Love, Mom (Notes From The Empty Nest)

World leader, known for reminding the Islamic world that his middle name is Hussein, hosts nuclear summit, presided over by large Islamic-shaped crescent:

Photo by Ron Sachs. Post via Error Theory.

It is hard to believe that the State Department could do this by accident:

An Islamic crescent is a very distinct and completely unnatural geometric shape, combining a circular outer arc with a non-concentric circular inner arc. The unnaturalness is an Islamic religious requirement. A lunar crescent has an elliptical inner arc. Using such a natural shape as a religious symbol would risk idolatry (the worship of any actual thing besides God). Thus Muslims use as their symbol the explicitly unnatural circle-in-circle crescent shape.

Sometimes the inner circle sits entirely inside the outer circle. This arrangement is typically used to symbolize Islamic world domination, as seen in the MAS logo. More often the inner circle extends beyond the outer circle, as seen on the last last Ottoman flags:

Turkish flag. Crescent covers an unnatural 2/3rds of a circle of arc, give or take (in contrast to a lunar crescent, which always covers a half a circle of arc).

Obama’s circle-in-circle NSS logo uses a thin crescent to combine the world encompassing aspect of the MAS logo with the more familiar Ottoman crescent, covering less than a full circle of arc.

Obama has ordered his underlings not to notice Islamic connections

Given that the unnatural circle-in-circle crescent is the only widely recognized graphic symbol of Islam, it must have been recognized as such by at least a significant percentage of the State Department personnel who saw it prior to the summit. Why didn’t anyone object, forcefully and publicly if necessary?

It would seem to be the Fort Hood phenomenon, where witnesses to Nidal Hasan’s murderous ideology were afraid that making an issue of it would be career suicide, thereby enabling Hasan’s mass murder of American soldiers. Obama has now made the career suicide threat official, ordering all members of the executive branch to be as oblivious to Islam as possible. The more disturbing the Islamic connection, the more it is to be avoided, to the point where Muslim terrorists, whose reading of orthodox Islamic interpretation compels them to slaughter infidels, are no longer to be called “Muslim terrorists” or “Islamic extremists.” Everyone is just supposed to ignore their Islamic motivation.

Hydrogen atoms and Swastikas

Defenders of Obama’s nuclear crescent (trolls in the comments at Gateway) think that so long as the Islamic-shaped crescent can be interpreted in some non-Islamic way, there is nothing wrong with using an Islamic shaped crescent to represent American hospitality:

Oh please, folks, get a grip. It’s modeled after a hydrogen atom, you know, as in hydrogen bombs?

This issue came up when the Missile Defense Agency’s crescent shaped website logo became a news story in February.

MDA website logo, uses the world-encompassing symbolism of a full circle-in-circle crescent favored by several Islamic terror groups:

Left: Islamic Palestine Block insignia. Center: Hamas insignia. Right: PLFP insignia (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).

MDA spokesman Rich Lehner insists that the world-encompassing circle-in-circle crescent “symbolizes the worldwide protection of our homeland and deployed forces.” But do we get to redefine in this way the only symbol shape that our terror war enemies claim as their own?

By that logic, one could say that the swastika represents a helicopter rotor in motion, making a great logo for our Apache squadrons, but no such interpretation can obviate the established meaning of the symbol shape, and like the swastika, the full circle-in-circle crescent has its own established meaning (a meaning not so different from the swastika). It represents Islamic domination of the planet. For Lehner to protest that this isn’t what the full circle-in-circle crescent means to him is as ludicrous and irrelevant as saying that he sees the swastika as a spinning propeller.

Not that it matters, but the NSS logo fails as hydrogen atom

Most obviously, why the gap in the electron’s orbit? The only purpose of this gap would seem to be to turn the crescent into the familiar Islamic-shaped crescent.

Less obviously, notice that the fattening of the crescent at the lower left indicates visually that the electron is coming closer at that point. That would only be the case if the orbit were being observed somewhat edge-on, but that would make the orbit appear to the observer as an ellipse, not the circle seen in the NSS logo.

By the same token, since the orbit is seen as circular rather than elliptical, that means it is being observed from above (from one of the poles of the axis of rotation), which means the electron is not moving closer to and further from the observer, hence no crescent-like fattening of the arc would be observed.

The only purpose for the unnatural fattening of the circle on one side representation would again seem to be to create the familiar Islamic shaped crescent.

Frank Gaffney was pre-mature in walking back his concerns about the MDA crescent

Kudo’s to Frank Gaffney for forcing our Democrat dominated media to address the crescent shaped MDA logo two months ago. In addition to noting the Islamic shape, Gaffney also noted the likeness to Obama’s permanent campaign logo:

When he discovered that the MDA logo predated the Obama administration, Frank began a walk-back, which he extended to the crescent shape:

It has also been observed that – rather than embracing the symbolic crescent and star, they could be interpreted as the targets of the intercepting swoosh in the MDA’s latest logo. If so, the 2009 design would presumably be offensive to Islamists, rather than evidence of submission to them.

No, the crescent cannot be interpreted as the target of the intercepting missile, because the target of the intercepting missile is explicit. It is shooting down another missile. The missile shot in the logo can be interpreted as defending the crescent, but it cannot be interpreted as attacking the crescent because the crescent is not a missile.

Ignorant coincidence, or stealth jihad?

The unanswered question is whether the Islamic-looking logos are the product of ignorant coincidence or Islamic supremacism. There are stealth jihadists who work in the field of Islamic symbolism, like the Los Angeles architect who designed the giant Mecca-oriented crescent that is now being built atop the Flight 93 crash site. 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 shaped, but the archetypical mihrab is crescent shaped.) The planned memorial will be the world’s largest mosque.

Like Gaffney (sorry Frank, but you really wimped out on this one), the defenders of the crescent mosque are willing to embrace untenable excuses for their Islamic symbol shape. Asked how he could abide the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93, argued that the almost-exact Mecca-orientation cannot be intended as a tribute to Islam because the in-exactness of it (within 2° of Mecca) would be “disrespectful” to Islam.

After the cartoon jihad, Gaffney and White might be excused for thinking that Muslims will take offense at just about anything, but the fact is, orthodox Islam cares very little about how exactly anyone faces Mecca for prayer. For most of Islam’s 1400 year history, far flung Muslims had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. Thus it developed as a matter of religious principle that what matters is intent to face Mecca (and God).

So where did Patrick White get the idea that orientation on Mecca must be exact? From a Muslim scholar commissioned by the Park Service to answer just this question. His name is Nasser Rabbat, and he told the Park Service a flat out lie. Why? Rabbat is presumably a stealth jihadist, though he could have also been doing a personal favor for ex-classmate Paul Murdoch, the Los Angeles architect who designed the Crescent of Embrace.

This is why these possibly coincidental Islamic symbol shapes need to be properly investigated: because where there is smoke, there is sometimes fire.

Gaffney was also premature in dismissing the Obama-like character of the MDA logo

Just because the Obama-like logo was not a product of the Obama administration does not mean it was not the work of a freelance Obamaton, or even an Obama-connected logo designer.

Obama started using his logo in early 2007, when it made a huge splash in the logo-design community. The contract for the MDA logo was not let until September 2007 and the logo itself did not appear until October 2008. Thus the MDA logo was designed while Obama’s logo was all the rage, and given Obama’s connections in the advertising industry, his people could even have exercised some direct influence over the MDA logo.

The strong Obama likeness makes it almost certain that the MDA logo was created by an Obama partisan as a tribute to Obama. From that strong prior, the likelihood that the Islamic-shaped crescent was also intentional goes up dramatically. Our president does not emphasize the “Hussein” in “Barack Hussein Obama” for nothing.

To join our blogburst-effort to stop the crescent mosque, just send your blog’s url.

*****************

13 March 2010

Crocodile tears from the parents of Jihad Jamie?

***************************************************
Consider this posted on the fridge!

Came across this over at Major Z’s. He’s got plenty to say about it, as do many others. Some of them get very, very detailed. You might be tempted to say conspiracy theorists…but take a look at the drawings. I don’t care how or why this came to look like it did…..it’s WRONG. Plain and simple…and calling it the “Crescent of Embrace”…? Anybody ever read Age of Tolerance? Ok…that’s fiction…if it’s non fiction ya wants….how about Dhimmi Watch.

