Haywhimee, Roses and Thorns

(image from here)

Haywhimee is a little town that doesn’t exist. It’s located in the middle of our imagination.

Yet we think it’s of crucial importance to the Maddie case. We would even say it’s where the solution to the case lies.

Haywhimee is very peculiar. There are many Haywhimeeans but none do in fact live in Haywhimee. The main reason being that Haywhimee doesn’t exist, as we said.

But although Haywhimee is fictional, Haywhimeeans are not. They are very real.

Haywhimeeans live elsewhere, in many different towns. Like in Praia da Luz. And at the moment we are particularly interested in some Haywhimeeans who do live there.

Haywhimeeans are allergic to having attention brought upon them just as vampires allegedly are of being exposed to sunlight, crucifixes and garlic.

Mind you, Haywhimeeans don’t mind bringing attention to themselves.

What makes their skin “burn” is the attention others bring to them. Attention they do not seek, want and in fact will do all in their power to avoid.

What is then a Haywhimeean? Anyone who when in a tight spot picks up a phone and asks someone on the other side “Hey, why ME?!?”

Two important things can be deduced from this definition.

The first is that a Haywhimeean always has someone he can call and the second is that he knows there are others that can be picked on instead of him.

For example, the “July arguidos” know there are others who could have been picked instead of them but they don’t have anyone to call and ask for support, “Hey, why ME?!?”

They meet the second criteria but fail completely on the first. Malinka, Silva, Rodrigues and Ribeiro are NOT Haywhimeeans.

But Robert Murat, for example, we think definitely is.

Malinka, Silva, Rodrigues and Ribeiro had no other choice but to step up to the plate. Murat is in a different ball game altogether. He’s not such an easy catch. He seems like a person to be able to pick up the nearest phone and have someone on the other side listen to him.

Who does a Haywhimeean call? They call other fictional towns like Aisletakecare and Influenceville.

Aisletakecarers and Influencevillans are usually powerful enough to solve the most pertinent and pressing problems.

We sensed last week that things were heading right into Haywhimeee territory

The rapid growth of UK nationals being included within the group of  ‘persons of interest’ (PoI) made us feel that way as there aren’t many ex-Pats in Luz who aren’t Haywhimeeans.

When the number rose to 4 (allegedly 2 suspects and 2 witnesses) then that made us be certain, Haywhimeee territory was really being invaded.

That’s why we wrote last week “we find really strange the lack of hurry in hearing these 11 people. On 04NOV2104, we know questioning was authorised, so why wait until the 24th to start hearing them? No urgency? Have these people such a full agenda that their next opening is only then?”

During this week, we must confess we suffered disappointment. We were almost convinced that our reading of the game had gone slightly wrong. Because of the news that one of the ex-pats named to be interviewed was a gardener.

The gardener, just like Malinka, Silva, Rodrigues and Ribeiro, was definitely NOT a Haywhimeean.

It seemed they continued to pick on people who couldn’t defend themselves.

We picture this sick game as SY being a shark. One that is circling around its victims.

Circling round and round with ever so small decreasing circles.

With the 4 UK nationals to be questioned by the PJ we thought that SY was making a dash right towards the victims.

But then the gardener popped up, and we momentarily thought that the shark had decided to stay at a safe distance, although, we repeat, consistently making each circle tighter than the previous one.

But then we read 2 pieces of news that made us rethink our rethinking and realise that our initial assessment wasn’t wrong after all: the questioning of the 11 PoI being delayed and that among them was Robert Murat and his wife Michaela.

We were right after all. Haywhimee had indeed been awoken and we’re sure jolted into a frenzy of activity.

We assume there have been a lot of phone calls made recently. We do believe some vehement and emphatic “hey, why ME?!?” have pinged off many a mobile mast.

Speaking of which, if authorities are really interested in phone traffic, and we think they are, we bet the current month must have been plentiful with useful information.

Of the 2 relevant pieces of news, delay and Murat, let's focus on the first.

This is what the Mirror, on 18NOV2014, said:

“Detectives put their trip to Portugal on hold after they failed to reached an agreement over the interview status of 11 people they were due to question”

(…)

Prosecutor Ines Sequeira is off sick and was unable to clarify the situation, sparking the suspension of the trip by DCI Andy Redwood and his colleagues.

