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US State Dept. Used Telegram to Stir Up Protests in Foreign Countries, Says Ex-Official

Sputnik – 29.08.2024

WASHINGTON — The US, from 2014 to 2020, valued Telegram for its ability to bypass state media control and surveillance, enhancing its use by political groups and dissidents, former State Department official Mike Benz said.

“Telegram is this very powerful vehicle for the US State Department to be able to mobilize protests, to be able to galvanize political support against authoritarian countries,” Benz said during an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson that aired on Wednesday.

The remarks were in response to Carlson’s question about why the US government, which upholds the Constitution and democracy, would attempt to end democracy in various countries through censorship.

The US favored Telegram from 2014 to 2020 due to its ability to circumvent state control and surveillance through its private functions and anonymous forwarding features, which were beneficial to US-funded political groups and dissidents, Benz said.

Later in the interview, Benz was asked about the possible impact of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest on US entrepreneur Elon Musk and whether the authorities view Musk similarly.

“With Elon, I don’t think they want to take him out. What they want is corporate regime change or him to play ball,” Benz said.

Durov was detained at Paris Le Bourget Airport on August 24. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office reported on August 28 that Durov was not placed in a pretrial detention center but was banned from leaving France, and he must also post a bail worth 5 million euros. Durov is charged with complicity in administering an online platform for the purpose of making illegal transactions by an organized group and other offenses. He could face up to 10 years in prison.

August 29, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

West using ‘mafia tactics’ on Durov – Serbian MP

RT | August 28, 2024

France is extorting Pavel Durov for Telegram’s encryption codes so they can censor the messaging platform, Serbian lawmaker Aleksandar Pavic has claimed in an interview with RT.

Durov was detained on Saturday in Paris and charged with failing to cooperate with the French authorities in investigating serious crimes allegedly committed using Telegram.

“These are mafia tactics, let’s be very clear. They are trying to extort the encryption keys from him,” Pavic told RT in an exclusive interview.

“If Pavel Durov resists, I think [Telegram] has an even better future. If he doesn’t succumb to the pressure, to the blackmail,” the Serbian parliamentarian added, noting that Telegram downloads have surged since the arrest.

Should Durov give in, Russia will “warn the free world – which is no longer the West” – that Telegram has been compromised, Pavic said.

Had Durov been arrested in Russia, the West would have denounced Moscow as repressive, but it’s different when France does it, he added, describing it as a “totalitarian mindset.”

People around the world are tired of “Big Brother telling them what is right to read, what shouldn’t be read, what they should think and what they shouldn’t think,” he said, noting that he has been using Telegram for years precisely because of its relative lack of censorship.

According to Pavic, Durov’s arrest is just the latest attack on free speech, which began about two decades ago ahead of the US invasion of Iraq and intensified with the arrest of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who published evidence of US war crimes in 2010.

Since 2014 and the US-backed Maidan coup in Ukraine, the “demonization” of Russia has been used to censor anyone whose reporting goes against the mainstream media line, he added.

“Anyone’s fair game now,” Pavic told RT. “Anyone who opposes the Western, globalist, deep-state narrative.”

Although born in Russia and a Russian national, Durov also has UAE, French, and St. Kitts and Nevis citizenship. Both Russia and the Emirates have requested consular access, but have been rejected because Paris considers his French citizenship to take precedence.

Pavic was in Moscow for the BRICS Municipal Forum event. An RT and RT Balkans columnist, he represents a populist opposition party (We – Power of the People) that won 12 seats in the 250-member parliament last fall, but has since split into two factions.

With Macron due in Belgrade later this week, Pavic said he hopes Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic will back his criticism of Durov’s arrest with a practical step, such as suspending talks to buy Rafale fighter jets from France.

