After denying for 4 years that the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 will contain 44 inscribed memorial panels (equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists) the Memorial Project has announced a new design that appears to collapse three of the panels into one:

Artist’s depiction of the slightly altered design for the Sacred Ground Plaza.

[If you are a newcomer, the Plaza sits in the position of the star on architect Paul Murdoch's giant Islamic crescent and star flag. They call the giant crescent a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle--what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11--is completely unchanged. It is still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.]

The focus of the Plaza is the two part Memorial Wall that follows the path of Flight 93 down to the crash site. As before, the lower section of wall contains 40 memorial panels, inscribed with the names of the 40 heroes. Instead of being small translucent panels set into the wall, they will now be 8 foot tall slabs. Nice.

The symbolically significant change is in the separate upper section of Memorial Wall that will be inscribed with the 9/11 date. In the original design, this separate upper section of wall contained three additional inscribed memorial panels:

Elevation view from original Sacred Ground Plaza design PDF.

The wall on the left is designated: “WALL WITH INSCRIBED NAMES ON FOLDED BAND OF TRANSLUCENT MARBLE.” The opening between the two sections of wall is marked “TRAIL,” and the wall on the right is designated: “WALL WITH INSCRIBED DATE.”

The three translucent panels inscribed with the 9/11 date were a problem because further up the flight path, at the upper crescent tip (where Flight 93 symbolically breaks the circle, turning it into the giant Islamic shaped crescent), sits one more inscribed translucent memorial panel:

At the end of the Entry Portal Walkway sits a huge glass panel that dedicates the entire site. In the original design, this brought the total number of inscribed translucent memorial panels on the flight path to 44, with the number of “extra” blocks matching the number of Islamic hijackers on Flight 93.

The enabling legislation for the Flight 93 Memorial specifically bars the Park Service from memorializing the enemy, but architect Paul Murdoch has other ideas. He doesn’t just include them in some kind of can’t-we-all-just-get-along multiculturalist fantasy. He depicts them as triumphant warriors, placing the capstone of his terrorist memorializing block count at the exact point where, in Murdoch’s description, the terrorists’ circle-breaking, crescent-creating feat is achieved. They explode through our peaceful circle, then die along with their victims. The capstone block commemorating this glorious martyrdom will be inscribed: “A field of honor forever.”

The Memorial Project is okay with all of this, but thanks to our blogbursts, too many people OUTSIDE of the Project also know about the terrorist memorializing block count, so they decided to fix up architect Paul Murdoch’s disguise, telling a caller two years ago that they were going to turn the three panels with the 9/11 date into one large panel. That would change the memorial block count from 44 to 42. Here is Mountain Goat’s report on that 2007 phone call:

The gentleman did add, that the translucent blocks are actually white marble, and that the one with Sept. 11 inscribed on it will be one block, although it will be roughly the length three of the other blocks would have been.

This seems to be the change that is depicted in the new design image, though we will have to see the construction drawings to be sure. (An FOIA request for the recently completed construction drawings was submitted to the Park Service earlier this month.)

Primping Murdoch’s disguise does not stop his terrorist-memorializing plot, but only helps him to get away with it

The Park Service assumes that the 44 blocks were a coincidence and that by eliminating the coincidence it has eliminated the problem, but the 44 blocks were not a coincidence and changing the number of blocks to 42 does nothing alter the terrorist memorializing intent. Also, because the Park Service has been trying NOT to see Murdoch is up to, they left other terrorist memorializing features of the inscribed panels completely intact.

Notice, for instance, that the separate upper section of memorial wall, inscribed with the 9/11 date, is centered on the centerline of the giant crescent:

The trail that divides the Memorial Wall into two parts is marked in purple. The section of wall with the 9/11 date is marked in aqua.

You can see just by looking that the upper section of wall is centered on the center line of the crescent. That is the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. Thus the 9/11 date goes to the star on the Islamic flag. The date goes to the terrorists.

Changing the number of panels used to inscribe the 9/11 date does nothing to alter this terrorist memorializing feature. Not that Murdoch really cares whether the Park Service executes his design with proper Islamic precision.

To Murdoch, it is the plan that matters

Murdoch made clear from the beginning that it is the plan that matters, not whether the memorial is actually built exactly to his specifications. We can tell that he fully expected at least one of his terrorist memorializing features to be caught and stopped because he left provision for his “mistake” to be easily corrected. This was the so called “40 Memorial Groves.” There were supposed to be one for each of the 40 infidel heroes, but Murdoch’s site-plan only shows 38 groves:

Why 38? Try to figure it out for yourself, then look here. As usual, Murdoch provides multiply redundant proof of intent, once you figure out what he is up to.

