Aaron Swartz: Parasites Have the Power To Kill The Host

Government, Human Accomplishment, Intellectual Property Rights, Liberty, Private Property, Technology

Aaron Swartz got too big for his boots, so the government decided to make life unbearable for the gifted young man, who had created more value for shareholders and customers when just a kid in short pants than any of the nogoodniks who prosecuted him. Yeah, freedom baby.

US media tries to forget the late Mr. Swartz . RT has not:

Swartz was a 26 year-old information transparency activist, who took his own life nearly two years ago, having faced a standoff with the government.
When he was just 14, tech prodigy Swartz helped launch the first RSS feeds. By the time he turned 19, his company had merged with Reddit, which would become one of the most popular websites in the world.
But instead of living a happy life of a Silicon Valley genius, Swartz went on to champion a free internet, becoming a political activist calling for others to join.
Swartz drew the FBI’s attention in 2008, when he downloaded and released about 2.7 million federal court documents from a restricted service. The government did not press charges because the documents were, in fact, public.
He was arrested in 2011, for downloading academic articles from a subscription-based research website JSTOR – at his university – with the intention of making them available to the public. Although, none of what he downloaded was classified, prosecutors wanted to put him in jail for 35 years.

Favorite Actor A … Welshman

Film, Hollywood

Matthew Rhys is magnificent in “The Americans,” which is the best series on TV. I wondered about him when he was no where to be seen prancing about on the Red Carpet with Hollywood phonies. The explanation: Rhys is Welsh. Last night we watched him in The Scapegoat, an adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier novel (I liked her moody mysteries a lot in my early teens).

Rhys does not disappoint.

Loretta Lynch, Next AG

Justice, Law, The Courts, War on Drugs

“If you liked Eric Holder you’ll love Obama’s new AG pick,” warns WND about “federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s pick to become the next attorney general.”

This is true when it comes to waging the wicked War on Drugs. Eric Holder’s only redeeming feature as attorney general was that he put a crimp in the War on Drugs and in “mass incarceration.”

Holder said [correctly] that “too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason.” He boldly worked to change that and could very well go down in history as the Attorney General who began unwinding the war on drugs and steering our country away from mass incarceration.

Lynch was actually a drug prosecutor. The other thing Lynch had no shame in doing was shaking down banks: she extracted a “US$7 billion settlement” from Citigroup.

Chicago Tribune is somewhat contradictory in writing that “Lynch was never part of Obama’s inner circle. But she was close to Holder.” Holder is Obama’s inner circle.

Lynch also “chairs the Justice Department committee that advises Holder on policy decisions. In that role, she traveled to Washington often, working closely with senior Justice officials.”

The War Party Is Coming

Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq

Judging from the move today to ramp up the US’s involvement in Iraq, Michael A. Cohen’s advice to Barack Obama to continue what Cohen deems a “relatively low-key effort” in that country is unlikely. The president, at the behest of the Republicans, has ordered 1,500 additional American soldiers to Iraq.

Writing at Foreign Policy magazine, Cohen urges Obama to make haste and to continuing the push for a nuclear non-proliferation agreement with Iran, before the new Senate is sworn in and thwarts such an agreement:

Time, however, is of the essence. With a November 24 deadline fast approaching and the distinct possibility that a GOP-controlled Senate will push for new sanctions on Iran, reaching a deal sooner rather than later — even if it means concessions from the United States, for example, on the number of centrifuges that Iran can maintain — is essential.

MORE.