I cannot get over it, I assumed they'd used a helicopter to lift the plane parts into place. Though that's not to say they didn't for the bigger sections, the Russians are apparently experts with their helicopter cranes.
Russian Mil Mi-26 airlifting a plane
But they could have as easily drove it to the location in parts, in army wagons. I was looking at Google Earth and at the maps Chris Cieszewski was discussing in his paper.
It would appear that Google Earth no longer gives access to the April 5, 2010 "snow" map Chris Cieszewski references in his report, as if it conveniently never existed, but that doesn't mean there isn't interesting information in the maps they do provide. So for date reference, below are the full grabs of the same area five years and three years before the crash, and the ones apparently taken on the 11th and 12th of April after. But I did read in the report Google had at least one of the dates wrong, and which in the earlier linked interview, Chris Cieszewski said he informed everyone relevant and none of the map dates were corrected.
Smolensk aerial view 28/5/2005
Smolensk aerial view 30/10/2007
Smolensk aerial view 11/4/2010
Smolensk aerial view 12/4/2010
You can see the date on the bottom of the grab to confirm it. But what I was interested in were the paths that were apparently created because of the plane crash. If we look historically, a dirt path always existed in the location of the paths they apparently had to create. And even if I check where that building corner on the right is, we see the crash debris starts in the same location. See how the paths are in harmony with the crash site if the debris was transported by truck.
If we step back to the night scene, part two of the Grzegorz Braun film, which we are to believe was filmed on the evening of April 10. We see the first of the two delegations. It apparently plays out this way...I'm guessing Tusk supposedly first flew to Moscow to meet with Putin and discuss the crash and which country will take charge of the investigation, they had a meeting there, then they drive to the crash site in Smolensk where they are briefed by the people on site. So...
Putin and Tusk arrive by car at the crash site in the evening.
They are led into the tent where they are briefed about victims, etc.
They leave the tent after the briefing to visit the crash site itself.
They start walking towards the wreckage where they will lay flowers.
In the last grab above, we are able to see the road behind then as they walk onto the soil. The man on the very left, just by his ear is the light of the tent the party has just left. Below we can look at these grabs in context.
is around about where the car pulled up in the first grab, (it looks like tanks on that aerial view, but I suspect them and the planes are pasted in, because the logic of the parking makes no sense).
is the tent in the second and third grab.
is where they start walking to the site in the fourth grab with the road behind them.
is the place where they lay the flowers and say prayers.
We can see all of this takes place in not much more than 100 metres. And then in the wider context of the airport, if they actually flew in early Wednesday morning and filmed their scenes before travelling to Katyn Forrest for the memorial. Here's my previous detail. where I placed the journalists waiting for the President's plane to land. Everything is less self-contained in less than 1km.
is where the journalists were filmed waiting.
is the tent.
is the place where they laid the flowers.
So, Putin and Tusk could have easily flew in early Wednesday morning, April 7, the plane lands at Smolensk Aerodrome. A car picks them up at point A; then drives 800 metres to where the tent is at point B. They do their filming in the tent, then walk to the near end of the crash site at point C. They are filmed laying flowers and it's done. They then go and get breakfast, change their clothes, refresh their makeup. Then it's off to the ceremony in Katyn Forrest.
Returning to the 'Micro-Detail Comparative Forest Site Analysis Using High-Resolution Satellite Imagery' paper by prof. Chris Cieszewski, I think it is worth quoting some of the more interesting sections. The report begins with explaining methodology and imagery used. Here's the section where he lists photos used:
Overall, we have acquired for the purpose of the analysis seven free and five commercial images for the latitude 54.824275˚ and longitude 32.050712˚. The images available for free are illustrated in Appendix A and they included images taken by Landsat 5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM, which have 27.5 m resolutions, and some other higher resolution free images obtained from DigitalGlobe and Google Earth (Fig. 16, Appendix A). The commercial images come from the GeoEye-1 and WorldView-1 and -2 sensors, all 50 cm resolution, as follows:
WorldView-1 image taken on April 5, 2010;
GeoEye-1 image taken on April 9, 2010 (western half of the airport only not including the crash site);
GeoEye-1 image taken on April 11, 2010 (available on Google Earth as April 10, 2010, image);
WorldView-2 image taken on April 12, 2010; (but no QuickBird image also taken about 10 min apart;)
WorldView-1 image taken on April 14, 2010.
While all the above images had resolution of 50 cm the readability of different images varied with the angle they were taken from. Two extreme cases are the image of April 5 and April 14 (Fig. 2). There is also a QuickBird image available for April 12, 2010, but it is inferior to the WorldView-2 image for the same date and we did not purchase it for the analysis; although, we partially describe it in this report.
So after explaining some of the different filters that were applied to the images, his paper then goes on to explain some of the image auto-comparisons they ran.
Image auto-comparisons: To compare the image changes over time we used Thresholding and Blob Analysis. Thresholding enables selecting ranges of pixel values that separate the objects of interest from the background by converting image into a binary image, with pixel values of 0 or 1. All pixels whose value falls within a certain range, called the threshold interval, are set to 1, and all other pixel values in the image are set to 0.
A blob (binary large object) denotes an area of adjacent homogenous or similar pixels. The pixels in blobs have value of 1, while the rest of the pixels have values of 0. Blob analysis are processing operations and functions analysing information about any shape objects in the image based on various params, such as shape and size of the objects. The information produced by blob analysis can be the size of blobs, their quantity, spatial characteristics, and placement, and cluster and distribution characteristics. Such analysis are used in many machine vision functions from detecting welding defects on construction frames to detecting soldering defects on electronic boards.
Figure 8: Example of automated image correlation processing: both images are segmented and then the target image (bottom) is compared with the source images (top) and missing object locations are marked with red squares while new objects are marked with yellow squares.
