Glenn Greenwald heeft een lijvig stuk (iets te, m.i.) geschreven over de
bestorming van Capitol Hill afgelopen 6 januari en dan m.n. over de moord op
een politieagent met een brandblusser, plus de rol die de media
daarin spelen. Uiteraard veroordeelt Greenwald het gebruikte geweld,
echter er dient wel gekeken te worden wie de slachtoffers waren…..
Greenwald stelt dat elke
kritiek die men levert op de berichtgeving over wat
er al meer dan een maand lang werd geschreven, wordt of afgedaan als een excuus voor
de bestorming van Capitol Hill, dan wel je bent een aanhanger van de
Trump supporters……
In
tegenspraak met de berichtgeving, werden 4 van de 5 doden niet om het
leven gebracht door de relschoppers, terwijl de enige dode die met
geweld om het leven werd gebracht een ongewapende Trump
supporter was: Ashli Babbitt, die van dichtbij door de
politie werd neergeschoten ofwel vermoord……
Echter
niet volgens de media in de VS, die kennen nog een dode, politieagent
Brian Sicknick, de New York Times (NYT) was het eerste medium dat met
het verhaal kwam dat Sicknick werd vermoord met een brandblusser en
dan natuurlijk door een Trump aanhanger……
Echter
tot op de dag van vandaag is er geen autopsie uitgevoerd op het
lichaam van Sicknick en ondanks dat er gigantische veel beelden zijn
‘geschoten’ door veiligheidscamera’s en smartphones, is er niet één
beeld dat het verhaal van de NYT bevestigt…… Uhh van de NYT? Al
heel snel na het artikel van dat nieuwsmedium nam zo ongeveer de hele
reguliere (massa-) media in de VS dit verhaal over en hoe…….. De
hysterie was en is nog steeds compleet over dit valse verhaal…..
Je
kan er dan ook donder op zeggen dat dit is ingegeven door de
politiek, immers e.e.a. gebeurde nog voor de impeachment poging tegen
Trump….. Tja kijk, als je met een vermoorde politieagent op de
proppen komt krijgt zo’n zaak natuurlijk veel meer gewicht……
Lees
het artikel van Glenn Greenwald en zie hoe de massamedia in de VS het publiek bespelen, natuurlijk geholpen door de politiek (daarnaast politici voeden niet zelden de media met leugens om zo zaken
voor elkaar te krijgen, zeker in de VS…..) Ach gelul, dat is hier
ook al heel lang zo en de media doen er maar wat graag aan
mee!! (zie ook hoe de media hier keer op keer de blunders op het Coronadossier goedlullen, blunders begaan door de grijnzende VVD hufter en premier Rutte, CDA blunderkoning de Jonge en diens partijcollega en minister, de al even hard blunderende hufter Grapperhaus…..) Eén ding is zeker, deze rellen werden vooral aangegrepen door de Democraten in een poging Trump een impeachment te bezorgen zodat hij in de toekomst niet nog eens kan opgaan voor het presidentschap (en zo’n impeachment kan wel degelijk worden doorgezet nadat de nieuwe president is aangetreden).
The False and
Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol
RiotInsisting
on factual accuracy does not make one an apologist for the
protesters. False reporting is never justified, especially to inflate
threat and fear levels.
Damage
is seen inside the US Capitol building early on January 7, 2021 in
Washington, DC (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)
By
Glenn Greenwald
February 17, 2021
“Information
Clearing House”
–
What took place
at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically motivated
riot. As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a
dangerous episode. Any time force or violence is introduced into what
ought to be the peaceful resolution of political conflicts, it should
be lamented and condemned.
But none of that
justifies lying about what happened that day, especially by the news
media. Condemning that riot does not allow, let alone require,
echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and
serious than it actually was. There is no circumstance or motive that
justifies the dissemination of false claims by journalists. The more
consequential the event, the less justified, and more harmful, serial
journalistic falsehoods are.
