It can't surprise anyone that Julian Assange picked M.I.A. to provide the soundtrack for his new talk show, The World Tomorrow, seeing as how the rapper already released her own Wikileaks-inspired mix tape back in 2010. Still, it's a funny image to think of the totally un-hip Assange in partnership with the cooler-than-cool Sri Lankan-born rapper. We're not necessarily going to endorse Julianne Escobedo Shepherd's assertion on Alternet that M.I.A. is the Julian Assange of pop music, but the two certainly have their similarities: They both seem to relish the role of international trouble maker, and they both simultaneously hate and thrive on media attention.
Assange is still under house arrest as he fights extradition, but as The New York Times' David Carr notes, he's apparently recorded 12 episodes of his show, which will air on the Kremlin-backed station Russia Today starting next Tuesday. Are you ready for a the preview RT dropped on Friday? Of course your are:
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Adam Martin



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