Thursday, August 29, 2024

Part I

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Is This About Free Speech or Serious Crimes? Arrest of Eccentric Telegram Founder in France Raises Major Issues

The arrest in France on Saturday of Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram and its associated companies has made international news. It has also sent shockwaves through the world. Now, in truth, many Americans have no idea who he is. They have no idea why France might’ve arrested him. They have no idea how he became a billionaire, a multi-billionaire. You have international financial firms estimating that his personal worth is something like $9.5 billion. But when you’re talking about Pavel Durov, you’re talking about one of the world’s not only wealthiest, but most interesting and perhaps most controversial characters. The arrest in France by national law enforcement authorities there has not been backed up yet with any clear sense of an indictment against him or a specific charges.

However, sources close to the government there in France said that it is two issues in particular that had prompted an investigation and led to the arrest. They had to do with massive financial fraud in terms of international schemes and also child pornography. But let’s be very careful. These are not personal charges against Pavel Durov in this case. Instead, they are charges made against his platform and he, of course, the founder and the president of it. You are looking at someone who has also taken on his own persona in the public. In much of the world he has seen as something of an Elon Musk figure. And like so many others, particularly the titans of the hyper technology field, Pavel Durov also has a very interesting personal story. He is identified as Russian, he was arrested in France, and yet he has spent much of his life in the Middle East.

The headline in CNN was this, “A Russian Elon Musk with 100 biological children,” referring to Pavel. Yeah, you heard that right. 100 biological children, that’s an interesting twist in this tale. How did that happen? Well, Pavel Durov has bragged about the fact that through semen donation, he has been the father of at least 100 biological children. Again, not a story you see every day. Even in the aftermath of his arrest, he has pressed back. The front page of the New York Times ran a story, “Telegram founder’s anti-authority attitude made him a target.” Well, you can sort of understand this, understand a team of reporters tells this, “More than a decade ago when Russia pushed Pavel Durov to shut down the pages of opposition politicians on a Facebook-like site he had created, the tech entrepreneur responded online by posting a cheeky picture of a hoodie wearing dog with its tongue out.”

The Times then tells us, “13 years later, Mr. Durov’s anti-establishment streak appears to have gotten him into a fresh round of trouble with the authorities.” The paper references his arrest on Saturday in France, “as part of an investigation into criminal activity on Telegram, the online communications tool he founded in 2013, which has grown into a global platform defined by its hands-off approach to policing how users behaved.” Now, comment on this, and of course, this is now a very controversial case, comment has come from the very top in France, and that includes French President Emmanuel Macron, who referring to the arrest of Mr. Durov, said that his country was “deeply committed to freedom of expression, but that” he went on to say “in a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework both on social media and in real life.”

Now, the times also turns to the interesting twist in the story that Durov’s arrest has “caused a firestorm turning him into a folk hero among those concerned about free speech and government censorship, especially as scrutiny of online content has increased globally.” So as you’re thinking about this, he is someone that does make you think of Elon Musk who’s made very similar kinds of waves and also issued very similar kinds of protests. You also have to think about Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to the House of Representatives we talked about just days ago in which there were similar accusations made. We’re talking about an outsized personality who is also now a man of international controversy and immense wealth and just the eccentricities. And it’s hard to even just call it an eccentricity of having 100 biological children. He’s a historian to himself, but now it’s becoming a global story.

Here are some of the big worldview implications we need to think about. Number one, there are accusations made of the fact that Telegram, the social media platform, in its offering of anonymity to users and basically making it very difficult for anyone to track, and that includes, of course, not only the bad guys, so to speak, but the good guys, meaning those who are trying to watch out in order to prevent or to prosecute child pornography or massive kinds of financial fraud and other things. It is very clear that this story is about Pavel Durov, but it’s about a lot more than Pavel Durov. For one thing, just to understand that as the Wall Street Journal tells us, enthusiasts, for example, for crypto, that is cryptocurrency, “pledge support for Telegram chief.” David Yaffe-Bellany writing for the Wall Street Journal tells us, “Shortly after Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging app Telegram was arrested in France on Saturday, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency company Tether called the situation very concerning.”

The journal then tells his crypto enthusiasts pledged to support Mr. Durov posting the hashtag, “Free Durov.” Other investors declared that the arrest was an assault on free speech. One crypto user spoke out, “Can’t even imagine a day without Telegram.” Well, the Wall Street Journal tells us that the cryptocurrency industry is very dependent upon Telegram, but it’s also clear that there are at least open accusations of the fact that some openly illegal and morally horrifying activities that moved on to Telegram as well, and that would include financial fraud, and horrifyingly enough, it would also include child pornography, at least that’s what we are told is alleged. We’re going to have to wait for official court documents to know exactly what the charges might be, but there are huge issues raised here.

