‘The race is wide open’: MPs’ vote looms for six Tory leadership hopefuls

 

‘The race is wide open’: MPs’ vote looms for six Tory leadership hopefuls

 

Badenoch and Jenrick are the bookies’ favourites but the party’s reduced ranks make the numbers extremely tight

 

Jessica Elgot, Pippa Crerar and Peter Walker

Fri 30 Aug 2024 15.38 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/30/the-race-is-wide-open-mps-vote-looms-for-six-tory-leadership-hopefuls

 

When the Conservative MPs who remain return to Westminster, they will briefly seem like some of the most popular people in SW1. With the party so reduced in numbers, over the next few days there will be a furious wooing of those who have not yet declared for one of the six leadership candidates.

 

“The race is wide open,” one senior Tory said. “There are barely any public endorsements so no one can tell who is the favourite. The public polling has been all over the place. Often they seem to be just based on who has paid for it.”

 

The former business secretary Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick the former immigration minister are the bookies’ favourites – but both have significant detractors and are fishing in the same pool of voters. Similarly, Tom Tugendhat, the most obvious choice of the One Nation wing, is duking it out with James Cleverly.

 

Most MPs expect Priti Patel and Mel Stride to be the candidates who fall when MPs whittle the candidates down to four before the party’s conference. But Patel has a close following in the party membership, and Stride has racked up a significant number of public endorsements from MPs.

 

The numbers are extremely tight because of the decimation of the parliamentary party. With six candidates needing 10 supportive MPs, at least 60 of the party’s 121 MPs are accounted for. A significant chunk more are unlikely to declare publicly, including whips and members of the party board.

 

“It’s honestly something like 30 MPs who will decide it at the first stage,” one senior campaign source said.

 

One Tory insider said they believed about 30 MPs would not publicly back any candidate, instead privately swearing loyalty to several: “The biggest cohort among Tory MPs are the careerists. They just want to back the winner.”

 

Boris Johnson, while a close friend of Patel, is not expected to back anyone yet. Asked at her campaign launch on Friday if the former PM supported her, Patel praised Johnson as “phenomenal for this country” but refused to elaborate.

 

After the final campaign launches over the weekend and Monday, the candidates will have a closed-door leadership hustings with MPs on Tuesday, before the first round of voting on Wednesday. This will eliminate at least one candidate.

 

Another round of voting, if needed, will reduce the field to the four candidates who will take part in a “beauty parade” at conference. After that, MPs will whittle it down to two, who will be put to the members for a vote. The result will not come until 2 November.

 

Jenrick, the only candidate to formally launch his campaign before the summer, will hold a rally in Westminster on Sunday. Once close to Rishi Sunak, he has reinvented himself as a migration hardliner, racking up the most endorsements, including high-profile MPs on the right.

 

“He’s basically the nicer face of Suella [Braverman],” one backer said. His core supporters among MPs include rightwingers such as John Hayes and Danny Kruger, but also the former ministers Jesse Norman and John Lamont.

 

Jenrick’s backers say they know he has the most to do to make himself known to the membership and he has spent the summer touring Tory constituency associations, visiting 16 in the last week alone.

 

“He’s the Princess Anne of the contest,” said one ally. “He turns up anywhere that will have him, gives lots of speeches and meets everyone.”

 

His supporters reject suggestions that he is not a “true” rightwinger, citing his decision to quit as immigration minister over Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan for asylum seekers.

 

But rival supporters say they believe the rise of Jenrick’s star has been almost entirely manufactured. He is the 33rd best-known Conservative, according to YouGov.

 

Jenrick in front of an audience, in front of a board bearing the slogan: ‘Change. Win. Deliver.’

View image in fullscreen

Robert Jenrick at the launch of his leadership campaign in Newark-on-Trent. Photograph: Darren Staples/Getty Images

“Rob’s whole rise has been a Westminster thing,” said one. “I think members aren’t really sure why there has been such a fuss made of this guy who seems to have come from nowhere. That’s why conference is so important, because you’ll see who has the momentum, who members are queueing up to see. It could all change there.”

 

Badenoch will launch her campaign on Monday after spending time in August on a family holiday, a decision which has drawn sniping from her rivals.

 

The claim from Badenoch’s team that members and MPs would not begrudge the “next leader” taking a holiday after the general election prompted derision from a source in another campaign: “If she thinks the six-week election campaign was hard, perhaps being leader of the opposition isn’t for her.”

 

There is already a determined “anybody but Kemi” campaign among MPs who have, over the years, fallen foul of her apparent abrasive behaviour.

 

“She could actually blow up and cause real and lasting damage that the party can’t recover from,” said one foe. “Another disastrous leader with a Truss-style meltdown could tip us over the edge.”

 

The third candidate with a well-resourced and funded operation is Tugendhat, the former security minister, who has made particular overtures to new MPs.

 

He won the coveted endorsement of Nick Timothy, a new MP who was previously chief of staff to Theresa May and is seen as a key Tory thinker.

 

It has added credibility to Tugendhat’s determination not to be seen as the token wet in the contest. He also used a speech on Thursday to propose a legally enforceable migration cap, and to suggest he may pull Britain out of the European convention on human rights.

 

Tugendhat has also undertaken a determined ground campaign, visiting more than 100 associations. But his speech was attended by few key party figures.

 

Some MPs believe Cleverly, the former home secretary, has an outside chance, citing popularity with the membership and a unifying approach. One supporter said: “James is the only candidate who is focusing on how the Tories can actually win power again, rather than an internal battle over the right which only ends one way.”

 

Patel’s speech, also in Westminster, saw a good turnout of members but focused more on homilies based around her mantra of party unity than specific policies, even when she was asked to name some.

 

“The British people are where my compass is, and that’s where we need to be as a party,” she said, in one slightly gnomic utterance.

