Badlands News Brief
The Walls Are Closing in ... But Not on Us
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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 Tuesday, August 22 …
Trump’s Georgia arraignment expected to be televised, Fulton County judge says
The state judge overseeing former President Trump’s Georgia case ruled that cameras will be allowed in the courtroom for the defendants’ arraignments, marking the first time that one of Trump’s criminal proceedings will be televised.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee on Tuesday granted a request from four local television stations to bring in live cameras and other recording devices in his courtroom through Sept. 8.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) is seeking to hold the arraignments for all the defendants the week following Labor Day, which would fall within that window. If the timeline is delayed, however, McAfee’s order would expire.
McAfee’s order does not indicate whether cameras will be allowed during a trial or any other future proceedings in the case.
Willis charged Trump last week alongside 18 co-defendants over their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump has denied any wrongdoing. — The Hill
Our Take: “It’s been said the the Revolution won’t be televised.
That’s fine, and we’re not looking for a revolution, anyway; we’re looking for a peaceful and constitutional return to the Republic our forebears had in mind when they laid down MUCH more than their pens in the forging of the documents that would codify and enshrine the rights we enjoyed until the powers that would be subverted them.
But … Donald Trump is the symbol of that rising sovereign sentiment within the American Mind … and it’s looking more and more likely that HIS revolution WILL be televised.
And we’ll all be watching.
The Trial of Donald Trump isn’t going to be the end of the story, but the beginning of one.
And I think we’re going to like how it ends.” —
The Worst People Run for Office. It’s Time for a Better Way.
On the eve of the first debate of the 2024 presidential race, trust in government is rivaling historic lows. Officials have been working hard to safeguard elections and assure citizens of their integrity. But if we want public office to have integrity, we might be better off eliminating elections altogether.
If you think that sounds anti-democratic, think again. The ancient Greeks invented democracy, and in Athens many government officials were selected through sortition — a random lottery from a pool of candidates. In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors. What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?
People expect leaders chosen at random to be less effective than those picked systematically. But in multiple experiments led by the psychologist Alexander Haslam, the opposite held true. Groups actually made smarter decisions when leaders were chosen at random than when they were elected by a group or chosen based on leadership skill.
Why were randomly chosen leaders more effective? They led more democratically. “Systematically selected leaders can undermine group goals,” Dr. Haslam and his colleagues suggest, because they have a tendency to “assert their personal superiority.” When you’re anointed by the group, it can quickly go to your head: I’m the chosen one.
When you know you’re picked at random, you don’t experience enough power to be corrupted by it. Instead, you feel a heightened sense of responsibility: I did nothing to earn this, so I need to make sure I represent the group well. And in one of the Haslam experiments, when a leader was picked at random, members were more likely to stand by the group’s decisions. — The New York Times
Our Take: “This article was first published with the headline, ‘Elections are Bad for Democracy.’ It’s unclear why The NY Times changed it. Can’t imagine.
Writer Adam Grant suggests in the piece that a ‘random lottery’ to select our leaders would be better than electing them because the people who run for office are largely narcissistic sociopaths.
In case you missed that, they are now openly advocating for selections. I’m sure the people running the lottery system aren’t narcissistic psychopaths, though. And people who would brazenly steal elections would never rig a lottery. Grant provides no specifics for how this will work, only that candidates will be vetted and tested to, ‘improve our odds of avoiding the worst candidates in the first place.’ Who does the vetting? He doesn’t say, but someone would and that means the death of representative government and the abandonment of consent as a requirement for governance. All because Adam Grant doesn’t like mean tweets.
My favorite part of this ridiculous piece is that Grant cites national division as a reason for getting rid of elections. ‘In a world filled with divisiveness and derision, evidence shows that members of Congress are increasingly rewarded increasingly for incivility.’
Consider the role the NYT plays in national division, and reread that statement. The people who’ve peddled destructive and divisive narratives for years — forever — are now citing the division they caused as reason to eliminate elections altogether. Establishment propaganda outlets like the NYT are, once again, manufacturing the problem, and then selling the regime’s preferred solution.
Let’s see if we hear the ‘get rid of elections’ idea go mockingbird. That will tell us how serious they are about it, and appropriately shape our response.” —
Atlanta college reinstates mask mandate after students test positive in city
Three years after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a college in Atlanta is reinstating its mask mandates for all its students and employees on campus for the next two weeks.
