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 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

Read Full Article

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

Read Full Article

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

Read Full Article

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

Read Full Article

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.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
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

Read Full Article

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.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
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

Read Full Article

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.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
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

Read Full Article