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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.
Some 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, May 18 …
Kari Lake's Election Challenge Trial: Day 2
The team at Badlands Media has been bringing you live coverage all day as the Kari Lake Election Challenge rages on in Maricopa County.
Our Take: “In day two of Lake v. Hobbs et al, Team Lake used Maricopa County's own data to show that signature verification did not take place in accordance with the law. The narrow legal matter being discussed is whether or not Maricopa County conducted signature verification per the Arizona statute.
Signature verification, according to Arizona law means that a human looks at a signature on a mail-in ballot envelope, and compares that signature to other signatures in the county record. The data presented in court Thursday showed that humans reviewed and compared signatures at an astonishingly-rapid rate according to testimony: 779,330 signatures were compared in less than six seconds; 512,597 of those were in less than four seconds; and 321,495 were in less than three seconds.
Additionally, the county's own data shows a correlation between faster speed and higher approval rates. Plaintiffs share the example of User 79, who reviewed 54,298 signatures with a 98.9% approval rate. Within that total, 45,217 were compared in less than six seconds with a 99.91% approval; 37,524 signatures in less than four seconds with a 99.97% approval. User 79 compared 27,196 in less than three seconds and approved 100% of them. Note that the faster User 79 reviewed, the higher the approval rate.
Plaintiff's handwriting and signature verification expert Erich Speckin testified that, in his opinion, the 45,670 signatures approved by User 26 and User 9 should be removed from the 321,495 because those "comparisons" were completed so fast they cannot conceivably have been completed by a human.
If machines were conducting signature verification, then signature verification according to the Arizona law and statutes did not take place.
Upon Plaintiffs resting their case, defendants immediately motioned for a summary judgement without bringing their defense. After an impassioned back and forth, the judge declined their motion, and the defense called their only witness, Ray Valenzuela.
Liddy questioned Valenzuela, and Lake's attorneys will cross-examine him tomorrow.
We will have every second covered on Badlands, beginning at 12PM ET.
Don't miss it!” — Ashe in America
Secretive Bilderberg Gathering Of Global Elites Kicks Off: See Who's Attending & What They're Discussing
The 69th Bilderberg Meeting, a secretive conclave of global power brokers, has kicked off in Lisbon, Portugal, with issues on the agenda including transnational threats, artificial intelligence, and America’s leadership in world affairs.
This year’s meeting, the latest in a series that began in 1954, continues to blur the lines between open diplomacy and clandestine elitism as political leaders brush shoulders with industry bigwigs, media barons, and finance tycoons.
“It’s a really high-octane list, leaning heavily into the Russia/Ukraine conflict and the future of NATO,” journalist Charlie Skelton, who’s in Lisbon to cover this year’s event, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
As usual, the details of their discussions remain obscured by the “Chatham House Rule,” a protocol that gives participants the discretion to use the information gleaned from the talks but forbids the identification of speakers or participants, ensuring anonymity.
“Thanks to the private nature of the Meeting, the participants take part as individuals rather than in any official capacity, and hence are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions,” a Bilderberg Meetings press release reads.
Among the major topics slated for discussion are artificial intelligence, the banking system, energy transition, and industrial policy and trade.
Other high-priority issues include the geopolitical landscapes of Europe, China, India, Russia, and Ukraine, along with NATO and America’s global leadership. — The Epoch Times
Our Take: “*Teaser for up coming badlands substack feature*
Ask yourself, who's choices govern your life? Did you have a voice in negotiating the policy that you are subjected to?
People we never met, who do not live in our lands and communities, who do not speak with us or know our interests, are deciding the course of our lives.
The Bilderbergs are at it again. They arrive as individuals, hence they need not make their discussions public, but the act as one.
The very fact we allow elected officials and other custodians of our rights and government to engage in open conspiratorial behavior with each other, as if this is OK, as if this isn't the very definition of conspiracy, is a damning indictment for the supposedly free countries we live in.” — Justin Deschamps
Supreme Court Delivers Ruling on Section 230
The Supreme Court passed up the chance on Thursday to take a case that many believe could have changed social media and the Internet forever.
