Monday, October 31, 2022

More Systems Crashes: Media Here Doing The Right Things

Posted by Peter Quennell

Over 150 died in this tiny space

1. Global Media Context

Many countries have media awards, the Pulitzers being the main ones in the US.

But there dont seem to be any that specifically reward reporting on systems and how they performed. 

Typically when things go wrong the mainstream media will tend to find someone (like Guede and Dr Mignini) on whom to heap all blame.

They ignore root causes, barely mention systems, get things wrong, fail to correct… and nothing improves. In the Perugia case there was a massive systems failure - by foreign media itself.

2. India & Korea Crashes

The whole world saw the aftermaths of two systems crashes last weekend. A combined total of over 300 died.

Perhaps under the influence of YouTube, which is becoming Systems Central these days, in the footbridge collapse in India and the crowd crush in Seoul, Korea, the systems are getting a public look.

It is already reported that the footbridge in India, after six months of closure for an overhaul, had just been reopened under pressure from MANAGERS for Diwali Day before ENGINEERS and INSPECTORS had signed off.

And in Seoul, exactly where the police were deployed that night, and what kind of police, doing what, is under the media microscope.

Only 130 or so cops, mainly instructed to look for drugs, were in the area where over 100,000 were expected to come. In sharp contrast, over 7,000 cops were deployed in another area because of a hint of violence, where the crowd was to be much less.

Here is the Associated Press report. Ignore the headline and the occasional simplistic “let’s blame the police”. The reporting in boldface on which systems broke or could work is pretty good. 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Seoul police assigned 137 officers to manage a crowd of Halloween revelers anticipated to number more than 100,000 over the weekend — a decision that has come under intense criticism following the deaths of more than 150 people when the group surged.

By comparison, nearly 7,000 police officers were sent to another part of the South Korean capital on Saturday to monitor dueling protests that drew tens of thousands but still fewer people than flocked to the popular nightlife district of Itaewon the same night.

Even the task force created to investigate why the crowd surged, with 475 members, is more three times larger than the detail assigned to crowd control…

The national government has insisted there was no way to predict the crowd would get out of control.

Experts disagree. Deploying so few police officers, they said, showed officials were poorly prepared despite knowing ahead of time that there would be a huge gathering following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in recent months.

On top of assigning more personnel, police and officials in the Yongsan district, which governs Itaewon, should have banned cars from some streets and taken other measures to ease the crowding in narrow lanes like the one where the deaths occurred, experts said.

Instead, the 137 officers in Itaewon were assigned to monitor crime, with a particular focus on narcotics use, meaning that for all practical purposes “no one was looking after pedestrian safety,” said Kong Ha-song, a disaster prevention professor at South Korea’s Woosuk University…

Emergency workers were so overwhelmed by the number of people lying motionless on the ground that they asked pedestrians to help them with CPR. But Choi Sukjae, an emergency medicine specialist and chief spokesperson of the Korean Emergency Medical Association, said CPR, which ideally should be administered within a handful of minutes, wouldn’t have made much of a difference in many cases since the paramedics were delayed getting to the scene because the area was so packed.

Kong, the disaster prevention professor, said more police and government workers should have been called on to monitor potential bottleneck points. He suggested that the crush may have been prevented if authorities had enforced one-way walking lanes, blocked entry to some narrow pathways, and temporarily closed Itaewon’s subway station to prevent an excessive number of people moving in the same direction.

Officials could have also temporarily closed Itaewon’s main road to cars, as they did during the annual Itaewon Global Village Festival earlier in October, thereby giving people more room to spread out, Kong said.

Lee, the urban planning professor, criticized Interior and Safety Minister Lee Sang-min, who claimed, without elaborating, that having more police and fire department personnel on the ground wouldn’t have prevented the tragedy.

When asked about the number of officers assigned, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said 137 was still more than it sent in 2020 and 2021, excluding units specifically assigned to virus control measures. Police and government officials have acknowledged this year’s crowd was bigger — but it was not clear by how much.

Kong added that the lack of a central organizer on Saturday — when young people flocked to bars and night clubs to celebrate Halloween but there was not one specific event promoted — may have contributed to the tragedy.

“Our country usually does a good job in following the manual and maintaining crowd control at events where there’s a specific organizer,” he said. “But officials are often unsure what to do or even don’t care about events that aren’t created by a specific organizer … although it’s those events that usually require a closer watch.”

Hong Ki-hyeon, a senior official with the national police agency, acknowledged that problem during a news conference Monday, saying police do not have an established way to deal with such gatherings.

“In events like festivals that have a specific organizer, discussions are made between related municipalities, police, fire departments and medical experts who prepare and cooperate under different roles,” Hong said. “That is what we lacked regarding this accident”...

In the two previous years, the district’s preparations for the Halloween festivities were focused on preventing the spread of COVID-19 among partygoers...

South Korea has a long history of deadly crowd crushes and stampedes, although none as deadly as Saturday’s…

Disaster managers around the world can benefit from this. And many who might otherwise have lost their lives.

Thursday, October 27, 2022

What The New UK PM Might Want To Do About This Elephant In The Room #2

Posted by Peter Quennell

Context

The other timely FT report, on what is really the parent elephant.

The #1 answer to “why slow growth” which predated and helped cause BREXIT. Messing no end with UK and US systems including justice systems - see the UK parliament moves happening fast now.

Cause of the UK and US becoming the nations with the world’s greatest wealth disparities. Cause of the value of the UK pound falling fast ever since 2016.

Using the toothless Word Economic Forum (WEF) as a bright shiny object to scare and distract the UK masses.

Channeled in the UK in part through London’s Tufton Street think tanks, puppet masters of Liz Truss and other naive or knowing “supply side” warriors.

Believed to include official and oligarch Russian and Chinese and mafia money in there. Not nice people.

