I found it at Obsideian Wings, where this man was one of the authors. I hadn’t read the blog before, but Andy had pre-positioned a post for this occasion.

He was killed in Iraq 1/3/2008. Yesterday.

Andy Olmsted, US Army, Blogger. Photo credit: Rocky Mountain News

“I am leaving this message for you because it appears I must leave sooner than I intended. I would have preferred to say this in person, but since I cannot, let me say it here.”
G’Kar, Babylon 5

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
Plato*

This is an entry I would have preferred not to have published, but there are limits to what we can control in life, and apparently I have passed one of those limits. And so, like G’Kar, I must say here what I would much prefer to say in person. I want to thank hilzoy for putting it up for me. It’s not easy asking anyone to do something for you in the event of your death, and it is a testament to her quality that she didn’t hesitate to accept the charge. As with many bloggers, I have a disgustingly large ego, and so I just couldn’t bear the thought of not being able to have the last word if the need arose. Perhaps I take that further than most, I don’t know. I hope so. It’s frightening to think there are many people as neurotic as I am in the world. In any case, since I won’t get another chance to say what I think, I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. Such as it is.

“When some people die, it’s time to be sad. But when other people die, like really evil people, or the Irish, it’s time to celebrate.”
Jimmy Bender, “Greg the Bunny”

“And maybe now it’s your turn to die kicking some ass.”
Freedom Isn’t Free, Team America

What I don’t want this to be is a chance for me, or anyone else, to be maudlin. I’m dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren’t going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.) I had a pretty good life, as I noted above. Sure, all things being equal I would have preferred to have more time, but I have no business complaining with all the good fortune I’ve enjoyed in my life. So if you’re up for that, put on a little 80s music (preferably vintage 1980-1984), grab a Coke and have a drink with me. If you have it, throw ‘Freedom Isn’t Free’ from the Team America soundtrack in; if you can’t laugh at that song, I think you need to lighten up a little. I’m dead, but if you’re reading this, you’re not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact.
[…]

There is more…much more.

Thanks, Andrew, and to your family, also, for your sacrifice.

Matt from Black Five has an idea….Send Season’s Greetings from bloggers to the troops overseas.

Details here.

Get your best 30 seconds of video game on.

And…check this out: A simple way to say thanks.

It seems there’s a new trouble in Blogging City, so says Lorelle VanPossen in her post “Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content.” Thanks to the digital age of programs, this is an excepot from the article to explain this phenomena:

[…]
Master Copyright Expert, Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, an adviser and contributor to the Blog Herald, investigated this and wrote in Protecting Your Content From the Spinning Spammers about this new trend in site scraping.

Jonathan calls them “Spinning Spammers”, and they are using Plugins and utilities for synonymized scraping of your blog. The process scrapes your blog feed and then “translates” your content using synonyms to replace recognizable words.
[…]

Your words may be out there already, replete with synonymous alternatives to your choices. If you get that deja vu feeling while surfing all over again, you may be correct!

Toss in my amazement that we have “experts” in plagarism to add to my surprise!

H/T: My WordPress Dashboard

In September 2005, Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo said that he would not be happy so long as the Flight 93 Memorial still included the giant crescent. He has kept his promise. The crescent is still there, and Tom Tancredo is NOT HAPPY.Alec Rawls has just received from Representative Tancredo a letter of complaint that Mr. Tancredo sent to Park Service Director Mary Bomar this afternoon. It notes the continued presence of the crescent:

Unfortunately, it appears that little if any substantive changes to the most troubling aspect of the design – the crescent shape – have been made.

And it calls for scrapping the crescent design entire and starting anew:

And while I regret having to contact the Park Service again about this issue, I sincerely hope that you will direct the committee to scrap the crescent design entirely in favor of a new design that will not make the memorial a flashpoint for this kind of controversy and criticism.

Thank you Tom Tancredo! The full text of Mr. Tancredo’s letter is pasted below.

G Gordon Liddy is on it

Alec Rawls will be on G Gordon Liddy’s radio show tomorrow morning (Tuesday) from 11-12, talking about the many Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the planned memorial. The show should be a blockbuster.

