Badlands Brief
Cancel Culture Comes for Holy Week in Jerusalem
The Badlands Brief is your daily drop of Badlands’ takes on the narratives dominating the info war. Read on, and join the conversation in the comments section.
Holy Week Cancelled in Jerusalem
Israeli police blocked senior Catholic leaders from entering Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre on March 29, 2026, preventing them from celebrating a private Palm Sunday Mass, according to church officials and media reports. The leaders included Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Catholic authorities said the incident marked the first time in centuries that top church leaders were unable to conduct Palm Sunday services at the site, one of Christianity’s holiest locations. The planned service was limited to a small number of clergy and was not open to the public. (Associated Press, March 29, 2026)
Israeli authorities said the decision was based on security concerns tied to the ongoing conflict involving Iran, citing missile threats, limited shelter availability and restricted emergency access in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem criticized the move, calling it “a manifestly unreasonable and grossly disproportionate measure” and saying it impeded freedom of worship.
The incident drew international criticism from U.S. and European officials over religious freedom concerns. Following the backlash, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed authorities to allow access to the church.
Ashe in America: Christians all over the world expressed unified outraged over the weekend as Israeli police prevented Catholic leaders from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to conduct a private Mass.
“Who do you think you are” vibes for real.
As we discussed in recent Briefs, the closing of this church didn’t really happen prior to Covid and 2020 — the global transformational change event that many have theorized was a luciferian ritual/sacrifice/transformation. It’s compelling. Consider:
2020. COVID-19 pandemic: Church closed to the public during Holy Week for the first time in modern history under health restrictions.
2021. COVID partial reopening: Limited access, reduced pilgrimages, controlled attendance for Palm Sunday and Holy Week services.
2022. Security restrictions / crowd controls: Israeli police imposed entry limits in the Old City; Palm Sunday access constrained though church remained open.
2023. Escalating tensions / police restrictions: Barriers and controlled entry into the Old City reduced Palm Sunday attendance and access to the church.
2024. Ongoing war-related security posture: Significantly reduced pilgrimages; access limited due to broader regional conflict, though not formally “closed.”
From what I can find, at no point were the Church leaders denied access or prevented from holding Mass — ever, let alone during Christianity’s most Holy Week.
That’s new. That’s where we are now.
And it’s so egregious, even Mike Huckabee had to rebuke it.
“For the Patriarch to be barred from entry to the Church on Palm Sunday for a private ceremony is difficult to understand or justify. Israel has indicated it will work with the Patriarch to accommodate a safe means of carrying out Holy Week activities.”
His whole statement is here, and it’s funny because it sounds like he is offering COVID-like restrictions as a plea for Israel to back down.
“Home Front Command Guidelines restrict any gatherings to 50 people or less. The 4 representatives of the Catholic Church were well below that restriction.”
In Italy, the leaders were much bolder, amplifying the sentiments of Christians everywhere:
“The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is a sacred site of Christianity and, as such, must be preserved and protected for the celebration of sacred rites,” Italian President Giorgia Meloni said. “Preventing the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Custos of the Holy Land from entering, especially on a solemnity central to the faith such as Palm Sunday, constitutes an offence not only against believers but against every community that recognises religious freedom.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “said holy sites belonging to Christian, Jewish and Muslim worshippers and been ‘repeatedly targeted’ by Iranian missile strikes in recent days. ‘In one strike, missile fragments crashed meters from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,’ he said in a statement shared on X, adding that Sunday’s decision involved ‘no malicious intent whatsoever. ‘As a result, Israel has temporarily asked worshippers from all faiths not to worship at the holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City to protect them.”
The list above feels like a guided progression, and we’re living its seventh year…
No big deal — Israel just cancelled Holy Week for Christians, “for your safety.”
It’s a good time to watch episode 3 of season 3 of The Chosen. That’s the episode that Ghost and I are reviewing on this week’s episode of The Choice (Thursday at 11aET), and Ghost and I were discussing on Sunday how there is no more perfect episode for this Holiest of Weeks.
Hosanna!
