As China rises, Asia rises with it. The Southeast Asian state of the Philippines stood to rise alongside the rest of the region until relatively recently as the United States successfully convinces the Philippines to do otherwise.
Before the current administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office, China was working with the Philippines to build badly needed modern infrastructure. Now, rather than working and trading together with China, the Philippines is pointing missiles at China. It has “invited” the United States, the Philippines’ former colonial master, to build new military facilities across its territory, using semantics and legal loopholes to sidestep the Philippines own constitution and undermine its sovereignty in the process.
Instead of rising with the rest of Asia, the Philippines continues to escalate toward a conflict that could set the entire region back decades or more.
Just as the United States politically captured Ukraine in Eastern Europe in 2014 and transformed it into a geopolitical battering ram against neighboring Russia at the expense of Ukraine’s population, economy, sovereignty, and possibly even its existence, it is repeating the same process with the Philippines vis-à-vis China.
How has the United States convinced a nation of over 115 million people to forego economic progress and development in exchange for an escalating confrontation with its own largest trade partner? What are the mechanisms Washington uses to convince an entire nation to race toward conflict and self-destruction?
A Vast Network of Propaganda
There is growing awareness of the means by which the US interferes politically in targeted nations through the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and adjacent organizations, agencies, and foundations, compromising a nation’s leadership and reshaping national policies to serve Washington at the expense of the targeted nation.
The NED does this through targeting every aspect of a nation-state, from its political system, to academia, from its courts and legal system to a nation’s information space.
Philippine information space, like many nations around the globe, has been targeted by a vast media network built up by the US government as well as corporate money funneled through intermediaries including foundations and endowments, to poison the Philippine people not only against China specifically, but against the Philippines’ own best interests in general.
Part of this vast network are so-called “fact-checking” projects the US government together with the largest names in Western media as well as US-based tech giants like Google uses to paradoxically reinforce US government disinformation and attack and undermine people and organizations working to inform the public – including the Philippine public – of what the US is really doing and why.
In the Philippines, this network includes PressOne. Its “fact-checking” activities have repeatedly targeted those exposing US interference in the Philippines’ internal political affairs and undermining Philippine sovereignty.
PressOne has falsely “fact-checked” claims regarding the building of US military bases across the Philippines using semantics to argue that while the US is certainly building military facilities for its own use in the Philippines, technically the Philippines retains ownership over these facilities.
PressOne outright lied claiming, “President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has denied that the facilities were intended to be military bases.” The Reuters report PressOne cites does not deny the facilities are indeed military bases, it simply claims the bases are not meant for “offensive action” against any country – another example of semantics.
In another example, PressOne conducted a smear against this author citing US and Philippine government claims, as well as through the use of a number of logical fallacies including guilt by association.
PressOne’s task is to convince those reading its content that a US-led effort to transform the Philippines into a Ukraine-style proxy against its largest trading partner, China, is not taking place, but if it were, it is somehow in the Philippines’ best interests.
It should then come as no surprise that PressOne’s “fact-checking” activities are the result of US government funding to stand-up such projects. At the bottom of each “fact-check” article on PressOne it claims, “PressOne.PH is a verified signatory of the Code of Principles of the International Fact -Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter.”
Poynter in turn discloses it is funded by the US government through the NED along with corporate-funded foundations connected to the Omidyar Network as well as the Google News Initiative, itself a partner of the US State Department as well as other US-allied governments.
All of this, in turn, is part of an influence operation targeting China the US spends hundreds of millions of dollars on every year.
Funding Disinformation Hundreds of Millions a Year
In 2021 the US Congress introduced the “Countering Chinese Communist Party Malign Influence Act.” It, along with other legislation and funds, seeks to spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to, “counter the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party globally.”
In practice, however, such legislation only seeks to reinforce the US’ actual malign influence.
As Reuters revealed earlier this year in an investigative report, “Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic,” the US government“aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China.” Reuters, quoting a senior US military official, wrote, “we weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective. We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”
The same Reuters report admitted that, far from an isolated instance, the US has a myriad of such programs run out of “psychological operations” centers engaged in systematic propaganda. Thus, while the US government was certainly “countering” China, it wasn’t because China was wielding “malign influence,” it was because China was undermining America’s own malign influence.
