Slashdot Mirror
Kremlin Falls For Its Own Fake Satellite Imagery (thedailybeast.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Turkish downing of the Russian SU-24 jet last November saw a predictable series of statements from each side claiming complete innocence and blaming the other entirely. Social media was a key battleground for both sides — the Turkish and Russian governments, along with their supporters — as each tried to establish a dominant narrative explanation for what had just happened. In the midst of the online competition, a little-observed, funhouse mirror of an online hoax was brilliantly perpetrated, one with consequences likely exceeding the expectation of the hoaxster. The Russian Ministry of Defense was duped by a fake image that Russian state media itself had circulated more than a year earlier, as a way to deny Moscow's involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
The Kremlin has outsourced the editing and faking department to India where an underpaid and overworked employee just used the last copy and did some airbrush.
are you sure it was not leftover from the images used to 'prove' existence of wmd in saddam's iraq? based on such fakes almost everyone in usa supported war (including clintons, though not obama or trump) which ended up killing millions, creating iran friendly iraq and isis, and finally with americans running as fast as possible from the mess they created.
WTF? The only claims I've ever seen to the effect that MH-117 had been shot down by *another plane* have come from the Russians.
Everybody else says and has been saying all along that it was a Russian-made AA battery, probably used by the rebels after getting it from the Russians. The Dutch investigation appears to confirm this.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I have never understood why the owners and editors of a news outlet would call it "The Daily Beast". The name was first invented by Evelyn Waugh in his famous novel of journalistic corruption "Scoop". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Waugh makes it perfectly clear that "The Daily Beast" closely reflects the preferences of its owner, Lord Copper, who is ignorant, violently prejudiced, and deeply unpleasant. In short, it's a gutter-press rag which cannot even be trusted to get the bare facts right, and whose opinions are deeply biased.
Is it an attempt at "irony"?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
WTF? The only claims I've ever seen to the effect that MH-117 had been shot down by *another plane* have come from the Russians.
Everybody else says and has been saying all along that it was a Russian-made AA battery, probably used by the rebels after getting it from the Russians. The Dutch investigation appears to confirm this.
Of course the Russians are the only people saying MH-17 might have been shot down by a fighter. The Ukrainian Armed Forces had the only fighters in the country at that time. (They may all have rusted to bits by now, or fallen to pieces for lack of maintenance). So if a fighter did the deed, it could only have been on the orders of the Kiev junta.
The term "Russian-made" is an interesting though disingenuous piece of sophistry. Of course, as Ukraine was part of the USSR, all its military equipment was "Russian-made" (although it might have been manufactured and even designed anywhere in the USSR, including Ukraine itself). Logically, the fact that a weapon is "Russian-made" implies that it might be used by the UAF - or not. It definitely cannot be used to imply that it wasn't used by the UAF. Incidentally, it would be interesting to notice where the weapons come from that ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups use. Namely the USA; although the US armed forces lose so much of their weapons and equipment through negligence and sheer forgetfulness that it's hard to know if this is deliberate or not in any given case. However the Russian helicopter that was shot down and destroyed by terrorists while trying to rescue the crew of the shot-down Su-24 was definitely hit by an American TOW missile.
The Dutch inquiry hasn't decided much of anything, and certainly hasn't published much useful evidence. Here is some insight into the feelings of the victims' relatives: http://www.rt.com/news/310195-...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
1. The Dutch investigators already reported, it was shot down by ground to air Russian missiles.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-mh17-investigation-idUSKBN0H40LM20140909
2. Turkey warned the su24 it was heading to Turkish airspace, and shot it down. It is not the first nor will it be the last time Russia has invaded Turkish airspace.
Your claim "a few seconds" is false, it is not accidental, it is tactical invasions of airspace.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/turkey-says-russia-violated-its-airspace-again-despite-warnings-n507686
It is not the Ukranian fault for failing to stop flights over captured airspace over invaded Ukraine. It is not Turkeys fault that Russian jets repeatedly invade its airspace. It is Putin, it is Russia.
Fuck off you Russian troll.
The "other" plane was claimed by Russia to have been spotted on radar was determined to be an Su-25 (a CAS/ground attack plane that many argue could not have reached a high enough altitude to attack MH17) NOT an Su-27 which is an air superiority fighter easily capable of reaching MH17's altitude and then some. The Su-25 does not have a "twin tail" configuration which is why the BS claimant for this pic changed it to Su-27, which was never claimed. So bullshit and more bullshit - but hey it's on the internet it must be true.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
OK, you must be a Kremlin-paid troll. The Dutch inquiry have tracked down the fucking serial number of the SAM from the shrapnel. With access Russian records (and Ukrainian, if you like) it could be traced precisely how it ended up with the rebels.
