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.
Extensive efforts by hundreds of people to warn the Memorial Project about the Mecca orientation and other untoward design elements have all been ignored, but Saturday's meeting offers a chance to expose this information (and the Project’s malfeasance) directly to the press and the public. Here are a few simple graphics that can be printed out on flyers for distribution at the meetings, or enlarged on placards.
Exhibit I: The Mecca orientation of the giant crescent in both the original Crescent of Embrace design and the redesign.
Red line crosses the most obtruding crescent tips of original crescent, left. Bisector points 53.46 degrees clockwise from north, which is 1.73 degrees steeper than the true Mecca line (55.19 degrees from North). Click on graphic for larger image.
The upper crescent tip is the end of the thousand-foot-long, forty-foot-tall, Entry Portal wall. This wall, and hence the upper tip of the crescent, remains unchanged in the redesign (image on right). A few trees were added out beyond the end of this wall, but since the upper crescent tip was not defined by trees, adding a few trees in this area does nothing to affect the crescent tip, or the orientation of the crescent that it defines. The bisector still points 1.73 degrees from Mecca. (See exhibit IV for instructions on how to easily verify these calculations for yourself. Graphics are from the site-plans available on the Memorial Project website.)
Here is an illustration from the redesign, showing how overtly the upper crescent tip remains in place and unchanged:
The end of the giant wall was the crescent tip in the original design. Unchanged in the redesign.
The first time Murdoch tried to sneak a half-mile wide Mecca-oriented crescent onto the crash site, he was caught by gate security (the American people). The Memorial Project told him to go back outside and try again, which is exactly what he did. The only change Murdoch made was to put a fake beard on (the couple of extra trees to the left). The crescent tips, and hence the presence and the orientation of Murdoch's giant crescent, remain unchanged.
A crescent that people face into to face Mecca is called a “mihrab” and is the central feature around which every Mosque is built. Murdoch’s design also contains other typical mosque features, such as the 100 foot tall Tower of Voices minaret, formed in the shape of an extruded crescent. Another typical mosque feature is a pulpit, or mimbar. You can see a possible epic mimbar in the graphic above.
In all there are a dozen typical mosque features, all of which can be seen to be realized in Murdoch’s design on the same epic scale as his giant mihrab. But set that aside. All that we are trying to get people to understand now is the Mecca-orientation of Murdoch’s crescent. Once this is understood, I think all will agree that planting the central feature of a mosque on the crash site is in itself unacceptable.
Exhibit II: The crescents of trees surrounding the Tower of Voices replicate the Mecca-orientation of the giant central crescent exactly.
A line across the most obtruding crescent tips of the Tower array (red) has virtually the exact same inexact-Mecca-orientation as the bisector of the line across the most obtruding crescent tips of the large crescent in Exhibit 1 (1.79 degrees steeper than the true Mecca line, compared to 1.73 degrees steeper for the bisectors of the giant central crescent). This redundancy confirms that the almost-exact Mecca-orientation of Murdoch's crescents is no accident.
Exhibit III: Not just a mosque, but a terrorist memorial mosque.
When the original Crescent of Embrace design was unveiled in September, onlookers were aghast to see planted on the crash site, not just a giant Islamic crescent, but a full naked Islamic crescent and star flag:
Looking closely at the copse of trees, one discovers that it is centered slightly to the side of the bisector of the giant crescent, placing it not quite exactly in the position of the star on an Islamic flag. If one looks inside the copse of trees, however, one discovers what IS centered on the bisector of the giant crescent: a separate upper section of the memorial wall, the lower section of which contains forty glass blocks, inscribed with the names of our murdered heroes.
Bisector of giant crescent passes through the center of a separate upper section of memorial wall (demarked by the path that passes through the wall from the left).
This upper section of memorial wall is the true focus of the memorial. As the star to the crescent, it is integrated into the Islamic symbolism of the design, while the section of memorial wall dedicated to the murdered passengers and crew is literally off to the side. The upper section of memorial wall also contains glass blocks, three of them, inscribed with the date: September 11th, 2001. The date goes to the star on the Islamic flag. The date goes to the terrorists.
There is one last glass block on the flight path: the large glass block that dedicates the entire site, placed at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. That brings the total number of glass blocks on the flight path to 44, exceeding the number of our murdered heroes by the number of their murderers. Could the 44 blocks be a coincidence? Swing the crescent tip line in until its bisector points exactly to Mecca and see where it lands:
Exact Mecca tip-line passes through the 44th glass block, at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. Bisector points 3/100ths of a degree off the true Mecca line (which is exact, within the pixel resolution of the graphics).
Notice also that if this line is projected upwards, it lands on the termination of a second, outer, and more recessed, Entry Portal wall. The most obtruding crescent tip, defined by the end of the inner wall, orients the crescent slightly off Mecca. The end of the outer wall offers a similar but hidden way of defining the crescent, this time oriented exactly on Mecca, and the key to discovering this hidden exact-Mecca-orientation is the 44th glass block.
Could this possibly be a one in a million-trillion lightning strike of coincidence? See Exhibit IV.
Exhibit IV Exact Mecca orientation repeated in the Tower crescents.
To go from the inexact-Mecca-orientation of the central crescent to the exact-Mecca-orientation of the central crescent, just swing the crescent tip-line in from the most obtruding crescent point on top to the more recessed crescent tip that sits slightly further out (as described in Exhibit III, and depicted in the second graphic below).
This structure is repeated in the crescents of trees that surround the Tower of Voices minaret:
Swing the red line that crosses the most obtruding crescent tips inwards until it kisses the next most obtruding crescent tip on the bottom (black line) and you get the exact direction to Mecca, within the pixel resolution of the graphics. (The black line points 55.13 degrees clockwise from north, 6/100ths of a degree steeper than the true Mecca direction.)
