Badlands News Brief

Whose Coup Is It Anyway? ... And Other Questions

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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 the Weekend that Was …

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Prigozhin 'Exiled' To Belarus In Exchange For Peace, Criminal Charges Dropped: What Was This All About?

This entirely bizarre slightly less than 24-hour short-lived coup attempt has just gotten even stranger, given the terms of the truce which evidently caused Evgeny Prigozhin to announce his Wagner fighter columns would turn around and go back to their bases.

The Wall Street Journal has confirmed based on Kremlin statements that "As part of the agreement, Prigozhin will leave Russia for Belarus, and criminal charges against him will be dropped, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. His fighters will be allowed to sign contracts with the Russian military."

And Russia's RT provides some further details as follows based on Peskov's statement:

"He added that Wagner's fighters will not be persecuted, taking into account their efforts on the frontlines of the Ukraine conflict. Peskov explained that President Vladimir Putin's team "have always respected their exploits."

Those PMC contractors, who refused to take part in the mutiny – and whole units did not – will be allowed to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry, Peskov stated.

Can this even be called "exile"?... given that Kremlin statements at this point aren't even so much as using the word which has a clear punitive implication. The irony remains that one can get a much harsher punishment for mere Cannabis vape pens in the country. In summary:

• charges dropped against Prigozhin, who will leave Russia for Belarus

• Wagner fighters who didn't take part in the uprising will sign contracts with the MOD

• Wagner fighters who did take part not charged 

• No word on potential MOD leadership changes

What's clear is that it does indeed look to be over, with no further immediate danger of civil conflict. — ZeroHedge

Our Take: “So, nothing much happened this weekend, huh?

In all seriousness, that question becomes less of a joke the more times you read it, as what we seem to have here is either an example of the shortest-lived and strangest massive coup attempt against one of the world’s superpowers in the history of the world, or a classic case of MILDEC (military deception.)

Aside from the … odd timeline ZeroHedge lays out quite succinctly above, the biggest bit of Actual that maps onto this being a smoke-out operation in concert between Putin and Prigozhin is the fact that they literally did something similar—albeit slightly less dramatic THREE WEEKS AGO—when Wagner threatened to abandon Bakhmut and claimed they were losing their position to Azov while decrying Kremlin MIL leadership.

At the time, myself and some other commentators suggested this was an example of Russian Maneuver Defense, and that the false feud between Wagner and the Kremlin would be used to bait Azov into an unwise and unplanned counter-offensive into Bakhmut, where Wagner (who had greatly exaggerated their weakness) would blitz them.

Of course, that’s exactly what happened, and Putin even commended the contractor unit for their effectiveness.

Now we’re to believe the same undermanned and underarmed Wagner Group, who had just orchestrated a clever bit of MILDEC a month earlier mustered enough of a force—and had enough of a change of heart—to march on Moscow, only to abandon said plans less than a day into the effort, and with zero bloodshed?

Color me delightfully skeptical.

As for the WHY of the above, there are a few advantages to this sort of deception.

• The False Coup ensnared the attention of the Media Industrial Complex, who were caught with their pants down yet again after going all in on the ‘walls are closing in’ narrative re: Putin.

• Blinken, the US (Deep) State Department and the G-7 Defense Ministers were waiting with baited breath to see if the Kremlin would fall, monitoring for ‘opportunities’ regarding the Ukrainian line.

• Putin and Kremlin leadership just got their most effective loyalty test they could have dreamed of. Wagner leadership is not being directly punished, but “some” will be.

• Azov moved into more precarious positions in the Donbas in light of their enemy’s seeming and temporary withdrawal, and the Putin-backing Chechens seized the opportunity to move MUCH closer to the Donbas under the guise of responding to Wagner.

In other words, we’re watching a movie, and sometimes that movie has subtitles.” —

Burning Bright

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MSM Betrays Biden Regime, Savages Spox's Over Corruption Bombshells

With revelations that Joe Biden's DOJ buried evidence of son Hunter tax crimes, and that Hunter demanded a CCP-linked associate wire funds while he was "sitting here with my father," things have started looking very bad for the Bidens, very quickly.

[…]

First, Kirby refused to answer questions before storming away from the podium.

"I'm not going to comment further on this," said Kirby, after he was asked if a WhatsApp message from Hunter which appears to demand payment from a Chinese businessman contradicted Joe Biden's earlier claims that he and Hunter never discussed Hunter's business dealings.

After Kirby ducked out, Jean-Pierre attempted damage control, only to be bombarded with repeat questions.

"I’m just not going to get into family discussion," she said, when asked why Hunter attended a White House state dinner with Indian officials and AG Merrick Garland on Thursday night.

The press doubled down, with one reporter asking; "Kirby wouldn’t answer James’ question. Are you going to answer the question? It’s not an unreasonable question to ask if the president was involved, as this message seems to suggest, in some sort of coercive conversation for a business dealing by his son. If he wasn’t, maybe you should tell us?"

