Kremlin Falls For Its Own Fake Satellite Imagery (thedailybeast.com) 120
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.
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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....
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They can tell by the pixels.
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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.
On the lighter side (Score:2)
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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.
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This.
Fuck the russian government for being too sissy to admit to being murderers.
Re: Story is BS (Score:1)
I'm not hearing much confessions from the US wrt civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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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.
Re:Story is BS (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I think we can all agree, at the very least, that Ukrainian air traffic controllers did not shoot down that plane.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And it worked good until we had to go back and clean up the mess we made.
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Except Buk-M doesn't really look like something that a bunch of drunken idiots can operate:
http://www.rusarmy.com/pvo/pvo... [rusarmy.com]
And it was likely operated by Russian army "on vacation" [wikipedia.org]
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The 'Drunken idiot' part is not in dispute.
The question is Russian drunken idiot or east Ukrainian drunken idiot?
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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.
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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.
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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 "Russia
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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.
Re:Story is BS (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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Why should I Google for something - with no certainty that it even exists - when someone has claimed that he has seen it?
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Well, this is a new nadir even for Slashdot. Moderating a request for information as "Troll". Amazingly, the readership of the British "Daily Mail" are far more opeminded than Slashdot seems to be.
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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
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RI and RT are relatively accurate and objective.
Well, knock me over with a feather! I should've known this was a spoof
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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.
Re: Story is BS (Score:2)
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).
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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.
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Yeah, I meant "Not on aircraft anymore".
A TOW is rather cumbersome on a chopper, as you said.
Re:Story is BS (Score:4, Informative)
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
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"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 posit
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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.
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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.
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> If given, it evidently didn't come with a well-trained operator.
I dunno? They hit their target.
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In fact, even the rebels themselves boasted about it (a rebel commander tweeted about it, not knowing they shot down a passenger plane).
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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.
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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.
Re: Story is BS (Score:1)
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No it wasn't. Never. No one except drunk Russians claimed the U.S. said it was a Russian MiG which shot down MH-17.
Everyone, except the drunk Russians, knew it was either a Russian-manned Buk shooting down the civilian airliner, or terrorists in East Ukraine with assistance from the Russians shooting down the civilian airliner.
Civilians in the area corroborated claims the missile was fired near their village/town which at
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Further, only the Russian-backed terrorists had been shooting down aircraft because only Ukraine had aircraft so the claim from the drunk Russians and terrorists that it was Ukrainian Buk which shot down the civilian airliner is, like this picture, completely false and made up out of thin air.
Or it could be that drunk Ukrainian nazis shot the plane to blame drunk Russian terrorists. Ukraine would never shot down the civil plane and lie about it? Well, they could - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . Could it be Russian military? Sure, it could be, and they would never acknowledge it. But why are you so sure, did you toss a coin? Why did traffic control sent plane through the war zone? And why do we discuss this shit on so called news for nerds? I propose this - Let's not bicker and argue about w
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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.
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Russians are not acting like Nazis. They are acting like Russians, which is worse. Compare with the pretext for them invading Poland in 1939.
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Fuck you.
"good reason for occupation"? That is the single most disgusting comment in here.
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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/... [wikipedia.org] - 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.
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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.
maybe a fake usa made iraqi wmd image? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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> iran friendly iraq and isis
WTF? You should check your news sources. Iran doesn't like ISIS any more than anyone else (and vice versa), and they are sure to hold a grudge against Iraq for a long time (the general population sure hates and possibly even fears Iraq more than e.g. the US).
The only thing I might grant you is that Iraq might be more positive towards Iran than since a long time, but if so it's fairly one-way so far and thus of limited consequence.
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sorry i missed the comma, 'creating iran friendly iraq,and isis ' creating two separate things
Why "The Daily Beast"? (Score:2, Insightful)
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/... [wikipedia.org]
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
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People have an individual and sometimes odd sense of humor. If they put out a good product, I'm more than willing to overlook their idiosyncrasies.
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Hmm... They neither said nor insinuated any of the things you're attributing to them. There is no "in other words" by my reading. Where'd you get that from your reading of their post?
I've not seen 'em ever suggest that others couldn't disagree or publish their disagreement. What'd they say that makes you presume they're insinuating such? Or are you actually suggesting that they shouldn't be allowed to disagree with the paper or comment about the oddity of their name, who owns it, or how they feel about the
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The rag with Chelsea Clinton on its board gets a review of its political coverage (very negative against Bernie Sanders -- surprise!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Who knows what's what? (Score:2)
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.
This is not a joke topic. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Interesting read but I can not find any reference to Turkish Pilots being killed in the attack in February. It appears to have been army personnel that were the majority of the victims (and most likely from the nearby military training school - speculation no evidence). There is little detail about the dead, one funeral was for an army officer (guardian).
I would find it unusual that the turkish army and airforce would share buses. However it is also unusual that names of any of the victims have not been di
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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.)
There was just an article in yesterday's NY Times about the government seizure of a major newspaper which said:
I would argue that NATO is willing to cut him a lot of slack for various reasons. Euro-ce
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An ally of convenience. NATO and the EU might not like Erdogan on ideological grounds, but right now there are mutual interests and enemies in play.
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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.)
I don't think that'll happen anymore - Erdogan tapped into Turkey's dormant Sunni supremacist majority, and has decimated the secular army leadership. In fact, Erdogan has decimated all dissenting voices inside Turkey, and nobody, absolutely no-one in the West has as much as made a peep. Not even his blatant support of ISIS seems to ruffle much feathers.
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While I have no love for Russia, your post merits a massive [Citation Needed] sticker.
There was no such widely-publicized attack on Turkish pilots.
By stepping down to the level of the Russian disinformation trolls, you've gained nothing. You're just as bad as they are.
What the actual fuck?! (Score:2)
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 of
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Why are all these bullshit political stories on Slashdot lately?!
Have you considered the influence of money?
Blowback is real! (Score:2)
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 originat
MH17 was shot down by Russian missles (Score:1)
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-
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"Russian-made" != "Russian."
On top of that, the report didn't even mention a missile. I don't have a dog in the fight or an opinion but I did actually read the link. (How else can I form an opinion, if I don't take the time to learn the facts?)
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If you believe that the Russians are the underdog in the Russia-Ukraine situation you may wish to re-assess that. If you were supporting underdogs, you'd be supporting Ukraine.
Whatever your views on the general situation, the separatist forces on the ground claimed this before they realized it was a civilian airliner, and then they panicked. It was really, really obviously the separatists in the Donbass who did this - whether it was regular Russian troops manning equipment from Russia may be less certain (a
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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'.
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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/... [dailykos.com]
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 c