To see directly how the same pattern of inner and outer crescent tips yields both the exact and inexact Mecca orientations of both the red maple crescent and the Tower crescents, just rotate the red maple crescent graphic 90° counterclockwise:
The red maple crescent, with exact and inexact Mecca tip-lines, rotated 90° for easy comparison with the preceding Tower-crescents graphic.
The red lines in both graphics are about 1.75 degrees steeper than the true Mecca-line (1.79° and 1.73° respectively). Both black lines point exactly at Mecca, within the pixel resolution of the graphics. Both inexact Mecca-orientations connect the two most obtruding crescent tips. Both exact Mecca-orientations swing in to the further out and more recessed lower left crescent tip.
Exhibit V How to easily verify for yourself the Mecca orientations of Murdoch’s crescents.
Great circle calculations
A variety of great-circle calculators are available online. I used the one hosted by the Kansas City Amateur Television Group (http://www.kcatv.org/).
Google Earth gives the coordinates of the crash site as 40:03:07N by 78:54:17W and the coordinates of Mecca as 21:25:48N by 39:49:12E. Punching these numbers into the KCATV calculator, the direction to Mecca comes up as 55.19 degrees.
Screen-shot of calculator. Different calculators use different assumptions about the shape of the Earth, but they all yield directions to Mecca from the crash site that are within a tenth of a degree of 55.2.
Screen-shots of graphics
To take a screenshot of a graphic on a Windows PC, press “alt” + “print screen” at the same time. The screen-shot is now on your clip-board and can be pasted into a graphics program.
Arctangent calculations
For those who graphics programs do not calculate polar coordinates, the arctangent function provides a simple way to convert rise and run in pixels into slope in degrees. (Plain-Jane Microsoft Paint has pixel counters at the lower right of the screen.)
For any right triangle, the tangent function of an acute angle A is defined as the ratio of the side opposite A to the side adjacent to A. Tangent (A) = (a/b).
The arctangent function is the inverse of the tangent function, thus A = arctangent(tangent(A)) = arctangent(a/b).
Example: In the first image of Exhibit I, I used a screenshot of the Crescent of Embrace PDFs, blown up to 600%. The line connecting the tips of the red maple crescent in this screenshot covers 448 pixels north to south and 332 pixels west to east. Flip these over to get the slope of the bisector (332px of rise for every 448px of run). To find the slope of this bisector, just solve for A = arctangent (332/448) = 36.54 degrees = the angle of the red bisector line above horizontal (east, in Fig. 1). Any rudimentary scientific calculator will have the arctangent function on it, which can be used to verify this calculation.
Global orientations are usually specified in terms of degrees clockwise from north, not degrees counter-clockwise from east. Degrees down from north and up from east sum to 90, so subtract 36.54 from 90 to get that the red bisector in Figure 6 is oriented 53.46 degrees clockwise from north.
Actions needed
There is much much more in Murdoch’s design; from multiple additional redundant proofs of Islamic and jihadist intent, to mosque elements, to terrorist-memorializing elements. Set all that aside. If we can just get the word out about the Mecca-orientations of Murdoch’s central crescent, and their confirmation in the Tower of Voices crescents, the lid will be blown off. I will try to get this information to all the local reporters before they go to the meeting, so they can understand from the outset that these are easily verifiable facts, not imagination.
Anyone who lives within driving distance of Somerset Pennsylvania, please consider trying to attend. The meetings are in the Somerset County Courthouse, Courtroom #1, 111 East Union Street, Somerset Pennsylvania, from 1:00-4:30 PM, Saturday February 18th. I am in touch with some people in the Somerset area already. Contact me if you want to inquire about coordination, and I will also be updating on that subject. Of course anyone can go on their own.
All attendees should please be on their best behavior, which might not be all that easy. Many of the people involved have made it a matter of principle to refuse to see anything untoward in Murdoch’s use of the crescent motif. They aren’t going to dislike crescents just because Islamic people like them, which is fine, but they are also prone to accuse anyone who does not follow this principle of being a bigot (see, for instance, the remarks by design-juror Tom Sokolowski, director of Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum, at the end of this news story).
All we can do is urge people investigate, not assume. Even after the conspiracy of 9/11, many people think that to even be open to evidence of a conspiracy is lunacy. This is a conflict between the post-9/11 world-view and those who are stuck on 9/10. For those who have been grieving ever since that day, wanting to go back is nothing anyone would ever hold against them. The rest of us must be willing to follow evidence.
Email to Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton’s office might also be helpful. Back in September she directed all Memorial Project feedback to the Memorial Project. That maybe made a kind of sense. The expectation at the outset was that Norton would review the selected design once it was finalized and decide if it is up to snuff. Now that the a finalized recommendation has been forwarded to her, she should be receptive to feedback, especially about any failure of the Memorial Project to investigate crucial warnings that were submitted to it.
I have pasted the text of a possible letter, and the contact information for several interested parties, at the end of this post.
Background
After my online exposé of the phony redesign brought the Project a storm of negative feedback in December, the Memorial Project contacted me. I learned from our discussions that no one involved in the Project had ever investigated the Mecca-orientation of Murdoch’s giant crescent, despite the hundreds of warnings that people had sent back in September. "Everything faces somewhere," said the Project’s publicity manager Chris Martin. When I asked Project Manager Jeff Reinbold if he had ever investigated the Mecca-orientation of the crescent he said they had "talked about the possible Islamic symbolism of the crescent" and "asked the architect about it."
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.
That brings us to today, and our upcoming opportunity to take the truth about Murdoch’s terrorist-memorial mosque directly to the press and the public.
Letter writing campaign
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: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
And if you have a message for Paul Murdoch, you can reach him at:
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