By Jeff Bercovici, Forbes Staff –
M.I.A., cable TV theme music composer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s T-minus four days until Julian Assange‘s new talk show debuts on Russia Today, and while no one’s saying who the first guest will be, one interesting detail has come to light: The show’s theme music was written by Sri Lankan hip hop star M.I.A.
The performer, whose offstage name is Maya Arulpragasam, composed original music for “The World Tomorrow,” which is set to air beginning April 17. A spokesman for Wikileaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson, says M.I.A. met with Assange in London, where he has been under house arrest for more than a year.
The daughter of a leader from the Tamil separatist movement, M.I.A. has been an outspoken supporter of Assange and Wikileaks. In 2010, she released a free mixtape called “Vicki Leekx” in tribute, and she has often mentioned Assange and his cause on Twitter, where she has more than 365,000 followers. Earlier today, she retweeted a post by Wikileaks saying, “M.I.A. is the Julian Assange of pop music.”
Will she also be a guest on the show? I’m guessing the answer is yes, but Assange and RT are keeping the guest list under wraps. In a press release from the network, Assange is quoted as saying his guests will be “global notables” who “normally simply would not be given a voice on TV at all. What is fair to say is that the majority of what they have said to me they could not say on a mainstream TV network.”
Certainly, M.I.A. has been given a voice on TV, but mainstream networks might not be so eager to do that again after she flashed the middle finger during her halftime performance at the Super Bowl in February. NBC and the NFL apologized publicly for the incident. (Courtesy http://www.forbes.com/)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uYs0gJD-LE&feature=player_embedded
JD / April 14, 2012
She is a fighter, no doubt, but the GOSL hired a PR company paying too much tax payers money to discredit M.I.A in Europe & North America.We can see some paid journos writing articles about her in newspapers.
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gamini / April 14, 2012
JD, Bell Pottinger & Co. mandate is not only MIA, there are articles appearing in this very CT blog by the dozen, under various names as journalists in the region, trying to diffuse the situation for the Americans, Indians and the MR regime, obviously our tax monies working through Bell Pottinger & Co. to salvage MR’s image. What a Joke?
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Max Silva / April 14, 2012
How can one be so cruel and try to discredit such a beauty?Very nice,very nice!
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Anti-B.S / April 20, 2012
Max Silva:
You are the 21st Century’s “bad penny,” for sure! Do the cheques come from Bell Pottinger or from The Emperor?
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