Error Theory

Weight-class combatants who are able to cut the most water weight for weigh-ins, then get it back before fight time, gain a size advantage. That makes the ability to cut weight a basic component of fight competition. But should it be, and does it need to be?

There IS an alternative. Instead of having fighters actually go through the process of losing water weight, blood samples could be used to measure the water content of bodily fluids and calculate how much additional water weight the person could safely lose, without their actually having to lose it. Subtract that amount of "excess" water weight from the fighter's scale-weight to get their weigh-in weight.

This water-controlled weigh-in weight would arguably be a fairer measure of fighting weight than the weight-cutting system produces. Fighters with the same water-controlled weigh-in weight would have the same tissue mass, sans fluids. Thus a fighter who has been exceptionally good at cutting and regaining water weight, like current UFC featherweight champ Jose Aldo, will lose his size advantage. Aldo (who needs no size advantage) has been consistently larger than his opponents come fight time. Under a water controlled system, they would be the same size, which seems right. Is an ability to lose water weight a fighting skill? No. So why should it be rewarded inside the Octagon?

The biggest reason to switch to water-controlled weigh-in weights is to avoid the health risks of severe dehydration. Less water makes bodily fluids thicker, which can put tremendous stress on the circulatory system and other organ systems, depending on how extreme the water loss is. That combatants at all levels are engaging in this practice, even in high school wrestling, means a huge price is being paid by a huge number of people just to be able to compete.


A coordination problem

Cutting water weight is what economists call a "coordination problem." If everyone is equally good at it then nobody gets an advantage from it, but everyone has to do it in order to keep the OTHER guy from getting an advantage from it. If only everyone could agree not to do it, then everyone would be better off. Everyone would be spared the discomfort and the health risks of dehydration, but there is no way to enforce such an agreement. Everyone would have an incentive to cheat, and it would be impossible to even define what cheating was. How could an agreed upon level of hydration even be defined?

Technology can solve this coordination problem by simply removing water from the equation. Drink as much water as you want before weigh-in. Blood samples will allow that water weight to be subtracted back out. If somebody tries to get an advantage by losing water weight, they can't do it. The blood test detects their low water weight and accordingly subtracts less water weight when calculating their weigh-in weight.

"Making weight" will become a long-term rather than a short-term proposition. Fighters will still have some ability to lose weight in the short-term by fasting for a day or two before weigh-ins, but they will only be able to lose a couple of pounds this way. Water-controlled or water-compensated weight will primarily be a function of how much muscle and fat a person has.

Moving muscle and fat up and down takes longer time periods, on the order of weeks at least. Fighters just have to make sure far enough ahead of a fight that their weight is on the right trajectory (just as they do now). They'll need to be a little bit more disciplined than now, because they won't be able to drop an extra couple of pounds through more extreme dehydration. On the other hand, the formula they'll need to follow is very simple. They just stay at the maximum weigh-in weight for their class, plus their normal water allowance, plus the three or so pounds for what they can lose by last minute fasting. Then the only way to get a weight advantage will be to have a higher ratio of muscle to fat than the other guy, which is as it should be.


Calibrating the "excess water weight" measurement

Substantial testing would be required to identify just how blood thickness varies with water-weight at each level of hydration. The formula for using blood thickness to calculate excess water-weight would also vary by body size, but the "experiments" necessary to calibrate these calculations are already being run. Fighters and wrestlers all over the country are cutting weight all the time. We just need to start collecting the data. How much does their blood thicken per pound of water-weight loss? Once we calibrate that relationship for each body size then we can determine, for a given blood thickness, what the fighter's weight would be if the maximum safe amount of water was removed, and that's their water-controlled weigh-in weight.

If a suitable water-content test for blood is not already available then one would have to be developed. Maybe a simple mechanical viscosity test would do. Then a couple of years of the UFC systematically collecting data on how blood thickens with water-weight loss and the relationship would be well enough calibrated to enable a switch over to water-controlled weigh-in weights.

Better for the fans too, as fighters will be sharper, not having just put themselves through the dehydration ringer. Soon the fight world will be looking back on the late 20th and early 21st centuries as the bad old days, when everybody had to go through hell just to get in the door for weight-group competition. Good riddance. Training and fighting are grueling enough.


Cross-posted at MMAlinker. For background, you can read here about Jose Aldo's struggle to make weight for the Mark Hominick fight (where he gassed, but still won), and here is Dr. Benjamin's Q and A on the medical dangers of weight cutting.

The study, "Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas," asked about hypotheticals where the subject could save several innocent lives by taking steps to sacrifice fewer innocent lives instead. E.g.:

"A runaway trolley is about to run over and kill five people, and you are standing on a footbridge next to a large stranger; your body is too light to stop the train, but if you push the stranger onto the tracks, killing him, you will save the five people. Would you push the man?"

People who answered "yes" turned out to also score higher on tests for psychopathic tendencies. Interesting, but the "utilitarianism" answer to this kind of question turns on a lot more than utilitarian views. It also turns crucially on religious views. A person who believes that there is a God who has his own mysterious purposes for the directions that people's lives take will not want to step in and "play God" himself, deciding who should live and who should die, because he knows that he himself DOES NOT have some wise master plan for the course of other people's lives. Religious people will be glad to try to save lives, but will be very reluctant to intervene to trade one life for another.

Thus the actual correlation that the study is finding could well be between irreligiosity and psychopathology. Is there a way to separate out the religious from the utilitarian components of the question, in order to determine which is responsible for the correlation with psychopathology? One possible control would be to preface the trolley question with an instruction to "suppose that there is no God," but religious people might not really be able to inhabit that hypothetical, making the control ineffective. You can't very well discern someone's moral framework by asking them to assume it away.

Another possibility is to ask at what point someone would sacrifice their OWN life to save x number of innocent others. Would they trade their life for ten innocent others, a hundred, a thousand, for everybody else in the world? The lower the number the more utilitarian the subject (so long as the number is greater than one). THAT measure of utilitarian tendencies would presumably not correlate with psychopathology. Did they ask it?

