Road Impact

 Ghouta Firing Directions: Road Impact

September 16, 2021

rough, incomplete

Amazingly enough, we now have a TENTH identified and NINTH geolocated Volcano rocket impact, a ninth visual trajectory estimate - if not very specific - made possible (it's only consistent with the rest).

On a whim I did an Arabic-language search on Youtube for Ghouta/Zamalka chemical missile yesterday, just in case I'd missed anything. I had missed a few things now found ... most of them at one long-inactive channel: فرسان الغوطة  (Fursan al-Ghouta, Knights of Ghouta). Their video uploads include several of Aug. 21 CW victims, perhaps all unseen by me - some about missing people, etc., a long, detailed video from the site of impact "wall 2," starting from inside the courtyard, and this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bft8Wen9_aY

شاهد عيان يروي ماحصل لمدينة زملكا جراء قصفها بالكيماوي

(An eyewitness tells what happened to the city of Zamalka as a result of its chemical bombardment )

Posted August 31, 2013, 12 views when I found it. The verbal content didn't seem that relevant to the forensics (per Amin), so we'll skip that for now anyway and focus on the visuals. There's a second video in the same vein (link) with a local in a spot, and that spot too may be of interest because this one was. 

It's not explained why this guy is sermonizing right here, but I think it's related to the filled-in crater in the road, with a little cylindrical item (the Volcano possible fuze-rod item?) laid atop the fill. 

There's a faint splash pattern of black across the road and some meters down it, with a more discrete center never fully visible (thus hard to interpret). There's also a discrete band of dark crumbles to the north and off the road's edge, and a long black smear a bit east - likely all related to the rocket hitting here from a largely westerly origin, then being dragged aside to leak the rest of its mysterious oily black liquid. 

This is my effort to isolate all black stuff visible between dudes as seen in the major west-facing view, combined in spatial proportion in one enhanced view, dudes/invisible parts cut-out, filled in bluish, and some white strokes to help connect the stray bit on the left and give some idea how it spreads roughly towards the camera.

The spot is quite well shown, with 360-degree views presented. Judging by basic scenery details and sunlight, this is an early afternoon video at the northeast corner of a certain larger building. It's the easternmost in a cluster of three such buildings of narrow shape running roughly north-south. With a few other scene ideas, like a dozed earth area and open field to the north, I tried comparing to previously mapped alleged impacts, first LCC1/HRW1 (see revised map at bottom of this post). There was no clear match right there or immediately nearby, so next LCC7/HRW8 looked promising. Not right there, but about 100m north of it, was a cluster of 3 sizeable buildings and everything around them popped out over and over. 

Correlating a bunch of features seen in all directions, some quite specific (orange place, tower, rooftop circle), clarifies this is the spot. I wound up using the same colors twice, sorry. E.g. pink = both the building to the west and the east side of the building we're at. A mosque just to the north with attached buildings visible was later destroyed, absent in the latest views. Earthen mound marked with yellow circle and approximate impact crater in the pavement marked with a red star.

...

Next place past over from that distinct orange seemed unclear, with rounded shapes, was left unmarked. Then I noticed according to a rare pin and photo on Google Earth, that is "Zamalka archaeological bath" - how's that for specific? 

Therefore, this red star added on the map of previous findings:

Trajectory estimate: so far it looks rather non-specific - kind of up the road from the west, with mixed clues as to north-south angle; there's some good spread visible to north, but south isn't all visible, and there probably should be more spread that way. To fit with the rest of our findings, it would have to have flown in from the northwest, almost over that mosque, or something like a 45 degree angle with this road that isn't even east-west but angling a bit to to the southwest. The crater shape and the splash pattern, unclear as they are, only seem consistent with that. I'll try to come back to this, to see if more can be said.

COVID-19 Vaccine Failures

 AKA the Stay Vigilant Post

September 11, 2021 

Intro: on risk assessments

As I write this, it has been exactly 20 years and some hours since the 9/11 attacks - among other things - totally blew my mind. And it's just weeks after the resultant 20-year occupation of Afghanistan ended on such a nauseating note of total waste. I have both too much and too little to say about that and what's transpired between. And it so happens the COVID-19 pandemic has again seized my attention these days. As pressure mounts amid a general 4th wave of vaccine-defying "breakthrough" infections, and many still balk at the unknown dangers of the vaccines available, it's worth considering what the VIRUS has done despite the limits we've tried to impose on it. 

The USA leads the world for confirmed cases, at least because India is undercounting so badly. The death toll here is at least 20-30% higher than the official 670,000. (Nearly all of these had some pre-existing condition assisting, known or unknown, but that's little comfort to the millions with such conditions.) That's equal to at least 268 9/11s so far. Officially, a somewhat constrained COVID-19 killed more people than 9/11 did every day on average for the first 6 weeks of this year. Oh, that's the worst it got? Forty-two 9/11s in a row? Why all the worry then, huh?

There have been just over 4.6 million confirmed deaths worldwide to date, and a lot of research - including some of my own - suggests the true death toll is much higher. Consider India alone -where this delta variant got its start - is estimated to have had 4 million deaths as of July 20. Even now they count less than half a million (~443,000). On a recent quick review, I estimate over 10 million global deaths for sure, probably over 12 million, and maybe even past 13 million. The Economist has been following quite well, and I see just now they estimate more than 15 million excess deaths during the pandemic (mainly from the disease but also some "lockdown deaths"). 

That's as-is, WITH current measures. Otherwise it could have been twice this bad, or maybe even ten times this bad. So it could have easily been 30 million, or maybe even 150 million dead without current measures. Why all the worry then, huh? Why all those measures?

And so there was the struggle to devise a vaccine that took a while, then its implementation and general good results at first. But then the delta variant taking over the scene this year, and we hear more and more about vaccinated and even fully-vaccinated people getting infected anyway. They get hospitalized and die more than expected, more than their share, or almost exclusively - at least per circulating claims. It seems like the touted protection is failing or even backfiring. 

By different measures, in different places and at different times, this is definitely happening to a degree that can't be ignored. Sometimes the unvaccinated do better than partly vaccinated, or partly vaccinated do better than fully, etc. But some people are hearing too much about this, including dangerous misinformation, and aren't seeing enough consideration of what the evidence truly shows or how it applies worldwide. 

I looked at four claims to this effect, regarding highly-vaccinated Israel and the United Kingdom, three of which proved false (or apparently so), and one basically true. That true one and some other curious patterns emerge as worthy of consideration. I'm still no real expert, but I'll suggest a core issue here is a complex balance of the limited protection afforded by vaccines, and mismatched levels of confidence and thus inadequate caution. The vaccinated will better avoid infection and bad outcomes, all else being equal. But the protection is incomplete enough that it allows that psychology issue to make it so all things aren't equal; some on the vaccinated side get reckless thinking they're immune, as more on the other side stay careful knowing they aren't, and their results get on par or even flipped. 

