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Alleged Satellite Photo Says Ukraine Shootdown of MH17
theshowmecanuck (703852) writes A group calling itself the Russian Union of Engineers has published a photograph, picked up by many news organizations (just picked one, Google it yourself to find more), claiming to show that MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter plane. The interesting thing is the very quick ad hoc crowd sourced debunking of the photograph using tools from Google maps, online photos/data, to their own domain knowledge backed up with the previous information. It would be interesting to understand who the "Russian Union of Engineers" are and why they in particular were chosen to release this information.
If this is real, that has got to be the worst pilot I've ever seen.
You don't fire at such a square angle. You want to be behind or in front. You also don't fire missiles when you're so damn close.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
It's a laughably bad fake ... but speaks volumes about the lack of math or science training amongst reporters to propagate this stuff.
Yeah, where is Obama's birth certificate? I bet he wasn't even really born!*
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For a decent debunking go to the Bellingcat blog. Also saw some graphic somewhere that clearly showed that the perspective was wrong by an order of magnitude, either the plane was 1 km wide or the satellie was orbiting at 20 km or so. This fake is so bad, that I think the only target audience is the Russian public, most of whom believe everything that Putin's propaganda machine feeds them. I have a Russian colleague, whom I normally regard reasonably high, that believes some really strange facts about this incident. She probably gets all her info from Russian websites.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
In Soviet Russia, photo shops YOU!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What we do know is that the plane was downed with multiple, small, high velocity projectiles. The wreckage was found with them. In the west no one seems to want to even entertain the possibility that this was cannon fire. On the other hand, if it was downed by Ukraine then this hardly helps Russia's case.
Too many smoke and mirrors on this, and sadly, I don't think we will ever get the truth.
It's not for 'lack of training' that they propagate this stuff. The boss wants it on the front page. Makes for a good whodunit.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It does, though not much. Most forget that before this incident, most of the Europe was very much on the fence about who was more aggressive in the conflict.
Downing of a plane with a lot of Dutch on board triggered a heavy anti-Russian sentiment in a lot of European countries. It was literally a turning point in propaganda warfare.
But to be fair, even if we found out today that it was Ukrainians who did it, the damage has already been largely done. EU has taken the path it took, and a ship this big doesn't turn fast. Too many bridges burned on both sides, too many insults traded. It will probably take at least a decade to fix relations to pre-downing levels even if we find out that Ukraine was the one that shot down the plane.
And let's face it, even if they did, we won't be told for aforementioned "face saving" reasons. Union is already on a very shaky ground with GB almost splitting off, Juncker drowning in tax avoidance allegations, Hungary taking openly conservative anti-EU stance within EU and the obvious elephant in the room, Eurocrisis. Greece is due for the next "shaving of the debt" soon enough, which is bound to create even more internal tensions. External enemy makes it much easier for politicians to rally their people, and Russia played the proverbial bad guy role like champ by ramping up its aerial penetration testing across Europe.
The most common (cheapest) ground based heat seeker missiles in use today detonate prior to impact and throw shrapnel (multiple, small, high velocity projectiles) into the target to obtain the widest kill radius. It's like the difference between buckshot and a slug. And yes there are missiles of all sorts where the warhead stays intact until impact but they are usually more high end (expensive) and need the guidance systems intact as long as possible to make sure it goes through the right window or down the correct air shaft when launched from several miles away.
As a counterpoint, my first news sources were local community newspapers and nationally syndicated TV news -- both of which I avoid like the plague now.
This obviously is not an attempt at Russian propaganda. Russia has already stated that they've spotted an Su-25 on the left side of the aircraft. While Ukraine does have a few working MiG-29's, why would Russia suddenly change the story from an Su-25 to a MiG-29? Ukraine, however, has always insisted that a Russian MiG shot down the aircraft, when they weren't insisting that Donbass rebels or Russians shot down the plane with a BUK. So someone is trying to make it look like Russia is releasing this garbage which looks prepared by some Ukrainian half-wit.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
> What we do know is that the plane was downed with multiple, small, high velocity projectiles
Yes, it's called "shrapnel".
