Evidence and the very unlikely

OK strange question, how much evidence would you need to prove that an human alien hybrid killed Meredith Kercher?  Assume that were the prosecution's theory.  Assume they had picked someone up and they believed that person was a human alien hybrid.  Assume they were using his alien traits to explain evidence, like he had been able to get through the window because hybrids can jump 12 feet easy, he hadn't left any evidence because hybrids can make their fingers not secrete oils....  This was the prosecution's theory and you as a juror had to rule on the case.  What sort of standard should you hold them to?  You might stay that's a really stupid question, and your reaction is precisely where I want your head at, so bear with me please.

Is it impossible that human alien hybrids exist or just very very unlikely?  You might say impossible.  OK what if there were families of human alien hybrids known to exist, towns which people could visit full of them.  Some had undergone analysis in various biological laboratories and the results were public.    You even knew people, who had met some and see them change shape.  Then you might say, "well then yes I'd believe in them".  In other words, its not impossible its just a question that there is nowhere near enough evidence to believe in something so unlikely.  Very much like Russell's Teapot.  There are lots of good reasons to believe that an animal like the platypus didn't exist, when it was first described and for several years there were debates when it was discovered if it was a fraud or a fluke.  But the evidence overwhelmed the skepticism.  And I think that this is a similar case, you don't really mean "impossible" what you mean instead is highly improbably, that is to say something for which you are going to need lots of high quality evidence.

So given any murder there is a certain percent chance it was done by a human alien hybrid.  There is a certain chance it was done by random quantum effects.  There is a certain chance is it done by a monkey like The Murders in the Rue Morgue.  Those are doubts in any case, they just aren't reasonable doubts, because they are so unlikely.  But remember this situation is different, this is the prosecutor's theory.   Which means the prosecution not only has to prove the crime but because they are using this theory to explain away the counter evidence like the 12 foot jump via. the alien hybrid theory they actually have to provide enough evidence to justify the existence of alien human hybrids.  And of course you are beginning to see where I'm going; while Mignini and Massei's theories may not seem up there with alien human hybrids they are still incredibly unlikely.  So lets work this hypothetical a bit before jumping back to the main case.

There is one more condition.  Maybe even a tremendous amount of evidence doesn't cut it.  The possibility that the pieces of evidence correlate and thus all or most of it is together wrong, that your analysis is wrong, that my analysis is wrong vastly overwhelm the likelihood of those scenarios.  One of the things that will strike you immediately if you read old trials is the sorts of scenarios that are considered likely or unlikely.  Something like an insect disease leading to a local significant shift in a particular insect population (like a bee) leading to a crop failure if it is considered at all, and not in that language, would be treated as unlikely while witchcraft or direct divine intervention are likely explanations for this natural phenomena.  Its hard to account for these variables but they exist with most evidence.     The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, bu Kuhn talks about how science deals with the incredibly unlikely.  Once it shows up it provides it disproves the paradigm of probably, which requires a paradigm shift, and that shift is undertaken only when the evidence becomes truly overwhelming.

Just to put this in perspective lets do a quick through experiment.  Assume you have to decide between just two options A and B (with B being guilty).  Assume that you have pieces of evidence each of which is 70% accurate and fully independent, to help in picking between A and B.  If A and B are equally likely, and your standard of evidence was more likely than not you would just count up the evidence and side without whatever letter had more "evidence" behind it.  For most everyday decisions even 2 pieces of evidence would be 90% and thus good enough.   If OTOH you standard was "beyond a reasonable doubt" say 98% and A and B were still both equally likely, you would only need to go up 4 pieces of evidence.  So this 70% evidence is great stuff for making day to day judgements.

But what if A and B weren't equally likely?  Assume that B were something like a human alien hybrid conjecture and A were something like "drug killing, gang killing, robbery, x-boyfriend, honor killing combined" in other words a grab bag of the alien human hybrid didn't do it.  Lets say that the one in ten billion murders at most are caused by an alien human hybrid. So to meet the reasonable doubt standard we would need B to be 500 billion times more likely based on evidence alone than A.    Which is to say if we have to pick between A and B we are often going to pick A even when most evidence points to B. If it were a pure 70/30 shot then it would take about 23 pieces of non correlating evidence each agreeing,  to make the odds less than 1 in 500 billion.

Ah but happens if I have good quality evidence?  Say 98% evidence like a videotape of my alien human hybrid or a repeatable blood sample that shows him his cells producing a silicon based sugar.  1 piece of evidence for reasonable guilt if A and B are equally likely and only 6 for human alien hybrid.   So its a linear factor of 4.    So if you think one of the pieces of evidence is overwhelming, certainly not as good as a video of the crime.  Go ahead and count it twice.

But here is where it gets tricky notice I keep saying independent.  What if they are not?  Well if they are even slightly dependent on one another that doubles the amount of evidence, moderate and I'm up around 100 pieces of the alien human hybrid.  And If you think about it that feels about right.  You would probably need about 100 anecdotes to believe this murder was committed by an alien human hybrid.  That is to say you believe this evidence correlated about 50% there is some overlap.

Ah....  but you might say.  "Wait a minute, CD!  Nothing in the Meredith Kercher murder theory is as unlikely as an alien human hybrid.  People get into squabbles all the time and someone ends up dead.  Domestic violence is frighteningly common not uncommon".  And you would be right.  You would also be rewriting the prosecution's theory of the case.  And boy is it tempting.  Their theory of the case is tremendously stupid.  It requires us to believe multiple highly low probability things.

Its hard to know exactly what is needed to prove the case and what is rank speculation.  But just starting on a particularly bad part of the report:

Meredith Kercher, returning home around nine in the evening, and without
anything in mind other than having a rest (the night before, Halloween, she had
stayed up very late) and doing some studying. Like her English friends, she thought
she had a class at 10 the following morning, and would not have had any intention
of acquiescing to the demands, held to be of an erotic-sexual nature by what has
already been observed, of whoever entered her room.
Besides, she felt attached to Giacomo Silenzi, with whom she had just started an
intimate relationship, and she was serious young woman with a strong
temperament.

1. How would you know what's on her mind as she is returning home?  What do you think you are writing a novel?
2. Do we really know enough about Meredith's sex life to know whether her 10:00 am class would or would not have had any impact on whether she wanted to have sex.  Heck there would have been many many years without sex if I had to wait till days I could sleep in till noon.
3. How do you know she felt attached with Giacomo Silenzi?  We know she had just started  boffing the pot grower downstairs.  Maybe she just liked his pot?  Maybe she liked his availability.  Maybe she liked the fact that Amanda and Laura had both wanted him and she just wanted to be queen bee?
4. And even the statements themselves, "serious young woman with serious temperament" -- Who is dating a pot dealer and helping him grow the stuff
5. Most people when striking up a conversation with a girl hint around the erotic sexual part a bit.  It might not have been entirely clear.  

And on and on and on goes the rank speculation needed to make this murder work out.   And mind you this is key.  This is paragraph is the evidence that Meredith wouldn't have opened the door and thus someone else let Rudy in.   The fact that someone else let Rudy is the evidence that Amanda had to fake the break in.  Amanda having to fake the break in is one of the key pieces of evidence that Amanda is the murder.

