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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Update from Previous

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!

Crescent controversy on Fox News television and Fox News front page! Thanks to the Avid Editor for the video clips

Boy, Murdoch is pulling out all the stops saying that ‘what continues to grow is support for the design’!!! What continues to grow is the OPPOSITION to planting the biggest Mosque in North America by a factor of 100 on the Flight93 crash site and the graves of the passenger and crew to commemmorate tha 9/11 terrorists.

What Murdoch is doing is in complete violation of Congress’s mandate that says the terrorists were excluded from the definition of passengers and crew and are not to be honored in the memorial.

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 know much more than that. The Fox reporting is pretty bare, and includes 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.

Fox IS airing the side-by-side comparison of the Crescent of Embrace and the Islamic crescent. They also report Tom Burnett’s condemnation of the crescent design an insult to his murdered son, and they mention our petition.

Fox has a lot more information at their disposal. They had a television crew to 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. Hopefully they will be using this material for an investigative feature in the not-too-distant future.

It appears as though CBS has something on this, also–

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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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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From Tom Burnett Sr: A petition to stop the Flight 93 Memorial

Dear Fellow Americans:

The planned Flight 93 Memorial contains extensive Islamic symbolism. It is an insult to my son Tom, and to the other murdered heroes of Flight 93 who stopped Islamic terrorists from destroying the White House or the Capitol that terrible September day.

Please consider signing this online petition that I and some compatriots have put together. It calls for a new memorial design, and for investigation of the present design. If you want to do more, feel free to forward or post this appeal.

For those who are not familiar, the original “Crescent of Embrace” design was laid out in the crescent and star configuration of an Islamic flag:

Outrage over this overt Islamic symbolism forced the Memorial Project to disguise the original crescent with a few additional trees, but every particle of the original design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign. The giant crescent and star flag is still there!

The Memorial Project assumes that any similarity to an Islamic crescent has to be unintentional. Even if it WERE unintentional it would still be intolerable, but how can anyone look at that crescent and star configuration and think that it CAN’T be intentional? That is like seeing an airliner fly into the World Trade Center and thinking that it CAN’T be intentional. Worst of all, the Memorial Project refuses to confront voluminous evidence that the Islamic symbolism IS intentional.

It turns out that a person facing into the giant crescent will be facing 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 crescent memorial will be the world’s largest mosque!

When TWO airplanes fly into the World Trade Center, even the most naïve person has start taking the possibility of intent seriously, but not the Memorial Project. The Islamic symbolism in Flight 93 Memorial goes on and on, but the Park Service refuses to be concerned.

Architect Paul Murdoch says that the crescent shape comes from the hijacked airplane breaking the circle where it crosses the upper crescent tip. The flight path then continues down to between the crescent tips where Flight 93 crashed. (That’s right: the crash site is the star on the crescent and star flag.)

Along the flight path are to be placed 44 translucent blocks, equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists:

Left image: The Memorial Wall, traces flight path just above the point of impact. The white line at eye level is a set of 43 glass blocks, 40 to be inscribed with the names of my son and the other passengers and crew, and three (on the near side of the gap) to be inscribed with 9/11 date. Right image: At the upper crescent tip, at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway, sits a huge glass block, the 44th glass block on the flight path. It marks the spot where, in the architect’s description, the terrorists broke our humanitarian circle, turning it into a giant (Islamic shaped) crescent. Inscription: “A field of honor forever.”

I don’t want to celebrate the terrorist’s circle-breaking crescent-creating feat, and I certainly don’t want my son’s name inscribed on that terrorist memorializing block count.

We need to get the word out: the Flight 93 Memorial has been re-hijacked, and this time the whole nation is aboard. We have to get up out of our seats and stop this abomination!

Sincerely,

Tom Burnett Sr.
Northfield Minnesota, March 2008

P.S. Paper petitions are also available (with mailing instructions, and explanatory information on the back). Just open and print.

Online petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/HonorFlight93/

Paper petitions and flyer-petition combinations: http://www.crescentofbetrayal.com/PetitionPage.htm

More information: http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2008/03/petition-for-congressional.html

Full exposé: http://www.crescentofbetrayal.com/

Petition picking up steam

World Net Daily has a very informative article today about our petition to investigate the Flight 93 memorial. It includes excerpts from Tom Burnett’s letter to the American people; it includes information about the fraudulent Park Service investigation (where an Islamic scholar said not to worry about the half mile wide Mecca oriented crescent because nobody has ever seen a mihrab anywhere near this BIG before); and it reviews the four specific complaints highlighted in the petition (the giant crescent, the Mecca orientation, the Islamic sundial and the 44 blocks).

