Talk:Alleged car bombing in Hurriyah, Baghdad, October 30, 2016

Online comments in Arabic
Alshehri S comments on the video on YouTube
 * ''This artificially blow to inflame sectarian more and more, the victims and the ambulance and bomb expert bombing were all in the same spot and in less than a minute completed the scene, then Anscheroh on the satellite channels that the bombing carried out by the other sect and increasing sectarian tension, such as the bombing of shrines previously and the bombing of mosques, the game base is by customers at home and the lives of Iraqis from both sides. India's former British occupation if he wants to ignite sectarian slaughter a cow and thrown in the way of Hindus, then enjoy the war between Muslims and Hindus, this God, what is happening in Iraq from 2003 split up loved ones and neighbors until they became the most enmity of some of the Jews Unfortunately the clergy of the two parties are partners in crime sickening, but from the womb of God says explicitly (Kill retaliation for Hussein) (Kill defense of the companions and the mothers of the believers) Iraqi Shiite Mo was married Sunni and Shiite Sunni married 20 or 30 years ago? Henw who changed? Religion and doctrine Bs What has changed hearts and minds changed and became a brother kills his brother because it is different from the thinking, the Persian and the US and British laughing at their ignorance and their crimes. But optimistically it says, will Iraq, the center of all the world and the throne of Baghdad under his kings of the East and the West, God willing,

-- Petri Krohn (talk) 09:44, 3 November 2016 (UTC)


 * This is a compelling but vague comment. I suppose it captures part of the underlying issue and the spirit of the problem, but the more substantive - and open - question is just who's stoking tensions here. On the surface, this being linked to one of several deadly attacks on Shi'ite neighborhoods, it would seem Shi'ites were lodging false reports. And, oops, caught out badly. But as I propose, it could be a double-fake to create just that impression. I note this commentator who felt like promoting the lessons here casts a side=sneer at "the Persian and the US and British laughing at their ignorance and their crimes." But it might be Saudi Arabia, US, Israel, Turkey backing the fakers instead. It seems a lot of those sharing the video are supporters of Syrian rebels, Sultan Erdogan in Turkey, other Sunni Islamist causes. They might be a little too eager to take this, and might be incapable of pausing to question it. --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:10, 3 November 2016 (UTC)


 * In the (German) article I've linked in the news earlier, it is striking how the whole thing starting with the headline is riding on the sectarian angle, with the exception of the direct quotes of the militia leader. He says it is "only those inhumane terrorists that want to make people believe that this (Sunni/Shiite) conflict exists". He says there's a witch hunt by "western conspiracy theorists" in media and NGO's trying to discredit the resistance, and that they also have non-Shiite fighters and are strictly against the Wahhabi fanatics, not normal Sunnis. Not the first time I've heard such things in direct contradiction to the reporting (about Mosul) they were embedded into. This just as an aside. --CE (talk) 13:11, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Location Questions
My initial doubts this was in Hurriyah have been pretty well put to rest. (various clues, no time to relate). Christiaan Triebert at Bellincat offers this (on Wikimapia as the spot the incident(s) happened. Mostly it seems to fit, and I'm inclined to just agree, but ... there's one shadow I can't explain (is my visualization just not working right?)

The sun slants across the street from the southwest, and the shadows of each truck and the car, and people seem consistent. (The exact angle and thus time is worth estimating, soon). But looking at the video, there's a foreground building suggested about where the camera is - it seems mounted to a building on the south side of the street, just behind the wall, and the shadow of which we see here angling out to the middle of the street. But satellite views show no such building. The school angles far back from the wall, and at no time of day seen in all Google Earth's images does any such shadow creep anywhere near the street. The satellite imagery is very dated - even Google Earth's most recent view if deom November 2010, six years old.

So we could presume a new building was put in since then. The smaller shack on the north side of the street has moved. But the current preview from Terra Server, from about two weeks before the incident, also shows no such building. Did it appear in the few days between, this place with a shadow and an apparently al-Qaeda-connected surveillance camera this fake scene was staged for? Is there something else I'm missing that cast such a shadow? --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:22, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Double-Fake by ISIS Supporters?
Petri showed me this on Facebook, and a little investigating solves it,to some extent, real quick. I call double fake here, perhaps by ISIS supporters, to make Iraqi Shi'ites look like fakers.