The heroes of Flight 93 deserve better.

1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech
A Defending Crusader
A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever
Al Salibiyyah
And Rightly So
Anne Arundel Maryland Politics
Battle Dress U
Big Dog’s Weblog
Big Sibling
Boston Maggie
Cao2′s Weblog
Cao’s Blog
Chaotic Synaptic Activity
Chester Street
Christmas Ghost
Democrat = Socialist
Dr. Bulldog and Ronin
Error Theory
Faultline USA
Flanders Fields
Flopping Aces
Four Pointer
Freedom’s Enemies
From My Position On the Way!
Ft. Hard Knox
GM’s Corner
Hoosier Army Mom
Ironic Surrealism II
Ivy League Conservatives
Jack Lewis
Jihad Press
Judge Right
Kender’s Musings
Monkey in the Middle
My Own Thoughts
Nice Deb
No Compromises When It Comes To Being Right!
Ogre’s Politics and Views
Papa Mike’s Blog
Part-Time Pundit
Publius’ Forum
Right on the Right
Right Truth
Ron’s Musings
Rosemary’s Thoughts
Smooth Stone
Space 4 Commerce by Brian Dunbar
Stix Blog
Stop the ACLU
the Avid Editor
The Loyal Eagles
The Renaissance Biologist
The View From the Turret
The Wide Awakes
Thunder Run
Tizona’s Weblog
We Have Some Planes

WHO BROKE THE CIRCLE?

The Memorial Project claims to have an innocent explanation for why the central feature of the Flight 93 memorial is a giant Islamic shaped crescent. As architect Paul Murdoch has been saying since September 2005, the flight path breaks the circle, turning it into what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace.

But this isn’t a memorial to an airliner. It is a memorial to human beings. So just who is it that architect Paul Murdoch is depicting as breaking the circle?

As a secular symbol, the circle signifies peace and harmony. There is no way that the heroic passengers and crew can be charged with breaking the circle. It is the terrorists who broke the peace.

Think what that means thematically. The terrorists broke our peaceful circle and turned it into a giant Islamic shaped crescent that just happens to point to Mecca. You could not come up with a more blatant depiction of al Qaeda victory.

This is what the Park Service is claiming as an innocent explanation: that they are depicting a circle-breaking crescent-creating action that logically can only be attributed to the terrorists. Are they really too dumb to figure out what that means?

Take action

How about a couple hundred of us call up the Memorial Project (814 443-4557) and ask them just who is being depicted as “breaking the circle”? If they try to say “Flight 93 broke it,” we can ask for clarification. Do they really mean to include our forty heroes amongst those who broke the peace?

They might even admit that it can only be the terrorists who are depicted as turning the circle into a crescent, and they might even realize: “oops.”

Maybe we should send a few emails as well, and cc the local press, who might be prompted to ask Memorial Project spokesmen how they are answering our pointed questions. (Click link for addressed email form. Feel free to cut and paste text from above. Sincerely, your name and state.)

The circle is a Christian symbol

In addition to being a secular symbol of harmony, the circle is also a Christian symbol, as referenced in the country-gospel line: “may the circle be unbroken, bye and bye, Lord bye and bye.” (Hat tip, No Compromise.)

The origin of the circle as a Christian symbol is the rising sun, which is today seen as the primary reason why many Christian churches conduct their liturgies facing east. (For some early churches, this was also the direction to Jerusalem.)

As Pope Benedict explained (back when he was Cardinal Ratzinger):

The cosmic symbol of the rising sun expresses the universality of God above all particular places and yet maintains the concreteness of Divine Revelation.

The circle and cross are seen together in the Celtic cross, thought to have been introduced to Ireland by Saint Patrick in the 5th century:

Nobody knows exactly what Saint Patrick had in mind, but the circle is thought to represent the sun.

Given that architect Paul Murdoch clearly has religious symbolism in mind (the repeated Mecca orientations in his design prove that), it is reasonable to infer that he is aware that the circle is a Christian symbol, and that the circle remaining unbroken is a Christian ideal.

Thus the Islamic victory symbolized in the crescent memorial is not just over the secular west, but in particular signifies the smashing of Christianity, and the triumph of Islam in its stead.

Just the fact that the crescent design CAN be interpreted in these ways is enough to make the design inappropriate, but these are not just POSSIBLE interpretations. They are the only logical interpretations. The breaking of the circle can only be attributed to the terrorists.

The drag lines were removed because they did not fit with Paul Murdoch’s circle-breaking, crescent-creating theme

Last week’s blogburst explained why architect Paul Murdoch was determined to get rid of the gigantic strip-mining derricks that were just up the slope from the impact crater. They were infidel artifacts, obstructing the view towards Mecca from within Murdoch’s giant Mecca pointing crescent:

Can’t have that majestic American flag interrupting the view towards Mecca!

Amazingly, the Park Service’s official explanation for the removal of the drag lines is that they don’t fit with Paul Murdoch’s circle-breaking theme:

National Park Service Deputy General Superintendent Keith Newlin said the National Park Service has a tendency to preserve landscapes and key elements of memorial sites if it will help people understand what happened there. The draglines weren’t in the airplane’s flight path, though they have been used as a reference point to explain the plane’s trajectory to first-time visitors.“The draglines didn’t contribute to the overall understanding of Flight 93,” he said. “We heard comments that we should keep one as a flagpole, but when we weighed everything, we decided against it.”

The pair of giant cranes didn’t mark the flight path? They marked its termination! To everybody in the area, these WERE the marker: “Up by the drag lines!”

Where did Newlin ever get the idea that the direction of the flight path somehow trumps the point of impact? He got it from Paul Murdoch, whose design is all about orientations. He positions his circle just right so that a “break” at the point where the flight path crosses the circle (together with another break 2/3rds of the way around the circle) will create the giant Mecca oriented crescent.

Now here we have Newlin asserting that it isn’t the crash site that matters, but these Mecca orienting angles!

For the memorialization of OUR heroes, the drag lines were an ideal marker: an actual manifestation of the dramatic achievements of ordinary citizens, saluting the towering achievement of the citizens of Flight 93.

The only “understanding” they didn’t fit was the narrative of Islamic victory that architect Paul Murdoch is trying to impose, where our American circle gets supplanted by a giant Islamic crescent.

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Tom Burnett Sr. entered the lion’s den on Saturday to oppose the crescent memorial to Flight 93 (now called a broken circle). An excerpt from the beginning of the Somerset Daily American‘s banner headline story about division amongst the families:

“Tom Burnett Jr. led the effort to take the plane back,” his father said. “When I was on the design jury, I saw the red crescent of embrace and realized it was an obvious and blatant symbol of Islam. It does not properly honor our people — those Flight 93 heroes. I think it’s a travesty that it’s moved along so fast.” He called for an investigation into the design. When he has brought up his concerns, some of the task force and advisory commission members have dismissed him, he said. “This is a cataclysmic mistake,” he said. “I’m going to save you from yourselves. I’d like to ask for an unbiased, transparent, honest investigation. This is just a terrible, terrible mistake. I’m asking every American — we must stop this mistake. This panel doesn’t own the design, I don’t own it, Pennsylvania doesn’t own it, all of America and all of the world own it.” He said he is also tired of the controversy, but that they must honor the heroes properly. It will reverberate in history. “I’m not going to stop fighting this thing, it is very, very bad,” Burnett said. “Wake up. Get your heads out of the sand.”

