Badlands News Brief

A Fed, a Ukrainian & a DeSimp Walk Into a Bar ...

Badlands Media will always put out our content for free, but you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Help our collective of citizen journalists take back the narrative from the MSM. We are the news now.

---

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, September 18 …

---

Ray Epps Charged With Jan. 6 Crime—After Conspiracy Theory Claimed He Worked For FBI

Ray Epps—a supporter of former President Donald Trump who was spotted at the January 6 Capitol riot—was charged with disorderly conduct for his alleged involvement in the attack, after the lack of charges against Epps led personalities like Tucker Carlson to baselessly claim Epps was a government provocateur.

Epps was charged with one count of disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, according to a filing from federal prosecutor Michael Gordon.

The court document said Epps did “engage in disorderly and disruptive conduct” at the Capitol with the intent to “in fact impede and disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business and official functions.”

The penalty for disorderly conduct in restricted grounds is a fine, imprisonment for not longer than one year or both.

On January 5, 2021, Epps traveled from Arizona to D.C., where he was spotted on video encouraging people to go “into the Capitol,” and then was seen again protesting outside the Capitol on January 6. — Forbes

Our Take: “‘We’re gonna go into the Capitol!’ Ray Epps said on January 5, 2021, and repeated the claims the following day before texting his nephew, ‘I orchestrated it.’ For this, he gets charged with one count of disorderly conduct after two and a half years of being protected by the government.

As far as cover-up narratives go, it’s pretty poor stuff. Everyone knows Epps is an asset for Pelosi and the coup-plotters, and this attempt to convince the American people — two thirds of whom believe the ‘Insurrection’ was orchestrated by the government according to recent polling — that Epps has been treated like any other defendant is too little, too late.

With former Capitol Police Chief Sund’s testimony before the House Tuesday, this charging decision feels like an afterthought meant only to distract from the ongoing exposure of the FedSurrection. It’s laughable how bad the official storytelling has become.” — Ashe in America

---

Trump Leads Biden Nationally As RealClear Asks 'What Happened To DeSantis?'

Former President Donald Trump would claim victory over President Biden, according to a pair of recent polls from CBS News/YouGov and Harvard Harris (which no longer disclose how many Democrats were oversampled).

When broken down by party identification (or lack thereof), 57% of independents chose Trump vs. Biden's 42%, while just 34% of everyone polled thought Biden would be able to finish a second term if reelected.

Biden is well below Trump in terms of job approval at this point in their terms...

Meanwhile, RealClear Politics' Sean Terende asks: "What happened to the DeSantis campaign?"

DeSantis isn’t quite a penny stock, but he briefly fell behind Vivek Ramaswamy among bettors, and languishes with primary season voters at just 14.9% in the RealClearPolitics Average. — ZeroHedge

Our Take: “One game I like playing with Media Industrial Complex headlines is to imagine them speaking to each other rather than the Collective Mind alone with their deployments.

This week, they're sounding the alarm not just over the fact that Donald Trump leads Biden in national polls (whatever that's worth,) but more importantly, that their Con Inc. wolf, Ron DeSantis has shed his skin much earlier than they thought, having been soundly rejected by the MAGA and America First faithful.

Panic in DC.” — Burning Bright

---

Milley & Stoltenberg Agree: 'We Must Prepare Ourselves For A Long War In Ukraine'

Two top Western officials have just said that NATO is preparing to settle in for a "long war" in Ukraine, as the prospect for peace negotiations retreats further and further on the horizon. 

First, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in an interview published Sunday by Germany's Funke Media Group said the alliance is committed to seeing military support to Kiev through, and that this is the only way to achieve peace. "Most wars last longer than expected when they first begin. Therefore, we must prepare ourselves for a long war in Ukraine," he said, and added: "We must recognize that if Zelensky and the Ukrainians stop fighting, their country will no longer exist. If President Putin and Russia stop fighting, we will have peace."

But after going all in on verbalizing the desire for a military solution, he still tried to emphasize, "We all want a quick peace." It's certainly contradictory messaging given he didn't so much as broach the possibility of getting Kiev and Moscow to directly dialogue at the negotiating table.

