1.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology and his work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. Sartre was also noted for his relationship with prominent feminist. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, Sartres introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism and Humanism, originally presented as a lecture. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused it, saying that he always declined official honours, Jean-Paul Sartre was born on 21 June 1905 in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, an officer of the French Navy, and Anne-Marie Schweitzer. His mother was of Alsatian origin and the first cousin of Nobel Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer, when Sartre was two years old, his father died of a fever overseas. When he was twelve, Sartres mother remarried, and the moved to La Rochelle. As a teenager in the 1920s, Sartre became attracted to philosophy upon reading Henri Bergsons essay Time and Free Will and he attended the Cours Hattemer, a private school in Paris. It was at ENS that Sartre began his lifelong, sometimes fractious, perhaps the most decisive influence on Sartres philosophical development was his weekly attendance at Alexandre Kojèves seminars, which continued for a number of years. From his first years in the École Normale, Sartre was one of its fiercest pranksters, in 1927, his antimilitarist satirical cartoon in the revue of the school, coauthored with Georges Canguilhem, particularly upset the director Gustave Lanson. Many newspapers, including Le Petit Parisien, announced the event on 25 May, thousands, including journalists and curious spectators, showed up, unaware that what they were witnessing was a stunt involving a Lindbergh look-alike. The publics resultant outcry forced Lanson to resign, in 1929 at the École Normale, he met Simone de Beauvoir, who studied at the Sorbonne and later went on to become a noted philosopher, writer, and feminist. The two became inseparable and lifelong companions, initiating a romantic relationship, though they were not monogamous, the first time Sartre took the exam to become a college instructor, he failed. He took it a time and virtually tied for first place with Beauvoir, although Sartre was eventually awarded first place in his class. Sartre was drafted into the French Army from 1929 to 1931 and he later argued in 1959 that each French person was responsible for the collective crimes during the Algerian War of Independence. From 1931 until 1945, Sartre taught at various lycées of Le Havre, Laon, in 1932, Sartre discovered Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, a book that had a remarkable influence on him. In 1933–34, he succeeded Raymond Aron at the Institut français dAllemagne in Berlin where he studied Edmund Husserls phenomenological philosophy, Aron had already advised him in 1930 to read Emmanuel Levinass Théorie de l’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl. The Neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in the 1930s inspired a generation of French thinkers, including Sartre
2.
May 1968 events in France
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The volatile period of civil unrest in France during May 1968 was punctuated by demonstrations and massive general strikes as well as the occupation of universities and factories across France. At the height of its fervor, it brought the economy of France to a virtual halt. May 68 had a impact on French society that would be felt for decades to come. It is considered to this day as a cultural, social and moral turning point in the history of the country, as Alain Geismar—one of the leaders of the time—later pointed out, the movement succeeded as a social revolution, not as a political one. The unrest began with a series of student occupation protests against capitalism, consumerism and traditional institutions, values and it then spread to factories with strikes involving 11 million workers, more than 22% of the total population of France at the time, for two continuous weeks. It was the largest general strike ever attempted in France, the student occupations and wildcat general strikes initiated across France were met with forceful confrontation by university administrators and police. De Gaulle went to a French military base in Germany, and after returning dissolved the National Assembly, Violence evaporated almost as quickly as it arose. Workers went back to their jobs, and when the elections were held in June. In February 1968, the French Communists and French Socialists formed an electoral alliance, the universitys administration called the police, who surrounded the university. After the publication of their wishes, the left the building without any trouble. After this first record some leaders of what was named the Movement of 22 March were called together by the committee of the university. Following months of conflicts between students and authorities at the Paris University at Nanterre, the shut down the university on May 2,1968. Students at the Sorbonne University in Paris met on May 3 to protest against the closure and the threatened expulsion of several students at Nanterre. More than 20,000 students, teachers and supporters marched towards the Sorbonne, still sealed off by the police, who charged, wielding their batons, as soon as the marchers approached. While the crowd dispersed, some began to create out of whatever was at hand, while others threw paving stones. The police then responded with tear gas and charged the crowd again, high school student unions spoke in support of the riots on 6 May. Negotiations broke down, and students returned to their campuses after a report that the government had agreed to reopen them. The students now had a near revolutionary fervor, on Friday,10 May, another huge crowd congregated on the Rive Gauche
3.