Morris Brown College (MBC), a private historically black liberal arts school, announced Sunday on Instagram the mask mandate would be implemented as a precautionary measure, even though the school's administration had not reported any positive cases among its students.
But several students in the Atlanta University Center—which includes several HBCU schools including MBC—tested positive for the virus. Students returned to the city after summer break just last week.
"We prioritize your safety and seek your cooperation in preventing another pandemic," college president Dr. Kevin James wrote in the post. "Thank you for being proactive in safeguarding our community." — FOX News
Our Take: “They're really going to try it again.
They're going to try to mask you up, vax you up and lock you down, and all in the midst of the Trump Witch Hunt, which is predicated on his claims that the 2020 election was stolen due to tactics implemented the first time around.
On the one hand, it's possible to read that through the lens of the Doomer's Refrain.
On the other, consider that it could be the biggest redpill germination campaign of all time.
This is our second chance at a last impression.” —
De-dollarization "Irreversible" - Putin Tells BRICS Summit In Remote Address
In their inaugural day 'family photo', BRICS leaders posed without Russia's President Putin, as FM Lavrov took his place given the ICC arrest warrant and Rome Statute would require the South African government to seek his arrest.
Putin addressed the summit remotely, and emphasized in the Russian-language speech that de-dollarization is "gaining momentum". He said the dollar's receding global centrality is an "objective and irreversible" process. As expected he struck an optimistic tone about the bloc's future, also at a moment China's XI is urging BRICS to become a geopolitical rival to the G7:
The Russian leader claimed the five BRICS members – Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa – are becoming the new world economic leaders, adding that their cumulative share of global GDP has reached 26%.
He noted that if measured by purchasing power parity, BRICS has already surpassed the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations – accounting for 31% of the global economy, compared to 30% for the G7.
Over the past 10 years, mutual investment between the BRICS member states has increased by six times. Their total investments in the world economy have doubled, while cumulative exports account for 20% of the global total, Putin said.
Putin also took a swipe at the US and West's "Illegitimate sanctions… seriously weigh on the international economic situation," and the "unlawful freezing of sovereign states’ assets" - in a message sure to be greeted positively among many aspiring Brics applicants. "We are consistently increasing fuel, food and fertilizer supplies to the states of the Global South," he added, while also blaming international food shortages on the West’s "unlawful" sanctions. — ZeroHedge
Our Take: “There have been a lot of rumors about announcements set to come out of this week's BRICS Summit, which kicked off today in Johannesburg.
Among these are the official announcement of a gold-backed currency as a means of weaning BRICS+ nations off of fiat.
Whether or not a currency is announced, announcements have already been made at the summit that point to the continued strengthening and expansion of the economic relationships between these risen and rising world powers.
What is tangential in the eyes of many western pushers of modern monetary theory is primary to others:
This is an attack on the US petrodollar, and if and when Saudi Arabia officially joins the mix, the Final Fiat Countdown will have begun.” —
New memos undercut Biden-Ukraine narrative Democrats sold during 2019 impeachment scandal
Just weeks before then-Vice President Joe Biden took the opposite action in late 2015, a task force of State, Treasury and Justice Department officials declared that Ukraine had made adequate progress on anti-corruption reforms and deserved a new $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee, according to government memos that conflict with the narrative Democrats have sustained since the 2019 impeachment scandal.
“Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee,” reads an Oct. 1, 2015, memo summarizing the recommendation of the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC) – a task force created to advise the Obama White House on whether Ukraine was cleaning up its endemic corruption and deserved more Western foreign aid.
The recommendation is one of several U.S. government memos gathered by Just the News over the last 36 months from Freedom of Information Act litigation, congressional inquiries and government agency sources that directly conflict with the long-held narrative that Biden was conducting official U.S. policy when he threatened to withhold a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee to force Ukraine to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, the country’s equivalent of the American attorney general.
