Damsel and I are very proud to be able to honor Marc Scott Zeplin on the eighth anniversary of the Islamic Terrorist Attacks against America on September 11, 2001 and to be part of the 2996 Project. This is the fourth year we have posted about Marc Scott Zeplin.

“Zep” is what his friends called him. Zep was one of the 2996 victims who perished in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Marc Scott Zeplin, age 33.

Place killed: World Trade Center. Resident of Harrison, N.Y. (USA).

Marc Zeplin worked in the World Trade Center offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services company. Reading what Marc’s friends and family have written about him, Marc was well-liked and respected by peers, friends and others who wrote words about him following his death.

The following is from Zep’s tribute at the memorial site that his company set up to remember their employees that were lost in the attack:

Date of Birth: January 12, 1968

Department: Equity Sales

A group of friends named and registered a star in the heavens in memory of Marc Zeplin. How fitting as he was a star in the eyes of so many.

Successful as an equity trader, he formed close relationships with his clients but he was foremost a family man. Marc was very caring and devoted to his wife Debra, sons Ryan (3 yrs old) and Ethan (10 months), parents, sister and in-laws. He adored his children and treasured the time he spent with them. Marc was very proud of the new home he and his wife built in Westchester and enjoyed the change from urban to suburban living.

Raised in Long Island, Marc attended Oceanside High School and the University of Michigan where he also continued to earn a master’s degree in the acclaimed business school. Marc’s first career calling was sports casting. He loved sports of all kinds and enjoyed broadcasting games in Michigan during his college years. However, when he returned to New York, he found immediate employment in the financial world and soon after started at Cantor Fitzgerald where he became a partner.

Marc was truly a “master of the word.” He knew how and what to say in order to put you at ease, make you laugh or help you resolve a problem. Marc loved people. He had many friends and demonstrated a zest for living life to the fullest. He was tops in every way. He even worked at the top. The right position for so many years unfortunately was wrong on only one day - September 11, 2001.

— Debra Zeplin and Leora Zeplin, Marc’s Wife and Mother.

Please join us today as we remember Marc Zeplin and the rest of the victims of those attacks, and please, NEVER FORGET.

We got our e-newsletter from the National Parks Service today. One interesting write-up tells about the events scheduled for Shanksville, site of the Flight 93 crash:

“Upon This Sacred Ground, Courage Remembered,” is the theme for the eighth anniversary of the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. A new national park is being created at this sacred ground, commemorating the heroism of the 40 passengers and crew members.

A number of activities will take place in observance of September 11. A special ceremony will be held in Shanksville during the morning and is open to the public. General Colin Powell will deliver keynote remarks, and country music performer Trace Adkins will sing the national anthem. The names of the passengers and crew members will be read at 10:03 a.m. — the exact time of the crash — by family members, first responders and local residents.

A small group of Flight 93 family members are embarking on Ride With the 40, a cross-country motorcycle journey to “complete Flight 93.” The riders will leave from Newark Liberty International Airport on September 3 and stop in towns and cities along the way before arriving in San Francisco on September 11. A traveling temporary memorial, similar to one displayed in Shanksville, will accompany the riders during their 3,000-mile trek.

In addition, an up-to-date listing of these and other activities to commemorate Flight 93 and September 11, as well as information about supporting the Flight 93 National Memorial Campaign, can be found at honorflight93.org.

Patriot Day - September 11th - commemorating the victims of the terrorist attacks on America in 2001 is coming soon. We must Never Forget.

If you have a blog, please consider signing up to honor a victim of the attacks. D. C. Roe, the original 2996 organizer, has renewed the call for patriots to sign up to honor the victims on September 11th. Go to the Project 2996 Sign-up Page and select your honoree.

Project 2996 started on the fifth anniversary of the attacks in 2006. Each year since that time we have honored Mark Scott Zeplin, a victim of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. We signed up for that honor again this year.

We also are going to insert a link in the Never Forget Tribute to the Project 2996 Sign-Up Page. The tribute is seen on hundreds of websites world-wide and this will help to spread the word.

