Badlands News Brief
Israel Invades, MAGA Sues & Ports Close
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 Monday, September 30 …
Israel begins ‘limited’ ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon
Israeli ground forces crossed into southern Lebanon early Tuesday, marking a significant escalation of an offensive against Hezbollah militants and opening a new front in a yearlong war against its Iranian-backed adversaries.
The White House National Security Council said Israel’s “limited operations” to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure across the border were in line with the country’s right to defend itself.
However, the NSC warned, an expansion of that operation was a risk. It added that a diplomatic solution was the only way to achieve lasting stability along Israel’s border with Lebanon.
“This is in line with Israel’s right to defend its citizens and safely return civilians to their homes. We support Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah and all Iranian-backed terror groups. Of course, we know that mission creep can be a risk and we will keep discussing that with the Israelis,” the NSC said. — AP News
Our Take: It's finally happened. The IDF went into Lebanon for the first time since the Lebanese War in 2006.
I'm sure this will be 'limited' in the same way it took two weeks to stop the spread.
The official narrative out of Tel Aviv is that Netanyahu wants to establish an 18 mile buffer zone north of Israel, similar to the DMZ between North and South Korea. The problem is that the entire world now knows that means the Israeli Settler Movement will immediately begin constructing new settlements the moment that the land is vacant.
However, Arab media and Russian media are now reporting that there are IDF soldiers on the ground in the suburb just south of Beirut—nearly 60 miles from the border—and Israeli planes are striking targets in the area. So it seems that Netanyahu is going for Lebanon's capital on night one. While Israeli media is reporting that no armor (tanks) have yet crossed the border, this operation does seem to have the feel of a blitzkrieg. (Aside from the 4 months of forewarning in the media.)
There are also reports from Syrian state media that Damascus has been hit by Israeli strikes, resulting in several deaths, including news anchor Safaa Ahmad.
It is important to note that Hezbollah is not just a paramilitary outfit—it was originally founded as a political movement to protest Israel overstaying its welcome when it chased Yasser Arafat from the West Bank to Lebanon in 1982, and didn't leave for 18 years. Aside from the dozens of Hezbollah military leaders that have been killed in these strikes, there are also many politicians from the organization who were killed, and are/were considered legitimate officials in the Lebanese government.
Reports are that Israel used deception to lure Nasrallah and his mates into a false sense of security, assuring officials in Iran that Israel was about to deliver new peace terms, as Netanyahu was boarding a plane to New York to address the UN General Assembly. Iran was told to keep Hezbollah restrained until the terms were delivered, and the region would have its peace. (This was, of course, a lie.) While you can applaud the gamesmanship, I suppose, and how it relates to the art of war, this deception will damage Israel's ability to establish long-term allies in the region.
As for Netanyahu's address to the UN, there were a few notable moments—the best of which being when he accused the assembly of being a bunch of antisemitic flat-earthers. (Patrick Gunnels beaming smile immediately came to mind.)
Netanyahu held up a map that showed his "Arab partners," referencing the Abraham Accords, and assured the UN that the Arabs were going to have his back as he took on Iran, which he also vowed to do.
But then those same Arab partners took the stage to set the record straight, claiming to speak for all 57 nations of the Islamic Organization of Cooperation, expressing incredulous indignation. You can hear the desperation in their voices as they plead with the assembly to ask the Israelis about their "endgame." Where does all this violence end?
For the past six months, Colonel Macgregor has been saying that the Abraham Accords were dead, and he didn't see it being revived, even as the Arab partners moved mountains to keep Israel well-provisioned while swatting down any enemy missile that flew overhead. I somewhat dismissed the Colonel's assertions as pure narrative. But listening to that group of foreign ministers—which included Saudi FM Faisal bin Farhan—express their exacerbation, I think Macgregor is on to something. (Of course he is.)
The map(s) that Netanyahu shared I have seen before. They are the battle maps drawn by neocon warmongers who saw the Abraham Accords as an exciting opportunity to turn the Sunni Muslims of Arabia against the Shia Muslims of Persia (Iran). While I'm sure Netanyahu intends to lead his Arab partners in a full blown cavalry charge against Persia, I see this bold move against Hezbollah and Iran as the equivalent of going "all in" during a poker game. Netanyahu is calling out General Kurilla's threat that the United States would not back Israel in a war against Hezbollah or Iran.