I think in the UK and especially in Israel, we're seeing the inadequately vaccinated minority of people infecting and killing each other at needless levels by spreading it anyway. And sometimes even fully vaccinated is still inadequate. That's an issue that may get even worse with strains and variants yet to emerge. 

The good news is we can see places where these patterns have already improved markedly, as with increased public awareness among the partly vaccinated - especially those well past their only dose - to stop ACTING like they're safe. This would mean that public education can help close that gap, but as it stands and is likely to stand, vaccines are not the panacea some predicted. They do seem to offer solid protection - especially when current full/boosted. But their protection was never absolute and has gotten lower, bringing a danger of carelessness. Better vaccines ones will emerge, probably a bit too late to be much better. Then and now, more people need to realize nothing works close to 100% in itself - the safe bet is to resume or maintain layering of measures. Boosting your vaccination won't be a guarantee - it can be skipped by some - especially those with known risks - avoidance alone keeps sparing many, but that can be seen increasingly to fail even worse than vaccines have been. The clear answer is to use neither alone but both together - pick your package of measures to avoid infecting yourself and others - specially yourself. Everyone should still, within reason, be avoiding crowds, watching what they touch between hand washing/sanitizing, distancing around strangers, masking up in case they're already infected, etc. 

And also this cannot be done in acute, short-term lockdown mode, except as needed at the worst points. We'll need to live life, run this economy, and so on WHILE doing these other things as possible. It will be tricky balancing, and people will die no matter what. But we can do it smarter than we are. WE can probably still crush this thing globally and totally move on, once we get smart enough. In the meantime, we've already done a lot, willingly or not, and have saved many millions of lives. A whole lot more remain at stake, so let's try to save as many of them as possible too.

First, yet more confusion stands in the way of some people getting on board with the life-saving.

Four Analyzed Claims: True or False?

60% hospitalized in UK are double-vaxxed: Apparently false

Claims in July: 60% of UK’s newly hospitalized Covid patients are "double vaccinated" at a time when less than 60% of all people there were fully vaccinated. This claim cited UK Health Secretary Sir Patrick Vallance who actually said that. But he misspoke, and corrected himself later in the day on Twitter:  "Correcting a statistic I gave at the press conference today, 19 July. ... rather 60% of hospitalisations from COVID are currently from unvaccinated people." (Sky News with video) Oops. 

Politifact passed on the correction after at least one "viral" Facebook post had promoted the error. This cited technical briefing 19 from Public Health England (PHE) dated July 23. "SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England" series, issued biweekly and collected here (www.gov.uk)  "Table 5. Attendance to emergency care and deaths by vaccination status among delta confirmed cases (sequencing and genotyping) including all confirmed delta cases in England" Feb. 1 to date: 229,218 cases, of which 7,790 resulted in hospitalization ("cases with an emergency care visit (exclusion)" on the table). Skipping an unmatched 80 samples, we'll recalculate by 7,710 so:

* 1,101 (14.3%) had received both doses 

* 1,756 (22.8%) were partly vaccinated

* 4,853 or 62.9%, of hospitalizations were of the unvaccinated.

* Vax rates at the time, July 19 per Bing tracker - 58.39% fully vaccinated, 74.4% at least partially vaccinated, 16.01% only part paxxed, 25.6% not vaccinated)

Note: Partly vaccinated (pv) combines "<21 days post dose 1" and "≥21 days post dose 1" (the bigger number). Fully vaccinated (fv) is headed "Received 2 doses." 

But that was an average over months, including points where less than 1% were fully vaccinated and more than 80% weren't at all. But then hardly anyone died then, so those spans don't count for much of this. For a then-current view, let's compare with the prior briefing 18 covering to 5 July to see the rate in the following 2 weeks: 3,618 new hospitalizations, of which: 

* 664 fv = 18.35% vs. 58.39% of populace = 31.43% their share - not past 100% of it.

* 788 pv = 21.78%  vs. 16.01% in populace = 136% their share of the population - now THAT's an issue. 

* 2,166 nv = 59.87% vs. 25.6% in populace = 233.87% their share.  That's who he referred to. Not such a good anti-vax point then. But the high pv rate is interesting.

And let's check a later span to see if it's changed any: comparing briefings 21 and 22, covering 2 weeks from 16-29 August: 2,962 new, hospitalizations linked to vax status, of which:

* 1,197 fv = 40.41% vs. 65.74% in populace = 61.47% their share, a much worse rate but still not past 100% 

* 525 pv = 17.72% vs. 10.31% in pop. = 171.9% their share - also doing a bit worse - those past 21 days will do extra poorly here.

* 1,452 nv = 49.02% vs. 23.95% in pop. = 204.7% their share - doing relatively better as the others do worse, but still faring worst of all.

* vax rates at outset, 16 August: 65.74% fv, 10.31% JUST pv (76.05% pv+), 23.95% nv

So in this span, the partly vaxxed were hospitalized at 2.8x the rate of fully vaccinated, and the  unvaccinated at 3.3 times their rate. This isn't the best case for vaccines and their shielding from infection or bad outcomes. It's an especially poor case for those who just got the one shot and let it slide past 21 days. But it's not a good case for staying unvaccinated either. Really, it suggests getting current is the safe path. But so far with delta, in England mainly, and so far, the data doesn't say this very clearly. 

60% of deaths in UK 2x vaxxed: True 

In confusion I challenged an argument about 60% something covid UK something, as lodged by "Tribal Block" on Twitter, more recently than I thought. They had pointed out " Just look at the official http://GOV.UK covid research data for yourself folks. Does the data and trend support the jab narrative?" Shows 6 out of 10 or 60% of deaths from COVID-19 were among the double-vaccinated, when they're only by then 69% of the populace. So yes, it "supports the jab narrative" of protection but just barely, not enthusiastically.

Upon investigation, this is true, at that time and in general/on average, at least as of July and August. The fully vaccinated have that lower rate of hospital appearance noted above, but it seems this is offset with deadlier stays when they do get hospitalized. As such, percentages of partly, fully, and unvaccinated deaths (within 28 days) are depressingly similar to rates in the populace. It looks kind of like there's no effect. But how can there not be? Rather, I suggest, this shows a balance of different effects that comes out roughly neutral so far (in England/UK, by this metric).

One odd pattern is for 1x vax often seeming safer than 2x, which contrasts with the above - they get hospitalized more, but then die less. Something about their demographics might help explain this. Also consider that 2x vax is used disproportionately by the most vulnerable, many of them in care homes, etc. If there were outbreak and enough carelessness, quite a few could still die even if the vaccine is working as we hear. Again, we hear it does fairly little to prevent infection with delta but plenty to protect from serious harm - at least for most people. Some of the worst off may see no real advantage at all, disastrously leaned against a SENSE of protection that leads them or those around them to careless behavior. 