Newspaper of record
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A newspaper of record is a major newspaper that has a large circulation and whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered professional and typically authoritative. A newspaper of record, sometimes referred to as an official newspaper. In some jurisdictions, privately owned newspapers may register with the authorities to publish public and legal notices. Likewise, a newspaper may be designated by the courts for publication of legal notices. These are sometimes referred to as legally adjudicated newspapers, a variation of newspapers of public record are those newspapers controlled by governments or political parties that serve as official newspapers reflecting the positions of their controlling bodies. State organs such as the Soviet-era Izvestia and the Peoples Daily in China are examples of this type, the second type of newspaper of record is not defined by any formal criteria and its characteristics can be variable. Despite changes in society, such newspapers have historically tended to maintain a similar tone, coverage, style, and traditions. In recognition of the usage, the Times held an essay contest in 1927 in which entrants had to demonstrate The Value of The New York Times Index and Files as a Newspaper of Record. The Times, and other newspapers of its type, then sought to be chroniclers of events, acting as a record of the announcements, schedules, directories, proceedings. The Times no longer considers itself a newspaper of record in the original, literal sense. Over time, historians began to rely on The New York Times and similar titles as an archival record of significant past events. The term newspaper of record thus evolved from its literal sense to its currently understood meaning
4.
Le Figaro
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Le Figaro is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. The oldest national daily in France, Le Figaro is one of the two French newspapers of record, along with Le Monde, and is one of the most widely respected newspapers in the world. In 2012, the paper had a circulation of 330,952 copies per issue. The paper is published in the format, switching from a broadsheet in 2009. The newspaper is owned by Le Figaro Group, whose publications include TV Magazine and Evene, the companys chairman is Serge Dassault, whose Dassault Group has controlled the paper since 2004. Le Figaro was founded as a weekly in 1826, taking its name and motto from Le Mariage de Figaro. Its motto, from Figaros monologue in the final act, is Sans la liberté de blâmer. In 1833, editor Nestor Roqueplan fought a duel with a Colonel Gallois, who was offended by an article in Le Figaro, albert Wolff, Émile Zola, Alphonse Karr and Jules Claretie were among the papers early contributors. It was published irregularly until 1854, when it was taken over by Hippolyte de Villemessant. In 1866 Le Figaro became a daily newspaper and its first daily edition, that of 16 November 1866, sold 56,000 copies, having highest circulation of any newspaper in France. In 1922, Le Figaro was purchased by perfume millionaire François Coty, abel Faivre did cartoons for the paper. By the start of World War II, Le Figaro had become Frances leading newspaper, after the war it became the voice of the upper middle class, and continues to maintain a conservative position. In 1975, Le Figaro was bought by Robert Hersants Socpresse, in 1999, the Carlyle Group obtained a 40% stake in the paper, which it later sold in March 2002. Dassault owns 80% of the paper, in 2006, Le Figaro was banned in Egypt and Tunisia for publishing articles allegedly insulting Islam. Le Figaro switched to Berliner format in 2009, the paper has published The New York Times International Weekly on Friday since 2009, an 8-page supplement featuring a selection of articles from The New York Times translated into French. In 2010, Lefigaro. fr created a section called Le Figaro in English, Le Figaro has traditionally held a conservative editorial stance, becoming the voice of the French upper and middle classes. His son Olivier Dassault is a member of the French National Assembly, Dassault has remarked in an interview in 2004 on the public radio station France Inter that newspapers must promulgate healthy ideas and that left-wing ideas are not healthy ideas. They requested more pluralism and honesty and accused the paper of one-sided political reporting, mougeotte had previously said that Le Figaro would do nothing to embarrass the government and the right
5.
