Why HRW is untrustworthy

[barbos]

You have a hurdles for that claim and position: justify the belief that he could not have experienced something that would have encoded these memories.

I maintain that the experience could have been accurate in a variety of circumstances to a fairly high degree. Various other posters have supplied a more difficult hurdle. You have attempted neither and claimed you have finished the course. But the fact is, you can't even get over your initial claim let alone the actual one you must: that this is a fabrication on the basis of what someone described.

These experiences are the likely result of a vast array of hypothetical experiences, from flinching away from a blast that attenuated in different directions to being actually shoved by the force of indirect fire detonation, necessarily also attenuated.

Note that "likely a fabrication" is a tacit admission of the possibility of the truth of the report.

"Likely a fabrication" as in he made no such observation at all, his injuries were sustained by other means. vs considerably embellished as there's no way he was thrown through the air at all.

For that matter, there's another problem I just realized: His reported detonation height. It's going to be moving way too fast to even estimate that. The bomb is probably falling at 100-200 m/s, meaning it's .005 to .01 seconds per meter--eyes can't accurately locate something at that kind of speed.

It was a low flying rocket I understand. At least this is what other witness seems to be describing.

 

[barbos]

"Likely a fabrication" as in he made no such observation at all, his injuries were sustained by other means. vs considerably embellished as there's no way he was thrown through the air at all.

For that matter, there's another problem I just realized: His reported detonation height. It's going to be moving way too fast to even estimate that. The bomb is probably falling at 100-200 m/s, meaning it's .005 to .01 seconds per meter--eyes can't accurately locate something at that kind of speed.

Nobody's buying what you're selling.

Well, I bought some of it. That's no much and I paid almost nothing
The thing I don't understand why bother with it? especially when there have been so many cases where lies were much more obvious.

 

[KeepTalking]

"Likely a fabrication" as in he made no such observation at all, his injuries were sustained by other means. vs considerably embellished as there's no way he was thrown through the air at all.

For that matter, there's another problem I just realized: His reported detonation height. It's going to be moving way too fast to even estimate that. The bomb is probably falling at 100-200 m/s, meaning it's .005 to .01 seconds per meter--eyes can't accurately locate something at that kind of speed.

Nobody's buying what you're selling.

Literally nobody cares whether this guy got some of the details wrong when recounting his story. It's perfectly reasonable and in keeping with both the FACT that the IDF has attacked locations in Gaza where civilians are present; and with eyewitness accounts of coming under attack from non-Palestinians in unrelated conflict zones elsewhere in the world.

You want to disbelieve the story. So you are happy with even the flimsiest rationalisation that allows you to dismiss it out of hand.

Others do not share your desire to disbelieve. They cannot be persuaded by your weak as fuck arguments, because they are weak as fuck.

Thinking up more, weaker, dismissals isn't helping your case, except in your head - where it is already inassailable, so the effort is even wasted on yourself.

Stop digging. It's embarrassing to watch.

One interesting thing is that Loren seems perfectly willing to concede that the attack happened, given that he has posted pictures ostensibly from this attack (no direct link, so no way to tell where the pictures came from). He just isn't willing to accept that a civilian may have been witness too, injured by, or otherwise in a position to relate experiences from this attack to the media. Nope, other than the Israeli ordinance causing minor damage to a street in Gaza, and completely obliterating secret bunkers underneath that street to the point that even the Israelis themselves can show no evidence that they were there, nothing else could possibly have been damaged by 1000 kilo bombs being dropped in a civilian area.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

One of the other odd things about this is that there is skepticism because the odds of an individual surviving are less than probable. But the thing is that this is not about an individual, but a whole group of people--this guy's relatives etc--and those people, presumably who were closer or in some other position more prone to being killed, actually were killed...so when we look at probability, we should consider something more like, what are the odds one guy survives with wounds and another 4 (or whatever) are killed. And that is a very viable scenario.

 

[laughing dog]

You have a hurdles for that claim and position: justify the belief that he could not have experienced something that would have encoded these memories.

I maintain that the experience could have been accurate in a variety of circumstances to a fairly high degree. Various other posters have supplied a more difficult hurdle. You have attempted neither and claimed you have finished the course. But the fact is, you can't even get over your initial claim let alone the actual one you must: that this is a fabrication on the basis of what someone described.

These experiences are the likely result of a vast array of hypothetical experiences, from flinching away from a blast that attenuated in different directions to being actually shoved by the force of indirect fire detonation, necessarily also attenuated.

