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The founder of Tesla Motors, co-founder of Paypal, and CEO/CTO of the company SpaceX, Elon Reeve Musk, aims to establish a colony of 80,000 humans on Mars by 2040. While fixing his short-term goals on sustainable energy production, Musk believes that life must ultimately become multi-planetary, to reduce the “risk of human extinction” due to global warming. Interestingly, Musk’s preference for Martian government is direct democracy “because the potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative democracy”.

That truism was suppressed about 2500 years ago, when Sparta crushed the selectively direct democracy of Athens. Curiously, the exclusively adult, male slave-owners who ran Athens around 500 BCE, were quite close in number to the future demos of Mars. That land however, will impose absolute consensus on the direct democracy of ‘Elon and the Elites’. No more arguments about fossil fuels being good for humanity. They require oxygen to burn.

Build a Wall!

Crazed bargaining is predictable, as Earth’s denizens enter the third ‘stage of grief’ over the presumptive loss of Mother Earth. Musk’s exit strategy brings to mind The Hanged Man, as he plummets head down from the Twin Towers. At least he doesn’t fry. As least he gets to fly. Unfortunately the 68th wealthiest man in America (to date), who has stated that he wants to die on Mars, but “not on impact”, will also be cursed by gravity.

Wir sind die Hautkrankheit der Erde

(We are the Earth’s skin disease) Günter Gras, ‘Dairy of a Snail’

The Mask of the Red Death?

The Washington Post reported that as climate departure looms, a year has been pinned to every major city in the world, and Kingston, Jamaica’s number is 2023. The subject of liquid democracy becomes a talking point when the plebs begin to realise that representative politics has bleached us. Might as well try something else, at least to delay that tipping point a few years.

Weltanschauung dunkel

(Black as the ace of spades)

99% Dreaming

Michael Hart and Antonio Negri, in their books ‘Empire’ and ‘Multitude’, describe how a potentially new type of society is maturing inside the womb of the old; how the rise of the “multitude” in the midst of capitalism, “makes democracy possible for the first time”. And how, historically, democracy was constrained by systems of political representation and hierarchically centralised state structures (‘‘the form of the One”).

The development of new forms of ‘immaterial labour’ corresponds with the rise of the ‘multitude’, who produce “not just goods or services; the multitude also and most importantly produces cooperation, communication, forms of life, and social relationships”. What thereby emerges is a vast new domain – the ‘commons’ – comprised of shared knowledge, revolutionary new forms of cooperation, social interaction, information and communications technology, etc; and this new domain is seriously at odds with the private ownership of the means of production by a privileged elite.

Directly socialised, immaterial production renders owners progressively superfluous – (good job, if they’re leaving for Mars!). The objective, material conditions therefore exist for an ‘absolute democracy’, where the associated producers directly regulate their social relations without the interference of democratic ‘representation’.

Professor Simon Tormey, in ‘The End of Representative Politics’, his study of the Arab Spring, Occupy, Anonymous and, in particular, ‘The Spanish Laboratory’, describes how ‘vertical’ systems of political representation are being subverted and overtaken by ‘horizontal’ political movements. Tormey celebrates:

“…a plethora of forms and styles of what might be called immediate or non-mediated politics: direct action, flash protests, Twitter-led mobilizations, pinging, hacking, squatting, boycotting, buy-cotting, occupying and other interventions of a direct, practical kind. Increasingly, politically engaged citizens don’t vote, they act. They don’t join mass parties contesting power; they create their own initiatives, ‘micro-parties’, networks, affinity groups, deliberative assemblies, participatory experiments. They don’t wait for elections; they seek to make their views, anger, displeasure, known immediately, now. They don’t read the media, They (to quote Indymedia) are the media.”

In a talk last year entitled ‘Lessons from Spain: Grassroots Democracy and the Movements against Capitalism’, at Sydney’s Politics in the Pub, Tormey marvelled at how 6 million people in Spain could be instantly mobilised by PODEMAS via Twitter. Social media and indeed, citizen journalism would seem to be the life-blood of the rhizome – “Like passing thousands of buckets of water, to put out the fire”, as Julian Assange once described the viral communications of Wikileaks supporters.