And from a Christian worldview perspective, we just need to look at this and recognize we are living in a time when many people are trying to suppress speech, and we are living in a time in which you also have this digital revolution where you have the development of apps, as they are known, like Telegram, that offers people all over the world the opportunity to communicate in a way that is secure and fast, and yet is outside the reach of many governments, and that includes repressive governments. This is a really complicated situation. You talk about life in a fallen world.

Let’s just say you have a dissident over here who’s fighting for freedom and justice and you are looking at someone who’s fighting for human rights and decency, doing the right thing morally, but he would be prosecuted, or she would be by the government of the country where they live, and thus they’re using Telegram in order to try to do good without government repression. And then you look at the fact that the very same technology can be used on the flip side to allow for child pornography, it is alleged, or massive financial crime. You can have an entire industry like cryptocurrency, then that’s controversial in itself, conducting much of its business. Some of the most important communications between principles in the cryptocurrency industry, these are moving to Telegram because it’s considered to be a safe place for these communications to take place. So in a fallen world, we end up with quandaries like this. And this takes us even beyond the conversation the culture was having over the letter from Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, to that house committee.

Now we are looking at an arrest, and an arrest in France. So we’re talking about a major European country that operates by the rule of law, and that’s where the statement made by the French president from a Christian perspective ought to at least attract our attention and make us think. Remember French President Emmanuel Macron, said after the arrest, that France was, he was giving an assurance, deeply committed to freedom of expression, but… Now, when you have a politician say, “We’re deeply committed to something, but,” you really need to look at what follows.

He went on to say quote, “In a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework both on social media and in real life.” Now, I can just tell you that in the grand scope of politics over the course of, say the last two or 300 years, that’s an unobjectionable statement. That’s the kind of statement you would think that the constitutional president of a republic in Europe would say. He would say, “We believe in free speech but not without limits. We believe in free expression, but we also operate under the rule of law.” Now, the problem is that that very same statement could be made not by the head of a government that is democratically elected, but by a government that is an absolute totalitarian nightmare. You could have the same assurance, so long as that but is there saying, “We believe in freedom of expression, but,” well, then you’re in a situation in which, quite honestly, you’re going to have to look a lot further into the situation to find out whether this government actually does believe in freedom of expression and in that protection or not.

When it comes to Telegram, I think it’s safe to say there are enough questions that would at least appear to justify a criminal investigation on the part of France. When you just say the words child pornography, that’s quite sufficient to make that justified. But when it comes to other dimensions, for instance, on Telegram, well, where’s this going to go? And let’s ask another question. In a real world, is it good to have an app like this, or is it just too dangerous? One argument can be made that having this kind of technology or using this kind of technology just allows new forms of sin or new forms of the expansion of, and even further corruption of sin just to say, again, in pornography. But you could turn around and say yes, but this is also a lifeline to freedom groups operating on behalf of human rights and human dignity around the world, groups that would otherwise have no opportunity for expression or external communication because their government would repress it.

So is an app like this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, I’m not going to answer that question because my whole point is to say that this is, for Christians, a reminder of the fact that you have a road. You can use it to take a family on a vacation, you can use it to send an ambulance to someone who is in need, or you can use it in order to drive away in your getaway car after a bank robbery. They’re not morally the same, but the road is the same. This quandary was faced in the publishing industry. Well, you can write a book, but good things can be put into books, bad things can be put into books, lies can be put into books, truths can be put into books, horrible things can be put into books. And the same thing is true for broadcast media.

So when you’re talking about social media, you’re talking about an app on a, say smartphone. Yeah, that’s a new technology, but I just want to point out this really isn’t a new moral question. This is a question that has really perplexed humanity going back for a very long time. I guess it’s true that when you had communication by writing with a stylus on a, say clay tablet, you could write a lie on the clay tablet or you could write the truth. It’s not the medium that is the issue, it’s the message. But we also understand that when you do add high technology, all of a sudden the media and the message are somewhat more difficult to separate. And it’s at least worth noting that when you’re looking at someone like this, the eccentricities and the moral twists and turns, they do just add to the story. 100 biological children? The technology of semen donation, and thus artificial insemination?

Boy, this really does get very complicated and thick. And get this, this is a billionaire who doesn’t want money. And by that, I mean he doesn’t want currency because he doesn’t want anyone to be able to track his purchases, and so he does things by means of cryptocurrency and other online mechanisms. I’m not sure what that tells us, but that’s not the way most of us can live. One final thought on this issue that’s relevant to us, when you look at freedom of speech, you think of the United States Constitution, for example, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, of course, in the context of other freedoms reflected in the US constitution. And here, I’m not talking about one’s people have invented. I mean ones that are there in the text. You also have a nation like France, a key ally, America’s first ally, as a matter of fact, in the Revolutionary war. You have a nation like France. You have other European nations. They make similar assurances that they recognize the right of human free speech or human expression, free expression.

