How Saul Kassin Hoaxed The American Psychology Law Society

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Important rebuttal. The sleazy gun for hire Kassin is lying on way too wide a front. I’d like to see his Powerpoints. Those are PROFESSIONALS he misleads, with NO peer review of his “research” ever.

There is no gray area on the interrogation at all. The claims of Fischer and Moore and John Douglas which Kassin parrots have no basis in truth at all. As Ergon mentions there are written notes and formal summaries of EVERY SINGLE REAL DISCUSSION Knox ever entered into - which actually occupied very few hours; my estimate is less than ten.

Try finding coercion there.  Did Kassin?

Kassin MUST prove that on the key night of 5-6 November police caused Knox to break.

He fails abysmally. Police did not even want Knox there. She met only with the diminutive Rita Ficarra and two others, merely to build a list. Voices were never raised, and she was given refreshments and bathroom breaks.

Here is the vital official record of all the discussion that night which leaves Kassin with no evidentiary way forward.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/the_knox_interrogation_hoax_12_proof_released/

Try finding coercion there.  Did Kassin?

And it was not exactly a fast narrowing down of suspects to just her. All the possible perps Knox “helpfully” listed to draw attention away from herself were carefully checked out over several weeks.

Of course Kassin is a piece of dirt. But then he’s only preaching to the choir.

The sub human filth that supports Knox are not interested in anything but reading any claims which substantiate their belief of innocence at all costs. They do this because they themselves are guilty of aiding and abetting the murdering bitch Amanda Knox. This is the reason for Moore Douglas Kassin et al. These slime who hide behind web pages spreading lies in order to bolster their own lives at the expense of others.
 
I personally would like to meet them face to face. But since they are abject cowards that will never happen which is probably just as well for them. It is always wise to remember that a person who is willing to sacrifice themselves towards the commonality of true justice is impossible to stop.

The definitive judgement of the Italian Courts is that Knox was present in the cottage at the time of the murder. Accordingly she must have known that Lumumba was not there.

Notwithstanding that she incriminated him (with herself as a witness) as the killer. Not one judge disagreed with the calunnia conviction.

By my calculations it is likely that over the 5 day period, 2nd -6th Nov, she spent no more than 12 hours in company with detectives and/or Mignini, and fielding questions, concentrated or occasional, including two trips to the cottage and back. She did however spend many more just hanging about at the Questura and of course it is true that, as she complained in her letter to Nencini, she was “at the beck and call of the police” all the time. Oh dear, how terrible!.

Until the phone records came back and Sollecito retracted his alibi, most of the questioning would have been about simple things the police needed to know such as (1) what were Knox and Sollecito doing at the cottage prior to the arrival of the postal police (2) what were the living arragements and lifestyles of the girls at the cottage and (3) who else were known to the girls and particularly Meredith and might need to be interviewed. Hardly coercive stuff.

As for the late night “interrogation” on the 5th - 6th, and as I demonstrated in my book, the critical period there was likely no more than 30 or, at the outside, 50 minutes.

Most of that time was taken up with Knox pretending that she couldn’t remember things. I don’t believe that for one moment. Knowing that she was a crucial witness she had already written a very long and detailed account i.e her e-mail. She had no problem with her memory with that be it that, on analysis, extensive portions of it can be deemed to be fictitious.

It is time for Kassin and Knox to give it a rest.

Ergon: excellent article.  It is useful to note that Saul Kassin is an esteemed and distinguished psychologist in his field, that of forced confession, not just an opinion mouthpiece.  This is why it is concerning that he has hitched himself to Amanda Knox’ cause and she willingly jumps onto his bandwagon as being the victim of a ‘forced confession’.  Thus it is crucial to examine whether Kassin has any basis to claim that this is true in this case. 

I would argue, no.

Pete:  Absolutely.  It is for Kassin to reasonably show that Amanda’s confession/false accusation was (a) false (b) due to police coercion, and (c) adverse conditions.

James Raper: some salient points made there.  The chronology is key to what happened in this case.