Reading this "evidence" does it sound sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Meredith didn't say:

• sure come on in lets smoke some weed and then I gotta go to class or 
• sure my boyfriends away I'd love to play tonight
  or maybe going with different theory, a food theory
• you know I'm already getting sick of pastas, stracciatella I'm totally in the mood for some boiled cabbage, maybe some chips.  I'd love some company!

We are talking a guy who played basketball outside her school and hung with her boyfriend.   This is called the Massei conclusions report, perhaps the Massei wild guesses report would be more fitting?  So lets assume its 80% likely that Meredith didn't open the door herself for Rudy and assuming she didn't open the door that its 80% likely that Rudy had someone let him and given that 80% chance that the someone had to be one of the 4 girls that no one else had a key to a rental apartment that they had had made over the last decade  and 80% that given all this Amanda would have realized she needs to fake a break-in....  well the whole scenario then is only 1 in 3.  And the same way the evidence adds the rank speculation takes the odds down and down and down.  And by way of example, if I used 60% for that the chances would have been just 7.75%.

So you go through the Massei report counting conjectures.  How many of these 80% do you need to make the case.  20, 100,1000?  At 20 its less than 1% likely that things came down the way Massei speculates.  At 100 you are around the one in ten billion we used as a  placeholder for the human alien hybrid.  That's the power of compounding.    It doesn't sound crazy because it is a huge collection of more likely than not theories strung together.  But just multiple them out and you get something incredibly unlikely.  To prove this kind of a sequence, in practice you would need to:

1. Collect evidence
2. Construct a fixed single sequence sequence
3. Collect evidence independent of your evidence in step (1) to confirm / disconfirm your sequence

otherwise you need an astronomical amount of evidence to show you aren't just fitting a conjecture to the facts rather than confirming a conjecture with facts.

The fact is Massei has no idea what happened, because an investigation was never done (see my article on prosecutorial abuse as to why it was never done).  They think they probably have the right people and the rest of the report covers:

a)  Stuff they did investigate
b)  Wild conjectures to tie those scattered pieces of evidence into a case.

And he does hit his conjectures to the facts at hand.  In the pages on the stab wounds and their order he has a high quality autopsy and thus lots of facts he has to fit to.  On the what Meredith was thinking as she approached her door he has essentially none so he is free to assert anything he wants.

There certainly is enough to indict Amanda based on the Massei report, but to convict?  Play a game.  Read the Massei report.  Each time you hit a piece of evidence cancel out 2 conjectures of his, which is being really generous with the evidence.  And that's not counting the fact of how silly some of the conjectures are.

And then there are places where the evidence is just wrong.  I'm not an expert on DNA, one can see extensive evaluation of the evidence all over the web and I don't have the background to know enough to evaluate it.  But this line is different:

Encase forensic analysis software determined, for such time period, that the only files created (last created) or written (last written) were generated, automatically, either by the computer’s operating system or the Firefox web-browser within its own cache: being files generated at regular intervals.

I'm going to get a bit techie for this paragraph, explain how this is total nonsense, feel free to skip it as just an example.  I'd like you if you are on a mac or a linux box to open up a terminal right now and type the phrase man touch.  If you are stuck on a windows box here is what you would have seen link.   Touch is a program designed to change timestamps because it is such a common activity.   Changing those dates are standard Unix activities, I have tons of scripts that modify those dates to things other than their defaults that run on my machine; for example when I push data to the TIVO I script changes to mtime so that it sorts the way I want it on my TV.   Mac's internally have 5 timestamps they associate with files: createDate, contentModDate, attributeModDate, accessDate and backupDate. accessDate implements atime, attributeModDate implements ctime and contentModDate implements mtime. The fsCatalogInfo attribute for a file in objective-C (the default language for system's programming on an Apple) has those five as variables (i.e. for example fsCatalogInfo.createDate), which is to say this is not some deeply hidden attribute, Apple invested money in making these timestamps alterable because programs need to do that so frequently.    Other than those 5 attributes there is no place any time information is stored about file manipulation.    You can in 3 seconds have a file on your mac that was last modified 10 years before you owned the computer, heck before it was created as far as the filesystem is concerned.  And there is no secondary record of these changes.   With an average user timestamps are obviously good evidence.   By definition average users are people who think about how to work their computer not how their computer works.  But Raffaele is a computer science graduate who is doing a degree in genetic programming, he's spending all day thinking abut how computers work.  For him,  the timestamp mean nothing more than the times he choose to assign to files.   He's probably 10x the programmer I am, I'm way over the hill, he's in his prime.  If this were Amanda's computer I'd think "determined that the only files created" was too strong I'd weaken it to something like "indicates that most likely the only files created".    For Raffaele's I'd say "a weak easily modifiable record which at the time of analysis showed..." is a fair characterization. [note added 1/12/11: Rose below translated from Italian what they actually used.  I'm leaving this unmodified for continuity, but the actual forensic method was much less reliable than the one I assumed they used]

I'm nitpicking the timestamp paragraph,  because that is one where I'm not quoting other experts.   I know for a fact that Massei is indicating that something that is only likely as an absolute certainty.     This is at least for me a perfect example of the basic problem with the Massei report, it replaces possible with likely, likely with almost certainly true and almost certainly true with tautologically true.  He takes weak evidence and argues that it shows things way beyond what it does in fact show.  Please google everything in these two paragraphs, check that everything I'm saying about timestamps is absolutely true.  Everyone does this with the inconsequential, "I'm sure I put gas in the car" as shorthand for "I'm usually pretty good about filling it once it gets below half full, and 3 days I remember it was less than 1/2..."  But if my job depended on it, I'd go out and check the car and  I'd still fill it up just in case the gas gauge wasn't working right.  If someone's life depended on it, I'd try and fill it and I'd make sure to have a spare gas container in the trunk.  And that's the level of certainty I would want before locking someone away for a quarter century, beyond a reasonable doubt.   And that is what the law requires.

 And then ask yourself did the forensic analysis really determine what happened on that computer or did it just provide a fallible piece of evidence about what happened on that computer?  And if it didn't then Raffaele can be telling the truth about what he and Amanda did during the time of the murder.  This little forensics was considered a major blow to their alibi.    And while you are thinking about that, read the report for yourself and go find yourself a dozen example like this of these unbelievable leaps of pure conjecture.   In the end there is one key question you absolutely must be able to answer before taking the awesome responsibility of destroying 3 children:

• What lethal acts do we know for certain that Amanda Knox performed?
• What lethal acts do we know for certain that Raffaele Sollecito performed?
• What lethal acts do we know for certain that Rudy Guede performed?

And I have yet to hear an answer to that question.

_____

See also:

• A similar argument was made by Raffaele's attorney's in his appeal (link), translated in the comments to this post here.  

