Robert Morningstar: Wrong, Wrong, Wrong and Wrong

 James Concannon writes...

        Robert Morningstar got the second half of Coast to Coast AM last Wednesday night. The producers (plus George Noory) must have thought it was time for a good old-fashioned liar, after recent appearances by Nick Pope and Seth Shostak, who both pretty well stick to facts. With AM* you either get misinformation, as when he's interpreting images or audio, or disinformation, as when he's deliberately mis-attributing images for propaganda purposes.

        On Wednesday night, it was all mis- and no dis-. He boasted about his own brilliance in digging up photo-evidence of Martian and Lunar civilizations, mentioning in particular his 2015 discovery of "Big Ben on the Moon". As I wrote in March 2015, this artifact is just a piece of random lint (looks like a tiny insect leg) in someone's scanner. Stuart Robbins also ridiculed this one later that year. Thanks again to "trekker" for pointing out that in the next frame "Big Ben" has migrated right-wards and is totally detached from the Moon.

Music of the Spheres
        I also wrote a major debunk piece about AM*'s next topic: The weird "music" heard by Apollo 10 (also Apollo 11 and 12) astronauts when they were behind the Moon. This was definitively traced to intermodulation between the VHF tracking of the two separate spacecraft. AM* said, testily, that he "just wishes NASA would come clean" about it.

        Well, y'know, four separate mission transcripts are available. The DSE and DSEA transcripts are available. The Press Kit is available. These documents have been on the Internet for ~20 years. Much more recently, a group of space enthusiasts has annotated the mission transcript as a flight journal. It's hard to know what else NASA could do to make this mission public. Of course Morningstar is imagining an alien orchestra and he wants NASA to admit it. But it's NOT TRUE.

        AM* even went as far as to create what he called a "radio play" on the subject. This consisted of four guys reading the mission transcript (very badly) plus someone simulating the Quindar tones (also very badly) on what sounded like a tin whistle. Here's a link to it.

Anti-vacc
        You can't monitor AM* for long before you understand that he's passionately anti-vacc (However, he's also passionately pro-Trump, and today's news must have created something of a dilemma for him). In the final moments of his two hours, he claimed that the swine flu (H1N1) mass vaccination campaign of 2009 caused many cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome. He further claimed that GBS is inherited in subsequent generations.

Well it's NOT TRUE that H1N1 vaccination caused a spate of GBS. Ref - para 5 of the Introduction. Certainly some people who had been vaccinated also contracted GBS, but simple statistics tells us not to attach special significance to this. In a population of 10 million, 21.5 can be expected to contract GBS in any six-week period, just by normal background infection rates. And well over 10 million were vaccinated.

It's NOT TRUE that GBS is inherited. Ref. - "Inheritance" para. Since no genetic mutation is associated with GBS, there is no possibility of inheritance.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong and Wrong

Adrenochrome and fantasy

James Concannon writes... 

       Adrenochrome is a real compound, chemical formula C₉H₉NO₃, the result of the oxidation of the hormone adrenaline (C₉H₁₃NO₃).

        What is not true is that adrenochrome is a potent psychotomimetic/hallucinogenic drug having effects on the brain similar to those of LSD (C₂₀H₂₅N₃O). It is not a controlled substance in either the USA or the UK, although it may be mildly psychoactive in some people at some dosages.

         What is even less true is that the only source of "the good stuff" is a living human body, preferably that of a child.

        What is less true even than that is that Hollywood celebrities, addicted to adrenochrome, have abducted large numbers of children and kept them in cages as a source of their recreational drug.

        Least true of all is that 2,100 caged children were rescued from five different underground bases in California by US Marines on 14th October 2019. That nauseating lie was promulgated by a guy from Wisconsin called Timothy Charles Holmseth, first on YouTube and then on a web page dated 1st April 2020. This was no April Fool's joke—Holmseth followed it up two days later with a "report" expanding the story from 2,100 to 35,000 and from California to three other States. Robert Morningstar swallowed the story hook, line and sinker, and re-posted it on his Foolbook page five days ago. Morningstar is an educated man—a Fordham University scholar, he tells us often—so why is he spreading this garbage around? I suspect the answer is political. The ridiculous fiction known as Pizzagate showed us that the propagandists of the extreme right wing in the USA (and that includes Morningstar) are interested in connecting any democrats with pedophilia and other forms of child abuse. According to an article in Spectator USA, propagandists of the extreme right (Q-Anon) circulated a rumor in 2018 that there was a video showing Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin mutilating a young girl in order to harvest adrenochrome from her terrified body. As if.

The Truth
        The truth is that the potency (and availability) of adrenochrome is all in fiction. Under the name drenchrom, it gets a mention in Anthony Burgess's dark dystopian novel Clockwork Orange. But the primary source of misinformation is Hunter Thompson's 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Hunter Thompson himself admitted that he made up the part about adrenochrome. The movie adaptation even shows Johnny Depp taking a hit:

Universal Pictures, 1998

        The whole idea of harvesting adrenochrome from adrenal galnds was a plot point in the FICTIONAL TV series Inspector Lewis (2008).

An obsession

Timothy Charles Holmseth describes himself as follows:

 “Timothy Charles Holmseth, 51, Minnesota, is a former radio broadcaster, government reporter, magazine writer, song writer, author, and publisher…recognized with first place awards for news reporting and column writing by the North Dakota Newspaper Association including Best News Series, as well as awards from Boone Publishing.”

The Frank Report investigated these claims and wrote:

He was never a “radio broadcaster” – just a guest on an internet podcast. Never a Government reporter (whatever that is) – and never wrote a magazine or song anyone knows of. Search of the ND Newspaper Assn site shows they never heard of him – and Boone Publishing doesn’t give awards.

        It is sort-of-true that Holmseth is an author and publisher. Amazon books lists five works self-published by him. The topics of all five are, guess what? Pedophilia and child abuse. Holmseth also claims to belong to some organization called the Pentagon Pedophile Task Force. The internet fact-checker Lead Stories debunked the whole pack of lies yesterday, confirming that there is no such thing as the Pentagon Pedophile Task Force. A blog in March 2018 detailed Holmseth's criminal record.

...and this is the man who Robert Morningstar wants us to believe.


Sources:
Wikipedia
Minnesota’s Timothy Holmseth finds trouble with his Q-Anon conspiracies
The truth about adrenochrome
Timothy Charles Holmseth is not what he appears to be (YouTube)

Robert Morningstar's faulty memory

James Concannon writes...

