Showing posts with label Chandra Levy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chandra Levy. Show all posts

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Revisionism: Nearing 4th anniversary of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, Anorak pokes holes in Portuguese town's attempted airbrushing of blame


The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre -A Minute for Madeleine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=979u-xbPHrQ

Above, Madeleine McCann, the-then three year-old Everton fan missing from Praia da Luz, Portugal now for four years.

This afternoon,
Anorak has posted a scathingly tart rejoinder to the blind acceptance by many about what has been reported and broadcast thus far on this tragic story, particularly about the supposed depth of feeling by the people of the seaside Portuguese town from which this young girl disappeared. Of what, yes, 'it all means...'

It takes aim and fires!
In my opinion?
Bulls-eye!
Bulls-eye times ten.


It's rightful target? This morning's story in The Sunday Telegraph, which had a teaser photo of Maddie at the bottom, just below the front page photo of Queen Elizabeth and former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Read the story so you'll better understand the spot-on criticism and analysis from Anorak:



Madeleine McCann: time to forget?
As the fourth anniversary of Madeleine McCann's disappearance approaches - and coincides with a new book written by her mother, Kate - Olga Craig returns to Praia da Luz to see how the Portuguese resort has put the incident behind it

By Olga Craig 7:00AM BST 24 Apr 2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/8469932/Madeleine-McCann-time-to-forget.html

-----

The
Anorak piece quite correctly thinks that the whole tragic episode is being airbrushed out of memory and that it's not just the Portuguese doing the convenient forgetting -since they want to keep the European tourists coming back and spending their Euros- but even some British journalists who are abetting this deliberate attempt to make the public's concern and the resulting media attention, appear frothy, frivolous and misplaced.

There's little doubt that some but not all of the reporting was.
I've read that sort before and so have many of you, but in casting such a wide net, these latter reporters only show their own profound lack of perspective, sincerity and humanity.


Without getting into all the details or naming the guilty, to me, it sounds suspiciously similar to the smug patronizing attitude I heard in-person at nice places throughout Washington -and later read in print- by some liberal reporters and columnists about Chandra Levy's disappearance and murder.

Who said that it was, you see, oh dear, 'much ado about nothing.'

Yes,
we were reassured, it was just another summer story in The Beltway that would soon disappear once Labor Day rolled-around and the big-time journalists returned from The Cape or Aspen or wherever the new in-spot was, as that story would then be squashed into nothingness by WaPo editors with a love for lengthy stories about the budget.

Yes, I was told,
reporting on Chandra Levy was almost beneath some of them, a graduate of a top-tier school said, who surely imagines that they'll be running the Washington Post some day when right-thinking people are making the grave decision.

I kid you not, Washington is absolutely full to the gills with people like that.
It's not
just the elected officials who have an extraordinary sense of grandeur about themselves and their future dates with destiny, it's the reporters.

Is there anything worse than journalists who are openly contemptuous of average people and their interests, lecturing everyone else in sight about what things "really" mean,
from the vantage point of their f-ing high horse?
I think not.


In case you forgot or never read it here the first time, while she was not someone I personally knew, Chandra Levy used the same exact gym I did in downtown Washington.
I actually saw her from time-to-time, just as I saw lots of people there who, after awhile, became familiar faces of a sort, even if I didn't know their entire back-story.


Those ubiquitous fliers of her that you saw on the news stories so many hundreds of times were the very one I passed everyday on my way into the gym.

My two previous post on Chandra Levy are at the bottom of this post.

Here's the piece from Anorak that shoots and scores!

Anorak
Madeleine McCann: Fourth Anniversary Tour, With Robert Murat
Read this great post at:
http://www.anorak.co.uk/279312/madeleine-mccann/madeleine-mccann-fourth-anniversary-tour-with-robert-murat.html

----

Sky News'
updated links to videos, photos, articles and Life of Crime blog by Sky's crime correspondent Martin Brunt at
http://news.sky.com/skynews/madeleine while those of The Sun are at http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/maddie/

The official site to find Madeleine McCann
http://www.findmadeleine.com/home.html


I don't get them in the mail in Hallandale Beach like I did for the 14 years I lived in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., but a good reason why you should always look at ADVO's "Have you seen me?" fliers:

Why you should always look at ADVO\

Because sometimes the kids seen on them do turn up. Above, Elizabeth Smart. I still remember the day that she was found alive, and quite unexpectedly, having kept the mailer above in a dresser drawer, knowing that I'd never run into her around D.C., finding myself crying the moment MSNBC broke the news that she'd been found ALIVE.