This is like throwing yourself into the tiger pit, and daring the zookeepers to rescue you.
And where is Russia in all of this?
Putin sent his Prime Minister to Iran yesterday to ostensibly discuss everything under the sun outside of war, announcing increased cooperation in all fields between the two countries. It was a clear show of force, signaling to the world that Russia has Iran's back. The other thing Putin did yesterday was sign an order to conscript an additional 133,000 soldiers into the military— stating explicitly that these new conscripts would not be involved in the Ukraine conflict.
I wonder why he would do that? —
Republicans launch barrage of 120 lawsuits to lay groundwork for election challenges 'should Donald Trump lose November race'
Republicans have launched a legal blitz that is said to be an effort to lay the groundwork for election challenges in November in the wake of the 2024 election.
The Republican National Committee says it is involved in more than 120 lawsuits across 26 states, in a strategy that some legal experts and voting rights groups say is meant to undercut faith in the system.
The Harris campaign added that Republicans are 'scheming to sow distrust in our elections and undermine our democracy so they can cry foul when they lose.'
But Republicans say the lawsuits are aimed at actually restoring faith in elections by ensuring people don't vote illegally.
The lawsuits have been filed in swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, which will be crucial in deciding who will win the 2024 presidential election between Harris and Republican rival Donald Trump.
This comes almost four years after former president Trump and his allies tried and failed to overturn his election defeat with a flurry of more than 60 hastily arranged lawsuits, claiming that his loss to Joe Biden was tainted by widespread fraud. — Daily Mail
Our Take: Earlier this year, I wrote a substack for Badlands about election lawfare in which I quoted Robert Barnes:
“Not Ripe in Spring, No Standing by Summer, Laches by Fall, and Moot by Winter.”
Election lawsuits are complicated because the legal precedent almost always holds more weight than the law itself.
Elections are a supercharged emotional event for Americans, and courts have repeatedly displayed a bias towards trust in the system. Never mind that the court is dismissing a highly complex technology system and that the courts — and their officers — historically have little technology experience.
The result appeals to technicalities and procedural outcomes in election challenge litigation, rather than rulings on the merits.
Public trust is critically important for a functioning society. The courts and other government entities trust the system — which is why those who distrust the system are labeled dangerous, threatening, and may lose access to their inalienable rights in 2024.
But public trust, by definition, cannot be coerced. Trust is earned and, once lost, terribly hard to restore. The government has lost the people’s trust. Notably, their response is not to attempt to repair, resolve and restore that trust, but to silence and demonize those who recognize the loss and call it out.
I applaud the RNC — not something I thought I’d say — for getting ahead of the election and, ostensibly, learning from their lack of preparation in 2020 and 2022. I hope they’re making sound legal arguments in the interest of public trust.
Regardless, we ALL have a job to do. There are no spectators in the information war.
Vote, be vigilant, and be vocal.
MAGA. —
Time Is Running Out: US Port Strike Could Begin Tuesday; Goldman Finds Highly Exposed Retailers
Time is running out for the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) and the US Maritime Alliance (USMX)—a coalition of port operators and carriers—to form a new labor contract as the existing one expires at midnight. A no-deal scenario would mean thousands of longshoremen at three dozen facilities across 14 Gulf and East Coast ports would begin striking at 12:01 am EST. Tuesday would mark the beginning of a major supply chain storm (inflation surge) in a no-deal scenario.
Goldman analyst explained last week that a walkout by ILA members would jeopardize $5 billion in daily international trade coming into the Gulf and East Coast ports.
Goldman's Jordan Alliger told clients, "Upwards of $4.9bn per day is at risk in international trade along the East and Gulf coasts, along with the potential for supply chains to likely become less fluid due to emergent congestion, which in turn could result in a re-emergence of transport price inflation."
