Yes, everyone knows that Ukraine has long been one of the most corrupt countries on the planet.

But keep quiet. The only people stressing about it are Putin apologists Yes, everyone knows that Ukraine has a serious problem with Nazis, including within its armed forces.

But keep quiet. The only people stressing about it are Putin apologists

Another shameful day for the deeply compromised NUJ. It has deleted its statement of protest at counter-terrorism police interrogating and threatening investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg as he returned to the UK.

Why are we paying dues to this fraudulent union? The same union sold out Craig Murray by rejecting his membership. In doing so, the NUJ as good as legitimised the Scottish courts' view that independent journalists can be denied the protections afforded state-corporate journalists. I wrote about it here: jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-07-3…

My latest: The 2020s looks set to be the decade when the BBC cuts out the middleman – 'counter-terrorism experts' – and subjects us to a parade of its own employees posturing as 'counter-disinformation experts' middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-bbc… Their job will be to explain why some people must be denied a platform to protect the public from 'thoughtcrimes'. It will be essentially the same counterterrorism agenda, with similar goals, but dressed in new garb

1. Part of the answer – the bit George Monbiot ignores (again) – is this:

The public is primed into docility by corporate media outlets that, however they window-dress, promote the same basic value: Us good, them bad.

That binary worldview is then easily turned inwards. Thread/

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1657269270600990720

2. Monbiot's a perfect illustration of how this works. Rather than deal with the arguments of those breaking out of the corporate media’s binary view of foreign affairs (on Russia, China, Syria, Iran) he demonises them as Putin apologists, genocide deniers, war crimes enablers

My latest: There was not a 'clash' at Al-Aqsa. It is not the latest episode in a 'conflict' between Israeli and Palestinians. Those supposedly 'neutral' terms conceal what's really happening: apartheid and ethnic cleansing middleeasteye.net/opinion/aqsa-m… Just as there is a consistent, discernible pattern to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, there is a parallel, discernible pattern in the western media’s misleading reporting on Israel and Palestine

My latest: Into a headline of just six words, the BBC crammed three bogusly 'neutral' words, whose function was not to illuminate or even to report, but to trick the audience, as the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu warned, into siding with the oppressor middleeasteye.net/opinion/aqsa-m… The 'clashes' at al-Aqsa, in the BBC’s telling, presume a violent encounter between two groups: Palestinians, described by Israel and echoed by the BBC as 'agitators', on one side; and Israeli forces of law and order on the other

The BBC and other media that eulogised Nicola Sturgeon as she stepped down as First Minister last month knew exactly what was coming – and still they played dumb and eulogised her.

Craig Murray was one of the very few trying to disclose the truth – and look where that got him He's still doing his best: 'For police to warn the suspects in an investigation in this way of how the investigation is proceeding – and to agree a pause for the leadership election – is deeply corrupt.  It has at least two seriously damaging consequences' craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/…

Don't want to be picky but didn't Owen Jones spend years breathing life into precisely this hierarchy of racism by cheering on evidence-free establishment smears that Corbyn's Labour had a special 'antisemitism problem', above that of other parties and wider UK society? It didn't The Forde Report showed that the antisemitism claim was weaponised by the Labour right for factional gain – to damage Corbyn. Owen Jones substantially helped them weaponise it by giving the smear credence from the party's left. Here I explain what happened middleeasteye.net/opinion/forde-…

Martin Forde KC, who was commissioned by Sir Keir Starmer to investigate the leaking of a report showing Corbyn was sabotaged by his own head office staff, says anti-black racism and Islamophobia are not taken as seriously as antisemitism by Starmer Forde made 165 recommendations for reforms to deal with racism against black and Asian members in the Labour party. He says he’s surprised to have heard 'almost nothing' since from Labour officials

It’s only with *your* support I can keep writing as an independent journalist. Please consider signing up to my Substack page – and if you can, become a paid subscriber. A thread below of recent articles

This on George Monbiot's antics smearing the left: jonathancook.substack.com/p/i-once-admir… This Big Story article gets to grips with the Twitter Files, arguing that, aside from stoking predictable bipartisan feuding, they show the degree to which social media platforms have dangerously prostrated themselves before the security services: jonathancook.substack.com/p/how-social-n…

Difficult to know whether to celebrate the fact the BBC has finally found the courage to talk about the Deir Yassin massacre by Zionist Jews in 1948, or to lament the fact it's framed by British Jews glorifying a dead relative who carried out similar ethnic cleansing operations The Holy Land and Us eschews the word 'ethic cleansing, of course. A Guardian review echoes the implicit racism. Jack Seale says it 'follows British Jews whose family histories pivot around Israel and the impulse to defend it'.

