ACTION ALERT: Flight 93 Memorial

From Alec Rawls at Error Theory:

The Flight 93 Memorial Project just announced a pair of public meetings this Saturday at the Somerset County Courthouse where it promises “a major, exciting announcement,” with architect Paul Murdoch in attendance.

The Project’s last public meeting was the unveiling back in September of Paul Murdoch’s winning Crescent of Embrace design, with its half-mile wide Mecca-oriented crescent. It is very likely that Saturday’s meeting is to announce that Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton has given final approval to Murdoch’s design, based on the insignificant design changes announced in late November. The design is now called simply The Flight 93 Memorial instead of The Crescent of Embrace, but the half-mile wide Mecca-oriented crescent is still there, as are all of the other Islamic and jihadist design elements of the original Crescent design.

I think it is completely unacceptable. All you have to do is look at the first image of the “memorial” to know what an insult it is. While the media is boo-hooing about the “cartoon offended muslims” they ignore something like this. Something that is supposed to be a memorial to the people of Flight 93, not something that pays homage to Islam.

I finally managed to get Reinbold and Superintendent Joanne Hanley to agree to let me to walk them through a few of the Islamic and Jihadist features of Murdoch’s design and how to verify them, but I had only started to explain how to analyze the orientation of the crescent when Hanley announced that it was improper for her to listen to this information without the Flight 93 families, who had been involved in every step of the decision-making process, hearing the information at the same time! She asked if I could write up a report that could be presented to the entire Project and for the last two months have been trying to work through the Project’s internal processes to get the Project to investigate the untoward aspects of Murdoch’s design.

Hanley reneged on letting me present the report to Flight 93 jurors, and she never investigated the information that my report contained. Two weeks ago she sent a letter asserting that my claims “lack factual basis” without citing a single inaccuracy in the 55 pages of factual analysis that I gave her. Since then I have been trying to warn Secretary Norton directly that the Memorial Project has refused to investigate what is in effect a second hijacking of Flight 93 by the jihadists. She needs to exercise her specified oversight role here, but every attempt to reach Norton has simply been routed back to Hanley, who is now about to affix Norton’s name to this abomination.

Take a moment today to send letters to those listed below. I even quoted Alec’s sample letter, so if you are short on time, you can just use that.

Here is contact information for the primary players:

Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior (who must sign off in the final design):
gale_norton@ios.doi.gov
202 208-7351.
Department of Interior 1849 C St, NW, Washington DC 20240

John Reynolds, Chairman, Flight 93 Memorial Project
jreynolds@nationalparks.org
(202) 238-4200
National Park Foundation
11 Dupont Circle, NW , Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036
Attn: John Reynolds

Joanne Hanley, Superintendent, Flight 93 Memorial Project
Joanne_Hanley@nps.gov or flni_superintendent@nps.gov.
There is also an email form on the National Park Service website at: http://www.nps.gov/flni/pphtml/contact.html.
814 443-4557
National Park Service 109 West Main Street, Suite 104 Somerset, PA 15501-2035

Jeff Reinbold, Project Manager, Flight 93 Memorial Project
jeff_reinbold@nps.gov
814 443-4557
National Park Service 109 West Main Street, Suite 104 Somerset, PA 15501-2035

Chris Martin, publicity manager for the Memorial Project
cmartin@marcusa.com

Congressman John Murtha (who sponsored the House legislation that created the Memorial Project):

814-535-2642 or 202-225-2065
PO Box 780
Johnstown, PA 15907-0780

Senator Arlen Specter (who sponsored the Senate legislation that created the Memorial Project):

202-224-4254

Contact your own representative here: paul@paulmurdocharchitects.com

Possible letter to send to Norton et al:

Dear Secretary Norton and Chairman Reynolds:

The original “Crescent of Embrace” design for the Flight 93 memorial contained many unacceptable features. Most obviously, it’s half-mile wide crescent was oriented within two degrees of Mecca. A crescent that people face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The second main feature of the design was another typical mosque feature: a minaret-like Tower of Voices, formed in the shape of an extruded crescent. A minaret is a literal “tower of voices” from which Islamic prayer-times are called. This tower was surrounded by crescents of trees turned exactly 90° to the giant red maple crescent, so that a line across the tips of the Tower crescents replicated the orientation of the giant crescent exactly, again within two degrees of Mecca, proving that neither orientation was accidental. (Full report available here.)

In addition to Islamic elements, the original Crescent of Embrace also included what seem to be terrorist memorializing elements. There was a copse of trees, placed in the location of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. The graphics released of the design were startling, showing a naked Islamic flag planted atop the crash site. There are also 44 dedicatory glass blocks installed along the flight, exceeding the number of our murdered heroes by the number of their murderers.

These and many other highly disturbing features all remain completely unchanged in the Bowl-of-Embrace redesign announced in late November. The only change that was made anywhere in the entire design was the addition of a few trees along the upper portion of the circle that the crescent partly inscribes. But the upper crescent tip in the original Crescent-of-Embrace design was defined by the termination of the towering masonry walls of the Entry Portal structure. Since the upper crescent tip was not defined by trees, adding a few trees does not affect the crescent tip, leaving Murdoch’s original Mecca-oriented crescent fully intact.

Murdoch was caught by gate security the first time he tried to plant his gigantic Mecca-oriented Islamic flag on the crash site. The Memorial Project itself was oblivious to crescent, star and minaret, but the American people set off the alarm. In response, it was incumbent upon the Memorial Project to take the concern about Islamic symbolism seriously, but this did not happen. Instead of investigating the warnings it had received about the Mecca-orientation of Murdoch’s crescent, all the Memorial Project did was tell him to go back outside and see if he could get past gate security on the second attempt, which is exactly what he has done. The hijacked memorial is now in the air, and Murdoch is getting perilously close to smashing his terrorist memorial mosque into the crash site where our heroes died fighting.

Please step up and exercise some oversight NOW. The project must be put on hold until all the evidence of Islamic and jihadist intent has been properly investigated. A half-mile wide Mecca-oriented crescent does not happen by accident. The repetition of this Mecca orientation in the crescents of trees surrounding the Tower of Voices minaret cannot be coincidence. A geometrically perfect Islamic flag does not appear on its own. Post 9/11, we cannot afford not to connect these dots. So far the Memorial Project has refused to even look at them.

Sincerely

Let’s send a message that this design is unacceptable.