Russia: Don't look for who did the MH17 shootdown

[dystopian]

You mean, after we win you'll rage quit and then bitch about it on the Internet for a month?

Spearmen are fucking OP.

 

[Jayjay]

There are many, but let's take the Paris Match photo for example:

Paris Match (who has no reason to lie about it) says it was taken around 11am on July 17th, and the analysis of shadows shows that the time is beween 10am - 10:15am. It's further verified by other sightings in social media. But actually, asking for single image is misleading. The most convincing evidence is that all the photos and videos corraborate each other. You are trying to point out some pedantic doubts about single dating of individual images, and indeed some images or videos may be fake, but the scope of the conspiracy required to forge all of them is so astounding that it's ridiculous.

We have photos and videos of the convoy which supposedly had the buk in it that can be dated, but this "mystery buk" isn't in any of them.

Actually, there is a high probability that it was:

The Buk seen in Russia was dubbed “3×2” due to an obscured number on the side of the vehicle (as is the case with the ID numbers of many of the vehicles transported from Russia to Ukraine). The remaining parts of the numbers of the Buk photographed by Paris Match as well as the loading markings and white paint on the rubber side skirt below those numbers were in exactly the same position.

A burn mark above the exhaust visible in one of the Paris Match photographs was also in exactly the same position as the one seen on Buk 3×2 in Russia. While all of these pieces of evidence seemed to indicate that the Buk in Ukraine and Buk 3×2 were one and the same, an additional piece of evidence made the case particularly compelling. During Bellingcat’s research[40] into the many Buk sightings, it became clear that the rubber side skirt above the tracks of Buk missile launchers can become damaged over time and that this damage creates a unique “fingerprint” allowing different Buk photographs to be matched. In the case of Buk 3×2 and the Buk photograph by Paris Match in Donetsk, the side skirts were nearly identical.

It's not completely conclusive, but similarities are close enough to call it.

FAIL Jayjay.
I asked for a dated verified photo or video, and you give me this crap. I did not ask for you long winded justification for why you think this is real.
Now I will ask again. Do you have one verified and dated photo. This photo is neither dated nor verified.
This photo is "verified" by other photos on social media ...bwa ha hahahahahah

You are failing to understand the nature of how evidence is corraborated. The fact that the same truck with the same BUK was seen on the same day in multiple places along the route from Donetsk to Snizhne is verification.

None of those photos can be verified. So you can't use unverified photos to verify another photo. What court would accept that? Not to mention you have just thrown out this vague allegation that somewhere are some photos. Once you start mentioning specific ones you will look pretty silly.

Any court in the world would accept this as evidence, and weigh is against other evidence. You specificly wanted to talk about a single image, and I specified why we know it's from the date that it is, from multiple sources (Paris Match, social media spottings, analysis of the shadows in the photo). What you dont' seem to get is that thsi isn't a 0% or 100% certainty. We might know one photo is depecting a certain event at a, say, 50% certainty. When you have two such photos confirming the same event, that's 75% certainty. Three photos, 88% certainty. And so on. The evidence adds up.

What you are doings is basically irrelevant whining about pedantic details instead of looking at the big picture.

Do you even know who took them? Most of the photos and videos come from Ukrainain secret service. Why on earth would you take that at face value?

Where is your proof that this photo comes from Ukrainian secret service? Actually, I bet you can't show me a single photo that you can prove to be from Ukrainian secret service by your own standards of verification. Why don't you apply your own ridiculous standards of verification on any of the claims you make?

I gave you a photo that is both dated and independently verified..

No you have not. At best you have Paris Match saying that the mysterious anonymous photographer (if they even exist) told them he/she took it on such and such a day.

Seeing as most pf the "evidence" comes from Ukrainian secret service there is a good chance this one did too.

Then it should be easy for you to give some evidence about the alleged link between Paris Match and Ukrainian secret service.

Fact remains, I gave pretty good reasons to think the Paris Match photo is genuine and that it was taken on moring of July 17th 2014. You have provided zero evidence that it's not. You may do so in subsequent posts, but so far you haven't done so.

Paris Match have published photo-shopped photos before, and it is up to you to explain why you explain why anyone should accept it is real

Because Paris Match is a reputable newspaper (I asked you to prove otherwise, you have not even tried) and the photo is independently verified. If this was the only photo, and nobody else saw the truck, then you might have a point. But again you keep ignoring all the other evidence from the same day from multiple independent sources.