We processed our images individually with inverted bands. Initially the images get thresholded, which converts a grey image into black and red image. The threshold is a limit at which the image colour gets converted into black and red (Fig. 8) – if the value of a pixel is above the specified threshold then it is set to red otherwise it is set to black. Objects that are brighter than the background get converted to red colour. Since there is a lot of noise in the image we use a noise reduction technique with a size limit for object identification. Thus, we eliminate the noise in the images by ignoring smaller objects. Images are compared using a method that compares blobs rather than pixels. So we perform blob analysis on the images, drew a bounding boxes that are double the size of each blob. The bounding boxes serve as search region of interest in the process of the image correlation analysis. Subsequently, the bounding box pattern is compared between different images and placed in the target images. Since each image has its own blobs and boxes, the source box pattern of blobs is put into a search loop looking for a blob of a similar size in the target image. If the search finds the blob then it displays the blob’s bounding box in green. If a blob is present in the source image, then the algorithm searches for similar blob in the target image in a specific region around its original location. The result of the search is one of the two conditions:
New blobs appear in the target image; or
Existing blobs disappear from the target image.
At this point an analyst needs to verify if there is a displacement of larger objects or if some smaller objects, which are not visible in the source image could be piled up and forming a larger object with an identifiable appearance in the target image. To distinguish between the different type of situations, we marked on the target image three types of bounding boxes denote the objects present in the source images at similar locations as in the target images. The yellow boxes denote new blobs, which were not present in the source images. The locations of the missing objects are marked with the red bounding boxes. To find the correspondence between a missing blob and nearest images, the algorithm finds the nearest blobs which of similar sizes and dimensions and analyses them. To find the exact match, the algorithm looks for the best match among the candidate blobs considering the size dimensions and distance from the original position on the source and target images.
This is one of the striking things noted in the report, the way the object move substantially between pictures taken and the increase of "satellite presence and imagery availability" for the days around the crash as opposed to the historic record. In his interview and noted above in the first quote, one aerial view appears on GeoEye-1 image dated taken on April 11, 2010, and is available on Google Earth dated April 10, 2010. He informed relevant parties of the date error, but the dates have not been corrected to match. With other references he makes in his interview, I suspect while not stated in this report, he might have concluded all of the dates listed for the images around the crash are up for speculation, I certainly think this is the case.
Looking at some of the results, it is to be noted the high level of cloud-free imagery available just before and after the crash. It has long been reported that as far back as the 1980s, Russia would sometimes use cement powder sprayed into clouds to force rain to clear them before they reached Moscow, thus ensuring the May Day parade in Red Square had sunny, cloud free weather.
We have looked for images from various sensors for the time and location of interest. Cloud-free (less than 20 of clouds) images available from the incident site include about one image per year on average between the years 2003 and 2010. In the same timeframe, there are 22 images for this location with high cloud coverage. Overall, it seems that from a historical perspective year 2010 was statistically an exceptionally cloud-free year in this area. Not a single cloudy image is available for the time between October 2009 and May 2010, and only one image out of total of 12 images in 2010 was captured during high cloud cover. By comparison, in 2009 eight out of 10 images and in 2008 six out of seven, images captured high clouds covers. Consequently, there is relatively few cloud free images available around the Smolensk area of any of the high-resolution sensors since the year 2002. Nevertheless, immediately prior to the time of incident of April 10, 2010, and immediately after the incident, there was an increased presence of the high-resolution sensors satellite activities. The high-resolution satellite images taken in this region near the incident time covered the dates of April 5, 9, 11, two satellites on 12, 14, all practically cloud-free, and more after that; although, the image of April 9 covers only the west site of the airport and it does not reach the crash area.
Of interest, and "coincidently", do you remember the Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud which appeared in April 2010, it grounded European fights for a week while the sky above was exceptionally clear? It is mentioned in the bottom video in an earlier post.
Study finds that Eyjafjallajökull ash could have harmed aircraft
An abnormally high fraction of the ash particles spewed skyward by Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano last April were small and sharp and therefore posed high risks to airplanes and human health, a new study suggests. That means the 7-day shutdown of much of Europe's air traffic ordered by civil aviation authorities, which affected 10 million passengers and cost between €1.5 billion and €2.5 billion, was likely worth it.
Eyjafjallajökull began erupting on 20 March 2010. For the first couple of weeks, lava oozed from a fissure on its ice-free flank, and the resulting ash plume was anything but impressive. On 14 April, however, molten rock began flowing from the ice-filled crater at the mountain's peak, and the eruption became explosive. The resulting plume of ash wafted southeast over Europe and triggered the largest disruption of the continent's air traffic since World War II.
The debate about whether and when to shut down air traffic, as well as when to reopen the skies to aircraft, was largely a matter of economics versus safety. "It was a matter of losing big bucks versus losing people," says Susan Stipp, a geochemist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Tiny particles of ash sandblast the windows and flight surfaces of any aircraft passing through even a diffuse volcanic plume, thereby blocking a pilot's view forward. What's more, the particles melt when exposed to the hellish temperatures inside a jet engine and can stick to turbine blades, disrupting airflow and stalling the engines-and possibly causing the plane to crash.
Eyjafjallajökull's ash was particularly hazardous, according to an analysis reported by Stipp and colleagues online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The steam explosions that resulted when water from a melting glacier met molten lava shattered the cooled, solidified lava into tiny knife-edged shards. Although less than 2% by weight of ash particles spewed during a typical eruption measure less than 10 micrometers across, more than 20% by weight of Eyjafjallajökull's early-stage ash fell below this unhealthful threshold. This powdery ash is particularly susceptible to melting quickly inside a jet engine, the researchers note. It can also be readily breathed deep into the lungs of humans living downwind of the volcano.
The sharp edges on Eyjafjallajökull's ash particles didn't wear away even when large numbers of ash particles were swirled in a beaker of water for 2 weeks, a sign, Stipp says, that the powdery ash could have remained a risk to aviation as long as it remained airborne...
The next point is what is covered in Chris Cieszewski's presentation, video posted earlier.