Full video interview at Odysee

August 29, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The arrest of Durov isn’t just about Telegram

By Fyodor Lukyanov | Russia in Global Affairs | August 27, 2024

The arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, when he had decided to take a little trip to Paris, has caused a stir in various spheres – from the business and tech world to media and politics. We will focus on the latter, especially as the incident is becoming another milestone in a wider political reorganization.

Durov comes from a niche that claims transnational status above all else. Information and communication technologies seem to have turned the world into a common space and abolished sovereign jurisdiction. The enormous influence that the IT giants have acquired has been converted into gigantic amounts of money, which has in turn increased their influence further. Transnational corporations have always existed – in areas such as mining, engineering, and finance. But despite their international character, they were still tied to particular states and their interests. The global communications industry, and its associated innovation sector, has dared to break that link.

The period of globalization that lasted from the late 1980s to the late 2010s favored this sort of attitude. It encouraged the creation of a level playing field on which the most developed countries had a clear advantage. They benefited the most. The costs associated with the techno-giants’ growing ability to manipulate societies – including their own in the West – were not seen as critical.

The crisis of liberal globalization has led to a change in the international reality (you could also invert that statement and say the reverse without changing the essence). Thus, the willingness to play by common rules has rapidly and universally diminished. What is fundamental is that this applies even where these laws were originally written, in the leading states of the Western community.

The previous era has not disappeared without a trace. The world has become fiercely competitive, but it remains closely interconnected.

Two things hold it together. The first is trade and production, the logistical chains for which were created during the globalization boom and have qualitatively transformed the economy. They are extremely painful to break. And the second is a unified information field, thanks to ‘nationally neutral’ communications giants.

But there is something strange that separates us. It is not a desire to grab more of the pie – in the sense of what Lenin called the expansionist “imperialist predators” – but rather a sense of internal vulnerability that is growing in various states.

Paradoxically, this is more of a factor in the bigger and more important countries, because these are the powers that are involved in the biggest game. This explains their impulse to minimize any factor that might affect internal stability. First and foremost, this pertains to the channels that serve as conduits for influence (read: manipulation), either from outside or from certain internal forces.

Structures that operate transnationally – understandably – immediately look suspect. The view is that they should be ‘nationalized’, not through ownership but in terms of demonstrating loyalty to a particular state. This is a very serious shift, and in the foreseeable future this process could dramatically weaken the second pillar of the current global interconnectedness.

Durov, a committed cosmopolitan liberal, is a typical representative of the ‘global society’. He has had tensions with all the countries he has worked in, starting with his homeland and continuing throughout his more recent travels. Of course, as a big businessman in a sensitive industry, he has been in dialectical interaction with the governments and intelligence services of different countries, which has required maneuvering and compromise. But the attitude of avoiding any national entrenchment persisted. Having passports for all occasions seemed to widen his scope for action and increase his confidence. At least for as long as this very global society lived and breathed, calling itself the liberal world order. But it’s now coming to an end. And this time the possession of French nationality, along with a number of other things, promises to exacerbate rather than alleviate the predicament of the accused.

The ‘transnational’ entities will increasingly be required to ‘ground’ themselves – to identify with a particular state. If they do not want to, they will be affixed to the ground by force, by being recognized as agents not of the global world but of specific hostile powers. This is what is happening now with Telegram, but it’s not the first and it will not be the last such instance.

The struggle to subjugate the various actors in this sphere, thus fragmenting a previously unified field, is likely to be a key component of the next global political phase.

The tightening of control over everything to do with data will inevitably increase the degree of repression in the information sphere, especially since it is not easy in practice to block unwanted channels. But if relatively recently it seemed impossible to dig up the world’s information superhighway and make it unusable for travel, this no longer seems so far-fetched.

The most interesting question is how the likely shrinking of the global information realm will affect trade and economic connectivity, the remaining pillar of world unity. Judging by the pace of change, there will soon be newsworthy developments there too.

This article was first published by Russia in Global Affairs, translated and edited by the RT team

August 28, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance | 1 Comment

Теlegram’s Durov vs Meta’s Zuckerberg: How Do They Stack Up on Censorship?