A Long-Run Policy to Contain China
In addition to lying about public health, the US seeks to convince the Philippine public to give up trade, economic development, and infrastructure projects with China and instead invest public funds into military spending ahead of what will likely be a Ukraine-style proxy war against China.
The centerpiece of Washington’s political capture and exploitation of the Philippines is the “Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement” (EDCA) it uses to build military facilities across Philippine territory it uses to base troops, equipment, weapons, and ammunition. The facilities contribute toward a wider regional strategy of militarily encircling and containing China, a foreign policy objective pursued by Washington since the end of World War 2.
Published by the US State Department’s own Office of the Historian is a 1965 memorandum from then US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to then US President Lyndon B. Johnson titled, “Courses of Action in Vietnam” which admitted that US military operations in Southeast Asia only“made sense” if they were “in support of a long-run United States policy to contain Communist China.” The same memorandum identified 3 fronts along which the US sought to contain China, including East Asia, Pakistan and India, as well as Southeast Asia where the Philippines is located.
Today, this policy of encirclement continues through mechanisms like the EDCA. Despite clearly running in contradiction to the Philippine people’s best interests, the well-funded propaganda campaign the US runs worldwide including in the Philippines (including the above mentioned PressOne) is attempting to convince the Philippine people that China is a threat, that the Philippines’ former colonial masters are their“allies,” and that buying US weapons and fighting Washington’s wars alongside US troops is the path forward toward a brighter future.
Considering the pile of ashes and bones the US is transforming Ukraine into even as this same process gains momentum in the Philippines, it is clear that along this path, there is no future at all for the Philippines. This unfortunate transformation and the deep socio-political scars it is creating within the Philippines serves as yet another warning about the importance of treating a nation’s information space as it does its physical domains and the importance of protecting this domain as well or better than a nation protects its land borders, shores, and air space. Only time will tell if other nations heed this warning, or simply follow Ukraine and the Philippines into self-destruction.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.
August 29, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | China, NED, Philippines, United States |
Leave a comment
Brazil’s Supreme Court has escalated the country’s retaliation against Elon Musk by freezing the financial assets of Starlink Holding, a subsidiary of Musk’s. This action is in response to another Musk company, X, which has refused to censor posts and designate a legal representative in Brazil.
This decision was part of a broader action taken by the controversial Justice Alexandre Moraes of the Supreme Court, who targeted an economic entity led by Musk. According to Brazilian media, on August 18, Moraes mandated the freezing of all financial assets of Starlink within Brazil to secure the payment of penalties levied against X by Brazilian courts.
Justice Moraes’ decision stems from the ongoing dispute involving X’s operations in Brazil. The company, under Musk’s direction, had recently shut down its Brazilian office on August 17, citing disagreements with the Supreme Court’s fines and content censorship mandates. This closure followed the court’s demand, made the day before, for X to appoint a legal representative to address these issues formally.
The lack of a legal representative prompted Justice Moraes to issue an ultimatum to the social network, giving them 24 hours to comply under threat of service suspension in Brazil. The urgency and consequences of these legal actions were communicated via a post on the Supreme Court’s X profile, directly responding to X’s announcement about the office closure to protect employees and the withdrawal of their representative.
Aside from X, Musk’s Starlink operates within Brazil, providing satellite internet services, particularly in the Northern region. The leadership of Starlink in Brazil has been informed and summoned to respond to the financial obligations imposed on X by the Brazilian judiciary.
Starlink, the satellite internet service by SpaceX, is particularly significant in Brazil for enhancing connectivity in remote and underserved regions, such as the vast Amazon rainforest where traditional broadband is impractical. This technology provides reliable internet access, supporting educational resources, digital commerce, and connectivity during natural disasters, which are frequent in regions prone to floods and landslides.
Additionally, improved internet access aids environmental monitoring efforts in the Amazon, facilitating better resource deployment against illegal activities such as deforestation and wildlife trafficking.
