Amanda Knox

The grand jury analogy was not meant to refer to the composition of the members in any way, but rather to the fact that grand jury indictments are lists of charges, which are then heard in a fair trial where the prosecution has to prove those charges are true. This Italian "lower court" conviction is supposedly going to result in a specific list of charges, which will then be heard in a fair trial where the prosecution has to prove them true.

Not that you said I was, but I'm not out to crucify an american girl. I'm not exonerating her because she's american either. You will remember that I have qualms re the prosecution as well. My immediate take is that she was involved but the police and prosecution were a mess. I do know a mild amount about italian law, but nothing to brag about or post about.

No, I didn't live there, High Seas. I've just been reading avidly since at least 1988. Fbaezer did live there and might have cogent thoughts, as he is routinely cogent on the occasions when he posts.

I do have a friend who studied language in Perugia (architect) and did visit there myself for a few days, and have read dollops of Perugia history.

My main memory was our (ex and I) tucking into a tiny Bar with chocolate bathed profiteroles late at night. The museum with the chain link fencing. The cathedral with the prussian telling me to cut the camera. And the hour long conversation with the woman who ran the small pensione - her english being very much better than my italian. Mostly I remember a stand with bananas on sale.

"Amanda Knox has been "snowed under" by thousands of letters of support from people who believe she is innocent, her mother has claimed."

LINK

The US reaction has prompted this comment from British lawyer and columnist:

Much of the US reaction to the conviction of Amanda Knox has been a disgrace. I fully accept there is an argument that she should not have been convicted on the evidence. But the emphasis of many of those pleading Knox's case " including politicians and lawyers " has not been to analyse that evidence, but to mount a vicious, intemperate and xenophobic attack on Italy's legal system.

They made it seem as if Knox was convicted solely because of a corrupt system and Italy's alleged anti-Americanism. What particularly irritated me was that these outbursts came from a country that has much to be ashamed of in its own justice system. I'm not just talking about the comprehensive injustices of Guantánamo Bay. More serious, because it's been going on a long time and affects many more people, is the way many states have treated defendants, particularly poor and black defendants, accused of serious crimes including murder and rape.

The accused have routinely been represented in court by incompetent lawyers. The chances of the innocent being found guilty of serious crimes are far higher in the US than Italy. It's not Italy that executes prisoners with sub-normal IQs " as happened in Ohio last week.

Please note too, that her co-defendant was an Italian national, and he received the same treatment and the same eventual verdict.

Yep, and if their treatment of her was so completely based on and biased around anti-Americanism, it just doesn't follow that they'd throw one of their own under the train (and a doctor's son/university student) for someone whose life they valued so little.

I don't think the British/Italian press demonized her so much as the American press tried to beatify her.

This girl apparently wasn't who she seemed to be in America once she got to Italy.
I also think the drugs probably played a very major part. Maybe when she woke up the next morning she was horrified at what had taken place. Maybe she doesn't even remember. I think that's more likely a scenario than that a bunch of Italian people decided they wanted to ruin an American girl's life just for the fun of it. If that was it - why'd they pick her? Apparently there were all sorts of American students living there.

There must have been some evidence that pointed to her.

Preposterous. Italy is an inherently evil country, and we have every right to criticize them for being so evil.

Nope. When the British and Italian press go around lying about her, that counts as demonization.





Nope. She is the same person.





Maybe Italy is an evil country that likes to maliciously prosecute innocent people.

Actually, no maybe about it. That is exactly what they are. If I ever meet that pilot that dumped the cable car down the side of a mountain, I'm going to shake his hand and buy him a beer.





There is no evidence that points to her.

Shouldn't bombing and invasion be in order too?

Sounds good to me. Not my call though.

(It was always pretty funny the way they started squealing in helpless rage when we took out Monte Cassino.....)

The monastery had stood on that hill for countless centuries and was full of invaluable artworks - besides, if the intent was to kill German troops, not one of them was harmed in any way. Better reconaissance would have shown they were camped near the monastery and not inside.

Sorry, my mistake - you've always posted in flawless Italian and seem very familiar with the place, so I naturally thought you'd lived there for some time. As to the person you recommend, nothing in his posts inclines me to trust any of his statements, but that's a different matter altogether.

I know exactly how valuable it was, and just how pointless the bombing was.

I hate Italy, with a great deal of justification I think, and I think the whole episode is incredibly funny.

It was showing already, even without justification..

My hatred of Italy was justified from the beginning. They are evil.

I heard it was the Indian Army which was instrumental in the Monte Cassino operation.

This is interesting, and was new to me, from Wikipedia:

In the course of the battles, the ancient Abbey of Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict first established the Rule that ordered monasticism in the west, was entirely destroyed by bombing and artillery barrages in February 1944.[nb 2]

Loading of Monte Cassino property for transport to RomeDuring prior months in the Italian autumn of 1943, two German officers, Captain Maximilian Becker, a surgeon in the Hermann Göring Panzer Division and Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel of the same unit, with singular prescience proposed the removal of Monte Cassino’s treasures to the Vatican and Vatican-owned Castel Sant'Angelo before the war would come closer. Both officers convinced church authorities and their own senior commanders to use the division’s trucks and fuel for the undertaking. They had to find the materials necessary for crates and boxes, identify skilled carpenters among their troops, recruit local laborers (to be paid with rations of food plus twenty cigarettes per day), and then manage the "massive job of evacuation centered on the library and archive," a treasure "literally without price."[57] The richness of the Abbey’s archives, library and gallery included "800 papal documents, 20,500 volumes in the Old Library, 60,000 in the New Library, 500 incunabula, 200 manuscripts on parchment, 100,000 prints and separate collections."[58] The first trucks, carrying paintings by Italian old masters, were ready to go less than a week from the day Dr. Becker and Schlegel independently first came to Monte Cassino.[59] Each vehicle carried monks to Rome as escorts; in over one hundred truckloads the convoys nearly depopulated the Abbey’s monastic community.[60] The task was completed in the first days of November 1943. "In three weeks, in the middle of a losing war, in another country, it was quite a feat."[60] After a mass in the basilica, Abbot Gregorio Diamare formally presented signed parchment scrolls in Latin to General Paul Conrath, to tribuno militum Julio Schlegel and Maximiliano Becker medecinae doctori "for rescuing the monks and treasures of the Abbey of Monte Cassino."[61]

Monte Cassino and Cassino have different meaning for the various participant nations of the battles. For the western Allies, monuments and inscriptions invoke God and country and sacrifice and freedom;[62] for the Poles it stood as a "symbol of hope for their country."[63] For the Germans and their veterans it was altogether different. Monte Cassino "represented the courage ... of their soldiers defending against Allied matériel strength," superior numbers and overwhelming firepower, a precursor of events to come.[63] They "fought with ... great skill ... No crimes stain the German record here, nor were there any self-inflicted horrors like Stalingrad," and " that they were able to "save the treasures of Monte Cassino and the museum and gallery of Naples [endures as] a point of particular pride."[64][nb 3]

Monte Cassino = We smashed it and it's gone.

I hope next time we take out the Pantheon.