Those last four links are to graphics that Tom Burnett is going to have on poster-boards when he addresses a Republican convention in Wisconsin at the end of the month. World Net Daily is looking to add video content these days so Tom is going to try to get video of his speech that we can edit down to five minutes of highlights for WND.

The first place we will be delivering the petitions is to the Memorial Project’s public meeting on May 3rd in Somerset PA. It looks like we are going to have quite a few signatures, both from the electronic petition (zooming towards 2000 already), and from the paper petitions (now circulating on the ground in PA).

At least one state legislator from Pennsylvania has signed the petition, and a Congressman has expressed interest in entering the whole thing into the congressional record. That would be a second Congressman coming out publicly against the memorial. (Tom Tancredo asked the Park Service last fall to scrap the crescent design entirely.)

Will any of the big radio radio voices wake up to the evidence that al Qaeda accepted our open invitation to the ENTIRE WORLD to enter our design competition? All they have to do is look at the FACTS.

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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.

Petition for Congressional investigation

A petition to stop the crescent memorial is now being circulated on the ground in western Pennsylvania. As a complement to this old fashioned canvassing effort, an electronic petition has also been created at ipetitions.com. Please circulate far and wide!

The petitions highlight four cases of apparent Islamic symbolism in the memorial design. Here is the text (electronic):

Call for Congressional investigation of Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial

Many features of the chosen Flight 93 Memorial design are intolerable:

1. THE GIANT CRESCENT. The centerpiece of the original “Crescent of Embrace” design was a giant red Islamic shaped crescent. Every particle of this original crescent design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only added a few irrelevant trees. The giant crescent is still there.

2. IT POINTS TO MECCA. The giant crescent points 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 is on track to become the world’s largest mosque.

3. THE ISLAMIC SUNDIAL. The minaret-like Tower of Voices is a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial (one of many typical mosque features that are realized in the crescent design, all on the same epic scale as the half mile wide central crescent).

4. THE 44 BLOCKS. There are 44 glass blocks on the flight path, equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists.

Intentional or not, these features are entirely unacceptable. This travesty must stop and investigations must begin.

1) We the undersigned call on our state and federal legislators to undertake their own thorough and independent investigations of the Flight 93 Memorial design. The truth must come out.

2) We ask that the crescent design be scraped entirely and that it be replaced with a new design that is not tainted by Islamic or terrorist memorializing symbolism.

3) We demand a fitting and proper memorial that HONORS the brave men and women of Flight 93.

Please take a minute to electronically sign this petition. All signatures collected by the end of April will be printed out and delivered to the May 3rd public meeting of the Memorial Project, along with Xeroxes of the hand-signed petitions.

That is just the start. There will be another public meeting in August, where we hope to present a much larger pile of petitions, and all signatures will eventually be delivered to the Pennsylvania state legislature and to Congress. Keep sending until the crescent design is stopped!

In the short term, we have a number of supporters in the Pennsylvania legislature at this point who are working to gain backing for an investigation. A demonstration of public demand should help that effort.

The paper petition

In order to make the paper petition self-sufficient, there is a second page, to be printed on the back of the petition, that provides explanations and graphical documentation of the four highlighted cases of Islamic symbolism. The idea is to have a petition that can circulate virally. Anyone can print it out and have enough information right on the petition itself to know that the objections are legitimate. (Mailing instructions are also included.)

Here are the back-side explanations of the four intolerable features:

1. THE GIANT CRESCENT

The original Crescent of Embrace design was a giant Islamic shaped crescent with the crash site placed between the crescent tips, in the position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag:

The redesign was supposed to eliminate these Islamic symbol shapes, but as Congressman Tom Tancredo wrote to the Park Service in November 2007, these features remain completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only disguised the crescent with a few additional trees. Architect Paul Murdoch’s refusal to eliminate the Islamic symbol shapes suggests intent, but intentional or not, these symbol shapes are unacceptable. Congressman Tancredo is now calling for the crescent design to be scrapped in its entirety, and we join in that request.

2. IT POINTS TO MECCA

Several credible analysts have found that a person facing directly into the giant crescent (still present in the redesign) will be facing almost exactly at Mecca:

The green “qibla” circle in the graphic above is from the prayer-direction calculator at Islam.com. It shows the direction to Mecca from Somerset PA (ten miles from the crash site). The red arrow shows that a person standing between the crescent tips and facing into the center of the crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca.