Other Flight 93 family members roared back. What is usually a three hour quarterly meeting of the Memorial Project stretched to five hours as over twenty people signed up to speak on both sides. One side wants scrutiny. The other is desperate to avoid it. The pattern at the meeting was simple and consistent. Critics of the crescent design pointed out damning facts and called for independent investigation. Defenders of the broken circle insisted that there is nothing to investigate, and cried out for critics of the design to stop putting them through this agony. If the claims of the critics are not accurate, independent investigation would end the agony. If the crescent/broken-circle does not actually point within two degrees of Mecca, then put this explosive claim to rest by showing where the crescent does point. If there are not actually to be 44 inscribed translucent blocks emplaced along the flight path (matching the number of passengers, crew, and terrorists), it is a simple matter of opening up the design drawings and counting. If the defenders of the crescent had truth on their side, they would be eager to have it exposed. Unfortunately for them, the giant crescent does point to Mecca, and somehow they don’t want the public to know it. Todd Beamer’s father is on the side of the crescent? The highest profile defender of the crescent design was Mr. David Beamer, whose son Todd issued the “Let’s roll” signal to re-take Flight 93. Mr. Beamer, beloved by conservatives for his opposition to Congressman Murtha, had not previously taken a public position on the crescent design. He has apparently gotten involved in fundraising for the memorial, and announced at the meeting that he has undertaken two months of due diligence, looking into criticisms of the design. Listeners expected Mr. Beamer to continue with a report on his fact-checking efforts, but he did not have a single word to say about any of the claims that Mr. Rawls and Mr. Burnett have put forward, launching instead into an extended condemnation of Alec Rawls for his “obsessive” persistence. If he found that the giant crescent does not point to Mecca, surely he would have said so. Similarly for the terrorist memorializing block count, or the placement of the 9/11 date in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. What better way to be rid of this dastardly Rawls fellow than to expose his claims as a fraud? Mr. Beamer’s silence about what he found speaks volumes, and not just about the crescent design. Who could fact check these claims and then be silent about his findings? Don’t look at the design drawings! Every defender of the crescent had his own scheme of evasion and obfuscation. Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93, took Alec Rawls to task for holding up a 2005 graphic of the top of the Tower of Voices, where an Islamic shaped crescent soars in the sky above the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes. This old graphic should not be taken as indicative of the current design Mr. White suggested, as the design has evolving for three years now. Yet the exact same graphic was brought to the meeting by the Memorial Project itself, and was on display right outside the courtroom where the meeting was held. That’s going to make some great video, as will one particularly scurrilous attack on Mr. Burnett, and the victim card played by Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley. Several videographers will be sending raw footage, which Alec will start putting together when he returns to California next week. Big enough to check the facts yet? How big does the conflict have to get before some major media outlet is willing to do their jobs and actually check the facts for themselves? David Dunbar and Brad Reagan of Popular Mechanics were willing to fact-check the “9/11 truth” morons, finding that most of their evidence is deliberately taken out of context, and that none of their claims stand up to the least bit of scrutiny. Come on PM. If we are a bunch of frauds then we are just as much in need of debunking. We’ve even got Flight 93 family members at loggerheads and crying out for relief. What are you waiting for? (A handy dandy list of damning facts to check here.) To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Thanks to Muslims Against Sharia for putting together a short video on the re-hijacking of Flight 93:

The voice at the beginning is flight attendant CeeCee Lyles.

CeeCee’s family has really struggled without her. One of the many stories that clearly illustrate how much one life matters. (Serious tear-jerker warning.)

Check out The Strata-Sphere

Last week’s blogburst asked those hero bloggers who forced the redesign of the crescent memorial back in 2005 to please notice that the giant Mecca-oriented crescent is still there.

Many thanks to AJ Strata for taking another look, and writing a long post on the fundamentally unchanged memorial. It looks like he might keep after this too, since he gives the memorial another mention amidst his debunking of recent claims that Obama’s birth certificate scan shows signs of Photoshopping.

If you aren’t familiar with The Strata-Sphere, it is second to none as a source for terror war news and analysis.

The Pennsylvania press reports our “who broke the circle?” email campaign, and covers up the Park Service’s refusal to answer

Since the memorial design is still being described as a broken circle, and since the unbroken part of the circle (the crescent) remains completely unchanged, our email campaign demanded to know “WHO is being depicted as breaking the circle?”

It can only be the terrorists. The circle is a symbol of peace, and it was the terrorists who broke the peace on 9/11. So the design shows the terrorists breaking our peaceful circle and turning it into a giant Islamic shaped crescent. A clearer depiction of al Qaeda victory is hard to imagine.

The Memorial Project and the Park Service sent evasive replies to the hundred or so emails they received, never answering the question posed, but the fact that they issued a mass response made the email campaign news. How did the Pennsylvania press cover it? With a cover up.

Reporter Kecia Bal mentions our “who broke the circle?” subject line, but never reports the substance our letter: that the circle can only have been broken by the terrorists, who then succeed in turning it into a giant (Islamic shaped) crescent.

Instead, Kecia quotes an emailer admitting that “it was a cut-and-paste kind of thing,” as if they might not even have understood the content, which remains a mystery to Kecia’s readers. She does not even let her readers know that the official government response failed to answer the question.

Why is the local media covering this up? Because the entire Memorial Project, including both advisory boards, was appointed by the Somerset County Board of Supervisors. As a result, it is stacked with local eminences, all of whom are by now deeply implicated in the two and a half year cover up. Kecia thinks she is doing these local eminences a favor by trying to make this story go away, but she is not.

The further that architect Paul Murdoch’s terrorist memorializing plot proceeds, the bigger the scandal. All of these local folks could still be heroes by stepping up and tackling the hijacker. Continuing to block for him instead is the worst thing they can do, not just for the country, but for themselves. We are trying to haul these people out of a burning building and they are tearing their fingernails out on the doorjambs. Crazy.

The August 2nd Memorial Project meeting

If you are within weekend traveling distance, please consider joining Tom Burnett Sr. in Somerset PA on August 2nd. If you get there early enough for the Memorial Project’s public meeting (10AM-1PM) you can sign up to speak. We will rally in the afternoon on Saturday, and visit the crash-site Sunday.

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

“They had some forewarning and they chose to take action.” The defenders of the crescent also have forewarning, and are trying to cover it up.

Gordon Felt, president of the Flight 93 family group that supports the crescent shaped memorial, offered a nice summary statement of the heroism of Flight 93:

They had some forewarning and they chose to take action.

“It’s that citizen soldier, heroism message,” he said “that we want to get out and memorialize their actions.”

Mr. Felt also has forewarning of an enemy plot, but he and the other defenders of the crescent design are choosing not to act. They are displaying a perfect anti-spirit of Flight 93.

According to Flight 93 Advisory Commission member Tim Baird, they all know that all of our basic claims about the crescent design are accurate: the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent; the 44 translucent blocks that are to be placed along the flight path, etcetera. Yet they and their allies in the press are doing everything in their power to keep the public from knowing what they know.

Example 1: PA paper reports Mecca orientation controversy, omits its own verification of the Mecca orientation of the crescent.

In last week’s anniversary coverage of the 9/11 attacks, the Johnstown Tribune Democrat noted the controversy over the orientation of the crescent. We say it points to Mecca. The Park Service denies it:

The project also has been dogged by complaints spearheaded by California author Alec Rawls that the memorial points to Mecca and is a veiled tribute to the Islamic terrorists – a claim family members and developers maintain has been investigated and refuted.

What reporter Kirk Swauger fails to mention is that he himself fact-checked the Mecca-orientation claim last year, and published his findings:

Rawls maintains that the midpoint between the tips of the crescent points almost precisely toward “qibla,” the direction to Mecca, which Muslims are supposed to face for prayer.His 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.

This is the only instance in three years now where any news organization has ever published any fact-checking of our easy to fact check claims about the memorial design. Alec has several times emailed Kirk’s published confirmation of the Mecca-orientation to every newsdesk in Pennsylvania and to every reporter covering the memorial story. They ALL know about it. Yet even Kirk continues to present the Mecca orientation claim as a “he said, she said” conflict, without letting his readers know that he has verified the Mecca-orientation for himself (and this isn’t the first time he has made this omission).

If Mr. Swauger really wanted everyone to forget his confirmation of the Mecca-orientation, he could just avoid any mention of the orientation of the crescent at all. Alec’s best guess is that Kirk is being held back by Tribune Democrat editor Chip Minemyer, who has tried to sweep the memorial controversy under the rug from day one, but the reporters are also neck deep. Several have suggested that to investigate and report on the accuracy of our claims would be taking sides. Of course that phony “scruple” would disappear in a second if the facts showed our criticisms to be bogus.

Example 2: Gordon Felt himself misled the public about the 44 blocks.

