Not just a problem for South Park

When I was researching You Can't Read This Book, my study of censorship, an old joke came back to me. "You can be a famous poisoner or a successful poisoner but you can't be both".

Successful censorship is hidden. A writer who concentrates on the famous cases misses the point. Censorship everyone knows about is not successful precisely because everyone knows.

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All humans have human rights

The Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour's Nation Estate is not as worthless as most agitprop. She does not scream at the audience but imagines the tiny homeland on offer to the Palestinians as a claustrophobic, concrete, tower-block. Her people are crammed inside, but you never see them.

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Ambassador, how you spoil us

I struggle to believe that Ron Prosor, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, does not know that Marine Le Pen is the leader of the French National Front. He struck me as a boorish man when I met him last year, but I did not take him to be that great a fool.

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A foul smell at Britain's unions

In a manner that ought to warm every leftish heart, Israeli trade unions emphasise that the class interests of Israeli workers transcend religious differences. The unions are supporting the great wave of protest in Israel against the larcenous increases in the costs of housing, transport, childcare, food and fuel the Likudniks have presided over.

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The real story today is in Syria

Even at a time of global economic crisis, and with huge events seemingly taking place every day this month, the revolution against the Syrian Baathists ought to be at the top of any editor's news list. Let me count the ways in which the Assad crime family is worthy of our attention.

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Left's Islamist fetish will end

John Staurt Mill thought that speech should always be free except when it directly incited a crime. Mill explained what he meant in On Liberty by citing the example of corn dealers, who were widely loathed as profiteers in 19th century Britain. If agitators claimed that corn dealers starve the poor, the law had no right to punish them, he said.

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Labour's tasteless joke policy

I hear that at a recent meeting with Jewish leaders, Ed Miliband ran into a problem that may destroy his ambitions to become Prime Minister.

Everyone was getting along famously until the Livingstone question came up.

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Dialogue with a western leftist

"You say you support the Palestinians?"

"Yes."

"Which Palestinians?"

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What does Ed stand for?

In Ed Miliband, the Labour Party has its first leader from a Jewish background. "Background" is the word to remember because, as with Benjamin Disraeli, Ed Miliband's father renounced his faith. Isaac Disraeli joined the Church of England and allowed his children to flourish in the sectarian English establishment of the day.

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Tunisia, and our black and white mentality

Every morning I read The Times, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Financial Times and the Independent. I stay with the Today programme until Radio 4 drives me away by insulting my intelligence with Thought for the Day and look at the Economist and the New York Times if I have a moment. But I knew nothing about Tunisia.

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Analysis: Even the Tories do not deserve Tonge and friends

Britain lacks a true liberal party, a movement of the radical centre which is committed unequivocally to the values of the Enlightenment. Instead, it has the Liberal Democrats, whose history all but orders it to stand firm against the forces of irrational hatred which are sweeping the world, but which ducks its moral obligations.

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Hatred is turning me into a Jew

My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew. Despite being called “Cohen”, I’ve never been Jewish before. It’s not simply that I am an atheist. My Jewish friends tell me that it is hard to find an educated London Jew who is not an atheist, but that I have no connection with Jewish culture.

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