In his 1929 short story, Chains (Láncszemek), Frigyes Karinthy first introduced the notion of ‘six degrees of separation’– where everyone is potentially connected, via ‘friends of friends’ through a maximum of six intermediaries. In 1990, we still thought that idea equally viable, or dubious. Four years later, author Kevin Kelly would write ‘Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World’, which would predict our post-millennial vision of ‘Chains’, as a Hive Mind. One giant leap for mankind, that would disrupt all manner of hierarchy and ruse.

Aaaarrrgh!

Brigitta Jónsdóttir – former Wikileaks associate, co-founder of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative and leader of Iceland’s Pirate Party – is likely to become the country’s Prime Minister this November.

The Pirates were already well ahead in the polls before the current coalition government’s PM, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, was named in the Panama Papers in relation to the offshore secretion of funds. Although he allegedly did not break Icelandic law, almost 10% of the population took to the streets outside of Parliament to oust him. Gudni Johannesson, historian at the University of Iceland, and man most likely to become the next President of Iceland, explains:

“His message to the country was more or less that we should all be together, we are all in the same boat, but at the same time he had taken a boat of his own, filled it up with gold and moved it abroad.”

Same old same old…

Dr Aleks Krotowski, who created the series: The Virtual Revolution, advances the notion that the greater the number of people who contribute to a body of knowledge, the more reliable that body of knowledge becomes, if it accumulates within a self-correcting system. She cited the evolution of Wikipedia, which in its nascence was scorned, but as the number of contributors grew it became 1% more reliable than Encyclopædia Britannica.

The self-correcting mechanisms of Wikipedia and the citizen-authored draft Constitution of Iceland, which was being finalised by Lawrence Lessig for the 2016 elections, had their flaws, but these collectively written facts and laws reflected a move away from centralised power, media and knowledge. It was perhaps time to pool together to ‘future proof’ our communities, education and planet. Clive Hamilton, at the launch of his book Requiem for a Species said it would take thousands of years to undo the damage Capitalism and the Industrial Age has done to our eco-system, even if we were to drastically reduce our carbon emissions tomorrow. We won’t, while “Coal is good for humanity” continues to dominate our airwaves, and Trump convinces 40% of his followers that climate change isn’t real.

Julian Assange once made an astute comment, that it matters less who’s telling the truth, than who has the biggest megaphone. My first port of call with this project will be Iceland to visit ‘The Mouse That Roared’, Birgitta Jonsdottir, a parliamentarian who co-founded, with help from Assange, the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. The aim was to create a “media haven” for journalism, and protect it as the self-correcting system in our society. She and the Pirate Party agreed to hear my questions, and I intend to document events leading up to the November 2016 elections. The world has its eyes on Iceland. Not only did they refuse to bail out their ‘banksters’ after the Global Financial Crisis; not only did they jail them and go on to successfully re-build their economy; should the Pirates win, this will be the first government in the world to operate on a model of liquid democracy.

‘Liquid’ is a form of direct democracy, on an interactive, online platform; where (rightfully) informed citizens can discuss, approve and create policy directly – or nominate ‘floating’ representatives whose expertise they trust on a particular issue to vote on their behalf. I’ll be looking at the efficiency of specific platforms, such as Liquidfeedback, which was developed in Germany, as well as DemocracyOS, which is used by Pia Mancini and the Net Party in Argentina.

As for my own place within the ‘hive mind’, I became a citizen journalist in 2010 in the wake of the Wikileaks revelations, and I played my part in the genesis of a people’s movement that concerned itself with holding power to account and demanding accuracy in the historical record. Over the next few years, I wrote around 200 articles on my blog Thing2Thing.com (see ‘Archives’), and made about 80 films, including a DVD edition entitled The Wikileaks Tapes. It took little time (given my technical skills, a Creative Commons media strategy and deep investment) to attract the attention of those who would provide wind for my sails.

