The Guardian believes uncompromisingly in freedom of expression, but not in any duty to gratuitously offend…Freedom of expression as it has developed in the democratic west is a value to be cherished, but not abused.
Guardian Leader Comment, 4 February 2006, on the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.
In September 2005, a Danish newspaper published 12 cartoons of [...]
I just heard this broadcast on Radio 4, with the inspirational figure who paid for it interviewed. It is a work of majestic genius, not of monumental racism. It is a tightly compressed, one minute burst of politics, densely layered and criss-crossed with meaning. It manages to squeeze an extraordinary amount of subtext out of [...]
Democracy in Britain leaves a lot to be desired – like actual democracy, for example. Governments secure unconscionable power with 33% of the popular vote; parties run multi-million pound election campaigns, ensuring they owe some millionaire or business, something, sometime; the anachronism of the constituency MP is still firmly in place and not going anywhere [...]
The radical historian, author of A People’s History of the United States, and documenter of some of the most important radical struggles in American history died yesterday aged 87. Zinn was active in the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement and organising amongst academic staff. He was responsible for upholding the memory of a [...]
Massachusetts was not won by the Republicans, it was lost by Obama
Yesterday’s big news from the far side of the Atlantic was the loss of one of the safest Democratic seats to Scott Brown, a man who represents possibly everything that should make us very worried about the Republicans. In Ted Kennedy’s former seat, which [...]
Barack Obama received his much debated Nobel Peace Prize in Norway today. One has to wonder exactly what part of sending 30,000 additional troops into a destitute nation, which has been occupied by the world’s greatest superpower for the last eight years, constitutes peace. Obama himself recognised the irony of receiving the prize whilst his [...]
It goes without saying that a leader’s first judge will invariably be his or her own people. Presidents and prime ministers live or die, come election time, by their policies, by how well they have adapted to events beyond their control and by how effectively they have handled the three most rudimentary tasks of government: [...]
The Obama administration will be breathing a sigh of relied today as the House of Representatives narrowly approved the President’s flagship health reforms. A battle still remains in the Senate, of course, and amongst the crazed zealots in the country crying ‘freedom’ whilst attempting to deny millions of the poorest Americans the right to basic [...]
Interview by Dan Swain and Lorna Finlayson
Ted Honderich is Grote Professor Emeritus of Mind and Logic at University College London. Since 9/11 he has written several books on the subject of terrorism and war, most recently Humanity, Terrorism, Terrorist War, and has become a vocal advocate of the right of the Palestinians to a [...]
Guest post by Carl Packman
“You know, you already sent 21,000 troops. You might send 65,000 troops. That’s not a Peace Prize-acting activity.”
That’s what the lifelong civil rights activist and cautious Obama supporter, Dr Cornel West, had to say about the president’s surprise reception of the Nobel Peace Prize whilst promoting his new memoir this week.
Cornel [...]
