Bellingcat

Site for citizen investigations of current events using open source information. Begun by Eliot Higgins and 8 volunteers and funded by a Kickstarter campaign.

 https://bellingcat.com  
Started: 2014
Founder: Eliot Higgins

In its own words:
"By and for citizen investigative journalists..."

Chooses random, anonymous (and probably fake) images from social media to suit whatever point you want to make - no need for any verification whatsoever.

Background of founder

In Oct 2012, Eliot Higgins was laid off from his job as an administrator at a nonprofit providing housing for asylum seekers.

In Aug 2013, Eliot Higgins noticed Twitter reports of a possible chemical-weapons attack in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus.

In Nov 2013, Eliot Higgins "confirmed" that Syria had used chemical weapons, without noticing that it was not the Syrian government that carried out the attacks.

Funding

On 15 Jul 2014, Eliot Higgins started Bellingcat for citizen journalism to investigate current events using open source information such as videos, maps and pictures. It was funded by a KickStarter campaign (£50,891 at 13 Sep 2014 from 1,701 contributions). The Kickstarter funding model is based on a cash-for gifts/favours model: backers "get to choose from a variety of unique rewards offered by the project creator. Rewards vary from project to project ..."

Also of possible note: Kickstarter "Projects can’t mislead people or misrepresent facts, and creators should be candid about what they plan to accomplish". From the project home page: "bellingcat.com will unite citizen investigative journalists to use open source information to report on issues that are being ignored . . . Bellingcat will be an extension of Eliot’s work on the Brown Moses blog. ."

Until the creation of Bellingcat, the Brown Moses blog had not been concerned with events in Ukraine. Another difference is that whereas the Brown Moses blog was non-commercial, Bellingcat is now obviously a commercial venture.

Mystery MH17 Buk in Torez

On 18 Jul 2014, Bellingcat "Found The Buk Missile Launcher That Downed Flight MH17" - though the photograph, widely claimed to have been taken in the town of Snizhne, was actually taken in the town of Torez and under weather conditions significantly different to those on the day of the MH17 crash. Eliot Higgins (proprietor of Bellingcat: known for investigative social media and weapons analysis) didn't consider when the photograph was taken to be important. The photo used by Bellingcat in the "investigation" as to the location of the BUK was uploaded on 18 July 2014 at 18:26:41. This "investigation" as to the location of the BUK" is an unusual way to go about things. Why not simply ask the person who took it or whoever supplied it? And why not ask when it was taken?

2014 Jul 18, 8:36 PM: Within a minute or so of Brown Moses tweeting that the Buk had been geolocated to Torez, James Miller (managing editor of Interpretermag) commented: "cool. Where?". James Miller, coincidentally, had been asked to geolocate the image (which appears to have originated from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry) only the day before.

Mystery MH17 Buks that did NOT get geolocated by Bellingcat

Ukrainian Forces BUK column

Still from a video taken in March 2014, when Ukrainian media reported the country’s military was concentrating air defenses closer to the Russian border to repel an “invasion”. Includes Kiev air-defense system no. 312.

Ukrainian Forces BUKcolumn

Sergey Paschenko

Captioned by TheDaily Mail as: "Is this the smoking gun? This picture has emerged of a pro-Russian rebel posing in front of the same type of BUK missile launcher that is believed to have shot down MH17" Though, actually, it is a Ukrainian Army conscript guarding Ukrainian Army Buks.

Sergey Paschenko selfie.jpg

Buks on Ukraine Military TV

Broadcast the evening prior to MH 17: a Buk-system in training/preparation - complete with radar.

Buks on Ukrainian Military-TV

321 at night

On July 19 Kiev’s Security Service (SBU) published photos online it claimed showed ‘Russia’ secretly withdrawing a BUK-M (NATO designation SA-11) surface-to-air missile system from the Ukraine civil war zone. Shortly after publishing this article, the photo in question was deleted. The photo was actually a still from video of a Kiev air-defense system no. 312, filmed in March this year at Yasinovataya, north of Donetsk. Buk #312 is mounted on a civilian transporter.

Ukrainian Forces BUK #312 at night

Torez BUK article conclusions

With the Kiev government having 27 BUK systems and the dissidents having (allegedly) one Russian-supplied and crewed system, it is statistically more likely to have been a Kiev BUK fired at MH17, especially considering Ukraine Air Defense expertise.

Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 (a commercial flight) was shot down by the Ukrainian military over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001. Ukraine banned the testing of Buk, S-300 and similar missile systems for a period of 7 years following this incident. Ukraine’s acting Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh described the combat readiness of the country’s armed forces as “unsatisfactory” in his 12 March 2014 report to the acting president. Tenyukh said recent exercises demonstrated a “dismal degree of preparedness among servicemen and lack of military specialists, equipment and weapons” in the Ground Forces, the Air Force and the Navy. The country’s air defense troops had received little training because of the 2001 ban on missile launches imposed after the crash of a Russian Tu-154 passenger jet. The ban was lifted in 2008, but so far only 10 percent of Air Defense Forces servicemen “have mastered the required level of theory and practice,” the report said. . The Ukrainian military had several batteries of Buk surface-to-air missile systems with at least 27 launchers, capable of bringing down high-flying jets, in the Donetsk region where the Malaysian passenger plane crashed, Russian Defense Ministry said .

The only thing that the Bellingcat investigation shows is that a particular photograph they were supplied with is of an area in Torez. Without knowing when this photo was taken, it proves nothing about Bellingcat's claim that it "Found The Buk Missile Launcher That Downed Flight MH17". Bellingcat accepted, without question, the line it was fed from Kiev that it was taken on the morning of 17 July. Bellingcat did not consider any other possible sightings of BUKs in the area. It is a straightforward case of cherry-picking "One Photograph" (Bellingcat's own words) to justify a story.

James Foley execution location

On 23 Aug 2014, Bellingcat made an estimate of the exact location where the James Foley execution video was made (outside Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold in north-central Syria), yet failed to notice that the video itself was a fake . See also: Turkish_Trailer.

Mystery MH17 Buk in transit

On 08 Sep 204, Bellingcat claimed "New evidence has been found that shows the Buk missile system that was used to shoot down MH17 on the 17th of July came from Russia, and was most likely operated by Russian soldiers.".

The first source quoted for there being a Russian BUK in Ukraine is a Paris-Match photo in the suburbs of Donetsk in the morning of 17 July. Russian satellite images show several BUK systems in the Donetsk area prior to MH17 but Bellingcat does not appear to have geolocated these or the Paris-Match video-frame.

Full article here via GoogleTranslate published July 25, 2014 | Updated July 29, 2014

Transporter-loaded BUK on the H21 main road from Donetsk to Torez. From YouTube Published on Jul 17, 2014, supposedly filmed at 11:40am on July 17th, geolocated to 48.017050, 38.301678 by Bellingcat (about 25km and 50 minutes from the next photo-op in Torez at 48.02448, 38.61451):

Note that it is on what appears to be the same civilian transporter, on a sunny day and headed away from the alleged launch site.

A photograph, allegedly "made at the time of launching rockets in the vicinity. Between Torez and Snizhne, which should be clearly visible inversion missiles, which shot down "Boeing-777" ... (interpreted from none-too clear GoogleTranslate Ukrainian-to-English translation) was released by the Ukraine Security Service. Note the clear conditions compared to the actual conditions at the time MH17 was shot down.

A BBC film crew went to locate this location and had the following to say:

"To find the place from which the smoke was allegedly coming from, we adopted as markers these three poplars and the group of trees. Presumably, this is the place that can be seen on the photograph published by the SBU. And here are our markers: the three solitary poplars and the small group of trees in the distance. The smoke that can be seen on the photograph came from somewhere over there [pointing behind her], behind my back. The SBU believes that this is a trace coming from the launch of a “BUK” missile. However, it must be noted that there are here, approximately in the same place, the Saur-Mogila memorial, near which the fighting continues almost unabated, and a coalmine. It turns out that the smoke with the same degree of probability could have been coming from any of these locations."

This BBC report was deleted shortly afterwards but later reinstated in edited format. See: BBC Russia MH17 report

Based on the BBC report, the launch is alleged to have occurred around here, which is about 30km from the nearest Russian border checkpoint, in Marynivki, avoiding major roads (geolocated photo).

Early the following morning, it is alleged to have been in Luhansk (by The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine/Bellingcat) and heading towards the Russian border, which is not the ideal route for getting from Torez to Russia. The Paris-Match caption for this photo says "The same truck photographed at dawn on Friday, July 18, 2014 by a surveillance camera in the city of Krasnodon, close to the Russian border, according to this image circulated by the Ukrainian intelligence." Krasnodon is in the Oblast of Luhansk, about 40km SE of Luhansk city. The civilian transporter is just passing a Bogdan Auto billboard. It appears to be the same truck.

