Badlands News Brief

Chaos in the Middle East Overshadows That at Home

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The News Cycle is almost impossible to track these days. At least, to do so fully.

That’s where we come in.

In the Badlands News Brief, the Badlands Media team hand picks news items of interest from the previous days to give you an overview of the biggest goings-on relevant to the Truth Community.

Items feature original commentary from members of our growing team of citizen journalists, whose stated opinions are their own. Feel free to follow the corresponding link to see their other work.

Now, onto the news from the Weekend that Was …

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Netanyahu Tells Gaza Residents To Clear Out, Says IDF "Will Use All Its Strength" To "Destroy" Hamas

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned residents of Gaza to "leave now, because we will operate forcefully everywhere."

Former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) international spokesperson Jonathan Conricus has summed up what this day means for Israel, calling in the country's "Pearl Harbor" moment.

"The entire system failed. It's not just one component. It's the entire defense architecture that evidently failed to provide the necessary defense for Israeli civilians," he told CNN of the surprise invasion from Gaza militants. "This is a Pearl Harbor type of moment for Israel, where there was reality up until today, and then there will be reality after today."

Town-by-town and farm-by-farm fighting is still underway given Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) reportedly control swathes of southern territory and even military outposts in Israel.

Netanyahu and his cabinet now must be contemplating what will surely be a high-risk rescue operation and potential ground incursion. — ZeroHedge

Our Take: “The entire establishment has aligned on behalf of Israel following the unprecedented attacks by Hamas early Saturday morning, with GOP fake primary candidate Nikki Haley calling this an ‘attack on America.’ As of Sunday, Iran-sponsored Hezbollah entered the fray, and reports on social media show military aged males across the region celebrating and promising to join the fight as well. This is gearing up to be a long conflict in the region, and the defense contractors couldn’t be more thrilled.

Democrats came out swinging against allegations that the $6B that Biden just released to Iran isn’t allowed to be used for anything other than humanitarian purposes, as if (1) money isn’t fungible, and (2) the US government has any reliable mechanism to monitor or influence such decisions.

Of note, Politico was getting ahead of this narrative three weeks ago, and reportedly Iran claimed that they will use their unfrozen funds whatever way they want. And then on Saturday, the Supreme Leader of Iran issued a statement on X that said, ‘God willing, the cancer of the usurper Zionist regime will be eradicated at the hands of the Palestinian people and the Resistance forces throughout the region.’ X ruled that the post violated the platform terms, but allowed it to remain up.

I support the Jewish people unequivocally, and I believe they have a right to exist in the land where Solomon’s temple once stood. But the idea that the Israeli government cannot be criticized for what, unbelievably and inexplicably, amounts to the worst national security failure in modern history is not a position I will ever take. Nonetheless, I’ve been called an antisemite multiple times over the weekend for just that. I’ve also been called a Zionist for not supporting the idea that the Jews should be wiped off the face of the earth. Fun times.

The fact that these attacks come amidst the entire US establishment beating the drums of war, billions in new funding to Israel — following the $6B release to Iran and Biden’s Sep 20 promise to Palestine of full US government support forever — as well as zero tolerance for journalistic inquiry, solidifies my position.

I’m not picking a side of who should die — and that’s what they want all of us to do.

The emotional pleas surrounding this conflict are turned up to 11. As I said, I believe the Jewish people have a right to live in the land God promised them. That doesn’t mean I’m going to cheer on the coming genocide of those that don’t agree with my position. And the language from the war mongers promises exactly that. Genocide. What would Jesus do?” —

Ashe in America

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Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks

Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.

Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said.

U.S. officials say they haven’t seen evidence of Tehran’s involvement. In an interview with CNN that aired Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship.” 

“We don’t have any information at this time to corroborate this account,” said a U.S. official of the meetings. — The Wall Street Journal

Our Take: “Adding to Ashe’s comments in a previous article on the Hamas attacks that took place in Israel over the weekend—and the oh-so-surprising response by neocons like Nikki Haley in her war mongering opportunism—we should not forget the long history of war mongering involving a spiritual battle between branches of the Abrahamic tree.

