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The Telegraph reports that Assange refused to meet the film's star, Benedict Cumberbatch, who maintains that he's a fan:

"He didn't want to condone the film because he thought – hopefully erroneously when he sees the end product – that the project would castigate him and portray a negative side of his enterprise," the busy Cumberbatch told me when we talked at the Corinthia Hotel in London, where he was promoting Star Trek Into Darkness.

"He didn't want to meet me because he feels the source materials we've based the movie on were poisonous to his account of the events. When he sees it I hope he feels that it's more balanced. I think he will. I hope he will."

The film just finished shooting, but Assange obtained a copy of the script months ago, calling it "a lie upon lie" about his life and the organization.

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The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), or Scotland Yard, said the estimated cost of surrounding the Ecuadorean Embassy from June 19, 2012, when Assange entered the building, until Jan. 31, 2013, is the equivalent of $4.5 million.

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The late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi may have been a middleman for an arms deal in the 1970s, according to diplomatic cables searched by The Hindu newspaper. Gandhi was employed by Swedish group Saab-Scania to help sell its Viggen fighter jet reportedly because of access to his mother Indira Ghandi  -- prime minister at the time. In his press conference Monday, Julian Assange said this revelation is shaking Indian politics, as the Ghandi family still dominates India's ruling party.

Meanwhile, one cable dated October 18, 1973 sent to Washington by the US embassy to the Vatican reveals that the Vatican once dismissed reports of massacres by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as "Communist propaganda."

Updated, 9:56 a.m.: Assange compares the Kissinger Cables to "essentially like what Aaron Swartz was doing" -- namely collating documents which are hard to access, or available only through a specific intermediary.

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Assange critiqued the film in a speech at the Oxford Union, wrote AP, the video of which is embedded below.

"It is a mass propaganda attack against WikiLeaks, the organization (and) the character of my staff," said Assange to an audience of largely youthful onlookers.

"It is not just an attack against us, it is an attack against Iran. It fans the flames of an attack against Iran," Assange added, claiming that it contributed to Western fears of an Iranian nuclear program, which he said were being "ramped up" by the Western media.

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Although the movie isn't set to premiere until November, Assange has obtained a copy of the script--and doesn't approve. From within London's Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange remains in hiding, he connected with Oxford University students via Internet and slammed the film, which allegedly contains scenes regarding a nuclear weapons program in Iran. "How does this have anything to do with us?... How is it that a lie gets into a script about WikiLeaks?" he asked. He called the scenes "an attack against us [WikiLeaks]" as well as "an attack against Iran." "It fans the flames to start a war with Iran," he said.

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Addressing supporters on a cold and wet English evening, the 41-year-old Australian looked fit and healthy despite half a year spent in trapped inside the small apartment he shares with Ecuador's diplomatic staff.

He gave no hint that he would end the standoff, which has seen him spend six months as a fugitive from European justice, saying he was holed up at the embassy for fear of the U.S. investigation into his activities.

"While this immoral investigation continues, and while the Australian government will not defend the journalism and publishing of WikiLeaks, I must remain here," he said.

While the U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into WikiLeaks' spectacular disclosures of U.S. secrets, Assange is currently wanted by police over allegations of sexual assault stemming from a trip to Sweden in mid-2010.

Many WikiLeaks supporters have suggested that the allegations are a ploy to extradite Assange, first to Sweden and then to the U.S. The Swedish government and Assange's alleged victims deny it, saying they are simply seeking justice.

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Unsurprisingly, Assange said the party platform would push for greater government transparency and against creeping intrusions on individual privacy. "Polls inside Australia show that Assange could conceivably stand a chance of winning in either New South Wales or Victoria," the Age noted.

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On Wednesday, WikiLeaks began to leak a batch of documents relating to the presidential election. The organization invited supporters to browse the trove of emails provided to the secret-spilling site by Anonymous from its famed Statfor hack. In a move that Anonymous called a "betrayal," WikiLeaks put the documents behind a pay wall, which prompted readers for donations.

"This is a filthy and rotten, wholly unethical action - and Anonymous is enraged," stated a release from Anonymous Global. "We are aware that the donation pay wall can be circumvented by disabling Javascript. However, this is not the point. Neither is Anonymous concerned that WikiLeaks is asking for donations," the Anonymous release notes, explaining that most readers would not know how to avoid the pay wall.

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The Wikileaks founder may have also been joined by singer MIA if a tweet exchange between the singer and Gaga is to be believed. Gaga, the most followed person on Twitter, was in London near the embassy to launch her new fragrance, Fame.

This is not Gaga's first connection to Wikileaks. In fact, when Pfc. Bradley Manning passed classified documents to hacker Adrian Lamo, the CD carrying the leaked information was labeled "Lady Gaga." Manning told Lamo via now-infamous chat logs, "No one suspected a thing ... [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's "Telephone" while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history." [h/t Atlantic wire]

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The Guardian reports:

A court ruled on Monday that the payments must be made within a month by nine friends and backers who in 2010 pledged £140,000 to guarantee Assange would abide by bail conditions during a failed legal challenge to extradition proceedings brought by authorities in Sweden, where he faces allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Chief magistrate at Westminster magistrates court Howard Riddle said of the ruling that, "I accept that they trusted Mr Assange to surrender himself as required." He added, "I accept that they followed the proceedings and made necessary arrangements to remain in contact with him. However, they failed in their basic duty, to ensure his surrender."

h/t The Guardian

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Assange decried the U.S. "assault on WikiLeaks," invoking Pfc. Bradley Manning's detention within the first minute of speaking:

Bradley Manning, science fair all-star, soldier and patriot was degraded, abused and psychologically tortured by his own government. He was charged with a death penalty offense. These things happened to him, as the U.S. government tried to break him, to force him to testify against WikiLeaks and me.

As of today Bradley Manning has been detained without trial for 856 days. The legal maximum in the US military is 120 days.

Assange went on to skewer the U.S.'s role in the 2011 Arab Spring:

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But even some who disagreed with the asylum offer for WikiLeaks’ founder rejected the British government’s suggestion that it would withdraw diplomatic status from the Ecuadorean embassy in order to arrest the Australian.

Nicholas Gaoht, a 21-year-old economy student at Quito’s San Francisco University, defended Ecuador’s right to offer Assange asylum although he was no admirer of the Australian’s work, or Correa’s handling of the affair.

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The 41-year-old Australian, who has fought for two years against efforts to send him to Sweden for questioning over alleged sexual misconduct against two women there, addressed a crowd of more than 200 supporters, reporters and dozens of British police, as he spoke from the balcony of Ecuador's mission.

Ecuador on Thursday granted Assange asylum and he remains out of reach of British authorities while he is inside the country's small embassy. Britain insists that if he steps outside, he will be detained and sent to Sweden.

Assange and his supporters claim the Swedish case is merely the opening gambit in a Washington-orchestrated plot to make him stand trial in the U.S. over his work with WikiLeaks - something disputed by both Swedish authorities and the women involved.

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Not Running From the Law

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The 3,788-word, Spanish-language document says the WikiLeaks founder faces “political persecution” by Washington and includes the suggestion that the United States executes dissidents.

Although parts of the statement appear outlandish, it scores some real points, including the assertion that Assange could face the death penalty. While it remains common in much of the United States, few other democracies use capital punishment.

Regardless of whether US authorities really would attempt to put Assange on trial — or whether he has committed any sexual crimes as Sweden alleges — the notion that the WikiLeaks mastermind could be sent to the electric chair will make many Washington sympathizers recoil.

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