Barreras falsas: estas cosas no deberían impedirle vacunarse contra COVID-19

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New Mexico Moves Closer To Marijuana Legalization

New Mexico is one step away from becoming the 17th state to legalize cannabis for adult use and the fourth state to adopt a legalization policy by passing a bill through its state legislature. The last stop is Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk for signing.

Are Teen Brains More Vulnerable To Marijuana Addiction?

Legal marijuana doesn’t appear to trigger more cannabis use in teens, but new research shows that some concern is warranted. The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, suggests teen brains are more vulnerable to marijuana and opioid addiction, making these users more likely to get hooked on drugs when compared to young adults.

Chuck Schumer’s Cannabis Reform Plan Is Becoming Clearer

The cannabis community has been sniffing around for the past month, trying to figure out what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer means when discussing the comprehensive cannabis reform bill he wants to pass this year. All of the evidence suggests that the U.S. Senate will hear legislation aimed at legalizing the leaf nationwide. However, the intentions of the highly anticipated bill, which Schumer says will be introduced “shortly,” are becoming clearer.

As US continues New Cold War, Russia and China forge new ties

As the Biden administration ramps up confrontation, Lyle Goldstein of Naval War College discusses how China and Russia are forging new ties. In its opening months, the Biden administration has targeted Russia...

“Wipe out China!” US-funded Uyghur activists train as gun-toting foot soldiers for empire

Cultivated by the US government as human rights activists, Uyghur American Association leaders partner with far-right lawmakers and operate a militia-style gun club that trains with ex-US special forces. On March 21, US-government-funded Uyghur activists were caught on video disrupting a gathering against anti-Asian racism in Washington DC, barking insults at demonstrators including, “Wipe out China!” and “Fuck China!” The Uyghur caravan flew American and “East Turkestan” flags and drove vehicles adorned signs bearing slogans such as, “We Love USA,” “Boycott China,” and “CCP killed 80 million Chinese people.” 

Western govt contractor entrapped British scholar in sting operation to cover up Syria corruption...

