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.

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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Kyle Rittenhouse Is Not the Enemy. He’s the Latest Product of the Outrage Industry

Rittenhouse is a mirage, a manufactured repository for our outrage, our self-righteousness, our fear and our guilt. He is a phantasm conjured up by the corporate media to feed its bottom line and feed our egos.

Kyle Rittenhouse Feature photo

The Kyle Rittenhouse furor is a fascinating illustration of how US politics has become mired in self-consuming tribalism. It shows how non-conversations, non-thinking now posture as serious political and social engagement. And it demonstrates once again the success of a practice beloved of elites the world over: offer bread and circuses to keep the

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Over 500 Scholars Launch Fightback Against Israel Lobby’s Antisemitism Smear of UK Academics

The question, raised by the petition and letter of complaint, is whether universities like Glasgow will continue to submit to such attacks on academic life under the cover of false or evidence-free claims of anti-Semitism.

Israel Apartheid Feature photo

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND -- Hundreds of international scholars have begun a fightback against pro-Israel lobbyists who have been scoring increasingly high-profile victories on UK campuses as they seek to curb academic freedoms under the guise of stamping out antisemitism.  Glasgow university officials have found themselves in the eye of a storm this

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Annexation: How Israel Already Controls More Than Half of the West Bank

Almost two-thirds of the Palestinian territory, including most of its most fertile and resource-rich land, is under full Israeli control and about 400,000 Jewish settlers living there enjoy the full rights and privileges of Israeli citizens.

West Bank Israeli settlement

A state of de facto annexation already exists on the ground in most of the occupied West Bank. Almost two-thirds of the Palestinian territory, including most of its most fertile and resource-rich land, is under full Israeli control. About 400,000 Jewish settlers living there enjoy the full rights and privileges of Israeli citizens. At least

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The Media’s 7 Years of Lies about Julian Assange Won’t Stop Now

Assange was reduced from one of the few towering figures of our time – a man who will have a central place in history books, if we as a species live long enough to write those books – to nothing more than a sex pest, and a scruffy bail-skipper.

Julian Assange | Wikileaks

For seven years, from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations. For seven years, we have

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