The World and Everything in It: February 9, 2023

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A new kind of human trafficking out of Cambodia requires a different response.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also the pros and cons of a test for fentanyl.

Plus the “He Gets Us” campaign. What’s that about?

And commentator Cal Thomas on the State of the Union address and the response to it.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, February 9th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now here’s Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Twitter hearing » Lawmakers on Capitol Hill grilled former Twitter executives Wednesday about censoring conservative voices and suppressing a New York Post news story about Hunter Biden.

Former Twitter legal chief Vijaya Gadde:

GADDE: In hindsight, Twitter should have reinstated the Post account immediately.

And Yoel Roth, the former head of global trust and safety, said blocking the story was a mistake, but the move was not politically motivated.

ROTH: Twitter noticed activity related to the laptop that, at first glance, bore a lot of similarities to the 2016 Russian hack and leak operation targeting the DNC.

The Chairman of the Oversight Committee, James Comer, suggested that internal Twitter communications showed that Democrats and FBI officials colluded with Twitter to suppress certain information.

COMER: Twitter, under the leadership of our witnesses today, was a private company the federal government used to accomplish what it constitutionally cannot: limit the free exercise of speech.

Comer referenced documents released by current Twitter owner Elon Musk.

China’s spy balloons » The U.S. military says the Chinese spy balloon that it shot down off the South Carolina coast this week was just one of many.

Pentagon Spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder.

RYDER: This is what we assess as part of a larger Chinese surveillance balloon program. You've heard us talk in the past about the fact that this is a program that's been operated for several years.

The State Department says it has learned of other Chinese balloons operating over several continents and has shared information about the spy program with dozens of countries.

Earthquake relief, death toll » The death toll from earthquakes in Turkey and Syria has now topped 12,000.

Governments and non-profit groups across the globe are rushing aid to the devastated region.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken:

BLINKEN: Across both countries, we’ve deployed experienced emergency managers, paramedics, planners, others, along with about 170,000 pounds of specialized tools and equipment.

Meantime, rescue workers say hopes of finding additional survivors are dimming with each passing day, but hope is not lost. Experts say some could survive for a week or more under the rubble, depending on injuries and weather.

Putin likely signed off on missile supply in Malaysia Airlines shoot-down » A team of international investigators says Russia most likely supplied the missile used to shoot down a Malaysian Airlines jet in 2014.

Nearly 300 people boarded the plane from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All aboard were killed when the jet went down over Ukraine.

Dutch investigator Andy Kraag.

KRAAG: We’ve reached our limits. We’ve done everything that we can within our limits and the next answers lie in Russia.

Investigators believe Vladimir Putin himself signed off on supplying missiles to Russian-backed separatists, including the one that downed the jetliner.

The team still doesn’t have enough evidence to prosecute any suspects and officially suspended the investigation.

Zelenskyy in UK » Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with French and German leaders in Paris on Wednesday.

The meeting came hours after Zelenskyy made a surprise trip to London where he spoke to British lawmakers. And he once again asked Western leaders to send fighter jets to Kyiv.

ZELENSKYY: And I appeal to you with the world's most simple and yet most important words. Combat aircrafts for Ukraine, wings for freedom.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that British forces will begin training Ukrainian pilots to fly combat aircraft.

Zelenskyy was also invited to attend a European Union summit in Brussels today, but it was unclear if he would attend.

FL Disney district bill » Walt Disney is one step closer to losing control of its own private kingdom near Orlando.

Lawmakers unveiled a bill this week that hands over control of Disney’s private Reedy Creek jurisdiction to the state of Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis:

DESANTIS: Disney is no longer going to have self-government.

Critics worry the move will shift the burden of paying for services in the district to taxpayers. But the governor says not so.

DESANTIS: Disney is going to pay its fair share of taxes and Disney is going to honor the debt.

Disney’s private government gives it unprecedented powers to decide what to build and how to build it at Disney World, issuing bonds.

It could even build its own nuclear plant if it wanted.

Rollins College professor emeritus Rick Foglesong told tv station WOKV:

FOGLESONG: I came to call it a Vatican with mouse ears.

Florida’s GOP-led legislature began taking a closer look at Disney’s half-century-old sweetheart deal after the company delved into politics last year, publicly campaigning against a parental rights law at the behest of LGBT activists.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: a new kind of human trafficking.

Plus, an effort to find fentanyl.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday, the 9th of February, 2023. Thanks for listening to WORLD Radio today! Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up on The World and Everything in It: human trafficking.

