Badlands News Brief

Trump Probe, Russia/China Alliance & COVID Origins

Mar 21, 2023

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.

Now, onto the news from Monday, March 20 …

Trump probe: law enforcement don’t expect arraignment until next week, virtual option not considered

Law enforcement officials met behind closed doors Monday to discuss the logistics of arraigning former President Trump following his possible indictment over hush-money payments made on his behalf during the 2016 presidential campaign.
A law enforcement source told Fox News Monday that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and different branches of law enforcement discussed the logistics of closing down streets and putting lights up with generators, extra barriers, and extra police.
The source said law enforcement does not expect the former president to be arraigned until next week as the Manhattan grand jury – which has been meeting secretly to hear evidence for weeks – has another witness on Wednesday. A virtual option was apparently ruled out as the District Attorney is opposed to it. However, another source familiar with the discussions regarding the handling of a possible Trump indictment, said that a virtual arraignment for the former president was never seriously considered.
The source told Fox News that law enforcement is concerned about safety. If the former president does come up to Manhattan, there will be a major police presence and the area will get shut down. Trump has called on his supporters to protest ahead of a possible indictment. — FOX News

Our Take: “Well, there it is.

They are pushing it back after hearing testimony today and I'd bet they will push it back again and again, until the heat is off and they quietly dismiss the grand jury after failing to procure an indictment.

If you recall, just a year or so ago, Cy Vance, then the Manhattan DA, failed to "get Trump". Two prosecutors quit because of it (Mark Pomeranz and Carey Dunne), and Cy decided not to run for office again. Along comes Alvin Bragg and he tries to do the same thing, to "get Trump" and he is gonna get the same result, but THIS TIME Trump via his Truth Social posts and statements has highlighted the Manhattan DA's Office and put all the attention on it like never before.

For Alvin Bragg and his supporters/cheerleaders in media/politics, "there's fire on both sides of the door."

No indictment, he has failed, media/pols got tricked into joining his wagon as it launched off a cliff. If he DOES pen an indictment, it will be easily dismissed, Trump will have more street cred and support than ever before, and Bragg+media+pols will have Hell to face.

Either way, on the other side of The Matador Trump's cape is a fu*king brick wall and [they] are headed full speed right into it.

There's also a possibility that a spicier dish may be served up: one that results in the indictment of someone OTHER than Trump and flips this entire fake news saga on it's head and twists it into a pretzel.

That's the dish I'm hoping will be served.” — Just Human

Putin Tells Xi He's "Open To Negotiating Process" On Ukraine As US Says Ceasefire "Unacceptable"

What's being described as an initial, informal meeting between Presidents Xi and Putin is underway at the Kremlin. While the expected cordialities and expressions of closer relations were exchange, among the most notable early statements came from Putin, who said he's "open" to peace talks with Ukraine and China's mediation efforts.
"We have a lot of joint tasks, goals," Putin told his Chinese counterpart while also congratulating him on re-election as the head of the Chinese state for a third 5-year term. Xi in return said "Russia succeeded in promoting prosperity under Putin’s leadership." Putin further expressed that "we will discuss your initiative [on Ukraine] which we view with respect."
"We are open for a negotiating process on Ukraine," the Russian leader added. He noted to Xi that "we have looked at your proposals for the resolution of the Ukraine conflict" and previewed that "we will discuss this question." — ZeroHedge

AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎@AZgeopolitics

🇨🇳🤝🇷🇺"Welcome to Russia" — Xi Jinping has arrived in the Kremlin, an informal meeting with Vladimir Putin has started

1:45 PM · Mar 20, 2023

820 Reposts · 3.06K Likes

Our Take: “China and Russia are the baddies, right? Ask most conservatives and the answer will be yes. But it's not entirely clear who is the bad guy and who is the good guy.

Case in point, the globalist agenda requires total compliance—just like any good scam. Think Asch Conformity experiments. To pull off a big lie, where one person or group is made to believe in the lie, you need all the other people in the audience to be in on the con. The globalists thought China et al. would go along with the Russia-Ukraine grift. But it seems Xi has other plans—at least this is one interpretation of what happened. I don't claim to know either way.

But in Bicameral spirit, the premise that Xi and Putin are working together as part of a global white hat sting operation against the DS has not been invalidated. It should at least be considered. The globalist agenda appears to require pandemics, wars between super powers, and a collapse of the food, energy, and finance sectors.