"The biggest wild card in the presidential election that nobody's talking about? The looming port strike that could shut down all East and Gulf Coast ports just 36 days before the election," Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen wrote on X earlier this month. — ZeroHedge
Our Take: This could be it—the moment that destroys globalist influence over the American business world.
Transnational corporations will not be able to get their product to our markets, while businesses that rely on foreign manufacturing for parts will be forced to pivot to domestic suppliers.
That's not to say that this won't be without any economic pain. Though I suppose that is something we have already been suffering and have long expected, to varying degrees. We should not be surprised that this development is here. Whether it plays out the way this fella describes remains to be seen. But at this point, we should all be expecting the unexpected.
Hang on tight, and ride out the storm. Things may get a little hairy. —
Clinton warns of October surprise that will ‘distort and pervert’ Harris
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of an October surprise that will “distort and pervert” Vice President Harris.
“There will be concerted efforts to distort and pervert Kamala Harris, who she is, what she stands for, what she’s done,” Clinton said during an interview with “Firing Line” host Margaret Hoover.
She pointed to the 2016 “pizzagate” conspiracy theory that surrounded the end of her presidential campaign against Donald Trump.
“I mean, look, I mean, the crazy story about me running a child trafficking operation out of a basement of a pizzeria,” Clinton said.
The comment evoked laughter from the crowd. “Pizzagate,” as the child sex trafficking conspiracy became known, resulted in a North Carolina man opening fire on a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor in 2016.
“Don’t laugh,” Clinton told the crowd. “It was a huge story. And it got one young man in North Carolina to get in his car with his, you know, assault rifle and drove up to liberate these nonexistent children and shoot up a pizzeria in Washington, D.C.”
“This is dangerous stuff. It starts online often on the dark web. It migrates. It’s picked up by the pro-Trump media. It’s then reported on by everybody else, which makes sure it has about 100 percent coverage, and people believe it,” Clinton said.
She warned that ahead of this year’s election, “the digital airwaves” will be filled with misinformation that can take on a life of its own. — The Hill
Our Take: Some focused anon just yelled, ‘bingo!’ at Hillary Clinton bringing up Pizzagate a month before the election. Today begins October. Let the surprises commence!
That this story is a cautionary tale foreshadowing a coming story about Kamala Harris is fascinating; more so, given the timing of the Diddy story blowing up and piercing normie bubbles across the sociopolitical spectrum. Layer in Kamala’s alleged connections to and electoral support from the Hip Hop world, and I’m popping popcorn.
At the very moment that ordinary Americans are coming to grips with Sean Combs as ‘the Epstein of the music industry,’ Clinton reminds the collective mind of Pizzagate — warning of Harris having her own Pizzagate moment within the next month. Remember that Clinton was a US Senator from NY, and the highest profile RICOs on the game board surfaced through SDNY.
Hey, remember when Hillary Clinton, like, fainted or something outside that van that one time?
Tell me we aren’t watching a movie. —
Nuclear power's AI renaissance
A new U.S. nuclear energy age may be dawning after years of false starts and dashed hopes.
Why it matters: The data centers powering the AI revolution have an insatiable thirst for energy. Major stakeholders — in Washington, Silicon Valley and beyond — see nuclear energy as one of the answers.
Driving the news: The Energy Department announced this morning it had finalized a $1.5 billion loan to stake the revival of the Holtec Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan. It'd be the first American nuclear plant to be restarted.
The news comes a week after tech giant Microsoft and Constellation Energy unveiled a $1.6 billion power purchase deal to restart a dormant reactor at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant in 2028.
At Climate Week in New York, 14 of the world's biggest banks and financial institutions pledged to support the COP28 climate goal of tripling global nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
The big picture: U.S. electricity use is soaring after staying flat for 15 years, driven by new factories, data centers, electric vehicles, hotter summers, and more. — Axios
Our Take: What's this? A convergence of Nuclear Narratives?
They're starting to figure out that they're too late to do anything about the great American pivot from the Green New Deal to the post-Eisenhower Nuclear Timeline we were meant to follow before the assassination of JFK.
This is a trend I've been tracking along all layers of the Info War, Actual to Narrative.