Thursday, October 20, 2022

What The New UK PM Might Want To Do About This Elephant In The Room #1

Posted by Peter Quennell

See 10,000-plus comments here

Context

Remarkably frank and useful Financial Times report.

Very timely too! Perhaps sensing that PM candidates could be busy listing their promises as soon as today.

Consider this stark warning above all in the report.

In most economies, something like 75% of all the economic value is created by only around 25% of the capacity. Typically the majority of that 25% will consist of innovating and expansive smaller enterprises.

All economies really, really need those guys. Absent them, corrupting large enterprises with stale low-value technologies will dominate, and growth will drop by at least half. 

This Financial Times report shows how, courtesy of all the new barriers, their vast destruction is really gathering steam. Broken systems (including our main interest: legal systems) are the direct cause, and a decade of zero growth is in the cards.

Supply-side or trickle-down “economics” which Liz Truss initially tried (with no mandate) to impose is exactly the worst policy to turn this vast systems problem of the UK’s small enterprises around.

It puts vast sums in precisely the wrong hands: those of wealthy people who, in a world economy where TRILLIONS of dollars are already available for any good new systems that appear, already have all the capital they can possibly put to good use.

Innovation - risk-taking - is not any longer their thing. So the tax-cuts all end up in a bank offshore. Or in another economy already at its peak.

And if they are heading mature enterprises, they have very possibly been promoting cost CUTTING and job LAYOFFS for years (that is how vulture capitalist Rishi Sunak made his mint: in the name of “efficiency” he destroyed jobs, innovation, and long-term growth.)

In fact, this is not an incentives problem at all. Whichever PM candidate has a sense of the vital need for enhancing systems on a grand scale (systems klutz Boris Johnson would be at the bottom of any such list) could make some long-overdue right moves.

Perhaps networked with the systems-smart Irish and the Swiss? Their GDPs per capita are each now TWICE that of the UK.

Sunday, October 09, 2022

Correctly Framing Queen Elizabeth’s Excellent If Partial Development Model #2

Posted by Peter Quennell

Queen’s Three Not-So-Secret Weapons

Did the Queen save her best act for last?

Some four billion are said to have watched her final events, at least in part. It seems a fair bet that the personal situations of a big majority of them had been enhanced by her activist presence over the years.

The Queen used in particular three development skills, weapons or techniques, all hiding in plain sight.

1. On a daily basis the Queen drew popular attention to good systems - she was surely nose-to-nose with more systems than anyone who has ever lived, and she made a beeline for all of the best, and put the spotlight on them and their originators and development teams.

Democratic and/or administrative & legal and/or scientific systems of UK origin are in play in every country in the world, and via the dazzling funeral planning she had guided in part she showed just how good the Brits still can be.

2. The Queen was remorselessly nice. She exuded kindness. At the Westminster Abbey service, the various bishops gave christian values a strong pat on the back, as if that was it, as if it all began there.

But kindness as a vital ingredient of homo sapiens’ sustained development success, over a dozen other flavors of humans, has just now been proven to go back hundreds of thousands of years.

1. There are more human species than we ever imagined

Species such as Homo Longi have only been identified as recently as 2018. There are now 21 known species of human.

In the last few years we have realised that our Homo sapiens ancestors may have met as many as eight of these different types of human, from robust and stocky species including Neanderthals and their close relatives Denisovans, to the short (less than 5ft tall) and small-brained humans such as Homo naledi.

But Homo sapiens weren’t the inevitable evolutionary destination. Nor do they fit into any simple linear progression or ladder of progress. Homo naledi‘s brain may have been smaller than that of a chimpanzee but there is evidence they were culturally complex and mourned their dead.

Neanderthals created symbolic art but they weren’t the same as us. Neanderthals had many different biological adaptations, which may have included hibernation.

***

5. Kindness is an evolutionary advantage

Research has uncovered new reasons to feel hopeful about future human societies. Scientists used to believe the violent parts of human nature gave us a leg up the evolution ladder.

But evidence has emerged of the caring side of human nature and its contribution to our success. Ancient skeletons show remarkable signs of survival from illness and injuries, which would have been difficult if not impossible without help.

The trail of human compassion extends back one and a half million years ago. Scientist have traced medical knowledge to at least the time of the Neanderthals.

Altruism has many important survival benefits. It enabled older community members to pass on important knowledge. And medical care kept skilled hunters alive.

3. Process skills. It surely mattered that Elizabeth was a woman. In a key respect, they have the edge. Women are now well proven to be more skilled and successful than men in process management, in being inclusive, building bridges, getting results from teams. Bottom-up. Leading from behind.

All in all, a dazzling show, though not yet widely understood. Did her elected governments in the UK learn anything? Seemingly, no. Not yet.

Sunday, October 02, 2022

Correctly Framing Queen Elizabeth’s Excellent If Partial Development Model #1

Posted by Peter Quennell

Context

The Queen experienced the key deflection point shown here in 1944-45.

From then-on, with the companionship of King George VI through 1952, and PM Churchill in 1945 and again in 1952, and the Duke of Edinburgh for the next 75 years, she was energized to play a major role in making a better world.   

The Queen was nothing if not enigmatic. She never gave an in-depth interview about her strategic intent, and she never wrote a book. The myriad well-meaning takes on her impact that we saw aired in the past several weeks are all over the map.

These several posts are an attempt to connect up the dots, given what we know about development now.

Of relevance to Meredith’s case? Yes, sure. Long ago, Meredith’s father John concurred with us that it was systems in Italy and to some extent UK that had let Meredith down, and that her legacy should be to push to correct some of those.

On a larger scale, the Queen was trying to do the same.