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: A deeply concerning pattern has emerged in Jerusalem. First, the Israeli government imposed a property tax on Church properties for the first time in its history—going back centuries; When the Church refused to pay, the government froze their bank accounts. Then the government began restricting access to the Holy Sepulchre Church; Now they are blocking the Cardinal and clergy from entering the site on Palm Sunday.
Not even the Muslims, who controlled Jerusalem for centuries, ever imposed a property tax or blocked the clergy from entering the Church. Probably because they knew if they did, it would start a Holy War.
It could not be more obvious that the Israeli government despises Christians and rebukes Jesus. What disgusts me the most is that Christian Zionists will trip all over themselves to make excuses for why this is perfectly acceptable. Their priorities are so deeply out of whack, they will likely end up betraying Christ and siding with the secular government of Israel before this is all said and done. The levels of brainwashing and conditioning are on par—or perhaps worse—with the most radicalized leftists. What a disgrace.
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Iran Crisis Shifts Power Toward Russia & China, as Trump Accelerates Sifting at Home
Russian official Dmitry Medvedev warned that a potential U.S. ground war in Iran could mirror the Vietnam War and have “fatal consequences” for the broader region, according to remarks reported in recent coverage. His comments followed more cautious statements from President Vladimir Putin, who described the conflict as unpredictable.
Meanwhile, Iran has introduced measures in the Strait of Hormuz requiring vessels to submit cargo and crew details and, in some cases, pay fees to transit the waterway, according to shipping analysts and international reporting. At least two ships have paid for passage, with transactions reportedly conducted in Chinese yuan.
Shipping traffic through the strait has fallen by roughly 90% since the conflict began, contributing to rising oil prices and supply disruptions, particularly in Asia.
In Washington, some Republican lawmakers have raised concerns about the trajectory of the conflict. Rep. Nancy Mace and others have warned against deploying U.S. ground troops in Iran and said prolonged uncertainty could weaken support among both Congress and the public.
Burning Bright: Donald Trump’s Iranian Gambit is emboldening the New Axis … who are the real Allies.
Or rather, who should have been for some time.
And the Energy War isn’t about Iran, but about what it represents.
What’s more, I believe it’s a war we’ve already won, at least, where it matters most.
This is no idle assertion. It is the logical extension of everything I have been mapping since the first unmistakable signals of the Iranian Knot emerged last year, most recently elucidated through the Path of the Torpedo and Trump’s Test, the full inversion of the Kobayashi Maru scenario and the broader architecture of the Multipolar War that stands as the true war at the heart of the intersecting fake ones.
The visible theater—the missiles, the chokepoints, the headlines screaming escalation—is the shield. Beneath and above it, the decisive war is playing out in energy markets, supply chains and the Collective Mind itself.
It is the basis for the Sovereign Disentanglement operation now being enacted in real time by Donald Trump and the Sovereign Alliance, including Russia, China, and yes, even elements within Iran, and decidedly against the Globalist Hegemon that has been exposed throughout this proxy conflict—as well as one that has been largely forgotten over the intervening weeks, and one that has yet to begin in earnest—as powerless in more ways than one.
But to understand the full scope of what is unfolding, we must first invert the lens through which the legacy media, the neoconservative remnants and even segments of the so-called alternative sphere insist we view the board.
The Central Narrative wants us to see chaos, vulnerability and the slow slide back into the postwar script of managed conflict and engineered scarcity, when what we are actually witnessing is the Reverse Hegelian Dialectic in its most refined form: problem (visible energy shocks rippling out of the Strait,) reaction (American economic pressure translated into an overwhelming public mandate for independence and acceleration,) synthesis (a tri-polar energy renaissance that renders the old scarcity cult obsolete while simultaneously disentangling the United States—and by extension the Sovereign Alliance—from the very entanglements the Hegemon spent decades perfecting.)
The Iranian Knot, then, is not the snare set for Trump. Rather, it is the one he has skillfully laid for them.
THAT is the true nature of the Kobayashi Maru Trump is not navigating, but forcing the Globalist Hegemon into while he—and most importantly, while WE—watch with rapt interest and growing understanding.
Through the deliberate foregrounding of escalation headlines while subtly shifting supply lines, realigning partnerships and laying bare Europe’s precarious reliance on foreign energy, he has turned the Globalists’ most prized tool—the manipulation of critical energy corridors—against them, rendering it the very mechanism of their exposure.
