A FOAF Told Me That There's An Angry Panda Out There

If you remember, Panda left a couple of comments in our "Colouring Hats With A Crayon" post.

This one,

“Panda has left a new comment on your post "Colouring Hats With A Crayon":

Just to clarify matters, I did not say I sat next to Mrs Fenns friend,

I said I sat next to a Lady who was a friend of Mrs Fenn.

Posted by Panda to Textusa at Feb 11, 2012 1:21:00 PM”

and this one:

“Panda has left a new comment on your post "Colouring Hats With A Crayon":

Textusa, how dare you snoop on MM copy lots of posts single me out for

dissection and be wrong without a word of apology,!!!!

You really are a vicious person and

I would say I feel sorry for you but I don't. You must be very sad to stoop to the kind of blogging you do.

Posted by Panda to Textusa at Feb 11, 2012 7:28:00 PM”

First, I would like to address my apologies to Panda.

You see, that “not-so-innocent-SIC-Psychic-whatchmacallit” thing has diverted lately our attention away from you.

It almost seemed like we did a “hit-and-run” kind of post, and that just isn’t our style or attitude towards the issues we address.

Panda, please accept our sincere apologies for this one unexpected but explicable delay.

We know it isn’t the sort of apologies you demanded, but about those, we’ll speak about it later.

Let us clarify that we don’t “pick” on people. We, however, feel compelled to expose all tactics that we detect and which we deem relevant, and that are perpetrated by people such as you, in all this humongous effort of disinformation that has involved the Maddie Affair, from the very first minute the unfortunate child lost her life.

So yes, whenever we find an enforcer of such disinformation techniques, we will single out the person, or persona, as is your case, out, be it you or anyone else.

Of course, as you might imagine, we don’t “shoot” on sight. There's always the right and adequate timing to expose who we feel should be exposed. Your time came, because you did present "new evidence", that paramount concept which we've all failed to grasp to date as to what it exactly means, but were told, that it's like a magical wand that will allow the case to be reopened.

We know that it would be sufficient for the McCanns to request such, but, apparently, they seem not inclined to do that... go wonder.

Other wolves in sheep's clothing will just have to wait a little bit more for their turn...

But let’s get back to the subject, shall we? The thing about the “friend of Mrs Fenn friend” you mentioned.

I’m afraid that instead of making things right, it seems that, thanks to you, things have taken a turn for the worse... for you.

Let’s start on how confused I am by what you’ve said.

In your comment t at MMF you say, as said, “friend of Mrs Fenn friend”.

In comment referred above, you correct this statement with an “I did not say I sat next to Mrs Fenns friend. I said I sat next to a Lady who was a friend of Mrs Fenn.”

Isn’t that what we just said in the post?

Edna Glyn, the, and we’re just quoting you here, “Lady who was a friend of Mrs Fenn”? Or is there any other Lady who’s a friend of Mrs Fenn, referred in the various fora about Maddie, besides Edna that we aren’t aware of?

If so, do please correct us that we will provide you, immediately, with all the apologies you so much seek, even demand.

Now, do allow me to turn to our readers. They, unlike you, don’t pretend that they don’t understand what I write, nor whine about the quantity of wording I tend to use. A nasty habit of mine, I’m afraid.

And I could write much about what Panda did write and what she really was meaning to write, but as Panda says, I’m a mean (or is it vicious?) person, so I’ll just assume that the typo in Panda’s comment at MMF is not the double use of the word friend.

I’ll assume, as I think was her intention that she indeed wanted to write “friend of Mrs Fenn’s friend”. Lady X, a friend of Edna Glyn. Edna Glyn, Mrs Fenn’s friend.

The storyline then becomes the following: Mrs Fenn hears a child cry, Mrs Fenn then calls Edna who isn’t surprised, Edna calls/speaks to, we don’t know how or when, Lady X, the “Lady friend of Mrs Fenn’s friend”, and Lady X then talks to Panda, a total stranger who, by coincidence, has sat next to her on an airplane trip to Gatwick.

According to Panda, Lady X seems to know a lot about the going-ons of the Maddie Affair, more precisely in the OC in PdL.

Lady X even knows, according to Panda, that the “the Ocean Staff had called out the McCanns from the Tapas Bar more than once because of children crying in 5a”.

This means that Lady X knows that Mrs Fenn’s complaint about a child crying in the McCanns apartment was not a single occurrence. According to Lady X, it did happen more than once.

Pity Mrs Fenn does forget to mention this rather important fact in her statement. But, as we all were able to read, Panda has assured us of that Lady X knows.

What we don’t know is how Lady X comes to know about this.

