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Losing Aaron
theodp writes "It's said that you can't fully understand someone until you meet their family. In Janelle Nanos's 'Losing Aaron,' you'll meet Bob Swartz, father of the late Aaron Swartz and adviser to MIT's Media Lab, and get a better understanding of how Aaron's family helped plant the seeds of his idealism. You'll also, sadly, see how MIT — the institution which Bob Swartz long felt stood for compassion and creativity, challenging authority, and pure scientific inquiry — took a self-described stance of 'neutrality' in the aggressive prosecution of his son that ended with Aaron's senseless death last January. 'Clearly I failed,' a tortured Bob Swartz acknowledges. 'There's no question, my son is dead. On the other hand, do I feel that I didn't try hard enough? Yes. Do I feel guilt about not trying hard enough? No. If you understand the distinction I'm trying to make. Could I have done more? Of course I could have done more. Because you can always do more. Did I put everything in that I possibly could? Did I work as hard pretty much as I knew how? Yes. Do I wish I did more? Yes. But I don't go home at night and say, "Well, you didn't care." Because I did. I cared about it more than anything else. And I don't go home at night and say, "I didn't try." Because I tried. Everything I could figure out. But I failed.'"
Someone who kills themselves rather than go to prison for 4 or maybe 18 months is very sick. Especially when they are independently wealthy, widely considered to be a genius, and have many well connected friends who will help them get back on their feet. I know that Swartz was loved by many people, including those with bully pulpits, but blaming other people for his death is revolting. The people who were close to him blame themselves for not helping him and are lashing out at the prosecutors and MIT.
As for the prosecution of his case, ask yourself why Swartz didn't access JSTOR with his own account at Harvard.
Bob knows that none of the "obvious signs" were really there, that everyone made them up to explain in hindsight what nobody saw coming. He knows he did exactly what he could have done, and he could have done more if he could predict the impossible-to-predict events of the future.
It's the same thing as 9/11. The FBI, CIA, the executive branch, everyone had all these documents about 3000 terrorist groups and hundreds if not thousands of operations and actions and movements. A lot of hot seats to check into. Then one of those hot seats inexplicably caught fire. Everyone looked back and shouted, "Oh my GOD it was so obvious! We should have known it was going to happen today! Look at the time line! 6 weeks ago, then a month, then just 12 days before the towers came down... it was screaming at us!!" ... but, it wasn't.
Aaron's death came roughly the same way. When Aaron started doing what he was doing, someone could have predicted easily that somebody might not be amused. Nobody could predict it becoming an outright holy war against one person, nor could they predict that he'd just kill himself instead of having his life crushed and getting shoved into buttsex prison for 18 years per count for 200,000 counts of shit he didn't do wrong. It just happened. The big story of his life has a lead-in, but the really big surprise twists were a total surprise.
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Could I have raised him a little differently so this didn't happen? Haunting. To say 'I did my best' is as wholly inaccurate as 'I did my worst' as most all of us fall somewhere in the middle.
It is pointless self-torture. Perhaps if he'd been taught to react differently in the situation that led to his doom, another earlier timeline close call was not averted.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The worst part is that the appalling behavior of the prosecution is standard practice. Any laws that could possibly apply (and some that have no chance of sticking) get thrown at the defendant in an effort to get them into a plea deal because they can't possibly afford the law talent required to protect themselves.
Meanwhile, if you have money or power, you are only charged under the laws that absolutely apply and only if they absolutely have proof you did it and are fully at fault. We wind up with corporations, governments, and the wealthy doing incredibly immoral things that obviously should be illegal but are not "technically" illegal or it's just too difficult to prove that they did it, so no prosecutor wants to take it on.
It's sickening.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
The helplessness Aaron felt must have been overwhelming. When people in high places conspire against you, there is not much left you can do. They are in control of your life and will twist the legal system into whatever they want in order to satisfy their ego. It's a game to them. Shit needs change.
