Blogburst: Removal of the Drag Lines

When the passengers and crew of flight 93 smashed their murderers to nothing on an open expanse of western Pennsylvania coal country, two towering sentinels stood silent witness to the heroic tragedy.

"Up on Skyline Rd.," the news shot around Shanksville and Somerset, "up by the drag lines":



The drag lines, as seen from what will be the center of the giant Mecca-oriented crescent that is to be planted on the flight 93 crash site. (Photo by Alec Rawls, 2006.)

It is hard to imagine a more fitting marker than these twin colossi. Before the hijackers could send Flight 93 into the White House or the Capitol building, a random draw of forty of our fellow countrymen massed a towering determination to fight back. Their effort to save their own lives ended beneath those artifacts of Pennsylvania's own native grit and ingenuity, but their success in defending their country will live forever.

Those silent sentinels could and should have endured as well, and they would have, if not for one man who was determined to see them go: architect Paul Murdoch, the designer of the terrorist memorializing Crescent of Embrace design. As the press reported at the unveiling of the crescent design:

The Flight 93 temporary memorial, the draglines and Skyline Drive will be removed to leave the landscape as natural as possible, Murdoch wrote in a narrative that accompanied the design.

The drag lines were supposed to stay

The presumption from the beginning was that the drag lines would stay. They were actually the first items of property purchased for the new national park.

Support for keeping the drag lines, whatever memorial design was chosen for the crash site itself, was virtually universal. The local historical society was for keeping the drag lines:

Several draglines still stand there, idled since the crash interrupted the mine work. Randy Cooley, director of the Southwest Pennsylvania Heritage Preservation Commission, said that equipment should stay, as part of the story the memorial will tell.

The excavating machines often are the first things visitors to the memorial site see, he said. The booms rise high over the field. They cast shadows, and show what the land once was.

"They're touchstones," Cooley said. "For many of the people on that plane, that may well have been the last thing they saw." [2003]

They were also meaningful to the local population:

The cranes, which served as drag lines for a long-idled strip mining operation, are synonymous with the area, residents said.

"When I think of (Skyline Drive), I think of those drag lines," said Erica Zeigler, president of Shanksville Borough Council. "They're something everybody around here associated with that road." [2005]

Memorial Project manager Jeff Reinbold acknowledged the hard feelings about the removal of the drag lines:

"You wish you didn't have to do it. But this was a celebration of the process," he said. [ibid.]

Why was Murdoch determined to have the drag lines gone?

Because a crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. (Some mihrabs are pointed-arch shape, but the prototypical mihrab is crescent shaped.)

Very simply, Murdoch could not allow his terrorist memorial mosque to be tainted by extraneous infidel artifacts. Those drag lines would have risen up right behind the giant mihrab, disturbing what is supposed to be an undisturbed space within which the Muslim believer can turn face his god for prayer.

Perhaps worst of all from Murdoch’s perspective was the huge American flag that coal miners attached to one of the booms the week after 9/11:



This flag was history. If Murdoch did not get rid of the drag lines, he could not get rid of the American flag, rising up 180 feet behind his giant mihrab. (Photo by Alec Rawls, 2006.)

Unacceptable: the jihadists turn to face their god, and see... an American flag?

This mosque interpretation is no stretch. Murdoch provides endless redundant proof of intent, as when he repeats the Mecca orientation of his giant crescent in the crescents of trees that surround the Tower of Voices part of the memorial.

Still hoisting a flag

When the hijacker is finally tackled and we have a chance to turn to less critical matters, like how to design a proper memorial to OUR heroes instead of to Paul Murdoch’s heroes, one of the costs to be accounted will be the loss of the iconic drag lines. At least Murdoch was not able to destroy them entirely, as 22 tons of steel from the scrapped machinery is being used in the construction of the USS Somerset:



The USS Somerset will be a sister ship of the USS San Antonio (seen here), so the drag lines will still be hoisting a flag.

Interestingly, the single physical requirement set down for design competition entries was that they should respect the rural landscape and leave it as it was. Paul Murdoch’s crescent design is the only one of a thousand entries that violates this lone rule, first by building a raised causeway across the wetlands (necessary to extend his crescent to the full typical Islamic crescent shape, covering 2/3rds of a circle of arc), and then by excising the drag lines, which everyone agreed were central to the historic nature of the site.

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Blogburst: A Call For America’s Churches

Three segments of American society get paid to investigate and report facts: academia, the press, and government. For two and a half years, all three have been spinning desperately to avoid and suppress the facts about Islamic and terrorist memorializing symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial.

Luckily there is a fourth segment of society that is also charged to witness truth, not for pay, but on religious principle. Asked by Pilate to account for himself, Jesus answered:

To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
[Jn. 18:37.]

Those who follow Jesus are supposed to do the same, which means first of all checking and reporting the facts when the importance of an issue warrants it.

The importance of the Flight 93 memorial to our churches could not be clearer. The Islam of the al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 is a religion of murder and deceit. Their self-professed strategy is to hide amongst us, pretending to be trustworthy friends, while plotting mass-murder against Christians, Jews, and all non-Muslims.

Whether this religion of deceit is the “true” Islam, as the bin Ladenists assert, or a bastardization of it, a deceptive memorial to the 9/11 terrorists is a direct challenge to the truth witnessing capacity of our society, and to the truth witnessing character of our Christian churches.

In a contest between deceit and honesty, there is no doubt which is stronger. Witness exposes and destroys deceit. If our churches enter this contest, they win. But will they enter? THAT is the test. If our churches stand by, and fail to witness truth, then the al Qaeda religion of murder and deceit may well succeed in stabbing its terrorist memorial mosque into the heartland of America.

The father of one of our Flight 93 heroes is asking America’s churches for help

In consultation with Tom Burnett Sr., Alec Rawls has put together a flyer that all of us can take to our local churches to try to organize sanctioned fact-checking efforts that our churches can stand behind publicly two months from now.

August 2nd is the next public meeting of the Memorial Project. Tom and Alec will both be traveling to Somerset PA to rally opposition. Mancow Muller is urging his national radio audience to attend, and groups like Rolling Thunder are also being contacted.

With Mr. Burnett in attendance, even a modest turnout will bring substantial news coverage, but coverage alone is not enough. We are facing a fact-checking blockade by the mainstream media, and can only break it by enlisting churches or other independent groups to sponsor their own fact checking efforts.

Are you a member of any kind of group where interested members could set up an ad hoc committee to check a few basic facts about the planned memorial? The full group or chapter could then make an official decision whether to stand behind this fact checking publicly in a press release that Tom and Alec can announce at the August meeting.

