Badlands News Brief

Debt Limits, Counter Offensives & Winning Signs

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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 Wednesday, April 26 …

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House Passes Debt Limit Bill, Setting Stage For Showdown

House Republicans on Wednesday narrowly passed their bill to raise the debt ceiling, while cutting spending and dismantling several items in President Biden's domestic agenda. 

The bill passed by a narrow margin of 217-to-215, with Democrats voting along party lines and four Republicans voting against it (Reps. Matt Gaetz (CA), Andy Biggs (AZ), Ken Buck (CO) and Tim Burchett (TN).

The legislation would raise the debt ceiling by a year in exchange for freezing spending at 2022 levels for a decade, which would mark a 14% cut, and roll back several aspects of Biden's landmark health, climate and tax law.

That said, the bill is DOA - given that even if it somehow made it through the Democrat-controlled Senate, President Biden has vowed to veto it.

This means we're headed for a showdown, as without action by Congress to raise the borrowing limit, the US Government faces a potentially catastrophic default within the next few months.

The successful vote came after a late-night negotiation among Republicans, ending in Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreeing to jettison a provision which would roll back tax credits that the Biden administration implemented for ethanol. — ZeroHedge

Our Take: “The debt ceiling showdown will have major implications on the financial collapse we have been discussing for months.

As it currently stands, they appear to be at a stalemate. If they can't come to an agreement, the already shaky economy would be dealt a potential death blow. More to come.” — Jon Herold

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Biden’s team fears the aftermath of a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive

The Biden administration is quietly preparing for the possibility that if Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive falls short of expectations, critics at home and allies abroad will argue that America has come up short, too.

Ukraine’s ever-imminent counteroffensive will attempt to retake Russian-seized territory most likely in the east and south, though for operational reasons no senior officials from Kyiv have detailed specifics.

Publicly, President Joe Biden’s team has offered unwavering support for Ukraine, pledging to load it up with weapons and economic aid for “as long as it takes.” But, if the impending fighting season yields limited gains, administration officials have expressed privately they fear being faced with a two-headed monster attacking it from the hawkish and dovish ends of the spectrum. — Politico

Our Take: “There’s a reason I talk about the concept of Narrative Seeding so often on various Badlands shows and briefs. And that’s because I believe we’re largely in a War of Stories, one playing out both above and below the very real kinetic and intel war being waged for the future of the United States, and much of the sovereign world.

For months, the Media Industrial Complex has been massaging the Normie hivemind with the prospect that what was once imminent victory for the brave and just Ukraine over the forces of darkness represented by Russia has now turned into a desperate and flagging effort to simply stay in a fight they lost the moment Putin’s forces entered—and subsequently liberated—the Donbas.

The reason [they] are so worried about this public about-face on Ukraine is that it’s not just going to get bipartisan egg on the face of the Biden Admin, who breathlessly supported the plucky proxy state against Putin to the tune of tens of billions in US taxpayer funding, but it’s also going to be an epic—and perhaps fatal—defeat for western globalism and hegemony.” — Burning Bright

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U.S. Entertainer Convicted of Engaging in Foreign Influence Campaign

A federal jury convicted a U.S. entertainer and businessman today for orchestrating an unregistered, back-channel campaign beginning in or about 2017 to influence the then-administration of the President of the United States and the Department of Justice to drop the investigation of Jho Low and others for embezzlement and other offenses in connection with the international strategic and development company known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), and to send a Chinese national back to China, as well as conspiring to make and conceal foreign and conduit campaign contributions during the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, 50, of Coconut Creek, Florida, conspired with Low Taek Jho, aka Jho Low, of Malaysia; Elliott Broidy; Nickie Lum Davis; George Higginbotham; and others to engage in undisclosed lobbying campaigns at the direction of Low and the Vice Minister of Public Security for the People’s Republic of China, respectively, to have the 1MDB embezzlement investigation and forfeiture proceedings involving Low and others dropped and to have a Chinese national sent back to China. — US Department of Justice

Our Take: “The 1MDB Scandal was born out of a massive embezzlement operation to steal $5 Billion from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). It implicates bankers, Hollywood, celebrities, and government officials in ten different nations across five continents. It even connects to Turki bin Abdullah Al Saud, one of the 11 princes detained by MBS in 2017.

Pras Michel is the latest to go down for his role in the illegal enterprise.

Specifically, Michel facilitated the illegal transfer of tens of millions of dollars from foreign donors into the Obama 2012 Campaign. He also took part in an influence operation against the Trump Administration and DOJ to get Miles Guo extradicted to China. He was convicted on ten counts, including conspiracy, concealment, false records, witness tampering, and FARA violations.

On the same day that Michel is convicted, the Swiss have announced the indictment of two more 1MDB conspirators—executives at PetroSaudi. PetroSaudi was co-founded by Turki bin Abdullah Al Saud …

This massive kleptocratic scandal ain't over yet!” — Just Human

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Explosive New Study Finds Face Masks May Increase Stillbirths, Testicular Dysfunction, Cognitive Decline -- In Kids

A new study by by German researchers has concluded that face masks can cause carbon dioxide poisoning when worn even for short periods and may have contributed significantly to stillbirths when worn by pregnant women, as well as testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline in children, among other destructive health issues.

