Category Archives: Europe

Remember Meredith Kercher

Crime, Europe, Justice, Law, Media, Science

The country’s national media, left and right, have once again galvanized in defense of “America’s Angelic O.J,” Amanda Knox. The same media mafia has, again, thronged to put the Italian judicial system on trial for railroading their cherub.

The reason? Via CNN:

“This is the second time an Italian court has convicted the former American exchange student of murder. Knox and her ex-boyfriend, Rafael Sollecito, were both found guilty of killing Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher, in 2009.”

Agitating for Amanda in years past “were mass murderer Hilary Clinton, corrupt King County Superior Court Judge Michael Heavey—he abused his office (my state; my taxes) to petition members of the Italian judiciary on behalf of Knox, in violation of Washington state’s Code of Judicial Conduct—Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell (she misspells her surname), ubiquitous tele-attorney Anne Bremner, public relations adviser David Marriott, and ’48 Hours’ correspondent Peter Van Sant, who had abandoned impartiality for outright advocacy.”

Said Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz:

Knox’s looks and public support may help her. “As popular as she is here and as pretty as she is here — because that’s what this is all about, if she was not an attractive woman, we wouldn’t have the group love-in — she will be extradited if it’s upheld.

“The Italian legal system, though I don’t love it, is a legitimate legal system and we have a treaty with Italy so I don’t see how we would resist,” he told AFP.

“We’re trying to get (fugitive NSA leaker Edward) Snowden back — how does it look if we want Snowden back and we won’t return someone for murder?” he asked.

Dershowitz told CNN last March that, even if Knox avoids extradition, “she remains a prisoner in the United States, because Interpol will put a warrant out for her and, if she travels anywhere outside the United States, she’ll be immediately arrested and turned over to Italy.”

And former homicide prosecutor, Paul Callan:

I don’t have a personal opinion on this, but I do have the opinion that we have an obligation to respect of the Italian system and they heard all of the evidence in this case. You know, the one name we haven’t heard is Meredith Kercher. She was a young woman in her 20s, stabbed 40 times and that’s why British public opinion and Italian public opinion is anti-Amanda Knox.

What is the case against her? One, the Italians says she confessed to the crime. Then she recanted the confession, but she also wrote it out in addition to orally confessing to the crime. They said that her DNA is linked to the murder. It’s on the murder weapon. They say that her DNA was found mix would Meredith Kercher’s blood at the apartment. Then they say she acted totally inappropriately after the murder.

she and her boyfriend were making out in the area that they were being held while questioning was going on. Now, this, while Meredith Kercher her best friend and roommate lies stabbed to death. So everyone thought inappropriate conduct. Now let me add one other thing the Italians say. They say that Sollecito [was] her alibi. The alibi was that they were together at the time of the murder. However, when they interviewed him first, his alibi was different than her alibi.

BURNETT: So, stories didn’t match up.

CALLAN: The stories didn’t match up. So they say false alibi, DNA, inappropriate behaviour and she confessed to the crime. How can you ridicule the Italians for convicting on that evidence?

Of course you can. “Another of our media’s collective moos was that, not being American, Italian justice was simply backward.”:

… Five spots of blood were harvested from the apartment where Meredith Kircher was murdered. More key forensic evidence against Knox included her footprint in blood outside Kercher’s room. Traces of Knox’s DNA and Kercher’s blood commingled on the fixtures in the bathroom the girls shared, “on doorjambs and walls,” to be precise. And a knife found in Sollecito’s apartment bore Knox’s DNA on the handle and Kercher’s DNA in a groove on the blade.

MORE.

Man Up, World! Give An American Patriot Asylum

English, EU, Europe, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Morality, Terrorism, The State

The USA is still the biggest bully in the world. The BBC reports that “Mr. Snowden has already asked 21 countries for asylum, most of whom have turned down his request.” (This is the Queens’s English? I would have written, “Most of which.”)

The US has been blamed for being behind the decision by France, Portugal, Italy and Spain to close its airspace to Bolivia’s president, whose plane was grounded in Austria for 13 hours as a result. …Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro said it would give asylum to the intelligence leaker, who is believed to be holed up in a transit area of Moscow airport.

