Thursday, January 27, 2011

Senator Cantwell & Amanda Knox

One of the people that the Friends of Meredith love to trash is Senator Maria Cantwell.   The reason is that she has taken an incredibly strong stand for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for a sitting US Senator.  She's questioned not just the punishment, which is common but the verdict which is almost unheard of:
“I am saddened by the verdict and I have serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial. The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Knox was guilty. Italian jurors were not sequestered and were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Ms. Knox. Other flaws in the Italian justice system on display in this case included the harsh treatment of Ms. Knox following her arrest; negligent handling of evidence by investigators; and pending charges of misconduct against one of the prosecutors stemming from another murder trial.
 I am in contact with the U.S. Ambassador to Italy and have been since the time of Ms. Knox’s arrest. I will be conveying my concerns to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I have also been in touch with the Embassy of Italy in Washington, DC. (press release)
Now the argument made against her, is that she made that statement out of ignorance.  That she didn't even know two Italians were convicted, hence her claims of anti-Americanism are ridiculous.  But, if you clicked on the link to the press release you will see in her description, "Knox stood trial with co-defendant and former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito."  So claims that "she didn't even know that Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian national, was convicted by that same jury" are obviously false.
TJMK demand more details and Senator Cantwell being the gracious person she is offered them:
Dear Professor Snape,
Thank you for contacting me with your thoughts regarding the Amanda Knox case. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.
I have serious questions about whether Amanda Knox received a fair trial by an impartial jury. According to some news reports, Italian jurors were not sequestered and were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Ms. Knox. Additionally, there may have been cross-contamination of evidence due to negligent handling by police investigators.
In this case, as in all cases where US citizens abroad face legal jeopardy, I believe that the U.S. Government should work to ensure that U.S. citizens are treated fairly, given adequate due process, and when appropriate, a fair trial by an impartial tribunal.
If Americans run into trouble while overseas, they should contact American Citizen Services at the nearest U.S. Embassy.
Thank you again for contacting me to share your thoughts on this matter. You may also be interested in signing up for periodic updates for Washington State residents. If you are interested in subscribing to this update, please visit my website at http://cantwell.senate.gov. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of further assistance. (link)
So of course like anyone else who dares speak up for Amanda she is subject to attacks.   Peter Quennell in my debate with him regarding her, "The sitting senator (Cantwell) made a fool of herself, and it is a year since her staff shut her up. Hillary Clinton of course brushed her off. For one thing Italian-Americans in Congress are very ticked at the xenophobic attitudes toward Italy being shown. For another the State Department found NOTHING wrong with the process and the trial and anything in a bill would have the whole of Italy in an uproar.  Besides there is NO sign the Italian judiciary can be leaned on. Go and ask a certain Mr Berlusconi."
    Now lets talk about who Senator Cantwell really is.  Is she a foolish woman being led around by her staff whom people casually brush off, or is that just a bunch of nonsense?  Maria Cantwell got a degree in public administration and then went to work for the Alan Cranston's primary campaign in 1983.   She got involved in local politics and was elected to the Washington House in 1986, had a successful legislative record.  She was a sacrificial lamb candidate in a Republican district for the US House in 1992, except she won her seat.  As a freshmen congressmen she took strong stands on electronic privacy, and changed national policy with regard to the clipper chip.  She running in a Republican district, in a landslide year (1994) almost held her seat.

    She left took over an executive position in RealNetworks and became instrumental in some of the very earliest streaming of sporting events ever done.  She was an innovator in online music,  balancing privacy with marketing, and we owe many of the compromises that have held for the last 15 years to her policies at Real.  After leaving Real she used a substantial chunk of the money she had accumulated to fund a Senate campaign without having to accept any donations.  She ran for the US Senate in 2000, won her seat and thus along with Senator Stabenow became the very first female candidate to beat an incumbent Senator.   Since then she has served a decade in the Senate where she took the lead again on privacy issues, environmental issues (she chairs the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard ), alternative energy (she chairs the Subcommittee on Energy), and of course technology.   In 2006 her opponent Mike McGavick was quite literally running from the  Liberty Mutual Group, and one of the main reasons we have healthcare reform today was that she won that election and beat back, at least in this one instance the forces of political corruption.