The Crescent of Embrace design, now called the (broken) Circle of Embrace, calls for a total of 44 inscribed translucent memorial blocks to be placed along the flight path. (There were forty passengers and crew on Flight 93 and four terrorists.)

In trying to get this information out to the public, we need to be brief, so “44 inscribed translucent memorial blocks” sometimes gets shortened to “44 glass blocks,” or “44 blocks.” Asked last spring about the 44 blocks, Gordon Felt declared it a lie:

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.”

But he follows this denial with a footnote, indicating that he knows full well that there will be 44 memorial blocks:

Felt said the names of the passengers and crew will be placed on the memorial, but no final decision has been made on how they would be displayed or on what material.

In other words, he is nit-picking over our occasional description of the blocks as “glass blocks,” when they might not all be technically made of glass.

As Alec’s original report to the Memorial Project made clear, 43 of the blocks are described in the design drawings as “polished, translucent white marble”:

Click pic for larger image.

The lower section of wall, on the left, contains forty of the “translucent white marble” blocks or panels (backlit at night), inscribed with the names of the forty heroes. The upper section of wall, on the right, contains three more blocks, inscribed with the 9/11 date.

That upper section of wall, by the way, is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, placing it in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. Thus the date goes to the Islamic star. The date goes to the terrorists.

Here is the 44th block on the flight path. It marks the upper crescent tip, where according to the Park Service’s own website, the flight path symbolically breaks our (Christian) circle, turning it into the giant (Mecca oriented) crescent. A clearer depiction of al Qaeda victory is hard to imagine, and it all comes together right here:

At the end of the Entry Portal Walkway (after the walkway symbolically “breaks” the towering Entry Portal Walls) sits a large “glass memorial plaque” that dedicates the entire site.

This 44th translucent block on the flight path marks the spot where the terrorists symbolically broke our harmonious circle and turned it into a giant Islamic shaped crescent. To be inscribed: “A field of honor forever.”

Gordon Felt knows ALL of this, and is trying to keep the public from knowing. It’s as if someone on Flight 93, hearing from the ground that airplanes had crashed into the Trade Towers, insisted to the other passengers that NO airplanes had crashed into the Trade Towers.

Apparently grief has made these people crazy. They have forewarning, and are struggling with all their might to keep others from being forewarned as well.

9/11 Date To Be Placed As Star On Crescent And Star Flag

Not all of us can make it to Pennsylvania next week to help Tom Burnett Sr. stop the re-hijacking of Flight 93, but if anyone needs another reason to try…

The crescent memorial to Flight 93 will have the 9/11 date inscribed on a separate section of Memorial Wall that is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag.

Check it out. As can be seen on our blogburst logo, there will be a copse of trees that sits roughly between the tips of the giant crescent (roughly in the position of the star on a crescent and star flag). That is the Sacred Ground Plaza, which sits just above the crash site. Inside the Sacred Ground Plaza is a two part Memorial Wall that follows the flight path down to the point of impact:

Elevation view of Memorial Wall. (Click picture for larger image. Source document here.)

The lower section of Memorial Wall (on the left) contains forty “translucent marble” blocks, inscribed with the names of the 40 murdered heroes (including Tom Burnett Jr.)

Next there is a gap marked “trail,” then the separate upper section of Memorial Wall has three more translucent blocks, inscribed with the 9/11 date. (There is one more translucent block on the flight path: the huge glass block that dedicates the entire site. It sits at the upper crescent tip, at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. That bring the glass block count to 44, equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists.)

The path that divides the wall into two parts can be seen on the Crescent of Embrace site plan:

Purple: the path that divides the Memorial Wall into separate upper and lower sections. Aqua: the separate upper section of Memorial Wall, inscribed with the 9/11 date. Red arrow: the centerline of the giant crescent (points to Mecca).

Just by looking, you can see that the upper section of section of Memorial Wall is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, placing it in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. (Click picture for larger image.)

The date goes to the star on the Islamic flag. The date goes to the terrorists.

Just one of many Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the planned memorial, and all of it remains completely intact in the Circle of Embrace redesign, which only disguises the giant crescent with a few irrelevant trees.

August 2nd

At about 1PM (when the Memorial Project meeting lets out) Mr. Burnett and Alec Rawls will host a press conference and a rally outside the Somerset County Courthouse (where the meeting will be held).

Saturday evening we will have dinner someplace that can be flexible about our numbers (probably a big buffet style restaurant). Sunday morning we will visit the crash site. (Alec is making arrangements with the Park Service now, in case we get a large turn out.)

The only reason to try to make it to the meeting itself (10AM-1PM) is if you want to sign up to speak during the public comment period at the end. Otherwise the meetings are pretty dreary.

The larger purpose is to make a statement to the national news outfits that Mr. Burnett’s presence will likely bring. (Fox news gave Mr. Burnett some nice coverage a couple of months ago.) A substantial rally would help that cause, hard as that will be to achieve out in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania.

Somerset is a long way to go to make a statement, but the crash site is well worth visiting in its own right. If you’ve been thinking of making the trip, the weekend of August 2nd would be the time. It is a chance not just to pay a visit, but to in some small way honor the heroes of Flight 93 by following their footsteps and tackling our own hijacker.

http://errortheory.blogspot.com

Tom Burnett Senior: “We have an Islamist design here that can’t go forward, please.”

Powerful video of Tom Burnett Senior and Alec Rawls at the August 2nd Memorial project meeting. The clip below is Part 1 of Alec’s new video exposé, starting with Mr. Burnett ‘s appeal to the American people to please help him stop the Park Service from planting a giant Islamic shaped crescent atop his son’s grave.

Part one: it points to Mecca. Clip covers the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, the phony redesign, and the crescent-topped minaret. Lots of unaired news video and animated graphics, bookended with the coolest spaghetti western music ever.

A terror war battle that we can still win, despite a president-elect who does not want to fight

Rational people still want to defeat the Islamofascist enemy, but half of the electorate will now get its way in pretending that there is no enemy. Exposing and stopping the terrorist Memorial to flight 93 is a chance for the rest of us to still achieve victory, and on multiple fronts at once. Not only can we foil an enemy plot, but we can at the same time expose the willful blindness of those peace-at-any-cost countrymen who are engaged in blatant cover-up of the most damning facts about the crescent design.

These are the two battles we need to win. We have to expose and stop the deceptive agents of Islamic conquest, and we have to expose and stop the peacenik cover-up of every enemy threat.

We also need to stop the re-hijacking of Flight 93 for its own sake. Just listen to Mr. Burnett’s insistence on a proper memorial for his son Tom and the other heroes. Yes, the battle over the memorial is only symbolic, but as our Democrat-controlled media just proved by delivering Obama to the presidency, it is the information war that ultimately determines everything.

To those conservatives who have been staying away from the memorial controversy, please reconsider. All of our claims about the Memorial are easy to verify. This is a real attack on our country, and in the age of Obama, it is a rare battle that we are still in a position to win. The father of one of America’s greatest heroes is pleading for your help, but he is also offering tremendous help, if you will only hear him out.

(To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.)

Mother of Flight 93 hero calls for “a full and transparent review” of the crescent-shaped memorial

For two years, Tom Burnett Sr. has been speaking out against the crescent-shaped memorial to Flight 93. This week Beverly Burnett (mother of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Jr.) stepped into the public eye to support her husband, and to make her own appeal for a full investigation:

Today, I am adding my voice for a full and transparent review of the National Park Service and Flight 93 design selection process that produced Crescent of Embrace. Does it have Islamic symbols or doesn’t it? Let’s settle this once and for all.Why do you think Tom Sr. opposed this design? It is pretty simple; Tom Sr. saw the Islamic symbols and knew those symbols did not belong at the crash site of Flight 93.

Tom Burnett Sr. traveled to Pennsylvania last August to attend the Task Force Meeting to voice his opposition to the memorial design. A Family Board member as well as a commissioner accused Tom Sr. being “just like the Islamic terrorists” that killed our son.

Why didn’t someone speak up and defend Tom Sr.’s right to voice his opinion?