There seems to be a pretty good case it is photo-shopped too, but that is another hurdle you need to overcome. But first things first.

We have truckloads of fake evidence in this whole saga, so you need to somehow verify this one. It is very very easily done if it is real.

We also have truckloads of evidence that is not fake. And if it is so easy to do, then why don't you take up my challenge and do it for some photo that you think is genuine, such as photos of Ukrainian BUKs.

You keep ignoring the elephant in the room which is that there are multiple lines of evidence that all point to the same conclusion. If all the evidence was made up or misinterpreted, they would likely point to random directions instead of forming any kind of a coherent narrative.

You keep ignoring that most or all of the "evidence" comes from Ukrainian secret service of from Ukrainians who had social media accounts associated with Ukrainain Nazi/ultra nationalist groups.
Or were you unaware of that? Or from social media accounts that appeared for minutes then were closed down

Yet you are trying to peddle this bullshit as reliable.

In your world, every Ukrainian is a nazi and every Russian is a saint. That's not valid argumentation, it's jsut demonizing your opponents.

The social media accounts where it was reported are people who collect these sightings. People who actually do, wouldn't set up twitter account becuase that would put their lives in danger. And of course, they probably have pro-Ukrainian leanings and some of them might even be described as nationalists. But the issue here isn't that the reporters would be inbiased, it's that it would be practically impossible to coordinate the kind of vast conspiracy where they all agree to post to twitter at specific times and fake photos from Donetsk to Zures to Snizhne and even Russia and French Newspapers according to some insanely elaborate plan.

But even then, it's of course possible that some reports you see in social media are made up, and that's why it should never be the only source. But even if unreliable, it serves as verification of other data. You would like to pretend that every piece of evidence exists in a vacuum, but it doesn't. It adds up: multiple lines of evidence, pointing to the same conclusion means that something was going on. Random forgeries are often suspicious precisely because they are outliers and oddities and don't match with other evidence.

 

[Deepak]

Can't we just send in some special forces to shoot that kid who's got his finger in the dike and preemptively flood the place?

You would have to shoot thousands of kids to accomplish that; only to discover to your moral horror that your efforts were a waste, for we moved to AI controlled flood defenses almost 2 decades ago and have been transitioning to floating cities...

...your plan to defeat us is akin to a spearman attacking a helicopter gunship in Civ.

Floating cities you say

 

[tupac chopra]

There are many, but let's take the Paris Match photo for example:.............

We also have truckloads of evidence that is not fake.

Jayjay, what is this evidence? Let's have look and see whether it did come from suspect sources.

 

[Jayjay]

There are many, but let's take the Paris Match photo for example:.............

We also have truckloads of evidence that is not fake.

Jayjay, what is this evidence? Let's have look and see whether it did come from suspect sources.

Don't be facetious. This entire thread is for purpose of discussing the evidence, so unless you have Alzheimer's or somehow reset your brains five minutes ago, you can't really pretend that you haven't seen it any of it. For example, right now Will Wiley and I were discussing one particular piece of evidence, the photo of BUK on a truck taken by Paris Match in Donetsk. You could start with that.

But, the point was probably that there is a lot of real evidence. Of course there is. Actually the vast majority of photos or reports we get from Ukraine is genuine, and both sides agree. The videos or photos of MH17 crash site for example, nobody is saying they are forged or is asking for verification or hunting down of individual photographers to ask them to submit original raw images for analysis. But for some reason, when a photo that doesn't agree with some crackpot conspiracy theory, then the entire Russian troll army, 101st keyboard division, goes absolutely berserk! Suddenly there are Ukrainian secret service agents lurking at every corner and forging photos in French newspapers and infiltrating Russian social media accounts and hauling BUKs in rebel controlled territory unseen and flying invisible planes and whatever else you can imagine.

 

[tupac chopra]

Jayjay, what is this evidence? Let's have look and see whether it did come from suspect sources.

Don't be facetious. This entire thread is for purpose of discussing the evidence, so unless you have Alzheimer's or somehow reset your brains five minutes ago, you can't really pretend that you haven't seen it any of it. For example, right now Will Wiley and I were discussing one particular piece of evidence, the photo of BUK on a truck taken by Paris Match in Donetsk. You could start with that.

:

That one looks like it could be photoshopped. The cabin is very clear but the buk is not. There are many other reasons to question it. But what other photos or videos support it. We might have mentioned them in the thread but we did not look at who posted them on the internet.
Do you consider Wowihay to be a reliabale source?