A new date for the interviews has not been set - and they are now unlikely to happen this year.”

A sickness that postpones hearing 11 people for at least a month and a half. Sending the questioning into the next year.

We’re sure that the report is missing a word. It should have been “Prosecutor Inês Sequeira is at home sick”.

The sickness afflicting the Portuguese prosecutor must really be serious. Serious enough to stop her from going to work. And not for just a day or two.

If this is the case, we hereby wish Prosecutor Inês Sequeira a quick recovery from whatever is keeping her sick in bed to allow her to spend Christmas with her family.

We had heard through the grapevine that the case was being pushed into 2015 but then never crossed our minds that it would be because of a personal affliction.

There seems to be a disagreement between UK and Portugal. A disagreement about the “interview status” of the people to be queried.

To put it simply, the prosecutor Inês Sequeira and SY cannot agree, according to the Mirror, whether X, Y or Z should be heard as arguidos or as witnesses.

We do not understand the reasons for this disagreement as, to put it simply, the UK cannot demand that anyone should be heard as an arguido or as a witness – and much less as it seems to be the case, as simply a ‘person of interest’, a status that doesn’t even exist in Portugal.

To put it simply once again, it’s none of the UK’s business under what legal status these 11 people are questioned in Portugal.

Who decides what Portuguese law determines in Portugal are the Portuguese legal subject matter experts of the Portuguese justice system. No help from the UK is required and, as it happens with any sovereign nation, any suggestions from the outside are not welcome.

The rogatory letter from SY requests diligences to be executed by PJ.

It should say who is requested to be questioned – certainly with the appropriate reasons as to why – and the questions to be asked.

The evaluation of what individual rights have to be guaranteed and what legal status under which these persons are to be heard by the Portuguese authorities is of sole responsibility of the Portuguese justice system.

UK has no right imposing any conditions in this process.

As we keep repeating, the time for UK to be an Empire has long gone. Whatever happened to Maddie happened in a sovereign Portugal. There’s no way around that.

We know and fully understand that all the problems the truth about the Maddie case may arise are internal to the UK. But sovereignty is sovereignty. PJ doesn’t tell SY how to work in the UK and SY doesn’t go to Portugal and determine, or even propose, how PJ works in Portugal.

SY has absolutely nothing to agree or disagree on this matter.

That said, there shouldn’t be any disagreement. If this was a normal process.

But if this was a normal process, then the rogatory letter would have arrived, the prosecutor would have authorised its diligences, with or without eventual restrictions, and would have dispatched it to PJ for execution. PJ would have convened persons to be questioned, ask them what was required to be asked and send the responses back to UK.

If this was a normal process, it certainly wouldn’t take the 20 days it was planned to take to convene the various PoI for questioning.

That fact alone means that Haywhimee was affected. Phone must have started to make calls. To guarantee that there was enough time to react.

All those precious calls to Aisletakecare and Influenceville. Maybe even some to Unmentionable City, the capital of that very real country called Nepotiland that doesn’t appear on any map.

As we have said, we think Robert Murat is a true Haywhimeean. He does say he hasn’t been notified and we shall trust. A notification is only the official way of informing a person of something.

The readers of the blog know that we believe that Robert Murat played a pivotal part in the events that were happening before whatever happened to Maddie and that had nothing to do with her or her fate as well as a crucial role in what was decided to do right after the little girl died.

But we may be wrong, so let’s stick with what Robert Murat had to say himself, as we pointed out in our “The Devil's Finger is in the Detail” post (11JUN2011):

“To recap, Robert Murat made the following infamous observation to David Jones of The Daily Mail on June 2nd 2007: “ Basically, I'm just an ordinary straightforward guy who's the victim of the biggest f.... up on the planet”, but the rest of the quote is less well remembered “If you want my opinion, it had to involve someone on the inside who works at the Ocean Club.”” 

But now that it seems he’s apparently going to be questioned again, he will have the opportunity to explain why he has this opinion of HAVING to involve someone on the inside who works at the Ocean Club

Also, as we are sure he has by now read the PJ Files, he might use this re-interviewing to give his opinion as to why he, on the night of May 3rd, was seen ONLY by members of the T7 outside his house and in the vicinity of apartment 5A when so many people were walking all over Luz looking for Maddie.