        Just over a year ago, as a Central American migrant "caravan" was making its way northwards through Mexico, Robert Morningstar re-posted on his Foolbook page this nasty piece of propaganda:

He added his own comment, as follows:

"[T]he democrats favorite group of people want to leave their sh*thole and turn our country into one too. Democrats have already been moving it in that direction here. Why not more? Right?"

       As this blog reported at the time, these images have nothing to do with the migrant "caravan" proceeding through Mexico. The most shocking image, of the bloodied policeman, is taken from a news story about student riots in Michoacan dated 16th October 2012.  The top photo is taken from a report of a 2016 teachers' union rally in Salina Cruz.

        Just the other day I asked him if he'd seen this report by Beatrice Dupuy of AP confirming that the images were unrelated to immigrants. His reply?

"James Concussion," You old fakir, I've never posted that. :) You are a cur, a scoundrel, forked-tongued con man and a habitual liar. 

        Excuuuuse me, WHO is the liar here??? Is it me, or is it the man who agreed with recently-convicted official liar Roger Stone that Hillary Clinton murdered JFK Jnr.?

Update: ...and the man who said he had a copy of the "1968 edition" of the Brookings Report. There is no such edition—the final report was issued in 1960. When challenged, Morningstar was unable to come up with any text from his so-called edition that varied in any way from the authentic version.

What is wrong with this picture?

        This is one of Robert Morningstar's collection of "lunar anomalies" by which he hopes to persuade us that the Moon is the cradle of some ancient civilization. He trotted this out on Richard Hoagland's blogtalk show, with this accompanying text:

"In this, and many other misapplications of Gestalt Psychology, NASA intentionally blinded public perception to hide PROOF of alien activity and construction on the Moon for more than half a century."

        Morningstar proclaims himself to be "a specialist in photo interpretation, geometric analysis and computer imaging." However, we know from previous articles on this blog that AM*'s photo interpretation skills are a joke (this one, too).

        In this case, he's excelled himself by misinterpreting jpg pixellation as the "serrated edges of a construction beam."

        His caption says that this is a detail from a Lunar Orbiter 4 image of the satellite crater Deluc L (The crater is named for the Swiss geologist Jean-André Deluc, and has 23 named satellites). However, I don't know where he got that image from, and (typically) he doesn't help us by giving its catalog number. The only Lunar Orbiter 4 image showing Deluc is Frame 4119, Sub-frame h1 (BUT SEE COMMENT #2 FROM ANONYMOUS, BELOW.). Here it is, with some of the satellites identified:

        Deluc Main is at 55° S, 2.8° W. Deluc L is at 60.8°S, 6.2° W, and it's just out of this frame to the west of Deluc E. Here's a view from Lunar Reconnaissnce Orbiter centered on Deluc L, with Deluc Main up at top and slightly right of center.^{note 1}

        So I can't tell what the "construction beam" actually is (AGAIN SEE COMMENT #2), but it's certain to be one of the many, many imaging artifacts that are all over Lunar Orbiter photography. On that mission, flown in 1967, the photos were developed on board by a semi-wet process, then scanned for transmission. This image of crater Euctemon (76.4°N, 31.3°E), also from AM*'s collection, unquestionably shows a scanning dropout.

        In short, these images are not "PROOF of alien activity and construction on the Moon," but "PROOF of Robert Morningstar's incompetence. FURTHER PROOF, I should say.

Thanks to Astroguy for monitoring

===========================/ \===========================
[1] Here's the raw image from the library. Note that a 17MB .tiff is available. If that's not good enough for you, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project offers a 652 MB download (!)

"I'm a lunatic" said Robert Morningstar

        He was just joking, of course—giving a facetious answer to George Noory's question "Why are you so interested in the Moon?" on Coast to Coast AM, 19th August. But many of the things he had to say during that two-hour interview made me think "lunatic" was close to the truth.

        Morningstar was expounding a theme that there's some kind of "new honesty" in NASA now that Jim Bridenstine is Adminstrator (since April 2018). He said that, in NASA's image library, old fuzzy images are gradually being replaced by higher resolution versions, which to my knowledge is totally untrue. He didn't give any specific examples, but he did OOOH and AAAH a lot over this image, which he says he found in a Polish astronomy magazine in 2018.

        Morningstar enthused over the gorgeous color, which he said the "old, dishonest NASA" would never have allowed to be seen. In answer to Noory's question "Why would they suppress color on the Moon?" he replied "If people could see how beautiful the Moon really is, they'd all want to go there." Well, y'know, since there's no possible way the general public can get to the Moon anyway, where's the harm in that? Besides, now that the cat's out of the bag, so to speak, why aren't people clamoring for transport to the Moon?

       Later in the show he returned to this topic, saying that he's being asked why we don't see these colors during full Moon at night. In a spectacular display of his misunderstanding of optics, he said that it's the same reason the sky is blue in daytime. The atmosphere filters out all but blue light. We are left to wonder whether Mr. Morningstar, the "specialist in photo interpretation," has ever looked at Mars in the night sky.

        By the way, anyone can make a full Moon digital photo as gloriously colorful as they like. Here's an article showing how. The result is no more real than Mike Bara's pathetic attempt to convince us that increasing color saturation of an image is "just like turning up the volume on a radio."

Turtle rock
        Morningstar repeated a claim he first made in October 2016, that "My friend Ed Mitchell" photograhed a UFO while on the Moon. He means this photo of turtle rock, AS14-68-9472:

        Morningstar said the UFO has "a geometric pattern." Oh yeah? If you're having a hard time even seeing a UFO, let alone a geometric pattern, look in the sky just above the second fiducial from left. There's a small piece of scanner lint. Ed stepped a little to his right and shot the next frame, AS14-68-9473:

        Bye-bye Mr. UFO.

        There was plenty more lunacy in the show, but I think that's enough to make the point.

Robert Morningstar does something disgusting again

James Concannon reports...

        In January 2016, Robert Morningstar posted on his Faceboo page a disgusting image of a decapitated woman in a lake of blood. The accompanyhing text read:

"Islam is a religion of pieces of human beings, left scattered, with many other victims maimed across the world in the Name of Allah, the merciless and despicable, a demonic deity who demands and condones subhuman barbarity and depravity such as this."