 

[Jayjay]

Don't be facetious. This entire thread is for purpose of discussing the evidence, so unless you have Alzheimer's or somehow reset your brains five minutes ago, you can't really pretend that you haven't seen it any of it. For example, right now Will Wiley and I were discussing one particular piece of evidence, the photo of BUK on a truck taken by Paris Match in Donetsk. You could start with that.

That one looks like it could be photoshopped. The cabin is very clear but the buk is not.

It doesn't look photoshopped to me. The picture is taken inside a car through window which obscures it a bit, that's all. Besides you know that there are at least two photos taken at the same time (which only slight change), which means the camera was probably taking a burst of pictures. It would be hard and rather unlikely that the forger would have faked two photos when one would have sufficed.

There are many other reasons to question it. But what other photos or videos support it.

If there are other reasons to question it, we can discuss them. But if you'd rather concede that we have no reasonable doubt as to the veracity of the Paris Match photo, we can discuss the next one taken in Shurez just an hour or so later, which is verified by ... you guessed it, social media reports in Shurez and the Paris Match sighting of the same BUK in Donetsk.

Do you consider Wowihay to be a reliabale source?

"Wowihay" is just collecting sightings on the ground, he could not check their veracity (it should be pointed that in this case Wowihay is not the source, but some other guy operating very similarly, but we can consider Wowihay as an example). So probably not reliable if that was the only source. But the point is that it's not the only source. Sightings in social media, if they occur at the same time, are valid data points to verify that the photo is indeed valid. Why? Because the photo wasn't published until over a week later. This means that if someone did lie that they saw a BUK in Donetsk at 10:45am o July 17th, before the MH17 shootdown, that means they were not only colluding with Paris Match photographers, but also with whoever took the video in Shurez, and who photographed the BUK in Snizhne, and the owner of the truck who said it was "stolen" by rebels. This absurd scope of conspiracy required to fake something like this is why the BUK & Truck sightings in Donetsk are more likely to be reliable than not.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ya, go Dutch. You went all out for this conspiracy.

 

[bilby]

Some people seem to think that they can prove that the Empire State Building doesn't exist, by examining each individual strut and beam used in its construction, and proving that not one of them is, by itself, strong enough to support such a large edifice.

 

[tupac chopra]

the BUK & Truck sightings in Donetsk are more likely to be reliable than not.

Which photos or videos do you consider reliable? Let's examine one (or more) and see who took it, see what we know about it

 

[barbos]

There are many, but let's take the Paris Match photo for example:

Paris Match (who has no reason to lie about it) says it was taken around 11am on July 17th, and the analysis of shadows shows that the time is beween 10am - 10:15am. It's further verified by other sightings in social media. But actually, asking for single image is misleading. The most convincing evidence is that all the photos and videos corraborate each other. You are trying to point out some pedantic doubts about single dating of individual images, and indeed some images or videos may be fake, but the scope of the conspiracy required to forge all of them is so astounding that it's ridiculous.

We have photos and videos of the convoy which supposedly had the buk in it that can be dated, but this "mystery buk" isn't in any of them.

Actually, there is a high probability that it was:

The Buk seen in Russia was dubbed “3×2” due to an obscured number on the side of the vehicle (as is the case with the ID numbers of many of the vehicles transported from Russia to Ukraine). The remaining parts of the numbers of the Buk photographed by Paris Match as well as the loading markings and white paint on the rubber side skirt below those numbers were in exactly the same position.

A burn mark above the exhaust visible in one of the Paris Match photographs was also in exactly the same position as the one seen on Buk 3×2 in Russia. While all of these pieces of evidence seemed to indicate that the Buk in Ukraine and Buk 3×2 were one and the same, an additional piece of evidence made the case particularly compelling. During Bellingcat’s research[40] into the many Buk sightings, it became clear that the rubber side skirt above the tracks of Buk missile launchers can become damaged over time and that this damage creates a unique “fingerprint” allowing different Buk photographs to be matched. In the case of Buk 3×2 and the Buk photograph by Paris Match in Donetsk, the side skirts were nearly identical.

It's not completely conclusive, but similarities are close enough to call it.

FAIL Jayjay.
I asked for a dated verified photo or video, and you give me this crap. I did not ask for you long winded justification for why you think this is real.
Now I will ask again. Do you have one verified and dated photo. This photo is neither dated nor verified.
This photo is "verified" by other photos on social media ...bwa ha hahahahahah

You are failing to understand the nature of how evidence is corraborated. The fact that the same truck with the same BUK was seen on the same day in multiple places along the route from Donetsk to Snizhne is verification.

