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As of late, a wave of censorship has swept over this campus. Those who would silence the free speech of UCSB students are not authorities but private individuals. The College Republicans have set up signs around campus in an effort to advertise for their Ben Shapiro event on the topic of Black Lives Matter. They have followed all of the correct procedure. They have been met with vandalism. Their wood signs have been repeatedly painted over and their fliers ripped from sight.

Those who have repeatedly defaced the College Republicans signs are unwilling to reason. This would be obvious to any outsider looking in to the enclosed environment of this UC campus. In a place where one-sided classes on political issues are taught as fact, it is a wonder that there are any students at the university who would challenge the doctrines imposed on them at all.

Art by Sierra Deak / Daily Nexus

When knowledge is transmitted in such a way as it is in the university system, there is little hope for dialogue. I hear those on the left clamoring for a national dialogue, yet they offer nothing but the destruction of property, both private and public. Observe the force employed by the individuals at UC Berkeley in response to the Milo Yiannopoulos event scheduled there. And now, in a small act of what is perhaps imitation of their more violent comrades at Berkeley, leftists of UC Santa Barbara have destroyed the signs advertising the Ben Shapiro event. Nothing else could be expected from those who consider speech violence.

To equivocate speech and violence is to obliterate the distinction between reason and force. Free speech is a principle of this liberal society for one reason: so that thinking individuals may partake in a discussion of their ideas with other individuals. It is the political prerequisite to freedom of the mind that is, the freedom to reason. As humans are thinking, rational animals, such an ability as reasoning is essential for our existence within a society.

Reason is exactly the means that humans use to avoid predation on each other. In the personal sphere, reasoning is absolutely essential. Consider sex, the most personal and intimate of all human relations. Any good persons intuition regarding sex would prescribe a consensual basis for it. Consent requires a state of consciousness and agency. Such a state is the state of reason. Reason demands conscious awareness and the ability to exercise ones volitional faculties, and so it is the heart of consent. When consent is not given by all parties involved, when force is substituted for reason, the interaction becomes rape or sexual assault. Voluntary, willful consent is required in the realm of sex. It is considered most vital in this context but abandoned in others.

If the free expression of our ideas is not protected by a just government, then where is justice in our law?

The person who forces another person to be his or her friend has nothing to offer. Friends help each other. Friends do good to their friends. This is common sense. If force is used, real value and worth is absent. Just as this applies to friendship, so it applies to politics. Particularly, freedom of speech. It is a truth that no one wants something that must be forced on them. Furthermore, no one wants what is theirs to be taken away by force. Ideas are the most intimate kind of possession. They make up our minds and ourselves. If the free expression of our ideas is not protected by a just government, then where is justice in our law? Are we to apply principles of freedom to one area of our life and not the other? I would say the freedom to speak and not necessarily to be heard is more valuable than a friendship. What friendship could survive without being grounded on a firm slab of truth? What truth can be arrived at except by the free expression and exploration of ideas?

When we apply the principle of reason to economic and political relationships, we get a free market. When we apply it to academics, we should get a free market of ideas. If there is any place in the nation to glorify free speech, it should be the university. Knowledge is the business of the university. Knowledge requires truth. Truth is not easy to obtain. To obtain truth, there is only one principle that can be brought to bear. This is reason and its corollary, freedom of speech.

I am an individualist, so I do not believe everyone on the left condones the savage actions of those students who defaced the College Republicans signs. I do not believe even the majority of those on the left are gripped by a fundamentally irrational Marxist ideology that denies the premises of reason and freedom. In the coming weeks, there will be events which promote unpopular ideas. If for no other reason than to affirm that it is okay to hold an unpopular idea, these events are a blessing. With regards to the administration of this university, the vandals who ruined the College Republicans signs should be found and punished. Their punishment should not be minimal. They should serve as an example so the university can assure its students that freedom of speech will be protected.

Connor Pardini believes in the right to hold an opinion, popular or not.

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Unwilling to Reason: Why Censorship is the Wrong Answer - Daily Nexus

Just remember, when an authoritarian government expresses interest in your opinions, its not necessarily with your best interests at heart.

Thats what the Chinese government has been doing over the last few years, according to a study by researchers in Hong Kong, Sweden, and the United States.