This review of The Wikileaks Tapes tells much of my story and unusually informal approach. I’m not sure I really knew what I was doing at first, but I surprisingly found myself chatting with people who had changed history, such as Daniel Ellsberg; I collaborated with other citizen journalists, like Alexa O’Brien who ‘self-produced’ the daily transcripts of Private Manning’s trial; and I recorded the laments of many professional journalists and members of the legal community.

The Next Generation

I plan to re-visit my friends in the US, including a number of whistle-blowers, film-makers and writers. Ecuador is also on the wish-list, to examine how their 2009 constitution is panning out, particularly in relation to the laws governing media ownership. Finally, there is much to document regarding the growth of social movements in Australia and cross-talk between them; from the Climate Angels to the Knitting Nannies; from Lock the Gate to Stop the War; from WACA to RACS. It’s a small world after all, and although ‘we the people’ will be hard put to save it, there appears to be much that can be done to mitigate the worst effects of inclement weather.

Irony on Mars

My crowd-funder film to attend COP21, the 2015 Paris climate conference.
Special thanks to Chris Hedges.

Update

WATCH ICELAND COVERAGE

After a blistering scare campaign from the Right just before the Icelandic elections, the Pirate Party did less well than expected, but they nevertheless tripled their votes from the last election, and won 10 out of the 63 seats.

Disgraced Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson’s former Progressive Party won only 8 seats, thus leaving the ‘winner’ of the elections, the Independence Party with 21 seats, impotent in forming government with them, as they had done before. 32 of the 63 are required.

Initially the Independence Party could find no other allies among the five other parties, so the mandate to form government was passed on to the Left. Given the numbers, all five parties would have to unite to table a majority.

Both the Left Green Party and the Pirates attempted to manage this, but failed. Finally, on January 17th 2017, a Coalition emerged, composed of the Independence Party, Bright Future and the Reform Party.

The new Prime Minister of Iceland is Bjarni Benediktsson, the leader of the Independence Party. He was one of the high-profile Icelandic politicians who managed to stay afloat, after being named in the Panama Papers. He is alleged to have buried a report on the names of other Icelanders with offshore accounts until after the elections. Benediktsson has recently come under heavy criticism from the Green Left Party and the Pirates. To be continued…

Aaaaarrrrgh!

An evening of learning, proposed by Federal Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, to keep us safe online. And what an excellent job Dan Bryant did of making both the why and the how clear in his workshop. Dan is a ‘conscientious objector’ systems engineer from the private sector, who joined the Greens to help refugees and keep the internet a fair playing field.

CRYPTOPARTY LIKE IT'S 1984 systems engineer and tutor - DAN BRYANT

The ‘Cryptoparty Like It’s 1984′ event is in 4 parts, and I’ve documented that into 3 films; the fourth being an interaction with the audience (whom I did not film for the entirety of the evening). The first is a preamble from Greens MP Jamie Parker and Senator Scott Ludlam; the second a cyber-security work-shop; and the third a Q&A with Ludlam and NSW Greens Candidate for Newtown, Jenny Leong.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussies… whether or not you like knights and dames, methinks it’s time to castle. With both major parties bull-dozing their way into our private lives, with the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2015, on *someone’s* behalf, the sensible reaction is to don the Invisibility Cloak. Go Dark! This trove of Australian metadata will likely become a target for penetration and theft world-wide; so best not to allow one’s own data-set to become vulnerable. Hell knows they haven’t thought it through about how to compensate us, if we all get robbed.

CRYPTOPARTY LIKE IT'S 1984 - Dan explains how TOR works

What I fear is that global surveillance provides a means for a global elite, to learn the ‘Deepest Secret Fear’ of any opponent; and to thwart their every move in advance. Metadata essentially monitors networks of communications, not just individuals; so this power extends over groups of all kinds, be it political parties, unions, journalists or activists defending their water supplies and farmlands.

The Greens are the only large political party opposing this ‘accident waiting to happen’ / totalitarian-corporate take-over. Senator Ludlam has decided to spread the word, far and wide, on how to really protect Australia. Every technique you learn in this workshop is entirely legal, and safe for use. If you can get yourself a decent VPN (virtual private network), it may even speed up your internet connection.

