Aaron Swartz, internet freedom activist, dies aged 26

reply to post by antar


Nah.. it's the 27 club. I'm not sure, but I thought it was only musicians.

Interesting times...activists and potential political enemies of the state getting themselves suicided and just plain murdered. Timed quite well with the most persistent talk of gun control I've ever seen.

We've all read about these kinds of things in our history books happening over and over again right before the government really goes off the edge and turns into full blown tyranny, and so many of us wonder how could that have ever happened? How could all those people possibly allow such terrible things to occur. How could they not see what was going on right in front of them and stop it?

This is how it happened. We're all too busy trying to keep our heads above water and survive, doing whatever we can to give ourselves and our loved ones a decent life, and trying desperately not to flush our future down the toilet. You make one mistake and the people in power over you can easily ruin the rest of your life and there's nothing you can do to fight it. So we all shuffle along in life with our heads down and doing what we're told, never TRULY challenging the government, because if we even try we'll have any hope of financial security totally destroyed with a stroke of a pen. Or, if you piss them off enough, you may even get to share a prison cell with a violently psychotic gang banger from el salvador, and if you survive that, you'll still be ground into the dirt for the rest of your life whether your released or not. And to top it off, their are plenty of Americans that are more than happy to participate in this system and play the game. Spineless slaves that spend their days licking the corporate/government boot, doing whatever and screwing whoever it takes in order to climb one step higher on the ladder. Gladly assisting government,inc in stomping their fellow Americans into oblivion whenever they step out of line.

You can not fight the system! The system will literally destroy you if you try, and your neighbor will help. This is how it happened, and it's happening again.

The vast majority of Americans are self absorbed, ignorant nitwits and bootlickers, and the rest of us just have to deal with it. We have a great country with so much potential and Americans and the greedy idiots they vote into power are squandering ALL OF IT!



Hopefully in 20 years I'll think back to the time I posted this and fondly remember how wrong I was about all of it, but as of now it's not looking so good.

reply to post by strafgod


Hypothetically, lets say he was taken out, what evidence would there be? None. That is the whole idea of making it look like suicide. Many things that happen have no evidence, but it does not mean they did not happen.

Originally posted by hadriana

Originally posted by j.r.c.b.
I read one article that said he was shot "in the back of the head". I'm guessing the autopsy isn't complete yet?? I couldn't find any more info.....at the moment, I find it really, really coincidental, all of these people turning up dead. If he was shot in the back of the head I'd say its not a suicide.....hopefully some more info will turn up soon...

Everything I've read said he hung himself.
Excellent article here, IMO, from Lessig. "Prosecutor as Bully"

lessig.tumblr.com...

Wow really?! That's a completely different story...I hate when they keep giving different accounts. Guess we have to wait on the autopsy..TY for the article

Originally posted by hadriana
reply to post by antar

 

Well, "we" as in America.

Here is his last blog post: www.aaronsw.com...

"What Happens in The Dark Knight"

Dude almost blatantly admits to staging his own suicide...weird...

I dunno he was facing serious jail time - 35 years which is kind of joke anyway.
He was liberating works such as:

Sample papers Swartz attempted to set free include "John Berryman: The Poetics of Martyrdom" and "Mapping the Niger, 1798-1832: Trust, Testimony and 'Ocular Demonstration' in the Late Enlightenment." On its own initiative, JSTOR, which hosts the academic papers and never pressed charges against Swartz, started offering limited free access to its archive just this week.

Aaron Swartz

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


oops yes you are probably right, just seems like so many great artists have to check out far too soon. I was not familiar with AS, but he seemed like a good man who was well intentioned.

reply to post by hadriana


I really enjoyed reading that and try as I may it just did not seem to me as if this guy was suicidal. I hope truths continue to come out on his life and death story.

he was a fighter, fighters dont go out like that.. He had money to fight the case, he would have walked away with nothing, the stuff he hacked was not government secrets or crazy top secret data and it did not cost anyone money or any type of financial information.

he had no reason to kill himself and it makes no sense how he has died, other then he never got to release any of the documents that he hacked and was murdered before they had a chance to start a trial and anyone could find out about the documents or he could have a chance to leak them out.

reply to post by sparky31

Others, facing charges, have taken their own lives. It's a waste of course but they do it from time to time.
I cannot see how he was a threat to the establishment offhand.

reply to post by eXia7



Can you give reference to your statement :
"Well, with all the recent mysterious deaths of top people in the gun industry," .....

reply to post by azureskys


He is talking about the gun manufacture John Noveske dying in a car wreck, and the manager of FPSRussia (one of the highest rated youtube channels and a show that reviews weapons including lots of assault weapons) was tied to a chair and shot.

John Noveske's last facebook post was a HUGE list of people who were on SSRI's (type of antidepressent that is known to cause violent and suicidal thoughts) that killed themselves or others out of nowhere. These drugs are the real problem, when you actually start to realize that they are in fact what are making these people snap, it gets kind freaky.
You can see the story and the list of people that acted out violently and what drugs they were on here: LINK

I don't think it was a conspiracy, he did it, sad story, the trumped up charges against him plus his natural depression resulted in this tragedy. The more intelligent someone is generally the more depressed they are.

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


Thank you for your kind reply and for the link.

Originally posted by eXia7

Originally posted by zatara

Well, with all the recent mysterious deaths of top people in the gun industry, it wouldn't surprise me if they are trying to silence all the opposition that they can.

I missed that one... mysterious deaths in the gun industry..? Is there a ATS thread on this.. Can you elaborate on that?

