Eastern Europe: Olivier's sphere of influence

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Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

So today Russia's Embassy to Sweden thought it would be a brilliant idea to make a Facebook post criticising a Swedish journalist based in Russia for reporting on the latest Bellingcat MH17 report, and made thinly veiled threats regarding their legal status as a journalist in Russia. It was covered in Swedish news here, god knows why they thought that would be a good idea.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 22:38

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 18:07

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

MH17 Truther logic on display

https://twitter.com/tedcruzinvasion/status/703724459652308992

# ¿ Feb 28, 2016 09:01

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

We're working on a few more MH17 reports, plus a 2 year anniversary report that's intended to be sort of the ultimate summary of all the information known so far, plus a look at various theories. We're still finding new bits and pieces, like we've noticed one of the videos from Russia that shows Buk 3x2 shows a white mark that's also visible on the Luhansk video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4udtaWZTI5I

# ¿ Feb 28, 2016 11:33

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/704242124926132224
https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/704242692637773824
https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/704245380670758912
https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/704245639157313536
https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/704246029802143744

Woman walking around the Moscow metro with a decapitated baby head shouting "I'm a terrorist".

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 11:06

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Found a rare video of the low-loader that transported the MH17 Buk filmed from the front and up close

https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/704334886887358464

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 17:20

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Nitrox posted:

What makes it distinguishable from the rest of the truck fleet?

The truck's owner, from whom the truck was stolen from, said the paint job was unique, and it's always seen with that red trailer. There was a phone number on the side, but they removed that after July 17th.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 22:52

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

The Russian MoD put out a statement about Bellingcat, this was the best response

https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/706907562071855106

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 11:23

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

So after the Russian MoD attacked Bellingcat the Russian MFA joined in, so we made a little video

https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/708667409687834624

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 15:56

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

I now use the examples of debunking Russia's MH17 lies in all my training sessions for journalists, government types, etc etc. For example, when I'm teaching the basics of Google Earth satellite imagery I use the satellite imagery the Russian MoD lied about the dates on as a hands on example, so the participants get to discover that for themselves. In fact, I'll be doing that on Monday at a training event at the Guardian office for all their journalists, and a later session that will be live streamed will be about how we demonstrated the Russian MoD lied about its bombing campaign in Syria as well. If they keep lying it just gives me more material for training people in verification and open source investigation.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 22:49

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Friendly Humour posted:

Don't you think it's a bit weird you're having to teach this poo poo to accredited and degreed journalists? I get that the information age is a comparatively new thing in human history, but I would have thought these people were already way ahead of you. I guess it says something about the current state of journalism, or perhaps it doesn't.

Well journalists really have been the earliest to adopt this sort of work, mainly the verification part of it though. We really look at the question of "if we CAN verify this stuff, what can we do with it then?". I think the problem they face is in a traditional newsroom there's not really much time to do learn how to do this kind of investigation without someone in a senior position making the decision to allow some people time to do it, and until they believe in the value of it that's not going to happen. So it's kind of an awareness issue even before it become a training issue.

This applies to many more fields, for example the work we're doing with police. The MH17 case is actually quite a big deal in the use of open source and social media investigation, because its the first time there's been an investigation of such of scale and of international importance where this sort of investigation has been done on such a scale. For the police, this means they're learning on the job to some degree, and they've got to do it perfectly, because we can already see how Russia is reacting to the use of these sources in the MH17 investigation. I've also been talking to various law enforcement agencies from various countries about teaching their staff this sort of stuff, and I think if the official MH17 investigation goes the way we think it will then there will be massive interest in the work we've done.

There's also the policy aspect. I've been working a lot with the Atlantic Council on stuff related to open source and social media investigation, and it wasn't until we released the Hiding in Plain Sight report that this sort of work was even known to policy makers. It had an extremely significant effect at those levels, and it's something we're working on building on, launching digital research units in various regions to focus on this kind of investigations. We're currently hiring our first two staff in Latvia, and are currently working to set up more across the world focused on different topics. Aric Toler actually was just speaking about our work at the Future War conference in DC, and there were lots of military, government, and policy types there, who were blown away by our work, and many told him they already refer to our work in their own work and training.

