Rhythm in Mayhem

Written by my good friend Bob Markman and used with his permission.

Never Forget, Never Forgive!!

Flight 93 Memorial 9/11: New Park Service Images prove the Crescent Of Embrace Memorial To Flight 93 Is Unchanged

The original Crescent of Embrace design for the Flight 93 memorial (left) was laid out in the configuration of an Islamic crescent and star flag (right). The crash site sits between the tips of the giant crescent, in the position of the star on an Islamic flag.

When this apparent symbol of Islamic triumph caused a national uproar seven years ago the Memorial Project (a public-private entity overseen by the Park Service) promised to change the design, but as demonstrated by the images below, they never did make any significant changes:


Above: original Crescent of Embrace design. Below: a frame from the Park Service's new virtual fly-by of the Circle of Embrace "re-design" as it is being built. (Comparison image thanks to MaxK.)

The most significant change is the few extra trees that are being planted outside the mouth of the original crescent (starting at the crescent tip on the right, where the flight path symbolically "breaks the circle," and continuing down behind the Sacred Ground Plaza that marks the crash site). These few trees supposedly turn the crescent into a circle, but as you can see, they do no such thing, but only apply the most minor window dressing to what is still a bare naked Islamic-shaped crescent.

The circle-breaking, crescent-creating theme of the design also remains completely intact

The Park Service web site explicitly describes the Circle of Embrace as a broken circle, proving that the terrorist-memorializing theme of the design is also unchanged. Way back in 2005 architect Paul Murdoch described his original Crescent of Embrace as a broken circle. The 9/11 attacks broke our circle of peace and the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is a giant Islamic-shaped crescent. The terrorist memorializing intent is obvious, or in the words of Tom Burnett Senior (father of flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Junior), "blatantly obvious."

The actions depicted in the memorial design are those of the terrorists. They break the circle of peace and the result is their flag planted atop the graves of our murdered heroes. Calling the design a broken circle instead of a crescent does not change this symbolism one whit. The unbroken part of the circle is still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.


Instead of pointing 2° north of Mecca, the half-mile wide crescent now points 3° south of Mecca

A crescent that points the direction to Mecca is a very familiar construct in the Islamic world. Because Muslims face Mecca for prayer, every mosque is built around a Mecca direction indicator called a mihrab, and the classic mihrab is crescent shaped. Here are the two most famous mihrabs in the world:

 
Left: the Mihrab of the Prophet, at the Prophet's mosque in Medina.
Right: the mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain. Face into these crescents to face Mecca, just as with the Flight 93 memorial.

As the Crescent of Embrace was originally designed, a person standing between the tips of the giant Crescent and facing into the center of the Crescent would be facing a little less than 2° north of Mecca (proof here). This almost-exact Mecca orientation was confirmed to the Park Service in 2006 by Daniel Griffith, a professor of "geospatial information" at the University of Texas who was brought in as a consultant by the Park Service.

Griffith's report examined the analysis of Politicalities blogger jonathan Haas, who had calculated that the crescent pointed.62° off of Mecca. Allowing some margin of error for the exact coordinates used for the crash site and for Mecca, Griffith confirmed Haas' calculation of the direction to Mecca ("the arctangent value is correct"), and he accepted Haas' calculation that the bisector of the giant crescent pointed a mere .62° off of this Mecca-line. The actual divergence is slightly larger—a bit less than 2°—but this is what the Park Service was told by Griffith: that the crescent pointed less than 1° from Mecca.

Even the Park Service realized this was bad but their response was pathetic, as Murdoch was only forced to make a slight change in the orientation of his giant mihrab. The conversation is easy to imagine: "How about if I change the orientation by five degrees?" Murdoch presumably asked. "Would that be enough?" So now instead of pointing 2° north of Mecca, it now points 3° south of Mecca, both of which are highly accurate by Islamic standards.

