9/11 hero's father bans use of name at Flight 93 memorial (1 Viewer)

[.]

The design of this memorial should outrage everybody and I agree 100% with this father.

Similarity to Islamic crescent in Flight 93 memorial protested

The father of one of the heroes of 9/11, Tom Burnett, who led other passengers in an effort to overcome terrorists on Flight 93, is banning the use of his son's name at a memorial planned for the heroics performed by a planeload of ordinary Americans that tragic day.

Tom Burnett Sr. told a blogger who also has been campaigning against the "Crescent of Embrace" design for the memorial that he won't allow his son's name to be used on any memorial with Islamic components. Atlas Shrugs: 9/11 Victim's Father Denounces Flight 93 Islamic Memorial

WND reported earlier on Rawls' book, "Crescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes of Flight 93," ( WorldNetDaily: Flight 93 memorial: 'Giant mosque') published by World Ahead. It documents a long list of Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the Flight 93 National Memorial.
Flight 93 Memorial Project | HomePage - HomePage

Rawls said the primary feature of the memorial is the giant central crescent of what originally was called the "Crescent of Embrace" design. He reports a person facing into this half-mile wide crescent – still present in the superficially altered "Bowl of Embrace" redesign – will be oriented almost exactly at Mecca.

"I think we HAVE to [do something]," said the father. "It's not that I pull a lot of weight around. I know that. I'm one of 40."

Rawls reports there were 40 heroes on Flight 93, along with four terrorists. From telephone calls from the airplane before it crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, while three other jets were crashing into the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., it's known that the passengers decided to respond to the hijackers with force.

Burnett has written to Congress, and to various newspapers a number of times condemning in the strongest possible terms the design.

"It is unmistakably an Islamic symbol," charged Burnett: "The red Crescent of Embrace… bastardizes what my son and others did on Flight 93."

Rawls noted that newspapers have declined to publish the letters from the man who served for part of the selection process for the design, which he describes as being "railroaded."

"By consensus the Stage Two jury forwards this section of the Flight 93 memorial to the partner [architect Paul Murdoch] with the full and unqualified support of each juror," said the report that was issued.

On the contrary, says Burnett, the vote was NOT unanimous: "It was 9 to 6," and Burnett for one remained adamantly opposed to the crescent design.

Rawls described the memorial as "a terrorist memorial mosque, built around the half mile wide Mecca oriented crescent."

Burnett told Rawls what would be appropriate is a congressional investigation.

But for now keeping his son's name out is both a moral imperative and a way to force attention to the issue.

"We don't want it used at all if that design stays in," Burnett told Rawls. "We've got to audit this process, and we've got to get to the TRUTH! That's really what we're after."

He said in addition to the giant crescent being an Islamic symbol, the proposed "Tower of Voices" is nearly like an Islamic minaret.

Burnett said his earlier letters described the crescent design as just not acceptable.

"Millions of Americans and I find the 'red crescent of embrace' an insult to my son, and the others on Flight 93, who engaged in a violent and valiant struggle to take that plane back from the Islamic hijackers," he said..

"Without warning, my son and the other passengers and crew of Flight 93 were suddenly placed in the vanguard of the war on terrorism. Facing unfathomable choices, Tom was calm, clearheaded, decisive and fearless. I can only hope that in the years to come the rest of us live up to the standard of heroism that he and others set on 9/11."

"What I am pre-eminently concerned about is what our countrymen will feel and learn when they visit the site. The story, when properly presented, will properly honor and properly reverberate in history what those heroes accomplished for their fellow Americans, and for the entire Western world. I would want them to feel the desperateness of those aboard Flight 93 as they became aware of what was happening, and the cold realization of what they had to do. I want them to ask themselves,'what would I have done, had I been aboard that flight?' We know that in very little time the passengers got out of their seats and attempted to take back that airplane. They tried. We believe, with more time, they could have," he continued.