It sounds like they didn't. At least, that is the gist of the authors' own critique of their own study (!), as contained in their own press release:

While some might be tempted to conclude that these findings undermine utilitarianism as an ethical theory, Prof. Bartels explained that he and his co-author have a different interpretation: "Although the study does not resolve the ethical debate, it points to a flaw in the widely-adopted use of sacrificial dilemmas to identify optimal moral judgment. These methods fail to distinguish between people who endorse utilitarian moral choices because of underlying emotional deficits (like those captured by our measures of psychopathology and Machiavellianism) and those who endorse them out of genuine concern for the welfare of others." In short, if scientists' methods cannot identify a difference between the morality of a utilitarian philosopher who sacrifices her own interest for the sake of others, and a manipulative con artist who cares little about the feelings and welfare of anyone but himself, then perhaps better methods are needed.

If their questions fail to distinguish between people who would sacrifice themselves vs. people who would only sacrifice others, this would seem to be an easy lack to supply. Just add some questions about self sacrifice. And why not probe for religious views while they are at it, since a correlation between irreligious views and psychopathology is clearly part of what their initial results are measuring. Might as well try to find out how big a part.

Alec Rawls, who has been working with Tom Burnett Sr. to stop the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93, explains the circumstances (related by Mr. Burnett in 2008, but not published until now).

Mr. Burnett had been telling his fellow design competition jurors that the crescent is a well known Islamic symbol. In addition to the giant central crescent (now called a broken circle) Tom also objected to the minaret-like Tower of Voices. "I made a point at that meeting," says Mr. Burnett, "to tell people that we have an Islamist design here that can't go forward, please, stay with me."

One of the left-wing design professionals on the jury, Tom Sokolowski (then director of Pittsburg's Andy Warhol Museum) thought that objecting to the crescent shape, just because it happens to be used by Muslims, was anti-Muslim bigotry. In a rude attempt to shut down criticism, Sokolowski actually called Mr. Burnett "asinine" for objecting to the huge Islamic-shaped Crescent. (Sokolowski would later repeat this performance to the press, calling a local preacher "asinine," "small minded," "bigoted," "repellant," and "disgusting" for protesting the Crescent design.)

It was in this atmosphere, charged with universal awareness amongst the jurors that the giant crescent was indeed a well-known Islamic symbol shape, but also charged with uncertainty as to whether people would be allowed to mention this fact, that another family member, Sandra Felt, started to explain what she liked about the Crescent design. She liked the "embracing" nature of it, says Mr. Burnett. She liked the way it "reached out..."

At which point another family member "lost it" (Mr. Burnett's description), screaming in agony: "I don't want to reach out to those people! THEY MURDERED MY DAUGHTER!"


The Park Service claims it "lost" the minutes

This extreme level of conflict on the jury over perceived Islamic symbolism should have come out years ago. The jury included a designated, non-voting, minutes taker. This was not supposed to be a private deliberation. These were volunteer citizens, doing the people's business, and the jury minutes were supposed to be made available to the public.

The Memorial Project and the Park Service claim that the minutes were "lost." No doubt, but that doesn't mean the loss was accidental, and defenders of the Crescent design had good reason to make the minutes go away. Any faithful record would have been explosive, revealing these fierce objections from multiple Flight 93 family members to the blatant Islamic symbolism in the Crescent design.

The ballot wasn't supposed to be secret either, but the Park Service refuses to account for what they claim was a 9 to 6 tally in favor of the Crescent design. What does 9 to 6 even mean on what was a ranked vote amongst three designs? Did every ballot that did not rank the Crescent last get counted as a vote in favor?

The whole thing is fishy, and there is one most obvious reason why the defenders of the Crescent might want to keep the vote details hidden. The seven family members on the jury were outnumbered by eight academics and design professionals. Thus all six of the votes against the Crescent could have come from the kin, with only Sandra Felt voting for it. This is more than just possible. It is likely.

Another mother of the murdered said only that she agreed with Mr. Burnett, and he thought that the other two men amongst the family members (Gerald Bingham and Ed Root) were on his side as well, though both have since spoken out against his ongoing effort to rescind the chosen design. Bingham and Root are angry at the anguish that the families are still being put through over the memorial design, but could such men have voted for the Crescent in the first place, in the face of that mother's anguished cry?

A vicious left-wing ideologue like Sokolowski, yes, but it seems almost inconceivable that family members could vote for a design that other family members saw as a tribute to the terrorists, or at the very least, as reaching out to Islam. Since Bingham and Root are willing to speak out, can they please tell us whether they voted for the Crescent? If they didn't, then the vote amongst the family members was at least 5 to 2 against.


In support of Powerline's John Hinderaker

The immediate impetus for making these revelations public now is to support John Hinderaker's 10th anniversary 9/11 post:

You may remember that there was considerable controversy when the design for the Flight 93 memorial was unveiled. It was called “Crescent of Embrace.” The crescent is, of course, the central symbol of Islam, and the design apparently was intended to symbolize some sort of rapprochement with that religion. The winning design was chosen by a jury, and some members of the jury, including Thomas Burnett, whose son was one of the heroes who brought down the airplane, vigorously opposed it. As I understand it, no one on the jury questioned the Muslim reference inherent in the crescent, but a majority believed that it would somehow be “healing” for the memorial to be, in part at least, a sort of tribute to Islam.

That was John's response to Tom Sr.'s revelations, and his statement is fully supportable, but for people to know why, the supporting information has to be available to everyone. Now it is.

Given the conflict between Mr. Burnett and Tom Sokolowski, there could not have been any doubt in any juror's mind that the Crescent was an Islamic symbol shape. Indeed, the jury made a specific request, not honored by the Park Service or by architect Paul Murdoch, that:

The crescent should be referred to as 'the circle or arc,' or other words that are not tied to specific religious iconography.

