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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. Feel free to follow the corresponding link to see their other work.
Now, onto the news from Thursday, August 17 …
GOP Demands Biden Emails Using Pseudonym After Hunter CC'd On Ukraine Call
House Republican investigators have asked the National Archives to hand over any unredacted records in which then-VP Joe Biden used a pseudonym.
Previously released emails retrieved from Hunter's abandoned laptop reveal that Biden used a "Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov" email address while he was serving as Vice President of the United States. What's more, that Biden aide John Flynn cc'd Hunter on 10 emails which contained Joe's daily schedule between May 19 and June 15, 2016.
One of the emails details plans for a phone call with Ukraine's former president, Petro Poroshenko. Flynn copied Hunter at his email address at Rosemont Seneca Partners - while Hunter was serving on the board of Ukrainian energy giant, Burisma, which was deemed to be corrupt by the Obama-Biden State Department.
[…]
According to a letter from House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, "The Committee’s need for these Vice-Presidential records is specific and well- documented," adding "The Committee seeks to craft legislative solutions aimed at deficiencies it has identified in the current legal framework regarding ethics laws and disclosure of financial interests related to the immediate family members of Vice Presidents and Presidents— deficiencies that may place American national security and interests at risk." — ZeroHedge
Our Take: “The real news here is that ‘I’ve never spoken to my son Hunter about his overseas business dealings’ Biden was copying his son on official US foreign policy communications. Perhaps journalists should have asked the inverse: ‘How many times did you engage Hunter in your official role as Vice President?’
The evidence is piling up around Biden like boxes of documents next to his corvette, and it’s inexplicable that he can still be in any position of power at this point. The only answer that makes any sort of sense is
’s take that you cannot impeach an illegitimate president. That feels true, but it’s also true that the illegitimate president is causing real pain for everyday Americans who are defaulting, starving, and dying all over the country. If we truly are watching a movie, it’s an interactive experience — like an involuntary excursion to Medieval Times. Or Hotel California.Also, just so we are clear, this isn’t new.
Marco Polo includes Joe’s alias on page 159 of the Biden Laptop report, which was released in October 2022. So, while the House Republicans are screaming outrage, they should have known this months ago considering the report was sent to every single one of them multiple times. I’m sure the ‘new’ revelation of Biden bringing his son into official US business will lead to another Trump indictment. And probably another ‘natural’ disaster and a couple more false flags.
Stop the ride, I want to get off.” —
Zelensky Holds Court With Ukraine's Most Notorious Neo-Nazi
Western media has dismissed evidence of neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine by citing President Zelensky’s Jewish heritage. But new footage published by Zelensky shows the leader openly collaborating with a fascist ideologue who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen.”
Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky has uploaded a video to his Telegram channel showing him holding court with one of the most notorious neo-Nazis in modern Ukrainian history: Azov Battalion founder Andriy Biletsky.
On August 14, just over an hour after Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced another $200 million in military aid to Kiev, Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky published the video depicting what he called an “open conversation” with Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.
“I am grateful to everyone who defends our country and people, who brings our victory closer,” Zelensky wrote, following his encounter with the unit on the outskirts of Bakhmut. While casual Western observers might not have realized it, the brigade Zelensky was addressing is actually the newest iteration of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.
“The 3rd separate assault brigade, excellent fighters,” Zelensky wrote days after the consultation, in a Twitter post which also alluded to a separate meeting with the Aidar Battalion, another neo-fascist outfit that has been accused of war crimes by Amnesty International. “They have stopped the enemy from advancing towards Kostiantynivka and pushed the occupiers back up to 8 kilometers.”
But the group’s origins are no secret. Describing their most recent rebrand in a YouTube video released in January, the unit explained: “Today we officially announce that the SSO AZOV is expanding to a brigade. From now on, we are the 3rd separate assault brigade of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Like its predecessor, the unit is led by Andriy Biletsky, who founded the Azov Battalion and has long served as a figurehead for the closely-aligned National Corps political movement. — The Gray Zone
Our Take: “I remember WAY back in 2022, it was considered poor form to accuse the Ukrainian war fighters of being neo-Nazis.
