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.

Elon Musk Isn’t a Threat to Society’s Health. All Billionaires Are

The mega-rich buy up media outlets precisely because a lie is more likely to fly than the truth – including the lie that they are invaluable.

Elon Musk Free Speech Feature image

SAN FRANCISCO – The most dangerous thing about Elon Musk buying Twitter outright for $44 billion is the rapidly spreading notion that his controlling an influential social media platform is dangerous. It is, but not for any of the reasons his critics assert. The current furor is dangerously misguided for two reasons. First, it assumes that one

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Liberals Are Adopting an Old Soviet Tactic: Painting Opponents as Mentally Ill

The pathologization of dissent is not going away. It will intensify as neoliberalism faces crisis after crisis and social polarization grows. Those who claim to be liberals defending democracy will soon be only too ready to snuff it out.

Propagandists Feature photo

Back in the dark days of the Soviet Union, dissidents risked being locked up – but not, officially at least, on the grounds that they had committed a political crime. In the Soviet regime’s imagination, treason and mental illness were often two sides of the same coin. Here’s a brief description from Wikipedia of the phenomenon: The KGB [the

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The West’s Hands in Ukraine Are as Bloody as Putin’s

Ukrainians will pay the price to wear down Russia, just as Syrians, Libyans, Iranians, Yemenis, Venezuelans and Palestinians have paid the price as the U.S. has sought to attain the goals of its globe-spanning imperial project.

Putin Russiagate Feature

ANALYSIS – There is a discursive nervous tic all over social media at the moment, including from prominent journalists such as Guardian columnist George Monbiot. The demand is that everyone not only “condemn” Russian president Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine, but do so without qualification.  Any reluctance to submit is considered certain

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As Trudeau Cracks Down, the Left Drives Protesters Into the Arms of the Right Once Again

Divide and rule, the cultivation of tribalism, is an insurance policy against successful dissent and the threat of revolution.

Canada Protests Fearure photo

OTTAWA – If you were Canada’s prime minister, what would you be prepared to do to enforce Covid restrictions on large swaths of your population? No one need ask that question any longer. Now we know the answer. For the first time in the country’s history, Justin Trudeau has invested his office with sweeping and undemocratic powers under the 1988

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Whoopi Goldberg’s Loudest Critics are the Real Racists

Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on the Holocaust were misguided and clumsy. But those exploiting the row are the ones with the ugly motives, namely the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) & corporate media outlets that vilified Amnesty International’s report on Israeli apartheid.

OPINION – Whoopi Goldberg is not someone I would normally rush to defend. Our politics are too far apart on too many issues. And many will doubtless take delight in the fact that the queen of cancel culture has just found herself canceled. But the pile-on against Goldberg for expressing a non-conventional view about the Holocaust needs

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Rachel Riley Libel Ruling is the Latest Judicial Attack on Political Speech

Giving judges the power to settle quite unremarkable, daily political speech confrontations on social media is a recipe for hollowing out the right to express a critical opinion in the main public squares of the digital age.

Rachel Riley Feature photo

Assaults on the right to speak, and to think, are coming thick and fast. But the significance – and coordination – of all these developments is being largely missed. Those who try to open up a little space – in politics, academia, and journalism – to think critically about our society and how power is misused are the chief targets. Western

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The Lesson of Covid: When People Are Anxious, Isolated and Hopeless, They’re Less Ready To Think Critically

The corporate media is not our friend. Its coverage of the pandemic is not there to promote the public good. It is there to feed our anxieties, keep us coming back for more, and monetize that distress. The only cure for this sickness? A lot more critical thinking.

Covid critical thinking feature photo

When I criticize meddling in Syria by Britain and America, or their backing of groups there that elsewhere are considered terrorists, it does not follow that I am, therefore, a cheerleader for the dictatorship of Bashar Assad or that I think that Syrians should be denied a better political system. Similarly, when I criticize Joe Biden or the

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