HOME





You Can't Read This Book
''You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom'' (2012) is a book by Nick Cohen about modern censorship, plutocratic power and privacy laws, freedom of speech, and free expression.CfrBook Review by Denis MacShane, on ''The Guardian'' & ''The Observer'' 12/02/2012.CfBook presentation on ''nickcohen.net'' In this book, author Nick Cohen argues that unrestricted access to online information and social media may expedite the fall of dictators, but does not mean we live in an unprecedented era of freedom. He goes on to state that we are subject to ever-tightening structures on what we say, think or do. According to Cohen, privacy laws let the wealthy censor the press; protest against oppression is slammed as bigotry and voices of dissent can't be heard over "the clamour hailing the internet as the saviour of democracy." While we seem more informed than ever before, states Cohen, his book aims to show that if we want to preserve free speech, we ignore history at our peril ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Nick Cohen
Nicholas Cohen (born 1961) is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He was a columnist for ''The Observer'' and a blogger for ''The Spectator''. Following accusations of sexual harassment, he left The Observer in 2022 and began publishing on the Substack platform. Personal life Cohen was born in Stockport, and raised in Manchester. His father was Jewish. He was educated at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). Cohen lives in Islington with his wife and their son. He is an atheist and is Jewish only on his father's side but says he is becoming "more Jewish".Nick Cohen (12 February 2009)"Hatred is turning me into a Jew" ''The Jewish Chronicle''. London. He is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society. Career Cohen began his career at the '' Sutton Coldfield News'', before moving to the ''Birmingham Post'', later becoming a contributor to ''The Independent'' and ''T ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Hanif Kureishi
Hanif Kureishi (born 5 December 1954) is a British playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist of South Asian and English descent. In 2008, ''The Times'' included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British literature, British writers since 1945. Early life Kureishi was born in Bromley, South London to a Pakistani father, Rafiushan (Shanoo) Kureishi, and an English mother, Audrey Buss.Emily Ballou"Whims of the father" ''The Australia'', 15 November 2008. His father was from a wealthy Madras family, whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of British India in 1947. Rafiushan came to the UK in 1950 to study law but due to financial reasons he worked at the Pakistani embassy instead. Here he met his wife-to-be, Buss. He wanted to be a writer but his ambitions were frustrated. The couple were married, the family settled in Bromley where Kureishi was born. In an interview, Kureishi notes:My [paternal] grandfather, an army doctor, was a colonel in the British India ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Freedom Of Speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law by the United Nations. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like ''free speech'', ''freedom of speech,'' and ''freedom of expression'' are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all ki ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Freedom Of The Press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exercised freely. Such freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state; its preservation may be sought through constitution or other legal protection and security. Without respect to governmental information, any government may distinguish which materials are public or protected from disclosure to the public. State materials are protected due to either one of two reasons: the classification of information as sensitive, classified or secret, or the relevance of the information to protecting the national interest. Many governments are also subject to " sunshine laws" or freedom of information legislation that are used to define the ambit of national interest and enable citizens to request access to government-held informat ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Academic Freedom
Academic freedom is a moral and legal concept expressing the conviction that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts (including those that are inconvenient to external political groups or to authorities) without fear of repression, job loss, or imprisonment. While the core of academic freedom covers scholars acting in an academic capacity - as teachers or researchers expressing strictly scholarly viewpoints -, an expansive interpretation extends these occupational safeguards to scholars' speech on matters outside their professional expertise. Especially within the anglo-saxon discussion it is most commonly defined as a type of freedom of speech, while the current scientific discourse in the Americas and Continental Europe more often define it as a human right with freedom of speech just being one aspect among many within th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition. The newspaper was controlled by Tony O'Reilly's Irish Independent News & Media from 1997 until it was sold to the Russian oligarch and former KGB Officer Alexander Lebedev in 2010. In 2017, Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel bought a 30% stake in it. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. The website and mobile app had a combined monthly reach of 19,826,000 in 2021. History 1986 to 1990 Launched in 1986, the first issue of ''The Independent'' was published on 7 October in broadsheet format.Dennis Griffiths (ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992'', London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, p. 330 It was prod ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and 'Reblogging, retweet' tweets, while unregistered users only have the ability to read public tweets. Users interact with Twitter through browser or mobile Frontend and backend, frontend software, or programmatically via its APIs. Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams (Internet entrepreneur), Evan Williams in March 2006 and launched in July of that year. Twitter, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California and has more than 25 offices around the world. , more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion Web search query, search queries per day. In 2013, it was one of the ten List of most popular websites, most-visited websites and has been de ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




English Defamation Law
Modern libel and slander laws in many countries are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the Statute of Gloucester in the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). The law of libel emerged during the reign of James I (1603–1625) under Attorney General Edward Coke who started a series of libel prosecutions. Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of duelling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation. English law allows actions for libel to be brought in the High Court for any published statements which are alleged to defame a named or identifiable individual in a manner which causes them loss in their trade or profession, or damages their reputation. Allowable defences are justification, fair comment, and privilege. A defamatory statement is presu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Baghdad airstrike ''Collateral Murder'' video (April 2010),, 5 April 2000. Retrieved 28 March 2014. the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and Cablegate (November 2010). After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks. In November 2010, Sweden issued a European arrest warrant for Assange over allegations of sexual misconduct. Assange said the allegations were a pretext for his extradition from Sweden to the United States over his role in the publication of secret American documents. After losing his battle against extradition to Sweden, he breached bail and took refuge in the Embassy of Ec ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Simon Singh
Simon Lehna Singh, (born 19 September 1964) is a British popular science author, theoretical and particle physicist. His written works include ''Fermat's Last Theorem'' (in the United States titled ''Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem''), ''The Code Book'' (about cryptography and its history), ''Big Bang'' (about the Big Bang theory and the origins of the universe), ''Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial'' (about complementary and alternative medicine, co-written by Edzard Ernst) and ''The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets'' (about mathematical ideas and theorems hidden in episodes of ''The Simpsons'' and '' Futurama''). In 2012 Singh founded the Good Thinking Society, through which he created the website "Parallel" to help students learn mathematics. Singh has also produced documentaries and works for television to accompany his books, is a trustee of the National Museum of Science and Industry, a patron of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Danish Cartoons
The ''Jyllands-Posten'' Muhammad cartoons controversy (or Muhammad cartoons crisis, da, Muhammedkrisen) began after the Danish newspaper '' Jyllands-Posten'' published 12 editorial cartoons on 30 September 2005, most of which depicted Muhammad, a principal figure of the religion of Islam. The newspaper announced that this was an attempt to contribute to the debate about criticism of Islam and self-censorship. Muslim groups in Denmark complained, and the issue eventually led to protests around the world, including violence and riots in some Muslim countries. Islam has a strong tradition of aniconism, and it is considered highly blasphemous in most Islamic traditions to visually depict Muhammad. This, compounded with a sense that the cartoons insulted Muhammad and Islam, offended many Muslims. Danish Muslim organisations that objected to the depictions responded by petitioning the embassies of Islamic countries and the Danish government to take action in response, and filed ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (; ; Somali: ''Ayaan Xirsi Cali'':'' Ayān Ḥirsī 'Alī;'' born Ayaan Hirsi Magan, ar, أيان حرسي علي / ALA-LC: ''Ayān Ḥirsī 'Alī'' 13 November 1969) is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist and former politician. She is a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, opposing forced marriage, honor killing, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. She has founded an organisation for the defense of women's rights, the AHA Foundation. Ayaan Hirsi Ali works for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the American Enterprise Institute, and was a senior fellow at the Future of Democracy Project at Harvard Kennedy School. In 2003, Hirsi Ali was elected a member of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the States General of the Netherlands, representing the centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis related to the validity of her Dutch citizenship, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]