Badlands News Brief
Baltimore Fallout Continues as Nickelodeon Exposes Itself
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.
Many items feature original (and subjective) commentary. Feel free to follow the corresponding link to see our writers’ Substack accounts and check out their other work.
Now, onto the news from Wednesday, March 27…
Ship that collapsed Baltimore bridge was carrying hazardous materials: NTSB
The cargo ship that caused the Baltimore bridge collapse was carrying hazardous materials, the National Transportation Safety Board said.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said there are 56 containers aboard containing hazardous materials, including corrosives, flammables and lithium ion batteries. She said some containers were breached and a sheen was identified in the water that will be dealt with by authorities. She said the voyage data recorder has been recovered.
Homendy said the investigation could take 12 to 24 months but that the NTSB will not hesitate to issue urgent safety recommendations during that time. She said a preliminary report should be released in two to four weeks.
"It's a massive undertaking for an investigation," Homendy said. "It's a very tragic event." — ABC 6
Our Take: “In the early hours following the Dali crash, the owner of the Singapore flagged ship issued a statement. The Dali is owned by Grace Ocean and operated by Maersk between the East Coast of the US and East Asia, Tradewinds reports.
In part, the statement read: ‘All crew members, including the two pilots, have been accounted for and there are no reports of any injuries. There has also been no pollution.’
I thought that was an odd statement — especially considering the amount of twisted metal and what not around the Dali at the moment — and I said as much when I read it. Now it makes more sense.
It also may be untrue. According to this local ABC report, ‘There is minor sheening on-scene. Booming has been ordered and is staged but will not be placed until search and rescue and dive operations are complete,’ the document said. ‘The amount of potential oil spill is 1.8M gallons of marine grade diesel.’
The first — FIRST — result on Google when I searched ‘sheening pollution’ is a fact sheet out of Canada entitled, ‘Water Sheen Facts’ with the highlighted text, ‘not all sheens are the result of pollution.’
Sure, okay.
To be fair, it also says (unhighlighted by the AI summarizer), ‘Sheens can be caused by petroleum products finding their way into the water, or they can be the result of naturally occurring phenomena.’
The Grace Ocean’s early and immediate assertion that there was ‘no pollution’ is suspect in terms of timing and circumstances, but now is more interesting given the sheen. No worries though, everyone, CISA is on it:
‘Federal officials are monitoring about 1.8 million gallons of fuel inside the container ship Dali for its ‘spill potential,’ according to an unclassified memo from the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency... The Department of Homeland Security has also deemed the water near the crash site unsafe for divers, according to a memo obtained by ABC News.’
I hope this is just sheen from the wreckage and residual engine fuel or something, and pray this is not a ‘spill’ or otherwise a mass pollution event.
That being said, with CISA involved, it’s sure to be the safest and most secure boat-crash-turned-fuel-spill in history.” —
Nickelodeon was 'infiltrated' by PREDATORS, records reveal. Channel employed FIVE convicted child molesters and two other accused pedophiles to work on set of kids shows
Nickelodeon employed or worked with five child molesters as well as two others accused of pedophilia, court records show.
Child safety activists claim the channel was infiltrated by predators who saw the power it gave them as a way to get close to their victims.
Two of the offenders were highlighted in a new HBO documentary about alleged child abuse at the channel.
But legal records show that convicted and accused pedophiles' prior involvement with the channel was far more extensive.
Nickelodeon says it has since improved its safeguards. — The Daily Mail
Our Take: “There are a number of important elements being presented in this story that are important red pills for a public slowly being prepared for cognizing things like Satanic death cults embedded throughout our public and cultural institutions. These elements are not only clues for the general public as to how rampant the problem of pedophelia is in the entertainment industry, but insight into how this culture of child abuse is being systematically cultivated and sustained.
One is the clear example of how trauma travels from generation to generation.
Dialogue coach Brian Peck molested child star Drake Bell. Bell is later accused of grooming and sexually abusing a 15 year old and eventually convicted of distributing child porn. An industry that normalizes child abuse will eventually produce more child abusers. We know that multigenerational abuse is something well understood and effectively engineered by MK Ultra programs, both in the past and today.
