Badlands News Brief
RON! Throws in the Towel as Globalists Panic
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 pick news items of interest from the previous days to give you an overview of the biggest goings-on relevant to the Truth Community.
Some items feature original (and subjective) commentary. Feel free to follow the corresponding link to see our writers’ corresponding Substack accounts and check out their other work.
Now, onto the news from the Weekend that Was …
Ron DeSantis ends 2024 campaign, endorses Trump over Haley
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ended his fading presidential campaign on Sunday and endorsed Donald Trump just two days before the pivotal New Hampshire primary, leaving former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley as Trump's last long-shot challenger for the Republican nomination.
DeSantis' decision, less than a week after his deflating loss to Trump in Iowa despite an enormous investment there, caps a stunning fall from grace after DeSantis had been widely seen as Republicans' most promising alternative to Trump ahead of the general election in November.
His departure sets up the one-on-one battle that Haley has coveted against Trump, the former president who has maintained an iron grip on the Republican electorate despite facing four criminal prosecutions. Trump has pleaded not guilty in all the cases.
But DeSantis' supporters appear more likely to switch allegiance to Trump than to the more moderate Haley. In New Hampshire, about two-thirds of DeSantis backers cite Trump as their second choice, said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
In a video posted on X, DeSantis endorsed Trump while delivering a parting shot at Haley.
"He has my endorsement because we can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear: a re-packaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents," DeSantis said. — Reuters
Our Take: “It's likely we'll never know what goes on behind the scenes in the Strange War, but it was always inevitable that both RON! and Vivek would endorse Trump.
Either they helped divert establishment funding and exposed uniparty sleepers on purpose, or by mistake ... either way, Trump has been the signal in the noise, and remains so.
Going to be a fun week to watch the DeSimps, Vivekians and Con Inc. Doom Brigade crawl ALL the way back into their shells to reapply the MAGA war paint they so easily wash away when the story turns against a movement that hasn't slowed in the least, and grows by the day.
These people showed you who they are, emphatically. Believe them.” —
"You Are The Problem" - Conservative Speaker Slams Davos Globalists To Their Faces
Kevin Roberts, President of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, spoke to globalists at the World Economic Forum confab Thursday and told them directly that “You are part of the problem, you are not the solution.”
During a discussion titled “What to Expect from a Possible Republican Administration,” Roberts let rip on the elitists.
“I will be candid,” Roberts began, adding “the agenda that every single person member of the [future Republican] administration needs to have, is to compile a list of everything that’s ever been proposed at the [WEF], and object all of them wholesale.”
He further urged that “anyone not prepared to do that, and take away this power of the unelected bureaucrats and give it back to the American people, is unprepared to be a part of the next conservative administration.”
When the discussion turned to Donald Trump, Roberts told the host of the panel, Sir Robin Niblett, ‘Distinguished Fellow’ of Chatham House, that “It’s laughable that you or anyone would describe Davos as protecting liberal democracy,” adding “It’s equally laughable to use the word ‘dictatorship’ at Davos and aim that at President Trump… I think that’s absurd.”
He continued, “The very reason I’m here at Davos, is to explain to many people in this room and who are watching, with all due respect – nothing personal – that you are part of the problem.” — Modernity News
Our Take: “‘It’s surprising to see the likes of Roberts and Milei even invited to speak at the WEF.’
It really is. It’s hard to imagine the Davos set commissioned such a scathing, public rebuke of their worldview. ‘Political elites tell the average people… that the reality is x, when in fact, reality is y.’
It’s almost as if Roberts follows
. #RealityPrimeRoberts said what we’ve been (ignored for) saying for years, ‘The infamous hypocritical self-avowed Marxists, private-jet environmentalists, and genocide-adjacent humanitarians want to hear from the Heritage Foundation how they can rebuild trust with everyday Americans against whom they have weaponized their institutions.’
There’s a lot of doomers dropping blackpills out there, but that line was just delivered at Davos.
Remember when globalist control of US institutions was a conspiracy theory? America First.” —
Houthis target US-owned tanker in latest of daily attacks
The Houthi rebels unsuccessfully targeted another U.S.-owned tanker Thursday night in their latest attack in the Red Sea.
Houthi fighters launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at the M/V Chem Ranger, a Marshall Island-flagged and Greek-operated tanker ship, at 9 p.m. local time, according to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).