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 27.08.2024

While Telegram founder Pavel Durov waits to be formally charged by French prosecutors for multiple charges relating to the platform’s lack of moderation, no such fate is likely to befall Mark Zuckerberg. The CEO of Meta has admitted his company opted to accede to the US government’s demands to censor content.

While Telegram founder Pavel Durov waits to be formally charged by French prosecutors for multiple charges relating to the platform’s lack of moderation, no such fate is likely to befall Mark Zuckerberg.

Unlike Durov, the Meta CEO has admitted to what was an open secret anyway: that he caved to repeated White House demands to throttle content on his platform. Senior Biden administration officials, “pressured” Meta to “censor” content, acknowledged Zuckerberg in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on August 26.

Elon Musk was quick to note there’s be no arrest for Zuck as he “censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data.”

Let’s see how the two platforms and their CEOs line up:

Pavel Durov

The Russian-born IT entrepreneur co-created Telegram – a blend of private messaging and public channels –with his brother in August 2013. Durov vowed to champion encryption in messaging, not allow the moderation of messages, deny requests to store records of confidential data, telephone messages and internet traffic of clients, or hand over keys for decrypting users’ correspondence upon request.

“Telegram has historically had problems with regulators in some parts of the world because, unlike other services, we consistently defended our users’ privacy and have never made any deals with governments,” Durov wrote in 2017.”

Telegram’s unlimited in size “channels” and group chats are encrypted using a combination of 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption, and Diffie-Hellman secure key, per the Telegram team. Telegram doesn’t provide end-to-end encryption for common private and group chats, but does provide a secret chat feature. Telegram lets users post files enjoying unlimited cloud storage. There is no targeted advertising or algorithmic feed. The platform’s audience exceeded 950 million users by July 2024.

The US government wanted to get its hands on Telegram’s code to infiltrate the system and spy on its users, Durov revealed in an April interview with ex-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. The entrepreneur rejected pressure to allow a “backdoor” in the app for Western intelligence. Durov resisted personal “pressure” in the US, where law enforcement officials approached him, seeking to “establish a relationship to in a way control Telegram better.”

“[But] for us running a privacy-focused social media platform, that probably wasn’t the best environment to be in. We want to be focused on what we do, not on government relations of that sort,” Durov said.

Mark Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg turned his Meta (formerly Facebook) into a tool for US censorship. The platform with its standard for messaging apps end-to-end (e2e) encryption and non-open source algorithm has served up documented cases of censorship and manipulation of public opinion proven by whistleblowers and information leaks. After the 2016 US elections, conservative viewpoints were suppressed under the pretext of “hate speech” while liberal ones were elevated.

In 2018 it was revealed that UK-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica engaged in the harvesting of tens of millions of Facebook profiles in 2014. They were used to target users with personalized political ads, including during the 2016 US presidential campaign. The company engaged in similar harvesting and vote manipulation operations in nations across the globe.

Posts criticizing everything from US foreign and immigration policy, climate policies, to vaccines were occasionally deleted outright, but more often hidden or deranked.
Used as an election manipulation tool, whistleblowers have documented Facebook’s skewed content moderation directives regarding candidates and their supporters, in direct violation of the company’s policy on protecting political speech.

Facebook barred Donald Trump from the platform in the wake of the 6 January Capitol riot after being accused of “incitement of violence”. He was reinstated his account had “new guardrails in place.”

Biden officials “repeatedly pressured” Facebook for months to “censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire” during the pandemic, Zuckerberg has admitted. As a result, in April of 2020 Facebook announced that it was imposing limits on “harmful misinformation about COVID-19.” The decision was reversed a year later.

On the eve of the 2020 presidential elections Facebook suppressed the New York Post story based on damning files in Hunter Biden’s laptop containing evidence of a pay-to-play corruption scheme by the Biden family.

