Badlands News Brief
Toothless Sanctions and Ouroboros Patterns
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 Tuesday, February 20 …
Russia to get hit with 'major sanctions' in response to Navalny's death, US says
The White House will announce a new "major sanctions" package on Friday "to hold Russia accountable" for the death of Alexei Navalny, the longtime Russian opposition politician and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.
"Whatever story the Russian government decides to tell the world, it's clear that President Putin and his government are responsible for Mr. Navalny's death," Kirby said Tuesday morning. "In response and at President [Joe] Biden's direction, we will be announcing a major sanctions package on Friday of this week to hold Russia accountable for what happened to Mr. Navalny."
Kirby did not go into detail about what the new sanctions package would include, but noted the sanctions will also work to hold Russia accountable for its ongoing war with Ukraine. — ABC News
Our Take: “The Navalny Deployment has rightly been seen by most in the Info War as another example of the Hegelian Dialectic -- a False Flag meant to both trigger mass psychological mania with regards to Russia in the aftermath of Vladimir Putin's seismic (and effective) interview with Tucker Carlson, and to provide the illusion of mandate for the sanctions they're handing down now.
Of course, these sanctions have not and will not 'work,' as demonstrated by the fact that Russia is one of the only nations whose GDP has actually increased in recent years, and whose national currency has strengthened relative to the petrodollar ... but the point of the sanctions isn't to work, but rather to act as a scarlet letter painting a line of demarcation between the 'rules-based order,' also known as the globalist establishment, and those who eschew said rules.
Thing is, we've reached the stage of the Story where Russia and the emergent BRICS nations are done pretending they care.” —
NYT Publisher Defends Coverage Of Biden's Age, Says It's Made White House "Extremely Upset"
The New York Times’ reporting on concerns about President Joe Biden’s age has made the White House very unhappy, according to the publisher of the newspaper.
The revelation came in an interview with Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, during which NY Times publisher Arthur Greg Sulzberger was asked if journalists should take a different approach when covering an “authoritarian candidate.”
Having navigated the newspaper through the turbulent 2020 election cycle, Mr. Sulzberger noted that there is a risk in the media “leaning into becoming the opposition to these candidates and becoming emotionally invested and trying to undermine them,” rather than helping the public better understand who they are and what they can offer.
“For me, the path forward is to fully and fairly convey this and do it unapologetically and with clear language while understanding that doing so may lead some people not to find it too credible,” said Mr. Sulzberger, who succeeded his father, longtime publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. in the role at the end of 2017.
“We are going to continue to report fully and fairly, not just on Donald Trump but also on President Joe Biden,” he told the Institute.
“He is a historically unpopular incumbent and the oldest man to ever hold this office.”
“We’ve reported on both of those realities extensively, and the White House has been extremely upset about it.”
During the interview, which was published Monday, Mr. Sulzberger also acknowledged that a “disproportionate number” of conservative voters do not trust any news source that recognizes President Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election. — The Epoch Times
Our Take: “OK, I have to admit that news of the White House being upset about New York Times coverage of Biden’s decline brought me some glee.
But then I sobered up and took a deeper look at what was really going on, because frankly, it’s too good to be true.
Sulzberger‘s position that there is a risk in the media ‘leaning into becoming the opposition to these candidates and becoming emotionally invested and trying to undermine them,’ seems reasonable. The problem is that he doesn’t represent an injection of new ideas, nor is there any evidence that he is a part of undoing the weaponization of the New York Times against the people.
He is the old guard personified. In fact, he is the sixth member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family to serve in the role of NYT publisher. All voting shares are controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger Family Trust. SEC filings state the trust's ‘primary objective’ is that the Times continues ‘as an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and unselfishly devoted to the public welfare.’ 😆
Given that Sulzberger took over in 2018, in the middle of Donald Trump’s presidency, it’s obvious that the New York Times has continued to play the role of the enemy of the people. Sulzberger cannot possibly represent a re-calibration of the NYT. This only further confirms that the assassination of Joe Biden’s character is an operation.
I would wager that any narrative claiming that the White House is upset with the New York Times is all just theatre to entrench us into a new story, with slightly altered villains and heroes.
