Has it occurred to anyone that Bellingcat cd have been set up by the FSB in an attempt to discredit them? I can imagine a scenario where a “trusted insider,” who has been allowed to leak certain truthful information, in a time of war give false information which he knows will be publicized in order to achieve the larger goal of discrediting a very large thorn in the side of the FSB.
> On Mar 14, 2022, at 5:51 PM, Michael Benson <[email protected]> wrote: > > > So concerning Stefan's position on Bellingcat, evidently grounded in a couple > URLs to be taken "with a grain of salt" and the views of Craig Murray, > interestingly enough earlier today I was following some argumentation by this > same Craig Murray concerning Bellingcat. Which he described in much the same > terms as Stefan, in a kind of verbal duel between himself and Andrew > MacGregor Marshall, a journalist specializing in Thai affairs: > > https://twitter.com/BensonImages/status/1503395047223480327 > > (It opens on my comment at the end, but if you scroll up you'll get the > thread.) As you'll see if you take the trouble, Murray describes Bellingcat > as a "security service outlet," Marshall disputes this and asks for evidence, > and Murray provides a link to a piece in MR Online, as in Monthly Review, a > self-described independent socialist magazine. > > But when I read that piece, which is titled "How Bellingcat launders National > Security State talking points in the press," I quickly discovered that their > evidence for this rested in part on the "alarming number" of people at > Bellingcat who've come from "highly suspect" backgrounds. Such as the US > Secret Service and the British Foreign Office. That plus some funding from > the National Endowment for Democracy, an NGO funded by the US Government that > has been criticized by both the left and right. > > Ok, fair enough. (And let's set aside the rather obvious laundering of > Kremlin talking points evident in MR Online as being off topic.) This was the > first I'd heard of Murray, so I went to his Twitter profile to check him out > — and discovered that he is himself a former UK Ambassador, something he's > proud to highlight. And thus is himself a former senior official of the > British Foreign Office. (He served in Uzbekistan 2002-2004 and prior to that > in a long string of FCO positions in Africa and elsewhere.) > > Of course with this we enter a hall of mirrors, in which by the same standard > Murray himself offers as evidence, he must himself be a "security service > outlet." Essentially a version of Epimenides' paradox, in which a Cretan > offers up that all Cretans are liars. > > But let's be charitable and take one resolution to the Epimenides paradox, > that Epimenides only meant that all Cretans _tell_ lies, not that every > single statement by every Cretan is a lie. And according to Wikipedia (which > I then went to, in my ongoing low-budget, low-fi emulation of Bellingcat's > methodology, albeit without bank account backdoors to the national security > state, alas), Murray was removed from his post at Foreign Office and > subsequently became an activist and human rights campaigner. > > Ok, fair enough again. Still, he was impugning the veracity and motivations > of _others_ who'd left _their_ respective official services in government and > became investigative journalists specialized in OSINT at Bellingcat. Which, I > would submit, apart from its journalistic bona fides, produces outcomes > necessary to the furthering of human rights activism. Because I think it > undeniable that they've produced some rather spectacular results, even if > they simultaneously sometimes evoke Cuban expat cartoonist Antonio Prohias's > classic "Spy vs Spy '' strips in Mad Magazine decades ago. > > I mean honestly, who doesn't get a bang out of the fact that in collaboration > with other investigative news organizations, Bellingcat was able to use > cellphone data to track known FSB operatives who'd attempted to assassinate > Alexey Navalny in Tomsk in August 2020, thus using tools traditionally > associated with espionage to out FSB assassins, something ultimately allowing > a miraculously still-living Navalny to actually _call_ one of his would-be > assassins from Germany, impersonate a senior FSB official, and actually get > this man (Konstantin Kudryavtsev) to describe to exactly how this attempt _on > the life of the man he was speaking to_ was made? Namely by smearing Novichok > on Navalny's underwear? Thus confirming both the allegations against him and > his own status as Keystone Spook for all the world to know? > > If that's not for the ages — a story worthy of Pliny the Elder — what is? Let > me end simply by observing that regardless of the above, Christo Grozev > himself was never an ambassador, secret service agent or military guy (ok ok, > "we might never know"), but rather a successful entrepreneurial journalist > for over three decades, who with his team won a European Press Prize for > unmasking exactly who'd poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal (with Novichok, of > course) in the UK in 2018. And that if you're tempted to see him or > Bellingcat as being engaged in right-leaning, pro-national security state, > pro-NATO, anti-socialist activities, consider that he and his collaborators > have also followed all manner of fact-tendrils inconvenient to the UK > government and other NATO countries, for example by investigating illegal > arms sales to the Saudis by NATO countries. > > Best, > Michael > > > -- > Michael Benson > Kinetikon Pictures > michael-benson.net > [email protected] > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
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