        As expat reported at the time, the image was in fact taken in an isolated village in Brazil, and depicted the crime of a frantically jealous young man who caught his girlfriend posting photos to another man on WhatsApp. Thus, it had nothing to do with Islam and was nothing but a revolting piece of propaganda.

        Today, Morningstar is at it agin, reposting what purports to be an image of the bloody remains of a woman stoned to death. The caption is "Muslims rape, stone 60-year-old Christian woman to death," and the accompanying text from The Geller Report has today's date.

"Islamic terrorists from the Jihadist organization Jabhat al-Nusra stoned to death an Armenian Christian woman living in the Syrian province of Idlib. Christian and human rights groups reported over the last week that the 60-year-old Suzan Der Kirkour was found dead outside of her village, al-Yaqoubiyeh."

        In fact, the image is a still from a Persian-language drama movie released in 2008. The title was "The Stoning of Soraya M". I have asked Morningstar to remove this offensive item and apologize.

"Multiple scientists"... oh yeah?

James Concannon writes...

        Robert Morningstar, as I've remarked previously, gets up in the morning and scratches around his favorite internet sources to see what's shocking today. He then re-posts a selection without ever checking to see if what he's laying before his followers is actually... you know, TRUE.

        Today's hilarious result was an article titled "Multiple Scientists Publish Papers Suggesting The Moon Is Hollow & Artificially Made," by Arjun Walia of Exonews. Walia has no qualifications related to astronomy, and none in journalism either. An article he wrote in 2013 linking vaccines to autism was demolished by the I Speak of Dreams blog.

        So who are these "multiple scientists" of which Walia writes? In order as written, they are the following:

1. USAF Colonel Ross Dedrickson (d. 2007). He had some crackpot ideas about aliens on the Moon, but he was not a scientist and he never said or wrote that the Moon is hollow and artificially made.

2. Dr. Horace Crater, a physicist from the University of Tennessee Space Institute, who, according to Walia's Exonews article,  "recently published a paper in the Journal of Space Exploration that identified certain features that appear inside the [satellite] crater Paracelsus C on the far side of the Moon."

        A paper of that nature was indeed published by J. Space Exploration, on 30 September 2016. Its exact title was Image Analysis of Unusual Structures on the Far Side of the Moon in the Crater Paracelsus C. The problem is, Horace Crater, who retired in June 2015, didn't write it. The authors were Mark J Carlotto, Francis L Ridge and Ananda L Sirisena of the Lunascan Project and Society for Planetary SETI Research, Tennessee, USA. Mark Carlotto is one of the foremost proponents of the artificiality of the so-called Face on Mars. He's a satellite imaging specialist, not a scientist [but see comment by Dee, #10 below]. The Lunascan Project is or was a project specifically looking for lunar anomalies. These are the "unusual structures":

        That does not quite amount to a claim that the entire Moon is artificial, now does it?

3. The Deputy Manager for the Clementine Mission to the Moon. That would presumably be Lt. Col. Pedro Rustan of the US Naval Research Laboratory. As fas as I know Rustan never said or wrote that the Moon is hollow and artificially made.

4. Ingo Swann. Swann (d. 2013) was a self-described psychic and remote viewer, not a scientist. Arjun Walia writes that he "reported viewing strange structures and humanoid creatures on the Moon." That's "viewing" as in "seeing in his imagination" not as in "actually seeing." Swann never said or wrote that the Moon is hollow and artificially made.

5. Sean C. Solomon, the director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Solomon said that the core of the Moon is a mystery, not that it's a hollow space.

6. Jim Marrs. Marrs (d. 2017) was a journalist and author, not a scientist. His reliablility on matters lunar may be judged from the fact that he said, at the Conscious Life Expo in February 2015, "NASA offers us no better resolution of images of the Moon and Mars than 100 yards, and at that, they all have "blurred out areas." " Marrs said plenty of whacko things, but that the Moon is hollow and artificially made is not two of them.

7. Isaac Asimov. Asimov (d. 1992) was a renowned science fiction author. He had some interesting insights about the Moon but he also never said or wrote that the Moon is hollow and artificially made.

        So the Exonews article contains not one single example of what its headline promises in plurality. Perhaps a writer cannot be held accountable for a headline, but Robert Morningstar, who describes himself as a scholar and a "civilian intelligence analyst," can be and should be castigated for irresponsible re-posting.

Robert Morningstar misattributes news images again

James Concannon writes...

        Shame on you, Robert Morningstar. To make a sleazy political point, you posted this on your FB page today:

        Morningstar, you also added this text from "WarriorCode", dateline 4th November 2:18pm:

"[T]he democrats favorite group of people want to leave their sh*thole and turn our country into one too. Democrats have already been moving it in that direction here. Why not more? Right?"

        These images are in fact years old and have nothing to do with the migrant "caravan" now proceeding through Mexico. The most shocking image, of the bloodied policeman, is taken from a news story about student riots in Michoacan dated 16th October 2012. The page is from the news service EMEXQUIS, and the translation of the lead is as follows:

"In a series of operations carried out early monday morning, state and federal authorities detained 176 students from the [..] schools of Cheran, Arteaga and Tiripetio in Michoacan."

        The top photo is taken from a report of a 2016 teachers' union rally in Salina Cruz, 250 miles away from where the caravan is today.

        It is no excuse that thousands of other right-wingers have tweeted and facebooked and instagrammed these horrible images for propaganda purposes. Morningstar says he's a scholar, an intelligence analyst and an investigative journalist. In my opinion, that gives him an obligation to verify that what he re-posts is genuine. It took me about five minutes to ascertain that these images were misattributed—Morningstar should have made the same small effort.

Robert Morningstar in denial

James Concannon writes...

        Robert Morningstar describes himself as  "a specialist in photo interpretation, geometric analysis and computer imaging." Considering how many times he has blundered in the field of photo interpretation, that really is the joke of the decade.

        His latest exhibit is the exact same flim-flam as Mike Bara put on page 117 of Hidden Agenda and page 85 of AA & JFK. It's the LRO image of landslips down the rim of crater Marius, turned upside down and called a "crystal city on the Moon."

        In this case Morningstar adds to the dishonesty by a) Claiming to have discovered it (two years before LRO was in orbit), and b) Identifying it as an Apollo image. He showed this travesty on a recent edition of Richard Hoagland's OSOM blogtalk, and I understand Hoagland claimed he was the discoverer. Apparently they argued for some time over whose balderdash this was.