Amanda Knox and Prosecutorial Abuse

One of the few things both sides of this case agree is that it breaks your heart. If you take a look at the 3 pictures for the 3 articles you are immediately struck. The picture for the first article shows Amanda in her first year of prison: a joyful kid full of life and spunk, a mischievous little girl flirtish looking at the camera. She's so obviously full of hope, she can't imagine that everything won't work out in the end. You can see in those eyes the sort of girl to run off to Italy on a whim and immerse herself in the language, the people the culture for the sheer joy of discovery and adventure. Probably the same way she rock climbed right before the incident or climbed trees a few years before that. People were offended, but I think jealous is a better word. How dare she make it to 20 with that profound childlike joy fully intact?

The picture for the second article is the same girl experiencing fear. There is a hunted look in her eyes. She is still in denial that Mignini would be able to keep her in his box for decades but no denial about his intent. The carefree girl is gone replaced with a murder suspect trying to navigate the minefield of being a prisoner within a system that really does intend her harm, made all the worse by the careless errors of the carefree girl of the first picture. The first Amanda was immature the second picture is no longer a child but not yet a woman.

The picture for this article is shocking. The eyes are dead, passive all hope has been extinguished. Those are the eyes of an old woman ready to pass from this life to the hereafter they should not be the eyes of a girl the age of a college senior. Its hard to know whether there is anything left to save in that girl anymore, or just enough left to bury. 3 years of prison has destroyed her. All I can see: hopelessness, depression, fatalism.

When I started this series I just figured I'd grab a picture form 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively. When I saw what they looked like I had trouble not bursting into tears, a maudlin emotionalism that is totally unlike me. Life should do this to people over decades, or better yet not at all. To be able to see the eyes and the face change in pictures which show no sign of aging, to see this happen to someone deliberately so quickly, is devastating. It really bring home the monstrous evil of what's going on in Italy, and since American prisons are worse here as well. Early in the life of this blog I wrote a piece (link) on the mechanism of real and false guilt and how church discipline was used to create this sort of effect, the analogy being to real imprisonment; in the case of that piece in a 1930s Soviet Prison. I think back on that piece now, in the one sense how apt the analogy is in the haunted looks I've seen in the people I've worked with tossed out of their communities for being gay or being disobedient wives or starting to question whether the leader was really right. But the real thing is so much worse than the analogy.

The justification offered for killing Amanda's soul and leaving behind a zombie is of course is the picture to the left of this text. Meredith Kerecher died slowly of exsanguination probably in pain, probably in fear. It was a brutal death of by all accounts a talented girl, delightful girl loved and cared for by many. Meredith probably fought for her life at the end that's why the blood smears are everywhere, she died in combat, she died fighting she died with a ferocious desire to live. Her 2007 picture will always be this. The horror of her death is compounded by the knowledge that she died young enough to fight like she did. She loved her life and she had so much to live for.

And in 2007 there were people looking at this Meredith picture that were probably worried about a reoccurrence. They were probably worried about public fear. When Sonia Marra was murdered in Perugia in 2006 the police hadn't charged anyone, and rumors were starting in the University for Foreigners about a serial killer targeting students. The police wanted to make damn sure this didn't happen again, they wanted to reassure the public that Italian police work would be swift. But they couldn't find a motive and Meredith on the surface wasn't doing anything that was likely to get her killed.  There were some signs pointing to this murder being domestic violence and one of her roommates acted suspicious, offended the police and told some lies. So they fixated. 

And then steps in a prosecutor who likes to play way over the line. Its important to stop here and point out that the fact this guy is a highly questionable character is not in dispute. Douglas Preston's Monster of Florence, about the Monster of Florence Murders (1968-85, well before Knox was born) talks about Mignini's villainy. His response was to engage in an illegal wiretapping operation against the police and journalists investigating for which he has been tried and convicted (link). Allegations of abuse swirl around him.

And even in the Knox case there have been substantial misconduct. For example Mignini has tried to charge Americans in Italian courts for activities performed in the United States, i.e. without any jurisdiction, and activities absolutely protected by the First Amendment:

• He filed criminal defamation charges agains a newspaper, the West Seattle Herald for reporting that Mignini is seen by many locals as inadequate and mentally unstable (link)
• He convicted (in absentia) Joe Cottonwood a California carpenter for calling Mignini a bully (link), its hard to do more then point out the irony of a DA filing criminal charges against someone for calling them a bully
• Slander charges against Amanda Knox's parents for quoting her sworn testimony (this BTW was the charge that got me off the fence regarding Amanda Knox) (link)

He also has further tried to get around the protections against perjury in Italian law protecting defendants by filing a separate slander charge against Amanda Knox for her sworn testimony in her defense.

So understanding this background, lets try and get inside Mignini's head in early Nov 2007. He's an experienced investigator, with a weak case against someone he is sure is guilty and is a serious flight risk. Her parents are on their way and while Amanda might not understand how much danger she is in, they will, and poof she will be back in Seattle. Once that happens he certainly isn't going to be able to get enough to extradite. Worse her alibi, Raffaelle, has money and might just follow Amanda back to the states for a few years, or head to Australia or even if he stays in Italy might be very hard to arrest with Amanda to tie him to the crime. So he's under immense time pressure and responds by conducting a series of illegal interrogations, the Italian equivalent of failing to Mirandize them, and then arrests them. He still doesn't have enough but he arrests them so he can hold them. Italy does not have the notion of right to a speedy trial so once arrested he can hold them for a year.

And immediately his problems worsen because the physical evidence isn't confirming his theories. Neither is the witness testimony. There is lots of blood but not much in the way of bloody footprints. The knives they find don't either have the right kinds of evidence or don't match the wounds. Psychopathic sexual killers have histories of working their way up to rape murders. We should see evidence of things like animal abuse, spousal abuse, sexual assaults on Amanda and Raffaele's criminal record, but they don't have a criminal record for anything remotely violent, or really much at all.

Since he's made an arrest he has to reassure the public that's he's done the right thing. Mignini starts planting false stories. For example he focuses the media on how Amanda's copy of Harry Potter was found at the cottage and not at Raffaele's place disconfirming her alibi, except it was found at Raffaele's place confirming her alibi. He leaks a false photo. Just to give you some idea of the effect of false evidence I played this the way he did. Notice how the "blood" on the photo on the left of the bathroom is pink, well its a chemical from the forensic team. The actual bathroom showed no signs of blood at all, except for a few drops in the sink, everything you see here would have been invisible to a human eye. Putting it next to the shot on the right which has actual blood misled you. I fell for the same trick when I first saw the photo. And he published these photos opposite stories of Amanda talking about not noticing the blood in the bathroom, when shown this picture makes her look like a total liar. Dozens of these propaganda stories were planted.

That's the sort of thing a prosecutor who is trying to inflame the public against a defendant who can't prove his case would do. Stories of non existent comics, stories of non existent bloody footprints making a path. Lying by 12 minutes about when the postal police arrived and then planting a story based on this time shift about Amanda trying to create an alibi after the police got there. Lets not brush over this because this is not a point in dispute, Mignini orchestrated a public campaign of defamation using a mixture of false and true information into an emotionally agitated Perugian population. No one denies this attack campaign of disinformation occurred, the only point in dispute is why.

