And Now, A Word from the No-Planers

Yep, this guy has proven that if a computer flight simulator doesn't generate the same shadows as real photos of 9-11 Flight 175, the real photos must have been faked. There are no words.

Jesse The No-Planer Ventura

Listen to the descriptions of the experts coming up on his 9-11 show, and see if you can see the problem:

Featured Experts and Eyewitnesses: Physicist Steven Jones, who says he found evidence of thermite, a bomb material, in the residue from Ground Zero; explosives expert Van Romero, who performed a test purported to show that liquid thermite can make steel girders burn hotter and faster; demolition expert Brent Blanchard, who says that no inspection for explosive materials was done at the scene; former Air Force pilot Jeff Dahlstrom, who is convinced that 9-11 was a "false flag" operation carried out to push the country into war; Mike Bellone, a recovery worker at Ground Zero who says that he saw airline flight recorders recovered at the scene; Dave Lindorff, a journalist, who says that the recorders were recovered, inspected and turned over to the FBI; Dale Leppard, a former head of the Airline Pilots Association who insists recorders are always found; and former FBI investigator Jack Cloonan, who disputes claims the recorders were found.

Van Romero is presented as a 9-11 "Truth" supporter, but anybody with any experience knows that he's not. And Brent Blanchard says no inspection for explosive materials was done at the scene? Sheesh, Blanchard sounds like another Troof supporter, but we all know he's been quite vigorous about debunking the kooks. What he really says is that there was no evidence of explosive materials at the scene.

On top of that we get phony Bellone and Lindorff, who will presumably attest that he's got an (unnamed) source at the NTSB who told him that they did recover the flight data recorders at the WTC.

But even beyond that, what is the reason for focusing on the black boxes? Isn't it pretty obvious where Ventura's going with this? He's effectively denying that Flight 11 hit the North Tower, and that Flight 175 hit the South Tower. Yep, Jesse has just become a "No-Planer".

Oh, and Dahlstrom took an interesting route to 9-11 Truthiness:

"When 9/11 occurred I bought the entire government and mainstream media story line. I was a lifelong conservative Republican that voted for Bush/Cheney, twice. Curiosity about JFK's death,after a late night TV re-run of Oliver Stone's movie, got me started researching and digging for the truth about his assassins."

If you're stupid enough to fall for one conspiracy theory, you're probably stupid enough to fall for another.

Yet More Incredulity

In a post over at 9-11 Flogger. Chris Sarns posts some pics that he claims shows evidence planted at the Pentagon. It's the usual "I don't believe it would look like that nonsense that we're used to hearing from the Troofers, this time about how the light poles should have caused more damage to the ground when they were hit by AA77.

How can you say those poles would just fall over after being hit by a plane going over 500mph and not leave any gouges in the grass?

I can't believe people would vote this into not showing.
You all are so fanatically married to the official flight path that you summarily reject any evidence to the contrary.

This is bleeping insane. Have a nice day.

Sarns himself claims to not be a believer in the flyover theory; one presumes he's a proponent of the missile theory. We get the usual nonsense about how nobody's ever seen a part at the Pentagon with a serial number on it. I am pleased to see that more of the Truthers are calling the Pentagon nuts "no-planers".

Meet the No-Planers

Which of these famed 9-11 researchers was mentioned in both David Ray Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor and Webster Tarpley's Synthetic Terror?

A. Steven Earl Jones
B. Richard Gage
C. Nico Haupt

The answer, of course is C, Nico Haupt. Haupt is credited with coining the most famous acronyms in 9-11 theories, LIHOP and MIHOP. Haupt is what we call around here a 0-Day "Truther" (that is to say that he suspected 9-11 was an inside job the day it happened), but unlike many others he immediately started organizing and researching.

There are not five people in the 9-11 "Truth" Movement who have been more significant than Nico Haupt. You can make an argument for David Ray Griffin, but Griffin is not a researcher. He synthesizes the work of others. Maybe Thierry Meyssan, who was the man who showed the Troofers a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Certainly not Eric Hufschmid, even though Hufschmid was the first to market a book and a movie on the conspiracy theory in the United States.

