Madeleine inquiry in the UK - questions still needing answers

 

The “Last Photo”- was it really taken on 3d May?

Madeleine McCann has been making headline news internationally yet again as the London Metropolitan Police investigation into her disappearance is reportedly going to be shelved this autumn.

I wonder if the Met’s Operation Grange has been deeply flawed from the very start and could that have something to do with the British ‘establishment’, a network that is said to include top politicians, billionaire newspaper owners and some leading police officers? But now we’re getting into the realm of speculation. Let’s not go there. Let’s stick with some of the facts as we know them.

The UK charity Missing People says that 140,000 people go missing in Britain every year. That’s 383 a day. Two thirds of the cases examined by the charity are under 18 years-of-age. So why did the British Government, diplomats and certain other influential individuals immediately give unprecedented support to the parents of this particular missing child? That’s the first of many fundamental questions that need answering.

The review and investigation conducted by Operation Grange, a special unit set up within London’s police force more than a decade ago, was always destined to fail, according to a well-known, distinguished London detective who said he would not get involved in the case because the official remit of Operation Grange was to investigate the “abduction” in the Algarve as if it had taken place in the UK. Why such a limited remit when suspicions hovered over Madeleine’s parents and while there was very little credible evidence that Madeleine had been abducted?

Why was Operation Grange told to turn a blind eye to the possible criminal involvement of Madeleine’s parents or their holidaying friends, which is the normal starting point in missing children cases? If neither the parents nor friends were involved, which may indeed be so, a standard investigation including them would have cleared their names, which the Portuguese police probe has never done. 

Why did such a limited investigation, which followed the review launched in May 2011, carry on and on with British Home Office approval at a cost to British taxpayers that has reached 13 million pounds? That’s more than 15 million euros or more than 16 million dollars.

Why have the British news media – especially the ‘red-tops’, but also some of the ‘quality broadsheets’ – become so biased and sycophantic in their reporting by always referring to Madeleine’s “abduction” without  adding a word such as “alleged” or “suspected”, and without questioning other possibilities? Why has The Sun, owned by the American-based billionaire Rupert Murdoch, been so privy to the little information dribbling out about the Operation Grange investigation?  And why has the British press long been castigating the Portuguese police and implying that the peaceful resort of Praia da Luz was a den of iniquity, an insult that the local residents emphatically deny?

Has Operation Grange ever properly considered that Madeleine may have disappeared several days before her parents raised the alarm on 3^rd May, or did that exceed their remit? A private research project carefully examined local weather conditions during the week of the McCann’s holiday. The analysis concluded that the date and time of the so-called “Last Photo” on a camera used by Kate McCann must have been doctored. There had been plenty of time to make fake changes because the camera and photo were not presented to the Portuguese police for examination until 24th May, a couple of days after Gerry McCann returned from a short visit to the UK. Operation Grange was fully informed about all this, but to no avail. Why?  

Convicted paedophile Christian Bruckner and his lawyer have totally denied any involvement, yet German prosecutors claim they are 100 per cent certain that Madeleine is dead and that Bruckner killed her. But if they had such certainty, why have they not charged him? The German authorities did not share whatever evidence they had with Operation Grange who insist they do not know whether Madeleine is alive or dead.  “It seems extraordinary our officers are so much in the dark,” said a former senior Met officer. “It begs the question why we are still bothering to run an inquiry if the Germans are so dominant.”  

Among the other things Operation Grange has showed no interest in is the remarkable offer by Dr Mark Perlin, chief scientist and executive of an American company, Cybergenetics, which is reputed to have the world’s most advanced equipment and methods to examine and identify DNA samples. Asked by an Australian news outlet if he could help in the Madeleine case, Dr Perlin said he would gladly analyse forensic samples found by specialist dogs in the McCann’s holiday apartment and in a car they had hired 25 days after the repored disappearance. He said he could decipher 18 previously unsolvable DNA samples dating back to 2007.

A now defunct laboratory in the UK had been unable to come to any proper conclusions about them. Despite the lapse of time, Dr Perlin was optimistic that if the samples were sent to him, he and his team could accurately identify the DNA in less than a fortnight. He offered his services to Operation Grange free of charge, but he got no response. Dr Perlin extended the offer to Gerry McCann, but he did not respond either.  Again, one wonders, why?

Neither the British Home Office nor anyone else connected with Operation Grange have been open and transparent about the limited investigation, but questions about it will not go away because the operation is widely perceived -  rightly or wrongly -  as having been a sham, some sort of cover-up.