From the 40,000 ft view, it’s just them squirming from loss of power and the light of day.” —
Biden-Harris Administration Announces Nearly $6 Billion for Clean Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure as Part of Investing in America Tour
Today, Vice President Kamala Harris and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan will travel to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as part of the Administration’s Investing in America Tour to announce $5.8 billion in funding for clean water infrastructure from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. President Biden and Vice President Harris are committed to ensuring a future where every child and family has access to clean, safe water, and today’s announcement brings the total amount of clean water funding announced by EPA from the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to $22 billion. The Infrastructure Law invests a total of over $50 billion to upgrade America’s water infrastructure, the largest investment in clean water in American history.
Over two million people in America live without running water, tens of millions more lack access to safe and reliable drinking water and sanitation, and over nine million homes, daycares, and businesses receive their water through a toxic lead pipe. Due to decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment, lack of access to clean water disproportionately affects low-income and underserved communities. President Biden and Vice President Harris believe this is unacceptable and must change. No child, no family, no teacher, and no American should lack access to clean water.Today’s announcement delivers funding to every single state and territory in the country to expand access to clean drinking water, replace lead pipes, improve wastewater and sanitation infrastructure, and remove PFAS contamination in water. — The White House
Our Take: “There is something weird going on. Or, it’s just more money-laundering...
According to the EPA, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided more than $50 billion to EPA for water infrastructure. These payments were announced and distributed exactly a year ago in Feb 2023. I covered these payments on Episode 28 of Culture of Change, here.
According to their own words, this was the single largest investment in water infrastructure that the federal government has ever made. One year ago. 50 Billion USD. Distributed to every state and territory in the US.
Yesterday, February 20, 2024, the Biden Harris Admin announced $6Bn more:
’…today’s announcement brings the total amount of clean water funding announced by EPA from the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to $22 billion…delivers funding to every single state and territory in the country to expand access to clean drinking water, replace lead pipes, improve wastewater and sanitation infrastructure, and remove PFAS contamination in water.’
That’s the exact same reason — PFAS — for the exact same recipients — all states and territories — announced exactly a year ago.
Why is another $6Bn needed just one year after the largest investment in US history? Does it have anything to do with that water hearing a couple weeks ago? Or are they just laundering more money while also attempting to buy votes in an election year?
Our water supply and its vulnerable infrastructure have been in focus in a sustained way for a while now. Maybe it’s nothing.” —
Assange Judge Worked For MI6 & Defense Ministry
One of the two High Court judges who will rule on Julian Assange’s bid to stop his extradition to the US represented the UK's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Ministry of Defense, Declassified has found.
Justice Jeremy Johnson has also been a specially vetted barrister, cleared by the UK authorities to access top-secret information. Johnson will sit with Dame Victoria Sharp, his senior judge, to decide the fate of the WikiLeaks co-founder. If extradited, Assange faces a maximum sentence of 175 years.
His persecution by the US authorities has been at the behest of Washington’s intelligence and security services, with whom the U.K. has deep relations.
Assange’s journalistic career has been marked by exposing the dirty secrets of the US and UK national security establishments. He now faces a judge who has acted for, and received security clearance from, some of those same state agencies.
As with previous judges who have ruled on Assange’s case, this raises concerns about institutional conflicts of interest. Exactly how much Johnson has been paid for his work for government departments is not clear. Records show he was paid twice by the Government Legal Department for his services in 2018. The sum was over £55,000. — Consortium News
Our Take: “There is so much to remember about Julian Assange’s contributions to our current timeline that it can make one’s head spin.
In the power struggle between Donald Trump and the Deep State, it’s important to remember that Assange destroyed the narrative that the source of the DNC hack that exposed Hillary was the Russians. This was a big deal.
Assange had already been undermining deep state operations across-the-board by focussing on corruption within the five eyes intelligence networks. But on top of this, it’s arguable that his contribution to operations targeting the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign were particularly devastating, and likely very aggravating.
This is what makes it so dangerous that this judge has a long history with intelligence agencies and classified government materials. If this judge is a corrupt, Deep State operative or has been compromised, he is precisely the kind of person that Julian Assange would have likely exposed.
One of the looming questions for me is, why did Donald Trump not exonerate Julian Assange?
As has been pointed out by his wife and lawyer, if he is extradited to the United States, this is akin to a death sentence. He is very unlikely to survive the worst form of incarceration the US has to offer.
Personally, I can only guess at two potential reasons for Assange not being let off by Trump:
Either doing this would have compromised operations underway to an extent that the casualties, or forms of compromise it demanded were unacceptable or there was a long game being played by Trump and his team that will once again align its strategies with Assange’s Great Work.
