It's September 2018

It is indeed September 2018.

September is, much like March, the time of the year when pressures on the UK government to close Operation Grange have appeared in the recent past.

We have already expressed our opinion about a campaign we believe was launched by those who don’t want the truth to be outed. Had that campaign been successful it would be now at its pinnacle or in momentum to reach it.

Its objective was to mobilise the public opinion furiously against the McCanns to try and force Operation Grange to make the fatal mistake of questioning the McCanns in an attempt to appease the rage of the crowd.

As we have explained, if this questioning is ever to happen it will kill the case as it will make it legally impossible for it to be prosecuted in Portugal and politically impossible for it to be in the UK.

This campaign started with the announcing of a book written by Sergey Malinka with the objective of undermining the Portuguese investigation by accusing it of torture in order to get results.

This would be done by speciously establishing a parallel between it and what happened with Leonor Cipriano. We have shown how this could be done without telling any untruth but simply by cherry-picking the truth, purposely leaving the inconvenient parts out.

This was followed by Colin Sutton and with noticeable presence in the media demanding that the McCanns be heard by Operation Grange.

The internet had the mission of stoking up and maintaining the hatred against the McCanns. With the double objective of, on one hand force Grange and on the other, confirm to anyone a little more curious that the media has been right all these years in saying the internet is indeed filled with McCann haters AKA trolls.

On FB, the soldiering of this campaign was mainly done by the Justice for Madeleine group. They could not demonise the McCanns more than they have, nor could they stress more how neglectful the T9 had been and they could not draw more attention to the fact the neglectful couple was still unpunished.

The new-anti NT and the old-timer Blacksmith had the mission of giving credibility to this neglect-emphasis and hatemongering against the McCanns. There was supposed to be a more active involvement of another blog which we won’t name yet as we haven’t yet given our reasons as to why we think this blogger would be involved nor as to why it wasn’t as active as expected.

Linking the MSM (Sutton) to the internet (JFM, NT and Blacksmith) we had Sonia Poulton whose video intends to get across 2 strong ideas: the McCanns were neglectful and to date they haven’t been questioned by Operation Grange.

Twitter was supposed to gather all of the above on the internet and promote it fiercely and by ripple effect spread the hatred for the McCanns and create a mob effect in demanding that Operation Grange immediately question them.

As the reader can see, it certainly was a campaign! We wonder how much effort went into coordinating it and how long before it went live.

It is ending up rather messy and the protagonists seem to have lost a grip on the process they set in motion. Even Pamela Gurney had to be used. Did they really think this particular campaign was going to work?

And it is September and the tabloid titbits about the McCanns that found their way to the tabloids at the end of August have not appeared. They were like a preview of things to come in September. This month we had silence.

On the internet, all have been forced to reunite forces on top of NT’s hill, forming a square like in the Zulu War. The NT blog is their Custer’s Last Stand at Little Bighorn.

Blacksmith and NT are basically talking to themselves and to the lick-spittle gang.

Justice for Madeleine is limping along. They have overlooked that advertising so many members (37,752 members the last time we looked) does not add up with the embarrassing low number of likes/loves and comments their posts have.

The last time we looked at the latest posts they were promoting:

- NT: 16 likes (4 admin) and 1 comment (from admin);

- Blacksmith: 13 likes/loves (5 admin) and 5 comments (3 admin);

- Sonia Poulton: 11 likes/loves (6 admin) and 3 comments (1 admin);

- Lesly Frances Finn: 15 likes/loves (4 admin) and no comments.

The more members they claim to have the more ridiculous they appear to be.

Justice is the first one to show that its importance by using numbers is fake. Besides, with Brexit and Trump, the time for Facebook as an opinion-shaper has gone.

On Twitter we have the gang members literally talking between themselves on the #mccann.

Pros who have pretended to be antis, for years or recently, talking to pros who make too much of an effort to show that they are really pros.

Many aliases but not that many people. It’s just a small group of people shamelessly continuing to pretend even though they know everyone else knows they are pretending. The fact that their voices have no echo, is a very loud message. They’re completely isolated and contained.

We will wait to see what will appear in the next 2 months. Nothing is better than untruths.

The fact that they are starting with so very little when they had planned for so much is something the blog congratulates itself for.

Meanwhile we will leave readers with how a sex-scandal can ruin a person’s reputation and social standing. A big thank you to our “FB Anon” to have called our attention to it.

This was first reported by CBS on Dec 16 2016 in the article “General demoted after affair, "swinging" lifestyle revealed”.

To those thinking that this was just an American thing, this CBS article has 247 words. The same news, when reported by the Daily Mail, had 953.