Surely the public, who have long been fascinated if not obsessed with the most discussed and reported missing person case in history, should be allowed straightforward answers to reasonable questions. The Portuguese people offended by British news reports and Operation Grange visits to Praia da Luz, and the British taxpayers who have funded the investigation without any say in the matter, deserve honest explanations. Most of all, Madeleine deserves justice.

 

          

Putin’s personality problems

 

The bizarre behaviour of President Vladimir Putin continues to astound analysts across the Western world. It could be just the way this enigmatic narcissist wants it to be.

 Most ‘normal’ people in Portugal and elsewhere are sceptical of the political elite. They distrust them. Putin is currently top of the heap.

The centre-right president and centre-left prime minister of Portugal, which is internationally rated as one the five most peaceful countries in the world, may not be totally admired by all Portuguese  voters, but at least they are considered to be sound of mind. Putin on the other hand is widely perceived to be anything but.

While not openly commenting on Putin’s psychological condition, Portugal’s Prime Minister Antonio Costa has vehemently condemned Russia’s actions in Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, many psychologists and investigative journalists using open source materials have concluded that Putin is probably a psychopath. The presence of a psychopath in any community  is worrying at the best of times, but one with so much power and global influence as Putin is of course exceptionally dangerous.

Many of the personality characteristics of a psychopath are observable and they include a grandiose sense of self-esteem, an uncontrollable tendency to commit violent activities, a compulsive need to tell lies and antipathy to love and a lack of remorse or shame.  Psychopaths are often highly intelligent, but usually have poor judgement and a failure to learn from experience. 

In Putin’s case as in many others, it probably all started with a very traumatic childhood. He was born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in 1952. An estimated 800,000 people in the city had been killed during the 900-day Nazi siege in World War ll. Putin’s father was severely wounded while serving in the Russian army. His mother almost died of starvation. The couple lost two children before Vladimir’s birth. 

According to reliable sources such as The Atlantic news magazine, his family lived in a single room in a rundown apartment with two other families. As his mother and father worked hard just to survive, it’s thought their small son went without proper parental care, sufficient food, emotional warmth, respect and kindness. He had few friends and was bullied by neighbouring thugs whom he learned to viciously defend himself against.

He grew up to be an intelligent lad, did well at high school and went on to get a university law degree. But the damage to his mind had probably already been done and was irreversible.

A great many people in Portugal, Ukraine, Russia and perhaps every other country in the world have mental health problems that are not nearly as severe as psychopathy and are treatable medically and with compassion. Unfortunately, in extreme psychopathic cases this is difficult because egocentricity, rigid pathological defence mechanisms and other harsh factors will not allow it. That does not mean psychopaths do not deserve support. But nor does it mean that acts of violence by them should be justified.  

While serving with the KGB, Putin’s career had produced “a macho, distrustful, unpredictable, cultivator of half-truths and disinformation who remains culturally and psychologically tied to a Soviet Union that no longer exists,” according to a source quoted in the American  journal Foreign Policy.

 Madeleine Albright, the U.S. secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, met Putin as the newly appointed acting president of Russia in 2000. In an article in the New York Times last month she recalled: “Putin spoke unemotionally and without notes about his determination to resurrect Russia’s economy and quash Chechen rebels. Flying home, I recorded my recollections. ‘Putin is small and pale,’ I wrote, ‘so cold as to be almost reptilian’.”

The former president of Latvia, Vaira-Freiberga, a teacher-scholar in Canada with a PhD degree in psychology, says that Putin has become “unhinged”, adding that invading Ukraine “was not the actions of a sane man interested in the welfare of his country.” In an interview with Global News, part of the Canadian Global TV network, she variously described Putin as “a narcissist and a psychopath, with no conscience whatsoever. And he is a megalomaniac. He is definitely megalomaniac with very strong paranoid tendencies.”

 Putin’s decision to launch his brutal invasion of Ukraine has made many other Western observers question the mental state of the man in charge of the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. Foreign Policy has noted that those who have followed the Russian leader’s behaviour closely over the years have been struck by the bizarre and dark nature of his recent speeches in which he described Ukrainian leaders as a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”

Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a ​​senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who previously worked as a senior Russia analyst at the CIA, has said that given the implications for the world, the U.S. intelligence community has teams of people, including doctors and psychologists working at the CIA’s secretive Medical and Psychological Analysis Center, devoted to analyzing the physical and mental health of authoritarian leaders, including Putin. “They use a variety of methods, including scrutinizing speeches and body language, to detect subtle shifts,” she told FP.

Charles Morgan, a forensic psychiatrist who previously worked for the CIA, told the magazine. “Although the science of indirect assessments is young at this stage, it seems to be true [that] a person’s past behavior is a more reliable indicator of how they will behave in the future than what they say they will do in the future.”