Haupt is, of course, a thorough madman as even his supporters acknowledge.

For the record, in my opinion, Nico Haupt is neither a flake, nor a neo-phyte, simply a stark raving madman and idiot savant researcher extraordinaire.

This is not exceptional in a movement that includes Uncle Fetzer as an elder statesman, Alex Jones as its most prominent face, Charlie Sheen as its big celebrity and Luke Rudkowski as a young superstar.

So why is Haupt on the outs with much of the movement he helped to found? Well, as I have pointed out in the past, it is the nature of the 9-11 "Truth" movement that it dissolves into factions over time. Haupt has come to represent what many feel is the most extreme faction of the 9-11 Truth Movement: The No-Planers.

The No-Planers are dedicated to the proposition that planes were not used on 9-11. It's a ludicrous position, but as I have pointed out in the past, almost all flavors of 9-11 "Truth" boil down to denying the planes in one fashion or another. The No-Planers in this regard are at least more honest about it.

Anyway, the No-Planers make up a significant portion of many of the more famous and early researchers in the 9-11 "Truth" Movement:

Nico Haupt
Gerard Holmgren
Rosalee Grable aka the Web Fairy
Killtown

All of those names were prominent in the 9-11 "Truth" movement in its early years. One of the more amusing parts of watching the "Truthers" over the last few years is seeing what happens when a prominent person in the movement like Jim Fetzer or Judy Wood or Morgan Reynolds or David Shayler has suddenly gone "No-Planer". At first the assumption is that they just suddenly went insane (nope, they were marked as insane the moment they became "Truthers"). But then the more interesting and paranoid explanation emerged; that they were cointelpro operatives, hired by the government and seeking to discredit the movement.

Of course, this is absurd; if Nico Haupt is a government agent, then I'm a Playboy bunny. Haupt and his fellow no-planers are just like every other segment of the "Truth" movement, convinced that they and they alone have the evidence to prove 9-11 was an inside job, and that every other group is leading the movement astray. As we shall see when we talk about the CIT guys, or the Directed Energy Weapons folks.

Here's Dylan and Nico arguing at Ground Zero on the Sixth Anniversary:



There are a couple of "No-Planer" videos that I will be discussing over the next couple of weeks:

1. September Clues
2. 9/11 Octopus
3. 9-11 Taboo

If anybody knows of any more of these films, please let me know in the comments. Also, any other researchers whose work I should be aware of. I know about Morgan Reynolds and Rick Rajter.

Banned At 9-11 Blogger

(IP edited for privacy reasons).

Well, this is news! I can see them banning me commenting; that's pretty typical for "Truther" sites, and I've actually been surprised that they allowed me to comment this long at 9-11 Blogger. But they won't even let me see their site!

Of course, there are ways around this, but I wonder if this isn't sending a message that the marginalized theories discussed over at 9-11 Blogger aren't worth exploring. Maybe it is time for me to focus more on the mainstream truthers: the no-planers, the CIT guys, the directed energy weapons crew. We spend far too much time on goofballs like Richard Gage and Steven Jones when there are serious researchers like Ace Baker and Judy Woods and Aldo Marquis whom nobody dares dispute their work.

Well, that no longer applies; consider me the Flagwaver Shill Planehugger Supreme. Coming up: Meet the No-Planers.

9-11 Taboo Review

I don't know that I will cover the whole film here, but since Genghis6199 asked for it, and since he has been polite in several emails with me, I am willing to look at his work. I know I will inevitably face criticism from the "responsible researchers" who generally act as if the No-Planers are somehow more insane than the "No-Planers at the Pentagon" or the "Controlled Demolition at the WTC" crowd. Sorry folks, but you're all rubber roomers to me.

Here's the link to the Genghis' page at Live Video; click on the video labeled 911taboo v1 [cut14b] part 1/3.