Tom Burnett Sr. is going to call in. Tancredo or his press secretary TQ Houlton may call in.   And YOU can call in:

1 800 GGLiddy

Streaming audio and broadcast stations here. Podcasts here. For the full expose, see Alec’s Crescent of Betrayal book, available for free download until the print edition of the book comes out in February.

A crescent and star flag on the crash site

For those who are not familiar with the memorial debacle, the original Crescent of Embrace design would have planted a bare naked Islamic crescent and star flag on the crash site:

Architect Paul Murdoch’s job is to work with symbols. He did not plant an Islamic flag on the crash site by accident. But even if this were somehow coincidence, it would still be wrong to build the memorial in a shape that the hijackers claimed as their own.

Representative Tancredo was the only Congressman to state the obvious, that “the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam–and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists,” raises the possibility that “the design, if constructed, will in fact make the memorial a tribute to the hijackers.” (Tancredo Press release, 9/12/2005. See Crescent of Betrayal, download 1, page xiii.)

Two days later, Tancredo’s press secretary laid out Tom’s conditions:

… that the congressman would be happy with the changes only if the crescent shape is removed.

Nothing was changed

All the Memorial Project did was add some surrounding trees. Every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign. The crescent shape was NOT removed. It was only very slightly disguised:

The graphics were recolored, and a few trees were added outside of the mouth of the crescent (lower left). Every particle of the original crescent and star structure remains. (Click here for site plan view.)

Representative Tancredo was right to demand removal of the crescent. It turns out that a person facing directly into the half mile wide crescent will be facing Mecca. That makes it a mihrab, the central feature around which every mosque is built. You can plant as many trees around a mosque as you want and it will still be a mosque. This is the world’s largest mosque, by a factor of a hundred.

If you want to thank Tom Tancredo for keeping his Flight 93 promise and standing up again for the honor of our murdered heroes, his phone numbers and online email form are here.

Full text of Representative Tancredo’s letter to Park Service Director Mary Bomar

November 5, 2007

The Honorable Mary A. Bomar
Director
National Park Service
U.S. Department of Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240

Dear Director Bomar,

I am regrettably writing you in reference to the proposed memorial to commemorate the victims of Flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. As you may know, I contacted Director Mainella in late 2005 about my concerns with the design.

The appropriateness of the original design, dubbed the “Crescent of Embrace,” was questioned because of the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam – and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists. As I pointed out in my September 2005 letter, the use of the crescent has raised questions in some circles about whether the design would make the memorial a tribute to the hijackers rather than the victims whose mission the flights passengers helped to thwart.

When I received Director Mainella’s response to my letter on October 6, 2005, I was pleased to read her assurance that the advisory committee and the architect were amenable to “refinements in the design which will include negating any perceptions to the iconography.” I was also pleased to learn that the name of the memorial was to be changed.

Unfortunately, it appears that little if any substantive changes to the most troubling aspect of the design – the crescent shape – have been made. This deeply concerns me. As I told Director Mainella in 2005: Regardless of whether or not the invocation of a Muslim symbol by the memorial designer was intentional, I continue to believe that the use of this symbol is unsuitable for paying appropriate tribute to the heroes of Flight 93 or the ensuing American struggle against radical Islam that their historic last act has come to symbolize.

I remain committed to ensuring that this memorial is a powerful symbol for the whole nation and a testament to the courage and will of the passengers of the flight – as I am sure you are. And while I regret having to contact the Park Service again about this issue, I sincerely hope that you will direct the committee to scrap the crescent design entirely in favor of a new design that will not make the memorial a flashpoint for this kind of controversy and criticism.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Tom Tancredo, M.C.

The phony redesign

To see clearly how the redesign leaves the original Mecca-oriented cescent fully intact, note that the orientation of the crescent is determined by connecting the most obtruding points of the crescent structure, then forming the perpendicular bisector to this line (red arrow):

The green circle shows the direction to Mecca (the “qibla” direction) from Somerset PA. It was generated using the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com. Just place this qibla graphic over the original Crescent of Embrace site plan and the Mecca-direction line almost exactly bisects the crescent.

