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Facts Matter
Global Shakeup: 29 US Ambassadors Get Recalled; Europeans Hit With Travel Ban for Violating US Free Speech
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On Monday, December 22, you had the U.S. state Department announce the recall of 29 different U.S. ambassadors. These were the 29 U.S. ambassadors who led the U.S. consulates in their respective countries of responsibility. Now, the initial reports of this shakeup came in the form of, I guess you can call them grumblings from the ambassadors themselves. Here was Politico breaking the story with again, those ambassadors kind of speaking to the media undercover of anonymity. Quote, the president of the American Foreign Service Association. The diplomats unions said that the group had been getting anecdotal reports from ambassadors as far afield as East Asia and the Pacific, who were told via phone calls that they had to be gone by January 15 or January 16. The envoys were not given a reason. Around two dozen ambassadors are being told to leave their posts, the State Department official said, having been granted anonymity because the topic involves personnel issues. Now, since this initial reporting, the U.S. state Department has come out and officially confirmed that these ambassadors are in fact being let go and their tenures will in fact be ending in January. And as you probably guessed, all of the affected ambassadors were actually appointed to their posts under Joe Biden, quote, the move is the latest major shakeup of the diplomatic ranks under President Donald Trump. It is particularly unusual because it involves envoys who hail from the career foreign service. While it is normal for new presidents to replace political appointees serving as ambassadors, career diplomats are typically allowed to continue serving because it is understood that by virtue of being in the foreign service, they will carry out the wishes of whoever is in the White House, regardless of political party. But the Trump administration has had little trust in the career ranks at the State Department. Its officials have called the State Department a bastion of liberalism. And the administration has already pushed out thousands of department employees. And so essentially, there was very little confidence that either the ambassadors or the career diplomats working underneath them would actually enact the Trump agenda. And then in terms of which specific countries ambassadors are being affected, here they are on a map. We actually presented it to you by continent and and then further in alphabetical order. So over in Africa, we have 15 total recalls in Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Egypt, the Gabon Republic, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia and Uganda. Then over in the Asia Pacific region, we have the ambassadors from Fiji, Laos, the Marshall Islands, Nepal, Papua New guinea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam all getting recalled. In Europe, we have Armenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovakia. And then lastly here in the Americas, we have the ambassadors from Guatemala and Suriname getting recalled. All of those affected ambassadors to those countries, they will end their tenure in January and then be replaced by appointees of the Trump administration. Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we actually reached out to the State Department and they got back to us, basically, in essence, saying that the ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president. And then they added the following, quote, this is a standard process in any administration. An ambassador is a personal representative of the president, and it is the president's right to ensure that he has individuals in these countries who advance the America first agenda. And then likewise, in a separate statement that was released by the Secretary of State, Mr. Marco Rubio, he added the.
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Following, that one of the reasons why he was elected, very specific things, but one of the reasons why President Trump was elected is sort of an understanding among the American people that our foreign policy was in need of a complete recalibration, a recalibration because the world had dramatically changed. Many of the institutions, policies, assumptions that our foreign policy was operating under were built upon a world that no longer existed. And it required us to reexamine that.
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Now, at the moment, the replacements for these posts have yet to be announced. Meaning in the practical sense, if you happen to speak Sinhala, Kurundi or Lao or any of the other languages in the countries that now don't have an ambassador, perhaps you should consider applying. I will throw a link to the official Careers page on the U.S. state Department Foreign Service Officer's website. You can find that link down in the description box below. Right? That's the description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you take a quick moment to smash so this video can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. Now, while we're on the general topic of the State Department, there is something else worth mentioning. On Tuesday, December 23, which was literally right before Christmas Eve, Marco Rubio announced that the US Will be blocking the entry into our country of foreign nationals who have supported the efforts to censor Americans. In a statement, Marco Rubio, he said the following quote. For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship. Now, as he alluded to there, this move will largely be against those in the European Union who are working to censor American social media companies. And to that end, in a companion statement, companion to this statement that was released on the official State Department website, you can see it up on your screen. Marco Rubio laid out the argument for why this travel ban needs to be put into place. Here's what he wrote. Quote the State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize and suppress American viewpoints. They oppose these radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdown by foreign states and in each case targeting American speakers and American companies. As such, I have determined that their entry presence or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. Now, among the individuals banned entry into the US are the following five high profile individuals. You have Terry Breton, the former European Commissioner. You have Imran Ahmed, CEO of the center for Countering Digital Hate. You have Claire Melford, who helps to run an organization called the Global Disinformation Index, as well as Anna Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballen who co lead a German organization called Hate Ape. And then Interestingly besides the EU, the former EU commissioner, those four other people, they run NGOs that monitor online disinformation. And by the way, it is perhaps worth noting that to the European Union, going after American social media companies is actually kind of a big business. According to this analysis right here that you can see up on your screen, the amount of money that the EU collects in the form of fines levied against US Based tech companies. That amount actually exceed the amount of money that they take in through taxes on European based tech companies, which is pretty wild. Also worth noting that this decision came very shortly after after Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, was hit with a large fine, which was actually the first of its kind and likely there are going to be many more following it. But right after this fine against X, the ban was put into place. Quote the US Government action came in part as a response to the European Union's Digital Services act, which requires large tech platforms to account for their content moderation decisions, including the steps they take to remove content deemed to be hateful or deceptive. Earlier this month, the European Commission issued its first fine for DDSA violations, a $141 million fine against social media platform X. In their fine decision, the Commission said that X's Blue Check account verification methodology was deceptive because users can pay for the check mark without the platform actually verifying the identity of the user. The European Commission also faulted X for not providing enough information about its advertisements on its platform and for hindering access to data about the platform. And just as sort of an interesting aside, the reason that the former European Commissioner, Mr. Terry Breton. The reason he was put on this visa ban list by the State Department was because the US Government claimed that he was basically the mastermind of the European Union's Digital Services Act. Which is true, he might have championed it. But it's also worth noting that something like 90% of the European Parliament voted in favor for it. And so it's not like a one man show. It's not like one man did it. They really just appear to have a much different idea of what free speech actually means over in the EU compared to here in the U.S. regardless, the other thing worth noting is that the list of people banned entry to the US Might actually grow in the very near future. Which is a point that Marco Rubia made in this published State Department memo. Quote, president Trump has been clear that his America first foreign policy rejects violations of American sovereignty. Extraterritorial overreach by foreign censors targeting American speech is no exception. The State Department stands ready and willing to expand today's list if other foreign actors do not reverse course. Which, by the way, this whole thing is a huge course reversal from the prior administration. I mean, on this program last year we published an episode detailing how the Biden administration was actually working very closely alongside their European and United nations counterparts to develop global disinformation monitoring tools. And so this latest move from the State Department, it's really kind of a complete 180 from the perspective of the Europeans going from the prior administration working alongside and championing the these exact disinformation monitoring tools to this administration punishing those who are working on those tools. I guess it really just goes to show the real world effects that a single election can have. And so there you have it. If you'd like to go into the details of anything we discussed in today's episode, I will throw those links down into the description box below, which is again that description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I'm sure you have already smashed earlier. But if you haven't, now is another opportunity. Please smash that like button so this video can reach ever more people. It'll get picked up by the Eason algorithm and also do smash that subscribe button, which also helps this video get picked up by the algorithm, but also helps ensure that when we publish the next episode, you'll be informed of it. Or at the very least, you'll be more likely to be informed of it on your timeline when we publish it. Thank you very much for that. And then until next time, I'm your host, Roman, from the Epic Times. If I don't see you before the New Year, Happy New Year. And then, until next time, stay informed and stay free.