At some point in history, the brothers and sisters of Abraham, Jews, Christians and Muslims started warring with each other over many things, one of which is the Holy Land. The idea of taking Israel as a kind of price of God’s Chosen people is a very old idea, one that landed in the hands of some people you’d never would have thought would want to advance it.

Here’s some historical context for the situation in Israel:

Neoplatonism is an older yet highly influential spiritually-based political theology (of sorts, a revival of Plato’s philosophy that emerged in the 3rd Century CE.)

In simple terms, it’s the idea that there’s a divinely perfect immutable realm, beyond the orbit of the moon, a realm of perfect forms and ideas, called the supralunary realm. A divinely perfect realm was where aristocrats and monarchs claim to derive their power and authority to rule on earth. Within the courts of many monarchs was a keen interest in philosophy, alchemy, and the spiritual purpose and course of life on earth. Specifically, it was believed that mankind could be restored to a divine state if one of the things done was taking back the holy land for God’s people, which was a kind of religio-political alchemy.

Popular amongst occultists, religious adepts, and aristocrats of the time, was the widely held belief that man had fallen into the Sublunary world, as a result of Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. The post-Adamic world of sin, vice, and suffering would only end when man chose to redeem himself by carrying out prophecies related to Israel, retaking the holy land, and the messiah’s ascendancy to the throne over all Mankind. The Messiah could remove sin, redeem the world, and make new covenants with man, while at the same time, the Messiah would take up his chosen people, who would be raised as rulers over the uncivilized and unclean masses. The kings and queens of the world and their intelligence agency helpers really liked this idea because it was effectively an endorsement of the ‘ends and means’ MO employed by monarchs the world over. As long as you did what ‘God’ wanted, all manner of horrors were justified—even necessary.

The Neoplatonic worldview fit nicely with the aristocratic belief that kings and queens, and their assigns, were divinely appointed to rule the uncivilized masses. It also fit nicely with the conquest ambitions of these same monarchs. The quest for Jerusalem was woven into war propaganda reaching all the way back into the Crusades. For the people, it means one thing. For the elites, at least those who subscribe to this worldview, it was their pathway to apotheosis—man becoming God.

The crusades, which were several centuries worth of Holy Land conflicts and campaigns designed to take back the land from Muslims, was likely secretly influenced by the neoplatonic worldview.

Centuries later, Sabbatai Zevi, sometime before 1666, when he was declared the Jewish Messiah by his self-appointed PR-man, Nathan of Gaza, believed it was necessary to restore Israel to the jews, his people, as part of his redemption and reform efforts.

Shabbatanism, as it would later be known, was one of the most successful, popular, and destructive Jewish reform movements in history. Upon entering the holy land in the late 17th Century, Zevi and his followers were almost immediately arrested by the Muslim Sulton at the time, who demanded Zevi convert to Islam or prove he is the Messiah by allowing the Sulton to rain arrows upon him—because if he was the Messiah he could defend himself or raise himself from the dead. Zevi chose to convert to Islam, which sent shockwaves through his movement.

Zevi’s conversion eventually gave rise to crypto-sabbateans—followers of Zevi’s movement who engaged in the Kabbalistic work they were tasked with in secret, while clothing themselves as Jews, Muslims, Christians or Atheists. This work, Sabbateans believe, would help them redeem the 12 sephiroth of creation, but only by engaging in acts of sin and evil.

Sabbateanism would become known for its debauchery, involving wife swapping, sex orgies, and increasingly depraved acts. Jacob Frank, 100 years later, took it to the next level, drawing from mystical traditions in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to name a few. Frank pushed a form of Antinomianism, which argued that redemption could be achieved through sinning and then repenting.

‘Since we cannot be saints, let us be sinners,’—a famous quote attributed to Frank.