CIJA, a taxpayer-funded outfit that collaborated with al-Qaeda, lied to entrap a British academic in a sting operation. Its goal was to discredit critics of the dirty war on Syria – and cover up its own corruption. A British academic who belongs to a prominent anti-war research group has been targeted in a deceptive sting operation run by a regime-change organization funded with UK and US taxpayer money. That contractor now stands accused of defrauding the European Union of millions of dollars. The Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media is a UK-based collective of professors who have published scholarly investigations exposing the disinformation and lies that have been at the heart of the decade-long Western dirty war on Damascus. The working group’s success in debunking this propaganda, and in amplifying whistleblowers from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), has made it a target of pro-war elements in Western governments and intelligence agencies, along with their allies in major corporate media outlets. This March, it was revealed that the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), a regime-change organization that has been funded by numerous Western governments and is linked to UK intelligence agencies, had run an elaborate sting operation in a bid to discredit an academic member, and the working group as a whole. A representative of CIJA posed as a Russian under a fake name and deceived a British researcher named Paul McKeigue into feeding it information with the goal of ensnaring him, vilifying his research group, and smearing its participants as tools of the Kremlin. In other words, the anti-war British scholar was entrapped by an organization supported by his own government, and that happens to have been accused of large-scale fraud by the EU’s own fraud regulator. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has formally accused CIJA of fraud, “submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering,” and recommended that authorities in the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium prosecute the EU-funded organization. Faced with potential consequences over these serious EU allegations of corruption, CIJA appears desperate to discredit anyone that reports on its unsavory activities. So the regime-change group contrived a months-long confidence trick of questionable legality and morality. And Western media outlets have eagerly spread its narrative in a closely coordinated cover-up operation aimed at burying the well-substantiated charges of fraud. CIJA: Lawfare based on money from Western governments and documents from Al-Qaeda The group behind the sting operation, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, has a history of unethical behavior. The Grayzone previously published an investigation documenting CIJA’s suspicious tactics, extensive links to Western governments, and direct collaboration with Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate. CIJA’s executive director and founder, William Wiley, also directs a company called Tsamota, and the two firms share the same legal address. Wiley has used Tsamota to cash in on conflicts that advance Western foreign policy interests, raking in millions in government contracts, while advising Canadian mining companies on how to avoid prosecution for their activities in Africa. Leaked documents show that Wiley’s Tsamota is closely linked to other Western intelligence cut-outs and government contractors such as ARK, which was at the center of an enormous global disinformation campaign aimed at orchestrating regime change in Syria. In fact Tsamota and ARK collaborated in jointly launching the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability, which in 2014 changed its name to CIJA. CIJA/Tsamota director Bill Wiley (far-right) at the 2013 MineAfrica conference with lawyers from Fasken, a Canadian law firm that defends mining companies working in Africa Having since 2013 received an estimated €42 million (nearly $50 million USD) in funding from the EU, Britain, United States, Germany, Canada, Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway – states that have waged war on Syria and supported the country’s Islamist opposition – CIJA has become the key instrument of legal warfare, or lawfare, targeting Damascus and the government of Bashar al-Assad. The United States and its European allies spent billions arming and training militants, many from extremist Salafi-jihadist groups, to try to overthrow the Syrian government and Assad, as NATO did in Libya in 2011. But in their ruthless crusade to bring about regime change in Syria, these Western nations supplemented their military efforts with other forms of unconventional and hybrid warfare, including suffocating economic sanctions and lawfare. CIJA was created in 2012, at the beginning of the dirty war, as a weapon of what these Western governments call “transitional justice,” or regime-change-by-court. (The doctrine has also been dubbed the “Responsibility to Prosecute,” based