The missiles did not hit the tanker and fell into the water, CENTCOM said. There was no damage, and no one was injured in the attack. The tanker ship has continued on its way.
The Houthis have launched more than 30 attacks from Yemen at commercial shipping since late November in a growing problem for the Biden administration that shows no signs of stopping.
The U.S. has responded with retaliatory strikes five times since an initial round of strikes last week, but the Houthis have continued to target merchant ships.
Hostilities have disrupted global trade and forced several of the world’s largest shipping companies to avoid the Red Sea shortcut and instead take the long route around Africa.
The Pentagon said the U.S. strikes are damaging Houthi infrastructure and forcing the Iranian-backed militia group to scale down attacks, but the Houthis are proving resilient in keeping up the attacks. — The Hill
And …
Houthis promise safe passage for Chinese, Russian ships transiting through Red Sea
Russian and Chinese vessels transiting through the Red Sea will be granted safe passage, a senior Houthi official tells Russian outlet Izvestia in an interview.
Senior Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti insists the waters around Yemen, which some shipping firms are avoiding due to the ongoing aggression from the Iran-backed rebel group, are safe so long as vessels are not linked to certain countries, particularly Israel.
“As for all other countries, including Russia and China, their shipping in the region is not threatened,” he says.
“Moreover, we are ready to ensure the safe passage of their ships in the Red Sea, because free navigation plays a significant role for our country.”
Despite their insistence otherwise, the attacks carried out by the Houthi rebels have targeted ships with no apparent connection to Israel.
Attacks on vessels “in any way connected with Israel” will continue, he adds. — Times of Israel
Our Take: “There are so many ways to dissect this Houthi/Red Sea Shot-Chaser combination, but it depends almost entirely on whether you're approaching the exercise from an Actual or Narrative lens.
In terms of the Actuals, we have what looks to be an escalating kinetic blockade forming in one of the most important trade routes from east to west, one that's disproportionally affecting the west due to prior sociopolitical/MIL conflicts.
While western framing of the Houthi blockade places China and Russia as cooperating and benefiting parties from the chaos, it's equally likely said Iranian proxies are intentionally trying to muddy the waters when it comes to an already-tense situation between the great powers of the east and west.
However, as always, it is my view that the Narrative theater is the easiest to parse, and also the most effective, and where the story of the Red Sea is concerned, one party is being attacked from all sides:
The Biden Admin is more isolated and embattled than ever.” —
AI bots are everywhere now. These telltale words give them away.
On Amazon, you can buy a product called, “I’m sorry as an AI language model I cannot complete this task without the initial input. Please provide me with the necessary information to assist you further.”
On X, formerly Twitter, a verified user posted the following reply to a Jan. 14 tweet about Hunter Biden: “I’m sorry, but I can’t provide the requested response as it violates OpenAI’s use case policy.”
On the blogging platform Medium, a Jan. 13 post about tips for content creators begins, “I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it involves the creation of promotional content with the use of affiliate links.”
Across the internet, such error messages have emerged as a telltale sign that the writer behind a given piece of content is not human. Generated by AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT when they get a request that goes against their policies, they are a comical yet ominous harbinger of an online world that is increasingly the product of AI-authored spam.
“It’s good that people have a laugh about it, because it is an educational experience about what’s going on,” said Mike Caulfield, who researches misinformation and digital literacy at the University of Washington. The latest AI language tools, he said, are powering a new generation of spammy, low-quality content that threatens to overwhelm the internet unless online platforms and regulators find ways to rein it in. — Washington Post
Our Take: “Over in the tech pages of the Washington Post, a new phase of the AI narrative just kicked off. Problem, reaction, solution.
‘Because a lot of these sites are operating with little to no human oversight, these messages are directly published on the site before they’re caught by a human,’ said McKenzie Sadeghi, an analyst at NewsGuard, a company that tracks misinformation.’
Here, the writer establishes the problem: AI content generation is being created and distributed with minimal human oversight, and it’s leading to misinformation. This is, of course, true; but it’s interesting because the examples provided are massive corporations like Amazon and X.
‘Writer Parker Molloy posted on Threads, Meta’s Twitter rival,’ — LOL — ‘a video showing a long series of verified X accounts that had all posted tweets with the phrase, ‘I cannot provide a response as it goes against OpenAI’s use case policy.’
