printThe following is from “America’s Angelic O.J,” now on WND.COM:
“The conviction of America’s sweetart du jour, Amanda Knox, was overturned this month. Based on O.J.-like evidence, Knox was convicted of murdering her British roommate. The vicious and depraved Nov. 1, 2007 killing took place in the historic, university city of Perugia, Italy. Police bungling notwithstanding, the biological and circumstantial evidence stacked against Knox and her former lover Raffaele Sollecito was considerable. …
…The once-convicted killers were declared innocent, no less, and released, due in no small part to a PR blitz mounted by Knox’s family and their Seattle-based publicist. They were assisted by the country’s national media, left and right. With the exception of Bill O’Reilly, former homicide prosecutor Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Jeanine Pirro; Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC—all worked tirelessly on behalf of the attractive, white kids. The conviction of Rudy Guede the American media let stand. Guede, the pretty pair’s (alleged) partner in crime, is a black man who lacked their appeal and assets. …
… On Nov. 5, 2007, after cartwheeling and canoodling with Sollecito at the police station, Knox framed Patrick Lumumba for Meredith’s murder and rape which she claimed to have overheard. (At that stage, only the cops knew Ms. Kercher had been sexually assaulted.) Lumumba was Amanda’s innocent employer. Knox even committed this evidentiary concoction to writing in a five-page memorandum. Later she blamed police for making her. Amanda’s allergy to the truth cost Lumumba – another black man who remained voiceless in the American media – his livelihood and reputation. …
… Nor did Megyn Kelly, Shepard Smith, Wolf Blitzer, Piers Morgan, Dr. Drew, Oprah (on and on), give the time of day to the victim’s family. In defense of our homegrown popularizers and poor thinkers, however, the Kercher family was way too classy to partake in the circus created by the Ugly Americans and their aides. …
… Comprehending circumstantial evidence demands analytical and deductive thinking. These faculties are becoming rare in the Age of the Idiot now upon us, as was glaringly apparent in the deliberations of Casey Anthony’s jurors. The average individual seldom reads; he knows only what is palpable and perceivable—what he can see and feel. If he can’t picture something—see it happen on YouTube or on CSI—he certainly cannot think about it in the abstract. …”
Read the rest of “America’s Angelic O.J” on WND.COM.
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UPDATE I: A MEASURE OF THE ZEITGEIST. BuzzFeed wants to know “Who’s Hotter: Amanda Knox Or Casey Anthony?” Intellectually, this item is more honest than what mainstream media has been dishing on the noxious Knox. By lumping the two ex-convicts together—both implicated in “vicious and depraved” deeds—BuzzFeed is disrespecting the duo. At least this is how I optimistically read this contest.
UPDATE II: An interesting thread on my Facebook Wall. I say ideas should not exist in the arid arena of pure thought. Chris Baker disagrees.
UPDATE III (Oct. 7): A comment at TrueJustice.org links to “America’s Angelic O.J.”:
Great article on WND that you linked to Peter. Some nice quotes in it too, such as:
“Ann Coulter offered up a few tart tweets about Knox’s exoneration: – Amanda Knox not guilty, Casey Anthony rolls eyes, says; ‘well, duh…’”
“Comprehending circumstantial evidence demands analytical and deductive thinking. These faculties are becoming rare in the Age of the Idiot now upon us…”
How true, and I must remember that line.
Someone else on the same site’s comments section, however, impugns my column solely because I write for WND, which the writer calls (fairly) “Obama Birth Certificate Central.”
But I am not a “birther.” The comment is precisely the kind of argument to expect in the “age of the Idiot now upon us”: The comment relies on the “well-known logical error known as the ad hominem fallacy. This is the fallacy of thinking one can undermine the status of a claim or argument by undermining the motives or character” or associations of the person who makes it. (I’ve paraphrased writer Mark Rowland’s definition, which I particularly liked.)
