1/ OPCW document entitled "Engineering Assessment of Two Cylinders Observed at the Douna Incident", Draft for Internal Review, Expanded Rev[ision] 1, dated 27 Feb 2019 syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers… is astounding. Totally undermines US and UK government statements. Also OPCW report.
2/ chlorine cylinders were observed in two Douma locations. "An engineering assessment has been conducted, using all available information, to evaluate the possible means by which these two cylinders arrived at their respective locations as observed". Just what was required.
2/ at both locations, the engineers fairly stated the two competing hypotheses:
A) that cylinders dropped from aircraft (helicopters) creating crater in roof
B) that cylinders manually placed, craters pre-existing (false flag)
3/ at Location 2 (cylinder on balcony of building where bodies located), engineers found that observed impact event could not be reproduced even with drop heights as low as 500 m (much lower than actual helicopter operating heights).
4/ simulations showed that a cylinder puncturing a concrete roof with steel rebar (as observed) would be marked by steel rebar, but "no traces" of such interaction in the balcony cylinder
5/ engineers point out that "observed appearance of cylinder and rebar not consistent". Front of cylinder shows "no signs" of impact with concrete slab or cylinder, while observed rebar "does not indicate" that it slowed cylinder to stop.
6/ New York Times postulated a theory in which cylinder bounced off a corner of terrace wall. Engineers pointed out that observed deformation "not consistent" with this theory and that supposed "cushioning" effect of wire netting "negligible" relative to energy of cylinder
7/ Engineers reported that observed crater on balcony "more consistent" with that expected from mortar or rocket artillery round than falling cylinder, and that this explanation supported by similar craters on nearby buildings
8/ Engineers dismissed another element of New York Times theory in which criss-cross pattern on cylinder postulated to have occurred as scratches from cylinder penetrating mesh. They observed that pattern "inconsistent" with postulated near-vertical trajectory.
9/ Engineers also dismissed New York Times theory that "mangled remains" of "mild steel framework and fins" located on balcony had ever been fitted to cylinder or (somehow) stripped from cylinder during impact
10/ their assessment of Location 4 (the bedroom cylinder) was just as savage. They observed that it "was not possible to establish a set of circumstances" where post-deformation cylinder could fit through crater with valve intact and fins deformed as observed.
11/ they observed that corrosion of damaged areas shows that cylinder had "spent some post-damage time being exposed to the elements", dryly adding that it "would most likely not have degraded to such an extent ... inside the bedroom".
12/ they observed that observed deflection of the shower frame in the bedroom was "not consistent" with direction of required movement of cylinder from crater to the bed.
13/ the engineers resoundingly dismissed the facially implausible theory that the cylinder "bounced onto the bed" as being contradicted by observed features of the bedroom
14/ the FFM engineering sub-team said that the "dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders and the surrounding scene of the incidents were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder having been delivered from an aircraft".
15/ FFM engineering sub-team stated that "alternative hypothesis", manually placing" of cylinders, produced "only plausible explanation for observations", rejecting theory that cylinders had been "delivered from aircraft"
16/ this document is absolutely devastating both to intel assessments by US and other governments and to the OPCW report published on March 1, 2019, raising serious questions about the integrity of each.
