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Nick Cohen rss

Nick Cohen is a columnist for the Observer and author of What’s Left and You Can’t Read This Book.

Leveson: Don’t let the state frighten you

26 March 2013

  If David Cameron had any sense, he would stand up in the Commons and say “I am withdrawing the Royal Charter. The law officers have assured me that Lord… Read more

Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens’s lefty publisher begged from him – and then betrayed him

16 March 2013

Before the crash of 2007, as aid agencies were asking the governments of what we once called ‘the rich world’ to wipe out poor countries’ debts, Christopher Hitchens received a… Read more

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN

'Murdoch betrays everyone in the end'

9 February 2013

My guard goes up when people in power say that they believe in investigative journalism. Everybody says they do, of course. Then everyone says they have a sense of humour,… Read more

Export-only justice

Export-only justice

8 December 2012

In the last few years lawyers have begun to gush about the ‘Sumption effect’. They were not thinking of Jonathan Sumption QC’s fine legal mind — which was of such… Read more

Cover

Whose freedom? Whose press?

3 November 2012

A love for freedom of the press inspired Milton, Voltaire, Jefferson, Madison, Mill and Orwell. Ringing declarations of the right of citizens to read and write what they choose have… Read more

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Nowhere to hide

15 September 2012

Ever since the millennium, I have wondered how long the utopian faith in the emancipatory potential of the web will last. Of course, we know the new technologies give the… Read more

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Censorship Olympics

14 July 2012

The guards would not let me walk round the Olympic park. ‘We’re in lockdown because of a security alert,’ one explained. The rain fell. The overbearing policing intimidated. ‘London is… Read more

Web of tyrants

21 January 2012

The internet can promote freedom and democracy – it’s a shame it also facilitates mob rule and witch-hunts Even those who are wary of the utopianism the net has generated… Read more

Nick Cohen

9 July 2011

I looked at it and was astonished. It was not that he disliked my ideas — he was entitled to disagree — but that he had attacked a book I… Read more

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Liberal England dies again

15 January 2011

The Lib Dems’ troubles are a result not only of coalition and foolish promises, but of a resurgence of the old left-right division In 1935, George Dangerfield published The Strange… Read more