This represents Narrative Disarmament cloaked once more in the guise of heightened tensions.
For a lot more on this particular brand of disentanglement, my latest long-form, if you folks fancy a read.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: What if President Trump is actually waging war on Israel, and using Iran as a proxy?
Here we see a live news broadcast interrupted by Iranian missiles raining down on Tel Aviv. As the reporter explains, the warning sirens didn’t start going off until the missiles were visible in the air and seconds away from impact. (Because Iran has destroyed the radar towers that provide advanced warning.)
We keep hearing about all of this damage that is being dealt to Iran, though we have yet to hear any Iranian public figure cry out for reprieve. However, in Israel we have seen a number of public figures speak out in recent days about the morale of the country and how there is a growing sentiment that they are losing the war.
It’s interesting that in all of his public commentary on the war, President Trump never mentions the hardships that Israel is facing. His fixation is solely on Iran, and sometimes I can’t help but wonder if he is actually referring to Israel in some of these posts.
PS - When asked about rumors regarding a possible peace deal happening this week, Trump sounded optimistic in affirming the possibility. It is awfully considerate of him to try and wrap this thing up before GART Nashville.
Swalwell & Fang Fang & Kash
FBI Director Kash Patel is pressing to release a decade-old investigative file involving Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, according to people familiar with the matter, despite no public evidence of wrongdoing tied to the lawmaker.
Patel has directed agents in the FBI’s San Francisco field office to accelerate the redaction of documents related to the case in preparation for possible public disclosure, the people said. The file concerns Swalwell’s past contacts with a woman the FBI investigated years ago as a suspected Chinese intelligence operative.
Current and former officials told the publication that the push has raised concerns the bureau about whether releasing such material would depart from standard FBI practices and risk politicizing investigative records. The FBI previously examined the matter and did not bring charges against Swalwell.
Ashe in America: I like this story. I especially like Eric Swalwell’s statement:
“Most troubling about this is that we are now literally at war. We also face threats against the homeland… Kash Patel should be spending every moment trying to keep us safe, not scoring political points. A lot of people have bent the knee to this administration. But I will not, and neither will the people of California.”
Eric Swalwell was having an affair with a foreign spy and wasn’t removed from the House Intelligence Committee until the two year investigation (which found no evidence of wrongdoing) completed.
He was sleeping with her, but totally innocent on the espionage front — that’s the official story we are meant to believe.
But that story was, like so much other nonsense, delivered to us from the regime via the Biden/Garland DOJ.
Worth another look.
A lot of loose ends are being tied — and a bunch of them deal with matters of national security that were previously shelved.
Imagine being Swalwell, ostensibly believing your window of exposure on your espionage had closed… that you got away with it all…
And along comes Kash.
I like that story. Let’s see what happens.
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Joe Kent Formerly Discloses That The CIA Worked Directly with Al Qaeda & ISIS on Behalf of Israel
A former U.S. counterterrorism official said the United States “worked directly with Al-Qaeda” and Islamic State militants during the Syrian conflict, according to an interview on Friday.
Joe Kent made the remarks in an interview with MintPress News, in which he described U.S. efforts to support opposition forces in Syria, including groups he said were linked to Al-Qaeda and later ISIS.
Kent characterized U.S. involvement in Syria as part of a broader pattern of military actions he said were conducted on behalf of Israel, referencing both the Iraq War and the Syrian conflict. He also said ISIS “got out of control,” prompting subsequent U.S. military involvement in Syria under the stated aim of combating terrorism.
The report identifies Kent as a former head of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center who resigned over disagreements related to U.S. policy toward Iran.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: While everybody is getting pissy over who is a white hat and who is a black hat, Joe Kent is out here providing the disclosure that we have long awaited.
While the affirmation that Al Qaeda and ISIS were working directly with the CIA on behalf of Israel are hardly surprising, given all the research and analysis that has been generated over the years, what makes this so significant is that it is coming from one of the [former] top intelligence officials in the Trump administration—the head of counterterrorism under the DNI.
