Situationen i Ukraina just nu, del 3

Professor Hudson stressed that if the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were to state that the Kremlin's $3 billion loan is not official, "this would rewrite international law and mean that loans from Sovereign Wealth funds of any nation (OPEC, Norway, China, etc.) have no international protection."
On the other hand, Professor Hudson denounced the decision of Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada to seize Russia's assets in Ukraine as a "radical step" that it is "beyond civil law."
"If Ukraine did this while still receiving IMF, US and Canadian lending, its creditors could be held as responsible," he remarked.

"The 'West' is not in the charity business. Its firms do not want to lose money, and the EU Constitution bans the European Central Bank and European taxpayers from financing foreign governments," the economist emphasized.
http://sputniknews.com/business/20150614/1023351827.html

Here are some simple facts about evidence:

• Evidence that a suspect has the capability to commit a crime does not provide evidence that the suspect committed the crime.

• Evidence that a suspect has a possible motive to commit a crime does not provide evidence that the suspect committed the crime.

• Evidence that a suspect was at the scene of the crime at the moment of the crime does not provide evidence that the subject committed the crime, unless evidence is available the the subject and only the subject was at the scene of the crime at the moment of the crime.

• The above do however substantiate the suspicion of committing the crime and the need to continue to treat the suspect as suspect.

• Eyewitness testimony is not direct evidence, neither in confirming that the suspect committed the crime, nor in denying that the suspect committed the crime. Eyewitnesses can of course be influenced up to being paid to testify.Honest eyewitnesses can be influenced by their own believes, by information by others, by fear and most of all by time. The longer the time frame between the event and the testimony is, the higher the risk that the memories of the eyewitness have been influenced by external information and personal considerations of the eyewitness.

• Pictures and videos are not direct evidence. The first challenge is to confirm that these were made at the time and location of which they are stated to be made. The next challenge is to determine if these have not been manipulated. And thirdly, quality, angle, range, etc. of the picture or video can have influence on the information provided.

https://espressowithpavel.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/on-the-subject-of-evidence-and-opinions/

That said, aviation lawyers close to the MH17 case now believe there is no evidence of a crime – a war crime, a crime against humanity, or a crime of terrorism — that would meet international prosecution standards.

According to the AFP, public Australian Government interpretations of the crash evidence and assignments of blame cannot be supported by the evidence the AFP’s officers had collected themselves at the crash scene in Ukraine, in the autopsy process in The Netherlands, and in the subsequent forensic testing of what was found in the bodies of the MH17 victims.

The final DSB conclusion on missile parts is: “the shape and form of the parts recovered is [sic] consistent with a 9M38 series surface-to-air missile.” This, according to international legal sources, is circumstantial, inferential, indirect – and for a courtroom, inadmissible.

A Dutch spokesman for the JIT said just hours before the DSB released its report that no report on the criminal evidence is scheduled in the next four months; and it is “still too early for any final conclusion.”
http://johnhelmer.net/?p=14322

Det är en av våra journalistiska principer som vi utvärderar endast en explosiv nyheter än tillförlitlig information när vi har fått från två oberoende, tillförlitliga källor. Om vi bedömer ett meddelande så explosivt som vi, kära läsare, vill inte undanhålla er, även om vi inte kunde tydligt kontrollera det, då vi kommer att välja en försiktig formulering.
Men i artikeln innehas inte denna försiktighet. Så texten slutade med formuleringen: 'Men nu experter från Bellingcat har just avslöjat denna inspelning som en förfalskning.'(google översatt från tyska)
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelblog/bellingcat-bericht-zu-mh17-was-wir-lernen-a-1037135.html

Kriese: The term "forensic analysis" is not a protected one. From the perspective of forensics, the Bellingcat approach is not very robust. The core of what they are doing is based on so-called Error Level Analysis (ELA). The method is subjective and not based entirely on science. This is why there is not a single scientific paper that addresses it.

Kriese: Forensic scientists use computer procedures that allow for the clearest possible conclusions: Has it been manipulated -- yes or no? Contrary to what Bellingcat claims, Error Level Analysis does not provide clear results. The conclusion is always based on the perspective of humans, on their interpretation.

Kriese: It attempts to determine compression artifacts. Those are the small deviations created when a photo is saved in JPG format -- differences from the original. It is possible to depict them in color. But: The final decision on whether a manipulation has occured or not is then still a personal decision made by the viewer. One has to decide whether variations should be attributed to manipulations or are they normal and could be attributed to clouds, for example?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you consider the Russian satellite images to have been manipulation?

Kriese: That's not the right question. We are not talking about satellite images here. We only know the version published by Moscow. That is a satellite image that has been prepared for use in a presentation.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bellingcat has come to the conclusion that they were edited using Photoshop.

Kriese: That's an erroneous interpretation. They claim that the metadata shows that the images were processed using Photoshop. Based on that they are concluding it was the clouds that were likely added in order to conceal something. The truth is that the indication of Photoshop in the metadata doesn't prove anything. Of course the Russians had to use some sort of program in order to process the satellite image for the presentation. They added frames and text blocks in order to explain it to the public. The artifacts which have been identified could be a product of that -- or also a product of saving multiple times in JPG format.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bellingcat says its findings are based on the use of the analysis tool FotoForensic.com, a website.

Kriese: And its founder Neal Krawetz also distanced himself from Bellingcat's conclusions on Twitter. He described it as a good example of "how to not do image analysis." What Bellingcat is doing is nothing more than reading tea leaves. Error Level Analysis is a method used by hobbyists.

Kriese: It is easy to claim to amateurs that one can see this or that. But just think about the US images of the alleged poison gas facilities in the Middle East. There's a similar point at Bellingcat: In one of the photos, a growing spot can be seen. It's allegedly an oil puddle next to a vehicle. But does one consider that to be plausible? I think it depends on whether a person wants to believe it or not.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/expert-criticizes-allegations-of-russian-mh17-manipulation-a-1037125.html

Panic in Kyiv: A scientific journal of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NANU) has published a "separatist" article about the genocide of the residents of Donbass by the VSU.

In Kiev, they called it unprecentented betrayal. The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is disgraced, having dared to suspect Ukraine's valiant armed forces of genocide against the population of Donbass.

Huge amounts of money were spread around in it, and not just those Nuland cookies ... Its main participants were outcasts from across the country, [...]

"Today, the population of Donbass en masse is being systematically, and brutally destroyed by the Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine, including through means and methods of warfare that are prohibited by international law," - wrote A. Lopata.

[...] "there is no aggression of Russia against Ukraine, but instead there is a US war with Russia in Donbass "to the last Ukrainian."

As of October 1, knowledge of English became a prerequisite for employment in the administration of the president of Ukraine.

Kiev will demand that Russia pay at least $1 trillion for Crimea and Donbass, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on Thursday.

“Crimea is the territory of Russia. Donbas is the territory of Ukraine. What is this $1 trillion about? It is not clear,” Peskov told TASS.

Ukraine is ready to sue the Russian Federation over its refusal to restructure Kiev’s debt in the amount of $3 bln, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Thursday.

The figure is thus almost 22 times less than announced by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk earlier on Thursday

On Tuesday, President Petro Poroshenko approved a new 'Strategy for National Patriotic Education of Children and Youth, 2016-2020'. The new program seeks to inculcate in youth the 'ideals and values' of the fascist collaborationist Ukrainian Insurgent Army, those of the Maidan revolution and of Kiev's military operation in eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko emphasized that he was confident that the new strategy's implementation would contribute to Ukraine's "national revival" and to the "protection of Ukraine's democratic European vector."