High reflectivity areas:
Figure 9: From top to bottom images taken on April 5, 11, 12, and 14, 2010, at the Smolensk incident site; panchromatic (left column) and inverted (right column) images.
The visual image analysis conducted on the orthorectified high-resolution imagery, with help of different image transformation methods, such as inverting the images, revealed much more useful observations (Fig. 9). The main observations on the consecutive crash scenes start with noticing that the scene of April 5 had almost no big areas of high reflectance, such as snow patches, that were subsequently replaced by dark (wet) areas. Figure 9 has the major areas of high reflectance marked with red ellipsoids that are marked on all subsequent images as well. It seems to be a quite an extraordinary coincidence that the majority of the large high reflectance areas were subsequently replaced on the image of April 11 by accumulations of major plane crash debris residing on seemingly dry (light) ground (Fig. 9 and 10, top left and centre). The seemingly dry ground (light reflectance in places of the snow areas replaced by the crash) could be explained if the areas of crash were in these locations sprayed with foam, which seem to be occasionally done on the crash site (e.g., Appendix B, Fig. 19). However, most of the spraying activities recorded on the site were with water houses that would make the ground even more wet (darker). Most of the other high reflectance patches on April 5 scene were either in areas such as driveways, where the snow gets shovelled sideways, or they were partly concealed from wind by woody shelters where they were subsequently replaced on the image of April 11 by wet (dark) areas from melting snow.
Figure 10: Different parts of the crash area showing changing positions of the plane debris and the snow patches coinciding with either dry ground patches (light) with plane debris or with wet ground patches (dark) without the plane debris.
The visual analysis was the most effective though, when we conducted detailed inspections on of various elements on the images in isolation from the rest of the image. For example, Figure 10 shows three example areas that we have compared on the 4 consecutive pictures from April 5, 11, 12, and 14. The figure shows quite readily the irregularities that big patches of high reflectance in the crash area convert over time into what seems to be ground patches, even though there is wet ground where there was no snow in the crash area, and there is always wet ground there was snow outside of the crash area.
Are we getting that, the areas of apparent snow photographed on what we believe to be April 5, five days before the crash, convert into the crash site on April 10; and if we think this was because it was being staged before the 10th, then the idea of Putin and Tusk being filmed laying flowers at the scene on April 7 becomes that more practical and probable.
fig-10 detail - April 5
fig-10 detail - April 11
Above is one of a details of the "reflective snow patches" taken five days before the crash compared to the same scene apparently taken the day after. It might be asked, if this is indeed the Tupolev Tu-154M 101 that has been dropped off in pre-fabricated boxed pieces by a military helicopter, why not use green camouflage so it is not seen by cameras? I would suggest it's because they absolutely did want to see where the items were dropped in relation to the planned crash site that was to be created. So the plane parts and equipment that would be used to move it were instead disguised as something natural but highly visible.
Snow white camouflage netting
Let's suggest the Russian military used a flying crane helicopter to lift and place the larger pieces, which they either flew or trucked in to the airbase. The Mil Mi-10 "Harke" design, was created back in the 1960s; it and subsequent versions are used extensively within construction where the terrain makes other methods of lifting impossible.
Russian Masterpiece Mil Mi-26 Picks Up A NATO CH-47 Chinook
Mil Mi-26 Helicopter Delivered A Heavy Tracked TM-10 Bulldozer
I suspect the Russian military also put up a fixed barrage balloon with camera at satellite level to monitor the progress of the work. They needed to unpack the pieces and move them to the correct areas that probably mimicked a simulated crash model that was pre-run. This fits with the idea I've been toying with that the black box data that is now used to create all the Scooby-Doo crash models was actually a flight simulated crash of a Tupolev Tu-154M completed some time before the staging. I'll come back to this later. And look what I just found from September 2010.
2,000ft up, the new 'barrage balloon' spying on the Taliban 26 September 2010
They may look like something from the days of the Second World War, but barrage balloons have found a new, high-tech role helping British troops in Afghanistan.
The 60ft-long drones are being deployed as hugely effective ‘spies in the sky’ to snare Taliban fighters before they mount attacks on British troops.
Bristling with sophisticated cameras, radar and electronic listening devices, the large, unmanned balloons – tethered at over 2,000ft – send live film footage of enemy activity day and night to forward operating bases and eavesdrop on insurgents’ mobile phone and radio calls from several miles away.
Aerostats are being deployed as hugely effective 'spies in the sky' to snare Taliban fighters before they mount attacks on British troops
Officially designated a ‘Persistent Threat Detection System’, the airships are having a significant impact on Taliban activity.
Images and audio evidence captured by the balloons are sent electronically through secure systems to a mobile monitoring station operated by a Light Electronic Warfare Team (LEWT). The team is made up of members of the Intelligence Corps and is usually situated at one of the British Army’s forward operating bases.
The information is then processed before being sent in encrypted messages to GCHQ for analysis.
Do we think just maybe, in that blue tent, that is where live images from the crash scene were being received from a similar barrage balloon? And when Putin and Tusk apparently travelled there to lay their flowers, they got to take a look at the technology first hand?
Finally, one problem with high cameras, clouds blocking the view of the ground. And Chris Cieszewski's paper states, before and after the time of the crash, there was a historically unusual lack of cloud cover, so a stationary satellite above had a clear view of the scene for the duration. Are we beginning to see all the elements coming together to form the actual story of what happened?
But futher, the fact the skies across Europe appear to have been clear might mean in that week they were capturing "satellite images" for the whole of the EU region, and the volcano was an excuse to ground flights. I definitely remember some of the clearest skies that week while the BBC was banging on about a dangerous dusk cloud shutting down air traffic for safety reasons.
I'm thinking there are a couple of reasons for the plane crash, but I'm going to set that aside for this post. I want to remind myself of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption from March 2010, because even though I wasn't a fakeologist back then, there was something about the BBC's reporting that seemed an exaggeration. The priority they gave the story, I mean, it should be, "And finally...", yet as I remember, it was a continuing main story for weeks before the travel ban.