 

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Those Myriad Spectacular Systems: Some Of The Rehearsals

Posted by Peter Quennell

Context

In rehearsal here (in the dark!) is a fraction of the myriad systems just activated over some 12 days.

The ceremonial military. Part of one of the most complex peacetime mobilizations of systems in history. All at rather short notice. Brushed up and extensively added-to since the transfer-of-power playbook was dusted off at Queen Elizabeth’s prompting back in 2008.

Simply listing all of them in main areas (like transport and communications) and their various subgroups could fill a book or two. And who was in charge? They were largely invisible, though we did see some of Queen Elizabeth’s formidable team of ladies-in-waiting in the cathedral.

In its own way, quite an encouraging shocker, as so many have been saying.

This suggests much promising potential for the UK in its overdue next wave of development. Maybe also far beyond: the Commonwealth countries already share many such systems like those of the Common Law.  More pointers to come.

 

Monday, September 12, 2022

Impressive Monarch’s Legal Accession System In UK Gives Charles III The Nod

Posted by Peter Quennell

Some Takes

At first glance, this ceremony Saturday morning might not seem like much.

And most UK and US media aired short versions or brief excerpts, often with commentators talking over the goings-on.

But watched carefully, it is rather impressive stuff.

1. This was the first accession ceremony since 1952 and the first ever to be shown on TV.

2. The only person here in 2022 who might have been present in 1952 was Charles, who was then four; his free-spirited “mum” was then 26.

3. Charles had been up in Scotland the day before and had had little time to rehearse where to walk or to write a compelling speech. 

4. The complex 70-minute business meeting of sorts, some of it ancient and some of it a bit arcane, was impeccably planned.

5. Under a confident new Cabinet appointee, Penny Mordaunt, the process moved flawlessly, without a single hitch. Some key decisions were ratified.

6. Normally the organizing of that audience is like herding cats; here even Boris formed part of a quiet, observant common front.

7. The gilded surroundings looked great. The first time those rooms at St James Palace (200 yards from the front of Buckingham Palace, off to the left) have been shown on TV.

Monday, August 29, 2022

Alert! Serial Misrepresenter Of MK Case Now Misrepresenting Under New Name

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. Overview

Two heavily promoted and wildly inaccurate new reports have appeared.

In both, a whiny I’m-the-real-victim Sollecito reprises his recent Der Spiegel rant in German which we took apart here. 

One is a two-part report on the new Paramount Plus video-streaming channel, and the other is a Kate Mansey story in the Online Daily Mail.

We’ll also be taking each of them apart next. First, some wider context here.

2. Wider Media Context

Netflix entered the internet-based video-streaming business first and has generally grown very fast. Today it is global, and still huge.

Back in 2016 Netflix took a huge stock hit, when a so-called real-crime report turned out to be in part fake.

On-line streamers have generally tried to be above board in their relatively few cautious true-crime productions since. 

Paramount Global with all its subsidiaries, including Showtime and CBS, is worth in total only about 10 percent of what Netflix is worth. William Cohan in Puck News explained Paramount Global’s overall fit.

Paramount Global is a minnow among sharks. With a market value of around $23 billion [now down to $16 billion] it is the smallest of the group of companies that aspire to Hollywood hegemony. Netflix, even after its recent plunge, still has a market value of about $157 billion. Comcast [NBC] is valued at around $206 billion. Disney [ABC] has a market value of more than $250 billion. [Content provider Amazon is at $1.3 trillion, Apple at $2.54 trillion, and Alphabet/Google/YouTube at #1.42 trillion.]

In this distinctly precarious situation, where misrepresenting true crime could be a real mistake, minnow Paramount Global’s video-streaming service Paramount Plus was launched a year ago in the US.

Paramount Plus was also launched a few weeks ago in parts of Europe including the UK (but not Italy) with its flagship promotional vehicle… an anti-Italy Sollecito whine?!

3. Demonizing Italy Context

Paramount Global under its old names (first Viacom and CBS, and then Viacom/CBS) has long been the most misleading and dishonest of all of the exploiters of the case among the main media in the US.

It had no reporters in the Italian courts (in fact none to our knowledge anywhere in Italy) and it has done zero translations of key reports.

Nevertheless it has historically taken a large number of cracks at Italian justice with help from a group of Seattle money-grubbers and members of Knox’s PR. See this partial list of posts below. 

Click for Post:  Why CBS Should Report Better - Way Better - On This Case

Click for Post:  CBS Attempts To Trash Another Witness, Lies To Its Audience

Click for Post:  Rumors In Manhattan About Ludicrously Bad CBS Report

Click for Post:  CBS Reporter’s Bizarre Claims About Prosecutor And Reporters

Click for Post:  CBS Report Sets New Record For Trashing Of Meredith, Xenophobia, Multi-Inaccuracies, Possible Libels

Click for Post:  Plight Of CBS Network: Anti Justice For Meredith Is Increasingly Bad Business

Click for Post:  We Now Examine The Compelling Evidence For The REAL Railroading From Hell

Click for Post:  Producer Of CBS Reports On The Case “Crazy, Desperate, Stupid, And/Or Unscrupulous” ?

Click for Post:  CBS Producer of Most Biased Perugia-Case Reports Pleads Guilty To An Unrelated Crime

Click for Post:  Emmy Nomination For CBS Producer For Xenophobic And Wildly Inaccurate Reports On Meredith’s Case?!

Click for Post:  The Very Appropriate Casting Of CBS’s Doug Preston As The Fredo Corleone Wannabe

Click for Post:  That Supposed Tsunami Of Leaks That Supposedly Hurt The Alleged Perps: Who REALLY Leaked?

Click for Post:  CBS’s Paul Ciolino Hit With A $40 Million Suit For Real Railroad Job From Hell

4. Context Of Daily Mail

The Daily Mail has had no fixed positions on the case, and mainly dabbles in it sensationally now and then, often to the discomfort of Knox.

