@EliotHiggins's Threads
Really great work here by @ForensicArchi using open source material from Ukraine to establish Russian involvement in the conflict, lots of possible future applications of the technology too. theguardian.com/world/2019/aug…
@ForensicArchi You can check out their online platform below, I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in how we can use technology to understand conflict ilovaisk.forensic-architecture.org
@ForensicArchi I'm interested to see how we could use the data we're collecting as part of our new investigation and archiving process on the platform they've developed.
Working on a response to Ted Postol's new Khan Sheikhoun crater theory, it blows my mind he thinks it's formed by a 122mm warhead, there's multiple examples of 122mm impacts that look nothing close to the Khan Sheikhoun crater. Examples from Mariupol 2015 shown below: 
Left is what Ted Postol claims was caused by a warhead from a 122mm Grad; Right is an actual 122mm Grad warhead impact
And just to be 100% clear, here's Postol stating it was caused by a 122mm warhead. Can anyone find a single image of a 122mm warhead strike that's comparable to the Khan Sheikhoun crater?
Details of @GLAN_Law and @MwatanaEn's evidence submitted to the UK government relating to Saudi air strikes in Yemen and UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia. Bellingcat will be submitting its own evidence with the help of @GLAN_Law later this month theguardian.com/world/2019/aug…
@GLAN_LAW @MwatanaEn The evidence submitted to @GLAN_Law is based on details gathered on the ground by @MwatanaEn, including images of bomb debris and craters, along with witness testimony. Bellingcat will compliment this by submitting our own open source investigations of Saudi air strikes in Yemen.
@GLAN_LAW @MwatanaEn At Bellingcat we've been working on a new methodology for open source investigation and the archiving of open source evidence that creates a high baseline for our investigations, and makes it easier to submit what we find and investigate to courts and other mechanism.
Thread - Yesterday I wrote a response to @TusliGabbard's Reports on Chemical Attacks in Syria, posted on her campaign website at the start of this month. Her supporters have reacted poorly, so here's a thread on it bellingcat.com/news/mena/2019…
Gabbard's Reports on Chemical Attacks in Syria relies heavily on the work of Ted Postol, who is notorious among those who follow chemical weapons in Syria. He confirmed in June he had met Gabbard to share his ideas. therealnews.com/stories/new-ev…
Based on Postol's work, Gabbard highlights various "inconsistencies" in OPCW reporting on the Khan Sheikhoun and Douma chemical attacks, start with this one.
More garbage in Tulsi Gabbard's "Reports on Chemical Attacks in Syria", on Douma, it makes the following statement. Pretty much everything in it is incorrect.
It describes the cylinder in a hole "several times wider than the diameter of the gas cylinder." This is referring to the gas cylinder filmed and photographed on the balcony impact site, which clearly isn't in a hole "several times wider than the diameter of the gas cylinder."
It also states "There are also photographs of similar hole in the roof of an adjacent building, where another yellow gas cylinder was found lying on a bed on the top floor" This is untrue, the other cylinder not near the balcony site. Both sites are marked below in red and yellow
I see Tulsi Gabbard's "Reports on Chemical Attacks in Syria" cites Ted Postol's claim about Khan Sheikhoun that the crater resembles one formed by an IED placed on the ground, rather than a bomb. Problem is, Ted Postol himself now claims this is untrue.
tulsi2020.com/record/reports…
tulsi2020.com/record/reports…
During his 2018 debate with me in London Postol presented an entirely new scenario, based on computer models, where a rocket actually formed the crater, and the same model excluded an IED being used, so Gabbard's claim isn't even supported by the source of that claim.
I should note its been almost a year since that debate, why Postol said his latest theory was being peer reviewed, and we've yet to hear anything about the outcome of that peer review.
The @CITeam_en took a visit to the @mod_russia's display of weapons from the Syrian conflict, which just happens to include the very cluster munitions Russia repeatedly denied using in the conflict. Oops. citeam.org/cluster-bombs-…
@CITeam_en @mod_russia As the @mod_russia states here "Russian aviation does not use them", yet here's cluster bombs proudly on display at the Russians MoD's own display of weapons used in Syria.
facebook.com/14922523243508…
facebook.com/14922523243508…
@CITeam_en @mod_russia They also looked at the Syrian rebel chemical weapon manufacturing set up on display at the display, and discovered the components were all manufactured in Russia, some just 50km away from the exhibition site. What a coincidence!