For most of Islam's 1400 year history far-flung Muslims had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. (Many of the most famous mihrabs point 10, 20, 30 or more degrees off Mecca.) Thus it developed as a matter of religious doctrine that what matters is intent to face Mecca, which architect Paul Murdoch proves by elaborately repeating his Mecca orientations throughout the design.


They misled the public into thinking that the crescent was being removed

Images of the Circle of Embrace "redesign" that the Park Service released in late November 2005 were calculated to fool the public into thinking that real changes were being made. Here is a comparison between the original Crescent of Embrace (top) and the phony redesign (bottom). At first glance the Circle of Embrace actually does look more like a circle than a crescent, but if you examine closely you'll see that this is almost entirely due to re-coloring of the image. The only actual change is the addition of the extra arc of trees that extends from the circle-breaking crescent tip down the hill towards the crash site:



Because this extra arc of trees explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle it in no way alters the circle-breaking, crescent-creating theme of the design. Neither does it affect the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent (the unbroken part of the circle) that is left standing in the wake of 9/11. It only looks like a real change, but the Memorial Project apparently decided that even this purely cosmetic alteration conceded too much to critics.

Look again at that screen-grab from the Park Service's new animated fly-by of the design as it is actually being built. The bold extra arc of trees that was the only actual change in the Circle of Embrace redesign has been taken out and replaced with a wispy wave trees:



These few trees, planted to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent, do not diminish in any way the crescent's functionality as a mihrab/Mecca-direction indicator. You can plant as many trees behind a mosque as you want. It is still a mosque, or in this case, a terrorist-memorial mosque.

Feel like complaining? Give Flight 93 Memorial Superintendent Keith Newlin a piece of your mind (and please pass along any response that you receive). There is also a petition you can sign, if you haven't done so already.

Never forget!

Flight 93 father: ground zero mosque is the SECOND mosque being built on a 9/11 site

Pamela Geller, who is leading the fight against the ground zero mosque in New York, has posted the following letter from Tom Burnett Senior.

To our fellow 9/11 families and to all who are concerned about the Ground Zero mega-mosque in New York:

We want everyone to know that the Park Service is right now building an even larger Islamic victory mosque atop the Flight 93 crash site. Many of you were outraged in 2005 when the Crescent of Embrace design was unveiled to be a half-mile wide Islamic shaped crescent:


Left: 2005 publicity shot of the Crescent of Embrace design. Right: typical Islamic crescent and star, viewed from a similar angle.

Few people know that this giant crescent actually points to Mecca, or understand the religious significance of this orientation. A crescent that points the direction to Mecca is a very familiar construct in the Islamic world. Because Muslims face Mecca for prayer, every mosque is built around a Mecca direction indicator called a mihrab. The classic mihrab is crescent shaped. Here are the two most famous mihrabs in the world:


Left: the Mihrab of the Prophet, at the Prophet's mosque in Medina. Right: the mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain.

Face into the crescent to face Mecca

As with the Medina and Cordoba mihrabs, a person facing into the Crescent of Embrace will be facing Mecca. In the image below, superimposed red lines show the orientation of the Flight 93 crescent. The green qibla circle is from an online Mecca-direction calculator:


A person standing between the tips of the crescent and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow) will be facing almost exactly in "qibla" direction (the Muslim prayer direction). You can verify the qibla direction from Somerset PA using any number of on-line Mecca-direction calculators.

To be precise, the Crescent of Embrace points 1.8° north of Mecca, ± a tenth of a degree. The final construction drawings alter this orientation slightly, so that instead of pointing a little less than two degrees north of Mecca, the actual crescent will point less than three degrees south of Mecca. Such small deviations from Mecca are insignificant by Islamic standards, which developed over a period of more than a thousand years during which far flung Muslims had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca.

The Park Service does not call the Crescent of Embrace a crescent anymore. Now they call it Circle of Embrace, but the only actual change was to add an extra arc of trees (planted to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent) that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. The unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace. It is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent, still pointing at Mecca.