This appears to be the BBC's first report regarding the volcano.
Volcano erupts near Eyjafjallajoekull in south Iceland
Several hundred people have been evacuated from their homes, as a volcano erupted in southern Iceland.
The volcano near the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier began to erupt shortly after midnight, leading to road closures in the area.
The eruption lit up the night sky just after midnight on Sunday
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No one was in immediate danger, but 500 people were being moved from the area, a civil protection officer said.
It is almost 200 years since a volcano near Eyjafjallajoekull, 120km (75 miles) east of Reykjavik, last erupted.
"We estimate that no one is in danger in the area but we have started an evacuation plan and between 500 and 600 people are being evacuated," Sigurgeir Gudmundsson of the Icelandic civil protections department told the Agence France-Presse news agency.
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There are fears that the volcano could cause flooding, as it causes ice to melt on the glacier above it.
"Ash has already begun to fall in Fljotshlid and people in the surrounding area have reported seeing bright lights emanating from the glacier," RUV public radio said on its website.
"It was a bit scary, but still amazing to see," Katrin Moller Eiriksdottir, who lives in Fljotshlid, told the BBC News website.
"The ash had started falling and we couldn't leave the car. They have now closed the road but we'll see what happens in the morning."
Three Icelandair flights, bound for Reykjavik from the United States, have been ordered to return to their points of origin, RUV radio reported.
The last volcanic eruption in the area occurred in 1821.
Personally I don't think there is anything in that report that indicates it's referencing an actual volcanic eruption. It starts, just after midnight on Sunday morning, when the roads are clear of traffic, the police start putting up road blocks. Then, if the 500-600 people are real, they are woken in the middle of the night and told they must leave their homes, says someone from the government. Then, we only have their word a volcano exists in the location as it hasn't erupted in 200 years.
If the point of the story is to seed the idea of an ash cloud, here it is... 'ash has already begun to fall', says a radio show, then backed up by a sim character confirming the previous claims by saying 'ash fell on my car and the road was closed', that's someone apparently taking the time to call the BBC even though it's still the middle of the night. And then we see the seeding of the idea "3" flights from the U.S. were turned around mid-air, not diverted to a different airport, and that comes from the same radio show as the original falling ash statement. Finally we have 1821, you can get a 9x3 out of it, though the numbers are not in our face.
From the original at 05:21 to the updated report at 12:23. It looks like they added some video (now not working) and expanded the story.
An Icelandic volcano, dormant for 200 years, has erupted, ripping a 1km-long fissure in a field of ice.
The volcano near Eyjafjallajoekull glacier began to erupt just after midnight, sending lava a hundred metres high.
Icelandic airspace has been closed, flights diverted and roads closed. The eruption was about 120km (75 miles) east of the capital, Reykjavik.
About 500 people were moved from the area, a civil protection officer said.
"We estimate that no-one is in danger in the area, but we have started an evacuation plan and between 500 and 600 people are being evacuated," Sigurgeir Gudmundsson of the Icelandic civil protections department told the Agence France-Presse news agency.
The area is sparsely populated, but the knock-on effects from the eruption have been considerable.
A state of emergency is in force in southern Iceland and transport connections have been severely disrupted, including the main east-west road.
"Ash has already begun to fall in Fljotshlid and people in the surrounding area have reported seeing bright lights emanating from the glacier," RUV public radio said on its website.
"It was a bit scary, but still amazing to see," Katrin Moller Eiriksdottir, who lives in Fljotshlid, told the BBC News website.
"The ash had started falling and we couldn't leave the car."
Three Icelandair flights, bound for Reykjavik from the United States, were ordered to return to Boston, RUV radio reported.
Domestic flights were suspended indefinitely, but some international flights were scheduled to depart on Sunday.
There had initially been fears that the volcano could cause flooding, as it causes ice to melt on the glacier above it, but that scenario appears to have been avoided.
However, it could cause more activity nearby, scientists say.
"This was a rather small and peaceful eruption but we are concerned that it could trigger an eruption at the nearby Katla volcano, a vicious volcano that could cause both local and global damage," said Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland's Institute of Earth Science, Associated Press news agency reported.
As the eruption is taking place in an area that is relatively ice free, there is little chance of a destructive glacier burst like the one that washed away part of the east-west highway four years ago, after an eruption under the vast Vattnajoekull glacier.
Iceland lies on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the highly volatile boundary between the Eurasian and North American continental plates, with quakes and eruptions.
The last volcanic eruption in the Eyjafjallajoekull area occurred in 1821.
I've just highlighted the new information. So now they've secured the area, "Icelandic airspace has been closed, flights diverted and roads closed." they can start churning out their BS story, or am I being cynical? ..."Eyjafjallajoekull glacier began to erupt...sending lava a hundred metres high."...Right.
Note this: "The area is sparsely populated, but the knock-on effects from the eruption have been considerable."...yes, it's going to develop into closing air traffic across Europe. So let's guess "sparsely populated" means, nobody can confirm the eruption is real now the area has been sealed off except for the sim who contacted the BBC in the middle of the night to say she had ash on her car...Then, rollup, rollup, for the scientists and the university professors to declare we are all doomed.
28 Mar 2010: BBC News Volcano erupts in south Iceland
Question, if we believe there is real and present danger, why are they showing a man on a scooter shooting past the front of the volcano? They've clearly made him drive past on cue.
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I would suggest it's subliminally to indicate scale, so if they are trying to non-verbally trick our minds into accepting a scale, what scale is the volcano actually? My real/fake barometer has just edged a little further towards fake, and that's before looking at the coloured water spraying upwards.
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Another person in the picture to remind our subconscious what scale we should be imagining. More spraying water that we are supposed to believe is liquid rock and a bit of smoke. Not convinced. And did you notice in the first report it stated "Icelandic airspace has been closed, flights diverted and roads closed." and yet we see a helicopter in the video above and a plane in the video below. The laws don't apply to television persons, apparently.