The only question was whether the use of this Islamic symbol shape should be seen as bad, and for a majority to favor the crescent design, a majority just have decided that it wasn't bad, even in the face of family members who found it horrific.

Maybe these left-wing design professionals actually wanted to torture the families, but the generous interpretation is the one John gives: that they saw the Crescent design as symbolizing "some sort of rapprochement" with Islam. Certainly that seems to have been Sandra Felt's idea, and at least one family member not on the jury thought it obvious that this must have been the intent of everyone who voted for the Crescent design. Mark Bingham's mother, Alice Hoglan, just wished that the outreach to Islam had been made explicit:

The Flight 93 Memorial selection committee has admitted to misgivings about the word 'crescent.' I almost wish that instead they could claim they deliberately chose the crescent design as a gesture of peace and unity with the Islamic world. If they were to make that claim, I would not object. I would welcome such a compassionate gesture.

Unfortunately, regardless of the intentions of the jurors, architect Paul Murdoch did not have a compassionate gesture in mind.


A terrorist memorial mosque

Mr. Hinderaker's anniversary post does not investigate whether the giant crescent actually does point to Mecca (allowing it to serve as an Islamic mihrab), or whether the Tower of Voices really is a year-round-accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial. Perfectly understandable, as these claims take some work to check and John had only just learned that the memorial controversy is still aboil, after thinking that it had been resolved in 2005.

But he does provide links to the evidence, and notes that some of it is accessible just by looking. Like why in the world does the Tower of Voices have an Islamic-shaped crescent on top?


The minaret-like Tower of Voices is formed in the shape of a crescent and is cut at an angle at the top so that its crescent arms reach up to the sky, as seen on mosque minarets across most of the Islamic world.

Literally dangling down below these symbolic Islamic heavens are the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes. This symbolic damnation is repeated over and over in Murdoch's design. The memorial is not just any mosque, it is an al Qaeda victory mosque.

So much for trying to reach out to Islam without bothering to vet what part of Islam is being reached out to. Nothing could be worse for the decent people of the Islamic world than to hand a great victory to the very worst in the Islamic world. That is the problem with doing this Muslim-outreach thing on the sly.

Knowing the American people would never go along with intentional Islamic outreach, the Memorial Project had to cover up what actually went on in the jury room, and once they got into cover-up mode, they just kept covering up revelation after revelation about what is actually contained in Murdoch's design.


Sokolowski's own vile cover-up: attributing the Crescent choice to the families, after vilifying family members who opposed the Crescent design

Here is how the Post-Gazette reported on local preacher Ron McRae, who believed that architect Paul Murdoch had intended the Crescent as a tribute to Islam:

It's a memorial to the terrorists," McRae said. "It's not a memorial to the innocent Americans who died there."

But Tom Sokolowski, the director of the Andy Warhol Museum, and one of the Stage II jury members, said that claim is "asinine."

"If the families of the 40 people who were killed felt this was an appropriate symbol to honor their loved ones, then I think he is delusional," he said. "To take this small-minded, bigoted view is disgusting and repellent."

Sokolowski knew that family members on the jury had taken that exact same "disgusting and repellent" view because he had said as much to their faces, and now here he was pretending that it was McRae, not himself, who was vilifying the families. Absolute moral trash of the highest order, even if he is just a feckless little worm. By intent, he is as evil as Murdoch.

Gordon Felt's defense of the Crescent design is also belied by what transpired on the jury:

Gordon Felt, whose brother, Edward, died in the crash, called the focus on the crescent an "unfortunate distraction," from the fourth anniversary memorial service tomorrow at the crash site.

Still, he continued, "It would be silly of us to have some sort of symbolism [in the memorial] that would be offensive to people."

This from the man whose own sister in law had spoken in favor of the "reaching out" symbolism of the Crescent, symbolism that was seen by other family members as intending to reach out to Islam, inspiring the most dreadful offense. All this is FACT, and Gordon Felt waves off any thought of it as "silly."


Did Gerald Bingham lie in his letter to the Memorial Project?

Mr. Bingham's letter to the Memorial Project (p. 21 here) was timed to counter Mr. Burnett's appearance at the 2008 Project meeting. It in-effect calls Mr. Burnett a liar, denying that Tom Sr. had ever raised any protest about Islamic symbolism when they served on the jury together:

Attention: Joanne Hanley
RE: Mr. Tom Burnett’s disapproval of the Memorial scheduled to be built honoring those on United Flight 93

Please read the following letter into the minutes of the Flight 93 board meeting scheduled for August 2, 2008.

I served on the Jury to select the final design for the Flight 93 Memorial along with Mr. Burnett. As I recall, Tom liked the design with a line of rocks along a 2 ½ mile walking trail. He indicated in his discussion with me that when it came to final vote that this would be the design of his choice. After the vote was taken and his design was not chosen he was very upset. Not once during these discussions did he mention that the design chosen by a majority vote of the committee had anything to do with a “symbol to the terrorist” as he is now saying.

The final design was chosen because its’ layout fit the landscape where the plane crashed and kept with the surrounding area.

I believe that Mr. Burnett has forgotten that this memorial is for 40 individual people who were on a flight taken over by terrorists and that all 40 of those people became heroes that day. All he is accomplishing at this point is causing other families aggravation and needless controversy.

We need to forge ahead with the plans as voted upon and join together as one just like our loved-ones did on United Flight 93, September 11, 2001.

Respectfully,
Gerald Bingham
Father of Mark Bingham

Mr. Bingham's denial that Tom Sr. said anything about Islamic symbolism is contradicted by numerous data points, starting with the fact that Mr. Burnett spoke out to the press immediately after Crescent design was unveiled in 2005:

Tom Burnett Sr., whose son died in the crash, said he made an impassioned speech to his fellow jurors about what he felt the crescent represented.

"I explained this goes back centuries as an old-time Islamic symbol," Burnett said. "I told them we'd be a laughing stock if we did this."

But his fellow jurors -- and it turns out, many of the other family members -- disagree with his interpretation.

"I got blown off."