17/ here is link to blog post by Paul McKeigue, David Miller and Piers Robinson breaking this story: syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers…
18/ Bellingcat and UK propaganda IntegrityInitiative have laughable response. Higgins linked to Scott Lucas tweet
which (falsely) claims to "dissect" "new engineering document"
19/ Lucas (part of "Integrity" Initiative) wrote Facebook post facebook.com/EAWorldView/ph…
20/ Bellingcat ally Lucas confirmed "investigation undertaken by engineering sub-team of FFM, beginning with on-site inspections in April-May 2018, followed by a detailed engineering analysis" and that "report of this investigation was excluded from the published Final Report"
21/ remarkably, the chronology of events in OPCW report did NOT cite this original work by engineering sub-team of FFM, instead citing only the much later (Oct-Dec) work commissioned from "unidentified 'engineering experts'"
22/ Bellingcat ally Lucas observed that Ian Henderson, a named assessor in report, is identified as "OPCW Inspection Team Leader" in Feb 2018 OPCW Scientific Advisory Board report opcw.org/sites/default/…
23/ to give an idea of Lucas' sloppiness, he says that Henderson stated that "'the alternative hypothesis' provides the only explanation for both cylinders", but that Henderson did "not delineate that hypothesis"
24/ however, a few pages earlier in relatively short document, Henderson clearly set out "alternative hypothesis" L2-2 for Location 2 (balcony) and L4-3 for Location 4 (bedroom) - that persons placed the cylinders manually.
25/ against many inconsistencies in Henderson report, Lucas offered single "explanation": that, per OPCW report, balcony cylinder first hit roof decreasing speed, so that it "hit concrete floor of balcony causing a hole in it, but without sufficient energy to fall through it".
26/ more on this after dinner
27/ Lucas falsely reduced the many FFM engineering sub-team issues to a single Location 2 issue: that "deformation of part of cylinder but not of rest is not consistent with an “intermediate impact”", also falsely claiming that sub-team failed to "refer" to roof damage.
28/ Lucas claims that "apparently", this argument was "rejected by the OPCW Fact Finding Mission before Henderson submitted his assessment, or in the 48 hours before publication of the final report."
29/ in reply to Lucas' skimpy argument, first an obvious point. Engineering Sub-team presented contradictions at two locations: Location 2 (balcony) and Location 4 (bedroom). Lucas totally ignored the Sub-Team's devastating critique of implausible bedroom scene. Zero discussion
30/ before turning to Lucas' single point, take note of huge contrast between Engineering Sub-Team (Feb 27) and OPCW Report (Mar 1) on whether balcony crater could be due to incoming mortar fire (explosive).
31/ Sub-Team stated that appearance of balcony crater "more consistent" with "mortar or rocket artillery round" (explosive) than "impact from falling object". They gave multiple reasons: deformed rebar splayed out and concrete spalling underside of crater (no photo in report);
32/ Sub-Team observed that mortar explanation supported by "more than one crater of very similar appearance in concrete slabs on top of nearby buildings". An example of such "very similar" crater is shown in OPCW Report Figure A.6.3; balcony crater also shown to compare.
33/ Sub-Team: also supporting mortar/rocket artillery attribution was "fragmentation pattern on upper walls" (while noting unusually elevated), concrete spalling and "black scorching" (also noting fire in corner of room)
34/ despite Engineering Sub-Team finding that crater "more consistent" with mortar/artillery, OPCW report stated that FFM "analysed the damage" and found that "this hypothesis is unlikely" "given the absence of primary and secondary fragmentation characteristic of an explosion"
35/ so, on Feb 27, OPCW Engineering Sub-Team said "fragmentation pattern on upper walls" supported likely attribution of crater to mortar/artillery. On Mar 1, OPCW Report stated opposite: that attribution to mortar unlikely because of "absence of fragmentation". Who to believe?
36/ Engineering Sub-Team cited "black scorching" underside of crater as support for attribution to mortar/artillry, while also noting post-crater fire in room. Skeptics earlier cited fire as evidence that crater long preceded Apr 7. OPCW weakly said that fire to "detoxify".
37/ seems odd that White Helmets would set a fire in this upstairs room on April 8 when so many dead bodies being removed from house. On April 9 afternoon, Russians inspected.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Stephen McIntyre

Stephen McIntyre Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ClimateAudit

Feb 8
In today's thread, I'm going to excavate some fascinating data on Omicron vs Delta from a CDC article. On its face, it's a garden variety sermon on vaccination
cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7…, but it contains other interesting data that wasnt discussed by the authors.
