Sophisticated police investigation - Portuguese style

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'These cops framed my wife'



It could have been worse for Kate McCann. This is a photo of Leonor Silva after being interrogated by Portuguese police over another child abduction and murder, that of her nine year old daughter.

The police officer leading the McCann investigation is one of five officers investigated by Portugal’s Ministerio Publico. In June the Ministerio charged three police officers with torture, a fourth with omission of evidence and a fifth with falsification of documents. It did not reveal who had been charged with which offence.


Log jam

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I'm not one for checking my stats every 2 minutes. I usually only ever see them when I need to go under the hood at my Squarespace CMS. But today I needed to edit something in the sidebar and spotted that my unique hits were less than half what they usually are. The stats analysis was unavailable so I couldn't investigate further. I've just managed to get into the system and it shows no activity since 7am!  For some reason the system just stopped recording at breakfast time. There is nothing flagged up about it so I think I'll send support a heads-up.

As much as I like to convince myself that the numbers aren't important my heart did sink a bit when I saw the figures earlier today. What did I say? Come back? I love you all!  I admit to being relieved when I discovered it was actually a counting hitch. Phew!

I still love you all. Honest!  ;-))


Sassenachs

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Scotsman - Fury as Foulkes accuses SNP of stoking racism
One of Scotland's most senior Labour politicians was last night at the centre of a race row after accusing Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party of stoking anti-English prejudice. Lord George Foulkes first became concerned after hearing that a child of one of his constituents had suffered anti-English taunts. And after anti-English incidents during the 2006 football World Cup, Lord Foulkes is concerned that there may be problems during the rugby World Cup, which starts this weekend.
I've been living up here in Scotland for a year now. I've met some lovely people. And I haven't come across and overt prejudice personally. So, is there anti-English prejudice? You bet! It's like the racism my step-son witnessed in Louisiana a couple of years back. It comes so naturally to some people they don't even realise they are doing it. Like the guy from BT Vision who declared that he 'hated the English' while sipping a cup of tea in my sitting room. 'Really?' , I said, 'all my ancestors are Irish but I was born in London and I'm happy to call myself English'. 'Oh, I don't mean you. It's not the English people I hate, it's the government', says he. 'WHAT?'. 'But they're all fucking Scots', I said. Every time some minister opens his mouth on TV a Scots voice comes out'. And another guy who was in every other respect perfectly friendly, who said, after I referred to myself as a Cockney, 'I hate Cockneys'. You really have to hear it in his particular unattractive accent to get the full flavour of the bigotry. 'Well', I said, 'good job I'm not Jewish then, eh?'

There are plenty of other examples I could cite. You'll rarely hear the Scots refer to 'Britain'. It's Scottish Gas, The Scottish Poppy Appeal, The Scottish Society for the Protection of Animals and so on. As far as I'm concerned the sooner the Scots get independence the better. Then we will all know where we are.

Am I bothered? Let's see: I married a Black woman, I've got two mixed-race/dual heritage daughters, my grandson is a (Black) Muslim, my present wife is Italian, my parents where from Tipperary, I'm a Cockney. Am I bothered? No! I don't give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of me, wherever they come from.


Grow your own

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Hardline takeover of British mosques
Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect whose leading preacher loathes Western values and has called on Muslims to “shed blood” for Allah, an investigation by The Times has found.

Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain. The ultra-conservative movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques, according to a police report seen by The Times.

The Times investigation casts serious doubts on government statements that foreign preachers are to blame for spreading the creed of radical Islam in Britain’s mosques and its policy of enouraging the recruitment of more “home-grown” preachers.


Miner's helmets

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DIRELAND: "FREE THE BUGGERS" - Britain & the Wolfenden Report

A great piece by Doug Ireland. Some choice excerpts:
As the Great Purge continued, the Conservative government appointed a Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution. Named to head it was Sir John Wolfenden, a private school headmaster and veteran of government committees on education and youth... The government did not know, at the time of Wolfenden's appointment, that his own son, Jeremy - later a journalist and British intelligence officer in Moscow - was gay. After being named to head the committee, Wolfenden wrote to his flamboyant son insisting "1) that we stay out of each other's way for the time being; 2) that you wear rather less make-up."