Mark Zuckerberg admitted that in an interview with Joe Rogan in 2022, claiming he was ordered to censor the story by the FBI. He has now conceded that the Hunter laptop story was not “Russian disinformation,” as it was alleged at the time by the Democrats and the mainstream media.

While Meta admitted in 2021 that Palestinian posts using words like “martyr” and “resistance” were inaccurately labeled as incitement to violence, the platform revealed its hypocrisy the following year. Meta openly supported calls for violence against Russian citizens after the start of the special military operation. In March 2022 it loosened prohibitions on violent speech for users in Eastern Europe, allowing the placement of ads with such content.

August 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

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.

August 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | 4 Comments

Telegram Founder’s Detention Shows ‘Dangerous Trend’ of Online Surveillance

By John Miles – Sputnik – 27.08.2024

Western governments are increasingly seeking to deepen their control of online platforms while looking to discredit those like TikTok and Telegram which they perceive to be beyond their control.

The mass adoption of the Internet has widely been seen as a positive phenomenon in encouraging greater openness and accountability in society.

Polling by Pew Research Center in 2022 demonstrates the largely helpful role citizens around the world attribute to the technology, with majorities of people in most countries approving of its impact. Citizens of Central and Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary are especially approving of social media’s influence on democracy, with respondents claiming it helps them stay informed about world and local events.

The United States, however, is a notable outlier in the research firm’s survey, with 64% of Americans saying social media has had a mostly negative effect on democracy and 79% saying it has created greater political division.

The finding comes as the role of social media and the Internet has increasingly been vilified in US society, with a panic over the alleged deleterious effect of online disinformation in politics. The height of the Russiagate conspiracy theory during the presidency of Donald Trump represented perhaps the high-water mark for the trend, but Western lawmakers continue to stoke concern over online content to justify government intervention and even outright bans on some platforms.

This weekend’s arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, then, can be seen as the latest development in the trend after Durov provoked the ire of Western officials earlier this year by revealing the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s attempts to install a backdoor in the popular encrypted messaging application.

“This attempt to break down communications and free speech around the world, I think, is a dangerous trend,” warned host Steve Gill on Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program Monday. “We just saw the CEO of Rumble… fled to avoid prosecution on whatever trumped up charges they may come after him. So this is a big issue. It is a big story. And I’ve been interested that the US media isn’t paying much attention to it. They should be.”

“It’s notable that, of course, Durov was arrested on allegations and is still being held, though he hasn’t been convicted for any crimes,” noted independent journalist John Jackman.

“The investigation has alleged, essentially, that the messaging platform Telegram has been used for fraud, drug trafficking, money laundering, and a coterie of other offenses. Now, what’s interesting about this is basically what the French authorities are saying is that Durov himself is responsible for any abuse that happens on that platform.”

Western authorities have long resented Telegram, which is resistant to the kind of surveillance and content moderation imposed on other online platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or X. Telegram’s relative freedom allows dissidents to thrive and users to share information from alternative perspectives, but authorities have accused the platform of being used to facilitate myriad crimes and abuses.

Recent years have seen Western governments take increasing steps to influence the flow of information online through the implementation of moderation regimes and, more recently, the banning of TikTok. Figures such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and X CEO Elon Musk have become more or less amenable to authorities’ attempts to exert control over their platforms, but Jackman argued that Durov has continued to chart his own course.

“Is Elon in trouble?” Jackman asked. “Well the answer is, if he stays on the right side of US foreign policy then he should be fine and continues to advocate for things like overthrowing the government of Venezuela, staying on the right side of the conflict in Ukraine, not cozying up to Russia too much, and so on. And then, of course, with Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, there’s absolutely no issue.

“One of the striking aspects of Durov’s arrest is that the French authorities actually waited until he landed to even file a warrant,” Jackman said, noting that French officials did not make the Telegram founder aware that he was wanted until he was already en route to France. “He had absolutely no indication that anything was coming. This was actually the same thing that happened with [Venezuelan businessman] Alex Saab, and it’s clear that France wanted to get their man and ensure that there was absolutely no chance of him evading the dragnet.”