The statistics counter on the Never Forget Tribute should roll past 50,000,000 later this evening. Each time the graphic is served up on web pages that embed the tribute, the hit counter advances by one. Damsel and I thank those of you who have taken the time to embed the tribute on your websites. It’s people like you who know that America, and the World, can Never Forget. We are grateful that so many of you care.

The animation was originally inspired by an anonymously-produced PowerPoint slideshow making the rounds on the Internet and via emails after 9/11. I gathered some of the graphics and produced the prototype of the graphic to display on my personal website. After refinements and improvements suggested by Damsel and others, it appears as it does today. This is the graphic seen in the right sidebar depicting the attacks on America by terrorists. Recently, I added the U.S.S. Cole attacks in tribute to the 17 Sailors murdered by terrorists.

In August of 2005, I made the animation available to anyone. The offer was only taken by a few sites at first, but since then, many more have begun displaying the animation. As of December 2005, there were over 200 sites linking to it, and that number has been growing since. Sites in the US, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Norway, the UK, Italy and several other countries, display the tribute on their pages.

It is slightly embarrassing that I wrongly placed a photo of the Limburg oil tanker bombing in the Never Forget Tribute instead of images of the USS Cole. The mistake was an honest one, since the image I lifted from the internet was labeled “cole.jpg.” It turns out that the Limburg was also bombed in October of 2000, probably by the same al-Qaeda terrorists that carried out the Cole attacks. One thing stands out is that neither the Clinton nor Bush administrations did much to avenge these acts of terror, just as the Obama administration is likely not to do in the future.

Image right: damage to the port side of the USS Cole - Click on thumbnail to enlarge.

After doing some research (which should have been done the first time), I located these two actual images of the USS Cole. I modified the Tribute again, this time with the correct images.

The image above shows the 40-by-60 feet hole blown in the side of the USS Cole. The blast hit the ship’s Galley, where crew were lining up for chow. The image to the left shows the USNS Catawba towing the Cole to be transported back to the United States.

Image left: Catawba towing the USS Cole - Click on thumbnail to enlarge.

Thanks go to Gary Swenchonis, Sr., who provided me with feedback on the Tribute. Gary is the father of Fireman Gary Swenchonis, Jr., who perished in the attack on the USS Cole. Gary has a couple of anti-terrorism websites set up:

Terrorism: Politicians and Victims
Remember The Cole!

A Pentagon judge dropped charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, an al-Qaida suspect held at Guantanamo and accused of masterminding the USS Cole bombing. Obama holds meeting with victims’ relatives after the fact, but not all relatives were in attendance.

Al-Nashiri and the other defendants are not about to be turned loose. The cases against them were dismissed without prejudice, which means new charges can be brought against them. And they are still enemy combatants. Obama has declared his intention to remove them from Guantanamo by January, but he has not pledged to free them. Releasing these terrorists would endanger American security.

All of this legal and political maneuvering is very distressing to the families of the sailors killed on the USS Cole. They have been struggling to get justice for over eight years now and are worried that the people of our Nation are forgetting what happened.

One of those families is that of Gary G. Swenchonis, Jr. Gary’s father, Gary, Sr. wrote why he chose not to accept President Obama’s invitation to meet with him:

It is because of the Obama Administration’s latest move toward surrendering to terrorism, that I now include a panel in the Never Forget Tribute to commemorate the Cole attack. Check it out in the sidebar.

We are very proud that Mr. Swenchonis, Sr. includes our tribute on his Blogspot page. We are also proud that the tribute is seen on hundreds of sites and will soon have passed the 50 million hits mark.

We must NEVER FORGET.

A couple of days ago, our server upgraded the operating system, which managed to break some of the scripts I use for this site. It turned out to be a good thing, because I re-wrote some of the scripts using more up-to-date features. One of those features is AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript And XML which is said to be “JavaScript on Steroids” by some.

I had been wanting to make the readout of the hit counter on the “Never Forget” tribute a dynamically-updated widget, so I went to work and made it happen. Now, when you look at the tribute statistics in the sidebar, you will see the counter update in (more or less) real-time as the tribute is served up to yet another website. The rate at which it increments is higher during day and evening hours in the U.S., so I presume most of the people seeing it are in the western hemisphere.

