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Ground Zero Mosque and Property Rights

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
August 20, 2010

If the “debate” staged by the corporate media over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” demonstrates anything, it is once again how gullible and easily influenced the American people are, at least according to polls.

On August 19, Time Magazine released a poll showing 61% of respondents oppose the construction of the mosque, compared with 26% who support it. “More than 70% concur with the premise that proceeding with the plan would be an insult to the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center,” writes Time.

Both “right” and “left” ignore the central issue of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque — property rights. Bill O’Reilly and Clinton era throwback Dick Morris demand Muslims be stripped of their right to own property in America.

An insult to the victims, even though there is no definitive evidence Muslims are responsible for that catastrophic event.

Time Magazine, of course, is a mantlepiece of the CIA’s Mockingbird corporate media, so any poll it generates should be highly suspect. In fact, we have absolutely no gauge as to what the American people think about the mosque. Considering the non-stop anti-Muslim propaganda propagated by the corporate media, it is entirely possible most Americans believe the mosque is an insult to the victims.

As expected, establishment politicos have lined up in opposition to the mosque. Naturally, the neocon Newt Gingrich compared it to Nazis trying to put up a sign near Washington’s holocaust museum and Sarah Palin, the darling of the establishment refashioned Tea Party movement, said it is an unnecessary provocation that “stabs hearts.”

Palin tells us she supports the Constitution, but obviously she has a dim understanding of the founding document. As Rick Lynch notes, in a political context, virtually nothing was as important to the Framers as property rights. For the founders, the rights of property were inviolable and they considered the Constitution itself as the embodiment of property rights. Concerns of freedom cannot be separated from concerns for property.

Palin should know that property rights were so important to the Framers that all but 4 of the 55 men at the Constitutional Convention placed the protection of property behind only liberty itself. As Lynch notes, of the four who disagreed on this point, three differed not because they valued property rights less than their fellows but because they actually “put [their] protection ahead of liberty as the main object of society,” as Forrest McDonald explains.

But nowadays, even the Supreme Court has a vague understanding of property rights and the Constitution. In 2005, during the “conservative” (actually neocon) Bush era, the Supreme Court ruled under the Kelo decision that local governments may force property owners to sell out and make way for private economic development. The founders would have been appalled by the very concept of “eminent domain,” the idea that government can deny the right of the individual to hold property.

Sharif El-Gamal, a real estate developer, owns the buildings that will be transformed into a 15-story mosque on Manhattan. In order that the feelings of the 9/11 victims families will not be hurt — and also buttress the cornerstone premise of the manufactured global war on terror — El-Gamal’s property rights may be violated.

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

It is not merely Newt and Sarah who are behind this selective application of property rights. New York governor David Paterson and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid oppose the mosque, as does Howard Dean, who has labeled it “a real affront to people who lost their lives.”

The real affront is to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If government can tell Muslims they have no right to property, they can tell all of us.

Is it possible nearly two-thirds of Americans are opposed to the very idea of property rights? If we are to believe the corporate media, they are.

From the Patriot Act to naked body scanners in airports around the nation, we have already lost far too many of our precious freedoms. It stands to reason we will lose our property as well.



When the fools were supposedly reasonable

When the fools were supposedly reasonable

Ask yourself, does Glen Beck or Hannity have any legitimate rappers at his back?

Alex Jones does and yes it matters

"The important thing to understand is that when scientific evidence demonstrates a certain fact, we should never ignore or deny that fact because we can’t immediately explain the history behind it.

  For example, we have evidence that there is methane in the atmosphere of Titan.  This evidence comes from measurements of the light emitted and scattered from that moon.  We would not say that it could not be methane because we can’t fully explain how the methane got there.  Similarly, we have much evidence that there were explosives at the WTC.  It would be unwise to ignore that evidence until we can explain how those explosives got there".

Kevin Ryan

 former Site Manager for Environmental Health Laboratories, a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL). Mr. Ryan, a Chemist and laboratory manager, was fired by UL in 2004 for publicly questioning the report being drafted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on their World Trade Center investigation. In the intervening period, Ryan has completed additional research while his original questions, which have become increasingly important over time, remain unanswered by UL or NIST

The Rest Of The World Sees A Very Different War Than We Do! Jeremy Scahill pt.5

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may bring 9/11 aid bill to floor month after it failed in House

BY MICHAEL MCAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Thursday, August 12th 2010, 4:00 AM

Hamburg/News

Sen. Harry Reid may be instrumental in giving Zadroga Act a second life.