Jackman called the tactic “draconian” and lamented Western governments’ attempts to repress their own citizens.

“What [censorship] means is that you’re weak, basically,” he claimed. “When you have to censor speech, when you have to be able to have the power to limit what people can say, then that means that you’re operating in a world where you’re scared of the facts, where you’re scared of truth.”

“We’ve seen this not only in contemporary and modern times, but we’ve also seen this throughout history: when great governments, empires, or nations start to lose their ability to actually govern effectively… you see these crackdowns on speech to start to try to limit the fact that the people can point out that the emperor has no clothes,” he continued. “And I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing.”

“The reason why they’re arresting people like Durov and not Elon Musk is fundamentally because the tentacles of law enforcement and intelligence agencies specifically have not, are not able to seep their way into applications like Telegram the way they are X or the Meta platforms. And so I think this is more of an issue about controlling the broader narrative rather than it is pursuing any specific types of criminal activity.”

August 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Durov arrest shows ‘upside-down’ West – Serbian leader

RT | August 26, 2024

Charges against Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France show that the West has abandoned the values it championed just a few years ago, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said.

The 39-year-old Russian was detained by French authorities on Saturday, after arriving in Paris from Azerbaijan by private jet. Durov also has the passports of France, the UAE and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Speaking on a newscast on Monday evening, Vucic said that Durov’s case was “interesting” and compared him to the persecution of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

“Back in 2018, when Russia put some mild legal pressure on him, some 26 groups from the West signed a petition to the Russian state to stop violating his freedom. Fast forward five or six years, and it’s perfectly normal [for them] to have him arrested and want to shut down Telegram in the West,” Vucic said.

“Everything has gone topsy-turvy, reality itself has been changed to fit their interests.”

France on Monday revealed the laundry list of preliminary charges against Durov, accusing the Telegram mogul of “facilitating” alleged illegal activities on his platform – ranging from drug dealing and money laundering to child pornography – by refusing to cooperate with French investigators going after an unnamed third party.

President Emmanuel Macron has defended the arrest, insisting that charges against Durov were “in no way a political decision.”

X owner Elon Musk, American journalist Tucker Carlson and Silicon Valley investor David Sacks have denounced Durov’s arrest as an attack on the freedom of speech.

Snowden, a whistleblower who revealed the extent of NSA spying on Americans and foreign leaders back in 2012, has accused France of holding Durov “hostage” in order to access private communications on Telegram.

Vucic brought up Durov’s situation in the context of the US and the EU criticizing Serbia for allegedly persecuting political opposition. According to the Serbian president, the EU routinely beats up and arrests protesters by the hundreds, while Belgrade is far more tolerant of outright riots.

“It’s all upside-down!” Vucic said. “When you allow the greatest of liberties, you’re a dictator. The fewer freedoms exist, the more they speak about them.”

August 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 2 Comments

Mark Zuckerberg confirms Biden regime pressured Facebook on censorship, admits to throttling Hunter Biden story

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 26, 2024

In a revealing letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has addressed significant controversies surrounding the platform’s content censorship practices, especially concerning actions taken during the 2020 presidential election cycle and the COVID-19 pandemic.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Zuckerberg confirmed that senior officials from the Biden Administration exerted “pressure” on Facebook to censor specific content related to COVID-19, criticizing the administration’s approach. Despite the external pressures, Zuckerberg emphasized that the final decisions on content moderation lay with Facebook, admitting regret over some of the decisions made under this pressure.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration… repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” Zuckerberg stated, reflecting on the administration’s actions which he now believes were “wrong.” He expressed regret that Meta was not more outspoken against this pressure at the time: “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions.”