Social democracy
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In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. By 1868–1869, Marxism had become the official theoretical basis of the first social democratic party established in Europe, in this period, social democracy became associated with reformist socialism. The origins of social democracy have been traced to the 1860s, with the rise of the first major party in Europe. 1864 saw the founding of the International Workingmens Association, also known as the First International, another issue in the First International was the role of reformism. Although Lassalle was not a Marxist, he was influenced by the theories of Marx and Engels, however unlike Marxs and Engelss The Communist Manifesto, Lassalle promoted class struggle in a more moderate form. While Marx viewed the state negatively as an instrument of class rule that should only exist temporarily upon the rise to power of the proletariat and then dismantled, Lassalle accepted the state. Lassalle viewed the state as a means through which workers could enhance their interests, Lassalles strategy was primarily electoral and reformist, with Lassalleans contending that the working class needed a political party that fought above all for universal adult male suffrage. The ADAVs party newspaper was called Der Sozialdemokrat, Marx and Engels responded to the title Sozialdemocrat with distaste, Engels once writing, But what a title, Sozialdemokrat. Why dont they simply call it The Proletarian. Marx agreed with Engels that Sozialdemokrat was a bad title, there was a Marxist faction within the ADAV represented by Wilhelm Liebknecht who became one of the editors of the Die Sozialdemokrat. Friction in the ADAV arose over Lassalles policy of an approach to Bismarck that had assumed incorrectly that Bismarck in turn would be friendly towards them. This approach was opposed by the partys Marxists, including Liebknecht, opposition in the ADAV to Lassalles friendly approach to Bismarcks government resulted in Liebknecht resigning from his position as editor of Die Sozialdemokrat and leaving the ADAV in 1865. Though the SDAP was not officially Marxist, it was the first major organization to be led by Marxists and Marx. The party adopted stances similar to those adopted by Marx at the First International, there was intense rivalry and antagonism between the SDAP and the ADAV, with the SDAP being highly hostile to the Prussian government while the ADAV pursued a reformist and more cooperative approach. In spite of such militant rhetoric to appeal to the working class, in 1875 Marx attacked the Gotha Program that became the program of Social Democratic Party of Germany in the same year in his Critique of the Gotha Program. Marx was not optimistic that Germany at the time was not open to a means to achieve socialism. In addition he noticed a change over the relations between the two classes. The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 make an approach to universal suffrage. The Fabian Society was founded as a group from the Fellowship of the New Life due to opposition within that group to socialism
6.
Neoliberalism
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Neoliberalism refers primarily to the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism. These market-based ideas and the policies they inspired constitute a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus which lasted from 1945 to 1980, as such, neoliberalism shares many attributes with other contested concepts, including democracy. The definition and usage of the term have changed over time, in the 1960s, usage of the term neoliberal heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochets economic reforms in Chile, once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy. By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and the Zapatistas reaction to development in Chiapas. Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing, the impact of the global 2008–2009 crisis has also given rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks developmental alternatives. In 1938 at the Colloque Walter Lippmann, the term neoliberalism was proposed, among other terms, the colloquium defined the concept of neoliberalism as involving the priority of the price mechanism, free enterprise, the system of competition, and a strong and impartial state. To be neoliberal meant advocating an economic policy with state intervention. Neoliberal state interventionism brought a clash with the opposing camp of classical liberals. Although Hayek had intellectual ties to the German neoliberals, his name was occasionally mentioned in conjunction with neoliberalism during this period due to his more pro-free market stance. During the military rule under Augusto Pinochet in Chile, opposition scholars took up the expression to describe the economic reforms implemented there, once this new meaning was established among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy. Another center-left movement from modern American liberalism that used the term neoliberalism to describe its ideology formed in the United States in the 1970s, according to David Brooks, prominent neoliberal politicians included Al Gore and Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party of the United States. The neoliberals coalesced around two magazines, the New Republic and the Washington Monthly, the godfather of this version of neoliberalism was the journalist Charles Peters who in 1983 published A Neoliberals Manifesto. Neoliberal theory argues that a market will allow efficiency, economic growth, income distribution. Any state intervention to encourage these phenomena will worsen economic performance, yet the handbook argues to view the term as merely a pejorative or radical political slogan is to reduce its capacity as an analytic frame. If neoliberalism is to serve as a way of understanding the transformation of society over the last few decades then the concept is in need of unpacking. Other scholars note that neoliberalism is associated with the policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. There are several usages of the term that can be identified, As a development model
7.