        Well, last week I asked AM* what the Apollo catalog number of this shot was, telling him that he was mistaken. His answer was to challenge me to provide the cat# of the LRO frame. I couldn't do that^{note 1}, but I referred him to the ASU release of the LRO strip.

His response:

"That's malarkey... There's no reemblance [sic] at all. No realtionship [sic]... Not the same place, not the same region not the same forms at all. Pure Balderdash! ... You crash. -> M*."

...and later...

"You are as "blind as a bat" ... Here is the phot I published... They share nothing in kind, complete opposite. Yuu show flats streams of lunar material running along the gorund. This photo of The Crystal City shows upright sprires and raised substructures supporting them. And he shadows cast by the structures prove that hey are upright spires lot lava streams spreading in flat rivulets inside Marius Crater. You are a bogus astronomer. -> M*"

        Well, he's right about the "bogus astronomer" part—I've never claimed astronomy credentials. However, I seem to be more talented at computer imaging than he is, so it took me just a few minutes to post a direct comparison:

        Since he showed no sign of being convinced by that, I went a step further, deriving the entire frame instead of just one section of it.

Reload the page or click on the image if the GIF animation cycle has stopped.

        Is that going to convince this "civilian intelligence analyst"? Probably not—just like Mike Bara, the words "I was wrong" are not in his vocabulary.

        There's one possible mitigating factor. AM*'s version of the dishonest flip is such horrible quality that it's likely he didn't actually do the flipping himself, just claimed credit for someone else's dishonesty.

Update 27 Sept:

        To nobody's surprise, Morningstar has been tongue-tied (keyboard-tied?) on this subject ever since I posted the GIF animation. Just cannot bring himself to type those magic words "OK, looks like I was wrong."

=====================/ \=====================

[1] Thanks to OneBigMonkey for finding what I could not. It's part of Narrow Angle Camera strip M109569228L, acquired in October 2009.

Robert Morningstar an investigative journalist. Wait.. WHAT???

James Concannon writes...

        This week, on the FarceBook, Robert Morningstar described himself as an investigative journalist. I had a good laugh over that.

A scene that has not yet happened...

[Cue the Harp arpeggios...]

- "Come in Mr. Morningstar, take a seat. So, you want a job as investigative journalist, and you say you have lots of experience?"

- "That's right, I've been doing it for twenty years and my intuition is great."

- "What we're really looking for is facts, rather than intuition. What kind of stories have you investigated?"

- "Paranormal phenomena mostly, anomalies on the Moon and Mars, that kind of thing."

- "For example?"

- "Well, I investigated the Apollo 20 crashed alien spaceship on the far side of the Moon."

- "But you were wrong about that, weren't you? Examination of the high-definition image from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows that this is just a 10km long natural depression, cratered to the same extent as its surroundings.

You also said that the Apollo-era photo that shows it, AS15-P-9625, was from Apollo 12 Magazine P. In fact it's from Apollo 15's Pan camera.

-  "I investigated what are obviously hangars for alien spaceships in Mare Imbrium."

- "Those "hangars" (and by the way you mis-spelled them as hangers in your report) are about 8km wide. Even in lunar gravity, an unsupported roof 8km wide is impossible. Here's a link to the LRO image. Your "hangars" are the two knobby hills at 24.06°W, 19.87°N. Zoom in as far as you like, see if you think there are any UFOs in there. Just like the "crashed spaceship," the hangar roofs are cratered just like all the surrounding terrain. You also said in your report that the image that shows them, AS17-M-2444, is from Lunar Orbiter. In fact, it's from the Apollo 17 Mapping camera. I see, too, that in your report you labeled seven craters in Mare Imbrium and got all seven wrong. We expect better accuracy that that."

- "One of my greatest revelations was of a space station in lunar orbit. I call it "Station Luna" and I have calculated that it must be 166 miles wide."

- "You are wrong about that. The image that shows it, AS10-28-3988, is of an 18-inch piece of mylar insulation that broke away as the Apollo 10 LM separated from the CM. John Young took several shots of it because he was slightly concerned that it was a hazard. Anything in lunar orbit 166 miles wide would be extremely obvious to every astronomer on Earth. This thing cannot be permanently hidden behind the Moon because a selenosynchronous orbit is an impossibility."

- "I investigated an anomaly on Mars that I called TMA-1. The investigation took five months. Finally I published this in UFO Digest: "TMA-1 clearly appears to be an intelligently conceived and designed form.. If so, this alone, of course, would indicate (and prove) the presence or ,more likely, the previous existence of intelligent life on the Red Planet. … I now believe that this artifact, TMA-1, may be a "Time Capsule", or the remnant of a larger one, intended to call attention to the region or, perhaps, to record the circumstances or forces, which caused a cataclysm that destroyed Mars' once Earth-like ecosystem."

- "You are wrong about that. The "anomaly" is "Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)" on 5 April 2004. It shows the mark made by the Opportunity rover's Rock Abrasion Tool. What took you five months?"

- "When you have the world-class intuition I have, you need to be certain. It took me a long time to conclude that AS17-M-2366 shows a 10-mile high clock tower on the Moon. I call it "Big Ben on the Moon."

- "You are wrong about that, too. The version of AS17-M-2366 you analyzed was a preliminary rough, containing scanner lint. In the next frame in series, AS17-M-2367, the lint you call "Big Ben" has migrated off to the right.

Moreover, the technique you used in what you call your investigation—pointing a digital camera at your computer monitor—is highly unprofessional. If you worked for us we would not put up with utter bullshit like that. Anything else?"

- "My intuition has led me to many inexplicable anomalies that NASA has obviously covered up. But those are perhaps my best work."

- "Well, Mr. Morningstar, thank you for coming in today. Be sure to let us know if you ever get anything right. We may offer you the position in the event that all the other applicants are even more incompetent than you. My assistant will show you out."

Robert Morningstar: FAIL!!

James Concannon writes...

        In my opinion, Robert Morningstar has just suffered the most humiliating failure of his career. The closest approach by Mars for 15 years has come and gone without any of the disaster effect AM* predicted. On Facebook, Morningstar is now dodging and weaving, making up excuse after excuse, but it's pretty much an open-and-shut case. This was his word-for-word prediction, on FB 17th July:

"Mars' passage close to Earth on July 31st, 2018 will created [sic] super storms like Katrina (again, as it did i 2003), along with volcanic activity and intense electrical storms around the globe. Be ready for something and anything."

