There are interesting happenings on the terror front:

“We want to move away from just challenging violent extremism. We now believe that we should challenge people who are against democracy and state institutions”, he [a Whitehall insider] said. BBC

Interestingly, it is legal to hold views that are anti-democracy and anti-state. My worry is what does “challenge people” mean in this context? Pressure people to avoid conservative preachers? This is similar to having black lists of people suspected of being anti-government (and McCarthyism) and since “challenge” probably does not mean legal sanction, the people who are black listed have no legal recourse in the case of false accusation.

This ties in to the view of a study by the International Commission of Jurists. The use of extra-legal measures against society are the biggest menace to our “open” society.

Mr Chaskelson, chairman of the panel, said: “In the course of this inquiry, we have been shocked by the extent of the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counter-terrorism measures in a wide range of countries around the world.

“Many governments, ignoring the lessons of history, have allowed themselves to be rushed into hasty responses to terrorism that have undermined cherished values and violated human rights.

“The result is a serious threat to the integrity of the international human rights legal framework.” BBC

This also agrees with a former head of MI5.

“It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism – that we live in fear and under a police state,” she said. BBC

The two things we need to consider in a response to terrorist threat are:

  • Is the mere accusation of terrorism being used to silence rational debate by assuming the guilt of the accused?
  • Do the proposed measures mitigate or aggravate the problem? What evidence supports this claim?

I have to think about the curious case of Geert Wilders

Anti Citizen One