Establishment Voices Attack Telegram Over Free Speech Protections in Wake of Founder’s Arrest
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 27, 2024
Legacy media and some establishment figures are busy justifying the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, attacking the platform, but also making not-so-veiled threats aimed at other platform owners.
Ukrainian-born former member of the US National Security Council Alexander Vindman, who played a key role in the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, took to X (calling it “Twitter”) – to warn the social site and its owner Elon Musk that there could be “broader implications” in the context of the Durov arrest.
To Musk specifically, Vindman’s extraordinary message, which reads very much like a threat, is that he “should be worried.” As ever, the accusation is that X is allowing “misinformation” – that is, not censoring enough. And the implication is that unless that happens, there could be more arrests.
In one post Vindman went through the Democrat keywords (mentioning “MAGA tech bros,” “weirdos,” referring to Trump as “sexual predator”) and expressed admiration for the EU’s way of “enforcing content moderation” – ostensibly, as opposed to his adoptive country.
Former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt was also on X to reiterate how EU elites see, and treat the issue of free speech while throwing around dramatically-worded accusations: “Telegram sits at the center of global cybercrime… Free speech is not without responsibilities!”
It follows that other platform owners could face a situation similar to Durov’s.
Officials who no longer hold formal office often serve to express some extreme points of view that those in government would rather not say publicly, and other handy mouthpieces are always legacy media outlets.
Thus the Guardian sees Telegram as a platform for “information and disinformation” about the war in Ukraine, but then goes on to brand it as the favorite app of “racists, violent extremists, antisemites” – this is the Guardian giving life to claims made by a pro-censorship group.
Europeans and the war again, and the Washington Post decided to disseminate the accusation originating from a senior EU security official that Telegram is “a primary platform for Russia to disseminate disinformation in Europe and Ukraine.”
According to CBS, the same is true of another war: “Encrypted messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp have been a huge source of misinformation and disinformation in the Israel-Hamas war. Misinformation experts say it’s because they are difficult to moderate.”
And the New York Times decided to hand-pick several of the worst examples among the hundreds of millions of Telegram users, to vilify apps in general and argue in favor of censorship.
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A New Era Of Mass Armies Approaches
BY IAN WELSH | SEPTEMBER 29, 2023
The army, or a part of it at the war college, has perked up and noticed some of the lessons of the Ukraine war, and that it’s a war that the US military could not fight. They’ve missed a lot of things, or felt they couldn’t/shouldn’t write about them, but they’ve figured some stuff out and written about them in a new report, “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force” by Lieutenant Colonel Katie Crombe, and Professor John A. Nagle.
The entire thing is worth reading, but I’m going to pull out three of the main points. The first is that a volunteer US military can’t fight a real war.
The Russia-Ukraine War is exposing significant vulnerabilities in the Army’s strategic personnel depth and ability to withstand and replace casualties.11 Army theater medical planners may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3,600 casualties per day, ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action or suffering disease or other non-battle injuries. With a 25 percent predicted replacement rate, the personnel system will require 800 new personnel each day. For context, the United States sustained about 50,000 casualties in two decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In large-scale combat operations, the United States could experience that same number of casualties in two weeks. (emphasis mine)
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Noted. This disaster seems more convoluted/effed up by the day. I do think DR could be much more expansive and informative and contextual and deep in her reporting…e.g., “According to CBS, the same is true of another war: ‘Encrypted messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp have been a huge source of misinformation and disinformation in the Israel-Hamas war. Misinformation experts say it’s because they are difficult to moderate.’” Am I obtuse or a naif: What is the goddam substance of “misinformation and disinformation in the Israel-Hamas war”? Who is misinforming/disinforming, and to what extent, and for what purpose? C’mon, Rankovic…. (There are other paragraphs that left me similarly “wanting”….)
Why in hell is no one else commenting on this effing issue???! I want differing perspectives, wisdom, portents, etc…. IMO, this should be “HOT BUTTON“!!! or am I just the lonely (ignorant?) gadfly?