Note that "likely a fabrication" is a tacit admission of the possibility of the truth of the report.

"Likely a fabrication" as in he made no such observation at all, his injuries were sustained by other means. vs considerably embellished as there's no way he was thrown through the air at all.

For that matter, there's another problem I just realized: His reported detonation height. It's going to be moving way too fast to even estimate that. The bomb is probably falling at 100-200 m/s, meaning it's .005 to .01 seconds per meter--eyes can't accurately locate something at that kind of speed.

Do you realize that with each response, your stories become more and more unbelievable?

Do you realize how pathetically desperate each of your "rationales" appear? We have 2 combat engineers who have explained that this man's experience how improbable is possible. There are plenty of website who document that bomb blasts can do what he claims he experienced. Yet you claim it is impossible. These ridiculous OPs and responses of yours simply buttress the impression of bigotry against Palestinians.

I realize that this is just an effort to obscure the fact that the IDF has, once again, embarked in a deadly action that killed and injured many adult civilians and children. Of course, no outrage on your part about that tragedy because the victims are Palestinians and the perpetrators are Israeli.

There there were no OPs or posts about this latest IDF outrage, so thanks for bringing it to everyone's attention.

 

[barbos]

One of the other odd things about this is that there is skepticism because the odds of an individual surviving are less than probable. But the thing is that this is not about an individual, but a whole group of people--this guy's relatives etc--and those people, presumably who were closer or in some other position more prone to being killed, actually were killed...so when we look at probability, we should consider something more like, what are the odds one guy survives with wounds and another 4 (or whatever) are killed. And that is a very viable scenario.

Odds of being thrown into the air by the blast and surviving are zero.

 

[KeepTalking]

One of the other odd things about this is that there is skepticism because the odds of an individual surviving are less than probable. But the thing is that this is not about an individual, but a whole group of people--this guy's relatives etc--and those people, presumably who were closer or in some other position more prone to being killed, actually were killed...so when we look at probability, we should consider something more like, what are the odds one guy survives with wounds and another 4 (or whatever) are killed. And that is a very viable scenario.

Odds of being thrown into the air by the blast and surviving are zero.

...and presumably every soldier with a purple heart who claimed that exactly this happened to them is lying through their teeth. Gotcha.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Odds of being thrown into the air by the blast and surviving are zero.

Winds going > 100 mph can knock you over and winds going minimally more than that whilst you are simultaneously hit with something in your legs can make you feel thrown. Such wind speed is likely not going to kill you. The greater the wind speed, the more likely an individual can be killed (but not necessarily) and the more likely they will have been thrown or feel like they have been thrown. The CDC has some specific numbers on this. None of these numbers say there is a 100% death rate at levels that can knock over someone or throw them in combination with something hitting their legs. Now besides all that, consider what we know from wind speeds of other types of things such as hurricanes and tornadoes, just as an example. One young man was picked up by a tornado and carried some 1300 feet and survived. This case of a Palestinian man surviving is about two orders of magnitude less dramatic. I mean, he could have been thrown (or knocked over) 10 feet, not over 1000 feet. Two orders of magnitude less.

I don't know what kinds of life experiences you and Loren have, but I'm living in the east coast US and have experienced many hurricanes. I've gone outside and nearly felt like I was being picked up at wind speed 75 mph. My apartment got evacuated back in '92 due to hurricane flooding. People survive hurricanes all the time with wind speeds above 100 mph. Now if you look at, say, wind tunnels, you can see it only takes wind speed of 80 mph to 180 mph to keep someone lifted up, never mind merely to throw them when they are off balance. And this depends on the person, their weight, shape, etc, probably. When you review the CDC numbers at the upper part of that range like 163 mph, it says "fatalities are widespread," not fatalities are definite. And at the lower end like 102 mph, it says "fatalities may occur."

Additionally, the victim of the explosion only needs to be far enough away (or at some other position) so the wind (and/or pressure) has dissipated:

As the shock wave expands, pressures decrease rapidly (with the cube of the distance) because of geometric divergence and the dissipation of energy in heating the air. Pressures also decay rapidly over time (i.e., exponentially) and have a very brief span of existence, measured typically in thousandths of a second, or milliseconds . An explosion can be visualized as a “bubble” of highly compressed air that expands until reaching equilibrium with the surrounding air.