What I would argue is he did so to try and create a political environment which led witnesses to make maximally incriminating statements against Amanda and Raffaele. We know that 31% of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim. Essentially using the logic:

a) Being a Muslim is bad thing to call someone

b) Obama is bad

c) Hence Obama is a Muslim

Using a similar sort of technique many witnesses will tend to shave their answers in the direction of public opinion. In other words he needed to create incriminating evidence, so he creates an environment where it shows up.  Moreover the media starts paying for witnesses to give stories and suddenly witnesses start popping up after months who heard Amanda running down the stairs, saw her across the street at crucial times, saw her shopping for bleach (but not buying it) the day after the murder. Who can possibly survive this sort of orchestrated disinformation? This is very similar to how George W Bush organized a campaign of disinformation to intimidate America's intelligence agencies to misrepresenting the state of Iraq's nuclear weapons program (see Plame affair).  

Of course the problem has been this case generated more publicity than Mignini anticipated. The way he expected it to work was that he gets this swarm of evidence and Knox confesses. Or he gets the conviction against Knox and her version is discredited. He never expected a media counteroffensive.

One has to remember in reading this case in 2011 the question is not

• Is Amanda Knox someone who acted suspiciously and thus the police were justified in investigating?

That would have been the correct question on Nov 5, 2007, but rather the correct question today is:

• Has Amanda Knox been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have engaged in a premeditated conspiracy to kill Meredith Kercher involving two other people with elements of the crime understood and known?

And the answer is not remotely. To demonstrate this just consider the following questions:

• What lethal acts do we know for certain that Amanda Knox performed?
• What lethal acts do we know for certain that Raffaele Sollecito performed?
• What lethal acts do we know for certain that Rudy Guede performed?

And this is why this case has so much heat. From the start the prosecution has attempted to conflate those two statements. Some people want to pretend that we are ready to answer the beyond a reasonable doubt question "yes", because it is no longer possible to just conduct an investigation. Either Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede were the killers, and the only killers, without substantial mitigation, or this case just is never going to be solved. So if Meredith is going to have "justice", by which they mean throwing 3 more kids away; they have to pretend that the evidence says far more than it does.

To put this another way, as a result of prosecutorial abuse we now have a situation where:

• Amanda Knox had done some suspicious stuff before and after the murder.
• Had there been a decent investigation we might had found out why.
• But there wasn't a decent investigation.
• So we are left with the fact that based on naive speculation she most likely either had something to do with the murder or is covering for someone who did.
• Probably having something to do with a killing is a far short of being proven to have been a primary in a murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
• The person who made the wrong choice to arrest quickly and use public pressure to force a defendant into talking, was not Amanda Knox.  She should not be punished by being denied justice because Mignini picked an ineffectual strategy.  

To support the trial verdict is to end 2 kids lives on firmly believing that more likely than not they had something to do with it. We can speculate on whether Amanda and Raffaele are actually guilty, we should not speculate on whether they should have been found legally guilty, the answer is an absolute unequivocal no.  In the USA generally any evidence collected from abuses, like illegal searches are considered "fruits of the poisoned tree" and tossed out. In an American trial that would have happened to virtually all of the evidence against Amanda Knox. Essentially all the charges against her stem from early interviews of herself and Raffaele which were illegal. Their trial was an abomination and an insult to justice.

Having a prosecutor engaging in rampant prosecutorial abuse doesn't prove you are not guilty in a moral sense, the reason he engaged in these abuses was because he was positive she was guilty. So the question then becomes given a fallacious trial, and a screwed up investigation can we go on to argue that not only should Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito be found legally not guilty but in fact are actually innocent? The answer is yes, those very same illegal statement from her earliest detention show convincing information about her state of mind which tend to disprove murder and that discussion of state of mind will be the topic of our next post.

I'll close by commenting, I usually just whine about various news items. I don't usually even mention causes that raise money, but if you think enough is enough in this case: Amanda's Defense Fund helps both of them.

____

• CBSnews' take on the prosecutor
• Video demonstrating what Amanda saw in the bathroom
• Filing from the Committee to Protect Journalists regarding the arrest of Spezi ordered by Mignini
• Classic article: Amanda Knox Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini: His Bridge to Hell
• The neverending nightmare of Amanda Knox

Amanda Knox as the shadow

Michael Wolff wrote a good summary of the case:
The promiscuous girl next door goes on her junior abroad to Italy, where she has lots of sex, smokes tons of weed, meets other students and rootless young people from exotic places, has the time of her life, and then one day finds her British roommate raped and with her throat cut. The hapless and desperate Italian authorities shortly implicate the American girl, her Italian boyfriend, and an African bar owner in the murder. Then, possibly because this is Italy, they convict a more or less random passerby for the murder. At the same time, the authorities continue to insist that an orgy-gone-wrong is the motive for the murder and that Amanda Knox is the mastermind.

I think that pretty accurately captures why this case has become an international case, though of course grossly oversimplifies what happened. The other aspect which is different and leads to publicity of course is that the Knox family and Amanda Knox herself have encouraged publicity. Generally suspects are reluctant to talk to the media the "anything you say can be used against you". People talk after they are exonerated, after they are pardoned, after they do their time or finally after they are on death row. They don't generally talk during the early phases. And of course given that the press generally, but not always, treats people who talk to them more favorably than people who don't Amanda is getting a more sympathetic press than most other criminal defendants. And then there is some culture clash, where actions of the Italian authorities are things that an American would object to. My post regarding the "slander" charges against Amanda Knox and her parents being typical of those cultural issues.

So of course given a sexy murder, a sexy suspect and controversy there are several movies coming out about this case. The feeling of the anti-Knox people is that the movies should be about Meredith Kercher. But any objective person knows of course the movie should be about Amanda. There will never be a movie about Max Jensen or Bennie Bushnel, rather Executioner's Song is about Gary Gilmore, his inner demons and the people who loved him. And perhaps it is precisely this that the anti-Knox people find most upsetting. Executioners song humanized Gilmore after he was shot by Utah. Throughout the movie, the audience identifies with Chrisine Lahti's Brenda Nicol trying to rescue Gilmore. They agree that prison has made him worse, they hope he can be saved they hope that the intense love he feels for Rosanna Arquette's Nicole Baker and her children. There is no article on Wikipedia for Max Jensen. He is lost like sands in a hourglass. Kercher's father rails about Amanda's celebrity, thinking this is something unusual; but honestly when you were reading this paragraph did you have to look up who Jensen was? I remember Gilmore clear as day, and had to look up the names of Jensen and Bushnel (Gilmore's two murder victims) to write this.

So once it becomes obvious that of course the movie is not going to be about Meredith Kercher the question becomes why do intelligent people think it should be? The father is obvious, but why the rest? Why would an issue like this even be raised? I can think about US trials where the verdict was genuinely in doubt and controversial I don't think anyone pretended that "the victims family" not liking the controversy was all that relevant. It's not uncommon for the victim's family and friends to fixate on a suspect, that isn't given much weight for good reason. But why of the 3 would they choose to fixate on Amanda?

