In this week's special Censorship Issue Shift Control... "The US is decidedly more robust about censorship. For starters, any art using the American flag is banned automatically (it's in the Constitution, alongside all that stuff about freedom of speech)." - Lisa Jardine on Western "liberalism". "In the movies,as in advertising, cars have played a strategic role sex-wise: when Hollywood rotated the gender wars through 180° in 'Thelma and Louise', it was female possession of the car - and of driving skills - that became the dominant and ultimately liberating motif." - Robin Hunt on Cronenberg's 'Crash'. "Fans of the 'Eastenders' will never forget last year's Blackpool episodes, which reached a riveting climax when Tony, the sexually confused ex-drug dealer, kisses Simon - his pregnant girlfriend's brother. Great stuff, but viewers were actually prevented from witnessing the full smacker. New BBC1 controller Michael Jackson made a last-minute decision to cut the kiss down from a lingering two-second smooch to a measly half-second peck." Paul Robinson on the history of censorship. Plus our new daily film section, a pre-millennial global singalong, Freebee the animated bee, the coolest shoes in the world, free books and CDs, and your last chance to win 200 quid in our fiction competition. It's all waiting, unexpurgated, at http://www.shiftcontrol.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Shift Control is produced by the Guardian's New Media Lab with help from Boddingtons and Stella Artois Dry To unsubscribe from this mailing list send e-mail to shiftcontrol-request@nml.guardian.co.uk with the following text in the body of the mail message: unsubscribe