on the “Responsibility to Protect” concept that was employed by liberal interventionists to justify the NATO wars that destroyed the states of Libya and Yugoslavia.) The commission’s investigators have collaborated with al-Qaeda and other Salafi-jihadist armed opposition groups in order to steal documents from Syria and use them in Western lawsuits against Assad and his government. CIJA’s collaboration with al-Qaeda was acknowledged in passing in an otherwise fawning publicity piece in The Guardian before it was quickly flushed down the memory hole, never to be mentioned again by the very same mainstream corporate media outlets that have printed puff piece after puff piece heroizing the organization. A €1.5 million EU grant for CIJA between 2016 and 2020 EU fraud regulator accuses its own grantee CIJA of corruption The European Union awarded the Commission for International Justice and Accountability a massive €1.5 million (approximately $1.77 million USD) grant in 2016 in order to gather “evidential material of potential war crimes and crimes against humanity” and prepare “new criminal case files” against the Syrian government and ISIS. The funding was meant to be used between 2016 and 2020. But Brussels has clearly not been happy with the work that CIJA did, or rather did not do, because the EU’s own fraud regulator announced when the project ended that the organization had been under investigation for fraud. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) published a press release in March 2020 stating that it had conducted a “long and complicated investigation” that “revealed that while the partnership claimed to be supporting the rule of law, the partners [CIJA] were actually committing widespread violations themselves, including submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering.” OLAF recommended “that the national authorities in the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium consider prosecuting the involved project partners [CIJA] for possible offences of fraud and forgery.” CIJA was not publicly named in the press release, but OLAF’s statement made it clear that the fraud charges concerned its “partners in Rule of Law project in Syria,” specifically an organization that “had entered into a contract with the EU to support possible prosecutions for violations of International Criminal and Humanitarian Law in Syria” — an obvious reference to CIJA. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) accused the EU-funded group CIJA of fraud in 2020 The OLAF statement added that CIJA had been given €1,999,830 (roughly $2.36 million USD) as part of its Syria contract, even higher than the amount disclosed in 2016. (The figures and timeline on other EU disclosures also slightly vary, and the BBC later reported that the fraud allegations concerned a €3 million contract that the EU awarded CIJA in 2013.) OLAF suggested that the European Commission should recover €1,896,734 (nearly $2.24 million USD), or 95 percent, of that amount. While the European Anti-Fraud Office did not explicitly name CIJA, a Dutch-language investigation by journalist Arjen van der Ziel, published in the major Dutch newspaper Trouw, later made it clear that CIJA was the organization being accused of fraud. The UAE’s newspaper The National followed up with an article on OLAF’s investigation of CIJA’s corruption, titled “Fraud allegations taint efforts to prosecute war crimes in Syria.” Back in 2014, the US State Department, which had given $1 million to CIJA over two years, announced that it was cancelling its annual funding for the group. Washington did not given a reason for the cut, so it is not clear if fears of corruption had also motivated this decision. Millions in funding leads to just one, highly dubious case Despite the millions of dollars the Commission for International Justice and Accountability received from Western governments, it has very little to show for itself. Over a period of years, al-Qaeda and other Salafi-jihadist militias have helped CIJA steal huge sums of documents from Syria in a massive operation aimed at prosecuting the government of Bashar al-Assad. But that effort has culminated in just a single high-profile case, which is full of gaping legal holes. In 2020, the German government used materials obtained by CIJA to arrest two former Syrian government officials whom it accused of war crimes. Both had voluntarily left Syria years before and were living in Germany. In fact one of the men being charged in Germany, a 58-year-old former prison intelligence officer accused of torture named Anwar Raslan, had worked closely with the Syrian opposition when he defected from the government back in 2013. Raslan later established himself as a prominent member of the Western-backed opposition to Assad. A 2020 profile in Foreign Policy, titled “If a Torturer Switches Sides, Does He Deserve Mercy?,” noted: “Raslan ingratiated himself with several opposition leaders and in 2014 even got a ticket to represent the rebellion in Geneva at U.N.