    This is a woman of substantial accomplishment.  Amanda Knox is lucky to have such an outstanding Senator and I can't think of any reason her comments should not be treated with the seriousness of a statement by a United States Senator.  There is simply no sign that Italian American politicians, like Nancy Pelosi, have anything but affection and camaraderie for Senator Cantwell.  Her suggestion about impartial tribunals has been key to international trials for many years, and moving it down from trials of military/political figures to civilians strikes me as an excellent policy and one that is well considered.   In short the attacks on Senator Cantwell are pure bunk.

    ____

    See also:

    26 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    "Amanda Knox is lucky to have such an outstanding Senator..."

    A truer statement is probably that the people of Washington are "lucky" to have a senator like Maria Cantwell. To say Amanda Knox is "lucky" at all is not easy to document. She was remarkably unfortunate to have her house mate murdered. She was also unfortunate to draw the attention of a desperate police force and a fanatical prosecutor. She was amazingly unfortunate to be first accused and then convicted of a crime that was already solved and in which she clearly played no part.

    And yet, as you point out, people of knowledge and influence come to her aid. Her parents put their lives on hold to help her. Literally thousands of people at this writing, world wide have joined her cause and champion her freedom. Doctors, lawyers, judges, journalists, and politicians from several nations risk sanction and ridicule to speak publicly and author books in her defense.

    Does she entreat them to do these things? Not a one. Amanda Knox is the embodiment of grace under pressure. She exudes politeness, humility, kindness, candor, intelligence, and confidence. Eloquent in two languages, she is unique among Americans of her generation, and yet she has been labeled a murderer.

    All one need do is watch her walk into a court room, interact with her counselors or hear her speak, and the lie is exposed for what it is.

    Amanda Knox' greatest assets are not her parents, her supporter, or the wise and powerful who speak in her defense. Amanda Knox' greatest asset, the one on which all the other are based, is that she is Amanda Knox.

    CD-Host said...

    You are quite right I shouldn't call Amanda Knox lucky. She has had a lot of good luck in life, but on the thing that really mattered; getting a 1/2 way sane prosecutor she was horribly unlucky.

    I also agree with you Amanda's holding up wonderfully. I can't begin to fathom how she has completely lost it. You are absolutely right, she is becoming truly a heroic figure in managing to have such elegance.

    BTW Patrick I assume you would know the answer to this... I'm ready to send the valentine's day letter but

    I've seen both
    06100 and I-06 132 which is correct?

    Harvey said...

    CD-Host,

    Try this Valentine message:

    Roses are red,
    Violets are blue,
    You may be a killer,
    But I love you.

    You have been completely deceived. Join her many lovers, line up to kiss a murderess. Yours is lamentable taste in people, my dear. TJMK is trying to tell you the truth, listen to them. Senator Cantwell is strictly about supporting her constituents, right or wrong. It's politics as usual. She saw she'd been led down the garden path and retracted her support because the case against Foxy was as strong if not stronger than the case for Foxy's innocence. Give her an A+ for fast learner. Now you, Mr. CD-Host, are going to drag around for years learning what we already know. People saw Amanda near the cottage the night of the murder! She lied about that. Why was Foxy's blood on the Q-tip box? You've bought into the lies that there were no footprints found by Luminol, but there were. Do you love messed up females? This woman cannot even spell "cat". Maybe her open indecency is the real bait, huh? You make me sick. She's no honor student, she may be good at languages but she's no Einstein.

    CD-Host said...

    Senator Cantwell is strictly about supporting her constituents, right or wrong.

    Ask the logging companies in Washington, if she's willing to oppose Washington constituants if she thinks they are in the wrong.

    She saw she'd been led down the garden path and retracted her support

    She's never issued a retraction. The statement is still on her website. She stood by it when questioned. What evidence do you have for a retraction?

    Your post is essentially a variant of the "Senator Cantwell doesnt' know what's she talking about".

    The rest I'll do a response to separately since its about the case and not the Senator.

    CD-Host said...

    People saw Amanda near the cottage the night of the murder! She lied about that.

    Maybe. The problem is they saw her in all sorts of places other than the cottage at the time of the murder, based on the body. And outside the cottage at the time the prosecution has her setting up the murder.