Thanks to The Somerset Daily American for publishing Mrs. Burnett’s complete statement, which she also entered into the record of the most recent Memorial Project meeting. Read the whole thing.

Two other mentions of the memorial controversy in the local PA press this week

In a letter to the editor, a local woman echoed Mrs. Burnett’s sentiment in favor of preserving the site as it is, instead of demolishing the highly regarded Temporary Memorial and radically transforming the landscape, as the Memorial Project intends.

At present the Temporary Memorial looks down over the “field of honor.” Because this temporary memorial is located roughly in the center of the planned half-mile wide crescent, it will be eliminated. Visitors who stand at the location of the Temporary Memorial will no longer look out over the original landscape, but will instead see the crash-site framed between the pincer tips of the giant Islamic-shaped crescent.

They call the crescent a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11 (originally called the Crescent of Embrace) remains completely unchanged.

Nice words from a local columnist, but no fact-checking

In the area’s second local paper, The Johnstown Tribune-Democrat, columnist Ralph Couey offers a very nice tribute to the heroes of Flight 93 in which he mentions Mr. Burnett’s opposition to the planned memorial. Unfortunately, Mr. Couey goes on to describes Mr. Burnett’s opposition as “hopeless intransigence,” and expresses his optimism that it can be gotten past.

Given that newspapers are supposed to get to the truth, one would hope that those who gain the privilege of this public platform would bother to check the facts. If Mr. Burnett is correct in his warnings about Islamic symbolism, then finding a way to get past these objections is like finding a way to sneak a hijacker past gate security. It is a bad thing, not a good thing.

The petition that Mr. Burnett sponsored along with our blogburst group lists four damning facts about the approved design that can all be verified in a matter of minutes. Can Mr. Couey check just one: that a person standing between the tips of the giant crescent and facing into the center of the crescent will be facing within 2° of Mecca?

The Muslim prayer direction in this animation (qibla) is from the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com. (If you have trouble getting their calculator to work–your Java has to be configured correctly–there is another Mecca direction calculator at QiblaLocator.com.)

This Mecca-orientation makes the giant crescent a mihrab, the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. Does Mr. Couey really want to see the world’s largest mosque planted on the Flight 93 crash site? It is fine to speak highly of the heroes of Flight 93, but it would be a lot more meaningful if he would honor the Burnett’s urgent appeal for fact-checking by stepping over to a globe and checking this one simple factual claim.

Mr. Couey is not the only one who wants the crescent controversy to go away without caring to know the truth. Sorry, but that is insufficient. Planting a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the crash-site will dishonor the heroes of Flight 93, and it fails to follow their example. They didn’t just have good intentions. They got the job done, and we have to get the job done too. We can’t be asleep at the wheel while an al Qaeda sympathizing architect hijacks our memorial.

What? Is it just too outlandish to think that the enemy might try to hijack one of our memorials? The same way that it is just too outlandish to think that the enemy might dare to hijack our commercial airliners? Do these people even know what they are memorializing?

But they CAN wake up. All they have to do is actually check the facts. Then they will know. So please Mr. Couey, take the time to check a few facts, then write a second column, reporting your findings. Somebody out there in Somerset needs to start telling the truth. It might as well be you.

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Frontpage Magazine covers the memorial debacle

FrontPage managing editor Jamie Glazov interviews Alec Rawls in this week’s FrontPage Interview.

Rawls takes the opportunity to lay out the basic facts for a new set of readers:

1. That the giant crescent (originally called the Crescent of Embrace) points to Mecca.

2. That this giant Mecca oriented crescent is STILL THERE in the Circle of Embrace redesign (explicitly described as a broken circle, just as the Crescent of Embrace was).

Punch line:

It’s like gate security catching a terrorist with a bomb and telling him to go back outside and see if he can hide it better the second time. All [architect Paul Murdoch] did was add some completely irrelevant disguise.

Please give FrontPage a visit, and if you haven’t bookmarked them already, the site is well worth your time.

Frontpage founder David Horowitz has been exposing the far left’s takeover of the Democrat mainstream since the 1980′s, and since 2001 has extended his Discover the Networks approach to our Islamofascist enemies. If you are drawn to the sound of the guns, FrontPage is on the frontlines of both the culture-war and terror-war battles for accurate information.

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Senator Specter’s payoff for betraying his party: betrayal of his state

We now know one of the payoffs that Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter received for being one of three Republican Senators who allowed President Obama’s trillion-dollar Spendulus bill to become law. WPXI in Pittsburgh reports that Specter has a 5.5 million dollar earmark for the crescent-shaped Flight 93 memorial in the omnibus spending bill just passed by the Senate.

Much as the people of Pennsylvania want to see a fitting memorial built, they yanked support for the crescent design in August 2007 after Tom Burnett Sr., father of Flight 93 hero Tom Jr., started warning the country that the memorial design is STILL packed to the gills with Islamic symbolism. Since that time the Memorial Project has hardly raised a dime, and a September 2007 interview with State Senator Jane Orie, who sponsors the Hearts of Steel memorial fund, makes clear that concerns about Islamic symbolism predominate. Here is her exchange with Pittsburgh talk-radio host Fred Honsberger:

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.”

Orie is talking here about the so-called “redesign.” The people of Pennsylvania know that the giant crescent, which the redesign was supposed to remove, is still there. The Park Service calls it “Circle of Embrace” now, but the circle is still broken, and the unbroken part of the circle——what is symbolically left standing in the wake of 9/11——remains exactly as it was in the original Crescent of Embrace (pictured above). Architect Paul Murdoch’s design is still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.

Pennsylvanians have voted with their pocketbooks to reject this memorial to the terrorists, but Arlen Specter is determined to cram it down their throats anyway, the same way he helped Obama cram a trillion dollars of socialist pork down America’s throat.

Specter knows better than any other politician not just that the giant Islamic-shaped crescent is still there, but that it points to Mecca

Our group was actually very hopeful back in 2007 that Senator Specter might put and end to the memorial debacle. After Mr. Burnett’s public appeal, Specter’s office wanted a briefing on the Islamic symbolism that we have found in the crescent design. One of our most knowledgeable people then spent 45 minutes with Stan Caldwell, Executive Director of Senator Specter’s Pittsburgh office, explaining in detail the Islamic and terrorist memorializing symbolism.

Caldwell had no trouble understanding our graphical proof that the giant crescent points almost exactly at Mecca:

A person standing between the tips of the Crescent of Embrace and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow) will be facing within two degrees of the Muslim prayer direction (qibla), which is calculated as the great circle direction to Mecca. (Green qibla graphic produced by the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com. Another calculator is available at QiblaLocator.com.)

Caldwell also had no trouble understanding that the giant crescent is still there. All the redesign did was place an extra arc of trees out behind the mouth of the crescent, an arc of trees that according to the Park Service’s own website explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle:

Animation starts with the bare naked Crescent of Embrace. The re-colored Circle of Embrace site plan is superimposed on top, then everything but the changes are removed. The only change is extra arc of trees (flashing) that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. Every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact.

Our man also explained the significance of the Mecca orientation: that it turns the giant Islamic-shaped crescent into a mihrab (the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built). The planned memorial is actually the world’s largest mosque, and Arlen Specter’s office is fully aware of it.

Do Specter and Caldwell have some explanation? The press will never ask, but we can:

DC Phone: 202-224-4254DC Fax: 202-228-1229

Another Washington Post cover-up

Dan Eggen reports how Families of Flight 93 (an adjunct to the Memorial Project, representing only those families who are backing the crescent design) have been in Washington seeking federal money. He includes no mention of WHY the private fundraising effort has failed. But State Senator Orie’s discussion of her fundraising difficulties is not hard to find. Any reporter doing a story on the memorial’s fundraising problems would presumably start here:

The whole first page of search results is our blogburst post about Orie. (“Fundraising difficulties” yields the same result.)

Either Dan Eggen is completely incompetent, or the Post is taking sides, refusing to report the facts that don’t support the terrorist memorializing side.

Perhaps ombudsman Andrew Alexander should weigh in on this. The Post has NEVER reported on Mr. Burnett’s long battle to stop the Park Service from planting a giant Islamic-shaped crescent atop his son’s grave. Mr. Burnett left a long comment on Dan Eggen’s article which Eggen simply ignored, along with private offers to talk.

