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Aug. 26, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:56
Telegram Founder Arrested - Free Speech Facing Firing Squad

The shocking arrest of popular social media messaging site Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France is a huge blow to free speech across the globe. Durov perhaps thought by escaping Russia to the "free" west he would not face authoritarian pressure. He was wrong. Also today...RFK's speech hit neocons hard. Will they strike back?

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Time Text
Pavel Durov and Telegram's Challenge 00:14:37
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Happy Monday Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Good.
Are you prepared?
Do you have a busy week?
A little bit of a busy week, yes.
This is in fact my only day in the studio this week.
Uh-oh.
I've got a long drive.
I don't know.
We're going to have trouble.
I'm going to get underneath my paydock.
But we'll go up to the D.C. area, Alexandria, and have some fun up there trying to prevent people from being smothered by statism.
Yeah, that's a job.
The job's going to last for a while longer.
Today we want to talk a little bit or start off with statism in the worst sense, and that is the lack of control on free speech, which is one of my favorite projects.
And that is, if you can't talk out and change your ideas, it makes it really tough.
It says the ideas are what are so important.
You know, they're never going to ban government guns, but they're going to ban the government and make it illegal for people to speak about it.
So that's a shame, but Duroff is...
Yeah, he's the founder and CEO of Telegram.
Telegram.
He came here to get away from some of this.
But France, oh, he left Russia.
And so he goes to France, but now he's under the gun over there.
And boy, they give him so many days, we'll interview you for so many days.
Oh, then that's not another weeks and weeks.
And it doesn't look good for him, but it's sort of sad that he leaves Russia to go to France because he wants maybe a little bit more flexibility.
And then the French, they at one time, every country at one time or another are known for free speech and understanding and exchange of ideas.
But in this case, he's been picked out by many, and it looks like it's going to be a big case.
At least it met the headlines today for what happened over the weekend.
Yeah, it's really incredible.
I mean, first of all, Telegram, I'm sure a lot of people here, a billion people use Telegram.
It is a massively popular social media messaging network now.
And I use Telegram a lot because you can get all sides of the story.
And that's why, you know, we know that the mainstream media has failed us.
We talk about it for years here.
So with Telegram, you can give both sides.
There is plenty of pro-Ukraine accounts you can follow.
There are plenty of pro-Russia accounts you can follow.
There are plenty of pro-Israel, pro-Palestine accounts.
You get the whole thing, you get the raw news, and you get to make up your own mind.
Well, governments hate that, as you know, Dr. Paul.
And we know from so many experiences, most recently the Twitter files, we understand how governments get into these, and they want to control it.
They want to have people silence, certain people silenced.
They want other people to be promoted.
And that's what we're seeing.
So Telegram, founded by a Russian, Pavel Durov, who has since given up his citizenship in Russia, as you say, ironically, because when he founded Telegram, Russia had passed a law requiring social media that has Russian users to host their information in servers in Russia, presumably so the Russian government can snoop in if they want.
Durov said, no, I don't want to do that.
I don't want to cooperate with governments in trying to get involved with my social media site.
So I'm leaving the country.
I'm renouncing my citizenship.
He ended up with a UAE and French citizenship, I believe both.
And he was headquartered in the United Arab Emirates.
And so he takes a trip on his private jet.
I think he went to Azerbaijan.
And then he touched down in France because he wanted to have dinner in France where he's a citizen.
And boom, they went and they arrested him.
And get this, Dr. Paul.
They're not going to just shut down Telegram.
He is facing 20 years in prison, not because he did anything, but because Telegram doesn't censor its users, and they claim that people are using it for nefarious reasons, and it's all his fault somehow.
So that's like if you are on a phone with somebody and you say something criminal and they bust the phone company is basically what it is.
So it's a serious situation.
It is a very dangerous blow to free speech.
You know, and it seems to me that what they fear, the countries that do this and all the countries do it, that they're insecure themselves.
They don't want to see an openness where everybody knows what they're doing.
And so the authoritarians have to do something about it.
So I think it's an issue over truth.
Are we allowed to know the truth?
And we pretend that we do.
