A Father's Grief: Aaron Swartz's Father Says Reddit Co-Founder Was 'Killed By The Government'

[tblue37]

53. He was an incredibly smart man, and totally committed to his

cause.

I think of his suicide as a form of martyrdom, like the suicides of those Buddhist monks who burned themselves alive at the height of the Diem regime to protest its human rights outrages while we were supporting that regime during the first part of the Vietnam War.

As tragic as his suicide is, and as unforgivable as the goverment's relentless prosecutorial assault on him was, I can't help thinking that he chose to commit suicide at this point, at least in part, as a way to direct the attention of those of us who don't care where our "electricity" comes from--IOW, to make people understand that our access to information and to the internet is not something that is guaranteed, but rather soemthing that we have to constantly defend against the attempts by the powerful to restrict our access.