On the Actual Layers, we're seeing DOE and DOD initiatives to kickstart nuclear restoration projects ahead of Trump's return. Most of these initiatives were proposed by Trump and "actualized" by Biden.
On the Narrative Layers, we've seen a renewed fear push against all things nuclear, from the Hollywood propaganda of Oppenheimer to the fake news surrounding the growing nuclear threat posed by the New Axis.
We're reclaiming the American Nuclear Dream from the clutches of [their] Nuclear Nightmare.
The energy vampires of the Globalist Deep State will be most affected.
Who could have seen this coming? —
Republicans have a post-pandemic plan for the scientific establishment
House and Senate Republicans are plotting a new battlefront in the Covid wars.
They seek to rein in the sprawling National Institutes of Health by bringing to heel its civil servants and the leading scientists awarded the agency’s biggest research grants.
Republicans plan to do that, if they win control of Congress in November, by demanding to know more about what the NIH is funding, assigning more political appointees to keep tabs on the agency, significantly downsizing it and by spreading the wealth to a bigger group of grantees. Democrats in the Senate majority are blocking changes for now. The fight shows how politicized public health has become since the pandemic.
“You have the NIH in the sights of people who think there were big failures during the pandemic and that we have to change the way things operate,” said Joel Zinberg, who worked on health policy on the Council of Economic Advisers during Donald Trump’s presidency and is now a senior fellow at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Trump, who clashed with NIH leadership during his term, could make some of the changes Republicans want even if Democrats are able to block legislation. At stake: nearly $50 billion in research funding.
Some Republicans believe the NIH’s leaders during the pandemic, Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, downplayed the possibility that Covid-19 emerged from a lab in China to protect the agency, which had funded researchers working with the Chinese. Others accuse Collins and Fauci of being too trusting of Chinese researchers and of failing to monitor the risks of so-called gain-of-function research, which can make viruses more dangerous to study them. — Politico
Our Take: The timing of this article is apropos, as I just spent my lunch hour at work on the phone dealing with a crisis at home.
My daughter just started kindergarten at the local public school—where my sister works, and I have confirmed does not have any woke curriculum... yet, the other day my wife noticed that she was incessantly itching her scalp. Worried that it was lice, we inspected her, didn't find anything, and chalked it up to dandruff.
Then we went to a birthday party over the weekend, where other parents informed me that several other kids at the school were rumored to have lice. I asked why the school wouldn't have informed us; I, myself, went to this elementary school, and the one lice outbreak I can remember was treated like nuclear waste spill, and was told that new school policy suppresses that kind of information from parents, for reasons unknown.
Fast-forward to the Monday work day, and Mrs. Ghost starts pummeling my texts with lice hysteria. She realized that lice eggs incubate for weeks before hatching, and a picture she had taken of our daughter's scalp showed "dandruff" that was identical to pictures of lice eggs.
I immediately phoned the school and got the nurse, whom I began interrogating. I learned that new[-ish] CDC policy nationwide stipulates that lice is no longer considered a serious medical issue, and therefore children with lice should be kept at the school in class with the clean kids. However, despite the reduction in perceived threat level of these vermin, the disclosure of lice outbreaks to parents has been elevated and is now considered a HIPPA violation and prosecutable offense. ("Oh, but demanding to know whether I am vaccinated isn't?!" — couldn't help myself.)
So now, due to the suppression of truthful knowledge, the school has created a time bomb, where hundreds of children are wandering my community with parasitic eggs laid in their hair, waiting to hatch and take over. Soon we will be overrun, and all of this could have been avoided with a friendly heads up and some special shampoo. I find myself realizing that the lice and our politicians are effectively the same organism: dysgenic parasites that wallow in filth and suck the lifeforce out of children. This is what happens when we relinquish control of our society to smelly cat ladies; we all get infected with head lice.
The only logical response to this situation—both the head lice and federal organizations like the NIH—is open defiance. We cannot surrender our civilization to these unclean bottom-feeders, who, more often than not, are overprivileged ne'er-do-wells from the upper middle class. We cannot allow them to normalize lice in our children.
All of these rotten institutions must be dismantled, and their personnel investigated for malfeasance. We must make an example out of those who have abused their power and the public trust.