At first blush one could argue the most likely cause is the prosecutor. When one reads between the lines of the prosecutor, he seems fairly sure that the other two suspects are bad people but Amanda Knox was a budding young serial killer cut off by a careless act before she had time to fully flower. That the best thing they can do for society is keep her off the streets for as long as possible, and / or once the trial is over give her some treatment for whatever her real motivations are. His focus may be experience but it is yet more piece of the puzzle. What's interesting of course is that the prosecutor with this view is considering Amanda much more special (though in a negative way) than Meredith. For example Judy Bachrach asserts, "Soon the Italian officials came up with a theory that Amanda wielded such enormous power over Rudy and Raffaele that she could order them both to violate and murder her housemate."

And when one sees the discussion online, Their focus as well is on Amanda, even while arguing the focus should be on Meredith. Sometimes the two groups even identify themselves as FOA (Friends of Amanda) vs. FOM (Friends of Meredith), since the FOA name came first I think I can freely call them the anti-Knox faction. When they say the focus should be on Meredith they mean it only in a negative sense as a contrast. a sort of ego / shadow dichotomy with Amanda vs. Meredith.

• Meredith studied hard in a respectable program while Amanda flittered just taking some classes on the side.
• Meredith had a single boyfriend and never would have cheated on him with Rudy Guede while Amanda is a sexual libertine (this one despite the evidence to the contrary).
• Meredith's family has quiet dignity while Amanda's are loud and inappropriate
• Meredith was going to work hard at the bar while Amanda flirted with customers.
• Meredith is beautiful while Amanda is only cute.
• Meredith is financially responsible while Amanda is financially reckless.
• Meredith is liked by all while Amanda is avoided.
• Meredith is British (civilized, deserving), Amanda is American (uncivilized, rude, feeling entitled while being undeserving)

etc....

And I'd like to give one more. Meredith suffering is seen as unconnected with her life. In reading the anti-camp's writings you are struck immediately by the delight in Amanda's suffering while being completely disinterested in Rudy Guede's imprisonment. Which is odd for people supposedly interested in supporting Meredith , Guede was after all the drug dealing rapist whose skin was inside her and most likely stabbed her, since he didn't object to the murder charge. He doesn't matter to them, rather they show him sympathy. And it is not a situation of hating all defendants equally, they are very concerned that Amanda might get off by blaming the crime on the actual rapist. If they were primarily concerned about the rape/murder why not want revenge on the one person who unquestionably a primary? I think it is fair to say something else is going on here then just a desire for justice. The prosecutors view that Amanda is in some sense more responsible for the deaths than the men who carried it out, is more evil than the actual rapists and murders predominates.

The theory speaks to this sort of confusion.  Rather than the humorous, playful, mischievous and overly trusting Amanda they see a stone cold psychopath who is also overcome by emotion and guilt for a murder she committed because of narcissistic jealous outburst enhanced by drugs, except on the night of the murder which she callously planned.

And I think I know why. I used the Jungian shadow term deliberately. From listening and hearing what we are dealing with is projection. Meredith and Amanda are changed from people into archtypes and symbols. The murder becomes a moment where the shadow is triumphant over the ego, which is soon replaced with the shadow being imprisoned in the unconscious mind unable to effect reality (i.e. prison) its desired state. People have been reading into Amanda their own anxieties about their own psychological struggles and reading into Meredith an ideal they strive for. I challenge you to read the anti-Knox blogsphere (see links in previous article) and not immediately notice the tremendous hatred of Amanda Knox uniquely among the defendants and how this seems out of sorts with what we are dealing with at worst. A 20 year old who got into a situation over her head and acted out under the influence of drugs and doesn't know how to dig herself out of the hole. The absolute worst case demands our sympathy. Who has not been in a similar situation, though generally one with lower stakes?

Moreover this shadow dichotomy allows for people to hold simultaneously incompatible negative opinions of Amanda. For example, frequently she is accused of being tremendously jealous of Kercher and insulted by her negative comments. That would make her catathymic killer, someone with a lifetime of pent up anger that explodes in a homicide. Catathymics rarely reoffended, the actual violent murder releases the anger, scares the perpetrator and they achieve many of the effects of therapy. For her to be a budding young serial killer she would have had to be disinterested in Meredith and looked down on her contemptuously. But jealousy is a negative emotion, and being a threat to society is negative hence both must be true. One can believe that Amanda felt like a loser intimidated and humiliated by Meredith but then her moral conflicts about the murder are real and she experiences genuine remorse. One can believe that Amanda is remorseless or even savors the memory of the killing, but then she was not jealous of Meredith. (See link for a discussion of types of killers in this case). The fact that people insist on believing both shows that Amanda and Meredith are being related to as archetypes and not people by the FOM crowd.

About 10 years ago there was an Italian, Derek Rocco Barnabei. He was alleged to have raped and killed his girlfriend . Good looking kid with a nice mother. The Italians including the Pope thought he was innocent and protested. Virginia executed him. He got a first class trial but there was some misconduct by the prosecutor as this case became an international incident. Italy flew his body back and erected a memorial (link).

If Amanda does a quarter century worth of time based on no direct evidence but rather evidence that she participated in concealing evidence she is going to remain a figure of sympathy. The anti-Knox people seem to be so blinded by their psychological angst that they are not thinking through what is becoming the likely future. Right now the person the evidence points most strongly to, and who is most the career criminal, Rudy Guede, is going to be released first two decades before Amanda Knox, with the Italians constantly trying to pile on more more minor crimes to increase her time in prison. The punishment she receives in Italy is not going to seen as a just punishment for a serious crime but rather just another example of American killed (effectively) by foreigners, little different than say Jack Hensley who was tried and convicted in a foreign court using different legal procedures resulting in a verdict which is absolutely rejected by Americans. If the goal is to hurt Amanda moral legitimacy may not be important. If the goal is to have the punishment be seen as just, for her not to be viewed as a victim then the substantial and serious questions about this trial need to be rectified. Amanda Knox's father is absolutely correct that the technique used to justify the questionable legal strategy of aiming for murder when the evidence, at best proves much less has been character assassination. Rather than try her on the evidence for the lesser charge, the Italian prosecutors has insisted on whipping up hate against her. Many people see what happened in this case, want trails to determine the truth and rightfully object to what happened.

_____

See also

• Definition of the different types of sexual murders. 

Amanda Knox

So I've been reading with some horror about the Amanda Knox case. This isn't a church discipline case, its a real court case. Up until the judges report was available in English there wasn't much that could be said. The report (link) falls far far short of establishing anything remotely like a murder conviction. It essentially provides some evidence (and IMHO not enough to convict) for either a conspiracy after the fact or obstruction of justice. In particular it never presents clear specific acts that Amanda Knox engaged in to kill Meredith Kercher. The standard of evidence seems to be whether the police can find evidence to definitely contradict their theories, rather than to find a theory which is provable beyond a reasonable doubt. The report makes detailed allegations regarding conspiracy after the fact and almost none about the murder itself. Further if you believe the prosecutions case you see people aggressively acting to clean up a murder scene but not having prepared for the murder in any way, meaning that malice aforethought seems to be missing. I have trouble seeing how you convict for murder.