16th April 2010 - Iceland volcano ash cloud erruption update - UK Air travel cancelled
More experts doing expert type things..."speaking as an aeronautical engineer, I wouldn't want to be putting a big plane up there at the moment."...I'm guessing, "at the moment", "big plane" and "putting" are technical engineering terms, if only I had the expertise to understand the nuance of what he's saying. And then off to the Scooby-Doo graphics:- "...this microscopic image is one of the first samples of particles that are dangerous to aircraft, but not said to be hazardous to people."
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This second video is dated April 16, that's six days after the crash. According to WIki, air space was closed across Europe on the 14 April when "the eruption entered a second phase", that's the same terminology used in COVID. So four days after the crash, no wonder why I don't remember it. Also, notice the 33 - (330,000,000 cu yd).
...Beginning on 14 April 2010, the eruption entered a second phase and created an ash cloud that led to the closure of most of the European IFR airspace from 15 until 20 April 2010. Consequently, a very high proportion of flights within, to, and from Europe were cancelled, creating the highest level of air travel disruption since the Second World War. The second phase resulted in an estimated 250 million cubic metres (330,000,000 cu yd) of ejected tephra and an ash plume that rose to a height of around 9 km (30,000 ft), which rates the explosive power of the eruption as a 4 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index. By 21 May 2010, the second eruption phase had subsided to the point that no further lava or ash was being produced.
I think this directly relates to the crash, but not in the way people might think. Next post, some volcano raw footage.
Back on those two videos above, I was just having another dissecting look at them. The first one has a helicopter at the end flying in front of the volcano...Laughing.
You can tell by the lighting on the helicopter. If the subject is in front of a green screen, a light is usually set behind it. This makes it easier to remove the background cleanly in post-production. We see this most obviously around the front of the helicopter in the top and bottom grabs.
Now, if you watch the video, the remote control helicopter has a pilot just like the grabs, and his head even moves as he is flying. Looking at the RC helicopter in the air, it's really difficult to estimate its size from its surroundings.
Then it finishes with this...Is it just me or does it look like it's straight out of Thunderbirds?
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Then on to the second video, a section with a montage of photos apparently taken in the plane over the volcano. And when we see the video, it's another subliminal. This is the proof our "big plane" expert was flying in the sky apparently.
And then this part is funny. Why is that black chap standing next to Guy staring at the ground? And where did he go in the second clip?
I'm pretty sure Guy Gratton (GG, 77) is standing in front of a still image. The other chap is there to blockout the background. I realise there is something like a rope blowing in the wind, but I think that's been added to convince us it's a video. Look at the trees, they aren't moving.
What deep set eyes you have, Guy Gratton, and a Punch and Judy chin.
And the report finishes with the following. And I can attest to this, an exceptionally clear sky while all UK air traffic was grounded, but a fine layer of cement build-up on my car over that same week. Therefore it must have been the ash cloud caused by the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano erupting the BBC News told me about.
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Else; some references to Russia and the Red Square Victory Day parade. You don't think maybe...do you?
At 850, Moscow Takes A Bow Published: 17 August 1997
...Over the last 18 months, the capital has been sandblasted, scrubbed, repaved, repainted, replanted and rebuilt to sparkle like a shining theme park reinvention of itself -- Moscowland.
By Sept. 5, prostitutes, drunks, beggars and other undesirables will have been dragged off subways and street corners and deported beyond the city limits. So far this year, crime is down 20 percent, and Mr. Luzhkov has bullied all shop owners in the city center to clean their storefronts and put up red, blue and white anniversary displays. Cleaning crews will be scrubbing cement pavements until they sparkle like stone. To show he can even browbeat nature, Mr. Luzhkov has ordered that on each day of the anniversary, special military planes seed the clouds above Moscow to avert rain.
The most aggressively advertised special anniversary events are a light show by Jean-Michel Jarre and a concert by Pavarotti. But the real windfall for foreign tourists is a chance to see the city after a $50 million face lift...
Weather modification: The rain makers Published: 30 April 2008
Whether it is the Chinese firing weapons into the sky to make it rain, or the Thai government setting up a "royal rainmaking project", the science of weather modification has always had a touch of the sci-fi about it.
So it is perhaps little surprise that the effectiveness of such an eccentric area of research has always been a little foggy. Indeed, no matter how hard you try – say, through launching silver-iodide particles into clouds to make them rain – it's hard to tell how influential you're actually being as it might have happened anyway.
But now, one of the world's leading weather experts thinks that the wind surrounding weather modification is set to change. Roelof Bruintjes, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, USA, believes that weather-monitoring technology is so hot nowadays that science fiction may soon become science fact. Speaking earlier this week, he said: "Now we can measure clouds so well – even from the inside – we can get many more answers as to what the effects of man-made intervention are, and separate them from what would have happened naturally...
...make the sun shine
According to Russian media reports, that nation's military has announced that up to 12 aircraft will "disperse clouds" to "ensure good weather" over Red Square during Victory Day celebrations in Moscow early next month. Last year, the Russian Air Force claimed to have nixed cloud formations by spraying them with potent concoctions including dry ice, silver iodide and cement powder. Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky said the Air Force's "most experienced crews" would be employed to guarantee blue skies over the Kremlin...
On May 9, the shell-shocked Eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk celebrated. It was Victory Day, the annual commemoration of Germany’s surrender to the Soviet Union in 1945. Kiev, which is struggling to escape its Soviet past, no longer treats the day as a festive occasion; for the People’s Republic of Donetsk, or DNR, the holiday was yet another opportunity to side with Russia and the Soviet Union, and against Kiev. It had been a year since the DNR had declared its independence from Kiev, following the Maidan protests—which began with then-president Viktor Yanukovych’s decision not to sign an EU Association Agreement and ended with him fleeing the country after a series of armed clashes in the center of Kiev—and a year since Kiev’s prosecutor general had classified the DNR as a terrorist organization. Thousands of people have since been killed: fighters on both sides, and civilians caught in the middle. More than a million people have been displaced, in a horrible echo of the Second World War’s mass evacuations...
