Ciceronian Review

Forstater

The judgment against Forstater received a lot of coverage.  In the news versions, Forstater lost her job for holding a gender critical view, that is, sees sex as largely biology and women as adult females, for holding the view that trans women are entitled to and should receive appropriate protections and treatment but are not entitled to displace protections for cis women (or women for Forstater).  See, for example, this and this.  There is also lots of political commentary on the decision.  For example, this.  I thought I would read the judgment because reports of judgments and court decision in the US of US legal systems are very often inaccurate, and often do not even state the court's decisions, providing instead summaries of comments on the decision.  Also, the UK system is different from the US systems.  Plus, it is an employment decision and that is, or can be, a world of it own in law.

A couple of caveats:  I do not know much about the structure of the UK legal system and am not sure I read the judgment correctly.  Even the most salient legal standard is more than a bit odd sounding to me.  If that so for a lawyer, what might it be for reporters?

First, Forstater was not fired.  Her contract was not renewed.  That is a quite different situation from being fired.  Second, the case seemed to me to be about tweets. (There was also a letter to her MP. (¶28.)) By which I mean what the Judge decided was based on his analysis of Forstater's remarks on Twitter, not on any other conduct.  She did not, as I read the decision, do anything else; she did not insult client, deny them service, provide lesser services or lower quality services to clients, denigrate clients, etc.  The central question was whether Forstater's views regarding trans women and trans men was a "philosophical belief" within the meaning of the European Convention and Human Rights Act.  To qualify as a philosophical belief (and so be protected expression, as I understand it): (1) the belief must be genuine, (2) it must be a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information, (3) it must be about a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour, (4) it must be minimally cogent, serious, cohesive, and important, and (5) must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.  (There are some other legal issues, e.g., defining harassment, but I think them secondary and will not spend time on them.)

The core analysis is at ¶¶ 74-93, especially 90 to 93.  What the Judge seems to me to conclude is that, while Forstater is free to campaign against the proposed revisions to the Gender Recognition Act and free to advocate for spaces exclusive to natal women, her view that sex is immutable is not protected and she may not describe trans women as men or trans men as women.  Expressing that view is not protected.  In other words, although Forstater thought that there was no legal compulsion to use the pronouns chosen by one's interlocutor (¶91), she is wrong.  Her offense, then, is that "She positively believes that they [trans women] are men; and she will say so whenever she wishes."  ¶93.  So, in the end, Forstater's belief is not a philosophical belief because it fails condition (5): it is not worthy of respect in a democratic society because it is not compatible with human dignity and conflicts with the fundamental rights of others.  (There is a peculiar passage where the Judge says that Forstater refuses to address people consistent with their Gender Recognition Certificate - 41.) 

One quick note: although the Judge implies that Forstater refuses to accept gender changes in communications with others, e.g., refuses to address trans men as men or trans women as women, that is not what the cited evidence shows.  What it does show is that she thinks that she thinks such address is matter of politeness and not being rude, but is not a legal requirement.

I wonder if the decision is appealable, and to whom.  There is a good deal of discussion of biology, but I can't quite make out why. Biology helps with information, but opinion about information is excluded from philosophical belief.  Which takes me to the part I have the most difficulty understanding -- what a philosophical belief is.  The condition are: (1) the belief must be genuine, (2) it must be a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information, (3) it must be about a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour, (4) it must be minimally cogent, serious, cohesive, and important, and (5) must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.  I understand what (1), (3), and (4) mean, and see the point of (5), but I have difficulty with (2).  I can't figure out what that is supposed to mean, which I suspect is because I do not know the legal materials behind it.  I do not think it is the ordinary meaning of the words, because that makes no sense at all.  How are beliefs differentiated from opinions, don't opinions necessarily involve beliefs and vice versa?  Why would the present state of information be excluded?  Or beliefs about the present state of information, or what inferences are best drawn from the present state of information?  Sorting out (2) is crucial to the decision, but it quite opaque to me (and I would guess to many in the US).  And there is a practical question -- how far would Forstater have to go in the way of round-about expression is to convey her concerns about the proposed revisions to the Gender Recognition Act?  Is the freedom to campaign left her by the Judge a freedom that has sufficient practical value?   