This Mecca orientation claim must be authoritatively investigated and answered. If it is true that the crescent points to Mecca, and hence can serve as an Islamic prayer direction indicator (the central feature around which every mosque is built), then whether this construct was intentional or not, it indelibly taints the design.

3. THE ISLAMIC SUNDIAL

Anyone can see the overt similarity between a traditional Islamic sundial (left-hand image) and Tower of Voices part of the Flight 93 Memorial (right-hand image):

When the shadow of the traditional sundial reaches the outer curved vertical in this photo, it will be time for Islamic afternoon prayers. Shadow calculations confirm that, on any day of the year, when the shadow of the 93 foot tall crescent shaped Tower of Voices reaches the inner arc of trees, it will also be time for Islamic afternoon prayers.

4. THE FORTY-FOUR BLOCKS

Tom Burnett Sr. does not want Tom Junior’s name inscribed on one of the 44 translucent blocks that are to be emplaced along the flight path. Forty-four is the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists:

The left side of this graphic shows the Memorial Wall, which follows the path of Flight 93 down to the point of impact. At eye level are 43 glass blocks. Forty are inscribed with the names of the 40 heroes. Three are inscribed with the 9/11 date.

Right-hand image: the 44th glass block sits at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway, where the flight path crosses the upper crescent tip. It marks the spot where, in architect Paul Murdoch’s description, the terrorists broke our humanitarian circle, turning it into a giant (Islamic shaped) crescent. This circle-breaking, crescent-creating feat is memorialized by the inscription: “A field of honor forever.”

The Park Service dismisses the suspicious block count on the grounds that the 44th glass block is much larger than the others. Mr. Burnett is not comforted by the magnificence of the 44th block, and neither are we. This design must be stopped, and investigations must be launched!

Other petition formats

The same four intolerable features are described in the annotated “Map of Betrayal” that was the subject of one of last month’s blogbursts. Thus the map makes a perfectly serviceable back side for the petition, providing an alternative petition/flyer combination.

The information on the map is denser than the explanations above, but has its own intrigue, showing how the different terrorist memorializing parts fit together like an elaborate puzzle.

The petition being circulated on the ground now in Pennsylvania is still another variation. It has slightly different wording than the electronic petition, and slightly different explanations of the four points than presented above. All the different formats are interchangeable. They all highlight the same four objectionable features, and they will all be delivered together to state and federal legislators.

Until we get a Congressional investigation, the petition will be an ongoing tool for raising awareness and registering opposition. If you participate in any activist fora or email lists, please forward the text and links along. (The electronic and paper-petition links are collected together on this petition Page at CrescentOfBetrayal.com.)

Blogburst blogroll

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

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.

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.)

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

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 the 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?

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

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

Please leave a comment on this post…a strange question appeared when I was trying to publish it.

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 memorial to the heroes who WON the battle that fateful morning, and so they decided that, ‘we’re just not going to address the issue.’

Mankamyer is not ideologically disposed to be politically correct. He is a conservative Christian patriot, speaking in this instance to a Christian Coalition meeting (recorded by Bill Steiner, with the knowledge and permission of those in attendance, 9-18-2007, Greensburg PA). What seems to be operating here is a generous spirit of goodwill, unwilling to believe anything bad about this architect they had all worked with and put their trust in.

Goodwill only towards the man accused of an enemy plot

The problem is that Mankamyer et al. failed to similarly give the benefit of the doubt to those who were issuing warnings about the design. If they had treated the critics as credible people too, they would have let the facts decide, and Murdoch’s dishonesty would have been quickly exposed.

When the controversy over the crescent name and shape first erupted, Murdoch denied that his giant crescent had the same shape as an Islamic crescent:

Theirs is a lunar crescent. Ours isn’t based on that.

Oh yeah? Zombie posted a “throbbing crescent” animation (no longer active) that showed otherwise, and Michelle Malkin broadcast it to the online masses. Here is a three panel re-creation:

“Throb on” shows the Tunisian crescent, matching the geometry of the Crescent of Embrace almost exactly: about 2/3rds of a circle of arc, with a circular inner arc. (Most definitely NOT a lunar crescent, which covers half a circle of arc and has an elliptical inner arc.) “Throb off” shows bare crescent site plan. (Click pic for larger image.)

All that people like Mankamyer had to do was actually look at what people were telling them and they would have known immediately that Murdoch was deceiving them. Instead, they explicitly decided that they were NOT going to look at the facts. They extended good will only to the man who was accused of perpetrating an enemy plot, while extending nothing but ill will towards his accusers.