I could go on, but the tl;dr is you'd be shocked at the people you think would be and should be using this information but aren't at all.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 09:00

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Friendly Humour posted:

You should go on actually, your work is methodologically really interesting. In no way to denigrate it, it just seems like such a simple principle of looking up social media for images and people that I'm a bit dumbfounded that it's innovative. I guess it's the problem is as you say mostly about one of time and effort, what you're doing is some hardcore investigative journalism in terms of how much investment it requires. Pointing out to editors "Hey! You should give your people time to do some journalism! Thanks!" shouldn't be an innovation, but I guess it is nowadays.

I've found that traditional newsrooms are facing pressure financially thanks to the shift of advertising from print to online, and sites like Buzzfeed and Mashable who get massive traffic from cat pictures and listicles are actually taking the money and investing it in investigative journalism. Outside of that it seems from my limited experience there's an increasing number of NGO type organisations doing investigative journalism, like the BIJ and OCCRP. We're actually planning to do a training event with the OCCRP in June that will train them on the sort of work we do, then we'll work together on live investigations in Ukraine to get the ball rolling, then support those investigations remotely long term. It's also been interesting to see non-English open source investigation teams get going, especially in Russian, and we've keep in close contact with many of them. If we're thinking in terms of a digital space national borders don't exist as they do in real life, the real barriers online are language, so I think it's important to proactively attempt to engage across the language barrier, which is one of the reasons my first full time hire speaks Russian, and why we're planning to soon launch a version of Bellingcat where all our posts are full translated to Russian. It's also the same reason we're working with the OCCRP, as they already having pre-existing crossborder networks in many countries.

Friendly Humour posted:

I do actually wonder why your sources haven't been metaphorically internet blackbagged and had their social media pages and everything scrubbed. If I was KGB officer and some of my polite green men did a very dumb thing, securing all potential sources would be the first thing on my list of priorities. It seems ridiculous that information about the AA brigade was just left laying around on the net for anyone to look at.

Well that assumes they would have known this sort of information was all over the place waiting to be pieced together, and elsewhere that hasn't seemed to have been the case. Now they have the issue that if they start removing this stuff it'll look like they have something to hide.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 17:11

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Elukka posted:

Hmm yes the Russian government that keeps going DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS GUY THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO IT repeatedly through the media and now direct from government ministries will probably not care at all.

The internet is a thing. Bellingcat might be difficult to stumble onto for the average person... except the government keeps talking about it.

We actually get pretty widespread coverage in Russian language media, with our last big report on the 53rd Brigade the RBC.ru article on our report had around half a million views alone, plus we had coverage from BBC Russia and various major Russian language news sites in other countries than Russia, so it was easily discoverable by anyone who spoke Russian.Our basic rule is anyone can reprint our articles as well, so blocking Bellingcat won't be particularly effective if Russia decides to do that.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 20:26

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

So here's what the Russian Foreign Ministry had to say about Bellingcat, finally in English

quote:

So-called evidence falsified by the British Bellingcat blogger team concerning Russian leaders� alleged complicity in the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash

We are dismayed with the publication by the Netherlands media of assertions by UK organisation Bellingcat about the alleged complicity of Russian leaders in the July 2014 Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 disaster in the skies over Donbass. They are citing as evidence various blurred photos whose origin is absolutely unclear, recordings of certain telephone conversations and the social media accounts of unidentified persons. To be honest, there is nothing new in Bellingcat�s methods. They have always used similar sources of information with regard to Russia, and they have also prepared their own open falsifications and planted them.

