If you’re reading this, you probably live in a country where the Internet provides a portal for the free exchange of ideas. But in many countries, believe it or not, what so many of us take for granted is unfathomable.  In others, it is a smoldering memory.

Among the US sanctions on Russia this week, one new restriction targets a specific bank, Rossiya. Washington officials described it as a personal bank for senior Russian officials. Well, today, President Vladimir Putin seemed to laugh off the new restriction. He said he personally doesn't have an account at Rossiya, but vowed to transfer his money there by Monday.

In an attempt to halt widespread allegations of corruption, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shuttered Twitter – but so ineffectively that the number of tweets sent in the country has remained unaffected.

Scepticism is growing online after Russian President Vladimir Putin inked a treaty to make Ukraine's Crimea region part of Russia. "In our hearts we know Crimea has always been an inalienable part of Russia," Putin said in a speech to parliament Tuesday. 

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is visiting China this week, and it is tempting to view the trip as the first step in a campaign to get his company inside the world’s most populous nation. After all, Twitter is struggling to add users, so it could stand to access a market of 600 million people connected to the internet.

A lot of my diplomatic counterparts in Havana look completely bemused when I talk to them about Twitter or tell them what my last blog was about. That’s not because they don’t know what Twitter or blogging is but because they don’t really see social media as playing a role in their daily diplomacy.

In Australia, a controversial anti-protest law passed Tuesday in the country's second-most populous state. Opponents say it gives police unprecedented power to halt protests. Changes to The Summary Offences Act passed Victoria's Upper House and will take effect in September.

When I was 19 I read about Plato's Theory of Forms. The theory, crudely put, argues that everything exists in a metaphysical realm in its ideal form, and that everything we have on Earth is a poor attempt to imitate the ideal. So, a cat on Earth is a poor imitation of the ideal cat; and a picture of the earthly cat is even more imperfect because it is even further away from the ideal.