To which KJP repeatedly deflected, getting defensive at one point.

"It's not up to you how I answer the question," she snarked at one dissatisfied journalist. — ZeroHedge

Our Take: “A lot of people have been dooming out lately after Durham's hearing and the political lawfare attacks against Donald Trump, but this train wreck of a presser is the perfect physical manifestation of the current state of panic and disarray that the Deep State is experiencing. Things might seem bleak from time to time; after all, a fight is an exchange of blows, but it seems like Trump and friends aren't really sweating things all that much.

While Karine Jean-Pierre and John Kirby can barely hold it together in the face of the slightest scrutiny, Donald Trump is looking quite comfy giving lengthy speeches and succinctly laying out the difference in severity between his non-crime and this damning evidence against Biden at the Faith and Freedom Coalition on Saturday night.

It's a little harder to get a read on the puppet masters in Davos, Geneva, and abroad. For them, Joe Biden is just a pawn—a punching bag who is continuing the deep-state plan while suffering all of these blows before tipping the WW3 dominoes and fading into obscurity once they finally decide to 86 him for health reasons.

But what do they intend to do next? It seems as though they want Trump locked up or disqualified, RFK Jr. marginalized into oblivion like Bernie Sanders, and a DeSantis vs. Newsome race, but is that really going to play out? I'm still enjoying this crazy chess game; dooming is for chumps.” —

Ryan DeLarme

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Special counsel in Trump classified docs case asks judge to delay trial until December

Special counsel Jack Smith has asked the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's classified documents case to delay the start of his criminal trial until December.

The request came in a series of new motions filed late Friday by the special counsel.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had set a tentative date of Aug. 14 for the start of the trial.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, with prosecutors saying he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation's defense capabilities.

In their Friday filings, Smith's team says they believe the pretrial proceedings, including making sure defense counsels obtain the necessary security clearances to review discovery materials, will realistically take more time than the August trial date proposed by Judge Cannon earlier this week. — ABC News

Our Take: “Jack Smith, everyone’s favorite Deep State district attorney, in asking for more time, helped tip off the American people as to what the real motive is for this show trial.

As Trump and others on the side of freedom have been clear about, a line in the sand has been drawn. Trump and the patriots will not let another election be stolen. Or more to the point, they won’t let them get away with it this time because we have all the evidence we need to stop them when they invariably try to steal 2024. In truth, Trump didn’t let anyone get away with anything. The operation was just bigger than stopping election fraud.

Listen to how boldly Trump speaks to the line in the sand.

Given how much Trump has on the DS and how desperate they are, the degree to which the bad guys are going to pull out all the stops to stop Trump and the patriots will truly be a sight to behold. In fact, this might be the primary thrust of what we will see over the next two years—the DS frantically trying to stay in control, and in the process, exposing themselves for all to see.

In a way, we’re already deep into the DS-self-exposure operation. It’s just going to be more inescapably obvious as time goes on; so expect some normie melt-downs.

Enter Jack Smith’s motions to move the trial date from August to December in addition to motioning the court to effectively gag Trump to prevent him from speaking about the case.

The ladder motion arguably is the more obvious benefit for the DS.

Trump is the ultimate narrative aikido master, able to artfully redirect the energy of his attackers back onto themselves or to make use of it in some beneficial way. The legal basis of the document scandal, as most people who look at it agree, is dubious at best. In fact, it’s so bad, it’s critical for the DS to keep it under wraps—hence the gag order.

Trump, as he has been doing, just needs to speak to the facts of the case to make the DS and all those that support this bogus document scandal look like the petty spoiled brat princes that they are.

Just like Robin Arryn in the Game of Thrones, Jack Smith and his ilk look the fool, and will continue to do so long as Trump’s tongue remains in his mouth.

This is one of the unwaveringly beneficial aspects of the patriot side of the war. Our position is founded on truth; therefore, the truth with all it’s lie destroying power is on our side. We merely need to use our voices to speak it into the minds of the ideologically possessed.

For this reason, it is critical for the DS to prevent Trump from talking the case. But more than this, it is also critical that the people for which this propaganda has been designed (the general normie population) also be prevented from examining the legal basis of the case—which has no real merit. If anyone with half a neuron of thinking power did look at it, they would quickly realize it’s nonsense—and in doing so, realize that it’s political corruption of the highest order—the weaponization of the law itself.

Like any good fraud, the only way it can be accepted by the masses is if it goes unexamined, like the fraud of the vaccine industry, or the fraud of the transgender affirming care, or the fraud of groom kids for sex while calling it sex education.

This brings us to the first motion—to delay the trial. The longer it is delayed, even without a gag order imposed onto Trump, the more they can use their control of the media to push their lies and deploy their political propaganda weaponry.

Frankly, I suspect that some bigger, more disruptive guns are being mobilized, like cyber attacks that take out the power grid, or another plandemic being rolled out, just as the effects of the toxic Canadian-fires from earlier this year start to show clinical symptoms in the general population.