On July 22, Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov, gave the exact coordinates of the video’s location: separatist-held Luhansk, about a 45-minute drive from Krasnodon. as 48.545760°, 39.264622°map (about 70 metres from where this photo was taken) 1.5km off the nearest M04 junction and heading towards Kiev-controlled areas: 7km from Roskoshnoye (which was "Claimed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence to be liberated from separatist forces as of July 14") and 21 km from Luhansk Airport (which was not abandoned by Ukrainian forces until September 1)[1].

It is shown on a civilian transporter, whereas those shown in Russia are on military transporters. The BUK has a white patch on its right-hand side and no railings - like one seen in Russia in June: basically, that's it.

On July 19 Kiev’s Security Service (SBU) published photos online that it claimed showed ‘Russia’ secretly withdrawing a BUK-M (NATO designation SA-11) surface-to-air missile system from the Ukraine civil war zone. At the time SBU Chief Vitaly Naida declared to a mute press“The SBU has taken measures within the investigation and is getting clear evidence of Russian citizens’ involvement in the terrorist attack (on the Malaysian Airlines Boeing)”.

However, bloggers immediately spotted the photos were of a Kiev air-defense system no. 312, previously pictured in March this year, when several BUK-M systems were filmed at Yasinovataya, north of Donetsk. The Ukrainian "evidence" photos show a single missile launch vehicle, whereas a Buk-M complex consists of at least three vehicles: missile launcher, radar and command vehicle. Ideally, a transporter loader vehicle would also form part of the system. This Ukraine SBU "evidence" shows two different transporters (with and without a blue flash on the cab. With one of the two photos (obviously faked and later removed) being submitted by the Ukraine SBU as "evidence", Bellingcat would reasonably have been expected to question the first one.

This "new evidence" has been manipulated into the Wikipedia article, courtesy of the accounts: My very best wishes, Sayerslle, Geogene, Stickee and Martinevans123 [2] [3]

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Anatoly Shariy	“[...], according to many experts, it's an MI6 organization.”	Anatoly Shariy	18 October 2020
Zinc Network	“Bringing together organisations including Zinc Network, the Institute for Statecraft, Aktis Strategy, Bellingcat, DFR Lab, the Media Diversity Institute, Toro Risk Solutions and Ecorys, our Consortium combines recognised market leaders in understanding, monitoring, and countering Kremlin-backed disinformation... This ecosystem of credible voices will continue to grow, exposing the actors and networks behind Kremlin-backed disinformation, reducing unwitting multipliers of disinformation, and building resilience amongst key target audiences across Europe. We will mobilise a Network Hub based in London, led by an experienced Project Director, consisting of an agile team with core competencies augmented by a wider pool of vetted experts. Our approach is highly localised, based around regional clusters of actors who can collaborate to effectively undermine the disinformation ecosystem in their respective areas and engage audiences most vulnerable to disinformation... It is a highly complex project involving coordination of many independent actors, and thus risk must be carefully managed and risk profiles constantly adapted, serving as the basis for all activity. The approach we propose is based on the identification, monitoring and management of risks as they materialise, allowing members to continue taking smart risks as they increase the scale and impact of their activities.”

 

Sponsors

Event	Description
Adam Smith International	London-based consultancy charged with overseeing the overseas work of the Adam Smith Institute. Used by British intelligence services to train puppet police forces in the Middle East.
Adessium Foundation	A secretive Dutch foundation that donates to projects backed by Western governments.
Google News Initiative	Google and the deep state buying domination over corporate media and creating tools to censor independent voices.
National Endowment for Democracy	The "traditional intermediary of the CIA", promoting the US "national interest" abroad by financing groups and individuals.
ProtonMail	Email and VPN server originally located in formally neutral Switzerland to avoid US/NATO surveillance or "information requests", but this has been hollowed out.
Sigrid Rausing Trust
Swedish Postcode Foundation

 

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Rating

17 January 2020 Terje 

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External links

• Use on Wikipedia so far
• Leaked/hacked emails and Facebook messages - Insight into Bellingcat funding and (dis)information sources