I would like to remind the media outlets in the Netherlands and in other countries (perhaps they have forgotten) that, Der Spiegel magazine accused Bellingcat of lies six months back. At that time, the German publication which accepted a similar false story as authentic had to apologise to its readers. In early 2016, the newspaper Trau of the Netherlands also conducted an investigation and established that 15 Bellingcat bloggers were inventing all this nonsense as a source of additional income. As you understand, these bloggers have no information at all and no idea of the disaster�s real facts. They are inventing news at home and sending it to various media outlets. In turn, television and radio company RTL of the Netherlands also doubts the Bellingcat findings and has noted openly that the bloggers have a very biased view of events, that they are using unverified data, and that they are focusing too actively on Russian officials who might be involved. At the same time, they are not justified in overlooking the role of the Ukrainian side.

Various Western experts and analysts have also voiced their opinion of Bellingcat. For example, a British political analyst said that a senior Dutch government or secret services official had advised the heads of the Joint Investigation Team to use Bellingcat materials. Otherwise their report would fail to interest anyone, he noted.

One is amazed, most of all, that state agencies of a country claiming the right to conduct a serious investigation into this tragedy are using Bellingcat materials. The Joint Investigation Team is actually taking this so-called �lead� in line with this �recommendation�. To be honest, one is terrified as to where this investigation may lead.

It's worth noting that at best the claims about the news articles are gross misrepresentation of the contents of the articles, and no such article was ever published in Der Spiegel Magazine. Here's the RTL piece, and the only Trouw article where it refers to money and Bellingcat. Clearly nothing like the Russian's describe.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 22:41

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Friendly Humour posted:

I wonder how many death threats you get day by day

Not many, although I've probably muted several hundred people on Twitter who would send me that sort of thing. I prefer muting, then they've no idea I can't see what they're saying, and still get to see all the stuff I'm doing that irritates them enough to send me abuse.

For those of you interested I did a presentation at the Guardian today about open source and social media investigation, you can watch it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy5Al4-HK5g&t=1332s

As you'll be able to see, I've been getting carried away with Keynote.

Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Mar 14, 2016

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 23:21

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

rabatz posted:

Well, they sort of did publish such an article. They apologise for their previous reporting, because the "expert" they interviewed contradicts bellingcat. They leave the conclusion up to their readers, but it's all heavily skewed against you. The average reader of those articles would probably agree with that Russian statement.
Your reputation in Germany was seriously damaged by those articles. They are the convienient go-to rebuttals for anything bellingscat-related. "Look, even the Spiegel says they are quacks"

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelblog/bellingcat-bericht-zu-mh17-was-wir-lernen-a-1037135.html
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/mh17-satellitenbilder-bellingcat-betreibt-kaffeesatzleserei-a-1036874.html

That's Spiegel Online, the articles were never published in Der Spiegel Magazine.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 06:49

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

No, and when I asked the author to get them to comment on the new imagery we purchased he said they weren't satellite imagery experts, and seeing the whole point of our report was about combining the two to come to a conclusion using only one to criticise us seems a bit off.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 09:08

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Friendly Humour posted:

Bit unprofessional of them. I thought Spiegel was a high-quality publication, but that just seems like something a tabloid rag would do.

Honestly I don't even understand what the point of their criticism was. That expert of theirs says too that the images the MOD published were edited but somehow that doesn't prove anything because apparently pictures meant as proof of innocense are often edited for reasons like...?

Basically is was that we didn't do ELA properly, our counter-argument is that it was done in the context of other issues we detected with the imagery. With recent updates to Google Earth historical imagery it seems even more certain nothing happened in one area we examined

https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/704387095448653825

And there's other problems too

https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/704029836973645824

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 11:14

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Friendly Humour posted:

Digging into a single piece of evidence and ignoring the rest in order to discredit a theory is cool and good.

Anyway the spiegel online piece was like a year ago. Outside Russian propaganda, is that really the worst criticism of Moses' work?

I'm pretty sure it is, and we only used ELA in that one report, so if that's all they've got then that ain't much.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 11:28

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Thing is, I was unemployed for a total of 2 months in a 10 year period, then I started working on the Brown Moses Blog full time after I did my Indiegogo fundraiser. The situation was is I finished a part time admin contract, then decided to do the Indiegogo straight after that, which took a month, during which period I was living off savings while I waited for the Indiegogo to finish. The whole unemployed thing is just something a journalist wrote because it sounded like a better story, then loads of other journalists repeated until it became a thing.