What a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive
But if the truth is what gets caught
Russia's phony story gets bought.
Burma Shave.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You should understand the seriousness of the situation. After the turkish downed that russian Su-24 plane, resulting in the death of one of the pilots and a an airborne assault trooper involved in the other's rescue mission, Russia's GRU provided sensitive HUMINT data to the marxist kurdish rebels. Based on that data, a kurdish workers' party kamikaze car bomb rammed an (otherwise unmarked) bus carrying turkish air force personnel. The explosion killed 20 pilots and maimed several others, who were flying F-16s for the Turkish AF. The KIA included the particular pilot who downed the Su-24. Two full fighter jet squadrons immediately lost their combat capability due to lack of personnel and no turkish pilot will dare to go anywhere red star marked planes for a long time... This is how things are done by Russia.
NATO is not willing to stand up for Turkey any more, because Erdogan behaves like a total lunatic and better replace him with a logically calculating general in a soon to happen coup d'etat. (Military dictatorship has always been the normal way of life in post-ottoman Turkey.)
But if Turkey still tries to play the role of a strong guy, their military airports will be pelted by russian Iskhander ballistic missiles (~ Pershing-2 on steroids). You may consider that Blackwater recently pulled out all of is mercenary troops from Saudi Arabia, after the houthi rebels of Yemen pelted them with smaller ballistic missiles made in Iran, copycats of the russian Tochka-M design, in total killing almost a thousand saudis and mercenaries in six precision strikes. There were many high ranking officers among the dead and large amount of vehicles destroyed, because the missiles impact at Mach 6 and can cause tremendous devastation with just half a ton of conventional warhead. It's like a man-made asteroid. many sources think the suprisingly successfull houthi rebels are actually a mixture of yemeni locals, iranian spec-ops troops and russian military advisors.
Of course Russians are guilty.
As are Ukrainian air traffic controllers for letting civil aircraft into an area where planes have been shot at and shot down on regular basis during days leading to MH17 disaster. This part of dutch report is not all that popular for some reason.
Hint: Fighter planes a few miles above the ground will not cover the area of entire crop fields, when photographed from satellites hundreds of miles up. They will appear almost the exact same size as sitting on the ground.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm not hearing much confessions from the US wrt civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More like, "Fuck the Russian government for giving advanced anti-aircraft tech to a bunch of drunken idiots who managed to hit the wrong plane."
The drunken idiots were probably Russian soldiers.
No way the Russians would give control of a system like that to irregulars not under direct Russian control - you don't give any arms to any army that you can't let them have permanently. They have guns - if you want your toy back they might not let you have it.
And it worked good until we had to go back and clean up the mess we made.
It's not just Russian trolls: there are swaths of people active online in the Western world to whom everything that their own government does, or related governments do, is part of an enormous conspiracy theory. You see it in the evolution theory discussions, and in MH17: someone has cooked up a theory alternative to what they've been told by the MSM, so it must be right. It's the right wing version of 'down with us'.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
The Dutch inquiry have tracked down the fucking serial number of the SAM from the shrapnel.
Link, please. And what is the serial number, since you have this important information?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
A classic piece of "poisoning the well". In case you haven't heard, it's a standard logical fallacy used to avoid meeting an argument with any actual facts.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
How many Russian trolls inhabit /. to mark this crap informative? Every single word is straight out of the Russian propaganda playbook. Not a single statement resembles reality.
'This is Karl Rove territory. The principle seems to be, "Whatever you do that is evil, blame your opponent for it first." I propose to call this The Rove Doctrine'. http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
Though this should not be surprising since there is no word for truth in the Russian language.
"Pravda". Although any linguistics expert will tell you that, if a language did lack a word for "truth", that would actually suggest that the speakers did not know how to lie.
The fact this St. Petersburg-based Russian troll used Russian insider as their source should be the clearest evidence this is nothing but blatant propaganda on the part of the Kremlin trolls.
'This is Karl Rove territory. The principle seems to be, "Whatever you do that is evil, blame your opponent for it first." I propose to call this The Rove Doctrine'. http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Except Buk-M doesn't really look like something that a bunch of drunken idiots can operate:
http://www.rusarmy.com/pvo/pvo...