2/ bear with some preliminaries so that the precise point is understood when I get to it. The underlying database is 222772 visits ("encounters") by adults to 383 US emergency depts and urgent care clinics and 87904 hospitalizations at 259 hospitals from Aug 26/21 to Jan 5/22.
3/ Delta variant was predominant for most of period; Omicron rapidly became dominant in Dec and, by Jan, Omicron (rather than vaccination) had more or less eliminated Delta. While authors stratify results by "Delta" and "Omicron" periods, unfortunately they didnt quantify lengths
Read 30 tweets
Jan 24
UK has published some relatively detailed data showing "unadjusted" rates of case infection of boosted vs unvax by age group.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl… As context, Ontario SciTable only shows "adjusted" case rate purporting to show unvax rate as twice that of vax (2 or more doses)
2/ in ALL UK ages above 30, "unadjusted" case infection rate for triple-vax was HIGHER than among unvax. These results troubled UK authorities who printed unadjusted unvax rates in light gray, warning "comparing case rates ...should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness"
3/ the UK conclusion that "comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness against infection" will come as news to Ontario SciTable and other authorities which regularly use such data in briefings
Read 14 tweets
Jan 16
Quebec, in midst of draconian lockdown, (unlike Ontario) publishes new hospitalization data by age group, vax status msss.gouv.qc.ca/professionnels…

These are real counts, neither "normalized" relative to population nor "adjusted" by Ontario Science Table (or CDC). What do you notice? Image
2/ the most obvious observation about new hospitalizations is that (unsurprisingly) they are dominated by seniors and particularly over 80s - a group which is almost totally vaxxed.
3/ a secondary observation is that, in younger agegroups, number of new hospitalizations among unvax is pretty similar to number of new hospitalizations among vax, even though population of unvax is much smaller. This is consistent with primary messaging from governments.
Read 17 tweets
Jan 12
in response to recent threads in which I showed actual vax and unvax case counts (not just per million), I've been abused by many commenters for my supposed failure to understand "data science 101" - that ONLY per million matters and only a moron would look at counts.
2/ I suspect that most of the abusive commenters are much younger than me and thus fail to consider why actual counts of fully-vax cases are of particular concern to someone who is fully vax and in a vulnerable age group (like me.)
3/ Nearly every 80+ and 70+ in Ontario was fully vax in Dec; yet there was unprecedented explosion of cases among seniors in mid-Dec. This is NOT due to almost non-existent unvax seniors. I wish it were. Yes, the few unvax are at more risk. But they arent causing senior caseload
Read 15 tweets
Jan 11
the actual operating problem for Ontario govt - what puts pressure on hospitals and ICUs - is most likely the dramatic resurgence of cases among Ontario seniors, even including 99.99% fully-vax 80+s.
2/ it is well known that hospitalization and ICU rates for senior COVID cases are FAR higher than younger cohorts. In Toronto, where fine-grained data is available, 34% of cases among 80-90s are hospitalized; 25% of cases among 70-79s hospitalized, 5.8% into ICU
3/ in November, the priority of federal government and Science Table appears to have been vaccinating 5-11 year olds, as opposed to boosting seniors. "Younger" seniors (60s and 70s) mostly wer not eligible for boosters until December due to 6-month federal regulation.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 10
today's Ontario cases are down almost 50% from Jan 1 max. Fully-vax cases accounted for ~85% of all cases; on a per million basis, fully vax cases still are higher than unvax cases. SciTable shows increasing cases, with "adjusted" unvax cases exceeding vax cases on per MM basis.
2/ here is today's NON-ICU hospitalizations, absolute and per million, by status. About 75% of non-ICU hospitalizations are full vax, flipping ratio that applied earlier in pandemic. Relative unvax rates remain higher.
3/ to estimate "excess" unvax non-ICU occupancy, I calculated what non-ICU numbers for unvax "should have been" if they had same relative occupancy as full-vax. It was ~100 extra for most of 2021, now ~150. This is 8% of present 1925 non-ICU occupancy.
Read 15 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(