Christian churches may be our best bet, being charged by Jesus to be witnesses for truth, and having "chapters" all over America. Thus this initial effort is addressed in particular to our churches, but any group that wants to expose important truths can perform the same service.

The flyer prints out front and back on a single sheet of paper. It has a couple of color graphics, but prints fine in black and white for inexpensive copying. If you want to participate, just add your contact info at the bottom (the file is MS Word and can be altered), then go see if you can raise some interest!

Mr. Burnett and his compatriots will be rallying in Somerset PA on August 2nd at the next public meeting of the Memorial Project. The resulting news coverage can be used to break the media blockade on fact checking, so long as at least a few churches are willing to sanction fact-checking efforts and release their findings to the public.

Please volunteer for this fact-checking effort, and help to promote it amongst pastors and parishioners. America needs its First Estate (its churches) to take a leading role, and witness the truths about this terrorist memorial that our media elites are trying to hide.

Details and fact-checking resources at CrescentOfBetrayal.com

Updates at ErrorTheory.blogspot.com Contact: alec@rawls.org

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BlogBurst: Rally At The Crash Site On August 2nd

Are you thinking of visiting the Flight 93 crash site? If you plan your visit for the weekend of August 2nd, you can help stop the gigantic terrorist memorial mosque that will soon start rising from the ground there.

August 2nd is the next scheduled public meeting of the Memorial Project, where anyone can sign up to speak during the public comment period. Tom Burnett Sr. (whose son Tom Jr. broke into the cockpit of the hijacked airplane) announced last Friday that he and Alec Rawls will be traveling to Somerset for the August meeting. They will be rallying outdoors, speaking at the public meeting, and visiting the crash site.

Mr. Burnett is asking other concerned parties who can make it to please come. The crash site is a beautiful and meaningful place to visit in any case, and here is a chance to make your visit even more meaningful. It is an opportunity to in some small way follow the lead of the heroes of Flight 93 by helping to stop the re-hijacking of Flight 93.

Mr. Burnett's announcement came on the Mancow Muller radio show, where Congressman Tancredo was also a guest. When controversy over the Crescent of Embrace design first arose back in 2005, Tom Tancredo was instrumental in forcing the Park Service to alter the design. Last fall he noted that the giant crescent remains unchanged in the so-called redesign and asked the Park Service to scrap the design entirely. On Friday he said that he would help Mancow Muller and Tom Burnett to stop the crescent design (audio, 19 seconds):

Certainly I will do everything I can to help you. I will bring it to the attention of my colleagues. I'll use the time I have on the floor of the House to rail against it.

THANK YOU CONGRESSMAN TANCREDO!

Mr. Burnett said that he would join Mancow in going to jail for taking sledgehammers to the crescent memorial if this tribute to the terrorists actually gets built. (Audio, 25 seconds.)

Cao has the whole segment of Mancow and the two Toms up as a YouTube video, with her own background graphics.

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BlogBurst: Crescent Shapes With And Without Islamic Intent: The Obama Logo Example

The two most widely recognized symbols of Islam are the crescent and the sword. Kind of amusing that Barack Hussein Obama’s campaign logo can be seen to feature both a crescent and a curved Islamic scimitar:



The crescent shape in Obama’s logo has the round part on top, just like a traditional crescent shaped mihrab (the Mecca direction indicator around which every mosque is built). The animation shows the two most famous mihrabs in the world: the mihrab from the Great Mosque in Cordoba, and the Prophet’s mihrab in Medina.

The lighter vertical column in the center-bottom of the logo, presumably meant to indicate reflected light, even conveys the full vertical shape of a traditional mihrab. The scimitar in the animation is from the flag of the Bosnian regiment of the Nazi SS.

If Obama himself had come up with this crescent logo, one might suspect Islamic intent, given his Islamic heritage. But the logo was not designed by Obama. It was designed by a Chicago based branding firm named Sender, which claims credit for coming up with: “a white sunrise against a blue sky, over a landscape implied by red and white stripes.”

Obama definitely deserves to be made fun of for having a fairly obvious crescent shape in his logo, given his efforts to convince the public that he is not Muslim. This is already an uphill climb, when both his grandmother and his cousin are telling documented lies about their religion, claiming to be Christian in one venue while professing themselves Muslim in another. Lying about being Christian: it’s an Obama family tradition!

Still, there is no indication that the crescent and scimitar shapes in Obama’s logo are intended to convey any Islamic meaning. A genuine coincidence apparently. At the opposite pole is the Crescent of Embrace design for the Flight 93 memorial:



Contrast 1: Architect Paul Murdoch CALLS his crescent shaped memorial a crescent

The Crescent of Embrace name proves that the Flight 93 crescent was and is intended to be seen as a crescent. Only very reluctantly did the Memorial Project change the name, and the changes they made to the design are purely cosmetic. Every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign.

Contrast 2: The Islamic symbolism is overt

It is not plausible that an architect, designing a memorial to people murdered by Islamic terrorists, could be oblivious to the fact that his memorial design is laid out in the shape of a bare naked Islamic crescent and star flag, readily identifiable as a crescent and star flag to airliners like Flight 93 passing overhead.

The Memorial Project simply assumes that the Islamic symbol shapes CAN’T be intentional, which is about like seeing an airliner fly into the World Trade Center and assuming it CAN’T be intentional. Do these people even remember the day they are supposed to be memorializing?

Contrast 3: The Flight 93 crescent contains still further Islamic symbolism

It turns out that the giant crescent points to Mecca. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is a well known structure in the Islamic world. It is a mihrab (as seen in the above animation), which gives the direction that Muslims are to face for prayer.

Everyone at the Memorial Project is fully aware that a person facing into the giant crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca. This according to Flight 93 Advisory Commission member Tim Baird. Again, they all just assume that this MUST be an innocent mistake (the equivalent of seeing as SECOND airliner fly into the Trade Center, and STILL assuming it can’t POSSIBLY be intentional).

Contrast 4: Proof of intent

Paul Murdoch PROVES that the Mecca orientation is intentional by repeating it in the crescents of trees that surround the minaret like Tower of Voices. Below is an animated run-through of the repeated Mecca-orientations (2 minutes).

You can restart the animation by refreshing the page:



Animated GIF: copy and paste. You can email it! (Animation restarts each time email is opened.) Click image for larger animation, if your connection is fast enough (1MB).

Crescent of Embrace site-plan, showing both the central crescent and the Tower of Voices, here.