    Why was Foxy's blood on the Q-tip box?

    No idea. But my daughter used to get frequent nose bleeds and so her blood would probably be found on the Q-tip box in my bathroom. That's not evidence of a homicide.

    I don't have a vagina but I know girls who have trouble hitting certain penis are advised to use a q-tip for measurement. There are guys who like the deep smell, particularly during menstruation which is often also collected on a q-tip. Amanda mentioned something about an ear infection. If she got some other piercings and was cleaning them...

    They share a bathroom.

    You've bought into the lies that there were no footprints found by Luminol, but there were.

    Of course there were. There are footprints of Guede. Other than that, the only footprint that would matter though are the ones that definitively match Raffaele or Amanda in blood. They both admit to being in the house on many many occasions. So...

    This woman cannot even spell "cat".

    Me thinks you don't have enough contact with undergrads. They use text speak all the time. This BTW is not adhoc I'm pretty liberal about variants of English in general, for example this post on ebonics from 2008.

    Maybe her open indecency is the real bait, huh?

    Nah she's not really wild enough. She was getting there.

    She's no honor student, she may be good at languages but she's no Einstein.

    If she were an Einstein she would have figured she was a suspect on the 2nd and gotten the hell out of dodge. No question about her lack of wisdom.

    Harvey said...

    CD-Host,

    I used "recant" when I have no proof. Cantwell has gone silent, that's my impression of someone wishing to quash a matter, but I have no proof she has changed her opinions about Knox.

    I asked you about blood on Q-tip box. Here's a quote from Barbie Nadeau's book, "Angel Face", p.130:

    "Because the girls lived together, it was not so surprising to find their DNA mixed. But in the bathroom the girls shared, there was a spot of Amanda's blood mixed with Meredith's blood on the tap, on the edge of the sink and again on the side of a cotton-swab box and the drain of the bidet."

    p. 131 "As Stefanoni noted, the spots on the sink and in Filomena's room were found only after the application of Luminol, which can reveal stains that have been wiped clean."

    You may be right about a nosebleed. Amanda probably was hit in the nose as she scuffled with Meredith. She tried to excuse what she knew might be her blood in the bathroom with lame reports of her pierced ears bleeding. It's possible Meredith grabbed at Amanda's ear and pulled an earring (Amanda had a missing earring the next day). Earlobes bleed freely, noses do, too. The point is that Amanda's blood was mixed with Meredith's blood. So they were bleeding at the same time, in the same place.

    Do you think that Amanda bled days earlier and then some killer dripped Meredith's blood onto the same spot? Rudy didn't go into that bathroom. The bloodstains that were wiped away (somebody was washing after Meredith bled, and it wasn't Rudy) after these bloodspots were wiped away in an effort to hide the crime, Luminol revealed them. So there is the proof that a cleanup occurred.


    Amanda's blood was mixed with Meredith's blood on the edge of the sink.

    As for your bizarre and disgusting ideas about Q-tips and sex?, I don't understand what you're trying to say, nor do I want to. It's obvious you haven't read the Old Testament command for people to refrain from sexual intercourse when a woman is menstruating. I refuse to get into such sordid thoughts, certainly not openly on the Internet with you or anybody else. Pure disgusting.

    And while we're at it, listen to Attorney Pacelli, Lumumba's lawyer quoted from Nadeau's book, p. 125:

    "You've heard the stories about her hygiene, about how messy she is. Well she is unclean on the outside because she is dirty on the inside." and p. 124: "Amanda is a talented and calculated liar who went deliberately out of her way to frame Patrick."

    CD-Host said...

    Harvey --

    I used "recant" when I have no proof. Cantwell has gone silent, that's my impression of someone wishing to quash a matter, but I have no proof she has changed her opinions about Knox.

    She is a sitting US Senator. Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox are both nobodies. She's not going to give a 1/2 dozen warnings on this issue. She's made a statement at this point, assuming she hasn't recanted:

    Most likely: she going to let it die
    Less likely: she's going to do something like attach a rider to a bill to escalate the issue.