The Daily Mirror
Madeleine McCann search: JK Rowling helps Maddy's mum Kate write book on

by Greig Box-Turnbull, Daily Mirror

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/04/11/madeleine-mccann-search-jk-rowling-helps-maddy-s-mum-kate-write-book-on-115875-23052492/


February 13, 2011
As predicted here, McClatchy & Miami Herald never refer to illegal alien status of convicted killer of Chandra Levy in article. Shocker!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/as-predicted-here-mcclatchy-miami.html

February 11, 2011
Killer convicted! Illegal immigrant from El Salvador sentenced to 60 years in prison by D.C. jury for 2001 murder of Chandra Levy
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/killer-convicted-illegal-immigrant-from.html

Sunday, February 13, 2011

As predicted here, McClatchy & Miami Herald never refer to illegal alien status of convicted killer of Chandra Levy in article. Shocker!


In this space on Friday, February 11th, in a blog post I titled, "Killer convicted! Illegal immigrant from El Salvador sentenced to 60 years in prison by D.C. jury for 2001 murder of Chandra Levy" http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/killer-convicted-illegal-immigrant-from.html 
I posited the deeply-felt personal belief that within days, when the time came for the Miami Herald to finally run their story on the verdict of this murder trial, they would completely ignore the fact that the convicted killer of Chandra Levy, Ingmar Guandique, was an El Salvadoran who was in the United States illegally.
And, in fact,
Guandique had been here illegally for YEARS.

As you can see from my snapshot of that article as it appeared in print, above, and the actual article, below, my prediction went from my brain and lips to the
Miami Herald's printing press
.

That I could predict such a thing with such utter confidence ought to give you some real insight into the extent which the traditional Chinese Wall between editorial and reporting is a non-existent one at the
Miami Herald on the issue of immigration policy.


They don't even bother trying to pretend anymore and hide their bias.


The real kicker is that the McClatchy reporter, Michael Doyle, actually used the word "immigrant" in his version of the story.
"Immigrant?"

"Immigrant," really?


Knute Rockne was an immigrant. Albert Einstein was an immigrant. Lou Gehrig and Martin Scorsese's family were immigrants.
Ingmar Guandique is an illegal alien who stone-cold murdered an innocent woman named Chandra Levy, a 24-year old young woman with an outgoing personality who continually gave to her community in her hometown, and was killed because to Guandique, she was just a loose-end to his latest crime.
Period!


Guadique is a person with a very long criminal record that this Herald article, as it actually appeared in print, hardly even begins to skim the surface of. The Washington Post reported on that criminal record in detail years ago, but but for whatever reasons, the Herald has NEVER ever mentioned it.

Tell me, why would the Miami Herald censor his long criminal background for so long?

And why was he STILL here?

Those are good questions, why don't you call illegal alien advocate Chery Little, founder and executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, and ask her?

There's clearly someone up in the Washington, D.C. area doing the same thing for the illegals up there that she does in Miami, where she has serially manipulated the hell out of the pliant South Florida news media, especially the Miami Herald.

Little limits information on the carefully-chosen '
clients' she trots out for the news media
and keeps the illegal alien parents -who came here and ignored U.S. govt. notices to return home or update information- completely out of the reach of reporters.
All in order to get the most positive spin possible for herself, FIAC and the issue.


If you have paid close attention to her and her dog-and-pony shows for the local South Florida media thru the years, it's hard not to notice that her 'clients' are almost always straight out of Central Casting, and that's not by mistake.
And did you ever notice how few of the Hispanic 'clients' are dark-skinned?
I have!
And so have many of my friends throughout South Florida.



That was especially noticeable when she was trying to rally public support for the absurd and unpopular DREAM ACT that the vast majority of Americans have always opposed.
The people she trotted out were almost invariably articulate high school kids getting very good grades with lots of potential and lots of options, as if that was at all representative of what most of the kids here in South Florida illegally have.
It's completely preposterous.

But the South Florida news media ate it up, anyway!

That's not by accident, since it's clear that Little carefully chose which people to trot out for all the predictable questions from the sleepwalking media, many of whom seem more like aspiring spokesmodels than journalists.

And because so many of the local Miami print and TV reporters lack much backbone to speak of, much less, a nose for real news, especially the ones under the age of 35, they swallow it whole every time, never bothering to ask how someone -a culpable parent- NEVER quite learned enough English in 17 years in Miami to make themselves understood in English, even while their kid might be getting straight-A's.

(Now there's THE real story -the reality disconnect and the media's perpetual lack of curiosity.)

And almost every time Cheryl Little's name appears in print in the Herald, who's the (faux) reporter doing the stenography?
Correct, Alfonso Chardy, the most self-evidently biased reporter at the Miami Herald -or just about any newspaper I can think of, actually.


If you ever wondered about the inherent and over-weaning bias of the Miami Herald and their parent company, The McClatchy Company, on the issue of immigration policy, I think this story is the final nail in the coffin.
Game, set, match.

If Carlos Alvarez or Dwyane Wade or Don Shula were killed in a robbery or drive-by outside of a Shula's Steakhouse by an illegal alien, would the Miami Herald mention that pertinent fact, or would they intentionally keep it out?

I guess we know the answer to that question now, as this snapshot I took, above, of Saturday's Miami Herald, page 4A -with no photos, no links, no nothing...- makes abundantly clear.