Torquemadras posted:

Now that I mention that, that's something I always found weird... Whenever someone starts talking about the events in Ukraine, and I start calling Russia's behaviour into question, there's one thing almost everyone who doubts the Bellingcat version says: "Putin is not a stupid man." It's always about Putin, and they want to stress that he's a smart dude. Like... why the hell does everyone assume that's called into question?

Thing is, Putin can be as smart as anyone wants, but if his army is Instagramming their entire lives and civilians are posting photos of every military movement they see there's gently caress all he can do. That's why open source and social media investigation is so powerful in an era where everyone has a powerful, networked, computer/camera in their pocket.

Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Mar 15, 2016

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 11:43

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Friendly Humour posted:

If I may ask, how do you get money from bellingcat actually? I don't see any ads or anything.

Sorry, thought I replied to this, Bellingcat is funded for the next year by a grant from Google, that funds me, Aric, and all the costs of running the site. We're also applying for other funding, mainly for specific projects.

Lucy Heartfilia posted:

Probably payments for giving talks, consulting and teaching.

I used to use that to keep things going, but I keep all that stuff separate from Bellingcat now I'm applying for grant, and run Bellingcat as a non-profit. It makes things simpler when applying for grants.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 18:06

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Friendly Humour posted:

That's awfully nice of them. Did you ask for the grant or did they come to you?

I went to them, they were keen to help out, I've done a lot with them on various events and projects, so we've had a pretty long relationship.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 18:57

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Friendly Humour posted:

By the way, I was looking for any and all criticisms of you online and stumbled on your spat with Seymour Hersh and a MIT rocket expert team headed by Postol et al from like two years back about those Sarin gas attacks in Syria. And about ten thousand foilhat media articles denouncing you as a NATO lizard.

What I can't find is Hersh ever acknowledging that you even exist, did he ever actually respond to you in any way? Or Postol for that matter?

Yeah, he was interviewed in Diken about it
http://www.diken.com.tr/seymour-her...ttack-in-syria/

Diken then interview both myself and Dan Kaszeta about that interview
http://www.diken.com.tr/brown-moses...for-the-rebels/
http://www.diken.com.tr/dan-kaszeta...acturing-sarin/

Funnily enough, I was at the ARIJ journalism festival in Jordan, and Seymour Hersh was going to appear the day after I left, so all the Syrian journalists and activists there were very keen on me battling to the death with him at some point, but disappointed to know I wouldn't be there. They apparently gave him a real grilling on the subject (after a lengthy deep dive discussion with me), or so they told me after I left. So I managed to get mild food poisoning from some Lebanese food, and the next morning I'm up, ready to take my flight out of Jordan, and I leave my room, and head to the elevators. Just then, an American who is behind me asks "excuse me, do you know where they serve breakfast?", and I turn around and it's Seymour Hersh. Obviously he doesn't recognise me, and I'm feeling way too ill and gassy to start any debates, so I just say, "yeah, downstairs, to your left", and take the lift down to the lobby. Although in fairness, if I had been fit and healthy I probably wouldn't have bothered anyway, especially not before breakfast.

As for Ted Postol, I keep meeting people from MIT who give me the impression he's seen as a fringe figure among his fellow academics, and it was me and Dan Kaszeta who got invited to the OPCW's anniversary event, not Hersh and Postol.

Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Mar 15, 2016

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 21:28

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Friendly Humour posted:

From what I read, their criticisms basically boiled down to "but somebody else could potentially have made those rockets and sarins and attacks. We have zero evidence for any of it, but it's not disproven so therefore you're wrong and also Obama wants a war against Assad". So four years of work and the criticism seems to add up to "nuh-uh". Impressive.

