Well, not exactly. Libertarian blogger Mark Wallace has accumulated £6,500 in public donations as a bounty for anyone who can set off the fire alarm in Ecuador’s London Embassy. Sheesh… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
Sometimes it useful to go back to when a story first broke to get some perspective on where it is now. This snapshot is from the BBC’s Newsnight edition from the day after it ‘escaped’ to the Ecudorian Embassy earlier in the summer: Julian Assange is not worried so much about going to Sweden as being inducted into a legal process that could see him end up in the US to face trial for espionage, or worse. Fair enough, I …
Tom Watson (not the politician) has a very perceptive piece on Julian Assange, and how hacking into government systems to free information has, in the short term at least, has created a fear factor that’s made the system less open: Slapping up stolen emails in partnership with hackers was supposed to be the early life Assange left behind when he got religion for government reform; providing a mechanism for legitimate whistleblowers to get their stories to journalists and the public …
I recall a few years ago being berated in Slugger’s comment zone by Julian Assange for daring to suggest that some decisions were best discussed behind closed doors. Despite our heavy duty investigation of Northern Ireland Water last year, I still don’t believe that everything in government automatically benefits from the transparency of the public square. But reading the Irish Independent’s batch of Ireland cables from the State Department, begs the question: is Assange simply super briefing the public in …
Mashable have a great intro to the Julian Assange walk out from a CNN interview on the basis that the interviewer had switched from the hard politics angle on his Iraq war leaks to the human interest angle of (he says false) allegations about him in his personal life. Assange is a tough cookie not given to the game of ‘gaining friends and influencing people’ ways of the old media. He’s even turned up in the comments zone of Slugger …