One of the T7 was so sure she saw him that she even pointed him out to the PJ, from inside a van, as Bundleman. As the man with a girl in his arms that SY assures us was Crèche Dad.

Another thing that Murat could possibly clarify, in case computer “814” belonged to him, would be why the 2 surges (05FEB2007 - 807 hits and 16MAY2007 - 76 hits) of interest swinging, like we showed in our  “Why Swing?” post (04APR2014)

And of course, it goes without saying, that we’re all curious – we’re sure authorities are too – as to what exactly he meant about the Maddie case being “the biggest f.... up on the planet”

We could not help notice the return on Sky News of Martin Brunt to the Maddie case after Brenda Leyland's death. The irony was him being having to report about Murat, who we know, were on very friendly terms back in May 2007 as per our post “The Murat/Brunt Get-Together” (06JUL2012).

Under the penalty of being repetitive, we think Murat is a Haywhimeean. And the calls we think he's made have produced effects as the delay shows as well as his appearances in the media lately.

There are still 3 UK nationals to be identified (or 2 if one takes the naming of the gardener as truthful) plus the Central/Eastern woman, if she’s not Michaela.

And we still have the other 6 PoIs. One cannot assume they’re all Portuguese as the nationality counting within these 11 people has been very dynamic. Of the 11, we only have the certainty of Murat and Michaela.

Are any of the others Haywhimeeans? A haywhymeean in this case doesn’t necessarily have to be a UK national. They could be Portuguese, for example.

Can they be Aisletakecarers or even Influencevillans?

We’re curious. Some names do come to our minds.

But we could be disappointed and all turn out to be as defenceless as the “July arguidos”. We’ll see in 2015.

But the fact that now having so overtly played the Murat card it means Government BHs really, really mean business.

However, the 20 day questioning session scheduled and its ulterior delay until next year also means very clearly that after 7 and a half years, Government apparently still doesn’t have enough strength to put a clean closure to this issue.

Aisletakecare, Influenceville and Unmentionable City are still not ready to concede anything and all Haywhimeeans are counting on that

The fierce arm-wrestling between the Government BH and the Swinging BH continues.

But the Black Hat edifice is crumbling.

The erosion it’s suffering is happening at a really fast rate and the effects of the damage to the structure is beginning to show.

An example of this was the Channel 5 – Global Obsession, last Tuesday 18NOV2014, unjustly, in our opinion, criticised by many as mere propaganda for the McCanns.

(youtube video here)

Yes, the McCanns appear to have been glorified in this documentary. But if one pays close attention, one can see that’s not exactly the case.

Let’s forget for a moment the many, many mistakes, inaccuracies, imprecision and omissions the documentary contains and just read some of the things that were said in it:

1:01 - media portrayed as McCann's minions:

“It did feel to the world of journalism sometimes as though we were being used.”

1:40 - McCanns the suing money making machines:

“It was a story that would end in High Court costing the British media hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages.”

1:46

“But I do think the British media sank below their fairly low usual standards.”

10:59

“To begin with there was consensus, every journalist accepted their story.”

13:17

“…but of course, everybody, all of us, thought we were looking for a child that had wandered away.”

13:47

“It was just 2 days since Madeleine’s disappearance but already the McCann’s relationship with the media was already starting to fracture.”

14:12

“Nobody understood pretty well why the prosecutor didn’t want to charge the McCanns for neglect.”

15:45

“…and in an unprecedented move the British government flew a media expert to Praia da Luz to advise them.”I can’t remember where the government has acted as PR advisot/minder for a family in a situation like this.”

16:07

“The McCanns mission was to keep Madeleine in the papers and on our TVs. At the start we had unparalleled access to the McCanns, however difficult it seemed for them.”

16:37

“I was as desperate as anyone to find out what was happening but like many journalists at the time, I was also becoming aware of the McCanns media campaign.”

18:11

“The McCanns were at a crossroads, the police wouldn’t speak to them, the press was starting to report rumours and the little girl was still missing.”

18:26

“It was they who decided to take hold of the campaign themselves, the government became concerned with the rumour-mill too and flew in former journalist Clarence Mitchell  from the cabinet office to advise the couple, and the McCanns hired their own PR expert, former parliamentary candidate and friend Justine McGuiness.”

21:38

“The price for keeping her in the headlines meant that sightings were reported from all over the world, but they were all red herrings.”

