Madeleine McCann: Pittsburgh terrorists, the blonde theory and Frankie Boyle’s fun with child murder
Madeleine McCann: it’s the summer and, naturally, the missing child is back in the news.
Daily Mail: “Eye-scanners used to track terrorists adapted to help search for missing children like Madeleine McCann”
Why missing children like Our Maddie? Why not anyone whose missing?
Eye-scanners used to track terrorists are being adapted to help search for missing children. Researchers at a Pittsburgh university have developed high-resolution cameras that can be placed at major checkpoints, such as airports and border crossings, to scan a person’s iris from 40-feet away.
So. Not children, then. It’s a story about a technology hat can be applied to anyone, regardless of age.
The Mail adds:
The technology could help children like British girl Madeleine McCann who went missing from a holiday apartment in Portugal, eight years ago, just days before her fourth birthday.
It could. And, then again, it might not. After all, if there is one thing we know about Madeleine McCann it is that she has a distinctive eye.
Pictures circulated of the blonde youngster focused on a distinctive mark on her right eye that her family hope will still lead to her identification, years later.
It hasn’t. And as for her being blonde, well, had she have been black, say, you would not still be hearing about her.
The List: “Natasha Noman: Noman’s Land”
She compares the difference in news coverage of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists’ deaths and the 2000 massacred in Nigeria by Boko Haram on the same day and how the western media obsessed over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann whereas, ‘it’s news in Pakistan if someone you know doesn’t get kidnapped’.
Can’t we all just agree that Our Maddie is a joke?
Mairia Cahill (Belfast Telegraph): she went to see Frankie Boyle, the comic who plays at being outrageous in a safe space:
Telling jokes (and laughing at them), about Madeleine McCann (batting off an intake of breath from the audience with “she’s still alive in that joke!”) should not be acceptable, no matter how much a champion of free speech you consider yourself to be.
The Belfast Telegraph finds others who are upset at the joke: “Abducted girl’s mum slams Frankie Boyle’s jokes about Madeleine McCann”
A mother whose nine-year-old daughter was abducted and murdered has hit out at controversial comedian Frankie Boyle for making jokes about missing Madeleine McCann…
Boyle made the jibe during a Feile an Phobail performance in west Belfast which already had been overshadowed by his previous material aimed at Down’s Syndrome children.
Boyle’s targets are people who are unlikely to hit him.
Patricia Cardy’s daughter Jennifer was just nine when she was abducted from her home at Ballinderry near Lisburn in 1981. Her body was later found in a dam at Hillsborough, Co Down.
She was murdered by Robert Black.
Reacting to Boyle’s ‘joke’ about Madeleine McCann, Mrs Cardy, now a great-grandmother, said the subject was neither funny nor suitable for humour.
“It has offended me in the sense he has used this to promote laughter and that would be all I would say.
“I don’t think anything can promote laughter that is not laughable, and that would be all I would say. You cannot promote laughter by something that is not laughable – and that’s where I stand.”
It depends what the joke is. Is it funny?
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the family of Jean McConville also slammed Boyle’s “sick” comments over Madeleine who went missing eight years ago.
Mrs McConville, a 38-year-old mother-of-ten, was abducted from her home in front of her children and shot dead by the IRA in 1972.
Her son-in-law Seamus McKendry, who is married to Helen, adds:
“He should be more careful with his topic especially in west Belfast where so many people have been disappeared.”
But where is Maddie?
The Sun: “Five false ‘sightings’ of Madeleine McCann”
Just the five?
SINCE she disappeared from a family holiday to Portugal in 2007, the whole world has been looking for Madeleine McCann.
And not found her. They found Osama bin Laden. But what happened to the innocent child is a mystery.
And what about Ben Needham?
The Mirror: “Greek cops have EIGHT different theories about missing toddler”
Just the eight?
Documents obtained by the Sunday People show how the hypotheses over toddler Ben’s 1991 disappearance in Kos range from “serious crime to accidental death”.
Any facts?
The exact details of the Greek police’s theories have been blacked out in the documents, which were released under Freedom of Information laws.
No. But we do have one fact that has not changed for years:
The lad, from Sheffield, was just 21 months old when he disappeared in Kos in July 1991.
What news?
In April, £700,000 of funding for a South Yorkshire Police investigation was granted by the Home Office. The review, carried out by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in February, examined how SYP would use the funding and whether its proposed seven main lines of enquiry were “reasonable and proportionate”.
It says:
“The circumstances in which Ben Needham went missing remain shrouded in mystery. The local Kos police have identified a number of hypotheses.”
In other words: they have ideas but no evidence to support any one of them.
But we do get this:
“This approach is consistent with the response to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, against which the Needhams benchmark the support to find Ben.”
Madeleine McCann is the benchmark for all missing people.
Posted: 11th, August 2015 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