And it was likely operated by Russian army "on vacation"
In fact, even the rebels themselves boasted about it (a rebel commander tweeted about it, not knowing they shot down a passenger plane).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Why should I Google for something - with no certainty that it even exists - when someone has claimed that he has seen it?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
What else is the regime in Kiev to be called? Even the current (illegal) "President" Petro Poroshenko has publicly admitted that the overthrow of his predecessor, President Yanukovych, was illegal.
'In a remarkable document, which is not posted at the English version of the website of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, but which is widely reported outside the United States, including Russia, Poroshenko, in Ukrainian (not in English), has petitioned the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (as it is being widely quoted in English):
'“I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as unconstitutional.”
'The official Ukrainian news-agency, Interfax-Ukraine, headlined this on June 20th, “Poroshenko asking Constitutional Court to recognize law stripping Yanukovych of presidential title as unconstitutional”'.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
As for "Russia Insider" being owned by the Russian government, can you please post details of how you know that to be true? If you don't, I'll assume your statement is unsupported.
It's irrelevant anyway. The reason I read sources such as RI and RT (among many others) is that the Western mainstream media are completely useless as impartial sources for international news. For a variety of reasons they have all been substantially subverted by Western governments - ironically, it is the Western MSM that is effectively government-owned, whereas RI and RT are relatively accurate and objective.
And, whereas you and others persist in calling me a troll, I am beginning to be fairly sure that it is you who are (mostly, at any rate) trolls. You do not seem to be in the least interested in facts, figures, logic, sources, or truth. If anyone dares to disagree with you, you simply insult them in the hope that they will give up in disgust. Well, I shan't. I am sure that many Slashdotters have open minds and want to know the truth, and it is worth putting up with a little childish mudslinging to help them.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
WTF are you smoking? It'd need more than a few SAM batteries for them to be able to tell Russia to go pound sand.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So once again, I'm curious (and skeptical) enough to go read the linked story. And once again there is not a single link to any source to substantiate the claims in the summary (or the title of the article). All it has is a picture of a tweet by some unknown "news outlet" with the old fake satellite image and a crudely drawn border and an arrow pointing to it that says "border". Did someone confuse March 1st with April 1st? I mean, it's something a kid would draw, doesn't look even remotely like anything official. There are no links to the source in the article, no references to where this picture is from, nothing. It's not even explained in what possible way the Ministry of Defense is involved, just that it was somehow "duped". Am I suppose to go google the truth now? Why are all these bullshit political stories on Slashdot lately?!
However the Russian helicopter that was shot down and destroyed by terrorists while trying to rescue the crew of the shot-down Su-24 was definitely hit by an American TOW missile.
TOW: "tube launched, optically tracked, wired guided." Those still in use?? I was under the impression they were largely replaced by laser guided munitions over two decades ago (which were, in turn, made obsolete by GPS guidance).
Yeah well, most Dutch people know that the Dutch "investigation" that didn't even bother to ask for the radar images is supposed to point to the Russians as the guilty party. Any other outcome would be politically problematic.
The 'Drunken idiot' part is not in dispute.
The question is Russian drunken idiot or east Ukrainian drunken idiot?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
RI and RT are relatively accurate and objective.
Well, knock me over with a feather! I should've known this was a spoof
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'll bite.
None whatsoever. They're drunk morons. They fucked up, thought the 777 was an Ukrainian military cargo plane and proceeded to tweet about it.
Then they arrived at the crash site and had an "Oh shit" moment and immediately proceeded to try a hasty cover-up.
You have no point. You're just spewing useless facts. The origin of Ukraine's material is not in dispute and is utterly irrelevant. The origin of Daesh/ISIS/whatever's material is not in dispute - they were financed by Qataris, looted the incompetent Iraqi forces, charged local populations protection money and bought weapons on the black market - and is absolutely irrelevant to the current discussion.
The DSB determined that the plane was destroyed by a SAM, directly contradicting the Kremlin's fantasy story.
Now, let's look at more facts:
* Several Ukrainian aircraft had been shot down in the previous month, with Little Green Men ("separatists") boasting about it.
* The Ukrainians say they had no SAMs in the area. This is believable, because they had literally no aerial targets whatsoever. There is no military reason to have a SAM launcher in the area, much less to operate one.
