Et tu, Reuters? — regarding the Capitol Riot

26 October 2021

Explanation of today's title

Et tu refers to Latin's:

"et tu, Brute!"

"and thou, Brutus!"

The "alleged dying words of Julius Caesar uttered as his friend Brutus stabbed him."

The American Establishment's lying never stops, does it?

For example, Reuters — self-confessedly "sponsored by Deloitte" — opened this morning's Daily Briefing this way:

The thousands of hours of video of the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters have overwhelmed the prosecutors and defense lawyers handling the hundreds of criminal cases and are delaying trials for some defendants.

"Deadly assault", huh?

Meaning the trespassing Capitol stroll, as Russian president Putin called it — in which the only deadly assault occurred, when a cowardly Capitol Police cop shot an unarmed woman — who had not posed him (or anyone else) any harm.

That "deadly" event?

According to Reuters' sloppy (or deliberately slanted) wording

Everyone is now "overwhelmed" by the "evidence".

The Justice Department has amassed so much video evidence that it would take almost nine months, running 24 hours a day, to screen it all: 16,925 individual closed-circuit videos running a combined 4,800 hours, and 1,600 more hours of video taken by police officers' body-worn cameras, according to an Oct. 22 court filing.

Defense lawyers were given instructions for accessing that video database on Oct. 18.

A second database containing more than 100,000 records from the FBI and other agencies is not yet accessible, the Justice Department said.

Evaluate how Reuters' use of the word "evidence" forwards (by implication) the Government's alleged criminal case against the rioters.

In truth, what the Government has are . . .

. . . hours-hours-and-hours of mostly unsifted video drivel that the Feds want us to believe depicts Trump supporters doing evil and nationally destructive things.

Recognize that actual evidence, semantically speaking, goes toward proving (or at least supporting) a charge of wrongful behavior.

Real evidence does not include hours of video that merely show masses of people doing very probably non-criminal things.

Reuters' article only gets to the core of the issue . . .

. . . when it quotes a federal judge's take on the current mess:

Defense lawyers and at least one federal judge have warned the delays may be infringing on defendants' rights to speedy trials.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta raised that concern during an October hearing for 17 members or affiliates of the right-wing Oath Keepers, whose trial on charges including conspiracy and assaulting law enforcement officers he reluctantly agreed to delay until April.

"We've got to get to a point soon where defense counsel has reasonable access to this information. It's just not acceptable any longer to keep hearing that the government is continuing to work on this," Mehta said.

"I understand it's an unprecedented case. An unprecedented amount of information.

"But what's not unprecedented is that we've got defendants charged with serious crimes ... and they've got rights, constitutional and statutory, to get to a trial if that's what they want."

Notice that the Feds have had this supposedly evidentiary stuff for more than half a year

And only now are they getting around to releasing a chunk of it to defense attorneys.

Also notice that another massive chunk of supposed evidence is still being withheld.

Do you think that all this unlawful retention — and the delays that it arguably mandates — might be being done on purpose?

The moral? — When the country is run by viciously unprincipled morons . . .

. . . we see and hear everyone, who is in possession of an electronically amplified platform, making 'cases' against people, whom they do not like.

Meanwhile, those same platforms — whether Government or Corporate-owned — censor opposition.

How this situation differs in significant principle from Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, or Mao's People's Republic of China is not clear. (At least not to anyone with an actually thinking mind.)

And when Reuters (as illustrated above) and the AP (see here) fall into witlessly forwarding the American Establishment's very obvious propaganda — our allegedly free society is in existential trouble.

PeteFree.com

Et tu, Reuters? — regarding the Capitol Riot