When Their Lips Move

they lie.  Uigher were sent to vocational schools and have now all graduated.  

Well, at least the government did not kill all of them. 

Desert

Bolton is gone from the Administration, reportedly because he was too belligerent, i.e., too ready to go to war with Iran.  The list of defects of Trump and his administration is long, but he has not yet take the US into a new war.  So grant him that, as Robert Paul Wolff says.  Trump has not actually ended US involvement in any wars either, so he is a kind of half dove.  More or less Obama, as both promised to end at least one war for the US and did not, and both, I think, raised US involvement a bit.  

A refinery in Saudi Arabia has been bombed, apparently by drone attack.  Iran denies involvement.  The US accuses Iran of involvement.  The Houthi in Yemen claim involvement.  Houthi rely on Iran for various forms of support.  The US supports Saudi Arabia in many ways.  Do any of them tell the truth?  I can say I do not believe Iran about much of anything, and, about that part of the world, believe some but not a lot of what the US says, and nothing much of what Saudia Arabia says, or the Houth.  But now the US is making its case, with an eye on military action.  

First of all, we have several wars in the area and have no need of another.  Saudia Arabia has a big military: the US sells SA high value armaments and an advanced air force.  So far it seems mostly used to whack residents of the country and to bomb wedding parties in Yemen.  Why then not defend their own oil facilities?  Is the point of the weapons sales to SA just to provide income to US companies?

 

 

Leaders

Iran reminds me of a small piece in the series "I, Claudius."  Pretty poor production values by today's standards, and very talky.  The series is about the Julian-Claudian emperors, cast as the reminiscences of Claudius.  There is a scene late in the series, most of the details of which I do not recall anymore - which emperor, etc.  In any event, the person is before the emperor and about to be sentenced to death for plotting or such.  The man says, to the effect of, "One thinks that if one shouts 'Liberty!' the walls of the city will all fall down.  They don't of course."  And off to his death.  But it is a piece of thought that recurs for me.  And Iran is an example, in this sense -- what is the US to do, and what is it that the government and the President to say?  We are for liberty and for democracy and so on.  But to what end?  It does not seem likely that anything said by anyone here will have a useful effect there.  At least, it is hard to see what good would come of governmental announcements.  The US is no friend of Iran and it would be less than serious to suppose that those in opposition to Khamenei and Ahmenijad will be bolstered by announcements.  Maybe.  But also, and much more certainly, ammunition for the government.  This is a hard problem for political theory -- when and what sort of intervention.  Makes Walzer's story-telling (in place of theory) more palatable.  But not more instructive.

Pummelling

As they have all week, Russia said again that it would be pulling out of Georgia.  Looks just like a lie.  For its part, Georgia, or its President, continues to act a fool, declaiming what Georgia will and will not permit.  The obvious fact is that Georgia has no real ability to do anything about anything, and persisting in pretending otherwise is not in the helpful category.  There is an interesting and quite informative discussion of some of the background at Fistful of Euros.  I suggest scrolling back for additional commentary.  I don't line up with them and they don't quite line up as a group.  I particularly liked the history - I had completely forgotten the the Balkan War.  I had also forgotten that air supply to NATO in Afghanistan is through Russian airspace.  Interesting that we have all gotten so intertwined. 

One wonders what it will look like in a year or two, once the short term political show ends.  The great slogan of Tianamin Square comes to mind:  Stupid Old Men Resign. 