LADIES & GENTLEMEN, welcome to ‘Politics in the Pub’, where people can have a good old yarn about things we’re not supposed to know. It was a pleasure to serve in the interests of putting this one together. Scott, Sam, Jacob, you had the audience on the edge of their seats.

“We need a herd inoculation”

is echoing, and they say:

“Fantastic.. terrifying and inspiring”

See you for Ep 2 xx Cathy

Let's take this baby on the road

Senator Scott Ludlam is back! with another viral video addressing Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony “Dum Dum” Abbott. Aussies were wowed by Ludlam’s fiery “Welcome to Western Australia” speech, in anticipation of Abbott’s visit to WA earlier this year. The speech got close to a million views within days, and Ludlam is indeed widely followed and cited by Australians across social media. So why all the politicians leave the Senate when Ludlam speaks is a mystery. Could it be as simple as Metadataphobia?

Meanwhile, news from Rap News…

“The G20 Summit is happening and the leaders of the wealthiest nations on the planet are converging on Australia to come and learn directly at the feet of the master of fascist dystopian fuckwittery: Tony Abbott. Join the noble Australian Prime Minister as he lists his recent achievements and launches the opening of the G20 Summit in Australia, backed by a faithful and compliant mainstream media, represented by our favourite local correspondent Ken Oathcarn.

This episode features a magical cameo from Wizard Senator Scott Ludlam, who has been campaigning tirelessly in speeches to empty Senate rooms to stop the Government’s proposed mandatory data retention laws – coming up soon for a vote in the Senate. After this G20 episode, no one will be in any doubt why Australia is leading the civilised world in the global race to towards 1984.”

Written and created by Giordano Nanni and Hugo Farrant in a suburban backyard home studio in Melbourne, Australia, on Wurundjeri Land. Juice Rap News

Special thanks to Scott Ludlam for working on this video, and for all his tireless work to fend off the forces of Mordor.

#StopDataRetention: http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/campaigns/stopdataretention

BREAKING: Ludlam Senate address (28/10/14)

That may sound unreliable… but it sells! Welcome to Big Brother meets Big Data!

Palantir Technologies, is a premium Silicon Valley start-up, whose business it’s been to write clever software to track digital footprints, then ‘join the dots’ to predict who you are and what you might do next. Its directors are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal and first outside investor in Facebook, and Alex Karp, an “eccentric philosopher” (with a PhD in neoclassical social theory) who turned their Palo Alto* headquarters into a replica of The Shire from ‘Lord of the Rings’. If it sounds like a fairy story, it is not. Palantir’s software has been labelled the Killer App. It was allegedly used to hunt down and kill Osama Bin Laden.

[Editor's update: In 2020 Palantir moved its headquarters to Denver.]

Palantir is ‘well in’. Its advisors are Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet (ex CIA). It was funded by In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm and the CIA became a client of Palantir back in 2004. Other government clients are the NSA, the FBI, the NYPD, and a number of counter terrorism and military agencies.

This baby was valued at five to eight billion dollars in 2013 and predicted to earn another billion in private sector deals in 2014. Forbes Magazine reported:

“Palantir is emerging from the shadow world of spies and special ops to take corporate America by storm. Private-sector deals now account for close to 60% of the company’s revenue.”

[Editor's update: Palantir went public in 2020 as PLTR. As of late April 2026, it has a market capitalization estimated in the range of $300 to $375 billion, largely due to its AI-enabled software platform. Its share value has seen a downturn in 2026, after peaking in 2025.]

The identities of corporate clients are usually kept secret, but in 2014 they have included J.P. Morgan, various hedge funds, News Corp and Bank of America – as some will recall from Palantir’s dealings with H.B Gary Federal in a thwarted plan to destroy Wikileaks and its media partner Glenn Greenwald, who instead went on to report on the disclosures of Edward Snowden. The plan may have succeeded, had not Aaron Barr, an employee of H.B. Gary, bragged about and published a list of alleged members of Anonymous, which in reality was a list of artists, writers and musicians who had taken an interest in the movement. The injustice of this blunder unsurprisingly triggered a revenge attack on H.B. Gary’s servers from real hackers, who uncovered a Powerpoint file outlining the steps the partners would take to discredit Wikileaks and its associates.