-organized peace talks. The about-face paid off when he flew to Germany in the summer that year and sought asylum.” Members of the Syrian opposition are split over how to prosecute leading Syrian government torturer and defector Anwar Raslan, Anchal Vohra writes. https://t.co/Z5v5BeyeDa — Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) April 22, 2020 That is to say, after being given several years, nearly $50 million of dollars in Western government contracts, and help from extremist Salafi-jihadist insurgents, this is apparently the best CIJA could come up with: a Syrian living in Germany who had supported the anti-Assad opposition. As the commission comes under increasing scrutiny, and with the EU’s fraud regulator breathing down its neck, it enacted a desperate con-job to discredit its critics. How CIJA resorted to lies to entrap a British anti-war scholar and distract from fraud charges The Commission for International Justice and Accountability has enjoyed obsequious praise from across the Western press. One of the only organizations that has criticized the Western government-funded group and its dubious methodology was the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media. So in 2020, CIJA took its characteristically deceitful tactics to the next level, in a quest to discredit the working group and smear its academic constituents. In February, the working group sent CIJA a list of questions for its executive director, William H. Wiley, notifying him and his organization that their shady business dealings were being investigated. (The working group has since made these questions public, and has also published its lengthy investigation into CIJA.) As the working group dug for information on Wiley, it was surprised to find that the CIJA leader had been listed as the head of nine different companies in four jurisdictions. They even discovered that Wiley and his firm Tsamota – a contractor for the European Union and US and UK governments that has done work in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Congo – had suspiciously been named in the Panama Papers, a database of offshore entities. Moreover, the researchers uncovered that CIJA and Tsamota had the same legal address listed, along with overlap in key personnel. The address that Wiley’s CIJA and Tsamota had registered in Brussels, Belgium was apparently just an apartment in a residential area. (In late 2015, Wiley moved the CIJA/Tsamota address to Lisbon, Portugal.) CIJA Executive Director William Harry Wiley and his firm Tsamota, a Western government contractor, are named in the Panama Papers When CIJA and Wiley saw the questions from the working group, they were apparently frightened to see that their alleged financial improprieties might come to light. (The European Anti-Fraud Office’s press release revealing its corruption investigation into CIJA was not released until March, a month later.) So CIJA embarked on an attempt to entrap the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media, in a bid to discredit its research. An unidentified CIJA staffer created a false account on the encrypted email platform ProtonMail and, in December 2020, contacted Paul McKeigue, a professor of genetic epidemiology and statistical genetics at the University of Edinburgh, and a member of the working group. McKeigue told The Grayzone that when the fake account first emailed him, it did not identify itself. The user, a CIJA employee in disguise, tried to entice McKeigue by promising useful information on Syria that he could use for his research. McKeigue said he was skeptical at first, but the account ultimately provided him with factual intelligence that only an insider could have had. McKeigue independently verified the information and saw that it was indeed correct. “They are professionals at information warfare,” McKeigue recalled. “They know how to trick you into believing them and gaining their trust.” The Grayzone has reviewed some of the emails sent between McKeigue and the CIJA staffer. The messages show how over several months of communication, CIJA deceived McKeigue into feeding it private information about his colleagues in the working group and about other public figures who have exposed lies and disinformation used to justify the Western dirty war on Syria. McKeigue stressed however that not all of the information he provided in the sting operation was accurate. “Some of this was embellished to give the impression of a coordinated network that in reality does not exist,” McKeigue said in a public statement, noting that the working group “does not exist as an entity other than a loose group of people who occasionally co-author articles or comment on each other’s drafts.” Professor Paul McKeigue, the British anti-war scholar who was entrapped by CIJA’s deceptive sting operation It was not until weeks into their correspondence, McKeigue recounted, that the account began hinting that it was supposedly run by a Russian intelligence officer. McKeigue stressed that the user had at first remained anonymous for