Flight 93 National Memorial

With the word's "let's roll," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and relatives of United Flight 93 victims have turned shovels of dirt at a groundbreaking ceremony for a permanent national memorial at the western Pennsylvania crash site. The memorial is set to open by Sept. 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Gordon Felp of the Families of Flight 93 said Saturday the victims' courage inspired people to work on the project. The 2,200 acre park will feature a chapel with... Read Full Story

Relatives of the victims of Flight 93 — the jetliner that crashed as passengers wrestled with hijackers over Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001 — are honoring their loved ones with a cross-country motorcycle tribute ride. The flight originated in New Jersey and was bound for northern California when it was hijacked by members of the al-Qaida terrorist group. The motorcycle caravan will retrace the flight's intended path. It leaves Newark Liberty International Airport Thursday morning and is... Read Full Story

by Alec Rawls For two years, Tom Burnett Sr. has been speaking out against the crescent-shaped memorial to Flight 93. This week Beverly Burnett (mother of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Jr.) stepped into the public eye to support her husband, and to make her own appeal for a full investigation: Today, I am adding my voice for a full and transparent review of the National Park Service and Flight 93 design selection process that produced Crescent of Embrace. Does it have Islamic symbols or... Read Full Story

It’s been a couple weeks since Alec Rawls has put out a new installment of the ongoing Flight 93 memorial blogburst, and this one consists of entirely fresh material.  It’s truly fascinating to see the development of architect Paul Murdoch’s memorial design, because we can see in it a consistent and obsessive preoccupation with Islamic imagery and culture.  As if the current plan isn’t full of quite enough Islamic imagery and symbolism, it is remarkable to discover that even preliminary... Read Full Story

In this week’s edition of the Flight 93 blogburst, author Alec Rawls explains some of the finer points of contention in our claims about the blatant Islamic imagery in the monument design, and he calls on heavy hitters Allahpundit and Michelle Malkin to rejoin the fight against the planned memorial.  Alec describes in this post how some of the most damning features of the memorial plan involve symbolic and thematic repetition and restatement, implying conscious intent on the part of the... Read Full Story

by Alec Rawls The Islamic Society of North America ( ISNA ) is a Saudi funded Wahabbist group. Its logo is in the shape of a mosque with a crescent topped minaret and a crescent topped dome. Here is the ISNA logo juxtaposed to a similarly shaped mosque from Uppsala Sweden: Both configurations have upturned crescents. The difference is that the arms of the ISNA crescents are lifted symmetrically, while the Uppsala crescents have one arm above the other. On actual minarets, the... Read Full Story

I don’t have much to say tonight regarding this edition of the Flight 93 blogburst, because like everyone else I’ve been busy watching Sarah Palin rock the Republican house in Minnesota.  Alec Rawls , though, outdoes himself in this installment, which winds up, appropriately, at last week’s Democratic convention, where Islamic Society of North America President Ingrid Matteson spoke. After watching Governor Palin mock and belittle the Dems, it’s hard to reflect on all their unsavory... Read Full Story

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... Read Full Story

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the government will pay $9.5 million to acquire land so the Flight 93 National Memorial can be built by the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Salazar said Monday that the National Park Service has reached agreements with eight landowners and that construction is expected to start in November. Salazar calls the money fair compensation. A department spokeswoman says the agency won't disclose what each owner will receive. Flight 93 crashed en route... Read Full Story

UPDATE:  You can also listen to my interview with Alec here by Alec Rawls Powerful video of Tom Burnett Senior and Alec Rawls at the August 2nd Memorial project meeting. The clip below is Part 1 of Alec’s new video exposé, starting with Mr. Burnett ’s appeal to the American people to please help him stop the Park Service from planting a giant Islamic shaped crescent atop his son’s grave. Part one: it points to Mecca. Clip covers the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, the... Read Full Story