Huffington Post: Leaders of astroturf groups opposing the Not-At-Ground-Zero-Muslim-Center can’t seem to decide on an argument. They have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at us in the way of fabricated reasons.

First, they tried the “legal” route. When it became apparent that American Muslims had a constitutionally guaranteed right to religious, cultural, and communal services in lower Manhattan just like everyone else, they invoked the “sensitivity to the 9/11 families” line.

When it was argued that there is nothing insensitive about Muslims with no connection to 9/11 establishing a center two blocks away (unless you assume collective guilt), and that Muslims died in the Twin Towers, too, they tried to smear the center’s imam as a radical.

When it was revealed that imam Feisal’s 37-year track record was so consistently antithetical to radicalism that it earned him the “moderate model imam” accolade from this administration, the Bush administration, the FBI, and the New York interfaith community, they tried the “sacred ground” argument.

When it was revealed that the center was not actually “at” Ground Zero and that there were offices, delis, dollar stores, bars, and a strip club in the same vicinity that no one was taking issue with for being on sacred ground, they tried the foreign funding route.

When it was revealed that the imam has no intention of receiving funding from foreign governments or groups, or even individuals with a less-than-stellar reputation, they tried the sensitivity route again.

It seems that they just can’t decide on the public strategy to keep Park51 from taking its rightful place among Manhattan’s blossoming diversity.

Privately, however, there seems to be little such confusion. The reasons there are given clearly, and it turns out it is precisely what many of us have argued all along: opposition organizers are motivated by an ideological belief that “Islam is evil and must be stopped; America is Judeo-Christian.”

That’s it.

That is the undisguised rallying cry on the private email listservs, the blogs, and the viral youtube videos administered by the right-wing oppositional leadership. On the prime time networks, they openly lie to the American people about harboring an anti-Muslim agenda, perhaps wishing to avoid being exposed for their religious intolerance.

Not for long.

Check out the uber-creepy Tea Party email below, released by no less than teaparty.org.

In it, the Tea Party folks argue that America is exclusively “Judeo-Christian” and that Islam should be “expelled from our shores.”

And that’s just for starters.

The rest of the email displays a fundemental disdain for a pluralistic America and reveals chilling levels of Islamophobia and hatemongering.

It poses the freakish question: “Will ‘blanket tolerance’ be the downfall of the Judaic/Christian basis of the American society?”

It quotes select passages from of the Quran out of context, a game that can just as easily be played with the Torah or the Bible.

It then suggests to its members that Muslims at large — not terrorists, mind you, but Muslims at large — plan for the “complete annihilation of the west,” for “our demise,” for “our destruction,” and that they are “working dilligently” to “celebrate the day America will be no more.” It warns that “the United States Judaic/Christian roots are being ‘God Shocked,’” and wonders if “the courts should hand down a litmus test” for religions before they are “expelled from our shores.”

So let me ask you again? Do you still think that the sudden rise in anti-mosque hysteria is really about sacred ground? Sensitivities to 9/11 victims? Funding sources?

Or is it about the rise of an ideological anti-Islam movement and the desire to curb, if not outlaw, religious freedoms for Muslims?

What would it take to wake the media up, if not this blatant piece of evidence? Will the media now pay attention? Is it remotely interested in the facts that are practically smacking it in the face? Where is the FOX News coverage of everything “Mosque at Ground Zero,” the same FOX News that desperately scrutinizes Imam Feisal’s every utterance in the hope of unearthing a controversial statement? Laura Ingraham, are you listening?

Here’s the YouTube video summary of the trailer:

“Fordson” is a feature length documentary film that follows four talented high school football players from Dearborn Michigan as they gear up for their big senior year rivalry game during the last ten days of Ramadan, a month when Muslims traditionally fast every day from sunrise to sundown.

The story is set against the backdrop of the stunningly beautiful Fordson High School, a public high school built by Henry Ford in 1922, which was once all white, but now boasts a 98% Arab population. As our team readies itself to play its affluent, cross town rival, we unearth the adversity faced by a community that is desperately holding onto its Islamic faith and trying to gain acceptance from their fellow U.S. citizens in post 9-11 America.

Through the eyes of the team, their coaches, and their fans, we get an unprecedented glimpse inside the lives of a community that is home to the largest concentration of Arabs in any city outside of the Middle East, and their determination to hold on to the American Dream.

You can contact the producers at fordsonthemovie@gmail.com

The photographs show Eden Abergil positioned provocatively with the men, prompting lurid comments from other users of the popular social networking site.

The pictures, which were uploaded into a folder entitled “Army – the best time of my life,” and associated comments were discovered by bloggers, who circulated them on the internet on Monday.

Palestinians have long claimed that they are subject to humiliating and degrading treatment while held in Israeli custody, but Israeli authorities have always rejected such allegations.

The Huffington Post

Any military strike — whether by the United States or Israel — is likely to pull the United States into a regional war and cause mass civilian casualties. Such an attack would truly be “calamitous” — to use the same description as the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen.

One could use the same word to describe what effect an attack would have on Iran’s struggle for democracy. If war breaks out with Iran, Iranians across the political spectrum would rally behind the government, and the emboldened government would be free to unleash the full potential of its terror to ruthlessly seek out and decimate the Green Movement — America’s best hope for a peaceful and democratic partner in Iran.

Newsweek

Stanford has become a favorite destination of Sharif grads. Bruce A. Wooley, a former chair of the Electrical Engineering Department, has said that’s because Sharif now has one of the best undergraduate electrical-engineering programs in the world. That’s no small praise given its competition: MIT, Caltech and Stanford in the United States, Tsinghua in China and Cambridge in Britain.

So far, nothing unusual. What is surprising and alarming, however, is that serious intellectuals condoned these views. Asked to comment on producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s declaration to The Times of London that many Iranians were “blond and blue-eyed” until “the Turks kinda changed everything,” American-Iranian author Reza Aslan asserted that, indeed, Iranians were Aryans. “If we went back in time 1,700 years to the mythological era,” Aslan said, “all Iranians would look like Jake Gyllenhaal.” This pronouncement highlights the resilience of what I call the “Aryan syndrome” in modern Iran. A historical detour is necessary to show why it is so problematic.

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Here’s the link for the Equine Destiny trailer. “Equine Destiny, the documentary, exposes mounting issues facing this country’s equines. Horse abandonment and neglect are not new problems. Today, these problems have increased dramatically.” EquineDestiny.com

Trailer to Why the Dollar is Green.