Kate Mansey is a main editor of the paper, and her crackpot report mainly summarizes and promotes the streaming Paramount Plus report which mainly has Sollecito whining in misleading terms yet again.

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Georgia Meloni Likely To Become Italy’s First Woman Prime Minister Next Month

Posted by Our Main Posters

Context

Georgia Meloni is the leader of the Brothers Of Italy Party.

Her party is now ahead in the polls. She has uploaded similar statements in excellent Spanish and French.

The party is widely labeled ultra-conservative and does seem to include adherents who have taken some very hard lines. The UK’s Observer newspaper has published this cautionary report. 

So here for an international audience she sets out to compare her own positions as being more akin to those of Liz Truss and the conservatives in the UK.

What of Italian justice? Typically, it goes its own way, politically unaffected, because of all the checks and balances built in - nice, but hard to execute even the few reforms it really could use.

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Reacting To Rampant Conspiracy Theories? Unusually, An FBI Search Warrant May Be Unsealed

Posted by Peter Quennell

Context

This unusual move was announced mid afternoon. Many YouTubes are already up.

Donald Trump actually has a copy of the warrant okayed by a judge for Monday’s FBI search of his Florida place. But he has not released it, and so conspiracy theories are running rampant - such as that the house has been extensively bugged.

A judge will now decide whether we get to be put in the picture. Big nail-biter is whether Trump’s lawyers will fight the warrant’s release.

The director of the FBI is not only a lifelong Republican but was also installed by Trump in 2017. It seems the judge who signed the search warrant was also appointed by Trump.

Buzz around New York is that the papers seized by the FBI Monday may relate to extensive dealings with Vladimir Putin. But with the US as Global Ground Zero for conspiracy theories, keep your powder dry!

See YouTube watchers comments here (scroll down)

Friday, August 05, 2022

Another Legal Hoaxer Takes The First Of An Expected Many Hits

Posted by Peter Quennell

Overview

Bad day for legal hoaxers as the American justice system delivers another body-blow. 

The Texas jury has now awarded PUNITIVE damages of $45.2m against the money-grubbing far-right radio host Alex Jones. This is on top of $4.1m awarded against him yesterday in COMPENSATORY damages.

Suing were just the first two of a possible 50 parents and teachers’ relatives that Jones had demonized daily for years in his false claims that a real bloodbath at a Connecticut school was a hoax to drive gun-control legislation.

Evidence that his own staff knew that it was a moneygrubbing hoax was presented. Alex Jones’s legal troubles have barely begun. He already faces a second trial in Connecticut next week.

Also Jones egged on the 6 January mob. thousands of recent text messages to Donald Trump etc etc that were handed over to the court by his own lawyer are headed for the Justice Department and Congress. This could result in criminal charges down the road.

For the many anti-Jones comments under the video (scroll down) please click here.

Thursday, July 28, 2022

Back In The News: UK’s Suzy Lamplugh Case, Maybe Most Obsessed-Over Anywhere

Posted by Peter Quennell

The History

Suzy Lamplugh disappeared in West London exactly thirty-six years ago today.

A real-estate broker, she had headed out alone to show a “Mr Kipper” a house, and she has never been seen since. No body. No hard proof of murder. Articles still pour out ceaselessly. There are so many YouTubes that it seems best that you take your pick.

The national frustration in England in part results from the fact that there are TWO suspects, both serial killers, the probable John Cannan whose car showed traces of Suzy’s DNA; and the possible Steve Wright, the Ipswich Killer, who Suzy’s family want interviewed - his own father labels him a possibility.

They have each spent years in prison and have divulged details of other crimes. So if either is guilty, why not do the same for this one?

Especially the one called John Cannan, locked up in Yorkshire, who is said to be on the point of dying. On 31 October 2018 our main poster James Raper kindly posted this tip about him.

I see that the police have started excavating the back garden of John Cannan’s mother’s back garden in the hope of, at long last, finding the remains of Suzy Lamplugh. Suzy was an attractive young estate agent who disappeared some 32 years ago after she had gone to meet a certain Mr Kipper at one of the properties on the agency’s books.

I rather doubt that they will find her there but if they do it will bring closure to Suzy’s remaining family. Her parents died a few years ago. Cannan can also then be charged with her murder.

The police never had anyone else in the frame. At the time of her disappearance Cannon was staying at a bail hostel nearby where he was called Mr Kipper because of his love of fishing and always being asleep. He was, it has to be said, rather a handsome man (though with rather strange, staring eyes) but he was also a sexual predator whose MOD with women was to portray himself as a successful businessman.

I bring this up because I was practicing law in Bristol when he was arrested and convicted for the murder of the newly-wed Shirley Banks. He had tried to abduct another woman only the day before Shirley disappeared. He is currently doing life.

It also transpired that he was having an affair with a Bristol solicitor whom I remember from my days there. IIRC she was representing him on some marital issue. She was married to a Bristol barrister though I never did work out who that was. Anyway, a narrow escape for her, and I didn’t see her around after that.

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Mainstream Media Woes: NBC Takes Heat For Blatantly One-Sided Report

Posted by Peter Quennell

NBC originated a live feed from the court. Now NBC slams those who actually watched?!

Below: 5 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 37 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 120 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 120 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 46 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 120 minutes. Comments here.

Thursday, July 14, 2022

More Proof That Mainstream Media Does NOT Accurately Report On Trials

Posted by Peter Quennell

Context

Main-media’s slow suicide by another name?

We recently quoted from some very ill-informed mainstream-media op-eds on the Depp-Heard case.

The NY Times’s and Washington Post’s OWN READERS in online comments below the op-eds almost universally said the opinion writers had NOT WATCHED THE CASE.

