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Pummel Persians: Will hit movie300 pave the way for a U.S. bombing of Iran? Are the Iranians a little touchy over a film based on a comic book?

      Iranian government officials are calling for Muslim countries to ban the film300 because of the way it depicts Persians.

      Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s top cultural advisor, Javad Shamqadri, called the movie an attack on Iranian culture.

    “Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the U.S. initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture. Certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies” Shamqadri said.

(Read story)

Why Photos Were Censored:This vehicle was allegedly shot by U.S. Marines after suicide bomb. Marines then deleted journalists' photos. (AP/ Rahmat Gul)

      The U.S. military is backing the marines who threatened journalists and deleted

 photographs of innocent civilians apparently killed by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, theAssociated Press reported Saturday (March 10, 2007).

      The assertion from the U.S. military came after the AP lodged a protest.

(Read story) (Read AP’s protest letter)

 (Read Dr. Nitschke uncensored)

     Moslem Mansouri, 43, is an exiled Iranian director living in Los Angeles. He smuggled raw footage out of Iran for his 2002 film,The Trial.The Trial is currently being screened at Iranian cultural centers around the country. (Read story)

Freeway Blogger: Censorship Can’t Stop Me

      A former teacher with the alias “Freeway Blogger” wants to teach Americans a new way to protest:

Decorating freeways with home-made signs.

"If you want to reach a lot of people, this is the way you do it," he says.(Read story)

   China Blue is a documentary about a Chinese blue-jean factory where some workers are paid as little as 6-cents an hour. It was banned in China. Director Micha X. Peled talked with Editor Joshua B. Good about how he got around Chinese censors. Peled also discussed the similarities and differences between Chinese censorship and the attempts at censorship Wal-Mart made over his previous documentary film,Store Wars.

(Read story)(Watch the trailer)

    In totalitarian countries such as Cuba, China and Iran, the censors shut down publications they deem unfit. In Polk County, Florida, they take them over. That was the outcome of an obscenity case handled by First Amendment Attorney Lawrence G. Walters, who negotiated a plea deal to keep his client out of prison.(Read story)

    A leading scientist on global warming says the Bush administration has stopped censoring him, but continues to harass other environmental researchers. James Hansen is a leading climatologist for the U.S.National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) and one of the first scientists in the world to sound the warning about human influence on global warming.(Read story)

    Because of reaction to Langston Hughes’s poem “Goodbye Christ,” the Harlem Renaissance writer suffered personally and financially, his works were removed from public libraries, his speaking engagements were banned, and he was targeted by religious groups, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Army, Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and the U.S. press, according to Hughes’s biographer, Arnold Rampersad.(Read story)

Thursday, March 15, 2007