Estimates are that more than 27 million people endure forced labor around the world. To highlight the plight of these people, President Barack Obama in 2010 signed a proclamation to make each January the National Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

BROWN: One of the trafficking hotspots is Cambodia in southeast Asia. Traffickers there are tricking victims into yet another kind of forced labor.

WORLD correspondent Amy Lewis reports.

TESI: Back in the late 70s, the Khmer Rouge had murdered all the educated people. So the librarians, the doctors, the nurses, the accountants, bookkeepers. Simply if you wore glasses, you were killed, or you fled the country.

AMY LEWIS, REPORTER: Paul Tesi is the CEO of Asian Hope, a Christian humanitarian group that runs seven Christian schools in Cambodia. Christian schools filled Cambodia’s educational vacuum following the mass murders by the Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970s. The new schools did more than educate poor children.

TESI: There's really no other way to prevent all the things that exploit poor people in developing countries than education. That includes sex trafficking, that includes vocational exploitation for labor. It's just harder to exploit the educated, and parents don't sell their children who are educated.

Human trafficking is a problem in more than just Cambodia. Noel Yeatts leads World Help, another Christian humanitarian group.

YEATTS: What's really going on in Thailand is really what we would refer to as cultural slavery. And the reason we call it that is because it's driven by extreme poverty. And its girls are making choices because they have no other choice.

Regardless of the country, the people targeted for trafficking are pretty consistent: women, children, the poor, and the uneducated.

But now, there’s a new kid on the block. A way of trafficking that bucks that trend.

SIMS: And the people who are finding themselves in these situations are also largely college educated, they're tech savvy. they're younger. They're usually proficient in multiple languages.

Jake Sims is the country director of Cambodia for International Justice Mission or IJM, a global organization that combats slavery and trafficking.

SIMS: Cambodia is a major source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking of many different forms. Approximately 100,000 people are believed to be working in what they call the online gambling space in Cambodia alone, which, which is a euphemism for online for scamming.

Those 100,000 people didn’t sign up to become scammers.

SIMS: The first side of this equation seems to have been precipitated by COVID-19 lockdowns, large numbers of people out of work, willing to look for higher risk markets for employment…

The social media job ads they respond to sound great. They offer good pay, nice living conditions, and a generic sounding job title like “customer relations” or “sales.”

But they have to travel to a country that has a dismal record of justice. The World Justice Project ranks Cambodia dead last for being free of corruption. Its neighboring countries don’t fare much better.

SIMS: The countries where these syndicates are operating are ones in which the governments are having a difficult time holding the perpetrators accountable under the law.

Even though the scam syndicates target a different category of victims, they still use the classic trafficking tools of deception, coercion, confinement, and abuse.

SIMS: So once at the facility, the organized crime group will take the workers’ passports, their IDs, their cell phones, cut off communication with the outside and their ability to travel. Then recruited workers are locked inside buildings with security guards and not allowed to leave.

They might be given a quota of people to scam each day. If they fail to reach it, they’re often physically punished.

Their job is to promote various scams. One version is called “pig butchering.” It refers to slowly gaining someone’s trust, as fattening a pig for slaughter. They groom their targeted person for long periods of time. The truth comes out after that person signs away their cryptocurrency or life savings. Other versions involve the trafficked victim enticing others to join them, doing what they do.

SIMS: It's hard for folks in the States or elsewhere to imagine the sort of scenario by which they might find themselves locked in a compound and forced to rip people off. Right? But anytime someone is abused and held against their will and forced to work, regardless of what that work is, they are a victim, and they deserve our care and our empathy.

Americans, Australians, and Brits are losing billions of dollars to this phenomenon, Sims says. Crime leaders set up scam centers in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. They enslave people from Thailand, Indonesia, China, India, Vietnam, and Malaysia, among others.

SIMS: So this is a truly global issue in terms of the reach of its impact in the reach of human suffering that it is causing. It's not a niche issue. This is something that is on some level impacting everyone. And as such, it merits a truly global response.

Sims says governments and aid groups need to have a coordinated response. In September, the Cambodian government cracked down on some of the syndicates in the capital city of Phnom Penh. More than 1000 people were rescued. But other groups were able to move their operations ahead of the sting. At the same time, Myanmar, also known as Burma, has seen an exponential increase in this type of exploitation.

International Justice Mission’s Jake Sims says one way to make a difference is to answer one scam call at a time.