Yet this is exactly
what has happened, and continues to happen, since that riot almost
seven weeks ago. And anyone who tries to correct these falsehoods is
instantly attacked with the cynical accusation that if you want only
truthful reporting about what happened, then you’re trying to
“minimize” what happened and are likely an apologist for if not a
full-fledged supporter of the protesters themselves.
One of the most
significant of these falsehoods was the tale — endorsed over and
over without any caveats by the media for more than a month — that
Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by the pro-Trump
mob when they beat him to death with a fire extinguisher. That claim
was first published by The
New York Times
on January 8 in an
article headlined “Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in
Pro-Trump Rampage.” It cited “two [anonymous] law enforcement
officials” to claim that Sicknick died “with the mob rampaging
through the halls of Congress” and after he “was struck with a
fire extinguisher.”
A second New
York Times
article
from later that day — bearing the more dramatic headline: “He
Dreamed of Being a Police Officer, Then Was Killed by a Pro-Trump
Mob” — elaborated
on that story:
The
New York Times, in a now-”updated”
article, Jan. 8, 2021
After
publication of these two articles, this horrifying story about a
pro-Trump mob beating a police officer to death with a fire
extinguisher was repeated over and over, by multiple journalists on
television, in print, and on social media. It became arguably the
single most-emphasized and known story of this event, and
understandably so — it was a savage and barbaric act that resulted
in the harrowing killing by a pro-Trump mob of a young Capitol police
officer.
It
took on such importance for a clear reason: Sicknick’s death was
the only
example the media had of the pro-Trump mob deliberately killing
anyone. In a January 11 article
detailing the five people who died on the day of the Capitol protest,
the New
York Times again
told the Sicknick story: “Law enforcement officials said he had
been ‘physically engaging with protesters’ and was struck in the
head with a fire extinguisher.”
But none of the other
four deaths were at the hands of the protesters: the only other
person killed with deliberate violence was a pro-Trump protester,
Ashli Babbitt, unarmed when shot in the neck by a police officer at
close range. The other three deaths were all pro-Trump protesters:
Kevin Greeson, who died of a heart attack outside the Capitol;
Benjamin Philips, 50, “the founder of a pro-Trump website called
Trumparoo,” who died of a stroke that day; and Rosanne Boyland, a
fanatical Trump supporter whom the Times
says was inadvertently “killed in a crush of fellow rioters during
their attempt to fight through a police line.”
This is why the fire
extinguisher story became so vital to those intent on depicting these
events in the most violent and menacing light possible. Without
Sicknick having his skull bashed in with a fire extinguisher, there
were no
deaths
that day that could be attributed to deliberate violence by pro-Trump
protesters. Three weeks later, The
Washington Post
said
dozens of officers (a total of 140) had various degrees of injuries,
but none reported as life-threatening, and at least two police
officers committed suicide after the riot. So Sicknick was the only
person killed who was not a pro-Trump protester, and the only one
deliberately killed by the mob itself.
It is hard to
overstate how pervasive this fire extinguisher story became. Over and
over, major media outlets and mainstream journalists used this story
to dramatize what happened:
Clockwise:
Tweet of Associated Press, Jan. 29; Tweet of NBC’s
Richard Engel, Jan. 9; Tweet of the Lincoln Project’s Fred Willman,
Jan. 29; Tweet of The
New York Times’ Nicholas Kirstof, Jan.
9
Television hosts
gravely intoned when telling this story, manipulating viewers’
emotions by making them believe the mob had done something
unspeakably barbaric:
After the media
bombarded Americans with this story for a full month without pause,
it took center stage at Trump’s impeachment process. As former
federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy noted,
the article of impeachment itself stated that “Trump supporters
‘injured and killed law enforcement personnel.’” The House
impeachment managers explicitly claimed on page 28 of their
pretrial memorandum that “the insurrectionists killed a Capitol
Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher.”
Once the impeachment
trial ended in an acquittal, President Joe Biden issued a statement
and referenced this claim in the very first paragraph. Sicknick, said
the President, lost “his life while protecting the Capitol from a
violent, riotous mob on January 6, 2021.”