Contrast 5: the designer's own thematic description is clearly terrorist memorializing

The designers of Obama's logo offer a clearly innocent thematic description of their creation. You can tell just by looking at it what it is MEANT to signify: a white sun coming up into a blue sky over red and white rows of fruited plain. Even the uncanny intimation of the vertical sides of a traditional mihrab are fully explained by the “sun” reflecting off the red and white “landscape.”

In contrast, Paul Murdoch's thematic account of his design is as nakedly pro-terrorist as his crescent and star layout. Murdoch says that the crescent comes from the terrorists breaking the circle. That is, they broke our liberty-loving circle, and turn it into a giant Islamic-shaped Mecca-oriented crescent.

As Tom Burnett Sr. put it in his letter to American people, asking for help with our petition to keep the crescent design off of his murdered son's gravesite:

I don’t want to celebrate the terrorist’s circle-breaking crescent-creating feat.

And lest anyone thinks that the giant crescent is no longer present, the Park Service website makes clear that, while the redesign looks more like a circle, the circle is still broken:

The circle is broken in two places that mark the southeastern path of the plane to the crash site. The circle is broken at the entry to the memorial and at the crash site.

The breaks are in the exact same places as before and the unbroken part of the circle (the crescent) remains completely unchanged. It it still points to Mecca. It is still the world's largest mihrab by a factor of a hundred. The only difference is that now a chunk of the broken off part of the circle is included in the design, which is perfectly consistent with its original terrorist memorializing theme. The terrorists still break our liberty-loving circle and still turn it into a giant Mecca-oriented crescent.

So there you have it. Dueling crescents! Obama’s crescent logo exemplifies innocent coincidence (however guilty Obama may be of lying about his religion). In contrast, the Flight 93 crescent exemplifies proven intent. (More of architect Paul Murdoch’s endless proofs of intent here and here.)

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BlogBurst: No More Do-Overs For Terrorist Memorializing Architects

Defenders of the crescent design keep accusing Tom Burnett Sr. of trying to get an improper “do over” after failing back in 2005 to sway the design-competition jury. But who is really seeking the do-over? The American people rose up in protest in 2005 when they saw that the Memorial Project wanted to plant a bare naked Islamic crescent and star flag on the flight 93 crash site:

That uproar forced the Memorial Project to agree to redesign the memorial so that it would no longer include Islamic symbol shapes (whether they are intentional or not). But nothing significant was changed. Every particle of the original crescent design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only disguised the original crescent with a few irrelevant trees, placed to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent.

The American people caught a hijacker trying to re-hijack Flight 93, and the Memorial Project told him to go back outside and try again, which is exactly what he did. Now they accuse Tom Burnett of wanting an improper do-over?

There were dozens of articles and television segments about the crescent controversy this week, mostly in Pennsylvania, with some national news coverage by Fox News television and AP. This post is an attempt to capture the general thrust of the new wave of position statements.

The Memorial Project is inverting every moral imperative at this point, and it all comes from their fervent desire to reverse the results of September 2005. Their embrace of the crescent was rejected by America and they are determined to undo that defeat, to the point of being willfully blind to massive evidence of al Qaeda sympathizing intent.

The new face of the Memorial Project: Edward Felt’s wife and brother take the lead

Sandra Felt, one of the Flight 93 family members who helped select the Crescent of Embrace design, admits that she never paid any attention to warnings about Islamic and terrorist memorializing symbolism in the crescent design:

Sandra Felt has known for nearly three years about complaints that the design of the proposed Flight 93 National Memorial allegedly contains Islamic symbols, but she never gave them any credence.

"I don't even think about it," said Felt, whose husband, Edward, died on ... United Airlines Flight 93.

And nobody blames her. It shouldn't be on the Flight 93 families to investigate evidence that any one of us can easily fact check. But Sandra and her brother in law Gordon Felt, now President of Families of Flight 93, are going further, pretending for some reason that the charges people have made against architect Paul Murdoch are actually being leveled against them.

How could that be, when three of the features that our petition lists as unacceptable--the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, the 44 glass blocks on the flight path, and the giant Islamic sundial--were not even discovered until after the crescent design was selected? Nobody blames the family members for approving design features they had no inkling were there, yet Gordon Felt says that warnings about the design are "quite hurtful, to think we would want to create a memorial to those who murdered our loved ones."

Nobody ever suggested any such thing, but Felt is getting as much mileage as he can out of this excuse NOT to look at the facts, telling Fox News television:

I was outraged, for anyone to infer that family members who have been such an integral part of this process have in any way been involved in memorializing the murderers of our loved ones. I find it extremely offensive.

This after expressing his anger at Tom Burnett last week for Tom's failure to submit to the Memorial Project's "democratic process." Tom lost the jury vote, so in Felt's view, he is apparently supposed to shut up now. Strange view of democracy.

Along with Patrick White (brother of Louis Nacke II), Gordon Felt sees Mr. Burnett as trying to get an improper "do over" by raising all these new concerns. Presented with evidence of an enemy plot, Felt acts as if this new information is cheating. Like Sandra, he is positively hostile even to the idea of taking this information seriously.

Not surprisingly, this slope is slippery, and Gordon Felt now seems to be deliberately misleading the public about the 44 inscribed translucent blocks that are to be placed along the flight path.

Memorial Project misinformation, covered up by the media's refusal to check the facts

One of the claims in our petition is that there are 44 inscribed translucent blocks, or "glass blocks," to be placed along the flight path. Asked about the 44 blocks by AP reporter Ramesh Santanam, Mr. Felt denied it:

Opponents also claim there is a plan to have 44 glass blocks, for the 40 victims and four hijackers, in the design.

"That's an absolute, unequivocal fabrication that is being portrayed as fact," said Edward Felt's brother, Gordon Felt, president of Families of Flight 93. "It's misleading and helps drive the conspiracy theory."

He said he is insulted people would believe he would participate in anything that honored his brother's killers.

Santanam presents these directly opposing factual claims, and that's it. No fact checking, when all he has to do is open up the design PDF's and count the translucent blocks. It takes literally two minutes.

Open up the Sacred Ground PDF and on the right side you see this:



At eye level, are 43 “glass” (or translucent marble) blocks, built into the two part Memorial Wall that follows the flight path just above the impact point. Forty are inscribed with the names of the 40 heroes. Three are inscribed with the 9/11 date. (The blocks can be counted in an elevation view at the bottom of the PDF.)

For the 44th glass block, go to the Entry Portal PDF, which shows a giant glass block, marking the spot where the flight path breaks the circle in architect Paul Murdoch’s description:



44th block sits at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway, which follows the flight path at the upper crescent tip. Murdoch even has the brass to tell us that it marks the terrorists' circle-breaking crescent creating feat. To be inscribed: "A field of honor forever."