...It didn’t rain on Moscow’s Victory Day parade. The Kremlin spent millions of dollars to make sure of it: A few days before the holiday, a spokesman at Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency announced that a group of planes would be ready to “attack” any rain clouds with cement particles and silver iodide. When Vladimir Putin made his speech on Red Square, he was surrounded by veterans and foreign dignitaries from China, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Egypt, as well as Winston Churchill’s grandson, a Tory MP. Most European leaders skipped the parade to protest Russia’s actions in Ukraine. For many Russians, it looked as though the once-Allied nations had forgotten that it was the Soviet Union that rescued them from Nazism, at the cost of tens of millions of Soviet lives. Putin thanked the Allied countries graciously for their help winning the Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia, but had harsh words for those who were violating the postwar principles of international cooperation. Intercontinental ballistic-missile carriers rolled through the streets, and fighter jets formed a huge “70” in the sky.
It didn’t rain on Moscow’s Victory Day parade. The Kremlin spent millions of dollars to make sure of it...
Victory Day: In Moscow, Bad Weather Rains on Putin's Parade Published: 5 September 2017
It's no coincidence that the sun always shines over Moscow on Victory Day — the Kremlin pours millions of rubles into making it happen.
Every year Russia sends military cargo jets to "seed" incoming rain clouds before they reach Moscow, a process that involves chemicals either being shot from planes or shoveled out of hatches directly onto rain clouds.
The chemicals, which include silver iodide, dry ice or cement, cause the bad weather to hit outside of the city and make sure that there are blue skies over Moscow for the parade. Russian ecologists claim that because the exposure of clouds to the chemicals is short, there is little risk of lasting environmental damage.
This year in the build up to the holiday, the Russian air force deployed nine Antonov military cargo jets to take on the bad weather, scheduled to begin flyovers around the clock starting at midnight on Tuesday, and at a cost of some 98 million rubles ($1.67 million)...
I could have posted a couple more articles saying the same thing from other years. You'll see the oldest one I found dates from 1997, but it's a pretty constant story I've read dating back to the 1980s..."Those crazy Russians!"
This is the raw footage of the Eyjafjallajoekull eruption. These are pictures of the "second phase", and from this we get the ash cloud that grounds air traffic across Europe for around a week.
Raw Video: Iceland Volcano Spews More Ash
It could be real stock footage pulled out for the occasion, and that's just a plume of steam. But I do notice a shadow that appears to rise into the sky, and the lighting strength gives it an indoor spotlight effect. They certainly can create smoke, though the way it moves in the video suggests large scale. I'm not sure if they would be able to mimic the slow changes in smoke plume at small scale even if they slowed the footage down. But since this site is about media fakery, let's get a few comparison pictures up.
If it's a mockup, this is the likely scale. Below is a model of Chernobyl, apparently created for a computer game. Do you not find it interesting the camera angles in the two shots? This is also why you cannot trust old photos to prove anything. The Victorian rage for photography is exactly matched with its rage for perfectly scaled dolls houses. I wonder why that might be?
Probably the same scale for the 911 models. Out of interest, this is apparently real Chernobyl. It still looks like a miniature village to me.
Though what did strike me, the crash reminded me of Chernobyl, they both have some striking use of circles, yellow and bleakness.
Anyway, getting back to the volcano; this, from the Guardian, is very convincing. Even though because I'm pretty sure of what they did and why they did it, it makes sense the volcano eruption is a complete fabrication. Still, reading the full Guardian article makes me second guess myself a bit.
Airspace from Ireland to Finland closed following eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, which sent plume of ash across flight paths
An unprecedented no-fly zone imposed across Europe following a huge volcanic eruption in Iceland is set to remain in force into the weekend, causing travel chaos for over a million air passengers.
Airspace stretching from Ireland to Finland, including airports in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels, was closed today following the violent eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in south-east Iceland which sent a plume of ash across some of the world's busiest flight paths.
All UK airspace was closed from noon except for "agreed emergencies". It is likely to stay shut tomorrow, with the force of the eruption showing no sign of abating.
Last night north-westerly winds continued to blow the eight mile high plume across the continent, raising fears that airlines could be grounded for days. One volcanologist said the ash could present intermittent problems to air traffic for six months if the eruption continued. The last time the volcano erupted in 1821, it spewed ash for two years.
The pan-European shutdown affected an estimated 4,000 flights and is the most dramatic step of its kind in living memory. It caused the most international travel chaos since the 11 September attacks on America in 2001.
Airports across France closed tonight following the lead of safety authorities in Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and Denmark. Planes travelling from America to Europe had to turn back over the Atlantic and a jet carrying British forces back from Afghanistan was grounded in Cyprus. The plume is projected to spread east and south over Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states, as well as parts of Russia.
"We certainly do not think we have over-reacted," a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Service said, prior to extending the total shut down of all UK airports until at least 1pm today. "Safety is our main priority and volcanic ash is a serious threat to aircraft."
In 1982, a British Airways jumbo jet became a giant glider when all four of its engines failed after flying through a volcanic plume over Indonesia. After a terrifying descent, the crew managed to get the engines started, before landing the plane safely in Jakarta.
The Met Office predicted planes will be grounded all day on Friday, while John Swinney, the cabinet secretary in the devolved Scottish government, said the ban on flights is likely to remain in place for "some days". Lord Adonis, the transport secretary, will tomorrow morning meet senior transport officials to consider contingency plans if the current weather situation continues.
The impact of the volcano, which began erupting in the early hours of Wednesday morning, eclipsed the build-up to the leaders' debate in Manchester . Gordon Brown apologised for any disruption caused by the eruption but said "safety is the first and predominate consideration". David Cameron broke off electioneering at a Halifax primary school to say it was "a very worrying and difficult situation".