Let this young man live out his life in Venezuela, instead of in a US cage.

Those who’re not suspended in the moral abyss with mainstream media already know that Edward Snowden is the best of America. Let us prove ourselves worthy of his sacrifice. Come every Memorial Day—more aptly called “Dying For Nothing Day”—we direct a commonplace saying at members of a military that has not defended authentic American liberties for decades. It is, however, to a young man such as this that we should say:”Thank you for your service, Mr. Snowden.”

Like son like father:

Edward Snowden’s father Lon Snowden, in an open letter co-authored with his lawyer, compared his son’s leaks to Paul Revere warning of incoming British troops, “summoning the American people to confront the growing danger of tyranny and one branch government.”
The letter, released to news organizations, lauded Edward Snowden as following the “honorable tradition” of “brave men and women refusing to bow to government wrongdoing or injustice, and exalting knowledge, virtue, wisdom, and selflessness over creature comforts as the North Star of life.”

UPDATED: Dhimmis Seek ‘Dignified’ Burial For Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Carrion For A Hungry French Vulture?)

America, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, EU, Europe, Islam, Jihad, Morality, Political Philosophy, Russia, Terrorism

His relatives refuse to give the Boston butcher a Muslim burial, so–what do you know?—Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s dhimmi victims are obliging. Apparently interring the dead is another one of those inviolable American values. And not only that, but giving this detritus of humanity a burial that comports with his faith is an obligation as well. All nonsensical, if not plain immoral. Incinerating Tsarnaev’s remains is the moral thing to do. (I was going to write that cremation was a “perfectly American” thing to do here, but I am unsure if we act as a moral people would any longer.) Cremation conserves resources and leaves (almost) nothing behind.

Via Fox News:

Peter Stefan, owner of Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlor, agreed to handle the funeral arrangements. He told Fox News:

“They can protest, but what do you do? In this country, we bury the dead.” Stefan said everybody deserves a dignified burial service no matter the circumstances of their death and said he is prepared for protests. But he added that arrangements have yet to be worked out, and finding a final resting plot for the body – which Islamic law says must not be cremated – could prove difficult.

UPDATE (May 5): Carrion For A Hungry French Vulture? Speaking of the detritus of humanity, philosophically, at least: The French are a people whose revolution was a precursor to the Karl-Marx inspired Russian Revolution and the Nazi menaces. During the Reign of Terror, and by popular demand, thousands of the country’s best and brightest—clergy, the aristocracy, and the educated—were guillotined in assembly-lines. This was a dress rehearsal for the industrialized, mass killing of the Communists and Nazis.

Fast forward to France of 2013. Due to EU central planners’ rulings, the vultures of France (the good kind; the birdies) are without carrion. The poor animals are starving. They did what they do best: clean up after human beings. And now French farmers, who can’t survive sans state subsidies (but expect vultures to), want to eradicate the Griffon vultures.

Cut vulture some slack. Can we not send a certain slab of putrefying flesh to poor these scavengers?

UPDATE III: Margaret Thatcher: An Individualist, Not A Feminist (Republican Teletwits R Feminists)

Britain, EU, Europe, Feminism, Human Accomplishment, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Reason

“Margaret Thatcher: An Individualist, Not A Feminist” is the new column, now on WND. Here is an excerpt. Read the rest on WND:

“Feminism is a form of collectivism. The sludge of feminist thought was as foreign to Margaret Thatcher’s supple mind as originality is in the collective consciousness of Dana Perino and Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Big hair, an overbite, botox and mind-numbing banalities: These best describe the female hosts on Fox News’ ‘The Five,’ a current-affairs panel, on which Lady Thatcher’s achievements were being claimed for womanhood.

To be fair to the pair from ‘The Five,’ a procession of equally vacuous panelists, plonked on other God-awful, dual-perspective chat forums—now multiplying on TV—had all rattled on about Margaret Thatcher qua woman.

The solipsistic sorority known as feminism was alien to Mrs. Thatcher, who was a methodological individualist, if ever there was one. The ‘Iron Lady’ would have had nothing but contempt for the mediocrities claiming her achievements for their communal sisterhood.