But the question is, do they even mean the same thing by using even the same words? This is where culture also shows up in ways that Christians need to anticipate. When, in the United States, we speak about free speech, we’re talking about a tradition, a legal understanding, a cultural affirmation of free speech that is particularly rooted in the Democratic and the constitutional traditions of Britain and the United States. You go to Europe, you just cross the English channel, you might be in a similar territory when it comes to an understanding of free speech, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same territory. I’ll conclude on this issue by saying this is a big issue and one that will deserve our tracking, but we also need to understand is big in another way. The New York Times reports Telegram is now approaching 1 billion users worldwide, making it, and maybe this is a little hint here to Elon Musk from the New York Times, making it bigger than X.

Part II

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You Love Your Animals More Than Your Kids? Horrible Worldview Confusion Now Packaged as Entertainment

Okay, so we were just talking about a man who claims to have a hundred biological children. We’re going to shift gears. And I want to look at a critic review, in this case, the review of an HBO series. The series is known as Chimp Crazy, but the issue here is perhaps even crazier. Amanda Hess offers a critique with the headline for some kids and pets are sort of the same. That’s right. For some, kids and pets are sort of the same. The subhead exploring the cultural and political obsession with animals in our family lives. Well, the article begins with the quote, “Monkey love is totally different than the way you have love for your child.” That is said by Tonya Haddix, identified as an exotic animal broker. And that quote comes from the beginning of that documentary HBO series known as Chimp Crazy, “investigating the world of chimpanzee ownership.”

The quote goes on, “If it’s your natural born child, it’s just natural because you actually gave birth to the kid, but when you adopt a monkey, the bond is much, much deeper.” So let’s understand the shock here. We’re living in an age of such moral confusion. Indeed, to use a big important word, it’s a basic ontological confusion. That means it’s confusion over creation itself, over being, over the order of creation. Confusing an animal, and it doesn’t matter if the animal’s a monkey or a chimp, or for that matter, a salamander with a human child and confusing the importance of that distinction, that’s really crucial. It’s really tragic when you see the failure to make that distinction, and it is also inherently dangerous, but it tells us something about the superficiality of our culture, and also the moral confusion of our age, that you have this HBO documentary, and now you have, in the New York Times, a review about that documentary, and it’s honestly presented as if this is a very interesting development.

There are people who believe that their animals are more important than children. And when it comes to, say animals on the one hand, children on the other hand, they’re going with the animals, not with the kids. The Times article also mentions an article that appeared in New York Magazine in which a woman is asking what she thinks is a huge ethical question, and that is whether she’s neglecting her cat because a baby was born, her baby was born. And this woman’s taking care of her baby, and that’s taking time away from the cat. Is that fair? Okay, this is going to sound quite strange, but the issue is so important. The article tells us about the HBO series. And we’re told that as it continues, “It illuminates an underground network of chimp breeders and brokers.” Brittany Pete, a lawyer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, describes it as, “A culture of almost entirely women who raised chimpanzees and monkeys as if they’re babies.” “Starkly, lonely mother figures were told, who mythologize apes as eternal children who never talk back, never mature, and never leave.”

Now, it’s important to recognize that this lawyer for the animal rights movement and its organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Brittany Pete is not saying this is a good thing. The implication here is that this is a bad thing. And this tells us something interesting. This is a bad thing coming from the animal rights movement, but as a Christian, I have to say I am in absolute agreement that this is a very bad thing. This confusion is a very toxic thing. And my main concern is not the fact that the chimps are being treated as some kind of substitute for a child. My greater fear is that there’s an actual confusion about the distinction between the chimp and a child. It’s the second that leads to the first.

In recent years, we’ve known things were going in this direction. I’ll just say as a matter of irony, just ask Republican vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance in so much cultural hot water for his statement about childless cat ladies. But we also have to recognize they talk about themselves. He didn’t make it up. You have people in this article, and again, they’re overwhelmingly women who refer to their animal, to their pets as fur babies, and even as starter children, my starter child, the reporter goes on to say all this suggests “that when we’re talking about our pets, we’re really talking about ourselves, or at least our children.” I just have to interject. No, you’re not. Horrifyingly enough, it gets worse. The Times article tells us about one woman identified as “a 50-something woman who describes herself as the Dolly Parton of chimps,” the Times tells us she believes that God chose her to be a caretaker, continuing, “She was a registered nurse before she became a live-in volunteer at a ramshackle chimp breeding facility in Missouri where she speaks of a male chimp named Tonka as if she is his mother.