In a separate disclosure, Zuckerberg detailed interactions with the FBI, which had warned the company of a potential Russian disinformation campaign targeting the Biden family and their association with Burisma ahead of the 2020 elections. This led to the suppression of a New York Post story involving corruption allegations against Joe Biden’s family, which was later determined not to be Russian disinformation. Zuckerberg expressed regret over this decision as well, noting significant changes in Meta’s policy to avoid such actions in the future.

“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg conceded, alleging a policy shift to prevent future such occurrences: “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Additionally, Zuckerberg addressed his contributions through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support electoral infrastructure during the pandemic, aiming to assist local election jurisdictions. He defended these contributions as non-partisan, though acknowledged public skepticism about the impartiality of such support.

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another,” he affirmed, signaling a withdrawal from similar contributions in future electoral cycles.

August 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , | 2 Comments

Court Finds Kennedy Has Standing in Our Consolidated Case

As I predicted, our new co-plaintiff Kennedy meets even the Supreme Court’s stringent standing requirements, the injunction against the government is back in play.

By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | August 26, 2024

As I explained in a previous post, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s companion lawsuit Kennedy v. Biden has been consolidated by the court into our Missouri v. Biden case. Based upon documents we obtained on discovery, the court recently found that Kennedy meets the Supreme Court’s stringent standing criteria. We only need one co-plaintiff with standing to bring the case and the petition for the injunction. So the injunction is back in play, and we will likely find ourselves at the Supreme Court again in a few months. Unless SCOTUS invents another technicality on which to temporize, they will be forced to rule on the merits of the evidence against the government, which we believe is overwhelming.

On the issue of Kennedy’s standing, U.S. District Court judge Terry Doughty last week ruled: “There is not much dispute that both Kennedy and CHD [Kennedy’s nonprofit Children’s Health Defense] were specifically targeted by the White House, the Office of Surgeon General, and CISA, and the content of Kennedy and CHD were suppressed. Therefore, Kennedy must now show a substantial risk that in the near future, at least one platform will restrict the speech of Kennedy in response to the actions of one Government Defendant.” Citing evidence we uncovered in Missouri v. Biden, Doughty explained: “The Court finds that Kennedy is likely to succeed on his claim that suppression of content posted was caused by actions of Government Defendants, and there is a substantial risk that he will suffer similar injury in the near future.”

As reported in The Kennedy Beacon Substack:

The latest ruling is not only significant for Kennedy but for the future of online speech. In June of this year, the Supreme Court ruled that the state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana did not have standing to bring their case on government directed mass censorship. Now that Kennedy and the CHD have been found to have standing in the matter, the Supreme Court will likely have an opportunity to judge the issue on its merits rather than on a technicality as it did when making its standing ruling on an injunction in June.

If Kennedy and his co-plaintiffs are able to demonstrate to judges that the Biden administration’s intrusion into the actions of major social media companies resulted in censorship, the country will be one step closer to a major legal ruling guaranteeing freedom to speak online without the censorious interference of the federal government.

In related news, Kennedy announced Friday that he is suspending his presidential campaign. While he has deep disagreements with Trump on several issues, he is endorsing Trump’s candidacy to advance the key issues on which they have substantial agreements—including stopping government censorship and propaganda. His 48-minute speech announcing this decision was an extraordinary moment in American politics and is worth watching. In addition to discussing the issue of government censorship, which seriously hamstrung his ability to campaign, Kennedy’s remarks focus also on the root causes of the current epidemic of chronic disease in the United States.

While there is online buzz that Trump may tap Kennedy as Attorney General, I anticipate if Trump is elected he will appoint Kennedy to his cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services, a department which includes the CDC, FDA, and NIH. This could prove a welcome opportunity for the reform of our public health agencies. I am currently working with a team of policy analysts and health freedom advocates on concrete policy proposals for just such reforms, and will keep you posted on our progress with that project.

