Costa Concordia captain convicted in deadly shipwreck

[brooklynite]

Source: CNN

Ship's Captain Francesco Schettino has been found guilty of manslaughter and other charges related to the January 2012 shipwreck of the Costa Concordia, an Italian judge announced Wednesday night.

The way prosecutors tell it, Francesco Schettino is an "idiot" who is not only to blame for the crash of the Costa Concordia, but who abandoned ship like a coward, ahead of most of his passengers.

The way his attorneys tell it, Schettino is a "scapegoat" who isn't responsible for the accident, having fallen into the lifeboat that carried him to shore only after losing his balance when the ship tilted.

It's now up to a three-judge panel to decide who they believe.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/11/world/costa-concordia-trial/index.html

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"Fallen into the lifeboat"...points for originality

[Kelvin Mace]

1. Damned inconvenient those recordings

of him being a complete and utter coward.

[FLPanhandle]

6. Yep.

Easiest trial ever.

[Skittles]

2. LOL, he "fell into a lifeboat"

how CONVENIENT

[Kelvin Mace]

3. I am confused

The headline says "convicted" but the story says the judges haven't made a decision.

Huh?

[JustAnotherGen]

4. It's the Italian Justice System

Had to learn this stuff as part of citizenship process. You are are guilty if accused/arrested. This judge has said - guilty and stupid. The three now deliberate.

Basically he has to prove he's not guilty of being stupid.

[Kelvin Mace]

5. You live in Italy?

[JustAnotherGen]

8. My husband is from there

We have two places in Calabria - then he put his Firenze flat in my name. Doesn't trust some of his cousins to not riff me should he dies before me. So citizenship and my own place would give me some weight.

We plan on spending summers in Calabria and winters in Costa Rica when we retire. Even bought out our plots in the tomb in Acri already so we are with all of his family.

[Kelvin Mace]

9. Nice, Italy is beautiful

but a mixed blessing politically. I lived in Ticino (Muralto) when I was a kid but only visited as far South as Milan. How long have you lived there?

[JustAnotherGen]

10. No I'm writing from NJ

Got married in 2012. He has to do business/family next week for a few days. Me? Not so much. Huge layoffs at the mother ship that isn't making the news and I'm trying to learn two other peoples' jobs by the 27th. We might gotto Firenze in mid April.

Were you in Italy as a military family?

I was in W Germany when I was a little kid.

[Kelvin Mace]

11. Switzerland actually

Ticino is the only Italian speaking canton. We went there to live with my aunt (who was married to a Swiss national) after my father died. I lived there fot two years and have very fond memories of both countries.

[JustAnotherGen]

12. It gives you a different perspective

And it makes you "care" about the rest of the world when you live abroad as a child.

I've posted before - Growing up in the 1970's in Germany - I didn't know older and elderly white people could be prejudiced.

It's when we moved to Western NY in the late 1970's that I learned that lesson.

[Kelvin Mace]

13. Learning another language also helps

It gives you two ways to see/interpret the world (my aunt speaks four, and most Swiss speak three). My father was from West Virginia, my mother was from Dublin, so it was a very eccentric cultural experience. Add to that that he was a Methodist and she was Catholic (he converted to marry her which did NOT go down well with his side of the family, about as well as my Mom marrying a "hillbilly" went down with her VERY Catholic and upper middle class family) and it made for an interesting music collection.

After my father died, things were very rough financially, and we had to rent the cheapest place we could find on literally "the wrong side of the tracks" in the "wrong side" of town. My mother who had never met a black person in her life had ZERO prejudices on the issue and had no observations about them other than they "talked funny" (which is how they viewed her, having, I am sure, never met some one from Ireland). Since my mother didn't drive, we walked everywhere, and the neighbors started giving us ride to church and the grocery store, which SCANDALIZED the white populace.

Ah, small town life in Virgina.

[Trajan]

7. The discussion between the Italian Coast Guard and 'Shittino' were priceless

What an embarrassment to the world's maritime community ... What an arse ....