Sky News Press Preview | Saturday 31 August / starts at 1:50

JD Vance’s Combative Style Confounds Voters but Pleases Trump

 

JD Vance’s Combative Style Confounds Voters but Pleases Trump

 

Over dozens of events and more than 70 interviews, Mr. Vance’s performances as Donald Trump’s attack dog have endeared him to his boss, even if America broadly is less enthusiastic.

 

Michael C. Bender

By Michael C. Bender

Michael C. Bender traveled on Senator JD Vance’s campaign plane for events in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/us/politics/jd-vance-trump-vp.html

Aug. 31, 2024

Updated 7:37 a.m. ET

 

Donald J. Trump knew that JD Vance could take a punch. But during their first week together on the campaign trail, the former president wondered just how many hits his new running mate could absorb.

 

The volume and velocity of attacks from Democrats stunned even Mr. Trump. He was unaware of the most incendiary remarks that opponents were rapidly unearthing from Mr. Vance’s past, and the former president told allies that he was troubled by the idea that more comments would come to light as Democrats savaged his heir apparent as weird and anti-women.

 

A month later, polls show that the number of Americans who dislike Mr. Vance continues to grow — but Mr. Trump could not be happier.

 

The reason: Mr. Vance’s relentless pace of full-throttle performances as Mr. Trump’s well-trained attack dog has pleased the former president and instilled a sense of stability inside a campaign still shaken by President Biden’s sudden exit from the race.

 

Mr. Trump had instructed his young sidekick to fight forcefully through those initial attacks, and later said Mr. Vance’s execution exceeded his expectations, according to three allies who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.

 

In a quintessentially Trumpian display of bravado, the former president has privately praised Mr. Vance by comparing himself to Vince Lombardi, telling people that his eye for political talent was now on par with the Hall of Fame football coach’s ability to find Super Bowl-caliber players.

 

But beyond Mar-a-Lago, early returns on Mr. Vance are less enthusiastic. Polls show that he effectively amplifies Mr. Trump’s political strengths but that he also magnifies his weaknesses. Mr. Vance’s approval rating improved by nearly double digits among the nation’s least educated and poorest voters since joining the Republican ticket — but plunged by even wider margins among college graduates and independent women, according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.

 

How those conflicting opinions either resolve themselves or become further inflamed will help determine whether Mr. Trump ends the race in less than 10 weeks with a second presidential term or a second electoral defeat.

 

“JD never had a honeymoon — he had a hurricane, but I think a lot of that is in the rearview mirror now,” said Charlie Kirk, a Republican activist close to the Trump campaign. “He’s further animated the conservative base and also voters we are looking to run up the score with, which are white working-class voters and young male voters.”

 

Democrats, however, have been outraged and confounded by Mr. Vance’s vice-presidential bid. This year, Mr. Trump had spoken at length about finding a running mate who was uniquely qualified to take over as president — and then picked Mr. Vance, who assumed his first elected office just last year and turned 40 less than a month ago.

 

Mr. Vance would be the nation’s youngest vice president since 1953, when Richard Nixon took the oath of office at 40. Common traits run through their backgrounds and early careers.

 

Both were born into poor families and earned law degrees from prestigious universities, Duke for Mr. Nixon and Yale for Mr. Vance. Both served in the military. Mr. Nixon had a more robust political résumé, but both were also less than two years into their first terms in the Senate when they joined their party’s presidential ticket.

 

Mr. Nixon was arguably one of the most combative vice-presidential contenders of the past century, although Mr. Vance may challenge him in that regard.

 

Mr. Vance has accused Vice President Kamala Harris of being personally responsible for the deaths of 13 service members in Afghanistan in 2021 and of opening the southern border to “let these cartels bring in the poison that’s killing our families.” He has said that she plans to buy oil from “every tin-pot dictator,” is more interested in building the economy in “Communist China” than at home and longs to put truck drivers out of business to force them into computer-coding classes.

 

And that was all from one 30-minute event on Wednesday in Erie, Pa.

 

“I really don’t know what Trump was thinking with this pick because Vance hasn’t done anything to show he’s ready to be the leader of the free world,” said Joel Benenson, a Democratic pollster who worked for former President Barack Obama. “Is he doing anything other than playing to the conservative base? The answer is no, and you don’t win elections from the left or the right. You win from the middle out, and these guys are not appealing to the middle.”

 

The most damaging attack on Mr. Vance last month centered on his comments from a Fox News interview in 2021, when he lamented the numerous “childless cat ladies” among American leaders, including Ms. Harris.

 

Many voters shrug off similar comments from Mr. Trump because they view the 78-year-old former president as something of an elderly uncle “who doesn’t understand the world has changed,” said Bill Kristol, who was the chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

 

“But Vance has gone out of his way to adopt a set of views from an ideological, right-wing milieu on things like child-rearing and how women should more or less stay home,” said Mr. Kristol, an organizer of Republican Voters Against Trump. “That is harder to understand from someone who is 40.”

 

The Trump campaign had planned to ease Mr. Vance into the spotlight, but the furor over “cat ladies” accelerated that timetable.

 

Mr. Vance’s excitement at joining the fray was immediately visible. He arrived with a fresh haircut and neatly trimmed beard for his first solo rally, a hometown event in Middletown, Ohio. In a sign of his astonishment at every warm welcome from his pro-Trump crowds, Mr. Vance opened each event for the first several weeks with the same single exclamation: “Wow!”

 

He has enjoyed traveling with family members aboard his chartered Boeing 737. His wife, Usha, is rarely without a book in her hands. His mother, Beverly Aikins, posed for selfies at an A&W in Big Rapids, Mich., and joined him at a private fund-raiser in Nashville. His father-in-law, Krish Chilukuri, carried an oversize bag of popcorn onboard for his day on the trail as if he anticipated an entertaining show.