Jacob Frank palled around with some of the more influential players in Europe at the time, rubbing elbows with men who would found the Bavarian Illuminati and other geopolitical movements. These movements also, strangely enough, had the ambition to restore the Holy Land to God’s people—because, you know, the Illuminati cared so deeply about helping religiously oppressed people.

There’s good reason to believe the same crypto-fication of darker sects of religious view continued into the present, within the US and beyond.

The Family is a 2019 Netflix Documentary Series exposing the existence of a neocon Christian movement that has been active within American politics, at the highest levels, for over 80 years. It is my opinion, having studied occult groups and the dark ideological views of the so-called Cabal that a faction of Crypto-Sabbateans or Frankists—or Satanists—for lack of a better term, was embedded within the United States over 200 years ago, and has become increasingly active since the end of the second world war.

Later, Zionism, a secular political movement with religious foundations, would finally do what could not be done centuries earlier. But the zeal for the Holy War didn’t end there. Factions within the Christian world continue to fan the flames of Crusade and conquest for Israel right on into modern times. The motivations on the surface have changed quite a bit. The rhetoric got some new branding.

There’s seemingly a lot more going on with Israel than just war hawks like Nikki Haley trying to gobble up some of the government graft. Just how deep the rabbit hole goes remains to be seen. It seems as though the idea of the holy land and God’s chosen people has been used for quite some time to realize not so benevolent ends.” —

Justin Deschamps

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Another Take: “So, what’s being Exposed to the Collective Mind right now?

Let’s go Bicameral, and take an Actual-Narrative view of Israel:

Actual: Hamas, a Deep State terror cell has gone dramatically kinetic in their most direct assault ever, on the heels of months of fomented color revolution tactics in Israel directly endorsed by the World Economic Forum.

This suggests that clandestine Deep State networks have been forced out in the open by the current lay of the game board. Ammunition is being spent rapidly.

Narrative: The Middle East is devolving into a state of large scale conflict unseen in years, with the potential for that conflict to escalate to one between major nations in Israel and Iran, all against the backdrop of the Biden Admin’s recent (and past, during Obama,) attempts to fund the Iranian regime.

More importantly, this escalation is being contrasted with Donald Trump’s unprecedented Abraham Accords accomplishments in the region.

We’re in a Mind War. And we’re winning it.” —

Burning Bright

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FBI Denies Targeting Trump Supporters Ahead of 2024 Election

The FBI on Thursday denied a report that it is targeting Trump supporters ahead of the 2024 presidential elections.

There was a report from Newsweek Wednesday saying the FBI created a category to evaluate threats known as anti-government [and] anti-authority violent extremism, saying that it encompasses individuals who it deems a threat but don't fall under anarchist, militia, or sovereign citizen groups. It cited more than a dozen current and former anonymous government officials saying that the program often investigates supporters of former President Donald Trump.

But the FBI said in a statement to news outlets this week that the report is false. The Epoch Times has contacted the bureau for comment Friday.

"Any allegation that the FBI targets individuals solely for their political beliefs is categorically false," an FBI spokesperson said. "The FBI investigates those who commit acts of violence or threaten violence, and we do not take action based on political belief or any First Amendment protected activity."

The spokesperson added that the "threat posed by domestic violent extremists is persistent, evolving, and deadly," adding, "The FBI's goal is to detect and stop terrorist attacks, and our focus is on potential criminal violations, violence, and threats of violence."

"Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism [AGAAVE] is one category of domestic terrorism, as well as one of the FBI's top threat priorities," the statement continued. "This threat includes anarchist violent extremists, militia violent extremists, sovereign citizen violent extremists, and other violent extremists—some of whom are motivated by a desire to harm those with a real or perceived association with a political party or faction." — The Epoch Times

Our Take: “Words matter.

Notice how they say, ‘solely based on their political beliefs.’

This is an admission that political ideology is a contributing fact in the FBI’s targeting formula. In fact, the denial doesn’t even deny that it might be the primary or lead factor in the decision. The addition of the word ‘solely’ simply means that it isn’t the only factor.