What further complicates the situation is that Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has made public statements calling for the assassination of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa. (formerly known as Mohammed Abu al-Jolani)
This is awkward, considering Joe Kent’s testimony, being that Jolani was once a leader in both Al Qaeda and ISIS. I would suspect that is why the Netanyahu government was initially so thrilled when he took power in December 2024.
So what happened?
My guess is that the Israelis went into that operation (the “overthrow” of Bashar al-Assad) believing that Jolani was working for them, only to find out that he is actually now working for President Trump, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Turkish President Erdogan.
I believe that the Israelis thought that Jolani was going to give them large portions of southern Syria to annex and make part of Israel, but that didn’t come to fruition. So now they want to kill him and take the land anyway. Reports are now surfacing that the IDF is beginning to raise the Israeli flag over towns in southern Syria.
Greater Israel isn’t going to make itself, amirite?
Trump Speaks at Saudi PIF Investment Forum in Miami
Former President Donald Trump delivered remarks at the Future Investment Initiative Priority Summit in Miami in February 2026, addressing an audience of global investors, policymakers and business leaders, according to event footage.
The summit is affiliated with Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative, an international forum focused on global economic trends and cross-border investment. Organizers brought together participants from multiple countries to discuss capital flows and economic opportunities.
In his speech, Trump discussed economic policy and emphasized the United States as a destination for international investment.
The event also drew political attention in Florida, with reporting noting scrutiny of connections between U.S. political figures and foreign-backed investment initiatives.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: President Trump went to Miami to deliver a keynote address at an economic investment forum hosted by the Saudi Public Investment Fund—the second year in a row that Trump has attended and spoken.
The speech was largely similar to the one he delivered in Riyadh last year, touting the successes of the Gulf Arab States and their desire to diversify their economies by investing in technology, infrastructure, tourism, and the United States economy.
Trump was in top form, delivering memorable quotes like when he told the audience that they could ask him about “anything,” including sex.
Top kek.
The other clip from the event that has gone viral was this moment, when he appears to throw shade at Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, saying, “…he didn’t think he would be kissing my ass…” and saying that MBS “better be nice to me.”
The internet has run wild with it, accusing Trump of insulting MBS. But the reality is that you only speak like this about someone with whom you have a very close friendship. This is how we speak to one another here at Badlands.
You’ll never convince me that after MBS pledged to invest trillions of dollars into the US economy, that President Trump would turn around and earnestly humiliate him at an investment forum that MBS was hosting. In fact, I bet all the other world leaders now wish that President Trump would roast them as a sign of endearment.
President Trump loves MBS and his other Arab partners. Full stop.
BONUS ITEM
Badlands Blitz
On the latest episode of the Badlands Blitz, Ashe and I discuss the Phantom Gay Ayatollah, who is one of the most subversive, dangerous and formiddable fake adversaries we have yet faced in the War of Stories.
We also talk about how serious it all is.
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Deep breath...exhale!
I am deeply in love with God and spend time daily in His word and trusting in His indwelling Spirit to lead and guide me. I celebrate Jesus' life, death, justification, resurrection, ascension, and patient waiting; and the ransom He paid and the redemption He enables for us all (if we accept it).
Two very distinct declarations guide my understanding of New Covenant fellowship and worship:
One comes after the disciples' marveling at the glory of the temple (a statement that they were sure Jesus would affirm). (BTW: This was the rebuilt temple that the religious leaders bragged had taken them 46 years to complete, so a roughly 20 BC start.) Jesus instead speaks of its destruction! (Luke 21:5-6) God does not, will no longer, dwell in buildings made with hands - that was Old Covenant!
The other comes from Paul, in his letter that most clearly defines what the New Covenant forms of gathering should look like. He centers his statement by reminding them that they themselves are the temple/sanctuary/tent of God. (1Cor.3&6) And that their "in common" gatherings should facilitate each one bringing "a psalm, a teaching, a revelation, a language, an interpretation...let all be done for building each other up...for God is not of confusion but of peace." (1Cor.12-14)
Having a week that focuses on all that God has done for us CAN (but is not assured to) draw us closer to Him...or it can be, as Paul warns, like the one who looks in the mirror and then, walking away, immediately forgets what he as seen.
Deep breath...exhale...post!
Seriously his last name is Pizzaballa? The Italian cardinal. You can’t make it up, folks