Flight 93 memorial: blogburst for 9/17/08

Here on this weblog I have often characterized much of the Park Service’s propaganda about the memorial project as duplicitous, and in today’s blogburst post Alec Rawls shows precisely what I’ve been describing, which in some ways reminds of typical exchanges with Islamist apologists about abhorrent passages in Islamic scripture.

When we point out to Muslim sympathizers the canonical basis of Islamic violence, calling attention to the jihadis’ citing of specific verses, do apologists offer an alternative interpretation of those scriptures?  No, generally speaking, they just deny that the Koran or hadith actually says what the jihadis claim.  So too, the Park Service and project supporters simply deny the Islamic character of the monument design in defiance of the facts.

Mecca orientation?  It doesn’t exist.  (On paper it might be a degree or so off).

Forty-four glass blocks?  A categorical lie.  (In the end, they might not consist of glass, exactly).

Islamic-shaped crescent?  A faulty description, even though the website of the National Park Service stresses the need to have a monument “open to interpretation.”  (It’s really a broken circle, you see).

And on it goes.

“They had some forewarning and they chose to take action.” The defenders of the crescent also have forewarning, and they 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 our basic claims about the crescent design are accurate: the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent; the forty-four  translucent blocks that are to be placed along the flight path, etc. 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 dot 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 easily verifiable claims about the memorial design.  Alec has several times e-mailed Kirk’s published confirmation of the Mecca orientation to every news desk 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 forty-four blocks.

The Crescent of Embrace design, now called the (broken) Circle of Embrace, calls for a total of forty-four 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 “forty-four inscribed, translucent memorial blocks” sometimes gets shortened to “forty-four glass blocks” or “forty-four blocks.”  Asked last spring about the forty-four blocks, Gordon Felt declared it a lie:

Opponents also claim there is a plan to have forty-four glass blocks — for the forty 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 forty-four 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, forty-three of the blocks are described in the design drawings as “polished, translucent white marble.”

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 forty-fourth 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 forty-fourth 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.  The block is 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 Center towers, insisted to the other passengers that NO airplanes had crashed into the towers.

Apparently grief has made these people crazy.  They have forewarning, and they are struggling with all their might to keep others from being forewarned as well.

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