The key evidence is are inconsistencies in testimony that the defendant has off and on alleged resulted from beating a suspect up. I'm from the North East, its not unknown for a cop to "tune up" a suspect, though it is rare. Its almost never used with a first time offender who is so obviously terrified, or high, she's acting erratically already. And what Knox describes, strikes to the back of the head, are very dangerous and used primarily to avoid bruising. I don't have good statistics but using these sorts of methods would seem to imply a nonchalance about whether the suspect suffers brain damage. These sorts of hits cause the brain stem to separate from the brain with the degree of force and exact type of hit determining the degree of separation. They are called "rabbit punches" because this type of blow was traditionally how hunters killed rabbits. If true, her life was quite literally in danger and confusion from head trauma isn't totally unreasonable.

In reading her statements even if we assume she was not being hit or sleep deprived, she clearly was being denied council and repeatedly expressed confusion. Drugs, which the prosecution obviously suspects could also make her unfit to give testimony. Her early testimony is worthless and should have been thrown out, and some has been. And that's not even counting the fact that she was obviously a suspect yet still being interrogated like a witness a clear violation of Italian law. And even if it weren't the lies provide more evidence for the obstruction charge they prove nothing about the murder. What we are left with after that is some circumstantial evidence that points to her probably being involved in some way, particularly after the fact. Which is far short of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that she was a primary.

What is absolutely beyond the pale though is the slander charge. Essentially the court ruled that because the police all agree they didn't hit there therefore they want her to do an extra 6 years. Italy doesn't have a notion of perjury for a defendant and this seems like an attempt to get around that. What's even worse is going after her parents with the slander charge, which is both blatant censorship and witness intimidation. This is where IMHO this case went from a young woman overcharged and over-convicted to pure injustice.

This injustice is especially bad because one of the primary points of dispute was the prosecution making up all sorts of elaborate stories and distributed these stories to the media to taint the jury with claims that it wouldn't matter in Italy. For all my complaints about the USA its nonsense like that gives me pride to be an American. This case is getting lots of attention though the Italians seem intent on stealing this woman's (and really at the time of the murder, girl's) life away from her.

I'd like to send her a message that she is not forgotten, so I gave a donation to her defense fund.

______

See also:

Pro Knox/Sollecito:

• Friends of Amanda
• Perugia Shock, this blog has been active for 3 years you can see the author go from being convinced Knox and Sollecito are guilty to innocent piece of evidence by piece.
• Candice Dempsey, author of the best book on the topic.
• Injustice in Perugia, Bruce Fisher's site, good quality information and analysis.  Has a forum with good discussion only open to innocentisti, and a blog open to all.  
• Science Spheres, a critical look at the evidence, Author of The Framing of Amanda Knox,
• The Ridiculous Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito
• View from Wilmington
• Graham Lawyer Blog, Steve Graham
• Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito are innocent
• Alternate theories, explores the single sex offended theory in depth
• Amanda Knox Appeal form

Anti Knox/Sollecito

• True Justice for Meredith Kercher, good quality legal analysis; however openly biased and very mean spirited.
• Perugia Murder File, excellent source of raw information, practices active censorship of pro-Amanda information, mean spirited
• Miss Represented, psychological speculation done at the time of the trial
• Statement analysis, analysis of Amanda Knox's statements for deception.

Neutral:

• James Randi Forum
• In Session Trials

Related

• Imam rapito affair, a case of 22 Americans being tried and convicted in absentia at the same time. It provides a political context for those alleging anti-Americanism in the judiciary. There are no allegations by either side that Knox had any involvement with Abu Omar.
• Statement by Senator Cantwell on the verdict. This is extraordinarily rare and serious. The Italians and Kercher supporters are blowing this off as irrelevant, but an attack on the verdict in a purely criminal case by a sitting US Senator is almost unheard of and implies very series misgivings in Cantwell's mind.
• Blog wars article about the domestic factions pro and con.http://amandaknoxappealforum.blogspot.com/

Trevor Project

So after Seth Walsh we just crossed over to 5 confirmed suicides in the USA this year as a result of homophobic bulling. 5 more people dead because "we don't hate the sinner just the sin" is nothing but a lie. We have no idea what the numbers are but even Christian conservatives put it at 7.5% of kids were bullied for sexual orientation. Yet they still oppose explicit mentions (see truetolerence.org) because they see homophobia as intrinsic to the faith. There is quite a few poor argument and justification for the gays are icky position, just the like girls are icky position that this blog often addresses. But I don't know any justification for the pro-harassment position. it is frankly amazing to me how successful the right has been in promoting bullying. You would think it would be hard to get millions to be in favor of teen suicide.

Anyway, if you are a gay kid going through this and stumble on this website. There is a group called the Trevor Project that is designed to help. 866-4-U-TREVOR (866-488-7386). If you are an adult

Politics and inerrancy

Peter Francia made an interesting comment that opinions about the bible were highly determinant of voting. He classed voters into the groups:

• Fundamentalists -- who believed in biblical inerrancy
• Moderates -- who believed the bible was the word of God but could not be understood literally
• Minimalists -- who believe the bible was of human origin

	Blue State	Red State
Fundamentalist	28%	50%
Moderates	53%	38%
Minimalists	18%	12%

What is fascinating is the correlation with politics an inerrancy didn't just hold up on issue like abortion. But for example issues like tax cuts vs. balancing the budget (Fundamentalists favored an unbalanced budget), environment vs. military (minimalists favored large military cuts and increases on environment spending), etc...

Books like Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics that go broader. For example the correlations between spanking and support for Republican candidates:

Odes and the Tea Party

So I'm a bit torn and I feel like ranting, one of the great joys of running a blog is getting to do classic blogging just sharing your thoughts rather than my usual advocacy.

On one hand I'm a liberal who thinks Barack Obama and Harry Reed are doing a very good job and I adore Nancy Pelosi. On the other hand this feeling of warmth is coming from the diminished expectations of a lifetime of disappointment. For example, half the time I can think of Health Care Reform as a historic accomplishment, something that Democrats have been aiming to accomplish since Truman. For the first time ever it is going to be possible for the government to start having national health policy and we may finally be able to make American health care rational.

The other half I think of it this way:
That really this bill was nothing like Truman's. Essentially it was enacting the counter proposal first suggested by Nixon and drafted by Dole.
Obama cut secret deals to sell out America with the Drug companies.
When the insurance industry objected to the bill the major provision in the public interest, the public option was removed and instead strong provisions making it a finable criminal act to not buy the health insurance industries products which amounts to little more than the same kind of corporate fascism that we've had for a generation.
Worse yet to get it passed Obama had to pay huge bribes. It would have been a lot cheaper to just give Nelson and Landrieu a suitcase full of cash then the obscene way they were bribed.
So in the end we got mild insurance reform masquerading as health reform, a defeat made to look like a victory, and a defeat that institutionalized corruption even further.