August 29, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance | Brazil, Human rights |
Leave a comment
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) – a part of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – has been enlisting private entities to help achieve one of its goals.
According to CISA, it would be to combat election misinformation and secure “election infrastructure” – while according to critics, it is to continue with the mission of censoring lawful speech “disfavored” by the current authorities seeking to remain where they are after November – by hook or crook.
CISA doesn’t feel the need to hide this activity that has been taking place since 2018 through a program called the Election Infrastructure Subsector Coordinating Council (SCC). It is here that US government entities – federal, state, and local – meet private groups (“partners” as CISA calls them).
We obtained the latest document for you here.
What’s coordinated here, according to the agency, and as was reported by The Federalist, is the reduction of “cyber, physical, and operational security risks to election infrastructure.” The coordination is done to the point where government and private sector have adopted “a unified approach.”
Information sharing ahead of the presidential election is also happening as SCC works with the Government Coordinating Council (GCC).
According to CISA, this collaboration is now “unprecedented” while what is referred to as “private sector owners and operators” sit, as part of SCC, in meetings with the FBI and election officials.
But CISA has other partners – the Election Integrity Project (EIP), formed months before the 2020 election, which has been blasted by the House Judiciary Committee as a tool for the government to bypass the First Amendment and censor speech.
The CISA site has a document, “Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation: Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials,” put together by CISA/GCC Joint Mis/Disinformation Working Group.
In it, CISA “defines” what each of its targets is supposed to be, and ends up doing what all “misinformation warriors” do – offer subjective and broad descriptions susceptible to interpretation, instead of clear definitions.
For example, “malinformation” is said to be information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”
The document mentions “delegitimization of election results” as one form of mis, dis, and mal information.
It’s unclear if CISA has both 2016 and 2020 elections in mind – or only one – but this is how the activity is described: “Narratives or content that delegitimizes election results or sows distrust in the integrity of the process based on false or misleading claims.”
August 29, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | CISA, DHS, FBI, United States |
Leave a comment
The Biden-Harris White House looks determined to justify and normalize the practice of the government colluding with private companies, in this instance Big Tech, to censor speech.
After Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, admitting that his company came under pressure from the current administration to conduct censorship and that he “believes” that was wrong – the White House doubled down on the controversial, and quite possibly, unconstitutional, policy.
In his letter, Zuckerberg chose to focus on Meta censoring content related to COVID-19, and in response, a White House spokesman revealed the government does not share Zuckerberg’s stance that the policy of pressure was wrong.
“Encouragement” is how that’s phrased. “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” stated the White House spokesman to media requests.
He further justified the actions described by Zuckerberg as needed because the White House believes private companies, including those from the tech industry, “should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people.”
And with the stage set in this way – the spokesman concluded that these companies are then free to make “independent choices about the information they present.”
But Zuckerberg’s letter to the Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan does a pretty good job of explaining how these “independent choices” get made. Senior figures from the Biden administration, Zuckerberg stated, in 2021 “repeatedly pressured our (Facebook, Instagram) teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.”
The decision on content removal, and introduction of new rules into platform policies to facilitate censorship, Zuckerberg concedes, was “ultimately ours” – but made under pressure.
If Meta tried to defy these “suggestions” – the administration showed “a lot of frustration.”
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” the letter, sent in response to the Committee’s subpoena first issued in early 2023, reads.
The Committee has been investigating how the government may have colluded with private companies to suppress speech it disapproves of, and whether those actions constitute First Amendment violations.
Even before the current Biden-Harris administration came to power, Facebook was being steered in a desired direction, one example being the notorious case of the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop news story, the Zuckerberg letter reveals.
The FBI contacted the social media giant with a “warning” that there could be an anti-Biden family “Russian disinformation” campaign – and Facebook heeded it by “fact-checking and temporarily demoting (links to the article).”
August 29, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, FBI, Human rights, United States |
Leave a comment
Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been formally indicted by a French court, accused of being an accomplice in several crimes allegedly committed by users of his messaging app. After paying a fine of five million euros, Durov was released from prison, but he is banned from leaving France and could be arrested again in the future.
