Red, Are you now suggesting this has something to do with the hospital accident which led to a child’s death? Why was this never mentioned before in your clues?

I agree with Stevo. The numerous posts by Kris are fundamentally aimed at posters, and are personal attacks. They are not posts intended to develop a perspective on the issue.

I still think we may yet get into questions even of judicial ’sovereignty’ in the tabloids. I understood Jacqui Smith’s plea for an end to media speculation as linked to possible English exercise of jurisdiction.

But on the suggestion of high-level conspiracies, I’d take a lot of convincing. An awful lot, given what I’ve heard from another legal source.

For now I prefer a BBC (World Service!) correspondent’s characterization of the whole affair as ‘a perfect journalistic storm’, generated by a number of converging factors which nobody in particular controlled.

Just as my best guess at the core mystery itself is still cover-up to avoid autopsy (cover-up, probably of a sedation-linked death, probably associated with failed emergency medical intervention), my best guess at the wider mystery is a sort of ‘fortuitous’ (or perhaps unfortunate) convergence of several different key factors: Gerry’s psychology, foreign location, primal fears of losing a young child, the present state of the British media, the familiar ‘middle-class Catholic doctors’ stuff and a bit more.

Exactly what I thought. Goodness, how would that look next to photos of the bloody footprints the police found in the apartment and car?…. Stevo?….

ian~essex wote: ” It was rumoured early on that there was an 8th person with the McCanns and Tapas 7 that evening who was whisked away before police arrived. Who this high level person was has never been mentioned by name to my knowledge only that they are a British official with a holiday home in Malta.”

This is quite interesting indeed. Isn’t Malta the place where there were the most reported “sightings” of Madeleine? (14?) It’s also been said that Gerry is related to Gordon Brown, explaining the energetic cover-up — but just looking at Gerry , I cannot imagine even a relative risking anything to help out such a pathetic guy. So I’ve been perplexed…

But all these things, along with xenophobia and primal myths and fears, are just loosely connected elements in the McCann riddle.

Do you have some simple connected account of how this strange story has taken the mass-hysterical form it has in 2007 England?

That’s what I came here (via Google) hoping to explore a month ago, but, this virtual pub being what it is, I got mostly bogged down in the (itself fascinating) Murder Mystery, rather than its wider implications which are my main interest.

That’s peculiar. Supposedly they have been frantically running around looking. But then they feel they need some exercise? A forlorn stroll I could see, but … jogging?!

Stevo975 wrote: “Right now, for the twins’ sake I’m hoping that if Madeleine is dead then the PJ find her sooner rather than later. They do the forensics and they can pinpoint how she died and by whom.If it happens to be the parents then I hope they throw away the key.”

Though I share your sentiments, I read the recent Team McCann manipulations as indicating that the forensics will only show that Madeleine was dead and that Kate knew this. The talk of “100% DNA” becomes irrelevant when the body fluids indicate definitely a corpse, because… well, 70% or 80% DNA from a corpse means that the body was a McCann. That’s the same as 100% DNA identification of Madeleine. This is without the body. That is why Gerry has been distancing himself from Kate for quite some time — it was a contingent plan from long ago.

I think the way to go will be to prosecute for
1) unforgiveable child neglect
2) lying and defrauding the public of millions in fund-raising
3) discussing what the police asked her, with a view to discrediting them and obstructing the investigation
4) illegal disposal of a body

These charges might around ten years, but I’m not sure.

Do you think they will find the body?

On the relation to 30s Germany: when I heard American neocons a few short years ago deriding ‘reality-based’ analysts and commentators as simply recording or reacting to someone else’s ‘reality’, as opposed to ‘making new realities’, I immediately thought of very similar positions taken by Nazi ideologists like Rosenberg (Der Mythus des zwangzigsten Jahrhunderts). And around the same time I surprised myself by telling various friends in England (which I left in the mid-nineties) that in the post-9/11 Blair and his Campbell-run ‘reality machine’ we/they/you had come closer to the basic dynamics of Fascism than any previous phase of British culture.

Most of them thought I was mad.

It’s certainly been (perhaps a long-overdue) ‘tipping point’ for me, since it made me confront quite consciously for the first time (well, the propaganda leading to the Iraq invasion was a sort of preparation) the way the mainstream media work - or rather don’t - in Britain.

I suppose for far too long I somehow half-believed the naive idea that the mainstream print and broadcast media provided a (however badly) professionally edited version of something called ‘reality’ to which they had better access (with all their wonderful training and resources) than I did.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but it took this crazy charade, the ‘McCann circus’, to finally and fully lift the scales from my eyes and - as with the concurrent scandals in the British broadcast nedia - help me realize that the ‘reality’ presented to dumb consumers by these ‘channels’ of information was just a scam with a corrupt agenda unrelated to ‘truth’.

As I say, I’m really embarrassed to admit that, despite all my scepticism about so many specific cases of large-scale media misrepresentation of ‘the world’ I on some level actually knew I was living in since my distant adolescence, I really did, for so long, on a deeper level, still lug around with me the idea that mainstream media really aspired to be ‘channels of information’, however systematically distorted (by economic and political vested interests in particular).

I now fully see that these discredited hacks have just been making it all up all along.

For me, the really interesting question now, is just how and why ‘they’ do this - and whether there’s anything resembling what I used to believe in as ‘reality’ left over, once one factors out ’spin’ and distortion.

And, in relation to the new McCann religion, what precisely motivates the mass ranks of British media priests - and whether Rupert really is God.

http://www.emailaddresses.com/online_translation.htm

“Perhaps one model is something like a bar (English: ‘pub’ or ‘public house’) where one gets to know regulars, and notices occasional interesting visitors, and learns to filter all the cacophony of voices after a while, in order to abstract some personally meaningful interaction from an otherwise unmanageable babble.
The ‘learning experience’ on that level alone is a fascinating spin-off from an initially ill-defined engagement with the phenomenon.”

Murder, I think that is a very good description of what we almost have here (except rather than filtering, something like a football slagging match ensues). I too, look at forums (I’ve only been part of 2 in my life, this one included and no the other has nothing to do with the McCanns), and it is interesting just based on a group mentality (if there is an leader- head moderator, which on the other forum, there is, along with people trying to ‘win’ them over and suck up to them to no end), and really interesting how cliquey everything can become. At least, in real time, this does allow people to come in and be heard (although it doesn’t always work). Another thing I haven’t really seen here is the snobbery based on length of being a contributor. Sorry, I know that is slightly off topic, but while you look at the news aspect, I look at forums and contributors (including die hards, suck ups, and flame mongers) in a more psychological way, as these things do become a society/community with written and unwritten customs and rules. It’s very interesting, this ‘internet’!

I do have a question for you, as I understand it (which is sketchy as I’m doing some work and it’s late), you see the overall reaction of the case as being a tipping point in the new frontier. I wonder which way you think it’ll go? It seems like the papers (well tabloids), while sometimes acknowledging their part in the trouble that this case has developed into, seem to just pass the buck towards the information age and the public.