This @realDonaldTrump vs @Aoc et al is a very interesting situation. Normally we have a situation where Trump does or says something awful, but before it escalates he does some other random crazy thing that distracts us from the previous crazy thing, so no escalation occurs.
But this is different. Here he's locked into an escalation with @AOC et al, who aren't the type to back down from a fight like more established democrats would, especially with issues like racism, and especially when he escalates things by calling them anti-Semites.
So to me it seems a question of who will back down first. @AOC et al might see Trump's escalating attacks a good way to bait the worst out of Trump, and Trump might see his base reacting positively, especially while Fox News, his prime source of news, defended his every action.
Following up on our earlier reporting examining the movements of three GRU agents linked to the Skripal poisoning @bellingcat has now published more details of their movements, this time in Switzerland bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
The investigation includes extremely detailed information on the movements of senior GRU officer Denis Sergeev, believed to have played a supervising and coordinating role in the Skripal poisoning.
GRU officer Denis Sergeev's travels through Switzerland occasionally coincided with visits to Switzerland by the other two Skripal suspects and GRU officers Col. Alexander Mishkin and Col. Anatoli Chepiga, suggesting they worked together on a regular basis.
Aiming to have the first episode of the Bellingcat 6 episode podcast documentary on MH17 out by July 17th. We've interviewed journalists, family members, lawyers, experts, and even Fred Westerbeke of the JIT about MH17, and we're looking forward to sharing it with you all.
The 1st episode focuses on the 48 hours immediately after MH17 was shot down, with interviews with journalists on the scene, including a lot of powerful testimony about what they saw in Eastern Ukraine. Big thanks to all of those involved for sharing their experiences with us.
In later episodes we talk about the Bellingcat investigation, the reaction of the Russian government, the story of what happened from the perspective of the separatists pieced together using audio intercepts, and the future for the case in various courts.
It feels like all the social media companies are having a go at open source investigators this week, first Facebook with graph search, then Twitter with shutting down open source investigator accounts, now YouTube has banned Bellingcat's YouTube channel:
2 years ago YouTube suspended my other YouTube account that was used for my old blog, after lots of back and forth they finally restored it, so it's not like they don't know who Bellingcat is.
I'd personally preferred to have spent the day preparing our new MH17 report and working on more pressing issues, but now I guess I get to spend my time trying to get the channel restored instead. Thanks, YouTube.
Whenever I'm filming an interview & they want some footage of me typing for whatever, instead of typing random letters I write confessions to the various conspiracy theories I'm accused of being part of just in case any of those obsessive loonies are checking what I'm typing.
Gotta keep yourself entertained while filming the b-roll.
You also don't want to be this guy:
It appears Twitter is suspending accounts that are doing open source reporting, in particular those focused on the activities of the Indian Air Force, reporting information from sites like @flightradar24. @IntelCrab, mentioned below, has also now been suspended.
It's not been a great couple of weeks for social media companies & open source investigators. 1st Facebook disables graph searches, an extremely useful tool for open source investigators, now Twitter is cracking down on them, apparently at the behest of governments.
With situations like this it would be great if Twitter had a clear policy on what open source material is forbidden on their platform, and if there's a consistent policy with governments on this issues.
Seems like Nikita Mikhalkov, Russian film maker & head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union is into some series Pepe De Silva shit with Bellingcat. He starts his video noting Bellingcat was founded 2 days before MH17 was shot down, & pull out this
It seems someone, and I suspect it's not Nikita himself, has been trying to connect the dots between Bellingcat and all sorts of organisations and individuals. Somehow I suspect this is related to the upcoming 5th anniversary of #MH17 being shot down.
It seems to list lots of Bellingcat contributors, including @AricToler, Cameron Colquhoun, @N_Waters89, @DanKaszeta, and lots more.
Russia issues new challenge to OPCW over Douma report by @Brian_Whit link.medium.com/vMoqElqx3W
As @brian_whit highlights, there's a number of similarities between the leaked OPCW report and the Russian counterclaims against the official OPCW-FFM report. You now have to wonder what Russia's involvement with the leaked report is.
It also likely explains why it was leaked to who it was leaked to. Seems the usual suspects are getting played by the the other usual suspects.