Comparing: the various reports linked to a certain scene shown in a video with this globalnews.ca report vs. apparently the same scene seen (earlier?) in this unexplained video from app. surveillance camera dated October 30, 3:39 (PM?).

First, the fake scene video has a couple oddities - the trees are bright red in the surveillance footage, and normal green in the other view (otherwise, everything lines up quite well). Are trees normal green in late October, in Iraq? These look deciduous, right? The leaves might be red, and on the ground. Somehow, one video has the leaves red but in place. Both might have been filmed at another time of year entirely. Or ... normal green is right, and the red trees are a mystery.

Next, as far as this camera sees, there is no one on the ground filming this incident. I did a decent search, and no one seems to have posted any videos of this fake rescue scene. Did the fakers go to all this hassle to stage this scene and let no one document it? That is, aside from the unseen surveillance video that captured the fake part and then released that? If so, ooops.

Finally: note how the wall behind this car is already burned. Something blew up or burned there once before - like, maybe earlier in the same day? The surveillance video says 3:39. Might be. If this is mid-day, the street must run roughly east-west, with the car that blows up on the north side of the street. The exact angle, if in Hurriya, could vary - there are 2 districts of the name, with different overriding angles (90 vs. app 110 degrees). We don't know it's really in either. (and that's an important point to keep in mind).

But just from the principle of the sun always moving west, and always from the south in the northern hemisphere, and presuming these are at least on the same day ... The Globalnews video has shadows of decent length running roughly right across the street. Enhanced views at right: The bottom view has shadows almost totally perpendicular to the wall. If this is exactly an east-west street, this is about solar noon. Above, to me appears to be coming from a bit east of that, so before solar noon if this street runs due east.
 * Note: I should have checked - the video is said to be on Monday, and is dated October 31. So ostensibly, it's next day and all point below is irrelevant. BUT still, coincidentally, there's a burn mark already there at the fake scene, it has its oddities, and so maybe they really were filmed the same day, the one delayed or the other backdated. It was probably provided to Globalnews.ca, who can't verify it. Might be two leaked video things as part of a package discreditation deal, maybe produced over the summer, for all we know. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:51, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

The surveillance footage, as shown above clearly has sunlight coming from further west (left), running roughly right along the edge of that angled car. This is later in the day, maybe at 3:39, after the previous claims, some kind of burning and damage, and prior news footage. Hours later, someone arranges this scene, apparently to suggest the earlier reported incident was fake.

What's unknown is all the who and why, and also where. At the end of that news video it appears some flags are visible. I can't say whose, but they look pretty dark. It might be hard for Shia-blaming Sunnis to set this up in their hood of Hurriya, but it could all be staged at will in an ISIS-held area, FWIW. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:06, 3 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Okay, same-day could not be presumed, so this is open - but not closed. I think there might've been a real bombing Oct 30, around 5, the news video filmed next day around noon, and then around 3 or 4, this fake scene enacted to discredit everything else. The core question of before and after mainly comes down to this:

Was there was a prior burn there, then the fake scene on the 30th, which no one bothered to film (or did they? awaiting fuller video study), but someone unsympathetic there caught it on camera and exposed their sectarian smear. And tinted the trees red. (??) Oh, and the burning car just inches away doesn't seem to add any to the preexisting smoke deposits - it looks the same before and after, despite not being simply the same. Maybe, but far from convinced. --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:22, 3 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Added to the graphic analysis: approximate spans of different graffiti compared with adges of more heavily-burned areas. I think it all matched up pretty well, with the only possible difference in the orange-marked zone behind the car. The view isn't great, but it seems likely the fake car burning adds some smoke on the left side of that that wasn't there before (all 3 lines shown - first it runs between right and middle, then from right to left. This seems to confirm the news videos and photos are from after the fake incident, which I was doubting (but again, it;s not a certain point from this crappy video) And either way, we can see everything else was already there. This faked burning car scene adds little to the site of a previous and far more violent fire-related event. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:36, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks to CE *, this section and theory gets a fairly positive mention in Triebert's analysis at Bellincat.
 * Others take it even further and suggest that it may have been a “double-fake” to create the impression that Shiites were lodging false reports. This theory is, arguably, supported by the burn marks on the wall that are mentioned above: does the surveillance footage shows a fake scene after a real car bomb exploded at the same location? It would explain the burn marks, it is suggested, as well as the attention received by RT Arabic and AP, proponents of this theory seem to argue.