They have been covering it up for two years now

The Memorial Project has known about this terrorist memorializing block-count since April 2006, when Project Manager Jeff Reinbold argued that the giant glass block at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway cannot be counted with the others because it is so much bigger (Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, p. 146). As Tom Burnett wrote in his February 1st advertisement in the Somerset Daily American:

What? Because the capstone to the terrorist memorializing block count is magnificent, that is supposed to make it okay?

But regardless of the merits of the Memorial Project's rationale for not being concerned about the 44 translucent memorial blocks on the flight path, there can be no excuse for telling the public that this claim is false. No one ever said that all the blocks would be the same size. We have been explicit: the 44th block is the giant glass block that dedicates the entire site.

Maybe Gordie Felt has a different dodge in mind. Maybe he is caviling over the fact that the 44th block is made of slightly different material than the other 43, being designated "glass" while the others are labeled "translucent marble." That's like caviling about the size difference.

We can't go repeating "44 inscribed translucent blocks on the flight path" all the time, so we shorten it to "the 44 glass blocks" or "the 44 blocks." Is that Gordon Felt's excuse for evading the fact that there are 44 inscribed translucent blocks on the flight path? We use a necessary shorthand and his instinct for evasion says "aha!"?

Sorry Mr. Felt. That is NOT how you live up to your fiduciary responsibility to the American people. You have accepted a position of trust and you trying to hide the truth, not expose it.

The fourth petition complaint: that the giant crescent is STILL THERE

One of the intolerable features of the soon-to-be-built memorial was known to everyone involved in the jury process. That is the crescent and star configuration of the original Crescent of Embrace design. When outrage erupted in September 2005 over this the planting of a naked Islamic flag on the graves of our murdered heroes, the Memorial Project was adamant they did not want to change it. They had talked about the likeness to an Islamic crescent during jury deliberations and decided that they wanted to choose it anyway. When controversy erupted, they felt the critics were trying to override what they thought was THEIR decision to make.

That position collapsed when Congressman Tancredo insisted that, intentional or not, it was unacceptable to build the Flight 93 memorial in the shape of a symbol that the Flight 93 terrorists claimed as their own. Pretty obvious one would think, but the backers of the crescent design were bitterly angry about having their preference overruled, just as they are now. They didn't want to change the design, and they DIDN'T change the design.

In the original, the terrorists break our liberty-loving circle, turning it into a giant Mecca-oriented crescent. The Park Service describes the so-called redesign in the exact same terms:

The circle is broken in two places that mark the southeastern path of the plane to the crash site. The circle is broken at the entry to the memorial and at the crash site.

It is still a broken circle, and it is still broken in the exact same places. The only change is that, instead of the broken off part being completely removed, a chunk of the broken off part of the circle now floats out across part of the mouth of the crescent:



Except for the re-coloring of the redesign image (right), the only change is the "broken off" arc of trees to the left of the crescent.

Both thematically and geometrically, nothing is changed. The unbroken part of the circle (the crescent) remains completely intact. In particular, it still points to Mecca, making it the world's largest mihrab (the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built).

Sandy Felt seems pretty clear that the issue is still the giant crescent:

Sandy Felt, Edward Felt's widow, was on the second jury.

She said ... that the issue of the crescent shape came up during discussions because of a public comment card submitted.

Jurors were not willing to dismiss the design because of the name, "Crescent of Embrace," or the shape.

"There's no particular ownership of this shape," she said. "... We felt confident with the notion that the void in the embrace was representative of loss."

She and the other crescent defenders claim that it is Mr. Burnett who wants a "redo" on this point, but it is actually THEY who are looking for a "redo." On this very point--on just the crescent shape itself, without taking into account the numerous other Islamic and terrorist memorializing features--it is the DEFENDERS of the crescent who lost the popular vote in September 2005, not Tom Burnett.

Democracy

Do the nine people who voted for the crescent design (the vote was 9 to 6) really think that they have a greater claim to represent America's democratic voice than a United States Congressman, speaking for a national uproar? Do they really think that it is THEIR prerogative to plant a terrorist memorial mosque on the graves of our murdered heroes, no matter what the rest of the country thinks?

America stood up in September 2005 and said OVER OUR DEAD BODIES. The Memorial Project pretended to accede to this rejection, promising to remove the Islamic symbol shapes, but they DIDN'T remove the crescent. They only hid it.

Democracy is the will of the American people, not the will of nine family members, misguided by grief, who have fallen in love with a giant Islamic shaped crescent. It is bad enough that an inflated sense of prerogative makes these family members think it is okay to try to sneak their giant crescent onto the crash site even after it has been publicly rejected. Worse is their using their bitterness at being rebuffed as an excuse not to witness the numerous further Islamic and terrorist memorializing design features that have been discovered.

Every American feels tremendous sympathy for the grief of these families, but that does not absolve those who have stepped up to positions of public responsibility from the need to BE RESPONSIBLE. As much as the families may want peace and healing, our nation is in the middle of what promises to be a very long war with those who attacked us on 9/11. To be willfully blind to evidence of an al Qaeda sympathizing plot is DANGEROUS.

Since these family members are embracing every excuse to evade evidence of radical Islamic intent, they simply have to be overruled, and this time for good. No more do-overs for terrorist memorial mosques.

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BlogBurst: Crescent Controversy on Fox News Television and Fox News Front Page!

Check out the Fox News front page today, where "Crescent Outrage" alternates top billing with "Six-Legged Soldiers!" Finally, more than a handful of Americans will at least know that there is a controversy over the Flight 93 memorial.

They won't get much more than that from Fox's text report, which is pretty bare. There is no mention of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, no mention of the 44 inscribed translucent blocks on the flight path, no mention of the Islamic sundial, and no fact checking (the modern media disease). Still, this is big.

The text report DOES show the side-by-side comparison of the Crescent of Embrace and the Islamic crescent and star insignia. It also reports Tom Burnett's condemnation of the crescent design as an insult to his murdered son, and it mentions our petition.

UPDATE: Red Lasso has the Fox News video clip (thanks to Avid Editor):



This is powerful stuff. Not only do they show the clear likeness between the original design and an Islamic crescent and star flag, but the image they show of the redesign shows pretty clearly how the giant crescent remains intact in the redesign:



From the crescent and star likeness, they cut to Tom Burnett, asking what people would think if a memorial were laid out in the shape of a swastika. If viewers hadn't just seen the crescent and star likeness, that statement could be made to sound crazy, but Fox does right by Tom, giving viewers the information they need to see the reasonableness of the comparison. Many thanks to Fox for getting this right.