22:43

“I think unconsciously people recognised that they were in some way being spoon-fed and they don’t like it, and if poor Mr and Mrs McCann have experienced some hostility from the public, and they have, and it’s been awful and totally underserved, it will be partly because the public have noticed, perhaps unconsciously, that the campaign has been run into a too professional manner.”

23:12

“And some sections of the press were beginning to notice a change in the public opinion.”

25:20

“And I can’t understand why they’re in the papers every couple of days.”

25.40

“Feels like favouritism, because they’re always… they’re always campaigning, they’re getting money there, left right and centre.”

26:14

“…and this is my dilemma, the media has the final say on who gets their attention and why and it all comes down to selling papers, getting readership and, for us, connecting with the viewers and winning the ratings war.”

26:33

“I think that it’s obvious that the media was far more interested in circulation and viewership than the fate of this poor little girl.”

27:05

“By early June and with no answers and no real new news to report, the media started to ask tougher questions, the fragile relationship between Kate and Gerry and the press started to break down.”

28:45

“The reason the press worldwide was involved in this story, from all over the world, is because Gerry McCann made it his business, to, as he put it in an interview with me, market his child, he called it the marketing of Madeleine McCann.”

32:32

“128 days after Madeleine the media had the massive story they had been waiting for. On September the 8th, the McCanns were hit by a bombshell, after being interviewed separately by Portuguese police, they were made arguidos, suspects.”

33:19

“And it felt like a terrible act of betrayal to be leaving Portugal without them being found… without Madeleine being found.”

33:45

“Look, they were the ones who hauled in the press in the first place, they were the ones who kept the press going when everything got quiet… so let’s look at it this way, the McCanns were in bed with a very, very difficult ally, and they hated the ally but they needed the ally.”

34:27

“…but this move also moved the suspicion. “A lot of people think that Public Relations or having a spokesman is some sort of penicillin… it’s not. Public Relations only works if… if a product is good””

34:45

“The McCanns seemed to be losing the campaign, sections of the press were more interested in them as suspects than looking for Madeleine, but despite the negative coverage, the McCanns fought on.”

37:21

“On March the 19th, the McCanns accepted half a million pounds of libel damages and front page apologies from the Express group newspapers. “Overall, long term trend, made no difference whatsoever, and later you could say that helped eat into their credibility, so I think it was a bad episode, a huge mistake””

42:40

“The things that made them very appealing to the press in the early days, worked against them eventually.”

43:49

“People initially said that they seemed to be too good to be true.”

Besides this we had headlines that were harmful for the McCanns:

Also, pictures of the McCanns that didn’t favour them in any way:

It was also, finally, shown the footage of the joy of the couple on Maddie’s 4th birthday, just a week after she had disappeared:

And we even had the title of GA’s book title translated so that public would fully see the words “truth” and “lie”:

On top of all this we had this bit about the dogs.

Notice how the occurrence of death is emphasised. It was as if the blood dog wasn’t even there. Death was what was highlighted:

30:35

“In mid-July, 9 weeks after Madeleine’s disappearance, British sniffer-dogs. Trained to smell blood and dead bodies were called in to examine the McCanns’ apartment and hire car. The apartment had been sealed off since Madeleine went missing and corpse odour was apparently discovered in the McCanns bedroom by the wardrobe, in the living room behind the sofa and outside on the veranda and in a flowerbed, and in the car the McCanns had hired to spread the word of the campaign 25 days after Madeleine’s disappearance was also apparently found corpse odour in the boot.”

We have never seen so much information, damaging to the McCanns, put together and shown publicly about the Maddie case as in this documentary.

The 01SEPT Sky News Report assumed UK authorities had bungled up the relationship between the British and Portuguese police and that Mr Amaral had been wrongly sacked. Only when speaking about Mr Amaral’s sacking is there a mention about favouritism given to the McCanns: “that early bad feeling led to the sacking of the original Portuguese Detective-Chief Gonçalo Amaral. He was fired after suggesting in an interview that the British police were not independent and appeared to be working for the McCanns.”

This documentary takes things against the McCanns much, much further.

Maddie’s death abounds throughout it.

Why there were no negligence charges was clearly questioned.

There was a clear emphasis put on the fact the McCanns were suspects.

What was highlighted was the incomprehensible and unprecedented participation in this case of the UK government.