        Let's take this piece by piece. I'm allowing one day either side of his prediction, to be generous, so I'll be reporting activity for the three days 30th July—1st August.

Superstorms
None.

        The closest thing to a superstorm in the last week was typhoon Jongdari, which caused havoc in Japan on 29th. Hilariously, just as the "Mars effect" hit us on 30th, Jongdari was downgraded to a tropical storm. There were torrential rains in Myanmar but, y'know, it's monsoon season so there's nothing unusual about that.

        Grasping at what straws were in the wind, Morningstar cited what he called "devastation" in Mexico. What a joke. The weather system he spotted was a depression which eventually became tropical storm Hector. Wind speeds were reported as a mere  35 knots, gusting to 45. No reports of any damage, loss of life or even injury.

        When I pointed this out, Morningstar replied "I think a crashed airliner is devastating enough. N'est as, Dumas?" OHH... OHHH.... a crashed airliner, oh yes how silly of me. At 3:45 pm on July 31st, Aeroméxico Connect Flight 2431 crashed almost immediately after take-off from Durango International Airport. A hailstorm was in progress, and the Embraer twin-jet with 103 aboard was probably the victim of a down-draft. All 103 people walked away, although there were 85 injuries.

        Is Morningstar seriously expecting us to equate this incident with Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane that caused catastrophic damage from central Florida to eastern Texas in August 2005? The cities of Gulfport MS and New Orleans LA were substantially destroyed, and 1,245 people died from the immediate impact and subsequent flooding. Wind speed of 280 km/h was recorded. So don't give me crashed small airliners with no fatalities, although the incident was no doubt devastating to those involved.

Volcanic activity
None, other than ongoing sequences such as the eruption of Kilauea, which began 30th April.

        Again wriggling, Morningstar cited the 27th July evacuation of Ambae island due to the imminent eruption of the Manaro Voui volcano. In fact, the island had been evacuated already, starting in September 2017 when volcanic activity increased to Level 4, and reinforced in April this year. The island is coated with a deep layer of ash but there are no reports of death or injury. So even if this eruption had happened during the three days of the Mars effect, it would have been pretty unimpressive.

Earthquakes
        Morningstar's prediction did not specifically mention earthquakes, but under the general heading "something and anything..." the three days of the "Mars effect" were free of any major seisms anywhere on the globe. The closest was a 6.4 magnitude earthquake at Lombok, Inodnesia that killed 14. That was on the 29th so it doesn't count.

Intense electrical storms around the globe
        This one is interesting. The lightning maps maintained by Blitzortung.org showed that Europe had been unusually sparky during the week prior to Morningstar's predicted effect.

Lightning, Europe, 28th July

By the 31st, Europe had calmed down somewhat

Lightning, Europe, 31st July

As for "across the globe", that one was a busted prediction without doubt. Here's North America and the Caribbean:

Lightning, North America, 31st July

...and as for the Southern hemisphere, calm prevailed:

Lightning, Oceania/Australasia 31st July

         These maps all show the lightning strikes accumulated from noon to 2pm local time on the dates indicated.

Morningstar pleads for more time
        Morningstar got so interested in this topic that he sat down and wrote a pseudo-scientific essay, The Mars Effect: How Mars’ Close Passage Exerts Geo-Magneto-Electric Effects Inducing Electrical Forces in the Earth’s Core.  Here are some excerpts from this woefully ill-informed work, which muddies the waters by conflating the Mars approach and the Lunar eclipse of 27th July:

During an eclipse, whether solar or lunar, there will be a summation of G Forces when in concert (i.e. in the same direction during solar eclipse),  or  as opposing G Forces during lunar eclipses).
When in that celestial configuration, there will be a differential subtraction of gravitational forces, whose buildup and break-down phases will compound the G-stresses on the Earth’s core and the Earth’s mantle as the 2 gravitational forces,
However, in this unique case of July 29th, 2018, with Mars involved, there were  3 sets of contending G-forces, tangling and tugging on each other like rubber bands from different angles at every passing moment as Sun, Earth, Moon transited in lunar eclipse, as Mars raced toward the Earth-Moon system with astronomical speed, interacting with gravitational forces and geo-magnetically with Sun, Earth and Moon during lunar eclipse:
The magnetic fields of all these celestial bodies were forced toward each other, pushing pressing, intersecting, overlapping, and thereby, inducing electrical activity between them and amongst them.
Finally, the Disentanglement Phase of the G Bands, where Mars is concerned, may take weeks to unwind, and so The Mars Effects on Earth’s weather, its plate tectonics and volcanic activities could take several weeks to dissipate, but during this critical phase a new series of super storm could be spawned by The Mars Effect like Mars did in 2003, spawning the super hurricanes, Katrina, Rita and Ophelia, which I announced and predicted on July 5th, 2003 while speaking as guest n the Jonathan P. Casey Radio Show, broadcast in New Jersey and the Philadelphia area.

        Morningstar seems incapable of understanding that the Sun/Earth/Moon alignment happens every single month, at New Moon and Full Moon. In gravitational terms, there's nothing special about an eclipse. He also seems unaware that Mars has no magnetic field, and he has the date of hurricane Katrina wrong. When I asked him, on Facebook, what his source was for the information that the Mars effect would now drag on for three more weeks, his hilarious reply was «I am "The Source."»

The mathematics
        I must admit I got a surprise when I calculated the actual gravitational interaction between Earth and Mars. The answer is, with Mars in conjunction, 2.409 x 10¹⁶ newtons. With Mars at opposition, its closest approach, 8.76 x 10¹⁶ newtons, or 3.64 times as much. Even though a newton is a rather small force (roughly 4.5 to the pound) that's more than I expected. Note that the accelerations produced are 0.403 x 10^-8 and 1.47 x 10^-8 m/sec² respectively—very, very small numbers).

        The gravitational attraction of the Sun is 40,000 times stronger and that from the Moon 200 times stronger. Dreamers like Morningstar should contemplate such data before they go making silly predictions.

        Let there be no doubt about it—regardless of how Mr. Morningstar now spins the data, this one was a total bust.

Update 14th August:
       Hector developed into a category 4 hurricane, and was thought at one time to be a threat to Hawai'i. It holds the record for most time (186 hours) as a cat 4 in the NE Pacific. However, it missed all the islands to the South and rapidly weakened. As of today it's been downgraded to a tropical storm. If Hector had ever become cat 5, and especially if it had done significant damage in Hawai'i, Morningstar would have been jumping up and down yelling about what a brilliant prognosticator he is. As things stand, his talents are seen to be crap.

