I’ve decided to lend my voice to the blogbursts on the Flight 93 memorial, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because every time I hear about the planned memorial it gets my blood boiling. Alec Rawls, our blogburst commandant and author of Crescent of Betrayal, calls the planned memorial “an abomination,” and that is exactly what it is.

If you will, just imagine a memorial to a group of innocent American civilians felled by Nazis in a cowardly sneak attack. Now also try to imagine that the memorial is inexplicably but unmistakably designed as a giant swastika, surrounded by German beer gardens. Shockingly, the number of memorial plaques equals the number of our fallen heroes PLUS the number of Nazis involved in the attack. All sorts of other symbolism, from the overt to the cleverly muted, seem to imply Nazi sympathy infused into the monument’s design—that is, on the part of the designers and their supporters. In response to an alarmed and outraged citizenry, including parents of the victims themselves, the architects and government officials answer with noxious New Age psychobabble about the monument’s dubious aesthetic properties. Welcome to the zany world of moral—or is that amoral?—relativism, a world ruled by a few politically correct ass hats who somehow wound up in charge of immortalizing one of the most dramatic and courageous acts of heroism in our nation’s glorious history.

Before you object that my analogy fails, I already know that. As it stands, the Flight 93 monument is way more offensive, disgusting, and outrageous than my Nazi metaphor could ever be, even if I worked on it. Heck, I like German beer gardens, but I’m not much, despite my blog’s header graphics, on frightful mosques, especially panoramic ones that ominously portend a triumph over us that militant Islam in fact already claims. That claim and that triumph were decisively rejected by the heroes of Flight 93.

Except for some minor editing on my part, the following is the work of Alec Rawls. Because I got into the game late, I only received last week’s blogburst post just as this week’s was coming out. Since you may not have seen last week’s post, which Alec was kind enough to send me and which formatted up nicely for my blogspot, I’m belatedly appending it here, right after the current blogburst blogroll.

Park Service refuses to say who broke the circle

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

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

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

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

Superintendent Hanley’s reply

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

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

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

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

Park Service Director Mary Bomar is even more oblivious

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

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

You may want to visit the park’s website for more in-depth information at:

www.nps.gov/flni.

Mary A. Bomar, Director, National Park Service

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

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

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

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

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

Daily American reporter decides to mark our emails as spam and block the senders

Hundreds of people emailing the Park Service demanding to know who broke the circle is NEWS. To pass this news on to the Pennsylvania press, several reporters and press outlets were cc’ed, in hopes that they would do their jobs and ask Park Service officials what answers they are giving.

When Daily American reporter Vicki Rock was asked by telephone if she was following up with the Park Service, she said:

… we pay no attention to mass emails like the people have been sending us. And I block them from emailing me again.

As if the Daily American has EVER been the subject of any kind of email campaign before. These emails are NOT spam. They are from individual Americans, taking time out from their day to warn about an enemy plot that Vicki Rock should have exposed long ago.

It takes literally two minutes to fact-check the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. (Just print out a graphic of the direction to Mecca from Somerset as calculated by Islam.com, place it over the crescent site-plan on your computer screen, and VOILA). How come this reporter has never done it? And why is she treating news (people are demanding a simple answer to a devastating question) as a hostile action against herself?

Same answer to both questions. She sees herself as a defender of the Memorial Project and the crescent design. Maintaining that defense requires willful blindness to voluminous evidence of terrorist memorializing intent. The press is as much involved in this behavior as Joanne Hanley and Mary Bomar and the other Project Partners. (Advisory Commission member Tim Baird said last year that ALL of the Project Partners know about the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent.)

Compared to this, seeing a reporter poke her own eyes out, trying to blind herself permanently to news about people confronting the Memorial Project, is hardly even strange.

Another letter?

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

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

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

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

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Addendum: Flight 93 memorial blogburst for 6/18/08

Who broke the circle?

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

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

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

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

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

Take action

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

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

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

The circle is a Christian symbol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

National Park Service Deputy General Superintendent Keith Newlin said the National Park Service has a tendency to preserve landscapes and key elements of memorial sites if it will help people understand what happened there. The draglines weren’t in the airplane’s flight path, though they have been used as a reference point to explain the plane’s trajectory to first-time visitors.

“The draglines didn’t contribute to the overall understanding of Flight 93,” he said. “We heard comments that we should keep one as a flagpole, but when we weighed everything, we decided against it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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