_Background_

Kassin has researched in detail the false confessions of the ‘Central Park five’ - five youths who each implicated the others in the crime, although not himself - and comes to the conclusion they were so pressured, they suffered a form of breakdown:

“These are cases, like the Central Park jogger case, where innocent people, who know they are innocent become so stressed, so broken down, and so confused as to what their best means of escape is that they confess fully knowing they’re innocent. In these cases they typically recant the confession almost immediately as soon as the pressure of the situation is lifted. The other type of confession is what we called coerced-internalized false confessions, and these are the cases where individuals actually come to believe in their own guilt as a function of the lies and their own suggestibility.”

He continues:

“The Central Park jogger case involves clearly coerced-compliant false confessions. That was a case in which five kids, 14, 15, and 16 years old, each of them [was] lead to believe that he would get to go home if he confessed. Each one calculated–given that they had been there from 14-30 hours of interrogation under tremendous pressure–that it was in his own best interest to cooperate.”  http://thepsychreport.com/conversations/coerced-to-confess-the-psychology-of-false-confessions/

_How does this relate to Amanda Knox?_

Problem for Kassin here is, Amanda Knox was questioned no more than 18 hours (see above) over three days, in common with several other interested parties in the matter (Meredith’s friends, the other housemates, and, in particular, Sophie Purton, ‘Shaky’ and Filomena).

Secondly, in none of Amanda’s own accounts does she claim police suggested she was at the crime scene: this is something she volunteered.  Neither did she immediately retract her accusation against Patrick.  On the contrary, in a private moment, she wrote a memo for the police reiterating her claims and again in her prison diary, written weeks later, claiming she saw in her mind Patrick in ‘blurry’ green images at the basketball court.

Kassin has also done enormous research on the US Reid techniques, popular in the 50’s, where it was common for police investigators to ‘lead’ the interviewee along and make suggestions as to their guilt, often aggressively, or they would minimize culpability by expressing insincere empathy, implying that the act/s they are suspected of was understandable in the circumstances.

Whilst it is true, interpreter Anna Donnino, having been privy to Amanda’s claim she could not remember what she did that evening, did suggest maybe she had temporary amnesia, as happened to her when she broke her leg skiing, and probably should not have done so.  However, this is a far cry from ‘tag teams of ten or twelve’ as claimed by Kassin and Steve Moore.  This is simply a myth based on Moore’s own career in the FBI, and fueled by Amanda’s girlfriend Madison Paxton feverishly feeding the press on Amanda’s behalf. 

For example, Nathaniel Rich, who used her material in his infamously inaccurate and incendiary article for ROLLING STONE claiming Amanda had been ‘railroaded’ by the police.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/a_deeply_ugly_inaccurate_and_callous_piece_of_junk_by_nathaniel_rich/

We have to reject Kassin’s hypothesis that Amanda’s self-incriminating statement that it was she who took Patrick to the cottage, whereupon he raped and murdered Meredith whilst she was crouched down in another room covering her ears from Meredith’s ‘heartrending, harrowing’ scream was *because of unacceptable police coercion*.

This is because the Reid techniques Kassin refers to was greatly modified as of *1984* and such techniques are no longer standard.  There were no ‘tag teams’ at Perugia Questura when Amanda volunteered her utterances, upon which, the interview was terminated and she was placed under ‘official suspect’ status.

Amanda made her “confession” within TWO HOURS of arriving at the Questura - hardly the 14-30 hours experienced by the Central Five Joggers, see above (and the police were convinced there of their involvement).

Amanda may have found the police intimidating and unpleasant.  However, the reason for her “confession” was because she overheard Police Chief Napoleoni stating that Raffaele Sollecito, being interviewed in another room, *had withdrawn his alibi for her* (and indeed, has never reinstated it, and refused to testify in court). 

This was the trigger - given the timing - for Amanda’s confession/false accusation.  Not a false memory or any particular pressure, other than the unavoidable psychological pressure of being in a police station being asked to give an account.

As Kassin himself points out in one of his learned papers, many social psychologists have observed that when subjects lie, they often do so based on real facts and events.