Road Taken

On business travel I picked up Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  The book is very well written, and fun reading.  I do not think it the great book of the age as some reviews have it, but certainly worth reading and fun.  Part of the plot has to do with gangs of men wandering the country, post-Apocalypse.  (There is a good deal more formula plotting in the book than I had expected -- I suspect most of the reviewers never read SciFi and may not recognize how formulaic crucial portions of the book are.  But that is neither here nor there.)  What struck me is that in post-Apocalypse books the survivors are always overwhelmingly groups of men.  There are always a couple of women, and sometimes some children.  The great majority are men who band together in very violent wandering packs.  Makes for good cinema, as it were, but I can't think why that would be a plausible assumption.  I don't think that women are more fragile than men, die off faster and more easily.  I don't think women leap into suicide in times of crisis at notably higher rates than do men.  Yet in The Road and all the other such novels I can think of, the women are all but extinct in the first days of disaster.  The other oddity is the assumed emergence of masses of utterly irrational and violent gangs.  Why would that happen?  Is it all part of the code that requires women in movies to fall down when they run, always to scream at the sight of the dead, and to panic whenever there is danger? 

One way in which The Road demonstrates good writing is that the structural impossibility of the tale don't get in the way of reading.

Another Chance

With a truce in place and at least some movement to fulfill the terms, attention turns to reconstruction.  According to an article in the WSJ on aid to Lebanon, the US has delivered almost nothing.  That seems to me a strategic mistake.  The US could earn some good will and provide some counterbalance to Hezbollah by a program o fairly public aid efforts, if not cash then equipment.  It would demonstrate that the various pronouncements during the recent war were genuine. 

I think practical obstacles may prevent entirely, but Israel could gain a great deal by offering significant aid to the reconstruction of Lebanon.  If the war was not on Lebanon, then that would be confirmed by aid.  More importantly, like US aid, it would provide a means of countering a portion at least of the propaganda.  For the moment, it looks like Hizbollah has the field to itself.  Not a good thing.

Rest

This is a particularly lovely piece of space:

EV's Off

Yesterday, Volokh at his own conspiracy posted a snippet regarding the murder of Mr. Vincent.  It was apparently offered as criticism of those who in the US who support the Iraqi insurgents.  Today, EV asks for help identifying his targets.  No part of this is intellectually defensible and no part of this is other than shameful.  Mr. Volokh ought to delete the post and apologize for error.
His first post retails unfounded rumors about Mr. Vincent which may be expected to offend his surviving wife at the least.  The rumors are offered as basis for attacking entirely unnamed and unidentified individuals.  We know the latter not merely from the fact that none are named, but that Volokh's second post is an admission that he had no idea who was being described in the first post.  The word for such conduct is pusillanimous.  Others may be more measured,  but I find this conduct despicable, and for more reasons than set out above or in the two other links.

The misuse of America's history of racist violence for the limited and cheap political theater at work in Volokh's post are too much.  Till was not murdered for sex with a white woman.  He was murdered -- after being tortured -- for speaking to her.  If Volokh can't tell the difference, then his child is adopted.  Till's murder was effectively public and protected by the legal authorities, and there was no war of any kind in the US at the time.  There is no history of Anglo-Americans enslaved in Iraq, and no history of widespread use of violence by and with the connivance of state agencies to suppress Anglo-American participation in civil affairs in Iraq, and so on.  As someone who recently spent considerable time deploring and explaining the inappropriateness of analogies with Hitler and Stalin, this week's performance by Volokh is inexplicable. 

Young Arms For Sale

The Friday NYT carried a curious story about Iraq.  There seems to be a controversy about a "missing" $300 million.  According to the tale to the TImes, the money was boxed up (yep, $300 million in cash, stacked into cardboard boxes), transported to Lebanon and then disappeared.  The Minister of Defense says it was used to buy arms for an armored vehicle unit of the Iraqi Army.  Not so says Mr. Chalabi.  (As between the dueling rats, I place no bets for veracity.)  Let's suppose the Minister is telling the truth (so no Rumsfeld he), that would not put an end to queries.  You see, according to Mr. Minister of Defense, he can't tell us who got the money for arms because they would be killed if the insurgents learned who sold arms to the Iraqi government. 

So, why not then spend it with the folks who are easy to hand and you can be certain are not intimidated by the insurgents?  Why not buy US arms or British, or even German or French, or Russian?  Why buy on the black market in Lebanon? 

Where is Oliver North when you need him. 

(Speaking of which, did you notice that Fawn Hall hit the news, sort of.  She is the widow of Danny Sugerman, a manager for the Doors.)