Badlands News Brief
Let's Talk About Hunter Biden ... and Bananas
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 with some Badlands flavoring to help wash it down.
Now, onto the news from Tuesday, June 11 …
Hunter Biden guilty of all charges in gun case
A jury found Hunter Biden guilty on Tuesday of all three charges he was facing related to a 2018 gun purchase, marking the first time in history that the son of a sitting president has been criminally convicted.
His charges included lying on a federal form about his drug use to purchase a revolver, submitting a false statement into a federal record, and unlawfully possessing the firearm for 11 days.
Biden faces up to 25 years in prison, but as a first-time offender, his sentence is likely to be far less than that.
The jury deliberated quickly, reaching a verdict in about three hours. — The Washington Examiner
And …
Biden says he will accept outcome of Hunter’s conviction on gun charges
President Biden on Tuesday said he would accept the outcome of his son’s conviction after Hunter Biden was found guilty on all three felony gun charges.
In a statement released shortly after Hunter Biden’s verdict was read in federal court in Wilmington, Del., the president, who is currently in Washington, said he would respect the judicial process as his son weighs an appeal of the outcome.
“As I said last week, I am the President, but I am also a Dad. I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today,” President Biden said. “As I also said last week, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.”
The president’s statement also appealed to other families whose loved ones have struggled with addiction as Hunter Biden’s drug use was aired out in great detail during the trial. The charges involve Hunter Biden lying on a form about being addicted to drugs while obtaining a firearm in 2018.
“Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery,” the president said. — The Hill
Our Take: While Con, Inc. takes a victory lap on Hunter’s conviction, the reaction of most Badlanders is summed up by Patrick’s reaction on X:
Gun applications are unconstitutional. Registries are unconstitutional. Every gun law is an infringement. Inalienable must mean something or the Bill of Rights is no longer in effect.
There are many legitimate crimes on which the First Crackhead could be rightly prosecuted. There are foreign agent registration violations, money laundering, influence peddling, and other business crimes. There is a whole section of the Marco Polo Biden Laptop Report dealing with Hunter’s sex crimes.
But the ‘justice’ we’re told is coming for Hunter, of course, does double duty for the gun grab lobby.
The outcome of Hunter’s trial adds more fuel to the weaponization of justice debate, as scrotus will no doubt use his son to pacify his progressive handlers and pander to the communist base — in their efforts to subvert the Bill of Rights and disarm lawful gun owners.
Shameless, but right on brand. —
Another Take: It's going to be really interesting to see what Donald Trump's narrative deployments are concerning the Hunter conviction.
I see most of the MAGA community rightly defending Hunter's constitutional rights, and pointing out that this was not the result we wanted; that's good, and the media is seeing that reaction.
Still, Trump is the main narrative-setter for the patriot side of the Info War, so what the system is really waiting on is his response.
Trump can come off bipartisan and unifying if he stumps FOR Hunter, using both of their cases as evidence of the widespread weaponization of the Justice System.
+ BOTH cases will highlight the US appeals process to a mass, engaged audience.
Additionally, the Hunter conviction is putting the spotlight on the total bifurcation between the Con Inc. Doom Brigade and the more discerning members of the Truth Community when it comes to analyzing the Info War from a First Principles perspective.
While the grift goons hop on the “get Hunter … but for the wrong crimes” bandwagon in the immediate aftermath of complaining about the weaponization of the same DOJ, most Anons are looking at this from a much wider and more long-term lens.
We knew the establishment would deploy Narrative Shielding, using the Hunter verdict as a cudgel to codify the Trump Witch Hunt, just as we know there’s Game Theory at play here where it concerns both an Actual disclosure campaign and the War of Stories layered over it.
I expect Trump to thread the needle on this deployment like he does with most, just as I expect the media to go all in on all the wrong takes, cementing positions they may come to regret circa 2025, when the Justice phase kicks off in earnest. —
US Navy 'Shadowing' Russian Flotilla off Florida Coast—Satellite Data
U.S. naval and air assets appear to be shadowing Russian warships that passed Florida's eastern coast on their way to make port in Cuba, open source maritime and aerial tracking data has revealed.
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts on Tuesday posted updates showing the CG Stone coastguard vessel, the USS Truxtun and USS Donald Cook destroyers, and the Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec travelling southwards down the Florida coast, purportedly following the Russian ships headed to Cuba. Above them, at least one U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon and Canadian CP-140 Aurora appeared to be conducting surveillance.
OSINT channel TheIntelFrog wrote on X (formerly Twitter) late on Monday that the American and Canadian assets "may be shadowing" the Russian flotilla. — Newsweek
Our Take: “Putin and the lads are buzzing the tower.
Next, we will witness the unbridled hubris and entitlement of warmongering elites, who have enjoyed the addled decadence of America's geographic isolation, while they hurled rocks from the safety of their glass towers at nations like Russia, which possesses a border 14,000 miles in length that they have defended for over a thousand years. Russia shares that border with 14 nations, not including Alaska, which is only 2.4 miles from the nearest Russian island in the Bering Strait.