And every country at one time or another says, oh, yes, we're for truth and freedom of speech and all this stuff.
But it's the authoritarians who want to compete with the people who say the most important thing we do is have truth in the expression of ideas.
And the people who overreact and say, well, we can't have this happen.
We're going to close them down and we'll put them in prison.
And our own government does it.
You know, we have to not be overly optimistic that our own government won't do the same thing that they have.
So it's this protection against revealing the truth.
They can't stand the idea.
If the truth comes out, maybe their power and their money and their monopoly and their militarism is all going to be challenged because the people usually, if they get a chance to hear something, you know, their minds can move in the direction because I think basically people are good people.
But, and that is why I think every government eventually has to express themselves just for survival reasons because they're surviving for the wrong reason.
They're surviving to promote their ideas and ideology and the authoritarianism that they think benefits them.
I don't think that the authoritarians that use this and fight truth are doing it one bit for the people.
I think this is what they do.
It's all a scheme and it's endless.
But it must be part of human nature.
But it's part of human nature to resent this.
And it's part of human nature who want to hear the truth.
And I think that's one of the contests that goes on eternally.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, here's the first clip.
From this, just something from Zero Hedge that gives you a rundown of where we're at.
It's worth a look.
There's plenty of stuff out there.
But Dr. Paul, one of the things about this story is that it takes a sinister turn.
Because on the one hand, on the surface, this is a story of the founder of a social media company that doesn't want to censor its users.
But a little bit beneath the surface, something else is happening, and it is very sinister.
If you put that next clip on, now we'll bring back Kim.com again.
In fact, we should have him on the show sometime.
He's brilliant, also a tech guy.
Now, he tweeted this out yesterday.
So I think you cannot understand the story of the arrest of Durov without understanding this.
Now, Kim.com posts on Twitter X, Breaking.
The crackdown against free speech escalates.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been arrested in France.
Western intelligence services want access to Telegram's private messages.
According to French media, Durov may face 20 years in jail if he doesn't cooperate.
Now, that is the sinister subtext here, Dr. Paul, because not only is Telegram a popular messaging site, it also features encrypted messaging between sometimes even between governments.
And governments would love to go in and see those private encrypted messages.
And Pavel holds the key to those.
And so a lot of people, Kim.com and many others, are suggesting the real reason he's arrested is not because people are posting bad things on there, but because Western governments, i.e. the CIA, wants to get at those encrypted messages and they've used France to do their dirty work.
Yes, and they're doing this because the truth is that they have to silence the people.
They say you can't have anything private.
And anything private might be just telling the truth.
So privacy is a terrible thing for the authoritarians to face up to.
And unfortunately, though, so many people go along with this because people get scared into it and they're always driven by fear.
The governments can stir up the fear and they usually want a lot of control.
And this isn't an argument over the expression.
How do you get it out the media?
The modern day media is different than it was when you had three outlets.
And so they have to expand their horizon to make sure nobody's saying anything.
So therefore, we don't know if he said anything.
We can't charge him anything.
So nothing private.
And that's where the problem comes in.
And people don't equate so much that privacy is liberty.
This is none of your business.
This is my house.
Get out of my house.
Yeah, remember the East Germany when houses were bugged, and phones were bugged, and you're ratting on your neighbors.
This is where we are.
But Pavel Durov was on the Tucker Carlson show, I must say, back in the springtime.
And it was a fascinating interview.
And Tucker, when Pavel was arrested the other day, now he had this post on Twitter, if we can put that up.
This is very interesting.
He says, Pavel Durov left Russia when the government tried to control his social media company, Telegram.
But in the end, it wasn't Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech.
It was a Western country, a Biden administration ally, an enthusiastic NATO member that locked him away.
Pavel Durov sits in a French jail tonight, a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies.
Darkness is descending fast on the formerly free world.
Here's our interview with Durov from several months ago.
Now you can watch that.
But there is a clip that someone put out of this interview where Durov explains how the U.S. intelligence services contacted him to try to get in.
Let's listen.
This is a minute long.
Let's listen to this clip.