As of this posting, the counter is about ready to roll past 48 million hits - wow!

Disclaimer: if you don’t have JavaScript enabled, you will not see the counter.

In the true spirit of “Never Forget” we re-post our original tribute to Mark Scott Zeplin, one of the 2996 victims killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. There were 2996 victims killed, but we were all victims of the pain inflicted by the attacks. Here’s our original “2996″ tribute on this Patriot Day, 2008.

Damsel and I are very proud to be able to honor Marc Scott Zeplin on the fifth anniversary of 9/11/2001 and to be part of the 2996 Project.

“Zep” is what his friends called him. Zep was one of the 2996 victims who perished in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Marc Scott Zeplin, age 33.

Place killed: World Trade Center. Resident of Harrison, N.Y. (USA).

Marc Zeplin worked in the World Trade Center offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services company. Reading what Marc’s friends and family have written about him, Marc was well-liked and respected by peers, friends and others who wrote words about him following his death.

The following is from Zep’s tribute at the memorial site that his company set up to remember their employees that were lost in the attack:

Date of Birth: January 12, 1968

Department: Equity Sales

A group of friends named and registered a star in the heavens in memory of Marc Zeplin. How fitting as he was a star in the eyes of so many.

Successful as an equity trader, he formed close relationships with his clients but he was foremost a family man. Marc was very caring and devoted to his wife Debra, sons Ryan (3 yrs old) and Ethan (10 months), parents, sister and in-laws. He adored his children and treasured the time he spent with them. Marc was very proud of the new home he and his wife built in Westchester and enjoyed the change from urban to suburban living.

Raised in Long Island, Marc attended Oceanside High School and the University of Michigan where he also continued to earn a master’s degree in the acclaimed business school. Marc’s first career calling was sports casting. He loved sports of all kinds and enjoyed broadcasting games in Michigan during his college years. However, when he returned to New York, he found immediate employment in the financial world and soon after started at Cantor Fitzgerald where he became a partner.

Marc was truly a “master of the word.” He knew how and what to say in order to put you at ease, make you laugh or help you resolve a problem. Marc loved people. He had many friends and demonstrated a zest for living life to the fullest. He was tops in every way. He even worked at the top. The right position for so many years unfortunately was wrong on only one day - September 11, 2001.

— Debra Zeplin and Leora Zeplin, Marc’s Wife and Mother.

Damsel and I are again very proud to be able to honor Marc Scott Zeplin on the sixth anniversary of 9/11/2001. Last year, as a part of the 2996 Project, we honored Mark Scott Zeplin, who was killed at the World Trade center in New York on September 11, 2001.

“Zep” is what his friends called him. Zep was age 33 when he died. He hailed from Harrison, N.Y. (USA). Marc worked in the World Trade Center offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services company. Reading what Marc’s friends and family have written about him, Marc was well-liked and respected by peers, friends and others who wrote words about him following his death.

Please see our post from last year where we included a tribute to Zep written by his wife and mother.

We wanted to post more about Zep, but this week we are on travel. So, as a result we have to use a borrowed computer and have limited time and resources. But our best wishes go out to Marc’s family and friends on this day.

Update 3: The jihadi website is down - if we had anything to do with that, then we’re proud.

Update 2: We may have a block solution. I would appreciate feedback if it doesn’t work for you. Or, even if it does .

Update: Big Dog has a post about the Jihadi Professor who is showing our graphic.

We realize (as we have for a couple of months) that our Never Forget tribute has been posted on a jihad-promoting website. We are able to partially block it from that website, but some requests still get through. We’re working on another implementation of the blocker but can’t say for sure that it will work, nor can we forecast when, or if, the fix will be available.

Disclaimer: The appearance of our Never Forget banner on a website does not indicate that we endorse the opinions expressed on that website.

As far as some retarded Islamic weirdo posting a pro-America tribute that honors 9/11 victims and first-responders while implicating those responsible for the attacks, well, we might see it as a small point of truth embedded in a swamp of Islamic bulls**t.

We appreciate the eMails and feedback from concerned readers. Thank you all.