MAINSTREAM CENTRISTS

JEFF J. BROWN—Again, the West is the best at psychological deflection/reflection, attacking its enemies for the exact same things it is doing, whether it’s true or not, so that at the dinner table and water cooler, its brainwashed citizens talk about all the supposedly horrible acts China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela are committing, and not about the reality of what their truly evil, genocidal governments are in fact perpetrating at home and around the world, costing millions of lives a year.

PETER KOENIG—On 23 January 2018, the United States initiated a coup against President Nicolás Maduro and his Government, by encouraging and fully supporting the “self-proclaimed” opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as interim President. Already days ago he had received the full support of President Trump, and today, in a special televised speech, US Vice-president Mike Pence declared that Venezuela’s Freedom begins with the new interim president, Juan Guaído

TONY SUTTON—Shupak examines various dubious media narratives explaining how Israel has the right to defend itself against Palestinian attacks. However, he points out, they mislead readers, “by ignoring the permanent violence of Israel’s colonisation of Palestine and the aggressive pursuit of ethnic supremacy that this colonisation entails.” He illustrates this by showing how, in one editorial, “the Times describes 
Hamas’s ‘heavily armed militia’ as a barrier to resolving the Palestine-Israel question, but makes no similar comment about Israel’s vastly more powerful military arsenal, which includes nuclear weapons,” adding, “The legitimacy of the coloniser’s violence is unquestioned, whereas the violence of the colonised is presented as illegitimate”.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—There are many Russiagate skeptics who have been doing copious amounts of research to come up with other theories about what could have happened in 2016, and that’s fine. But in a way this can actually make the debate more confused, because instead of leaning back and insisting that the burden of proof be met, you are leaning in and trying to convince everyone of your alternative theory. Russiagaters love this more than anything, because you’ve shifted the burden of proof for them. Now you’re the one making the claims, so they can lean back and come up with reasons to be skeptical of your argument.