Wednesday, August 16, 2017

A long article on Julian Assange

A man without a country by in the New Yotker. The main claim seems to be that Julian Assangeis not neutral in his treatment of US and Russia and the author presents some circumstantial evidence. The clincher is "James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence, put the conclusion bluntly to me: “It was done by a cutout, which of course afforded Assange plausible deniability.”"
In any case, if one looks at the conflicts around the world, US is involved in many more places than the Russians. More about James Clapper in the Wikipedia "Following the June 2013 leak of documents detailing NSA practice of collecting telephony metadata on millions of Americans’ telephone calls, two U.S. representatives accused Clapper of perjury for telling a congressional committee that the NSA does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans earlier that year. One senator asked for his resignation, and a group of 26 senators complained about Clapper’s responses under questioning. In November 2016, Clapper resigned as director of national intelligence, effective at the end of President Obama's term. In May 2017, he joined the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) as a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Intelligence and National Security."
P.S. What if the DNC Russian “hack” was really a leak after all? A new report raises questions media and Democrats would rather ignore from Salon.com
P.P.S. I knew Julian Assange in the early 2000's. He took a course on Complex Analysis from me. He got mediocre grades (mathematics did not seem to be his main interest) and we chatted off and on about politics. He never asked me for better grades in assignments and generally wanted to know what he did wrong in assignments.

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