The bill failed in the House in a spectacular display last month when Democrats tried to pass it in a procedure that needed a two-thirds vote - and barred the GOP from changing the legislation.WASHINGTON - The leader of the U.S. Senate is weighing whether to bring up the key 9/11 health bill for a full vote after Congress returns from vacation, the Daily News has learned.

The measure won a majority, but with only 12 Republicans, leaving it short of the higher bar. Angry outbursts erupted on the floor, and a rift among New Yorkers followed.

The state's delegation patched up their differences this week and have vowed to bring the $7.4 billion bill back for a regular vote next month. But the Senate has been an even bigger sticking point, and if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) can get the more deliberative body to act, it would all but assure 9/11's first responders and victims finally get aid and compensation after nine years.

"I can only hope the Senate does act quickly and doesn't play political games with this," said 9/11 responder and advocate John Feal. "They could show the House how it should be done."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who has sponsored the Senate bill, wrote to Reid yesterday to push him along. "More than 900 heroes have died from health complications attributed to exposure at Ground Zero since 2001, with thousands more experiencing physical and mental health conditions," Gillibrand wrote in a letter obtained by The News.

"This legislation has languished for far too long, and these heroes cannot wait any longer," Gillibrand wrote, noting that 14,000 World Trade Center responders live outside the New York metro area, including 126 in Reid's home state of Nevada.

A spokesman for Reid confirmed he is focusing on the measure and trying to figure out how to pass it.

The big problems are how it is paid for, and whether or not one Republican can be found to back it and ensure it cannot be blocked by a filibuster.

The House version shuts a tax loophole for foreign subsidiaries doing business here to raise the cash needed for 10 years, but sources have told The News that Senate Republicans do not like that maneuver.

Gillibrand is one of those hunting for a Republican backer.

"My boss is optimistic a Republican will support this," spokesman Matt Canter said.

Dr David Kelly was on a hitlist, says UN weapons expert as calls grow for full inquest

By Miles Goslett and Arthur Martin
Last updated at 2:31 AM on 14th August 2010

 

'High target': There are fresh calls for an inquest into Dr David Kelly's death

A leading UN weapons inspector last night added his voice to the growing clamour for a full inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly.

Dr Richard Spertzel claimed Dr Kelly was on a 'hitlist' in the final years of his life.

The former head of the UN Biological Section, who worked closely with Dr Kelly in Iraq in the 1990s, has written to Attorney General Dominic Grieve about the 'mysterious circumstances' surrounding the death.

The weapons inspector's body was found after he was unmasked as the source of a damaging BBC news report questioning the grounds for the Iraq war. 

Officially, he took his own life.

Yesterday Dr Spertzel told the Mail that the British authorities were 'intentionally ignoring' the issue.

He believes that there is something 'fishy' and insisted that a coroner should examine the death as soon as possible.

His demands come 24 hours after nine of Britain's leading medical experts wrote an open letter to minsters demanding a full inquest.

Dr Spertzel said: 'I know that David, as well as myself and a couple of others, were on an Iraqi hitlist. In late 1997, we were told by the Russian embassy in Baghdad. I had no idea what it meant but apparently David and I were high on the priority list.' 

Scroll down for video report

He said he and Dr Kelly were told that they were 'numbers three and four' on the list during an inspection trip in Iraq.

'When it first happened I felt right away that David just being associated with the work he'd been doing for the UK government would have made him a high target,' Dr Spertzel said.

'The Iraqi intelligence service did not take kindly to such action so my first reaction [to Dr Kelly's death] was "we'd better watch our backs".'

No inquest has ever been held into Dr Kelly's death. Instead, a public inquiry chaired by Lord Hutton was set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding it.

Inquest call: Dr Richard Spertzel claims he and Dr Kelly were on a hitlist

The inquiry ruled that the 59-year-old committed suicide in woodland near his Oxfordshire home in July 2003 by cutting the ulnar artery in his wrist with a blunt pruning knife.

Dr Spertzel, who is based in Washington where he continues to write and lecture on biological weapons, said: 'My concern about David Kelly's death is exactly what the doctors are saying now - that is, it's virtually impossible to commit suicide by slashing your wrist in that way. 