Let's have a look at PHE's Technical briefings, like number 19 cited above, as collected here Investigation of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: technical briefings - GOV.UK . We're looking at the same table 5, but now looking at delta variant deaths instead of hospitalizations. starting with number 16, covering to 14 June 14, like all of them starting from February. Then we'll check in over 6 more briefings 17-22 - 2 weeks apart, covering 12 weeks. most of the action is happening recently, when vax rates have been similarly high to now. 1,798 deaths by Aug. 29 - from 73 by June 14 = 1,725 in 12 weeks. 

At the outset recall last year even before delta but also before vaccines, the UK was suffering up to 1,000 covid deaths PER DAY at the peak (and even more considering the evident undercounting/misclassification). This year still it's gotten no worse than about 600 in 2 weeks. That's a massive difference.

https://www.bing.com/covid/local/unitedkingdom?vert=graph

Over these same 12 weeks, the rate of fully vaccinated rose from 48.82% to 68.63% while overall vaccinated only grew 67.4% to 77.06% - slowing in early July from a faster rate over the summer. Partially vaccinated, defined as no 2nd jab - has shrunken from 18.58% to 8.43% as more people stepped up in the program and less new people started on it. Again, partially vaccinated (pv) combines "21 days post dose 1" and "≥21 days post dose 1" (the bigger number). Fully vaccinated (fv) is headed "Received 2 doses"

Briefing 16 to 14 June 

Deaths 73 (cumulative from Feb. 1, but only listing deaths within 28 days of positive test) 

Unlinked (or Vaccination status unknown): 2 

fv 26 = 35.62% (including earlier times when less than 1% were fully vaxxed)

pv 11 (10 1) = 15.07% (given as at least partly vaxxed - subtracting fully vaxxed)

nv 34 = 46.58% (including times when more than 80% were unvaxxed)

And over the next 6 2-week spans, a bunch of numbers one can look at or scroll past:

Briefing 17, 15-21 June

Deaths: 117 - 73 = 44 new in last 14 days

unlinked: 3 

fv 50 - 26 = 24 new, 54.54% vs. 48.82% in populace

pv 20 (1 19) - 11 = 9 new, 20.45% vs. 18.58% in populace

nv 44 - 34 = 10 new, 22.73% vs. 32.6% in populace

(14 June vax rates: 48.82% fv, 18.58% pv (67.4% pv+), 32.6% nv) 

Briefing 18 to 5 July :

deaths 257 - 117 = 140 new 

Unlinked: 2

fv: 118 - 50 = 68 new 48.57% vs. 52.26% in pop.

pv: 45 (1 44) - 20 = 25 new 17.86% vs. 19.04% in pop.

nv: 92 - 44 = 48 new, 34.3%  vs. 28.7% in pop.

(22 June vax rates: 52.26% fv, 19.04% pv (71.3% pv+), 28.7% nv)

Briefing 19, 5-19 July

Deaths: 460 - 257 = 203 new

unlinked: 6 - 2 = 4 new, 1.97%

fv: 224 - 118 = 106 new, 52.22% vs. 54.58% in populace 

pv: 65 (5 60) - 45 = 20 new, 9.85% vs. 18.42% in populace

nv: 165 - 92 = 73 new, 35.96% vs. 27% in populace

(vax rates 5 July: 54.58% fv 18.42% pv, 27% nv)

Briefing 20 to 2 August 

Deaths: 742 - 460 = 282 new

8 unlinked - 6 = 2 new = 0.71%

fv: 402 - 224 = 178 new, 63.12% vs. 58.68% in pop.

pv: 79 (10 69) -65=14 new = 4.96% vs. 15.76% in pop.

nv: 253 - 165 = 88 new, 31.2% vs. 24.74% in pop.

Briefing 21 to 15 August

Deaths 1,189 - 742 = 447 new

16 unlinked - 8 - 8 new, 1.79% 

fv: 679 - 402 = 277 new. 61.97% vs. 62.35% in pop.

pv: 104 (14 90) - 79 = 25 new, 5.59% vs. 12.92% in pop.

nv: 390-253=137 new, 30.65% vs. 24.74% in pop.

Briefing 22, to 29 August 

1,798 - 1189 = 609 new 

- 29 unlinked - 16 = 13 new, 2.13% 

fv: 1,091 - 679 = 412 new = 67.65% vs. 65.74%

pv: 142 - 104 = 38 new = 6.24% vs. 10.35%

nv: 536 - 390 = 146 new =23.97% vs. 23.95%

(vax rate 16/8 65.74% fv, 10.31% JUST pv (76.05% pv+), 23.95% nv)

Graphic: UK, COVID-19 delta variant deaths within 28 days, by vaccination status: depressing similarity to rates in populace

Keeping it simple with a lumped PV category skipped over another important point to note: the big difference between those ≥21 days from dose 1 vs. those <21 days out. The whole small category did fairly well by this measure, but when we note it breaks down like 5 vs. 60  and 14 vs. 90, it should be noted that recently single-vaccinated people somehow did amazingly better than fully vaccinated people at surviving breakthrough infections. Someone should try to figure out just what that means. But conversely, the weakly and not-recently vaccinated did quite a bit worse than this shows. If I were to come back and add to this post, it would be to show that difference. But for now...

85-95% hospitalized in Israel are fully vaxxed: apparently false.

There's a claim to this effect, noted via RanIsraeli on Twitter: Dr. Kobi Haviv medical director of Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, said in a Channel 13 TV News, August 5 "90% ... 85-90% of the hospitalizations are in fully vaccinated people. ... The effectiveness of the vaccine is waning/fading out," He apparently puts it at 95% at another point per video titles, clarifies this is at his clinic but also seen broadly in Israel. "outbreaks in hospitals ... it is not just here and there." 

I didn't yet find a direct source on this from Channel 13, nor any kind of explanation or retraction. Definitions? if fully vaccinated means "vaccinated with thrust (booster)" there's a real problem (alleged). Only 74% of the population at the time was fully vaxxed, so even 85% of hospitalizations would be disproportionate - and the Ministry of Health is lodging masses of fraudulent data.

Checking the Israeli health ministry's website, on August 5 there were 26 new critically ill patients, ZERO of them fully vaccinated - not 85-95%. It was about the same on all preceding days, but climbing to some 3 or 4 per day afterwards, and later to 7 or 8 (out of about 48 total on Aug. 27, for example = 16.67%). 

https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general?utm_source=go.gov.il

I see no 85-95% for any one group, but a definite rise with unvaccinated and partly vaccinated, and only a mild rise later on, with the fully vaccinated majority - the claim seems blatantly false, but perhaps well-intentioned: it seems one thing the vaccinated need - the partly more so than the fully vaccinated - is to get better at avoiding infection. Scare tactics like thus might help.

IF I'm comparing the right things, 1x vaxxed seems extra unsafe here - contrary to the England mortality trends seen above. A larger number of cases (about 15-30/day) came from among "vaccinated no thrust" -  about 5.6% of the populace only partly vaccinated. In contrast only about 10-15/day came from the unvaccinated - a much bigger group nearly 3.8x times the size, with no vaccine assisting. The partly vaxxed are probably not more vulnerable to infection in itself (is that even possible?), so this likely this shows over-confidence in protection that has lapsed, or is just no match for the new, virulent strains. Note how the pattern improves sharply by mid-August (falling to 10-15/day), as the unvaxxed maintain the same care as always but can only avoid it so well and keep sending 20-30/day. That looks like a learning curve, with some vaccine assistance regained. Dr. Haviv's apparent disinformation may have been of some help there. 

