At a time when the word "anti-semite" is used to conflate any criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, this story (via Jesus' General) of a Jewish family forced out of a Delaware town by rabid anti-semitic Christians needs some major attention. The growing Christianist movement in this country is stumbling towards a new, mainstream form of anti-semitism - one where it is not appropriate to criticize Israel, but where it is completely appropriate to force Jewish children to attend bible studies in their public schools.

Then Thursday, May 26, 2005, Washington Post Editorial:

IT'S ALWAYS SAD when a solid, trustworthy institution loses its bearings and joins in the partisan fracas that nowadays passes for political discourse. It's particularly sad when the institution is Amnesty International, which for more than 40 years has been a tough, single-minded defender of political prisoners around the world and a scourge of left- and right-wing dictators alike. ... [W]e draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union.

Now Washington Post, November 2nd: CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons:

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

They lie, they lie, they lie and lie and lie some more. They fake outrage even when hyperbole accurately describes the depths to which they will sink. They have no concept of truth or morality. Nothing is below them.

This diary entry is my first, and a bit long, but I hope you'll take the time to read it. If nothing else, it gives you pause about the relationship of the government to the news, and how far they can go.

My friend, Jiahao Chen, is a Singaporese citizen studying for a PhD in Chemical Physics here in Champaign, Illinois. Up until about a week ago, he had a blog on our servers, 'AcidFlask'.

In his blog, he criticized the running of Singapore's technology ministry, A*STAR, and specifically criticized its draconian and absurd scholarship program (more on them after the jump). He then, over the course a single weekend, received 11 emails from the chairman of A*STAR, a bureaucrat named Philip Yeo. Yeo's emails (I've seen them) were both juvenile and hysterical, but their gist was that is that if Jiahao didn't remove all his statements critical of the government, he'd be sued in a Singapore court for libel. Yeo has, of course, declined to specify what exactly he finds libelous.

more below the fold ...