The ash cloud, almost invisible to the eye, began to spread across Europe on in the early hours of Wednesday before stretching east to northern Norway, Sweden and Finland and south across Scotland and the UK, engulfing Britain totally by Thursday afternoon.
The runways and aprons at Heathrow, normally the world's busiest airport, were becalmed. Manchester airport was almost empty with 75,000 passengers unable to travel.
The eruption of the volcano which had been dormant for 187 years caused devastation in Iceland and civil protection teams had to evacuate around 700 residents when torrents of melt water flowed off the glacier through fields and farms. Day turned to night east of the eruption as thick grey ash fell, leading to fears among farmers for their grazing farm animals.
Geophysicists in Iceland said that the production of ash from Eyjafjallajokull is likely to continue at a comparable level for some days or even weeks.
"Where it disrupts travel depends on the weather," said Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office. "It depends how the wind carries the ash."
John Strickland, director of air transport consultancy JLS Consulting, said the effects on long haul travel could be particularly severe because of Iceland's position on heavily used routes.
Ironically, Reykjavik airport was one of the few European airports to remain open, because the wind direction carried the plume away from the country's capital.
Do you believe them? Here's the five-day forecast the day after air traffic was grounded in the UK. It's interesting to see the clear sky areas, because I think that was the whole point. But we'll get to that in the next post.
In May 1985, two months after coming to power, Mikhail Gorbachev delivered a speech in St. Petersburg (then known as Leningrad), in which he publicly criticized the inefficient economic system of the Soviet Union, making him the first Communist leader to do so.
This was followed by a February 1986 speech to the Communist Party Congress, in which he expanded upon the need for political and economic restructuring, or perestroika, and called for a new era of transparency and openness, or glasnost.
But by 1987, these early attempts at reform had achieved little, and Gorbachev embarked on a more ambitious program...
As I've mentioned before, the four founding countries of the United Nations were China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Therefore are the governments of China and Russia the enemies of the British and U.S. governments, or are they their partners? What does COVID tell us? Weren't they all in LOCKSTEP with the vaccines, mandates, lockdowns? And isn't the World Health Organisation and the Pandemic Preparedness Treaty just the end result of that 1945 partnership?
The UN was preceded by the League of Nations, which was formed in 1920 following World War I. The League aimed to preserve world peace through international cooperation, but it was not able to stop a second world war.
The name “United Nations” was devised by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II and was first used on January 1, 1942, when 26 nations pledged to fight against the Axis Powers led by Nazi Germany. In 1944, representatives of China, England, America, and the Soviet Union met to prepare a blueprint for the UN. In 1945, representatives of dozens of countries met in San Francisco from April 25 to June 26 to hammer out the United Nations Charter. It was ratified on October 24 of that year by the original 51 member states.
There are currently 193 members. The UN headquarters is in New York City, but its land and buildings are international territory. It has its own flag, post office, and postage stamps. Its six official languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. The UN’s European headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland.
Guess where in the former Soviet Union Chernobyl is actually located? Only the piss-take capital of the world, Ukraine. It's also, by coincidence, where the 2022 Russian invasion started when COVID-19 failed.
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was captured on 24 February, the first day of the invasion, by the Russian Armed Forces, who entered Ukrainian territory from neighbouring Belarus and seized the entire area of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant by the end of that day. On 7 March, it was reported that around 300 people (100 workers and 200 security guards for the plant) were trapped and had been unable to leave the power plant since its capture. On 31 March, it was reported that most of the Russian troops occupying the area had withdrawn, as the Russian military abandoned the Kyiv offensive to focus on operations in Eastern Ukraine.
So returning to the crash. I'm not sure how obvious it is to anyone following this thread, but the start of the Eyjafjallajoekull eruption, 21/3, predates the Smolensk plane crash, 10/4, by some weeks; so any cement sprayed into the sky to disperse clouds wasn't an inadvertent act by the Russians, the knock-on effect resulting in a cement cloud drifting over Europe and grounding flights. It was a planned excuse.
In Chris Cieszewski's paper, as previously highlighted, he makes note of the unusual cloud-free pictures that characterise 2010, and also the frequency of the images taken around the time of the crash.
Overall, it seems that from a historical perspective year 2010 was statistically an exceptionally cloud-free year in this area (compare cloud covers in Tab. 2). Not a single cloudy image is available for the time between October 2009 and May 2010, and only one image out of total of 12 images in 2010 was captured during high cloud cover. By comparison, in 2009 eight out of 10 images and in 2008 six out of seven, images captured high clouds covers. Consequently, there is relatively few cloud free images available around the Smolensk area of any of the high-resolution sensors since the year 2002. Nevertheless, immediately prior to the time of incident of April 10, 2010, and immediately after the incident, there was an increased presence of the high-resolution sensors satellite activities. The high-resolution satellite images taken in this region near the incident time covered the dates of April 5, 9, 11, two satellites on 12, 14, all practically cloud-free, and more after that; although, the image of April 9 covers only the west site of the airport and it does not reach the crash area.
It is somewhat ironic then, that one of the first images I posted was this one.
While Chris believes the pictures are taken by a satellite, it is clear that actually, the camera has been setup in a stationary location at the crash site on a barrage balloon/fixed aerostat, and these are the images Putin and Tusk are looking at in the tent.
This crash test then logically leads into the idea the Russian military were preparing for the imminent operation of mapping the ground across the EU for Google Earth, clearing clouds with cement dust as necessary. It would seem it was decided by European leaders, the most cost effective way to achieve the aim was to suspend flights and pretend it was because of a volcano eruption in Iceland.
As an aside, since I was talking about ash creating clear sky, this story appeared in my twitter feed, In an earlier post a report mentioned the Russians seeding clouds with dry ice and silver iodide as well as cement. Not just the Russians it would appear...