SIMS: Ask if they're being forced to work and where they're from. See if you can get them to send the name or their GPS coordinates from where they're located. You can tell them that if they're in need of help, they should contact their embassy or a local NGO. Direct them to ijm.org if you want.

For the person on the other end of the phone, it could be their call for help. And they might have called you for such a time as this.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis.

BROWN: You can read WORLD Magazine’s companion story at wng.org.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the opioid epidemic, specifically, fentanyl.

The opioid is a powerful synthetic. It’s been responsible for two-thirds of the total overdose deaths from opioids.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Drug users don't always know when they take fentanyl. Dealers often mix it in with other drugs to increase potency. Lawmakers are pushing to make it easier for people to test drugs for fentanyl. And this opens up questions of whether this crosses a line, into feeding addiction.

WORLD’s compassion beat reporter, Addie Offereins, is here to talk about it.

BROWN: Welcome Addie!

ADDIE OFFEREINS, REPORTER: Thanks for having me.

BROWN: Tell me more about fentanyl test strips.

OFFEREINS: The only way for users to know if their drug contains fentanyl is to use a fentanyl test strip. This is just a paper strip that users will dip in water that has been dissolved with the residue of the illicit drug that they're testing. As you mentioned, users taking illicit drugs like cocaine or heroin often risk consuming fentanyl along with them. This is because fentanyl is cheap and potent so it increases the high of a drug and dealers will often mix it in to other illicit drugs to make them go further. Dealers will also press fentanyl into pills that resemble legitimate prescription opioids. And not only is fentanyl cheap and potent, it can be fatal at a two milligram dose for some people.

BROWN: In your article you report that some states ban the strips. For example, Texas fines those who possess the strips $500 for committing a Class C misdemeanor. But now some states are rethinking these bans. Why?

OFFEREINS: Well, as deaths keep climbing and the opioid epidemic is getting worse, lawmakers are getting desperate and reconsidering decriminalizing these strips. Republican Governor Greg Abbott is making a legislative push to save more lives and is urging the new Texas legislature to reconsider decriminalizing the strips. Other Republican and Democratic governors around the country in places like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia are making similar pushes. In Arizona the state seized 1,200 pounds of illegal fentanyl last year by the month of October. Most of this was found at or near the southern border. And to combat this influx of illicit fentanyl, the state began distributing these test strips to different counties around the state.

BROWN: Those who want to decriminalize test strips say that making them more widely available will reduce the number of overdose deaths. But others say making the strips more available will actually incentivize drug use. What about those concerns?

OFFEREINS: Yeah, so they say that distributing the strips or opening safe consumption sites will make illicit drugs more socially acceptable, and they aren't likely to get addicts into rehab. Paul Burke is a former addict and current pastor. He says harm reduction strategies don't change people's lives. He used methamphetamines—among other drugs—for about 18 years and now he's the executive director of Brooklyn Teen Challenge, which is a residential rehab program in Brooklyn, New York. He's not sure that users will throw out their next high even if they do detect fentanyl in a drug. He did emphasize when talking with me that he doesn't minimize saving a life. But he's worried that fentanyl test strips will encourage more people to experiment with illicit drugs. Instead his program focuses on life transformation, bringing people out of addiction, and introducing them to Jesus Christ.

BROWN: Some people in favor of the strips also advocate for other harm reduction measures like safe consumption sites. Are all harm reduction measures equal? Can we make distinctions here?

OFFEREINS: Yeah, so addiction psychiatrist Dr. Mark Duncan wouldn't put fentanyl test strips in the same category as safe consumption sites. He says the strips are essential in his home state of Washington as fentanyl has become the most common drug on the street. But when it comes to safe consumption sites, he says it's less clear, because some addicts may never interact with the treatment provider outside of a safe consumption site. Critics of the sites point to places like San Francisco which recently closed its Tenderloin Center. This was a site aimed at preventing overdoses and connecting people to rehab. And while it did reverse more than 300 overdoses, fewer than 1% of visits resulted in addicts entering treatment. So the question is, do these sites actually provide effective compassion for people in their addiction or enable them to continue using drugs in the long term?

BROWN: That’s a good question. And Addie goes into much more detail in her roundups article at wng.org. We’ve included a link to it in today’s transcript. Addie Offereins is WORLD’s reporter on the Compassion beat. Thanks for joining us today, Addie.

OFFEREINS: Thanks for having me, Myrna.

MASON: My name is Mason, and I am 11 years old, and I go to school at South Forsyth Middle School.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Mason Christiansen is like many boys. He enjoys donuts and he loves Legos, the building toys.

