The release of a terrorist. An opinion.

An outrageous deal to release a senior al-Qaeda terrorist - February 23 2012

                In this commentary in the Washington Post on February 23, columnist Marc A. Thiessen writes about why it is wrong to release a senior Al-Qaeda terrorist named Majid Khan because he made a deal with our government. 

                Marc A. Thiessen makes some good points, for example he provides some examples on why Khan should never be released.  Khan has been charged with war crimes, including murder, attempted murder, spying and providing material support for terrorism - with would get him a life sentence twice over.

 

                Thiessen states that "Instead [of going to prison], he might now be released.  For what?  Under the reported deal, Khan has agreed to testify against his fellow terrorists during the next four years at Guantanamo, after which he would then be eligible to be transferred to Pakistan."  

 

                Thiessen identifies the fact that Majid Khan can and has provided valuable information about members and leaders of the Al-Qaeda, is what has lead the United States to offer Khan this deal.  The information Khan provided did prove useful, and lead to the arrest of a man named Zubair, an operative of Al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asian affiliate Jemmaah Islamiyah.

 

                Marc A. Thiessen is a valued columnist at the Washington post, having covered foreign and domestic policy, and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.  He also served as a chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and before that as a senior aide to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms.  I agree with Mr. Thiessen.  I think that it is just plain dumb to release a terrorist, much less a senior one - no matter what he can provide.

Internet Piracy has not been Reduced!

    Whatever your stand on internet piracy is, the shutdown of megaupload.com has not affected internet piracy much.  In this post by the Daily Mail, columnist Rob Waugh writes that after the FBI seized megaupload.com and arrested its founder, multimillionaire Kim Dotcom, total internet viewing fell by over two percent.  That is two percent of all of the internet users - about 360 million a day or more than 30% of the whole world. 

    Despite the fact that meagupload.com held over 30% of all file-sharing, file-sharing has not dipped by much.  Most of the users of megaupload either moved their business overseas - also displaying the fact that most of them had used oversea based, file-sharing websites, or stitched to other big file-sharing websites like Putlocker, MediaFire and Rapidshire.  This is also shown by their big jump in traffic.

     The rest of the article is about Kim Dotcom.  The former hacker was in a New Zealand prison and was denied bail at his bail hearing, on the grounds that he would flee the country if given the chance. This was because it is believed he has access to money, and has a history of fleeing charges.  Dotcom told Auckland court he had no intention of fleeing and would fight for his money, some of which was seized by the authorities.

     I would recommend this article because I found it fascinating.  I would like to see if this has any influence on the Sopa and Pipa issue, and whether it will affect the internet as we know it.