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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26150 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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As I've bemoaned on multiple occasions, nobody is making the UK do this. The ICJ doesn't count, I've seen arthritic dogs ready to be ol' Yeller'd with a better bite:bark ratio. You can - if you are a sovereign state larger than Sealand - just ignore them. Mauritius? Why are they going to do, cancel Jet2 holidays and paddle over in their canoe?

Has anyone considered pitting one sacred cow against the other? Someone needs to tell Starmer that he could fund the NHS and pensions for another 3 weeks with the money.

Starmer is fully lawyer-brained. he is not mentally capable of ignoring a court.

The treaty establishing the jurisdiction of the court in question specifically excluded the U.K.s relationships with its former possessions. A lawyer-brained person would have no problem ignoring the court under such circumstances.

I think there's a difference in meaning going on here.

Parent commenter seems to mean "lawyer brained" as "treats the law as a totem or religion, sacred and inviolable, the font from which all good springs" whereas you seem to be meaning the type of person who will comb through reams of fine print to find the one technicality that lets them do what they wanted to all along.

Basically, subservience to law versus wielding the law as a weapon.

Starmer did a lot of work in, and seems to respect a great deal, international law in particular. The thing about international law is that it often has virtually no enforcement mechanism. The kind of lawyer who looks for technicalities to let their client get off scot-free does not go into international law, since their clients are already usually getting off scot-free if you do nothing at all. You need to have some moral belief in the righteousness of international law and need to use the weapons of activism as well to get anything done.

So the technically correct terminus for Starmer is international-law-brained.

Parent commenter seems to mean "lawyer brained" as "treats the law as a totem or religion, sacred and inviolable, the font from which all good springs"

So, bad lawyer-brained?

I mean the sort of brain you'd expect a lawyer to have, which is definitely closer to the second. They're advocates, after all.

This issue is the focus of the sole dissent from the ICJ's opinion (authored by Judge Donoghue of the US).

Today the Court recites once again that there would be “compelling reasons” to decline to give an advisory opinion when such a reply “would have the effect of circumventing the principle that a State is not obliged to allow its disputes to be submitted to judicial settlement without its consent”. However, the decision to render today’s Advisory Opinion demonstrates that this incantation is hollow. It is difficult to imagine any dispute that is more quintessentially bilateral than a dispute over territorial sovereignty. The absence of United Kingdom consent to adjudication of that bilateral dispute has been steadfast and deliberate. Mauritius was thwarted by this absence of consent, so took another route, pursuing the present request and thereby fulfilling the affirmation of its Foreign Minister in 2004 that the State would use “all avenues open to us in order to exercise our full sovereign rights over the Chagos Archipelago”. The delivery of this Advisory Opinion is a circumvention of the absence of consent.

Donoghue is complaining about the Court's actions, but even had the opinion been unanimous, the point would stand; the court does not have jurisdiction and so its opinion (even if perfectly well-reasoned according to its own rules) is not binding. It's even right there in the name, "Advisory Opinion". Any actually "lawyer-brained" person know this and not feel bound by the opinion. Therefore lawyer-brainedness is not an explanation for Starmer's actions.

Pretty sure the dude arguing Mauritius' side of the case was a mate of his, as well.

I genuinely don’t understand what’s going on in Starmer’s head.

Now, I’ve seen in a lot of lawyers this idea that respect for the Rule of Law is the one thing standing between us and full banana-republic-dom. you’re allowed to twist it into a pretzel but the moment you say, “the judge has made his decree, let him enforce it” you might as well be living in Trump’s America or Putin’s Russia. (And no, they don’t see a difference between the two).

I wonder if Starmer just sees himself as the last line of defense against the barbarians. If so it’s weird he gave the vote to 16 year olds.

At the end of the day 'The Law' is just a big pantomime that people believe in, like fiat currency. The theatre is enhanced with strange robes, wigs and funny words.

At the Nation State level, it is something to be used or discarded depending on how expedient it is. As part of the UN Security Council with veto powers, they can pretty much tell anyone to go pound sand over territoriality issues (assuming sanctions aren't in the wind).

This whole thing is a problem of their own making and seems to be a 'decolonisation' vanity project funded by the taxpayers.

At the end of the day 'The Law' is just a big pantomime that people believe in, like fiat currency.

But it's an important pantomime that they're willing to go to huge lengths to protect. A couple of Terry Pratchett quotes on justice and finance:

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

and

“But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever - provided, naturally, that you don't go and look. This is known as finance.”

Our current rulers are aware that everything is built on a foundation of dreams. It's just that they think this is necessary to uphold modern civilisation. That's why they're so invested in making sure everyone keeps up the pretence - they really do think it's best for everyone. Which is not necessarily to say they're right about that.

It's just that they think this is necessary to uphold modern civilisation.

I've seen no indication that this is the case. They're happy to violate the law when it suits them. If they're not violating this one, it's because they don't want to, not because they're held back by beliefs about what upholds modern civilization.

Scott talked about beliefs as tribal membership signals. If belief in the rule of law were easy, it would have no value as a signal.

(Why force the beliefs to pay double duty as underpinnings of civilisation and tribal membership signals? Well, if they are also the latter, it actually adds an incentive to profess them even when personally inconvenient.)

Modernity for them often means "the consensus of the last couple of decades". Which is how you often get claims that some relatively new understanding or institution is all that stands between people and barbarism. The laws they ignore presumably are from less civilized times.

Makes sense in that light.

Of course, being aware of being in a dream is itself lucid dreaming. Which is fine, but when you start then trying to use that awareness to deliberately twist the dream in your preferred direction, it reaches the metaphor's awkward transition of dreaming being an individual person's thing to, well, something other people have a stake in.

Socially controversial social engineering that tries to leverage lucid-dreaming-like 'I know this is a dream, but others must still behave like a dream while I change their dream around them*' has some of the same experiences/connotations/implications of being stuck in a dream you don't control, but when then keeps changing for the worse. I.E., a nightmare of feeling impotent and trapped.

I agree completely, especially with

a nightmare of feeling impotent and trapped

This was a big part of Yes, Minister's critique - the Civil Service and 'British Democracy' might be all that stands between us and barbarism, but isn't it convenient that this lines up so neatly with what they wanted to do anyway?

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