Mason lives in Georgia and last fall, he brought those two things together. It all started with a sketch of his local Dunkin' Donuts restaurant.

MASON: And then one night, I just started building it in Lego...

It took him more than a month to finish. And then he showed it to the store manager, bought some donuts, and went home.

Mason didn't think much more about it until a few weeks later, when his family dropped by the donut shop. He spotted a photographer and lots of other people:

MASON: I'm like, wait, is this all for me? And then I went in, and everyone's cheering for me. And I was just really happy.

Yeah, happy multiplied when the manager gave Mason a certificate for a year’s worth of free donuts and a $500 gift card to a Lego shop.

Mason gave credit where credit is due:

MASON: My parents were always really...supportive during the time that I was putting it together.

BROWN: And as my mama would say, he has good manners, too!

REICHARD: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 9th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: marketing Jesus.

For almost a year, a series of ads have peppered billboards, social media, and TV. They’re all part of a marketing campaign called He Gets Us. The goal of the campaign is to restore Jesus’ reputation among unbelievers.

REICHARD: He Gets Us is even airing two commercials at the Super Bowl this Sunday. They’re estimated to cost $20 million. That may be the biggest faith-based ad campaign in history. WORLD Reporter Zoe Schimke talked to the people behind the campaign.

AUDIO: A rebel took to the streets. He recruited others to join him…they swore allegiance to him. They roamed the hood, challenged authority…

ZOE SCHIMKE, REPORTER: The ad starts with black and white still photographs: People in the inner-city with tattoos, piercings, chains. The images show them doing tricks on skateboards, climbing over fences, running from somebody chasing them.

AUDIO: Religious leaders abhorred them…We have to shut them down, they said, get them off the streets, protect our communities from these troublemakers. But they weren’t part of a gang spreading hate and terror. They were spreading love.

The screen cuts to black, with the words “Jesus was wrongly judged.” Then, “he gets us.”

It’s the same message that airs at the end of every ad. The campaign’s organizers hope it will challenge people’s perceptions of Jesus, and spark their curiosity.

HILL: Most folks who see the ads from He Gets Us would agree that they're, they're different.

Brad Hill is a representative for He Gets Us.

HILL: They might describe them with various adjectives, edgy, modern, fresh, whatever. But they're intentionally designed to catch attention and get people to take a look at Jesus.

The ads are on Instagram, Youtube, and they play during NFL broadcasts. They’ve already attracted millions of views. The upcoming Super Bowl is the pinnacle of the campaign so far.

The ads don’t point to any particular church or denomination, but instead direct viewers to he-gets-us-dot-com. There, site visitors can choose to start a weekly Bible reading plan, chat with a representative, or find a local discussion group to talk about Christianity.

The ads are based on survey results from people all across the country. Organizers asked the public, How do you perceive Christianity? Hill says that for many people, the attitude of Christians is off-putting. And it influences how they think about Jesus.

HILL: They would say, for example, it seems like Christians think they own Jesus, or it seems like I have to be a certain way, or check a box or be in a club, before I can get closer to Jesus.

Hill hopes that the ads will show people a side of Jesus that they’ve never seen before.

HILL: A large part of what He Gets Us is doing is really putting Jesus right out there, easy to access, easy to explore.

A small handful of anonymous donors back the He Gets Us campaign. They’re responsible for the 100 million dollar budget. He Gets Us got started when a Christian donor-advised fund called The Signatry partnered with a marketing company.

Most of the campaign’s wealthy donors have remained anonymous, except one.

GREEN: You’re going to see it at the Super Bowl, he gets us.

Dave Green is the Christian founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby. So far, he’s the only public donor to the He Gets Us campaign. Here’s what Green told Glenn Beck in a November interview.

GREEN: We’re wanting to say, ‘we’ being a lot of different people, that he gets us. He understands us. He understands all of us.

The ads have drawn criticism from more left-wing activists, who say that He Gets Us is backed by “staunchly conservative causes” and should not be trusted.

But the ads also have many conservatives worried. Some Christians are concerned that the ads downplay Christ’s divinity or holiness in order to simply be ‘seeker sensitive.’

According to the He Gets Us website, campaign leaders do believe that Jesus was fully man and fully God. But Brad Hill says that today’s audiences don’t have a common perception of Jesus’ character like past generations did, and so the message has to be tailored differently.