* The Russian Little Green Men were very quick to boast of having downed a supposed Ukrainian transport aircraft.
* There is no Ukrainian aircraft missing that could be attributed to such an event.
* The Russian Little Green Men were even quicker to try to eliminate the aforementioned boasts from the internet.
* A Russian Buk was spotted hastily leaving the area with one conspicuously-absent missile
* Instead of cooperating with a transparent investigation, as is required by international law, the Little Green Men stonewalled every attempt at investigation on-site for months. They tampered with the scene (at least by virtue of being there, probably beyond that).
* The Kremlin's theory is pure bullshit - the damage is not consistent with Air-to-Air missiles or cannon fire, the supposedly responsible fighter doesn't even have enough performance to get to the same flight level as a 777 in cruise (except for a possible upgraded variant - which only Russia has!)
The only logical conclusion:
The self-titled separatists or their Russian Little Green Men handlers shot down MH17 with a Buk. Most likely the latter, since a Buk is not something you can just train a random troublemaking hired gun on in a haste. They intended to hit another Ukrainian aircraft but misidentified their target or didn't even bother to try. They fucked up and were extracted in a hurry.
Odd loose ends:
Why did the stonewalling proceed for so long? Clearly, they could've put on the show for a week to do a cleanup to remove any traces of the Buk. And the Russians (who were illegally sent the black boxes, since they were not involved in the investigation - the DSB, representing the majority of the victims and the flight's origin; the US NTSB, representing the state of manufacture; or the Malaysian counterpart as the state of the operator were the only logical choices) did not evidently tamper with the black boxes (if they did, they were incompetent), since their data is 100% consistent with the debris.
Why claim it was a SU-25? Surely the Kremlin's Guy in Charge of Soviet Bullshit has enough resources to choose an appropriate plane to claim that the Ukrainians used.
Additional comments:
"Little Green Men" and "separatists" are used interchangeably. Technically, there are a few groups (in an approximate order of significance at the time): Russian troublemakers sent by the Kremlin; Russian troops operating without identification (which, I'd like to remind everyone, is a war crime) - these include specialized units handling Russian equipment that requires training; real Ukrainian citizens who do want to be Russian and, finally, a tiny portion of Russian volunteers swayed by propaganda.
RT is an incredibly biased source located in a country known for its love of bullshit stories that are meant to cover-up its mistakes. It is not to be taken seriously. A Daesh twitter account will probably have fewer lies than RT.
Some final, personal comments:
The whole treatment of the issue is frankly disgusting. Putin is a very small person (he's also shorter than he'd like to show, judging by his pres
They probably are, on the ground. Not on aircraft, but since you're static on the ground anyway, the wire isn't much of a drawback and makes the whole thing much cheaper.
Radar is not needed.
Air-to-Air missiles use different warheads than the Buk. The shrapnel damage is not compatible with the former but is compatible with the latter.
Anything else is Russian propaganda.
Unless they magically had specific training on the Buk weapons system, their chances of even launching a missile would be slim to none.
And, since you mention Nazis, I'll point out that it is, in fact, the Russians who are acting like Nazis.
* Annexing neighbors under the guise of protecting people of the same ethnicity? Check.
And what the hell is "Photoshoppe"? Is that a 19th century photographer or something?
No, it's the photo-editing program they used in the 19th century on the steam-powered computers they had back then....
True, to some extent, though: There are a lot of soviet-era weapons systems still in use with only minor updates, and Russia does have an arms export industry.
The plane was shot down by a Russian weapons system, but it could have been found or given to the rebels. If given, it evidently didn't come with a well-trained operator.
Illegal president? How long does the term of the (criminal) Yanukovych last? At what point in time is it allowed to democratically elect someone else?
RT is a mouthpiece of the Putin and the Kremlin, it's is as objective as Fox News is here. It knows that if it is critical of Putin it will be suppressed. Stop listening to the Russian dictator and start using your head.
They can tell by the pixels.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Presumably you won't. That's not what this conversation is about. Why you'd expect the US to pop in, interrupt, and drone on about an entirely different subject is beyond me. Does that happen often in your world? In your world, do people, especially country representatives, just regularly pop in and say completely off-topic things about entirely different events that are only barely related? If they do, then that might be where you learned the behavior.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
> If given, it evidently didn't come with a well-trained operator.