The study found that the regime has been selectively loosening its grip on social media censorship and allowing users to discuss some sensitive topics but its doing this in part to better track dissent and nip potential protest movements in the bud.

For the study, titled Why Does China Allow Freer Social Media? Protests versus Surveillance and Propaganda and published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, researchers analyzed more than 13 billion posts made to Sina Weibo, a Chinese-language microblogging platform akin to Twitter, and correlated these with 545 collective protest events.

They discovered that online censors often allowed free discussion of controversial topics including official corruption and pollution, in many cases accompanied by calls for protests and strikes, apparently with an eye to preventing or limiting the latter.

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Overall, around three million posts relating to protests or social conflict and another 1.3 million relating to strikes were allowed to remain by censors.

Towards that end, the authors state we find that social media can be very effective for protest surveillance, as Most of the real-world protests and strikes that we study can be predicted one day in advance based on social media content.

In one case, the city government of Chengdu simply canceled the weekend, requiring workers to show up at their workplaces and students to be in school, in order to head off a protest over a planned toxic chemical factory.

In fact, users seem to assume that their social media is being monitored, and use it as a channel to circumvent local officials and communicate directly with the central government.

In one interesting example, the user wrote: Billions of money went into the pockets of local officials and their business partners! President Xi, Premier Li, and Secretary Wang in the Central Discipline Inspection Department, do you read our microblogs? Can you hear our voice? Please eradicate these corrupt officials! Right now!

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China Loosens Social Media Censorship To Uncover Dissent - MediaPost Communications

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BRAZIL'S PRESIDENT IMPOSES CENSORSHIP OVER CASE INVOLVING FIRST LADY plus55 (blog) Brazil's First Lady Marcela Temer has been a victim of extortion. A hacker entered into her phone and e-mail accounts, threatening to pull President Temer's name through the mud. The First Family reacted quickly. The State Court in Braslia, at the ... Brazil's Two Largest Newspapers Forced by President and Judge to Delete Reporting; We're Publishing It HereThe Intercept Brazilian judge censors O Globo and Folha for publishing first lady's conversations with blackmailer; entities protestKnight Center for Journalism in the Americas (blog) Judge Censors Folha Article about an Extortion Case Related to the First Lady, Marcela TemerFolha de S.Paulo teleSUR English all 8 news articles »

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BRAZIL'S PRESIDENT IMPOSES CENSORSHIP OVER CASE INVOLVING FIRST LADY - plus55 (blog)

The company we keep Elvis Presley, Big Bird, South Park, Lena Dunham have all been censored. Composite: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty; Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Alamy; Chris Buck for the Guardian

If Lena Dunham had her way, one episode of Girls would have featured a shot of freshly-ejaculated sperm looping through the air. This was brought up during a recent oral history of the show ahead of its last ever series as well as the fact that HBO stepped in and stopped it from happening on the grounds of basic taste.

With its money shot that never was, Girls has now entered the hallowed halls of censored TV shows. Heres a potted history of the company it keeps.

When Elvis Presley waggled his pelvis on the Milton Berle Show in 1956, an appalled New York Daily News described the performance as being tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos. So, when Elvis appeared on the Steve Allen Show some months later, nervous executives forced him to tone down his sexually suggestive dance moves by making him perform Hound Dog to a dog in a hat on a plinth.

One evening, Tonight Show host Jack Paar told a long and rambling anecdote that contained several references to the term WC as a euphemism for toilet. NBC censors, outraged at the filth inherent in discussing water closets on television, cut the anecdote without informing Paar. The following night Paar close to tears walked off set mid-episode and refused to return for a month.

An episode entitled The Fix saw Hutch get addicted to heroin, and the BBC refused to broadcast it. The episode would eventually air during a special Channel 4 Starsky and Hutch night 24 years later. Note: this video is a fan-made montage, although the original would have arguably been more traumatic had it also been soundtracked by How to Save a Life by The Fray.

A first-series episode entitled The Klansmen has never been broadcast in the UK. This could be because it deals with a violent white power organisation and is therefore full of racial epithets. Or it could be because Bodie one of the good guys, remember repeatedly outs himself as a racist in fairly graphic terms. Or it could be down to its big reveal: the leader of the racist organisation was black. Either way, ick.