Morningstar predicts

James Concannon reports...

        Today, the self-styled "civilian intelligence analyst" and "specialist in photo interpretation, geometric analysis and computer imaging" (who can't tell the difference between a 166-mile wide space station and a 2ft sheet of mylar insulation) posted this prediction:

"Mars' passage close to Earth on July 31st, 2018 will created [sic] super storms like Katrina (again, as it did i 2003), along with volcanic activity and intense electrical storms around the globe. Be ready for something and anything."

We'll be watching.

Update 20th July:
Severe tornadoes ripped through Iowa, partly destroying Marshalltown. Nothing to do with Mars.

A different storm sank a boat in a Missouri lake, drowning 17. Nothing to do with Mars, either.

6.0 magnitude earthquake, Papua New Guinea. Nothing to do with Mars.

Update 21st July:
Scorching (110°F) weather in Texas, persistent drought in the UK. Nothing to do with Mars.

Update 22nd July:
5.9 magnitude earthquake, Kermanshah, Iran. Nothing to do with Mars.
Floods/landslides in Vietnam kill 21. Nothing to do with Mars.

Update 23rd July:
Record-breaking heatwave in Japan, dozens dead. Nothing to do with Mars.
5.9 magnitude earthquake, mid-atlantic ridge. Nothing to do with Mars.
Reports that Germany is running out of beer bottles because of a heatwave. Mars?

Update 24th July:
60 dead in Greek wildfires. Nothing to do with Mars.
Dam collapses in Laos. Hundreds missing. Nothing to do with Mars.

Update 25th July:
Exceptionally heavy rain on the East US coast brings flooding. Nothing to do with Mars.

Update 27th July:
Ambae island in Vanuatu evacuated as the Manaro Voui volcano began spewing ash. Nothing to do with Mars.

Update 28th July:
Severe storm (but not "super-storm") continues on US East coast. 500 buildings destroyed by fire in Redding, CA. Notable (although perhaps not "intense") electrical storm over the North Sea, extending into Germany. Nothing to do with Mars.

Update 29th July:
6.4 magnitude earthquake, Lombok, Inodnesia. 14 dead. Typhoon Jongdari^{note 1} caused chaos in Japan. Mars is coming!!! (allegedly)

Robert Morningstar has now written that the effect of close approach will last for "at least three weeks." Clever — he hopes thereby to give himself a lot more time to claim that his predictions were accurate, and to guarantee that everyone will have forgotten his exact prediction by the time his window closes. I'm not buying it.

30th July ======== ZONE OF CLAIMED MARS INFLUENCE ==========
Typhoon Jongdari downgraded to "tropical storm."
California brush fires continued (having begun a week ago). The volcanic sequence in Hawaii continued (having begun 30 April). Some Indonesian volcanoes continued to belch (as they have been doing for a few thousand years).
A fairly impressive belt of lightning persisted over Europe, but electrical activity over the Americas was normal, and that over Oceania and Australasia abnormally quiet.

Lightning map, Oceania/Australasia 30 July 2018. Pretty peaceful.

That's about it for today.

31st July: 
Nothing to report today.

Morningstar reminds me that there's a tropical cyclone over Mexico, but, y'know, it's the season for that. There's nothing remotely unusual about this one.

1st August:
Nothing going on today. No major eruptions or earthquakes worldwide. Even the European lightning map shows much less activity. The Mexican tropical storm developed into a named event, "Hector," but it's a very junior hurricane with winds 35 knots gusting to 45.

======== END ZONE OF CLAIMED MARS INFLUENCE ==========

Now please see Robert Morningstar: FAIL!!! for an assessment.

=======================/ \======================
[1] July and August are peak months for typhoons (a.k.a. Pacific tropical cyclones). Over the period 1959-2015, those months saw average numbers of 3.9 and 5.4 respectively. In other words, it would be highly surprising if there were not any typhoons during this period (ref: Wikipedia).

Robert Morningstar's fake-everything page

James Concannon reports...

        Robert Morningstar has written "I manage my Facebook page like a newspaper." What a joke. The truth is that he's turned his page into an aggregator of totally fake news. His sources include such laughable peddlars of propaganda as Pamela Geller, yournewswire.com, wnd.com, dailycaller.com and zerohedge.com. He sometimes writes a little text himself, but more often just re-posts the lead from his source.

       The majority of the garbage he re-posts is straight Republican talking-points. It's no secret that Morningstar's politics are slightly to the right of Adolf Hitler, so readers of the page get reminded daily that Donald Trump is a saint, and that Obama and the Clintons are serial child-killing maniacs.

        Last month expat was lamenting the fact that, these days, Internet arguments so often deteriorate into accusations of pedophilia. I guess the general idea is "Since pedophilia is the worst thing we can imagine, let's accuse our enemies of it and see if it sticks." So, for example, just yesterday Morningstar posted this from zerohedge:

Ex-Clinton Foundation Official Tied To Chinese Kindergarten Embroiled In Bizarre Sexual Abuse Scandal

        The actual story is highly tenuous and the connection to the Clinton Foundation non-existent. It dates from 26th November 2017, and Morningstar seems unaware that CNN covered it three days later, reporting that the police investigation concluded that the parents were making up the stories of abuse for whatever reason. But this is what passes for "news" in the world of Robert Morningstar.

Islam
        Another major theme Mr. Morningstar has willingly sucked up from his sources is Islamophobia. These sources include the blogs jihadwatch.org and creepingsharia. As expat reported back in Januay 2016, AM* thinks nothing of deliberately misattributing news images, labeling them as evidence of the crimes of Islam when they are, in fact, no such thing.

        Snopes.com monitors those sources and, under the tag creepingsharia, documents another flagrant case of misattribution, this time involving video coverage of a religious procession in Bradford, Yorkshire. The procession was not, as alleged, a demonstration in favor of Sharia.

        Morningstar hates snopes.com because it frequently contradicts his prejudices. But instead of countering its analysis with logical rebuttal, he simply writes the catchphrase "Snopes is for dopes" and leaves it at that. His followers don't seem to mind, and they probably agree.

It's all a conspiracy
        Those twin major themes have almost pushed science and medicine off this horrible page, but those themes do still have a foothold, especially when the news can be twisted to imply a cover-up by governments or large corporations. A few days ago we saw this headline:

Cancer Institute Finally Admits Marijuana Kills Cancer

The source was ushealthmagz.com and the lead was as follows;

"In August 2015, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) released a report on their website which stated, “Marijuana kills cancer”. Yes, you read that right – marijuana kills cancer."