My turning point when I decided our government was nothing more than a facade for corporate corruption was the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (wikipedia page). Up until then I had believed that we basically had a good but flawed government. Since then I've lived in a world of diminished expectations looking for candidates that are the least destructive. Appalled at our leadership and appalled at Americans for voting for this leadership. It seems like TARP had that effect on millions of other people and I'm thrilled that lots of people now view our government as a kleptocracy since maybe that understanding will create the pressure needed for real reform. With huge leads in the House, 59 Democratic Senators and the Presidency and a population more progressive than any since the 1930s was this year's Financial Reform Bill really the best we could do? TARP, which I was neutral too, demanded real reform in exchange for these huge loans, but I've watched with complete disgust as our Senators and Congress were bribed and bought off by banking interests to act against the common good. Even TARP was designed in such a way to make sure that the public achieved almost no benefit from taking on hugely risky assets and that the profits would flow back to Wall Street. Pure institutional corruption involving tens of billions of dollars. Timothy Geithner's theft from the treasury may very well be the largest financial crime of my lifetime.

One of the differences I noticed between living in California and New Jersey/Pennsylvania was the corruption of local politicians. In New Jersey we have political machines and corrupt non idealogical politicians. Things can get done as long as the right hands are greased. There is a casual indifference to corruption. For example the Chief of Police in Elizabethtown owns the towing company with the exclusive contract to tow off the Highway. And everyone thinks this is funny, a gallows humor born of the desperation of people having given up on having the sort of government we were raised to think we had. When some disadvantaged kid rips off a store he does years in jail. When the Chief of Police uses his office to transfer hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars from the public to his own accounts its treated as a joke. That Elizabethtown corruption pales in comparison to the corruption at the national level but its a perfect example of the problems in the North East and why we can't have decent government here.

Conversely in California we had no corruption that I knew of in local government. California public officials were mainly idealogical: environmentalists, right wingers, liberal activists.... These officials were drawn to government over a few limited issues they were passionate about; and once there had to active in many issues so they ended up joining coalitions and reinforcing one another. These California officials were generally independently wealthy and thus hard (or at least expensive) to bribe, unlike the blue collar or professional class politicians of New Jersey who are on average middle class. Senator Heinz used to make a joke that he was "Too rich to be bribed and too powerful to be threatened", and there is a lot of truth to that. One of the reasons I like idealogical politicians is that at least they they act on the public interest as they see it. So given the intense desire to corrupt our system I think we need more ideology not less.

Its one of the reasons I have mixed feelings about citizens united. It might just create a group of politicians that are adequately funded and don't need to be constantly hawking for money. On say 3% of the issues they are bought and paid for but on the 97% they can vote their conscience. That's a lot like how the system worked in the 70s and 80s. So there is some hope, but I'm appalled that the best I can hope for, for my country is that the attempt of the Supreme Court to facilitate easier bribery backfires into accidentally producing a more honest government. But alternately, wealth doesn't seem to work on the Presidentially level, Kerry was still a weasel even though Teresa Heinz (who had Senator Heinz's fortune) is worth between $750m and $1.2b.

All this brings me to the Tea Party. Where we suddenly have a group of ideologues taking a major political party. People who are definitely planning to shake things up in Washington. Of course we've all heard this before, and I may be setting myself up for disappointment. But still its hard to live in constant disgust with your government. Pat Buchanan sees the Tea Party as playing the role of commissars ensuring that the Republicans officeholders don't sell out. I can easily see that. Lately I heard the Tea Party's anthem and I was moved. While I doubt I agree with Krista Branch, the singer, on the solutions I completely agree with her on the problems, we both agree that a government completely unresponsive to real American concerns and focused on K-street is the real threat to America:



And this little patriotic ditty is moving. She may be hokey but I'm desperate for any kind of patriotic message that I can actually believe in at all, what she in the previous video and Glen Beck mean by "restoring honor". Under Clinton corruption was terrible, but George Bush pushed it to a level not seen in America since Andrew Jackson drove John Quincy Adams from power. She is absolutely right that America has forgotten who we are, we are not a people damned to forever live under a government so incompetent and dishonest that the rest of the world can look across the ocean in pity for how poorly governed we are.

So could I be one of those 8% of the Tea Party which are Democrats? First off I just don't agree with them on the issues. Economically I am a Keynesian. I agree, with Paul Krugman's critique that the problem with Obama's policies has been that the stimulus was too small. Where I disagree with Krugman is believing this is accidental, high unemployment has been very useful in driving down wages and maintaining profits allowing corporations to de-leverage without harming the income of the investing class. I think Summers and Geithner were quite willing to throw ten million people out of work to make sure the right 100,000 didn't see their income drop off. Krugman's perspective is the exact opposite of what the Tea Party has argued. Also I don't think they way the Tea Party have been debating is helpful. I guess I'm also an intellectual and incoherent rage is scary. This is the first mass armed citizens political group active in the USA since the Klan.

But as I thought about it more, one can make a pretty good analogy between the reconstruction scalawags and our current elected officials, the reconstruction carpetbaggers and k-street. Carpetbaggers were Northern business interests that had come down to the South after the civil war bribed public officials and seized control of the means of production. The Redeemers considered these people the way occupied people consider the investing class of a foreign invader and understood with absolutely clarity that their continued involvement eliminated the ability to self govern. Our current crop of corporate oligarchs is if anything worse than the crop of business interests that exploited the south's defeat. A Scalawag, literally a worthless deformed animal, was a term for the southerners that were helping the north, generally government officials, the recipients of the bribes. Its a great word to apply to the modern government officials that have let money so corrupt their purposes that they no longer do anything like what they were sent to Washington for. The Redeemers which arose out of the first Klan had a simple program for rebuilding self rule drive the Northern army out of the south; and then soon thereafter put in place economic reforms ending carpetbagging. This gave the South, or at least the white south, back a democracy a government which represent the people rather than national business interests. The analogy is very very apt; the Tea Party's primary enemy is the sort of crony capitalism that both our parties support. Being a Northerner myself the Klan has nothing but negative emotional connotations for me, but when I abstract away my own upbringing and try and relate to this like a southerner; yeah I get it, and I agree.

But then on a third pass, my frustration with the Republican party today, which is southern dominated, is very similar to the New England Republicans abandoning the carpetbaggers (Northern Republicans that had moved south) right after the civil war for their political corruption. In the other words the North East became so offended by Southern Republican corruption that they (passively) supported the Redeemers including their militant arm. Hmmm..... this analogy gets better and better. For corporate lobbyists there are billions if not trillions of dollars at stake, violence might be the best way or even the only way to break K-street's hold on our elected government. In the 2008 crisis I must admit to rooting for the bear and not the government.

So is this is a role I'm comfortable in, the North Eastern Republicans who passively sided with the Redeemers? We know that this policy was a moral disaster, once the Redeemers drove out the North they, like any revolutionary party facing a similar problems, immediately turned on the indigenous population likely to side with the North. That brought on Jim Crow and generations of racial tension that still hasn't healed. But..... we don't get to run history backwards. Had the North Eastern Republicans not passively supported the Southern Democrats and allowed corruption to become intrinsic to US government would we have fallen into a cycle of destructive corruption, with a 1870-1950 century history similar to Argentina or China rather than the explosive growth we did experience? And moreover I'm not sure in our modern analogy there is an indigenous population the Tea Party redeemers will need to turn on, does the metaphor break down here and offer the good without the bad? And then I flash to Hispanics and the anti-immigration movement that is part of the Tea Party and, well, I can see there might be a population that could play the role of the blacks.