It also explains some other things like the fakers' disinterest in documenting this staged scene except "accidentally" via that surveillance camera - it seems like they only wanted the candid blooper reel, not the supposed fake videos that never did surface (picking a credible Shia-seeming account to upload and then delete the hoax videos can also be tricky, so maybe they figured "why bother?")
 * (I lost my log-in to Twitter for the moment and couldn't find the tweet) --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:11, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

But it also raises some problems, like how would anyone else (presumed Sunni sectarian types) get such clear access to the scene (at what time?) with no locals interfering, etc. And when? Truly before the next-morning photos, adding smoke as it seems? If so, that's later the same day as the blast, and by shadows not much later, possibly earlier - this isn't a slam-dunk theory or anything, and it remains confused, but it still feels like the right avenue. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:48, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Chronology
time zones note: Apparently I've been wrong in thinking California time is UTC - 8. An older map I used once said so, but maybe a zone was zapped? Everything else says it's -7. And Daylight time might matter here .... but [http://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/iraq/baghdad according to this, there have been no time changes, they stay on GMT+3 year-round. So the normal time is 10 hours different, but by Twitter/Youtube time, California/Pacific and still DST, it should be just 9, correct? (edits below reflect that - 2 hours down from at first) --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:02, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Twitter: (searching for بغداد الحرية ) The red trees surveillance footage first appears (version from handheld): Oct 31, 12:49 PM (=9:49 pm in Iraq +/- DST at this time). First version more like we've seen appears 1 Nov 4:05 am (noon of the 2nd in Iraq), [from INP+.

Another video appears around here, later afternoon, car smoking, some apparent blood on the ground (could be real or fake) example).

What came prior? No videos or photos shown relating to this scene, just what seems some stock photos of car bombing. First reports of an attack on the 30th: earliest seems to be Oct 30 6:11 am: (translated) Urgent: "Baghdad operations ... an explosion in Hurriyah caused by a car bomb was parked near a shop explosion." So around 3:10 pm local time? (+/- DST at this time) in Iraq is the first news. Suggested is it happened not much before, perhaps much later than the fake scene, unless the news was held back (after correction the implied delay is apparently negative - the blast maybe was earlier in the day than that video). Many mentions follow, mentioning a car bomb but not at first any deaths or numbers injured. The first to do so 6:58 am "Killing and injuring 13 people, a car bomb in the Hurriya district of northwest Baghdad #." This too suggests a current flow of information. So a bombing around 3 pm local time is suggested. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:36, 3 November 2016 (UTC) and Caustic Logic (talk) 11:02, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Youtube Check my YouTube playlist for the chronology of the video uploads. Two of the videos on the list are first posted by a an al-Nusra Front linked channel Baghdad Two Years. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 12:06, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Too late to start now, but soon. Thanks. --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:53, 3 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Ok, if this is a fairly compehensive list, it's noteworthy that still no street-level videos of the staged scene appear - they apparently staged that only for the hidden camera, which is quite odd. There are a couple aftermath video from later, showing blood however, and apparently the same fake scene car burning. But most videos are copies of that red-tree video-of-a-video.


 * The earliest (?) video, the first one anyway, one of the al-Nusra ones, as on Twitter, first seen on someone's handheld device. According to the handy extractor provided by Amnesty International for human rights researchers, given in UTC time, is 21:27:22, on October 31. So this should be 12:27 am on November 1 in Baghdad. That's almost 7 hours off from Twitter's first appearances. So ... is that given in UTC after all? --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:02, 4 November 2016 (UTC)