Alan MacLeod Profile picture
Jul 29, 2024 18 tweets 7 min read Read on X
[Thread] There is a coup d'etat attempt underway here in Venezuela 🇻🇪, fueled by tons of fake news.

In this thread, I'll debunk some of the most egregious and viral fake stories circulating.

Add your own in the replies.
A viral video claims that leftist thieves are stealing ballot boxes.

In reality, these are aircon units.

Ballot boxes are small brown cardboard boxes, barely larger than a shoebox.

These giant appliances bear no resemblance to ballot boxes.

This is what a ballot box in Venezuela actually looks like. Image
This video, claiming to show huge clashes between protestors and police today is going viral.

But, as @ldejesusreyes and others have noted, this video is 7 years old.

This image, which many claim to be official election results, has been seen by tens of millions of people.

It claims that the vote count is 109%.

But actually, all that happened is that the three minor opposition candidates pictured got 4.6% of the vote together, not each.

This is a simple data entry error from someone making an infographic for the TV.

These are not the official results. The official results add up to 100%.

Dishonest actors are promoting this to spread the idea that the official election results are fraudulent.Image
@ldejesusreyes People are claiming this image is from the national electoral council (CNE), and the charts on the screens show a Gonzalez victory.

But this isn't from the CNE at all. Rather, it is from Mercal Aragua, a totally different organization with no access to voting information. Image
The opposition is also blatantly using a bot network to boost their narrative on social media

HT: @JulianMaciasT
Image
Image
I know for a fact that this is fake news, because I was right there in this crowd as this video was taken.

It was, in fact, the opposition that tried to shut down this Caracas polling station.

A group of over 100 right-wing demonstrators crowded round the entrance to stop people from entering.Image
Elon Musk himself retweets a video purporting to show protestors tearing down a statue of President Hugo Chavez today.

But this video is from 2017. Image
The widely circulated images of a man in Aragua "murdered by government" are completely fake, as this video, shared by @BrianMteleSUR clearly shows. He just gets up and leaves, after he "dies".

Blatantly fake news!

Perhaps the most important fake news is that the opposition actually won 73% of the vote.

The US government has fueled these allegations.

But I spoke to dozens of American electoral observers here, and they told a very different story.

My report:

mintpressnews.com/venezuela-whil…
Versions of this image, which purport to show a police officer pointing a gun at a defenseless woman and child, have been seen by millions of people.

But video evidence clearly shows that the police officer is unarmed, and is actually waving his arms at her.

HT: @JulianMaciasT
Image
This is total nonsense. I've been speaking with people flying out from the airport, and it is operating completely normally. There is no takeover of the airport at all.

And as for Maduro, he just gave a speech tonight at the presidential palace, in front of thousands of people. So much for fleeing the country!Image
Image
This video has 1.7 million views, and 21,000 likes. But it is highly misleading: the video is from 2017.

Right-wing Spanish politician Isabel Diaz Ayuso jumps on the fake news bandwagon, sharing a 2017 clip, as if it was from this week.

Expect a lot more of this in the coming days.

HT: @JulianMaciasT

@JulianMaciasT This viral video has been seen by millions.

It claims to show the Venezuelan 🇻🇪 military massacring peaceful protestors.

Two problems:

1. It is from 2016 🤦
2. It is from Turkiye 🇹🇷

You'll never believe this, but Alex Jones is putting out fake news on Venezuela, falsely claiming Maduro has ordered the arreat of his opposition opponent, Edmundo Gonzalez.

Right-wing Colombian senator Maria Fernanda Cabal shares a video of Maduro's men torturing their opponents.

The problem? It is actually a clip from the Netflix show, Simón. Image

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More from @AlanRMacLeod

Jun 27
Thread🧵: Facebook is controlled by the US national security state.

Let me explain how and why the world's largest social media company has been penetrated by intelligence agencies.

For the full investigation, based on years of research, click below:

mintpressnews.com/meet-ex-cia-ag…
In 2018, Facebook announced a deal with the Atlantic Council, which would give the latter significant influence over the world's news feeds, controlling what billions see -- and what they don't see.

The Atlantic Council is a Pentagon-funded think tank with no fewer than 7 former CIA directors on its board. It was founded as a NATO offshoot project, is staffed by NATO generals, and acts as the military alliance's brain.

In other words, giving the Atlantic Council control over 3 billion people's newsfeeds is a half-step away from state censorship, but on a global level.

about.fb.com/news/2018/05/a…Image
Even more worryingly, Facebook is absolutely teeming with US spies.
My research has uncovered dozens of former national security state agents working in key positions in politically sensitive departments like Trust and Safety, Content Moderation, and Security.