 

Since Mr. Trump announced his selection on July 15, Mr. Vance has held two dozen campaign events, mainly in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He has hosted about two dozen fund-raisers. He has participated in more than 70 interviews on television, conservative radio and podcasts, as well as with newspaper and magazine reporters. At least 10 other times, he has answered questions from reporters traveling on his campaign plane.

 

Mr. Vance’s media strategy, allies said, functioned as his attempt to reach beyond the conservative base and to joust — carefully and respectfully, for the most part — with network anchors.

 

“Every V.P. candidate gets attacked when they’re chosen; it’s how you handle it that matters,” said Senator Steve Daines, a Montana Republican overseeing his party’s Senate campaigns. “They’re throwing hardballs at him, throwing curveballs at him, and he’s really been very impressive.”

 

Mr. Vance’s interactions with reporters produced one of his most effective days on the trail when he attacked his Democratic counterpart, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. The Harris campaign had posted an old video of Mr. Walz pushing to restrict access to “weapons of war that I carried in war.” Mr. Walz served 24 years in the military but never in combat.

 

Mr. Vance and his team had been searching for some way to disrupt a streak of positive news for Ms. Harris, who had unified her party around her nomination, and their tactic of highlighting the discrepancy worked. Cable networks broke into their coverage to report his criticisms of Mr. Walz.

 

Some pundits concluded that the move had been designed by Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump campaign adviser who had played a key role in similar “Swift Boat” attacks on Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee. But Mr. Vance had anticipated the opportunity on his own and quickly seized it.

 

Later, when his plane followed Air Force Two into Chippewa Valley Regional Airport in Wisconsin, he hurried down the tarmac straight for Ms. Harris’s plane.

 

Her motorcade sped off before Mr. Vance could execute any publicity stunt, so he instead spent a few minutes with reporters who had gathered to see Ms. Harris. He mostly mocked Ms. Harris for not taking more questions, a criticism that remains a top talking point for Republicans.

 

“I just wanted to check out my future plane,” Mr. Vance said when he returned to his motorcade.

 

Ms. Harris’s campaign later posted a meme-style video on social media aimed at mocking Mr. Vance. The clip shows her meeting with Girl Scouts on the tarmac before quickly cutting to footage of Mr. Vance’s arrival. A narrator says, “All of a sudden, I hear this agitating, grating voice.”

 

Mr. Vance’s self-assured manner with the news media has reached the point where questions from reporters now account for about half of his typical 30-minute events. The rules are stacked in his favor.

 

Mr. Vance seeks questions mostly from local outlets, which, by definition, are typically focused on regional issues. The news media is corralled at the back of the room, where the microphone is held by campaign staff members, limiting opportunities for follow-up questions.

 

“You all want to see me take some questions from the media?” Mr. Vance asked a crowd inside a Wisconsin warehouse stacked with PVC products on Wednesday.

 

An approving roar erupted from the crowd.

 

But unscripted events carry risk, too. At a trucking logistics company in Pennsylvania, Mr. Vance’s audience sustained a chorus of earsplitting boos when a woman introduced herself as a reporter from CNN.

 

The next reporter stumbled on her question, and multiple audience members heckled her and loudly mimicked her stammer.

 

Mr. Vance also overextended himself while speaking about a confrontation between Mr. Trump’s team and Arlington National Cemetery officials. Mr. Vance angrily cursed Ms. Harris for her response to the incident — but she has said nothing. Her campaign’s only reaction was from a spokesman who offered a brief and largely unnoticed response to a question during a cable news interview.

 

“She wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up?” Mr. Vance said to applause. “She can go to hell.”

 

Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections. More about Michael C. Bender

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Woman arrested after six hurt in knife attack on bus in Germany

 

Woman arrested after six hurt in knife attack on bus in Germany

 

Bus was heading to festival in Siegen near Cologne when incident took place on Friday evening

 

Associated Press in Berlin

Sat 31 Aug 2024 09.46 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/31/woman-arrested-after-six-hurt-in-knife-attack-on-bus-in-germany

 

A 32-year-old woman has been arrested after six people were hurt in a knife attack on a bus headed to a festival in western Germany. Authorities said there was no evidence of a political or religious motive.

 

Three of those attacked are in life-threatening condition, police said on Friday evening.

 

The knife attack took place in Siegen, east of Cologne. The bus was on its way to a festival in the town and at least another 40 people were on board when the attack took place at about 7.40pm.

 

Police and prosecutors said the six people wounded were aged between 16 and 30 and all were from the region. By Saturday morning, three of them had left the hospital after outpatient treatment.

 

Local authorities planned to go ahead with the festival.

 

The stabbing in Siegen happened a week after a knife attack in Solingen, a city in the same state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in which a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria who had avoided being deported is accused of killing three people and wounding another eight.

 

The Solingen attack prompted the governing coalition to draw up plans to tighten knife laws and make deportations easier.

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The bewildering politics of Telegram

 

Technology

The bewildering politics of Telegram

 

Here are two big reasons the controversial app just became a global flashpoint.

 

Telegram’s claimed 950 million users are spread around the globe, and the app allows them to broadcast messages to up to 200,000 people. |

 

By Mohar Chatterjee, Derek Robertson and Maggie Miller

08/27/2024 05:00 AM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/26/telegram-app-politics-00176386

 

When Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested late Saturday at an airport outside Paris, accused of complicity in illegal online behavior and refusing to disclose information to authorities, right-leaning American political figures leapt to his defense, including Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.

 

Left-leaning civil liberties groups also took Telegram’s side — to a point.

 

The arrest is casting a spotlight on the messy global status of a messaging app whose sprawling reach and commitment to free speech have earned it a rotating cast of friends and enemies in the political arena, and whose multinational structure raises tough questions about enforcing digital rules in the age of social media.