None of those photos can be verified. So you can't use unverified photos to verify another photo. What court would accept that? Not to mention you have just thrown out this vague allegation that somewhere are some photos. Once you start mentioning specific ones you will look pretty silly.

Any court in the world would accept this as evidence, and weigh is against other evidence. You specificly wanted to talk about a single image, and I specified why we know it's from the date that it is, from multiple sources (Paris Match, social media spottings, analysis of the shadows in the photo). What you dont' seem to get is that thsi isn't a 0% or 100% certainty. We might know one photo is depecting a certain event at a, say, 50% certainty. When you have two such photos confirming the same event, that's 75% certainty. Three photos, 88% certainty. And so on. The evidence adds up.

What you are doings is basically irrelevant whining about pedantic details instead of looking at the big picture.

Do you even know who took them? Most of the photos and videos come from Ukrainain secret service. Why on earth would you take that at face value?

Where is your proof that this photo comes from Ukrainian secret service? Actually, I bet you can't show me a single photo that you can prove to be from Ukrainian secret service by your own standards of verification. Why don't you apply your own ridiculous standards of verification on any of the claims you make?

I gave you a photo that is both dated and independently verified..

No you have not. At best you have Paris Match saying that the mysterious anonymous photographer (if they even exist) told them he/she took it on such and such a day.

Seeing as most pf the "evidence" comes from Ukrainian secret service there is a good chance this one did too.

Then it should be easy for you to give some evidence about the alleged link between Paris Match and Ukrainian secret service.

Fact remains, I gave pretty good reasons to think the Paris Match photo is genuine and that it was taken on moring of July 17th 2014. You have provided zero evidence that it's not. You may do so in subsequent posts, but so far you haven't done so.

Paris Match have published photo-shopped photos before, and it is up to you to explain why you explain why anyone should accept it is real

Because Paris Match is a reputable newspaper (I asked you to prove otherwise, you have not even tried) and the photo is independently verified. If this was the only photo, and nobody else saw the truck, then you might have a point. But again you keep ignoring all the other evidence from the same day from multiple independent sources.

There seems to be a pretty good case it is photo-shopped too, but that is another hurdle you need to overcome. But first things first.

We have truckloads of fake evidence in this whole saga, so you need to somehow verify this one. It is very very easily done if it is real.

We also have truckloads of evidence that is not fake. And if it is so easy to do, then why don't you take up my challenge and do it for some photo that you think is genuine, such as photos of Ukrainian BUKs.

You keep ignoring the elephant in the room which is that there are multiple lines of evidence that all point to the same conclusion. If all the evidence was made up or misinterpreted, they would likely point to random directions instead of forming any kind of a coherent narrative.

You keep ignoring that most or all of the "evidence" comes from Ukrainian secret service of from Ukrainians who had social media accounts associated with Ukrainain Nazi/ultra nationalist groups.
Or were you unaware of that? Or from social media accounts that appeared for minutes then were closed down

Yet you are trying to peddle this bullshit as reliable.

In your world, every Ukrainian is a nazi and every Russian is a saint. That's not valid argumentation, it's jsut demonizing your opponents.

The social media accounts where it was reported are people who collect these sightings. People who actually do, wouldn't set up twitter account becuase that would put their lives in danger. And of course, they probably have pro-Ukrainian leanings and some of them might even be described as nationalists. But the issue here isn't that the reporters would be inbiased, it's that it would be practically impossible to coordinate the kind of vast conspiracy where they all agree to post to twitter at specific times and fake photos from Donetsk to Zures to Snizhne and even Russia and French Newspapers according to some insanely elaborate plan.

But even then, it's of course possible that some reports you see in social media are made up, and that's why it should never be the only source. But even if unreliable, it serves as verification of other data. You would like to pretend that every piece of evidence exists in a vacuum, but it doesn't. It adds up: multiple lines of evidence, pointing to the same conclusion means that something was going on. Random forgeries are often suspicious precisely because they are outliers and oddities and don't match with other evidence.

I must admit, I did not follow all these internet investgations.
Are you saying Paris Match reporter took that photo?

 

[Ford]

I must admit, I did not follow all these internet investgations.

Why would you? It is so much easier to just repeat official Kremlin propaganda.

 

[tupac chopra]

I must admit, I did not follow all these internet investgations.
Are you saying Paris Match reporter took that photo?