Notice that Murdoch left room for two more Memorial Groves, one at each end. But just as the 38 Groves “mistake” is easy to fix, it will also be easy to un-fix it later. Indeed, failure to follow Murdoch’s exact design is not a bug. It is a feature.

Islamic fundamentalists have been citing control of the al-Aqsa mosque as a grounds for waging war against Israel since the founding of the modern Jewish state. If we fail to be true to the glorious design of Murdoch’s terrorist memorial mosque, that will just be one more reason for Murdoch’s co-religionists to conquer The Great Satan, so that this death-penalty insult can first be avenged (“It is not for any prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land” 8.67), then corrected.

Murdoch has not admitted to being Muslim (never mind a fundamentalist Muslim), but he HAS demonstrably designed an al Qaeda sympathizing memorial to Flight 93, all according to the established principles of proper mosque design (chapter 5), so there is no doubt of his ambition. Anyone who tries to sneak an al Qaeda memorial onto the Flight 93 crash site IS al Qaeda.

In 2005, the Park Service helped Murdoch hide his giant crescent by calling it a broken circle instead (as Murdoch had described it all along). Now the Park Service is helping to disguise yet another of Murdoch’s terrorist memorializing design features, but without even acknowledging this time that the changes are in response to anything troublesome about the original design.

So tell us Park Service: if there never were 44 memorial panels on the flight path, as you have been telling the press for almost four years, why did you change the number of panels? And do you really think it is wise to help a hijacker improve his disguise?

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

In 2007, Flight 93 Advisory Commission member Tim Baird told Alec Rawls (the author of these blogburst posts) that everyone 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 meaning of a crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca. Every mosque is built around a Mecca-direction indicator called a mihrab, and the classic mihrab 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 denied it:

“The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site,” she said.

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.

Dr. Glenn Kashurba

It turns out that a Pennsylvania psychiatrist who has been intimately involved with the memorialization of Flight 93 (writing two books on the subject) argued 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:

“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.”

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 told the press 9 days before the Kashurba story:

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.”

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 argued that it cannot be seen as honoring Islam because the inexactness of the Mecca orientation would be “disrespectful” to Islam.

Mecca orientation takes literally 2 minutes to verify, starting from source documents

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 site-plan on your computer screen, and you will see that the Mecca-direction line (which Muslims call “qibla”) almost exactly bisects the crescent:

The green circle in this image is from the qibla calculator at Islam.com (down at the moment, but you can use the one at Qibla.com, or QiblaLocator.com). 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.

Everything points to Mecca?

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:

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.

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.

What proves Islamic intent is the architect’s elaborate repetition of the Mecca orientation

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 breaks the circle, 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:

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:

The only change was to include an explicitly broken off part of the circle

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 mihrab, the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. The planned memorial is actually a terrorist memorial mosque.

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EPA comment period closes Tues: tell ‘em no state-establishment of CO2-phobic religion

Only a couple more days to let the EPA know what you think of its proposed war against CO2. Just click on the little yellow “add comments” balloon. The following is a comment (ending at “sincerely”) that you can copy and paste. (If you choose to roll your own, feel free to leave it here too.)

Dear EPA:

There is overwhelming statistical evidence that the primary driver of natural temperature change is solar-magnetic activity, yet the solar flux is completely omitted as an influence on climate in all four IPCC assessments and in the Obama administration’s new “Climate Change Impacts in the United Sates” report. This omission is rationalized on grounds that the existing theories of how solar activity affects climate are still formative. The scientific method rejects this rationalization. Observational evidence is supposed to trump theory, not vice versa, but the IPCC is using theory (its distrust of existing theories of the mechanism by which solar-magnetic activity drives global temperature), as an excuse for ignoring the overwhelming evidence that solar-magnetic DOES drive global temperature. Not all religions are anti-scientific, but the demonstrably anti-scientific nature of CO2 alarmism proves that it IS religion, not science.

EPA regulations are supposed to be science based. Imposing restrictions based on an anti-scientific religious doctrine would not just violate the EPA’s mandate, but would violate the constitutional prohibition on state establishment of religion.

Solar-magnetic warming: theory and evidence

The sunspot-temperature theory is actually looking pretty solid. It is known that a strong solar-magnetic flux shields the earth from high energy cosmic rays which otherwise, according to the theory of Henrik Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, would ionize the atmosphere, seeding cloud formation. Thus the solar wind in effect blows the clouds away, giving the earth a sunburn.