weeks, and did not falsely claim a Russian identity until well into their private communications. Eventually, the account turned to a fake name: Ivan. The CIJA staffer behind it blatantly lied to McKeigue, creating an entirely new, fictitious persona. “Ivan” tricked McKeigue into believing that he had a source on the inside, maybe even a whistleblower, who wanted to expose CIJA for apparent connections to Western intelligence agencies. “When I first started looking at CIJA, I thought it was all an intelligence front and was doing its work to lay the basis for a US occupation and sanctions on Syria,” McKeigue told The Grayzone. “But as I dug further, I realized that, for all of the millions in funding that Western governments had provided it, CIJA had actually delivered very little.” “Ivan” tried to convince McKeigue not to focus on investigating the corruption angle, but rather to focus on links to Western intelligence. The account even told McKeigue that the executive director of CIJA, William Wiley, was a CIA agent who had a long history working with the US government. This led McKeigue to investigate Wiley’s extensive links to Washington and other Western governments, and his role in the trial against Iraq’s former leader Saddam Hussein and international tribunal for former Yugoslavia. McKeigue, who said that he now believes that Wiley was the one running the false “Ivan” account, found a book by journalist John Nixon, “Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein,” which referred to a CIA analyst in Iraq named Bill, whom McKeigue suspected was William Wiley. CIJA executive director William Wiley But “Ivan” had distracted McKeigue from the main scandal: The EU regulator’s serious charges that Wiley had presided over a massive case of fraud. “I realized that the case was mostly about corruption,” McKeigue told The Grayzone. “I was stupid, but I was extremely busy at the time,” he added. “If I hadn’t been so busy, I would have been more careful.” This scandal came to light on March 26, with a series of articles in the British media. The BBC’s avowedly pro-war reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou – who was exposed for her own unethical, propagandistic work on Syria by The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté – promoted CIJA’s sting operation in an article titled “The UK professor and the fake Russian agent.” Hadjimatheou uncritically echoed CIJA’s talking points, demonizing Paul McKeigue as a Kremlin shill and even defending the organization against the EU fraud regulator’s corruption charges. Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone exposed how the BBC has infiltrated Russian language media to advance NATO interests in a covert program funded and overseen by the UK Foreign Office. The Times, a British outlet known for amplifying the narratives of the UK’s intelligence services, ran a carefully coordinated piece attacking McKeigue. Just a few hours later, the same newspaper printed another smear accusing McKeigue and his colleagues at the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media of “peddling Syria war ‘conspiracies.'”  The article uncritically regurgitated the claims of Charles Lister, a DC regime-change lobbyist employed by militaristic think tanks funded by the Gulf monarchies waging war on Damascus. These media attacks were followed by a nearly identical smear piece in the right-wing tabloid the Daily Mail, which conveniently failed to mention OLAF’s fraud investigation into CIJA. Amid the coordinated media assault, CIJA released a statement maligning the working group and defending its own dishonest tactics, insisting that its sting operation was “undertaken by lawful means.” For his part, Paul McKeigue published a personal statement on the working group website. “As a citizen investigator, I cultivate contacts with all sorts of people who have relevant information, including anonymous sources and some identified sources whose activities I do not endorse,” he wrote. “I kept an open mind about who I was talking to.” The working group has since released its investigation into CIJA and Wiley’s suspicious business dealings. McKeigue emphasized that he is deeply troubled by “the subversion of British parliamentary government by what I now recognize to be a ‘deep state’ operating partly through private cutouts.” Indeed, a UK government contractor with close proximity to intelligence services engaging in a spy-like sting operation against a British anti-war academic in an attempt to discredit his research, stain the reputation of his colleagues, and cover up well-substantiated charges of corruption should be a major scandal. The desperation of the tactics shows CIJA and William Wiley have a lot to hide. A truly independent media would shine light on this controversy. But so far, the mainstream press has functioned as the public relations arm for the corruption-stained CIJA, papering over the ethical rot and corruption of a taxpayer-funded organization in a bid to further the dirty war on Syria.