So which is it Mr. Alexander? Is the Post incompetently ignorant of a controversy that has raged for years, or is it intentionally suppressing the facts about the giant Mecca-oriented crescent?

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

9/11 date to be placed as star on crescent and star flag

Not all of us can make it to Pennsylvania next week to help Tom Burnett Sr. stop the re-hijacking of Flight 93, but if anyone needs another reason to try…

The crescent memorial to Flight 93 will have the 9/11 date inscribed on a separate section of Memorial Wall that is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag.

Check it out. As can be seen on our blogburst logo, there will be a copse of trees that sits roughly between the tips of the giant crescent (roughly in the position of the star on a crescent and star flag). That is the Sacred Ground Plaza, which sits just above the crash site. Inside the Sacred Ground Plaza is a two part Memorial Wall that follows the flight path down to the point of impact:

Elevation view of Memorial Wall. (Click picture for larger image. Source document here.)

The lower section of Memorial Wall (on the left) contains forty “translucent marble” blocks, inscribed with the names of the 40 murdered heroes (including Tom Burnett Jr.)

Next there is a gap marked “trail,” then the separate upper section of Memorial Wall has three more translucent blocks, inscribed with the 9/11 date. (There is one more translucent block on the flight path: the huge glass block that dedicates the entire site. It sits at the upper crescent tip, at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. That bring the glass block count to 44, equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists.)

The path that divides the wall into two parts can be seen on the Crescent of Embrace site plan:

Purple: the path that divides the Memorial Wall into separate upper and lower sections. Aqua: the separate upper section of Memorial Wall, inscribed with the 9/11 date. Red arrow: the centerline of the giant crescent (points to Mecca).

Just by looking, you can see that the upper section of section of Memorial Wall is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, placing it in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. (Click picture for larger image.)

The date goes to the star on the Islamic flag. The date goes to the terrorists.

Just one of many Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the planned memorial, and all of it remains completely intact in the Circle of Embrace redesign, which only disguises the giant crescent with a few irrelevant trees.

August 2nd

At about 1PM (when the Memorial Project meeting lets out) Mr. Burnett and Alec Rawls will host a press conference and a rally outside the Somerset County Courthouse (where the meeting will be held).

Saturday evening we will have dinner someplace that can be flexible about our numbers (probably a big buffet style restaurant). Sunday morning we will visit the crash site. (Alec is making arrangements with the Park Service now, in case we get a large turn out.)

The only reason to try to make it to the meeting itself (10AM-1PM) is if you want to sign up to speak during the public comment period at the end. Otherwise the meetings are pretty dreary.

The larger purpose is to make a statement to the national news outfits that Mr. Burnett’s presence will likely bring. (Fox news gave Mr. Burnett some nice coverage a couple of months ago.) A substantial rally would help that cause, hard as that will be to achieve out in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania.

Somerset is a long way to go to make a statement, but the crash site is well worth visiting in its own right. If you’ve been thinking of making the trip, the weekend of August 2nd would be the time. It is a chance not just to pay a visit, but to in some small way honor the heroes of Flight 93 by following their footsteps and tackling our own hijacker.

Park Service refuses to say who broke the circle

The planned Flight 93 memorial is described as a circle “broken in two places,” with the unbroken part forming a giant Mecca-oriented crescent (originally called the Crescent of Embrace).

Since last week, the Park Service has been inundated with hundreds of emails, demanding to know WHO is being depicted as breaking the circle.

It can only be the terrorists. The circle is a symbol of peace, and only the terrorists can be charged with breaking the peace on 9/11.

Thus the planned memorial shows the terrorists breaking our peaceful circle and turning it into a giant Mecca oriented crescent (which remains completely intact in the so-called redesign). In other words, it’s one giant: “ALLAHU AKBAR!” (heard on Flight 93′s flight recorder as the doomed flight careened towards the ground).

Superintendent Hanley’s reply

Our emailers are getting a lengthy response from Memorial Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley that fails to address the question of who broke the circle. She mentions the question, then heads off in another direction:

You also had questions about “who broke the circle.” The natural topography of the site upon which the memorial sits is in the shape of a bowl, or a circle. This “circle of embrace” follows the geography, and points your attention down to the Sacred Ground, the crash site where the 40 heroes of Flight 93 gave their lives combating the terrorists. The trees surrounding this “circle of embrace” are missing, or broken, in two places; first, where the flight path of the plane came overhead (which is the location of the planned memorial overlook and visitor center) and second, where the plane crashed at the Sacred Ground (depicted by a ceremonial gate and pathway into the Sacred Ground).

No, the topography is NOT a bowl. The upper arm of the crescent starts 100 vertical feet above the crash site while the lower arm circles 50 vertical feet below the crash site. Beyond misrepresenting the topography, all Hanley does is admit that the circle is broken at the point where the flight path crosses it, without ever addressing the simple question of WHO is being depicted as breaking the circle?

This circle-breaking theme is the Park Service’s OWN explanation for the crescent design (passed on from architect Paul Murdoch), and they refuse to even THINK about what it means.

Park Service Director Mary Bomar is even more oblivious

Director Bomar also received our emails. The response she is sending out does not even acknowledge the question of who breaks the circle:

Thank you for your e mail of June 24, 2008, concerning the Flight 93 National Memorial. The National Park Service (NPS) is aware of these concerns, and took steps in 2005 to investigate this issue. Please be assured that we are all committed to having a national memorial that conveys the full honor due to the heroes of Flight 93, not to the terrorists. Our priority now is to move forward with the building of the memorial, and to continue to commemorate those heroes who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.You may want to visit the park’s website for more in-depth information

at:

http://www.nps.gov/flni.

Mary A. Bomar, Director, National Park Service

Actually it was in 2006 that the office of Mary Bomar herself (then a regional director of the Park Service)”took steps,” utterly fraudulent steps, “to investigate this issue.”

The Park Service’s own consulting expert, a professor of Sharia law at Indiana University named Kevin Jaques, admitted that the giant Mecca-oriented crescent is similar to the Mecca-direction indicator (called a mihrab) around which every mosque is built, but he assured the Park Service that there was no need to worry because no one has ever seen a mihrab anywhere near this BIG before:

Thirdly, most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at [sic] the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience. Again, just because it is similar does not make it the same.

This is the information that Mary Bomar had in her hands TWO YEARS AGO: a blatantly dishonest excuse for not being concerned about what was admitted to be the geometric equivalent of the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built, only bigger than any ever seen before by a factor of a hundred. “Don’t worry. It might be recognizable as a mihrab to people on jetliners like Flight 93 flying overhead, but from the ground? Pshaw!”

Every iota of the Mary Bomar’s phony “investigation” was just as blatantly fraudulent. (Extended expose here.)

Another letter?

We can keep on dumping emails on the Memorial Project if we want. Our petition to stop the memorial asks if signatories want to join an email list for doing things like forwarding emails to targeted individuals. Most are clicking “yes,” and the present campaign has as yet only tapped the first few thousand signatories.

Perhaps it is time for another letter, pointing out that:

Misrepresenting the topography of the crash site to be a bowl does nothing to answer the question of WHO BROKE THE CIRCLE. (Press people can read about the non-answers from Superintendent Hanley and Director Bomar here.)

Go ahead if you have a mind to. (Email link here.)

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Why the drag lines were removed from the Flight 93 crash site

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.

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Friday, May 08, 2009

Saudi authorities contradict U.S. Park Service: mihrabs do NOT have to point exactly at Mecca

A Muslim consultant told the Park Service in 2006 that the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 cannot be seen as a mihrab (the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built), because the giant Islamic-shaped crescent does not point exactly at Mecca:

Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees.

Saudi religious authorities recently had to address this question when observers noted that some 200 mosques in Mecca itself do not point directly at the Kaaba (the “Sacred Mosque” that all Muslims are supposed to face for prayer). Meccans who worried that their prayers might not count were assured by the Islamic Affairs Ministry that “it does not affect the prayers.”