The public was reminded of the suing battles (we wonder why – not – the £50,000 from the libel of McCanns v The Times was left out) and the money the McCanns have made in court.

The couple was portrayed as being obsessed with the media and with marketing their own daughter.

The documentary is filled with words and imagery harmful to the McCanns. To their image and credibility.

It filled the public’s mind with both subliminal and overt messages to increase its hostility against the couple.

A public hostility that the documentary acknowledges and confirms. Reason dictates that no media campaign can account for such a general negative opinion about a couple who has lost a daughter.

It was like watching a documentary about the beauty of roses but with a very clear and objective emphasis on the thorns.

Yes, roses are beautiful but those nasty thorns of theirs simply cling to cloth and they will destroy a silk dress like cat claws on curtains. And let me not talk about damages on velvet covered furniture. A dreadful nightmare. They do smell nice but those pointy things are like blades on skin and I have lost count of how many times I had to go buy more and more disinfectant for the cuts. The flowers are charming but the thorns are brown, ugly and honestly a nuisance. If only roses didn’t have them… mind you, I love roses, but… you know, roses are indeed red also red is the blood that is spilled after the thorns rip the skin.

Did the words above make you love roses more or less? Yet it is said they are beautiful, that they do smell nice and that they are charming.

In our opinion, the C5 documentary was the McCanns being offered a bouquet of roses made up of 3 dozen very prickly stems and only half a dozen of them had flowers.

The media is clearly starting to withdraw its troops from the “McCann camp” and beginning to find excuses to deploy them to the other camp.

Times are changing and over the horizon can be sensed winds blowing in the opposite direction. Now is the time to lower sails from what is rapidly becoming a mere draft and a pestilent one at that.

In the documentary, the press excuses their horrid behaviour because of profit-seeking – which will always be a permanent truth – and because of that uncontrollable media-crazed Gerry McCann who has, almost single-handedly, been able to run a world-wide media campaign of unseen proportions during the past 7 and a half years.

The reason given for this astounding capability is the fact the McCanns are middle-class people and because of this they have means available to them they wouldn’t have if they belonged to the working-class.

Let that be a lesson to a Mohamed Al-Fayed who has tirelessly made an effort to keep in the UK headlines the motives (the blog is NOT subscribing any of them) he believes are behind the death of a British female citizen in a foreign country, one Diana Spencer.
 
It seems, at least according to the documentary, that to be able to control the UK media one has to be middle-class.

Any other social status won’t do. It doesn’t matter if you’re scandalously rich. If one is not middle-class and articulate then it’s no use even trying.

But watching the documentary, one has to ask in what Interstellar world was it filmed? It certainly was not on planet Earth.

It must have been from Dr Mann’s planet because saying that 2 days after Maddie disappeared the relationship between the McCanns started to fracture is to be a bigger and more desperate a liar than Dr Mann himself.

As far as we can remember the only time the UK media was hostile to the McCanns was in those months of August and September 2007, when there was a tiny glimmer of hope justice would happen in a timely manner.

Before and after that, UK media has been as tame as a SY Officer on all fours on Praia da Luz soil.

Lately, basically in the last year and a half, things have slowly, slowly been changing. We have been the only ones who have alerted readers from the start of this fact.

We did note that not a word was mentioned about the disgraceful behaviour of the UK media about Mr Amaral, the PJ, Portugal and the Portuguese.

We could not let pass one detail from the documentary. The example of how an image is indeed worth more than a thousand words.

In the “reconstruction”, Kate finds the kid’s bedroom door wide open (door opening in the wrong direction) and this is what she supposedly sees:

The fact that the window is open is perfectly visible.

However, it seems Kate McCann needed to have the door slam shut in front of her and to reopen it to realise this fact.

Finally, please read attentively the last words of the documentary. It says much more than many realised when watching this last Tuesday

43:52

“So why is Madeleine McCann on the front pages all these years on? Sure, story sells newspapers, it boosts ratings, but it’s because you, you want to know, whether it’s because of your cynicism of the McCanns and the way they marketed their daughter, because it’s the unsolved mystery, because, perhaps is every parents’ worst nightmare or but there for the grace of God go I, whatever the reason you’d have to be cold-hearted indeed not to wish closure on this for the McCanns, and that story, the eventual discovery of Madeleine, will be the biggest yet”