My OperaBox and Knox get away with it.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011 8:37:26 PM
Yup. Much as politicians like to think that they are the news, in truth there have been just two major stories lately. Box & Knox. And since they both feature the letter 'x', which is grossly under-represented in blogs today, I thought I'd mention both of them.
The box is of course a Greek satellite TV box, which the Eurocourt has decreed is legal in the UK so up yours Murdoch. Of course the Brit courts may yet choose to ignore the Euro ruling and uphold the £8,000 fine it imposed upon an unsuspecting pub landlady for daring to use one of these machines, but doing so would probably achieve the impossible and cause a pro-Europe backlash.
The fact is that, because of the stupid positioning of the satellites broadcasting to Britain, it's impossible to stop every country from there to here from eavesdropping on the TV that we're paying for, so it makes a nice change for us to be able to repay the compliment, even if we, er... have to pay for it...
Dagnab it. Don't you just hate it when a plan doesn't quite come together?
And so on to the slightly more serious case of the murder of Meredith Kercher by Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede. Or not (It could be argued that by making that a statement I'm leaving myself open to libel claims, but I think I'm probably on safe ground, because..) It goes like this.
We in the outside world have access to information that the jury weren't allowed to consider. For a start there's Rudy Guede, who pleaded guilty to assisting in the killing and named the other two as his co-killers. He claimed that he and Sollecito held Kercher down and Knox actually performed the act which resulted in her death. Then there's Sollecito who told the police that Knox did it, but then withdrew the accusation and refused to repeat it in court. And finally, at least for the moment, there's Knox's admission of lying in court after she accused Patrick Diya Lumumba of the killing. You have to wonder why, if she was innocent, she would need to fabricate a story about someone else. She got 3 years for the slander, which means she did just one year for the murder.
Oops. Just had a call from Messrs Sue, Grabbit, and Runne. All mentions of killing and murder above should, of course, have read 'alleged killing' or 'murder (Allegedly)'. Sorry 'bout that.
After the case was over there was an interesting interview with one of Miss Knox's legal team. After a short discussion of the case the interview took a turn that maybe the legal eagle wasn't expecting when the interviewer said "Of course it has to be said that in some states of the USA Amanda Knox might have been executed by now". The interviewee explained why the case would never have gotten off the ground in the US, but the interviewer persisted "Yes, but just suppose it had. Mistakes do happen in America too." This seemed to catch the interviewee off guard.
For a moment she started to explain that Knox, being female, white, and middle class, would probably not have been sentenced to death, then she realised just what she was about to say and backed off.
I suspect that if she hadn't the name Troy Davis might have come up.
The box is of course a Greek satellite TV box, which the Eurocourt has decreed is legal in the UK so up yours Murdoch. Of course the Brit courts may yet choose to ignore the Euro ruling and uphold the £8,000 fine it imposed upon an unsuspecting pub landlady for daring to use one of these machines, but doing so would probably achieve the impossible and cause a pro-Europe backlash.
The fact is that, because of the stupid positioning of the satellites broadcasting to Britain, it's impossible to stop every country from there to here from eavesdropping on the TV that we're paying for, so it makes a nice change for us to be able to repay the compliment, even if we, er... have to pay for it...
Dagnab it. Don't you just hate it when a plan doesn't quite come together?
And so on to the slightly more serious case of the murder of Meredith Kercher by Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede. Or not (It could be argued that by making that a statement I'm leaving myself open to libel claims, but I think I'm probably on safe ground, because..) It goes like this.
We in the outside world have access to information that the jury weren't allowed to consider. For a start there's Rudy Guede, who pleaded guilty to assisting in the killing and named the other two as his co-killers. He claimed that he and Sollecito held Kercher down and Knox actually performed the act which resulted in her death. Then there's Sollecito who told the police that Knox did it, but then withdrew the accusation and refused to repeat it in court. And finally, at least for the moment, there's Knox's admission of lying in court after she accused Patrick Diya Lumumba of the killing. You have to wonder why, if she was innocent, she would need to fabricate a story about someone else. She got 3 years for the slander, which means she did just one year for the murder.
Oops. Just had a call from Messrs Sue, Grabbit, and Runne. All mentions of killing and murder above should, of course, have read 'alleged killing' or 'murder (Allegedly)'. Sorry 'bout that.
After the case was over there was an interesting interview with one of Miss Knox's legal team. After a short discussion of the case the interview took a turn that maybe the legal eagle wasn't expecting when the interviewer said "Of course it has to be said that in some states of the USA Amanda Knox might have been executed by now". The interviewee explained why the case would never have gotten off the ground in the US, but the interviewer persisted "Yes, but just suppose it had. Mistakes do happen in America too." This seemed to catch the interviewee off guard.
For a moment she started to explain that Knox, being female, white, and middle class, would probably not have been sentenced to death, then she realised just what she was about to say and backed off.
I suspect that if she hadn't the name Troy Davis might have come up.
DHdarkesthour # Thursday, October 6, 2011 12:18:46 AM