According to Panda, Lady X lives in Faro. Faro is almost about 70 km from PdL. It has the big cities of Lagos, Portimão and Albufeira, not to speak of others as Armacao de Pera, between them. Not exactly around the corner, is it?

Now, how does someone who lives so far gets to know what the OC Staff has done or not done about the McCanns and their crying children, while the PJ, in PdL, don’t have a clue?

It seems then that this popular topic of conversation all over the Algarve fails to reach the PJ ears.

The OC Staff were apparently telling this to everyone, all the way to Faro at least, but not to the PJ.

And who, besides the PJ, was singled out by the OC Staff not to share this information with?

Mrs Fenn, of course. They did forget to tell her, didn’t they? Otherwise she would have remembered this in her statement, wouldn’t she?

What?

Oh, silly me! You’re absolutely right! The OC didn’t tell her because she would be the first to know about the multiple crying episodes, wouldn’t she?

As the upstairs neighbour, she would be the one who would’ve reported the repeated cries, wouldn’t she?

So, did Lady X get to know from Edna, who in turn got to know from Mrs Fenn that the crying episode happened more than once?

So why does Lady X say it was the Ocean Staff that had called out the McCanns from the Tapas Bar, instead of saying that Mrs Fenn had complained other times?

Or, let me guess, Mrs Fenn did hear repeatedly cries, but told the PJ about only this one instance so that she wouldn’t smear too much the McCann’s name… that must have been it.

But then, why bother to go to the PJ at all? After 109 days? Why not just remain in silence instead of reporting a single event, when there were others to be reported too?

So it remains important for SY to call in Edna Glyn. It apparently seems to be a fact that the complaints about children crying were many, and not just that one instance told by Mrs Fenn. Mrs Fenn doesn’t mention them in her statement, and this should be definitely clarified.

Edna Glyn is either to say what she knows about these repeated crying episodes, or, if she doesn’t know anything about it, help identify who this Lady X can be, a person that is saying that she's, allegedly, her friend and is talking about such relevant clues about the case to strangers.

Or maybe there's a direct connection that we don't know of, between Lady X, or Edna Glyn for that matter, and the OC Staff, which Panda doesn't tell us, and we have no way of finding out... but if it that was so, why bring up Mrs Fenn name at all? 

Is that important? About Mrs Fenn, it is, yes, and about Edna Glyn too. But the post is not about either of them. It’s about Panda and Lady X, two travel companions, although strangers to one another.

We maintain all said in the "Colouring Hats With A Crayon" post. We continue to say that it isn’t hearsay, but that it’s Panda clearly saying what she heard Lady X say, and not what she hears Lady X saying it’s being said, one huge and very important difference.

You see, what we are before here, my dear friends, is the most basic of all misinformation tools: the FOAF.

This is so much used, that I even dare ask all readers, s/he who hasn’t used it at one time or another in their lives please do cast the first stone.

I, for one, will remain motionless.

What is a FOAF?

It’s something we heard from a Friend-Of-A-Friend. You know, when you hear say "I have this friend who knows this person that..." You can add as many "OAFs" to the FOAF as you like. From a FOAF to FOAFOAFOAF...

Familiar isn't it? That’s how most Urban Myths are born and kept alive.

I’ll give you an example, very recently used in a comment in Joana Morais's blog about our Desperate Disinformation post: “Now seriously, I happen to know someone who works for SIC and who knows someone (technical staff) who knows someone who was involved with the programme so I am in a position (fingers crossed) to explain what happened. My source told me that...”

Remember that? What a classic text-book FOAF that one was!

Yes, we’ve all used FOAFs one time or another. All are meant to misinform, in some way or another.

It allows us to ad lib a story up a bit. “He who tells a tale, adds a detail”…

And mind you, taking out most of the Urban Myths of the equation, most FOAFs are about 70% to 80% true. It's just when that bit of creativity, that, when exaggerated, makes the whole thing just be ridiculous,

Most are “innocent”, even inoffensive FOAFs, you know, those that just serve to magnify the importance of the storyteller.

But then there are very serious and intentionally harmful FOAFs.

Panda uses a FOAF (a friend of a friend of Mrs Fenn tells her that...), from it abusively reaches conclusions in which the following argumentation is based upon this "certified" source. This is far from being inoffensive, and much less innocent.

Back to you Panda, I do agree with you, that apologies are in order. Not from me to you, because I don’t see any reason whatsoever for them to exist, nor from you to me, because, again, I see no  reason, and if I did, I wouldn’t request such thing, much less demand it.

Where I do see apologies are due, is from you to your friends. But that’s between you and them.