"No, I cannot approve the suggested memorial, 'red crescent of embrace.' That was accepted without unanimity, by Jury Two, August 2005. It should be thrown out. It is unmistakably an Islamic symbol that has been used by Muslims for centuries. A jarring symbol that, inadvertently or not, commemorates – on such hallowed ground – the hijackers' faith, and on the site where 40 Americans, 40 heroes, died," he said.

"I would like to see a full investigation. Love to have it come from Congress. And find out why? Why Murdoch. What's his reason here? He can't be that dumb," he said.

Rawls said in his book the crescent – and its orientation – are significant because it is such a "mihrab" around which every mosque is built.

Defenders of the "Crescent of Embrace" design, Rawls contended, "choose their side first, then avoid or suppress all contrary reason and evidence."

In an April 2006 conference call, Memorial Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley told Rawls she was not concerned about the Mecca orientation because it's not "exact."

Rawls said there also are 44 inscribed glass blocks placed along the path that Flight 93 followed to the ground, matching the number of passengers, crew – and terrorists.

As WND reported in September 2005, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., sent a letter to the Interior Department, asking officials to reconsider the "Crescent of Embrace" design due to the symbol's ties to Islam.

"It has raised questions in some circles about whether the design, if constructed, will in fact make the memorial a tribute to the hijackers rather than the victims whose mission the flight's passengers helped to thwart," wrote Tancredo in a letter to Fran Mainella, director of the National Park Service. "Regardless of whether or not the invocation of a Muslim symbol by the memorial designer was intentional or not, it seems that such a symbol is unsuitable for paying appropriate tribute to the heroes of Flight 93 or the ensuing American struggle against radical Islam that their last historic act and the 'Let's Roll' effort has come to symbolize."

A Pennsylvania pastor also fought the design.

"This is a memorial to the terrorists who killed those people, not a memorial to the folks who died there innocently," said Rev. Ron McRae, head of the Bible Anabaptist Church near Jerome, Pa., about 55 miles from Pittsburgh.

WorldNetDaily: 9/11 hero's father bans use of name

 

[Suzie Q]

THAT IS A DISGRACE!!! Why in the hell would they include the 4 hijackers in any sort of memorial! That is just insane! I would build a big toilet as a memorial to those jack*sses and have a pig farm surrounding it!!!

I can't believe they would even entertain the idea of this ridiculous memorial. come on!!!

 

[Joker741]

WTF is this country comming to? That is pure bull shit that they would design something like that. I am just sitting here shaking my head in disbelief.

 

[Stroker]

Piss poor attempt at a subliminal message.

 

[Al smith]

I posted a thread about this over at a skeptics forum. It was debunked
outraged flight 93 victims father forbids his name on memorial - JREF Forum

dont believe everything you read on the web

 

[.]

I posted a thread about this over at a skeptics forum. It was debunked
outraged flight 93 victims father forbids his name on memorial - JREF Forum

dont believe everything you read on the web

What was debunked, the dad or the design of the memorial?

Have you bothered to look at any of the designs illustrations?
Error Theory: 44 dead people, 44 translucent blocks on the flight path

Or the orientation of the memorial towards Mecca:
Error Theory: <i>Tribune Democrat</i> abusing Families of Flight 93

It's no accident that the design strongly resembles a Islamic crescent. The plans didn't just draw themselves up. Hardly looks debunked to me. I don't see how one guys post debunked anything.

I also don't see where the dad refusing the name to be included was debunked either. Are you calling the father and the websites that spoke to him liars?

 

[Al smith]

What was debunked, the dad or the design of the memorial?

Have you bothered to look at any of the designs illustrations?
Error Theory: 44 dead people, 44 translucent blocks on the flight path

Or the orientation of the memorial towards Mecca:
Error Theory: <i>Tribune Democrat</i> abusing Families of Flight 93

It's no accident that the design strongly resembles a Islamic crescent. The plans didn't just draw themselves up. Hardly looks debunked to me. I don't see how one guys post debunked anything.