August 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian MP claims kidnappers targeted his family over pro-church stance

RT | August 26, 2024

Ukrainian MP Artyom Dmitruk has claimed from exile that he is a victim of political persecution due to his support for the largest Christian church in the country. Kiev has accused him of violent crimes and illegally crossing the country’s border.

Last week, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a bill into law which threatens to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), over allegations that it may be controlled by Moscow. Dmitruk stood out among his fellow lawmakers for his vocal opposition to the legislation. He is now considered a fugitive in Ukraine and says his family is in danger.

”They tried to abduct my family. They tried to kidnap my mother, wife and two small kids from a hotel in Europe,” the MP claimed on his Telegram channel on Monday. Dmitruk said private security had thwarted the plot and that he knows who was behind it.

Last week, Ukrainian authorities announced criminal charges against an unnamed MP. He was accused of assaulting two people – a law enforcement officer and a military service member. Separately, they announced a criminal investigation into alleged illegal crossing of the border by the same person. Dmitruk is understood to be the suspect, according to Ukrainian media.

The lawmaker is a professional powerlifter and entrepreneur who runs fitness clubs in the city of Odessa. He went into politics in 2019 on the wave of Zelensky’s surprise presidential campaign, getting elected as an MP for his Servant of the People party.

Dmitruk dismissed the allegations against him as fabricated for political reasons. One of the charges is apparently related to a conflict he had last year with what he called a scam call center.

The politician claims that Zelensky’s office is after him over his support of the UOC. The church has been subjected to law enforcement raids on its monasteries, arrests of senior bishops and the seizure of property by supporters of the rival Kiev-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Last week, armed men showed up at various properties associated with Dmitruk and his family, he told his attorney Robert Amsterdam, who voiced his client’s criticism of Kiev’s infringement of religious freedoms.

Dmitruk has alleged that his foes intended to have him killed while supposedly resisting arrest. His current whereabouts are unclear, with Tatryana Sapyan, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian investigative agency DBR, claiming on Sunday that he had fled the country via Moldova.

August 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Durov’s arrest represents a new level of desperation from western elites

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 26, 2024

The arrest of Pavel Durov marks a new low point on the scumline of the side of the bath – the tub being western democracies and the line being their desperation to stay in power at the costs of controlling social media. Durov, who owns Telegram and lives in Dubai, could be in jail for months and possibly years on the trumped-up charges which the French state has conjured up simply because he refuses to allow any government to have a back door into Telegram. He has fought this tooth and nail for years with the west, in particular the U.S., playing every dirty trick in the book to get access to the platform for its own nefarious purposes – to destroy opposition figures, their strategies etc. – rather than what it is dressed up to be, identifying terrorists and international criminals.

As the UK ponders how its own state has sunk to a new totalitarian level in recent days with the arrest of its citizens who merely like a posting on a social media platform, the West has arrested this French Russian dual national genius who is charged with the crimes of those criminals active on Telegram. And so charges of terrorism and trafficking in minors, drugs and whatever else they can find on the platform will be made against him as someone abetting in the crimes. Of course, the same rules will not be levelled against Elon Musk who surely has criminals on his platform or for that matter any of the other social media platforms.

But how many of these platforms are also taking the same stand as Durov? We are led to believe that most of them aren’t but in light of his arrest we should assume that many of them have already allowed some sort of access to them for the deep state. Elon Musk likes to brag about his refusal to comply with the EU’s demands that he “moderates” who he allows onto X, adding that other social media platforms accepted the deal offered to him by Brussels: comply with our requests and we grant you some leniency on future antitrust fines. This offer, which he claims was happily accepted by other platforms is as close as you can get to the EU offering a brown envelope stuffed full of cash to a man in a pub. It’s a bribe and gives a clue as to how anti-democratic the EU is and how it operates in the shadows.