 

Telegram’s radical free speech position puts it in an unusual position among global social apps. Since Durov founded Telegram more than a decade ago, the theatrical and enigmatic Russian entrepreneur has become a primary character in the evolving global war over how wide-open online communication should be.

 

Telegram’s claimed 950 million users are spread around the globe, and the app allows them to broadcast messages to up to 200,000 people, giving it the power of a social media platform. But unlike mainstream social media apps, it also refuses on principle to take down any posts that violate local restrictions on speech, or disclose any data about their users to any government.

 

This has made it a darling of digital rights groups, such as Access Now, which have backed the app in its fights with authoritarian regimes in Iran, Myanmar and elsewhere — including Russia, where dissidents use its encrypted messaging to discuss the Ukraine war.

 

Then-Indonesian Communication and Information Minister Rudiantara (left) shakes hands with Pavel Durov during their meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2017. | Tatan Syuflana/AP

 

But it also means that users can spread disinformation and post about illegal activities without the company actively coming after them.

 

It’s the latter that appears to have gotten the founder in trouble. Durov was arrested as part of a larger judicial investigation opened by the cybercrime unit of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office on July 8. The charges include a range of offenses connected to activity allowed on Telegram, including fraud, money laundering and the distribution of child sexual abuse material.

 

In a post, Telegram said it complies with all European laws, and neither the platform or its founder could be blamed for the online abuse of the service.

 

Telegram’s lack of moderation tracks closely with the ideals of Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of X, and other critics on the political right, who say social media companies have gotten too cozy with governments — and that enforcement of rules against harmful speech amounts to state-sanctioned censorship.

 

Venture capitalist and prodigious Trump fundraiser David Sacks asked on X, “Are you getting sick of me saying ‘I told you so?’” citing a previous prediction that Telegram would be the target of government action similar to the U.S.’ forced sale of TikTok.

 

Musk took the prediction game even further: “POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” he wrote on his platform as he reposted news of Durov’s arrest.

 

“Everyone on right-wing Silicon Valley Twitter is going crazy, and no one left of center cares or comments,” said Marshall Kosloff, a media fellow at the right-leaning tech think tank the Foundation for American Innovation. “Telegram is anti-moderation — that makes it right-wing coded.”

 

The transition of “free speech” from a liberal cause to a conservative one has defined the past decade in politics. Before social media became the dominant channel for political communication, the defense of free speech was mostly associated with organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, which protested book bans and argued for freedom of religious expression.

 

Now, conservatives have adopted civil libertarians’ rhetoric to protest what they see as liberal governments interfering in the ideally “neutral” public sphere of the internet. Musk himself hung previous executives of Twitter out to dry when he took over the platform and loosened its rules.

 

But in authoritarian countries, Telegram’s refusal to moderate has also earned it some level of respect from left-leaning civil society groups — even as they acknowledge the drawbacks of the platform.

 

“Civil society has had a complicated relationship with Telegram over the years,” Natalia Krapiva, senior tech legal counsel at Access Now, said Monday. “We have defended Telegram and its users against attempts by authoritarian regimes to block and coerce the platform into providing encryption keys, but we have also been raising alarms about Telegram’s lack of human rights policies, reliable channel of communication, and remedy for its users.”

 

“Telegram fails on most measures of corporate responsibility including transparency and accountability,” Krapiva said.

 

Telegram’s very distributed structure adds policy and enforcement questions to the political questions.

 

The platform’s geographic footprint is sprawling and hard to pin down, with data servers reportedly located all over the world, though their exact locations remain hidden. Durov himself relocated to Dubai in 2017, bringing the platform’s development team with him. Telegram continues to be headquartered in Dubai, where local IT regulations are friendlier than those of other countries they’ve tried before, according to the development team.

 

The nature of Telegram’s operations makes it particularly tricky for authorities from any country to pin down the platform’s core development team or access data on its users and operations. Durov — the most visible member of Telegram’s development team — has said on Telegram that he has both French and Russian citizenship. Investigators from the French customs department ultimately arrested Durov at the Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday evening.

 

It’s unclear whether the U.S. government is assisting its French counterparts in the investigation. A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment, and officials at the State Department and the French Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said Monday that there is “no legitimate defense of a platform that allows” material such as child sexual abuse imagery, which researchers say has been traded on private channels on Telegram.

 

“In liberal democracies, we make laws, and there are some things that are, of course, not permissible,” Krebs said. “There are curbs that governments can put in place and the French government has taken action here. I wonder why the guy felt comfortable going to Paris, given some of the scrutiny.”

 

Brendan Bordelon contributed to this report.

Telegram Becomes Free Speech Flashpoint After Founder’s Arrest

 

Telegram Becomes Free Speech Flashpoint After Founder’s Arrest

 

Pavel Durov, the founder of the app, which has more than 900 million users, was taken into custody by the French authorities.

 

Adam Satariano Paul Mozur Aurelien Breeden

By Adam Satariano Paul Mozur and Aurelien Breeden

Adam Satariano reported from London, Paul Mozur from Taipei, Taiwan, and Aurelien Breeden from Sigottier, France.

 

Aug. 25, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/25/technology/pavel-durov-telegram-detained-france.html

 

Telegram, founded in 2013 by the Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, has grown into one of the world’s largest online communication tools and is central to everyday life in countries like Russia, Ukraine and India for messaging, getting independent news and exchanging views.

 

The company’s growth — it now has more than 900 million users — has been driven partly by a commitment to free speech. Telegram’s light oversight of what people say or do on the platform has helped people living under authoritarian governments communicate and organize. But it has also made the app a haven for disinformation, far-right extremism and other harmful content.