The necessity for such a rule is obvious. Throughout most of Islam’s 1400 year history, Muslims who were any significant distance from Mecca had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. Thus it became established religious principle that what matters is intent. It is the mind of the believer that needs to face directly towards the Kaaba, and directly towards God. This principle applies in Mecca the same as anywhere else.

All the great mosques of the ancient world point well away from Mecca

Older mosques often point 10, 20, 30 or more degrees away from Mecca. The most famous mihrab in the world, the mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain, points more than 45° off of Mecca:

The Cordoba mihrab points south, while Mecca is east-southeast of Spain.

In contrast, the Crescent of Embrace points a mere 1.8° north of Mecca, ± 0.1°, which is highly accurate by Islamic standards.

The Muslim consultant who lied to the Park Service was a classmate of architect Paul Murdoch

Who told the Park Service that a mihrab has to point exactly at Mecca to be legitimate? It was Nasser Rabbat, a professor of Islamic architecture at MIT and an expert in the history of mosque design. No one knows better than Professor Rabbat that mihrab orientation does NOT have to be exact.

There is only one reason why Rabbat would lie to the Park Service about such a basic fact. He recognizes that the giant Mecca-oriented crescent at the heart of the Flight 93 memorial IS a legitimate mihrab, and he wants this al Qaeda sympathizing plot to succeed.

A look at Rabbat’s background shows that he was a classmate of Crescent of Embrace architect Paul Murdoch, both getting masters degrees in architecture from UCLA in 1984 and both doing their masters work on Middle Easter subjects. (Murdoch wrote a “masters project” titled: “A museum for Haifa, Israel.” Rabbat wrote a master thesis on house design in Cairo and Damascus.)

This prior connection between Murdoch and Rabbat raises the possibility that Murdoch himself was able to orchestrate the Park Service investigation into warnings about his own design. By the same token, having the two classmates both show up in the Flight 93 memorial raises the possibility that Rabbat was Murdoch’s source of expertise on how to incorporate the full complement of typical mosque features into his Crescent design. (For the dozen typical mosque features, see Crescent of Embrace, chapter 5.)

The Crescent of Embrace also includes an exact Mecca-orientation

While exact orientation on Mecca is not a traditional requirement, modern mosque designers do generally employ now-available techniques for orienting their mihrabs more precisely on Mecca than was previously possible. Murdoch satisfies this modern norm (and provides hidden proof of intent) by including a true thematically-defined crescent that does point exactly at Mecca.

Murdoch’s thematic explanation for his crescent design is that the circle was broken on 9/11 by the path of Flight 93. The terrorist-piloted airplane smashes our peaceful circle, turning it into a giant Islamic-shaped crescent (that just happens to point to Mecca). The terrorist-memorializing implications of this theme are hardly less overt than the Islamic symbol shapes themselves. Nothing particularly subtle here folks.

The symbolic breaking of the circle occurs at the upper crescent tip, where the fifty-foot tall, thousand-foot long Entry Portal Wall is parted by the Entry Portal Walkway, which follows the flight path through the wall:

The section of wall to the right of the walkway in this image is symbolically “broken off” by the flight path. Remove this symbolically broken off part, and the remaining crescent structure points EXACTLY at Mecca, ± 0.1°:

What symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11: a giant Islamic-shaped crescent pointing EXACTLY at Mecca.

Rabbat knew about this too, since the original report that Rabbat was commenting on detailed both the slightly inexact Mecca-orientation of the full Crescent of Embrace, and the exact-Mecca-orientation that results when the symbolically broken-off parts are removed. Same for the Park Service. As the original recipient of Alec Rawls‘ report, the Park Service knew about both orientations. They also knew, because it was also in the original report, that a mihrab does NOT have to point exactly at Mecca. Yet they still publicly touted Rabbat’s claim that the crescent can’t be seen as a mihrab because it doesn’t point exactly at Mecca. A veritable web of self-conscious lies by Rabbat AND the Park Service.

The design is called a broken circle now, but the circle is still broken in the same place as before (where the flight path crosses the upper crescent tip). The unbroken part of the circle, what is symbolically left standing in the wake of 9/11, remains completely unchanged. It is still a giant-Islamic shaped crescent, still pointing exactly at Mecca.

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Two Memorial Project commissioners quit over the Project’s bad behavior

Two Pennsylvanian’s quit the Flight 93 Memorial Commission last week, protesting Park Service plans to condemn five crash-site properties that it never negotiated for in good faith. Consider the case of the Lambert family, who have been on their land for three generations:

“It’s absolutely a surprise. I’m shocked by it. I’m disappointed by it,” said Tim Lambert, who owns nearly 164 acres that his grandfather bought in the 1930s. The park service plans to condemn two parcels totaling about five acres — land, he said, he had always intended to donate for the memorial.

“To the best of my knowledge and my lawyer, absolutely no negotiations have taken place with the park service where we’ve sat down and discussed this,” Lambert said.

Lambert said he had mainly dealt with the Families of Flight 93 and said he’s provided the group all the information it’s asked for, including an appraisal.

They are condemning land that he was trying to GIVE to them, just because he had the gall to expect the Park Service to actually do its part.

Project members have embraced the “absolute moral authority” conceit

How dare anyone not rush to give these grieving 9/11 family members whatever they want? Didn’t they hear Maureen Dowd’s proclamation that “the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq [or on 9/11] is absolute”?

When crash-site owner Mike Svonavec put up a donation box to try to cover some of the cost of hiring security guards for the hugely popular Temporary Memorial, Patrick White, cousin of Flight 93 hero Louis Nacke, told the press:

That land has been paid for with 40 lives … the donation box is an insult to that cost.

When Svonavec insisted that the Park Service follow its own legally required procedures for assessing property values (procedures that, as it happens, take into account current property values, not just pre-crash property values), White accused Svonavec of trying to profit from the blood of his cousin:

“I think Svonavec believes his land, because it has the blood of my cousin and 39 other people, it’s worth more,” he said.

Using the flag of victim-hood to defend Paul Murdoch’s terrorist memorial mosque

Project members use the same trick to deflect criticism of the giant Islamic-shaped crescent that is now being built on the crash-site. When people point out the hidden terrorist memorializing features—things that no one knew about when the Crescent of Embrace design was chosen—like the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent, or the 44 glass blocks emplaced along the flight path, Project members not only deny these easy to verify facts, but they pretend that they are being accused of intending to honor the terrorists:

“That’s an absolute, unequivocal fabrication that is being portrayed as fact,” said Edward Felt’s brother, Gordon Felt [about the 44 blocks claim].

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

In The Church of Liberalism, Ann Coulter slammed the media for granting the Jersey Girls an “absolute moral authority” card, not questioning the Girls’ practice of blaming the Bush administration instead of al Qaeda for their husband’s deaths on 9/11. The Jersey Girls were bad enough, but nowhere is the flag of victim-hood being used to cover up more bad behavior than at the Memorial Project.

Active cover-up of an ongoing Islamic supremacist plot

Like the Jersey Girls, the Memorial Project gives Islam a pass for 9/11. Project members might not have known about the Mecca-orientation of the Crescent of Embrace, but they DID know that it was a giant Islamic-shaped crescent. Now they are doing far worse. Now they DO know that the giant crescent points almost exactly at Mecca, and are consistently misleading the press about it.

Their own Muslim consultant told them not to worry about the Mecca-oriented crescent, claiming that it can’t be seen as a mihrab (the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built) unless it points EXACTLY at Mecca (a claim that was contradicted earlier this month by Saudi religious authorities).

So what does Project Supervisor Joanne Hanley say when asked about the Mecca-orientation claim?

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

They are actively and knowingly covering up clear evidence of an ongoing al Qaeda sympathizing plot. Bad behavior indeed.

Everyone involved with the Flight 93 Memorial knows that the Crescent of Embrace points to Mecca

<a href=”http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/HonorFlight93/&#8221; target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/Blogburstlogoclickforpetition.jpg&#8221; border=”0″ alt=”Blogburst logo, petition”/></a>

In 2007, Flight 93 Advisory Commission member Tim Baird <a href=”http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2007/07/flight-93-update-hijacker-has-gained.html”>told</a&gt; Alec Rawls (the author of these blogburst posts) that <em>everyone</em> at the meetings he attended is fully aware that the giant crescent, originally named the Crescent of Embrace, really does point almost exactly at Mecca. Professor Baird says they all just assume (himself included) that the Mecca orientation must be an innocent coincidence.