As reported by the Daily Mail, the research, published in the journal Heliyon, comprises a review of 43 previously published studies on exposure to CO2, mask-wearing, and pregnancy.

The study notes that even short-term exposure to concentrations of CO2 as low as 0.3% caused brain damage, increased anxiety, and impaired memory in both pregnant rats and young mice in one study.

In another, when male mice were exposed to 2.5 percent CO2 for four hours, testicular cells and sperm were destroyed. The equivalent amount for humans would be 0.5 percent of CO2 over the same time period.

Yet another experiment discovered that stillbirth and birth defects occurred in pregnant rats that were exposed to just 3 percent CO2, which would be equal to 0.8 percent for humans.

The study also points to research that found just five minutes of mask wearing resulted in CO2 levels increasing to between 1.4 percent and 3.2 percent.

While they note that the review provides ‘circumstantial evidence’ only, the researchers allude to a surge in stillbirths during the pandemic, saying that masks could have contributed. — Summit News

Our Take: “The truth always makes more sense than the socially enforced lie. In this case, masks were never considered effective in slowing the spread of disease by most reasonable people and professionals. Viruses, if we are to believe the mainstream narratives, are too small to be stopped by a mask—even the best ones. A virus, in this sense, is like a golf ball, and the mask is like a soccer (football) goal—the golf ball can easily pass through the much larger holes in the net.

This isn't some breakthrough science we're talking about either. The mask-making industry as well as medical professionals know that masks are fundamentally incapable of doing much of anything—and we knew this all the way back in the early days of mainstream medicine. So if everyone knew, what was the point? 

Now we know.

Masking was never about slowing the spread of disease—it was a) about social compliance, making people do something they know to be bogus as an act of submission to an authority and b) because wearing a mask compromises cognition, memory, and healthy reproduction, to name a few of the identified effects from the study.

Wearing a mask, in effect, makes people more compliant due to both the social psychology effect—you better do it or be left out—and the physiological effect on the brain of oxygen deprivation. In China, where mask wearing is part of the norm, birthrates have declined, and compliance to totalitarianism is the norm as well.

Now, it should be noted that the study demonstrated correlative data points. There are other factors at work in producing the effects cited in the study. Nevertheless, there's good reason to suspect that at least one of the contributing factors that have led to these effects was mask use. No doubt the vaccine, increased stress, social isolation, and other factors have also played a role. 

A return to merit-based social policy is desperately needed in addition to peaceful noncompliance of any policy that on its face lacks merit. Case in point: masks were never effective, and the research always proved this out. And yet, we went along with it anyway, to our great detriment. Thankfully, the courage to be benevolently disagreeable has likely increased in the world as a result of the study's findings, at least, we can hope.

Going along with something you know to be untrue or harmful in the name of not ruffling feathers almost always comes at a terrible price.” — Justin Deschamps

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Cyber Command, CISA unveil secret joint operations

A little-known partnership between the country's military cyber forces and homeland defenders has stymied the impact of two state-linked attacks, senior officials disclosed at the RSA Conference.

Why it matters: With so many cyber-related agencies in the U.S., it's often difficult for anyone outside of the government to understand which office is responsible for what during an attack.

These disclosures are some of the first clear examples of how the Pentagon-based Cyber Command and the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) cooperate during an active event.

Driving the news: Eric Goldstein, CISA's executive assistant director for cybersecurity, and Maj. Gen. William Hartman, chief of the command's Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), detailed two previously unknown incidents involving the agencies during a panel talk Monday. — Axois

Our Take: “More confirmation that elections systems, including those systems used to report the results of an election, are online and vulnerable to attacks by foreign nations.

Who knew? Oh.” — Just Human

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(RE-POST) Taliban kills ISIS-K leader behind 2021 Afghanistan airport attack that left 13 Americans dead, U.S. officials say

The ISIS leader responsible for the planning of the 2021 attack at the Kabul airport that took the lives of 13 U.S. service members has been killed by the Taliban, a Defense Department spokesperson confirmed to CBS News late Tuesday night. 

Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, told CBS News in a statementthat the Defense Department could confirm that he was killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan "in early April," adding that the U.S. "was not involved in this operation."

This comes after Senior Biden administration officials earlier Tuesday confirmed the ISIS leader's death, but said the White House would not release the name of the man, describing him as the "mastermind" of the assault on Abbey Gate, one of the main points of entry for those trying to evacuate Afghanistan during the U.S. withdrawal. 

Officials learned of his death in Afghanistan weeks ago, but said it had taken some time to confirm. — CBS News

Our Take: “Trump was right. Again.

‘We'll be very much hoping that they will be doing what they say they're going to be doing. They will be killing terrorists. They will be killing some very bad people. They will keep that fight going.’ — Trump on Feb 29, 2020 when he announced the signing of the Doha Agreement.

The Taliban continuing to kill ISIS terrorists, as they promised Trump they would do, while Trump is not in the White House is quite a thing, isn't? And the Taliban doing it on their own, with the equipment they seized from the Afghan Armed Forces, and not even telling the Biden Admin about it ... speaks volumes.

The Doha Agreement is holding and working. I've written a number of articles about the Afghanistan withdrawal, but this one is most apropos.” — Just Human

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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.