RAF rainmakers 'caused 1952 flood' Unearthed documents suggest experiment triggered torrent that killed 35 in Devon disaster
30 Aug 2001
On August 15, 1952, one of the worst flash floods ever to have occurred in Britain swept through the Devon village of Lynmouth. Thirty five people died as a torrent of 90m tons of water and thousands of tons of rock poured off saturated Exmoor and into the village destroying homes, bridges, shops and hotels.
The disaster was officially termed "the hand of God" but new evidence from previously classified government files suggests that a team of international scientists working with the RAF was experimenting with artificial rainmaking in southern Britain in the same week and could possibly be implicated.
Squadron Leader Len Otley, who was working on what was known as Operation Cumulus, has told the BBC that they jokingly referred to the rainmaking exercise as Operation Witch Doctor.
His navigator, Group Captain John Hart, remembers the success of these early experiments: "We flew straight through the top of the cloud, poured dry ice down into the cloud. We flew down to see if any rain came out of the cloud. And it did about 30 minutes later, and we all cheered."
The meteorological office has in the past denied there were any rainmaking experiments conducted before 1955, but a BBC Radio 4 history investigation, to be broadcast tonight, has unearthed documents recently released at the public record office showing that they were going on from 1949 to 1955. RAF logbooks and personnel corroborate the evidence.
Until now, the Ministry of Defence has categorically denied knowledge of any cloud-seeding experiments taking place in the UK during early August 1952. But documents suggest that Operation Cumulus was going on between August 4 and August 15 1952. The scientists were based at Cranfield school of aeronautics and worked in collaboration with the RAF and the MoD's meteorological research flight based at Farnborough. The chemicals were provided by ICI in Billingham.
Met office reports from these dates describe flights undertaken to collect data on cumulus cloud temperature, water content, icing rate, vertical motions and turbulence, and water droplet and ice crystal formation. There is no mention of cloud seeding.
But a 50-year-old radio broadcast unearthed by Radio 4 describes an aeronautical engineer and glider pilot, Alan Yates, working with Operation Cumulus at the time and flying over Bedfordshire, spraying quantities of salt. He was elated when the scientists told him this had led to a heavy downpour 50 miles away over Staines, in Middlesex.
"I was told that the rain had been the heaviest for several years - and all out of a sky which looked summery ... there was no disguising the fact that the seedsman had said he'd make it rain, and he did. Toasts were drunk to meteorology and it was not until the BBC news bulletin [about Lynmouth] was read later on, that a stony silence fell on the company," said Mr Yates at the time.
Operation Cumulus was put on hold indefinitely after the tragedy.
Declassified minutes from an air ministry meeting, held in the war office on November 3, 1953, show why the military were interested in increasing rain and snow by artificial means. The list of possible uses included "bogging down enemy movement", "incrementing the water flow in rivers and streams to hinder or stop enemy crossings", and clearing fog from airfields.
The documents also talk of rainmaking having a potential "to explode an atomic weapon in a seeded storm system or cloud. This would produce a far wider area of radioactive contamination than in a normal atomic explosion".
UK weather modification experiments at the time presaged current practice in the US. The idea was to target "super cool" clouds, and to increase the volume of freezing water vapour particles. Most methods involved firing particles of salt, dry ice, or silver iodide, into clouds, either from an aeroplane or from burners on the ground. The clouds would then precipitate, pulled down below freezing point by the extra weight of dense particles, thus making it rain sooner and heavier than it might have done. Significantly, it was claimed that silver iodide could cause a downpour up to 300 miles away.
Many countries now use the technology, which has considerably improved during the past 50 years.
But controversy still surrounds the efficacy of these early cloud-seeding experiments. In 1955 questions were asked in the Commons about the possibilites of liability and compensation claims. Documents seen by the BBC suggest that both the air ministry and the Treasury became very anxious and were aware that rainmaking could cause damage, not just to military targets and personnel, but also to civilians.
The British Geological Survey has recently examined soil sediments in the district of Lynmouth to see if any silver or iodide residues remain. The testing has been limited due to restrictions in place because of foot and mouth disease, and it is inconclusive. However, silver residue has been discovered in the catchment waters of the river Lyn. The BGS will investigate further over the next 18 months.
Survivors of the Lynmouth flood called for - but never got - a full investigation into the causes of the disaster. Rumours persist to this day of planes circling before the inundation.
It does seem a suspect coincidence that Eyjafjallajoekull erupts in March, moves into a second phase four days after the crash, in which it shuts down European air traffic from the 15-21 April.
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The 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano had a huge impact on air travel, changing the assessment of risk by the aviation sector and catalyzing new lines of scientific investigation. Ash advisories derived from dispersion-model output were issued by the London VAAC, depicting the presence of ash over large parts of Europe and the North Atlantic. Based on those advisories, over 300 airports in about two dozen countries, and a correspondingly large airspace, were closed in Europe during 15-21 April 2010. This resulted in massive impacts on air travel worldwide. Over 100,000 flights were cancelled over that week, affecting 7 million passengers, and resulting in $1.7 billion USD in lost revenue to airlines according to an analysis by Oxford Economics.
To reopen airspace, European aviation authorities endorsed the creation of a new type of concentration chart advisory product that delineated hazard zones based on dispersion model output of ash concentrations. So called 'low' ash concentrations were deemed to be defined as <2-4 mg/m3. The concentration charts were adopted by air traffic management and airlines with the expectation that zones of low density ash could be transited with no or minimal risk of immediate aircraft damage providing a regime of enhanced risk assessment by airlines, including more frequent aircraft inspections, was adopted. Currently, concentration charts have only been adopted for operational use in Europe and the North Atlantic region, as outlined in Volcanic Ash Contingency Plan EUR and NAT Regions. The scientific validity and operational utility of the ash concentration charts have been questioned by international experts and therefore have not been implemented outside Europe.
Below, ash from Mount St. Helens eruption on May 18, 1980 collected 39 km (24 mi) downwind, in Randle, Washington. It looks kind of like cement.
