Don’t Take Flight 93 to Mecca 5-8-08
May 8, 2008 Flight 93
No more do-overs for terrorist memorializing architects
Defenders of the crescent design keep accusing Tom Burnett Sr. of trying to get an improper “do over” after failing back in 2005 to sway the design-competition jury. But who is really seeking the do-over? The American people rose up in protest in 2005 when they saw that the Memorial Project wanted to plant a bare naked Islamic crescent and star flag on the flight 93 crash site:
That uproar forced the Memorial Project to agree to redesign the memorial so that it would no longer include Islamic symbol shapes (whether they are intentional or not). But nothing significant was changed. Every particle of the original crescent design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only disguised the original crescent with a few irrelevant trees, placed to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent.
The American people caught a hijacker trying to re-hijack Flight 93, and the Memorial Project told him to go back outside and try again, which is exactly what he did. Now they accuse Tom Burnett of wanting an improper do-over?
There were dozens of articles and television segments about the crescent controversy this week, mostly in Pennsylvania, with some national news coverage by Fox News television and AP. This post is an attempt to capture the general thrust of the new wave of position statements.
The Memorial Project is inverting every moral imperative at this point, and it all comes from their fervent desire to reverse the results of September 2005. Their embrace of the crescent was rejected by America and they are determined to undo that defeat, to the point of being willfully blind to massive evidence of al Qaeda sympathizing intent.
The new face of the Memorial Project: Edward Felt’s wife and brother take the lead
Sandra Felt, one of the Flight 93 family members who helped select the Crescent of Embrace design, admits that she never paid any attention to warnings about Islamic and terrorist memorializing symbolism in the crescent design:
Sandra Felt has known for nearly three years about complaints that the design of the proposed Flight 93 National Memorial allegedly contains Islamic symbols, but she never gave them any credence.
“I don’t even think about it,” said Felt, whose husband, Edward, died on … United Airlines Flight 93.
And nobody blames her. It shouldn’t be on the Flight 93 families to investigate evidence that any one of us can easily fact check. But Sandra and her brother in law Gordon Felt, now President of Families of Flight 93, are going further, pretending for some reason that the charges people have made against architect Paul Murdoch are actually being leveled against them.
How could that be, when three of the features that our petition lists as unacceptable–the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, the 44 glass blocks on the flight path, and the giant Islamic sundial–were not even discovered until after the crescent design was selected? Nobody blames the family members for approving design features they had no inkling were there, yet Gordon Felt says that warnings about the design are “quite hurtful, to think we would want to create a memorial to those who murdered our loved ones.”
Nobody ever suggested any such thing, but Felt is getting as much mileage as he can out of this excuse NOT to look at the facts, telling Fox News television:
I was outraged, for anyone to infer that family members who have been such an integral part of this process have in any way been involved in memorializing the murderers of our loved ones. I find it extremely offensive.
This after expressing his anger at Tom Burnett last week for Tom’s failure to submit to the Memorial Project’s “democratic process.” Tom lost the jury vote, so in Felt’s view, he is apparently supposed to shut up now. Strange view of democracy.
Tags: flight 93 memorial, islam, Mecca, opposition, terrorist design
Don’t Take Flight 93 to Mecca 3-26-2008
Mar 26, 2008 Flight 93
Petition for Congressional investigation
A petition to stop the crescent memorial is now being circulated on the ground in western Pennsylvania. As a complement to this old fashioned canvassing effort, an electronic petition has also been created at ipetitions.com. Please circulate far and wide!
The petitions highlight four cases of apparent Islamic symbolism in the memorial design. Here is the text (electronic):
Call for Congressional investigation of Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial
Many features of the chosen Flight 93 Memorial design are intolerable:
1. THE GIANT CRESCENT. The centerpiece of the original “Crescent of Embrace” design was a giant red Islamic shaped crescent. Every particle of this original crescent design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only added a few irrelevant trees. The giant crescent is still there.
2. IT POINTS TO MECCA. The giant crescent points to Mecca. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a “mihrab,” and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The Flight 93 Memorial is on track to become the world’s largest mosque.
3. THE ISLAMIC SUNDIAL. The minaret-like Tower of Voices is a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial (one of many typical mosque features that are realized in the crescent design, all on the same epic scale as the half mile wide central crescent).
4. THE 44 BLOCKS. There are 44 glass blocks on the flight path, equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists.
Intentional or not, these features are entirely unacceptable. This travesty must stop and investigations must begin.1) We the undersigned call on our state and federal legislators to undertake their own thorough and independent investigations of the Flight 93 Memorial design. The truth must come out.
2) We ask that the crescent design be scraped entirely and that it be replaced with a new design that is not tainted by Islamic or terrorist memorializing symbolism.
3) We demand a fitting and proper memorial that HONORS the brave men and women of Flight 93.
Please take a minute to electronically sign this petition. All signatures collected by the end of April will be printed out and delivered to the May 3rd public meeting of the Memorial Project, along with Xeroxes of the hand-signed petitions.
That is just the start. There will be another public meeting in August, where we hope to present a much larger pile of petitions, and all signatures will eventually be delivered to the Pennsylvania state legislature and to Congress. Keep sending until the crescent design is stopped!
In the short term, we have a number of supporters in the Pennsylvania legislature at this point who are working to gain backing for an investigation. A demonstration of public demand should help that effort.
The paper petition
In order to make the paper petition self-sufficient, there is a second page, to be printed on the back of the petition, that provides explanations and graphical documentation of the four highlighted cases of Islamic symbolism. The idea is to have a petition that can circulate virally. Anyone can print it out and have enough information right on the petition itself to know that the objections are legitimate. (Mailing instructions are also included.)
Here are the back-side explanations of the four intolerable features:
Tags: flight 93 memorial, Mecca, mosque, petition
Don’t Take Flight 93 to Mecca 3-19-2008
Mar 19, 2008 Flight 93
QiblaLocator confirms Mecca orientation of Flight 93 crescent
Reader Max K. found another Islamic website with a Mecca-direction calculator. It can be used to construct yet another graphical demonstration that the Flight 93 memorial points to Mecca.
Muslims face Mecca for prayer, with the direction to Mecca calculated by the great circle method. Enter your street address into the search field at QiblaLocator.com and it brings up a Google map with a red line showing the Muslim prayer-direction (or “qibla”) from your home.
At the Flight 93 crash site, Skyline Road passes through the center of what is to become the giant central crescent of the planned memorial. Enter “Skyline Rd, Shanksville PA” into the QiblaLocator search box and it generates this map:
Red line points to Mecca. (Azimuth, also in red: 55.19° clockwise from north.)
To see how this direction to Mecca compares with the orientation of the planned memorial, first impose some orientation lines on the Crescent of Embrace design:
The short black line connects the two most protruding tips of the half-mile wide central crescent. The long black arrow shows the orientation of a person standing between the crescent tips and facing into the center of the crescent. (Every particle of this original design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only disguises the giant crescent with a few additional trees.)
Next just lay the site-plan graphic on top of QiblaLocator’s Google map:
The red and black lines are almost parallel.
To be precise, the upper crescent tip is the end of the thousand foot long, fifty foot tall, Entry Portal Wall. The bottom crescent tip is the last pair of red maple trees at the bottom end of the crescent walkway. Connect these tips, and the perpendicular bisector (black arrow) points 53.5° clockwise from north (within two degrees of the exact direction to Mecca).
A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The Flight 93 Memorial will be the world’s largest mosque.
Earlier Mecca direction graphics
In 2005, Sarah Wells constructed a somewhat similar graphic. She used the Mecca direction calculator at Islam.com to get a qibla line that she superimposed onto the memorial site plan:
Green “qibla” circle shows direction to Mecca from nearby Pittsburgh. Again you can see that a person standing between the tips of the crescent and facing into the center of the crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca.
Sarah’s graphic and the QiblaLocator graphic both demonstrate that the giant crescent points to Mecca in the way that Muslims define the direction to Mecca (by the “great circle” or “shortest distance” method).
The first graphic to show the Mecca orientation of the crescent memorial was posted by the pseudonymous Eaotin Shrdlu on September 10, 2005, two days after the crescent design was unveiled:
The large map projection and the small site-plan inset both have north at the top. Etaoin’s graphic shows that direction to Mecca from crash site (green line) and direction of person facing into crescent (red line) are the same.
University of Pennsylvania Professor Tim Baird, a member of the Flight 93 Advisory Commission, says that everyone involved in the Memorial Project is fully aware of the factual accuracy of the Mecca direction claim. Nevertheless, they all stand by as Project spokesmen keep denying the Mecca orientation in the newspapers. The Project even found an academic fraud to tell the press that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca:
Daniel Griffith, a geospatial information sciences professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, said anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round. (Pittsburgh Post Gazette, August 18, 2007.)