Another is the concept that convicted pedophiles will flock to places like Nickelodeon because it is a safe haven for them. This is exemplified in what happened to Brian Peck after he was convicted as a child molester: he was hired by Disney.
These companies are so saturated by child molesters that there is a predator subculture looming beneath the surface. But this actually points to the final, and maybe most difficult reveal of all: that our population has a high number of pedophiles.
Conservative estimates propose that there are about 60 million men on earth struggling with persistent thoughts about sexual relations with minors.
As I wrote in The Looming Culture of the Pedophile: ‘Stopping men with a sexual attraction to children from consuming child pornography, or worse, abusing a child, should in fact be a priority, but this means supporting the idea that these 60 million men are not trapped like this for life.’
This is one of the major dilemmas of living in a culture that has been grooming men to sexually idolize younger and younger females. The top search term in the porn industry is ‘Teen.’ In orbit around this are terms like "barely legal." The porn industry seems to be spending billions grooming men in the direction of pedophelia. This form of grooming is rarely addressed.
I understand the sentiment that pedophiles should simply be imprisoned, and in some cases I understand the sentiment that some child rapists be given the death penalty.
But neither of these sentiments are confronting the fact that there is a rising number of men being steered deeper and deeper into a culture focused on sex with minors.
If men can be groomed in this direction, what must be done to reverse this trend?
Our culture is a massive ship and the course correction that is due needs to be comprehended in scale, time and difficulty. Both long term and short term solutions are needed to heal from the large scale sexual abuse of the human collective as a whole.” —
SEC scores big win in lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase
The Securities and Exchange Commission scored a major win in its lawsuit against Coinbase on Wednesday, as a judge ruled that its claim that the cryptocurrency exchange engaged in unregistered sales of securities could be heard by a jury at trial.
Coinbase’s shares fell around 2.5% on news of the ruling in Manhattan federal court rejecting its bid to dismiss the SEC’s complaint.
The regulator first filed suit against Coinbase in June, alleging the company was acting as an unregistered broker and exchange. The agency also demanded the company be “permanently restrained and enjoined” from continuing to do so.
In her ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla wrote, “The ‘crypto’ nomenclature may be of recent vintage, but the challenged transactions fall comfortably within the framework that courts have used to identify securities for nearly eighty years.”
“The Court finds that the SEC adequately alleges that Coinbase, through its Staking Program, engaged in the unregistered offer and sale of securities,” Failla wrote.
The judge elsewhere in that ruling agreed to dismiss the SEC’s claim in the lawsuit that Coinbase acted as an unregistered broker by making its Wallet application available to customers. — CNBC
And …
SWIFT planning launch of new central bank digital currency platform in 12-24 months
Global bank messaging network SWIFT is planning a new platform in the next one to two years to connect the wave of central bank digital currencies now in development to the existing finance system, it has told Reuters.
The move, which would be one of the most significant yet for the nascent CBDC ecosystem given SWIFT's key role in global banking, is likely to be fine-tuned to when the first major ones are launched.
Around 90% of the world's central banks are now exploring digital versions of their currencies. Most don't want to be left behind by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but are grappling with technological complexities.
SWIFT's head of innovation, Nick Kerigan, said its latest trial, which took 6 months and involved a 38-member group of central banks, commercial banks and settlement platforms, had been one of the largest global collaborations on CBDCs and "tokenised" assets to date.
It focused on ensuring different countries' CBDCs can all be used together even if built on different underlying technologies, or "protocols", thereby reducing payment system fragmentation risks. — Reuters
Our Take: “A pair of headlines emanating from the financial sphere on Wednesday have some interesting implications, if you approach them with a Bicameral mind.
The SEC has notched a temporary win in its suit against Coinbase, as the judge has ruled that their complaint that the crypto exchange engage in the unregistered sale of securities can be heard by a jury at trial.
SWIFT is planning to launch a new Central Bank Digital Currency Platform within 2 years.
While the SEC is rightly seen as a part of the Deep Administrative State by most in the alt. media and Truth Community, I think there's more going on here than meets the eye.
First off, the SEC has acknowledged that Bitcoin is the only crypto it considers a free market commodity, and NOT a security. This means that, de facto, the US government considers all other digital currencies to be securities.