Being right next to the explosion (i.e. like say a foot away) isn't going to allow a victim to be alive provided they are in the path of the explosion, but being further away increases likelihood of survival. Within the range of surviving wind speeds, there is a sweet spot that can be inferred from above and CDC tables where speed is fast enough to hold a person up but doesn't necessarily kill them.

Finally, I will add that the guy had said he was hit in the legs. This is pretty vague and we do not know what that means or how that could have impacted him through collision and conservation of momentum or how that could have been a factor in combination with wind speed in knocking him over into the wind.

But nothing he claimed was outrageous.

 

[barbos]

Odds of being thrown into the air by the blast and surviving are zero.

Winds going > 100 mph can knock you over and winds going minimally more than that whilst you are simultaneously

Read what I posted earlier.

 

[barbos]

One of the other odd things about this is that there is skepticism because the odds of an individual surviving are less than probable. But the thing is that this is not about an individual, but a whole group of people--this guy's relatives etc--and those people, presumably who were closer or in some other position more prone to being killed, actually were killed...so when we look at probability, we should consider something more like, what are the odds one guy survives with wounds and another 4 (or whatever) are killed. And that is a very viable scenario.

Odds of being thrown into the air by the blast and surviving are zero.

...and presumably every soldier with a purple heart who claimed that exactly this happened to them is lying through their teeth. Gotcha.

Or mistaken.

 

[laughing dog]

...and presumably every soldier with a purple heart who claimed that exactly this happened to them is lying through their teeth. Gotcha.

Or mistaken.

The club of people who are mistaken about this is greater than you think.

Look at this video - a man standing on a grate is blow into the air by an explosion.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/shocking-video-shows-man-survive-sidewalk-explosion-in-queens/3177378/

 

[KeepTalking]

...and presumably every soldier with a purple heart who claimed that exactly this happened to them is lying through their teeth. Gotcha.

Or mistaken.

While I don't think you have taken as hard a line on this as Loren, he does not seem to allow for this person to have been mistaken, and you have not been exactly charitable regarding the source of the report.

On the other hand, I am among those in this thread who have noted that the person could have been mistaken in recounting what happened. So, welcome aboard, there is plenty of room for this fellow to have been mistaken about exactly what transpired when his home was bombed, and his home to still have been bombed.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Odds of being thrown into the air by the blast and surviving are zero.

Winds going > 100 mph can knock you over and winds going minimally more than that whilst you are simultaneously

Read what I posted earlier.

I started reviewing your posts. Came across one where you referenced Sylvester Stallone movies and another where you said Palestinians are liars. Since I am hoping you do not mean either of those, could you please be more specific? Or simply respond to the content of my post, rather than making me search for possible responses?

 

[TomC]

One of the other odd things about this is that there is skepticism because the odds of an individual surviving are less than probable. But the thing is that this is not about an individual, but a whole group of people--this guy's relatives etc--and those people, presumably who were closer or in some other position more prone to being killed, actually were killed...so when we look at probability, we should consider something more like, what are the odds one guy survives with wounds and another 4 (or whatever) are killed. And that is a very viable scenario.

Odds of being thrown into the air by the blast and surviving are zero.

One the one hand, I understand the frustration. Palestinian leadership is notorious for big lies to the media and using their own people as cannon fodder to keep garnering support for their wealth and power. I get that.

But, when it comes to human beings, blanket absolutes like this post are nearly always false. People survive things that should have killed them. Traumatic events like bomb blasts often leave inaccurate memories. Doesn't mean all of it's wrong.
Tom

 

[ZiprHead]

...and presumably every soldier with a purple heart who claimed that exactly this happened to them is lying through their teeth. Gotcha.

Or mistaken.

The club of people who are mistaken about this is greater than you think.

Look at this video - a man standing on a grate is blow into the air by an explosion.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/shocking-video-shows-man-survive-sidewalk-explosion-in-queens/3177378/

LD wins the thread.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

"Likely a fabrication" as in he made no such observation at all, his injuries were sustained by other means. vs considerably embellished as there's no way he was thrown through the air at all.

For that matter, there's another problem I just realized: His reported detonation height. It's going to be moving way too fast to even estimate that. The bomb is probably falling at 100-200 m/s, meaning it's .005 to .01 seconds per meter--eyes can't accurately locate something at that kind of speed.

Nobody's buying what you're selling.

Literally nobody cares whether this guy got some of the details wrong when recounting his story. It's perfectly reasonable and in keeping with both the FACT that the IDF has attacked locations in Gaza where civilians are present; and with eyewitness accounts of coming under attack from non-Palestinians in unrelated conflict zones elsewhere in the world.