So, extrapolating from Kassin’s own theory, either Amanda was lying about being present at the cottage with Patrick OR/and she was lying about Patrick committing the crime, and, in addition, OR/and she was covertly accusing ANOTHER BLACK MAN committing the acts, whom she was covering up for (as found as a judicial fact by Marasca Supreme Court), whilst minimising her own involvement (as does Rudy Guede, who also confessed to being present at the cottage during the crime).

Given the trigger of Raff pulling her alibi in front of the police, and all of the courts making a legal finding *Amanda was present at the murder scene* (apart from the excoriated Hellmann), it is clear she CONFESSED to being at the scene *because she was telling the truth* and lied about Patrick as she knew he was not there, but named him *as she was there and she knew Rudy was there, and was covering up for Rudy* - another fact upheld by the final Marasca court.

What is it about experts in their field, such as Professor Kassin or Dr Peter Gill, Forensic DNA pioneer, that makes them want to use their influence *outside of the law courts* to confer the status of ‘honorary exonerated’?

It might seem gallant from their POV but makes a mockery of genuine innocence cases, and indeed, derails the credibility of the entire innocence industry.

Nicely put KrissyG.

I wonder what Kassin makes of the inconsistencies in Knox’s own account of the “interrogation”?

In her trial testimony Knox spoke of the psychological pressure of “lots of” police officers around her. She also gave that impression in her book. However in a letter she wrote to her lawyers, and in the recorded prison meeting between her and her mother, she said that she named Lumumba as the killer when she was alone with Ivano Raffo and the interpreter, the others having left the interview room.

As to the others there were two, Ficarra and Zugarina.

In her book she explicitly says that it was the police who suggested the name Patrick to her. In her trial testimony she admitted that it was she who had volunteered the name.

Hence we have a post facto pattern of obfuscation and lying about the “interrogation”.

Does none of this cause Kassin any problems?

Interestingly though, in none of her accounts, did she indicate that the police had suggested a scream to her, but we have two witnesses as to a penetrating scream the night of the murder.

Last year Knox was tried in absentia on a long standing criminal charge of defamation concerning the police officers whom she had alleged had “tortured” her. She was acquitted. However neither Knox nor Kassin can take any comfort from this as the acquittal did not in any way verify her allegations. She was acquitted on the grounds (the finding) that she was already a suspect before the questioning started, and that therefore she should not have been questioned at all without legal representation. Accordingly (again the finding) she was immune from prosecution for any defamation.

This would appear to be out of step with her definitive conviction for calunnia ( defamation of Patrick Lumumba) save that Knox repeated her claims about Lumumba in her Memorial when she was not in fact being questioned. On the other hand her allegations against the police (being hit) first arose in her Memorial as well.

The byzantine exigencies of Italian judicial reasoning are sometimes quite bizarre.

“I wonder what Kassin makes of the inconsistencies in Knox’s own account of the “interrogation”?”

Goodness, James, that is opening up a can of worms! Okay.

I wonder what Kassin makes of this?

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/questions_for_knox_1_did_you_actually_undergo_an_illegal_interrogation/

I wonder what Kassin makes of this?

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/questions_for_knox_4_why_so_many_false_claims_in_accounts_of_your_visi/

I wonder what Kassin makes of this?

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/our_take_on_the_case_for_the_prosecution_4_amanda_knoxs_multiple_confl/

I wonder what Kassin makes of this?

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/us_and_uk_media_wrongly_attribute_italian_report/
http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/knox-camp_denial_of_drug-ring_link/

I wonder what Kassin makes of this?

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/what_no-show_amanda_knox_should_have_emailed_judge_nencini_as_truthful_test/

I wonder what Kassin makes of this?

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/knox_camp_illusions_multiple_examples_of_how_rs_and_ak/

And did Kassin or Knox explain to the APLS audience that Knox had already served three years for Patrick’s framing and is a felon for life?

Having failed all possible appeals?  Even the bent Judge Hellmann brushed Kassin off.

Hi KrissyG

A suggested addition to your telling summary of the opportunistic Kassin method.