Unfortunately, past Israel's borders, this disinformation becomes toxic. It's become more fuel to a smoldering global wildfire of ignorance - see latest Twitter citations by assorted virus apologists as proving all vaccinations everywhere are, like, pointless or even deadly. "It's a pandemic of the vaccinated." Rather, as the UK data shows clearly, the vaccines can be rendered useless on balance, or even harmful by - as I propose - misplaced over-confidence. But especially with continued caution, the data keeps suggesting the most vaccinated can actually avoid the pandemic of the unvaxxed raging around them. 

Fully vaxxed infected above average in Israel - apparently false 

A data table posted around shows COVID-19 infections in Israel between 4 July and month's end, broken down by age. Many brackets show infection rates past their rates in the populace, and others are very close, so that on average of everyone aged 20-90, 86% of cases were among the fully vaccinated, to 84.4% of the populace fully vaxxed. By this, the vaccine was or is causing more cases than it's preventing! 

This table is still passed on as here and was first noted here. Data sources from the Israeli government are cited, but filtered into someone's table. It's professional-looking, but I don't think it was done correctly. I haven't pulled up the links and am not sure what exactly is wrong with that, but noting 18,672 total cases July 4-31, while the Bing tracker gives almost twice that many new cases in the same span - 36,296. Maybe the remainder are in the missing under 20 age bracket? Non-vax and fully vax added = 100% - no room left for partly vaxxed. Are they left off, or which category did they get put in? Does the youngest age bracket below 20 change the picture? Some error using old age-based population numbers? Simply averaging percentages for each age group regardless of the group's relative size? Etc.  

Infections among the vaccinated majority are expected now, but we also hear they're still protected from infection and thus re-spread - just not as totally as was hoped. It has been up to 95%+ depending on the exact vaccine vs. dominant strain at the time. On July 23 CNBC reported Israel says Pfizer Covid vaccine is just 39% effective as delta spreads, but still prevents severe illness - depressingly low but still far better than zero percent protection. Still, the percentage vaccinated who get infected, ill or dead should at least be smaller than their share of the populace.

The degree of current protection comes into focus, as alleged above the jabbed are getting infected at rates mostly ABOVE their (incorrect) portion in the populace, and are thus killing more of the unvaccinated minority. But the data I see at the source cited, in general, suggests some among the unvaccinated and the partly vaccinated are disproportionately infecting and killing each other.

https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general?utm_source=go.gov.il

daily confirmed infections, absolute number, entire population (all ages - only above or below 60 is available anyway), by vaccination status: no 86% anything: about 50% pv, 50% nv, 0% fv in July 

That looks like a similar learning curve as above visible here with overall infections, - pv people wised up in August and got careful like their non-vaxxed fellows, finally faring better than them from mid-August, a bit slower in this general curve than in the one for serious cases (those at greater risk learned a bit better). It seems both tan and blue curves start trying to come down about 14 August, and the ones with some vaccine help hit the brakes more effectively. 

Meanwhile and with a familiar time-delay, the delta was breaking through to more of the fully vaxxed majority and its older frailer component. Like older age groups morbidity following on covid waves in England - some younger folks who got it die at one point, enough of them to see the bump, then older groups show their own bumps a week or two later - they were trying harder to evade it, but in many cases they could only do that for so long. (see here) That greenish line for infections among fully vaccinated in Israel does the same but milder. But this isn't just old folks, but a 75% majority of the populace including them, and covered by vaccination such that hardly any get infected at all. Again, that's ABSOLUTE NUMBER, not a percentage, and it's a small number coming from ~3/4 of the entire population. The main thing here is some partly vaxxed and some unvaxxed people comprising about 1/4 of the population are still infecting each other back and forth. 

But here as the greenish line bumps up some, those claims of fully vaxxed people appearing past their population share might get closer to true. It doesn't look remotely possible from the graph, but let's just check against - a bit further down on the Health Ministry's dashboard - the "vaccination by settlements" table. As auto-translated, that shows for each city/settlement the number of "active patients" and the percentage of these fully vaccinated and partly vaccinated. Subtracting the larger number from 100% gives rate of non-vaccination. These are the numbers I saw about a week ago. It may have been somehow different in July as cited in that table, but considering other signs of data distortion there, I kind of doubt it. here at the end of August, after that adjustment by the partly vaccinated, and a lesser one by the unvaxxed, we should see general low rates for all vaccinated, and we do, aside from a few fluke cases in smaller areas (that appear first on this list, FWIW). 

All "cities/settlements" with over 900 patients: Maybe I missed a couple, but noting 20 locations of that size, with 45,128 patients total between them. Every larger number shows:

* NONE with fully vaccinated appearing above average (which, again, is 74.94%): they range from no worse than 68.8% to as low as 21% of patients (28% to 91% of their proportion in the populace - NOT 100%+)

* NONE with partly vaccinated appearing above average - a refreshing change from some of the data (<81.8%): they range from 72.3% to as low as 32.2% of known, active cases in these 20 areas.

* ALL have above average non-vaccinated (>18.2%), sometimes drastically: no lower than 27.7% of patients and up to 67.8% of them are unvaccinated. That's 1.5x up to 3.7x their share of the population - NOT getting strangely spared. 

Biggest number in one "settlement" by far is 5,154 patients in Jerusalem. Of these 45% are fv (0.6x their share of  the populace), 52.3% pv (0.64x their share), and 47.7% are from among the 18.2% (national average) forgoing the vaccine for whatever reason (2.6x their share of the populace). 

Next biggest: tel aviv-jaffa: 3,829 patients - 64.5% fv (86% nat.av.) - 67.7% pv (83% av) - 32.3% nv (177%  av)

Full vaccination seeming hardly better than partial - in both of these two largest pools - is an interesting detail and one that becomes quite relevant by scale. The simple reading is there's not much difference from infection but (per the data above on "seriously ill") the booster / full vaccination protects much better from bad effects. Consider the worse case for boosters, Tel Aviv-Jaffa - 2,592 vaccinated patients - 2470 of these fully covered, just 122 in for missing the "thrust" - all getting sick just below national average. But still, the un-boosted will suffer worse effects and die at a higher rate. And even here, non-vaccinated people are getting infected at about twice that rate, and then faring even worse under it.

