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The Most Dangerous Man in the World

Yesterday saw the launch, in Sydney, Australia, of an MUP book, "The Most Dangerous Man in the World" - The inside story on Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks secrets.

"The Most Dangerous Man in the World is the definitive account of WikiLeaks and the man who is as secretive as the organisations he targets. Through interviews with Julian Assange, his inner circle and those who fell out with him, Fowler tells the story of how a man with a turbulent childhood and brilliance for computers created a phenomenon that has become a game-changer in journalism and global politics.

In this international thriller, Andrew Fowler gives a ringside seat on the biggest leak in history. He charts the pursuit of Assange by the US and Sweden and how in the eyes of many Assange had become, according to the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, 'the most dangerous man in the world'."

As it happens The Hindu has an interview with Assange:

"There is a basic structure to geopolitics, which is not often mentioned. One way to think about it is that every country that is not very isolated has to sign up to one provider of intelligence or another. And there are a number of providers in the market. The U.S. is the market leader. And then you have really Russia and China and the U.K. providing a little bit. If you don’t sign up to one of these, then you can’t see what’s happening around you in your borders — because you don’t have geo-spatial intelligence. Information about individuals who may be coming into your territory or conspiring, you do not have; and that’s something that military groups and intelligence groups in various countries want to have. It increases their relative power within their own nations.

That doesn’t mean the nation needs it but rather that, for Indian intelligence, they can, for example, tremendously increase their influence within India by being signed up to all that intelligence product that the United States produces. Similarly, the Indian military can increase its power by having all these relationships with the U.S. military. And those relationships are not just pushed by the U.S. military or by the U.S. intelligence services. Nowadays, most of the economic activity involving intelligence and military in the United States occurs in private companies.

So there’s a blurring out in the United States between what is part of government and what is part of private industry. And these private industry groups, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and so on, and many thousands of smaller companies, lobby and push the U.S. State Department, Congress, and other countries directly to sign up as part of this system — so they can get more power and influence within the United States and have a greater ability to suck money out of the U.S. tax base and out of the tax bases of other countries.

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