Sunday, September 09, 2007

Does anybody know WTF this is really all about?

Holiday time, of course, runs at a different rate to normal time and it’s easy to return after a trip with a subconscious expectation that things will have moved on a lot more than they have

After a couple of weeks away from the UK and UK news it was kind of depressing to come home and see this story still plastered all over the newspapers…



It’s all a bloody game isn’t it?

Without attempting to trivialise the probable death of a small child there's something much more peculiar going on here

An awful lot of time and space has been devoted in the media and blogs to the ins and outs of what may have happened the night Madeleine McCann disappeared and the behaviour of her parents



A much, much smaller amount of time has been devoted to trying to understand the forces and objectives behind the enormously overblown and seemingly irrational Find Madeleine campaign – the fund raising, the professional spokespeople, the ribbons, the balloons, the limited companies, the gushing and perplexingly uncritical media coverage, the corporate tie-ins, the spooky government involvement, the Pope…




This is an astonishingly well-resourced, well-supported, well-managed, cross-media campaign. A campaign that has attempted, sometimes successfully, to generate low-level mass hysteria in certain target groups in the population




Just one small question...

Why?

It’s not about finding a lost kid is it?

.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Portugal's tourism industry is where everyone should be looking.

You can bet that they contributed a large amount to the 'Find Madeleine' campaign and now, via government departments, they are now the ones putting pressure on the police to close the case.

If they can get just a small confession, we can all go home and British families are safe to come to Portugal for their holidays again. Because it wasn't a pedophile network, it was the parents/an accident.

Anonymous said...

You'll have missed this week's Any Questions then? Meeja barons Greg Dyke and Kelvin McKenzie wailing about the merest possibility that the great British press might have been wrong about this all the time, and how all of us evil people on cyberspace need to be ashamed of ourselves?

Marvellous stuff. Do the 'listen again' thing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/anyquestions.shtml

Stef said...

@b

I did miss it, thx for the link

Stef said...

@alex

That line of thinking doesn't even start to explain the shady involvement of Clarence Mitchell from the UK government's Media Monitoring Unit...

http://tinyurl.com/38ddlk

nor does it explain the utterly uncharacteristic 'gloves on' approach of our media

I believe a good portion of the anger and venom being directed by ordinary people in the direction of the McCanns is more to do with a reaction to the skewed, manipulative coverage than the perceived sins of the McCanns themselves

Shahid said...

Welcome back Stef.

Elmer Quigley Gooseburger said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Elmer Quigley Gooseburger said...

I'll try that again. :-)

Yes, welcome back Stef (and thanks for the most welcome link).

You ask (rhetorically, of course) if it's just about finding a lost kid.

This guy seems pretty clued up and probably knows more than he hints at; my own suspicions centre on the microchipping all people / children agenda.

Anonymous said...

"there's something much more peculiar going on here" and "A campaign that has attempted, sometimes successfully, to generate low-level mass hysteria in certain target groups of the population."

The continued presentation of only one of many competing hypotheses has generated a cult atmosphere in the UK. Many people have made an emotional investment in the subjective reality of "snatched-child / grieving-parents." As to what will happen when or if this subjective reality doesn't correlate with the discovery of an objective reality of what occurred will be very interesting to see. As a taster, the work of Robert Balch may be of interest. He studied how a cult behaved when its leader's predictions didn't come to pass as and when predicted.

Stef said...

@shahid - hello

@b - just listened to Any Questions ... marvelous stuff indeed

@elmer q - that's some fine work you're doing there and well worth a linky. Thanks for pointing me towards that guy's blog ... as you say, remarkably clued-up

eeore said...

I know oyu shouldn't laugh but you do have to love photoshop :)

Anonymous said...

I'm with elmer on this one. I think theres some element of various parties exploiting this story as part of a 'long game' to create an atmosphere conducive enough for them to start floating the microchipping idea. This is where they'll start, the elderely, the mentally ill, vulnerable children. Then of course 'well why not just tag everyone'?

I think we're a long way from that but the ground is been laid.

Anonymous said...

Realizing that the free at point of use babysitting service that the McCanns were offered is analogous to the all encompassing and free at point of use care in school mandatory up to the age of 18 as well as after school hours that will be foisted upon the children of hard-working parents sometime in the near future helps put things in perspective.

Not forgetting the multitude of other side-benefits, we now have thousands angry or at least perplexed at the refusal of the McCanns to use the free crèche service that was offered. The McCanns' knowingly being part of a PsyOp better explains all the discrepancies in the story, the odd way in which they court publicity as though it is an ends in itself rather than merely being the means to find their daughter; as well as their accommodation being outside of the WB complex, which allows them the use of PR consultants Bell Pottinger (ref. http://tinyurl.com/374vwy)

Anonymous said...

Bell Potinger - the same PR firm that represented lovable mass murderer Pinochet. And apparently had a hand in getting the Saudi Arms deal investigation dropped. And were behind the Litvinenko photos - no doubt unrelated to Lord Bells close friendship with Russian criminal Boris Berezovsky.

Good to see only the best lying bastards for the McCann's!

Tony said...

WTF this is all about? How about this:

Present-day global capitalism took hold when its advocates learned to exploit disasters. After a disaster (war, tsunami, terrorist attack), you can push your agenda for worsening labor conditions, looser regulation, and pocket-lining exercises (Enron, Halliburton) while the reeling, disaster-struck population of the world has its attention elsewhere.

Klein attributes this technique to Milton Friedman, who is reported to have said that "only a crisis -- real or perceived -- produces real change."

Anonymous said...

Mmmm, Disaster Capitalism...

We're back onto the Catch 22 and Milo Minderbinder thread, aren't we?

It's all there in that book, I tell you.

Anonymous said...

look into my eyes....

Stef said...

cheers to everyone who has posted links - it's reassuring to know that at least some people are aware that something else might going on here

Anonymous said...

Something occurred to me today> The Langham case. If there are all these films on his computer of children being subjected to extremely sadistic sexual acts, WHY THE FUCK aren't we all, Richard Branson, Clarence Michell, the Pope, looking for them? Eh? Pfff.

And second thing, I'm sure you've all seen who's 'defending' the McCanns? The serial defender of serial killers, that's who. All of the bastards guilty, afaiia. Beeb: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6995499.stm

Sat in a hairdresser today reading all the weekend's red-tops and frothing. Sorry. It's good for you once in a while, I'm sure.

Stef said...

The bloke who cuts my hair only recently replaced a stack of dog-eared old porn mags with copies of Nuts and Loaded - all of which feature stronger editorial content than the red tops, better photography...

and less obscenity