> even entertain the possibility that this was cannon fire
Because cannon fire has a minimum size of the puncture it can make, the size of the shell. The resulting marks on the aircraft will be a circle of that size, given a nice face-on strike, or elongations if the angle was more glancing. It can get much larger if the metal tears.
Now look at the image. There are many, many holes in the aircraft that are much smaller than a cannon shell. In fact, there are quite a few that are exactly the size of a piece of shrapnel.
So that's why "west no one seems to want to even entertain" the idea, it's clearly false.
What's truly alarming are the apparatchiks that were conveniently removed from the image.
My guess is CIA/Mossad.
Just out of curiosity, what would Mossad have to gain from something like this? I could see them trying to give Al Queda or ISIL some bad press, but what would they have to gain from making Ukraine look bad?
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Laughable doesn't begin to describe it.
The damned airplane is as large as a small town in that image.
Implies that area (and possibly others) are under constant surveillance.
I wonder how long until they can stream video from a satellite, store it, and go back later and watch the movements after a crime to see where and possibly who did it.
If they can't already.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If one is to believe the Russians (ha!) the picture shows a jet which is clearly not an Su-25 but rather a more modern Mig.
First, look at the wings. An Su-25 has a very shallow swept wing design which is because it is for ground attack. You need wings which are stable at slow speeds.
The jet in the forgery clearly has very sharp swept back wings consistent with all modern jet fighters.
In addition, if you look closely at the picture the Russians provided, there are no pods on the wingtips of the jet shown. Now look at the Su-25. Pods on each wing tip.
Also, the elevators (the small wings at the back of the jet) are too large in the picture provided. The Su-25 has much smaller, more narrow ones.
Second, look at the nose of the jet in the forgery. Long and pointy. Now go look at a picture of an Su-25. Shorter and more stubby, similar to a Harrier.
Finally, there is issue of ceiling. The Su-25 has a max ceiling of 23,000 feet. Most 777s fly from 35,000 to roughly 60,000. If the Su-25 was flying at roughly the same altitude as the jetliner, that means the pilot was flying higher than Mt. Everest without any oxygen because the Su-25 does not have a pressurized cabin.
Granted, none of this will matter to the Russian people, but anyone who has two brain cells can clearly see this isn't even close to being an Su-25 as the Russians claim.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I see no evidence that anyone who sounds sane does suspect Mossad.
Re "I'd put together a fake image which looks good enough to pass the sniff test for a day or two, but which is designed to "go off" shortly after when the public gets a chance to deconstruct it."
Some interesting ways to track this.
MI6 or CIA got something found in Russia and it was rushed out to the media. FSB just watched to track the origins, publication and expected Western media results.
Russia released the image internally to follow the image to expose some internal NGO or other well funded networks.
Limited hangout.
ie just to see something internal to Russia been activated.
Some other group set this in play and Russia, the US and UK are just interested to see where it tracks back and why.
So the value was not in the poor fake but its origins.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
In the US, it was reported that pro-Russia rebels immediately surrounded the crash area and actively interfered with the debris and prevented investigators from entering the scene. If that's true, that's says a lot about the guilty parties.
If anything is "obvious" here, it is that this is the propaganda equivalent of a False Flag attack. My guess is CIA/Mossad.
But surely the CIA/Mossad would be clever enough to realize that Anonanonaon would quickly figure out their False Flag strategy and expose them on Slashdot, so they'd know better than to try it... meaning that the only remaining explanation is that Russia put out the fake photo as a False False Flag attack, to make the CIA/Mossad look bad!