 

Many were shocked when reports emerged on Saturday across French news media that Mr. Durov had been arrested in France on charges related to the spread of illicit material on the service. A French judicial official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, confirmed on Sunday evening that Mr. Durov was in police custody. As word spread online over the weekend, news of his detention became a flashpoint in a continuing debate about free speech on the internet.

 

Elon Musk, the owner of X, which has adopted a similarly hands-off approach to content moderation, posted “#FreePavel” on his X account. “It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” he also said.

 

Leonid Volkov, formerly a top adviser to Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in prison last year, wrote on Telegram that although the platform had become a useful tool for criminals, Mr. Durov should be released. “Durov is not an ‘accomplice’ to the crimes committed by Telegram users,” he said.

 

The reaction over the news of the arrest showed how concerns about free expression, censorship and government oversight of online content are rising at a time when regulatory scrutiny of speech on the internet around the world has ramped up. National governments, especially those in the European Union, have intensified pressure on companies to address disinformation, online extremism, child safety and the spread of illicit material.

 

Telegram has long been on the radar of law enforcement agencies around the world because terrorist organizations, drug sellers, weapons dealers and far-right extremist groups have used it for communicating, recruiting and organizing.

 

Mr. Durov, 39, was arrested at Le Bourget Airport near Paris after landing on a private plane from Azerbaijan, according to French news reports. The French judicial official said on Sunday evening that his time in custody had been extended. Under French law, the initial 24 hours spent in custody can be extended to up to 96 hours, depending on the seriousness of the criminal accusations.

 

Representatives of the French police and Interior Ministry declined to comment.

 

In a statement on Telegram on Sunday, the company said, “Telegram abides by EU laws,” adding, “Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide.”

 

In an interview on Telegram, George Lobushkin, a former press secretary for Mr. Durov who remains close to him, wrote, “This is a monstrous attack on freedom of speech worldwide.”

 

The arrest of Mr. Durov risked intensifying tensions with Russia. The Russian Embassy in France said in a statement on Sunday that it had asked the French authorities for clarification on news of the arrest.

 

Vladislav Davankov, the deputy speaker of the State Duma, a chamber of Russia’s Parliament, called for Mr. Durov’s release. He said the arrest could be an effort to gain access to information held by Telegram and “cannot be allowed,” according to Meduza, an independent Russian news organization.

 

Mr. Durov, whose net worth was estimated by Bloomberg at more than $9 billion, has largely avoided the kind of public scrutiny faced by top executives of other large online platforms, including Elon Musk of X, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Shou Chew of TikTok and Sundar Pichai of Google.

 

Mr. Durov’s arrest has little precedent. While the European Union and United States government have summoned and questioned leaders of other social media firms, rarely has a major tech leader been arrested over what takes place on such sites. In 2016, the Brazilian authorities arrested a senior Facebook executive after the company failed to turn over information from WhatsApp as part of a drug trafficking investigation.

 

Of particular interest after Mr. Durov’s reported detainment in France could be what information Telegram would decide to share, or withhold. The French authorities may try to force Telegram to share information with them on criminal channels that, for instance, are used to sell firearms or coordinate terrorist attacks. Such a move could test Telegram’s claim to its users that it strictly safeguards their information.

 

A Russian national, Mr. Durov left Russia in 2014 after he lost control of Vkontakte, the rival to Facebook in Russia. The year before, he had founded Telegram, selling it as an uncensored and secretive way to communicate. The company is now based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Mr. Durov has citizenship in France and the U.A.E., according to Telegram.

 

Telegram works as a standard messaging app, like iMessage or WhatsApp, but also hosts channels and groups in which large numbers of people can broadcast ideas and communicate.

 

Telegram’s popularity is partly rooted in moves that it made to allow the hosting of huge chat groups of up to 200,000 people, at a time when other social media, like WhatsApp, were taking steps to cut back group sizes in efforts to combat disinformation. Other functions, like the sharing of large files, no limits on sharing links and bots that can interact with users within channels, have helped make it a powerful tool for social organization and coordination.

 

Those capabilities, combined with the app’s minimal moderation, made it a haven for individuals and groups that were banned from other platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

 

Telegram makes money through in-app purchases, advertising, subscriptions and other promotions. In March, Mr. Durov told The Financial Times that Telegram was nearing profitability and considering an initial public offering.

 

Reports of Mr. Durov’s arrest were immediately met with criticism by fans of the service as an example of governments trying to censor free speech on the internet. Mr. Durov has generally kept a low profile, not doing many media interviews. On his personal Telegram channel, he muses about various topics, including his ascetic lifestyle, the countries he travels to and, more recently, how as a sperm donor he now has more than 100 biological children. On Instagram, he occasionally posts photos of himself shirtless.

 

Although Mr. Durov portrays himself as a crusader for free speech, many security experts have said Telegram is not sufficiently encrypted. Disinformation analysts also say that, by taking a light touch with moderation, the app has become a major vector for the spread of terrorist propaganda and far-right extremism.

 

Mr. Durov has linked the creation of Telegram to a run-in he had with Russia’s security services, who he said broke into his apartment in an effort to force him to take down opposition political material on Vkontakte. More recently, he abandoned plans to issue a cryptocurrency through Telegram after scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

After he left Russia in 2014, Mr. Durov said he traveled to Berlin, San Francisco, London, Singapore and other cities before making Dubai the headquarters for Telegram. Russia at one point tried to ban Telegram, but the company’s troubles appeared to ease after a top company executive appeared in 2020 on a tech panel with Russia’s prime minister.

 

Tucker Carlson, the far-right talk show host who interviewed Mr. Durov this year, said the arrest was “a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies.”