Chomsky on the ‘joke’ of ‘Russian interference’ and the savagery of US sanctions

Noam Chomsky says that ongoing US claims of Russian interference are a joke — all the more so as the US continues to ravage multiple states with savage sanctions that target...

Bellingcaught: Who is the mysterious author of Bellingcat’s attacks on OPCW whistleblower?

After publishing fraudulent claims in a bid to smear OPCW whistleblowers, Bellingcat has been caught in another subterfuge that contradicts its stated allegiance to “transparency and accountability”: a hidden, external author writing its material. The website Bellingcat promotes itself as a collective of digital sleuths who “pledge allegiance to truth and evidence and abide by the principles of transparency and accountability.” Its self-described “groundbreaking investigations,” especially those aimed at Russia and Syria, have led to fawning Western media endorsements of its claim to be an “intelligence agency for the people.”  But Bellingcat’s carefully crafted public image as an “open source” outlet is belied by its extensive NATO government ties and a conspicuous pattern of conduct in line with its state sponsors’ interests. Bellingcat has hauled in grants from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US government-funded CIA cutout. Leaked documents reported by The Grayzone revealed that Bellingcat has collaborated with a UK Foreign Office operation that aims to “weaken Russia.”  Bellingcat has also been a regular source of interventionist material on Syria, the target of a decade-long, multi-billion dollar proxy war waged by the US, UK, and their allies. This includes participating in a nearly two-year campaign to whitewash a scandal at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) — one of the most shocking and well-documented pro-war deceptions since the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. A series of leaks has exposed how top OPCW officials censored findings which undermined US-led allegations of a Syrian government chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. Together with its NATO state sponsors, Bellingcat has worked to bury the cover-up and denigrate two OPCW whistleblowers who challenged it from the inside.  Bellingcat’s disinformation efforts resulted in an embarrassing debacle late last year, when the outlet was caught publishing fraudulent material about one of the dissenting OPCW scientists.   Now, emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal that Bellingcat has engaged in more subterfuge than was previously known. Messages sent months before the “Bellingcat Investigation Team” released its bogus article show that Bellingcat was not the sole author of the now-discredited piece published in its name. It also was not the first one. The communications show that someone outside the Bellingcat organization composed portions of the fraudulent material that ultimately appeared on Bellingcat’s website. An external author even drafted questions that Bellingcat sent to multiple recipients. Bellingcat’s duplicitous conduct took place in the midst of a poorly coordinated effort involving HuffPost UK and the BBC – two outlets that also enjoy close ties to the British state.  The target of the Bellingcat-led smear campaign is Dr. Brendan Whelan, a 16-year OPCW veteran and member of the mission that deployed to Syria in April 2018 to investigate the alleged chemical attack in  Douma.  The Douma team failed to find any evidence of chemical weapons use, shattering the pretext for the US, UK, and French airstrikes on Damascus that same month. But the investigators’ original report was doctored and suppressed, an act of censorship that Whelan protested in an email which was subsequently leaked along with other damning internal OPCW documents.  The leaks also revealed how the Douma inspectors were sidelined from the probe following Whelan’s protest, leading to a final report that excluded their critical findings. That report, released in March 2019, reached the unsupported conclusion that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that chlorine gas was used in Douma, aligning with the US-led narrative of Syrian government culpability.  Last October, over a year after the cover-up became public, Bellingcat claimed to have obtained a “draft version” of an OPCW letter sent to Whelan that disproved all of his concerns. The Grayzone quickly demonstrated that Bellingcat’s “letter” was a sham.  When The Grayzone obtained the real OPCW letter sent to Whelan, it contained none of Bellingcat’s distorted text. The Bellingcat letter claimed that new scientific “methods” had found “chlorinated pinene compounds” in Douma wood samples that proved chlorine gas use. It also stated that Russia and Syria had secretly accepted the OPCW’s conclusions. However, the OPCW’s own published documents undermined both assertions. Bellingcat has refused to explain the fraud that it perpetrated. Nick Waters, a Bellingcat staffer who was directly involved in producing the anonymously bylined story, deleted embarrassing tweets in which he gloated about his fake scoop. Since then, Waters has ignored queries from The Grayzone. Bellingcat has now been caught in another act of deception.  Identical typos reveal Bellingcat’s hidden author Emails obtained by The Grayzone show that at least eight months before Bellingcat published its fraudulent article impugning the OPCW whistleblower, a staffer for HuffPost UK pursued the same story. He is Chris York, a writer responsible for a consistent stream of attacks on prominent critics of the official story of Syrian government responsibility for a chemical attack in Douma – an odd niche for a reporter who scarcely mentioned Syria before 2017.  In one such email, York claimed to be on the verge of publication. Then, for some reason, he pulled back.  