Coupled with Trump's statements on blocking CBDCs in the future ... could the banks eventually be undone by their own securities laws?” —
Jon Stewart benefited by 829% ‘overvalue’ of his NYC home even as he labels Trump’s civil case ‘not victimless’
Comedian Jon Stewart ranted this week that Donald Trump’s civil real-estate case overvaluing his properties was “not victimless,” yet when it came to his own home, Stewart benefited from a similar inflation.
On Monday night, Stewart, 61, unpacked Trump’s $454 million appeal bond, calling out experts framing the former president’s New York civil case as not causing direct harm to any individual.
“The Daily Show” host rolled a clip of CNN’s Laura Coates interviewing “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary, who commented that the ruling didn’t “go over well” with the real estate industry that was now fretting over the possibility of becoming the next target.
Coates responds to O’Leary by highlighting that Trump was found liable for falsifying business records in the second degree, issuing false financial statements, insurance fraud and conspiracy, all due to asset inflation.
“Everything that you just listed off is done by every real estate developer everywhere on Earth in every city. This has never been prosecuted,” O’Leary replied.
In response, Stewart asked: “How is he not this mad about overvaluations in the real world?”
“Because they are not victimless crimes,” he said.
To further his point, Stewart argued that “money isn’t infinite. A loan that goes to the liar doesn’t go to someone who’s giving a more honest evaluation. So the system becomes incentivized for corruption.”
[…]
But it didn’t take long for internet sleuths to look into Stewart’s own property history, which shows his New York City penthouse sold for 829% more than its assessed value, records confirmed by The Post reveal. — The NY Post
Our Take: “Hypocrisy is the norm for famous people still peddling the regime’s narratives, so that’s not really news. But check out this bit:
‘Meanwhile, the New York assessor valuation on Stewart’s former penthouse is the exact same citation method and metric that New York Attorney General Letitia James used to value Trump’s private and personal properties, and then sued him for inflating those assets.’
Trump and the Shark Tank bro and developers and bankers and all other sorts have been saying this since the case was filed. This news about Stewart’s properties is an escalation of that disclosure.
829 is a lot of percentage points. Stewart himself claimed this — his own behavior — is fraud.
‘How is he not this mad about overvaluations in the real world? Because they are not victimless crimes,’ he said… ‘money isn’t infinite. A loan that goes to the liar doesn’t go to someone who’s giving a more honest evaluation. So the system becomes incentivized for corruption.’
Oh, the inequity of it all!
Stewart should be immediately prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
How many non liar loan applicants did Stewart’s lies disenfranchise? Who else inflated their property in NYC and is guilty of this devastating ‘fraud’ for which 45 was convicted? Are we going to see a return of the occupy movement this summer?
So many questions. I hope we get answers to all of them.” —
BONUS ITEMS
NBC News fires ex-RNC chair Ronna McDaniel after Rachel Maddow, ‘Morning Joe’ revolt
NBC News dropped former Republican National Committee boss Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor — a humiliating turnaround after a mutiny among the network’s stars.
MSNBC prime-time headliner Rachel Maddow and the co-hosts of “Morning Joe” were among those who sparked a revolt over the decision to bring the Trump-backing politico on board, which was announced last Friday.
NBCU Universal Chairman Cesar Conde took “full responsibility” for the decision to hire McDaniel — and can her less than a week later — in a memo to furious staffers Tuesday evening obtained by The Post. — The NY Post
Trump Hits Back Against NY Gag Order -- Turley Says: "Appeal"
Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday responded to a gag order issued in his "hush money" case, slamming both the judge and his daughter - who allegedly posted a picture of Trump behind bars on social media.
Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the case in which Trump is accused of making 'hush money' payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the 2016 election, issued a gag order blocking Trump fromm making public comments about the court staff, jurors, witnesses, or prosecutors in the case.
"Given that the eve of trial is upon us, it is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount," Merchan wrote.
Trump Responds
On Wednesday, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, claiming that the decision imperils his First Amendment rights. Trump also took aim at Merchan's adult daughter.