There are now literally thousands of comments under the numerous YouTube videos on the case arguing that social media did NOT affect the jury. It was hard facts that did.

Social media in fact simply reflected what many millions saw (except seemingly any mainstream media reporters) on the 20 or so live feeds from the court.

This video of a wildly biased NBC “news report” that aired last night was uploaded just a few hours ago.

Click through to the (at present 2600) comments here (scroll down) in effect almost all saying that, once again, mainstream media is lying to all of us on a grand scale.

Shades of the Meredith Kercher case and Danielle Redlick cases? You can find similar comments to these below under those biased media reports too. We have a lot of like-minded friends out there.

Betsy Packard 1 hour ago

Social Media did NOT determine this case. We watched Amber get caught lying time after time.

Jack White 7 hours ago

Wow NBC, this is how you treat information? Twist it to your will, you know as the public we see what you are doing and you are just loosing viewers.

Ashley Jordan 6 hours ago

This right here is why I refuse to watch MSM! They clearly did not watch the entire trial like most of us with common sense!

Matt Davis 10 hours ago

Really upsetting to see a big news media video like this completely disregard 90% of the trial and give a narrow, biased view on the trial discrediting the court and jury’s verdict, and humiliating Johnny depp, a surviver of amber heard. Both had huge evidence suppressed, Johnny couldn’t play the audio she admits to cutting his finger off.She was proven to be the abuser in a 6 week trial, and to watch this video is disgusting- this would not be happening had the roles been reversed

Gina Simmons 10 hours ago (edited)

I have never seen anything so biased in all my life. I watched the trial ! With an unbiased opinion and the truth slowly unfolded   that Amber Heard was the abuser,  based purely on fact.
I am a woman, and for my own reasons have always side with women about abuse - but this this trial changed my perspective- that men can be victims of abuse too. It sickened me that a woman could go to the depths she went to, to destroy a man that could no longer suffer her abuse.
It is saddening that something like this could be put together in such a way to discredit the verdict. I am sick of being called a Depp fan - I am a fan of truth and justice - something you have left out of this, people who know right from wrong - not fans. Though the right verdict was reached, you have tried to smear it and social media who have been far more truthful about the trial evidence than the MSM.
And as for Elaine Bredahoft- shameful, as she herself knows the lies her client has told and is still pushing them, she even told a few herself, I witnessed that - she should be disbarred.
Shameful that you have put a handful of people together so speedily who obviously never watched the whole trial,  trying to sway the audience to believe a person who constantly perjured herself and covered it over with theatrics - was the victim and treated unjustly.
Amber Heard is the calculating, manipulative,  narcissistic, physical and mental abuser of her former huband - why do you try to paint it as though this fact is not true - and because I have come to this conclusion after seeing it with my own eyes - I am described as Johnny Depp fan?
These are two people, the whole world is not split into two categories - either fans of Depp or Heard. Like me, as I said , just a fan of the truth and justice - for women and for men.

Kris 1 hour ago

This is actually appalling and insulting to everyone who watched this trial live. Insulting to all the fantastic Lawyers and law-workers commenting on this and cases similar to this for years to be smeared by wanna-be journalists who blatantly lie about them again and again. To give this stuff such a stage is unbelievable. Unquestioned biased opinions being presented as “facts”. As i can still see the dislikes this is getting rationed and rightfully so. When will the media finally get the message that they can NOT lie to their viewers any more? Its over. And imagine they would not have allowed cameras in there? News cannot be trusted, so called “experts” cannot be trusted. Thats what i learned from it. Because they lied to my face about stuff i was able to see first hand. This is just another idiotic try to change the “court of public opinion”.

barbde65 3 hours ago

And y’all at NBC and all other MSM’s wonder why we are all turned off? I recall the day she went and played the victim and the fallout… how I was so disappointed and had to believe her…then here comes this trial and I found a new community to follow and these attorneys didn’t believe he could win, the law was on her side… then JD puts on his part and I began to wonder… then AH takes the stand and I was angry… she showed herself as a liar and was fake…the way she kept trying to stare down the jury, the way she told stories that weren’t the same as her “witnesses”…then during both rebuttals, I changed my mind and realized how she’d used the metoo movement, women wanting to believe any claimant and the media to cancel JD… while he’s been all the things he said he was, I mean come on we all knew of his drinking and drug usage way back to the Viper Room and River Phoenix… but the way she described certain alleged abuses? She’d have needed IMMEDIATE treatment for sliced and bleeding feet and in Australia had he really committed SV with a “broken bottle” he would still be there in jail… you all owe JD the actual and fair truth which I highly doubt anyone of you has the decency to report… you’re nothing better than TMZ at this point! Shame on you for not reporting the ACTUAL facts and how disgusting she is as a person…

Randy Moog 3 hours ago (edited)

Three things.
1) NBC was caught replacing audio in the middle of the sentences Amber Heard was saying during their big interview.  They replaced words mid sentence because it was pointed out when the first teasers came out she was obviously lying about facts, and it was easy to prove she was lying.  So NBC removed parts of the video, and edited words mid sentence to make audio clips that were never said, but didn’t have the lies in them.  There are a number of videos that show the teaser clips versus the final clips where this is clear.
2) The trial influences social media, not the other way around.  People mocked AH lying and bizarre behavior AFTER they watched the trial, not the other way around.  People watched the trial with open minds and it was the trial that made them then go to social media and talk about what they saw. 
3) With social media it is easy to comment and fact check in real time.  It is harder with MSM like NBC.  NBC tries very hard to control the narrative and blocks and fact checking.  Luckily this is posted on YouTube were people can comment - something you CANNOT do on NBC’s sites.  And after watching them edit audio and change what people said, you can see why.