Best (reported) vax spare rate in a sizeable population: "elite intelligence" (prisoners?):  Out of 1,233 patients, 21% were fully vaccinated (28% their national average), 32.2% were (at least) partially vaccinated (39% their national average), and 67.8% were unvaccinated (373% the national average)

Below is the list of 20 city/settlement/entries considered, as given by raw auto-translation. Especially for those who know Israel better, the area breakdowns might shed light on how Palestinians and Palestinian areas are faring. Other metrics on that dashboard might shed light on hospitalization and mortality rates, etc. There are these 2 less-vaccinated population minorities infecting each other and dying at higher rates ... just who are those people? That seems like a good question I'll just ask for now.

city         patients         fv         pv         nv 

rishon lezion  2340p  68.8%  72.3%  27.7% 

haifa  2716p  67.8%     71.6% 28.4% 

sheva  2387  66.7%     71.3%       28.7% 

kiryat ata  992p  66.5%      71%        29% 

petah tivka  2898p  66.1%     70.5%     29.5% 

meth  1543p  66.1%  70.2%    29.8%

ramat gan  1152p  66.4%  69.3%    30.7% 

holon  2189p  65.3%  69.1%     30.9% 

tel aviv-jaffa  3829p  64.5%  67.7%     32.3% 

hadera  1285p  62.6%  66.7%     33.3%

ashkelon          1770p  61.5%     66%         34%

blocks  1725  61.8%     65.6%        34.4% 

netanya          2941  61.1%     65.4%     34.6%

ashdod  3646  58.7%        65%     34%

ramla  987p  55.4%     62.1%     38%

singer  960p  54.6%     60.5%     39.5%

jerusalem  5154p  45%        52.3%      47.7%

bnei brak  3482p  29.3%      38.3%    61.7%

beir shemesh  1899p  29.7%        35.3%    64.7% 

elite intelligence 1233p          21%         32.2%    67.8% 

Higgins and Me

September 3, 2021

I've been tempted to do a post like this before, but now is time, as it relates to the exposé What the Rocket Man Wants us to See in Ghouta (forthcoming), but needs its own post to breathe. 

For a long time now I have imagined Bellingcat founder & CEO Eliot Higgins as a sort of nemesis. It's kind of silly, but I only mean "in part." We do both use much of the same couch potato analysis, largely from video and visual evidence, to bring new insight to contentious events of geopolitical significance. But of course we do it to opposite effect; Higgins and co. generally labor to support official narratives while I and those I collaborate with challenge them. Bellingcat get to "re-invent journalism" by "pioneering" Open Source Investigation, have international criminal investigations launched over their findings, and so on, They have real budgets to pay and constantly hire new staff, somehow made available by some Western governments but mainly a lot of private donors whose agendas (and finances) aren't at all clear to me (to anyone?). In the meantime, our work... has been tolerated so far. 

What is now called "Open Source Investigation" or "Open Source Intelligence" (OSINT) wasn't called anything I knew of at first. But it is specifically what we focused on. Rather than just wait for secrets from Wikileaks, we could learn a lot from reports and visuals that are publicly available, properly weight and with an eye to correlation. In 2012 I co-founded a "group" based on this idea, called "Citizen's Investigation into War Crimes in Libya" (CIWCL) with a website and everything, which has since expired. The logo has a magnifying glass over text of the phrase "available evidence suggests," split into 2 lines. The focus is both on the text (the evidence) and especially considering the sources, on reading between those lines. 

This is one aspect where Higgins and his team differs most from me and mine. Bellingcat's visual work is largely correct, but doesn't usually prove that much; they can geolocate a video to say the events allegedly occurred HERE, but they still rely on trust in terrorist-activist claims as to what HAPPENED there, taking little to no effort at verifying the claims BY the video. At our best anyway, we employ a much more rigorous comparison of all sources, weighed properly. If we find the visual and the verbal disagree, the visual evidence is preferred. Bellingcat will try to avoid finding such conflicts.

Other differences: Higgins had wondered early on how you get paid analyzing videos and stuff. He's found his solutions to that, whereas I decided to not even try. I still squeeze in what I can on my own time, and just kept not having much of a life outside work and this. The others I think do similar, maybe some with less work and more life, etc.

As for similarities ... I know I've been inspired by some of Higgins' and Bellingcat's methods, and the opposite might also be true, though I've always had a lower profile. As I had put it once in December, 2014 "We're not following him/them, or vice-versa (that I know of), just riding two sides of the same geopolitical waves." Who copied who isn't certain or crucial - what I mean to show here is that Higgins' type of work is not that amazing or unique. But on review, it still seems he might be copying me at times. Below I'll explore some parallels regarding collaboration and format, investigative methods, and two important early investigations.

Collaboration and Format (last 10 years): 

During Libya's disastrous Arab Spring "revolution" in 2011, Higgins was posting comments at The Guardian as Brown Moses. He was famous for being the first commentator on topics of interest (Bosker, HuffPost). As I recall seeing (comments now all gone?), he would collect claims about African mercenaries and Gaddafi regime crimes, track feats of the multinational "freedom fighters," and put down pro-Gaddafi "conspiracy theories." 

In the meantime from April, I started this blog and began some detailed open-source work exposing those lies (like the sniped tykes of Misrata's fake-x-ray matching) and the real massacres (starting with Al-Baida) by the foreign-backed terrorists. These would tear Libya apart, ruining the best living standards in Africa, provide new havens and new armaments to Jihadists across Africa and the Middle East, and bring open Human slavery back to Africa. They were called "freedom fighters," and Eliot Higgins among many others cheered for them. (Libya masterlist and collected posts tagged Libya - incomplete - at first the whole site was about Libya and it wasn't tagged)

In 2012-2013 after seeing a job well done or a good cause destroyed, we both turned our attention to Syria - as did the thrust of global Jihad. Higgins started his Brown Moses blog in March 2012. Among other topics, he tracked insurgent weapon supplies - largely from Libya - in videos of their deeds. He would achieve the most recognition, however, for adding OSINT weight to the gravest alleged crimes of the "Assad regime," like the Houla Massacre of over 100 by Alawite death squads, and later the Ghouta chemical massacre of over 1,000. 

With Petri Krohn, I started CIWCL in February to formalize our Libya work, then swiftly turned to Syria in June. and later to Ukraine (and the "group" name became CIWCL-SUB for Syria, Ukraine, and beyond). Petri and especially "CE" (whom I knew from the JREF forum, now International Skeptics) helped start the wiki site A Closer Look On Syria (ACLOS), to formalize a collaborative process that emerged (others could add blog posts if they joined, as Petri and Felix did, but not add to or clean up mine - a wiki site opened all that up). With CE primarily managing the site, more great open source work followed - visual and otherwise - exposing Syria lies like the Houla Massacre and the Ghouta chemical attack. ACLOS was not highly praised. It was DDOS attacked so frequently we had to move sites early on to even keep it visible. Props to ShoutWiki. When people complained of attacks that seemed to appear when we did and suggested deleting ACLOS, they refused. The attackers eventually gave up and let the site be. (link f/c - it was way back, somewhere)

2014-forward: Higgins launches Bellingcat to formalize the collaborative process that emerged (Keefe: "concerned that he was getting too much of the credit for work that collaborators published on his blog") and does all kinds of other "visiting fellow" and receiving awards type stuff, as detailed at the Rocket Man post, besides hosting workshops, giving media interviews, etc. 