WikiLeaks
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WikiLeaks /ˈwɪkiliːks/ is an international non-profit organisation that publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources. Its website, initiated in 2006 in Iceland by the organisation Sunshine Press, Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder, editor-in-chief, and director. The group has released a number of significant documents that have become front-page news items, early releases included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war and a report informing a corruption investigation in Kenya. In July of the year, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary. In October 2010, the released a set of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations. In April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in November 2010, WikiLeaks collaborated with major global media organisations to release U. S. State Department diplomatic cables in redacted format. During the 2016 U. S. presidential election campaign, WikiLeaks released emails and other documents from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clintons campaign manager and these releases caused significant damage to the Clinton campaign and may have contributed to the Democratic Partys loss. The U. S. intelligence community expressed high confidence that the emails had been hacked by Russia and supplied to WikiLeaks. During the campaign, WikiLeaks promoted conspiracy theories about Clinton and the Democratic Party, WikiLeaks has also been criticised for inadequately curating its content and violating the personal privacy of individuals. WikiLeaks has, for instance, revealed Social Security numbers, medical information, credit card numbers, the wikileaks. org domain name was registered on 4 October 2006. The website was established and published its first document in December 2006, sarah Harrison, Kristinn Hrafnsson and Joseph Farrell are the only other publicly known and acknowledged associates of Assange. Harrison is also a member of Sunshine Press Productions along with Assange, WikiLeaks was originally established with a wiki communal publication method, which was terminated by May 2010. As of June 2009, the website had more than 1,200 registered volunteers, despite some popular confusion, WikiLeaks and Wikipedia are not affiliated. Wikia, a for-profit corporation affiliated loosely with the Wikimedia Foundation, according to the WikiLeaks website, its goal is to bring important news and information to the public. One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers, another of the organisations goals is to ensure that journalists and whistleblowers are not prosecuted for emailing sensitive or classified documents. The online drop box is described by the WikiLeaks website as an innovative, secure and that is why in the US Constitution the Bill of Rights says that Congress is to make no such law abridging the freedom of the press. It is to take the rights of the press outside the rights of the law because those rights are superior to the law because in fact create the law. Every constitution, every bit of legislation is derived from the flow of information, similarly every government is elected as a result of people understanding things
8.
National Security Agency
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NSA is concurrently charged with protection of U. S. government communications and information systems against penetration and network warfare. Moreover, NSA maintains physical presence in a number of countries across the globe. SCS collection tactics allegedly encompass close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, breaking and entering, additionally, the NSA Director simultaneously serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and as Chief of the Central Security Service. Originating as a unit to decipher coded communications in World War II, NSA surveillance has been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, such as its spying on anti-Vietnam-war leaders or economic espionage. In 2013, the extent of some of the NSAs secret surveillance programs was revealed to the public by Edward Snowden, internationally, research has pointed to the NSAs ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries through boomerang routing. The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced back to April 28,1917, a code and cipher decryption unit was established as the Cable and Telegraph Section which was also known as the Cipher Bureau. It was headquartered in Washington, D. C. and was part of the war effort under the executive branch without direct Congressional authorization, during the course of the war it was relocated in the armys organizational chart several times. On July 5,1917, Herbert O. Yardley was assigned to head the unit, at that point, the unit consisted of Yardley and two civilian clerks. It absorbed the navys cryptoanalysis functions in July 1918, World War I ended on November 11,1918, and MI-8 moved to New York City on May 20,1919, where it continued intelligence activities as the Code Compilation Company under the direction of Yardley. MI-8 also operated the so-called Black Chamber, the Black Chamber was located on East 37th Street in Manhattan. Its purpose was to crack the codes of foreign governments. Other Black Chambers were also found in Europe, during World War II, the Signal Security Agency was created to intercept and decipher the communications of the Axis powers. When the war ended, the SSA was reorganized as the Army Security Agency, on May 20,1949, all cryptologic activities were centralized under a national organization called the Armed Forces Security Agency. This organization was established within the U. S. Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The AFSA was tasked to direct Department of Defense communications and electronic intelligence activities, in December 1951, President Harry S. Truman ordered a panel to investigate how AFSA had failed to achieve its goals. The results of the led to improvements and its redesignation as the National Security Agency. The agency was established by Truman in a memorandum of October 24,1952. Since President Trumans memo was a document, the existence of the NSA was not known to the public at that time
9.
