This quote came to mind from St. Thomas Moore (Paul Scofield in A Man For All Seasons)

WILLIAM ROPER: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

SIR THOMAS MORE: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

***

And what winds are blowing now thanks to Bushco and all that deregulation thanks to Reagan and oh yeah, Clinton, etc. and now the man who talks the talk when opportunity beckons but feels no obligation to walk the walk.

If lawlessness is not checked it becomes exponentially more horrifying.

Shadow systems … in our military, in our banking and legislative systems … extra-judicial shenanigans to the point of massive sexual abuse i.e., torture program … and if we tiptoe carefully and not CALL it torture but “enhanced interrogation” we can live in at least semi-denial, crazymakingly dysfunctional, and protect our corrupt denying leaderships.

Glenn Greenwald vs. Chuck Todd, revealed Todd thinks having a “passionate commitment to the rule of law” is an indication of ideological partisanship … liberal bleeding-heartism. Wow. So political elite is above the law so sayeth the corporate press.

Political systems are usually extravagant rationalizations for economic systems.
We have rot in both, but they tend to originate in flawed economic thinking.
Like all errors, they can be corrected.
But first, you have to know how to spot the errors.

this is capitalism at its best or worst depending on your ability to create wealth.

After the implosion of the Soviet Union in the last 1990s, a lot of punks, jerks, fearful asshats, criminals of assorted varieties, and twits viewed ‘capitalism’ the way that Cargo Cults view the mythical, benevolent ‘John’: they thought if they became ‘capitalists’ they could be rich, rich, rich and the milk and honey would flow like oil from a Saudi spigot.

‘Capitalism’ was used as a front for criminal activity, sometimes out of ignorance — and sometimes deliberately.

‘Capitalism’ is a lose term.
Your use of ‘capitalism’ as an excuse to abandon all moral judgment is, IMHO, exhibits a popular, lazy claim to be lazy, predatory, and dumb.

‘Capitalism’ as a functioning system that can allocate resources and share wealth so that ‘everyone does better when everyone does better’ needs to be recovered.

In the last 60 years or more, ‘economics’ became ‘mathematized’ and the underlying social and cultural aspects were ignored by well-paid, arrogant cretins who made a very good living doing a lot of math, which then allowed them to ignore the social consequences of commerce.

Derivatives are a way to **disguise** actual, true value.
Until we rid ourselves of ‘economic fictions and lies’ and figure out accurate pricing systems that account for TRUE costs and genuine value, we’ll be stuck in a polluted, politically toxic mess.

Lecture for the a.m. now over; off to your next class.
But homework could include some Soros, some ‘Adam’s Fallacy’ some http://www.amazon.com/Supercap…..38;sr=1-1, and — since we all love a nice, yummy dessert, some Nomi Prins.

And if the thought of all that reading intimidates you, click over to youtube and search on some of those titles or authors. You are in for a treat. (And when you get done with those titles, you have Paul Hawken waiting for you.)

Prins will be at the FDL Book Salon this fall with her new book; you might enjoy one of those events, but read the book first.

You strike me as someone who hangs out in the back of the class with a pack of cigs dangling from your pocket, a couple of ear piercings, and a few tattoos. Those sometimes turn out to the brightest students, and they often start off with insults.

EW is a Master Instructor, so stop with the snotty attitude and get your brain moving.

Okay, before EW and bmaz bust my ass, I’m done.

This parallel set of communications now appears to be an attempt to commit fraud.

Still catching up here, and would have run right over Mary’s point.
Just a hat tip to all the ‘thinkers’ around these parts. My, oh, my.
Now, to help FauxNewz understand that it is **emphatically NOT** about political partisanship.
It’s about trying to figure out why we had leadership that got punk’d while pouring gas on the embers of ignorance, fear, tribal loyalties, and illiteracy.

What a great way to undercut your own military; start a ‘parallel structure’ and only read in the people in your own tribal cult. Mindboggling.

But if it was via webcam, then if the circuits were only in the physical facility it was limited to closed circuit on location. I’m skeptical that it would have stopped there. Also, no clue whether the webcams were backing up onto security DVD (which, I suppose, is how banks and merchants do it).

Without actually knowing what is in the derivatives, it’s kind of hard to konw if they arguably go to “reasons behind” the destruction as well, isn’t it? And even on that, some things may not be obvious on the face of the derivative (it might not say, “hey – here’s a reason to destroy tapes) but may be implicit in it (as, for example, a summary that discusses reasons why someone is convinced that Z isn’t a high value al-Qaeda operative which, combined with the Yoo memo which specifies that protection against torture liability is premised on Z actually being a high value al-Qaeda representative, and you have a reason to destroy evidence. Or if you have derivatives talking about the realization of goals towards “learned helplessness” with its concomittant lasting impact, which would contradict the reasoning in the Yoo and Bradbury opinions of non-permanent or not lasting damage — you have a lot of things that might implicitly would go towards the reasons for the destruction, especially when combined with other documents.

That is one wonderful comment when reading it after reading the bmaz post, CIA Fraud In State Secrets Assertions.

This parallel set of communications now appears to be an attempt to commit fraud.

Could also be in Jane Mayer’s book as well as Goldsmith’s own book.

But I really thought Goldsmith saw Hamden on closed circuit video.