

Of course, what we can expect is lots of Wikileaks clones, selling information to the highest bidder ...... and the whistleblowers themselves? Well, they, like Private Bradley Manning will probably be languishing in various prisons although like the real news we will probably not even get to hear of them. Talking of which ....... where is all the nitty gritty stuff in Israel? Where are the direct orders to kill civilians in Gaza etc.? Again we know that this happened. Therefore, Julian could you please get this stuff posted as soon as possible and at least give me the opportunity to change my mind about you once more.