But not entirely. The jurors, in their final report, suggested the name of Murdoch's design be changed from crescent to something with less religious significance, like an arc or circle.

This is corroborated by Helene Fried, who helped to manage the design competition:

Fried said the connection was raised by some history buffs on the jury during three days of deliberations last month.

Compare "old time Islamic symbol," with "history buffs." And if the Jury's statement that the Crescent name is "tied to specific religious iconography" was not in response to Mr. Burnett's protests, where did it come from? Is Bingham saying that others on the jury were more vehement than Mr. Burnett in pointing out and objecting to this tie?

Then there is Mr. Burnett's account of Tom Sokolowski calling him "asinine" for objecting to the Islamic symbolism of the crescent. This is corroborated by the fact that Sokolowski used the exact same language to condemn Pastor Ron McRae. Altogether, the evidence is overwhelming that it is Gerald Bingham who is lying when he accuses Mr. Burnett of lying.


For the sake of the families

Bingham makes his motivation clear. He opposes Mr. Burnett because:

All he is accomplishing at this point is causing other families aggravation and needless controversy.

But notice what Bingham doesn't say. He is willing to discuss how Mr. Burnett voted, but he keeps his own vote secret. (Gerald Bingham has been divorced from Mark Bingham's mother Alice Hoglan since the 1970's, so her stated approval of Muslim-outreach in the Flight 93 Memorial should not be linked to him.)

If Bingham voted for the Crescent, his secrecy about his vote would make no sense. Everyone from Sokolowski on up appeals to the will of the families. Bingham himself does this. These appeals obviously turn on whether the nine votes for the Crescent design came from family members or from the cadre of left-wing design professionals who outnumbered the families 8 to 7.

For Bingham's objective of ending the controversy, the most weighty thing he could say is that he voted for it, but he doesn't. And how could he have voted for the Crescent? This is a man who is so keen to avoid pain for the families that he is even willing to tell slanderous lies about the one family member he blames for dragging out the controversy. Surely such a man would never have voted in the first place for a design that was already causing the most extreme anguish to multiple family members.


Ed Root is also loud in his condemnations but mum about his vote

Jury member Ed Root also attacks Mr. Burnett and Mr. Rawls for continuing to oppose the Crescent design (p. 22 here):

Those who oppose this Memorial, for whatever misplaced reasons, have voiced their belief on numerous occasions. That is a striking example of the democracy we hold dear. When those unfounded beliefs turn to a zealotry that attempts to overthrow the very democratic process that selected the winning design it does a terrible disservice to those who worked long and diligently during the design process and, to me, it mocks those very 40 that we long to honor. Our nation is one of laws and due process. To let a few destroy what many have built is not democracy, but tyranny.

Yet Root too keeps his vote secret. It could just be embarrassment, not wanting to admit that he voted for such an obvious perversion, crammed to the gills with Islamic-shaped crescents. Or it could be that he was better than that, and despite the magnificence of Murdoch's Crescent, was unwilling to vote for as design that other family members found so appallingly offensive.

Mr. Burnett says he liked Mr. Root, and it is easy to see why. They both believe the passengers and crew were fighting, not just to stop the terrorist attack, but to get back to their families:

“The people of Flight 93 wanted to live,” Root said while visiting “Father Al” and the chapel in July. “There’s no doubt in my mind, they didn’t want to die.”

That distinguishes the passengers and crew from the hijackers, in Root’s eyes.

“[The passengers and flight attendants] wanted to try to get control of the plane and, if possible, to survive,” he said. “But they knew from all of the phone calls that if they didn’t do something, it would be far worse. So it really is this comparison of philosophies of a free society versus a terrorist society. One is, their cause is death; the other is, their cause is life. And that’s what makes this worthy of a national memorial. That’s what makes this worth being remembered.

Maybe he can join with Mr. Burnett in demanding an explanation for Memorial Superintendent Keith Newlin's claim that it was the passengers and crew who crashed the airplane: "They are the one’s who brought the plane down," says Newlin. This is his way of avoiding the implication that the circle-breaking crescent-creating theme of the memorial can only be depicting the actions of the terrorists. "[The terrorists] TRIED to break the peace," says Newlin, "but they failed." Surely Root would disagree.

But Root is wrong about who is refusing to respect democratic principles. Their 15 person jury does not take precedence over the will of the nation, clearly expressed in the national uproar over the original Crescent of Embrace design. The Memorial Project promised to remove the offensive features—the Islamic symbol shapes—but they never did. They just disguised them.


"The difference is at best a subtle one"

Thanks to Powerline for exposing this as well:


Crescent of Embrace, left. Circle of Embrace, right.

They call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace. All they did was recolor the graphics, then add an extra arc of trees, placed to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent, that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. As a result, Murdoch's circle-breaking crescent-creating theme is now even more explicit, and so are its obvious terrorist-memorializing implications.


Will other front-line conservative blogs and publications take notice?

John Hinderaker is a top lawyer, a lifelong expert at evaluating evidence. When he announces that there is serious substance to the Flight 93 controversy, serious people ought to listen.

Everybody understands the difficulty. With multiple Flight 93 family members crying their anguish against anyone who prolongs the controversy, people need to actually look at the facts before taking a position. So take a look! MANY of the facts are perfectly straightforward and utterly damning. Not everyone can be as brave as Pamela Geller, but no one should let the whiff of danger stop them from examining this most important issue.

We're talking no less than the re-hijacking of Flight 93 by an actual al Qaeda sympathizing architect. Think 9/11 folks. The whiff of danger should be an attractant, a chance to tackle a hijacker. Those lied-to and in some cases lying family members need to have their fat pulled out of the fire. Ride to the sound of the guns.


Blogburst posters and linkers (THANKS): 1389 blog, Flopping Aces, Bob McCarty Writes. Solsticewitch13.

The Park Service enlisted three outside consultants to assess whether the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 really can be seen as a giant mihrab: the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. All three consultants, including two Islamic scholars, were blatantly and provably dishonest.