You want to disbelieve the story. So you are happy with even the flimsiest rationalisation that allows you to dismiss it out of hand.

Others do not share your desire to disbelieve. They cannot be persuaded by your weak as fuck arguments, because they are weak as fuck.

Thinking up more, weaker, dismissals isn't helping your case, except in your head - where it is already inassailable, so the effort is even wasted on yourself.

Stop digging. It's embarrassing to watch.

You still don't get it. The problem with this report is that it shows HRW doesn't care if what it reports is accurate.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

One interesting thing is that Loren seems perfectly willing to concede that the attack happened, given that he has posted pictures ostensibly from this attack (no direct link, so no way to tell where the pictures came from). He just isn't willing to accept that a civilian may have been witness too, injured by, or otherwise in a position to relate experiences from this attack to the media. Nope, other than the Israeli ordinance causing minor damage to a street in Gaza, and completely obliterating secret bunkers underneath that street to the point that even the Israelis themselves can show no evidence that they were there, nothing else could possibly have been damaged by 1000 kilo bombs being dropped in a civilian area.

Nobody is denying that Israel bombed Gaza that day, the dispute is only over the details.

While a civilian certainly could have witnessed and been injured in the attack there are major problems with this guy's report--I was posting it because of what it says about HRW.

As for the existence of the bunkers--that picture of the road I posted is pretty good evidence they were down there. A bomb hitting a road isn't going to cause subsidence like that, but a bomb collapsing a hollow under the road certainly could. It's not limestone formations where you get sinkholes, a hollow is going to be man-made.

And any place with a military facility is a military area, even if it also has civilians.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Odds of being thrown into the air by the blast and surviving are zero.

Winds going > 100 mph can knock you over and winds going minimally more than that whilst you are simultaneously hit with something in your legs can make you feel thrown. Such wind speed is likely not going to kill you. The greater the wind speed, the more likely an individual can be killed (but not necessarily) and the more likely they will have been thrown or feel like they have been thrown.

But this wasn't wind, this was a shockwave. Whatever you argue about wind has no bearing on the situation, the important thing is a shockwave kills at a far lower energy than it takes to throw you.

Being right next to the explosion (i.e. like say a foot away) isn't going to allow a victim to be alive provided they are in the path of the explosion, but being further away increases likelihood of survival. Within the range of surviving wind speeds, there is a sweet spot that can be inferred from above and CDC tables where speed is fast enough to hold a person up but doesn't necessarily kill them.

There is no relevant wind speed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

...and presumably every soldier with a purple heart who claimed that exactly this happened to them is lying through their teeth. Gotcha.

Or mistaken.

The club of people who are mistaken about this is greater than you think.

Look at this video - a man standing on a grate is blow into the air by an explosion.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/shocking-video-shows-man-survive-sidewalk-explosion-in-queens/3177378/

Huh? There's a blast of fire, he pulls back and falls. He's not thrown anywhere.

 

[bilby]

"Likely a fabrication" as in he made no such observation at all, his injuries were sustained by other means. vs considerably embellished as there's no way he was thrown through the air at all.

For that matter, there's another problem I just realized: His reported detonation height. It's going to be moving way too fast to even estimate that. The bomb is probably falling at 100-200 m/s, meaning it's .005 to .01 seconds per meter--eyes can't accurately locate something at that kind of speed.

Nobody's buying what you're selling.

Literally nobody cares whether this guy got some of the details wrong when recounting his story. It's perfectly reasonable and in keeping with both the FACT that the IDF has attacked locations in Gaza where civilians are present; and with eyewitness accounts of coming under attack from non-Palestinians in unrelated conflict zones elsewhere in the world.

You want to disbelieve the story. So you are happy with even the flimsiest rationalisation that allows you to dismiss it out of hand.

Others do not share your desire to disbelieve. They cannot be persuaded by your weak as fuck arguments, because they are weak as fuck.

Thinking up more, weaker, dismissals isn't helping your case, except in your head - where it is already inassailable, so the effort is even wasted on yourself.

Stop digging. It's embarrassing to watch.

You still don't get it. The problem with this report is that it shows HRW doesn't care if what it reports is accurate.

The problem with that claim is that the evidence in this thread completely fails to support it.

Given just the evidence in this thread, if I had to rank HRW and Loren Pechtel in order of trustworthiness of their reporting, I wouldn't hesitate to put them above you, by a wide margin. So, why should I believe you when you claim that they are untrustworthy?