'It just doesn't make sense. It seems to me that they [the British authorities] are intentionally ignoring all this. Something's fishy.'

Yesterday some of the doctors who wrote to ministers demanded an end to the shroud of secrecy over the death.

They want the official post-mortem results to be made public and for witnesses to give evidence under oath.

Concern over the cause of death has been mounting after it emerged in January that all medical and scientific records, including the post-mortem report and photographs of the body, were secretly classified for 70 years in 2004.

Sir Barry Jackson, past president of the British Academy of Forensic Science and one of the doctors who wrote to ministers, said yesterday: 'In my experience from 30 years as a practising surgeon I find it difficult to agree with the cause of death as listed on his death certificate.'

Another, Dr Elizabeth Driver, a solicitor and Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, added: 'As a pathologist I cannot understand how Dr Kelly could have died from blood loss of a severed ulnar artery. It makes no medical sense. Little is known about the medical facts because the post-mortem has been kept secret.

'There are obvious questions which were not addressed in the inquiry.'

Doubts over the official version of his death have previously been raised by Mai Pederson, a U.S. Air Force linguist who served in Iraq with Dr Kelly's weapons inspection team.

She said he had a painful elbow injury which meant his hand was too weak to cut a steak.

He would have to have been a 'contortionist' to have killed himself in the way the Hutton Inquiry claimed, she said.

She also said he had a disorder that made it difficult to swallow pills, undermining Lord Hutton's claims that he took some himself. 

Sander Hicks at Alternet: the power structure has never felt compelled to produce an objective investigation of the 9/11 attacks

• Sander Hicks

It's a minor coup for the 9/11 Truth Movement when Sander Hicks can publish the above statement at Alternet. - simuvac

Israel, the War on Terror and the "Holocaust Effect"

The “The War on Terror” is driven by a seductive mix of violence and propaganda tied to existential threats.

August 12, 2010

Last week, WikiLeaks released 200,000 pages of US War machine secrets. Like the Pentagon Papers, it may eventually lead to a paradigm shift about an unwinnable war. The Af/Pak Papers go even farther: they expose a “big lie” about the War on Terror. In these documents, what was once murmured is now screamed from the roof-tops: our long-time ally, Pakistan, has been funding and training the Taliban.

With friends like these, who needs “enemies”?

It’s been a long, hot summer for the US War machine. US assassin cabal Task Force 373 was exposed by WikiLeaks with "prima-facie evidence" of war crimes for killing seven children in Afghanistan. Back in May, the US Machine’s top Middle East ally, Israel, rappelled from their helicopters onto a flotilla of human rights activists. Nine aide workers, including one American, were killed in the violent melee. Yet Israel was not censured by the USA, and Congress just approved $33 billion more for Afghanistan.

To fully understand that seductive mix of violence and propaganda called “The War on Terror” you need political and historical chops. But you also need a special kind of insight, into something I’m calling “The Holocaust Effect.”

I want to robustly confront the Nazi genocide against the Jews, but from a new angle. The state violence the Jews suffered has boomeranged back. The only thing worse than suffering violence is when the victim population chooses to ape that violence. Sure, there are no gas chambers in Gaza, but Israel and her supporters have nonetheless crossed a line of late.

This came out last week during the failed campaign of Zionists and right-wingers to stop plans for an Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero. Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said, "[9/11 Victims Families’] anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

An organization dedicated to fighting the return of fascism is now endorsing a victim’s “entitlement” to bigotry? Sounds just like Israel’s policy in Gaza.

In the name of victim-hood, violence metastasizes. Israel is the birthplace of two major world religions. Both preach the God of peace, mercy and understanding. But Israel’s huge heart has turned to stone. Without a commitment to gutsy, God-based, peace and nonviolence, Mainstream Zionism has become an ugly practice of hate and murder. Politics alone can’t address the problem, you have to know the Torah, the Bible. You must know God to be able to fully face up to this Zionism of the modern day.

Israeli violence depends on US violence for its life. Just a couple years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu frankly admitted "We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," because those events "swung American public opinion in our favor." Here in New York, the “War on Terror” is based on our use of the Holocaust Effect. Look at the past nine years of daily life in NYC. There are similarities between those who increase police and military power here, and the Israeli policies in the occupied territories. The power structure in NYC claims that we were the victims of terror. As a result, that same power structure trashes the Bill of Rights, and puts soldiers on our streets. My bag can be searched at random in the subway. Pre-recorded announcements during that train ride refer constantly to terror, threats, and “suspicious packages.” Yet the power structure has never felt compelled to produce an objective investigation of the 9/11 attacks. Contradictions remain unsolved. The question of justice in this country is frozen in the trauma of terror.

