can we not
have a comparison to katie price/ other Z list celebrities to show just how dire this is?
A moist Jemima Khan once described WikiLeaks' Líder Máximo as "the new Jason Bourne" – but Julian Assange just isn't selling like the Robert Ludlum hero. Despite heavy publicity, Assange's "unauthorised biography" sold just 644 copies in three days. This placed the ghost-written memoir 537th on the best-seller list, the …
Per http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3493498/Katie-Price-book-outselling-Gordon-Browns.html Katie Price was still managing to sell almost 1,000 copies every three days of 'Pushed to the Limit' (described as "the latest instalment of the model’s autobiography") after 10 months on the market.
Per the report linked to by El Reg, the best selling book last week — One Day — managed to sell about 14,443 copies every three days.
Wikileaks published highly compelling evidence that a bunch of agencies that operate effectively above the law were — quelle surprise — acting as though above the law. If, like me, you think that greater accountability leads to better governance then that's a good thing. There's the counter-argument that what they did was likely to endanger actual operatives currently in the field and to negatively bias diplomatic relationships. I'm optimistic that the input of outlets like The Guardian will have caused the advantages to outweigh the disadvantages but the truth is that we'll probably never have a complete picture.
That all being said, Assange has always come off as so ostentatiously trying to benefit personally from the Wikileaks disclosures that you have to wonder about his motives. Not only do I not for a second believe that he's acting altruistically, but I don't even see him as an important component of the Wikileaks story. He didn't found the organisation and it's pretty obvious that not only do they not really need a public face but that even if they did they'd have been able to pick from a thousand others.
I'm therefore not really sure why I'd want to read a biography — he's a person with mostly negative traits that hasn't had any original ideas or built anything significant.
I'm sorry but WTF are you babbling about?
Look, hate to say it, but releasing tonnes of internal memos from the US Embassies around the world on mundane shit, does nothing but try and embarrass the US Government. C'mon really? What value did we gain on finding out that HRM passes gas like the rest of us? No probative value.
Dumping US Military classified docs and after action reports? Again, yes, war is hell. But where is there anyone actually acting above the law except for the terrorists and Taliban who don't give a rat's fsck about any notion of law or fair play.
That's the trouble with Wikileaks. No real whistle blowing and it was Assange's way to attempt to get rich quick.