This is the Park Service's official explanation for the design: the terrorist attacks are depicted as smashing our peaceful circle and turning it into a giant crescent. A clearer depiction of Islamic victory is hard to imagine, so no one should be too surprised that the damned thing points to Mecca, and actually turns out to be a mosque.

Other mosque features

Mosque design is based on a dozen typical mosque features, every one of which is realized in the Crescent/Circle design, all on the same epic scale as the half mile wide crescent-mihrab. Note, for instance, that the 93 foot tall minaret-like Tower of Voices is topped with another Islamic-shaped crescent, akin to the crescent-topped minarets seen in many Islamic countries:


An Islamic shaped crescent, soaring in the sky above the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes, which literally dangle down below. In Islam, there is only heaven and hell. Symbolic damnation?

The Flight 93 mosque needs to be stopped, along with the Islamic victory mosque at ground zero in Manhattan. May the fight against these two desecrations strengthen each other.

Sincerely,

Tom Burnett Senior
Loving father of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Junior

Pamela's Atlas Shrugs post includes a second letter from Mr. Burnett, thanking her for her help and passing on some information about the design selection process. (The vote for was 9 to 6 from a judging panel where family members were outnumbered 8-7 by left wing design professionals.)

Want to join our blogburst against the crescent mosque?

Just send your blog's url.

There is also an online petition that people can sign.

Contact information for the Flight 93 Memorial Project here.

Flight 93 Blogburst: 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.

A 9/11 Memorial That Honors The Victims And Not The Terrorists!

It is just too bad it is outside of Jerusalem and not southwestern Pennsylvania.

A bright blue sky could not hide the gray shadows of pain that marked the eyes of the families of the victims of the "9/11" terrorist attack that found themselves in Arazim Park in Jerusalem on Thursday. They had gathered together with international dignitaries and Israeli leaders to dedicate a new monument to the their loved ones, who lost their lives in the senseless 2001 attack on America by the Al Qaeda terrorist organization.





Designed by award-winning Israeli artist Eliezer Weishoff and commissioned by the Jewish National Fund-USA/Keren Kayemet L'Israel (JNF-USA/KKL), the memorial depicts the World Trade Center and Pentagon through sculpture and landscape architecture.

People from nations around the world lost their lives that morning, among them a number of Jews, including Israelis. Fewer Jewish New Yorkers than usual were present in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, however, because many had stopped on their way to work to vote in fiercely-contested local primary elections.

The 30-foot high bronze sculpture commemorating the event and honoring the memories of the victims is composed of a waving American flag transformed into a memorial flame. The monument rests on a base of gray granite, part of which comes from the original Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, destroyed in the mammoth airliner attack eight years ago. The sculpture, which was funded by the Bronka Stavsky Rabin Weintraub Trust, is surrounded by a circular, crater-like plaza and reflection area tiled in stone.

The Jerusalem monument is one of the first major international memorials to mark the terrible event and honor the memory of its victims -- and the only site outside of New York to recognize the names of every victim of the attack.

Memorial donor and native New Yorker Edward Blank explained that he funded the project as a means of expressing the myriad conflicting feelings he struggled with after the tragedy. "My wife died just a few days before 9/11," he said, "and then the whole world was sent reeling by the events of that day. I was looking for a meritorious way to recognize the many feelings I was having, and this memorial was the perfect fit."

U.S. Ambassador to Israel James Cunningham attended the ceremony dedicating the monument, as did U.S. Congressman Erik Paulsen, who led a delegation from the United States. They were joined by Israeli Cabinet ministers, Knesset members and many families of the victims of 9/11, as well as other distinguished guests.

Read the full story here.

Strange how the people of Israel can design and implement a memorial to the victims of terror that will grow and bloom as time goes by. How strange that the designers never considered facing it towards Jerusalem, just on the road to the city. Nor does it face Mecca as the Flight 93 Memorial does.

When you visit Israel, take a moment outside of Jerusalem and visit this memorial. It is well worth your time and trouble to do so.