Rather than calming tensions and ensuring the public that the government isn’t weaponized against Trump supporters, the FBI statement practically confirms it. It’s just not the only factor.

Other factors include, ‘anarchist violent extremists, militia violent extremists, sovereign citizen violent extremists, and other violent extremists—some of whom are motivated by a desire to harm those with a real or perceived association with a political party or faction.’

Motive seems like something that should be determined by a court, but setting that aside, the addition of ‘violent’ is presented without specificity, and this administration views words as violence. Of note, the majority of J6 defendants — even many who were detained without charges — have no history of violence.

Minority Report is here, and it’s woker than I remember.” —

Ashe in America

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BONUS ITEMS

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Appeals Court Rules For Trump Amid NY Fraud Trial

After a hearing on Friday, an appeals court granted a stay, or pause, on a judge's order that former President Donald Trump's businesses be dissolved.

This was only a partial victory for President Trump, as the appeals court said the trial that began this week could continue.

The prosecutors had opposed the request for a delay, accusing the defense attorneys of attempting "to sow chaos" and disruption.

The Trump Organization issued a statement after the pause, calling the judge's order to cancel the Trumps' business certificates "overzealous."

"Judge Engoron’s order erroneously sought to adjudicate the rights of non-party business entities that employ nearly 1,000 hard-working New Yorkers, have never been accused of any wrongdoing and, were never given their day in court – in clear violation of their fundamental Constitutional rights and Due Process.  We will continue to vigorously defend our company and our incredible employees from this politically-motivated persecution," the statement reads. — The Epoch Times

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Bill Maher: "Democrats Look Like Sanctuary City Hypocrites" 

"Real Time" host Bill Maher blasted President Biden and ultra-radical progressives for their massive policy U-turn on the southern border this week. He said border state Republicans who bused migrants to sanctuary metro areas (mainly in the Northeast) "called the Democrats' bluff about sanctuary cities," and the Democrats "look like sanctuary city hypocrites." 

"Here's how serious the situation is: You know, they've been busing the migrants to the cities now. They kind of called the Democrats' bluff about sanctuary cities, and they said oh, you love them so much? Here you go. And the cities don't like it so much. NYC Mayor Eric Adams said this is going to destroy our city ... Eric Adams … went to Mexico today. He's going to Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia, I think door-to-door, no, really, just to tell people personally, we don't have room, I'm not kidding, don't come. That's pretty amazing. No, he's telling these people, we don't have room. This is New York City. Don't you know our catchphrase? We're the Little Apple. And our theme song, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, so go anywhere, don't come here," Maher said in his opening opening monologue on Friday evening. — ZeroHedge

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Juncker: Ukraine is totally corrupt

Former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has slammed the possibility of Ukraine joining the EU, lambasting the country as massively “corrupt.”

“Anyone who has had anything to do with Ukraine knows that this is a country that is corrupt at all levels of society. Despite its efforts, it is not ready for accession; it needs massive internal reform processes,” Juncker said during an interview with German outlet Augsburger Allgemeine published Thursday.

“Making false promises” to Ukrainians regarding EU accession “would be neither good for the EU nor for Ukraine,” added Juncker, who was boss at the Berlaymont in Brussels from 2014 to 2019.

“You shouldn’t make false promises to the people in Ukraine who are up to their necks in suffering,” Juncker said. “I am very angry about some voices in Europe who are telling Ukrainians that they can become members immediately.” Kyiv has been fending off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion which began in February 2022. — Politico

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We hope you enjoyed this brief look back at the major news items you might have missed in this ever-escalating and ever-accelerating news cycle as the Information War continues to rage on around us.

The Badlands Media team will continue to combine our cognitive powers in order to slow things down and find the signal amidst the noise as this series expands.

As always, if you have any thoughts on these news items or the MANY others swirling in the digital ether, drop into the comments below to share them with your fellow Badlanders.