After the brutal killings on the Mavi Marmara, Israel was widely denounced by everyone from Amnesty International to Foreign Policy Magazine to the Daily News. But when the US war machine is your ally, you don’t have to say sorry. President’s Obama’s first response was to express sorrow, and caution everyone to “wait for details to emerge.” Then he called Israel and offered help with their public relations disaster.

The UN called for an objective investigation into the Flotilla killings. Israel refused, and appointed its own military and civilian inquiries (it later acquiesced to an international probe). Of course, Israel’s own military inquiry found no wrong-doing. The civilian inquiry is focusing on "actions taken by those who organized – and participated in – the flotilla, and their identities” while remaining incurious about how nine of them were shot.

I showed up at the Gaza Flotilla Survivors event at House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn, on June 17. Flotilla survivors like Kevin Ovendon prepared to give rousing speeches. Before the event got underway, I had a moment to wander across Atlantic Avenue to hear from the 20 counter-protestors waving Israeli flags. Sometimes you learn a lot about an issue from the opposition.

I approached a tall, well-dressed man in a yarmulke, who introduced himself as Dov Hikind (without mentioning he was the New York State Assemblyman who had organized the counter-demonstration).

Hikind told me, “What happened was a tragedy, without question. But the real story is the status of the ‘IHH’” -- the group who organized the flotilla.”

Hikind claimed that the IHH was a “terrorist” organization, and cited local NY politicians like Jerry Nadler who had recently made the claim. Israel has pushed this talking-point, and blocked one of the survivors from being able to speak in the USA, when a petition drive, combined with the efforts of local politicians, pressured the State Department to withhold a visa.

That visa was denied based on allegations that IHH has “ties to Hamas and Al Qaeda.” However, the sources for the assertion are sketchy, if not completely manufactured. The lead source is a paper on IHH from the Danish Institute for International Studies.. But that report was penned by a young, mysterious American named Evan F. Kohlman, a “terrorism expert” inseparable from US Government counter-terrorism. Previous profiles on Kohlman report his “counterterrorism center” is located in his bedroom in New York. .Kohlman is a part of the “Nine Eleven Finding Answers Foundation” a group that works with 9/11 victims’ families. But rather than producing “answers” about 9/11, Kohlman works as an “expert witness” in military tribunals of terror suspects. What kind of objectivity can you have as a “private consultant in terrorism matters for the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)…and Scotland Yard's SO-15 Counter Terrorism Command”? Kohlman took $45,000 from the Pentagon to make an emotional movie, based in part on Pentagon images, to show at a terrorism trial.

Assemblyman Dov Hikind complained that in Gaza, Hamas does not recognize the State of Israel. But even Hikind surprised me when he admitted that there is some truth to the theory that “Hamas is a Creation of Mossad.” He brusquely quipped, “Go on the internet” if I wanted to learn more. Ok, Dov, let’s go:

Since Hamas’ founding in 1987, Israel’s strategy has been to use the religious Islamists at Hamas as a foil, rather than negotiate with the secular, leftwing Fatah movement. Are you finding peace talks with your Muslim neighbors difficult? It’s convenient, then, to keep on hand your own brand of radical Islamists to do something violent at key moments. Hamas itself is a wing of Muslim Brotherhood, a group with historical ties to the Far Right, and the CIA. Hamas is a “terrorist” group on the State Department list, but their parent group is somehow “the preeminent movement in the Muslim world…something we can work with” according to a former CIA official.

What’s a peace radical to do? What is the ethical Christian/Jewish/Muslim/spiritualist response? Without denying the Jewish Holocaust, is it too heretical to ask if the reason that Holocaust Denial is so popular in the Arab world is that the Holocaust of 65 years ago is now being used to justify brutal attacks on a similarly oppressed people?

Call it the Holocaust Effect. What we are seeing here is the power of victim-hood elevated into the power of legend. The US seeks to enshrine 9/11 into an impregnable cultural myth. The Israeli Right seeks total freedom from human ethics—a strategic advantage in war. (Thank God due process still exists: 550 officers have been investigated for war crimes in Gaza.) The Holocaust Effect is like a US law now, or a cultural norm, as America attempts to justify its expanding empire.