This comes as the Ukrainian government is still trying to increase the pressure on its Western partners concerning more weapons at a faster rate, and advanced hardware, as Politico presents: 

The head of Ukraine’s Security Council Oleksiy Danilov, in an opinion piece published Saturday evening, said the only way to end the war is if Kyiv’s allies speed up deliveries of weapons. "Refusing or delaying the transfer of modern weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces is a direct encouragement to the kremlin to continue the war, not the other way around," Danilov said.

Next, on the same day as Stoltenberg's comments grabbed headlines, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley spoke with CNN about the state of the war and the Pentagon's perspective. He too warned that this conflict is set to endure for "a long time". 

"There’s well over 200,000 Russian troops in Russian-occupied Ukraine. This offensive, although significant, has operational and tactical objectives that are limited, in the sense that they do not — even if they are fully achieved — they don’t completely kick out all the Russians, which is the broader strategic objective that President Zelensky had," the top US general said. — ZeroHedge

Our Take: “Where are all the Anti-War liberals? How is the US going to assist Ukraine in ejecting 200k+ Russians from Ukraine when they can't even remove unarmed illegals here at home?

When Deep-State controlled Milley & Stoltenberg agree on anything, you can bet it has nothing to do with what is best for the real American people. If there's one thing our government is good at, it is creating long wars. The more unwinnable the better. It's not about winning, it's all about producing, selling, and using weapons. Raytheon stock value, for example, has gone up almost 40% since the start of this Ukraine effort.

There's no downside for them: if they somehow happen to 'win' against Russia, all those vast resources are theirs to plunder, just like the good ole days back in the 90's when the Soviet Union broke apart; if they don't 'win', then they profit from the standard war machine agenda. It's win-win for them. Besides, their nuclear bunkers are ready and stocked.” — Ryan DeLarme

---

Zelensky Fires Top Defense Officials In Corruption Purge Ahead Of Washington Trip

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed six high-ranking military officials. The sweeping firings come as the Ukrainian leader plans to travel to Washington later this week to lobby Congress to pass a multi-billion funding package for Kiev. 

Taras Melnychuk, permanent representative of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers, announced the six deputy defense ministers had been fired from their posts on Telegram. The deputies were fired two weeks after Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov was sacked over corruption. Melnychuk, or newly appointed Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, did not explain the reason for the recent terminations. 

The New York Times reports Zelensky made the move to give the appearance of working to tackle corruption before he directly appeals to Congress for a new multi-billion dollar aid package. “The shake-up in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wartime leadership team came as he headed to the United States, keen to demonstrate to American officials and other Western leaders that his government is not squandering — on either graft of mismanagement — the tens of billions of dollars in aid they have sent to Ukraine,” the outlet explained. 

The Times notes the impact of firing the officials is more likely to be felt in the long term. “Battlefield decisions runs directly from Mr. Zelensky to the military’s uniformed general staff, largely bypassing the civilians at the defense ministry, so the turnover is not expected to have an immediate effect on the course of the war,” the outlet explained. “The ministry’s role is primarily not in tactics but logistics — procurement, salaries and benefits — where changes may not be felt right away.”

Ukraine was infamous for being the most corrupt country in Europe before the Russian invasion. Since then, Washington has sent Kiev over $100 billion in weapons and other direct financial assistance. — The Libertarian Institute

Our Take: “Trojan Horse methodology—that’s what I’ve recently started calling the globalists method of baiting and deceiving the general population into the illusion of globalist benevolence and the trustworthiness of our broken and otherwise spiritually toxic civilization.

To most people, things are corrupt but not all that bad, and certainly not willfully malevolent.

Point of fact, our civilization is not wholly trustworthy nor are the globalists wholly benevolent—obviously. But the globalists are partially trustworthy, at least on the surface, which acts as the wooden skin of the Trojan Horse.

For instance, when you send money to someone using one of the various systems, it works 99.99% of the time. The trust built from the financial transactions side of our civilization, and other stable areas, induces within the general population a false sense of trustworthiness across society as a whole. But there’s enough that doesn’t work, like the justice system, or the political process, explain all the things that don’t work as ‘incompetence.’ That is, things are corrupt and broken not because of intentionally calculated malevolence, but because people are stupid. Halon’s razor states ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity’—which I debunked in this article here.

To the profane citizen—the man or woman who is deceived by this—when leadership like Zelensky or Biden remove a corrupt actor, it instills faith in the stability and trustworthiness of the system as a whole. ‘Look: we punished a bad actor, that makes us good!’

