News from Alan MacLeod

The Twitter Files is making headlines worldwide. But six months ago, I dug into Twitter's staff and found that it had recruited dozens of "former" officials from the FBI, CIA and other national security state organizations. These individuals were inordinately employed in highly politically sensitive fields, such as trust and safety, security and content moderation. The whole thing left me realizing that big media and big government are so close that it is hard to see where one ends and the other begins. See the full thing here: https://www.mintpressnews.com/twitter-hiring-alarming-number-spooks-secret-agents/281114/

The "Israeli Spy" who "Infiltrated" MintPress News: my new investigation. Catherine Perez-Shakdam was a hijab-wearing Muslim writer who wrote for MintPress between 2014 and 2017. Yet late last year, she resurfaced as a Jewish Zionist writer for the Times of Israel and a fellow of the right-wing, spook-aligned Henry Jackson Society. It transpired that even before MintPress, she had worked for Israeli intelligence outfit, WikiStrat. Many, including MintPress management, think that she was an Israeli intelligence plant. Read the fascinating case of CPS here. https://www.mintpressnews.com/catherine-shakdam-israeli-spy-infiltrated-mintpress-news/282889/

Given recent events, it's important to know that, in the past 2-3 years, Twitter has been extensively recruiting agents from the FBI, CIA and NATO. It has also, in its own words, been "collaborating" with the FBI, with the bureau instructing the platform on which accounts to suppress and delete. Many of Twitter's new recruits were psychological operations specialists and have got straight into highly influential fields such as Trust & Safety, security, and content moderation. My investigation into this alarming trend: https://www.mintpressnews.com/twitter-hiring-alarming-number-spooks-secret-agents/281114/

Tucker Carlson is not some radical, anti-war outsider; he's an elitist neocon with extremely close links to the national security state. In which I go through the Fox News host's extremely shady links to intelligence, including participating in the US-led war on Nicaragua in the 1980s, to trying to join the 1990s, to being thanked by the agency for his work smearing CIA critic Gary Webb, to doing the most blatant pro-Iraq War propaganda imaginable in the 2000s. Check it out here: "Tucker Carlson: The Elite Pedigree of a Brilliant Cosplaying Populist” https://www.mintpressnews.com/tucker-carlson-biography-nicaragua-cia/279782/

New investigation from me. Call of Duty is a Government Psyop: These Documents Prove It Scrutinizing Activision Blizzard’s key staff and their connections to state power, as well as details gleaned from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Call of Duty is not a neutral first-person shooter, but a carefully constructed piece of military propaganda, designed to advance the interests of the U.S. national security state. Military documents note their close collaboration with Call of Duty producers, the point being to make them more "credible advocates" for the US war machine. https://www.mintpressnews.com/call-of-duty-is-a-government-psyop-these-documents-prove-it/282781/

Revealed: Hundreds of former agents of notorious Israeli spying group Unit 8200 now have influential jobs in US big tech companies. This includes Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon. Unit 8200 is part of the IDF and its veterans have been responsible for many of the world's most invasive spying malware. This includes Pegasus, which was used to spy on tens of thousands of politicians, journalists and human rights defenders. Unit 8200 also uses big data to surveil Palestinians, compiling dossiers on millions and using their sexual and medical histories as kompromat to extort them. That they are so prevalent in Silicon Valley is of concern. My latest investigation: https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-former-israeli-spies-working-top-jobs-google-facebook-amazon/282413/

Since Elon Musk has finally purchased Twitter, now is a good time to remind everyone of his close ties to the US national security and surveillance states. From its earliest days, Musk's SpaceX has been intimately connected with the CIA. The agency's former president of venture capitalism, Mike Griffin, mentored Musk, helping him to secure huge government contracts, and even accompanied Musk to Moscow where he tried to buy Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles. Musk's Starlink is also a crucial tool for the Ukrainian military. Musk worked with the US government to send thousands of Stalink satellites to Ukraine, helping their complex weaponry stay online. Today, many Ukrainian forces literally cannot fire their weapons without using Starlink satellites and Starlink thermal imagery, helping them target Russian forces. All this and more in my investigation I wrote in May: https://www.mintpressnews.com/elon-musk-not-renegade-outsider-cia-pentagon-contractor/280972/

Back in November, I wrote an article analyzing Tulsi Gabbard's strange career progression from anti-LGBT conservative to progressive to pro-war politician. It seems more relevant now than ever. https://www.mintpressnews.com/anti-war-progressive-militarist-tulsi-gabbard-political-trajectory/279101/

New from me: The BBC to NATO pipeline. My investigation found that the BBC has, on more than one occasion, employed NATO psyops officers to work among their ranks. Find out how the BBC is connected to state power, the military, the secret services and the Conservative Party. https://www.mintpressnews.com/bbc-nato-pipeline-british-state-broadcaster-serves-powerful/282156/

Livestream with me, Lowkey, Ramzy Baroud and Jessica Buxbaum talking about how Israel launders its image through pop culture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0gczVAlUOw

By me: How the CIA fuelled a massive opium boom in Afghanistan, and created an entire region-wide opioid epidemic in South and Central Asia. https://www.mintpressnews.com/cia-afghanistan-drug-trade-opium/277780/

ICYMI: FOIA’d documents show that the Pentagon worked closely with Hollywood, rewriting dozens of films and TV shows about the Afghan War to give them a more pro-war message, thus helping prolong the conflict. My investigation: https://www.mintpressnews.com/pentagon-leaned-hollywood-sell-war-afghanistan/278568/