    But Senators make one off statements on issues, all the time. I would agree there is no evidence that Amanda Knox is a burning obsession of Senator Cantwell's but she doesn't have to be. Senator Cantwell is plenty powerful enough to get Amanda out if she throws even some weight around. Not that I think that is likely, but by the same token I wouldn't read anything into her not having taken further action.

    Ultimately Italy has little stake in this itself as I discussed in Italy the EU and the international standards of justice.

    As for the blood mixing, I'm not an expert on this but my understanding is that's false. There is mixed DNA but they mixed samples tested negative for blood. You for example lose a gram of day of dead skin cells all of which have DNA. If there were blood they would mix. Amanda lived in the house, her DNA would mix with any traces of Meredith's blood.

    If there were comingled blood then that would prove they had both bled with a day of each other.

    The bloodstains that were wiped away (somebody was washing after Meredith bled, and it wasn't Rudy) after these bloodspots were wiped away in an effort to hide the crime, Luminol revealed them. So there is the proof that a cleanup occurred.

    And this as well didn't happen. There are evidence of proteins not blood on the bathroom. There is no evidence of blood being wiped up outside of Meredith's bedroom with some towel swirls.

    Harvey said...

    I had a good laugh about your "Mack the Knife" story. It was commented on at hpr online (Harvard Political Review), a comment under Alex Koenig's article: "Amanda Knox Might be Guilty", comment by Camby Newton.

    How can you say that when Luminol detected blood in the sink that was invisible to the naked eye, that this doesn't imply a washdown of the sink?

    Listen to me, PMF has all the hard facts. Michael, The Machine, Nicki, Catnip, Skep, SomeAlibi, many of those have incredible intelligence. At least go to the Forensics forum and read about DNA evidence. PMF is stating the facts, better than journalists. Naturally they interpret things to favor their opinion, but the facts remain that 5 places in the cottage showed mixed DNA of Knox and the murder victim. Blood will tell. Why do you dislike Meredith so much? She was very much more a lady than Amanda will ever be. She was restrained, polite, serious, careful, and had many virtues. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think she was pretty. She would have accomplished so much in life. She would never have killed anyone. She didn't overindulge and act crazy, she was frightened by Amanda's behavior, very distressed. Guess she was right.

    CD-Host said...

    Thanks for the reference to Camby's comment, CD-Host has another sideways comment via Art where he shows Amanda like a cabaret dancer puppet held in arms by man dressed 40's style and looking Eliot Ness or Mr. Italian in black suit, tie,

    Camby should learn to read, the woman, per the caption is Jenny Diver who dates back to 18th century version well before Amanda. Not everything is about Amanda.


    How can you say that when Luminol detected blood in the sink that was invisible to the naked eye, that this doesn't imply a washdown of the sink?


    Because it didn't detect blood it detected proteins. It could be from Meredith brushing her teeth and taking mouth cells with her. They didn't find much blood in the bathroom. It could have been from her washing her face. They should have gone for blood but they were aiming for trace.

    PMF is stating the facts, better than journalists.

    Actually no. On the one area where I know enough to not be quoting, computer forensics, they are definitely wrong. They are misrepresenting the facts. On other areas like the blood check your sources. Another thing is the facts regarding me. I know for certain they are publishing, deliberately false statements. So why would I trust them on areas where I am less sure?

    There was a little controlled experiment that you can see where I made a mistake about a footprint. Rose

    a) Corrected me
    b) Provided supporting documentation
    c) Agreed to discuss

    And did so in good faith. Contrast that with PMF which has always demanded unconditional acceptance despite counter evidence. They just did it yesterday to someone who had additional information on Rudy.

    And I know they censor. I continue to find the side that argues: Evidence, Logic and Facts. Much more convincing and that is the FOA. I have yet to get any kind of question answered from anyone at PMF. They are good at hateful rhetoric though.

    zooks said...

    "People saw Amanda near the cottage the night of the murder!"

    Toto said he saw them. He also so Disco buses that didn’t run that night, Halloween masks even though it was the day after, is a professional witness who testified in two other murder trial and came forward many months after the murder.

    "Why was Foxy's blood on the Q-tip box?"

    It wasn’t. Knox’s blood was only found on a spot in the bathroom sink. It is believed to be from an ear piercing.