Consultant #1 (details below) confirmed to the Park Service that the giant crescent (now called a broken circle) does indeed point almost exactly at Mecca, then when asked about it by the press, denied that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca (insisting that "you can face any direction to face Mecca").

Consultant #2, a professor of Islamic architecture at MIT, lied about one of the most familiar of all Islamic doctrines, claiming that a legitimate mihrab must point exactly at Mecca. (The original Crescent of Embrace pointed less than 2° north of Mecca. The broken-circle "redesign" points less than 3° south of Mecca. Both highly accurate by Islamic standards.)

Consultant #3, a professor of sharia law at Indiana University (!), came up with an almost comically dishonest rationale for dismissing concern about the giant Mecca-oriented crescent: don't worry, no one has ever seen a mihrab anywhere near this BIG before. Not so funny is the Park Service's eagerness to embrace such a transparently ludicrous excuse.

The details are documented in a large advertisement that Alec Rawls and Tom Burnett Sr. are running this week in Somerset Pennsylvania as President Obama and the national press arrive in town for the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The press has so far been unwilling to check even the most basic facts about the memorial, like whether the giant crescent really does point to Mecca (takes about 2 minutes). Maybe charges that the Park Service and its consultants are telling easily verifiable lies will be more up their alley.

That's the hope, but a strong push might also make the difference. If you want to help, here are email addresses for the new Park Superintendent Keith Newlin and for a few Pennsylvania newspapers. You can write your own letter, or just copy the first four paragraphs above, and tell them that you want these charges checked!

Keith_Newlin@nps.gov, alec@rawls.org, swischnowski@phillynews.com, chepp@phillynews.com, ajohns@tribdem.com, cminemyer@tribdem.com, news@dailyamerican.com, skalson@post-gazette.com, TBirdsong@post-gazette.com, mcollier@sfchronicle.com, newsdesk@kpix.com


Ad copy, with links do documentation

After a brief primer on the giant Islamic crescent-and-star flag that the Park Service is building on the Flight 93 crash site, the ad exposes the three blatantly dishonest consultants that the Park Service invited to please pull the wool over their eyes:

Academic charlatan calculates the direction to Mecca, then tells the press that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca

Here's a novel way to deny that the giant crescent points to Mecca. Just deny that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca. This from the Park Service's first consultant, as reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

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.

That is not an errant paraphrase. Griffith said the same thing to Tribune Democrat reporter Kirk Swauger:

He said you can face anywhere to face Mecca.

So when Muslims face Mecca for prayer, they are just deluding themselves? They could actually face any old direction and still be facing Mecca? Is there really no such thing as a direction on planet earth?

Griffith was lying of course, and the Park Service knew it, because the first thing Griffith's report on the orientation of the Crescent of Embrace does is calculate the direction from Shanksville to Mecca:

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

"Azimuth" means direction, in degrees clockwise from north. Muslims calculate the direction to Mecca by the "great circle" or "shortest distance" method ("as the crow flies," curving only in the over-the-horizon direction), and this is the method Griffith used. He also accepted that the Crescent in the original design drawings points a mere .62° away from Mecca (about a degree closer than it actually points, but no matter).

In short, Griffith confirmed the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent, then denied it to the public, but the Park Service knew the truth, because they had Griffith's actual report. Thus when the Park Service repeated Griffith's denials that the giant crescent points to Mecca, they too were knowingly hiding the truth from the public. One example is the previous Park Superintendent Joanne Hanley. Asked directly whether the giant crescent points to Mecca she denied it, telling the Post Gazette that:

The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site.

The Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent is clear evidence of an enemy plot to re-hijack Flight 93. The American people need to know the facts, while these public figures have worked desperately to keep the facts from them.


Muslim consultant from MIT lied about one of the most familiar of all Islamic doctrines, claiming Mecca-orientation must be exact

After Griffith verified that the crescent/broken-circle does indeed point almost exactly at Mecca, the Park Service asked two Islamic scholars whether there was any Islamic significance to this giant Mecca-oriented crescent. Could it by any chance be seen as a giant mihrab? After all, the archetypical mihrab IS crescent shaped.

The Park Service's second consultant, a professor of Islamic and mosque architecture at M.I.T. named Nasser Rabbat, assured the Park Service that because the crescent does not point exactly at Mecca it cannot be seen as a mihrab:

Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees.

That is a bald lie, and every practicing Muslim knows it. For most of Islam's 1400 year history far-flung Muslims had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. Thus it developed as a matter of religious principle that what matters is intent to face Mecca, with no requirement for precision in actually facing Mecca. Two or three degrees off is highly precise by Islamic standards. Many of the world's most famous mihrabs face 20, 30, 40 or more degrees away from Mecca and it matters not one whit.

Every practicing Muslim knows that they only need to face very roughly towards Mecca for prayer because they are constantly availing themselves of this allowance when, five times a day, they seek out walls that they can pray towards that will leave them facing roughly towards Mecca. Not having to face exactly at Mecca for prayer is one of the most familiar of all Islamic doctrines.


Saudi religious authorities confirm: mihrab orientation does NOT have to be
exact

The mihrab-orientation issue came up in 2009 when the denizens of Mecca itself realized that even their local mosques only face very roughly towards the Kaaba. is is an unusual case because the people who built these mosques couldn't say they didn't know the actual direction to the Kaaba. They could see it. No problem, according to the Saudi Islamic Affairs Ministry, which assured worshippers that, "it does not affect the prayers."

Nobody would know this better than Nasser Rabbat, who actually teaches mosque design. Indeed, he would know the full basis for the primacy of intent: that intent is given preeminence throughout Islamic teaching, not just in Mecca-orientation. For instance, Islam's first instruction to converts is that they are supposed to lie about their religion (Tabari 8.23):

en Nu'aym came to the Prophet. 'I've become a Muslim, but my tribe does not know of my Islam; so command me whatever you will.' Muhammad said, 'Make them abandon each other if you can so that they will leave us; for war is deception.'

