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Aaron Maté Profile picture
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1 Apr, 4 tweets, 4 min read
New Yorker's @yaffaesque continues a sacred media ritual: writing a Bellingcat puff piece that omits its state funding & role in OPCW Syria cover-up.

It's understandable: taking money from the NED -- a CIA cutout -- doesn't quite jibe w/ an "intelligence agency for the people."
.@yaffaesque lauds @EliotHiggins' "métier" for "long-distance digital forensics" in Syria. He omits the ongoing scandal over Douma, where Bellingcat has whitewashed an OPCW cover-up & smeared the whistleblowers who challenged it. (thegrayzone.com/2020/10/28/dra…)(thegrayzone.com/2021/03/24/aut…)
.@yaffaesque focuses on Bellingcat's purported exposés of Russia via "open sources." Yet he is completely disinterested on what open sources expose about Bellingcat. On top of OPCW story, there's also Bellingcat partnering in a UK propaganda op vs Russia: thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reu…
Here's another inconvenient open source that @yaffaesque ignores. Even its own UK state patrons have privately concluded that "Bellingcat was somewhat discredited, both by spreading disinformation itself, and by being willing to produce reports for anyone willing to pay."

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More from @aaronjmate

Aaron Maté Profile picture
3 Apr
ASPI, Australian think tank funded by weapons makers & states including the US, just put out a hilarious report attacking @TheGrayzoneNews' Xinjiang coverage.

ASPI doesn't challenge a single fact. It instead tallies Chinese diplomats retweeting us. 🧐(aspi.org.au/report/strange…)
I urge you to read it. It's amazing it. It includes stuff like this: OMG, look we made a graphic showing that a WHO staffer gave a Grayzone article a retweet!!!!!!! 😱 Image
ASPI, the think tank behind this report, is funded by totally objective & good faith sources like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, US, UK, NATO, Australia, and Israel. It is literally a troll farm paid to manufacture public support for war and hegemony: ImageImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Aaron Maté Profile picture
24 Mar
Last year, we caught @Bellingcat publishing falsehoods in a bid to smear an OPCW whistleblower.

That isn't all. Emails obtained by @TheGrayzoneNews now show that Bellingcat let a hidden, external author write its fraudulent material. #Bellingcaught

thegrayzone.com/2021/03/24/aut…
Bellingcat's OPCW deception (thegrayzone.com/2020/10/28/dra…), was based on it claiming to have obtained an OPCW letter sent to Dr. Brendan Whelan, a whistleblower who challenged the Syria cover-up. We showed that Bellingcat's "letter" was never actually sent, and full of falsehoods.
New emails reveal more of Bellingcat's subterfuge.

It begins w/ another outlet. Months before Bellingcat's bogus October 2020 article, @ChrisDYork of @HuffPostUK first pursued the same story. He even told Wikileaks that he was about to publish. He ultimately never published.
Read 10 tweets
Aaron Maté Profile picture
18 Mar
US state outlet Voice of America's "fact-checking website" @PolygraphInfo deems claims of an OPCW Syria cover-up "false" and a "conspiracy theory." They are obviously nervous that a group of eminent voices -- including five former OPCW officials -- just called out the cover-up. Image
For a supposed "fact-checking website," US state-run @PolygraphInfo gets the facts blatantly wrong. I'll correct tomorrow. But for now, note something curious: this "fact-check", unlike every other article I see on Polygraph, has no author. Who wrote it? archive.is/HXtK2 Image
I asked @PolygraphInfo why their error-ridden "fact-check" on the OPCW scandal doesn't identify its author, unlike every other article on the site that I checked. VOA's @jimfryVOA replied: "VOA does not always identify authors for their safety and that of their families abroad." Image
Read 5 tweets
Aaron Maté Profile picture
11 Mar
A big development in the OPCW's Syria cover-up scandal: a group of eminent signatories -- including *five* former OPCW officials -- call on the OPCW to stop suppressing the findings of the Douma probe and let the dissenting scientists air their concerns: couragefound.org/2021/03/statem…
Other signatories supporting the OPCW whistleblowers include ex-UN senior officials Denis Halliday & Hans von Sponeck; Noam Chomsky; Daniel Ellsberg; and Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.

To US media: how long will you continue to bury this scandal? cc @democracynow @TheIntercept
The OPCW "now stands accused of accepting unsubstantiated or possibly manipulated findings with the most serious geo-political and security implications."
Read 11 tweets
Aaron Maté Profile picture
26 Feb
Remember when Senate Intel called Kilimnik a Russian spy & Russiagaters claimed vindication? I showed that SSCI had no evidence & ignored countervailing facts. I also reported that FBI had not changed its assessment that KK only has vague RU intel "ties." realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/…
No one tried to refute my reporting, opting for Russiagate fan fiction instead. Well today FBI issued an alert for Kilimnik on old warrant. Look how they describe him: he is "assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian Intelligence." FBI, unlike SSCI, still not calling him a spy.
Now ask yourself: if FBI is not describing Kilimnik as a "Russian intelligence officer", how could Senate Intel Committee, with far less investigative powers & info, know something they don't? What Mark Warner has is an imagination, and an extremely credulous media to lap it up.
Read 4 tweets
Aaron Maté Profile picture
25 Feb
.@NYTBen's latest on Syria's economic and food crisis continues what is becoming one of Western media's most cherished traditions: giving crippling, murderous and illegal US sanctions only a single, passing, and buried mention.
nytimes.com/2021/02/23/wor…
The fact that US sanctions destroy Syria's economy & prevent reconstruction isn't a secret. Trump envoy James Jeffrey openly brags that the US "crushed [Syria]’s economy through sanctions."

Why is an ex-US official more honest than a news outlet?
foreignaffairs.com/articles/middl…
BTW, @NYTBen's "Western sanctions" is another misnomer. These are *US sanctions*, under the Caesar Act. They explicitly target Syria's reconstruction and any global entity that somehow helps it. That's why the UN Special Rapporteur calls them illegal. thegrayzone.com/2021/01/14/un-…
Read 7 tweets

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