We also know the exact type of rockets used in the attacks were used in previously chemical attacks against opposition held areas, and also the explosive version of the same rocket was used since late 2012, and is still photographed and filmed in use today. I've examined images of these in extremely close detail, down to the bolts and welds, and all past examples are identical in every way to the ones used on August 21st 2013. So it's not only a case of being able to make them, but make them to be perfect copies of the ones used in previous attacks.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 22:16

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

There's a live blog here
http://www.delfi.lv/news/national/p...s.d?id=47188319

Lots of talk about Nazis etc, whats the actual story?

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 11:44

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

kalstrams posted:

It's the annual remembrance day of Latvian Waffen-SS legionnaires, where couple of people take a short morning stroll to Freedom Monument to put down flowers to their dead relatives, and sometimes comrades.

Yeah, seemed journalists and protesters outnumbered participants.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 11:53

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Just leaving this here

https://twitter.com/RobPulseNews/status/710076223418994688

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 13:58

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

https://twitter.com/GrahamWP_UK/status/710039960531894272

https://twitter.com/GrahamWP_UK/status/710041498730045440

Since that last tweet he's not posted for over 3 hours. I suspect they did arrest him after all.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 14:19

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/710187247216238592

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 22:05

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/710228727217704960

Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Mar 16, 2016

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 22:23

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

They use it in Charlie Brooker's Newswipe as well.

Graham Phillips is saying he was thrown our of Latvia and has been banned from returning for 3 years, so much for his Baltics trip.

https://twitter.com/GrahamWP_UK/status/710326332123713536
https://twitter.com/GrahamWP_UK/status/710326988456763392

Meanwhile, here's Bellingcat's Aric Toler talking about MH17 at New America's Future of War conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6jpVVTmeN0

Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Mar 17, 2016

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 09:33

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

evil_cheese posted:

Brown moses the youtube video of your speech on the last page is set to private for some reason.

The whole thing is being edited into smaller chunks for easier sharing and stuff, I'll repost it when it's back up.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 19:08

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

As promised, the edited version of my presentation on open source and social media investigation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7zvsXv2ECI

# ¿ Mar 18, 2016 17:36

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Nitrox posted:

This is great. Do you mind if I share this with friends?

Go for it, there's other videos on the same channel from the same event, Malachy Browne talking about Reportedly's brilliant Yemen arms tracking investigation, and Storyful�s Eliza Mackintosh talking about verifying mass shootings and terror attacks.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2016 17:57

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Last year you may remember we used satellite imagery to examine craters from artillery attacks in Eastern Ukraine which, in combination with additional evidence, proved Russia had been launching artillery attacks in Ukraine from Russian territory.

Now in the Savchenko trial the exaxt same methodology was used by a prosecution expert witness to prove Ukrainian artillery fired into Russia, citing Bellingcat and winning praise from the judge
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/03/25/russian-prosecution-cites-bellingcat-methods-in-savchenko-trial/

So now we've had a nice precedent set in a Russian court for a methodology we developed being acceptable evidence to prove the origin of artillery attacks, which is always handy.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 08:05

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

I'll be at the Dutch House of Representatives on Thursday with the Atlantic Council presenting our work on Russia's war in Ukraine and MH17, for anyone who wants to tune in (if they broadcast that sort of thing)
https://www.tweedekamer.nl/vergaderingen/commissievergaderingen/details?id=2016A01236

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 14:42

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Doodles McIdiot posted:

Hey BM, if you happened to notice a somewhat disheveled looking gentleman in the room, I swung by to see this in person. What are your feelings about this meeting? I thought the presentation was well done but I had hoped the discussion afterward would be more engaging. I have always found that Dutch politicians pussyfoot around international security issues. Do you feel that, in your conversations with them, they seem to take the Russian strategy seriously enough?