The causes of the late Mrs. Thatcher—who served as the United Kingdom’s prime minister from 1979 to 1990, and passed away this week—were those of “individual men and women” and their families.

As Lady Thatcher famously averred, feminism was poison. ‘No! No! No!’ The Lady was not for feminism. Within parliament, Prime Minister Thatcher had disavowed “little sir echo’s” acquiescence to the colossal collective of the European superstate. From without parliament, she would have extended the same scorn to little miss echo’s campaigns for gender-driven sectional interests.

The force of Mrs. Thatcher’s thinking and leadership flowed from a fierce independence of mind that precluded an affinity for the black hole of feminist thought—the collapse of which becomes increasingly likely as its center of gravity grows heavier. (Yes, women—especially feminists—risk vanishing into self-centeredness and self-preoccupation.) A bona fide feminist at the Guardian got it right. Mrs. Thatcher, she fumed, had no empathy for woman-centric whining, preferring the company of men.

Such was Lady Thatcher’s individualism that she even hand-bagged Thomas Jefferson for what she perceived as his flawed expression of the American Mind …”

The complete column, “Margaret Thatcher: An Individualist, Not A Feminist,” is on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION, AND DO BATTLE FOR LIBERTY BY:

• Using the content-sharing icons on Barely a Blog posts.

• At the WND and RT Comments Sections, and on Facebook.

• By clicking to “Like,” “Tweet” and “Share” WND’s “Return To Reason.”

UPDATE I: No To The EU. It says a lot about collectivism’s historic, unstoppable momentum that Margaret Thatcher was ousted as prime minister of Britain, in 1990, because of one of her most prophetic and patriotic insights: that against the European superstate. She famously insisted that, “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”

UPDATE II: Libertarians will and should continue to debate whether Margaret Thatcher truly reduced overall government outlays. While economic growth outpaced government growth during the Thatcher years, as The Spectator’s Jonathan Jones observed, “Government spending actually rose by 17.6 percent in real terms under Thatcher.”
We might, in addition to all else, ponder why, given the privatization Thatcher accomplished—National Freight, steel, gas, telecoms and water—Mrs. Thatcher failed to tackle Britain’s National Health Service. Alas, there is so much one woman can do. To ignore her towering intellect and her patriotism, so unusual today among the Anglo-American traitor class, is worse than stupid.

UPDATE III: “Milton on Maggie.”

UPDATE IV (4/12): The Republican Teletwits are Feminists. Jeff P writes:

Ilana,
Very well written piece capturing so many of the essentials of Lady Thatcher. However as regards the two ladies of The Five, I didn’t at all sense that they were/are leftist feminist supporters and am of the belief or at least the impression that they would agree with your statements about Lady Thatcher vs liberal feminism. I do want to tell you however, that I believe you do the quality of your essay a disservice with the ad hominems of “botox, big hair, and overbite.” I think it is within bounds to draw the analogy of the feminist sludge to Thatcher’s supple mind as originality to the collective consciousness of Perino and Guilfoyle. Just my thoughts.

Sincerely,
Jeff P.

Reply:

Dear J.,

Never said they were leftist; but they are neocon-Republican feminists. Which, I suppose, is left, in my book. All Republican TV tarts (bar Malkin and Coulter who are serious commentators, but are not invited on panels b/c too smart for their hosts) are feminist lightweights. Think about what individualism versus feminism involves. The constructs deployed by the many Dana Perinos and Kimberly Guilfoyles, festooning panels all over the networks, are invariably gender-centric.
The two were incapable of addressing Mrs. Thatcher’s thinking, other than to chirp on about her contribution to making them feel better as women; brightening their prospects as females. Well, she should not have, because Mrs. Thatcher was nothing like them.
In any case, their discourse is feminist, not individualist.
As to the bite. Writing has to be biting and sharp, not boring and agreeable. If you back up the bite with facts, and I do my best—then one should have some fun. Those two broads are thick. Why are they there speaking to the nation? Why are all these panels bedecked with such silly sorts? Because these women will never say anything remotely provocative or original. Never have, never will.

Here is another one.