FireInATheater.com

Compare and contrast:
In Africa, Sudan’s president pardoned the British schoolteacher imprisoned for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Mohammed. (The president had to be intensely pressured by high-ranking British officials to release the teacher.)

In America, an Arizona businessman started selling teddy bears named Muhammad. (To date, no sword-waving crowd of maniacs is reported to have chanted for the businessman’s death.)
[Sky, KPHO]

Yahoo is not the only American company helping the Chinese government repress its people. Microsoft shut down a blogger at Beijing’s request. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft censor searches in China. Cisco Systems provided hardware used by Beijing to censor and monitor the Internet.

These companies argue that it is better for the Chinese people to have a censored Internet than no Internet. They say that they must abide by the laws of the countries they operate in. But the Chinese Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the press, association and assembly. Those guarantees may be purely symbolic, but these companies — which loudly protest Chinese piracy of their intellectual property — have not tried to resist. What they are resisting are efforts in Congress that could help them stand against repressive governments.

School administrators were justified in punishing a high school student who wrote a violent story in his notebook, a federal appeals court ruled Nov. 20 in a decision that free-speech advocates fear could greatly expand officials' power to censor student expression.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based its decision on its interpretation of the Supreme Court's June ruling in Morse v. Frederick, the so-called "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case. In that decision, the Court ruled that school officials can censor student speech that a reasonable observer would believe advocated the use of illegal drugs. The 5th Circuit, in its Nov. 20 ruling, found that by similar reasoning, officials also can punish speech they believe advocates behavior that endangers students' physical safety.
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[T]he 5th Circuit's interpretation of the general rule established by Morse was that "speech advocating a harm that is demonstrably grave and that derives that gravity from the 'special danger' to the physical safety of students arising from the school environment is unprotected," and so administrators do not need to meet the more-protective Tinker standard to censor such speech. The court said administrators must be able to response quickly to threats of violence "without worrying that they will have to face years of litigation second-guessing their judgment as to whether the threat posed a real risk of substantial disturbance."

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the way news media are being harassed to prevent them reporting the activities of the opposition parties taking part in this weekend’s parliamentary elections and by the way the public TV stations have systematically promoted Vladimir Putin’s candidacy.

“Public opinion is being crudely manipulated,” the press freedom organisation said. “The international community should react to this display of contempt for democracy, despite President Putin’s warnings to other countries not to ‘meddle’ in his country’s internal affairs.”

Reporters Without Borders added: “Russians have not had access to fair and unbiased information about all the parties competing in these elections. This bodes ill for next March’s presidential elections.”

[RSF]

Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrest of feminist writer Jelveh Javaheri of We-Change, a website that had been campaigning for women’s rights in Iran since 2005. She was arrested on 1 December in Tehran when she responded to a court summons.

“Javaheri is the second cyber-feminist to be arrested in two weeks on utterly vague charges,” the press freedom organisation said. “Websites such as hers are symbols of the criticism which the Iranian government wants to stamp out. By harassing feminist activists in this manner, the regime wants to put a stop to these news and information websites, and that constitutes a serious violation of free expression.”

Aged 30, Javaheri was taken to Evin prison on the northern outskirts of Tehran after being charged with publishing false information, “disturbing public opinion” and “publicity against the Islamic Republic.