Here, in this official Meta (Facebook) video, a guy called "Aaron" is identified as the company's face of content regulation.

You'd never guess from this video that Aaron is a CIA agent.
Read 9 tweets
Jun 23
Football legend Diego Maradona showing his Fidel Castro tattoo to Castro himself (2001).

A poor boy from the slums of Buenos Aires, Maradona grew up to become a sporting legend.

Despite his riches, he remained a revolutionary socialist throughout his life; one who described Castro as a "father," and said that he "hated the United States with all my strength".

He also supported liberation struggles around the world. "In my heart I am Palestinian," Maradona saidImage
Maradona with his Che Guevara tattoo. Image
Maradona with socialist president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, sporting a "Stop Bush" t-shirt.

He considered the US to be the center of capitalism and imperialism. "I hate everything that comes from the United States. I hate it with all my strength," he said. Image
Read 7 tweets
Jun 19
Thread 🧵: I'm seeing a lot of US politicians express outrage at the Iranian strike on an Israeli hospital, so I thought I'd fill you all in on the shocking history of the US purposely bombing hospitals around the world.

For more, see my investigation:

mintpressnews.com/us-bombing-hos…
Yemen 🇾🇪

In March, Trump carried out 14 separate attacks against the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital in Saada, Yemen, turning it into rubble.

The newly built Al Rasool Al-Azam Hospital was the centerpiece of the region’s healthcare network. Costing over $7.5 million, the center provided crucial treatment to hundreds of cancer patients who previously went without any care at all or faced an eight-and-a-half-hour round trip to the capital, Sanaa, for therapy.

The Anti-Cancer Fund, a local government medical organization, described the events as a clear “war crime.”

“These attacks are not just airstrikes, but systematic executions, intended to eliminate hope and wipe out life amid a suffocating blockade,” it said in a statement.

These images give a taste of what repeated US bombardment did to it.Image
Image
Syria 🇸🇾

In 2017, on Trump's orders, US forces repeatedly bombed the National Hospital in Raqqa, Syria, carrying out 20 separate attacks against the building, including using white phosphorous munitions.

A highly controversial and widely-banned weapon, white phosphorous instantly ignites upon contact with oxygen, sticks to clothes and skin, and burns at an extremely high temperature. It cannot be extinguished by water, leaving those affected to suffer excruciating – and deadly – injuries.

At least 30 civilians were killed, some likely due to the effects of the white phosphorous, which causes respiratory damage and organ failure.Image
Read 16 tweets
Jun 19
Thread🧵 In light of Iran's allegations about WhatsApp sharing user location data with Israel, it's important to understand how deep Israeli intelligence penetration of big tech firms goes.

I've been working on this topic for 4 years. Here's what I found.
mintpressnews.com/revealed-forme…
Firstly, Meta (WhatsApp's parent company) is filled with former intelligence agents from the Israeli Defense Force's elite cyberwarfare battalion, Unit 8200.

Chief among these is Emi Palmor, who sits on Meta's Oversight Board - a 21-person panel that ultimately dictates the direction of the company, deciding what content is allowed and what is disallowed.

Palmor is a former Israeli spy and later went on to become General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. In this role, she directly oversaw the stripping away of Palestinian rights and created a so-called “Internet Referral Unit” which would find and aggressively push Facebook to delete Palestinian content on its platform that the Israeli government objected to.Image
Image
Another important person at Meta is Eyal Klein, head of data science.

Klein spent six years in Unit 8200, rising to the rank of captain. Image
Read 18 tweets
Jun 14
Cannot stress this enough: big tech is a US regime change tool. Image
Without the CIA, Google would never have been born. And as late as 2005, the CIA was still a major shareholder in the company.

Moreover, dozens of former CIA agents work in senior, influential roles at Google, as my investigation found:

mintpressnews.com/national-secur…
E10n's many companies would not exist without the CIA, either.

His connections to the CIA are so close that he even named his first child after his CIA handler, Mike Griffin, then-head of a major CIA department.

Read my investigation for more:

mintpressnews.com/elon-musk-not-…
Read 4 tweets
Jun 13
lol. lmao, even. Image
This statement makes zero sense, unless you understand that "stability" means "under Western control."

If you understand this, everything fits perfectly.

I wrote about this for @FAIRmediawatch back in 2021:

fair.org/home/stability…
Germany is no better. Image
Read 4 tweets

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