Durov was arrested in Paris after arriving at the local airport from Azerbaijan. The charges against him could lead to a sentence of up to ten years in prison, but a series of diplomatic pressures appear to be hampering the authoritarian plans of French officials. Durov, despite being Russian by birth, holds several passports and is a citizen of different countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Durov lived in Dubai for many years and developed deep economic and strategic ties with the UAE government. For this reason, the pressure from the Arab country for France to release him was massive. The UAE threatened to end military and economic cooperation agreements, which certainly raised concerns in the French government. In practice, it can be said that the UAE used its international position as an important commercial and diplomatic hub to help Durov face the tyranny of the French authorities.
It must be said that there is no solid argument to condemn Durov. Social media creators cannot be held responsible for what other users do on their platforms. If Durov provided the French authorities the keys to access Telegram’s internal codes, he would not only be helping to punish the criminals who use the app, but also violating the private data of millions of innocent users – in addition to giving the French government access to data shared by state officials, businessmen and military personnel who use Telegram.
If France were truly committed to values such as freedom and democracy, Durov’s arrest would never have happened. However, contemporary France is anything but democratic. Paris is becoming a dictatorship under Emmanuel Macron, who has repeatedly refused to recognize the electoral defeat of his party coalition, taking authoritarian measures similar to those of some autocratic regimes around the world.
Durov himself is a French citizen. If France were a democracy, it would be concerned about guaranteeing the individual freedoms of its citizens. However, even Middle Eastern Islamic countries such as the UAE, which are often described as “autocratic” by the West, are more respectful of democratic values than France – as seen in the UAE’s efforts to have Durov released from prison.
The most interesting fact about Durov’s case, however, is that some Western media outlets are trying to describe him as a kind of Russian “agent.” There is a narrative that Telegram is a Russian tool of “hybrid warfare.” Western propagandists are trying to mislead the public into believing the fallacy that Durov refuses to share data with the French authorities in order to supposedly “protect the Russians.” However, the truth is quite different.
Despite being born in Russia, Durov has always been an opponent of the Russian government. Ideologically libertarian, Durov has always had a Westernized view of his country’s politics, seeing Moscow as an enemy of individual freedom. He left his homeland in search of greater freedom in the West—and is now being persecuted by France, the country where Durov sought citizenship in the hope of finding greater freedom than in Russia.
Durov is now learning in the worst possible way that the “freedom” advocated by the West is just rhetoric. In France, where he expected to be “free,” Durov is being persecuted simply for upholding his libertarian values and refusing to share sensitive data with state authorities. Durov has never faced such brutal persecution in his own country, which shows that the level of violation of individual freedoms in the West is higher than in Russia.
It is not yet known what Durov’s future will be. He is not “free” yet, since Paris has ordered him to remain on French territory. The local authorities are trying to intimidate him, using psychological terror to make him reveal the Telegram’s codes. Banned from leaving France, Durov’s only hope may be to seek asylum in the French-based diplomatic facilities of a country of which he has citizenship.
Only one thing is certain for Durov: he is not safe in France, the country where he once believed he would find freedom.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.
August 29, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | France, Human rights |
Leave a comment
Per Telegram, Take These Steps to Keep the Telegram App from Being Deleted
This is subsequent to Telegram Founder Pavel Durov’s Arrest in France for allowing free speech (i.e., failure to censor).
The Solution
Telegram announced that to prevent this, apply these settings:
Go through each step:
<Settings>
<Screen time>
<Content and Privacy Restrictions >
<TURN THE BUTTON ON>
<iTunes and App Store Purchases >
<Deleting Apps>
<CHECK “DO NOT ALLOW”
August 29, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights |
Leave a comment
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 aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
Leave a comment
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 aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | France, United States |
Leave a comment
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 aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance |
Leave a comment
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 aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | United States |
Leave a comment
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 aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | European Union, Human rights |
Leave a comment
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 aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | France, Human rights |
Leave a comment
Aletho News 