In this time I did some at ACLOS, which expanded to many other areas - mainly surrounding Russia - that Bellingcat also covered, and I was less interested in. I wrote some articles, collaborated with the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, etc. But mostly I came back to this blog and renamed it Monitor on Massacre Marketing, as I neglected ACLOS and let the CIWCL site expire (but it's still active on Facebook). I got kind of lame last year, wasted most of it researching and debating little besides COVID-19 massacre and it anti-marketing (a depressing experience). 

Then a big new discovery this year led to the Ghouta sarin attack reports with Michael and Chris, making some small waves thanks to to Rootclaim founder Saar Wilf and to Aaron Maté (whom Higgins has also blocked as supposedly irrelevant), no thanks to an apparent boycott by some of the antivaxxers and virus apologists (who distrust Aaron and Max Blumenthal as much as they do 99+% of global health experts), and well-timed just ahead of the 8-year anniversary of the Ghouta event. (the big blurry face is mine, sorry) I cannot overstate how completely we own this subject now. And it's the biggest Syria story there is to own. Higgins denies it, but then he has a long history of denying Islamist atrocities just to score more points against - as it so happens - the West's latest geopolitical target (see below).

Methods: Visual Geolocation

Oliver Bullough at GQ recently explained "one of the specialties that Higgins developed was open-source geolocation—authenticating that posted footage did indeed capture the place that it purported to document," usually by matching scene details to satellite views. It sounds like he invented this "online wizardry," and perhaps so; many bright people have invented similar methods before and since, besides many who have copied it from others. The case is described: 

"In August 2011, Libya’s revolution had become a civil war and insurgents were boasting about having seized the coastal town of Brega. Higgins posted a video selfie purportedly taken by a rebel fighter walking through the town, but another commenter snapped back – it could have been filmed anywhere; it proved nothing." 

Higgins wanted to know, but it seemed impossible. "This is when he had his idea. He watched the video again," taking careful note of the scenery and the roads walked, looked up Brega on Google Maps, "and searched for roads that matched his sketch. It took a while, and he had to keep rotating his piece of paper" but he found the matching spot in the eastern residential district, and added other matching details to verify. Good work. Insurgents "had indeed entered Brega – or the eastern part of it anyway." Other evidence would prove that terrible fact of moderate short-term interest, but Higgins got to confirm it first, as he likes to do. Bullough comments on this: "If Higgins isn't the most innovative journalist anywhere, I don't know who is."

A later Bellingcat article explained this Brega geolocation, from a video posted on August 11. The video is not available now, but one still frame is shown with mid-afternoon sunlight. He could have done less map rotating if he knew how to read solar angles and set the basic directions. 

I had the impression I'd done this kind of work quite a bit by then. But on review all that clearly predates it is from July 17, with the small image at right to show one place protesters were being shot dead in Benghazi on Feb. 19 - near the area marked with a pale blue box. This is the entrance of a Tariq Bin Zeyad school as labeled, next to a park with distinct features. (BTW sunlight played no role here under clouds and smoke and/or it may be after sunset). Although I didn't show the video details that match, the video is still available and it seems worth showing it now, in a new image below (using a March, 2011 Google Earth view, as the February one is obscured by clouds). School entrance coordinates: 32°5'45.9"N, 20°5'1.58" E

At this spot: a man shot in the head is laid down, likely dead, as some climb the walls as if to unlock the school from inside and make it a clinic or base. Another wounded man bleeding heavily is carried by in the direction marked in red. There's a fire set a ways back, making a smokescreen, as protest-militants will do to avoid being shot. Further back that way is the "Katiba" military barracks the "protesters" attacked daily with molotov cocktails, grenades, guns, a bulldozer and even a stolen tank. They did this every day, with some killed in self-defense each day allowing the funeral march that would start the next day's battle, until  Feb. 20 (the day after this video). By then they had more weapons seized in other cities and a suicide bomber destroyed the gates, letting them in to massacre the soldiers, beheading some of them. This finalized the "liberation" of Benghazi the Libyan government was not allowed to correct. 

It was a month later "when [Higgins] had his idea" to similar effect. But he's the "most innovative" one anywhere.

With varying help (notably Petri, Peet 73, Felix, I forget), I did more of this in kind of mapping work, manly from late August on the hideous massacres in Tripoli and in Sirte and other incidents, and in review of earlier events in the "Arab Spring" phase. A few of the better examples: Al-Baida snipers Aug. 24 - another early video located on Nov. 5 - one of the Tripoli massacres explained Dec. 11, with some backstory - another with a pile of bodies actually visible in the satellite view - etc. 

(A contemporaneous effort: On August 9 I started trying to sort a "Qala'a massacre" including location - a forest or tree farm with dirt roads, which I tried to map considering angle of sunlight, with help mainly from a Peet 73 getting better clues by the 11th and 12th text-based location on August 15 - nothing relevant or timely enough to have inspired Higgins' map-spinning work in Brega. A locations post stayed unclear until October with a specific guess based on a new photo from the site - not definitive but good, in the middle southern edge of the spot we had identified west of al-Gawalish.) 

Higgins after that ...  quite a few hits, but then see below his geolocation work on two important investigations in Syria.

Investigations: Houla Massacre 

Higgins got wider attention past weapons buffs out of his coverage of the grisly massacre in Taldou, al-Houla on May 25, 2012. As Syria Deeply explained in April, 2013:

A turning point came when Higgins live-blogged the Houla massacre, which unfolded near Homs last summer. “There was a massive amount of info coming from Twitter and Facebook,” he says, “so I decided to live blog it. And that was reported on NPR, and then after that I got lots of followers on Twitter and people [began] reading the blog. I set targets to do stuff. I’m competitive, so I like to be able to build up an audience.”

He started at the Brown Moses blog with an impressive list of videos from the scene, of the supposed regime shelling that proved all to follow was by them, and the emotion-loaded scenes of hacked-up kids, all with little to no analysis. He didn't see the clue in how rebels so easily got the bodies - as they usually do. He geolocated nothing of relevance and correlated nothing. "Survivors" are cited blaming army shelling and "Shabiha" militants from the neighboring Alawite town. But it was never known these were genuine witnesses and speaking freely. In fact it can now be seen their stories clashes with the video evidence, and sometimes with themselves (consider star witness Ali in some of my open-source analysis of verbal nonsense). 

Higgins covered that story in two blog posts of May 25 and 27 collecting videos and claims, and then nothing else until he popped back on June 28 to in part dismiss "Mother Agnes Mariam claims about the Houla massacre." Those were only part of the body of evidence for insurgent guilt, and were based on some of the other witnesses who described a terrorist massacre, as Syrian state media had reported. But some pro-opposition clergy members had spoken up with their own opinions that mother Agnes was just spreading pro-Assad lies. On this basis, Higgins said John Rosenthall owed an apology for citing her, and the Brown Moses blog had nothing more to say on the Houla Massacre after this.