Then again, this could be a very desperate and pathetic play on the part of the DS, for which, I’m delighted to be at this place if we are indeed here.

Regardless of what these developments mean, we have a lot to look forward to—even if it gets a little hairy for a bit.” —

Justin Deschamps

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U.S. spies learned in mid-June Prigozhin was planning armed action in Russia

U.S. spy agencies picked up intelligence in mid-June indicating Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin was planning armed action against the Russian defense establishment — which he has long accused of bungling the war in Ukraine — and urgently informed the White House and other government agencies so they were not caught off guard, several U.S. officials said Saturday.

The exact nature and timing of Prigozhin’s plans were not clear until shortly before his stunning takeover of a military command and tank run toward Moscow on Friday and Saturday, officials said. But “there were enough signals to be able to tell the leadership … that something was up,” said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. “So I think they were ready for it.” — The Washington Post

Our Take: “As far as I know, there is no concrete reporting or disclosure that links the $6.2B in ‘discovered’ Ukrainian funds to the Wagner so-called coup attempt. But stories like this make the theory seem plausible.

The US government knew there was going to be a coup; they briefed Congress; they were concerned about Russia’s response and the potential nuclear fallout. And a couple days before Wagner advanced, they ‘found’ an extra $6.2B for Ukraine.

That said, the ‘$6.2B coup’ theory was one of the least silly theories over the weekend. In a 24-hour live Twitter space, hosted by Mario Nawfal, a stage full of neocons damn near lost their minds playing pundit while quoting alleged Wagner-run Telegram chats. Around 11am ET, Mario himself said, ‘Within the next few hours, we could see the Kremlin fall.’ That was the silliest theory of psy-op.

Many unanswered questions remain about the coup that wasn’t—the coup d’nah —but it’s not in doubt that warmongering neocons gloriously embarrassed themselves on Saturday. When Wagner turned around, they couldn’t hide the sadness in their voices. Apparently insurrections are now in vogue.

As for what role, if any, the $6.2B played, let me know if you find out. I’m still wondering about the $2.3T that went missing on September 10, 2001.” —

Ashe in America

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Newly declassified report shows U.S. intelligence community remains divided over likely origin of Covid

A long-anticipated government report on the origins of Covid-19 offered new details on the U.S. intelligence community’s findings but did not state definitively whether the source of the coronavirus was exposure to an infected animal or an event at a laboratory.

“All agencies continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Friday in a 10-page declassified report.

The report laid out divisions within the Intelligence Community, some of which were previously acknowledged.

While the National Intelligence Council and four unnamed agencies assessed that natural exposure to an infected animal was the most likely scenario for the first human infection, the Department of Energy and FBI’s assessment was that a laboratory-associated incident was more likely the cause.

Meanwhile, the CIA and an unidentified agency “remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,” the report states. — NBC News

Our Take: “Plausible Deniability: ‘The ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to deny knowledge of or responsibility for actions committed by or on behalf of members of their organizational hierarchy.’

How do you achieve plausible deniability in the Covid-19 scandal? You have 17 ‘different’ agencies full of ‘experts’ assess the crime, report contradictory findings, and ignore established scientific facts. And, again, no one gets held accountable.” —

Ashe in America

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Another Take: “From the producers of the WMDs in Iraq report, to the 53-expert letter debunking the Hunter Biden laptop before the 2020 election comes another very trustworthy intelligence community report—this time, detailing investigations into the origins of COVID and China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Despite the fact the intelligence community ostensibly has access to far better information sources than us plebs on the outside, the report read like a confirmation of the official narrative for the past three years.

Here are some excerpts from the article/report:

• ‘Meanwhile, the CIA and an unidentified agency ‘remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,’ the report states.’

Strange that the IC can make well-nigh angelic level assessments of the 2016 election, apparently having proof that after 8 years we still haven’t been able to find, and yet it can’t ‘determine the precise origin’ of COVID.

• ‘Almost all’ intelligence agencies agreed that the virus wasn’t genetically engineered, and all agencies agreed that Covid was not manufactured as a biological weapon.’

• ‘Additionally, the report said ‘most’ agencies also agreed that the virus was not laboratory-adapted—more specifically, that the virus had not sustained natural, random mutations via human-enabled processes in the lab.’

Despite the fact ‘directed evolution’—gain of function—has been performed within US funded biological research facilities for years, for some reason, COVID, which began it’s spread a stone’s throw away from one of these biolabs, wasn’t genetically engineered. At least, that’s what the oh so trustworthy IC tells us. They would never cover for big med or big tech. No. Certainly not.

This is just a small taste of the spin the experts in the IC managed to come up with.

What I do find interesting is that the report said ‘most' agencies’ agreed with the majority opinions. Some didn’t. Who are these dissenters? Are these patriots in the IC?

I’ll just leave this here …

‘We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.’ - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)” —

Justin Deschamps

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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.