I dunno? They hit their target.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Russians are not acting like Nazis. They are acting like Russians, which is worse. Compare with the pretext for them invading Poland in 1939.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Ok, lets see the alternative - USSR refuses to occupy eastern part of Poland, so Hitler takes it all, up to the soviet border. Less territory between Germany and soviet industrial cities - worse position for USSR in 41. That was a good reason for occupation by itself. And, BTW, Poland was part of Russian Empire until it's demise in 1917 - some 22 years prior this events, just like Ukraine now.
Unless they magically had specific training on the Buk weapons system, their chances of even launching a missile would be slim to none.
Who do you mean by they? Ukrainians have Buk's and S300's, look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - evidently they a able to fire those at random targets and deny everything afterwards.
I tell you it's a coin flip, both sides had a technical means to do it, Ukrainians had motive, Russians had not. Sorry but I have zero trust for "evidence" produced by either side.
I think we can all agree, at the very least, that Ukrainian air traffic controllers did not shoot down that plane.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
TOWs were used on helicopters, but were quickly replaced by more fire-and-forget munitions, or ones that could be guided by other laser-designators (for example a ground spotting team). It's much easier to hide from enemy fire in a trench/behind earthworks and use a TOW than to use it while hovering in a helicopter.
Fuck you.
"good reason for occupation"? That is the single most disgusting comment in here.
Ukrainian armed forces probably have training, random Ukrainian thugs do not.
And the supposed "motive" is far more farfetched than "they fucked up and misidentified the target". The Ukrainians had no targets to misidentify because there were no hostile aircraft around.
Yeah, I meant "Not on aircraft anymore".
A TOW is rather cumbersome on a chopper, as you said.
This kind of thing actually happens fairly frequently. The various functions of intelligence and counter intelligence are well compartmentalized out of necessity.
It isn't, and hasn't for a long time, just been a story of these people duping eachother, but in fact, quite often, duping themselves.
In fact, I have even seen claims that some of the torture techniques used by the CIA were the result of SERE training, but SERE training was the result of incorrect information about the use of torture which originated in propaganda against our public enemies.
The snake has been devouring its tail for decades now. Saw a fascinating talk that touched on a lot of this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
"The Ukrainian Armed Forces had the only fighters in the country at that time. (They may all have rusted to bits by now, or fallen to pieces for lack of maintenance). So if a fighter did the deed, it could only have been on the orders of the Kiev junta."
Not that using words like "Kiev junta" don't give the fact away that you're a Putin apologist, but might I note that the plane was hit from a missile at the front when it's position was extremely close to the Russian border meaning any aircraft in that position to fire at the airliner from that position would have had to cross into Russia proper to get into the correct firing position?
This would beg the question as to:
a) Why Russia didn't intercept or shoot down the intruding aircraft.
b) Why it has no radar or photograph evidence of this incursion.
c) What type of Ukrainian aircraft could possibly both carry and launch a BUK missile given that report evidence shows that this is what the missile was and that Ukraine has no air-launch platform for this missile type and also remain completely undetected by the Russian military (Hint: No such aircraft exists).
"Here is some insight into the feelings of the victims' relatives: http://www.rt.com/news/310195-..." ...on Russia's very own state propagandist's website. That doesn't paint a very strong picture for your argument. It's equivalent to posting a link to Fox News as evidence that George Bush never did anything wrong ever.
Stop apologising for Putin, you're making a fool of yourself in trying to defend the indefensible and acting as someone who thinks it's okay for a nation state to kill hundreds of civilians (it's not, no matter who does it - just because America has fucked up a lot too doesn't mean Russia gets a free pass on murder).
There is an intermediate step you left out. The Russians gave the Ukrainian military some missile batteries, which then feel into the hands of ethnic Russian separatists in the Ukraine. It would be likely these separatists had been in the Ukrainian military and knew how to operate the missile battery. Badly.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Neither side had interest in downing a Dutch airliner.
Ukrainian side had no interest in downing ANYTHING, as "rebels" didn't have anything that could fly. (unless you consider thrown AK-47 a flying object)
Right after the incident, "Rebels" bragged about downing yet another Ukrainian jet.
So apparently Russians, sorry, "rebels", did it by mistake.
Commercial air lanes were way higher than the shootdowns that had occurred. Noone was expecting the russians to be stupid enough to give a Buk to semi-trained operators.
Then again, by making ukrainian airspace effectively off limits, Russia managed to deprive Ukraine of valuable foreign income.