UPDATE IV: I like the way writers with a blind spot for crime perpetrated by sweet young females or whites harp-on, and hide behind, the misguided theory of the crime: a ritual or a sexual game gone wrong. As if today’s youngsters don’t sometimes experiment along the lines of the vapid, vampiric films they devour; as if they never enact the alternate reality they occupy. Some kids don’t exist outside their hand held devices, and the stuff they see in these toys.
More to the point, the obsession with motive is another CSI hangover. In “America’s Angelic O.J.,” I clearly say that, “Police bungling notwithstanding,” there is often no accounting for the “subterranean irrational forces that so often propel evil.”
This central stupidity conjures the manner in which Geraldo Rivera exculpated Casey Anthony: “Why would a mother kill her child?”, the Fox host wanted to know.
UPDATE V: Via the grapevine, I am getting word of certain racialists, never rationalists, who are admonishing me for my deductions vis-a-vis the evidence in the Knox case. The claim being that I’ve failed to grasp and formulaically highlight the prevalence of “black dysfunction” in our society. Their implication, I imagine, is that the indisputable involvement of a black man in the murder must automatically exclude the whites. The “case” against me is a grotesque joke, coming as it does from the quintessential American chauvinists who’ve generally ignored (except for tokenism) the largest, if disorganized, racial ethnocide in the 21st century: that of rural, white South Africans. And its chronicler: Guess who wrote the definitive text on that racial enthnocide? And guess who’s ignored that text yet is now lecturing its author about not being sufficiently racial in her treatment of the Knox crime? Your typical, navel-gazing American, Race-Über-Alles paleo. Give me a break!
UPDATE VI (Oct. Eight): NO HEARSAY, PLEASE. Jerri Lynn Ward: As a lawyer, you know that hearsay is inadmissible, and is wrong argument. I try to avoid it on BAB. The information you’ve provided us falls in that category. The source I studied and quoted is a veteran reporter in Italy who was actually THERE, in the thick of the case. She writes for liberals (who generally love Knox) and has no agenda. I know agenda when I see it. Barbie Latza Nadeau’s reporting was as impartial and impeccable as they come, in my opinion. This woman fits the old mold of journalism.
UPDATE VII: Jack kindly left a link to his source on the Knox case, a man called Steve Moore. I perused the site and saw not one hyperlink to a primary source document, meaning court documents, briefs, etc. This is one of those individuals who is postulating from afar. I’m loathe to promote this kind of individual’s verbiage on the blog. For an “investigator” to offer nothing more than a narrative, and no primary documents: that’s is suspect. You are free to look him up on Jack’s advice.
UPDATE VIII: Jennifer mentioned the love-making at the scene of the crime:
Oblivious to the cameras—or perhaps for them—-Amanda Knox (22) and Raffaele Sollecito (25) exchanged a slow, sensual kiss in full view of world media. Not far from where the two kissed lay the body of Meredith Kercher, the English girl with whom Knox had shared student accommodation in Perugia, Italy. Her throat slit, Meredith had expired in slow agony.
The kinky canoodling of Knox and her paramour outside the house of horrors conjured the climactic moment in the film noir “The Comfort of Strangers.”
Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren play an older couple (Robert and Caroline) who live in a palazzo in Venice. They gain the trust of the vacationing Mary and Colin (played by the late Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett), a young English couple. As Colin sips a cocktail with Robert at the latter’s Venetian residence, Robert suddenly and swiftly (as planned) moves to cut Colin’s throat. He then steps over his gurgling victim and the gushing blood to engage in frenzied sex with his eager wife Caroline.
The two have fulfilled a shared fantasy.
My Christ, Ilana. I knew very little about this case, pretty much zip, save for the accusations and the infamy, and WANTED to believe the sniffling girl who thanked America was innocent. (Just like, when I was little, I wanted to believe the jolly blacks outside the courthouse of O.J.’s trial were right and he was innocent). But I had a bad gut feeling, and became increasingly irritated whenever she and her jubilant parents were shown. I wanted her to be innocent, and I wanted all the people I usually agreed with on TV news to be right. Your post confirmed my nightmarish fear, and leaves practically no room for doubt. For me, there’s no torture in the world worse than seeing a horrific thing that the crowds around you ignore. But you and Anne Coulter, the only political writers I visit repeatedly, know the truth and you’ve shared it well. God help us. If your conclusions are true, and I see no present reason to doubt them, may some law of some kind nail the little bastards.