If you can put on your earpiece, Dr. Paul, and listen to this clip of the picture from the FBI, the security agencies, wherever we came to the U.S.
So to give you an example, last time I was in the US, I brought an engineer that is working for Telegram, and there was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by cybersecurity officers or agents, wherever they are called.
The U.S. government should hire your engineer.
That's my understanding.
That's what he told me.
To write code for them or to break into Telegram?
They were curious to learn which open source libraries are integrated to the Telegrams app, you know, on the client side.
And they were trying to persuade him to use certain open source tools that he would then integrate into the Telegrams code that, in my understanding, would serve as backdoors.
Would allow the U.S. government to spy on people who use Telegram.
The U.S. government, to maybe any other government, because the backdoor is a backdoor regardless of who is using it.
That's incredible.
So he goes to the U.S. with an engineer working on his code, and the engineer is approached by Spook saying, hey, we're going to give you a lot of money, but can you give us a backdoor into Telegram?
Very sinister turn of events.
Well, big things are at stake, and unfortunately, they're not the good things.
They're the bad things.
It's the evil versus those who seek truth.
And unfortunately, there are days you can become pessimistic about all this because governments are so powerful.
But the climax always comes with expansion of militarism, and it gets more violent.
And that's what's happening.
Just look at where the violence is increasing and the potential violence, how it may explode, because it's always associated with economic problems.
The economic problems are starting to explode.
And more countries are militarizing with the assumption that there will be more wars being fought.
And this tends to be a consequence of people not telling the truth and people becoming thugs.
You know, everybody can understand a thug who goes in and beats somebody up and steals property, even though that is getting confusing too.
Because in this country right now, people can be caught doing that and they are purposely let go.
So that really mixes up this whole thing of trying to sort out the good and the bad and the evil to the monsters.
Well, the final word on this for us, at least today, is someone who has paid the price for his dedication to a free society.
And that's Ed Snowden.
Put this up.
This is what Snowden tweeted out yesterday about the arrest.
The arrest of Durov is an assault on the basic rights of speech and association.
I'm surprised and deeply saddened that Macron has descended to the level of taking hostages as a means for gaining access to private communications.
It lowers not only France, but the world.
So everyone, people in the know, people who understand these things, I think seem to pretty much get what this is about.
It's partially about censorship, but it's mostly about we want to see that back door.
Yep, and they have the pressure and the power.
Macron's Descent Into Darkness 00:12:31
And this is the reason basic morality, if it's lacking, this is let go.
And the factions just grow and grow because there is no peaceful way of solving problems.
They just have whoever is the most powerful.
And I think there's some bad signs out there, what's going on in this world today.
Yeah.
Well, something else happened over the weekend that caught our attention, and that was the dramatic events on Friday.
And now we heard some rumors about it that RFK had been talking to the Trump campaign.
I wasn't sure to believe it or not.
But then on Friday, here we go.
They're going to be in Phoenix together.
I think we mentioned it on our show Thursday.
They're going to be in Phoenix.
At the same time, it was widely anticipated that he would make the announcement that he was ending his campaign.
Well, it turns out he's suspending the campaign.
And in areas that are, he called swing states, he is pulling his name from the ballot in favor of Donald Trump.
That, I think, is a dramatic development.
A Kennedy-going Republican.
And it did get a lot of attention, but there's a lot of anger there, too.
I guess one of the most disappointing things that I see in this is, you know, he goes back to the other Kennedys, his uncle and his dad, and seeing that there was a difference there.
But now, the whole Kennedy family, now I hope Robert is right because he's trying to soften that and said, well, there'll be some Kennedys that will support me.
But it seems so sad when you think of, you know, when Kennedy was president, I didn't have any great sympathy for him.
But over the years, there was a change, especially when I learned more about why he was assassinated.
It probably had to do with a war position.
And that is a big thing that they do that.
But the Kennedy family, the sad part I wanted to point out was how many came down hard on Robert.
Even silence would be better if they disagree with him.
But boy, they must, I don't understand how they could become so anti and angry and mean and nasty.
So because he doesn't seem like we've seen him and we've worked with him.