“A shrine to Micky Mouse”

Mankamyer’s presentation includes some wrenching examples of just how willfully blind he and others have become as they continued down their chosen fact-free path. Listen to the crazy excuse he comes up with for not being concerned about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent (ten seconds):

You see what we are up against though. I could come in here and say… I could draw a point from this window to that window, and it goes right to Orlando Florida and this is a shrine to Micky Mouse. [laughter]

This is clever? A Mecca-oriented crescent or arch shape is the central feature around which every mosque is built. A line across two windows does not orient anything, and the scumbags who hijacked Flight 93 did not pray to Micky Mouse five times a day.

Of course Mankamyer was intentionally offering the stupidest example he could concoct as a way of suggesting that it is just as stupid to be concerned about planting a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the Flight 93 crash site. If he had said that directly everyone in the room would have been disgusted, so instead he made the most disingenuous comparison he could come up with.

This is what their spirit of goodwill has degenerated into: pure malignant bias.

They all know about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent

Notice that Mankamyer does not deny the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. This squares with what Flight 93 Advisory Commission member Tim Baird told Alec Rawls in July 2007: that everyone involved in the Memorial Project is fully aware that the giant crescent does in fact point within two degrees of Mecca. They all just have excuses for why they are not concerned about it.

“I won’t be concerned unless you can prove intent,” Baird said, “and it is impossible to prove intent.” i.e. Baird does not care what the facts are. There is absolutely nothing that could ever wake him up from his anti-vigilant slumber.

They all know that the public would never accept a giant Mecca oriented crescent on the crash site, regardless of whether it was intentional or not, so they lie about it. One project spokesman after another keeps declaring that factual claims like the Mecca orientation of the crescent are false and “preposterous.”

How long before one of these fine upstanding citizens recognizes that it is wrong to keep lying to the public about explosive information that they all know to be true?

Mankamyer says that he would like to see a Congressional investigation

The scenes are quite astounding. Clay Mankamyer, a conservative Christian, manages to get a Christian Coalition meeting laughing about the Mecca orientation of the Flight 93 crescent. How do you ever live that down?

You start by trying. In the question and answer part of the meeting, Bill Steiner asked for an independent investigation, and Mankmyer said he would join Bill in that (10 seconds):

Bill Steiner: “The only concerns we have is that this design be fully vetted by a Congressional investigation before it goes any further.”

Bill talks over Mankamyer’s reply, but Mankamyer repeats himself enough to be heard: “And I would like … I would join you in that.”

If Mr. Mankamyer would insist publicly on a Congressional investigation, it would go a long ways. So would admitting to the public that he and others in the Project are aware of the factual accuracy of the Mecca-orientation claim.

Tom Burnett Sr. is asking everyone to help him get state and Congressional investigations started. It would certainly help if at least a few people from inside the Memorial Project would start telling the truth.

“I came into this world to be a witness for truth”

The heroes of Flight 93 did not obfuscate. They faced the harsh truth of their situation and acted as love required. Mankamyer understands that. He is a genuine patriot, who dedicated himself to the memorialization of Flight 93.

Somehow–apparently at the urging of architect Paul Murdoch–he let himself be guided by presumption, finding excuses to avoid unpleasant truths. (It was in talking to Murdoch that Mankamyer and others decided it was “too big a stretch to think anyone conspired” and they should therefore “not … address the issue.”)

Facing threat of death, Jesus told Pilate that he “came into the world to be a witness for truth” (Jn 18:37). This is his most fundamental instruction to his followers: trust in truth. Never EVER put presumption ahead of witness. For those who make this mistake, it is never to late to undo it.

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

Dr. Daniel Griffith (”anything can point to Mecca, because the earth is round“) is still trying to convince the press that the Flight 93 crescent does not point to Mecca. In an email to the Park Service and the press this week, he tried to make it sound as if Alec Rawls is calculating the orientation of the crescent by using techniques that can be manipulated to achieve any desired result:

Based on Alec’s arguments, one could claim that the memorial is oriented toward the Vatican.

The Flight 93 crescent can indeed be seen as pointing to the Vatican, for the simple reason that the Vatican sits on the great circle line between the crash site and Mecca.

This is what Griffith represents as some concocted method for calculating the orientation of the crescent: the great circle method!

This “shortest distance” or “straight line” direction to Mecca (curving only in the over the horizon direction) is the relevant direction because this is the way that Muslims calculate the direction to Mecca. (There was a debate about it in the 1980’s and 90’s, largely settled by this nondescript looking analysis.)