An article in the The Spectator in the UK said that “sitting at the end of an absurdly long table or marooned behind a vast table in a palatial hall, Vladimir Putin’s idea of social distancing has gone beyond the paranoid and into the realm of the deranged. His distance from reason and reality seems to have gone the same way. In little more than 48 hours, Putin’s sensible, peace-talking statesman had flipped into something dark and irrational that has worried even his supporters.”

John Sipher, a former senior member of the CIA’s Clandestine Service who served in Russia, has said that getting information from a leader’s inner circle in countries like Russia and China, which are regarded as “hard targets” by intelligence agencies, can be especially tricky.“Sources don’t grow on trees, and it’s especially difficult in a place like that. The rest of us are left to pour over Putin’s speeches and acts as the world wants to see what his next move may be.”

 

    

Ukraine and the information war

 

As the saying goes, “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.” No one has to be lying. They may just have different viewpoints, but that’s not what’s going on in Ukraine.

Stories told in the past by Donald Trump and Boris Johnson were obvious examples of inexcusable lying. The main focus now of course is on the truthfulness or otherwise of Vladimir Putin.

When someone tells an incorrect story they genuinely believe to be true, they are unwittingly spreading misinformation. When someone tells a story they know to be false, they are spreading disinformation. The latter is Putin’s speciality.

Putin said repeatedly before 24 February that he was not going to order an invasion of Ukraine. Amassing troops and heavy armaments along Ukraine’s border was “a military exercise,” he insisted. He described the West’s concern about a possible attack as “hysteria.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed two weeks into the invasion that his country “did not attack” Ukraine. 

Who are they kidding with this doublespeak? In typical Orwellian fashion, the Kremlin has forbidden the people of Russia even to mention the words “invasion” or “war” in connection with Ukraine. To publicly protest against it is an offence punishable by imprisonment.

The Kremlin has shut down as far as possible any news infiltrating from the West. Meanwhile, the West is doing what it can to continue making reliable news available to the citizens in Russia. As well as the war on the ground, the news on war involves much disinformation, propaganda, cyber attacks and internet blackouts.

In contrast to what’s going on inside Russia, freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom of information are constitutionally guaranteed in Portugal. Internet access is not restricted.  Against this background an opinion poll carried out by Politico in eight European countries last month showed the Portuguese as the most supportive of an EU coordinated defence of Ukraine, with 78% of respondents in favour of this.

Portugal is probably China’s closest contact in the EU, but China’s attitude to the war in Ukraine is obscure, all the more so because it is a distraction from Beijing’s Paralympic Winter Games.  While China is regarded as a key strategic partner of Russia and a powerful opponent of the United States, it also has strong ties with Ukraine. It remains to be seen how China will react physically or informatively to the extreme violence in Ukraine in the days and weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, newsrooms and individual journalists across the Western world are making use of technical ‘Open Source intelligence’ methods to fact check information. The aim is to verify or debunk questionable statements or images before broadcasting or publishing controversial stories. It is thought Russian manipulation is being used to blame others for carrying out atrocities such as the destruction of hospitals and direct targeting of civilians, including children, which Putin denies. ‘Open source’ investigations will be crucial in indentifying those to be held to account in future international court cases about war crimes against humanity.

One person above all others who has never minced his words untruthfully since this war began is Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He has pleaded with the West to create a “no fly zone” to stop Russian air strikes against his people, but NATO has repeatedly refused on the grounds that it would further provoke Putin and perhaps escalate the war into a nuclear disaster. There is nothing fake about the attitudes of either President Zelenskyy or NATO. No one is lying here. The just have different points of view.

In referring to the crass dishonesty emerging from the Ukraine crisis, Britain’s Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, has written: “False news is news with pity edited out.” This seems most appropriate in the context of Putin’s claim that he had ordered Russia’s military to put its nuclear deterrence forces on “high alert,” implying he was prepared to use weapons of mass destruction if necessary to bring Ukraine to its knees. More recently, both the United States and Russia have accused each other of making threats about the use of biological or chemical weapons, but no one seems to be sure if this is a serious possibility or more doublespeak to create further doubt and fear within the enemy.

Western media outlets are not always completely neutral or on the same political wavelengths. In the United States Fox News is to the right of CNN. In the UK, The Guardian is to the left of the Daily Telegraph. Among the other reputable outlets reporting on the war directly from Ukraine and available to people living in Portugal are the BBC and Sky News.