The good: Very high production values; Genghis clearly knows his way around video and audio editing. It's somewhere between 9-11 Press for Truth and 9-11 Mysteries in terms of actual production quality. I hated those films, but I am quite willing to say that they were (relatively) well-made.

The bad: The video is very much "inside baseball"; if you are not familiar with No-Planer theories and evidence this is not the place to start. It's somewhat like an Alan Moore comic book; those who are already in the know may find it terrific; those who are not will likely get lost and confused. The music is annoying in places, but then I'm an old fart who's not in the target demographic.

The evidence: Genghis does not present his evidence in a straightforward fashion, unlike, say, Loose Change, so you almost have to deduce the claims. In the early part of the film his point appears to be that among those who personally witnessed the attack (as compared to those watching TV or studio monitors), few described it as a plane; most discussed hearing an explosion, and a few compared it to a missile.

Of course, it is not hard to discover onlookers who described it as a plane; consider this video, where the call of a plane is immediate. Genghis seems to expect (this becomes clear near the end of this segment) that somebody would say "Oh my God, here comes another plane! And it's going to attack the other tower!"

I had to chuckle at the reporter who described "some kind of vehicle, an aircraft" being included in this section; does Genghis really think it's important that he said "vehicle"?

Next, Genghis goes into the "Let's overlay two pieces of video and show that the plane is in different places in different videos. Well, duh! You cannot overlay video from two different sources from different distances and different angles and adjust it so that background images are in the same place. It's not going to happen, and efforts to do so are just so much video masturbation. I can believe it's effective in terms of convincing people of funny business, but anybody with any experience in three-dimensional vector plotting and the effects of zoom lenses will recognize this as a buffoonish attempt to avoid doing the incredibly hard work of mapping the actual trajectory of the plane in three dimensions.

Indeed, this was my original thought about the no-planers; that they had actually mapped the flight trajectory out three-dimensionally and proved that it couldn't be there. That does not appear to be the case. After watching a few no-planer videos, it appears that their impossible plane is mostly an artifact of this type of overlay fascination. Look, this is elementary-level physics. If you video a building from one angle, and that same building from a different angle, any object in the background will appear to be in different places, even if you adjust the building size and overlay the images so the building looks reasonably the same. This is especially the case if any kind of zoom lens is used. Zoom lenses are neat and beautiful and they lie, beautifully. They give you a view that is not reality.

It is certainly true that at some camera angles the plane appears to be diving as it hits the building and in others it appears to come level at the building. It would be interesting to see some real analysis of this phenomenon. I have no doubt it is explainable in terms of the position of the observer. But there is no attempt at that here.

Genghis does show the clear imprint of a Boeing in the South Tower entrance hole with about 2:05 left in the first part of the video. I assume he thinks he's doing the opposite, since he points to the left wingtip and the vertical stablizer and engines, apparently to show that they created too little damage. It's close enough; despite the No-Planers claims to the contrary, I'm sure that parts of Flight 11 didn't make it into the North Tower and ditto for small bits of Flight 175 into the South Tower.

He says most of the live shots of Flight 175 have no plane sounds; I'll accept that as true. But some do, as does the one which he closes out this segment with (although it does not show the plane itself).

Overall, Genghis does a good job of selling some pretty bad theories. The difference between me and the "mainstream" "Truthers" is that I recognize that's no different from David Ray Griffin. I have not decided as to whether to tackle the rest of the film (the second segment features some fine investigative work by Jeff "Crazy Canuck" Hill). The film is very watchable, so it may be worth the time and effort.

Ace Baker on Hardfire, Part II

I have not had a chance to watch this video as yet, but I am sure that Steve Wright did as excellent a job as he did in the initial version. Kudos to Ron for setting this up.

