“G’day. Good to see ya. Pull up a chair. Grab a cold one if you’ve got it, because we need to have a serious yarn about what’s been going on down in Canberra this week.” If that greeting sounds familiar, you’re not alone. It opens many videos on a YouTube channel called Oceania Unfiltered, a page that claims to offer “sharp, independent analysis on the political, economic and cultural issues shaping Australia and New Zealand.” The host sits in a room with coloured lights, speaks in broad Australian slang, and spends most of his time attacking Anthony Albanese, praising Pauline…

The scorching Oklahoma sun beat down on the historic red-brick streets of Guthrie last week, casting long shadows that seemed to hold a deep, unsettling secret. Beneath the surface of this quaint, Norman Rockwell-like town—where the aroma of fresh coffee mingles with the scent of old timber and the rhythm of life is dictated by the courthouse bell—a coordinated sting operation had just ripped a hole in the fabric of normalcy. For months, undercover officers and federal agents had been embedded in the shadows, attending rigorous, multi-day human trafficking training sessions in sterile hotel conference rooms. They learned to spot…