What matters in Islam is not whether Muslims tell the truth, but whether their intent is to advance Islamic conquest.

Of course we made sure the Park Service saw the proof from the Saudi Islamic A airs Ministry that their Muslim consultant had lied to them about the Mecca-orientation of a mihrab needing to be exact. That was a couple of years ago now. If they had any integrity they would re-open their investigation, but then if they had any integrity they would never have handed their watchdog role over to a pair of Muslim consultants in the first place.


Islamic scholar from Indiana University says don't worry, no one has ever seen a mihrab anywhere near this BIG before

Kevin Jaques, a professor of Islamic sharia law at Indiana University, does not say whether he is Muslim (remember Tabari 8.23: converts who live amongst the infidels are supposed to hide their religion), but he did write an article right after 9/11 urging that any U.S. response should be based on the principles of sharia law, so he pretty much has to be Muslim. He is definitely an Islamophile.

Professor Jaques' report to the Park Service acknowledges that the crescent is geometrically similar to the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built, but dismisses any concern about Islamic symbolism on the grounds that no one has ever seen a mihrab anywhere near this BIG before:

... most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large as the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience. Again, just because it is similar does not make it the same.

You know, like no one can recognize Abe Lincoln's likeness on Mount Rushmore. It's just too darn big for ordinary folks to get their tiny little minds around, and the Flight 93 crescent is much bigger than that. It's actually big enough to be easily visible from airliners like Flight 93 passing overhead. The scale would be epic beyond belief so ... don't believe it!

[Jaques full comment was left anonymously on this radical fruitcake left-wing blog (scroll to the last comment at the bottom). It can be identified as Jaques' because a chunk of the text is identical to what the Memorial Project released a few months later, naming Jaques as the source. Notice that the Park Service did not release the revealing part of Jaques' statement, where he acknowledges that the giant crescent IS similar to a mihrab, but is too big to worry about.]

Too big to worry about is not technically a lie perhaps, but it is a transparently dishonest excuse. That it was good enough for the Park Service shows how badly they wanted to be deceived. It would even be funny if the issue were not so deadly serious. Muslims are not allowed to deceive for just any reason. Orthodox doctrine tells them to deceive when by doing so they can advance the cause of Islamic conquest, and one of the oldest traditions of Islamic conquest is the building of victory mosques on the sites of their attacks.

To be completely certain that the memorial is actually intended to be a mosque one has to work through Murdoch's endless proofs of intent: his elaborate repetition of the Mecca-orientations, the year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial (tomorrow's ad), the 38 instead of 40 Memorial Groves (Thursday's ad), etcetera. But the Park Service's extensive lying to the public about the most basic facts of the design should by itself be a clarion call to everyone to insist on an independent investigation. The Service’s own internal investigation was nothing but proven lies from beginning to end. That is not acceptable!

Neither is the news media's consistent refusal to check and report the facts. News-people all know that Muslims face Mecca for prayer, yet the Post-Gazette did not question Griffith's claim that "anything can point to Mecca, because the earth is round." They too are complicit in foisting this lie on the public. Every reporter who reads this ad and does not try to fact-check our easy-to-verify claims is part of the problem.

What this means, people, is that you have to stand up on your own. Your opinion leaders have abandoned you to this Islamic assault, but if you do stand up to your supposed betters, if you check the facts for yourselves and demand that the press and the government conduct proper investigations, then Murdoch's plot can still be undone. The hijacker can still be ousted from the cockpit. Now that would be a fitting memorial to Flight 93.

Alec Rawls and Tom Burnett Sr.


UPDATE: some much appreciated help in spreading the word

Many thanks to Pamela Geller for letting her many wonderful readers know about our ad campaign.

Also nice boosts from 1389 Blog, from The Atheist Conservative, from Talk Wisdom, from Defending Crusader, from Findalis, from creeping sharia, and from Nice Deb. Thanks!

White House spokesman Jay Carney claims that paying people not to work is one of the best ways to create jobs:

It is one of the most direct ways to infuse money directly into the economy.

How about not taking it out in the first place? Carney apparently thinks the money appears by magic, but it is actually extracted in the most perverse way possible. Here is the beginning of Michigan's Unemployment Insurance information sheet for employers:

When a worker becomes separated from his or her job and files for unemployment benefits, the worker’s past employer or employers will probably be charged for any benefits that may be paid.

With slight differences, that statement applies to every state. Some are a little more rigorous, like Georgia:

In Georgia, employers pay the entire cost of unemployment insurance benefits [paid to former employees].

It's not a cost sharing system. It is not society that picks up the tab for this social insurance. In general, employers are on the hook for all payments made to their own former employees. Just like when you get in a car accident, it is your own insurance rates that go up. Psuedo-insurance you might call it. But in the case of unemployment insurance this is taken to the extreme. The unemployment benefits come straight out of former employers' bank accounts.

As a consequence, when the duration of unemployment insurance is doubled, as Obama pushed through in his inaugural "stimulus" package, the unemployment insurance liability faced by employers was doubled, and the only way they could avoid that liability was not to hire, so that's what happened: no hiring since February 2009.

If you were going to be on the hook for half an employee's salary for a full year for anyone you had to let go, would you hire? It is an insanely high penalty. $20,000 of liability for any $40,000/yr employee you take on. Absolute murder for the economy.

Add that the actual hit, when it lands, is going to land on precisely those companies that are already struggling to stay afloat. That's why they are laying off workers. So not only are firms not hiring, but when they try to save themselves by cutting back their workforces, they get pushed into bankruptcy by still having to pay half the laid off worker's salaries for up to a year.

Add also the perverse incentives for employees: that quite a few people will prefer not to work when they can get paid for staying home. It's a triple whammy.

The White House is blissfully ignorant of the destructiveness of the funding source for this job killer, ignorant enough that Spokesman Jay Carney could actually spew contempt at the reporter who questioned how paying people to stay home creates jobs:

I would expect a reporter from the Wall Street Journal would know this as part of the entrance exam.

