Malaysian plane crashes on Ukraine-Russia border - live

[Paul Rigby]

Satellite photo of fighter jet zapping MH17, appeared on a Russian forum a month ago

http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2014/11/14/s...month-ago/

Update: Colonel Cassad reports that the still photograph first appeared on the Web on Oct 15, here (allow time for the autotranslator to work through the page). I've inserted the high-resolution copy of the photo (7406×5000) direct from that post. You can see Donetsk airport, to the west. The commentary says: "The image was obtained by mail from enthusiasts Russian Wikileaks, the source is not named. The time on the image corresponds to the time indicated in the data of objective control presented by the Ministry of Defense of Russia. According to the inscription, the international designations of time, the picture would be from the US satellite intelligence apparatus."- RB

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[video=youtube_share;xhVbgWEvheQ]http://youtu.be/xhVbgWEvheQ[/video]

Hello from "Odnako"! At the disposal of Channel One was sensational picture, presumably made by a foreign satellite spy in the last seconds of flight Malaysian Boeing over Ukraine. On the eve of the most important meetings of world leaders at the summit of G20 in Australia, the story of the death of the passengers of this flight is more than relevant. The frame speaks in favor of the version, which in the West is almost never heard. It is known that at the summit in Brisbane, Australian Prime Minister Abbott is threatening to ask our President in the rigid form a question about Malaysian Boeing. We will try to facilitate his task. Back in August, the Russian Union of Engineers issued its report on the possible causes of the crash, which received fairly widespread in the media and the Internet. Experts conducted a detailed analysis of all available information from all sources, produced technical calculations and elaborated version of causes of death "Boeing". The conclusion of the experts was that the only technically possible version was the destruction of the Malaysian airliner with a missile and gun armament another plane. Pay attention to one point in the report is the absence of any credible evidence of the start of the missiles "ground-to-air". Start "Buk" is accompanied by a fiery cloud, a deafening roar that can be heard within a radius of up to 10 km, and inversion followed which is clearly observed in the sky for up to 10 minutes. In short, there was most likely no "Buk", no start from the ground. In the presence of district disaster dozens of professional observers from all sides and thousands unprofessional, no one has seen or recorded. While the aircraft was seen and recorded. And it was definitely not Russian planes. The arguments of the experts were heard on the Internet, the report was translated into English and German. First Vice-President of the Russian Union of Engineers Ivan Andrievsky said:

When we began to receive a large amount of information, among which was a different material, engineering calculations, and ultimately on Nov 12, we received this. "I fully agree with the results of your analysis of the causes of the crash of the Boeing," says the man who presented himself as a graduate of MIT, Aviaexport with twenty years of experience, George Bilt. "The Boeing was hit by a pursuing fighter jet. First, the crew fired from a cannon, then the cab was struck by an air-to-air missile, then the right engine and right wing were struck by a missile with thermal homing system." The photo which is clearly evident in the launch of the rocket from under the left wing fighter exactly at the cockpit, was attached to the email. On the terrain, weather conditions, the dimensions of the aircraft shot fully consistent with the circumstances of the accident. We saw a satellite image taken with not a very high orbit. And such images are usually made for general intelligence air and ground space. In accordance with the coordinates specified in the picture, we can assume that the picture was taken by a UKUSA satellite. We undertook a detailed analysis of this picture and no signs of tampering were found.

All versions should be considered, including the proverbial "Buk". The person who sent the picture, showing how the MiG-29 kills passenger "Boeing", whoever he was, of course, professional. In order to forge this requires even more professionalism than to access such information. Lord, you have these pictures! Or others! Show them, finally! Hands on the table! Because at the moment there is every reason to believe that the committed state crimes by those who destroyed the plane deliberately and cynically. And those who consciously and cynically hides it with exhaustive information. Goodbye from "Odnako"!

Revealing identity of the fake MH17 image author

Yury Barmin, Dec 8

https://medium.com/@yurybarmin/revealing...c6cfd76de8

The MH17 satellite image released by Russia's Channel One in mid-November instantly made the rounds on the Internet. The photograph allegedly made by a satellite suggests that the MH17 flight was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet rather than a surface-to-air missile that belongs to the rebels.

A letter with the image enclosed was sent to the Russian Union of Engineers by an expert who introduced himself as George Bilt, an MIT graduate with over 20 years of experience in aviation. Unfortunately for Channel One, the satellite image turned out to be a forgery as several media outlets that had examined the photograph described it.