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Key words being “According to CBS” and the title: “Establishment Voices Attack Telegram”
Of course the establishment attacks are banal because they avoid addressing the facts and stick to vague assertions.
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Thanks! I’m considering another comment/insertion later this evening….
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“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” — George Orwell, 1984
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell, 1984
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” — George Orwell, 1984
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
chomsky
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”- George Orwell
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. “- George Orwell
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” – George Orwell
1984
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I don’t know the predisposition of this site or its participating audience, but I have become very enthused and animated, in my desperation, by the presence of the Green Party/Dr. Jill Stein-Prof. Butch Ware. Its positions — talking points aplenty — and platform take me back to days when (possibly) the duopoly was “dual”poly. The Green Party has no chance of prevailing, but one might hope…. At this moment, I ‘hope’ I’m given the liberty to post below a somewhat-shortened Green email text I received today/27th. It doesn’t go to Telegram/Durov, but I’m hopeful that in coming days….
Richard Medhurst was arrested for the crime of journalism (from Jill Stein email, 8-27-2024)
For years we have warned that the persecution and incarceration of Julian Assange established a dangerous precedent for the criminalization of journalism.
While Assange was finally freed this year, we see the rotten fruit of that campaign emerging in the recent, unjustifiable arrest of independent journalist Richard Medhurst.
Medhurst is a dual Syrian-British citizen and one of the foremost independent journalists covering the genocide in Gaza. He has been a powerful advocate for Palestine and a relentless truthteller. Last week he was arrested for his journalism under the UK’s Terrorism Act – an unbelievably dangerous law passed in the Tony Blair era of enlightened liberalism. Increasingly this law has been wielded to silence journalists and whistleblowers.
But we’ve seen this movie before, haven’t we?
Aside from Assange – who was targeted by four different American presidents – the arrest of Richard Medhurst bears all the hallmarks of Obama’s record-breaking persecution of whistleblowers and journalists using our country’s century old Espionage Act.
It’s also not the first time the UK targeted journalists under this draconian law – but Medhurst’s arrest is particularly egregious.
Just before he was taken into custody, Medhurst publicly criticized the Terrorism Act and its use in silencing dissent over Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. A few hours later he boarded a flight back home to the UK, and was arrested on arrival. —
Richard Medhurst: “They arrested me—not detained—they arrested me under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 and accused me of allegedly ‘expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a prescribed organization,’ but wouldn’t explain what this meant.”
The same class of liberal elites who stood on the DNC stage last week in Chicago proclaiming themselves the “party of freedom” and welcoming an “era of joy” also aided and abetted Barack Obama’s war on journalists and whistleblowers.
In fact, in one of his last acts as president mere days before handing the reins of power over to Donald Trump, Barack Obama signed Executive Order 12333 speed-running the distribution of mass surveillance data collected by the NSA to the FBI, DEA, and Homeland Security.
Facism is alive and well in America, and it has a welcome home in both major parties.
There is only one antidote with a path to the White House on the ballot this Novmber, and it’s the growing people-powered anti-war, anti-genocide, pro-worker, pro-planet movement behind (our) campaign.
I am calling on Prime Minister Starmer to drop this egregious case against Richard Medhurst and join me in a pledge to end the war on journalists and whistleblowers perpetrated by both our countries.
With RFK Jr formally suspending his campaign last week, the field has narrowed and the choices are clear.
Millions of voters watched the spectacle in Chicago last week and remain unimpressed with the empty promises of a party that couldn’t find 2 minutes to welcome a Palestinian American into their “big tent.”
They listened as Kamala Harris pledged a militant crackdown on asylum seekers at the border and maintaining our military powers as “the most lethal fighting force in the world” – promising unlimited, unconditional weapons for a genocidal apartheid state.
These voters are looking for alternatives, and we need to reach them.
In solidarity…Jill
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