The article from the Daily Mail “'Swinging' two-star general is demoted and his career is effectively ended after 11-year affair and multiple sexual partners are discovered” was published on Dec 16 2016:

“- Army Major General David Haight was stripped of his stars and will retire at the level of lieutenant colonel

- The 'steep and rare' demotion came after an investigation into his 'swinging' sex life and long-term affair

- Officials said he repeatedly used military computers and phones for his illicit affairs despite warnings

- Haight was entrusted with classified state secrets and his affairs could have targeted him for blackmail by adversaries

By Associated Press and Daily Mail Reporter

Published: 21:55 BST, 16 December 2016 | Updated: 02:17 BST, 17 December 2016

An Army major general has been stripped of his stars and demoted to lieutenant colonel after a 30-year military career because of a long extramarital affair and a 'swinger' lifestyle.

Embattled Army Major General David Haight was demoted by three steps to the rank of lieutenant colonel, a steep and rare downgrade for a senior officer, Army Secretary Eric Fanning said Friday.

The demotion will cost him $43,000 in annual retirement pay, based on pay scales for a lieutenant colonel and a two-star general with 30 years in the Army. And it slams the door on what was once a promising career.

Fanning approved the board's recommendation and made the final decision.

Philandering is a violation of military law. An Army inspector general investigation concluded that Haight had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a woman who was not his wife, and that he misused government resources, including a department cell phone and computer, for a 'high volume' of personal calls and emails.

Haight's attorney, Army Lt. Col. Sara Root, said Haight regrets his conduct but that it did not detract from his multiple combat tours.

'He has sacrificed a lot for his country. He's not a threat to his country and would never do anything to harm it,' she said, according to USA Today. She insisted he had never been targeted by spies or divulged national secrets.

A demotion of three grades is unusual, and is based on Army regulations that require a three-member board to determine an officer's retirement rank when the person has been found guilty of misconduct.

The board had to decide whether Haight served satisfactorily in his current rank, and if not, he could be demoted to the last rank in which his service would be considered satisfactory.

The demotion suggests that the board concluded that Haight's misconduct stretched back through his time as colonel and was serious enough to make retirement at the more senior grades not possible.

Under the regulations, 'one specific act of misconduct may or may not form the basis for a determination that the overall service in that grade was unsatisfactory, regardless of the period of time served in grade.'

The investigation, which was launched in January, was triggered by anonymous complaints sent to then-Gen. Philip Breedlove, who was the top US general for NATO at the time, and to the Army and Defense Department inspectors general.

According to the report, Haight was verbally counseled at least twice by a senior officer in November 2015 after initial complaints were filed and before the full investigation began.

The counseling, it said, included assistance for possible marital problems, the perception of a relationship with someone who was not his wife, and other personal issues.

In December, more anonymous allegations of misconduct came in, and one included a sexually explicit photograph. And the inspector general ordered a full investigation on January 4.

The probe revealed that Haight conducted an affair for nearly 11 years, and also at times was involved in a 'swinger' lifestyle. He was married during the entire time of the relationship, and has four children.

According to the report, Haight reminded the woman a number of times to communicate with him through another email address because his government accounts were monitored.

'I really would prefer all this traffic be on other net,' he wrote in one email, cited by the report.

The report found that between June-November 2015 he called mistress Jennifer Armstrong, who was a government contractor, more than 80 times from his government cellphone, for a total of more than 1,400 minutes of conversation.

It also found that they exchanged more than 800 personal emails between October 2010 and November 2015, including many that were sexually explicit. Often he signed them with 'ILY,' an abbreviation for 'I love you.'

Armstrong told USA Today in August that the general was leading a double life, one that included her and swingers clubs.

Haight, who dealt with the highest government secrets, could have easily been a target for blackmail if his secret life had been discovered by a foreign adversary, officials anonymously told the outlet.

There were also sexual liaisons with strangers at swingers' clubs, it was reported, as well emails of erotic photos between other swingers.

Haight was also a key adviser to Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Armstrong, 49, said that their relationship began 11 years ago with a flirty email about Haight's 'terrific smile' when she was stationed in Iraq and escalated to a full-blown affair, trysts with other women and couples, and promises of a future together.

'I gave him the best years of my life,' she told the outlet.

Haight had been serving as director for operations at US European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. He was pulled from the job and has been working as a special assistant to the Army deputy chief of staff for military operations.

He was commissioned in 1986 at Brigham Young University and later was assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment, an Army special operations unit. And he served several combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

If all was legal, if all was consensual, if no one cares these days about whether one is a swinger or not, why would he be a possible victim of blackmail?

We will continue to be a “single-thread forum blog” that we have been lately. Continuing with commenting as we have done with the “The help and the tennis” posts.

We understand that it is a difficult format for readers to follow but we think that our faithful have fully understood why we decided to do that as only in a free-style mode was it possible to have achieved as much as we were able achieve to this summer.

We will continue our path as we planned. Patiently and resiliently as we have always been.

As the Portuguese say, the dogs bark but the caravan continues on. They may bark as much as they like. This case is not about making noise but about reaching those who are silently reading, and in these, those who can decide about this case.