Bellingcat not only published the story that York claimed he was about to release, but used text that was identical to his in their final product. In its October 2020 article, Bellingcat quoted the letter that it claimed the OPCW had leaked. A side-by-side comparison of Bellingcat’s transcription of the letter in its article to the screenshot of the letter that it also published reveals two errors: a typographical error, and an omission of one definite article that appears in the original screenshot.  These errors were not made by Bellingcat. Instead, three months earlier, on July 27, Chris York of HuffPostUK sent an email to Wikileaks containing the same two errors in otherwise identical text. This can be seen by comparing York and Bellingcat’s text to Bellingcat’s screenshot:• Bellingcat’s screenshot says “developed methods for analysing wood”; by comparison, Bellingcat’s article, like York’s email, says “developed methods or analysing wood.” • Bellingcat’s screenshot says “different types of wood in the signatures of the chlorinated compounds produced”; by comparison, Bellingcat’s article, like York’s email, says “different types of wood in the signatures of chlorinated compounds produced.” Left: Chris York’s July 27 2020 email to Wikileaks erroneously quotes the purported OPCW document. York’s typos are highlighted. Right: Bellingcat’s October 26 2020 article repeats Chris York’s typos, instead of accurately quoting the screenshot that it published in its article. (The screenshot is in the first table above, as well as here: https://archive.is/1O3Du) The typos are beyond any possible coincidence, and not the only overlap. Nick Waters of Bellingcat not only published Chris York’s errors, but also copied questions that York had sent months earlier. Bellingcat “investigator” asks someone else’s questions In emailing queries to Wikileaks, Whelan, and me, Bellingcat’s Nick Waters once again used text originally sent by Chris York of HuffPost UK. A comparison shows that Waters’ queries in October are near carbon copies of queries that York sent in July.  York’s and Waters’ questions to Wikileaks contain virtually identical structure and verbiage across multiple paragraphs. (Waters also used the same language in emails that he sent to me and to Whelan). Bold: Identical language between York and Waters. Bold italicized: Language between York and Waters that conveys the same meaning. Original emails from Chris York of HuffPost UK and Nick Waters of Bellingcat, sent nearly three months apart. Waters’ message used mostly identical or similar language to York. Waters’ message also follows the exact same structure. Given that Bellingcat copied someone else’s text and did not write its own questions, the question that now arises is how and where Bellingcat’s material originated. One option is that Waters received York’s material and copied his entire set of questions, slightly changing the wording in a lazy effort to disguise the copying job. That would raise the question of how Bellingcat ended up with another outlet’s question: did York pass his questions to Waters? Or did someone else?  Another option is that neither Waters nor York wrote their overlapping questions or text to begin with, and received them instead from a mutual source. What is indisputable is that Bellingcat’s Nick Waters did not write the questions that he presented as his own.  The Grayzone sent multiple queries to Waters and Bellingcat about the overlap between their material and HuffPost UK’s. They have not responded. “I can’t hold off publishing much longer”: How did Bellingcat get HuffPost UK’s leftovers? The fact that Bellingcat had its text circulated by another outlet months before raises serious questions about what role Bellingcat played in its “investigation.”  The chain of events began in early 2020, when Chris York of HuffPost UK first referenced the “document” that Bellingcat would later base its story on.  York wrote Dr. Brendan Whelan in February 2020, shortly after the OPCW released an internal inquiry baselessly maligning two whistleblowers it identified as Inspectors A and B. Just days before the inquiry’s findings were announced, the British journalist Brian Whittaker doxed Whelan, whose name he said had been leaked by someone with “access to sensitive OPCW information.” That same month, Bellingcat published an attack piece that identified Whelan as Inspector B.  In light of those attacks, the timing and nature of York’s outreach to Whelan suggests that it may have been a part of a coordinated effort to impugn him.   “I was hoping to speak to you about some documents that Wikileaks do not appear to have released yet,” York wrote to Whelan on February 26, 2020. Whelan did not reply. York followed up again on March 7th, which Whelan also ignored.  Four months later, York sent Whelan a final message claiming that publication was imminent. “I’ll soon be publishing an article on the Wikileaks Douma leaks, specifically on a document that wasn’t publicly released but appears to contradict some of the points Wikileaks and yourself have put forward,” York wrote on July 16. During this same period, York also reached out to Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson. In one email, York shared with Hrafnsson the same error-laden transcription of part of the text of the OPCW draft letter that would later surface at Bellingcat. Just as Bellingcat would do months later, York additionally accused Wikileaks of hiding the document. Releasing it, York alleged on August 17, “would have completely contradicted the narrative you put forward that the Douma attack was staged.”  York was so confident in his false belief that the document disproved the whistleblower – and that others beyond him had actually received it – that he chided Wikileaks for failing to issue a public correction in response. “[A]fter HuffPost UK discovered the existence of this document and questioned Wikileaks about it,” York scolded, “you have done nothing to correct the record and have instead let the disputed narrative about a ‘staged’ chemical attack go unchecked.”  