The game the right and their corporate media enablers are playing goes like this. "We support religious freedom but these nasty Muslims are not being sensitive to the feelings of the 911 survivors. But there's another sensitivity that the media, which are blasting this trumped up issue totally out of proportion, are totally ignoring.

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The game the right and their corporate media enablers are playing goes like this. "We support religious freedom but these nasty Muslims are not being sensitive to the feelings of the 911 survivors.

But there's another sensitivity that the media, which are blasting this trumped up issue totally out of proportion, are totally ignoring. The conversations we have in the US are open to view by the rest of the world, including the billion plus Muslims and the billions of additional humans who are TRULY TOLERANT of religions. Those people are seeing the American people, who they've always tolerated and appreciated, in spite of noxious US military actions and foreign policies.

That affection the world has had for the US is one of the USA's primary sources of what Joseph Nye has called "soft power." When we lose soft power we lose support of allies in military ventures... as we have in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we lose soft power we lose ground in terms of the desirability of made in America products. Our balance of trade got worse last month.

When we show thinly veiled intolerance for Islam we are doing what George Bush his enablers did when they invaded Iraq-- giving huge marketing weapons to Al Qaeda and every other anti-American, anti-Western terrorist organization on the planet. Now, they can point to the poll that shows 69% of Americans are opposing the building of a Mosque in New York. They can point to the news coverage which remarks that all accross America, local communities are opposing the building of Mosques. They can point to potential political candidate Newt Gingrich as opposing building of any mosques in the US. And who are they pointing these behaviors out to? Potential suicide bombers, recruits for terrorist actions, financial contributors to terrorist organizations.

This is not a huge leap to make. Mark Halperin of Time Magazine, wrote an article suggesting that even though this is clearly a potent wedge issue that could be effective for Republicans, they should not use it. Why? He explains,

"a national political fight conducted on the terms we have seen in the past few days will lead to a chain reaction at home and abroad that will have one winner -- the very extreme and violent jihadists we all can claim as our true enemy."

Halperin also points out that misinformation on this issue is rife. The Islamic center, is not even a full mosque. It is being built two blocks from ground zero, not on ground zero. I keep asking, how far away from Ground Zero is acceptable. If opponents say two blocks away is not good enough, they could say "not in the state that the 911 attack occurred in" or, "not in the state next door to where the 911 attack occurred."

I don't see this as just a political ploy. I see it as a continuation of extreme advocacy, in the name of righteousness and what's good for America, of policy that puts the US at dramatically increased risk and danger, which is incredibly damaging to the dregs of good will that have survived the Bush administration Christian and Jewish fundamentalism and intolerance against Islam, against Palestinians, against the fantasy of Iranian nuclear threat...

And this issue would not be adding gushers of fuel to the fire if the corporate media were not fanning the flames, working the story. Why can't they see that this story may be a short term viewer builder but long term, this is going to lead to much greater hate for America, increased terrorism and worsening balance of trade?

The world we live is no longer so simple, so small that we can speak to one group and assume another group will now know what we've said. It hasn't been for a long time. Yet this is how the opponents of the Cordoba building, which is not being built on Ground Zero, are acting. They need to come out of their caves and wake up to the reality that their small, bigoted response does not stand the smell test, when they claim failed Muslim "sensitivity." On the contrary, their own sensitivity to the threat to America is the problem.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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