'Defend' here means ethnically cleanse Palestinians

My latest: The right, from Trump to Tucker Carlson, have appropriated the concerns of the progressive left – unaccountable corporate power, dysfunctional politics, media-establishment collusion, the war industries – and harnessed them to their own cause jonathancook.substack.com/p/i-once-admir… The Trumps and Carlsons want the discredited status quo to remain, but know the game's up. So they cosplay dissent to buy time – stealing the left's ideas so they can pose as opposition to the technocratic establishment, itself cynically posturing as the rational, sensible centre

My latest: In an age of distortion, major columnists have powerful tools and a responsibility. George Monbiot's latest column on Russell Brand is an object lesson in how that can go wrong jonathancook.substack.com/p/i-once-admir… For several years, Monbiot has been regularly smearing the few icons of the progressive left, such as linguist Noam Chomsky and investigative journalist John Pilger. Now, it seems, it is comedian Russell Brand’s turn to come under Monbiot’s scalpel

My latest: Outrage by Israel's defenders at Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s genocidal rhetoric is now serving chiefly as a comfort blanket for those who have always supported Israel as a Jewish supremacist state middleeasteye.net/opinion/huwwar… Smotrich’s biggest offence is not that he calls for Huwwara's destruction, or even that he fuels the crimes of his fascist settlers’ allies. It's that he highlights all too clearly what's been going on for more than 50 years in the occupied territories – and before it, in Israel

My latest: A top government minister's call for state-organised violence against civilians based on their ethnicity would usually be understood as genocidal. But not when it's Israel, a key partner in projecting western power into the oil-rich Middle East middleeasteye.net/opinion/huwwar… Instead, the full significance of Bezalel Smotrich’s threat – given that he and his partner, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the police minister, control the means by which such genocidal actions can be undertaken – is not being addressed by Western observers

How do we know Hersh's investigation is right that the US carried out a major act of international sabotage in blewing up the Nordstream pipeline?

Because after ignoring Hersh's account, establishment media is now advancing ludicrous alternative stories moonofalabama.org/2023/03/nord-s… MoA on Die Zeit's preposterous claim that Ukraine did it:

'You do not dive down to 80+ meters for an industrial size job, involving the placement of hundreds of pounds of explosives in eight individual charges on very sturdy pipelines, from a sparsely manned sailing boat...

Astonishing! Margaret Hodge, who's spent years helping to hound anti-racist Jews out of Labour for criticising Israel, in a campaign that brought down its former leader, admits she hadn't been to Israel since 1994. She's shocked to now discover it's an apartheid state Here is Dame Hodge telling British Jews they can't 'stand by' as Israel sinks into the abyss. And yet she's been one of the main instigators of the purges in Labour that have seen those very same Jews expelled in disproportionately high numbers – for supposed anti-semitism

My latest: The Twitter Files expose the duplicity of liberals who defend social media’s use of censorship on the grounds that they are private companies not governed by First Amendment protections of free speech and so can do as they please middleeasteye.net/big-story/twit… The reality is that platforms like Twitter and Facebook respond to hidden pressure, either from the federal government or via its intelligence agencies, in restricting what can be said. They are functioning less as private companies and more as subsidiaries of security services

My latest: After Trump’s election, US security agencies like the FBI – aided by political pressure, especially from the Democratic Party – aggressively wormed their way into social media's decision-making processes middleeasteye.net/big-story/twit… Covert meddling in US politics was viewed as a necessary response to the rapid rise of a new populism. Trump and his supporters had come to dominate the Republican Party, and a populist left headed by Senator Bernie Sanders had made limited inroads into the Democratic Party

My latest: The same security agencies that whipped up the evidence-free hysteria of 'Russiagate' are now exposed as perpetrating the very interference in the democratic process they accused Moscow of middleeasteye.net/big-story/twit… It was not Russia but the FBI, DHS and CIA – the same agencies arguing that Moscow was sowing discord in the US – that were aggressively and clandestinely seeking to influence American public opinion and fuelling political polarisation

UK media, like US media, has largely ignored Seymour Hersh's huge story on the US blowing up the Nordstream pipelines. The blasts were an attack on western Europe, especially Germany.

A German newspaper interviews him (Google translation works well) berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesell… Hersh on the timing: 'The war was not going well for the west and [the White House] were afraid of the approaching winter. Nord Stream 2 was put on hold by Germany itself, not international sanctions, and the US was afraid Germany would lift sanctions because of a cold winter'