Part Of Meredith’s Emerging Legacy?  A Kind, Caring, Safe, Well-Run Perugia



Meet Wladimiro Boccali. The mayor of Perugia.

A year ago when Mr Boccali ran for office (video above) it was in the context of a city-wide desire for prosperity, public safety, support for the police and the court system, the enhancement of Perugia’s reputation, and the clamping down on drug dealing and student excesses.

A mood that very much flowed from the shock of Meredith’s passing. A sense that certain things had gone too far.

Since then, Mr Boccali has been in the Italian national news almost daily, and he is coming to be seen as the kind of political leader Italy could really use in a turbulent future.

He is in the news again right now, because there was a riot in the main piazza of the old city by some drunks late last saturday night. 

In part inspired and encouraged by good town leadership, Perugia’s economy is now one of the more thriving city economies in Italy. Perugia’s median IQ is extremely high (Perugia is probably one of the smartest cities in Europe) and a lot of very advanced research goes on there.

Perugia’s town administration does many caring things, such as the special city council meeting for Sonia Marra.

And seemingly attracted by all of this, people are moving to Perugia in droves - its population is increasing at double the national growth rate.

So. Meet the new Perugia. Meredith’s own qualities, writ large.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 04/09/10 at 02:45 PM in

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4/9/10
Good, may Perugia prosper. Bravo Mr. Boccali.

Posted by Hopeful on 04/09/10 at 11:53 PM | #

It’s a bitter-sweetness that something good can come out of Meredith and Sonia Marra’s tragic fates.

Posted by mortytoad on 04/10/10 at 04:07 AM | #

A quick update on where we stand with regard to the posting. The sentencing report is grabbing most of our attention, and it is almost entirely translated now and is being very, very carefully fact-checked and edited. An amazing work of love by the translators in Europe, the US, and Australia. And a stunning confirmation of the rightness of putting AK and RS away.

Main posts coming up next on TJMK hopefully all of them in this week are:

1) A post on one of the most biased reporters, probably even more misleading and nastier than the hapless Nina Burleigh. No prizes for guessing who.

2) The extraordinary three-hour three-part broadcasts in Italian on the case, on the TV program Porta a Porta. All of the defense lawyers and Maresca and Patrick Lumumba participated. We have the video files and will upload them for our many Italian speakers to download and follow.

3) A very long post (as in verrrry long, our longest ever) analysing the kabuki dance between the lawyers for the three, which began even before Rudy was hauled back from Germany.

Do the defense lawyers all believe their clients are innocent? Wildly improbable. But you can soon decide.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 04/13/10 at 05:51 PM | #

Peter,

I agree with Giselle1403, re:
“send the translation of the Massei Report with the important parts highlighted to Oprah. I have heard that she very much hates being misinformed…”

I, too, have heard that Oprah makes a big deal of errors made by her fact checkers.  It would be one way of getting the truth out there.

Posted by Mo-in-Mass.,USA on 04/14/10 at 01:17 PM | #

Hi Giselle and Mo. Thank you for a great idea. We will do that, of course.

The sentencing report should be both readable online and downloadable on both PMF and TJMK in a few days.  We’d had in mind to email the addresses for the report in English to all the relevant media.

But not till you suggested it did we think of taking it to Oprah Winfrey directly. As you say, that could pay off very big.

I regret now not flying to Chicago and seeing Oprah’s people before her program with AK’s family and Ted Simon aired. I had the opportunity. One of her producers called and asked some questions and wanted an okay to use some images from TJMK. She was very nice, and showed much sympathy for Meredith’s family, but she was not obviously up to speed.

Typically when we put up a hard post critical of a journalist or reporter (think Machine on John Q Kelly or Nina Burleigh) there is no public recanting from them. But they usually do go quiet from that point on, and one or two have got in touch, in a nice enough way.

Only one squealed publicly, the hapless Steve Shay of the West Seattle Herald, who doesn’t seem to give a damn about Meredith’s family and friends: . 

Shay obviously neither understands TJMK nor the case, nor checks his facts, nor seeks any balance in his pieces. But he and his paper are struggling, so for the most part we let them be.

Last week, Shay quoted the Knox apologist Bruce Fisher, who runs a xenophobic, wildly inaccurate and probably libelous FOA hate site which is particularly fictional on Mignini (we thought the new Knox-family lawyer Ted Simon had reigned in such things - they do great harm to their cause in Italy and are very hurtful to Meredith’s family and her friends) to the effect that TJMK is…  a hate site!

Steve Shay did not ask us for a balancing comment.  He simply quoted without question Bruce Fisher. We thereupon received a bunch of readers of the West Seattle Herald over here, trying hard to find the claimed hate.

Several emailers rather sarcastically even asked where it was.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 04/14/10 at 03:51 PM | #

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