The problem
with this story
is that it is false in all respects. From the start, there was almost
no evidence to substantiate it. The only basis were the two original
New
York Times
articles asserting that this happened based on the claim of anonymous
law enforcement officials.
Despite this alleged
brutal murder taking place in one of the most surveilled buildings on
the planet, filled that day with hundreds of cellphones taping the
events, nobody saw video of it. No photographs depicted it. To this
day, no autopsy report has been released. No details from any
official source have been provided.
Not only was there no
reason to believe this happened from the start, the little that was
known should have caused doubt. On the same day the Times
published
its two articles with the “fire extinguisher” story, ProPublica
published
one that should have raised serious doubts about it.
The outlet interviewed
Sicknick’s brother, who said that “Sicknick had texted [the
family] Wednesday night to say that while he had been pepper-sprayed,
he was in good spirits.” That obviously conflicted with the Times’
story that the mob “overpowered Sicknick” and “struck him in
the head with a fire extinguisher,” after which, “with a bloody
gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed
on life support.”
But no matter. The
fire extinguisher story was now a matter of lore. Nobody could
question it. And nobody did: until after a February 2 CNN
article
that asked why nobody has been arrested for what clearly was the most
serious crime committed that day: the brutal murder of Officer
Sicknick with a fire extinguisher. Though the headline gave no hint
of this, the middle of the article provided evidence which
essentially declared the original New
York Times
story false:
In Sicknick’s
case, it’s still not known publicly what caused him to collapse the
night of the insurrection. Findings from a medical examiner’s review
have not yet been released and authorities have not made any
announcements about that ongoing process.
According to
one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs
that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators
believe that early
reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not
true.
The CNN story
speculates that perhaps Sicknick inhaled “bear spray,” but like
the ProPublica
interview
with his brother who said he inhaled pepper spray, does not say
whether it came from the police or protesters. It is also just a
theory. CNN
noted that investigators are “vexed by a lack of evidence that
could prove someone caused his death as he defended the Capitol
during last month’s insurrection.” Beyond that, “to date, little
information has been shared publicly about the circumstances of the
death of the 13-year veteran of the police force, including any
findings from an autopsy that was conducted by DC’s medical
examiner.”
Few noticed this
remarkable admission buried in this article. None of this was
seriously questioned until a relatively new outlet called Revolver
News on
February 9 compiled
and analyzed all the contradictions and lack of evidence in the
prevailing story, after which Fox
News’
Tucker Carlson, citing that article, devoted the first eight minutes
of his February 10 program to examining
these massive evidentiary holes.
That caused right-wing
media outlets to begin questioning what happened, but mainstream
liberal outlets — those who spread the story aggressively in the
first place — largely and predictably ignored it all.
This week, the paper
that first published the false story — in lieu of a retraction or
an explanation of how and why it got the story wrong — simply went
back to the first two articles, more than five weeks later, and
quietly posted what it called an “update” at the top of both
five-week-old articles:
Caption
that now sits atop both New
York Times articles
from Jan. 8 about Officer SIcknick’s death.
With the impeachment
trial now over, the articles are now rewritten to reflect that the
original story was false. But there was nothing done by The
New York Times to
explain an error of this magnitude, let alone to try to undo the
damage it did by misleading the public. They did not expressly
retract or even “correct” the story. Worse, there is at least one
article of theirs, the January
11 one that purports to describe how the five people died that
day, which continues to include the false “fire extinguisher”
story with no correction or update.
The fire
extinguisher tale
was far from the only false or dubious claim that the media caused to
circulate about the events that day. In some cases, they continue to
circulate them.
In the days after the
protest, numerous
viral
tweets
pointed to a photograph of Eric Munchel with zip-ties. The photo was
used continually to suggest
that he took those zip-ties into
the Capitol because of a premeditated
plot to detain lawmakers and hold them hostage.
Politico
described
Munchel as “the man who allegedly entered the Senate chamber during
the Capitol riot while carrying a taser and zip-tie handcuffs.”