PS - I'm now considering launching a full-scale unrestricted 5th generation warfare campaign against the local school board, usurping their leadership, anointing myself "dominus noster," and imposing a totalitarian terror against bureaucrats and pronoun-people who seek to dominate and subjugate others. Because dictators aren't born, they are made. So if I do end up becoming history's next great tyrant, just remember that it all started with head lice. I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable. —
BONUS ITEMS
Trump says ‘violent day’ of policing will end crime
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police retaliation in order to eradicate crime “immediately.”
The remarks — delivered by Trump at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, just 36 days before the election — did not amount to a new policy proposal, according to a Trump campaign official.
“One rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out and it will end immediately, you know? It will end immediately,” Trump said.
Asked whether the former president’s idea amounted to a new proposal and how such an operation would work, a campaign official said Trump was “clearly just floating it in jest.”
“President Trump has always been the law and order President and he continues to reiterate the importance of enforcing existing laws,” Steven Cheung, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a statement to POLITICO. “Otherwise it’s all-out anarchy, which is what Kamala Harris has created in some of these communities across America, especially during her time as [California] Attorney General when she emboldened criminals. — Politico
Austrian far-right party pushes to form government after election win
Austria's Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl hailed a "new era" after preliminary results showed Sunday that the FPÖ had become the first far-right party to win in the country's parliamentary election since World War II, per EuroNews.
The big picture: Although the FPÖ's win reflects a growing trend across Europe that's seen voters lean toward anti-immigration, populist parties, the party is unlikely to form a coalition government as required by Austrian law.
That's because all other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with the FPÖ, with the exception of Chancellor Karl Nehammer's outgoing conservative People's Party (ÖVP). But Nehammer won't work with Kickl, citing the FPÖ leader's beliefs in conspiracy theories.
"You can't run a state sensibly and responsibly with him," Nehammer said, per EuroNews. "And I still stand by that." — Axios
Lawmakers fear ‘chaos’ if Trump-Harris race goes to the wire
Lawmakers in both parties are bracing themselves for a messy aftermath to Election Day as polls show the race between former President Trump and Vice President Harris is so close in several battleground states that it could take days to determine the winner.
Democratic senators say they fear Trump and his allies will seize on any initial uncertainty over the results to claim election fraud if Harris is projected the early winner.
Some lawmakers are already girding themselves for another battle on the Senate and House floors over certifying the election if Harris is declared the winner.
Though Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act in 2022 to avoid a reprise of Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob marched on the Capitol, some Democrats worry that history may repeat itself.
“A reasonable person has to be concerned with the rhetoric that’s coming out of certain states and certainly out of the Trump campaign. Once again they’re setting the stage whereby any loss will be blamed on corruption at the ballot box, even when there’s no possible support for that allegation,” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) said.
“I am concerned that there’s going to be chaos. They’re going to try to slow things down. If it looks like they’re losing, the Trump campaign will try every avenue possible,” he said.
Democrats have filed an ethics complaint in Georgia accusing members of the state election board of holding an illegal meeting and passing rules that exceed their authority. — The Hill
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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This head lice issue is a low level example of "something is true" for decades, until that one day when all the people who are "smarter than everyone else" decide to REVERSE course, not even a slight veer, a total about face. I was a teacher of refugee students, who struggled with this issue, but our school took measures to inform and curtail these outbreaks. School nurses invoking HIPPA, is the perfect example of how a govt regulation that is supposed to "protect the citizens' privacy" 🙄 gets turned on its head. Pun intended. Go for it, Ghost! Demand a school environment with clean heads!
I have it from reliable sources, with results, when the lice kits from the grocery store fail, mix Teatree oil, diatomaceous earth, and olive oil. Rub into hair and scalp, cover with a shower cap overnight. Then shampoo a lot and fine comb. God speed your victory over this pestilence!
Interesting Takes today, thanks for sharing.
I so look forward to getting through this current phase of the plan and beginning "The Best is Yet to Come". Our current world is FUBAR and we need to flush and start a new.
I have total faith in God and this Evil must be crushed.
I stand ready.
God Wins!
God Bless!!!