And none of that comes out in his personality.
Yeah, it is sad.
And I should have put the statement up, but I think it was his siblings released this terrible statement saying, you know, basically our brother is terrible.
You know, he's awful.
He's such a disappointment.
I mean, putting politics in front of your own family.
You're right.
Just be silent about it, you know.
My brother has a different perspective.
You know, we honor that, but we don't agree with him.
Full stop.
That's all you need to do.
Instead, they relentlessly attacked him.
It's awful.
I wonder if Bobby Kennedy, now that he's closer to Trump, will ever get a chance to talk about foreign policy.
Hopefully there are some things they can come together.
Sometimes I think, I hope they don't come together with all the economic policies.
There might be too much agreement there.
And the speech was neat.
You know, I read it all.
I listened to part of it.
I listened to clips of it.
But they basically said, look, there are areas where we disagree, but there are areas that are so important that I've decided to work with Trump.
And I'm kind of surprised.
I know Trump looks at numbers, and this is an earthquake, really, especially at the week where the DNC, they wanted to have a big bounce.
Well, they didn't get it, in fact.
And this was such a massive event.
And I thought we might look at a couple of quotes from the speech to see his rationale, to see RFK Jr.'s rationale for what he did.
If you can put that first one up now, this is a scorcher against the Democratic Party.
He said, in the name of saving democracy, a Democratic Party set itself to dismantle it.
Lacking confidence that the candidate could win a fair election in the voting booth, the DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself.
Each time our volunteers turned in those towering boxes of signatures needed to get on the ballot, the DNC dragged us to court, state after state, attempting to erase their work and subvert the will of the voters that signed the petitions.
It deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and the other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail.
It ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden.
Then, when a predictably awful debate performance precipitated a palace coup against Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an election.
They installed a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020 without winning a single delegate.
That is a blistering, blistering rebuke, I think.
You know, but it gives us a bigger challenge on sorting this out because, you know, democracy is not exactly the most favored term for hysteria.
But I think they use it loosely enough, and a lot of people who would be close to where we are, they use it carelessly by meaning, well, that's just freedom.
And, you know, in a way, one of the best examples of democracy is freedom in the marketplace.
People get to vote wherever they spend their money, but they don't even want to recognize that.
You have to regulate business.
You can't let the consumer decide these things.
But anyway, I think a lot of times people, I don't think that there's a lot achieved to dwell on this, but democracy sometimes leads to a lot of dictatorship, and we've been warned about that.
So democracy is something else, but it's not in a way they talk about, if you're for democracy, you're for freedom.
But that shouldn't make us hesitant to not condemn these people who are saying, oh, you know, they have violated democracy.
In their terms, and even in our terms, they did.
They came in and made certain that elections, even there has to be some elections, but there's rigging of elections and all that.
It's really turned into be a monster in a way.
But I think, though, I think they stepped over the line.
Who would have ever believed that they would even pretend there was an election?
Before they just cheated.
But now they don't even do it.
They just remove people.
But if there is an election, I think it will not convert them to our more modest position.
What he's going to say is that we just, I've never been, never thought so closely about what's going on here because the degree of hatred is phenomenal.
Even we just mentioned about the family, even the family has to join in in this hatred.
And people must have a motivation there that it's just hard for me to understand.
Yeah.
He said a lot of good things attacking the neocons in his speech.
And that's great because he said it with Trump right next to him.
And I'm hoping that those words penetrated Trump's ears and he took it on board.
Because if you now skip ahead to the one, three great causes.
I just want to do a couple of these, more of these really quick because I think it's important to read what he said.
I think it's one of the greatest speeches, certainly of the year, political speeches.
But he said, three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place, primarily.
And these are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as independent, and now to throw my support to President Trump.
These causes were free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war on our children.
And he says, I want to, I've already described some of my personal experiences and struggles with the government's censorship industrial complex.
I want to say a word about Ukraine war.
The military industrial complex is providing us with a familiar comic book justification like they do on every war.
And this one is a noble effort to stop a supervillain, Vladimir Putin, from invading Ukraine and to thwart his Hitler-like march across Europe.