The Washington
Post
used the images to refer
to “chatters in far-right forums explicitly discussing how to storm
the building, handcuff lawmakers with zip ties.” That the zip-tie
photo of Munchel made the Capitol riot far more than a mere riot
carried out by a band of disorganized misfits, but rather a nefarious
and well-coordinated plot to kidnap members of Congress, became
almost as widespread
as the fire extinguisher story. Yet again, it was The
New York Times
that led the way in consecrating maximalist claims. “FBI Arrests
Man Who Carried Zip Ties Into Capitol,” blared
the paper’s headline on January 10, featuring the now-iconic photo
of Munchel at the top.
But on January 21, the
“zip-tie man’s” own prosecutors admitted
none of that was true. He did not take zip-ties with him from home or
carry them into the Capitol. Instead, he found them on a table, and
took them to prevent their use by the police:
Eric Munchel,
a pro-Trump rioter who stormed the Capitol building while holding
plastic handcuffs, took the restraints from a table inside the
Capitol building, prosecutors
said in a court filing Wednesday.
Munchel, who
broke into the building with his mom, was labeled “zip-tie
guy” after he was photographed barreling down the Senate chamber
holding the restraints. His appearance raised questions about whether
the insurrectionists who sought to stop Congress from counting
Electoral College votes on January 6 also intended to take lawmakers
hostage.
But according
to the new filing, Munchel and his mother took the handcuffs from
within the Capitol building – apparently to ensure the Capitol Police
couldn’t use them on the insurrectionists – rather than bring them in
when they initially breached the building.
(A second man whose
photo with zip-ties later surfaced similarly
told Ronan Farrow that he found them on the floor, and the FBI
has acknowledged
it has no evidence to the contrary).
Why does this matter?
For the same reason media outlets so excitedly seized on this claim.
If Munchel had brought zip-ties with him, that would be suggestive of
a premeditated plot to detain people: quite terrorizing, as it
suggests malicious and well-planned intent. But he instead just found
them on a table by happenstance and, according
to his own prosecutors,
grabbed them with benign intent.
Then, perhaps most
importantly, is the ongoing insistence on calling the Capitol riot an
armed
insurrection.
Under the law, an insurrection is one of the most serious crises that
can arise. It allows virtually
unlimited presidential powers — which is why there was so much
angst when Tom Cotton proposed it in his New
York Times
op-ed over the summer, publication of which resulted in the departure
of two editors. Insurrection even allows for the suspension
by the president of habeas corpus: the right to be heard in court if
you are detained.
So it matters a great
deal legally, but also politically, if the U.S. really did suffer an
armed insurrection and continues to face one. Though there is no
controlling, clear definition, that term usually connotes not a
three-hour riot but an ongoing, serious plot by a faction of the
citizenry to overthrow or otherwise subvert the government.
Just today, PolitiFact
purported
to “fact-check” a statement from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) made on
Monday. Sen. Johnson told a local radio station:
“The
fact of the matter is this didn’t seem like an armed insurrection
to me. I mean armed, when you hear armed, don’t you think of
firearms? Here’s the questions I would have liked to ask. How many
firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? I’m only
aware of one, and I’ll defend that law enforcement officer for
taking that shot.
The fact-checking site
assigned the Senator its “Pants on Fire” designation for that
statement, calling it “ridiculous revisionist history.” But the
“fact-checkers” cannot refute a single claim he made. At least
from what is known publicly, there is no evidence of a single
protester wielding let alone using a firearm inside the Capitol on
that day. As indicated, the only person to have been shot was a
pro-Trump protester killed by a Capitol police officer, and the only
person said to have been killed by the protesters, Officer Sicknick,
died under circumstances that are still completely unclear.
That protesters were
found before and after the riot with weapons does not mean they
intended to use them as part of the protest. For better or worse, the
U.S. is a country where firearm possession is common and legal. And
what we know for certain is that there is no evidence of anyone
brandishing a gun in that building. That fact makes a pretty large
dent in the attempt to characterize this as an “armed insurrection”
rather than a riot.
