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ER Editor: Here is the full interview between Mike Benz and Tucker Carlson, from which the RT article below is drawn. It’s revealing. The relevant chat about Telegram and its use by US deep state agencies and actors comes around the 7th minute and continues for several minutes.
Was the Biden administration involved in the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov? Mike Benz explains.
(1:20) Who Was Involved in Pavel Durov’s Arrest?
(15:50) How Telegram Is Used by the CIA
(27:22) Domestic Policy Doesn’t Exist
(34:19) The Redefining of Democracy
(39:21) The… pic.twitter.com/cmgWWCIIpw— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 28, 2024
We’ve viewed the arrest (alleged) of Pavel Durov with our usual scepticism. We wonder, however, if this is the real message, or one of them, that should come out of this. Were the dramatic events of Durov’s supposed arrest at the weekend meant to lead to an interview and disclosure of US 3-letter agencies and their attempts to overthrow regimes in other countries, i.e. foment color revolutions? The ‘bad actors’ in encrypted platforms aren’t necessarily those we would naturally think of first, but the deep state itself.
Is Durov being painted as naive? Are necessary limits to free speech being implied here? Did Russia have a point when it was concerned about unfettered use of Telegram?
This is Mike Benz’s website mentioned below, Foundation for Freedom Online.
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Belarus gets mentioned below as a case in which Telegram was useful for the color revolution being fomented in that country. In 2020, Lukashenko was moving Belarus officially closer to Russia while NATO wanted it aligned with the EU. Russia apparently did step in to stop an attempt on Lukashenko’s life, as well as the coup attempt. (It did the same for Syria.) Belarus, like Ukraine and Syria, has been a target country for the western deep state.
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CIA used Telegram to topple governments, former US official tells Tucker Carlson
The encrypted app was the “darling of the CIA,” according to ex-State Department diplomat Mike Benz
RT
The US and its CIA-controlled “soft power” arm utilized the encrypted social media app Telegram to foment riots and protest movements against foreign governments it deems undesirable, former Trump administration official and free speech activist Mike Benz has said.
These statements were made during an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson on his show Wednesday. Benz, a State Department official under the Trump administration, now runs the free speech watchdog Foundation for Freedom Online.
Carlson asked Benz about a potential US role in the arrest of Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov in France last week. A court in Paris charged Durov on Wednesday with complicity in several crimes perpetrated through his app, as well as failing to cooperate with French authorities.
While the former diplomat did not speculate, he noted that Durov’s detention aligns with the pattern of “soft power” tactics the US has pursued in the past.
The US has championed free speech globally for decades, “in large part” because it allows the country to build resistance and political or paramilitary movements “in countries where the US State Department seeks political control,” the former official said. Durov’s end-to-end encrypted social media app Telegram has been instrumental in this effort, Benz claimed.
The reason “26 US-government-funded NGOs” condemned Russia for attempting to ban Telegram in 2018 was that “the US State Department was using Telegram,” utilizing its encryption and local popularity “to foment protests and riots within Russia – just as they did in Belarus, Iran, Hong Kong, and attempted to do in China,” the former State Department official stated. The app’s encryption is a powerful means of evading state control over media and allowing “US-funded political groups or dissidents to garner tens of thousands of supporters with relative impunity,” he added.
Benz asserted that Telegram was the “main channel” when the US was “effectively orchestrating a color revolution in Belarus” in 2020. “The National Endowment for Democracy NED was actually paying the main administrators of the Telegram channels that orchestrated those riots,” he noted, calling the NED “one of the most prolific CIA cutouts in the arsenal.”
This practice is part of a long-running campaign by the US, UK, and other NATO partners to gain political control over the territories of the former Soviet Union and their resources, according to Benz.
He concluded that Telegram has been “the darling of the CIA, the State Department, and USAID” for political operations worldwide, due to its billion users and the ease with which they can be directed to necessary channels for recruitment.
Source
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Published to The Liberty Beacon from EuropeReloaded.com
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