Fox has a lot more information at their disposal. They had a television crew at the Somerset County Courthouse yesterday where Colonel Harry Beam laid out a precise and devastating exposé of Islamic and terrorist memorializing design features, and they were sent extensive fact checking materials. None of this gets into their present reporting. If they put that material into an investigative feature, they can knock the crescent memorial out for good.

UPDATE II: Avid Editor found another completely different Fox News segment on Red Lasso. This one is even better, mentioning the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent!

BlogBurst: Congressman Ramstad Comes Out In Opposition To The Flight 93 Memorial

Congressman Jim Ramstad (R-MN) gave a House speech this month, supporting Mr. Burnett's opposition to the crescent design. The speech is entered in the Congressional Record here, along with supporting statements from Tom Burnett Sr. (father of murdered Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Jr.).

That makes two Congressmen now who have come out publicly against the crescent memorial. (Tom Tancredo took the lead last November, asking the Park Service to choose a completely new design.)

News coverage revs up confrontation at this Saturday’s public meeting

Ramstad's speech, and our ongoing petition drive, netted a full width banner headline on the front page of the Somerset Daily American, with the story continuing full width on an inside page as well. This high profile local news coverage should make for an interesting Memorial Project meeting at the Somerset County Courthouse this Saturday. Several critics will be speaking during the public comment period, and the first batch of petitions will be delivered in bulk (over 5000 signatures to date, 4700 online and 500 on paper).

The Daily American article includes lots of powerful language from Mr. Burnett and other critics of the crescent design, along with some remarkably disingenuous evasions from the usual defenders. Most egregious is Patrick White, vice president of Families of Flight 93, who tries to pretend that the criticisms of the design are all about Mr. Burnett trying to get an undemocratic "do over" after failing to stop the Crescent of Embrace design when he served on the design competition jury.

While on the jury, Mr. Burnett only complained about the giant Islamic shaped crescent and the minaret-like Tower of Voices. No one on the jury, including Mr. Burnett, knew anything about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent; or about the placementof the 9/11 date in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag; or about the 44 glass blocks on the flight path; or about the fact that the Tower of Voices turns out to be a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial.

Not that the jury is beyond reproach. It was bizarre for these family members and design professionals to plant a bare naked crescent and star flag on the graves of our murdered heroes, but given everything that the jurors did NOT know, this configuration at least COULD have been an accident. What came out after the design was selected is absolute proof of terrorist memorializing intent, with every Islamic and terrorist memorializing feature being repeated in the Tower of Voices portion of the memorial.

One example is the 38 Memorial Groves. (There were supposed to be 40.) By itself, it is merely suspicious that the arc of 38 groves can be seen as a set of 19 nested crescents: one for each 9/11 hijacker. But architect Paul Murdoch proves this terrorist memorializing intent by surrounding the Tower of Voices with a second set of 19 nested crescents. And on it goes. EVERYTHING gets repeated in the Tower of Voices, and the 93 foot tall Islamic sundial is itself a very precise structure that could NEVER occur by accident.

Patrick White wants to dodge all this by pretending that the controversy is about the initial jury decision, instead of the ensuing blindness to voluminous evidence of terrorist memorializing intent. No one exemplifies this willful blindness better than Patrick White himself.

Patrick White denies the Mecca orientation in public while admitting it in private

At the July 2007 Memorial Project meeting, a critic of the crescent design engaged Mr. White in private conversation, asking how he could be unconcerned about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. White's reply was to suggest that this orientation cannot be seen as a tribute to Islam because the inexactness of it would be "disrespectful to Islam." (The crescent points 1.8° north of Mecca, ±.1°.)

But this isn't what White was telling the public. That same week, Patrick White told the press that all of the claims about Islamic symbolism had been thoroughly investigated and been found to be untrue and "preposterous." In private, White was acknowledging the almost exact Mecca orientation of the crescent and making excuses for it, while issuing sweeping denials in public.

He is still doing the same thing. He KNOWS that the giant crescent points almost exactly to Mecca, yet claims that such "assumptions," have been "repeatedly shown-to-be-false." In fact, not a single factual claim about what is in the design has ever been rebutted. If the crescent did not point to Mecca, it would be trivially easy to demonstrate. This is a simple geometric claim. But all the Memorial Project has ever offered is unsupported denials, denials that they acknowledge in private to be FALSE.

Patrick White’s dishonest attack on Tom Burnett

The jury process is irrelevant. No one is criticizing it. The jurors bear no responsibility for hidden Islamic and terrorist-memorializing features that they knew nothing about when they chose the crescent design. If it were not for two ugly bits of misinformation, put forward by Patrick White in his effort to make the jury process the issue, there would be no reason to mention the jury process at all. Both of White’s falsehoods are aimed at discrediting Tom Burnett Sr.

1. In the Daily American article (half way down) White claims that Mr. Burnett: “gave his consent to support what the majority picked.”

Mr. Burnett was incensed in 2005 when the Memorial Project announced that the jurors had united behind the majority choice. Without ever consulting with Mr. Burnett, the Memorial Project wrote in their jury report that: "By consensus the Stage Two jury forwards this section of the Flight 93 memorial to the partner [Paul Murdoch] with the full and unqualified support of each juror." Tom has been trying to correct the record ever since, and Patrick White OUGHT to know it.

2. White also claims that: “No one agreed then with Mr. Burnett’s preferred choice for a final design.”

"To the contrary" says Mr. Burnett, "the vote not unanimous; it was 9 to 6." Five people were with Mr. Burnett in rejecting the crescent design. This on a jury made up of 8 design professionals and 7 family members. It could even be that a majority of family members opposed the Crescent of Embrace. Tom requested the vote tally in a formal letter to the Memorial Project which was never answered. Now Patrick White throws the vote tally in Tom’s face, and completely misrepresents it.

3. Bonus badness. White claims that: “Jurors gave all of Mr. Burnett’s concerns a complete airing.”

In fact, the design professionals on the jury tried to shut Mr. Burnett up. Tom Sokolowski, director of Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum called Mr. Burnett “asinine” just for noticing that the crescent is a traditional symbol of Islam. This overt hostility to Mr. Burnett’s concerns is not what most of us would call “a complete airing.”

So no, the jury process is not the issue here, but if it were, it couldn't stand up to scrutiny either.

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BlogBurst: Pennsylvanians Build An Organization To Stop The Flight 93 Memorial

The following press release was sent to Pennsylvania news outlets yesterday:

Angry over the Islamic symbolism contained in the Flight 93 Memorial Design, which appears to honor both the heroes and the terrorists, a group of concerned citizens asked Harry Beam (Lt. Col. U.S. Army Retired) to lead an organized effort to have the design changed.

