THE REAL REASON FOR CENSORSHIP - Part 6
Who's Really In Charge of Things...???
What’s really happening with Telegram…?
We’ll pick up where we left off in Part 5…
Mike Benz: Foundation for Freedom Online
TUCKER: 1.10.45
What happens to Pavel Durov?
MIKE: 1.10.52
It’s unclear what kind of pressure may be mounted to set him free. There have been suggestions that potentially the UAE may take some steps – unconfirmed – the one player in the room who could exert enough pressure to set Pavel free is, unfortunately, potentially one of the players who may be implicated in his arrest in the first place.
And again, this comes back to the U.S. Embassy in France, which is why I believe that questions need to be asked by the House Foreign Affairs Committee to Ambassador Denise Bauer. Were there previous communications, previous emails, previous meetings, previous dialogue with French intelligence, French law enforcement, or members of the French government?
And when I say were there meetings, or communications, or dialogue, I don’t just mean directly by the U.S. Embassy, I also mean through the U.S. Embassy’s back channels — which is that many times this is done directly by the U.S. Embassy, but many times it’s done by a back channel — which is that instead of the U.S. Embassy talking with French law enforcement directly, a back channel — someone from a Civil Society Institution funded by the State Department — like an Atlantic Town Council type organization, or a former member of the State Department — has these conversations, does this lobbying, does this coordination, and then reports to the State Department for updates on the conversations about the anti-corruption prosecution and the State Department provides guidance to the back channel, continues the negotiations of pressure.
And so, the sweep has to be total here, because the implications of the U.S. Embassy either coordinating, or at the very least, approving this are seismic, because again, Telegram’s critical military intelligence role in countering Russia and statecraft role in everything the State Department does, because again, if Russia does have a back end access to Telegram, whether they cracked it through their cyber hackers, or whether Pavel had some secret agreement, that means every rent-a-riot revolution that the CIA does using Telegram all over the world is also being secretly monitored by the Russians, and maybe that’s why it was unsuccessful in Belarus. Maybe that’s why it was unsuccessful with Alexi Navalni in Russia. And they do make points about the fact that Russian military uses it freely. Over half of Russia uses it, and they point to questions around the funding in order to make that argument.
So, you do have these U.S. interests, but you also have French interests. Again, I’m not…
TUCKER: 1.13.28
Do they have evidence, I mean the U.S. funded the creation of Signal – it doesn’t mean — right? — tons of people use Signal. Do they have evidence of this? I mean, Pavel Durov left Russia in 2014. In his account — and I think this is true — he felt like he had to leave, he didn’t want to leave, he’s Russian. But, the Putin administration was trying to control Telegram and he famously gave the finger to Putin on camera and left, and took citizenship in other countries, so like, do they — as someone who’s been accused of being a Russian asset a million times, when I don’t speak Russian and of course, I’m not even that interested in Russia (??), I’m sensitive to that slander, and I just want to know, do they have actual evidence that Putin has a back door to Telegram. It sounds like a lie to me, but…
MIKE: 1.14.21
Well, they argue there would be no other reason for the Russian military to use it in such an unfettered fashion for official Russian military documents to advocate the use of Telegram.
TUCKER: 1.14.34
Of course there would be another reason, which is it’s secure.
MIKE: 1.14.27
Right. Well, if you read CIA media on this, again, you pointing to what Radio Free Europe wrote two weeks after your interview with Pavel, it was that things may have — well, Telegram…
TUCKER: 1.14.47
Radio Free Europe is disgusting. Let me just say, having grown up around it, I’m just shocked by what it’s become. It’s disgusting and they should be ashamed of themselves.
MIKE: 1.14.56
Well, Radio Free Europe was lauding Telegram from 2014 to 2020. What they argue is that something may have changed beginning in 2021 with a new round of funding, I believe a debt round, a large dollar figure debt round that was raised, and they argue that there may have been Russian investors in that and so, there may have been some payoff, and so because of that, Russia only stopped — because for two years they were pursuing banning Telegram from Russia, but then they stopped it and at the time, that was considered a major free speech victory by the United States, and by the State Department, they applauded the NGO pressure on Russia, and the threat of sanctions on Russia for if they went ahead and banned Telegram, but the fact that they relented and then ubiquitously used Telegram — actually Telegram usage in Russia massively surged after the ban. There were only about 10% of Russians who used it before the ban, and now it’s over 50%.
So, they argue between the funding, between the fact that they’re losing in all these places where they use Telegram now, and that Russia may be keen to it, and the fact that there was — that the attempted ban was dropped, and then a massive surge in usage afterwards can only mean that Russia began to be pro-Telegram because of a secret deal between them.
TUCKER: 1.16.17
So, in other words, Ukraine is losing a land war against a country with a hundred million more people because Pavel Durov has some secret arrangement with Putin. I mean, this is the kind of fantastical, childish thinking that makes empires fall, actually. I mean, the total inability to deal with reality, to assess your own shortcomings, to be honest about anything as it pertains to yourself, to be honest about yourself and how much you suck — those are fatal weaknesses in people and in countries, and I grieve to see the U.S. government fall into that kind of self-indulgent fantasy.