Any Muslim would have denied this absurdity, but the Post Gazette does not want Griffith’s fraud exposed, because the Gazette itself has been fully complicit in covering up the Mecca orientation of the memorial since 2005. Post Gazette reporter Paula Ward told Alec Rawls in 2006 (download 3, p. 108) that editors and reporters at the Post Gazette saw all of the demonstrations of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent back in 2005 and made a top level editorial decision not to publish this explosive information. Editor Tom Birdsong thinks it would hurt the Democrats, so he is not going to publish it, and neither are other newspapers.
This shouldn’t be a right-left issue, but try telling our newspaper editors that. Which leaves it up to the rest of us to get the word out about Islamic and terrorist memorializing symbolism in the Flight 93 Memorial. This is going to have to be passed person to person.
You can help. To join our blogbursts, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.
Don’t Take Flight 93 to Mecca 3-12-2008
Mar 12, 2008 Flight 93
Joementum!
Alec Rawls did a 45 minute interview with Washington D.C talk-radio host Joe Ardinger Saturday night (3-8-08, Segment 3).
“It rips,” says Alec. “We exposed a lot of the terrorist memorializing parts of the Flight 93 Memorial, and went over the clear proofs of intent that architect Paul Murdoch included in the design.”
Joe’s interests: “Ghosts, UFO’s, The Lizard People from The Hollow Earth, Politics, True Crime, Conspiracies, you get the idea…” If he wants outlandish, the truth about the Flight 93 Memorial is tops, which could just make Joe the man for the Job.
Alec knows nothing about the Lizard People, or Joe’s politics, but this issue ought to transcend all domestic divides, and for Joe it certainly does. “Very fun interview,” says Alec: “Joe is a great host, and he says he wants to keep after this.”
That’s excellent. Thank you Joemericans!
(If Joe’s 3-8-08 Segment 3 link ever disappears, there is a backup copy here.)
To join our blogbursts, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.
Don’t Take Flight 93 to Mecca 3-5-2008
Mar 5, 2008 Flight 93
Islamic symbolism causing fundraising problems for Flight 93 Memorial
Pennsylvanians know about the Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 Memorial, and have stopped donating. The first indication came last September when State Senator Jane Orie came aboard as a fundraiser. She got a quick education in growing controversy.
In a 9/11 radio interview with Pittsburgh talker Fred Honsberger, Orie explained why she hoped the Flight 93 families would get back together and revisit their design choice:
Orie: “No matter who it is, and no matter where I went today for 9/11 events, everybody brought up this crescent. Whether it is intentional or not, it is disturbing to people.”
Honsberger: “So everyone is bringing it up to you.”
Orie: “Absolutely.”
At that time, the Memorial Project had collected about $12.5 million, far short of the huge design’s anticipated 60 million dollar price tag. Six months later the amount sits at “A little more than $12 million.” It is possible that they are actually spending more on their fundraising efforts than they are raising.
Bill Steiner, who has been rustling up opposition on the ground in PA, dropped by Somerset recently and had a conversation with Memorial Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley. She appeared beleaguered, and confided that fundraising was sluggish, suggesting that the memorial would probably have to be built in stages. Presumably she meant something other than the normal stages of building, but was anticipating delays.
Now this week the Somerset Daily American has an editorial complaining that the whole state seems to be dumping on Somerset County, bemoaning amongst other things the lack of funding for the Flight 93 Memorial.
This is not the preferred way to stop architect Paul Murdoch’s terroist memorial mosque from being built. The damn thing ought to just be stopped by those in government who are in a position to stop it, so that a new and fitting design can be selected. At that point, money will be needed, but for now, with Murdoch in full command of the hijacked memorial, lack of money is what is needed. Starving the engines of fuel is one way to keep the hijacker from reaching his target, and until the hijacker is stopped, nothing else matters.
The people get it, and are voting with their pocketbooks. When are our our elected representatives going to step up and do their part?
Senator Orie is not the only Pennsylvania state legislator who has expressed concern, but Congressman Tancredo is as yet the only politician to actually call for the crescent design to be scrapped. If our representatives can’t be leaders, can’t they at least be followers?
To join our blogbursts, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.