The nation’s highest court did not take a case that could have clarified the scope of the federal liability shield known as Section 230, which protects internet companies from many legal claims regarding content posted by users.
“In a pair of rulings Thursday morning, the justices shut down lawsuits seeking to hold giants like Google and Twitter liable for terrorism-promoting content on their platforms, but the court nixed the suits without issuing any sweeping pronouncements on the immunity provision that has come under increasing fire from both Republicans and Democrats,” Politico reported.
“The cases mark the first time the high court dealt with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the 1996 law that gives internet websites broad liability protections for most third-party content posted on their sites. It marks a major win for tech companies that have argued narrowing their decades-old liability shield could be disastrous for the internet, leading to a greater influx of hate speech and extremist content online,” the outlet added.
In October 2020, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took issue with Section 230 in a dissent in the Malwarebytes Inc. v. Enigma Software Group USA case. — Conservative Brief, sourcing Politico
Our Take: “Section 230 has been used as a weaponized tool against anyone not conforming to narratives set on many social internet websites. This abuse has long been called out by Justice Clarence Thomas and several members of our current congress. This is simply an excuse that private social media companies use to regulate and censor free speech, leaving the corruptible media platforms to be the arbiters of truth versus allowing truth to be discovered.
When this does come to a head, we can address the real issues at hand. The silencing of dissenting voices has only shed more light and attention on an atrocious situation. We need the Supreme Court to come together and stop side-stepping the elephant in the room.
Allowing this to continue is eroding our society, and is why no one trusts the MSM any longer. This issue needs to be tackled, as honest reporting is being gate-kept. This absolutely does a disservice to all sides of the political spectrum when we do not allow for voices from all sides to be heard, whether we agree or not.” — Johnny Q
TWITTER FILES: Twitter Provided Privileged Access to Banning Queen, Taylor Lorenz
Shortly after Elon Musk purchased Twitter last October, he reinstated several accounts the company had banned, triggering anxiety among tech savvy reporters and eliciting a blaring headline from one of his greatest critics, the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz: “‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts.”
Her detractors portray Lorenz as hyperbolic and anxious, a characterization she fulfilled by charging that Musk was setting off alarms across the internet, “Elon Musk plans to reinstate nearly all previously banned Twitter accounts — to the alarm of activists and online trust and safety experts.”
Reinstating banned Twitter accounts certainly alarmed Taylor Lorenz as well. According to newly disclosed Twitter files, Lorenz successfully banned an account only a few weeks prior to publishing her Washington Post essay. Other files show Lorenz behind other bans and that Twitter seemed to have a special relationship with her, sending out an alert after Tucker Carlson did a short segment on Fox News ridiculing her often-criticized reporting.
The month before Lorenz’s article alleging that Musk was “opening the gates of hell”, she successfully pushed to ban a Twitter account with a small following called @fearthefloof. This account dug into her past and detailed her life as a Manhattan rich girl, who attended a Swiss boarding school, and has a well-connected sister named Brook Lorenz—a publicist who has worked at CNN, the Washington Post and CBS News.
According to this now deactivated account, Lorenz is also able to scrub much of her past from web searches because her uncle owns the internet archive, which stores old webpages. — The DisInformation Chronicle
Our Take: “The Deep State Dems and their allies in media and industry want you to believe there is nothing of substance to he idea Twitter, and other platforms, colluded with corrupt actors to manipulate voters and engage in election fraud. They are dead wrong.
The truth is, the manipulation is far more insidious and pervasive than we ever imagined. Trump knows of this subversive influence, saying as much in the CNN Town Hall when he talked about Twitter and the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The same problem that rages at the heart of this issue crosses over into nearly every other issue. And this problem is the lack of objective standards in measuring success vs failure and the rule of law vs. corruption.
Case in point: Twitter and other large social media platforms use vague rules to justify unfairly implementing various policies for managing hate speech and the like. The vagueness is not an accident. It ensures that no one, be they within Twitter, users of Twitter, or regulators of Twitter, can use objective means to make valid and repeatable decisions insofar as to who should or should not be banned. While some degree of vagueness is unavoidable, if one reviews the case history of Twitter policy decisions related to offending posts on their platform, a clear pattern of inconsistency in standards appears.