Quite crude, but is this out of the realm of possibilities…a Girl-on-Girl movie starring the above mentioned individuals?
They would be “filthy” rich, globally more (in)famous than now, and celebrated by both Euro-trash and Hollywood elite.
Their coupling would be what America needs – ROLE MODELS FOR YOUNG WOMEN.
My peronal preference is to withold personal judgement of guilt/innocence in cases where I have NOT heard all the evidence (and CNN/FOX/MSNBC is not a court of law!).
Nevertheless, it upsets me if “Dream Teams” of slimy lawyers can constantly bamboozle idiotic juries into acquitting the guilty. Such events erode the rule of law which in turn provides a “justification” for the Bush-Cheney-Obama style Judge-Jury-Executioner lynch-mob-vigilante approach.
My preference is for a reasonable adverserial system, focused on a search for the truth, within the rules of DUE PROCESS OF LAW, judged by a jury of INTELLIGENT PEERS (not every schnook that can be rounded up!). Maybe it is far too much to ask for and we are headed back to the Stone Age of barbarians with clubs making the law.
If I were convicted of a crime I would be perfectly willing to be tried by a jury of my peers. Problem is, I don’t define “my peers” as “village idiots.”
Out of curiosity, does anyone know if Meredith’s family is religious? It’d be nice to know if they have some comfort.
[I have no idea, J., but they are tremendously dignified and regal.]
For those interested in the counter-arguments that ultimately set Amanda Knox free the best source is Steve Moore, a retired FBI investigator. After reading the prosecution case summarized by Ilana and Ms. Coulter I read Mr. Moore’s defense and reached a verdict of not guilty.
[Is this “retired officer” someone who reporters for years from the scene; who knows Italian and is familiar with “dem foreigners and der rotten system,” as my source is? I doubt it. But do provide a link, if you cite a worthy source.]
Yes they are. I think I’d have crumbled a long time ago.
One of my contract people is a forensic investigator. She has gone through the crime scene photos and procedures (It’s all out on the internet). The forensic investigation was a complete joke. The postal police first came in and stomped all over the crime scene. The investigators took armfuls of clothes out of a hamper and threw it on the floor where it lay for a long time. That was only part of the problem. What I am saying is that they mixed DNA up all over the room. The “bloody” footprints in the bathroom. What the luminol was revealing was bleach which you would expect to find on a bathroom floor because of the cleaners that are used. I didn’t know what to think of this case until I spoke with my contract employee for a couple of hours.
[See post update.]
Which of the two following possibilities is more likely?
One, that the black hoodlum Guede, who had previously been arrested burgling other establishments (including breaking into a second story window) but had been let go by police, broke into the girls’ flat to commit burglary and unexpectedly encountered Meredith, whereupon he sexually assaulted and killed her?
Or, two, that the two white college students formed a sexual torture trio with the black burglar Rudy Guede on the spur of the moment, and the three of them together sexually assaulted and killed Meredith?
Number two is what the prosecutors and you believe. On the basis of zero evidence. Guede’s DNA is all over the murder room. Knox’s and Sollecito’s DNA is absent. The footprint which was said to be Sollecito’s is not his. The knife in Sollecito’s kitchen, a big deal in the initial trial, does not have enough DNA to serve as evidence. Also, Amanda’s famous “confession” to the police was not a confession, but an imaginary scenario which she was pushed into adopting at the end of an all-night interrogation , and which was so improper it was not allowed even in the original trial.
(See original entry here.)
Link to Steve Moore material as requested by Ilana above….
[See post.]
The crime scene photos are ALL on the Internet?? Predatory vultures. Nadeau sounds exploitative as well, thorough reporting or not.
Auster, I hear that their blood was mixed. How do you explain the facts about the cell phones, and the kissy-feely crap the two alleged hormones-in-crime were doing while the police came in? I thought Knox claimed she HEARD the crime occur.