 

Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France. More about Aurelien Breeden

‘Internet prophet’: arrest of Telegram CEO could strengthen heroic image

 

‘Internet prophet’: arrest of Telegram CEO could strengthen heroic image

 

Pavel Durov will probably use French legal disputes to position himself as a champion of free speech, say observers

 

Pjotr Sauer

Sat 31 Aug 2024 05.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/31/arrest-of-telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-could-strengthen-heroic-image

 

When Pavel Durov came under criticism from Russian regulators over the spread of pornography on the VKontakte social media platform he founded, the tech entrepreneur responded mockingly by changing his Twitter handle from “VK CEO” to “Porn King”.

 

More than a decade later, Durov’s anti-authoritarian stance and hands-off approach to moderation have landed him in more serious trouble.

 

On Wednesday, a court in Paris charged the 39-year-old with being complicit in the spread of images of child sexual abuse, as well as a litany of other alleged violations on the Telegram messaging app.

 

Since its launch in 2013, Durov has presented Telegram as a politically neutral refuge, free from government control and a haven for free speech. For years, he seemed unbothered by the increasing global regulations targeting tech companies and the growing criticism that his platform was being exploited for criminal activities and terrorism.

 

“It looks like he overestimated himself. Durov believed he had unchecked freedom and was too significant to be arrested. France thought differently,” said the Russian journalist Nikolai Kononov, one of the few reporters who has spoken to the tech billionaire on multiple occasions and authored a biography about him.

 

For now, Durov has avoided jail, out on a €5m (£4.2m) bail, but has been required to surrender his three passports – French, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Russian – clipping the wings of a man known for rarely staying in one place for long.

 

Born in 1984 in the Soviet Union, Durov grew up in a family of intellectuals and was sent to a prestigious high school in St Petersburg. According to Kononov, Durov rebelled against power from a young age.

 

While learning to code in school, he hacked the system to make all the computers in the classroom display a photograph of the teacher with the caption “Must die”. He was banned from the computer lab for a month.

 

As a somewhat awkward teenager, Durov was said to possess immense self-confidence, bordering on a messianic belief in his own abilities. When friends gathered at a flat after high school graduation to discuss future careers, he told them, without a hint of joking, that he would become an “internet prophet”.

 

As his reputation as a computer wizard grew while at university, Durov was approached by two acquaintances who showed him an early version of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. The group quickly decided to create a nearly identical Russian version.

 

To bring his vision to life, Durov enlisted the help of his older brother, Nikolai, a maths prodigy who won gold three years in a row at the International Mathematical Olympiad in the 1990s. The older Durov would later be recognised as the brains behind both VKontakte and Telegram.

 

With relatively little competition in the Russian market, VKontakte quickly grew to become the leading social networking platform in Russia as well as across the post-Soviet sphere.

 

VKontakte provided a user experience akin to Facebook but was specifically designed for the Russian-speaking audience. Its rapid growth was partly fuelled by the platform allowing the sharing and streaming of pirated music and films, and pornography.

 

Durov’s first test of his commitment to freedom came during the demonstration against Vladimir Putin that swept Russia in early 2012. Durov emerged as a hero of the liberal opposition by refusing to shut down groups on the site that were dedicated to organising protest marches. He further solidified his independent reputation when he refused to turn over data to the Kremlin on Ukrainian users during the 2013-14 Maidan marches in Ukraine.

 

But he gradually lost control of VKontakte to investors linked to Mail.ru, a company owned by a Russian oligarchy close to the Kremlin.

 

Durov decided to leave Russia, writing in his departing message: “Since December 2013, I have had no property, but I still have something more important – a clear conscience and the ideals I am ready to defend.”

 

Colleagues said Durov came up with the idea for Telegram while looking for a way to communicate safely with his team.

 

Telegram’s novelty was that it allowed huge chat groups, making it easier to organise people, like a slicker version of WhatsApp.

 

Its “channels” allowed information to be disseminated quickly to large numbers of followers in a way that other messaging services do not; they combined the reach and immediacy of a Twitter/X feed, and the focus of an email newsletter.

 

The app’s blend of usability and privacy has attracted a diverse range of users, from lifestyle bloggers to anti-authoritarian protesters, and has been instrumental in fuelling demonstrations in Iran, Belarus and Russia.

 

It has also increasingly become a refuge for extremists and conspiracy theorists, as well as a preferred tool for child abusers, drug gangs and terrorist groups.

 

In the business world, Telegram’s success, with nearly a billion users, demonstrated that Durov was much more than just a copycat artist.

 

“While VKontakte raised some questions about whether Durov’s success was due to his own merits or simply a replication of Facebook, the launch of Telegram was clearly a technological breakthrough on a global scale,” said Pavel Cherkashin, a venture capitalist who worked with Durov.

 

As Telegram evolved into a tech giant, Durov fostered a reputation as an eccentric, imperious figure. Obsessed with the film The Matrix, he saw himself and dressed like Keanu Reeves’ character Neo, as a coder with a mission.

 

Although he is often referred to as “Russia’s Zuckerberg”, his biographer Kononov notes that Durov drew inspiration from Apple chief Steve Jobs, who was at the height of his influence at the time.

 

“Durov, like Jobs, saw himself as an authoritarian visionary, who pushes his staff to the extremes”

 

Durov would occasionally publish self-help posts entitled “Rules of Life” on his Instagram account, advising his millions of followers to live a solitary existence, avoid alcohol and coffee, and refrain from overeating.

 

He also prided himself on owning minimal property, which he claimed allowed him to remain unanchored and maintain a mobile lifestyle, supported by a team of just 30 full-time engineers around the world.

 

Durov has kept details of his private life largely secret, though last month, he disclosed on social media that, as a sperm donor, he now has more than 100 biological children.

 

Protester holds a icon depicting Pavel Durov during a demonstration in St Petersburg against the blocking of Telegram in Russia in 2018.