Listen to this. “Haddix has two human children. She just loves them less and says so on television.” Now, you have to say, let’s just pause for a moment. This is HBO. In one sense, this is meant as some form of dark entertainment. And so HBO making this into a documentary doesn’t mean that this is something that happens in every community every day, not at this level, not in terms of say the chimp mothers here. But the problem is that, even as the New York Times recognizes, and it’s clear HBO recognizes this as well, there are enough people in America who are sufficiently confused on this issue that if they don’t belong in this documentary, maybe they’re not that far from it.

The article concludes, sadly enough, by going back to this woman and her children, the article states “One of the saddest moments in Chimp crazy is when Haddix’s adult son Justin reflects on growing up in a family where an ape was more important than he was.” continuing, “He recalls his mother skipping his school events to tend to the urgent needs of her pets. The young man then said, “That’s where the big attraction to these primates comes in. They’re like children who never grow up, so they’re constantly going to need her care.” Very telling statement coming from a son. The article concludes, “He is coming to terms with his mother’s own need to be needed. When she is with the primate, you can just tell she’s happy.” And then the son said, “And I can’t get in the way of that.” Honestly, it’s one of the saddest things I’ve read in a very long time. And I’m not sharing it with you on The Briefing just because it’s sad.

I’m certainly not sharing it just because it’s bizarre. I think the main point here is that these folks are just seriously deluded, sadly, tragically confused. And HBO is just turning this into some kind of entertainment product because it’s going to be fascinating to watch this, and that requires just enough shock value that people hear a woman say, “Yeah, I care more about my chimps than my own children,” and then you hear one of the children speak. Yeah, that’s something like a very sad show, as a sideshow. But when you look at this, you all of a sudden recognize, again, the great danger is not someone who’s gone this far, but we’re in a society filled with millions of people who are moving in this direction. And as a matter of fact, it’s not an HBO documentary, but it’s very much front page news. When you have so many pets replacing so many children in the lives of so many adults, it’s a breakdown of civilizational order, but as Christians understand, it’s also, in a very real sense, an absolute loss of creation order.

Now, I’m not saying I don’t believe we should have pets. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Trust me, I’m not saying that it’s wrong to love our pets. I am saying it is tragically wrong to confuse a pet with a child. It is horrifyingly wrong to prefer the pet to the child. It is beyond description until, all of a sudden, in this cultural moment, it’s not beyond description because someone just described it in this newspaper and the son just spoke to it in the documentary. Going back to the headline in this story, “For some, kids and pets are sort of the same.” We just have to respond by saying, no, kids and pets are not sort of the same.

 

Part III

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Fox Hunting is a Religion in the UK? In a Secular Age, Definition of Religion Hard to Sustain

Albert Mohler:
Finally, we’re also talking about an international conversation about the ethics of fox hunting.

And this is very much tied to the British aristocracy, but it has now been outlawed for a number of years by the government there in the United Kingdom. But it’s interesting that at least some who are trying to lead to the re-legalization of fox hunting are coming back saying that they’re doing so because fox hunting is not just a hobby, it’s a religion. So they’re going to frame the fact that under the free exercise of religion, under the protection of religious groups, they should have the right to practice their religion of fox hunting. I refer to this not because that’s such an interesting story, but because it’s receiving very serious legal attention, and some of the things said in terms of the legal statements are worth our note.

For example, a professor of constitutional and human rights at University College London said, “The test,” being the test of religious liberty, the validity of this kind of claim “requires that the belief be genuinely held and that it be sufficiently cogent and weighty and coherent.” “There needs to be some sort of belief structure or framework.” Now, I’m going to shift from Fox hunting to Christianity, because isn’t it interesting that in a society where Christianity was so much a part of framing the entire understanding of reality, the structures of the civilization itself… You can’t talk about Britain, you can’t talk about Europe, you can’t talk about Western civilization without its basic Christian structure and Christian roots.

When you just shift to trying to talk in a secular age religion, you got to come up with some kind of definition. And I just want to point out, well, how minimal this definition is. There needs to be some sort of belief structure or framework. The test requires the belief be genuinely held and that it be sufficiently cogent and weighty and coherent. Well, who says? Who says what’s weighty? Who says what’s coherent? Who says what’s cogent? Who says what’s valid and not valid? In a confusing age, in a secular age like ours, these questions just loom large, and they show up in bizarre ways. They show up when someone is claiming that fox hunting is a religious liberty. I’ll simply end by saying, I think the fox would have a different story.