The second image here is very interesting, it shows a smaller type of improvised munition dropped from helicopters which we've seen evidence for in the past, but I think this is the first time they're shown dropping from helicopters
Here's a recent photograph of what is likely the same type of munition, and they've been photographed in the past as well. I think there's even a photo of a Hip helicopter loaded up with them somewhere
Here's the photo I mentioned
Bellingcat launched its new Yemen Project this week, with our new investigation platform and archive coming out next week, making it easier to discover verified material and what will likely be 100s of reports on incidents in Yemen. bellingcat.com/news/mena/2019…
We've been working on creating the Yemen project over the last year or so, but it really all came together at a Hackathon we held at the end of January, where we were joined by open source investigation experts from @amnesty, @hrcberkeley, & Kings College glanlaw.org/single-post/20…
There we worked in small investigation teams on 100 Saudi Coalition airstrikes provided to us by @GLAN_LAW, & during the 4 day Hackathon we were able to make a lot of progress on investigating these strikes, so a big thank you to @amnesty, @hrcberkeley and Kings College for that.
We *should* be releasing our new Yemen project on April 22nd, which will include dozens of detailed investigations into air strikes released over 5 weeks, along with a new searchable archive of verified and geolocated open source material from Yemen.
We've been working with @GLAN_LAW to develop new investigation and archiving processes focused on using our investigations in future court cases, and ensuring material we gather is archived in a useful and viable manner for use in those cases.
Also to support the documentation of our investigation process we'll be using @hunchly during investigations, which preserves our investigations as we're doing them, and archives the pages we visit them automatically as we work.
Probably because we don't hire people who think George Bush's notorious "Mission Accomplished" banner was CGI'd in, or spread conspiracy theories about rescue workers harvesting organs.
Source for the "Mission Accomplished" claim, via the SPM Working Group's @PiersRobinson1:
The speech was actually broadcast live with the banner visible from multiple angles, but the SPM Working Group's @PiersRobinson1 claims it was superimposed.
Many people have made comparisons between Wikileaks and Bellingcat in the last couple of days, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. Wikileaks elicits and publishes leaked materials, we analyze open source materials and, in very rare cases, leaked data.
The clearest case of this can be seen in a story on our October 2018 story "305 Car Registrations May Point to Massive GRU Security Breach". We found this data in pre-published leaked materials, but purposefully chose to not doxx these GRU agents.
bellingcat.com/news/2018/10/0…
bellingcat.com/news/2018/10/0…
We could have easily published all of the available personal information about these 305 GRU officers, but chose not to because it would just be doxxing for the sake of it. Despite what some think, we are not an extension of any security service.
Among other things, this includes the example of the bombing in Sarmin where the Russian MoD used aerial imagery from before an attack occurred to claim an attack didn't occur bellingcat.com/news/2015/11/0…
It's such a good example of a government using deceptive imagery to lie about air strikes we use it in all of our 5 day workshops, clearly demonstrating how open source evidence proves they are lying.
Google Earth also has satellite imagery 9 months after the airstrike that shows the damage visible in video footage filmed on the day of the attack, including a destroyed wall and two destroyed utility poles. 35.906882, 36.725719
Updated chemical weapon attack graphic from @UNCoISyria. Something I didn't notice before, the April 7th 2017 attack note says the victims suffered the same symptoms as those involved in the March 30th 2017 attack, where Sarin was used....
The Sheikh Maqsoud and Saraqib April 2013 attacks were two strange attacks with Sarin using grenades in breeze blocks dropped from helicopters. The Sarin used contained our old friend hexamine, and I examine the attacks here:
bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017…
bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017…
Interesting to note the @UNCoISyria description of the March 2013 Khan al-Assal attack & the August 2013 Al-Ghouta attack. Despite Russia producing a detailed report on Khan al-Assal, it's never been released publicly. I hope one day to see it for myself. thedailybeast.com/its-time-russi…
Russia Today's coverage of the OPCW FFM report is peak Russia Today. First, it wrongly claims the OPCW Fact Finding Mission can assign blame:
Then it leaps to anti-White Helmets propaganda
Then it cites claims the very OPCW FFM report its writing about has already shown are untrue.
The OPCW FFM’s Report on the April 7th 2018 Douma Chemical Attack Versus The Open Source Evidence via @bellingcat bellingcat.com/news/mena/2019…
One point I want to stress about the Douma attack is the OPCW FFM did some simulations of the impact sites, showing the damage done to the gas cylinders matched that of the impacts at the site.
For the conspiracy theorists this means that now the crafty rebels had to perfectly damage the gas cylinders and the surrounding area in a way that experts would later be able to analyse and get consistent results for how the cylinders were damaged and the impacts they caused.