View image in fullscreen

Fervent supporters question speculation that Pavel Durov travelled to Paris aiming to resolve his legal disputes. Photograph: Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

At the time of his arrest, after arriving in Paris by private jet, Durov was accompanied by 24-year-old Juli Vavilova, a Dubai-based crypto coach and streamer.

 

But while he has mostly managed to avoid the public scrutiny faced by top executives of other tech companies, such as Elon Musk and Zuckerberg, foreign governments have long sought to monitor Durov and win his favour.

 

The Guardian previously reported that Durov’s number was selected for surveillance using the Pegasus spy network, while the Wall Street Journal this week said French and Emirati spies hacked him in 2017.

 

At the same time, he seemed to have been wined and dined on multiple occasions by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who had suggested Durov move his company to France.

 

“Durov felt that he was treated with respect in France, I don’t think he saw the arrest coming,” said a source close to the billionaire who asked for anonymity.

 

Durov obtained French nationality in 2021. Macron on Thursday said the decision “was taken as part of a fully assumed strategy, to allow women and men ... who make the effort to learn the French language and who develop wealth and innovation, who shine in the world, when they ask for it, to be given French nationality”.

 

Le Monde reported that the men had met on several occasions before Durov obtained a French passport. This request for French nationality was made by Durov after a lunch with Macron in 2018, the newspaper added, saying this had been confirmed by the Élysée Palace. During this lunch, the possibility of Telegram basing itself in France was mentioned.

 

Questions have been raised about the timing and circumstances of Durov’s detention, in particular, whether he knew that Paris had issued a warrant against him.

 

Some have speculated that Durov travelled to Paris aiming to resolve his legal disputes, while fervent supporters question whether he would ever voluntarily surrender himself.

 

However, most believe Durov will probably frame it as another chapter in his fight for free speech, positioning himself as a champion of the cause.

 

“From the very start of his career, Durov has emerged stronger after every attack against him, further solidifying his image as an anti-establishment hero,” said Kononov.

 

Additional reporting by Kim Willsher in Paris

Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength: A Sunday Times Bestseller by Bruce Daisley

 

Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength: A Sunday Times Bestseller Hardcover – August 25, 2022

by Bruce Daisley (Author)

The Sunday Times top ten bestseller that reveals the true secrets of inner strength.

 

'This is a truly refreshing, captivating and important book that shifted my perception on a topic I thought I knew! A must read.' Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur and host of The Diary of a CEO

__________________________________________________________

 

We're endlessly being told that if we want to be successful in life we have to be tough and stubborn. If we struggle, it's because we're weak and uncertain. Bruce Daisley thinks this is simply untrue, and in his new book the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Joy of Work takes the notion of resilience apart, explains how it really works, and puts forward a new programme for building self-confidence and tenacity. He calls it Fortitude.

 

In this book, Daisley disproves the myth that only extraordinary people are successful, shows how to achieve a sense of control through simple mind exercises, and, above all, demonstrates how we can draw on those around us to empower ourselves and build our inner-strength. Offering empirically tested advice, Fortitude sets out a practical path to greater self-confidence and courage, not just for the elite few, but for us all.

 

'A fascinating and important pushback against the narrow, joy-eroding version of "resilience" that would leave us to sink or swim alone, Fortitude is an indispensable guide to a more energising, human, and effective approach to working and thriving in a post-pandemic world.' Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks

 

'Surprising and challenging. Fortitude encouraged me to re-think not only my work but how I live my life.' Sarah Ellis, co-author of The Squiggly Career

 

'Something I never knew I needed to read but I'm so glad I did, its opened up a whole angle of thinking.' Nadiya Hussain

 

'A fascinating analysis of resilience - what it is, what is isn't and why, when we develop it together, it becomes something better and more important, fortitude. It seems that resilience is a team game.' Alastair Campbell

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ELON MUSK: Champion of the Far Right

Brazil Blocks X After Musk Ignores Court Orders

 

Brazil Blocks X After Musk Ignores Court Orders

 

The social network began to go dark in the nation of 200 million, the result of an escalating fight between Elon Musk and a Brazilian judge over what can be said online.

 

By Jack Nicas and Kate Conger

Jack Nicas reported from Rio de Janeiro, and Kate Conger from San Francisco.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/world/americas/brazil-elon-musk-x-blocked.html

Published Aug. 30, 2024

Updated Aug. 31, 2024, 1:04 a.m. ET

 

X began to go dark across Brazil on Saturday after the nation’s Supreme Court blocked the social network because its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with court orders to suspend certain accounts.

 

The moment posed one of the biggest tests yet of the billionaire’s efforts to transform the site into a digital town square where just about anything goes.

 

Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, ordered Brazil’s telecom agency to block access to X across the nation of 200 million because the company lacked a physical presence in Brazil.

 

Mr. Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week after Justice Moraes threatened arrests for ignoring his orders to remove X accounts that he said broke Brazilian laws.

 

X said that it viewed Justice Moraes’s sealed orders as illegal and that it planned to publish them. “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” Mr. Musk said on Friday.

 

In a highly unusual move, Justice Moraes also said that any person in Brazil who tried to still use X via common privacy software called a virtual private network, or VPN, could be fined nearly $9,000 a day.

 

Justice Moraes also froze the finances of a second Musk business in Brazil, SpaceX's Starlink satellite-internet service, to try to collect $3 million in fines he has levied against X. Starlink — which has recently exploded in popularity in Brazil, with more than 250,000 customers — said that it planned to fight the order and would make its service free in Brazil if necessary.

 

Mr. Musk and Justice Moraes have been sparring for months. Mr. Musk says Justice Moraes is illegally censoring conservative voices. Justice Moraes says Mr. Musk is illegally obstructing his work to clean up the Brazilian internet.

