What, I wonder, is self-imposed moral amnesia? Somehow the word composition eludes me.

Nanna

Tony Judt: An Obituary

Two years later his scintillating and excoriating Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956 dissected that "self-imposed moral amnesia" of a generation that had been infatuated with communism and had worshipped Stalin to a degree which now seems not only repellent but incomprehensible.

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/130192.html 

Thank God, Glenn Greenwald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald) whom I profusely quote here and certainly subscribe to his views, is neither French nor 1944-1956 nor ex-communist.

Being familiar with the Jewish community in Warsaw I know that animosities abound between Jews probably as much as between gentiles. But hey, it's the 21st c. Time to wake up and smell the coffee! If the guy is right, let's just admit he is despite the fact that he is a Jewish American, and not French, intellectual.

Irvine Muslim Students Convicted of Shouting at Israeli Ambassador

In a trial that never should have taken place, ten Muslim students at UC Irvine were convicted Friday of disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador on campus last spring.

The twelve-person jury deliberated for two days before agreeing with the prosecutor that coordinated shouts of protest against Israeli policy had violated a law against disrupting public meetings. The students and their supporters argued that they had exercised their freedom of speech, that Ambassador Michael Oren’s talk had been delayed only briefly and that the students were prosecuted because they were Muslims.

The judge sentenced the students to fifty-six hours of community service and up to three years of probation. The students were found guilty of two misdemeanors, including one conspiracy charge for planning their protest.

Oren appeared on campus (where I teach history) in February 2010. As Oren began his speech, a student stood up and shouted “Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech!” Police removed him from the room, and then another rose and shouted at Oren, “You, sir, are an accomplice to genocide!” He was removed, and nine more followed. A total of eleven were arrested. (One pled guilty to reduced charges, so only ten went to trial.) The longest interruption, defense attorneys told the jury, lasted only eight seconds, and the total amount of time taken up by the eleven statements—combined—was roughly one minute.

shows supporters of the ambassador in the audience also shouting, further delaying the proceedings, but they were not removed, arrested or put on trial. The ambassador went on to deliver his speech after a delay of about twenty minutes.

The convictions made headlines around the world—Google News lists 465 news articles. It wasn’t just the Islamic and left-wing press that objected to the trial. The Los Angeles Times in an editorial called it “a case that never should have been filed.” Even the Orange County Register, a Republican newspaper, said the verdict “chills speech,” and called the case an example of “selective prosecution” that had been “used arbitrarily.”

A group of 100 faculty members, including five deans, had asked Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas to drop the charges, arguing that the students had already been punished by the university—which also banned the Muslim Student Union for one quarter last year—and that further punishment was wrong. The group Jewish Voices for Peace also condemned the prosecution, delivering a petition with 5,000 signatures to the DA at the start of the trial.

The students are likely to appeal, keeping the case in the news for another year or two.

http://www.signandsight.com/features/2195.html

Early in the morning of November 2nd a window was broken and a Molotov cocktail thrown into the premises of Charlie Hebdo, which subsequently burned out. By sheer luck nobody was hurt. ...

More disquieting still is the fact that the religiously motivated arson attack on a building devoted to free speech occurred simultaneously with additional religious pressure. The Italian director Romeo Castelluci's play "Sur le Concept du Visage du fils de Dieu" (on the concept of the face of the son of god) is currently showing on the other side of Paris at the Théatre de Ville. The production has become the target of repeated daily attacks from fundamentalist Christians, who enter the theatre and attempt to prevent the play from being performed. These protests are organised by infamous Catholic groupuscules such as "Renouveau Français" and "Civitas", which can be clearly identified as far-right extremists. ...

But there is no reason to assume that movements on the far right automatically like or even support one another. Instead, the particularities of far-right movements often make them natural enemies, not unlike French and German right-wing nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries. ...

* * *

Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice claimed the right to detain women whose eyes were too tempting, and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority demanded that the country's wireless carriers block text messages containing any of 1,500 expressions including the English terms “fatso,” “barf-face,” “strap-on,” “cyber slimer,” “ass puppies,” “monkey crotch,” “finger food,” and “axing the weasel,” and an Urdu phrase meaning “sweat of a lizard's pubic hair.” ^{33  34  35  36} (Harper's Weekly Review)

Speaking of liberal democracy,

Did Congress Just Endorse Rendition for Americans?

You've heard about indefinite detention in the defense bill. But it also contains some eyebrow-raising language regarding the transfer of terrorist suspects to foreign countries.

That means if the president determines you're a member or supporter of Al Qaeda or "associated forces," he could order you to be handed over to the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Yemenis ("any other foreign country"), any of their respective security forces....

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/did-congress-just-endorse-rendition-americans

... a policy begun by Bill Clinton, and fully endorsed by Al Gore (who referred to rendition as a "no brainer"), and the vast majority of Democrats, until George W. Bush continued it after 9/11...

(I might add that Bill Clinton had no problem firing missiles to kill terrorists, without giving them their day in court, etc.). 

The opposite of rendition would be some sort of "right" to be taken to the U.S. for trial. If you can identify the law that such a right is based on, I would be all ears...

Facebook, Google Self-Censor After Indian Court Order

Facebook and Google are leading the way for online companies in India to remove content deemed religiously or politically offensive, after a court there threatened a large-scale crackdown if they didn't comply. 

The two companies have already taken some content offline, Reuters reports, and a New Dehli court ordered them to "put in writing the steps they had taken to block offensive content, and submit reports within 15 days." Google wouldn't say which sites it had taken down, Associated Press reports, "but had said it would be willing to go after anything that violated local law or its own standards." The companies had battled government pressure to censor user-generated content, which stems from a law passed last year that made companies responsible for what users posted. When a high-court judge threatened a China-style crackdown if they didn't comply with that law, the sites came into compliance, Reuters reported. Indian communications minister Sachin Pilot said the order wasn't censorship, but said, "They all have to operate within the laws of the country. ... There must be responsible behavior on both sides." India has laws against hate speech that make it a crime to disrespect other religions.