If China and Russia join forces, they could opt out of these pre-planned implosion events and in doing so deal a significant blow to the agenda. Of course, both super powers might just be positioning to become the superpowers in a post Western civilization world.” — Justin Deschamps

Biden signs legislation to declassify certain intelligence on Covid pandemic origins

President Joe Biden on Monday signed legislation requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information on any possible links between a lab in China and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The House and the Senate unanimously passed the legislation earlier this month. The push to make public classified information on the origins of the pandemic comes after the Energy Department concluded with “low confidence” that the virus is likely the result of an accidental laboratory leak in China.
“In implementing this legislation, my Administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security,” Biden said in a statement.
Under the legislation, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has 90 days to declassify all information on possible links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of Covid. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been a major center of coronavirus research. — CNBC

Our Take: “A) This could be 'real' disclosure, coming on the heels of both the House and Senate unanimously voting for the measure.

B) It could be used as further justification for the escalation of tensions with China, as I believe the public story will be that China (not rogue elements within Wuhan) are responsible for COVID-19.

C) Either way, a limited hangout will prove ineffective, as the cat's out of the bag re: Fauci & the NIH.

The ongoing goalpost moving re: Wuhan Institute of Virology represents the clearest example yet of Overton's Goalpost.

Don't worry about continued attempts to obfuscate the true nature of ... whatever COVID was, be it a virus, a bio weapon or a PsyOp. The Net Effects were catastrophic to the world, and Deep State elements were responsible.

When the enemy is forced into a position whereby they release more intel than they previously had, it's a sign of having lost ground in the Mind War.” — Burning Bright

US Studies How To Guarantee All $18 Trillion In US Bank Deposits

After repeated laments by the likes of Bill Ackman, who most recently said that "I continue to believe that the best course of action is a temporary @FDICgov deposit guarantee until an updated insurance regime is introduced" (and who just flip-flopped on his "Fed must hike with shock and awe" call from 2022 and is now urging for a Fed hiking pause), and following a Bloomberg weekend report that US mid-sized banks demanded a two-year total deposit insurance scheme from the FDIC, and warned if it doesn't arrive, there may lots more shotgun weddings (or shotguns), moments ago Bloomberg reported that "US officials are studying ways they might temporarily expand Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. coverage to all deposits, a move sought by a coalition of banks arguing that it’s needed to head off a potential financial crisis." Guess our March 12 tweet was ahead of its time yet again.
The BBG report explains that "Treasury Department staff are reviewing whether federal regulators have enough emergency authority to temporarily insure deposits greater than the current $250,000 cap on most accounts" without formal consent from a deeply divided Congress, and goes on to note that "authorities don’t yet view such a move as necessary, especially after regulators took steps this month to help banks keep up with any demands for withdrawals" which is an important caveat, and is the same one that hawks are using to justify why a Fed pause would be self-defeating ("why is the Fed blowing up their last bit of inflation-fighting credibility; what do they know that we don't): the same question can be applied to the Treasury: "what does the Treasury know that we don't."
Most likely nothing - after all bank crises are non-linear, but as Bloomberg notes, "still, they are developing a strategy out of due diligence in case the situation worsens." — ZeroHedge, citing Bloomberg

Americans To Bear Burden Of Monetary System's Gradual Deterioration, Economist Says

Ordinary Americans can expect their wealth to get repeatedly chipped away as the monetary system degrades and requires progressively more intervention by authorities to perpetuate itself, according to an influential author and economist. It may take “a very long time,” however, for the system to actually break, he told The Epoch Times.
The recent downfall of two sizable American banks, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and First Republic Bank, rattled the financial markets. Investors are now looking to the Federal Reserve to provide relief and within months reverse its policy of raising interest rates. That’s after the central bank, together with the Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), already shored up the banking sector, offering special loans and guaranteeing uninsured deposits for the failed banks.
The failures, however, represent a symptom of a broader problem—one the central bank can’t fix, according to Daniel Lacalle, fund manager, economist, and prolific author.
“The problem here is the concept of ‘what can be done?’” he said, arguing central bank market interventions intended to smooth over market perturbations tend to simply redistribute the risk and losses—and at the added cost of making the system more fragile in the long run.
“Every time they try to solve a bubble with more liquidity injections, they create another bubble,” he said. “What you have to do first is not implement crazy monetary policies.”
He was referring to the policy of extremely low interest rates that the Fed maintained for most of the past decade. — The Epoch Times

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.

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