Dwight Eisenhower was one of the heroic US soldiers to first liberate the Jews from the death camps. Gifted with an almost prophetic foresight, he warned us that the Holocaust would someday be denied by political opportunists. What he didn’t see was the “Military-Industrial Complex” (which he also gave dire warning of) would become so powerful, it would wage a war on the truth, by engaging in deception to advance US interests abroad, while instilling terror at home.

In my conversations with Zionists, Dov Hikind included, I have often wondered why they never talk about God. They tell me Zionism is not a religious movement; it’s a nationalist movement. This is a tragic development for the Jewish people.

It shows that the modern-day Israelis are still making the same mistakes from millennia ago. Read the Bible, and you realize the ancient Jews were gifted with an insight into the true nature of the Supreme Being: change, mercy, peace. But today, instead of living the higher law of repentance, compassion, and understanding, the Israeli Likudniks worship a false god of revenge, power and military might. The attack on the Mavi Marmara was so brutal, it may soon “turn the tide” against Zionism, according to Kevin Ovendon, the flotilla survivor allowed to speak that night. The world owes Judaism a huge debt for advancing our consciousness. But the world owes Zionism nothing.

The host at House of the Lord Church, Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry told me that his event was “faithful to the Biblical mandate, to prioritize the needs of the least in society, the excluded, the exploited, a call that is in both the Old and New Testament.”

Jesus came with love for the hated in society: the zealots, the whores, the dispossessed. He preached peace. He walked the talk to the cross. Christians and Jews and Muslims everywhere need to hear this call: Jesus would stand with the people of Gaza, not the soldiers delivering death from above.

Sander Hicks is the author of The Big Wedding: 9/11, The Whistle-Blowers, and the Cover-Up. He lives in Brooklyn.

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WTC 1 - The Obvious Case Against the Collapse/Crush Down Hypothesis - Debunking the Conspiracy Theories of Prof. Bazant and NIST

By Anders Björkman (M.Sc)
Just drop Anything on Something

Start with a solid rubber ball, mass m (kg) and drop it on the floor from height h = 3.7 meters height = the height that WTC1 upper part is assumed to drop. The ball free falls with acceleration g (9.81 m/s²) due to gravity, makes contact with the floor and normally bounces. The ball was not rigid and deformed upon contact with the floor. Why? The floor applied a force on the solid rubber ball, so that it deformed, absorbed some of the kinetic energy E involved (E = m*h*g) and then released it and bounced up. Evidently the ball also applied a force on the floor that also deformed, absorbed the remainder of the energy involved; maybe the floor vibrated a little. This is Newton's third law at work.

Then do the same thing with a solid sphere of steel. Drop it on the floor. If the floor is strong enough, the same thing will happen as with a rubber ball! The steel sphere bounces. If the floor is not strong enough, i.e. it cannot produce a force big enough to deform the steel sphere, so that it bounces back, the floor will be damaged - maybe a hole is formed in it, and the steel sphere drops through the hole at reduced speed and contacts something else below, or the floor is just partially damaged ... and catches the steel ball, i.e. arrests it.

Finally drop anything weak (an egg or a lemon?) on something strong! PLAFSH! The weak anything (the egg or lemon!) is crushed against the strong something!

Don't forget that!

Try to compress a lemon with another lemon. What happens? Both lemons compress.

Now you have learnt a little what can happen when you drop anything on something and try to compress something. This basic knowledge is used in this paper.
-----------------------------------------------------
If the upper, 53 meters tall, 13-15 storeys upper part of WTC 1 actually dropped on the structure below is a matter of semantics. Drop suggests that it was not being held at all. I prefer that it came into contact after local structural failures and downward displacement and that it was prevented from dropping by the connections between the two parts. Anyway, only the velocity at contact is of interest and it was not high in the WTC 1 case. Assuming a 'drop' of 3.7 metres, it does not produce a big velocity; it is around 8 m/s. If the 'drop' is dampened by intermediate connections the velocity is much less.
-------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bazant (described below) and NIST suggest that the energy initiating or released at the WTC 1 destruction was enormous but in a serious ships collision it can be up to 10 times bigger!! NIST should learn from ship collisions! Bazant also assumes that the WTC 1 upper part was rigid (!). A rigid object is indestructible and will destroy anything non-rigid. But ships and WTC 1 upper part are not rigid.
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The official explanation(s) of the WTC 1 (photo left) global collapse (sic) is that the alleged release of potential energy (PE), of the mass of an upper part C above all supporting columns after sudden, local deformation and buckling, due to downward, alleged near free fall movement in an initiation zone (indicated by red) and impact of a structure below, exceeds the strain energy (SE) that can be absorbed by the same columns below and above and that all this was due to gravity only.
[SEE THE PICS AT THE LINK]-------------------------------------------------------
Evidently this crush down model and theory is complete nonsense, but it is the official explanation(s) of the WTC 1 destruction on 9/11! A small, fairly weak part C, 95% air, cannot possibly crush a big part A of similar structure only due to gravity and compress it into a 87.3 meters tall tower of rubble on the ground after 10 seconds! Anyone that has just dropped anything on something knows this. Try then to crush this something! You need a big force for that, which gravity alone cannot provide.