The third option is, of course, to take the maddening number of variables in this scenario and rest more comfortably in doubt and uncertainty: a primary tool for navigating the fog of fifth generation warfare and a necessary cognitive stage for effective discernment.” —
Musk Reveals Neuralink's First Human Patient Controls Computer Mouse With Mind
In an X Spaces event, Elon Musk revealed the first human patient implanted with a brain chip from Neuralink has made a "full recovery" and "can control the mouse around the screen just by thinking."
"Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of. The patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking," Musk told X users in Spaces on Monday night.
Musk said Neuralink is currently focusing on maximizing the number of mouse clicks by the patient.
Neuralink implanted the first brain chip into a human in January, following approval for human trials in September. The potentially life-transforming technology could help patients with quadriplegia caused by cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. — ZeroHedge
Our Take: “I’m no scientist, obviously, but it sounds like Elon says that Neuralink is having success in programming thoughts. Musk claims the Neuralink guinea pig, I mean patient, has made a full recovery and is able to move a computer mouse ‘just by thinking.’ He then went on to explain that they are focusing this part of the experiment on mouse clicks.
So there is a team of scientists with this patient, and they are working on how his thoughts connect to the clicks of the mouse, ostensibly focused on accuracy and calibration of his thoughts to the IRL actions of the mouse. That sounds like programming thoughts. It could also be considered programming the device, but the device exists to control the physical world via thoughts, so…
Who is the ethical voice in this experiment? I don’t mean the SpaceX marketers talking about healing the lame and making the blind see again. I mean a person or people with a calibrated moral compass who will ensure that these scientists aren’t developing the tools for our future enslavement?
If there are such people, their voices must be visibility-filtered. Speaking of, how long do we have until the regime censorship tools — unveiled but not abolished by Elon — can extend to our thoughts? Let’s be honest, they’re testing that now.” —
Pornhub could be blocked in Canada. What’s the bill behind the controversy?
A controversial bill proposing that porn sites should have an age verification requirement is coming up for study from the House of Commons amid concerns about its effectiveness in protecting minors and other privacy concerns.
The owners of Pornhub, one of the largest porn sites on the internet, have opposed the bill, calling it the “wrong legislation,” and say they’re considering blocking access to Canadians.
Bill S-210, An Act to restrict young persons’ online access to sexually explicit material, is a Senate bill currently making its way in reverse through the parliamentary process. That means it started in the Senate, passed that chamber in April 2023 and is now in the House of Commons for consideration.
It passed second reading in the House of Commons in December 2023 and is set to be studied by the standing committee of public safety and national security this spring.
It was brought forward by Independent Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne in 2021. — Global News Canada
Our Take: “There are echos in this story of the Machiavellian means by which Trudeau managed to block Canadians from consuming news across social media, and on Google.
In much the same way as did Facebook and Google, this new bill has caused Porn Hub to throw their arms in the air and say ‘We won’t play your game! We’ll just take our toys and go home.’
I’ll just clear the air by stating that I am deeply biased. Pornhub is a reprehensible entity, responsible for traumatizing and warping children and adults alike, not to mention the fact that they have most certainly (some argue indirectly) facilitated child sex trafficking.
This is on top of the fact that the porn industry, overall, produces culture that can only evolve in one direction: deviancy and debauchery, not to mention that it’s highly addictive and is now plugging into a dark web network of AI porn that is truly horrifying in its implications. Almost the entire industry should be nuked, in my opinion.
But in the battle to remove the harms of porn we are faced by a tricky dilemma, personified in Canada’s Bill S-210.
While, on the surface, it seems like an excellent idea to force age verification systems on sites like Pornhub, one of the most dangerous characteristics of this bill is that it does not specify how this would be done. Insight into the systems, guidelines and regulations on how to tie personal data to a website that could easily be used to assassinate someone’s character are nowhere to be found in the bill.
A meaningful comparison would be the way in which the Canadian government did not mandate vaccine passports on businesses, but instead mandated that they have a vaccine policy in place. Under the pressure of propaganda, rhetoric and potential social ostracization, the majority of Canadian businesses responded to this policy by choosing medical tyranny.
Vague rules and laws have always been used by tyrants to sow social disorder.
So while I am actually all for Pornhub completely leaving Canada, I also understand that this bill could easily be used to open porn-consuming Canadians to forms of surveillance, data theft and extortion that could be life ruining.