    "You've bought into the lies that there were no footprints found by Luminol"

    There were luminol footprints but they tested negative for blood and Meredith Kercher’s DNA. There is also no way to tell when they were made and by whom.

    "This woman cannot even spell "cat"."

    Right. The honor student can’t spell cat. :/

    wald1900 said...

    I agree with those who regret that Senator Cantwell used the word “Anti-American” in her comments. “Anti-American” is one of those shot-gun blast adjectives that try to say something important while seldom saying anything meaningful.

    When things start going bad it’s rarely good to be an outsider. This tendency, in times of stress, to view outsiders with suspicion is not an Italian trait or a European trait; it’s a human trait. When things started going bad in Perugia, Amanda Knox suffered, first and foremost, from her status as an outsider. While I don’t dispute the fact that many Europeans harbor negative biases against Americans, or even, that these biases worked strongly against Knox (indeed, much of the media coverage of the case deliberately pandered to these biases); however, Senator Cantwell’s use of the word “Anti-American” only served to unnecessarily polarize the discussion.

    Although I’ve devoted most of my post to a criticism, I have to say that except for this, her comments are exactly what I would hope from a U.S. Senator and I applaud the fact that she chose to speak out on the issue.

    CD-Host said...

    wald1900 --

    Its an interesting choice of words but according to John Diamond she meant anti-American

    * The trial took place in a context of strained relations with Italy on a number of fronts: the 1998 cable car incident in which 20 Italians died when a passing U.S. military aircraft severed the cable; the conviction in absentia in November 2009 of 22 Americans involved in an alleged CIA kidnapping of a terrorist suspect in Milan in 2003; the unpopularity of the Iraq War; as well as negative stereotypes about American college students, particularly women. All of this and more was reflected in Italian media press coverage that the jury was exposed to. (link).

    wald1900 said...

    Thanks for the link. You’re right – it’s clear that her choice was not accidental. I regret her use of the word, nonetheless. “Anti-American” is kind of like “racist” in that as an accusation, it applies by subtle inference to everyone who is not of the stricken group. By its very nature, it polarizes by painting those who are not part of “us”, friend and foe alike, with the same brush.

    There is clearly a European stereotype about what it means to be an “American”. We are considered by many to be arrogant, loud, superficial, ignorant and yes, slightly dim. Did I forget vulgar? Yeah...we’re vulgar, too. Given this unflattering portrait, our relative success and the influence America enjoys in matters of world politics, economics, media and entertainment becomes, for some, downright galling. Further, I have no doubt in my mind that these and other stereotypes played a significant role in Amanda Knox’s arrest and conviction.

    All of this being said, the range of intensity that Europeans may feel this bias is as broad as the population itself. By lobbing a word like “Anti-American” across the Atlantic, one risks lumping those who think kindly of America with those who merely find our accents unlovely with those who were doing high-fives and chest bumps when the Twin Towers came down. While I am ambivalent about the effects her word choice may have had on ardent “America haters”, I worry about the alienating effect on those who, notwithstanding any low-level bias they may harbor, are fundamentally people of good conscience and would otherwise be appalled by the injustice done to Knox.

    Again – Cantwell’s letter good! Glad she wrote it. Just wish she had left off the Anti-American stuff.

    CD-Host said...

    wald1900 --

    I see your point about tying people together. That is a good argument why it was an unfortunate choice of words. The other two stereotypes are overweight and gregarious. That being said my real feeling is that, "empires do not have allies, they have vassals and enemies". That most of the anti-Americanism is driven by military aggression.

    That's one of the reasons I like Senator Cantwell's idea of independent tribunals, for serious criminal cases, it helps to avoid the politics.

    I don't know if you remember the international mood when the twin towers came down. Clinton had promises he couldn't keep regarding treaties and Bush was doing a lot to make it clear that the USA was not just another European country on issues like the ICC. I was surprised at the global reaction I would have thought there would have been much more chest thumping. That being said it came back in six months. And Umbria is the sort of area it might never have left.

    Its a weird choice of words. I guess her real intent matters here.

    1) It plays well domestically. Cantwell is a bit isolationist.

    2) What else can she attribute the conviction to? That Italy's justice system is deeply fundamentally flawed? She can't take my positions that everyone's justice systems are flawed.