The French arrest however goes deeper in that we can assume that it was not France operating alone to nab Durov. We can assume that the FBI and CIA had probably pushed Macron to do this appalling dirty work but perhaps also Israel had a hand in it. Just recently, Netanyahu complained that data which was stolen from the government was being exchanged on Telegram and asked Durov to step in and retrieve it. He got no reply. Did Mossad have a hand in the arrest of Telegram’s boss? It seems credible given that it is hard to believe that Durov would fly into French airspace eyes wide open. Was it a kidnapping operation to get his plane and his pilot to land in Paris? French TV channel TF1 said Dubai-based Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Saturday 24th of August but did not state whether the plane’s ultimate destination had been France.

The details around the arrest are very sketchy, but according to Reuters, Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, said some governments had sought to pressure him but the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics”.

Another question which arises from the arrest is whether it is an international effort by western countries led by the U.S. – with Israel very much part of it – to test the waters for other arrests. Pundits have been dismissed as conspiracy theorists for weeks now suggesting Elon Musk will be arrested at some point, or charged in his absence, by UK authorities for some of the more controversial posts he has made about the political situation in the UK, or even by the EU which appears to have started a legal battle with him after he refused to respond to two letters sent to him by a French European Commissioner. Perhaps even the Democrats in the U.S. might play the same card given that Musk has lost all credibility as a neutral player in U.S. politics after he has so openly supported Trump who has promised him a position in a new government if he were to enter the Oval Office. There is no such thing really as free speech. It comes at a very high price for those who want to protect and cherish it and now France will test the political landscape to see how the arrest of Durov will affect Macron’s ratings. The French president has used outstandingly poor judgment in the past in calling for parliamentary elections immediately after EU ones which gave so much power to far-right groups, so he seems to be good at falling on his own sword. He may well have factored that Durov does not have the popularity of say Assange who didn’t stir so much political anger when he was banged up for years in a filthy, dank cell in the UK on trumped up charges from the U.S.

What is especially worrying is that locking up powerful people who have huge followings on the internet is becoming a trend which people are getting used to. The war between those who want to control the perceived truth and those who hold the actual one is hotting up. Scott Ritter, Andrew Tate, Richard Medhurst all arrested within days of one another, while Musk himself shuts down Egyptian comedian Bassem Youseff who had 10m followers on X. What we are witnessing is a new level of desperation that western elites are more afraid than ever after wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in Ukraine and starting a world war in the Middle East that voters have no confidence any more in their decision-making, as they, the public, struggle more and more to pay for groceries or even heat their houses. It’s a new milestone in the blind dogma of elites to resort to tactics which we would have scorned China or North Korea for using just a few years ago. It’s a new level of panic which we haven’t seen before.

August 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Telegram comments on founder’s arrest

RT | August 25, 2024

Telegram abides by EU laws and its founder, Pavel Durov, “has nothing to hide,” the company said after Durov was arrested in Paris. Telegram said that it is “awaiting a prompt resolution” of the situation.

Durov was taken into custody at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday, immediately after arriving from Azerbaijan by private jet. According to French media, prosecutors in Paris plan to charge the 39-year-old with complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, and fraud, arguing that Telegram’s insufficient content moderation, its strong encryption tools, and its alleged lack of cooperation with police allow criminals to flourish on the app.

Telegram dismissed these arguments on Sunday, stating that the company follows EU laws and that its content-moderation policies are “within industry standards.”

“Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe,” the statement continued, calling it “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”

“Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information,” the company concluded. “We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation.”

Telegram is headquartered in Dubai, although the company appointed a Belgian legal representative earlier this year to manage its compliance with EU law. Telegram has also complied with the bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions by blocking access to Russian news outlets, including RT.

However, Durov has consistently refused to hand over user data to law enforcement agencies, or to install so-called ‘backdoors’ so that these agencies can surveil conversations on the app. Speaking to RT on Sunday, Durov’s former spokesman suggested that French authorities could have made the arrest on behalf of the US, after Durov publicly accused American intelligence agencies of pressuring him into giving them access to Telegram user data.

August 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 1 Comment

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