Anti-terror measures will make us the extremists we fear

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Theresa May is pushing a terrorism bill through parliament which will place a legal duty on universities to ban radical speakers. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

In the 1860s when the Austrian ambassador complained to the home secretary, Sir George Grey, about Karl Marx and other revolutionaries, he received a brief and dismissive reply: Under our laws, mere discussion of regicide, so long as it does not concern the Queen of England and so long as there is no definite plan, does not constitute sufficient grounds for the arrest of the conspirators.

Not quite what the current home secretary would have replied, I suspect. Theresa May is rushing yet another terrorism bill through parliament. This will place a legal duty on universities to ban radical speakers mere discussion in the words of her Liberal predecessor, who probably also took a more favourable view of being labelled radical.

Fifty years ago Malcolm X came to speak in Oxford, an episode now recalled to stir the sentimental memories of the universitys alumni. Today, of course, he would never have made it to Oxford; the UK Border Agency would have turned him back at Heathrow. After all even the very silly, but vile, Julien Blanc, the seducers guru, has been banned.

Malcolm X would probably have fared better in his homeland. The United States remains a nation of laws girded by a constitution, despite police shootings and protest riots. Sadly the United Kingdom is rapidly becoming a nation of ministerial discretion and direction, ever wider administrative powers that would probably have more than satisfied the 19th-century Prussian and Austrian bureaucrats who were so worried about Marx.

Under Mays new legislation, universities will have to follow the guidance issued by the Home Office. If they fail to follow it, the home secretary will be able to issue them with directions. Far from being regarded as institutions in which the most vigorous (and contested) debates should be encouraged, higher education institutions are now to be treated as fertile ground for the radicalisation of gullible students by supporters of extremism.

This is not the first time the government has introduced legislation to require universities to ban extremist speakers, although paradoxically the first political intervention back in the 1980s was to stop universities, and student unions, banning rightwing speakers, extremists of another ilk.

But this initial, and rather one-sided, libertarianism was quickly succeeded by more authoritarian interventions. Until now, the centrepiece has been the Prevent strategy, begun under Labour and revamped by the current government.

The 2011 white paper asserted the governments absolute commitment to defending freedom of speech. But, in the very next sentence, it argued that preventing terrorism meant that extremist (but non-violent) views had to be challenged by the administrative measures it then outlined. We have travelled a long road from Greys reply to the ambassador.

There is so much wrong with the new legislation. The key terms such as radicalisation, extremism and terrorism will be defined by politicians who are advised by securitocrats, cowed by tabloid-inflamed public opinion and influenced by electoral advantage.

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Anti-terror measures will make us the extremists we fear

Paul: I'll fight "caricature" of my foreign policy views in 2016

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Senator Rand Paul speaks at a session titled "The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy" during the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council meeting in Washington December 2, 2014. REUTERS

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, on Tuesday acknowledged that should he run for president in 2016, his libertarian-leaning views on foreign policy will be easy for his conservative opponents to distort and over-simplify.

"I'm not talking about all or none" when it comes to intervening abroad, Paul said at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council annual meeting in Washington. "That's a caricature, and I will have to fight that, but we'll see what happens."

Conventional wisdom dictates that Paul's more hands-off approach to foreign policy would be a disadvantage in the Republican presidential primaries. Paul, however, said that the branch of the GOP that agrees with him is "not a small movement."

He referenced a Bloomberg/ Des Moines Register poll from October, which showed that 41 percent of Iowa Republican caucus-goers think the U.S. should "pull back current military engagements to be less interventionist in foreign policy, as Rand Paul suggests." The poll found that 45 percent agreed the U.S. should "be quicker to intervene in conflicts overseas, as John McCain suggests."

While he believes in less intervention abroad, Paul said he grew up as a Reagan Republican and holds on to the principles espoused in that era.

"I absolutely support the concept of peace through strength," he said. The senator touted his five-year budget plan that would boost the Defense Department budget will completely eliminating other parts of the federal government.

"If you want a strong defense, fine... but if you're going to run up an $18 billion deficit, you're going to make the country weaker."

2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Paul: I'll fight "caricature" of my foreign policy views in 2016

New Caledonia v Solomon Islands (Men) – Full Game – 2014 FIBA Oceania U19 Championship – Video

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New Caledonia v Solomon Islands (Men) - Full Game - 2014 FIBA Oceania U19 Championship
Watch the Full Game New Caledonia against Solomon Islands at the 2014 FIBA Oceania U19 Championship here on YouTube. Subscribe to our YouTube channel ...

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New Caledonia v Solomon Islands (Men) - Full Game - 2014 FIBA Oceania U19 Championship - Video

A framework for resolving Japan-China dispute over islands

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How to make sense of the dispute between Japan and China over some half a dozen uninhabited islets in the East China Sea known as the Diaoyu to the Chinese and the Senkaku to the Japanese?

With a combined area of just a couple of square kilometers, and no permanent human use of any of the islands in recent decades, it is hard to see how the islands could nearly bring the two Asian nations to blows. But from a broad perspective, these rocks are laden with tremendous symbolic and historical significance.

For China, the status of the Diaoyu islands today constitutes a legacy of a period of Japanese aggression beginning in the late 19th century and continuing until 1945 for which Japan sometimes still fails to show proper repentance. In Beijing's eyes, standing up for what it views as its proper rights upholds the post-World War II international order, which dictates that Japan give up the territories that it took from China in the war of 1894-95.

For Japan, China's new interest in what had appeared to be a settled matter over the islands suggests a newly assertive China is bent on using its increased power for nationalistic purposes not only over these particular islands, but also in other maritime domains of the western Pacific region. As such, beyond the immediate importance of these islands, the dispute could be a harbinger of unpleasant things to come.

Nationalistic politics in both countries further compound the difficulty of finding a solution to the quarrel over islands that both sides claim in their entirety.

We are independent scholars from each of the key countries involved in this dispute. This includes the U.S., which professes no opinion on who owns the islands, but made many of the territorial decisions after World War II that produced the current situation, and which continues to support Japanese claims to be the rightful administrator of the islands today. The following is offered as a framework to spur our governments to try new approaches.

Two main ideas are at the heart of our proposal, which is designed to respect the core interests and nonnegotiable demands of both claimants to the islands. One pillar is the notion of shared sovereignty, with both Japan and China retaining their claims to all the islands. The second calls for ownership of the islands to be decoupled from ongoing disputes over who has access to parts of the surrounding seas and seabeds. This logic leads to two options that policymakers in Beijing, Tokyo and Washington should consider:

An interim freeze: The simplest approach would be for each side to not object to the other's claim of sovereignty, and for both sides to forgo any active use, administration or oversight of the islands. In effect, the dispute would be frozen. This would allow time for the Japan-China relationship to return to a calmer state, or perhaps for new ideas to emerge on how sovereignty can be shared more permanently. By decoupling the ownership issue from economic rights around the islands, the situation could be further eased.

A more binding solution: This approach would employ similar logic but seek a more lasting resolution. It would include six points:

Each side agrees to not challenge the right of the other to maintain its respective claims to full sovereignty over all the islands.

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A framework for resolving Japan-China dispute over islands