Pretty crazy, when they have also been told the <em>meaning</em> of a crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca. Every mosque is built around a Mecca-direction indicator called a <em>mihrab</em>, and the <a href=”http://looklex.com/spain/cordoba04.htm”>classic <em>mihrab</em></a> is crescent shaped. Geometrically, the Crescent of Embrace is the world’s largest mihrab.

However honestly Project Partners believe that the Mecca orientation of the crescent must be a coincidence, this is not what they tell the public. When reporters asked Memorial Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley about the Mecca orientation, she <a href=”http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07230/810465-85.stm”>denied</a&gt; it:<blockquote>”The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site,” she said.</blockquote>Thinking that the Mecca orientation of the crescent must be a coincidence in no way justifies lying to the public about this explosive information. If Baird’s account is accurate—that the dozens of Memorial Project Partners all know that the giant crescent actually does point to Mecca—then the Memorial Project has a lot of explaining to do. Now an overlooked article from 2007 corroborates Professor Baird’s information.

<strong>Dr. Glenn Kashurba</strong>

It turns out that a Pennsylvania psychiatrist who has been intimately involved with the memorialization of Flight 93 (writing two books on the subject) <a href=”http://www.dailyamerican.com/articles/2007/07/24/news/news094.txt”>argued</a&gt; to a reporter before the July 2007 Memorial Project meeting that the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent (which he took as a given) should be seen as coincidental:<blockquote> “When you calculate angles to Mecca – I’m going to be in Washington, D.C., this week, and I’m sure if I calculate angles of the monuments, at least one points to Mecca,” Kashurba said. “I don’t know if it will be the White House or the Lincoln Memorial, but at least one will. People looking for a way to support their way of looking at things will look at this in this way for ever and ever.” </blockquote>If Dr. Kashurba was getting his information from the Memorial Project’s public statements, he would have denied that the crescent points to Mecca. Here is what Memorial Project Partner Patrick White <a href=”http://www.tribune-democrat.com/local/local_story_196231439.html”>told</a&gt; the press 9 days before the Kashurba story:<blockquote>Rawls, of Palo Alto, Calif., contends that the centerpiece of the design points toward Mecca.

Rawls’ claims are untrue and “preposterous,” according to Patrick White, Families of Flight 93 vice president. “We went through in detail all his original claims and came away with nothing.”</blockquote>Kashurba knew better, as did Patrick White himself. The week after his public denial, a local woman asked White how he could be okay with the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. This time White did not deny the Mecca orientation, but <a href=”http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2007/07/flight-93-update-hijacker-has-gained.html”>argued</a&gt; that it cannot be seen as honoring Islam because the inexactness of the Mecca orientation would be “disrespectful” to Islam.

<strong>Mecca orientation takes literally 2 minutes to verify, starting from source documents</strong>

It is not surprising that these Memorial Project insiders would know that the giant crescent does in fact point almost exactly at Mecca (1.8° north of Mecca to be precise, ± 0.1°). After all, they had by the summer of 2007 been examining Rawls’ report, and answering questions from the press about it, for over a year, and the near Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace is trivially easy to verify.

Just use any of the online Islamic prayer-direction calculators to print out the direction to Mecca from Somerset PA. Place this graphic over the Crescent <a href=”http://www.crescentofbetrayal.com/F93CrescenSite-PlanPDF.pdf”>site-plan</a&gt; on your computer screen, and you will see that the Mecca-direction line (which Muslims call “qibla”) almost exactly bisects the crescent:

<a href=”http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/Central%20crescent/IslamcomAnimFull.gif”><img src=”http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/Central%20crescent/IslamcomAnim400px.gif”></a&gt;
The green circle in this image is from the qibla calculator at <a href=”http://www.islam.com/salattimes/index.php”>Islam.com</a&gt; (down at the moment, but you can use the one at <a href=”http://www.qibla.com.br/”>Qibla.com</a&gt;, or <a href=”http://www.qiblalocator.com/”>QiblaLocator.com</a&gt;). A person standing between the tips of the giant crescent and facing into the center of the crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca.

Patrick White knows this and deceives the press and the public about it. Dr. Kashurba knows it and stands by as White and others deceive the press and the public about it. These deceptions have been blatant.

<strong>Everything points to Mecca?</strong>

The Project even went to far as to dig up an academic fraud from Texas, willing to deny that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca:<blockquote>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.</blockquote>Was the reporter embarrassed to ask Muslims if they can really face any direction to face Mecca? Hard to blame her. Just to ask such a stupid question is to answer it, but the obviousness of the fraud is no excuse for letting it stand.

According to Professor Baird, every Memorial Project member who saw these denials knew that they were fraudulent, yet not one of them has tried to tell the public about the Project’s dishonest cover-up. When the truth does get out to the broader public, Project members are going to have a lot to answer for, which is presumably why they are keeping their mouths shut now. They have done a very bad thing and they don’t want it exposed.

<strong>What proves Islamic intent is the architect’s elaborate repetition of the Mecca orientation</strong>

No one ever claimed that the almost exact Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace proves Islamic intent. Architect Paul Murdoch proves intent in a different way: by elaborate repetition of his Mecca orientations. His first confirmation of intent is to include an exact Mecca orientation.

In Murdoch’s explanation, the flight path <a href=”http://www.tribune-democrat.com/local/local_story_257234554.html?keyword=topstory”>breaks the circle</a>, turning it into the giant crescent. To find this thematically defined crescent, remove those parts of the full Crescent of Embrace that extend out past the point where the flight path breaks the circle. The resulting true or thematic crescent points EXACTLY at Mecca:

<a href=”http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/Central%20crescent/ExactMeccaAnim800.gif”><img src=”http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/Central%20crescent/ExactMeccaAnim400.gif”></a&gt;
At the upper tip of the crescent, the flight path comes down from the NNE and symbolically breaks the circle. What symbolically remains standing is the true or thematic Crescent of Embrace, pointing exactly at Mecca.

Murdoch’s next confirmation of intent is to exactly repeat this entire multi-Mecca oriented geometry in the vast array of crescents of trees that surround the Tower of Voices part of the memorial. Setting aside the chance that an architect could in the first place design a memorial to Flight 93 out of nothing but crescents just by innocent coincidence (which must be close to zero), the odds that these crescents would by random chance manifest Murdoch’s repeated Mecca orientations are 1 in 131 billion:

<strong>The only change was to include an explicitly broken off part of the circle</strong>

The original Crescent of Embrace design included the symbolically broken off parts at the upper crescent tip. When the bare naked Islamic-crescent shape caused a public uproar, the Memorial Project added another broken off part of the circle, floating out in front of the mouth of the original crescent.

They call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, the symbolic result of 9/11, is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent, still pointing EXACTLY at Mecca. That makes it a <em><a href=”http://looklex.com/spain/cordoba04.htm”>mihrab</a></em&gt;, the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. The planned memorial is actually a terrorist memorial mosque.

To join our blogbursts, just <a href=”mailto:caoilfhionn1@gmail.com?cc=alec@rawls.org&subject=Blog url and email address to add to blogburst list”>send</a> your blog’s url.
<script language=”javascript” src=”http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=c9772897903facc56d35d9d0f9360331&#8243; type=”text/javascript”></script>

********************************************************************

23 November 2009

Flight 93 father denounces civilian trial for 9/11 terrorists

Tom Burnett Sr:

A military trial will do the same thing–give them justice, give them a chance to talk–but not out, you know, in the public.

Nicely framed and edited by KSTP Minneapolis:

Second Burnett interview here. If only our government, with all its resources, could make 1/100th the sense of this honest patriot, but honesty and patriotism seem to be completely absent from the Obama/Holder makeup. Mr. Burnett says he will fight.

Mr. Burnett is also trying to stop the Park Service from planting a giant Mecca-oriented crescent atop his son’s grave

Video expose of what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace design, contains footage of Mr. Burnett and Alec Rawls (author of this blogburst post) at last year’s Memorial Project meeting:

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.