Bellingcat and the NED

https://mate.substack.com/p/elon-musk-is-right-bellingcat-is

Even blind squirrels get acorns on occasion. Musk is certainly repugnant in every respect but as Aaron Mate points out – this time he was right.

As some have known for years, Bellingcat is not a neutral investigatory outlet, but a tool of Western intelligence agencies. This is not to say that all who work for Bellingcat or who are involved in the organisation are simply corrupt or even necessarily clued in, but it seems clear enough the outlet is being steered by those who have a deliberate geopolitical agenda.

This became evident during the Syrian Civil War which in Western media was dominated by misleading reporting, the manipulation of facts, and outright lies. Bellingcat kept coming up as the go-to for supposedly fact and evidentiary-based reporting and yet its narratives became very suspect and seemed to almost always echo and reinforce the official line. I was immediately suspicious of its reports regarding Syria, and after this the investigations of Flight MH17, the Skripal poisoning, Navalny, and so forth were suspicious.

Then, as with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and The White Helmets, investigators began to discover that Bellingcat is a little too connected and cozy with organisations like The Atlantic Council – in other words the NATO Establishment. For years I have believed Bellingcat is little more than a propaganda arm for the American-dominated Atlanticist imperial framework and its institutions – in particular it's military arm, NATO.

And yet for the media, Bellingcat is unassailable, the proverbial sacred cow and they will not even entertain the question of its credibility. The same is true when it comes to an NGO like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or a government funded and yet supposedly independent organisation like USAID. And yet the record demonstrates these organisations are deeply connected to US intelligence and heavily utilised by them. Not everything they do involves clandestine or subversive operations but they are platforms used by the US praetorians to manipulate public opinion and shape politics. None of these outlets operate alone or even as standalone organisations posses a great deal (if any) actual power. They are tools – and Bellingcat is no different.

And there's a degree of interpenetration and something of a symbiotic relationship between these organisations. Bellingcat receives money from the NED – and yes, even the Soros organisation. Contrary to the delusions of the Far and Libertarian Right, Soros is not a 'woke' communist activist but a long-time agent of the US Empire and its Wall Street-driven interests.

The media world has become a literal labyrinth, and an ever-changing one. Outlets do some good work, gain some notoriety and accolade, and infused with money and immediately head down a path of compromise and corruption. And it seems like this oft-repeated cycle is intensifying with some groups rising and falling in a very short time. Watching The Intercept has been interesting in this regard as it has followed this pattern and yet over the past couple of years – it has started to move once again in a more positive direction when it comes to certain areas of reporting. And that's what I increasingly find – one or two good journalists at an outlet that are worth reading, or a site that is worth visiting on certain subjects. As always, it's complicated and the only way to navigate this stuff is to read widely and read lots of history for the background and context.

If you don't know – then don't trust what you read. Trust no one. Mainstream outlets were once (and to some degree still are) propaganda arms of state and corporate power. But in the United States these outlets have all but abandoned any kind of serious news. This has opened up a new world of media – for good or ill, and one further complicated by not just the Internet, but social media. Further it must be remembered that even bad or deceptive outlets don't exclusively report lies. Some of what they say is true, and some stories are true. In other cases the troubling issues aren't always the facts per se but how they're framed and contextualised. That said, there are plenty of blatant deceptions out there as well. It's a confusing time and Christians especially need to be vigilant. The images coming across your television screen can be powerful and tug at your emotions – and cloud your thinking which is exactly what these organisations are trying to do. Some are lame and simplistic in their methods, others like Bellingcat are more sophisticated and thus more dangerous.