I also don't see where the dad refusing the name to be included was debunked either. Are you calling the father and the websites that spoke to him liars?

I did, bother to check the designs. Then I went here
The Bowl - Flight 93 National Memorial

The crescent seems to be more of a circle now. Glad the hijackers were not wiccans or someone would be going off about it resembling Stonehenge, let me add that Moslem's do not really have an official symbol. The crescent is from a trio of flags from counties that happen to have a majority of Moslem's in their population. Please do yourself a favor and research this beyond one site thats dedicated to paranoid conspiracism

Father wants son's name withheld from Flight 93 memorial

Joanne Hanley, superintendent of the Flight 93 National Memorial, said, Rawls "bases all of his conclusions on faulty assumptions."

"In addition, the facts are twisted and people are misquoted, all to serve his intended purpose," she said.

Murdoch, the designer, said Rawls was "a fanatic who has continued to undercut and violate the families and is exploiting their feelings on his own behalf."

Task force members have noted that the new design has been approved by all the necessary parties, most importantly the family members who lost their loved ones on the flight.

Burnett said all he is looking for is a "thorough, honest investigation" of the design and the elements discussed by Rawls.

 

[Bazzil]

They're not really including the hijackers in the memorial, are they? That just seems way too rediculous to be true.

 

[.]

I did, bother to check the designs. Then I went here
The Bowl - Flight 93 National Memorial

Sure looks like a crescent to me. If it's not a crescent then why did the designer originally call it "Crescent of Embrace?"

The crescent seems to be more of a circle now. Glad the hijackers were not wiccans or someone would be going off about it resembling Stonehenge, let me add that Moslem's do not really have an official symbol. The crescent is from a trio of flags from counties that happen to have a majority of Moslem's in their population. Please do yourself a favor and research this beyond one site thats dedicated to paranoid conspiracism

Father wants son's name withheld from Flight 93 memorial

Joanne Hanley, superintendent of the Flight 93 National Memorial, said, Rawls "bases all of his conclusions on faulty assumptions."

Except for the addition of some trees the crescent is still the same as it's always been, including when it was called the "Crescent of Embrace."

And here's Rawls response to Hanley's faulty logic:

Insane statements from the Flight 93 Memorial Project

Great article ( Flight 93 memorial draws a new round of criticism ) by Paula Ward the Pittsburgh Post Gazette today, quoting a host of principles from the memorial debacle making the most insane statements. Daniel Lovering's AP article, Flight 93 Memorial Design Worries Father -- Newsday.com is drawn from Paula's article, but omits the revealing quotes. Here is a rundown:

The diabolical Daniel Griffith

The central feature of the planned memorial is a half mile wide crescent, originally called the Crescent of Embrace. In answer to my claim that a person facing directly into the giant crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca Error Theory: Flight 93 update: The hijacker has gained control of the cockpit up pops a paragon of perversion:

Daniel Griffith, a geospatial information sciences professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, said anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round.

And here all these Muslims are going to all this trouble to calculate the direction to Mecca so that they will know the direction to pray five times a day. If only they knew about this stunning new mathematical advance by Professor Griffith they could save themselves so much effort. Indeed, we could all stop worrying about which direction to drive to get to work, which direction to fly our airplanes. Don't worry, be happy, the world is round! Is this guy on LSD?

Unfortunately for Mr. Griffith, I am in possession of the analysis of the orientation of the Crescent of Embrace that he sent to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review last year. The first thing his report does is calculate the direction to Mecca:

I computed an azimuth value from the Flight 93 crater site to Mecca of roughly 55.20°.

"Azimuth" is the technical term for "direction," measured in degrees clockwise from north. Griffith calculated the direction from the crash site to Mecca to two decimal points. Now he claims that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca! He is flat out lying about his OWN analysis. [A scan of Griffith's full report is attached at the bottom of this post. Griffith says that he does NOT give me permission to distribute this report, but I am confident that any file named "Tribune Review comments for distribution" is already in the public domain.]