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but managed to expose, endanger AND KILL sympathizers and spies working with the US and the UK on the other side.
Sorry cold fjord, but this is false. From here:
The military's position took another hit Wednesday, as the former brigadier general who headed the Information Review Task Force investigating the leaks said that he had never heard that a source named in the Afghan war logs was killed.
Though the Taliban had claimed that its review of the war logs led them to an Afghan whom the U.S. military named as a source, the supposed informant the Taliban claimed to have executed was not in fact named in the leaked materials.
Now-retired Brig. Gen. Robert Carr had wanted to testify about the Taliban's claim Wednesday, but Col. Denise Lind, the military judge presiding over Manning's court-martial, barred such testimony as inadmissible hearsay.
The revelation supports an assessment by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that the rhetoric about the supposed harm caused by the leaks was "fairly significantly overwrought."
4 months or 25 years, Aaron could have done more good alive in jail than dead. Death never solves anything. If you're going to die then die fighting for what you believe not by suicide.
You are overlooking that Aaron's decision was not just to avoid jail time. It was also to save his family from bankruptcy for his legal defense. The prosecutor made sure that even if Aaron would be acquitted from all charges, the running tab for that would be in the millions.
The U.S. "plea deal" system is not just bereaving defendants of a jury trial by the threat of jail time, but rather with the immense cost of an effective defense. If you are innocent, you can buy yourself out of every year of prosecution jail time for about $200000 in legal defense cost. If you are guilty, it gets more expensive and less reliable to buy yourself out, but the main mitigating factor is not innocence but money.
The prosecutor was going for the 25 year demand. Getting Aaron mostly acquitted would have been a $5000000 job (probably involving an appeal as well).
Most corrupt judicial systems are cheaper than the U.S.
As a military intelligence officer he released military intelligence during wartime in a war that LEGALLY approved by all political parties in both the US and the UK.
Citation needed.
Specifically, where are the Articles of War, ratified by both houses of the Congress of the U.S., and signed by the President of the U.S. which are required for the U.S. to actually BE in a state of war, such that this was in fact an act which occurred during wartime?
Bull,
When prosecutors have every advantage and reason to puff up any charge to a felony
When prosecutors receive their raises and political position based on WINNING, not JUSTICE
When legislatures pass laws with outrageous punishments for infractions to gain political favor
When victims who have lost nothing stand back and let this machine crush people and send them off to prison for life
That is persecution and everybody on the interwebs is a potential victim of it
Binary thinking is for the young. The dichotomy of the idealist and the pragmatist is really a failing of idealism that pragmatism is thought to be unprincipled. In most cases, there is no true understanding of an ideal, it is really just an unembodied idea with unforeseen consequences. The truism is that world is changed by people that can change the world, not people that only wish it. Of course one would hope to change the world for the better rather than the worse, but it's the height of arrogance that a single person always know which direction is better.
It's not easy to raise a pragmatist that realizes every hand is a winner and a loser, and not to count their money when it's sitting at the table... It's much easier to raise an idealist that ignores these facts of life and laments the world for not seeing things the way they do. That's what my 3-yo son does now. He doesn't know the rules to all the games that we play together and the surprising (to him) strategies that seem to work yet, so he makes some assumptions which sometimes don't turn out to be true and that disappoints him (which is reflected in different severity of negative behaviors depending on his energy status / mood).
I'm hoping to prepare him to experience his own chosen path in life by pointing him in what I think is a good direction and giving him some tools to continue to make his way as he discovers the true rules of various "games" he will experience. I'm sure I too will regret not giving my son enough tools someday, but he owns his own life path...
On principle (one of the few that I have), my son doesn't have to change the world to be better for me (or the rest of society). Actually, I think that deliberately sending my son on such a mission would be sociopathic behavior on *my* part (might be akin to sending him on a suicide mission if I can be momentarily extra insensitive to the above mentioned situation). However, if he choses to walk that path, I wish him all the luck.