But then he says something that sounds familiar to Ron Paul Liberty Report viewers, if you go to the next one, and he gets it.
In fact, tiny Ukraine is a proxy in a geopolitical struggle initiated by the ambitions of the U.S. neocons for global, American global hegemony.
He says, I'm not excusing Putin for invading Ukraine.
He had other options.
But the war in Russia's predictable response to the reckless neocon project of extending NATO to encircle Russia, a hostile act.
And it's, I'll skip that and go to the next one.
And again, this is going to sound familiar to Liberty Report viewers, but not to people who watch the mainstream media.
The Ukraine war began in 2014 when U.S. agencies overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine and installed a hand-picked pro-Western government.
They launched a deadly civil war against ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
In 2019, America walked away from a peace treaty, the Minsk Agreement, that had been negotiated between Russia and Ukraine by European nations.
So, I mean, I think it's important to show that he is obviously reading a lot of things beyond the neocon talking points.
He must have some advisors who are tuned into this.
So I think this is very encouraging that he places the blame with the neocons.
So I was delighted that he emphasized the children.
Yeah.
Because that's where it all starts and pursues.
They couldn't have done that without the abuse and destruction of the school system.
The school system has been so corrupted with the ideas and they pass them on.
And I still know that people survive.
I myself and other family members, so many people can't survive it.
But it gets worse and worse.
Now it's into all this sexual craziness and the whole thing about positions on foreign policy too and patriotism.
But these teachers are indoctrinated and you see teachers' unions.
They are really powerful influence.
And a lot of people knew it and they do it.
It isn't, oh, we just happen to be here, so we will pass on our ideas to the children.
I think they target them.
They target the children.
Yeah, they do.
Well, anyway, we know that RFK is not perfect.
We know that Trump is not perfect.
We're not endorsing either.
We both have problems with both of their Middle East policy views, for sure.
But nevertheless, I think we're so desperate for even for these things to come out that, you know, that we're happy to see it.
Well, at least they're willing to talk about it.
Sometimes, you know, what our own government is doing now is making it so it's difficult to talk to each other.
And they're, you know, restraining.
And that's happening in all the countries.
To me, I think this is also a symbol of an expression that the country is bankrupt.
It's morally bankrupt and it's financially bankrupt.
So they resort to all these kind of things.
And I think it destroys the culture and it destroys the good part of America.
And I think it's up for grabs, even though I still remain optimistic because I think ideas have consequences.
And we still see and hear from a lot of people that are enthusiastic about peace and prosperity in a voluntary society.
Absolutely.
Well, on that note, I will announce this is the very last time you will ever see me say this.
Put on that very last clip just to let any of you know, if you're pondering coming to our conference this Saturday, this coming Saturday, you do have another opportunity to get your tickets.
Last Chance Tickets 00:01:33
It's going to be a fascinating day, that is for sure.
And actually, it goes along with what we were talking about with RFK.
He talked a lot about health and about food and about chronic disease.
Well, we're going to touch on that too with such great people as Dr. Joseph Mercola and Joel Salatin.
Tickets have sold really well, Dr. Paul.
We've done better than last year on tickets.
So we're happy to see that because we've got inflation, we've got economic problems, but people still want to get together.
So get those tickets.
I will put for the very last time, I will put a link in the description of this program to snatch those up and a chance to come listen to Dr. Paul speak in person near Washington, D.C., in a town named after his favorite person, Dulles.
But anyway, we look forward to seeing you.
And back to you, Dr. Paul.
Yeah, I'm glad you got the judge to come.
Yes.
Because, you know, he was with Fox for a long time.
He was very, very popular.
And he still is, but he sort of had to take a break from it because of it.
But, you know, there was somebody by the name of Tucker that was at Fox at one time.
And he grew in numbers.
And I think the judge is doing well.
I don't think he's just going to disappear.
And he had a large number there.
And I think he fits in so well with our group of people.
It's going to be fun.
Yeah.
So over to you, Dr. Paul.
I am finished.
Okay.
And I too want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
We're looking forward to our conference.
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