Here is the great circle line from the Flight 93 crash-site to Mecca:

(Click-pic for larger image. Great circle calculator here.)

Here is the great circle line from the crash-site to the Vatican:

This calculator rounds to the nearest degree, so Mecca and the Vatican both are presented as lying on the great circle line that, from the crash site, proceeds 55° clockwise from north.

Of course a person who faces Mecca is also facing everything else that happens to lie in the direction of Mecca. When Griffith acknowledges that the crescent points to the Vatican, he is not debunking of the Mecca-orientation of the Flight 93 crescent, but confirming it.

Reductio ad Hitlerum

Griffith pulled the same trick last July, telling reporter Kirk Swauger of the Johnstown Tribune Democrat that the crescent can be seen as pointing to a Nazi concentration camp if you want:

Griffith said Rawls suggested memorial organizers would be outraged if the crescent pointed to a Nazi concentration camp instead, the professor said it actually could be done.

Of course Rawls never suggested that anyone should care if the crescent pointed at a concentration camp. Is there a worldwide religion of facing Nazi concentration camps for prayer? Was Flight 93 hijacked by people who face Nazi concentration camps for prayer?

An unpublished report that Griffith wrote for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review in 2006 clarifies his concentration camp reference. It notes that there was a Nazi concentration camp (Drancy) located just outside of Paris, which as you can see on the maps above is also (like the Vatican) on the great circle line between the Flight 93 crash-site and Mecca. In his 2006 report, Griffith acknowledges that the crescent points to the Drancy camp, yet is still unwilling to acknowledge that it points to Mecca. Somehow, the crescent points to everything on the line to Mecca except Mecca.

When Griffith told Swauger that you can see the crescent as pointing to a Nazi concentration camp if you want, he was clearly trying to mislead Swauger into thinking that you can see the crescent as pointing wherever you want. This dishonest intention was made clear by another statement that Griffith made to Swauger (not reported by Swauger, but related by Swauger to Alec Rawls at the time). Griffith told Swauger that: “You can face anywhere to face Mecca.”

He is doing the same thing when he tells the Park Service now that the crescent can be seen as pointing to the Vatican, without being clear that this is because the Vatican sits on great circle line to Mecca.

Pecksniff

In his email, Griffith complains that Rawls has been trying to bully him into changing his analysis. Nobody is trying to bully Griffith into changing anything. We are trying to expose him as a fraud.

Griffith is practically in tears about being called a Pecksniff (a character from Martin Chuzzlewit “who lies and cants whether he is drunk or sober”). It is the perfect epithet. Look in the dictionary under Pecksniff and you will see Daniel Griffith’s picture.

Not that anyone should bother to read Griffith’s email, but if anyone wants to, it puts front and center another astounding example of Griffith’s free-form dishonesty.

Griffith quotes Rawls’s January 2006 report to the Memorial Project as saying that:

…the orientation to Mecca “take[s] a short cut over the North Pole … even though Mecca is south of Shanksville.”

From this supposed quote, Griffith goes on to construct an elaborate fantasy about how, since the great circle line between the crash-site and Mecca does not actually go over the North Pole, it was really Rawls, not he, who started this idea that you can face different directions to face Mecca.

But Rawls’s report to the Memorial Project did not say that a person facing the north pole from the crash site is facing Mecca. Rather, it includes an aside explaining why the shortest-distance line to Mecca “points in a northeasterly direction” (not due north), even though Mecca is south of Shanksville. The reason is because both are in the northern hemisphere. To illustrate, the report includes the simplest possible example: “The shortest distance between points on the opposite sides of the northern hemisphere will take a short cut over the North Pole.”

Griffith quotes only the second half of this sentence, omitting the part about connecting points “on the opposite sides of the northern hemisphere.” That allows him to pretend that the points referred to are the crash-site and Mecca. Of course Shanksville and Mecca are not on opposite sides of the hemisphere. Mecca is about 2/3rds of the way around the hemisphere from the crash-site.

Having Misrepresented Rawls as saying, not just that a person facing into the giant crescent is facing Mecca, but also that a person facing due north from the crash site is facing Mecca, Griffith then writes:

I fail to be convinced that only 2, rather than the infinity of possible, arcs are acceptable to Muslims.

Bwahahahaha! Griffith just finished saying how wrong it is to think that a person facing north from Shanksville is facing Mecca. Then he turns around and uses this face-north-to-face-Mecca claim (misattributed to Rawls) as justification for saying that a person facing any direction is facing Mecca. Just how much peck has this idiot been sniffing?

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