When Anonymous gained access to thousands of emails on H.B Gary’s servers, they found that Palantir had worked with HB Gary Federal to develop proposals for attacking WikiLeaks’ infrastructure, blackmailing its supporters and identifying donors. One idea was to submit false information to the organisation’s drop box, which would later be exposed as such. When the plot was exposed, Palantir put an engineer on leave, apologised for his role in the plan, and cut ties with HB Gary. After that they installed a “Batphone” in Karp’s office, allegedly to receive reports about “unethical clients”, and reinstated their engineer.

One might ask at this stage if these people are elves or the Black Riders.

Palantir Technologies is a perhaps a pioneer in an upcoming consumer industry of selling private information for profit, and they are cheap as chips compared to Booz Allen, IBM and Lockheed Martin. But Forbes Magazine suggested Palantir restrict their services to the top end because some people wouldn’t be happy if they went totally public. Quote: “It helps its customers see too much”.

Really? Alex Karp claims his “turn-key” service (as he calls it) helps the Government go after bad guys. Who those bad guys are he often doesn’t know or succeed in finding out.

“It’s tough”, he says, because his targets don’t leave behind any tangible evidence such as fingerprints or DNA.

Whether they actually are bad guys he takes on faith from his Government or whichever client he is working for, and of course the Batphone. According to former employees, Palantir has sought work in Saudi Arabia despite the staff’s misgivings about human rights abuses in the kingdom, but Karp doesn’t seemed to have picked up on any calls about that issue.

In an interview on the Palantir website, Karp assures us that Palantir are the good guys and he showcases a high profile project where they chased the infiltrators of the Dalai Lama’s computer. He stumbles however when asked who it was and has to admit that it wasn’t really clear in the end whether it was a foreign government or teenagers. That’s a pretty wide margin of error.

Palantir’s so-called predictions hinge on assumptions and probabilities – no light, just shadow – and as it turns out, the “bad guys” are not always bad guys. Sometimes they’re activists; sometimes journalists. Karp loves to drop in the word “turn-key” when he’s selling his crystal ball kit. The irony he doesn’t see is that it is the perfect tool for turn-key totalitarianism. You put all of this surveillance into place and then someone, a new President or Prime Minister, flips the switch to tyranny.

Click! Suddenly the technology is not being used as intended. Click! Anti-war activists are raided by the FBI. Click! Refugee activists are threatened by the Department of Immigration and Border ‘Protection’.

[Editor's update: In 2026 a Palantir AI-powered platform called ImmigrationOS is used for identifying, tracking and removing deportation targets - so that an officer can green light a raid, generate a warrant and trigger deportation within a few clicks.]

Alex Karp claims to be an advocate for civil liberties. He assured a talk-show host that innocent people would not be “swept into the dragnet”; that the “patterns” his software detects only relate to the activities of terrorists. He says that the data Palantir supplies is “tagged” for one use only, giving the impression that his company has control over who sees what, or how the information will be used.

The US Justice Department’s Inspector General, in a series of reports on FBI practices found systematic disregard for the required procedures for demanding records. False statements in affidavits to telecommunications companies and the FISA Court; improper acquisition of journalists’ phone records; use of national security authorities in cases unrelated to national security; and attempts by superiors to retroactively conceal these improprieties. Speaking of patterns, a pattern of failure to report potential violations to the proper oversight board was also “noted”.

William Binney, a former NSA official, who led a team to develop ThinThread, the agency’s selective and effective pre-911 surveillance tool, resigned because he saw the whole thing spin out of control and his country turn into a police state. Binney baulked when he saw that NSA data was being used to prosecute petty crime, and not many terrorists. Not many at all. Palantir’s director admits that real terrorists are apt to change their patterns and cut their ties as soon as anyone in their circle is arrested. Going after ordinary citizens, on the other hand, is a much more fruitful, easy and lucrative process.

