Assange Has Signed Book Deals Worth $1.5 Million+

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."

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Re:Why did Assange want to move to Sweden?

[TapeCutter]

The Aussie politicians asked the federal police to see if Assange had broken any laws, they came back with a definite "no". Most of those politicains have now resorted to calling him irresponsible rather than criminal, the foriegn minister has said all along that WL has done nothing wrong by publishing leaks (even though some of those leaks were personally embarrasing to him). So far he has recieved much better treatment by the Aussie government than David Hicks did.