Copyright getting interesting!

Warner issues a takedown order to Larry Lessig!  How long do you think he’s been waiting for this: let the fun commence!

WOW

OK, you have got to read this blog entry.  She pegs so much here, explaining politics, social views, religion, etc on the basis of discipline methods.  Perfect.  Read it!

Wow, is stupidity the goal here?

Yesterday’s Times reported something about the development of the torture regime that, I think, says a lot (none good) about us as a society. 

In “In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Look at Past Use” the reporters say “The program began with Central Intelligence Agency leaders in the grip of an alluring idea: They could get tough in terrorist interrogations without risking legal trouble by adopting a set of methods used on
Americans during military training. How could that be torture?”

• and (Please excuse the long quote) “This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.” and “According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

• Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly
  researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

• The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia. “

The banality of evil doesn’t have anything on this.  This is the mindless stupidity of evil.  Or is it?

What are we supposed to believe?  That no one in the top levels of the administration, Congress, the spy agencies knew the purpose of SERE or that waterboarding has a looong history?  C’mon, that is too unbelievable for the laugh test.  This leads me to three questions.  First, why float this story?  Second, what does this say about the decision-making process of the Bush administration?  Third, and perhaps most importantly, who was the torture directed at and why was it done?

The story is appearing now as an attempt, weak as it is, to excuse the behavior.  The old “we didn’t know” defense.  Nevermind that it has no legal standing as a defense, the purpose is to sucker some Fox viewers.  This defense plays along with Cheney’s “it works” defense.  Neither are really an excuse, but an attempt to wriggle from responsibility by pleading ignorance or to justify the behavior on the “ends justify the means” basis.  Never mind that the ignorance test doesn’t pass the laugh test or that the “it works” defense has been tested and has been shown to be wrong.

We are supposed to beleive that no one in any position of authority knew anything about the history of the Cold War, the Vietnam war, the US incursion in the Philippines, or popular culture (Manchurian Candidate, Monty Python, anyone).  I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I knew all of this before 2000.  Maybe Bush is this stupid, and Feith (according to Tommy Franks, the “stupidest fucking person in the world”), but everyone else?  No, this isn’t real ignorance, it can’t be.  This is something much darker.

So if people knew, they didn’t want to know and they didn’t want to tell the others.  Was this an unspoken agreement?  Were they scared of the others (Cheney scares me!)?  Either the top was very stupid and surrounded themselves with other stupid people, yes men, or people scared shitless of them.  Or the top wasn’t stupid and wanted to hurt people and were surrounded by stupid people, yes men, or people scared shitless.  Of course, both might be true – some at the top were stupid and some wanted to hurt people.

I have a hard time believing that they were all that stupid.  Some, at least wanted to hurt people.  The real question at this level is who was stupid and who wanted to hurt people.  The next question, and the more interesting, I think, is why did these people want to hurt others?

The simple answer as to why (and I admit, the one that I turned to first) is that they were sadists.  That may be true for some, but a more likely reason, I think, was to sow fear.  The reasons are not mutually exclusive.  Torture doesn’t get answers, but it does scare people.

Who might they want to scare and why?  Well, potential terrorists, certainly.  This is the same deterrence reason given for the death penalty and other harsh punishments.  The problem is that the studies go both way on this.  It doesn’t seem likely that it is strongly deterrent, especially not for committed terrorists.  So, it’s not really to prevent others from becoming terrorists (deterrence) nor is it to stop other attacks (sorry Jack Bauer, but it doesn’t work).  The only reason that I can think of, then, is punishment.  As punishment, torture is clearly illegal, but since it doesn’t look to the torturee but to the torturer and society as a whole, it may make some people feel better.  Pretty weak reason, though: to make some people feel better.  I don’t see that as a compelling enough reason to cause someone to participate in torture, though I may be wrong.

Who else might this be directed at?  To the extent that sadism was the motivation, the good feeling that Bush and the others got.  Sadly, I think that this was a major reason. Why?  they were the only ones who knew about it for a long time.  The knowledge of torture made them feel good – they enjoyed the power, the feeling of doing something, and punishing the other.

Who else might it be directed at?  One main group is those in government.  It was designed to cow them.  In so far as they went along with it, they were part of the conspiracy, and wouldn’t blow the whistle on this (or other crimes).  Also, it is intimidating.  If they will do this to them, why not me?  In the past, one difficulty with this is that one method that torturers used to use to excuse themselves was that the torturee was different, was less of a person.  This worked in much of the 20th century, less so at the end of the past century.  Though, the former Bush administration is still trying to use this (torture helps Muslims follow their religion – read this to try to understand).

The last group is the general public in the US and the world.  Unfortunately, I think that this may have been one of the main reasons.  Why?  For part of the society, it may be the feeling that “justice was done” and for the rest: intimidation.

So, what do we have?  Some sadists who got some kicks and get a feeling that justice was being done.  Also, those close to them who might not have agreed were shut up, and much of the rest of the country was cowed.