Threads as a serious competitor to Twitter is hilarious, but here the writer is seeding the reaction: Hey, look at all these examples of big businesses using AI content generation with no human oversight! Look at all this misinformation! Someone must do something!
Enter the solution.
‘We don’t want our models to be used to misinform, misrepresent, or mislead others, and in our policies this includes: ‘Generating or promoting disinformation, misinformation, or false online engagement (e.g., comments, reviews)’… We use a combination of automated systems, human review and user reports to find and assess uses that potentially violate our policies, which can lead to actions against the user’s account.’
What big tech, via WaPo, is doing here, is establishing a best practice.
ChatGPT is the public-facing pioneer in generative AI, and their approaches to problems within this emerging new landscape will be considered and cited as best practices for the foreseeable future. With this piece (and all those that will follow) human reviews, rules against misinformation and spam, and do-no-harm principles — FOR CONTENT MODERATION — are being established as the best practice for fighting AI-generated misinformation.
These don’t sound like wholly bad approaches. But I’m skeptical that they’re not being proposed in bad faith.
If you recall the AI Dilemma, the proposed solution to the dystopian problem/reaction set was a global pause on AI development for anything above a ChatGPT4 capability. The pause did not apply to the AI research community, and the AI research community is comprised of World Economic Forum corporate partners, government actors, and dark money NGOs. This solution — the pause — was a non-starter for the truth community, a community that is significantly larger than the global governors want you to believe.
Thus, the problem is being reframed with some of their own — Amazon, X, and others — projected as violative of AI best practices. Importantly, the solution is the same: Restrictions and oversight from the same people selling you the problem and telling you how to react.
The regime wants to wield the power of AI to orchestrate their much-needed reality collapse, but they’re pulling out all the stops to ensure that you don’t fight them on it. They’re putting the next phase of the ‘censorship industrial complex’ in place right now, and they’re telling you it’s for your safety. Für Ihre Sicherheit.” —
Iran and US use Saudi Arabia to swap messages and cool Gaza tensions
Nine months since Riyadh and Tehran restored ties after years of animosity, Saudi Arabia has assumed a new role as an intermediary between Iran and the United States, three sources in Iran told Middle East Eye.
High-ranking officials in Riyadh have been instrumental in relaying messages between the countries and reducing tensions over Israel's war on Gaza.
The process began in November, when Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian attended an emergency summit in Riyadh on the Gaza war attended by leaders from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and Arab League countries.
An Iranian insider familiar with the matter told MEE that Amirabdollahian carried with him a message for the US to give to Saudi officials. It was a response to one recently received from Washington.
The Saudis then conveyed this message to senior officials in Washington, the source said. — Middle East Eye
Our Take: “I’ve been forwarding the Q-aligned Sovereign Alliance theory for about two years, now, and nothing I’ve seen in the interim has disabused me of the notion.
In fact, it seems that every Narrative Deployment we see in the War of Stories fits the theory that sovereign-minded world leaders are rising up against the mutually-assured subjugation of globalism like a glove.
forwards an adjacent theory he refers to as ‘Regions of Responsibility,’ which is itself a spin on the Russia and China-forwarded multi-polar world order concept they continue to push as their defined vision for the future of global trade, cooperation and ultimately, peace.Saudi Arabia, with its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, seems to be the fulcrum of one such region at present, and I feel that his will be a major name to remember as the story that is 2024 rolls on.
Good thing he’s got a great relationship with Donald Trump, eh?” —
BONUS ITEMS
Fani Under Pressure: Judge In Trump-Georgia Case Orders DA To Explain Misconduct Allegations
The judge in the Trump-Georgia case has ordered Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) to answer to accusations that she hired her romantic partner as a top prosecutor on the case.
Judge Scot McAfee on Thursday ordered Willis to respond to the allegations in writing by Feb. 2, and has scheduled a hearing on the matter for Feb. 15.
The accusation, first found in a court filing by attorney and Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, accuses Willis of hiring her paramour Nathan Wade - whose involvement, Roman argues, makes the indictment "fatally defective." Roman has asked McAfee to dismiss the charges, and to block the Fulton County DA's office from further involvement in the case.
Wade (who was hired without proper approval), is a private attorney in the midst of a divorce who "has little to no experience trying felony cases, much less complex RICO actions," according to a 127-page filing in former President Donald Trump's 2020 election trial in Georgia.