When you have this many neighbors, you learn the art of diplomacy, or you become history's next cautionary tale. American hegemony has cursed us with an arrogance that has hampered our ability to cultivate a thorough appreciation—let alone, a mastery—of the Art of Peace.
So I expect to see a Lindsay Graham post sometime today, where he will whine like an insolent child because Russian warships are conducting the same Caribbean exercises that they conducted annually throughout the 2010's. In fact, 10 years ago Russia sent four ships to Havana that included the nuclear-powered icebreaker/tug, the Nikolay Chiker, which has returned as part of this little armada.
While Putin has stated that this specific trip is intended to be a show of force, the reality is that it is only four ships, manned by about 190 sailors.
For context, the US has six fleets, and two of them—the Sixth Fleet and the Seventh Fleet—operate in the North Atlantic and Pacific, respectively. The Sixth Fleet—which is only one of three fleets operating in the Atlantic—has around 40 ships and 21,000 sailors, while the Seventh Fleet has nearly 70 ships and 27,000 sailors. And these ships are routinely near Russian waters.
Back in 2020, the US ruffled some feathers when it boldly sent four ships into Russia's naval backyard, the Barents Sea, in an event that directly mirrors what we are now witnessing down in Havana.
We are watching a movie.
PS - If we don't get a Trump armada that hooks up with the Russians for a massive flotilla, then we have been deprived of an iconic memetic event. (Don't rob us, Ghosts in the Machine.) —
Trump’s Project 2025 plot would take ‘wrecking ball’ to US institutions, key Democrat warns
The blueprint for a potential second Donald Trump presidency known as Project 25 would take “a wrecking ball” to America’s democratic norms and institutions, a leading Democrat has warned.
Representative Jared Huffman spoke to the Guardian ahead of the launch of a congressional working group designed to sound the alarm about the rightwing roadmap and ensure that Trump never has the chance to implement its extreme agenda.
The near 900-page Project 2025 handbook was produced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank in Washington, as a manifesto for expanding the power of the presidency while dismantling layers of government. It recommends purging the federal ranks of many appointed roles and stacking agencies with loyalists.
This would lay waste to democratic institutions, checks on executive power, individual rights and freedoms, and church-state separation in order to impose a far-right agenda, Huffman said. “You can look at what they’re going to do to our democracy: weaponising the Department of Justice, clearing away any norms that limit executive power. — The Guardian
Our Take: Project 2025 would ‘take a wrecking ball to America’s democratic norms and institutions,’ claim Democrats … after taking a wrecking ball to America’s democratic norms and institutions.
Just when you think we’ve hit peak gaslight.
Back in reality, the Republic is suffering a crisis of public trust, and the only way to restore public trust is with accountability. Uniparty Democrats and Republicans have abused and corrupted the institutions to such an extent that salvaging the institutions is an ambitious goal, and Project 2025 is a necessity.
It’s obvious that the ruling elite fear accountability for their decision-making, its intentions, and its outcomes. They should. The people that brought us to the point of needing ‘a great reset,’ — the people that, in short order, have brought about global war — those people do not get another at-bat.
Accountability is a requirement for any serious effort to restore the Republic.
And accountability is coming. —
Trump Meets Bitcoin Miners in His Latest Pro-Crypto Overture
Several Bitcoin miners met with former president Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night, according to Matthew Schultz, executive chairman at crypto mining company CleanSpark Inc.
Trump told attendees that he loves and understands cryptocurrency, adding that Bitcoin miners help to stabilize energy supply from the grid, according to Schultz. Trump said he’d be an advocate for miners in the White House, Schultz added.
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg News.
The former president has increasingly highlighted Bitcoin and other digital assets on the campaign trail in recent weeks as a way to reach new voters. He has taken advice on the subject from Elon Musk and pledged at a recent Libertarian Party convention to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the convicted founder of the Silk Road online marketplace. His campaign is also now accepting crypto donations.
Jason Les, chief executive officer and director of Riot Platforms Inc., also met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, according to a post on X. — Bloomberg
And …
Our Take: Negative indicators abound in the Info War.
To wit, today, Trump Jr. boosted Bitcoin Magazine's endorsement of Donald Trump, calling him the best choice for a Bitcoin future ... and Bitcoin has crashed almost $2,000 on the day.
The thing is, this isn't a negative indicator about Bitcoin, but rather, about the establishment that's attempting to keep a lid on its true price discovery like they've done with gold and silver for decades, using futures contracts leveraged through the ballooning ETF funds launched in January to keep recent ATH (all time high) tests from breaking out too sharply.
While they've been able to paper over the gold and silver markets for literal decades using this strategy, it's infinitely more difficult to keep it going long-term when you're dealing with a decentralized, finite resource, as Game Theory has already kicked in regarding both retail and institutional investors.
Trump's boosting (all the Trumps,) appears to be baiting the final banking ammo into the light. —
Banana company Chiquita found liable for sending money to a Colombian paramilitary group
Ajury in Florida on Monday found Chiquita Brands International, one of the world's largest banana companies, liable for making payments that funded a paramilitary group in Colombia.
A lawsuit, which was brought to the federal court in the Southern District of Florida, said the banana company should be held responsible for the murders of eight individuals by the paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). The group was designated a terrorist organization by the United States, and was known for its violence in the South American country. It was disbanded in 2006, according to CNN.