Keyyyyzzzz 8 hours ago

I recall a time when both the media AND online commentary were overwhelmingly in support of Amber ... which gradually turned around to support Johnny after the public release of two things: (1) the footage of Amber’s testimony in the UK, and; (2) the many hours of audio recordings - largely Amber’s own. So, as a ‘liberal’ minded (Australian) lawyer I made a point of following the entire six week trial, while deliberately blocking all commentary (both online and traditional media). My verdict was virtually identical with that of the Virginia jury. Not only was Amber’s testimony very contradictory, but there was simply no credible evidence to support her DA claims: and the little that there was ultimately seemed to emanate from Amber herself.
I have to say I’m really surprised at the traditional ‘liberal’ media commentaries - like this one - which appear to have rejected this verdict on the grounds that it will have a suppressing effect on victims of DA! Not only have you clearly NOT followed the evidence presented in this case itself, but you are ignoring the fact that the jury DID vindicate the DA survivor in this case: ie, Johnny Depp. As even your own expert commentators make clear in this video: men are extremely reluctant to come forward as DA victims! Its pretty clear that Johnny would NEVER have come forward ... if it weren’t for the fact that his entire reputation and career were at jeopardy! And yet you’re prepared to disregard both the bulk of the evidence AND the verdict of the jury; simply because it doesn’t conform to your outdated notion of what a DA survivor must look like. It seems to me that the traditional US ‘liberal’ media stands in very real danger of losing relevance in the News environment; a sad and frightening prospect in my opinion ... and in the opinion of hundreds of millions of fair and reasonably minded people around the world.

Tuesday, July 05, 2022

Unsavory Knox & Sollecito Chums Are Taking Quite A Beating Now

Posted by Peter Quennell

Fine Australian report praised by Italian viewers (scroll down)

1. Italian Developments

The video report on a mass trial in southern Italy could be good news.

That is if there is to be more exposure of the nefariousness in Meredith’s case. And of how way too much of the American media and the political administrations were led around by the nose, by these guys intent on taking Italian justice down a peg.

Not that Italian media have been exactly shy though. Few in Italy believe all was above board - in the selection of Judge Hellman and his “independent” consultants, in the final sentence issued in 2015 by the Supreme Court, and in Knox’s “not guilty” verdict in the Florence calunnia trial.

Everybody knows of the Sollecito family’s blood ties in the deep south and in Canada, though those have mostly dwindled since the assassination of Canadian mafia kingpin Uncle Rocco in Montreal in 2016.

Calabria is in the deep south of Italy, across the Strait of Messina from Sicily. Several thousand years ago, those were among the wealthiest areas in the world. Agriculture flourished back then, and the south was a major waypoint for cargo traffic making its way along the Mediterranean.

The remorseless decline of the deep south was first set in motion by climate change, and by piracy from bases in countries further to the east. Lawless gangs emerged after the 19th century uprisings against royalty.

The mafia big three families have long been considered Cosa Nostra (Sicily), Camorra (Naples) and Ndrangheta (Calabria). All three had connections with Meredith’s case.

The Ndrangheta was infiltrating the Perugia area around the time that Meredith died. Knox’s and Sollecito’s lead lawyers had represented mafia previously. Appeal judge Hellman was assigned in suspect circumstances. Sollecito was suspected of seeking help from the Canadian arm of the Ndrangheta. Both of the lead Supreme Court judges were from Naples and subjects of whispers. The judge in Knox’s second calunnia trial was transferred to Florence from the Ndrangheta area due to suspect friendships. A pro-prosecution witness had been a Camorra member. Perugia prosecutors and judges sometimes have a role in mafia cases. Perugia saw a mafia mass-arrest. One of the lead investigators transferred to Rome to head anti-mafia investigations.   

Sicily’s Cosa Nostra was mostly responsible for the assassination of over 100 judges, prosecutors and others in law enforcement through the 1990s, at which time the kingpin was put away and the first several of various mass trials put away additional hundreds. It then faded, and the Ndrangheta mushroomed.

The current Ndrangheta mass trial in western Calabria is of the Mancuso clan, the west-coast segment of the Ndrangheta, which because of a seaport built in the 1990s is definitely the most significant. The trial will conclude in a few months - many took the short-form trial (in effect they pleaded guilty) but over 300 didn’t. 

Does this suggest the last of the big Italian mafia families is finally on the ropes and of diminishing significance? Maybe; maybe not. As the Australian video explains, for many in the area, the Ndrangheta remains more popular than the government, because they make sure to provide more services.

But certainly by global standards they are not such big-fry. Russian, Japanese and Mexican crime families are estimated to be larger, both in membership and turnover. But the Ndrangheta is still big in European cocaine, and has bought a collection of conventional businesses.

Italian law enforcement has developed a number of admired and emulated techniques to diminish their crime families. One is to isolate members from one another and from other prisoners, in prison conditions that by Italian standards are not too nice.

Even at the peaks of these crime families, reported crime rates in Italy, murder or otherwise, have steadily remained below 1/5 of the American rates. Italian law enforcement is brave, and their systems are good models.

2. Canadian Developments

Mobster Dominico Scarfo has been on trial for the shooting of Rocco Sollecito at a traffic light in Montreal in May 2016, and for a related killing.

Rocco Sollecito had been the de facto head of the Rizutto crime family, which was very closely associated with the Italian Ndrangheta. Raffaele Sollecito met with him several times in 2012 and 2014 in a mob-controlled town at the east end of the Dominican Republic island.

Scarfo was found guilty of both killings in April. This is a report on the trial outcome from the Montreal Gazette.

The jury also found Scarfo, 49, guilty of conspiring to kill both men.

The trial began in late January, and the jury deliberated for 19 days — one of the longest deliberations in Canadian history — before reaching unanimous decisions on all four charges. The record for the longest deliberation is 28 days.