Sure

Keith Ratliff - Tied to a chair and shot in the back of the head

John Noveske - Killed in "mysterious" car crash

Sorry, I should've added this link in my first post lol

I will agree with other posters that it does indeed seem "fishy" in light of the other recent activist murders.

oddpenguin

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow

I read your linked article,and you know,i found an enormous anger+sadness welling up in me-the carnage+devastated lives from anti-depressants and other psychotropic drugs just made me sick.GUNS ARE THE LEAST OF YOUR WORRIES,AMERICA.This is a full-blown assault against your very future-your young,your children.Maybe this is the sickest+most diabolically evil conspiracy of all.When you unhinge the minds of a nation's children..and yet,these drugs keep being prescribed.This should be America's NUMBER ONE CONCERN-as demonstrated in the article,an unhinged mind dont need a gun to kill.Just the will to do so,and it seems these drugs override built-in taboos,like murdering and suicide.

It could be colonial mustard at this point, you can't convince anybody who doesn't want to be convinced. You can try, but as long as people relate Science with Conspiracy, we will live in a bronze age.

I think he realized he would have faced very serious charges, and that he had one shot to attain
some very serious documents but he didn't calculate his procedure correctly and the
only logical action was to commit suicide, or he was killed and it was made to look like a suicide
because his room-service held him hostage; literally.

Stuff like that happens in high level banking forums. HSBC probably has a handful of people
who are connected internationally at all of their assets to address any sort of domestic terrorism
that threatens their livelihood.

reply to post by gangdumstyle

sounds like a person without all that, living in a camper, would happily accept tens of years in prison.

reply to post by SaltireWarrior


Well whether he committed suicide or not is still debatable as not enough sources/information is available (and would it be available sometime soon?). BUT lets analyse his life and work in summary and Q/A shall we:

Summary of his work:
*26 yr old American activist who fought against:
-SOPA/PIPA (big one)
-Protection of IP censorship
*Co-creator of RSS 1.0 (technology) and co-founder of Reddit.com
*Gifted individual yet fought against the gov as a team (I mean he wasnt just a behind doors hacker)
*Helped to make information freely available to the public, including an estimated 19 million pages of federal court documents from the PACER case-law system, according to Aljazera

So what was he accused of?
*Arrested by the FBI and CHARGED with crimes which can earn him up to 50 YEARS IN PRISON
*Accused of downloading thousands (or millions as the BBC quotes) of ACADEMIC ARTICLES from MIT for him to distribute it (not sell or copy btw or scan) for free. (RAISES EYEBROWS)
[This makes absolutely no sense according to Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal, “It's like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library." CORRECT or what!]
*Accused of computer fraud which he denied although it is not clear yet by which this is, was it the break-in at MIT to download journals?

What was his biggest threat to the US?
-Definitely the SOPA/PIPA act which basically bans any website (and effectively the IP address) which contains copyright material but basically downgrading our freedom of information.
Which brings me to my next question, Who wanted this bill (SOPA/PIPA) to be passed?.
-Well yes the gov, but as most gov, they are just puppets and big corps run the show, Hollywood being the biggest. They wanted sites that happen to be located in a nation more hospitable to copyright infringement than the United States is (in fact, the U.S. is probably the least hospitable jurisdiction in the world for such an endeavor). Because the target is offshore, a lawsuit against the owners in a U.S. court would be futile.

So, lets ask some logical questions shall we:

1. Why did he face 50 years in prison (plus a hefty fine) for just downloading FREE Journals at MIT (yes he might have broken into MIT, apparently, but seriously 50 years!!! while rapist, killers, murderers etc get 5-10 years (not generally speaking but most do).
2. Why are mysterious death of ppl who who question the gov becoming frequent?
-Swartz allegedly "hanged himself" according to many high-profile media (news coorp etc). How can you be for sure he hanged himself or was hanged?
When a (low profile) person is found hanged, they DONT say "yes mam, I can confirm he hanged himself" after a few hours or even a day (this happened to a relative of mine so I know they dont take 1 day, they can take from weeks to months). Instead, they do the forensics etc etc etc to CONFIRM this was the case. But hey guess what the BBC says after 1 day of Mr Swartz death:

The activist and programmer took his life in his New York apartment, a relative and the state medical examiner said. His body was found on Friday.

Seriously? how do they know that fast he actually hanged HIMSELF and was not by someone?

-The well known Rifles manufacturer John Noveske "died" in a car crash. Is it unlucky or coincidence that NOT LONG after posting details of all the school shooters who were taking PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS.
-Another activist Keith Ratliff, the creator of a super-popular YouTube channel featuring videos of exotic weapons, was also recently found dead. He was discovered on a rural road in Carnesville, Georgia. Ratliff had a single gunshot wound the head and police are treating his death as a homicide.
1 single gunshot? this means someone must have got pretty close to him.
-Alex Jones was threatened!!! wake up people, and on NATIONAL TELEVISION!! Imagine AJ said the same thing Morgan and the others said!. AJ would have been arrested, you cannot threaten to KILL someone on national television and get away with it! but hey they can!.

Anyways sorry for such a long post, but please do your own research as well. For me, Mr Swartz was set up by the "big" guys. (The evidence that this dude was set up weighs more FOR than AGAINST). By set up I mean, they either killed him on site by making it look like an own suicide (hey its easy for pros) or he was deliberately drugged in a cafee or bar (just like in the films, yes guys it is possible!) and he was so depressed that day that he hanged "himself". Do remember that he was threatened and molested dozens of times before. This is why the post-mortem (autopsy) must be DONE and the public needs to know the results! ESPECIALLY HIS FAMILY!

So guys what you think? opinions and analysis please! Please do correct me if I am wrong