Posted by zeugma on February 13, 2006, at 18:22:29
when unblocked (hopefully soon)- or anyone else who does not find my posts tedious-
Please consider again the strange case of I.Lewis Libby, the man alleged to have spared our enemies the task of blowing the cover of an American spy by obtaining Dick Cheney's permission to do it himself (truly strange behavior from an Administration that brought us the Patriot Act, if Libby's grand jury deposition is not perjury). The latest remarkable development, which suggests to me that someone high up in America's most secret echelons read "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" in the course of their Ivy League education:<<
Defense attorney John Cline and Fitzgerald also told the judge that they were working on an agreement that would allow Libby to help prosecutors translate about a hundred pages of his handwritten notes.Fitzgerald said Libby's notes "by and large cover predominantly topics other than the issue of Mr. Wilson's wife [ i.e. Valerie Plame, American spy]."
Libby's handwriting is difficult to read, the lawyers said, and has slowed down the reviews by the intelligence agencies.
Under the agreement, the lawyers said, Libby would translate his scrawlings but would not be held responsible if he were to make a mistake.
>>The historic importance of this is underlined by the fact that no less than FIVE American agencies (the CIA, the National Security Agency, the State Department, the National Security Agency, and the offices of the President and the Vice President) will be poring over Libby's script and no doubt offering to help Libby in the onerous task of deciphering his own notebooks.
Is Libby aware of his opportunity to do what we all wish we could do- be granted the ability to change an incriminating but indecipherable letter to a harmless but nonsensical one? (There are things I have written on this very board that I wish had been delivered in such a font that even Dr. Bob might despair at decoding, and grant me in effect an indefinite immunity from blocks- but of course, my posts would go for nothing after a while. I am all for clarity, and I encourage schoolchildren to listen to their teachers when they say handwriting is important. but then, there are situations where it can be an advantage to have to be the 'translator' of one's own writing, especially when engaged in a case of high affairs of state. Handwriting may soon become a lost art in America, along with the ability to build levees.)
(now for some fanciful speculation)
His notebooks may become a source of fascination for future generations, who will offer their own interpretations of what is inexplicable to our own- why a man would be ordered by his own government to spare America's enemies the trouble of blowing an operatives' cover in the midst of a "war on terrorism" (if in fact someone or other has not committed perjury, or just made an innocent mistake in blurting out an American spy's name- but see below if such 'mistakes' are even possible, because this involves the doctrine of incorrigibility, the the doctrine that even when mistakes are pointed out, they cannot be corrected. Please bear with me.)
alexandra, when your block is up,(or anyone else not bored to tears by matters scrutinzed by the most important organizations of the U.S. government), please comment on the implications this has Daniel Dennett's Multiple Drafts model of the mind, as well as notions about the lack of 'privileged access' to our own minds. It appears to me that the doctrine Libby's agreement draws most on is an old idea of Richard Rorty's, that although we lack privileged access to our own minds, and so cannot be sure that we have decoded accurately the contents of our own mental notebooks, we are nevertheless 'incorrigible'- even if we get it wrong, no one can ever correct us.
Many people I know actually believe this doctrine of Rorty's. I have never been able to convince them of the error of their ways, unfortunately.
:-)
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:609247
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20060204/msgs/609247.html