Fuji shows further the contortions Kassin made to fit Knox and her supposed trauma-induced “confession” into the vulnerable group he himself defined - which she actually misses by a mile.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/claims_amanda_knoxs_confessions_resemble_false_confessions_not_backed/

Yeah, Kassin did his PowerPoint and schedules, Peter. See https://twitter.com/manfromatlan/status/847485720897830912 for a picture.

And he did say the use of the Reid technique by cops was a recipe for False Confessions.

Comments here by actual attendees: https://twitter.com/search?q=#APLS2017 Kassin&src=typd

How anyone can describe something as a false confession when it is clearly not a confession - she blamed someone else is beyond me.
Knox was convicted of the callunia against Patrick Lumumba due to what was her clear malicious accusation against him.

Nothing of what Kassin says is relevant anyway because Knox never gave a false confession at all, lets get this right first.

@Deathfish as you write, and as DF2K, bucketoftea, Ergon, and SeekingUnderstanding also wrote, back in 04, 2014, Knox never gave a false confession at all.

It was also written that this Is a case of False-False-Confession combined with False-Accusation.

Nested-Obfuscations?

@Ergon, Peter Quennell, James Raper, Krissy G—thank all of you for making short shrift of Kassin’s error filled morass to the poor APLS. Knox is the ultimate liar so of course she inflated the time she was “interrogated”.

Then her daddy parroted her lies for her. Curt Knox ballooned the nightmare interrogation up to 52 hours ballpark figure. Ballpark is right. Ballpark means a very rough approximation, nothing too near the truth.

Then Kassin says 50 or more hours of coercive interrogation! The truth is much closer to at most 17 hours in 5 days. What is that, about 3 or 4 hours a day of interfacing with police right after a murder? How dare they inconvenience the party girl? She might miss a phone call to her coke dealer, oops I mean a lecture on Italian poetry then a stop at Bubbles and pizza with Raf.

The Knox-Kassin PR version of her horrifying interrogation: Can’t you just feel the hot lamps over her sweating head and the smoking wolfpack of cops circling?

To press her into falsehoods to close their case, that is the PR spin. It’s all bologny, more Knox style deception. The truth was as Peter said, it was learning her boyfriend had withdrawn his lying alibi for her that caused her to cave and go to Plan B: accuse somebody, anybody of the crime to distract from her stonewalling and “can’t remembers”. Solution: my boss did it, yeah, he did it, not me.

But there were no 10 or 12 police leaning on her with bared fangs when she shouted out Lumumba, but the simple Anna and Ivano Raffo (wasn’t Raffo the Aussie?) in the room with Knox at Questura.

Also she coughed up his name within 2 hours of arriving as KrissyG pinpoints. Two hours, not 12 or 50.

Two hours is not enough time for the police to have broken down an innocent honor student.

Knox’s deluded defenders propagate lies about her being given nothing to drink, but even Knox refutes this with mention of her hot tea and snacks.

As James Raper says some of the general questioning over the 5 days after Meredith’s dead body was discovered (as Quennell shows, this is the same general questioning done to Sophie Purton and many of the people and friends who knew things about Meredith at the time of her death. It is not to be confused with serious police interrogation, but Knox has exaggerated and conflated the two types of questioning to come up with a humongus figure of long hours browbeaten and coerced)...but some of the general questioning was not even done inside the police station but on a trip back to the cottage.

And as Raper eloquently implies, it is odd that Knox resented being at the police’s beck and call for a few days to help them find her friend’s murderer, when Knox later claims she stayed in town for that very purpose, “to help the police”. Yet when they did want her at the police station to help them, suddenly it was talk to the hand.

And the only two true interrogations were with Mignini, at Knox’s request.

The other discussions and investigative questioning were stressful but to be expected. After all, she did live in the room near the dead victim, in the same house.

This post by Ergon tremendously clears the air after the hopefully not too naive APLS had to sit through a very prejudiced Kassin-Knox account of Knox’s police ordeal.

This website shows the true scope of Kassin’s error. Knox will lie like a rug and anybody who believes her hysterical account of interrogation tortures and sufferings at the hands of police, is easily deceived.

