Honing in on an aspect from the 'has WikiLeaks been compromised' thread

First, quick notes:

• Do not refer to the 30 minute edited version that a whole bunch of new YT accounts started posting soon after the original was posted. The original, about 1 hour and 20 minutes of Assange talking, is the one that contains the weirdness --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndUYXZMNlBU *Edited to start time of appearance @ 3 hours 15 minutes.

• Do not refer to the transcript that a couple users posted after it aired. It does not capture in any sense the weirdness of the appearance, it omits quite a bit.

• It's really annoying to listen to because it is extremely scratchy. I discuss further, but I believe there were multiple recordings, maybe a lot, edited together for Julian's speech. It definitely helps that it is scratchy.

10 points:

1. He never addresses the panel directly outside of his mention of "Buenos Aires" in the beginning. That would not be a hard word to synthesize, or take from other recordings of talks in Argentina.

2. There are times where he talks over the panel and just keeps going without skipping a beat. Weird that he would not at least pause to note that people are trying to interrupt him or at least change volume of his voice.

3. Some of his stopping points are very abrupt, and a few times they happened mid sentence, like they paused the recording abruptly.

4. Overall it sounded like a pre-recording that they pause and play segments from. There are only 2-3 questions towards the end, and I believe they requested the questions before and then prepared the answer.

5. There were technical difficulties about 10 minutes into his appearance, where they had to take a 5 minute break. (and the way they resume is bizarre, JA just starts talking, I simply don't think they had sound bytes for "Ok, I'm back, are you all there?", so they just resumed playing the recording; he, of course, does not acknowledge the technical difficulty either)

6. He gives a really long winded introduction about how he got into programming when he was younger, etc. It's unusual for JA talks. Specifically the panelist asked "Why don't you update us on your situation?" And then he launches into a long winded intro about the history of himself, "Well, let me introduce myself... " The exchanges missed each other. People know who he is, they wanted to know about his situation. The creators of the recording must have thought the audience would expect an introduction, even though that's not normal for JA talks.

7. Towards the end, the panelist asks questions in Spanish, and there are no pauses where the Spanish questions could be translated to him in English. I doubt he's fluent in Spanish. How would he know what they are asking? (more likely, they got the questions beforehand, edited together a response, and neglected the pause for translator or weren't expecting they would be asked in Spanish)

8. There are at least some lines that also appear almost exactly in other JA videos on YouTube or Vimeo. It's very time consuming to find matching recordings, but at least I know his intro "Hello, can everyone <emphasis>hear me</emphasis>" sounds exactly the same as his entrance during the UN detainment ruling video chat. It's very possible they cut from older videos, as there are hundreds of unique ones to choose from. Since some of his comments indicate recency, it's also possible they cut from the full John Pilger interview, which was never aired in full on RT.

9. After they posted it, a whole bunch of new or relatively new YT accounts started posting a cleaner, condensed 30 minute version of the video that hides a lot of the weirdness. Bizarre, perhaps. Again, don't refer to those if you want to analyze the talk.

10. Finally, WikiLeak's Twitter never Tweeted a link (or if they did not for many days after), and I don't think they acknowledged it in any way for a while. I don't know why they wouldn't own it, "Here's more evidence you've all been asking for that he's OK". It's possible they were uncertain about it, so decided to keep a distance until they saw how people reacted, or they didn't want too many people, e.g. 4 million followers, to look at it.

11. Adding this - the panel is thoroughly confused why it isn't a video call. They had the screen prepared and everything.

Overall, if it wasn't clear, I do not think UMET / CISL conference was in on it. Maybe 1 guy was, the guy asking questions towards the end who was the main moderator sort of controlling the talk, but it's also possible he was not. The CISL conference itself looks legit enough.