Several journalists, including Sky News’ chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay, have been targeted in the Ukraine. Seriously wounded when more than 1,000 bullets shattered the car in which he and his TV crew were travelling, Ramsay was brought back to the UK with the following video that gives a special insight into the sort of risks dedicated journalists are prepared to take in order to report the truth.

https://news.sky.com/story/sky-news-teams-harrowing-account-of-their-violent-ambush-in-ukraine-this-week-12557585

Portugal’s past, Putin’s future

It is increasingly possible that President Vladamir Putin’s war in Ukraine could be his downfall, not so much because of sanctions imposed by the West, but because of condemnation by his own people. That’s what happened in Portugal during this country’s colonial war in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Portugal’s conflict in the last colonies of its empire ended with the revolution of 1974 when elements of the army, with the approval of the Portuguese population at large, ousted the dictatorship established by Antonio Salazar. The dictatorship was replaced by democracy.

It is predicted that if the war in Ukraine continues for much longer, Putin’s autocratic rule in Russia will plummet. It’s already dropping. Protests in Russian cities involving thousands of citizens outraged by the invasion of Ukraine have continued despite many arrests, but so far no evidence has spilled out of significant opposition to the war from within the Russian military.

While Portugal willingly gave up its long-held empire, Putin seems determined to rebuild the former USSR, the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was a major part. He could hardly be more different in character from Salazar. Portugal’s dictator lived simply and shunned publicity. Putin, 69, seems to be steeped in hubris. He lives luxuriously, mixing closely only with billionaire cohorts. 

Like Salazar, Putin had a successful university education. He went on to hold important national positions, including head of the KGB, and yet many have described his interest in Ukraine as an “obsession” and seriously questioned a mindset that seems lacking in  rational thinking.  

Although perhaps not able to play a major role in Western sanctions against Russia, the Portuguese government has expressed solidarity with NATO, of which it is a 1949 founding member, and the European Union which it joined in 1986.

Russia’s potential retaliation for Western sanctions is causing alarm in parts of Europe, particularly Germany, dependant on imports of oil and natural gas from Russia. Less discussed but nonetheless important, especially in drought-stricken countries like Portugal, is the fact that Ukraine is the main supplier of maize and Russia the main supplier of wheat to Europe.   

While Portugal is not dependent on Russia oil and gas, a positive alternative for countries facing cuts in energy imports would be the promotion of greater efforts to further develop clean energy sources, such as solar, wind and hydro-power in line with the climate change needs.

Ukraine has a population of over 44 million, more than four times that of Portugal. Huge numbers of refugees have already fled to Poland and other neighbouring countries. The number is expected to reach four million. Many are expected to make their way to Portugal, which has been home in recent years for between 40,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians registered as Portuguese citizens or issued with official residential permits. 

Thankfully, for all Ukrainians and everyone else in this country, Portugal is recognised internationally as one of the most peaceful countries on Earth.     

Cooperation not conflict if we hope to survive climate change

So much aggression across the world is making it increasingly difficult to focus even here in peaceful Portugal on the biggest threat of all to the future of humanity: climate change.

The arguing over Ukraine, now getting close to all-out war, atrocities in Afghanistan, mass killings in African nations, Islamic terrorism, child abuse within the Catholic Church, cyber attacks from China.... this plus the worldwide economic crisis and the COVID pandemic have been diverting attention from the symptoms we are already experiencing of a potential climatic calamity.   

Overcoming the issues discussed but left unresolved by last November’s COP26 conference in Glasgow remains mankind’s greatest and most urgent challenge. It needs intelligent cooperation not absurd confrontation. 

Alarming new studies show that droughts and sea level rises due to climate change are threatening life in the United States more than ever before, just as they are in Portugal.  Even more alarming is the fact that internationally not nearly enough is being done about it.

“Climate change-induced extreme winter drought devastates crops in Spain and Portugal,” just about made it into the international news headlines last week .“This year, amid record low levels, or no rainfall at all, farmers in both Portugal and Spain, who are growing produce for all of Europe, are worried that their crops for this season will be ruined,” reported  Euronews.

Portugal has had little rain since last October. Since the end of January, 45% of the country has been experiencing ‘severe’ or ‘extreme’ drought. Rainfall from the beginning of October to the end of January was less than half the annual average for that four-month period. Water levels in the country’s reservoirs are dropping significantly and there are no reassuring forecasts for heavy rains in the months ahead. Every bit as worrying as growing sufficient agricultural products for human consumption and grass for livestock is providing domestic supplies of fresh water in urban areas. Sufficient winter precipitation prior to the normal dry summer is crucial, but Portugal is not getting it. 