Translation: No rule of law, no fairness—mainly tyranny and weaponization of positions of power and influence.
If you hear this and feel a sick feeling in your stomach, congratulations, you have a moral pulse. This is wrong, at a deep level. And the mere fact we allow it to happen at all is itself a victory for the powers that should not be.
Think abuser conditioning and grooming. A groomer uses encroachment to slowly get their victim used to abuse, eventually producing a numbing effect wherein the victim has little to no awareness of the fact they are being abused. This is precisely where the people find themselves.
The more we accept and acquiesce to tyranny, the more bold and ambitious the tyrants become. A bully keeps bullying until they are confronted. And in today's age, the bullies are some of the biggest companies out there, most especially, the bridge trolls that control social media censorship.” — Justin Deschamps
'Death Outlives War': Analysis Estimates Post-9/11 US Conflicts Killed Over 4.5 Million
The post-9/11 War on Terror may have caused at least 4.5 million deaths in around half a dozen countries, according to a report published Monday by the preeminent academic institution studying the costs, casualties, and consequences of a war in which U.S. bombs and bullets are still killing and wounding people in multiple nations.
The new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs shows "how death outlives war" by examining people killed indirectly by the War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.
"In a place like Afghanistan, the pressing question is whether any death can today be considered unrelated to war," Stephanie Savell, Costs of War co-director and author of the report, said in a statement. "Wars often kill far more people indirectly than in direct combat, particularly young children." — CommonDreams.org
Our Take: “I don’t end with this bit of projected data to send us into a spring weekend on a low note. That said, while those of us in this community have been digging in the dark for months, years … some of us, decades, I think we can sometimes lose the forest for the trees, as we either get so caught up in the Micro that we miss the Macro, or—and I’m guilty of this—we focus so much on Narrative that we miss the Actual.
I’ve been writing and commenting on the uncanny frequency with which the CIA and US Intel Agencies have been dominating the War of Stories—also known as the Media Cycle—in recent months. From accusations of international—and criminal—sabotage operations, to dripping and resurfacing disclosure regarding everything from JFK to 9/11, to their more recent alleged role in the spinning up of the Russiagate hoax targeting Donald Trump and subsequent suppression of the damning Hunter Biden Laptop, the CIA has had their grubby little paws in MANY a cookie jar over the years.
We all know this. We’ve all known it for quite some time.
But when we pause and consider the Net Effects of what they might have wrought with these clandestine—and criminal—moves against the sovereignty of the United States of America, we are reminded that the ripples have been far-reaching, and have touched every man, woman and child on this earth.
Justice is coming, and while patience is our shared and sometimes grudging virtue, it can’t come soon enough.” — Burning Bright
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.
I have a lot of great sources, but I look forward to Badlands in my morning email the most:) With today's articles on Bilderberg, Section 230, etc, I'm reminded again of what seems uppermost in my mind these days: The idea that We The People are complicit with the Deep State in this mess because we have slowly abdicated all our God given authority over this planet to them. Prove me wrong? Trump said he's giving it back to us, Q said the precipice would make us ready to take it. I trust it will happen and I can hardly believe it. Thanks be to God for yet another unspeakable gift.
The macro theory I am considering that appears to account for each topic included today has a lot to do with history. I lived in Germany for over 3 years and when there, delved more into the actual situation during WWII. Years of interest in the European monarchies and the Catholic Church added more depth; finally, Will Zoll’s lengthy, but excellent articles on the rise of the Prussians and my lengthy interest in US organized crime and the ‘timely’ rise of the intelligence agencies helped fill in gaps. Now my conclusion (at least in theory) is that when WWII concluded, the Prussian remnants came to set up their new headquarters in Washington, DC. They came via a few known ways (Operation Paperclip, etc.) and many more clandestine ways. This theory appears to answer each and every question of the actions that our federal government has taken... In other words, we are the site of the world’s evils; at least the government is. Time for ‘we the people’ to awaken and take action. Food for thought on a Friday morning.
Thankful for each of you courageous journalists. God bless each of you.🙏