No-Planer Theories Discussed on Hardfire

Ace Baker represents the TV fakery view, while Ron Wick (just kidding, Wieck) and Steve Wright argue the rationalist case. Ace presented his "evidence" well, but his case collapsed at freefall speed after Wright (an expert in video special effects) started analyzing it. Another excellent job by Ron in setting this up. There will be a second part to come in a week or so.

Dylan's Changing Positions

In this clip, which I believe comes from the presentation Dylan made at the Chicago "Scholars" convention, Dylan states that he doesn't believe that the 19 hijackers existed. As I pointed out the other day, this marks him as a "No-Planer", at least as of the time this was filmed. He's also changed his mind on the hijackers; I recall in a recent interview that he now believes they existed.

Hat Tip: Emailer Genghis

Who's A No-Planer?

One of the more amusing debates within the Troofer community involves the "No Planes" theories. The "No-Planers" are commonly considered by the "Plane-Huggers" to be disinfo operatives planted inside the movement by the government to discredit the "legitimate Truthers".

That's wrong, and the reason why it's wrong reveals a lot about the nature of conspiracy theories and how they're constructed. Suppose you're "Truther No.1", the very first 9-11 conspiracy theorist, on the morning of 9-11. You say to your friend, "The US government did it!" And he promptly punches you in the snoot.

But suppose he's a conspiracy theorist himself, so he doesn't smack you. He says, "That's interesting, but I don't see how they pulled it off. Who, other than radical Muslim fanatics would commit suicide by flying a plane into a building?"

So you start brainstorming with him. Maybe commandos hijacked the planes, gassed all the passengers, and set the autopilots to crash the airliners into the buildings before parachuting to safety. Or maybe they already had remote control on the planes and so the cooperation (or elimination) of the pilots was not necessary. Maybe they were other planes, drones without passengers.

When you get right down to it, the planes are terribly inconvenient for the conspiracy theories. And as a result, almost all the MIHOP people attempt to wish them away either implicitly, or explicitly.

Examples? We get told all the time that Flights 11 and 77 were not even scheduled for that day. That's a "No-Planer". We get told that the tail numbers for some of the planes were not retired. That's a "No-Planer". Dylan Avery says in Loose Change II that Flight 93 actually landed in Cleveland. That's a "No-Planer". We get told constantly that the actual planes that crashed into the World Trade Center were 767-200 refueling planes. That's a "No-Planer". We get told that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon. That's a "No-Planer". Dylan Avery said in an interview that he'd like to believe the planes are still out there, flying around. That's a "No-Planer". We see references to "alleged" Flight 11. That's a "No-Planer". We see mentions that Todd Beamer isn't on the Social Security Death Index. That's a "No-Planer". We hear that 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 of the hijackers are still alive. That's a "No-Planer".

Almost all the 9-11 conspiracy theorists are "No-Planers", when you get right down to it. So the notion that the "TV Fakery" people are the "No-Planers" is absurd, and the notion that the supposedly mainstream Troofers are "Plane-Huggers" is equally a lie. The only Troofers who actually accept the planes are LIHOPers and that somewhat rare category of "LIHOP plus Controlled Demolition".

More On the Holmgren Dustup

Here's Morgan Reynold's version of what happened:

Here is the background: Mr. Holmgren began "chewing" on my case in late '06 in email lists. I first became really aware of it in his big email on November 29 when he appointed me to his "dirty liars club" along with Jim Fetzer, Judy Wood and Steve Jones (do we get free beer?). I was a dirty liar because I was not pointing out Fetzer's blunders, braggadocio and falsehoods. Holmgren initially made no reference to my expression "no big Boeing" as the main problem, instead it was all about my alleged "dirty deal" with Fetzer, "All in the name of getting publicity." The alleged deal was "gutless," "two faced," and "hypocritical." If Mr. Holmgren believes there was a "deal," fine. I await his proof. He cannot prove his allegation since there was no deal.