“In the name of us all, and in the name of the community you served as judges, I want to thank you for your services. All good things must have an end though,” Superior Court Justice Michel Pennou told the 10 jurors who remained on the panel at the trial’s end.

The prosecution faced an uphill battle as its key witness, an informant, initially refused to testify when he was first called to the stand in February.

“No. I won’t be answering any questions,” the informant told prosecutor Isabelle Poulin after she asked her first question.

“F—ing me over is f—ing everybody over. It ain’t happening,” the informant said back in February while complaining that his contract with the Sûreté du Québec was not being respected.

He eventually settled down and testified at length, despite several outbursts throughout.

With the first-degree murder verdicts, Scarfo automatically received a life sentence with a period of parole ineligibility fixed at 25 years. Pennou said he will hear sentencing arguments on the conspiracy charges at a later date….

Scarfo is said to have collaborated with, among others in the Canadian mob, a “deceased crime boss”.

Hmmm…  Rocco Sollecito’s predecessor Nicolo Rizutto was gunned down in his house by a long-distance sniper.

Rocco has been widely presumed to have been behind that, and although said to have been a guy quite easy to get along with, some in the mob may have remained loyal to the previous boss.

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Ghislaine Maxwell’s Sentence Is 20 Years, And A Fine Of $750,000

Posted by Peter Quennell

Ghislaine Maxwell Sentencing Due Today; Defense Asks For Postponement

Posted by Peter Quennell

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Quack Psychologist Todd Grande Misrepresents Redlick Case, Ridicules Classic Signs Of PTSD

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click here for viewer comments. Video summary of facts below.

Context

The misleading title of the video is “Wife Hurries to Find New Lover After Stabbing Husband”

That never happened.

We have encountered the money-making by victim-shaming quack psychologist Todd Grande before. He seriously misrepresented Amanda Knox.

Now he seriously misrepresents Danielle Redlick, mainly by playing the tragedy for giggles and omitting most of the hard facts.

Viewing of the brutal honesty of her testimony is a real eye-opener. Prior to her taking the stand just about all bets were against her, and she had been demonized for years.

These things among others came out at trial and strongly justified her verdict of “not guilty”.

1. She was NOT on a dating site. The dating app showed up for a mere 10 seconds as the app provider testified.

2. Evidence of abuse by him was extensive, like witnesses to his hitting her. She tried for divorce and he stopped it.

3. They separated (hence the dating app) but he moved back in unilaterally and resumed roughing her up.

4. He had been raging at her since the previous day after spotting the app. Their children texted her to take care.

5. He attacked her violently, coming down on her, and the single defensive stab apparently seemed minor to both of them.

6. He walked around and yelled at her locked in the bathroom for up to 20 minutes. When she finally felt it safe to emerge he was dead. 

7. Her muddled actions for the rest of the night are already declared by more-professional psychologists to be strong symptoms of PTSD - which she may need to keep fighting for years.

Todd Grande’s YouTube is the one irresponsible outlier. The first of the other YouTube analyses and the viewer comments below them - again mostly by women - are all totally on the mark.

Below: a factually correct 13-minute overview

Monday, June 20, 2022

How Three US Trials Associated In The Public Mind Are Right Now At Their Tipping Points

Posted by Peter Quennell

To reach comments click here.

The Three Cases

All three cases involve women who faced trials by jury. These are their imminent tipping points.

1. The Heard-Depp Damages Hearing

This Friday the 24th of June a meeting between the judge and the legal teams in the Depp-Heard case will arrive at agreements on the sizes of the damages awards.

The big unknowns are (1) how much the Depp team will ask for presumably in exchange for Amber Heard’s agreement that she will no longer poison public minds about the jury verdict; and (2) whether Amber Heard will be psychologically capable of biding by any such agreement.

Some professionals watching are seeing her psychology now as in a pretty bad way, rather than seeing a monster, and would prefer that Heard’s personal and media enablers stop getting in the way of treatment.

Many agree that Heard’s symptoms we see today mirror the diagnosis of two syndromes (Borderline and Histrionic) by court-ordered psychologist Dr Shannon Curry.

2. The Ghislaine Maxwell Sentencing

Last December the jury found Jeffrey Epstein’s procurer guilty of harm to several young women and in New York on Tuesday 28th next week she will be sentenced, probably to 20 years at a minimum.

She really is being seen as something of a monster. She might do herself a lot of good by sharing her little black book of all the men that violated the dozens of young girls at Epstein’s various properties. The only firmly known one was Prince Andrew and he settled a civil case with one girl for millions.

However, don’t hold your breath. Maxwell has shown no remorse, her team’s losing strategy was a pretty horrible one of trashing the young women, and her team is angling for a new trial. 

3. The Danielle Redlick Sentencing

Our first-time mention of this high-profile Florida case. Danielle Redlick (below pre-abuse) admittedly stabbed her husband to death, but has just been found not guilty in light of very convincing evidence of self-defense and domestic violence.

She will be sentenced August 5 for some crime scene rearrangement, and as she was held before trial for over three years she may not serve any more time.

Why is this associated with the other cases in the public mind? Well, one or two had seen in her a monster, like Ghislaine, while many others, genuine domestic violence victims and experts, have declared online that her DV predicament rang true to them.

Her perceived unflinching honesty is the very opposite of the many negative reactions online to the escalating DV descriptions Amber Heard has been trying to market, evidence-free.

Click here for a YouTube with numerous comments from DV survivors about Amber Heard faking it and Danielle Redlick not

Danielle Redlick in pre-marriage days

Thursday, June 16, 2022

ABC News Channels A Juror, Undercutting Heard’s Wildeyed Claims On Other US Networks

Posted by Peter Quennell

(1) Scroll down for viewer comments. (2) See at foot for UK lawyer analysis.