Looking closely at the above graphic (click for larger image), you can see that the most obtruding tip at the bottom of the original crescent structure is the last red maple at the bottom. On top, the most obtruding tip of the crescent structure is the the end of the thousand foot long, fifty foot tall, Entry Portal Wall. Here is an artist’s rendering of the end of the Entry Portal Wall as seen in the Bowl of Embrace redesign. It shows how overtly this upper crescent tip remains intact in the redesign:

The redesign only added the extra row of trees on the left, behind the visitors in this graphic. Notice that these trees are not even visible to a person who is facing into the crescent. They do not even affect a visitor’s experience of the crescent, never mind affect the presence or integrity of the crescent itself.

Don’t even think about it, Navy/Coast Guard team!

This weekend is to do the work the big bloggers (John, Matt, Jimbo and Mrs G) won’t do – taking it to the streets.

They must just sit about, sipping coffee drinks with odd names, dreaming of victory (except for Mrs G, who might have not had her coffee and has fallen asleep at the wheel, like John the Zoomie did last year).

So, find some brew that appears to resemble the mid-watch coffee, get a full mug (borrow one from your CPO’s Mess is you’ve lost yours) and hit the bricks. Talk ValOUR-IT up something fierce, get them to nod and say (using the “repeat back” method of reinforcement): “I will go home, log on the net and contribute to our wounded service members, via the Navy/Coast Guard team.” Make them say it, without errors, three times in a row (it’s a memory thing) before you let them out of your vicinity.

Bring it home for Navy/Coast Guard!

End note: No “complaining” and whining. Get on with it. You know you’ll feel better when Monday’s number show it’s worth your effort…

Tracked back @: Steeljaw Scribe

Evidence here.

In the ‘Shoe Navy, we say “back in battery.”

Good to have the master tale spinner back at it…

When Tom Burnett Sr. came out against the Flight 93 Memorial, the press asked architect Paul Murdoch if there were really going to be 44 inscribed translucent blocks emplaced along the flight path (equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists). Murdoch acknowledged 43 of the blocks, but denied knowing about a 44th:

[T]here 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.

Yes he does. Paul Murdoch is fully aware of the large dedicatory glass block at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway:

Man and child stand in front of the 44th block, which forms the railing at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. The glass block will be inscribed: “A field of honor forever.” This Walkway provides visitors with their first view of the inside of the giant crescent. (From the Entry Portal page of the original design PDFs. Click pic for wider view.)

The flight path

The Entry Portal Walkway is built along the flight path. It signifies, in Paul Murdoch’s own description, the terrorists breaking the circle and turning it into a giant crescent. The flight path then continues down to the crash site, which sits in the middle of the mouth of the giant crescent (in roughly the position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag).

Just before the impact point is the Memorial Wall, also built along the flight path. This two part wall is where the other 43 blocks will be placed (the ones described by Paul Murdoch above):

The forty translucent blocks that run horizontally through the left hand section of wall (closest to the impact crater) will be inscribed with the names of the forty murdered heroes. The three on the right will be inscribed with the 9/11 date. (From the Sacred Ground Plaza page of the original design PDF’s. Click pic for larger image. The alternating white and gray depicts the zig zag layout of the translucent blocks.)

Challenged by the father of one of our murdered heroes, Murdoch told a desperate lie, feigning ignorance of one of the most prominent features of his own design: the huge glass block that dedicates the entire site. This should have been the end of his hijack attempt, but Murdoch’s deception was abetted by both the Memorial Project and the press.

The abettors

“That has been disproved so many times,” said Bill Hayworth, the Memorial Project’s PR flack, when asked about the 44 blocks. Would it have been too much for reporters to ask for this proof?

In fact Murdoch is the first one to ever even deny that there are 44 glass blocks on the flight path. The only earlier Memorial Project statement about the 44 blocks was from Project Manager Jeff Reinbold, who told Alec Rawls in an April 2006 conference call that the giant glass block can’t be counted with the small glass blocks because it is bigger: “If we are going to count the big glass block with the small glass blocks,” he said, “then we have to count the windows in the visitor center too.” (Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, p. 146.)

“The windows in the visitor center are not on the flight path,” Rawls replied. He never said they were all the same size, and he never said there are no other panes of glass in the Memorial. Reinbold’s silly dodges do not contradict Rawls’ 44 glass blocks claim in any way.

