Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding (Guardian Books)
Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Biography (Canongate)
Julian Assange, the poster boy for freedom of information, quickly fell from grace with his sexual assault and rape charges. Now he is being deported to Sweden.
I found these books about him riveting, but the unauthorised autobiography was unputdownable because it was personal.
There are some poignant bits about Assange as a parent; meeting his own father for the first time; and his frantic running, for years, from a former lover of his mother. But there is not an iota of criticism for the unstructured, haphazard lifestyle she provided. Rather, he thanks her (and this lifestyle) for making him turn to computer hacking, which in turn morphed into an idealism to change the world and stop wars.
In contrast, Guardian Ânewspaper journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding paint Assange as quite a strange character.
Maybe, from their more conventional backgrounds and gazes, he is. But they also slip in far too many cables, which frankly are quite Âboring.
I have some irritation with Assange, however: his criticism of the mainstream media is remorseless and overdone. After all, he really wanted and needed the traditional media to lend more credibility to his work and to the Wikileaks’ leaks.
Although Assange seems genuinely idealistic in the unauthorised biography, I can’t help remembering what happened when I was at the Pan African Conference for Access to Information in Cape Town this September.
A screen flashed that Assange had agreed to address the conference — for a fee of €10?000.
Eish! What happened to the Âidealism?
But then he does have all those legal bills to pay.
And now, even worse, Wikileaks has run out of money to publish and won’t be releasing anything
this month.