Thanks for coming, I think it was a fairly standard discussion for those sorts of events, but we had a lot of good conversations afterwards and we've been in more meetings today, and they seemed engaged.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2016 12:18

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

The OCCRP is promising to release a massive story at 8pm CET about corruption, money laundering, and offshore funds links to lots of different governments in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, in many cases going all the way to the top in those countries. The top guy at the OCCRP has been saying Putin's spokeperson Peskov should plan for a late night, a journalist in Ukraine has been talking about asking Porshenko's office some difficult questions, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is involved, and other countries being covered also include Azerbaijan and Serbia plus more.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2016 09:54

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

anilEhilated posted:

My money's on every single governmental figure in the EE being paid by the Kremlin.

My guess is they've figured out they're all laundering money from their governments budgets and through dodging business deals, but they've all used the same network to do it, and network has been busted open.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2016 10:11

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Thanks to all those of you who came to the event today, apologies I couldn't stick around to talk but I was being dragged from one place to the next, which has become a regular feature of my life.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 21:57

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 18:07

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Yet again the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is pissy at Bellingcat

quote:

Bellingcat as an instrument to divert attention from investigating the tragedy of the Malaysian Boeing over Ukraine

We took note of an interview with Bellingcat representatives for the BBC in which they sarcastically spoke about some �trolling� on the part of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Ministry of Russia, for allegedly attacking them.
I would simply like to recall that we do not attack anyone, but rather, give our unbiased assessment of the work of both this group and those who use its materials as reliable information.

We understand the purpose of this group�s activities. Acting jointly with the current Ukrainian authorities, they continue to use all possible �fakes,� to create quasi-evidence to blame Russia. Why do we take this position and on what is it based? Even now the commission (investigating the circumstances of the Boeing tragedy over the territory of Ukraine) prefers to ignore Russia�s reasoning, which is corroborated by facts and evidence, in particular by tests and experiments. The commission ignores it to the extent that it makes no reply to this reasoning, while at the same time passing off these �fakes� for the hundredth time as proof or integrated evidence, even when this information has been debunked, and not only by Russia.

At present, we have information,that leads us to believe that loyal and handy witnesses in this case are being selected and presumably trained. This begs the question: why is all this being done? The aim is once again to give the global community fabricated proof of Russia�s aggression. This seems blasphemous in this case, because people died there and their families want to know the truth. One may endlessly combine all these invented stories and collect evidence allegedly found on social media sites and at the same time ignore the results of experiments, including those provided by Russia. All this can be done only if you neglect to consider one thing: this case is not just an information campaign, it involves human lives, the destinies of the victims� families, who definitely want to know the truth.

It apparently refers to this article where I said this

quote:

"What's been interesting for me is having this Syria community of trolls and the community of pro-Russian trolls that built up around MH17 and my work, now coming together after Russia's involvement in Syria. It's nice to bring people together, even when it's in their mutual and obsessive hatred of one person.

"Recently we've even had the Russian Ministry of Defence and Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs putting out statements attacking Bellingcat. They seem to be basing it on what the trolls are saying," he adds.

But as the Russian MoD and Russian MFA has been repeatedly claiming we're using fakes, and now even working with the Ukrainians, I've now published the following open letter, which we've also sent to the Russians

quote:

Dear Sir or Madam,
Both the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense have accused Bellingcat of preparing "open falsifications," passing off "fakes," using "faked posts," and making "pseudo-hypotheses." Bellingcat has never created fake information, and has never included "faked posts" as evidence in its investigations. After months of false accusations in official press conferences, we request that the government of the Russian Federation provide specific examples of the "fakes" and false evidence that are supposedly published by Bellingcat.
Additionally, on April 6, the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Bellingcat of "acting jointly with the current Ukrainian authorities." Bellingcat has never acted jointly with any body of the Ukrainian government. We request any proof held by the government of the Russian Federation that Bellingcat has cooperated with the Ukrainian--or any other--government in its research or publications.
The government of the Russian Federation seems very concerned with providing an "unbiased assessment," in the words of spokesperson Zakharova, of the work of Bellingcat. We request concrete proof to support its accusations.
Yours sincerely,
Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat

So lets see if my continual badgering will result in any actual evidence of these accusations.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 14:30

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Eastern Europe: Olivier's sphere of influence

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