        Except that the NCI report cited did not state that. Read the actual report, or the abstract anyway, and you'll find a 6-point bullet list ending with this very, very guarded statement:

* Cannabinoids may have benefits in the treatment of cancer-related side effects.


Why?
        Why does an educated man—a scholar, no less, he tells us—re-publish such trash without batting an eyelid? I've thought about that question, and here's the picture I have. Morningstar doesn't care about the truth. He has all these sources, and he gets up in the morning and reviews them. He truly sees himself as an editor/aggregator on behalf of a readership that's as bigoted and intolerant as he is, so he just picks whatever stories he thinks will appeal to that readership. The question of whether they are true or not doesn't cross his mind. Snopes is for dopes, for the simple reason that checking out unlikely news stories is a ridiculous and quite unnecessary activity.

        There's also, I think, some element of wishful thinking. He wishes he would be the one to discover a mysterious 10-mile high tower on the Moon, so he fastens on a piece of lint caught in a scanner and makes it so. He wishes he would discover a huge space station in lunar orbit, so an Apollo 10 image of a piece of floating mylar insulation becomes that space station and he calculates its size as 166 miles across. It doesn't occur to him that such an object would be extremely well known to every astronomer both amateur and professional in the world (and by the way, it could NOT be permanently hidden behind the Moon since a selenosynchronous orbit is an impossibility.)

Morningstar's 166-mile space station (public domain)

        If I'm right, it's a waste of time trying to convince him that he's wrong. I will continue to snap at his heels, however, whenever I have time. My hope is that some of his followers may one day see how bamboozled they have become.

Update: Morningstar now accuses me of sympathy with pedophiles

8th July: AM* re-posted a "story" from yournewswire with the headline:

British Man Gets Prison Sentence For Exposing Political Pedophile Ring

        The story concerns a con-man known only as "Nick." This person, now 50 years old, made allegations of sex abuse against a number of public figures, alleging multiple incidents of pedophilia and even murder, dating back 30 years. "Nick" filed a claim for £20,000 compensation.

        The police investigation of these claims, known as Operation Midland, found no evidence to support the allegations and was closed in 2016. Compensation was paid to those who had been harrassed by the investigation.

        Now "Nick" himself has been charged with twelve counts of perverting the cause of justice and one of fraud. He will appear in court in September.

        The yournewswire piece falsely reported that "Nick" has already been sentenced, adding "It’s not the first time the British legal system has conspired against those in society determined to bring pedophiles to justice."

When I posted to AM*'s fooboo page, correcting the yournewswire story, he replied:

"But we all know that what he exposed ("Nick") was true, and the British police are only protecting the guilty."

I replied

"No we don't "all know" that, Robert, that's just your fantasy. Nick's stories were pure fabrications."

AM* then came back with:

"Of course, "You all" don't know about the rampant pedophilia in Britain because you sympathize with pedophiles and so you blind yourself to their crimes."

I demanded that he produce evidence that I sympathize with pedophiles, or retract the accusation.

So far he has done neither.

--J.C.

Robert Morningstar's history lesson

James Concannon writes...

        Today on the Book of Farces Robert Morningstar defended Jeff Rense's flagrant anti-semitism, and wrote this:

"A lot of so-called "anti-Semitism" has had a basis in history and just cause behind it."

Stand by for some flagrant errors on Saturday night

James Concannon writes...

        The announced topic for The Other Side of Midnight Sat/Sun 17/18 February is:

"Did President Kennedy's abrupt decision in 1963 -- to end the "Space Race" ... and go to the Moon together with the Russians -- stem directly from the CIA's sudden, top secret, "Project Corona" confirmation, in 1963 ... of ancient ET ruins on the Moon?"

        Broaching this self-evidently ridiculous topic with Richard Hoagland is none other than frisbee expert Robert Morningstar. Morningstar claims to be "a specialist in photo interpretation, geometric analysis and computer imaging."

        Project Corona was a series of reconnaissance satellites targeted at the USSR and China running from June 1959 to May 1972, initiated and managed by the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology. It is the same surveillance project as the one often referenced as Keyhole, and after a series of embarrassing failures 102 missions returned useful information, the film being dropped out of orbit and captured by USAF aircraft.

        Why do I write "self-evidently ridiculous"? Simply because Corona had nothing to do with the Moon. Writing on Facebook today, Morningstar claimed "I know very well that Corona was a USSR-China spy satellite, but it could be rotated and focused on the Moon, as well." What poppycock! If Morningstar truly was any kind of specialist in geometric analysis he would never dare to make that claim.

Data:
Corona camera lens focal length: 610mm
Film frame width: 70mm
Orbital altitude: 160km, later improved to 121km
Distance of the Moon: 370,000km
Diameter of the Moon: 3,474km

From the above data, the field of view was 2 x (arc tan 35/610) = 6.524°
Width of a frame on the Earth surface 2 x (160 tan 3.262°) = 18km, improved to 13.8km

At the distance of the Moon, the image width would have been 42,291km. The entire face of the Moon would therefore have occupied 0.082 of the film width—about like this:

Ancient ET ruins MY ASS.

        I have provided the above information to both Hoagland and Morningstar, but no doubt they will ignore it and treat their audience to three hours of absolute rubbish on Saturday night.

Update:
        I've now seen a technical document indicating that the camera optics underscanned, using only 54.5mm of the total film width 70mm. In that case the field of view would have been 5.04°, and the best ground image would have a width of 10.6 km. At lunar distance the image width would be 32,560km and the Moon diameter almost exactly 10%.

Which is it, Robert Morningstar?

 James Concannon writes...  

       The civilian intelligence analyst who is wrong about almost everything seems now to have arrived at a final version of his article about the Las Vegas massacre of 1st October. The piece is titled LAS VEGAS VIDEO IMAGES AND SOUNDS PROVE MULTIPLE GUNMEN COMMITTED LAS VEGAS MASSACRE, and his serial amendments have served only to confuse the issue.

        Morningstar writes "I’ve corellated [sic] the videos linked below with this external photos [sic] of the hotel to triangulate the postion of the 2nd Mandalay Bay Hotel shooter who fired from a low platform atop the green roof porch shown above." (emph. added) The videos referred are the taxi driver's video and the video from the hotel across the street (that would have to be the Desert Oasis Motel, a crappy one-storey building.)