My calculations are very close to Griffith's. I get that the direction to Mecca from the crash site is 55.19° clockwise from north, one one-hundredth of a degree different from Griffith's "roughly 55.20°."

To compare this direction to Mecca with the orientation of the crescent, I connect the most obtruding tips of the crescent structure, then form the perpendicular bisector of this line, finding that it points 1.8° north of Mecca. Griffith never even contests my analysis of the orientation of the crescent, or anyone else’s analysis. He simply assumes that these analyses are correct and goes on to note that there is an ex-Nazi prison camp between the crash site and Mecca. Thus according to Griffith, the crescent can be seen to be pointing towards this Nazi prison camp, which would seem to be a confirmation, not a refutation, of its pointing towards Mecca.

According to the Tribune Review, Griffith is acting as a consultant to the Families of Flight 93. How they happened onto this fiend is a great mystery. Does he think he is doing them a favor by telling them what they want to hear when they ask him for expertise?

Superintendent Joanne Hanley repeats Chairman Reynolds' ignorant assertion that the Washington Monument can be seen as as an Islamic prayer-time sundial.

Just as Griffith makes the idiotic claim that everything faces Mecca, John Reynolds, chairman of the Flight 93 Memorial Project, claimed in a recent newspaper interview ( http://www.crescentofbetrayal.com/ReynoldsInterview.pdf ) that any tower shaped object (like the Tower of Voices portion of the Flight 93 Memorial), can be seen to be an Islamic sundial, if one wants to see it as such. (i.e. It is all in my head.)

On 8/10/2007, I sent Superintendent Hanley an email informing her of my rebuttal to Chairman Reynolds sundial claims. Error Theory: Memorial Project Chairman John Reynolds is a fraud Reynolds' interview proves that he never even looked that my sundial analysis. He thinks that Islamic prayer times are determined by shadow angle (so that when the shadow of the Washington Monument crosses the surrounding security wall at the time for Islamic afternoon prayers, that spot on the security wall can be interpretted as marking the time for Islamic prayer, if one wants to interpret it that way).

But the first thing I explain in my sundial analysis is that Islamic prayer times are determined by shadow length, not shadow angle. Thus prayers commence at a different time every day (earlier as the days get shorter). That means they cannot be marked by a given spot on the security wall. Rather, the prayer line on an Islamic sundial must be placed an exact distance from the shadow caster, and it must follow an exact arc, which in the case of the Washington Monument, never goes anywhere near the granite security wall that Chairman Reynolds thinks could serve as an indicator for Islamic prayer times.

When the shadow of the Washington Monument reaches the outer curved vertical, drawn in red, it is time for Islamic afternoon prayers. If there were a wall built along this line, THEN that wall could be interpretted as turning the Washington Monument into an Islamic prayer time sundial. Note that this would require moving the road and demolishing the building at the top, which blocks the end of the Monument's shadow from even eaching the ground between November 15th and January 15th. (Full explanation here: Error Theory: Memorial Project Chairman John Reynolds is a fraud )

Despite my informing Superintendent Hanley of the foolishness of Chairman Reynold's sundial remarks, she repeats them to the Post Gazette:

As for the allegation that the Tower of Voices is really an Islamic sundial, Ms. Hanley said with an analysis like Mr. Rawls' then the Washington Monument could be perceived as one, as well.

Take a look for yourself at what Reynolds and Hanley are refusing to examine. The likeness between an traditional Islamic sundial and the Tower of Voices is overt:

South is at the top in both images. In the photo of the traditional Islamic sundial (left) the gnomon shadow is just reaching the outer curved vertical, indicating time for afternoon prayers. Shadow calculations confirm that, on any day of the year, when the shadow of the Tower of Voices reaches the inner arc of trees, it will also be time for Islamic afternoon prayers.