The post and comments were like the cream of truth rising to the top. It felt good to be a cat to cream this morning, to read such clear reasoning supported by real facts which cut through the Knox fabrications and her trained monkeys’ PR magic show.

Thanks for solid insight.

A very clear article with brilliant, well reasoned, insightfully worded comments. I’d echo Hopeful’s sentiments entirely about being the cat getting to the cream this morning. Stunning stuff. Take a bow everyone.

When undoubtedly bright people like Kassin and Gill pin their colours so firmly to the mast of the tramp steamer SS Poxy Knoxy, I can only imagine that it is fear of the opprobrium that would be heaped upon them that prevents them from confessing “I was duped”.

Maybe they would view it as professional suicide or maybe they genuinely haven’t read sites like this splendid one to get an alternative viewpoint. I’m probably being too kind; I’m sure they must know she’s guilty by now.

The other very obvious common denominator with the Knox fanboys is middle aged, not very good looking males. Think Gill, Kassin, Fischer, Moore, Sforza et al. This type seems to be particularly beguiled by the once pretty, and excessively easy to lay, siren’s call. T’was ever thus and ‘twill ever be.

The next Sollecito-Gumbel hearing is scheduled for April 28.

Thanks for the heads up about the Sollecito/Gumbel hearing Ergon.

Papa Sollecito must rue the day he ever brought his brat into the world as no doubt he will be saddled with the ongoing legal costs of his errant man child.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that the good doctor has changed his will at some point to reflect the fact that young stabby has already had his share of the pie whilst papa is still alive.

Got to wonder if grandma’s house has already been sold by knife boy under duress from his daddy?

A boy who should have been set up for life now increasingly looks like he could face extended austerity for the rest of his miserable existence. My heart bleeds.

It is impossible to me that a professor could still believe her when articles such as the one here are easily available.
Perhaps, as David Mulhern has already said, he can’t say he was duped.

“It is impossible to me that a professor could still believe her”...

It is rather easy and common. Many common tricksters perform well in presence of scientists but refuse to repeat in presence of magicians…

There was an Israeli (I am forgetting the name; it is somewhat old) who could bend iron rods (or something like that) using psychic power and rather respectable scientists were the first to be duped…

Most of us (another professor here speaks) are pretty orthodox in our outlook and refuse to update with new evidences.

Sad but true.

We are just ordinary people with a different designation. It does not make the professor a superman.

Happy Easter, happy resurrection. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace and life. Jesus our hope forever, He made a way.

@davidmulhern, your comment on Sollecito’s finances is astute. It was only his dad’s deep pockets that pulled Raffaele out of a horrible pit. A fortune that might have built a great future for their only son and brought real honour to their family.

It’s a shame, a real loss and who is to blame? their dolt of a son or the madwoman he fell in love with? Two wrongs don’t make a right, one folly led right to the next and the snowball effect when the Sollecitos decided to defend their guilty son in the name of honour.

Raf put his family in that impossible position. A parent’s love was showered on the undeserving one. We can understand that while seeing how shortsighted it was. Has it made Sollecito a better person or a more intransigent liar and hostile rebel, fighting for all the wrong causes like his Seattle doppleganger? 

Raf claims to be 400,000 euros in debt from the strain of protecting his honour and his girlfriend in the courts. Not to mention what was spent on his defense. There went a few Ferraris. But hey, he got to Burning Man.

Truth is strangely more economical and produces better results. It’s foolish to educate a rebel, Papa Sollecito now understands that Proverb. The Yale school of hard knocks gave Raf his degree, cost: over a million dollars. That’s a lot of X-rays, blood tests, incisions and surgeries Dr. Sollecito had to make trying to find Raf’s brain.

Father and son went on a tremendously painful journey together, to what end? No doubt they are fused together from it, but like Amanda the ones close to her are forced to compromise truth and accept many lies to stay near the quirky one. James the guitar player and Colin the ghost hunter are both history. Greta the airline hostess and the American woman Raf wanted to marry for a green card, are all history.