How did we get to a place where stupid sadists were running the show and, worse, that stupidity could be seen as a valid defense.  Ouch!

EurActiv.com – OECD lashes out at university ‘conservatism’ | EU – European Information on Innovation & Creativity

OECD lashes out at university ‘conservatism’ 

Published: Tuesday 31 March 2009   

Traditional university faculties are too conservative and are standing in the way of progress, as Europe’s education system struggles to become more innovative, according to the head of the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation.

via euractiv.com

Posted via web from cuardach’s posterous

Balkinization

If even the stodgy law professors get it, there’s hope.  Right?

A couple months ago, I thought that President Obama’s strategic decision to defer to “safe hands” like Geithner and Summers on macroeconomic matters was wise. I even held out hope that the government would use some of its leverage over the banks to induce them to invest in our future–projects such as green energy, universal broadband, and health information technology that will be perennially neglected by investors obsessed with quarterly earnings.

But these hopes are fading as a neo-feudal reality begins to emerge. Whatever their failures, however reviled they are by the public, the potentates at our leading banks appear to believe themselves entitled by divine right to determine what projects get credit and which are denied. Rather than assert the people’s prerogative to demand investment that builds a better future for us all, our putatively progressive Treasury Department contorts itself to resist the “nationalization” label–even as conservatarians like Lindsey Graham and Alan Greenspan consider it. Like the Rubin-ites who rolled over Robert Reich and Brooksley Born in the Clinton administration to prevent derivatives regulation, these “centrist” Democrats are pushing the Obama administration into a hollow establishment “consensus” that commands the respect of few outside the Beltway Bubble, Greenwich, and the Upper East Side. For these worthies, we are impertinent even to ask about the long-secret destinations of the AIG money.

via balkin.blogspot.com

 

Posted via web from cuardach’s posterous

Balkinization

A couple months ago, I thought that President Obama’s strategic decision to defer to “safe hands” like Geithner and Summers on macroeconomic matters was wise. I even held out hope that the government would use some of its leverage over the banks to induce them to invest in our future–projects such as green energy, universal broadband, and health information technology that will be perennially neglected by investors obsessed with quarterly earnings.

But these hopes are fading as a neo-feudal reality begins to emerge. Whatever their failures, however reviled they are by the public, the potentates at our leading banks appear to believe themselves entitled by divine right to determine what projects get credit and which are denied. Rather than assert the people’s prerogative to demand investment that builds a better future for us all, our putatively progressive Treasury Department contorts itself to resist the “nationalization” label–even as conservatarians like Lindsey Graham and Alan Greenspan consider it. Like the Rubin-ites who rolled over Robert Reich and Brooksley Born in the Clinton administration to prevent derivatives regulation, these “centrist” Democrats are pushing the Obama administration into a hollow establishment “consensus” that commands the respect of few outside the Beltway Bubble, Greenwich, and the Upper East Side. For these worthies, we are impertinent even to ask about the long-secret destinations of the AIG money.

via balkin.blogspot.com

Posted via web from cuardach’s posterous

Database Trial

Justis

via law.yale.edu

We are conducting a trial of an additional portion of the Justis database. In this case, their version of CELEX, the documents of the European Union. To give it a try, simply go to Justis (you can click on the link above) and, once you are in the database, click on the EU and then search. Please let us know what you think. The trial continues until early April.

Posted via web from cuardach’s posterous

Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship | Berkman Center

Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship

About | Statement | Signatories

About

On 7 November 2008, the directors of the law libraries at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, the University of Texas, and Yale University met in Durham, North Carolina at the Duke Law School. That meeting resulted in the “Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship,” which calls for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats.

via cyber.law.harvard.edu

Read more about this at the link above.

Posted via web from cuardach’s posterous

Lillian Goldman Law Library | Legal Databases

American Foreign Relations since 1600
32 chronologically organized chapters that combine bibliographies, biographies, and analysis written by scholars in the field, and conclude with examinations of every part of the world or nation addressed by the United States during that period; includes 18,000+ primary and secondary sources that cover the breadth of American history from the 17th century to the present. 

via law.yale.edu

As long as you are connected to the Yale network just click for access. If you need information about connecting to the Yale network from off-campus, click here.

Posted via web from cuardach’s posterous

Op-Ed Columnist – A Continent Adrift – NYTimes.com

As usual, a great Krugman column. this time, though political structures are the stumbling block to effective response. Interesting.

You might expect monetary policy to be more forceful. After all, while there isn’t a European government, there is a European Central Bank. But the E.C.B. isn’t like the Fed, which can afford to be adventurous because it’s backed by a unitary national government — a government that has already moved to share the risks of the Fed’s boldness, and will surely cover the Fed’s losses if its efforts to unfreeze financial markets go bad. The E.C.B., which must answer to 16 often-quarreling governments, can’t count on the same level of support.

Europe, in other words, is turning out to be structurally weak in a time of crisis.

via nytimes.com

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