MIKE: 1.16.59
Right, but think about the amazing windfall that just befell the CIA. They’ve had no leverage against Pavel this entire time, and yet the entire Russian military architecture is built on Telegram.
All high level Russian military and political officials, the internal workings of Russian statecraft and deliberations, all happened on Telegram. And there’s been no window into that because of Pavel’s belief in free speech.
So now, if Pavel cracks under interrogation, if he cracks under pressure, suddenly all communications of all Russian citizens and all Russian military officials, and all Russian diplomats that were taking place on Telegram for the past five years are now in the hands of the CIA. So, this is an amazing…
TUCKER: 1.17.43
Why don’t we just torture him to death? I mean, like why not just drop the pretense and just be like we’re North Korea now, with slightly better infrastructure — slightly — and stop pretending — ‘cuz that’s what this is, they’re like torturing a man, and in the process, stripping us of our God-given speech rights, and our right to privacy that they’re always crowing about, but only when it pertains to abortion. I mean, this is so immoral what we’re participating in. Does anybody — does [it] even occur to all the creeps on the internet — the Atlantic Council, Alexander Vindman, all the people who think this is great — does it occur to them that they’re no better than North Korea in this situation?
MIKE: 1.18.26
Well, I think, from the Ukrainian perspective, they say our people are dying, we’re being massacred by the Russians, and so free speech has to be a casualty of this war.
TUCKER: 1.18.38
And religious freedom, and the Russian Orthodox Church, and the freedom of priests to celebrate the Eucharist, they’re in jail, now. So it’s like, but at a certain point, do you think anyone in Ukraine looks over to Washington and says, you promised us this was a good idea. They’ve lost at least 600,000 Ukrainians. They’ve lost the right to their land (*It actually still belongs to Russia). Their land can now be bought by foreign corporations, they’ve just made that change, and it will be. And, all of that is because they followed the advice of Washington. Do you think they think that?
MIKE: 1.19.07
Well, it doesn’t matter what the people of Ukraine think. No, they’re not allowed to have elections. They can’t vote their way out of it. There’s no elections. And, mind you, everyone listening right now can look up something called The Red Lines Memo.
From the Ukraine Crisis Media Group, which is basically a conglomerate of all these U.S. funded NGOs and Civil Society institutions in Ukraine, and they sent the so-called “Red Lines Memo” to Zelenskyy when he took office, and they threatened Zelenshyy in that letter, that if he took any of the below actions on security policy, on energy policy, on media policy, on cultural policy — seven or eight different buckets of internal policies that Zelenskyy might pursue — that if he crossed any of the Red Lines, in terms of restoring use of the Russian language on Ukrainian TV, or interfering with the privatization of Naftogaz and things like this — that if he crossed any of those Red Lines of the policy issues articulated by this U.S. constellation — this U.S. NGO which is an umbrella for all these other State Department NGOs — that Ukraine would face immediate political destabilization if any of those policies were enacted.
Basically the same rent-o-riots that were deployed by the U.S. State Department (*on U.S. soil, in U.S. cities, better known as Antifa, Black Bloc, BLM, etc.), and the Central Intelligence Agency and to some extent the Pentagon in the 2014 Maidan Protests would be redeployed against Zelenskyy if he decided to chart an independent course for the Ukrainian people. (Sound familiar? They don’t hate Trump, they fear him, just for these reasons. Same actors, same players, different day.) That he would be run out of office the same way his predecessor, Yanukovych was, by the same forces, if he did something that was in the will of the Ukrainian people, but opposed to the U.S. State Department and occupying forces. (*Read that again…slooowly…)
TUCKER: 1.20.58
This is so grotesque — I just want to pause now and ask you, anyone who’s followed this conversation to this point finds it probably as compelling as I do — so for people who want — I never do this, but in your case, I want people to read what you write, where’s the best place to follow you much more closely than just your appearances here?
MIKE: 1.21.21
On X Mike Benz Cyber. All one word, @MikeBenzCyber. I’m prolific. I believe in this. I understand what is probably going to happen to me at some point, but again, my dog in this fight is not changing U.S. foreign policy. Let others decide what to do in Ukraine, and what to do all over the world.
I can understand both sides of the issue. I can understand the sort of anti-imperialists — these are human rights violations, we should not be toppling democratically elected governments.
I can also understand that it’s a big, bad world out there, and if we don’t do it, somebody else will, and we need capacities in place to do that. It’s a complicated issue. The problem is, we don’t have a democracy when our entire political structure is about hearts and minds of the people — that’s what a democracy is — hearts and minds of the people are determined by the information ecosystem — freedom of speech.
And so, if you don’t have the freedom of speech to be able to influence hearts and minds, the hearts and minds to be able to give rise to a free and fair election, well then, you don’t have a democracy. You have military junta, effectively.
And, to the point that you made before that the legitimacy all falls out, and so all I care about is free speech on the internet, and so…
To be continued in Part 7…
END OF PART 6 /