Jacques Chirac
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Jacques René Chirac is a French politician, who served as the President of France and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra from 1995 to 2007. Chirac served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976, from 1986 to 1988, Chirac occupied various senior positions, including Minister of Agriculture, Minister of the Interior, Prime Minister, Mayor of Paris, and President of the French Republic. Chiracs internal policies initially included lower tax rates, the removal of controls, strong punishment for crime and terrorism. After pursuing these policies as Prime Minister, Chirac changed his method, Jacques Chirac has emerged as an improbable icon of retro taste and a figure of public affection. On 15 December 2011, the Paris court declared him guilty of diverting public funds and abusing public confidence, and gave Chirac a two-year suspended prison sentence. Chirac, born in the Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire clinic, is the son of Abel François Marie Chirac, an executive for an aircraft company, and Marie-Louise Valette. His great grandparents on both sides were peasants, but his two grandfathers were teachers from Sainte-Féréole in Corrèze, according to Chirac, his name originates from the langue doc, that of the troubadours, therefore that of poetry. He was educated in Paris at the Cours Hattemer, a private school and he then attended the Lycée Carnot and at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. After his baccalauréat, he served for three months as a sailor on a coal-transporter, Chirac played rugby union for Brives youth team, and also played at university level. He played no.8 and second row, in 1956, he married Bernadette Chodron de Courcel, with whom he had two daughters, Laurence and Claude. Chirac is the grandfather of Martin Rey-Chirac by the relationship of Claude with French judoka Thierry Rey, Jacques and Bernadette Chirac also have a foster daughter, Anh Dao Traxel. Inspired by General Charles de Gaulle, Chirac started to pursue a civil career in the 1950s. During this period, he joined the French Communist Party, sold copies of LHumanité, in 1950, he signed the Soviet-inspired Stockholm Appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons – which led him to be questioned when he applied for his first visa to the United States. Chirac trained as a military officer in armoured cavalry at Saumur. He then volunteered to fight in the Algerian War, using connections to be sent despite the reservations of his superiors. His superiors did not want to make him an officer because they suspected he had communist leanings, after leaving the ENA in 1959, he became a civil servant in the Court of Auditors. In April 1962, Chirac was appointed head of the staff of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. This appointment launched Chiracs political career, Pompidou considered Chirac his protégé, and referred to him as my bulldozer for his skill at getting things done
10.