Carney just passed his exit exam: time for this Baghdad Bob to leave.

Duped by the Memorial Project's 2007 "White Paper" apparently.

Briareus calls himself an "occasional contributor" to the Diary of Daedalus blog, which has done important work in documenting Charles Johnson's efforts to flush his former (anti-jihadist) self down the memory hole. If it was just himself that Johnson was flushing down the toilet, few would care, but he is also flushing the work of thousands of commentators. A lot of genuinely important fact-checking, investigation and documentation was conducted in the LGF community's epic comment threads.

Of particular relevance for present purposes, it was five "lizardoids" who first suggested, then discovered, then verified the Mecca-orientation of the giant Islamic-shaped crescent in the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93. How ironic that someone who has been helping to preserve these people's contributions is now trying to deny them.

Briareus' recent comments at Atlas Shrugs actually constitute a pretty serious ad hominem attack against me, but they only include one substantive claim:

"Rawls' strongest argument is that the "crescent" points toward Mecca. IT DOESN'T."

No need for quotes on "crescent"--they named it Crescent of Embrace--and it is trivially easy to verify that this giant crescent does in fact point within a couple of degrees of Mecca.

Just use any online Islamic prayer-direction calculator to print out the direction to Mecca ("qibla" in Arabic) from Somerset PA. Place this print-out over the Crescent site-plan on your computer screen, and you'll see that the Mecca-line almost exactly bisects the giant crescent:



A person standing between the most protruding tips of the crescent structure and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow), will be facing almost exactly in the “qibla” direction. To be precise, the crescent points 1.8° north of Mecca, ± 0.1° (calculations here).


The Memorial Project's 2007 White Paper

So where did Briareus get the idea that the crescent does NOT point to Mecca? He isn't explicit, but he does mention an "independent study" he read, and links to the copy of the Memorial Project "White Paper" that I have posted on my Crescent of Betrayal website. This joint effort by the Park Service and the Memorial Project is anything but independent. It was developed internally by the very people I had been criticizing as a ploy to put my criticisms to rest. Still, it is very worth reading. The details it contains are utterly damning, to the Park Service and to the memorial.

On the Mecca-orientation of the crescent, they cite one Dr. Daniel Griffith, a professor of "geospatial information" at the University of Texas, who confirms that the giant crescent does indeed point almost exactly at Mecca. He just tries to deny that this implies any Islamic meaning or intent: "just because calculations are correct does not make the resulting numbers meaningful."

Obviously the meaning of a crescent that points almost-exactly at Mecca is not a question that falls within Dr. Griffith's field of expertise. Briareus can approve Griffith's ignorant declaration that the Mecca-orientation doesn't mean anything if he wants to, but on the point at hand--does the crescent point to Mecca--Griffith and the White Paper confirm this orientation, they do not refute it, as Briareus seems to think.


Hey, let's leave it up to a couple of pious Muslims

The two other consultants on the White Paper are a pair of pious Muslims, both of whom are indeed knowledgeable about the meaning of a Mecca-oriented crescent, and both of whom are transparently dishonest with the Park Service. One, a professor of Islamic and mosque architecture at MIT named Nasser Rabbat, claims that the Crescent of Embrace cannot be seen as a mihrab (the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built) because it does not point exactly at Mecca. To constitute a legitimate mihrab, the crescent could not be off at all in its orientation, or so Rabbat claims:

"Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees."

That is a bald lie. For most of Islamic history far-flung Muslims had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. Thus it developed as a matter of religious principle that what matters is intent to face Mecca, with no requirement for precision in actually facing Mecca.

The Flight 93 crescent faces within 2 (now 3) degrees of Mecca, which is highly precise by Islamic standards. Many of the world's most famous mihrabs face 20, 30, 40 or more degrees away from Mecca and it matters not one whit. Further, all practicing Muslims know that they only need to face very roughly towards Mecca for prayer because they are constantly availing themselves of this allowance when, five times a day, they seek out walls that they can pray towards that will leave them facing roughly towards Mecca. Not having to face exactly at Mecca for prayer is one of the most familiar of all Islamic doctrines.


Saudi religious authorities confirm: mihrab orientation does NOT have to be exact

The mihrab-orientation issue came up recently in Saudi Arabia when the denizens of Mecca itself realized that even their local mosques only face the Kaaba very roughly. This is an unusual case because the people who built these mosques couldn't say they didn't know the actual direction to the Kaaba. They could SEE it. No problem according to the Saudi Islamic Affairs Ministry, which assured worshippers that “it does not affect the prayers.”

Nobody would know this better than Rabbat, who teaches mosque design at MIT. Indeed, he would know the full basis for the primacy of intent: that intent is given pre-eminence throughout Islamic teaching, not just in Mecca-orientation. For instance, Islam's first instruction to converts is that they are supposed to lie about their religion (Tabari 8:23). What matters is not whether they tell the truth, but whether their intent is to advance Islamic conquest ("for war is deception").


Consulting with the Muslim Brotherhood

Rabbat knowingly lied about one of the most familiar of all Islamic doctrines. That's a fact. He HAD to know that he was giving the Park Service misinformation. The most likely explanation for why he lied is that he was following this other basic Islamic instruction: to deceive in the service of Islamic conquest. The evidence is that Rabbat is an Islamofascist.

What did the Park Service expect, going to an orthodox Muslim for advice? Don't they know that Osama bin Laden was a perfectly orthodox Wahabbist? The Park Service might as well have asked the Muslim Brotherhood what they thought of Murdoch's al Qaeda victory mosque. (Just fine and dandy, of course.)

There are plenty of moral Muslims, but they are not orthodox. If they are orthodox then they are Islamic supremacists and supporters of conquest by terror, because that is what the orthodoxy demands. Muhammed: "I have been made victorious with terror" (Sahih Bukhari 4.52.220).