Now Raf has moved to Parma, a little closer to the Swiss border in case he ever has to make another run for it.

Will Raffaele continue to parade his lies through life? He knows exactly what happened to Meredith Kercher, every detail of her death, none of which he has told the truth about.

@DavidB.  I guess once Kassin and Moore were roped in to Knox’s perverse agenda, they couldn’t bear to admit their faux pas. Now they know how Raffaele feels. Maybe they want to identify with him.

I’m in good Easter mood, will share silly cat jokes: what did the moggie put in his drink? mice cubes. What did the cat say to his sweetie? Furred time’s a charm.

I hope you are all feline fine today.

Hi Chami

Well the simple answer is ‘Because they want to believe’
People, some of them well meaning I’m sure, want to believe in Donald Trump. But then only in the USA does the majority believe in Angels, even in spite of the fact that they don’t even know where their county line is.

This is the same as US/Cdn racism. Racists don’t believe they are racist because they don’t understand what it means. They simply follow the same old status quo.

People believe Knox is innocent because they can’t be bothered to evaluate anything. They just want to be left alone to enjoy their football and not think about anything which is a sad commentary upon human intelligence.

In order to understand this better, check out such things as the infamous WallMart Nation.

“Well the simple answer is ‘Because they want to believe’”

I wished it is as simple.

Donald Trump won the election, right? He has the majority support. And I think people really believe him- at least what he said and promised.

We are only 4 times in population but we have dozens of Donald Trumps here in India. And they have a big fan base. Somewhere the faith in the person trumps your own sense of rationalism and logic.

Racism? We are number one there too. I have witnessed, during the last 50 years, how this nation has evolved. But then the rest of the world has also moved. Perhaps we are too close to each other for comfort.

‘Knox is innocent’ is now a cult; it has gone beyond logic and science. It is no more a topic for debate.

Because they do not understand themselves.

REVEALED: How Trump is ‘very upset’ with ‘ungrateful’ Amanda Knox after he supported her innocence and donated money to her defense fund…  This is April 18, 2017 headline in The Daily Mail online.

It seems a Mr. Guido Lombardi who owns an apartment in Trump Tower and is a neighbor of President Trump, says that Trump is “very upset” that the ungrateful Knox “had publicly endorsed his opponent, Clinton, for the presidency.” Keep in mind that Trump is angry about Knox’s PUBLIC endorsement. No doubt he would agree Knox has every right to vote for whoever she deems fit, as I agree she does.

Trump long ago tweeted in support of Knox’s innocence. He urged sanctions against Italy if she went to jail.

“Knox wrote that Trump had donated money to her defense fund when she and her family were strapped for cash, but she endorsed Clinton because of her views on abortion” to quote Daily Mail, and women’s reproductive rights.

Knox says, “Politics is not a tit-for-tat game. It’s not: I helped you, now you help me. Only in Banana Republics do rich political leaders dole out favors in exchange for your silence and your vote.”

Knox noted that while Trump was correct in his belief in her innocence, he has maintained that the teens arrested in the Central Park Five case were guilty even though authorities acknowledged that they were wrongfully imprisoned.—Daily Mail

Knox said, “Like some of my supporters, Trump had his own ideas and his own way. He called for the U.S. to sanction Italy until they released me—a pronouncement which only amplified anti-American sentiment towards me in the courtroom.”

She continues, “Even if Trump means well, his schemes tend to be blunt, selfish, and short-sighted rather than nuanced, empathetic, and thought through.”

Wow! just wow! It seems to me it is Knox who did not recognize the nuance in Trump’s message or Mr. Guido Lombardi’s message. My interpretation is that Trump is angry that Knox PUBLICLY endorsed his opponent. He may believe Knox has the right to her secret ballot and to vote for anybody she chooses, but to rise up and draw attention to PUBLICLY being against his candidacy after he had poured money into her hands and declared her innocent (perhaps heavy handed with the wild call for sanctions against Italy, but obviously an enthusiastic supporter of Amanda Knox), it is the public aspect and the high profile attempt to cause him to lose the election, that he has every right to find fault with. Knox turned on him, just like she turned on Meredith who was good to her. She had every right to vote for Hillary Clinton, but she chose to slap Trump in the face in the process. I bet he has fully reconsidered her “innocence” if character is any clue.