BG pointed us to this rather oddball article which touches on Holmgren peripherally:

Have I mentioned, by the way, that the most verbally aggressive member of the holographic-airplanes team, Gerard Holmgren, just happens to be the brother of David Holmgren, who appears to be, for lack of a better description, Australia’s answer to Mike “Peak Oil” Ruppert. That’s probably just one of those wacky coincidences that we occasionally stumble upon while cruising down the Conspiracy Superhighway, so we probably shouldn’t attach too much significance to the fact that ‘Peak Oil’ seems to walk hand-in-hand with other forms of 9-11 disinformation.

I don't know if David and Gerard really are related, but the fact that Richard Heinberg, a 9-11 kook and Peak Oil advocate appears prominently on the former's page certainly suggests a link.

No-Planers Latest Movie

SEPTEMBER CLUES part1

It's at least comprehensible. The nose-out issue? First, it's probably not the nose, it's far more likely the landing gear, but even if it was, remember that the nose of the second plane did not hit the core of the building, unlike Flight 11, so there was no obstruction after it entered the building.

There are three more parts which I have not had the opportunity to watch.

Update: On the "You can't see the WTC from Chelsea argument, TD in the comments pointed us to this photo:

More Bitterness from the No-Planers

Dishing the dirt on the 9/11 Truth Police - Part Two

I've always felt that the 9-11 Deniers trying to distance themselves from the no-plane crowd is like the guy at the loony bin dressed up as Napoleon telling you that the man who looks like George Washington is actually a nut.

How TV Fakery Works

Actually, I thought the no-planers had gotten away from "bluescreen" technology. Weird stuff. My high school chemistry teacher told me to always be a skeptic and not a cynic and at the time I didn't get the difference. Skeptics demand proof before they are convinced; cynics cannot be convinced no matter what proof is offered. Most 9-11 Deniers are cynics, but the no-planers raise it to an art form.

Audio Fakery?

Audio proof of no-planes-theory

The guy does make one valid point, which is that Michael Berger's Improbable Collapse clearly altered the audio of the first attack as show by the Naudet brothers in their film, so that the video of the crash and the audio of the crash were simultaneous; whereas we know that due to the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound, the crash would be visible first and the sound would be delayed by a couple seconds.

So he has indeed proven audio fakery, by a 9-11 Denier.

The Best Explanation for No Planes Yet

I got a chuckle out of this thread:

is because if they had used real planes there was always the potential that much of the planes debris may have landed in the street revealing no pasengers on board. Also, using no planes escaped radar and the potentiality of being shot down.

It really is this simple.

Except, as pointed out later:

The only thing wrong with it is they didn't escape radar, so where does that leave you?

Another no-planer jumps in:

I have raised this argument many times. What if either of the "planes" had missed their targets altogether and landed downtown Manhattan? These were supposedly n00b pilots after all. How did they even find their targets mid way from Boston to LA; from 35,000ft without naviational aid? They just looked out the window?

It's called the Hudson River.

On Gatekeepers

I mentioned this in the comments section of the Nico Haupt News post a few below this one, but thought it was interesting enough to pull out to the front page.

One of the constant gripes of the 9-11 Deniers concerns "Lefty Gatekeepers". The theory here is that by barring the gates, famed Leftists like Noam Chomsky, George Monbiot and others, along with Leftist Magazines like The Nation, Counterpunch, etc., are preventing 9-11 Troof from reaching a larger audience. That these people and magazines are barring the gate is undeniable; the reasons are debatable. The nutbars believe that Alexander Cockburn and the Nation are in the pay of the CIA. Sensible people will say that the reason they are barring the gate is because they know that if they embrace 9-11 crackpottery, the mainstream media and conservatives will use any association with the "Truthers" to discredit their movement.

That this is so should pretty evident, because the "mainstream" 9-11 Denial Movement practices gatekeeping themselves. They bar the "no-planers" and the "Star Wars Beam Weapons" from their midst just as fiercely as the Lefty Gatekeepers bar them. And why? Because they know that the mainstream media and conservatives will use any association with the "no-planers" to discredit their movement.

Ironic, no?