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Thread. Great analysis by @KenSilverstein1 of the optics and optical media illusions taking place around Venezuela.Helps us understand the high-powered, multi-million $$$ media & NGO operation supporting Venezuelan opposition leaders like @LeopoldoLopez. bit.ly/2RrAr9G
To understand the media dynamics propping up the new face of the Venezuelan opposition embodied by darker, poorer @jguaido, the best example to study the media & social media (i.e. #SOSVenezuela) that of his mentor, Lopez, enjoyed w backing from @NEDemocracy & other US agencies
doing overtly what one former US intelligence source told me "used to be covert operations." In a previous era of what journalists used to report as "destabilization programs" before too many became uncritical mouthpieces for those programs, US intelligence agencies did things
like plant stories, fabricate facts and feed them to journists as if they were a PR firm and even remove and replace what used to be known as "investigative journalists," as happened to @RayBonner1 because his work ran afoul of ppl like the current US Special Envoy on Venezuela,
#ElliottAbrams. Now som of those formerly covert operations r public, neoliberalized, privatized & outsourced to PR firms like @highlantern,the firm paid 1000$/mo to craft a "strategic narrative" around Lopez &"execute a strategy to drive the narrative with key opinion leaders,"
according to govt docs like this one secured by @KenSilverstein1: bit.ly/2CQTNjr
Especially interesting the details in govt docs of @highlantern's sophisticated social media, news, email, "thought leadership development" & other stuff I remember having their intelligence operations equivalents back in El Salvador of the analog age. bit.ly/2CQTNjr
@KenSilverstein1 confronted a @nytimes, asking him if & how much his Times magazine story of Lopez was influenced by @highlantern principal Robert Gluck. Gluck's work is also featured in this story I wrote about Lopez for @ForeignPolicy in 2015: atfp.co/1etD5YL.
That story is seen by some as documenting the US govt destabilization programs of the digital age, detailing how Lopez & Venezuela's opposition have enjoyed million$ in US aid for everything fr media & social media training,organizing & other activities raising the media profile
of Lopez and the opposition. That story also got its authors a death threat, a hit piece & other trouble. The @NLGnews denounced Lopez's 'human rights' lawyers for "veiled threats," which,they said violates principles of free speech and a free press" bit.ly/2G6zX7b
The "threats" the @NLGnews was referring to were, I would assume, threats of lawsuits.
So, yes, the making of the rotten sausage of the Vza story US media consumers are being fed has been rancid 4 some time,since at least 2002, whn Lopez was highly visible on local, natl & global TV during that first coup attempt called by many a "golpe mediatico" or media coup.