The press was also in on the deception. Kecia Bal, the reporter who quoted Hayworth’s dismissal of the 44 blocks claim had already verified the block count for herself. Mr. Rawls had earlier sent her close ups of all 44. She responded with a request for copies of the original design PDFs, so she could check the veracity of these close-ups for herself.

When Bal quoted Hayworth, she knew he was wrong, and allowed him to mislead the public by suppressing her own fact checking of the 44 blocks. People can think that the 44 blocks are innocuous if they want, but lying about the block count certainly is not innocuous. Similarly for many the other lies that are being told in defense of the crescent design.

Memorial Project members insist that it is just coincidence that a person facing directly into the giant crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca, but that isn’t what they are telling the public. They are telling the newspapers that the Mecca-orientation claim is false, while acknowledging amongst themselves that the Mecca orientation is real.

Again and again Murdoch, the Memorial Project and the press are lying in concert to cover up the facts of the design. Some people will be unsure what to make of the many suspicious features of the crescent design but no one should doubt the need to expose and condemn those who lie about the facts.

Tracked back @: Cao’s Blog

Trackbacked to Cao’s blog and Error Theory.Pennsylvania Newspapers Pretend There is No Direction to MeccaIn September 2005, a half dozen different bloggers verified that a person facing into what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 would be facing almost exactly at Mecca. Some surrounding trees have been added to the design, but the giant central crescent remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign:With Tom Burnett Sr. condemning the crescent design and refusing
to allow Tom Jr.’s name to be used, there is now a big public controversy in western Pennsylvania over whether the giant crescent really is oriented on Mecca. In response, the Memorial Project has decided to deny that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca, and Pittsburgh’s two major newspapers are both backing up this transparent falsehood.Professor Daniel Griffith, who is serving as a consultant to the Memorial Project, told the Post Gazette that: “anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round.” …He made similar statements to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and the Johnstown Tribune Democrat. None of these papers asked for a second opinion from any of the one billion Muslims who face Mecca five times a day for prayer, and it isn’t that the media has been duped by Griffith.Editors and reporters at both the Post Gazette and the Tribune Review are fully aware that a host of bloggers have independently verified the Mecca orientation of the crescent design. It was actually the Tribune Review that first commissioned Professor Griffith to analyze the blogosphere’s Mecca-orientation claims. Alec Rawls, who has written a book about the many Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the crescent design, has a copy of Griffith’s report for the Tribune Review posted online. The first thing Griffith 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. Now Griffith is denying that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca, and the Tribune Review refuses to tell its readers that Griffith is contradicting the report that he wrote for them.

The Post Gazette is even more outrageous. Rawls was told by Post Gazette reporter Paula Ward that she and her editors saw all the blog posts on the Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace back in September 2005 and decided not to publish this explosive information. (Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, p. 108.) At the same time, the Post Gazette was running editorials that called critics of the crescent paranoid bigots:

But like those who look at innocent kids trick-or-treating at Halloween and see only the devil’s work, a few small and suspicious minds couldn’t look past the crescent to see a remarkably sensitive design.

When Tom Burnet Sr. asked the American people last month to please take his and Mr. Rawls’ warnings about the crescent design seriously, the Post Gazette responded with an editorial titled:
“Efforts to sully Flight 93 memorial deserve scorn.”

What is the significance of a crescent that a person faces into to face Mecca? Such a structure is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. That is why the surrounding trees added in the Bowl of Embrace redesign do nothing to alter the Islamic significance of the design. You can plant as many trees around a mosque as you want and it will still be a mosque.

One local paper actually did fact-check the orientation of the giant crescent and validated the Mecca orientation claim in print, but the larger papers are all refusing to pass this fact checking on, or to do their own, even though it is simple one-two operation. All that Tribune Democrat reporter Kirk Swauger had to do was use the Mecca direction calculator at Islam.com to print out a graphic of the direction to Mecca from Somerset PA, then place this print out over the Crescent of Embrace site-plan PDF on his computer screen:

The green circle, marked with the qibla direction (the direction to Mecca), is from Islam.com. Graphic shows that a person standing at the midpoint between the most obtruding tips of the crescent structure and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow), will be facing almost exactly at Mecca. (Hat tip Sarah Wells.)

