Error Theory

Can you identify the images in this graphic?
Left image: a traditional Islamic sundial (photo © Germán Moreno, 2006). The shadow has just reached the outer curved vertical, indicating time for Islamic afternoon prayers. The image on the right is the Tower of Voices portion of the planned Flight 93 Memorial. It is also an Islamic sundial. Shadow calculations confirm that, on any day of the year, when the Tower shadow reaches the inner arc of trees, it will be time for Islamic afternoon prayers.

This is just one of many Islamic and jihadist features hidden (and not so hidden) in what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace design. I spent much of 2006 trying to get the Flight 93 Memorial Project to come to grips with this information. My book about the crescent design, and about the dysfunctional Memorial Project that has allowed it to proceed (Crescent of Betrayal), will arrive in bookstores at the end of August.

That is not soon enough to put pressure on the Memorial Project’s upcoming public meeting (July 28th, 2007). Given the urgent public need to know what is in the design before the meeting, my publisher (World Ahead) has agreed to let me make my final draft available for free download until the print edition of the book comes out.

This is very generous of World Ahead. They understand how crucial it is that the alarm be raised before the July 28th meeting, so that if the design is affirmed, it will be in the face of controversy, and will not automatically achieve unstoppable momentum.

A terrorist memorial mosque?

You heard right. Mosque design involves about a dozen typical mosque features. All are realized in the original Crescent of Embrace design, all on the same epic scale as the Tower of Voices minaret-sundial. All remain completely unchanged in the superficially altered Bowl of Embrace redesign.

Here is another giant mosque feature. Face into the half mile wide central crescent (still present in the Bowl of Embrace redesign) to face Mecca:

This overlay is my elaboration of a graphic put together by Sarah Wells at the blumerle blog on September 10, 2005, three days after the crescent design was unveiled. The “qibla direction” shown here in green was generated by a Muslim website (Islam.com). It shows the direction to Mecca from Somerset PA, ten miles from the crash site. You can tell just by looking that a person facing directly into the giant crescent is facing almost exactly at Mecca.

A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a "mihrab," and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. Here is the mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain:
Most mihrabs are three dimensional, giving the direction to Mecca both through their depth dimension and the orientation of their facade. The mihrab in the Flight 93 Memorial is two dimensional, like a giant Muslim prayer rug (called a "musalla," translated "small mosque"). Just as the Tower of Voices is the world's largest Islamic sundial by a factor of several hundred, so too is the giant crescent the world's largest mihrab and/or prayer rug by a factor of several hundred.

The only change in the Bowl of Embrace redesign was to add some trees behind the giant crescent ("behind" being from the perspective of a person facing into the crescent). This has no effect on the presence or integrity of the giant mihrab/prayer rug, any more than it makes a difference whether a prayer rug is placed in front of some trees. A mihrab, whether standing or in the form of a prayer rug, is a self contained religious construct. It should be placed in a clean and decent place, suitable for prayer, but other than that it is unaffected by what is around it.

What you can do to help stop this abomination

First, read at least part of the book. See how evil this design really is. (How are the terrorists memorialized? There is a separate upper section of Memorial Wall, centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, placing it in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. Inscribed on this separate section of Memorial Wall is the date: September 11, 2001. The date goes to the star on the crescent and star flag. The date goes to the terrorists.)

If you are looking for people to harangue, there is no point in inundating the Memorial Project anymore. They know what is in the design and just make excuses for it. A better target for some friendly contact would be the local newspapers, who have never investigated my information, despite my repeated urgings. A blogstorm might make a difference there. Some candidates:

Brian Whipkey, editor of the Somerset American Daily.

Chip Minemyer edits the Johnstown Tribune Democrat.

Frank L. Craig edits the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Be nice to them. One thing you have to understand about this story is that the Memorial Project told the Flight 93 families that my information had been debunked, even as Project leaders were acknowledging to me in private that it was correct. ("It has to be exact," Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley told me in April 2006, explaining why she wasn't worried about the giant crescent, oriented almost exactly on Mecca: "That's one we talked about. It has to be exact." She KNOWS it is almost exact and is willfully blind about the implications.) The upshot is that, through no fault of their own, the families all think I am some kind of malicious liar. Sympathy for the families then translates into antipathy for me, and the reporters are not immune to that.

Not that all of them are innocent. I learned from Post-Gazette reporter Paula Reed Ward that the editors of the Post Gazette knew about the Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace back in September 2005, and decided to keep it mum. (Download 3, page 108.) If you want to give them an earful, here are their phone numbers.

The FBI could also be worth contacting. I have contacted them a couple of times myself, but have no indication that they are paying any attention to this enemy plot. A few redundant tips to their tip page might be warranted.

A chance to light a fire in the old media via ad buys

There is also a chance for you to achieve something unprecedented here, if you happen to have deep enough pockets. I have put together some print ads that graphically expose the terrorist memorializing features of the crescent design. The idea is to run them in Pennsylvania newspapers in the run-up to the July 28th meeting. Ad readers are then given the address of the website, where those who themselves have deep pockets can again download the ad copy and take it to other newspapers for publication. If the design is affirmed, this seeding of awareness of what is in the design, and the means to protest, could create an avalanche.

The low cost of online communication has allowed all kinds of silly things to "go viral" online. Is the importance of stopping a terrorist memorial from being built on the Flight 93 crash site enough to overcome the old media cost barrier and create the first viral transmission of content through the commercial press?

It should be. How many times in life will a person get a chance to help tackle a hijacker? I've devoted over a year to this, so you can tell where I come down.

One ad uses the above side by side images of the Tower of Voices and the traditional Islamic sundial. These images both come out well in black and white, and the file is a PDF, so it can be printed in different sizes. At two column widths (3.75 inches) it will cost about $300 to run in a medium sized newspaper. At three column widths (5.75 inches), about $700. Small newspapers are about half as much. Large papers maybe five times as much.

This is serious money, but an ad buy isn't just an ad buy. It is a chance to possibly start a chain reaction and go viral in the old media, reaching beyond the relatively small portion of the population that has discovered the fact checking of the alternate media.

For those of us without deep pockets, CrescentOfBetrayal.com also has downloadable flyers and posters that anyone can print out and post. These are based on a high resolution map of the site plan. Superimposed is the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent and other key information. The 300dpi 11 x 17's look awesome on Kinko's matte or glossy cardstock ($3 a pop). Put one on your wall today!

In case anyone has really deep pockets, I have also formatted the 11x17 poster as a large color ad (ready for CMYK printing, as newspapers require). The information on the posters and the large ad is both startling and detailed. If we can get this into western Pennsylvania newspapers, knockout. But this is serious money: $4,500 for a medium size paper.

Neither I or my publisher will make a penny off the book throughout the period of greatest controversy. Our most interested readers are all going to get the book for free. Whether there will be any market left after that, we don't know, and are not weighing. All that is secondary to stopping this hijacking.

The one thing that anybody can do is take a look, and that is all it takes to verify conclusively the basic facts that I am asserting. There is no reason to be left wondering if these claims are for real. If you want to take more than a look, if you want to read the whole crazy story, it is there for the downloading.