This is precisely what the trojan horse methodology is designed to do, which acts as the perfect self-deceiving smokescreen the oligarchs have successfully used to engage in the systemic and industrialized horrors of our day and age.

I highly doubt that Zelensky is a reformed man that actually wants to do right by the country, the world, and the people affected.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of humanity falls for this age-old tactic. The truth about our would-be masters and their mediocre underlings is so deplorable, so vomit-inducing, so nightmarish, that people reflexively turn away from it when it is encountered—which I argue is yet another intentionally-generated effect.

Think: the police who saw the contents of Anthony Weiner’s laptop, or the folks that turn a blind eye to the incomprehensible tolerance of our justice system with respect to child porn, child trafficking and other horrors inflicted by CPS.

In effect, the inner core of the Trojan Horse is so toxic, so feted, so rank and defiled, so disturbing that most people black it out of their minds when they stumble upon it.

Zelensky’s purge is no doubt at the behest of his DC swamp compatriots that know they need to sell to the American people and the political class in this country the belief that the war in Ukraine is not only necessary, but essential to their sense of moral superiority.

The Trojan Horse requires lubrication to be swallowed fully by the target population. In effect, the globalists smother it with false moral virtue, so that it’s not just tolerable to the dimwitted gullible masses, but highly desirable. They want us to feel like we’re good people by supporting Ukraine, and to do this, they need to make the hero of Ukraine, Zelenksky, actually seem heroic by removing corrupt actors.

Of course, to anyone with half a clue, this all seems like a really bad daytime tv drama series.” — Justin Deschamps

---

House Subcommittee on Oversight Hearing Interviews Former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund – Outspoken Critic of Nancy Pelosi’s Failures to Secure the US Capitol on Jan. 6 – WHY ISNT THE FAKE NEWS REPORTING ON THIS?!

Not a single peep from the mainstream media on this afternoon’s House Committee Hearing titled “Oversight of United States Capitol Security: Assessing Security Failures on January 6, 2021.” NOT A SINGLE PEEP! Google it for yourself and see.

The Democrat-run January 6th Unselect Committee propaganda hearings saturated the fake news last year- aired on Primetime Network TV and full of hearsay and phony witnesses. Unfortunately, a GOP House-run hearing with an actual CREDIBLE witness got no such treatment. Besides C-SPAN (who only just aired the hearing as they do most Congressional hearings) we at the Gateway Pundit are the only single news source to report on this. Unbelievable!

Today, former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund testified before the committee. Chief Steven Sund has been outspoken of Nancy Pelosi and her failures to secure the US Capitol on January 6th. Can this be the reason this man has been silenced?

[…]

Steven A. Sund, the Capitol Police chief on that fateful day, confirms Pelosi’s culpability along with the rest of the Democratic leadership. Sund reported that Pelosi utilized him as a scapegoat and forced him to step down as Police Chief. It has now become obvious that she was just trying to obfuscate her own responsibility for the attack. — The Gateway Pundit

Our Take: “This much-anticipated hearing began almost an hour late as the House was voting on defense spending, and it was a short hearing. Chief Sund shared a condensed version of the longer story he shared with Tucker Carlson last month.

The head of gaslighting for the hearing was California Representative Norma Torres, who asserted that the crowd was armed and marched on the Capitol with the intent to ‘hang Mike Pence.’ She also claimed that, ‘If they didn’t have a weapon, they found one.’ My blood pressure still hasn’t returned to its resting state after listening to the lies of this vile woman.

The hearing didn’t really move any needles, but did spotlight the need to end qualified immunity and require legislators to be under oath when they speak in public hearings. As it stands now, they literally have immunity to lie to the American People.” — Ashe in America

---

Our Take: “The Media Industrial Complex is currently engaged in a halting version of Overton's Goalpost when it comes to Zelensky and the 'War in Ukraine.'

While they've championed Ukraine against the evil Nazi Russian Empire (which is in the process of deNazifying Ukraine,) the Prussian Proxy State is currently in the midst of a Narrative assault on the Biden Admin, NATO and the collectivist West.

Strings were likely cut somewhere along the way, and the Deep State is coming to that slow realization.” — Burning Bright

---

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.