Buzzfeed's Max Seddon and a Russian opposition journalist Ilya Varlamov both claim they managed to get in touch with Bilt (my e-mail to him, however, bounced back). According to them, the latter expressed his confusion at the fact that his findings were published by Channel One without any fact checking. It is suspicious, however, that Bilt seems to have replied to both Seddon and Varalmov with identical letters as their recent articles prove.

Some media outlets went an extra mile to blame the Kremlin for the image (consider this "Kremlin has mastered propaganda, but not photoshop"). As it always is the case with mainstream media, any news stories coming out of Russia and contradicting those of Western media should necessarily be masterminded by the Kremlin. Any attempts to prove this point wrong are attributed to the "Kremlin's hand" even more.

What is truly surprising about the MH17 satellite image to me is that those media outlets that made their investigations into this incident stopped short of finding out who actually posted it in the first place. Continuing the investigation seemed necessary and not all too difficult, which I tried to do and here are the results.

In his interview with Buzzfeed George Bilt, whom I couldn't track down online, claims he found the photograph on a Russian forum. Searching by image does bring up a result leading to a thread entitled "Ukraine shot down Boeing 777, evidence and facts from the satellite" on a Russian forum called OBKON (short for "Public Control of Authorities" in Russian), but this is where the mystery begins. The original image in high resolution was posted there on October 15, that is a month before Channel One's report.

The user who posted the photograph on OBKON, Duke Elliot (or Дюк Эллиот), posted the image the day that he registered on the forum, half an hour after that to be precise. The user specified that the image had been sent to him by Wikileaks "enthusiasts" from Russia. His profile page says that he lives in Moscow and was born on March 22, 1987, but just like his name this information cannot be verified and may well be misleading.

The image itself did not appear anywhere else on the Internet but for OBKON prior to its publication by Channel One on November 14. The said forum, however, does invite some questions. Its close inspection shows that the OBKON website is far from a real forum, rather a semblance of one with threads ranging from discussions of utilities rates in Russia to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine. The problem with this forum is that there is no genuine discussion happening there, but instead up to ten users post chunks of texts copied verbatim from news articles in Russian with their original titles and occasionally images and videos in various threads.

Between July 26 when the thread on MH17 was created and November 14 only 22 messages were posted in the thread, not too lively of a discussion. Interestingly though, the Russian Union of Engineers that got hold of the satellite image claims it had been sent to them on November 9, while the discussion on the said thread resumed on the very same day after having ceased on October 15, but this could be just a coincidence.

Duke Elliot posted a total of three messages on the forum, all in a span of three hours and all related to the MH17 photograph. His first post was deleted on November 14, after the image had been shown by Russian TV but not by its author. I sent a private message to Duke Elliot on the forum, but he never read it and did not access the website since his first visit on October 15.

My primary interest in contacting Duke Elliot was to find out what his motivation was for posting a potentially game-changing image on some shady forum with fake conversations. There are countless forums discussing the MH17 tragedy and aviation in Russia, which are far more popular than OBKON, so why out of all options choosing a website where the photograph would never be discovered?

Identity of the culprit

First version (the most obvious one):

Those bloggers who tried to identify the mastermind behind the MH17 satellite image mostly agreed that he was the moderator of OBKON. His nickname is Aleks and he's been with the website since 2011 when OBKON was created.

In his profile Aleks says he lives in Austin, TX, and is 44 years old. His real name is allegedly Aleks Ririllov, but there is no person with a similar name in any social network I checked. Aleks' profile on Google+ says that he lives in Wellington, New Zealand. Well, he resides neither in the US nor in New Zealand, but in the city of Omsk in Russia's Siberia and is a huge fan of the World of Tanks, an online game. From Aleks' videos on YouTube I concluded that he belongs to what is called "liberal opposition" in Russia and defends human rights in his native town. I also managed to find Aleks' e-mail, which I obviously sent a letter to, but with no success.

Two important aspects support the version that Aleks, OBKON moderator, was the one who at the very least posted the image online and possibly fabricated it as well.