At the time the threat was made in December 2015, Shokin’s office was conducting an increasingly aggressive corruption investigation into Burisma Holdings, an energy firm the State Department deemed to have been engaged in bribery and that employed Hunter Biden and paid him millions while his father was vice president. — Just the News
Our Take: “I just keep telling myself, ‘You can’t impeach an illegitimate president,’ while processing each new smoking gun against the Biden Crime Family. While most of the Biden news this year is what
refers to as ‘reruns’ of the Biden Laptop contents, these memos are cited as new, and I don’t recall seeing them, so they are definitely new to me.The trove comprises ‘several U.S. government memos gathered by Just the News over the last 36 months from Freedom of Information Act litigation, congressional inquiries and government agency sources…’ And the contents are damning.
First, the ‘son of a bitch’ speech takes on new meaning when you consider that the Senior State Department officials invited Shokin and staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session and that they were ‘impressed’ with his work. They sent a memo saying they supported the third loan guarantee. The way Biden tells it, the official US foreign policy position was that Shokin had to go. This memo proves that to be a lie.
But there is much more here. When you pull the thread on these memos, you reach some damning conclusions:
(1) Burisma was using Hunter to pressure Joe to get Shokin fired, and top US officials knew it and sounded the alarm up the chain to … Marie Yovanovitch. ‘U.S. officials in the Kyiv embassy told then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch at the end of the Obama administration that Hunter Biden had, in fact, impacted the U.S. anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine.’
(2) Marie Yovanovitch lied under oath during the first House impeachment inquiry.
(3) George Kent lied under oath during the first House impeachment inquiry.
(4) Exculpatory evidence was withheld from Trump’s defense team during the first House impeachment inquiry and the subsequent Senate trial.
(5) The US State Department and the rest of the federal establishment has been covering this up for years.
Joe Biden has lied to the American people about his and his family’s activities and influence in Ukraine, repeatedly, over the course of many years.
You can’t impeach an illegitimate president. But you should be able to prosecute one, right?” —
BONUS ITEMS
First Trump co-defendant surrenders to Fulton County jail
The first of former President Donald Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election case turned himself in at the Fulton County jail on Tuesday, a process that will be an early signal around how other surrenders are handled.
Scott Hall, who works as a bail bondsman in Atlanta, was charged by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis with crimes related to his alleged involvement in the Coffee County, Georgia, voting systems breach.
His experience will likely demonstrate how most defendants in the case are treated. He had signed a bond agreement with Willis on Monday, then was given an inmate identification number and released after spending roughly an hour at the jail on Tuesday. — CNN
Meadows seeks to block arrest as he tries to move Georgia charges to federal court
Mark Meadows, the former Trump White House chief of staff, asked a federal judge Tuesday to block his arrest over Georgia election charges as he tries to move his case to federal court.
In a court filing Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Meadows’s lawyers filed an emergency motion for either an immediate ruling on moving his case to federal court or for an order to prohibit Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from seeking his arrest if he does not surrender to the Fulton County jail by Friday at noon, the deadline Willis set.
“District Attorney Fani Willis has made clear that she intends to arrest Mr. Meadows before this Court’s Monday hearing and has rejected out of hand a reasonable request to defer one business day until after this Court’s hearing,” the filings said.
Later Tuesday, a judge ordered Willis to respond to Meadows’s requests in writing by 3 p.m. Wednesday.
A federal judge ordered a hearing for Monday over Meadows’s request to move his case. — 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.
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.
Re "the Revolution won't be televised." Remind me what Q has been wrong about, so far? Ok so here is "My Take": We Must have a Revolution. Not a physical one, and not just a return to our Republic roots. Oh no, dear friends, we need a huge change from our damned complacency and "I don't care what they do in DC as long as they leave me alone" attitude! We must take the helm of this great ship, get fully engaged, VOTE, get involved in local politics (yes, Politics), and steer her back to our Maker's course. There is no 'returning' to anything but God, at this point, imho. Trump said in his Inaugural Address that he was handing the country back to the People. Next step: We must reach out and take it. This will be the Revolution, and it will be in our hearts and minds. And yes, I believe it has begun.
Obvious acceleration is occurring on a myriad of fronts and one wonders at which point it will ‘hit the fan’? Hint: I’d bet it’s not going to be the so-called Republican debates tonight.🤣
Ashe nailed it, “You can’t impeach an illegitimate president. But you should be able to prosecute one, right?”
It’s past time to return God to our nation. Praying for His mercy on this nation as there must be a few good God-fearing people here. I believe there are many on this list of truth journalists.🙏