The new studies in the US have reported not only on mega-droughts in California and the rest of the southwest, but on sea level rises all along America’s vast coastline. We know all about sea level rises along Portugal’s west and south coasts. They are threatening to flood and perhaps submerge many communities causing social and financial ruin, not least to tourism.

Longer and hotter heat waves prompting more widespread wildfires are among Portugal’s other major concerns in connection with climate change, which is why mandatory spring land clearing is already underway throughout the country from north to south. 

Yes, we know about the ever-present danger of desertification as Portugal is one of Europe’s most vulnerable countries to climate change because of its geographical location. This is all so distant from the minds of egomanias such as global warming denier Donald Trump and Ukraine obsessed Vladimir Putin, but global leaders must focus much more on supporting, not destroying, the future of life on planet Earth.  

 

Climate change is dramatically changing birdlife across Europe

 

By contributing to global warming, humans are causing major disruptions to birdlife in Portugal and all over the rest of Europe as well as Africa.

For one thing, the annual northward bird migration between Africa and Europe, which traditionally starts this month, is being impacted. Migrants are arriving earlier, staying longer, and in some cases not returning south.

Ornithological studies show that the imbalance has been rapidly increasing and will continue to do so as the planet warms up.

Normally, more than two billion birds have been flying epic journeys from sub-Saharan and southern Africa in spring, and back again in autumn, a total of anywhere between eight and more than twenty thousand kilometres. But these are not normal times. Global warming and increasing desertification has been changing habitats and food availability in Africa, thus making Portugal and all other European spring and summer breeding grounds even more attractive than they used to be.

Studies forecast that many of the commonest migrants will continue to spend as much as two months longer in Europe before returning south in the autumn or winter - and that an increasing number may cease to be long-distance travellers ever again.

A lot of storks and swallows, which are particularly familiar species in Portugal, have given up tackling the hazardous crossing southwards across the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara desert. They find the year-round environment here is more than adequate.

House martins and cuckoos are among the first and most obvious arrivals here in February and March, but instinctively they are finding it is not worth the effort when Winter environments and food supplies are more plentiful in Europe nowadays compared to a couple of decades ago.

Migrants prepare for departure by consuming as rich and abundant a diet as possible. Even so, there is still a strong possibility of exhaustion on the way. Not only that, they have to depend on their instinctive but still not fully understood ability to navigate over vast distances.

While greater numbers of normally migratory individuals are residing here, Bird International and the RSPCA reckon the overall population of birds in Europe has decreased by around 600 million since 1980. Most of them are common species such as sparrows, starlings and skylarks. Many have been wiped out by agricultural developments, land clearance, air pollution and insecticides. The research shows that some other species have increased by roughly 300 million, hence the net figure of 600 million. The equivalent population decrease over the same period in the United States and Canada is estimated to be more than two billion.

 Complicated as all this may seem, nature is simply being forced to adapt as best as possible in line with Charles Darwin’s theory on the survival of the fittest. In this regard, recently published research using data collected over decades shows that some bird species are adapting to global warming by losing weight, slimming down and slightly extending their wing lengths in order to be more efficient in cooler climes.

Bids that prefer relatively high-altitude living are moving higher in hilly or mountainous areas if warming temperatures demand this. Waders in Portugal and elsewhere will have to find alternative wetlands because of droughts created by climate change. The Portuguese Institute of Meteorology says the current drought here, which started last November, has worsened and now 54% of the country is experiencing moderate drought, 34% severe drought and 11% extreme drought.

Mammals and plants are having to adapt too. Some mammals are slimming down and growing longer noses, ears and tails. Fewer seed-eating birds nowadays mean that plants are suffering because of a lessening of seed distribution.

In contrast to native European birds and mammals, so many humans are obese. The world’s human population is increasing. Climate change is not getting the attention it needs. According to the British Museum of Natural History, of the 544 bird species in Europe, 71 are currently threatened with extinction and 34 more are vulnerable. Humans are likely to become extinct too if they don’t mend their aggressive ways, focus more on nature conservation and keep temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

 

A majority win for the Socialists

The centre-left Socialist Party (PS) was victorious in Sunday’s general election with enough votes for an absolute parliamentary majority led by Antonio Costa.

The result came as a surprise. A Socialist win had been predicted, but opinion polls had suggested a less than outright win, meaning that another minority coalition arrangement would be necessary.

The early election was called because the 2022 budget proposals of the former minority Socialist government were rejected by parliament, including the two far-left parties that until llast November had been supporting the PS.

Provisional results have given the Socialists around 43% of the votes and the centre-right Social Democrats a lower than expected 30%.  The far-right Chega party finished third.

The voter turnout was higher than expected despite the COVID pandemic.