    Anyway. The point of the article is that she made a very strong statement of support and has stood by it; despite the claims that her staff "shut her up".

    Harvey said...

    CD-Host,

    As a PMF lurker and friend, I'm shocked that you have threatened to shut down that website.

    Please do not try to hurt PMF.

    You would do better to put your keen intellect toward Church Discipline website. It helped me recently despite the fact I oppose you on the Foxy issues. You have studied Biblical history. You contribute a lot of knowledge to that.

    I was having a bad day and your site led me back to some things in the gospel. Thank you.

    You can create new personas to continue online to promote your views about Amanda Knox.

    CD-Host said...

    Harvey --

    Well they weren't exactly threatened with that. But they are engaging in what amounts to terrorism, attacking uninvolved 3rd parties to achieve political goals.

    My feeling with PMF is:

    a) They have engaged me, repeatedly. They critiqued my original article on their site. That was how our relationship started. They have thrown all sorts of hideous hateful rhetoric about me. And then they have threatened me personally.

    b) They are the ones that crossed over to a meat space dispute. When they were informed they have gone over the line they doubled down, rather than responding like moral or decent people and pulling content that has nothing to do with a murder trial in Perugia.

    Not provoking side disputes is part of running a blog which is dedicated to another cause. Meghan McCain is trying to provoke conservative Republicans and engage moderate Republicans, Liberal Republicans and Conservative Democrats. But she would want to avoid a flare up over something like say a Yankees fans vs. Red Sox fans.

    This is a BS flare up.

    c) I have no particular desire to be involved with these people. I think they are a nutsy dangerous cult. They are the aggressors here, all they have to do is delete the stuff about (real name) and there is no real life dispute, rather we are back to a disagreement about the who did the Kercher murder.

    d) PMF is a miserable failure in convincing people about the justice of the Kercher case. The original intent was that Massei would disprove the claims of the defense, while Massei is the best argument for the defense.

    This has caused the group to undergo structural transformation. I've heard people say this happened around October, though I haven't gotten clarity on what specifically happened around October that led to PMF moving from a debate blog with a position to what they are now, essentially a hate blog.

    e) It is my preference that all debate happen, calmly and civilly. No one's interests are advanced by hate speech. PMF is fundamentally a vehicle for hate speech intermixed with some information about the case.

    Which would normally be fine for me. CD-Host has engaged with a variety of these hate blogs. What's made PMF unique has been a serious attempt to move from hate speech to incitement to violence against me personally, based on very little provokation.

    Rose Montague said...

    The ethics of outing are generally understood by most people on the internet.

    1. If you use a different name than your real name, you don't want people making or sharing the connection.

    2. If you use your real name, then you want people to know your real name.

    The position at PMF seems to be that if they can figure out what your real name is without doing any thing illegal then of course, you want everybody to know what your real name is and it is perfectly OK to share that information with anybody that sees it posted.

    Or if you say something bad about Meredith or use bad words or maybe say anything they consider questionable, then it is perfectly OK to out you and intrude into your personal life, including your employment.

    I noticed that one poster also thought this policy was wrong and was subsequently banned because they made that opinion clear.

    CD-Host said...

    Rose --

    Thank you. Perfectly put!

    Patrick King said...

    CD-Host, this is the address I use when I send her letters and books.

    Amanda Knox
    casa circondariale "Capanne" di Perugia
    Strada pievaiola
    06100 Perugia-Italia

    CD-Host said...

    Patrick --

    Cool matches with where I sent the letter to. In terms of sending books / gifts. Is there a wish list somewhere of stuff she needs? Honestly I don't have a clue what she would like. Rocco pretty much says she likes anything she can get her hands on. But after 3 years of reading she's like far better read than I am. Might have a better shot with a gift for Raffaele I have a better idea of what to give the just graduating from your PhD programmer, then what to give the budding young literary chick. :-)

    Can we do an FOA thing where we buy kindles and load it to the gills with stuff for her? Otherwise I know she's limited to 3 at a time.

    I just don't know what her interests really are. Rocco is very unclear.

    Patrick King said...

