Oh, goody, Smiffy's insulted Bushmeat.

Beyond Parody

JB writes: A piece of puffery on Twitter by and for a M/S Pat Brown, about whom the Bureau knows very little, sent me, for the first time, to her blog. There she has written that:

"…something is seriously wrong with the Madeleine McCann case and here are ten reasons why I think this is not business as usual and there is a political cover-up going on of some sort." At last – a smoking gun!

These, briefly, are the 10 reasons which tell Pat Brown that there is something called a "political cover-up" going on in the UK.

The amount of funds being allotted to Scotland Yard…is unprecedented and outrageous.
Scotland Yard began their "review" by publicly stating that the parents were not suspects.
Scotland Yard constantly says they are updating the parents of the missing child.
Scotland Yard did not do a reconstruction of the crime.
Scotland Yard validated Jane Tanner's version of what she saw on a narrow street.
Scotland Yard verified that Tannerman existed with a claim that was not credible.
Scotland Yard relatively large "Operation Grange" team has spent three years reviewing files that should have taken no more than a few weeks or months.
After reviewing all the evidence and leads in the files, Scotland Yard is investigating suspects that have no connection to the case.
Scotland Yard wants to search for Maddies's body (and, yes, they would be searching for a body as all other evidence would be long gone after seven years) in the most unlikely place to find her, right near the apartment in a very open-to-the-view-of-the-public location with hard-as-rock ground where no shallow grave could have been missed by the PJ or anyone walking by.
In spite of the fact the PJ has asked for there to be no press about the case, Scotland Yard has its own people still giving interviews.

I have rarely seen a more shoddy disconnect between a claim - a really serious, unprecedented and dramatic claim that would instantly bring about the fall of the government and their mass imprisonment if it were found to be true – and the "evidence" supposedly justifying it.

Leaving aside the ignorance of British institutions that the list reveals and the failure to understand even the most elementary basics – an investigative review as this was does not involve "suspects", reconstructions are not normally used in UK investigations for the resolution of witness anomalies – it consists of childishly subjective opinion ("outrageous", "not credible") , suppositions ("a few weeks or months", "Scotland Yard validated…"), non-sequiturs ("after reviewing all the evidence and leads in the files, Scotland Yard is investigating suspects that have no connection to the case") and hearsay, ("Scotland Yard wants to search for Maddie's body in the most unlikely place to find her" ) but not a single syllable linking this rubbishy rodomontade in any way to her central accusation.

She has made the claim up.

It hardly needs pointing out that these Ten Commandments, where they are not worthless or nonsensical, can be used as evidence of almost anything. Scotland Yard incompetence, the mental state of a "Criminal Profiler", the fact that all the world's police forces are conspiring against us, anything: all three such theories are as well supported by the ten points as her own claim is. Most damningly they are very strong evidence indeed for the theory that the McCanns are innocent of anything connected with their daughter and that the police know it! Is that what M/S Brown is trying to prove? I'm sorry but I genuinely don't believe from this blog entry that she even knows what evidence actually is, any more than Tony Bennett does.

A researcher rather than a self-publicist might have started such an explosive j'accuse with known examples of such United Kingdom cover-ups in the past, with the exact machinery that enables them to work, their successes and failures and, having established their existence, go on to give the precise reasons that would provoke politicians to embark on such a crazily self-destructive course. But no, nothing. Instead a gossipy junk shopping list that even Jerry Lawton wouldn't write.

I know nothing about Brown's career but I gave my opinion of "criminal profiling" many years ago on the 3As site: it is based on nineteenth century junk-science concepts of "criminal attributes or dispositions", which arose out of highly questionable eugenics research around the same time as phrenology, with which it has many things in common. The only investigative system that has ever really encouraged it is, by no coincidence at all, that of Nazi Germany, where its junk and anti-humanist concepts (humans aren't humans, they're types) fitted happily into that state's murderous belief in "criminal" as well as "racial" types. Its Wikipedia entry still today refers to its ambition "to accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown criminal subjects or offenders". To call it pseudo-science is to flatter it enormously. Give me phrenology anytime.