http://heiwaco.tripod.com/nist3.htm

Note the pic above: There is no upper block crushing the lower sections- it's been obliterated. Furthermore gravity alone will not cause the debris to be thrown out laterally as is seen. Where is that pile-driving mass ? It does not exist. The building here is being ripped apart by forces other than gravity.

Paterson: If 'Ground Zero Mosque' Moves, State Will Hel

Paterson: If 'Ground Zero Mosque' Moves, State Will Help

MICHAEL GORMLEY | 08/10/10 07:21 PM | 

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York Gov. David Paterson offered state help Tuesday if the developers of a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks agree to move the project farther from the site.

Paterson, a Democrat, said that he doesn't oppose the project as planned but indicated that he understands where opponents are coming from. He said he was willing to intervene to seek other suitable state property if the developers agreed.

"I think it's rather clear that building a center there meets all the requirements, but it does seem to ignite an immense amount of anxiety among the citizens of New York and people everywhere, and I think not without cause," Paterson said in a news conference in Manhattan.

The developers declined to comment. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who last week made an impassioned defense of the project planned for lower Manhattan, declined to comment through a spokesman.

"I am very sensitive to the desire of those who are adamant against it to see something else worked out," Paterson said.

Paterson said he expects the state Public Service Commission, which must sign off on the Corboda Initiative's project, to follow the law and not politics in its review.

Paterson noted that "we really are still suffering in many respects" from Sept. 11 and that impassioned feelings were bound to emerge from a mosque just a couple of blocks from where nearly 3,000 people died at the hands of Muslim extremists.

He noted that Muslims died in the Sept. 11 attacks, too, and that "we have to remember that sometimes it's the fanaticism of religion that have driven people to do what they do, not the worship of the religion itself."

Supporters of the cultural center, including some Jewish activists, argue the aim of the Cordoba Initiative is to improve understanding of Islam. They point out that Muslims worshipped in the same area for a long time before the 13-story, $100 million proposal became public in May and was the subject of public hearings in the city and debate on television and radio nationwide.

Opponents note that the center will replace a building damaged by the landing gear of a jet that slammed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. They say the religion that fueled the hatred in the terrorists shouldn't be displayed so near to the site and in a place New Yorkers will have to pass daily.

A city board cleared the way for the existing building to be razed to make way for the center, which is to include athletic and arts facilities and be dedicated to peace and tolerance. Critics are suspicious of who will fund the project, and developers haven't released their sources of capital.

Carl Paladino, a Republican candidate for governor, said the plan is "no different than Japan asking to build a memorial to kamikaze pilots next to the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor."

Bloomberg argues, though, that it "would be untrue to the best part of ourselves, and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans, if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan."

The State Department said Tuesday that the imam behind the center was being sent on a religious outreach trip to the Middle East, a plan that predated the controversy.

The department is sponsoring Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's visit to Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, where he will discuss Muslim life in America and promote religious tolerance, department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

"We have a long-term relationship with him," Crowley told reporters, noting that Rauf had visited Bahrain, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in 2007 and went to Egypt last January as part of a State Department exchange program.

A Marist College poll released Tuesday found that 53 percent of New York City voters polled oppose constructing the mosque there. Just 34 percent favored the plan in the poll, which also showed a slide in Bloomberg's traditional high approval ratings.

The Marist poll surveyed 696 New York City voters July 28 through Aug. 5 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS the figures and language in the final paragraph to include results among voters, instead of residents.)