Alan MacLeod Profile picture
Jul 29 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

Nov 14
BREAKING: Today, the United Nations voted 170-6 on "The Right of the Palestinian People to Self-Determination".

Those voting against:

🇺🇸United States
🇮🇱Israel
🇦🇷Argentina
🇵🇾Paraguay
🇫🇲Micronesia
🇳🇷Nauru Image
The full voting list can be found here. The vote today was actually less one-sided than it should have been, as certain targets of Washington (e.g. Venezuela 🇻🇪, Afghanistan 🇦🇫) have had their voting privileges revoked, thanks mainly to US sanctions on their countries. Image
I'm seeing a few of the same questions about UN voting pop up in the replies, so here are some answers:

The intense US economic blockade of countries like Venezuela 🇻🇪 and Afghanistan 🇦🇫 has caused them to be physically unable to transfer their dues (payable in US dollars) to the UN, meaning their voting rights have been suspended. The same thing happened to Iran a couple of years ago.

On the question of why so many tiny Pacific countries vote alongside the US 🇺🇸 and Israel 🇮🇱: They are microstates, and one of their only valuable exports is their United Nations votes, which are reliably (under the table) sold to the highest bidder. On so many issues, you will see the likes of Nauru 🇳🇷 and Micronesia 🇫🇲 vote with the minority (usually the US position) in order to pad the stats a bit. Why is it that only these countries vote alongside the US? Because that's all Washington can afford.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 13
Thread 🧵

Undisclosed to the public, there are hundreds of former Israel Lobbyists working in America's newsrooms, shaping the way we understand the world.

My new investigation lifts the lid on this network:

mintpressnews.com/revealed-the-i…
For instance, Moshe Arenstein, MSNBC's Executive Producer, was literally an IDF intelligence commander in his youth. Image
You'd never guess from Gili Malinsky's CNBC profile that she is a former IDF commander, & worked for years for Friends of the IDF, an American charity that raises money for supplies for Israeli soldiers.

This conflict of interest isn't even disclosed when she writes about Israel Image
Read 13 tweets
Oct 30
BREAKING: For the 32nd year in a row, the United Nations votes overwhelmingly to end the US embargo on Cuba 🇨🇺.

The vote today was 187-2.

Countries voting against:

United States 🇺🇸
Israel 🇮🇱

Abstentions:

Moldova 🇲🇩 Image
US sanctions are illegal under international law, & only pariah nations like the 🇺🇸 & 🇮🇱 support them.

The sanctions are designed, in the US govt's own words, to "decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and [the] overthrow of [the] government." Image
When read out, the results were met with resounding applause from representatives of the world's free nations at the UN.
Read 5 tweets
Oct 26
Thread 🧵

By aiding the 🇮🇱 slaughter in Gaza, Joe Biden has been accused of participating in war crimes.

But "Genocide Joe" is far from the 1st president to have done so

In this thread, I will show how successive presidents have perpetrated war crimes & crimes against humanity Image
1. Joe Biden

Apart from directly funding and facilitating the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Biden:

+ Strongly supported the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, helping push through conflicts that would go on to kill millions of people, according to a study from Brown University - watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/pap…

+ Biden was also the architect of "Plan Colombia" - the militarization of the drug war in Latin America, whereby the US sent vast amounts of money and military hardware to the far-right Colombian government, who used it to fight a bitter counter-insurgency war against leftist guerillas under the guise of eradicating drugs. The United Nations estimates that 7.4 million Colombians were internally displaced in this war, which few in the US have even heard about. mintpressnews.com/mass-incarcera…Image
2. Donald Trump

Some of Trump's worst actions included:

+ Removing the US from global anti-nuclear weapons treaties.
+ Supporting a Saudi-led genocide in Yemen, supplying arms and political support to the government in Riyadh.
+ Dropping "The Mother of All Bombs" on Afghanistan - the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat.
+ Ramping up illegal sanctions against Cuba 🇨🇺, Venezuela 🇻🇪, Iran 🇮🇷 and many other countries.Image
Read 10 tweets
Oct 26
Thread 🧵

Sacha Baron Cohen is being roundly condemned for his latest racist skit on national TV.

But few people know how closely he has worked with both US and Israeli intelligence throughout his career.

My @MintPressNews investigation explores this:

mintpressnews.com/closer-scrutin…
In a 2009 interview with David Letterman, Baron Cohen casually mentioned that "Brüno" was made possible by the CIA, and that a CIA agent helped arrange much of the film.

I managed to find that CIA agent and talk to him.

@JohnKiriakou told me that Baron Cohen was obsessed with finding a "terrorist" and making him look stupid on camera. Kiriakou advised against it, but Baron Cohen eventually interviewed Ayman Abu Aita -- a Christian Palestinian NGO worker -- and presented him as a radical jihadist in the movie. In this interview with Letterman, Baron Cohen casually refers to him as a "terrorist" eight times.

Abu Aita's life was ruined, and he sued for nearly $100 million. The case was settled for an undisclosed sum in 2012.

Brüno depicts Muslims as rabid homophobic trash. But the most shocking and newsworthy case of exposing bigotry Baron Cohen has documented has never been revealed.

Kiriakou notes that, while in character as Brüno in Jerusalem, Baron Cohen was beaten nearly to death by an enraged crowd of homophobic Israelis, who, angered by his camp and sacrilegious attire, started stoning him, on camera. A rabbi even spat on him. He was nearly killed.

It was the only time in his career that he broke character and desperately yelled that he was an Israeli Jew, not a homosexual foreigner. The comedian fled for his life and found refuge in a nearby store bathroom.

Read further on to find out why Baron Cohen would choose to never reveal this footage.Image
From an early age, Baron Cohen's friends note that he was an obsessive Zionist who went to live in Israel in his youth.

He grew up idolizing Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and met him in 2012.

In 2019, Baron Cohen starred in "The Spy", an Israeli series idolizing Mossad agent Eli Cohen. Cohen goes deep undercover in Syrian high society, providing intelligence to Israel that was crucial for its victory over Syria in the 1967 war. To this day, Israel illegally occupies Syrian and Palestinian land captured in 1967.

"The Spy" was directed by a former Israeli paratrooper, who worked closely with the Mossad to produce it. The series has been used extensively in Mossad recruitment campaigns.Image
Read 8 tweets
Oct 16
[Thread]🧵

Israeli spies are writing America's news.

My new investigation uncovers a network of ex-agents of 🇮🇱 spying agency Unit 8200 working at some of the US' most prestigious outlets, including Axios & CNN.

Full investigation here ⬇️

mintpressnews.com/revealed-israe…
Axios reporter Barak Ravid recently won the prestigious White House Correspondents' Award.

Ravid is a former agent of Israeli spying agency, Unit 8200, and was, until last year, a reservist in the Israeli military group. Image
Image
Image
Before joining CNN to produce segments for Fareed Zakaria and Christiane Amanpour, Shachar Peled was an officer in Unit 8200 and in Israeli intelligence service, Shin Bet. Image
Read 15 tweets

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