I have shown the Park Service the proof of how their devout Islamic consultant lied to them about mihrab orientation having to be exact but they pretend they can't hear. So Rabbat is a jihadi and the involved Park Service personnel are a bunch of cowards. What is Briareus' excuse?

A lot of people have just been duped. Maybe he is one of them. Whatever the case, he really ought to rethink.

It was 19 Islamic terrorists. That makes the broken-circle memorial to Flight 93 a memorial to the terrorists, who are depicted not only as smashing our circle of peace, but as leaving a giant Islamic crescent-and-star flag in its place:



They call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace: a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, pointing to Mecca.

The damned thing is actually an al Qaeda victory mosque, with the Mecca-oriented crescent as its mihrab: the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built.

That is the short version of an advertisement that started running in western Pennsylvania newspapers last week. Alec Rawls sends along this update on the effort to stop the crescent mosque.


10th anniversary ad campaign now underway

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review recently solicited Tom Burnett Senior's response to some new design images for the Flight 93 memorial. When he said that the so-called redesign leaves all of the terrorist memorializing features intact, editors instructed reporter Kari Andren to leave his remarks out. They preferred un-interrupted praise from the same few family members who always speak up for the broken-circle design.

The people of Pennsylvania deserve to see what their information gate-keepers don't want them to know, so Mr. Burnett and his backers decided to begin their 10th anniversary ad campaign a few weeks early. The first full-page color ad just ran in the Somerset Daily American and will appear in two other local papers next week.

For a PDF of the ad copy, click on the thumbnail below, or scroll down for the same content formatted for browsing. If anyone wants to help fund additional advertising, a very generous soul has offered to match all donations up to a total of $5000.




More explicit than a giant Islamic crescent-and-star flag?

As the ad-headline notes, the Circle of Embrace "redesign" only accentuates the circle-breaking crescent-creating theme of the original Crescent of Embrace. Mr. Burnett's full remarks explain:

The only visible change is the addition of an extra arc of trees that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. The unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace: a giant Islamic shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.

People also need to know that a Mecca-direction indicator is the central feature around which every mosque is built. It is called a "mihrab," and the classic mihrab is crescent shaped.

So the terrorists broke our circle of peace on 9/11, and all that remains standing is the central feature of a mosque. The inclusion of a broken-off part of the circle only accentuates this terrorist-memorializing symbolism. It bastardizes what my son Tom and the other heroes of Flight 93 accomplished. The crescent/broken-circle design is a desecration of sacred ground.

Tom Burnett Sr. Northfield MN

Park Service calls the circle "broken"

A proper newspaper would ask the Park Service if the extra arc of trees really does represent a broken-off part of the circle. Still, people can easily verify this crucial fact for themselves. It is right on the Park Service's own website. Their "questions about the design" page asks "Is this circle 'broken' at all?" Their answer is yes:

... the circle is symbolically "broken" or missing trees in two places, depicting the flight path of the plane, and the crash site.

The locations of these two breaks in the "circle of embrace" are spelled out:

...first, where the flight path of the plane went overhead (which is the location of the planned memorial overlook and visitor center), and second, where the plane crashed at the Sacred Ground (depicted by a ceremonial gate and pathway into the Sacred Ground).

These are the two ends of the extra arc of trees, which starts near the original upper crescent tip and continues down to the crash site. So Mr. Burnett is right. Both ends of the new arc of trees are explicitly broken off. The unbroken part of the circle—what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11—is just the original Islamic-shaped Crescent of Embrace that the Park Service promised to change.

To illustrate, the ad includes a side-bar of graphics, showing just what is changed and what is not changed in the memorial. This is slightly complicated by the fact that the Park Service pretended that they were going to make one very big cosmetic change that they are not actually making, but a few pictures easily tell the tale.


The Park Service pretended the outside of the crescent would be filled in with a forest of trees

A publicity shot of the original Crescent of Embrace design shows what appears to be a bare-naked Islamic crescent-and-star flag planted atop the crash site:


When this blatant Islamic symbolism caused an uproar, architect Paul Murdoch re-worked his mock-up to show a forest of additional trees surrounding the outside of the original Crescent:

Only the inner arc of the crescent remains visible, making the new Circle of Embrace name seem reasonable. But none of these surrounding trees made it into the actual Circle of Embrace design drawings. (The "Stage 1" drawings, encompassing the area seen in these images, were released in 2009.)

The Park Service may eventually let the bare field grow in with trees, but this is not a change in the design. The only actual change is the extra arc of trees, seen below in orange. It explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle:

What the Circle of Embrace actually looks like. The original giant crescent still sits naked on an open field and the flight path still "breaks the circle" at the upper crescent tip.

Remove the explicitly broken off part of the circle (in orange), and what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11 is the same giant Mecca-oriented crescent the Park Service promised to change. It constitutes a classic "mihrab," the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built, and will form the centerpiece for the world’s largest mosque.


Who broke the circle of peace on 9/11?

When the "Crescent of Embrace" was unveiled as the winning design, architect Paul Murdoch explained the crescent name and the crescent shape by saying that the circle was broken on 9/11, leaving only a part of the circle still standing: the giant crescent. The fact that this circle-breaking crescent-creating theme remains completely intact in the broken-circle design demands the question of WHO is being depicted as breaking the circle of peace on 9/11.

The final section of the ad points out that there can only be one answer. We all know who broke the peace on 9/11. Thus the memorial can only be depicting the actions of the terrorists, who are seen not only as smashing our circle of peace, but as replacing it with their own crescent and star flag.

With the media censoring all criticism, people who don't like all this blatant Islamic symbolism need a way to signal each other directly, so the ad finishes with a handy dandy flyer that readers can post on windows, walls, bulletin boards etcetera:



If you want to put a few up yourself, click the image above for a printable PDF, complete with urls for our petition to stop the memorial and for more information. And here is an ad-copy version that anyone can run in their own local paper (the free weeklies can be pretty reasonable).

As Flight 93 showed, just because the hijacker has control of the cockpit doesn't mean he can't still be stopped.