Whatever the precise mechanism, researchers have found that solar-magnetic activity “explains” statistically about 60-80 percent of global temperature change on all time scales going back hundreds of millions of years. On the decadal time scale, see the seminal 1991 paper by Christensen and Lassen (“Length of the Solar Cycle: An Indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate”) and the 2003 isotope study by Usoskin et al (“Solar activity over the last 1150 yrs: does it correlate with climate?”), which found: “a correlation coefficient of about .7 – .8 at a 94% – 98% confidence level.”

For longer time scales, see the 2003 paper by Shaviv and Veiser (“Celestial driver of Phranerozoic climate?”), which found that found that the cosmic ray flux explains statistically about 75% of global temperature variation over the last 550 million years.

Omitted variable fraud

Solar activity was at “grand maximum” levels from 1940 and 2000 which, given the historical correlation between solar activity and temperature, could easily explain most or all late 20th century warming. When the IPCC and others omit the solar-magnetic variable from their models, any warming effect of solar activity gets misattributed to whatever correlated variables ARE included in their models.

By sheer coincidence, CO2 reached its own “grand maximum” levels (at least compared to the rest of the Holocene) in the second half of the 20th century. Thus in the alarmist models, whatever warming effect the omitted solar-magnetic variable is responsible for gets misattributed to CO2.

You can find rationalizations for this omitted-variable fraud in every IPCC report. For instance, section 6.11.2.2 of the Third Assessment Report does not question the correlation between solar activity and climate, but dismisses the cosmic-ray cloud THEORY as too speculative to include in their climate models:

At present there is insufficient evidence to confirm that cloud cover responds to solar variability.

But they don’t just leave solar-magnetic activity out of their models. Because their forecasts are based entirely on their climate models, they also leave solar magnetic effects completely out of their climate forecasts, despite knowing that there is SOME mechanism (even if the cosmic-ray/cloud theory turns out to be wrong) by which solar-magnetic activity is the primary driver of global temperature.

The only solar variable they do include is solar output or Total Solar Insolation (from long to short-wave radiation), which does not include the solar-magnetic flux. The Fourth Assessment Report does the same thing, looking only at TSI, as do all of the analyses that follow from these reports. For instance, if you look at he “Natural Influences” subsection of the Obama administration’s new report, you will see on page 16 that the only natural influence listed is “solar output’ (or TSI), which is why it is shown graphically to be so tiny.

Solar output is close to constant over the solar cycle (less than 0.1% variation), which is why it is called “the solar constant.” Because TSI is nearly constant, it cannot account for the many thousands of years of close correlation between solar activity and temperature. That must be coming from the one solar variable that DOES vary with solar activity: the solar magnetic flux. Every IPCC climate scientist knows this, yet they still omit the solar-magnetic variable.

Proof of omission: page 16 graphic from the June 2009 report by U.S. Global Change Research Program (in effect, the NOAA). The only natural warming effect listed is total solar output, which does not include the solar-magnetic flux. Similar graphics can be found in each of the IPCC’s assessment reports, where this analysis originates.

Religion, not science

When the alarmists omit solar-magnetic effects on the grounds that they are not satisfied with with existing theories of HOW these effects work, they are not just committing statistical fraud, but they are contradicting the very definition of science. Observation (the overwhelming correlation between solar activity and global temperature) is supposed to trump theory, not vice versa.

Consider an analogy. Until Einstein developed his theory of general relativity there was no good theory of gravity. Newton had a description of the gravitational force (that it diminishes by the inverse of the square of the distance) but nobody had any sensible account for the mechanism by which massive objects were drawn to each other. Applying the standards of the IPCC, a pre-Einsteinian or pre-Newtonian scientist should have forecast that when a stone is released in the air, it would waft away on the breeze. After all, we understand the force that the breeze imparts on the stone, but we don’t understand this thing called gravity, so we should not include it, even though we observe that heavy objects fall.

That is not science, and neither is CO2 alarmism. Data is supposed to trump Theory. By using theory (the proclaimed insufficiency of solar-magnetic theory) as an excuse to ignore the evidence (where solar activity is known to somehow warm the climate), warming alarmism perverts the scientific method.

That makes it religion in the constitutionally barred sense. Not only is this belief system embraced by millions of people WITHOUT EVIDENCE, but it is embraced in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. Alarmism about CO2 is not just a religion, it is a demonstrably irrational religion, equivalent to believing that rocks will waft away on the breeze.