 

In his order, Justice Moraes said Mr. Musk was an “outlaw” who intended to “allow the massive spread of disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law, violating the free choice of the electorate, by keeping voters away from real and accurate information.”

 

The fight is now at the center of Mr. Musk’s bid to turn X into a safe haven for people to say nearly anything they want, even if it hurts the business in the process.

 

In dozens of posts since April, Mr. Musk has built up Justice Moraes as one of the world’s biggest enemies of free speech, and it appears Mr. Musk is now betting the judge will cave to the public backlash he believes the block will cause.

 

“He might be losing money in the short term, but he’s gaining enormous political capital,” said Luca Belli, a professor at FGV Law School in Rio de Janeiro, who has tracked Mr. Musk’s strategy with X.

 

But the longer the blackout on X lasts, the more it will test Mr. Musk’s commitment to his ideology at the expense of revenue, market share and influence.

 

Since 2022, Brazil has ranked fourth globally with more than 25 million downloads of the X app, according to Appfigures, an app data firm. X’s international business has become more important under Mr. Musk, as U.S. advertisers have fled the site because of an increase in hate speech and misinformation since Mr. Musk bought it.

 

Mr. Musk has overhauled the social network since buying it for $44 billion in 2022, when it was still called Twitter. In addition to renaming the service, he jettisoned many of its rules about what users could say. (Though he introduced a new rule against using a term he deems overly liberal: “cisgender.”) He also reinstated suspended accounts, including that of former President Donald J. Trump.

 

Yet Mr. Musk said X would still follow the law where it operates. Under his leadership, X has complied with demands from the Indian government to withhold accounts and removed links to a BBC documentary that painted a critical portrait of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister.

 

At other times, Mr. Musk has battled orders to remove content, such as in Australia, where he fought an order to remove videos depicting a violent attack against a local bishop.

 

But he has met a formidable challenge in Justice Moraes.

 

Few people have had a larger singular impact on what is said online in recent years than the Brazilian judge. He has emerged as one of Brazil’s most powerful — and polarizing — figures after the country’s Supreme Court enshrined him with expansive powers to crack down on threats to democracy online, amid fears about a far-right movement led by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president.

 

Ahead of Brazil’s 2022 election, the court empowered Justice Moraes to unilaterally order the takedown of accounts he deemed threats. He has since wielded that power liberally, often in sealed orders that do not disclose why a given account was suspended.

 

He has ordered X to remove at least 140 accounts, most of them right-wing, including some of Brazil’s most prominent conservative pundits and members of Congress. Some of those accounts questioned Mr. Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss and sympathized with the right-wing mob that stormed Brazil’s Congress and Supreme Court.

 

Justice Moraes has also led multiple criminal investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro and voted to deem the former president ineligible to run in Brazil’s next presidential election.

 

Mr. Musk suddenly entered the debate in April with a series of posts calling Justice Moraes a dictator, giving new life to Mr. Bolsonaro’s right-wing movement. Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters lauded Mr. Musk as a savior from a tyrannical judge.

 

Yet when Justice Moraes included Mr. Musk in an investigation into disinformation and began threatening X with fines, the company sent a conciliatory letter that it would comply with the judge’s orders.

 

Then, in recent weeks, X stopped complying. After Justice Moraes threatened the company’s legal representative in Brazil with arrest, Mr. Musk closed X’s office.

 

“The people of Brazil have a choice to make — democracy, or Alexandre de Moraes,” X wrote when announcing the move.

 

Mr. Musk has used X as a political cudgel. To his nearly 200 million followers, he has repeatedly boosted Mr. Trump and other right-wing leaders, while mocking politicians he opposes, such as Vice President Kamala Harris and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

 

Mr. Lula supported the block of X. “Just because someone has money doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want,” he said Friday. “They must accept the country’s rules.”

 

The U.S. Embassy in Brazil said it was monitoring the dispute. “The United States values freedom of speech as a cornerstone of a healthy democracy,” the embassy said in a statement.

 

Several authoritarian governments have banned X, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Some other nations have temporarily blocked the site at times. In 2021, Nigeria suspended the service for about seven months after the company removed posts the country’s then president threatening secessionist groups.

 

On Friday, Justice Moraes ordered Brazil’s telecom agency to “adopt all necessary measures” within 24 hours to block people in Brazil from using X.

 

He also said that people who use VPNs to circumvent the block and access X could face fines of nearly $9,000 a day. VPNs, which can make internet traffic appear as though it was coming from a different country, are commonly used software for privacy and cybersecurity.

 

Justice Moraes issued multiple orders on Friday. In the first, he also ordered Apple and Google to prevent downloads of X as well as popular VPN apps.

 

People across Brazil quickly criticized the move against VPN apps, and about three hours later, Justice Moraes issued an amendment to the order, this time leaving out the directives to Apple and Google.

 

Even with that amendment, Carlos Affonso Souza, a Brazilian internet-law professor, called the order “the most extreme judicial decision out of a Brazilian court in 30 years of internet law in Brazil.”

 

It is not the first time Brazilian authorities have blocked an online service for ignoring court orders. Yet such blocks have usually lasted just days before a company has reversed course and complied. That was the case in 2022, when Justice Moraes blocked the messaging app Telegram for a weekend.

 

Mr. Belli, the law professor, said he expected the same with Mr. Musk and X. “My bet is that he might be blocked for a couple of days, and then will comply and portray himself as a victim,” Mr. Belli said. “So he’s still winning.”

 

A correction was made on Aug. 30, 2024: An earlier version of this article misstated how a Brazilian Supreme Court justice amended his order. He cut language ordering Apple and Google to prevent downloads of popular VPN apps in Brazil. He did not cut language saying that people who use VPN apps to access X in Brazil could face fines.