In posting that June 28 commentary, Higgins seems to be indirectly replying to the previous day's UN Human Rights Council report. Otherwise, he simply ignored it. That "oral update" was unable to decide the blame, noting a same-day rebel offensive that overran at least two army checkpoints. "With the available evidence, the CoI could not rule out ... [that] the perpetrators were anti-Government forces seeking to escalate the conflict while punishing those that failed to support – or who actively opposed - the rebellion." Even with some apparent effort to blame the government, several points kept suggesting the other view. A later report issued in August tried harder and ignored more, managing a fairly decisive indictment of the Syrian army and "Shabiha" militias (see here). But Higgins could rule out the alternative, somehow, even when the UN couldn't, and had already called it case closed. 

For me this massacre, with dozens of children murdered in such a shocking manner, was a turning point to finally start studying Syria. Early analysis at ACLOS went on for months, analyzing reports, videos, and accounts from "alleged witnesses/survivors" for the two main narratives, with an eye to correlation and consistency. By year's end we established that an insurgent force of several hundred descended on Taldou that day and almost certainly overran 2, 3, or even 4 of the five security posts there, while attacking the fifth. In this way it seems they gained control over the southern half of the town, where someone then engaged in a massacre targeting - per the most credible reports - an extended Abdulrazaq family of the Shia faith and 2 Sunni families seen as loyal to the government (both named Al-Sayed but supposedly unrelated). 112 civilians were killed, 63 of them children, all shown, some with horrified faces hacked open as if with hatchets. Among that 112, some Abdulrazaqs and some al-Sayeds were also killed in the rebel-controlled north of town, and some other intermarried with the Abdulrazaqs were even killed in the fractious village of Aqrab a ways to the north (noting all between Taldou and Aqrab was rebel-held Al-Houla, connecting to other rebel-held towns like Rastan, and with territory running to the Turkish border).

Two reports and some addenda explaining all this are offline until I find them a new home, but the "Battle for the Houla Massacre" evidence in the 2014 2nd report is important (see the decent 2017 review here). I got an idea to re-up that after Bellingcat was started, with and a new blog Taldou. Truth. It could never go far, and didn't even go all the way, but close - it's a great resource on the subject. I issued a challenge there: Brown Moses on the Hook to show if anything was wrong in our visual work, or to maybe admit he couldn't. Issued in December 2014, he of course never responded to the challenge. He meant case closed. 

Bellingcat were not the ones to map several videos to spots in town relative to overrun and circumvented security posts and massacre sites, as we did here. Because of laziness and lack of concern, Eliot Higgins never saw the smoke rising from the National Hospital after sunset, in line with the rebel attack witnesses he dismissed as Assadist liars. It was the ACLOS crew who correctly pinned one "regime shelling attack" on a rebel dude firing an RPG over and over just south of the central security post, around 6:15 PM (B.1 below) as activists tried awkwardly to ignore him. Higgins had found that shelling video extra-convincing, maybe because the explosions were just so loud. 

I realize this is pretty hardcore pro-Assad propaganda here and will set a lot of people off. That blood was clearly set on his hands, and those of the insane genocidal Alawites next door, and it was case closed based on who-cares-what details long ago. "Everybody" knows that. But sorry, I don't calculate my position based on how far it strays from the approved version, and I wouldn't keep it tighter just because the crime was so hideous. If it's completely f%$#ing upside-down, absolving the killers and blaming the victims, someone who is still FREE to say so should say so. It's depressing, but the implication here is we have a sick system. Higgins didn't invent this inversion of truth, but he did his part maintaining it.

Furthermore, I and we (varyingly) have found the same basic MO again and again in these early massacres of - mainly - late 2011 to late 2012. But Jabhat Al-Nusra kept getting implicated in these (Houla, Tremseh, Daraya) and especially at the end (Aqrab, Ma'an, Haswiyeh). And they did have access to things like rifles and hatchets. Seeing his "Shabiha massacres" advantage falter, "Assad" then turned - as of December 2012 - to attacks by SCUD missiles, aircraft only he could fly, and chemical attacks with sarin from his own unique recipe. He would try to blame the "terrorists" for these crimes, but Eliot Higgins would be on hand to help foil those plans.

Investigation: Ghouta and Other CW Incidents

Higgins has been noted for following Syria chemical attacks early on, even before a reported 1,429 were killed in Ghouta on August 21, 2013. But I've probably been following longer - since days before a single attack was even reported. The first attack report was noted at ACLOS on day 3 of my watch, following Obama repeating his tempting "red line" offer on Dec. 3. Early coverage into 2013 was pretty flawed but still valuable - eg I gave too much credit to chlorine claims in the Khan al-Assal attack of March 19 in one early article on Syria CW attacks run at the Center for Research on Globalization in early May: "Was the Syria Chemical Weapons Probe “Torpedoed” by the West?" - or better yet see an improved draft that just missed the deadline, posted here with later comments.

At the Brown Moses blog, Higgins showed some respect for this article. Despite the CRG website being "far to conspiratorial for my liking" my contribution was "a good round up of reports of chemical weapon use in Syria" and that's "not something I say lightly." He used it mainly as a start point to address the numerous claimed incidents up to then, and he was right about the chlorine claims in Khan al-Assal; chlorine is not that deadly, and eventually everyone seems to agree - sarin was used against Syrian troops and mostly-Shi'ite civilians at Khan al-Assal, described as "cottage industry" and also judging by impurities, it's said to be the same kind used in Ghouta. Also that launch spot cited - 47km away! - was some other error in Alex Thomson's early dispatch, with official claims being about 5km to the north, in Kafr Dael, and a small but powerful locally-made rocket called Bashair-3 used (see below). 

We didn't interact much, but some. In an Oct 2013 grenade discussion in comments at his blog, he acknowledged the helicopter-dropped 'cinderblock containing the sarin grenades' is smoking AND glowing just like white phosphorous does. That might be last time he responded to me. These grenades have been linked to Jabhat al-Nusra, thanks partly to Higgins (my post on them), and in at least one attack contained the same kind of sarin used in Khan al-Assal and Ghouta. The same also appeared in the weapons used for a sarin attack on SAA troops in Jobar, that occurred just 3 days after Ghouta and in the same area from which the sarin-filled Volcano rockets were fired.

Also of note: Higgins was apparently informed in May, 2013 that Jabhat al-Nusra had seized some of Syria's chemical weapons in the Aleppo area some time before, and although the type(s) weren't clear, they may have used them at Khan al-Assal (which, again, used sarin). He was asked to keep that off the record, and has accordingly deferred to Syrian claims that none of their CWs have been stolen. As it so happens, that's probably the right call; as I may explain in another post, this story from Matthew Van Dyke is rather dubious anyway. (they probably did have sarin, just not by the route he was told about.)