As Swauger put it in his news
article:

[Rawls’] claims seem to be backed up by coordinates for the direction of qibla from Somerset that can be found on Islam.com. When superimposed over the crescent in the memorial design, the midpoint points over the Arctic Circle, through Europe toward Mecca.

Having suppressed this information for two years, Pittsburgh’s major newspapers are desperate to keep it suppressed now, or they will be ruined. Thus they find themselves camped out on the very spot that the blogosphere ranged with its artillery two years ago. They know full well that the Mecca-orientation of the crescent has been verified numerous times and are counting on their
control of public information to keep this knowledge from getting out to the general public.

The challenge to bloggers could not be more overt. Can the blogosphere retrieve its earlier fact checking from the memory hole and bust these news frauds? Easy and permanent access to existing fact checking is the blogosphere’s natural advantage, but we still have to take advantage of it.

This information was also mentioned at Newsbusters here on September 27, 2007.

———–

If you want to join us outraged protesting bloggers

1. in objecting to planting an Islamic symbol instead of an American one on the crash site,
2. in objecting to its pointing to Mecca and the terrorists’ intended target,
3. in objecting to dishonoring the memory of the people who fought the terrorists on Flight 93
4. in pointing out how Paul Murdoch cleverly and symbolically cast the passenger and crew out of the Islamic heavens in the design while the terrorists are inside the Islamic heavens
5. in pointing out how the date and the site are dedicated to the terrorists
6. in pointing out the numerous redundant mosque design features
7. in pointing out the terrorist memorializing features
8. and post along with us on Wednesdays

Please contact caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com with your website url. She will, in turn, add you to the email list, send you the
blogroll code (if you want to put it in your sidebar), and will send you the prewritten text to post. You should receive the email from Cao a day or two prior to the Wednesday it should be posted, and tracked back to Cao’s blog and Error Theory, if your blog has that capability. This will help us track who in the blogroll is posting the blogburst.

Let’s roll.

Stop the Memorial Blogburst

——————————–

Riddle me this:

What was Paul Murdoch, the design’s architect, thinking? What was his ulterior motive? When controversy over the original name “Crescent of Embrace” and the bald Islamic symbol planted on the crash site brought a public outcry, the entire memorial was hastily re-titled “40 Memorial Groves.”

As Alec is apt to do, he’s having some fun with this: So why only 38 Memorial Groves?

His answer should appear today at Error Theory, go check it out!

Trackedback @: Cao’s Blog and Error Theory

Begun by Cao, the below post found at The Wide Awakes, to support a grass roots movement to change the design of the Flight 93 monument. The details of the design and the relation to all things Islamic are way beyond sheer coincidence. Unlike the case of the Navy barracks in San Diego, we have the opportunity to possibly stop the construction of a site that would honor those who did the killing, rather than those who were the victims. It is in the subtle message, only seen from above, and when sound cartographic scrutiny is used, when the true indignity comes out. It’s not a perspective you’d get being earth bound. Chase the links and see this isn’t some off the page conspiracy of ill-informed minds.

X Posted at Cao’s blog and STACLU

Flight 93 has once again been hijacked by the terrorists.

After deliberating on this for a while, I’ve decided to start a blogburst regarding the Flight 93 Memorial in order to keep the calculations that verified its orientation to Mecca from going down the memory hole.

In addition, I think bringing heightened awareness to the mosque features of the memorial and other facts are important because they’re moving to start construction of this monstrosity at the crash site.

If you want to join the blogroll/blogburst for the Crescent of Betrayal blogburst, email me at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog’s url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, the plan is- we will all be posting simultaneously on this issue on Wednesdays.

Of course, I will fully expect that you will post on this if you join the blogburst. I’ll keep an email list, and if you don’t post on it, your url will come off the blogroll, and your email address will come off the list.

Thanks to Stop the ACLU

This isn’t one of those posts you just read and think about, as you go about your day. It’s one to take action on and pass the word. By blog, by email, by word of mouth, by cellphone. Get to work, of live with the overhead view of a the Muslims crescent to remember the first casualties in our homeland to a new kind of war.

I’d say, with YouTube and such sites, the 15 minutes of fame will be extended for many years more…

embedded by Embedded Video

Heh.