The jury in the civil case ordered Chiquita to pay the families a total of $38.3 million. The verdict comes after the company pleaded guilty in 2007 to making over 100 payments to the AUC that equaled more than $1.7 million, but a source told the Justice Department that the payments were made under the threat of violence.
“Chiquita knowingly provided substantial assistance to the AUC to a degree sufficient to create a foreseeable risk of harm to others," the jury determined. It also found that the company failed to "act as a reasonable businessperson would have acted under the circumstances.” — Just the News
Our Take: Back on February 7, on Breaking History,
and I were joined by our old friend War Hamster (Brady), who has an expertise in this kind of history, so much of this background comes directly from him—and is accurate. Brady told us about the origins of the banana trade, and how it became a central part of CIA operations.In 1880, a 21 year-old American named Minor Cooper Keith moved to Costa Rica to work for his uncle's railroad company, which was ceded to him just two years later. The company was contracted with the Costa Rican government, which defaulted on its payments, so Keith raises 1.2 billion pounds from your favorite London banks, and buys them out. He completes the railroad in 1890, but Central America is lacking in passenger-customers. So Keith gets into the banana business.
Fun Fact: Bananas are not actually indigenous to the Americas. They come from Southeast Asia. But Keith had been experimenting with planting bananas on American soil since 1873, and finally got them to take in the tropical climate. He partnered with M.T. Snyder and Tropical Trading and Transport Company, and together they expanded the banana industry from Costa Rica to Panama and Colombia. The business took off, and by the turn of the century, bananas were the second-most consumed food in America.
In 1899, due to financial setbacks, Keith merged his company with Boston Fruit Company, which already had an established empire in the West Indies (Caribbean), forming United Fruit Company. They immediately have a strangle over the fruit trade which ultimately translates to control over the logistics and transport of all freight. They were nicknamed El Popo —"The Octopus"—because this dominion over all long-distance transportation gave them natural political power that they freely exerted over these developing nations, propping up dictators and literally creating the term "banana republic." (Yes, that's the actual origin.)
The Spanish-American Civil War of 1898 destabilized the entire region, and a law firm was on the ground waiting—and maybe played a hand in fomenting the unrest.
That law firm was Sullivan & Cromwell, the firm responsible for inventing the holding company, or "parent company," as it's known today. But they are more infamous employing the Dulles brothers for most of their professional lives, as well as other notable CIA figures. The relationship between these lawyers and United Fruit would lead to the latter playing a starring role in the Iran-Contra Scandal, among other lesser known revolutions.
After being exposed for its CIA-connections and related activities in the 1980's, United Fruit rebranded itself as Chiquita Banana. And evidently, they are still involved in some pretty dark stuff in Central America.
The point is, bananas were created and marketed as a product so that these familiar oligarchs could cultivate the political clout necessary to control governments in Central America, which was necessary in order to engage in the trade of other commodities from that region... —
BONUS ITEMS
Trump to meet with House Republicans during D.C. trip
Former President Trump will huddle with House Republicans on Capitol Hill during his visit to Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: It comes as Trump is plotting with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to hit the ground running with a Republican policy agenda if he retakes the White House in November.
Driving the news: Trump will meet with the House Republican Conference at the Capitol Hill Club, a Republican clubhouse a block from the Capitol, at 9:30am, multiple sources told Axios.
Trump also plans to huddle with Senate Republicans that day to discuss a "strategic governing agenda in 2025," Axios' Stef Kight reported.
The former president is in town to meet with corporate executives at a Business Roundtable event.
What they're saying: "The Speaker and the House GOP leadership look forward to hosting President Trump on Thursday morning," a Johnson spokesperson told Axios. — Axios
The US lifts a ban on sending weapons to a controversial Ukrainian military unit
The U.S. has lifted a ban on providing American weapons and training to a controversial Ukrainian military unit that was key to the defense of the major port city of Mariupol, the State Department said on Tuesday.
The Azov Brigade is among Ukraine’s most effective and popular fighting units but it has been dogged by its origins as a volunteer battalion that drew fighters from far-right circles and criticism for some of its tactics. The U.S. had banned the regiment from using American weapons, citing the neo-Nazi ideology of some of its founders.
The current members of the Azov Brigade, which has been absorbed into Ukraine’s National Guard as the 12th Special Forces Brigade, reject accusations of extremism and any ties with far-right movements. But the Kremlin has seized on the regiment’s origins in its efforts to cast Russia’s invasion as a battle against Nazi influence in Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow took an “extremely negative” view of Washington’s decision. He described Azov as an “ultranationalist armed formation” and accused U.S. authorities of being “ready to flirt with neo-Nazis.” — AP 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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Shared this to FakeBook, got censored immediately. So I screenshot all their "rulings/warning" and posted them...So I imagine I will be banned for life. Censoring my 1st Amendment rights for defending my 2nd Amendment rights. There ought to be a law...no wait...hope I live to see it
These briefs are driving everyone bananas!?!----sorry, that was really bad. Great update with historical and future significance as always. God Bless you guys and gals!!!