HILL: We seek first to help someone really develop that respect, and even interest or admiration for Jesus as a man…he went through all of the same experiences, trials and challenges that we do today, which makes him very relatable, and makes him winsome and attractive…

Todd Pruitt is the lead pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church. He argues that evangelism strategies don’t always need to adapt for newer generations.

PRUITT: ​​I saw this when I was a 20 something year old youth pastor in the early 90s, mid 90s, when the Church Growth Movement and seeker sensitivity was all the rage. And we were saying the same types of things then - well, this generation is unique. And I just…the older I've gotten, the more I've started to reject that idea, not that there aren't certain characteristics of generations that might be fairly new. But I think, for the most part, most generations have the same kind of set of problems and the same sorts of blinders.

Pruitt says that Jesus himself did ministry very differently.

PRUITT: If you look at the evangelism that Jesus did and if you look at the evangelism that the apostles did, it was all fairly - rather uniform in terms of the things they preached: they called sinners to repent, they warned them of the judgment to come. And they called them to look to Christ for forgiveness.

For Pruitt, the way to bridge gaps is through relationships - boots on the ground evangelism, and a clear message about what Jesus came to do.

PRUITT: I still believe that the message that we are sinners and that Jesus forgives and redeems is still a powerful message that needs to be heard upfront. I just don't know why we get the idea that that's something we kind of need to let people in later on down the road, after we get them to like Jesus first.

Despite some concerns, the campaign has amassed wide support from Christian audiences—and that support continues to grow. He Gets Us has big plans for the future, even beyond the Super Bowl.

HILL: I can tell you that the number of donors has grown rapidly. There's now 100 or more donors.

Brad Hill says the campaign will continue broadcasting ads across the country for the next two or three years.

HILL: So much of what's happening around He Gets Us is actually even beyond the ads, and it's happening in our churches, it's happening in ministries. And it's honestly just one conversation at a time where we hope that we can give great prompts and great ideas and great questions to ask.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Zoe Schimke.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 9th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: Commentator Cal Thomas on President Biden’s State of the Union address.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: We’ve heard it all before. In fact, a recording of last year’s State of the Union could have been replayed, saving President Biden a trip to Capitol Hill.

Numbers can be selectively used to hide reality and advance one’s political agenda. Both parties do this, but Democrats and their media allies do it better. It’s important to go beyond the claims of success. For example, at the time of Biden’s State of the Union last year, the president also claimed to have added millions of “new” jobs. There has been a large growth in government jobs, but a decline in private sector employment. It also depends on how one counts. Does a person coming back to the same job after the pandemic count as newly employed? Do people who work two or more jobs get counted more than once? What about part-time jobs?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of open positions in the private sector decreased to 9.501 million in November, down from 9.528 million in October. November was the sixth decline in the last eight months since hitting a record high last March. Meanwhile, government jobs at all levels grew.

President Biden can take credit for the numbers, but the public isn’t buying it. They see prices at the supermarket much higher than when Biden took office. Gas prices remain at least $1 a gallon higher than two and a half years ago and are rising again.

There was more baloney about taxing “the rich” in Biden’s speech when the real problem is not revenue. It’s spending. Biden’s laundry list of proposals would add trillions to the debt. Once again, the federal government is taking in record amounts of revenue. It’s their undisciplined spending that has produced a debt of $31 trillion and counting, exceeding our gross domestic product by more than 100 percent.

Biden had nothing to say about individual responsibility. He presented our government as the only power that can save us.

In the Republican reply, newly installed Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders spent 14 minutes deconstructing Biden’s speech with lines such as this:

“Being a mom to three young children taught me not to believe every story I hear. So forgive me for not believing much of anything I heard tonight from President Biden … Democrats have failed you. They know it. And you know it.”

Sounding Reaganesque, she said, “government exists not to rule the people, but to serve the people. Democrats want to rule us with more government control…”

Then she brought up the age issue, which is bound to be a factor in the 2024 campaign, and delivered this zinger: “At 40, I’m the youngest governor to head my state. At 80, he’s the oldest president in American history. I’m the first woman to lead my state. He’s the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.”

One more thing. If government was the solution to all our problems, why hasn’t it solved the problems Biden again mentioned – from poverty to crime? Why does nothing ever seem to get better, especially when Democrats are running the government?

The Republican majority in the House will – and should – stop much of this spending nonsense.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet.

And, Collin Garbarino reviews a football movie—of sorts—just in time for the Super Bowl, but it’s nowhere near the greatest of all time.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. (Psalm 16:7-8 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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