Nicolas Sarkozy
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Nicolas Sarkozy is a French politician who served as the President of France and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra from 16 May 2007 until 15 May 2012. Before his presidency, he was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement party, during Jacques Chiracs second presidential term he served as Minister of the Interior except between March 2004 and May 2005 when he was minister of Finances. Sarkozy was also mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of France and he was Minister of the Budget in the government of Édouard Balladur during François Mitterrands last term. During his term, he faced the late-2000s financial crisis and the Arab Spring and he married Italian-French singer-songwriter Carla Bruni on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris. In foreign affairs, Sarkozy promised a strengthening of the entente cordiale with the United Kingdom, in the 2012 election, the Socialist François Hollande defeated Sarkozy by 3. 2%. After leaving the Presidential office, Sarkozy vowed to retire from public life before coming back in September 2014, on 2 July 2014, Sarkozy was charged with corruption by French prosecutors. In 2016, he ran in the Republican presidential primary, and was eliminated in the first round of voting and they were married in the Saint-François-de-Sales church, 17th arrondissement of Paris, on 8 February 1950 and divorced in 1959. During Sarkozys childhood, his father founded his own advertising agency, the family lived in a mansion owned by Sarkozys maternal grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris. The family later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the Île-de-France région immediately west of Paris, according to Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. Sarkozy said that being abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today and he also has said that, in his early years, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthier and taller classmates. What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood, Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a well regarded public middle and high school in Paris 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième. Sarkozy enrolled at the Université Paris X Nanterre, where he graduated with an M. A. in private law and, later, Paris X Nanterre had been the starting place for the May 68 student movement and was still a stronghold of leftist students. Described as a student, Sarkozy soon joined the right-wing student organization. He completed his service as a part-time Air Force cleaner. After graduating from university, Sarkozy entered Sciences Po, where he studied between 1979 and 1981, but failed to graduate due to an insufficient command of the English language. After passing the bar, Sarkozy became a lawyer specializing in business and they had two sons, Pierre, now a hip-hop producer, and Jean now a local politician in the city of Neuilly-sur-Seine where Sarkozy started his own political career. Sarkozys best man was the prominent right-wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent, Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, after they had been separated for several years. As mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Sarkozy met former model and public relations executive Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz
11.
Julian Assange
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Julian Paul Assange is an Australian computer programmer, publisher and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of the organisation WikiLeaks, which he founded in 2006 and he has won numerous accolades for journalism, including the Sam Adams Award and Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 but came to prominence in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks. These leaks included the Collateral Murder video, the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs, following the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and asked allied nations for assistance. In November 2010, a request was made for Assanges extradition to Sweden, Assange continued to deny the allegations, and expressed concern that he would be extradited from Sweden to the United States due to his perceived role in publishing secret American documents. Assange surrendered himself to UK police on 7 December 2010 and was held for ten days in confinement before being released on bail. He sought and was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 and he has since remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, and is unable to leave without being arrested for breaching his bail conditions. In 2016, WikiLeaks published the DNC leaks and the Podesta emails during the 2016 United States presidential election, Assange was born in the north Queensland city of Townsville, to Christine Ann Hawkins, a visual artist, and John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder. The couple had separated before Assange was born, when he was a year old, his mother married Richard Brett Assange, an actor, with whom she ran a small theatre company. Christine Assange then became involved with Leif Meynell, also known as Leif Hamilton, Assange had a nomadic childhood, and had lived in over thirty different Australian towns by the time he reached his mid-teens, when he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne, Victoria. He attended many schools, including Goolmangar Primary School in New South Wales and Townsville State High School and he studied programming, mathematics, and physics at Central Queensland University and the University of Melbourne, but did not complete a degree. In 1987 Assange began hacking under the name Mendax and he and two others—known as Trax and Prime Suspect—formed a hacking group they called the International Subversives. He is thought to have involved in the WANK hack at NASA in 1989. In September 1991, Assange was discovered hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, the Australian Federal Police tapped Assanges phone line, raided his home at the end of October, and eventually charged him in 1994 with thirty-one counts of hacking and related crimes. In 1993 Assange gave technical advice to the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit, in the same year he was involved in starting one of the first public Internet service providers in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network. He began programming in 1994, authoring or co-authoring the Transmission Control Protocol port scanner strobe, in 1998, he co-founded the company Earthmen Technology. In 1999 Assange registered the domain leaks. org, but, as he put it and he did, however, publicise a patent granted to the National Security Agency in August 1999 for voice-data harvesting technology, This patent should worry people. Everyones overseas phone calls are or may soon be tapped, transcribed and archived in the bowels of a foreign spy agency