When I asked ex-pat British journalist Christopher Hitchens, who was writing about politics for the left-wing weekly New Statesman at that time, about the 1967 decriminalization vote, he told me that "the man who doesn't get as much credit as he deserves for it was Wilson's Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, a very right-wing social democrat. Jenkins, who was heterosexual, didn't care about nationalization or economic matters, but he was deeply committed to three things - end the death penalty, free the buggers, and liberalize the laws on divorce and abortion."

Hitchens added, "There was tremendous opposition from the Labour members of Parliament representing the miners. In fact, Matthew Coady, the New Statesman's parliamentary correspondent, wrote a famous article for the weekly in which he denounced the miners' MPs and detailed the widespread homosexual conduct in the coal mines. And, in fact, any miners' MP who claimed he didn't know that many of the lads down in the pits were having it off with each other was telling the most gigantic fib."


Hatchet job

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Gerry and Kate McCann we know you killed Madeleine we just don't know how

More poisonous and libellous outpourings from that cretinous little killer, John Hirst and his pathetic followers.

The McCanns must be guilty because they have hired a top lawyer!

'I question why someone who is only a so-called witness in the case would need a lawyer?' asks the great legal brain.

Well, I think if I was a 'witness' under Portugese law and was subjected to 11 hours of interrogation I would rather like to have the services of a 'top lawyer' too. Perhaps, when this is all over, the McCanns might decide to sue the likes of Chopper Hirst. Who knows, if it happens The Axeman might feel the need to hire a lawyer himself, which would surely prove his guilt, no?

CUNT!

UPDATE:

Kate McCann has been formally declared a suspect by the Keystone Portuguese cops. Not, in itself, particularly significant but given the clear incompetence of these goons a tad worrying. There are now two formal suspects completely unrelated to each other. Where are the results from the 'blood' found in the bedroom, or the stranger 's DNA found in the apartment?

The Portuguese police are under a huge media spotlight and desperate to come up with something, anything. That is never a recipe for good investigation or good justice. Meanwhile, It's almost certain that poor Madelaine McCann's remains are rotting away in some remote area of Portugal.


Is it a bird? Is it a plane? ...

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New Statesman - Citizen's advice

There is a growing excitement... around the idea of a "super-blog", first mooted by Sunny Hundal of Pickled Politics

As Brown prepares for his first conference as leader, he has every reason to be optimistic. The polls are largely good (even if the "bounce" appears to be weakening) and his party is united behind him. And, more importantly, the left is brimming with new thinking for the first time in years. There are already signs that a political coalition is developing around Brown far wider than anything Blair could have imagined. Even in the anarchy of cyberspace, progressive bloggers are beginning to coalesce around a left-liberal consensus beyond the divisions caused by the Iraq War. There is a growing excitement, for instance, around the idea of a "super-blog", first mooted by Sunny Hundal of the Asian website Pickled Politics, to promote ideas that will help keep the Tories out of power at the next election.
Via PP

Maybe Martin Bright is easily excitable. He claims 'there are signs that a new politics is beginning to emerge' but where exactly? Brown was central to the New Labour agenda and is more authoritarian in his makeup than Blair could ever be. Superblogs and Super New Improved Politics coming soon?

Don't hold your breath.


Missing, believed foreign

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If Stones Could Float: The British Press and the Turks and Caicos Boat Disaster
The night after the world’s most visible missing person (Madeleine McCann) vanished, early on 4 May 2007, at least 80 other people disappeared when a boat sank in the Caribbean. This time British authorities were directly involved in the disaster, and there is good reason to suspect that the deaths may have been the result of criminal negligence, if not of deliberate police violence.

Some of the dead were eaten by sharks; many were women and children. A UK government enquiry is currently underway and the publication of its final report is due in August. It doesn’t take much effort to imagine how the media might have reacted if the victims of such a calamity had themselves been British. The disappearance of even a single white yachtsman is always guaranteed a certain amount of press coverage. But what if the dead are poor and black? What if they come from a place like Haiti? How many stones might we expect newspapers like the Guardian or Independent to overturn in their coverage of such a story?
Via Lenin