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Vladimir Putin has defended Chinas online censorship, declaring that the internet cannot be a place of excessive quasi-freedom, Russian news agency Interfax has reported.

We should not criticize what China is doing, the Russian president said when a blogger asked whether Moscow should follow or condemn Beijings strict regulations online. Thats 1.5 billion people. Go ahead and try to govern them for a bit.

Chinas so-called Great Firewall of measures, which restricts users from accessing websites such as Facebook and YouTube, is one of the most prohibitive national internet policies in the world. Authorities have also announced a crackdown, to be implemented over the next year, on users who disguise their Internet Provider address in order to circumvent the wall.

However, Putin said that Chinas desire to strongly filter online information access to its people is part and parcel of its wider development.

What was it that Napoleon said? China is sleeping and may she sleep longer still, Putin said, alluding to the legendary Corsican commander-in-chiefs warning that China will one day grow to global influence. China has long since awoken and it is with these processes that it needs to govern, the Russian leader added.

Putin said Russia would follow its own path instead of implementing Chinas policies, but added that regulations in general should correspond to the level of development of a society.

Callous quasi-freedom on the internet does not exist anywhere anymore, he added. All countries in the world have certain content limitations. We have limitations and they are known. They are propaganda for suicide, child pornography, propaganda for terrorism, distribution of narcotics and so on. In my view, these limitations are enough at the moment.

Despite Putins reassuring turn of phrase, Russia has moved closer to the Chinese model of internet policing in recent years. In 2014, lawmakers approved legislation demanding that companies handling the private data of Russian citizens base their relevant servers inside Russia. This allows security forces to inspect and raid server facilities and also gives Moscow a greater ability to censor unwanted content.

The same year, at the annual forum in Petersburg, Putin called the internet at large an invention of U.S. intelligence agencies and promoted Russian equivalents of Google and Facebook as alternatives for Russians to use.

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Vladimir Putin Defends China's Internet Censorship - Newsweek

This month, the rulers of Pakistan stepped up a campaign against blasphemy, frightening news from an Islamic nation where insulting the official religion is a capital crime.

From an American perspective, this would merely be another, distant nations horror if it werent for one aspect of the story.

As part of the crackdown, Pakistani leaders have asked executives of Facebook and Twitter to help them help root out people who post blasphemous material on social media sites from anywhere in the world.

In response, Facebook said in mid-March that it planned to send a team to Pakistan to discuss the governments request. Really?

And this week, Pakistans interior ministry claimed Facebooks administrators have been blocking and removing blasphemous content from the site. Really?!

Its heartening to read that Facebook said in a statement that, in considering government requests, it keeps in mind the goal of protecting the privacy and rights of our users.

However, the situation calls for stronger assurance that Facebook will do its part to defend the basic human values of free thought and free expression.

Its understood that social networking companies have a complicated challenge in dealing with an array of cultures and standards of freedom in countries all over the world.

But Facebook and Twitter or any American company facing pressure such as this from Pakistani leaders must bluntly refuse to cooperate in any way with a repressive regimes efforts to forcibly squelch free expression and dissent, even if their refusal means having access to their sites blocked in those countries.

As Michael De Dora, the main representative to the United Nations from the nonprofit Center for Inquiry, said: We do not want to see the people of Pakistan cut off from such a powerful and far-reaching platform as Facebook. But we hope Facebook makes clear that it will not compromise its users safety or freedom through disclosure.

Pakistan is, sadly, far from the only country that doesnt understand the right to free speech that most Americans take for granted.

The Pew Research Center found last year that, as of 2014, 26 percent of the worlds countries and territories had laws or policies against blasphemy (that is, showing a lack of reverence for a god or sacred thing), and 13 percent had laws or policies against apostasy (the renunciation of a religion), the offenses calling for everything from fines to execution. Such laws are most common in the Middle East and North Africa.

But Pakistans policies, and its leaders rhetoric, are worse than most. According to unofficial tallies, since 1990 at least 68 people have been killed there over allegations of blasphemy, including a provincial governor shot dead six years ago by a police guard who accused him of blasphemy after he defended a Christian woman who insulted the Prophet Muhammad; and currently about 40 people are on death row or serving life sentences for blasphemy. Last week, three bloggers were arrested on blasphemy charges.

In Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif calls blasphemy an unpardonable offense.

Here, the unpardonable offense would be failing to push back against such backward thing. Facebook and Twitter should help to lead the push.

The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.)

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EDITORIAL: Facebook shouldn't facilitate censorship in Pakistan - Jacksonville Daily News

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how my speech topic for public speaking was rejected. I spoke about how I thought it was unfair and how I think it went against the main principles of what college is for.

Since writing the article, I have had some response, as well as more speech topics that were banned, so I thought I would write an update.

As some of you may have seen in last weeks issue, a response was written to my column. Matt Gaffney wrote about his own paper getting silenced and spoke about how I am owed an apology. I personally do not think Mr. Gaffneys and my situations related to each other; I also dont think I am owed some kind of apology. All I want is for classes and professors to be open to adult discussion rather than treating the students like kids.

I also do not agree with the language in Gaffneys response. To me, it seemed like Gaffney was attacking professors at this school, which was absolutely not my intent. I do not have any ill will toward the communications department at all, nor do I with my own professor.

Although the situation irritates and angers me, all I want is for my professor, and others alike, to be more open to student discussion and respectful debate. Im not in search of gratification or justice for this situation; I want a more open learning environment where discussion is encouraged instead of silenced.

I have also had some positive response from my article. Another communications professor, who also teaches public speaking, reached out to me and requested a meeting. When I met with this professor, he told me he was happy that I wrote what I did, and that in his class, he welcomes more heated topics.

This was reassuring and made clear to me that this issue was with my own personal professor and not the department as a whole. The decision to deny topics is entirely up to the professors discretion, and there are not guidelines set by the department.

This professor and I had a nice discussion about the need for different opinions and talked about current and controversial topics. I was glad to know that not every professor is like mine, and some of them are open to discussion, which is a step in the right direction.

Recently, my class was assigned our final speech of the semester. For those of you who have not taken this class or do not remember, this speech is to persuade the audience to agree with your stance on a topic. This is the perfect opportunity to discuss a riskier topic, but once again, my class was denied this opportunity.

When given the requirements for this speech, my class was handed a sheet with topics that were not allowed for this final speech. This list includes topics such as: climate change, LGBT rights, drunk driving, hazing, pollution, child abuse, capital punishment, religiously oriented topics, politically oriented topics and 15 more restricted topics.

When I saw this list, I was shocked, as were other people in my class. I completely understand if a topic is inappropriate, but most of these topics werent, especially when analyzed in a professional academic setting.

My professor said some of these topics were restricted because they were overdone, which I think is also unfair, but that does not relate to this article as much.

I just could not believe that we are being told we cannot talk about things things that most of the class are passionate about. Things that are current and affect our lives.

I am going to submit a topic for my speech soon, and I will await to see if it passes through this insane list of banned topics.

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Censorship reaction - Standard Online

UNH Women's Studies Program Faculty and Staff April 3, 2017 Filed under Opinions

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The Womens Studies Program strongly condemns the universitys recent censorship of the anti-sexual harassment exhibit posted in the MUB.

We stand in support of the students who worked with the Sexual Harassment and Rape Prevention Program (SHARPP) to stage this creative and brave response to sexual violence on university campuses. The students solicited actual epithets that have been hurled at members of our campus community, and replicated these on the wall outside the MUBs main offices. Within only hours of the exhibits appearance on March 17, the university took it down.

The administration justifies its decision by citing the MUB policy manual (section 8.03): Any poster with hate speech as defined in the Students Rights, Rules and Responsibilities will not be posted. Any poster/flyer containing profane/vulgar language is prohibited. But this was not a poster, it was an exhibit. And the language it contained is, indeed, much more than profane and vulgar: it is real, and it is violent.

By invoking, interpreting and enforcing the MUB policy manual in this way, the university has shut this conversation down, and has done great damage to student and staff attempts to address campus sexual harassment and violence. The university has invested a great deal of resources on public relations campaigns to present itself as taking action on this problem. It would do well to let the people who understand the issue bestSHARPP, and the students who live with and experience the harassment and violenceto have a voice.