Reynolds and Hanley both prove by their remarks that they have not even looked at my sundial analysis. (SundialCalculations They don't even know that Islamic prayer times are determined by shadow length! Yet they are claiming to have thoroughly investigated my warnings of terrorist attack and determined them to be a false alarm. In fact, they have been grasping for ignorant excuses NOT to investigate my warnings. Is it possible to be more irresponsible?

At least Superintendent Hanley does admit one key terrorist memorializing feature. Talking about the orientation of the crescent, she describes how the crescent is placed so that the crash site is situated between the crescent tips:

"The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site," she said.

Murdoch admits it too:

"It's oriented toward the Sacred Ground," he said. "It just couldn't be clearer."

They both admit that the Flight 93 crash site is placed roughly on the center line of the giant crescent, leaving it in roughly the position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. Doesn't Superintendent Hanley know that this is what caused the original outrage over the Crescent of Embrace design? That it was a bare naked Islamic crescent and star flag?

Original Crescent of Embrace publicity photo from Paul Murdoch Architects shows a bare naked crescent and star flag on the crash site, plainly visible to commercial airplanes like Flight 93 cruising overhead. The copse of trees that is placed in roughly the position of the star on an Islamic flag marks the crash site.

The Bowl of Embrace redesign adds a few trees so that the crescent and star flag will not be quite so bare naked, but everything that you see in this original publicity photo remains completely intact in the so-called redesign. The crash site is still placed as the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag.

The hijacker speaks: architect Paul Murdoch denies that there is a 44th glass block on the flight path

One of the reasons that Tom Burnett Sr. is insisting that Tom Jr.'s name not be inscribed on one of the glass blocks in the planned memorial is because there are a total of 44 inscribed memorial glass blocks emplaced along the flight path, matching the number of passengers, crew AND terrorists. Asked about this suspicious glass block count, architect Paul Murdoch first quibbles about the terminology (they are translucent marble blocks, not "glass blocks"), then he feigns ignorance about the 44th block:

Regarding the claim that there are 44 glass blocks in the memorial, Mr. Murdoch vehemently disagreed, saying that, first of all, there is no glass block used in the design.

Instead, there are 40 inscribed marble panels listing the names of the passengers and crew at the gateway to the Sacred Ground, where their remains still rest.

There is then an opening in the wall, Mr. Murdoch said, and three additional panels, which would include the date, Sept. 11, 2001.

"Where the other one is being fabricated, I don't know," he said.

Reporter Paula Ward helps him out:

A separate glass plate will be located near the visitor's center and include the memorial project's preamble.

The only thing Paula failed to note in her fact checking is that this glass block by the visitor center is emplaced along the flight path, up at the upper crescent tip, where as Paul Murdoch describes it, the flight path breaks the circle, turning it into a crescent. Here is an image of this most impressive inscribed glass block (from the original Crescent of Embrace design PDFs, released by the Memorial Project):

Oh THAT glass block! The 44th glass block on the flight path is at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. As the walkway passes through the Entry Portals Walls, it breaks the circle in Paul Murdoch's explanation. What a lovely thought: that on 9/11, our liberty loving circle was smashed by the terrorist and became a giant Mecca oriented crescent!

Having used the flight path as a central theme of his design, Paul Murdoch is obviously well aware of the flight path and what is built along it. His claim that he can't figure out where there might be another glass block on the flight path is a typical Paul Murdoch lie.

We hosted an open design competition in time of war. We should have expected that the enemy would enter and try to win a memorial to their heroes instead of ours, and this is exactly what has happened. Paul Murdoch is trying to win a victory for the enemy. Is he a member of al Qaeda? Is he is a nihilistic trickster who wants to see what he can get away with? I can't answer those questions. I do not know his motivation, but I do know what he is doing: that he is trying to stab a terrorist memorial mosque into the heartland of America.



Error Theory: Insane statements from the Flight 93 Memorial Project