The first post by Duke Elliot, the one that got deleted, read as follows: "Evidence that Ukrainian SU shot down the Boeing" (Screenshot I). The problem is that when Russian media started discussing this story they reported that a MIG fighter jet, and not a SU, shot down MH17. I said it already that Duke Elliot did not delete the post because the last time he logged in on the forum was on October 15. If not by the author the post must have been deleted by the administrator, which leads us to Aleks, the only administrator who visited the forum on November 14. In a wider context it becomes clear that the purpose of deleting the comment was to hide the fact that the message contradicted what was being reported by the Russian media. Only later it was proved that it was in fact a SU fighter in the image, and not a MIG (Screenshot II).

The second aspect that needs to be closely inspected is the way the satellite shots posted by Duke appear on the forum. Channel One's report about the MH17 image encouraged hundreds of people to sign up on OBKON and take part in the discussion in the same thread where Duke Elliot posted his "evidence." But here's what I noticed following the discussion on OBKON: whenever one of those new users posts a picture the image appears on the page with some sort of a small watermark in the lower right corner that says "obkon.ucoz.com" (Screenshot III). Unless you manually uncheck the option of a watermark it will appear in your image. The majority of those who are (still) discussing the fake image on OBKON haven't noticed that option to remove the watermark. The MH17 satellite image twice posted on the forum did not have the watermark. I can't believe that Duke Elliot, who had just registered on the forum, would be attentive enough to remove the watermark from his images. The moderator, however, would be perfectly aware of that, especially because none of Aleks' images contain this watermark.

Second version (the most realistic one):

This second person was extremely hard to find. Contrary to some reports out there he is neither an aviation expert nor a propaganda tsar, but an ordinary guy from Siberia with mediocre (as it turns out) photoshop skills who is closely watching the crisis in Eastern Ukraine.

His name is Yan, or at least that's what he called himself on VK, he lives in Kemerovo, a town in Siberia, and is a photographer with an interest in rock music and a taste for expensive guitars. Yan recently sold his Chinese CUV that he had bought in 2007 and most of his music equipment, including an equaliser, an amplifier and two electric guitars. Unlike Aleks, OBKON moderator, Yan has a pro-Kremlin position, and supports Russias strategy towards Ukraine in all of his comments.

I'll spare your time and won't go into details of how I found him because it took me hours of work to identify him. Just look at a profile picture that Yan once had on VK (it is an actual photograph of that guy) and you'll understand who is the real villain…Judging by circumstantial evidence I'm inclined to think it is he who posted, or at least fabricated, the satellite image. Having posted the MH17 photograph on OBKON Yan left an almost unnoticeable trail online. He shared the link to the image on OBKON in his comment to a random article on a pro-Kremlin website politonline.ru soon after posting the original photograph. He shared that link once again on VK two days later, on October 17, and two more times on RT on October 20. Yan is the only person to have ever shared a link to the image online before November 14, but his sensational posts never drew public attention, so he simply abandoned the idea of breaking his made-up story to the world.

Judging by Yan's taste for making up new identities, George Bilt could be a person of his own making. The most interesting detail about him, however, is that the day Channel One revealed what they thought was indisputable evidence of Ukrainian jet shooting down MH17 Yan deleted his account on VK. He also tried to delete the messages that contained links to OBKON from other websites, but I managed to retrieve some of them from cache.

I got in touch with several people who had Yan on their friend lists in VK; all of them denied they even knew him, but all of them promptly deleted Yan's inactive profile from their friend lists.

Third version (conspiracy):

And here is a conspiracy theory. This is simply to entertain you if you've made it so far. I took to social networks to verify my findings regarding Yan, but it looks like nobody really looked into the identity of mysterious Duke Elliot. Some Twitter users, however, came up with conspiracy-like versions of who could be behind the photoshopped MH17 photograph.

Eliot Higgins is a famous blogger who started a website for citizen journalism called Bellingcat. Higgins' website published a report that purportedly explains the origin of the Separatists' Buk earlier in November and was one of the first websites to share the findings related to the alleged fabrication of the satellite image. Several users on Twitter and Russian forums also attributed the MH17 satellite image to none other than Eliot Higgins.

It remains unclear if the story of the MH17 image fabrication from October 15 to November 14 was a carefully planned affair or a mere accident, which the Russian Union of Engineers and Channel One fell victim to. But one thing is clear, an ordinary photographer or a forum moderator, both of whom are from Siberia, managed to outplay the media both in Russia and abroad and tricked them better than any propaganda machine.

PS. This is a very amateurish investigation, which I wouldn't normally waste my time on. But in the last three weeks I spent more time at airports and hotels then ever before in life and this was a perfect pastime. Don't be too strict.