Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook is a MintPress contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

How Britain’s Labour Party Became a Criminal Conspiracy Against its Members

New Al Jazeera documentary reveals a covert alliance between the Labour right and hardline pro-Israel activists to purge the left as antisemites.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
How Britain’s Labour Party Became a Criminal Conspiracy Against its Members

For many years, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters have claimed that he, and they, were targeted in a coordinated attack from the right of the party, comprising a majority of Labour MPs as well as senior party staff. The aim was to sabotage Corbyn’s chances of taking power. Those allegations were dismissed as a wild conspiracy

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The Queen and Her Legacy:  21st Century Britain Has Never Looked So Medieval

If the Queen’s job was to rebrand the empire as Commonwealth, transmuting the Mau Mau massacre into gold medals for Kenyan long-distance runners, Charles’ job will be to rebrand as a Green Renewal the death march led by transnational corporations.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
Queen Elizabeth II Feature photo

Anyone in the UK who imagined they lived in a representative democracy – one in which leaders are elected and accountable to the people – will be in for a rude awakening over the next days and weeks. TV schedules have been swept aside. Presenters must wear black and talk in hushed tones. Front pages are uniformly somber. Britain’s media speak

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Those Angry at Rushdie’s Stabbing Have Been Missing In Action Over a Far Bigger Threat to our Freedom

The novelist is championed by western liberals not because he’s bravely articulated difficult truths but because of who his enemies are.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
Rushdie Assange Feature photo

Nothing I am about to write should be read as diminishing in any way my sympathy for Salman Rushdie, or my outrage at the appalling attack on him. Those who more than 30 years ago put a fatwa on his head after he wrote the novel, “The Satanic Verses,” made this assault possible. They deserve contempt. I wish him a speedy recovery. But my natural

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How Spooks and Establishment Journalists Are Circling The Wagons

In the second of this two-part series, we examine why so many journalists are keen to cooperate with and parrot the key messages of the US and British intelligence agencies.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
BBC Protest Feature photo

Analysis -- Earlier this month, Russia banned 29 British journalists, including several from the BBC and The Guardian, on the grounds that they were “associated with the defense complex”. That claim was not, at least in all cases, quite as preposterous as was widely assumed. In part one of this two-part series, we saw how the Guardian’s Luke

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A Lemming Leading the Lemmings: Slavoj Zizek and the Terminal Collapse of the Anti-War Left

The left has sunk a long way since the Iraq war. The renowned public intellectual Slavoj Zizek is the latest recruit to the war hawk camp

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
Slavoj Zizek Feature photo

Have you noticed how every major foreign policy crisis since the U.S. and U.K.’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 has peeled off another layer of the left into joining the pro-NATO, pro-war camp? It is now hard to remember that many millions marched in the U.S. and Europe against the attack on Iraq. It sometimes feels like there is no one left who is

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British “Watchdog” Journalists Unmasked as Lap Dogs for the Security State

The cases of Carol Cadwalladr and Paul Mason reveal how readily celebrated media figures are recruited to the intelligence services’ covert information war against other journalists.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
Carol Cadwalladr and Paul Mason Feature

LONDON – Events of the past few days suggest British journalism – the so-called Fourth Estate – is not what it purports to be: a watchdog monitoring the centers of state power. It is quite the opposite. The pretensions of the establishment media took a severe battering this month as the defamation trial of Guardian columnist Carole Cadwalladr

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Forget Liberating Ukraine – We First Need To Liberate Our Minds 

Our compassion to help is being weaponized in ways that kill Ukrainians and destroy their communities. In fighting a ‘madman,’ we are revealing our own insanity.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
Ukraine Media Coverage Feature

Nothing should better qualify me to write about world affairs at the moment – and Western meddling in Ukraine – than the fact that I have intimately followed the twists and turns of Israeli politics for two decades. We will turn to the wider picture in a moment. But before that, let us consider developments in Israel, as its “historic,” year-old

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