Of course, the only thing I would object to under that framing is whether or not the ‘neo’ qualifier belongs on the otherwise-fitting label, as Ukraine itself—along with its various ‘freedom fighters’—share more than just ideological similarities to the infamous, elitist regime that terrorized the fields of Europe to such a degree that their symbolism is deeply embedded into the human psyche, regardless of nationality or creed.
The deeper you dig into the wandering ways of the Info War, the less certain you’ll be of ANY of our written or oral histories—up to and perhaps ESPECIALLY the World Wars. That said, the fact that Nazis and Naziism are not just back in the zeitgeist in a major way, but that they’re being ‘revealed’ in the very ‘heroes’ the Establishment Uniparty and NATO collectivist warmongers alike have been backing to the tune of billions in taxpayer funding is one of the biggest redpills we could have asked for … and something tells me the true reveals haven’t even started, yet.” —
Briefing by Chief of Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov on U.S. military-biological activity
The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation continues to analyse the military and biological activities of the U.S. and its allies in Ukraine and on the territory of other countries.
As we have noted earlier, U.S. military-biological activity pose a security threat to many nations around the world.
Despite the fact that the stated goals of U.S. programmes are to monitor disease incidence and provide assistance to developing countries, in fact, we see the Pentagon conducting uncontrolled dual-use research in circumvention of international obligations under the BTWC.
Projects of the American military department are primarily aimed at studying potential agents of biological weapons — anthrax, tularemia, coronavirus, as well as pathogens of economically significant infections — pathogenic avian influenza and African swine fever.
There is a clear trend: pathogens that fall within the Pentagon's area of interest, such as COVID-19, avian influenza, African swine fever, subsequently become pandemic, and American pharmaceutical companies become the beneficiaries.
Our Take: “If you need an indication of how dire things have become, consider that the Russian military is now a more trustworthy source of information than our own media.
What's more, half the U.S. population remain stubbornly in the dark about the West's role in COVID-19. The consolidation of wealth and power that resulted from the pandemic was staggering and has since fueled widespread speculation that COVID-19 was no accident at all. The pandemic adversely affected more lives than both World Wars, the Vietnam War, and the Wars in the Middle East combined.
Yet, to this day, there has been virtually no accountability.
Over a protracted period of time, outrage dissipates. The public begins to forget about COVID and all of the unaddressed grievances, while the nation’s attention is focused instead on a war in Eastern Europe, a culture war at home, the persecution of former presidents, and a looming financial collapse …
None of the errors of the last Pandemic have been sufficiently addressed. In fact, the culprits have only become more emboldened by the lack of accountability, and are desperately trying to push through both the WHO CA+ (aka the Pandemic Treaty,) and roughly 200 amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) that would essentially elevate the WHO and it's primary funders to a de facto world government in the event of another global health scare.
Is it all starting to make sense? Maybe you recall the stories from last year at the outset of the war in Ukraine regarding those U.S.-funded biolabs? Sounds like those labs and the individuals connected to them (Bill Gates, George Soros, Hunter Biden) might become newsworthy again soon.
Of course, you probably won't hear much in the mainstream, but rest assured, we at Badlands will be closely following these developments.” —
Congress probing whether Democrats improperly using nonprofits, foreign money to win elections
The powerful House Ways and Means Committee is opening a probe into whether liberal activists are misusing tax-exempt nonprofits to mobilize Democrat voters in battleground states, injecting foreign money into elections, or evading campaign finance laws.
Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., a member of the tax-writing committee and a founder and the House Election Integrity Caucus, said Wednesday that Democrats are far ahead of Republicans in running campaigns to get voters to cast early or absentee ballots and lawmakers are concerned that foreign money may be seeping into the process.