FBI Director Robert Mueller argued that the entire body of phone records is “relevant to an investigation” because it plausibly contains records that will be relevant to some investigation at some point in time. Since these investigations were not only being used to pursue petty criminals but dissidents too, Binney realised that his Government’s actual use of data gathered through spying had become “a Totalitarian Process”. The American Civil Liberties Union describes Palantir as “a true totalitarian nightmare”.

Julian Sanchez from the CATO Institute articulated a problem that possibly none of the hobbits from The Shire had foreseen:

“Such an architecture of surveillance, once established, would be difficult to dismantle and prove too potent a tool of control if it ever fell into the hands of people who — whether through panic, malice, or a misguided confidence in their own ability to secretly judge the public good — would seek to use it against us.”

Unscathed by the plot to destroy his career, Glenn Greenwald worked with Edward Snowden to reveal that this architecture is in place. Mass surveillance of all citizens, an unprecedented level of eavesdropping, with all the dirt ready if your name comes up, to prosecute you for any kind of crime or misdemeanour. And if you happen to be living in ‘The Lucky Country’ of Australia, you might already be getting into strife for criticising your Government, even if you use a pseudonym because you happen to work for it.

The more innocent citizens are spied upon and intimidated, if they get lippy, the more secretive Governments must become to get away with it. Besides an erosion of civil liberties that inevitably becomes unconstitutional, there’s another ‘technical’ issue that makes the whole process dubious:

Evidence stops being ‘forensic’ when it’s only a digital footprint.

Alex Karp admits that and one can only conclude that his company sells nothing but hunches, and that around these hunches his clients have cultivated a devout belief in the stoned philosopher’s Palantiri – and word has it he often is stoned. A cloud of secrecy then prevents sceptics, lawyers and moralists from reality-checking the ‘vision’, and inducing them to assume that a well-paid, well-hidden job is being well done. Copies of NSA documents are not even allowed to be passed on for analysis by another Palantir client, the NYPD. And thus, the circle of trust is hermetically sealed, around an irrational, self-serving seat of power that is frightened of mere shadows.

Peter Jackson should make a film about that!

Sydney PRISM-BREAK protest - Photo Jarek Gasiorek

Bradley Manning has now been imprisoned for 1000 days without trail, a part from an Article 138 hearing concerning cruel and inhumane treatment. Read more.

Rehearsals for the Bradley Manning Mardi Gras float went well today, despite the intemperate conditions. The date is March 2nd; the place is Sydney; and it’s not too late to join in the fun!

“The Wikileaks Tapes” is a labour of love and it was a very unexpected adventure which began the day I met Christine Assange. She had been consulting my blog at thing2thing.com and I guess she trusted that I was willing and able to do something strong for Julian. So she asked people to give me the time of day… and I gave it my 110%.

Special thanks to #colmirgo for the interview…

THE WIKILEAKS TAPES - 24 films about the organisation that changed the world

“The WikiLeaks phenomenon has shown us that a new form of journalism is possible. It has also shown just how full of Western corporate propaganda the mainstream media have become. The lengths that Vogan has gone to, as a completely unfunded solo operator, to make such an important contribution to the historical continuum is a case in point that independent citizen journalism is an indispensable tool for speaking the truth.” Colin Mirgis, Green Left Weekly ………………………..READ MORE

I visited Daniel Ellsberg to learn the importance of leaking.

Special thanks to #colmirgo for the interview…

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It’s July 2011, and apparently the parties don’t know that Sabu has recently been arrested by the FBI and is reporting on all he sees… Our author, Parmy Olson is allegedly not present but reporting Topiary’s recollections of the events after his arrest.

Strangely enough, a published extract starts with direct speech from a Bond-like user name, ‘q’ (in French, “cul”?) who is apparently on the Wikileaks end. Or is it “q”? The name they can see in the chat room is “Dancing Balls” – also translatable to the French as “cul”. I’m getting confused but mildly titillated already… Q or Dancing Balls says:

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It is hypothesised that q, who at all times henceforth speaks on Assange’s behalf, is “reaching out” for LulzSec’s help in “infiltrating several Icelandic corporate and government sites”.