In 2008 when Sarah Palin was nominated I was excited. I knew immediately that Sarah Palin has the potential to be America's Eva Peron. The platform of the vice presidency could have been a powerful voice for good. When she was unable, as my cousin put it, "to channel her inner Pat Buchanan" and instead essentially parroted George Bush positions on everything, I decided to vote for Obama. Obama didn't inspire me but at least had sensible policy prescriptions. And he has not disappointed in either regard, his policy prescriptions have been excellent though far too weak and he remains uninspiring, tinkering around the edges to create a better run and kindler gentler corporate oligarchy. To this day Palin has been an odd paradox, personally taking classical Neo-Conservative positions very much George Bush; while strengthening and leading Paleo-Conservatives (including the virtual rebirth of the John Birch society) and hardcore Libertarians. I think with Palin's involvement in the Tea Party and the new platform coming out Palin will get another bite at the apple to decide whether she wants to offer a different vision or just be a stupid hot looking version of Mitt Romney. In Eva's case her goal was to get Argentine business back into the hands of Argentina and away from the British, another analogy to our finance class; and one hopefully tis analogy is a little less inflammatory than the Redeemers driving the North out.

But in less Fascistic direction the Tea Party came out of the Ron Paul Libertarian movement's Tea Parties and both Glenn Beck and Dick Armey are clearly inside this new vision. A simplified tax code, non interference in markets a tiny government, the end of the military industrial complex provides a decent vision. That could starve state capitalism and possibly allow us to be free again. The Tea Party still runs quite explicitly on the sorts of massive spending cuts needed to shrink the government. The Tea Party could just be the Libertarian Party finally getting big enough to have a real electoral impact. Redeemer philosophy and Libertarian philosophy mesh quite well, the old Libertarian party was northern this southern flavor could be quite exciting. The question would be whether the Libertarians could handle the temptations towards corruption, the history of American Railroading which happened when Libertarian philosophy had broad support in both parties seems to indicate they probably couldn't. Worse when you poll the people who attended Tea Party protests last year, even though they were mouthing Libertarian slogans their actual concerns seemed to be rooted in fears that their own generous benefits will be cut. So, some of the GOP's most reliable voters are simultaneously demanding budget restraint and protesting anything that might reduce their own benefits. This is a tricky circle to square, and so I have much less hope that Libertarianism would be followed in practice but less hope is not no hope. Our modern carpetbaggers don't have an enemy army that first needs to be driven out, so perhaps this can all be done peacefully.

I'll close with a rapper named Jasirix who makes the same point regarding the Tea Party's imagery and how to think about them. His perspective, is in this case directly related to race:

Sophia Bibliography

Ran into a great bibliography of Sophia at the Lutheran Seminary (link to original). I have to frequently discuss the issue of Christianity emerging from Hellenistic Judaism i.e. a progression of:

1. Hellenized Judaism
2. Hellenistic Judaism
3. Gnosticising Jews
4. Christian Gnosticism
5. Orthodox Christianity

Sophia as the origin of Jesus comes up quite frequently and a handy list of references....

Aldredge-Clanton, Jann. In Search of the Christ-Sophia : An Inclusive Christology for Liberating Christians. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1995.

Aubin, Melissa M. "'She Is the Beginning of All the Ways of Perversity:' Femininity and Metaphor in 4q184." Women in Judaism 2 (2001).

Barker, Margaret. "Wisdom: The Queen of Heaven." Scottish Journal of Theology 55 (2002): 141-59.

Brock, Ann Graham. "The Identity of the Blessed Mary, Representative of Wisdom in Pistis Sophia." In Walk in the Ways of Wisdom, 122-35. Harrisburg ; London ; New York: Trinity Pr Intl, 2003.

———. "Setting the Record Straight--the Politics of Identification: Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother in Pistis Sophia." In Which Mary?, 43-52. Atlanta: Soc of Biblical Literature, 2002.

Camp, Claudia V. Wisdom and the Feminine in the Book of Proverbs. Bible and Literature Series, 11. Decatur: The Almond Press, 1985. BS1465.2 .C26

———. “Woman Wisdom As Root Metaphor: A Theological Consideration.” The Listening Heart: Essays in Wisdom and the Psalms in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, ed J. Hoglund K.Huwiler E.J. Glass. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987.

Chryssavgis, John. "Sophia, the Wisdom of God: Sophiology, Theology, and Ecology." Diakonia 34 (2001): 5-19.

Cole, Susan, Marian Ronan, and Hal Taussig. Wisdom's Feast : Sophia in Study and Celebration. 1st ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.

Conway, David. The Rediscovery of Wisdom : From Here to Antiquity in Quest of Sophia. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

DaCosta, Jacqueline. "Can Apophatic Theology Be Applied to Goddessing as Well as to God?" Feminist Theology 11 (2002): 82-98.

Edwards, Mark J. "Pauline Platonism: The Myth of Valentinus." In Studia Patristica Xxxv, Ascetica, Gnostica, Liturgica, Orientalia, 205-21. Louvain: Peeters, 2001.

FitzGerald, Constance. "Transformation in Wisdom: The Subversive Character and Educative Power of Sophia in Contemplation." In Carmel and Contemplation, 281-358. Washington: ICS, 2000.

Good, Deirdre Joy. Reconstructing the Tradition of Sophia in Gnostic Literature. Monograph Series (Society of Biblical Literature) ; No. 32. Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1987.

———. "Sophia as Mother and Consort: Eugnostos the Blessed (Nhc Iii, 3 and V, 1) and the Sophia of Jesus Christ (Nhc Iii, 4 and Bg 8502, 3)." University Microfilms International, 1983.

Gilbert, Maurice. “Le Discours De La Sagesse De L'Ancien Testament.” La Sagesse De L”Ancien Testament, ed Maurice Gilbert. BETL, 51. Leuven: Leuven Universtiy, 1990. John Ireland BS1455.S12 1990

Jacobson, Diane. “Strengths and Weaknesses of Wisdom/Sophia Talk.” in A Reforming Church...Gift and Task Charles P. Lutz, 107-25. Minneapolis: Kirk House, 1995.

Johnson, Elizabeth A. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. N.Y.: Crossroad, 1993.

———. "Holy Wisdom: Image of God's Saving Presence." Review of Wisdom ATLA0001280248. Living Pulpit 9 (2000): 6-7.

Keleher, Serge. "Response to Sophia Senyk, 'the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Today: Universal Values Versus Nationalist Doctrines'." Review of Senyk, Sophia Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church today ATLA0001334828. Religion, State & Society 31 (2003): 289-306.

Kuhn, Heinz Wolfgang. "The Wisdom Passage in 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 between Qumran and Proto-Gnosticism." In Sapiential, Liturgical and Poetical Texts from Qumran, 240-53. Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2000.

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