As for Higgins' investigation of the August 21 incident ... see What the Rocket Man Wants us to See in Ghouta for more detail, but in summary: He identified the government-improvised Volcano rockets from at least June and so recognized them right off in videos following the sarin attack. That's a plus. He also had linked them by videos to government use only, as if insurgents didn't have any Volcanos or managed to never show them off. He supposedly mapped their impacts and found the government-held firing spot; Oliver Bullough at GQ recently enthused at Higgins' work and a well-deserved "surge of interest that culminated in a profile in the New Yorker, headlined “Rocket Man”, after he proved the Syrian regime fired makeshift rockets packed with sarin at rebel-held parts of Ghouta, killing hundreds of people." Bianca Bosker at Huffington Post called Higgins a "one-man intelligence unit" whose "work unraveling the mystery of the rocket strikes of Aug. 21 played a key role in bringing much of the world" to blame Syria's government for the chemical attack. 

And this fame would be crucial to launching Bellingcat. But really he did a pretty crap job on that aspect. None of Higgins' Ghouta geolocations are his own work; he just verified them, and in one case didn't even do that. Two locations were visually identified by followers, two others were set by coordinates, and Bellingcat claimed a fifth location based absorbing an error by then-collaborator Chris Kabusk (who now works with Michael and I). While Chris corrected this error in 2017 based on new photos, Bellingcat retains the flawed deduction and passes it on to influential parties worldwide. 

For reference here: all impacts mapped by LCC & HRW (red and blue) vs. all correctly geolocated (green dots, 8 in total) and the ones among those that were first set by Higgins & co. boxed in yellow, or yellow-green for Higgins/Kabusk. We're not claiming to have placed all these green dots with out own work - just the ones that aren't wrapped in yellow. 

In other spots Higgins can be seen consciously twisting the evidence to the official conclusions, urging us to just blindly trust the "UN azimuth" from the west - which he knows is grossly erred (the reality being up to "50 degrees off to the north"). Then ignoring that anyway, he looked northwest at max. range or a bit past it (2.1 to 2.6km), and decided some government-held firing spot or other probably fits. In 2021 he decides the maximum range no longer applies, claims his early reading from the north way past range, lets it be read as pointing west way past range - confirming the key finding of the UN-OPCW probe: the government did it, from whatever invented angle at whatever impossible distance.

Finally he had added a backup shortcut early on, in case that all failed. With Dan Kaszeta and other allies, he would use various unfounded tricks to "prove" the field samples of used sarin were from Syria's stockpiles, and so only they could have used it, even if that flies in the face of all the other evidence. After this, it was "case closed" and faith in that closure demanded. 

In our reports this year, Michael, Chris and I use the ignored trajectory (read better as 30 deg. north from what the UN reported, not 50) as the clearest among 7 or 8 or 9 estimates (dep. on definition) from 7 or 8 geolocated impacts that converge almost exactly at a spot that matches the videos he had also dismissed. This footage shows Islamist insurgents in an area they would control, firing at least 3 of their own Volcano rockets, on what they say is the night of the attack, at the right angles to be some of those found 2km away the next day, full of that unique type of sarin. 

This pretty well disproves Higgins' exclusive ownership shortcuts and sloppy ballistic analysis, besides implicating the foreign-backed terrorists for this attack and the several hundreds of civilian deaths blamed on that sarin. Below: based on alt. analysis in my 2nd report. I think it's generally an improvement, but full team review will be part of any NEXT ROUND of Ghouta analysis. Who's open here, and who's so eager to keep cases CLOSED based on authority decisions?  

Open Sources, Open Debate?

One obvious appeal of Open Source investigation is how anyone can see and check the conclusions. As a rule of thumb a strictly visual geolocation from anyone credible is probably right; it's so easy to show wrong that someone likely will have already. But then maybe no one has - always worth verifying. In that sense at least, Bellingcat does produce findings that are largely correct, just very incomplete and not the proof they pretend it to be. This too is open enough to see - at least to the well-informed eye - as explained in part above.

As Higgins told Bianca Bosker “If you want someone to really question your work, just post it on the Internet. ... There are plenty of people who’ll want to tell you you’re an idiot and you’re wrong.” Implicitly, they'll fail when challenging his work because, as she wrote, "Higgins tries to imagine every disagreement from some ticked-off stranger online, and preemptively strengthen his argument’s weaknesses." In that case, they won't be able to SHOW anything truly wrong - they can raise confused questions and doubts, and even pretend they've proven you wrong, but otherwise ... they might resort to blocking you, etc. But that better describes our findings, strengthened so Eliot cannot cope with them directly.

Considering the points above, I long suspected Higgins never muted me, having too much intelligence to flat ignore my often insightful work, But he has ignored me or failed to respond since early-mid-2014 at latest - maybe in October 2013 - the entire time he's been this "OSINT" hot-shot thrust upon the world stage. He's smart enough to recognize a potential threat. Best defense would be to hope I remain obscure enough to barely matter, and definitely to avoid giving me any attention of his own. All-time twitter replies to my several questions: zero. IIRC all replies to a few comments at Bellingcat.com were fielded by others like "Servus" (here refusing to learn Syrian soldiers have been attacked with sarin until I was cut off from even trying). Bellingcat's Twitter account likewise has never replied (and just recently has blocked me, along with a lot of people - see replies here and check if you're blocked too - it was news to many). 

The other two current Bellingcat contributors I have ever encountered - Aric Toler and Nick Waters - have blocked me in the last year or two. I don't think that was for any rude behavior, and likely on a Bellingcat ignore policy. But Higgins, who would originate this policy, did not. Recently as I review better, it strikes me Eliot is more lazy and lame than I had realized, and most likely did mute me long ago, but let me see what he was up to, for what it's worth (generally it wasn't worth much to me). 

He blocked Ghouta reports co-author Michael Kobs back in 2014, as he was quite active against Bellingcat on the MH-17 issue all along. I disagreed with their direction, but the narrow visual work they had done seemed valid to me and I said so. It seemed a complex case where no one else got the complexity, and maybe that lonely road aspect led me to sort of drop out of that scene, and Ukraine/Donbass in general (I find I do better with picking my battles, and that was big one). That may be related.

As the Rocket Man articles explains (forthcoming), Higgins was aware of our new Ghouta findings since March, and casually engaged in efforts to minimize and discredit them. In time he got specific enough to offer a weak rebuttal of his own and commented in support of another, and falsely claimed we ignored key evidence about rocket and sarin ownership. Alongside this failure, he has been taking a harder line to skeptics and increasingly appeals to authority. He suggested in June that Twitter should ban statements that Syrian CW attacks were "false flags", pursuant to a policy against "denial" of "violent events" (the Holocaust, etc., with the etc. being really problematic) 

But he only now blocked me, on July 26, within hours of our Push Back appearance. That's just as I reason I/we might be too big to ignore. I'm not to see any of the attacks he might be launching, or I'm on hard mute like I don't exist until hopefully I don't. Turns out this intelligence unit isn't so open after all. But he is getting paid and praised.