EPA is supposed to make science-based rulings. If you regulate CO2 based on demonstrably anti-scientific ideology, it will be an unconstitutional state establishment of religion.

The current cooling trend fits the solar-magnetic theory, not the CO2 theory

All of the major temperature records show that the earth’s average temperature has been falling for ten years now (with the 21 year smoothed temperature falling for five). In this period, CO2 has continued to increase, while the sun has descended into a prolonged solar minimum. This turn in the sun (breaking the coincidental correlation between solar activity and CO2 that existed for the previous 70 years), is rapidly unmasking the hoax of anthropogenic global warming.

It should not take a rare astrological event to unmask an obvious statistical and scientific fraud. Will the EPA now destroy its reputation by codifying the “green” religion at the very moment when the heavens themselves are exposing its dishonesty? If you choose this course, you will be destroying the nation’s economy and the lives of your countrymen in the service of your own anti-scientific religious beliefs, in violation of your oath of office.

Sincerely,

On the subject of state established religion

This is also the subject of our blogbursts, trying to stop the Flight 93 Memorial Project from stamping a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the graves our murdered heroes:

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 archetypical mihrab is crescent shaped.)

The Crescent of Embrace memorial is actually a terrorist memorial mosque, replete with a full complement of typical mosque features, like the minaret-like Tower of Voices that has an Islamic shaped crescent on top and turns out to be a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial.

Outcry over the apparent Islamic symbolism forced the Park Service to make changes. They promised that they would remove the Islamic symbol shapes, but they never did. They call it a broken circle now, but the circle is broken in the exact same places as before.

The unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.

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Two Memorial Project Commission members 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.

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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.

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Paul Murdoch channels Allahpundit

Two years ago Allahpundit (who works for Michelle Malkin) made a very strange judgment. He accepted that the original Crescent of Embrace design for the Flight 93 memorial pointed roughly to Mecca (to be exact, it points within 2 degrees of Mecca), but said that worrying about the orientation of the crescent reeked of “truther-iness.”

“A good rule of thumb,” said Allah:

if you need a protractor to properly express your outrage, you’ve probably gone too far.

Orientation on Mecca may sound esoteric, but it is certainly not esoteric to Muslims, who are supposed to face Mecca five times a day for prayer, and often carry special compasses for that purpose.

In particular, 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.) This isn’t merely suspicious, like learning to fly airliners without learning how to land. It is the discovered enemy objective: to stab a terrorist memorial mosque into the heartland of America.

How can anyone be surprised? As our blogburst logo shows, the original crescent design was a bare naked crescent and star flag. For Allah to dismiss ADDITIONAL Islamic symbol shapes as coincidence is like seeing the second airplane fly into the Trade Center and saying: “Well now it HAS to be an accident.”

Allahpundit seems to have forgotten the defining quality of the 9-11 truth morons. It isn’t that their claims seem esoteric or even outlandish. It is that their claims are FALSE, and in most cases are revealed by the simplest fact-checking to be blatantly dishonest as well. The truthers are self-conscious purveyors of malicious disinformation, a la Michael Moore.

In contrast, everything we are saying about the flight 93 memorial is TRUE, and is easily verified to be true just by examining the official design drawings.

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“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.

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Rally this Saturday: Stop the crescent mosque!

Tom Burnett Sr. and Alec Rawls will be in Somerset PA this weekend to condemn the crescent/broken-circle memorial to Flight 93. Here is Alec’s notice about the press conference that he and Mr. Burnett will host after they speak at the public meeting of the Memorial Project Saturday morning:

…Also on the press conference panel will be Diane Gramley, President of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, and the Reverend Ron McRae of Johnstown.

In addition to our own statements, Mr. Burnett will read a statement from Congressman John Kline (R-MN), and Alec Rawls will present statements from Rich Davis, founder of the Chester County Victory Movement, and from the president of Muslims Against Sharia Law.

After answering questions for the press, Mr. Burnett and his co-panelists will host a rally to stop the re-hijacking of Flight 93. Members of our informal Western Pennsylvania Compatriots group (who spoke out at the last public meeting) will be in attendance, and some out of town folks will be coming as well.

And check this out: a big color ad in the local paper:

To inform and invite the local populace, a half-page full-color ad will be running in tomorrow’s edition of the Somerset Daily American. It explains how the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the Circle of Embrace redesign, which is explicitly described by the Park Service itself as a “broken” circle. That is exactly how architect Paul Murdoch described his original Crescent design.