        My comments about that are, first, that at no time did the taxi driver have a view of that platform. As she approached the drop-off from the north she could see the sloping green canopy edge but not the gray platform AM* wants for a gun position. My second comment is that the Motel video is useless—the flashes seen on it are from around the tenth floor, and there are no broken windows at that level. I also note, as I have previously, that triangulation is not what the intelligence analyst did. But anyway, that's a clear statement of where he thinks a second gunman was.

        He continues "The Las Vegas Taxi Driver’s Video caught a shooter firing from the lower floor of the Mandalay Bay from a very close vantage point, i.e., pulling out of the Mandalay’s Drive-Though entrance." That would have to be something like this frame, at 04:59:

Here's an approximate daylight version of that view from Streetview:

        Again, the absence of broken windows absolutely rules out gunfire from any floor of the hotel except Paddock's suite on the 32nd.

        He continues "By comparing frames and correlating the driver's position and the camera angle to the shooter's position (indicated by the gun flash) in that frame, and using a triangular section of the unique roof (poviding two 90 degree angles for precise referencing,  I was able to calculate the shooter’s position to be outside the hotel and shooting from a balcony that covers the drive-through entrance of the hotel."

        Once again, the taxi driver had no view of that balcony area at any time. At the moment when she pulled out of the covered area, such a view was doubly impossible since the roof area was above and behind her (see image above.) I've looked at that section of the video multiple times and I do not see a gun flash, and neither do I see two 90° angles. It's my belief that the shooting had stopped by that time anyway. No used shell casings have been found anywhere on that balcony or rooftop.

         So Morningstar has offered us four gunnery positions, all of which are impossible:

1. The balcony
2. The 10th (ish) floor
3. A lower floor
4. A platform on the canopy roof.

WRONG AGAIN, frisbee genius.

Robert Morningstar gets the Las Vegas massacre story hopelessly wrong

James Concannon writes...

        First we have Kerry Cassidy listening to the voices in her head and reporting them as if they were factual, and now we have Robert Morningstar, frisbee expert, publishing 3000 words on the Las Vegas massacre and getting almost nothing right. I will respect his claim of "All Rights Reserved" by not quoting from the piece, but I will review it and comment on it.

        For a start, Morningstar gets the name of the perp wrong. Throughout his essay, he writes "Steven Pollack" instead of Stephen Paddock. He may have corrected the text by the time you read it, but the original version was wrong. OOPS.

Original text © 2017 Robert Morningstar

        Reading this essay through, we don't have to wait long for the first major error. In the very first line Morningstar claims that this event was the worst killing in the history of the United States. Well, compare 58 dead with 268 (Battle of Little Bighorn), 2,996 (World Trade Center) and 700,000 (American Civil War.) What Morningstar is unsuccessfully grasping for is that the death toll was the largest of any mass shooting by an individual.

       Morningstar's whole thesis is that Paddock did not act alone—that there was at least one additional gunman at the Mandalay Bay. He gets started along that road by telling us that Paddock must have had help getting 23 firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition into Suite 32135. Well, perhaps... my remark on that is that bellmen at the Mandalay are quite used to carrying heavy equipment, since many pornographic videos are shot in Vegas hotel rooms.

        Morningstar embeds this video in his text, purporting to show gunfire from around the 10th floor of the Mandalay Bay. But that's impossible—there are no broken windows at that level, and the alternative explanation that the flashes are reflections is infinitely more credible.

        A second embedded video, recording the onset of the attack and almost all the carnage, is used by Morningstar as if it proves the "second gunman" case. Very few of the gunshots sound like the weapons fire we're used to hearing in films and TV—some sound almost like a slow drum roll, and some are more like loud clicks. The distinction between the two sounds is the heart and soul of Mr. Frisbee-man's case. But bump stocks were found on 12 of Paddock's 22 rifles, and two of them were mounted on bipods. Does it somehow strain Morningstar's logic to suggest that more than one weapon was used, perhaps even simultaneously, by a single shooter?

         Morningstar originally stated that he had triangulated (how?)^{note 1} the position of the second shooter to the ledge at third floor level.

        That idea has too many problems to be credible. How would a sniper get access to that ledge, and come back down after the event, without being observed? Why were no shell casings reported on that ledge? Is that vantage point too low to be effective, considering that bleachers at the concert venue would obstruct the view from that angle?

        Morningstar next alleges that both the Bellagio and Flamingo hotels were sprayed with gunfire that night—a claim that has specifically been denied by authorities. He shows us smartphone video made by René Downs, but that video does not show what he says it shows. It shows crowds of excited people in the lobby and corridors of the Bellagio, prevented from exiting because the hotel (like all others on the Strip) was in lockdown.

        Our favorite frisbee expert wraps it all up by alleging, with no evidence whatsoever, that Pollack [sic] was working with the FBI over an arms deal that "backfired badly." Morningstar styles himself a "civilian intelligence analyst" but if this essay is a fair sample of his analysis I'd say he's a major, major failure.

Credentials
        In addition to making himself his own CIA, Morningstar writes that he is "a specialist in photo interpretation, geometric analysis and computer imaging." The Rational wikipedia lists six specific examples of where Morningstar's photo interpretation has been dead wrong. In May 2016 this blog listed 28 errors of interpretation by him. Once again, OOPS.

Update:
        Morningstar re-worked his essay into an article for UFO Digest. In it he suggested that a second gunman could have been positioned on the balcony over the main entrance to the hotel. The image below shows how more than half the concert audience would be obstructed by the stage and bleachers from that position:

=================/ \====================
[1] Let's remind ourselves how triangulation works, shall we? You take optical bearings on the object of interest from two different places as far apart as is practical. Transferring your bearings onto a map then pinpoints the object.

This, however, is not what Morningstar did. He took a single freeze-frame from the taxi driver's video (perhaps around 03:00?) and visually matched a part of the canopy to arrive at what he now says is a position on the balcony over the drive-through hotel entrance. Fatal to his case is the fact that no shell casings have been found at that position—many windows overlook the balcony and canopy and it's inconceivable that such obvious evidence would have been missed.

At exactly 03:03 there are two flashes, but they are not associated with any sound of gunfire and it's impossible to tell what the actual source is. They look a lot like flash photography to me. If this is what Robert AM* claims to have "triangulated," he's a flim-flam man, not an intelligence analyst.