"The Red Tide Turning?"

[jmage at panix.com]

If George Szamuely needs some legal advice, mine would be to hold the books
hostage. Once NYU understands that -  if he loses the jury trial - he
intends to fight the way the judge instructed on his mens rea defense ("I
sincerely intended to return them all tomorrow every day since the first
few became overdue") all the way on appeal, and since the evidence must be
preserved during the appeal, it would not take any great skill to extend
the time before NYU gets its books for many more years. NYU would be wise
to withdraw its complaint.

As for the cops and DAs, I would recommend to them now that they have
undertaken the "thorough examination" of the Phenomenology the following
helpful section that will aid them in preparing for a trial involving both
an offense against property and a mens rea defense - from C.Free Concrete
Mind AA.Reason V. Certainty and Truth of Reason A.Observation as a function
of Reason 3. Observation of nature as an organic whole b. Observation of
self-consciousness purely as a self-consciousness, and as standing in
relation to external reality [in the classic Baillie translation]:

"Psychology contains the collection of laws in virtue of which the mind
takes up different attitudes towards the different forms of its reality
given and presented to it in a condition of otherness. The mind adopts
these various attitudes partly with a view to receiving these modes of its
reality into itself, and conforming to the habits, customs and ways of
thinking it thus comes across, as being that wherein mind is reality and as
such object to itself; partly with a view to knowing its own spontaneous
activity in opposition to them, to follow the bent of its own inclination,
and carry off thence what is merely of particular and special moment for
itself, and thus make what is objective conform to itself. In the former it
behaves negatively towards itself as single and individual mind, in the
latter negatively towards itself as the universal being.

In the former aspect independence gives what is met with merely the form of
conscious individuality in general, and as regards the content remains
within the general reality given; in the second aspect, however, it gives
the reality at least a certain special modification, which does not
contradict its essential content, or even a modification by which the
individual qua particular reality and peculiar content sets itself against
the general reality. This opposition becomes a form of wrongdoing when the
individual cancels that reality in a merely particular manner, or when it
does so in a manner that is general and thus for all, when it puts another
world, another right, law, and custom in place of those already there."

sums it up neatly, no?
john mage