All the redesign does is include an extra arc of trees that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. The unbroken part of the circle (the crescent), remains exactly as it was. It is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca , as your colleague Kirk Swauger verified a year ago:

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.

Except for Kirk’s verification of the Mecca orientation of the crescent (which was not picked up by any other news organization), reporters have not been bothering to check the facts. When our claim that there are to be 44 inscribed translucent blocks emplaced along the flight path was reported a few months ago, Gordon Felt, President of Families of Flight 93 was quoted denying it, but despite this clear conflict of factual claims, no reporter bothered to simply open up the design drawings and count.

Can reporters actually be shamed into doing their jobs? Doubtful. They seem to regard actually checking the facts as giving some kind of unfair advantage to the side that is right (which they would be happy do do if the right side was THEIR side).

When the press is in this anti-fact-checking mode, their methodology is just to quote each side. We are trying to take advantage of this behavior by having some of our independent supporters use source documents to fact-check our basic claims, then attest in press releases and at the public meeting that they have personally counted the translucent memorial blocks etcetera.

Co-panelist Diane Gramley will be making such declarations for the cameras. Cao (the organizer of these blogbursts) did some checking from source documents this week and has already posted a powerful press release about her findings that Alec will present at the press conference.

Tom Burnett’s attendance should bring national news coverage. If Tom and Alec can direct some of that coverage to our independent fact checking, it might break the media embargo on fact checking, and once we get the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent out as verified national news, the crescent goose will be cooked.

If you want to participate in our fact-checking drive, Alec has a set of fact checking guides, with links to source documents, at CrescentOfBetrayal.com. Just send him a link to the post or comment in which you attest to your fact-checking results, and he will compile them.

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“I hope I’ll see your face again baby…”

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.

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Calling Michelle Malkin, Charles Johnson, A.J. Strata, Ed Morrissey, Richard Fernandez and Ace of Spades

When the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 was unveiled in September 2005, these six high profile conservative bloggers were instrumental in raising the public protest that forced the Memorial Project to agree to a redesign. Charles Johnson stayed with the story until the summer of 2006, and Ace has done two links since 2005, but for the most part, these conservative heroes seem to have decided that the “circle of embrace” redesign is okay.

It is NOT okay. Architect Paul Murdoch described his original Crescent of Embrace design as a broken circle. The redesign is still described as a broken circle, and the unbroken part of the circle (the crescent) remains exactly as it was in the original design.

In particular, the giant crescent still points to Mecca, and the repetition of this Mecca orientation in the crescents of trees that surround the Tower of Voices part of the memorial proves that the Mecca orientation is intentional. That makes the giant crescent a mihrab: the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built.

The planned memorial is a terrorist memorial mosque. This is an enemy plot, every bit as ambitious in its own way as the 9/11 attacks. To stop this re-hijacking of Flight 93, we need our frontline bloggers to rejoin the fray!

The only change: the design now includes a broken off part of the circle

The design drawings were recolored to make it look as if significant changes were made, the but only actual change was the inclusion of an additional arc of trees, said to represent a broken off part of the circle:

Crescent of Embrace left. Circle or Embrace right. The only actual change is the additional arc of trees on the west side of the memorial. (Click for larger image.)

Notice that this extra ark of trees sits to the rear of a person facing into the giant central crescent. That is the equivalent of laying down a Muslim prayer rug (called a small mosque) in front of some trees. The prayer rug is unchanged. You can plant as many trees around a mosque as you want to. It will still be a mosque.

“Broken circle” is Park Service’s official story

In the original design, the broken off part of the circle was removed entirely. Now, as Memorial Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley reiterated last week, a broken off part of the circle is included:

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).

She is describing the two ends of the additional arc of trees. It is broken at both ends.

Both the theme and the geometry of the original Crescent of Embrace design remain as they were. The terrorists still break our circle, and they still turn it into a giant Mecca oriented crescent.

Those who raised the hue and cry about the original design ought to be equally concerned that the original design remains completely intact in the phony redesign. Come on heroes. Your help is NEEDED!

Animation superimposes the redesign, then withdraws all but the changes. (Click for larger version.)

Come to the August 2nd meeting

If you can make it to Somerset PA on Saturday August 2nd, come help Tom Burnett Sr. tackle the hijacker! (Mr. Burnett announced trip, and his willingness to go to jail if necessary, in this audio clip from the Mancow Muller radio show (25 seconds. And here is Tom talking about the heroism of his murdered son, Tom Jr. Audio 45 seconds).

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