    I thought about sending her a Classic iPod with all the new Beatle material which she probably hasn't heard, but getting electronics into that prison is a huge deal. Rocco, who has a lot of clout, took three months to get the PC she needed for her study program in to her. I doubt a Kindle is a logical solution. Maybe contact her parents to see if they can bring it over, if that's a project you want to start.

    Rocco told me she badly needs CD ROM disks which she mails to her professors.

    I went over the books that Rocco gave her and tried to think of ones he might not think of that she may not have read or would be happy to read again.

    It's important to remember to send her PAPERBACK book. They'll tear the covers off hard bound books if they give them to her at all.

    So far I've sent her Castaneda's Journey to Ixtlan, Dumas' Le Comte de Monte Cristo in the original French, which she's studying, Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, Kenneth Yasuda's The Japanese Haiku, kind of a how-to book on the discipline of writing Haiku which I love personally, Ricky Rooksby's book, How to Write Songs on Guitar, and for Valentines Day I sent her P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves Omnibus Vol 1.

    She's very interested in playing guitar, a hobby I enjoy, too. There's any number of great DVD guitar lessons which she can probably use on the computer Rocco gave her, but I don't know the extent of time she's allowed to use that, so have not sent any of those.

    If you send her CDs or DVDs make sure they're sealed in the original packaging. She will apparently not be given privately made disks.

    Rocco says that English books are hard for her to acquire. She enjoyed Kerouac's On The Road, which her mother gave her last year. I don't know if she's read Dharma Bums or any of his other work.

    I've found that Amazon.co.uk is a economical way to get around shipping charges which are very high if you ship them yourself from the US or use US Amazon.

    Hope that helps.

    CD-Host said...

    OK good tips.

    Amazon.uk

    paperbacks in English. That's good.

    CDs. Great tip. You sure she doesn't want blank DVD (essentially the same price and 6x the storage)? Does she want a spindle or individually wrapped, (individual is about 10x the price but I don't know if they will let her keep / use a spindle? Does she need mailers too or does the prison provide that?

    You just give me the idea of Clavell's novels, she can likely relate.

    So she has professors. That's good. What's she doing her (I assume masters) in?

    Patrick King said...

    Yes, I think she could relate to Clavell: King Rat, Shogun, maybe less Tai Pan and Noble House, but they're all great stories.

    I don't know whether she can use DVDs or not. I'll have to ask Rocco or Corrado. They tell me when the things I send get there. She doesn't get anything immediately btw. Guards go through everything that comes to her to make sure you're not sending her files or shivs. It's so absurd in the context of this particular person. Hard to understand how she ever got into this.

    DVDs are often country coded. She has a top-of-the-line computer, the same one Rocco uses in his office, but I don't know if it has a universal disk drive.

    As to blank DVDs I'm pretty sure Rocco said they disabled the camera feature in her computer. I think most of the files she sends are Word files and pdf. But check with Rocco, yourself. He's very friendly and communicative and easily reached on Facebook.

    Amanda has an unusual capacity for languages. She's currently fluent in English, German and Italian, and making good progress in French and Chinese.

    Chris Halkides said...

    CDHost,

    PMF tries to portray itself as a purveyor of information and informed criticism, but their efforts usually fall short. The Machine wrote about Professor Hampikian, "Hampikian's analysis is comical. He should stick to the facts rather than regurgitating FOA myths. Rudy Guede's DNA wasn't all over Meredith's body. There was only one instance of his DNA on Meredith's body. It's also misleading of him to claim that Guede's DNA was all over the room. There were only four instances of Guede's DNA in the room. The fact he's using FOA hyperbole rather than sticking to the precise number of instances is telling in itself.

    He offered no evidence that Meredith's bra clasp had been kicked around or that it had been contaminated. The defence experts claimed that the bra clasp had been contaminated without providing any proof at the trial. He's not saying anything new.

    He seemed to acknowledge that it was Meredith's DNA on the double DNA knife, but argued that it was contaminated. Predictably, he was unable to provide any proof that contamination had taken place." The Machine's critiquing Dr. Hampikian in DNA forensics is akin to Don Knotts teaching Cary Grant how to be suave.

    CD-Host said...

    halides would you like to link to the specific discussion or articles? You can use the "a href=" format.

    Chris Halkides said...

    The Machine talks about the DNA evidence here.