August 17, 2020: In an email to Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, Chris York of HuffPost falsely suggests that Wikileaks and an OPCW whistleblower have hid a OPCW “document” which “would have completely contradicted the narrative you put forward that the Douma attack was staged.” He also scolds Wikileaks for having “done nothing to correct the record” in response to the document he “discovered.” In reality, the OPCW “document” was never sent to anyone and contained false claims. The fact that York claimed to have “discovered” the document suggests that it was only passed to Bellingcat after HuffPost UK dropped the story. Bellingcat’s omission of HuffPost UK’s original role – while simultaneously copying the fraudulent content of its text – demonstrates a flagrant disregard for transparency, and stands at odds with Bellingcat’s professed fidelity to “open source,” “verifiable” evidence.  Just as he did with Whelan, York informed Wikileaks that he was on the verge of publishing his story. “I’ll be publishing the article at the weekend so a response before then would be appreciated,” York wrote Hrafnsson on July 22. On August 4th, York followed-up with one final plea: “Could I please get a response to this, I can’t hold off publishing much longer.” August 4 2020: Chris York of HuffPost UK tells Wikileaks that he “can’t hold off publishing much longer.” He ultimately never published. York’s article never appeared at the HuffPost UK.  In a brief phone conservation with me on October 27th, the day after his story surfaced at Bellingcat, York said that he would read the Bellingcat article before responding to my questions. He has since gone quiet and failed to respond to multiple emailed queries from The Grayzone. His editors at HuffPost UK have kept mum as well. Converging disinformation from Bellingcat and BBC Although the identity Bellingcat-HuffPost UK’s dodgy source is unknown, the participation of a third outlet in this story – the UK state broadcaster BBC — offers a strong candidate.  Just weeks after Bellingcat’s debunked story appeared, the BBC released a podcast that attempted to advance the same bogus line. “Mayday” host Chloe Hadjimatheou repeated the Bellingcat letter’s falsehoods about the wood samples and the secret Syria-Russian acceptance of the OPCW’s final report. In yet another uncanny crossover, Hadjimatheou also falsely suggested that one of the OPCW whistleblowers received a payment from Wikileaks. In emails to Wikileaks and Whelan one month before Mayday was aired, Bellingcat’s Nick Waters made the same insinuation.  While her uncritical promotion of the Bellingcat-HuffPost UK letter’s debunked assertions was nothing new, Hadjimatheou did offer one significant contribution. To make her case against the whistleblowers, Hadjimatheou interviewed someone whom she claimed was an anonymous OPCW official operating behind the pseudonym, “Leon.” Hadjimatheou did not specify what role, if any, Leon played in the Douma investigation. The anonymous official also offered nothing of substance beyond what was already claimed in the bogus OPCW letter released by Bellingcat. It is possible, therefore, that Leon was the real source of the fraudulent information provided to Bellingcat and HuffPost UK. If the BBC is correct that Leon is an actual OPCW official, then the implications are serious. It means that alongside the OPCW’s refusal to account for the Douma cover-up, an OPCW staffer is spreading disinformation about former employees who challenged it.  The OPCW did not respond to The Grayzone’s questions about whether it is investigating the “draft letter,” or Leon’s comments to the BBC. If the OPCW is not probing this defamatory conduct, its inaction could be read as a tacit endorsement. The Grayzone also asked the BBC’s Hadjimatheou about her recycling of Bellingcat’s debunked claims, Leon’s qualifications to comment on the Douma investigation, and other major lapses in her reporting. Hadjimatheou initially said that she would reply to me in writing. After receiving my questions, she backtracked on that pledge and declined to offer any responses. In the absence of any explanation from these three outlets – BBC, Bellingcat, and HuffPost UK – on how they have targeted OPCW whistleblowers with identical false material repeated by an unidentified OPCW source, another common denominator might help fill in the silence. Just like the BBC, Bellingcat and HuffPost UK have formal British government ties of their own.  The editor of HuffPost UK, Jess Brammar, has helmed the outlet while simultaneously serving as a member of the UK government’s Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee, which censors journalism on behalf of “UK military and intelligence operations,” in the name of “national security.” For its part, Bellingcat is a founding “partner” in a UK government propaganda operation, the Open Information Partnership (OIP), funded with $13.7 million in taxpayer money. Bellingcat was enlisted in the OIP even though its UK state partners have privately doubted its credibility. A leaked internal assessment produced for the OIP concluded that: “Bellingcat was somewhat discredited, both by spreading disinformation itself, and by being willing to produce reports for anyone willing to pay.”  Whoever is behind the attacks on veteran OPCW scientists, Bellingcat’s role in the smear campaign is absolutely clear. While marketing itself publicly as an “open source” collective of crime-solving digital sleuths, Bellingcat has been used as a proxy in a disinformation campaign to whitewash a major global deception and defame the whistleblowers who challenged it. It is duplicitous enough to let someone else write its material, and sloppy enough to get caught. 

Did the CIA pressure Yemen to release al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki?

Recordings released by the Houthi government of Yemen raise new questions about Washington’s support for the same jihadist militants it has claimed to be waging war on. (This report was originally published...