This is why you never go in against a Russian when death is on the line!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Oh, that's simple. The Russian tradition of conspiracy theory always blames the Jews. If you're the sort of person used to reading and believing conspiracy theories that justify Russia, it would take exceptional intellectual effort and insight to realize blaming the Jews makes no sense at all in a particular case.
Two points:
1) We know the rebels were using anti-aircraft weapons in the area because they said they were using anti-aircraft weapons. They got an AN-26, an SU-25, and an IL-76. I never read CNN because they are too damn cheap to do their own research, which means in international news they almost always end up parroting the President's line. But the BBC had extensive coverage of all three shoot-downs, it's quite skeptical of the official line (check out the Hutton Inquiry if you don;t believe me), and all were quite close (150 km or less) to MH17. They themselves repeatedly claimed to have done all three shoot-downs.
2) Your source does not understand how aerial combat works or looks. Canon fire produces lots of identical holes. Identical. The bullets are precisely machined to all be exactly the same size, they are coming in at the exact same angle, and they are hitting the exact same material. You don't get a 2 cm hole right by a 5 mm hole, you get a bunch of 30 mm holes.
Moreover his scenario may be "coherent," but it's stupid. Su-25s are not fighter aircraft, they are ground-attack aircraft. Their systems are not designed to accurately hit a specific part of an aircraft traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, they are designed to pepper a 30 mph tank with as many bullets as possible in the hopes that one will get lucky and hit a weak point in the armor. Moreover they have to be incredibly close to work, (under a km, a couple hundred meters is ideal), aimed straight at the target (the gun is welded onto the nose), and the pilots of a commercial aircraft are damn well gonna notice a military aircraft pointed straight at them, at maximum speed, closing to within a km. If the Ukrainians actually wanted to do this they'd use an actual fighter-jet, like a Mig-29 or Su-27, or they'd sneak a missile battery close to the front and use that.
OTOH, as I said we know the rebels were using anti-aircraft weapons. We know those weapons put a bunch of non-similar-sized holes in the planes cockpit. We know they boasted about shooting down a plane (which they thought was a large Yakovlev transport) at exactly the same time MH17 went down, and they pulled the post pretty much the second they realized the only plane missing in Ukraine was a neutral civilian airliner, etc. Most important we know their attempt to blame it on the other side is ridiculous. It's the kind of thing you think up when you've been caught red-handed and you don;t want to admit it, not the kind of thing you say because you believe it's true.
In my opinion, the most obvious and interesting theory [maxkeiser.com] is that Putin's plane was near the same air space close to the same time as MH17 ...
Your sense of what is "obvious" might be a bit off.
Web evidence points to pro-Russia rebels in downing of MH17 (+video)
Igor Girkin, a Ukrainian separatist leader also known as Strelkov, claimed responsibility on a popular Russian social-networking site for the downing of what he thought was a Ukrainian military transport plane shortly before reports that Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 had crashed near the rebel held Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
MH17 disaster: Social media posts, phone recording used to blame Russian separatists
Social media posts by pro-Russian insurgents - most of them hastily removed - suggest the rebels thought they had shot down a Ukrainian army plane before realising in horror that it was in fact a packed Malaysian airliner.
Ukraine and MH17: Who are the separatists?
On Thursday evening a Russian social media page linked to the rebels announced they had knocked down a Ukrainian An-26, adding, “We warned them – don’t fly ‘in our sky’”. The post – which was accompanied by distant video-shots of smoke rising after an apparent crash – was later removed, but it has stoked suspicions that pro-Russian militiamen shot the Malaysian Airlines jet by mistake.
The evidence that may prove pro-Russian separatists shot down MH17
Deadly Ukraine Crash: German Intelligence Claims Pro-Russian Separatists Downed MH17
Putin's plane was an hour away.
This could have been a simple, yet tragic, case of mistaken identity.
It was, but not as you apparently intend. It wasn't the Ukrainians trying to shoot down Putin and being mistaken but rather the "separatists" shooting at what they mistakenly assumed was a Ukrainian aircraft.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell