As always, a lot is happening in America that does not make the news in Europe. One of the stories that splashed this week in U.S. media, but seems to have gone unnoticed in Europe, is the bombshell Congressional testimony by a U.S. government official on child trafficking. Protected by legal ‘whistleblower’ status, the witness, Tara Lee Rodas with the Department of Homeland Security, testified about how the government of the United States has taken the role of middleman in international child trafficking.
According to Fox News, Rodas warns that the United States government allows unaccompanied minors to enter the country, and then releases them into the hands of “Transnational Criminal Organizations.” In written remarks, Rodas explains that
children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] delivers a child to a sponsor—some sponsors are criminals [who] view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income
Another witness, Sheena Rodriguez of Alliance for a Safe Texas, who was testifying alongside Rodas, shared “experiences of encountering unaccompanied children at the border” who were trafficked by Mexican crime cartels. The children, Ms. Rodriguez explained, were held “at warehouses with armed guards.”
The fact that a government official testifies on this matter is nothing short of remarkable. Since Joe Biden was sworn in as president, the U.S.-Mexico border has been virtually open, with millions of illegal immigrants flowing across the border. For two years now, state government officials in primarily Texas and Arizona have been struggling strenuously to keep their states safe amid record volumes of illegal immigrants. Their struggle has been accompanied by virtual silence from the federal government.
Not all Democrats have been quiet, though. Eric Adams, Mayor of New York City, recently lamented the buses arriving in his city with illegal immigrants apprehended by state authorities in border states. During the week of April 19, New York City received 2,300 migrants, which prompted Mayor Adams to desperately demand that the federal government “crack down on cities using federal grant money to move migrants to New York.”
Mayor Adams is apparently not very interested in using the resources of his city to help America absorb the 2.76 million illegal immigrants the Biden administration welcomed in 2022 alone. It does not seem to have occurred to the good mayor that he could call President Biden, also a Democrat, and ask him to maybe plug a hole or two in the border.
The chief executive of New York City seems to like illegal immigrants, so long as they do not come to his city, of course.
Another big news story that got a little bit more attention in Europe was the departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News. This story got a brief mention by Reuters; our own Bridget Ryder covered it comprehensively in an excellent news article. However, the overall modest interest in the story could be the result of the limited presence that Fox News has in the European media landscape.
Tucker Carlson was the top rated prime-time host with Fox News. According to some estimates, his departure robbed Fox of half of its 2.7 million viewers in the time slot he covered. His popularity is in large part due to him being perceived as a staunch conservative and a straight talker who doesn’t shy away from confronting his guests with uncomfortable questions.
Carlson has also brought up sensitive topics, including the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Based in part on not previously seen footage from the events at and inside the Capitol, Carlson challenged the official narrative that the events were an insurrection. The political fallout from Carlson’s work on this matter could very well affect the 2024 election, which—one has to assume—could be a reason why his show was canceled in the first place.
The worries about Tucker Carlson’s influence on next year’s presidential election are not without merit. Given his prime-time viewership dominance, Carlson’s ousting seems to be a boneheaded business decision. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Fox also chose not to renew its contract with Dan Bongino, their most popular weekend host. Like Carlson, Bongino has earned an America First reputation, i.e., leaning in favor of Trump rather than the neocon faction of the Republican party.
Since Fox is also choosing to keep Carlson on payroll throughout 2024, the full duration of his current contract, there is little doubt that they really want to make sure he does not have a media platform during the election cycle. It is tempting to conclude that Fox News now de facto has declared sides, aligning itself with the neocons in the ideological battle for control over the Republican party.
Another ideological battlefield in America was recently brought to the surface of the news cycle in a way that seems to have baffled European media to the point where they predominantly refrain from reporting on it. This is, of course, the continuing fallout from a beer commercial featuring a ‘transgender’ individual. Fox Business reports:
Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right Beer, which launched immediately after Americans began boycotting Bud Light for its controversial partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, is expected to surpass $1 million in sales since mid-April
Ultra Right beer is marketed as having only four ingredients while being “100% woke free.” Its sales success is not the only one following beer buyers abandoning Bud Light. According to Breitbart, Coors and Miller, two of Bud’s big competitors in the market for light, low alcohol beer, “saw an 18 percent spike in their sales following the Anheuser-Busch-owned brewer’s transgender controversy.”
The fallout against Bud Light is only the tip of the iceberg of American reactions to what they see as big businesses trying to impose culturally radical values upon them. This trend among America’s corporate leadership is confounding, especially since it has led to loss of revenue or stock market value for many companies. One of them, Disney, has chosen to double down in its support of radical cultural values: they have decided to sue Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the company losing the special tax status of its theme park in his state. That loss, in turn, is the consequence of a law passed by the state legislature when Disney decided to join a campaign to bring sexually explicit materials into Florida school classrooms.
Overall, European media are not too interested in the American cultural war. Their look at America is—perhaps unsurprisingly—colored by their view of themselves. A case in point is the Irish Times, which boldly declares that the Northern Ireland peace agreement, which President Bill Clinton was deeply involved in, still has backing across the political aisle in America. With Irish American voters leaning more Republican in recent years, “a rare situation” has emerged in American politics where there is solid bipartisan support for the Good Friday peace agreement.
With its headline, “Belfast Agreement is almost the only topic that can unite Democrats and Republicans,” the Irish Times reinforces the impression that the two American political parties are hopelessly divided on all other issues. This is not true: members of the two parties are tripping over each other in their efforts to increase defense spending, which of course is warmly welcome by the military industrial complex. More than $124 million in defense-industry spending on lobbying Congress appears to have paid off.
Another issue where Congress is largely united:
Several Democratic senators have announced that they are willing to force President Joe Biden to veto a resolution reinstating tariffs on countries linked to the Chinese solar panel industry. The resolution … would repeal the president’s moratorium on solar tariffs to four southeast Asian nations, where a Commerce Department investigation found many Chinese solar companies were assembling their products to dodge U.S. tariffs on their products.
If there is one thing that is unique about the bipartisan agreement on solar panel tariffs, it is the fact that Democrats in Congress are willing to go against a president of their own party. While Republicans often fall over themselves trying to undermine a Republican president, Democrats have an almost military-grade ability to close ranks behind a Democrat president.
With all that said, it is good, of course, that America’s political leadership stands behind the Good Friday agreement.
They are also showing unity behind another issue, one of even more significance for the future of humankind than the Good Friday agreement. The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, has taken a particular interest in how the American government handles the issue of unidentified aerial phenomena, UAPs—or UFOs, as we used to call them.
On April 26 the Daily Mail reported:
Senior members of Congress have spoken to as many as six whistleblowers who claim they worked on Roswell-style UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs, according to a top attorney, a leading Stanford scientist, and ex-UFO program officials.
The Roswell incident, which took place in 1947, involved the crash of an unknown airborne vessel in a rural area outside the town of Corona in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Eye witnesses claimed that the vessel was clearly not of Earthly origin, a claim that was later reinforced by civilian UFO investigator Stanton Friedman. Allegedly, the U.S. military seized the vessel (possibly survivors as well) and brought them to the air force base in Roswell, N.M..
Since then, there have been countless stories in the UFO literature about how some outfit under the U.S. government has been trying to reverse-engineer alien technology. It is these efforts that the Daily Mail article refers to.
The paper goes on to explain that Congress passed a law last year to give ‘whistleblower’ status to “anyone who has worked in such mind-boggling secret programs” as UFO reverse-engineering:
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, [lawyer] Daniel Sheehan said he is in contact with at least six former government officials or military contractors who say they worked on just such a program … Sheehan says witnesses who allegedly know about Roswell-style programs, including a former Defense Intelligence Agency director, have been referred for interviews with the Pentagon’s UFO office
The Daily Mail is good at keeping an eye on what stories are big and new in America. This particular story is definitely big, and it is becoming increasingly present in the news cycle. On April 19th, the Washington Examiner reported:
the leader of the Pentagon’s UFO identification office, who recently speculated about the potential for an alien “mothership” in the solar system and “extraterrestrial technological probes” visiting Earth, will testify in a rare congressional hearing. Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the recently formed All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, will appear as the sole witness in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
Apparently, the United States government is leading the world in some sort of UFO disclosure project. It will be very interesting to see what comes next—and how the media in both America and Europe report on it.
The America Report: Child Trafficking, Beer Boycotts, and UFOs
As always, a lot is happening in America that does not make the news in Europe. One of the stories that splashed this week in U.S. media, but seems to have gone unnoticed in Europe, is the bombshell Congressional testimony by a U.S. government official on child trafficking. Protected by legal ‘whistleblower’ status, the witness, Tara Lee Rodas with the Department of Homeland Security, testified about how the government of the United States has taken the role of middleman in international child trafficking.
According to Fox News, Rodas warns that the United States government allows unaccompanied minors to enter the country, and then releases them into the hands of “Transnational Criminal Organizations.” In written remarks, Rodas explains that
Another witness, Sheena Rodriguez of Alliance for a Safe Texas, who was testifying alongside Rodas, shared “experiences of encountering unaccompanied children at the border” who were trafficked by Mexican crime cartels. The children, Ms. Rodriguez explained, were held “at warehouses with armed guards.”
The fact that a government official testifies on this matter is nothing short of remarkable. Since Joe Biden was sworn in as president, the U.S.-Mexico border has been virtually open, with millions of illegal immigrants flowing across the border. For two years now, state government officials in primarily Texas and Arizona have been struggling strenuously to keep their states safe amid record volumes of illegal immigrants. Their struggle has been accompanied by virtual silence from the federal government.
Not all Democrats have been quiet, though. Eric Adams, Mayor of New York City, recently lamented the buses arriving in his city with illegal immigrants apprehended by state authorities in border states. During the week of April 19, New York City received 2,300 migrants, which prompted Mayor Adams to desperately demand that the federal government “crack down on cities using federal grant money to move migrants to New York.”
Mayor Adams is apparently not very interested in using the resources of his city to help America absorb the 2.76 million illegal immigrants the Biden administration welcomed in 2022 alone. It does not seem to have occurred to the good mayor that he could call President Biden, also a Democrat, and ask him to maybe plug a hole or two in the border.
The chief executive of New York City seems to like illegal immigrants, so long as they do not come to his city, of course.
Another big news story that got a little bit more attention in Europe was the departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News. This story got a brief mention by Reuters; our own Bridget Ryder covered it comprehensively in an excellent news article. However, the overall modest interest in the story could be the result of the limited presence that Fox News has in the European media landscape.
Tucker Carlson was the top rated prime-time host with Fox News. According to some estimates, his departure robbed Fox of half of its 2.7 million viewers in the time slot he covered. His popularity is in large part due to him being perceived as a staunch conservative and a straight talker who doesn’t shy away from confronting his guests with uncomfortable questions.
Carlson has also brought up sensitive topics, including the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Based in part on not previously seen footage from the events at and inside the Capitol, Carlson challenged the official narrative that the events were an insurrection. The political fallout from Carlson’s work on this matter could very well affect the 2024 election, which—one has to assume—could be a reason why his show was canceled in the first place.
The worries about Tucker Carlson’s influence on next year’s presidential election are not without merit. Given his prime-time viewership dominance, Carlson’s ousting seems to be a boneheaded business decision. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Fox also chose not to renew its contract with Dan Bongino, their most popular weekend host. Like Carlson, Bongino has earned an America First reputation, i.e., leaning in favor of Trump rather than the neocon faction of the Republican party.