The Faculty and Staff of the UNH Womens Studies Program

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The New Hampshire : Women's Studies program condemns ... - The New Hampshire

The news that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has cancelled her speaking tour of Australia due to security concerns should concernanyone who believes in freedom. It is a dark day when a woman who fled to the West to escape the Islamist suffocations of Somalia, and precisely so that she might think and speak freely, feels she cannot say certain things in certain places. That even a Western, liberal, democratic nation like Australia cannot guarantee Hirsi Ali the freedom to speak her mind without suffering censorship or harm is deeply worrying. It points to the mainstreaming of intolerance, to the adoption by certain people in the West of the illiberalism that makes up the very Islamist outlook that Hirsi Ali and others have sought to escape.

Hirsi Alis Oz tour, Hero of Heresy, had been due to kick off this Thursday. She would have visited Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, hosted by Think Inc., an organisation devoted to the promotion of intellectual discourse. But today, citing, among other things, security concerns, Think Inc. announced the tour was off.

This isnt the first time Hirsi Ali has effectively been hounded out of even tolerant nations, made to feel unwelcome in the West because of her strong, critical take on Islam and its treatment of women. She had to leave her adopted home of Holland after receiving death threats for her involvement in the 2004 Islam-critical film Submission (the films director, Theo van Gogh, was stabbed to death by an Islamist). She still has heavy security whenever she speaks in public. Certain campuses in the US have made it clear she isnt welcome, because shes Islamophobic. That is, she criticises Islam, which today is treated as a species of mental illness. How perverse that even a woman who has suffered under extreme forms of Islam can be treated as dangerous for daring to ridicule that religion.

Hirsi Alis troubles in Australia are striking because they point to a really worrying interplay between the polite intolerance of Islamophobia and the more violent urge in certain sections of society to punish and maybe even kill critics of Islam.

So before this mornings reports of a security threat to Hirsi Ali, there had been a respectable campaign to keep her out of Oz. Four hundred Muslim women and other concerned citizens, including academics, a museum director and, hilariously, human-rights activists, signed a petition saying Hirsi Alis rhetoric poses a threat to social peace and the safety of Muslims Down Under. Against a backdrop of increasing global Islamophobia, Hirsi Alis divisive rhetoric simply serves to increase hostility and hatred towards women, the petition says. In short, her words are inflammatory, violent even, and they directly harm Muslims. So shut them down, shut her up, keep her out. Australia deserves better than this, the petition said.

In a video watched and shared tens of thousands of times by both Islamic and so-called liberal activists, Muslim women are shown denouncing Hirsi Ali, accusing her of repeat[ing] the language of our oppressors. The video says Hirsi Ali uses the same Islam-critical rhetoric that has been used in recent years to justify wars, invasion and genocide. So her words are warlike, evil, destructive. It also says she uses the language of patriarchy. This is perverse. Its patriarchal to criticise the Islamist repression of women? And, by extension, is it anti-patriarchal to defend the Islamist ideology from a womans divisive criticism?

Then came some kind of security threat, some promise of violence that caused her to cancel her tour. Its time we realised that these things are intimately related; that respectable societys creeping intolerance of critical thought fuels other, more extreme peoples conviction that such thought must be punished harshly, if necessary.

The more people depict certain ideas as unfit for public life, the more they send out a signal that the people who hold those ideas are dangerous and wicked, and possibly fair game for violence. They branded Hirsi Ali an enemy of public order and decency, no doubt making it easier for others to fantasise about punishing her. They said she would harm Australia and its Muslims, no doubt giving others the idea that she should therefore be kept out of Australia by any means necessary.

Where somewant to crush the likes of Hirsi Ali or Charlie Hebdo with laws and bans, others want to crush them with violence. Different means, yes; but these two sections of society, the chin-strokers and the gun-strokers, share the same aim: to silence people whose ideas they dislike. The bookish censor lends moral authority to the violent censor. From thefailure to stand up for Salman Rushdie to the No Platforming of the likes of Hirsi Ali today, too many thinkers in the supposedly tolerant West unwittingly give a nod of approval to efforts to shut down dangerous people.The signal we should be sending to society is not that some ideas are too dangerous for public life, but that no ideas, even ridicule of Islam, will ever be silenced or punished; that it is unacceptable ever to harm someone simply for what they think and say.

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The short path from censorship to violence - Spectator.co.uk (blog)