Merchan, Trump wrote, "is suffering from an acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome," adding that Merchan's "daughter represents Crooked Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, and other Radical Liberals," adding that she allegedly "has just posted a picture of me behind bars, her obvious goal, and makes it completely impossible for me to get a fair trial."
"This Judge, by issuing a vicious ‘Gag Order,’ is wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement, including the fact that Crooked Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and their Hacks and Thugs are tracking and following me all across the Country, obsessively trying to persecute me, while everyone knows I have done nothing wrong!" the post continues.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley suggests appealing the order … — ZeroHedge
US backed itself into corner by blaming IS for Crocus City Hall terror attack — diplomat
The US has backed itself into a corner by jumping the gun to lay blame on the Islamic State terrorist group (IS, outlawed in Russia) for the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall even as the incident was still in progress, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
"The very fact that within the first 24 hours [after the attack], even before the fire was put out, the Americans started screaming that it wasn't Ukraine, I think, is a piece of incriminating evidence. I can't classify it otherwise; it is evidence in and of itself," the diplomat said on air during a Sputnik radio broadcast.
"The second fact to note concerns the clamor by the US that this assuredly was the work of ISIS (former name of IS - TASS)," the spokeswoman pointed out. "Of course, the speed with which they were able to [come to such forthright conclusions] is astonishing. It took them only a few hours to get to a microphone, turn on the lights, summon the press and draw a conclusion about who is to blame for this horribly bloody terrorist attack," Zakharova said.
"I think they’ve boxed themselves into a corner, because as soon as they started screaming that it was ISIS, all those people who work in international relations, who are political scientists and experts, recalled and reminded everyone else what ISIS really is," the diplomat said. "You are behind all those ISIS-type structures, you - the United States, Great Britain - yourselves brought them into being," she concluded. — Sputnik
Trump’s Truth Social skyrockets on first trading day in major boost to former president
Former President Donald Trump’s media company, Trump Media, rose sharply in price during its stock market debut.
On its first day, Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, was valued at roughly $8 billion, greater than respected companies such as Mattel and Western Union. The former president holds 60% of the stock in Trump Media, making him the primary beneficiary of the good market performance, the New York Times reported.
According to the outlet, a frenzy of interest in the company’s stock caused trading to be briefly halted due to extreme volatility. However, by the end of the first trading day, Trump Media closed at $57.99, a gain of 16%.
Trump helped create Truth Social after he was banned from Twitter, his favorite mouthpiece for about a decade, in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Though his ban was rescinded after Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought the outlet, he has decided to stay with Truth Social.
According to research firm Similarweb, Truth Social has about 5 million active users. X, formerly known as Twitter, has around 500 million. — The Washington Examiner
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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Isn’t it amazing how quickly our authorities solve major incidents - within hours - the Baltimore bridge crash wasn’t terrorism, the Crocus attack wasn’t Ukraine, the Russian interference in our 2016 elections had no American collaboration, Benghazi was triggered by a video… and the list goes on.
I respect Simon's direct and confrontational Take on pedophilia. His willingness to address the topic at all is reflected in his article from June of last year. "This is one of the major dilemmas of living in a culture that has been grooming men to sexually idolize younger and younger females. The top search term in the porn industry is ‘Teen.’ In orbit around this are terms like "barely legal." The porn industry seems to be spending billions grooming men in the direction of pedophelia. This form of grooming is rarely addressed."
As a pre-teen boy I had to defend myself violently twice from the advances of adult men - once from the operator of the local paper's delivery routes...and that was in the early 70's. And no I didn't tell anyone (in fact this is the first time I have ever brought it up), not because I wasn't horrified, but because I wanted to keep my first job (I somehow won a brand new bike in a sales contest the next month too)...the story gets worse but I will stop here, hopefully making my point.
I do believe there is an answer and, like Simon, I believe that reversing the course of this ship will take effort (imagine turn battle ship around).
I also suspect that the general population has become so cowed by the assault against standards, the manipulation of language, and the long-game strategies of our enemy that we may not be capable of the accepting the determination that some actions - and even some thoughts - are wrong. As I have noted before, we need to accept that Truth is and that it comes from our loving Creator; and that He is able and willing to Ransom and Redeem any and every one from any and every sin (oops - did I say that word?)!