No one knows who took the photo. It's secret, for some reason. Those who say it is real have changed the time it was supposed to have been taken too. The shadows didn't match that time so the time was changed so they did. Originally Bellingcat said 9 am, then this was changed to 11 am then to 10.45 am. It did not appear in satellite photo from that morning of that area, so some suggested another time,or that it traveled at great speed or that it was hiding under a tree.
there area lot of questions about it but we know it's real because there were other suspicious photos taken.

It is easy to verify a photo these days. All the relevant data is contained in the file if you have the original.
You would think we would have some proof that at least one of them was genuine. But we don't

 

[bilby]

I must admit, I did not follow all these internet investgations.
Are you saying Paris Match reporter took that photo?

No one knows who took the photo. It's secret, for some reason. Those who say it is real have changed the time it was supposed to have been taken too. The shadows didn't match that time so the time was changed so they did. It did not appear in satellite photo from that morning of that area, so some suggested another time,or that it traveled at great speed or that it was hiding under a tree.
there area lot of questions about it but we know it's real because there were other suspicious photos taken.

It is easy to verify a photo these days. All the relevant data is contained in the photo if you have the original

Nonsense. There are dozens of metadata editors available that can change all of the metadata captured with a digital photo in a way that is completely undetectable; only insofar as 'having the original' means 'having taken the photo yourself' can you be confident that the EXIF and other metadata is genuine; and if you took the photo yourself, you don't need metadata to prove it. It is common practice amongst professionals to delete (or set a camera not to record) some or all of that data before distributing digital copies, for a variety of commercial confidentiality, personal privacy and security reasons. Wikipedia lists no less than 40 software packages that can edit the metadata in digital photos.

I have no doubt whatsoever that if a photo emerged with EXIF that showed something you want not to be true, you would be the first to point out that such information is easily altered.

 

[tupac chopra]

I have no doubt whatsoever that if a photo emerged with EXIF that showed something you want not to be true, you would be the first to point out that such information is easily altered.

While it's true it can be altered, unless you're an expert you will leave evidence it has been altered.
Even an expert will probably leave clues

 

[bilby]

I have no doubt whatsoever that if a photo emerged with EXIF that showed something you want not to be true, you would be the first to point out that such information is easily altered.

While it's true it can be altered, unless you're an expert you will leave evidence it has been altered.
Even an expert will probably leave clues

Nope.

Any halfway competent person can download a freeware or shareware tool that will untraceably alter metadata. It's just information in a file - it's not like photoshopping a picture, where skill is needed to manipulate it, and even skilful edits can often still be detected; it's just a small amount of encoded text and numbers. Changing some or all of that text is easy; detecting that it was changed is almost impossible, unless the changes are very clumsy indeed (such as a picture of the Eiffel Tower with the GPS coordinates changed to say it was taken somewhere in Moscow).

 

[barbos]

I have no doubt whatsoever that if a photo emerged with EXIF that showed something you want not to be true, you would be the first to point out that such information is easily altered.

While it's true it can be altered, unless you're an expert you will leave evidence it has been altered.
Even an expert will probably leave clues

No, date can be altered by a non expert just fine.
But you said it contained time which was not consistent with shadows and general time frame so these french decided to correct it?
But that would prove that time was probably manipulated and there is no reason to believe the date was correct.

 

[tupac chopra]

Changing some or all of that text is easy; detecting that it was changed is almost impossible,

Not if you are manipulating something the size of that buk
http://ampedsoftware.com/authenticate-samples

The original file will likely tell us what we need to know

 

[barbos]

While it's true it can be altered, unless you're an expert you will leave evidence it has been altered.
Even an expert will probably leave clues

Nope.

Any halfway competent person can download a freeware or shareware tool that will untraceably alter metadata. It's just information in a file - it's not like photoshopping a picture, where skill is needed to manipulate it, and even skilful edits can often still be detected; it's just a small amount of encoded text and numbers. Changing some or all of that text is easy; detecting that it was changed is almost impossible, unless the changes are very clumsy indeed (such as a picture of the Eiffel Tower with the GPS coordinates changed to say it was taken somewhere in Moscow).

Yes, metadata can be altered, hence the the original question, how that photo was dated?

 

[bilby]

Changing some or all of that text is easy; detecting that it was changed is almost impossible,

Not if you are manipulating something the size of that buk

Metadata has fuck all to do with the subject of the photo.

If you change the photo itself - the data - then that is detectable; but then, the original cannot easily be used to determine the location, date or time of the photo - just whether it has been photoshopped.