And it seems that Knox is more “blunt, selfish, and short-sighted” than Trump in how she used her voting rights. Even if you don’t support Trump’s party or his politics, you may understand his frustration and disappointment at her PUBLIC cry for his downfall.

Hi Hopeful

Yes, long rumored. Also rumored that maybe $2 million was spread around to ease her passage out of Italy - conceivable she does not know all about that.

So Trump was unwittingly in bed with Hillary and later John Kerry - as well as in bed with the Sollecito arm of the mafia. I can imagine Trump getting more ticked off if all that becomes known to him. 😊

Hint…. We’d sure like to see the messages between the Rome Embassy and the State Department which were previously refused to Andrea Vogt under a Freedom of Information request.

As for politics, I’ve seen close-up so many of these leaders of all flavors and I’m iffy re all of them. Frankly none are competent at growth & development method because that is not their background.

Trump clearly has some small knack for “seeing” value and putting better systems in place but so far we see little connecting of the dots at a macro level in those zones.  Besides Trump only knows well several legacy industries where value is fading with oversupply and sharp elbows are the rule.

Trump seems defensive re Silicon Valley and its value streaks. Numerous US billionaires in the fast-value-adding sectors (Gates, Buffet, Bezos of Amazon, Zuckerberg of Facebook, Page & Brin of Google, Musk of Tesla) began their ascent long after Trump did - and are now worth 10-20 times what Trump is worth.

The difference is, Trump inherited the business.  His father was the brains behind the Trump empire.

Agreed, Krissy. He took over a biz worth maybe $280 million at 28, when his father was forced by anti-discrimination laws into adopting a low profile. (Fred then suffered for years with dementia.)

The amount of real value Trump has created looks to be minuscule, possibly negative, as is too often the case with 2nd generation wealthy.

And legacy industries for the most part generate little or no value (or negative value) as correctly defined (you will know what that is!).

Of course Goldman Sachs which peopled the Cabinet makes much of its income from mergers, themselves notorious value destroyers.

PS As I have said before though, kudos to Trump for dragging a real problem of growth into the light.

One only has to drive around the US to see so much decay - partly admittedly because the country is so large and there’s no incentive to clean up before moving on.

There IS a way to give everybody hope, but they need to come together into purposeful groups and one needs uniters with all the right knowhow for that.

Good news is the knowhow is all here - literally in my case, NYC has evolved all the value and systems and process knowhow to get the job done (and it has the UN).

But Washington DC really does not - and it wont happen anyway top-down.

Hi Chami

On your first (academics) comment above. No need for the flagellation! You perhaps know my response!

A university (like the numerous UN agencies) is essentially a large system-development and system-spreading device.

Medical systems, law systems, engineering systems, botanical systems, financial systems, on and on.

Many or most academics have pressures to stand out, and so they head to conferences as Kassin does to spread their personal system flavor of the month.

Kassin is not out there selling Knox innocence, he probably doesnt give a damn.

He is out there selling system knowhow and in his professional field trying to put himself at the top of the heap.

In general, such forays outside academia are not altogether bad, but there should be peer-group monitoring, not only in the schools but also on the outside. (Here Kassin has avoided both.)

We are a sort of peer group on the outside.  We have already forced some false gods into silence - and are still building a lot of power to face others down.

Right?!

*********

Coming next. Knox as a systems problem from cradle to where she is now… Kidding, but think through Knox’s life and how many sub-optimal systems enabled her to head the wrong way.

Here is one university-related that she actually caused to be put right.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/cutting_through_the_confusion_over_knoxs_status_in_perugia/

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/and_now_an_excellent_report_by_andrea_vogt_on_the_university_of_washin/

Where next:

Or to next entry Why Did The Mainstream Media Enable A Takeover By The Conspiracy Nuts?

Or to previous entry Exposing Peter Gill #2: Nailing His “Proven Miscarriage Of Justice” False Claim