Read Part I:
Pavel Durov Is an “Internet Freedom Fighter”
By , September 05, 2024
Is Telegram Becoming “a Terrifying Weapon in the Israel-Hamas War”?
The Internet has become a key site of conflict in most propaganda contests involving competition to dominate the hearts and minds of people throughout the world. The so-called war unfolding in Gaza, the West Bank and the wider east Asia region is a classic case that puts the battle for control of the Internet at the heart of the psychological warfare waged by protagonists on either side of the conflict. In my view this battle for dominance in the Middle East forms the primary setting enlivening the central tensions in the Durov case.
Clearly the close collaboration between the governments of Israel and the United States, especially since the events of Oct. 7, 2023, has added to the evidence demonstrating the importance of this Israel-US partnership in the unfolding of global geopolitics. The genocide in Gaza and now increasingly in the West Bank, is clearly exposing the role of US and Israeli partners in very dirty work.
These partners have displayed their pinnacle of authority in the global community by getting away so far with an ongoing mass-murder of unparalleled savagery. The government of Israel seems to have demonstrated that in its direction of the genocide, it has the upper hand. The US is the backup player supplying the money, the weaponry, the diplomatic cover empowering Israel to continue with its vicious ethnic cleansing.
Imagine if the government of New Zealand decided to go on a killing spree to eliminate all its Maori people. Or imagine if the Canadian government decided that for some strange reason the fulfilment of our national destiny required the wiping out all Blackfoot, Haida and Cree people.
If the governments of Canada or New Zealand pursued this genocidal goal, I don’t think the global community would stop at making verbal pronouncements backed by litigious procedures alone. I expect that troops would be sent in by some coalition of the willing to stop the genocide. Apparently that’s not the case, however, when the United States and Israel team up to eliminate Occupied Palestine of its native inhabitants.
Starting in the days after October 7 the Israeli government was hard at work trying the put impediments in the way of Telegram’s early treatment of the Israeli assault on Hamas and on the civilian population Hamas represents in Gaza. The importance of Telegram as a recipient of both sides of the conflict is outlined in some detail in an essay dated 23 October, 2023 in Wired Magazine.
The essay by Darren Loucides is entitled, “How Telegram Became a Terrifying Weapon in the Israel-Hamas War.” The subtitle asserted, “Hamas posted gruesome images and videos that were designed to go viral. Sources argue that Telegram’s lax moderation ensured were seen throughout the world.
The tone of this story exposes Wired Magazine as a component of the vast media arsenal amassed by Israel First partisans over many years. This arsenal has been instrumental in the success of a thought control operations that have created a monopoly for Zionist interpretations of the Israel-Palestine conflict from its inception in 1948.
The whole tone of Wired’s essay is that Zionist media has had, and should continue to exercise, monopoly control over the dominant narrative in Western media. The other side of this coin in that Telegram should be charged with some sort of crime for allowing Hamas the capacity to disseminate its own side of the story when it comes to influencing the media coverage on the events of October 7 and afterwards.
Here is a lengthy citation to give readers a sense of the alarmism expressed in some Zionist circles. The citation is consistent with the trajectory inherited from many pro-Israel proponents that have enjoyed a long run of self-affirming media coverage.
“As with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Telegram, which is headquartered in Dubai, has once again found itself at the center of a complex geopolitical and humanitarian crisis. How this happened—not once, but twice—reveals the outsize power of one of the world’s most tight-lipped technology companies. More than a dozen interviews with sources on the ground, analysts, and former Telegram employees reveal the power of the platform to quickly spread unfiltered content ahead of traditional media, as well as the true extent of Hamas’ weaponization of the app—and what seems to be an ideological aversion to interfere at the upper echelons of Telegram.
The Weaponization of Telegram
Hamas accounts have been banned from most social media platforms for years. But, when it launched its attack on Israel on October 7, Hamas had a huge presence on Telegram. The platform’s potential to rapidly disseminate easily downloadable and sharable content made it a crucial weapon. Hamas’ Telegram channels grew rapidly in the first five days of the conflict. Qassam Brigades, the channel dedicated to the organization’s military wing, tripled in size from 205,000 to nearly 620,000 subscribers, alongside a tenfold increase in the number of views per post, according to analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). In the year prior to the attacks, the channel had only grown by 20,000 followers. Before the takedown requests from Google and Apple, the Qassam Brigades channel was nearing 800,000 subscribers. It is currently down to roughly 670,000 subscribers.
The complete article by Professor Anthony Hall is published on Looking out at the World from Canada.
See also
Pavel Durov Is an “Internet Freedom Fighter”
By , September 05, 2024
Concluding Remarks
For the people of the world, the rise of the Internet has been far and away the primary shared development of our lifetimes. The impact of this new communication device in society is on a par with, or even greater than, the transformative effect of the printing press or electricity. In fact one way to think about the Internet is as the most significant extension of the same trajectory of innovation leading from the printing press to electricity.
The Dorov case is bound to be a major platform spurring debate about where the Internet is headed. We the people of the world demand to have our voices heard and sometimes acted upon. This determination about the Internet’s future must not be left any longer to the closed door deliberations of the billionaires’ club. Durov is a member of that club. What will he do? What will his jailers do? We need many more Internet Freedom Fighters.
Let’s rise to the challenge of doing justice to what should be such a great boon for all of humanity. We are still in the early days of the Internet and we have to reign in the way it is now being used as an instrument of tyranny.
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This article was originally published on Looking out at the World from Canada.
Dr. Anthony Hall is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