Col. Beam said he examined several different factors before agreeing to lead the effort. First, he found that the people making the request are credible. Tom Burnett (father of a Flight 93 Hero) is demanding change to the memorial design. Additionally, Col. Beam states that he has talked to MD’s, PhD’s., Attorneys, School Teachers, Nurses, Pastors, Skilled and Unskilled Workers, Veterans and Retirees who are upset with the actions of the Flight 93 Planning Committee and the National Park Service. Second, Beam said he had to determine the validity of the assertions that there is Islamic symbology in the memorial design. He stated, “I will be the first to admit that several years ago, when I first heard about the Red Crescent, I assumed that it was a matter of co-incidence. After researching the design, I found there are many (8) additional co-incidents which cause one to question the design and the designer.” The fact that the Red Crescent points towards Mecca in the same manner a Mosque would if it were built on the site. The fact that there are 44 glass blocks included in the design (40 passengers and crew; 4 terrorists) are just two more of the eight examples of co-incidence.

The third factor was that the statements from Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) opining on the symbolism issue were not credible. Their opinions, presented to the U.S. National Park Service and the Memorial Project, were contradictory. One SME stated “because the earth is round, you can face any direction and be facing Mecca.” Most 5th graders know that is false. The statement also conflicted with another SME who said “the orientation to Mecca must be exact.” Many mosques do not have an exact Mecca orientation. One of the SME’s was a classmate of the designer, Paul Murdock.

When asked, how do you hope to accomplish your goal of changing an approved national Flight 93 memorial plan? Beam responded “I know that it will be an up-hill fight, but our Flight 93 Heroes deserve a better memorial than one that also pays tribute to the Islamic terrorists”. This will be a massive grassroots effort throughout the country to sway the opinions of the Department of Interior, the National Park Service, the Flight 93 Planning Committee and our lawmakers to change the current design. When people hear the facts concerning the current design, they are angered and ask “How was the fraudulent design approved?” Email and written petitions are being circulated not only locally but throughout the nation. Although we have just started, we have thousands who have signed petitions. We are certain that number will increase. Currently, letters and phone calls are beginning to be made to lawmakers. Congressman Tancredo has asked the National Park Service to change the design and remove the Islamic symbology; we hope to get other lawmakers to support his efforts. This fight transcends politics. It is not a Republican or Democrat issue – It is Americans demanding that our Flight 93 Heroes get a National Memorial that honors their memory – not the memory of Islamic terrorists. Anyone wishing to obtain a written petition or sign an electronic petition, can go to www.crescentofbetrayal.com. Persons interested in assisting in this effort can contact Col. Beam at hibeam@atlanticbb.net.

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BlogBurst: UK Independent Reports The Mecca Orientation Of The Flight 93 Crescent

On Saturday, the conflict over Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial got its first international news coverage. One highlight is the conversation that Leonard Doyle, U.S editor of the UK Independent, had with Tom Burnett Sr.:

Tom Burnett, whose son Tom Jnr died in the crash, said of the design that it is "aesthetically wonderful," but "a lot of it contains Islamic symbols". He added: "We ought to just throw the design out and start anew because it really dishonours those who died."

Towards the end, Doyle moseys around to the bombshell, reporting the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent as a fact. The bad news is that Doyle immediately tries to dismiss this explosive information by making a completely irrelevant and factually preposterous counterclaim:

Part of the blame must lie with Paul Murdoch, architect of the winning design who initially described it as a "Crescent of Embrace". The title caused the internet to erupt with conspiracy theories. Then someone noticed that the arc actually pointed towards Mecca. The fact that this was also the direction to Washington DC was lost on the conspiracy theorists.

No, the direction to Mecca is NOT the direction to Washington. The shortest-distance direction to Mecca (the way that Muslims calculate the direction to Mecca) heads northeast from the western Pennsylvania crash-site. Some people find that counterintuitive, but Pennsylvania and Mecca are both in the northern hemisphere, with Mecca being about 2/3rds of the way around the hemisphere. Thus the direction to Mecca takes a shortcut towards the north pole. D.C., in contrast, lies southeast from the Shanksville crash site.

The errant claim that D.C. and Mecca lie in the same direction is a red herring anyway. what difference would it make if people facing into the giant crescent were facing Washington? Is there a religion of facing Washington five times a day for prayer? Were the hijackers of Flight 93 followers of such a religion. No. They faced MECCA five times a day for prayer. That is why the Mecca direction matters.

A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a "mihrab," and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The memorial now being built in Shanksville will be the world's largest mosque by a factor of about fifty (and there are some really big mosques).

Doyle is not the first person to try to dismiss the Mecca orientation of the Flight 93 crescent by claiming that the crescent also points to something else. Of course it DOES point to a host of other places. It points to everything on the line between the crash site and Mecca. Earlier this year the crazy Dr. Daniel Griffith noted that one of those points turns out to be the Vatican. So what? There is no religion of facing the Vatican for prayer.

The Independent should issue a correction

Given that Doyle's attempt to dismiss the Mecca orientation of the crescent was based on an absurdly wrong factual claim (that the direction to Mecca is the same as the direction to Washington), the Independent ought to issue a correction, especially given the importance of this error to Doyle's reporting. Without the factual error, his illogical pretense that the Mecca orientation would not matter if the crescent happened to also point to Washington simply disappears. The Mecca orientation would then stand in naked disgrace before the Independent's international readership. Is that enough of a prize to make a serious push for?

Doyle has already been asked for a correction, without reply. Our petition, however, gives us a new tool for dealing with such recalcitrant parties. We are up to about four hundred signees after one week, and over half say they are willing to engage in activist measures like forwarding emails. Maybe this is a good opportunity to fire a test shot, and unload a minor deluge of correction requests on the Independent.

If you want to pitch in, just copy and paste the following short note into an email

To the Editors of the Independent:

Please correct a glaring factual error in Leonard Doyle's article on the Flight 93 Memorial ("Conspiracy or coincidence? Flight 93 memorial attacked over crescent shape," March 29, 2008). Doyle's reporting of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent is much appreciated, but he then tries to dismiss the significance of this orientation by making the factually ridiculous assertion that the direction to Mecca from the Shanksville Pennsylvania crash-site is also the direction to Washington:

… someone noticed that the arc actually pointed towards Mecca. The fact that this was also the direction to Washington DC was lost on the conspiracy theorists.

The shortest distance direction to Mecca is to the northeast from Shanksville. Washington is to the southeast.