Additionally to the video analysis at bottom there is this newer longer one examining the whole of the pussyfooting NBC Dateline interview with Heard.

Context

The NBC network has aired an interview in several parts with Amber Heard.

This now looks like a disaster. Informed court-watchers have gone to town both on the timid and ill-prepared NBC interviewer and on Amber Heard over her multitude of unchallenged conspiracy theories (some excellent comments there).

And now, unsurprisingly, the jury starts to push back against Amber Heard’s incessant media trashing of them. The GMA website carries the video above and also this telling reporting.

By Mark Guarino & Doug Lantz

A juror in the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation trial said in an interview that aired Thursday on “Good Morning America” that when the actress cried during her testimony the jury saw only “crocodile tears.”

“It didn’t come across as believable,” he said. “It seemed like she was able to flip the switch on her emotions. She would answer one question and she would be crying and two seconds later she would turn ice cold. It didn’t seem natural.”

Depp, he said, “just seemed a little more real in terms of how he responded to questions.”

The juror, one of seven jurors during the six-week trial, spoke exclusively to “GMA” and is the only juror on record to speak publicly about the case. He asked to have his name not used for this report.

In early June, a jury in Fairfax, Virginia, awarded Depp more than $10 million in damages; Heard received $2 million in her countersuit.

The catalyst for defamation countersuits was a 2018 op-ed Heard wrote in The Washington Post in which she said she “became a public figure representing domestic abuse.”

Depp argued that suggested she was victimized by him, although she never identified him by name.

‘Why would you buy the other person a knife?’

Heard’s credibility was suspect throughout the duration of the trial, the juror said. Besides how she acted on the stand, several other factors led the jury to believe Heard was not credible, the juror said.

The jury concluded “they were both abusive to each other” but Heard’s team failed to prove Depp’s abuse was physical.

“They had their husband-wife arguments. They were both yelling at each other. I don’t think that makes either of them right or wrong. That’s what you do when you get into an argument, I guess. But to rise to the level of what she was claiming, there wasn’t enough or any evidence that really supported what she was saying,” he said.

Heard, the juror said, was considered the aggressor in the relationship by the majority of the jury. “If you have a battered wife or spouse situation, why would you buy the other person, the ‘aggressor,’ a knife? If you really wanted to help Johnny Depp get off drugs, why are you taking drugs around him?” he asked.

Heard testified she purchased Depp a large knife as a gift, which Depp’s legal team presented to jurors.

The juror said that photographs Heard took of her ex-husband also fell flat. Although the defense used them to show Depp’s decrepit state after a drug or alcohol binge, the juror said they failed to make an impact.

“If you mix alcohol and marijuana, that’s where you usually end up—passed out,” he said. “We discussed at length that a lot of the drugs she said he used, most of them were downers. And you usually don’t get violent on downers. You become a zombie, as those pictures show.”

In his testimony, Depp also admitted to cocaine use, a stimulant, and Heard testified he was frequently doing the drug in her presence.

No make-up: no credibility

The juror also said the jury essentially dismissed all witnesses on both sides who were employees, paid experts, friends or family from either side.

Also suspect were the photos that Heard’s team presented that purported to show bruising on the actress’ face. Two photos presented near the end of the trial were not credible to the jury, he said.

They believed the accusation by Depp’s team that one photo was edited to artificially redden Heard’s face to suggest bruising. Heard testified the photos looked different because of a “vanity light.”

“Those were two different pictures. We couldn’t really tell which picture was real and which one was not,” the juror told “GMA.”

The juror also said the defense failed Heard by telling them that the actress “never goes outside without make-up on,” he said. “Yet she goes to file the restraining order without make-up on. And it just so happens her publicist is with her. Those things add up and starts to become hard to believe,” he said.

$7 million donation that never happened was ‘a fiasco’ for Heard

The juror said the four-hour debate over the difference between a pledged donation and an actual donation ended up “a fiasco” for Heard.

On the stand, Heard testified she never finished donating all $7 million from her divorce settlement to two charities because she didn’t want Depp to reap the tax benefits by sending her settlements to the charities directly.

Heard testified that a pledge and a donation are “synonymous with one another” and “mean the same thing.” The jury was shown video of Heard on a Dutch talk show saying she gave her donation to the charities.

“The fact is, she didn’t give much of it away at all,” the juror said. “It was disingenuous.”

He blamed Heard’s legal team for giving her poor advice, such as looking directly at the jury when responding to questions. “All of us were very uncomfortable” at that, he said.

He also said her team “had sharp elbows versus being sharp.”

“They would cut people off in cross because they wanted one specific answer without context. They were forcing people to just answer a very narrow question ... which was obvious,” he said.

“She needs better advice,” he said of Heard.

Publishing the 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post that defamed Depp was a poor choice, he said. “If she didn’t do any of this stuff with the op-eds, Johnny Depp could have helped her out in her career. They didn’t leave things on a nasty turn,” when they divorced, he said. “It turned nasty after the op-ed.”

‘We only looked at the evidence’

The juror denied the jury was swayed by outside forces. He and “at least” three others did not have Twitter accounts.

“Some people said we were bribed. That’s not true. Social media did not impact us. We followed the evidence. We didn’t take into account anything outside [the courtroom]. We only looked at the evidence,” he said. “They were very serious accusations and a lot of money involved. So we weren’t taking it lightly.”

The juror also said that no one on the jury was starstruck and their individual celebrity never played a factor in their decision. While he admitted he knew of Depp more than Heard, he hadn’t seen many of his films. “None of us were really fans of either one of them,” he said.

Asked whether he would go see a future movie starring Depp or Heard, the juror said it would depend on the movie.

“What they do in their personal lives doesn’t affect me whatsoever. Going to movies is entertainment. I go for the quality of the movie or the storyline,” he said. “Not for the acting.”