Anytime corrupt governments, like the one we have in Canada, claim they are protecting children, it’s safe to take a closer look to see how this emotionally charged claim would play out in the long run.” —
US again vetoes Gaza cease-fire resolution at UN Security Council
The United States was the lone veto against a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza on Tuesday, marking the third time Washington has opposed such a measure.
The vote on the resolution drafted by Algeria was 13-1, with the U.K. abstaining, on the 15-member council. The veto puts the U.S. increasingly out of step on the world stage as it faces criticism for its support for Israel in the campaign against Hamas in Gaza, launched after the militant group’s deadly Oct. 7. assault that killed some 1,200 people. It also came a day after Washington floated its own rival resolution, calling for a temporary cease-fire.
The United States argues a complete cease-fire would jeopardize negotiations involving Egypt and Qatar to release the hostages Hamas abducted in its attack. — Politico
Our Take: “The Ouroborosian death spiral of the System of Systems, and the Central Narrative (h/t
) continues to accelerate in full view of the awakening public, as this week, the US is seen publicly refusing to back a ceasefire in Gaza just days after stumping for more taxpayer funding to the OTHER proxy war they’ve got spun up in the Donbas, as they’re busy attempting to back Nazi battalions against the Russian Federation.While it can seem like normies aren’t paying attention to these deployments as closely as this community—they’re not—the overall Macro is seeping into the Collective Mind that the Uniparty establishment will stop at nothing to perpetuate its endless war machine, even to the chagrin of the rest of the supposedly-civilized world.
When you break this Deployment into an Actual-Narrative structure, and consider it in light of the Devolution theory, one wonders what Globalist-aligned proxies are being threatened by the kinetic events in Gaza that would force the entirety of the EU bloc to call for a cessation in violence, even as they scream for more of it just a hop, skip and jump to the east.” —
BONUS ITEMS
Pay-To-Play: Trump Faces A Staggering Cost For Appeal
In the wake of the massive judgment against Donald Trump, many in New York are celebrating the prospect that the former president could be forced to sell off his property just to be able to appeal the $355 million judgment against him. While Trump has good grounds to object to this excessive fine, he still has to come up with close to a half billion dollars just to make his arguments to the New York Court of Appeals.
In order to file an appeal, the courts require a deposit for the full amount of the damages or a bond covering the full amount. Even with escrow options, the call for cash or collateral can be enough to put some executives in a fetal position.
It can be challenging enough for many companies drained from years of litigation. For Donald Trump, the demand for $355 million plus $100 milion in interest could force a fire sale on properties to pony up just the deposit.
Many of us have been critical of the ruling of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron who imposed the astronomical fine despite finding that Trump’s “victims” not only did not lose a single dollar but made handsome profits. Indeed, these banks testified that they wanted to continue to do business with Trump as a “whale” client, but Engoron is now barring them from doing so.
Putting aside the merits of this judgment, the threshold deposit rule magnifies the unfairness of this New York law that does not require that anyone actually lose money to claim hundreds of millions from a company.
One can argue that, if upheld, any insolvency is the fault of the company. However, this rule can force insolvency just to seek review of a judgment.
For Trump, even this fine would only amount to roughly 14-17% of his wealth. — Jonathan Turley
"I'm Not Going Anywhere": Haley’s Hawkish Position On War Takes Center Stage In South Carolina Primary
On Tuesday, Nikki Haley vowed to remain in the Republican presidential primary race against former President Trump - telling a crowd in her home state of South Carolina: "I’m not going anywhere."
"I’m not afraid to say the hard truths out loud. I feel no need to kiss the ring. I have no fear of Trump’s retribution. I’m not looking for anything from him. My own political future is of zero concern."
The 2024 candidate - whose social media manager had a seriously bad weekend - went on to compare her race against Trump to David vs. Goliath.
What's obviously going on, given her insurmountable deficit, is that Haley needs to run as long as possible to prevent the right from gathering support behind Trump into November, which is exactly what will happen once she quits the race. — ZeroHedge
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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I always wonder if Assange was kept in prison because it was safest place for him and when the time is right he will be released and exonerated 🤷🏼♀️
The water narrative: you don’t think they will be putting something in it to cause chaos across the voting states? Maybe that’s too ‘tin foil’ and it’s the money laundering? Definitely setting up something bad though.
Navalny: Why the fuss now?
The outrage in the West over the death of a Russian political figure in a Siberian prison is a flashing ***DISINFORMATION INCOMING*** sign for the truth community.
Especially when an American citizen has been rotting in Russian custody over 7 years with zero sanctions and half hearted negotiations for his release.