It is important to correct Mr. Doyle's errant excuse for dismissing the Mecca orientation of the crescent because orientation on Mecca is actually very significant. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a "mihrab" and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The planned memorial will be the world's largest mosque. Please include this significance of the Mecca orientation in your correction.

Respectfully yours,

If you haven't yet signed our online petition, please give it a look. Also, Tom Burnett Sr. just released a public appeal for people to spread the word about our petition effort. If anyone wants to forward or post Tom's letter, it is available for copy and paste here (scroll to bottom for HTML format).

Glaring omissions in Doyle's report, amounting to cover up

If the Independent's correction policy extends to dishonest reporting by omission, there are two other key facts, fully known to Mr. Doyle, that the Independent should publish. While he was driving to Shanksville, Mr. Doyle talked to Alec Rawls by telephone for almost a half an hour, mostly about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent.

Doyle was fully apprised of the double dealing of Memorial Project spokesmen who in private conversation admit the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent and make excuses for it (basically, they all assume it is coincidental), while in the newspapers they deny that the crescent points to Mecca. For example, when Superintendent Hanley was asked directly about the Mecca orientation by a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette last summer, she claimed that:

"The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site."

Thus Doyle was fully aware of the controversial nature of the Mecca orientation claim, yet he did not report it as a matter of contention. He reported it as an fact. That means one of two things. When Doyle talked to Hanley (who is quoted in his article), she may have acknowledged the Mecca orientation of the crescent to him. Alternatively, Doyle could have checked the Mecca orientation of the crescent for himself. (Alec Rawls told him how. It takes literally 2 minutes to verify.)

Which is it Mr. Doyle? Either is explosive and should be reported. If a reporter for a major newspaper verifies for himself that the Flight 93 crescent points to Mecca, he damned well ought to say so! If Memorial Project personnel admitted the Mecca orientation of the crescent, after a long history of denying it in to the press, that is newsworthy!

Why is Doyle holding back? This is cover-up, just like his attempt to dismiss the Mecca orientation with the red herring about the direction to Mecca also being the direction to Washington.

A perverted concept of "balance"?

Doyle's behavior is a puzzle. If he wanted to cover up the Mecca orientation of the crescent, why did he report it at all? In two and a half years, only one other reporter bothered to fact-check and report the orientation of the crescent. (Kirk Swauger at the Johnstown Tribune Democrat wrote last summer that: "[The Mecca orientation claims] seem to be backed up by coordinates for the direction of qibla from Somerset that can be found on Islam.com. When superimposed over the crescent in the memorial design, the midpoint points over the Arctic Circle, through Europe toward Mecca.")

One possibility is that Doyle may be pursuing a perverted concept of balance, akin to the left wing preference for equality of outcomes over equality of opportunity. The facts tilt in favor of the critics of the crescent, so in order to write a story that presents the two sides as equally valid, Doyle buries the facts, not completely, but enough to write a story that does not advantage either side. Of course if the facts went against critics of the crescent, this concept of balance would go out the window (as it should). But when the facts support conservative voices, this perverted concept of balance seems to be a second mode that the West's left wing media falls into.

That's just a theory. Perhaps Mr. Doyle can offer a better explanation. His article is in many ways quite a nice one, telling the story of Flight 93, and of Tom Burnett Jr.'s decision to do something to stop the hijackers. Give Doyle credit also for reporting the most explosive fact (the Mecca orientation). Then he dismisses the Mecca orientation with a completely fraudulent dodge, and omits how the Project has been denying the Mecca orientation for years. Very odd.

Doyle also fails to mention that every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign.

In contrast to his fabricated grounds for dismissing the Mecca-orientation of the crescent, Doyle simply repeats without comment the Memorial Project's claim that the design was changed to remove "any perceptions relating to Islamic symbolism":

The crescent became a circle, with two symbolic breaks, one where visitors will walk along the flight path, the other at the crash scene.

Would it have been too much to note, as was clearly explained to Mr. Doyle, how every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only added a few irrelevant trees to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent.

The circle is still "broken" in the exact same spots, creating the exact same crescent. This is even how architect Paul Murdoch explains the crescent design: the terrorists broke the circle, turning it into a giant (Mecca-oriented) crescent. The only change in the "redesign" was to include a broken off chunk of the circle, which now floats out behind the mouth of the crescent.

After long conversations with Tom Burnett, Alec Rawls and Bill Steiner (who has been organizing opposition on the ground in Pennsylvania for two years) Doyle actually knows more about the Islamic symbolism in the crescent design than any other reporter who has covered this story. If he would just report the truth, he could do some real good, and advance his own career at the same time, by breaking the story of a lifetime. Instead, he has decided to hide the truth, even using blatant disinformation to do it. Sure looks like ideological bias.

Insist on a correction.

To join, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog's url.

Blogburst: QiblaLocator Confirms Mecca Orientation of Flight 93 Crescent

QiblaLocator confirms Mecca orientation of Flight 93 crescent

Reader Max K. found another Islamic website with a Mecca-direction calculator. It can be used to construct yet another graphical demonstration that the Flight 93 memorial points to Mecca.

Muslims face Mecca for prayer, with the direction to Mecca calculated by the great circle method. Enter your street address into the search field at QiblaLocator.com and it brings up a Google map with a red line showing the Muslim prayer-direction (or "qibla") from your home.

At the Flight 93 crash site, Skyline Road passes through the center of what is to become the giant central crescent of the planned memorial. Enter "Skyline Rd, Shanksville PA" into the QiblaLocator search box and it generates this map:

Red line points to Mecca. (Azimuth, also in red: 55.19° clockwise from north.)

To see how this direction to Mecca compares with the orientation of the planned memorial, first impose some orientation lines on the Crescent of Embrace design:



The short black line connects the two most protruding tips of the half-mile wide central crescent. The long black arrow shows the orientation of a person standing between the crescent tips and facing into the center of the crescent. (Every particle of this original design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only disguises the giant crescent with a few additional trees.)

Next just lay the site-plan graphic on top of QiblaLocator's Google map:



The red and black lines are almost parallel.

To be precise, the upper crescent tip is the end of the thousand foot long, fifty foot tall, Entry Portal Wall. The bottom crescent tip is the last pair of red maple trees at the bottom end of the crescent walkway. Connect these tips, and the perpendicular bisector (black arrow) points 53.5° clockwise from north (within two degrees of the exact direction to Mecca).

A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The Flight 93 Memorial will be the world's largest mosque.

Earlier Mecca direction graphics

In 2005, Sarah Wells constructed a somewhat similar graphic. She used the Mecca direction calculator at Islam.com to get a qibla line that she superimposed onto the memorial site plan:



Green "qibla" circle shows direction to Mecca from nearby Pittsburgh. Again you can see that a person standing between the tips of the crescent and facing into the center of the crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca.