Since Fox is also choosing to keep Carlson on payroll throughout 2024, the full duration of his current contract, there is little doubt that they really want to make sure he does not have a media platform during the election cycle. It is tempting to conclude that Fox News now de facto has declared sides, aligning itself with the neocons in the ideological battle for control over the Republican party.
Another ideological battlefield in America was recently brought to the surface of the news cycle in a way that seems to have baffled European media to the point where they predominantly refrain from reporting on it. This is, of course, the continuing fallout from a beer commercial featuring a ‘transgender’ individual. Fox Business reports:
Ultra Right beer is marketed as having only four ingredients while being “100% woke free.” Its sales success is not the only one following beer buyers abandoning Bud Light. According to Breitbart, Coors and Miller, two of Bud’s big competitors in the market for light, low alcohol beer, “saw an 18 percent spike in their sales following the Anheuser-Busch-owned brewer’s transgender controversy.”
The fallout against Bud Light is only the tip of the iceberg of American reactions to what they see as big businesses trying to impose culturally radical values upon them. This trend among America’s corporate leadership is confounding, especially since it has led to loss of revenue or stock market value for many companies. One of them, Disney, has chosen to double down in its support of radical cultural values: they have decided to sue Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the company losing the special tax status of its theme park in his state. That loss, in turn, is the consequence of a law passed by the state legislature when Disney decided to join a campaign to bring sexually explicit materials into Florida school classrooms.
Overall, European media are not too interested in the American cultural war. Their look at America is—perhaps unsurprisingly—colored by their view of themselves. A case in point is the Irish Times, which boldly declares that the Northern Ireland peace agreement, which President Bill Clinton was deeply involved in, still has backing across the political aisle in America. With Irish American voters leaning more Republican in recent years, “a rare situation” has emerged in American politics where there is solid bipartisan support for the Good Friday peace agreement.
With its headline, “Belfast Agreement is almost the only topic that can unite Democrats and Republicans,” the Irish Times reinforces the impression that the two American political parties are hopelessly divided on all other issues. This is not true: members of the two parties are tripping over each other in their efforts to increase defense spending, which of course is warmly welcome by the military industrial complex. More than $124 million in defense-industry spending on lobbying Congress appears to have paid off.
Another issue where Congress is largely united:
If there is one thing that is unique about the bipartisan agreement on solar panel tariffs, it is the fact that Democrats in Congress are willing to go against a president of their own party. While Republicans often fall over themselves trying to undermine a Republican president, Democrats have an almost military-grade ability to close ranks behind a Democrat president.
With all that said, it is good, of course, that America’s political leadership stands behind the Good Friday agreement.
They are also showing unity behind another issue, one of even more significance for the future of humankind than the Good Friday agreement. The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, has taken a particular interest in how the American government handles the issue of unidentified aerial phenomena, UAPs—or UFOs, as we used to call them.
On April 26 the Daily Mail reported:
The Roswell incident, which took place in 1947, involved the crash of an unknown airborne vessel in a rural area outside the town of Corona in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Eye witnesses claimed that the vessel was clearly not of Earthly origin, a claim that was later reinforced by civilian UFO investigator Stanton Friedman. Allegedly, the U.S. military seized the vessel (possibly survivors as well) and brought them to the air force base in Roswell, N.M..
Since then, there have been countless stories in the UFO literature about how some outfit under the U.S. government has been trying to reverse-engineer alien technology. It is these efforts that the Daily Mail article refers to.
The paper goes on to explain that Congress passed a law last year to give ‘whistleblower’ status to “anyone who has worked in such mind-boggling secret programs” as UFO reverse-engineering:
The Daily Mail is good at keeping an eye on what stories are big and new in America. This particular story is definitely big, and it is becoming increasingly present in the news cycle. On April 19th, the Washington Examiner reported:
Apparently, the United States government is leading the world in some sort of UFO disclosure project. It will be very interesting to see what comes next—and how the media in both America and Europe report on it.
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