Why, is not made clear but rather speculated upon by the author. One lingers over the alleged target country… Iceland? Really? Trying to stop the flow of Wikileaks information? A long history of camaraderie between the two makes me ponder longer, as does the phrase “Q and Assange said…“. My picture is that it’s just text on screen now, and neither of those names are appearing on it. More confused than ever, I read on…

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There is talk of Wikileaks rewarding Lulzsec with a file called RSA 128. Not the morning after pill… but the smoking gun! But alas… it was not handed over. What a shame.  And alas, an alleged video that Assange made to prove his identity was also deleted. So what evidence is there LulzSec were seeing anything but Dancing Balls, or if the event happened at all? There’s mention of screen shots, for what they’re worth… Gawker.com who recently covered the story, issue a caveat at the end:

“… it’s impossible to say with certainty who LulzSec spoke with at the time. In her book, Olson points out that q is a controversial figure; some claim he’s a rogue agent impersonating a Wikileaks insider, while others assert he’s a true member of Assange’s inner circle.”

Damning revelation of Assange in conspiracy with black-hat hackers, or entertaining spy-thriller, strictly for the lulz, whose script could do with one last revision? I would like to offer my commentary, as a 23 year veteran in video post production, to the description of the video, because that’s where I spotted some real flaws in the story.

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Topiary, who is initially alone in the IRC room with “Dancing Balls”, and already skeptical because it has been named “wikilulz”, is not at all convinced that Assange is on the other end. We are told:

“Within five minutes, he pasted a link to YouTube into the IRC chat, and he said to look at it quickly. Topiary opened it and saw video footage of a laptop screen and the same IRC chat they were having, with the text moving up in real time. The camera then panned up to show a snowy-haired Julian Assange sitting directly opposite and staring into a white laptop, chin resting thoughtfully in his hand. He wore a crisp white shirt and sunlight streamed through a window bordered with fancy curtains. q deleted the twenty-two-second video moments later. Also in the IRC channel with Topiary and q was [LulzSec leader] Sabu, now likely with very interested FBI agents monitoring the discussion.”

And later:

“The following day, q and Assange wanted to talk to LulzSec again. Perhaps sensing that Topiary was still skeptical, q insisted on uploading another video. It again showed his laptop screen and the IRC chat they were having being updated in real time, then a close-up of Assange himself, head in hand again, but this time blinking and moving the track pad on his laptop, then him talking to a woman next to him. The camera was then walked around Assange before the video ended. The video had been filmed and uploaded in less than five minutes. Topiary, who was experienced with Photoshop and image manipulation, calculated that doctoring the IRC chat and Assange in the same video image within such a short space of time would have been incredibly difficult, and he veered toward believing this was all real.”

Where I don’t connect with this scenario begins with the onscreen text in the video being described, on both occasions, as being in real time on YouTube, I immediately think wow, more James Bond stuff, and many would say “no way…”, but of course it’s possible to broadcast live if you’re a YouTube Partner and have at least 10 videos with over 300 views and passed a rigorous vetting by YouTube over one week. That could happen… I guess?

But why then does Topiary, the media guy, and only on the second day, “think” about the time it would have taken to composite Julian into the image (to produce a pre-recorded and doctored video)? Olsen’s mention that he’s an expert in determining “what’s real and what’s doctored” lends credibility to his projected musings, but this whole soliloquy is incoherent with what’s been clearly established by her, through him, before – it’s live!

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She (Olsen) / he (Topiary) says the camera on both occasions is initially framed on their current chat with the text rolling in real time. Olsen describes the camera as panning continuously between this and Julian. Experience tells me that if it’s live at the beginning of the pan, it must be live at the end of the pan, since footage from “now” wouldn’t have been available yet to incorporate as a pre-recorded background video behind Julian. Not “difficult” Parmi, but impossible.

I can’t imagine this being Topiary’s reasoning at all. More likely it’s the words of someone who does not understand video technology at all; is trying to remain consistent but fails, and who doesn’t realise that Photoshop is not what someone skilled in video image manipulation would use. That would be more useful for the screen shots…

Casting no aspersions on Topiary whatsoever. Just stale of the tall tale, told by an idiot.