Sarah's graphic and the QiblaLocator graphic both demonstrate that the giant crescent points to Mecca in the way that Muslims define the direction to Mecca (by the "great circle" or "shortest distance" method).

The first graphic to show the Mecca orientation of the crescent memorial was posted by the pseudonymous Eaotin Shrdlu on September 10, 2005, two days after the crescent design was unveiled:



The large map projection and the small site-plan inset both have north at the top. Etaoin's graphic shows that direction to Mecca from crash site (green line) and direction of person facing into crescent (red line) are the same.

University of Pennsylvania Professor Tim Baird, a member of the Flight 93 Advisory Commission, says that everyone involved in the Memorial Project is fully aware of the factual accuracy of the Mecca direction claim. Nevertheless, they all stand by as Project spokesmen keep denying the Mecca orientation in the newspapers. The Project even found an academic fraud to tell the press that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca:

Daniel Griffith, a geospatial information sciences professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, said anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round. (Pittsburgh Post Gazette, August 18, 2007.)

Any Muslim would have denied this absurdity, but the Post Gazette does not want Griffith's fraud exposed, because the Gazette itself has been fully complicit in covering up the Mecca orientation of the memorial since 2005. Post Gazette reporter Paula Ward told Alec Rawls in 2006 (download 3, p. 108) that editors and reporters at the Post Gazette saw all of the demonstrations of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent back in 2005 and made a top level editorial decision not to publish this explosive information. Editor Tom Birdsong thinks it would hurt the Democrats, so he is not going to publish it, and neither are other newspapers.

This shouldn't be a right-left issue, but try telling our newspaper editors that. Which leaves it up to the rest of us to get the word out about Islamic and terrorist memorializing symbolism in the Flight 93 Memorial. This is going to have to be passed person to person.

You can help. To join our blogbursts, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog's url.

BlogBurst: Joementum!

Alec Rawls did a 45 minute interview with Washington D.C talk-radio host Joe Ardinger Saturday night (3-8-08, Segment 3).

"It rips," says Alec. "We exposed a lot of the terrorist memorializing parts of the Flight 93 Memorial, and went over the clear proofs of intent that architect Paul Murdoch included in the design."

Joe's interests: "Ghosts, UFO's, The Lizard People from The Hollow Earth, Politics, True Crime, Conspiracies, you get the idea..." If he wants outlandish, the truth about the Flight 93 Memorial is tops, which could just make Joe the man for the Job.

Alec knows nothing about the Lizard People, or Joe's politics, but this issue ought to transcend all domestic divides, and for Joe it certainly does. "Very fun interview," says Alec: "Joe is a great host, and he says he wants to keep after this."

That's excellent. Thank you Joemericans!

(If Joe's 3-8-08 Segment 3 link ever disappears, there is a backup copy here.)

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BlogBurst: Islamic Symbolism Causing Fundraising Problems For Flight 93 Memorial

Islamic symbolism causing fundraising problems for Flight 93 Memorial

Pennsylvanians know about the Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 Memorial, and have stopped donating. The first indication came last September when State Senator Jane Orie came aboard as a fundraiser. She got a quick education in growing controversy.

In a 9/11 radio interview with Pittsburgh talker Fred Honsberger, Orie explained why she hoped the Flight 93 families would get back together and revisit their design choice:

Orie: "No matter who it is, and no matter where I went today for 9/11 events, everybody brought up this crescent. Whether it is intentional or not, it is disturbing to people."

Honsberger: "So everyone is bringing it up to you."

Orie: "Absolutely."

At that time, the Memorial Project had collected about $12.5 million, far short of the huge design's anticipated 60 million dollar price tag. Six months later the amount sits at "A little more than $12 million." It is possible that they are actually spending more on their fundraising efforts than they are raising.

Bill Steiner, who has been rustling up opposition on the ground in PA, dropped by Somerset recently and had a conversation with Memorial Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley. She appeared beleaguered, and confided that fundraising was sluggish, suggesting that the memorial would probably have to be built in stages. Presumably she meant something other than the normal stages of building, but was anticipating delays.

Now this week the Somerset Daily American has an editorial complaining that the whole state seems to be dumping on Somerset County, bemoaning amongst other things the lack of funding for the Flight 93 Memorial.

This is not the preferred way to stop architect Paul Murdoch's terroist memorial mosque from being built. The damn thing ought to just be stopped by those in government who are in a position to stop it, so that a new and fitting design can be selected. At that point, money will be needed, but for now, with Murdoch in full command of the hijacked memorial, lack of money is what is needed. Starving the engines of fuel is one way to keep the hijacker from reaching his target, and until the hijacker is stopped, nothing else matters.

The people get it, and are voting with their pocketbooks. When are our our elected representatives going to step up and do their part?

Senator Orie is not the only Pennsylvania state legislator who has expressed concern, but Congressman Tancredo is as yet the only politician to actually call for the crescent design to be scrapped. If our representatives can't be leaders, can't they at least be followers?

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BlogBurst: Map Of Betrayal

Click thumbnail to view high rez flyer (300dpi). Fits letter size paper. Suitable for flyering your town or campus.

BlogBurst: "...Not Going To Address the Issue..."

Memorial Project founder: "They decided that, 'we're just not going to address the issue' [of Islamic symbolism]"

Flight 93 is the symbol of our woken vigilance. We are supposed to be alert now, to jihadist enemies that hide amongst us, pretending to be trustworthy friends.

Those charged with the memorialization of Flight 93 have instead embraced an anti-spirit of Flight 93, regarding vigilance as somehow beyond the pale even of contemplation.

Listen to the words of Clay Mankamyer, one of the founders of the Flight 93 Memorial Project, describing the Project's reaction to warnings of Islamic symbolism in the Crescent of Embrace design. They asked the accused architect Paul Murdoch about it. They agreed with him that it was "too big a stretch" to think that he had conspired to intentionally include Islamic symbolism, and so they decided that: "we're just not going to address the issue." They made an up-front decision NOT to look at the facts.

Here is the audio (50 seconds) followed by a transcript:

The controversy then arose. When I first heard it, it was a street preacher who had drawn attention to the similarities to the red crescent, and when you heard what he had to say about it, and looked at the design, there were without a doubt some striking similarities. He went to, I went to, Paul Murdoch and expressed some concern and wondered what they were going to do about it. Their decision was that, well, certainly everybody is going to see that any similarity is going to be just coincidental and it's too big a stretch to think that anybody conspired to create anything but a memo