"We're going to be investigating that as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Oversight Subcommittee," Tenney told the Just the News, No Noise TV show Wednesday.
The IRS says that 501(c)3 tax-exempt ground can conduct voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives but only "if they are conducted in a neutral, non-partisan manner, for example, without reference to any candidate or political party."
But Tenney said she is concerned liberal activists are using the system for "vote trafficking" to push only voters who support Democrats to the polls and to accept large funds from liberal donors or foreigners interested only in electing Democrats. — Just the News
Our Take: “The answer is yes. We will engage in another multi-million dollar investigation, but grassroots election investigators have already answered the question, and the answer is yes, the uniparty establishment is using nonprofits to inflate voter rolls. Inflated voter rolls are a critical aspect of the election fraud machine. The machine relies on fake voters, fake ballots and fake counts.
I have zero faith that House investigators will deliver any meaningful accountability for that fact but, make no mistake, it is a fact. Another fact is that these nonprofits are also a critical aspect of the lawfare machine. For example, Mi Familia Vota is a voter registration nonprofit that is also suing in multiple states to prevent President Trump from accessing the ballot.
The one exception I take with this reporting is framing this as Democrat-specific, which continues to politicize the issue. In case you missed it, Sam Bankman-Fried’s donations span the political spectrum because the left/right divide is a false binary. It’s a uniparty, and the blue/red framing prevents Americans from isolating the real root causes of dystopia.
President Trump said it best during his 2017 inauguration speech:
‘For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government, while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered—but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.’
Restoring America to the People means dealing with the entire establishment and all their NGOs — not just those of Democrats.” —
NATO Official Retracts Russian Land-Grab Suggestion As Means To Broker Peace In Ukraine
The NATO official who angered Ukraine by seemingly suggesting a land for peace deal with Russia has retracted his words, explaining that the quote in question was taken out of a larger, more comprehensive context.
As Remix News recently reported, Stian Jenssen, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s chief of staff, spoke to the Norwegian press on Tuesday. Stoltenberg has so far cautiously avoided questions about what Ukraine should do to end the war. The NATO chief has consistently replied that the decision on whether to start negotiations with Russia belongs to Ukraine alone, not to third countries.
Asked by journalists from the Norwegian newspaper VG whether Ukraine has to give up land in order to achieve peace and NATO membership, Jenssen suggested that the issue had already been discussed within the alliance.
“I’m not saying it has to be that way, but it could be a possible solution,” he added.
By Wednesday afternoon, Jenssen regretted having angered the Ukrainians with his statement and immediately retracted it. Jenssen clarified the issue to the Norwegian newspaper VG, where the original statement was published.
About his statement a day earlier, he said it was “a mistake,” adding by way of explanation:
“it was part of a larger discussion about possible future scenarios in Ukraine, and I shouldn’t have said it that way. If — and I stressed if — they get to the point where they can negotiate, the military posture on the battlefield will play an absolutely central role and will have a decisive influence on the terms on which peace will be achieved.” — Remix News
Our Take: “I talk about the Overton Window with frequency both in my writing and in my appearances on Badlands Media, and most reading these newsletters are well aware of the concept—that being the publicly-acceptable range of discourse on sociopolitical and controversial cultural subjects.
My personal spin on this frame is the concept of Overton’s Goalpost, which posits that an enemy psychological or informational faction will engage in the following refrain when they find themselves in an unenviable Narrative position relative to the Actual on the ground:
Deny
Diminish
Qualify
Distract
Admit
It can be a fun game to play, as long as you’re not the faction being forced to deploy it.
So, which stage is NATO at relative to the war in Ukraine?” —
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.
Stop the ride, I want to get off.” — Ashe in America
Could not have said it better Ashe!
Ryan DeLarme: "virtually no accountability"
How about AGGRESSIVELY no accountability!