Wade ended up pocketing nearly $700,000 from Fulton county taxpayers - with which he allegedly took Willis on lavish vacations. He also billed taxpayers $2,000 to talk to the Biden White House about prosecuting Biden's political opponent. — ZeroHedge
Bannon Predicts Trump's First 100 Days Will Set 50-Year Agenda
In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Steve Bannon laid out what the beginning of former President Donald Trump’s second term would look like if he is elected later this year.
“The first 100 days of President Trump’s second term will be the equivalent of the first 100 days of FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt],” said Mr. Bannon, the host of the “War Room” podcast.
“FDR, in his first hundred days, started the foundations of building the administrative state, the deep state. The first 100 days of President Trump, I think you’ll see the beginning of the deconstruction of that and the destruction of the deep state, along with dozens and dozens and dozens of other policy proposals,” he added.
Mr. Bannon served on President Trump’s transition team in 2016 and then as the White House’s chief strategist.
He recalled that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had put together the future president’s first transition team.
Mr. Bannon dismissed the resulting work product as “a joke.”
“We reviewed it, but we threw that away,” he said. Mr. Christie was quickly replaced as the lead of the transition effort by the president-elect’s second in command, Mike Pence.
“During the first few days on the job, every hour felt like a race,” Jared Kushner, also a member of the transition team, recalled of the opening hours of President Trump’s time in office in his memoir, “Breaking History.”
Mr. Bannon and Mr. Kushner were among the big names who helped set the White House’s initial agenda. Reporting during the Trump administration often emphasized ways the two men did not always see eye to eye. — The Epoch Times
Senior NATO Official Says There Will Be A Hot War With Russia
A high ranking NATO official has stated that people in Europe should prepare for a full on war with Russia sometime in the next two decades.
Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of Nato’s Military Committee, told reporters following a meeting of Nato defence chiefs in Brussels that governments need to start putting preparations in place, and that civilians will need to be mobilised on a large scale.
“We have to realise it’s not a given that we are in peace. And that’s why we [Nato forces] are preparing for a conflict with Russia,”Baur declared.
He continued, “But the discussion is much wider. It is also the industrial base and also the people that have to understand they play a role.”
“It starts there,” Bauer continued, adding “The realisation that not everything is planable and not everything is going to be hunky dory in the next 20 years.”
The Telegraph reports that Baur also heaped praise on Sweden for telling its people to brace for war. — Modernity News
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.
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.
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Silicon Valley billionaires behind secretive new California city reveal proposed development map
California Forever stealthily snapped upmore than $800 million of Solano County land in recent years.
https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/california-forever-new-city-map-development/
Citizens, Bank of America and Capital One wipe out dozens of locations in just ONE week as they become latest victims of the 'bank branch bloodbath'In the second week of 2024, Citizens and Bank of America filed for closures It was a strong week for openings too - 10 banks filed for a total of 15Do you still go to the bank or can you manage your finances online? Email money@dailymail.com about how closures are - or aren't - affecting you https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/banks/article-12983515/Citizens-Bank-America-Capital-One-wipe-dozens-locations-just-ONE-week-latest-victims-bank-branch-bloodbath.html'
Illinois couple discovers massive voter ‘irregularities’ throughout the state in recent elections
Among irregularities found after over 2,000 hours of analysis:
Over 300,000 votes from the 2020 election were missing or deleted from Illinois voter data before the legally mandated retention period of 22 months Over four years, the state’s population decreased by 150,000; however, the voter rolls increased by 650,000Over 2.5 million votes were cast by individuals before their registration datesMore than 230,000 registrations showed registration dates that appeared to be illegal or illogicalThere were over four million apparent registration violations out of 8.9 million registrations
https://lawenforcementtoday.com/illinois-couple-discovers-massive-voting-irregularities-throughout-the-state-in-recent-elections
Getting back to DeSantis. I'm glad we are uniting the party but remember this DeSantis isn't endorsing Trump because he liked him or his policies he's doing it for himself. He wants the MAGA vote in the future. He'll never get mine simply because I don't trust a man that doesn't keep his word. He didn't keep it with President Trump when he told him he would never run against him and he didn't keep his word to the people in Florida who re elected him to govern Florida. Many of those Floridians are in big trouble with insurance companies but DeSantis was too busy running around the country with Florida taxpayer money. I could go on but you get my point.