No footage from the episode Snuffys Parents Get a Divorce exists, because it has never been aired in any form. The story was meant to deal with the breakup of Mr Snuffleupagus family, but test screenings revealed the litany of unintentionally negative effects the episode had on children. Reports suggested that the kids who watched it were in tears, adding They thought nobody loved Snuffy. They worried their own parents were going to get divorced. As a result, the episode was canned forever.

Although it may appear placid to the point of tedium, an episode of the plodding American sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond entitled Maries Sculpture has never been broadcast on British television. Why? Perhaps because this is the episode where Raymonds mother unwittingly creates a giant (and fairly graphic) statue of a female sexual organ. And, since Everybody Loves Raymond only airs at 8am in the UK, its likely the channel decided that a colossal ceramic vagina shouldnt be the last thing kids see before they leave for school of a morning.

When Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in 2005, the outrage was such that South Park was bound to weigh in at some point. The episode Cartoon Wars Part II was initially supposed to show another depiction of Muhammad, but ended up running a black title card reading Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network in its place.

Between 2001 and 2006, Fear Factor was a modestly diverting dare show, like Im a Celebritys Bushtucker Trials stretched out over an hour. However, when NBC revived it in 2011, Fear Factor became a programme where girls in skimpy outfits drank donkey semen while men watched and vomited. After viewing the episode in question, NBC chose not to air it in America. Still, its good to know where the line of decency is. That line is donkey sperm.

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South Park to Sesame Street: the TV censorship hall of fame - The Guardian

Inflame (Kaygi), a first feature by Ceylan Ozgun Ozcelik, is a psychological thriller centered on a woman who suffers recurring nightmares of working on a TV news channel. She lives alone in an apartment left to her by her parents, who died in a car crash 20 years earlier. But the nightmares are actually memories, and her parents could still be alive. Inflame is the only Turkish film playing this year at the Berlin Film Festival, where it world premiered Sunday (Feb. 12) in the Panorama section.

Ozelik, a former movie critic on television,spoke to Variety about how the film, written with guidance from the Sundance Film Institutes Screenwriters Lab in Istanbul, reflects her countrys recent history and current climate. Here are excerpts from the interview.

Inflame germinated at a time when the situation in Turkey was less turbulent. Can you talk to me about the choice of title?

The Turkish title is Kaygi, which is actually a different word. Kaygi in Turkish means worry or anxiety. Its a very popular word in Turkey now. The Sundance lab in Turkey helped me come up with the English-language title.

How do you feel about the idea that due to the title people are going to associate it with the post-coup climate?

The film actually turns on something that happened in the 90s. The protagonist is searching for some kind of sense of her parents death. She has been brought up thinking they died in a car accident. Its about memory and forgetting, but also about the oblivion generated by a collaboration between the government and mass media. When I started writing this film I started asking myself, How much can one forget? Is there a limit to this oblivion? It was unavoidable that the main character was a journalist working in the mainstream media, as I did.

How is your experience working in Turkish TV reflected in the film?

Though I never worked as a news journalist, I observed my friends and co-workers in situations that I could not actually put in the script because the audience would think that its overwritten, exaggerated. For almost two years, I worked for this production company that worked directly for government TV. They would get names of certain people that had to be excluded from the news, especially from social media.

Yet this film is partly funded by the government.

Yes, the Ministry of Culture has seen a longer version of the film, in order for it to get financing.

Can you tell me how the Sundance lab helped you with the script?

I was accepted into the lab with just a 60-page draft. I had two tutors, Naomi Foner and Howard Rodman, who were very helpful. They explained to me what was missing in terms of the connections between the films themes. I was also told that Inflame was reminiscent of Polanskis The Tenant, which made me very happy because I was drawing inspiration from that film. They encouraged me, and this was very meaningful to me.

How deliberate was the choice of venturing into thriller territory?

I just love thrillers; I am crazy about them. The apartment is a very strong symbolic element that you have in many thrillers, especially those that deal with traumatic events from the past. In this case, history seeps into the apartment, and the most powerful support [to this narrative device] comes from the sound.

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Director Ceylon zgn zelik On 'Inflame' and Censorship in ... - Variety