Indeed, the most
dramatic claims spread by the media to raise fear levels as high as
possible and depict this as a violent insurrection have turned out to
be unfounded or were affirmatively disproven.
On January 15, Reuters
published
an article about the arrest of the “Q-Shaman,” Jacob Chansley,
headlined “U.S. says Capitol rioters meant to ‘capture and
assassinate’ officials.” It claimed that “federal prosecutors
offered an ominous new assessment of last week’s siege of the U.S.
Capitol by President Donald Trump’s supporters on Thursday, saying
in a court filing that rioters intended ‘to capture and assassinate
elected officials.’” Predictably, that caused viral social media
postings from mainstream
reporters and prominent pundits, such as Harvard Law’s Laurence
Tribe, manifesting in the most ominous tones possible:
Shortly thereafter,
however, a
DOJ “official walked back a federal claim that Capitol rioters
‘intended capture and assassinate elected officials.’”
Specifically, “Washington’s acting U.S. Attorney, Michael Sherwin,
said in a telephone briefing, ‘There is no direct evidence at this
point of kill-capture teams and assassination.’”
NBC
News,
Jan. 15, 2021
Over and over, no
evidence has emerged for the most melodramatic media claims — torn
out Panic Buttons and plots to kill Vice President Mike Pence or
Mitt
Romney. What we know for certain, as The
Washington Post
noted
this week, is that “Despite
warnings of violent plots around Inauguration Day, only
a smattering of right-wing protesters appeared at the
nation’s statehouses.” That does not sound like an ongoing
insurrection, to put it mildly.
All this matters
because it inherently matters if the media is recklessly circulating
falsehoods about the most inflammatory and significant news stories.
As was true for their series of Russiagate
debacles, even if each “mistake” standing alone can be
dismissed as relatively insignificant or understandable, when they
pile up — always in the same narrative direction — people rightly
conclude the propaganda is deliberate and trust in journalism erodes
further.
But in this case, this
matters for reasons far more significant than corporate media’s
attempt to salvage the last vestiges of their credibility.
Washington, D.C. remains indefinitely militarized. The establishment
wings of both parties are still exploiting the emotions surrounding
the Capitol breach to justify a new domestic War on Terror. The FBI
is on
the prowl for dissidents on the right and the left, and online
censorship in the name of combatting domestic terrorism continues to
rise.
One can — and should
— condemn the January 6 riot without inflating the threat it posed.
And one can — and should — insist on both factual accuracy and
sober restraint without standing accused of sympathy for the rioters.
Glenn
Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four
New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent
book, “No Place to Hide,” is about the U.S. surveillance state
and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the
world. Prior to co-founding The Intercept, Greenwald’s column was
featured in The Guardian and Salon.
Glenn is
one of the three co-founding editors of The Intercept. He left The
Intercept in October 2020. https://greenwald.substack.com/Suscribe
to his newsletter
===================================
Zie ook: ‘De VS oorlog tegen ‘landelijk terrorisme’ is een definitieve stap naar een volledige politiestaat…….‘ (ook een artikel over de bestorming van Capitol Hill, waarin uitspraken van Greenwald worden over die bestorming worden aangehaald)
‘A
Domestic Terrorism Law? War on Dissent Will Proceed Full Speed Ahead‘
(een ICH artikel geschreven door Philip Giraldi)
‘Trumpisme
en fascisme eindig je niet met censuur en andere autoritaire
maatregelen, maar door de condities te veranderen die e.e.a. mogelijk
hebben gemaakt‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)
‘De roep om censuur na de stormloop op het Capitol zal ook links keihard treffen‘
‘Om ons thuis, de planeet, te redden moeten we de westerse oorlogsmachine stilleggen‘
——————————————————————
En terzijde: ‘American
Psychosis‘
(een kort artikel en video op Information Clearinhg House met Chris Hedges)
‘Glenn Greenwald vervolgd voor het brengen van de waarheid en zijn seksuele geaardheid‘
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