Or read it yourself!

For the record, the text in blue in the article below NEVER appeared in yesterday's print edition.


-----

Chandra Levy's killer gets 60-year prison sentence

By Michael Doyle

The man convicted of killing Chandra Levy was sentenced Friday to 60 years in prison.
Punctuating a law-and-order saga that's lasted nearly a decade, D.C. Superior Court Judge Gerald I. Fisher rejected a defense bid for a new trial and imposed the stiff sentence on Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique.
"I think he is a dangerous person," Fisher said. "I think he is a dangerous person to women, in particular, and I think he will remain one for a long time."
Chandra's mother, Susan Levy, drove the point home, with a firmly delivered victim's impact statement that she directed, at times, right at Guandique.
"You, Mr. Guandique, you are lower than a cockroach," Levy said.
At the end of her 16-minute statement, in which she also read comments written by her son, Adam, and her husband, Robert, Levy turned to her daughter's killer and pointed at him.
"Finally, (expletive) you," Susan Levy said. "That is it."
Now 29, Guandique will be at least 80 before he becomes eligible for parole from federal prison. Fisher rejected prosecutors' request to deny any possibility of parole, raising the faint possibility that Guandique will die outside of prison.
"This might be a life sentence," Fisher acknowledged. "In all likelihood, it will be a life sentence."
Manacled and dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Guandique showed little emotion during most of the 90-minute sentencing hearing. When given a chance to speak, though, he appeared to rub tears from his eyes before protesting his innocence.
"I am sorry, I am very sorry for what happened to (Chandra)," Guandique said, speaking through an interpreter, "but I had nothing to do with it. I am innocent."
Following a little more than three days of deliberations, the jury of three men and nine women on Nov. 22 had found Guandique guilty on two counts of first-degree felony murder.
The jury concluded Guandique had attacked Chandra on May 1, 2001, while she was walking or jogging in a remote reach of Washington's Rock Creek Park. The felony murder charge was formally predicated on a claim that Guandique was attempting to rob Levy, although prosecutors emphasized the possibility that the attack was sexual in nature.
Citing prison disciplinary records and other crimes, including several Guandique admitted to and others that were never proven in court, prosecutors had argued he was an implacable menace to society.
"Guandique has demonstrated predatory behavior that seems incapable of rehabilitation," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Amanda Haines and Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez wrote in an 18-page sentencing memo.
Defense attorneys Santha Sonenberg and Maria Hawilo retorted with their own sentencing memo of more than 11 pages, in which they cited a violent, impoverished upbringing as well as learning and psychological problems.
"He grew up without running water or electricity ... and he suffers from a number of different afflictions," Sonenberg said.
A former defense attorney, appointed to the D.C. Superior Court bench by President Bill Clinton in 2001, Fisher had also overseen preliminary proceedings in the Levy case for more than a year before the trial began.
Levy had just turned 24 when she disappeared. She had finished her University of Southern California graduate studies and a federal Bureau of Prisons internship and was planning to take a May 5 Amtrak train back home to California's San Joaquin Valley, trial testimony revealed.
Levy was also sexually involved with then-Congressman Gary Condit, trial evidence and testimony graphically confirmed. Early speculation about her shadowy relationship with the much-older politician had helped make Levy's disappearance a news sensation in the first place.
An uncomfortable-looking Condit testified that he had nothing to do with Levy's death, but the judge also permitted him to stiff-arm questions about the exact nature of his affair with Levy.
Prosecutors lacked any DNA, fingerprint, fiber or other physical evidence connecting Guandique to Levy or the wooded Rock Creek Park hillside where her skeletal remains were found in May 2002. There were no eyewitnesses.
Prosecutors also didn't get a chance to cross-examine Guandique, who listened to the translated trial proceedings through a headset.
Of the 40 prosecution witnesses, only former Fresno Bulldogs gang member Alberto Morales directly connected Guandique to Levy. A one-time cellmate, Morales testified that Guandique confessed the killing to him.
Morales, currently scheduled to be released in 2016, is not currently in federal Bureau of Prisons custody, according to the agency's inmate locator. During the Levy trial, he was said to be "in transit." It is not yet known which federal prison Guandique will be dispatched to; previously, he was serving his sentence on other charges at U.S. Penitentiary Victorville, on the unforgivably hot margins of California's Mojave Desert.

Meanwhile this very afternoon, the St. Petersburg Times, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Company, has a story on their website, highlighted in blue below, titled, "Illegal immigrant held in connection with standoff in Carrollwood."
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/illegal-immigrant-held-in-connection-with-standoff-in-carrollwood/1151437

Yes, even the St. Pete Times, a very liberal newspaper that employs reporters I personally know, DOESN'T engage in such ham-handed and selective use of facts -much less, in a murder case!- to the extent that McClatchy and the Miami Herald has -and does.



"Illegal immigrant held in connection with standoff in Carrollwood."
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/illegal-immigrant-held-in-connection-with-standoff-in-carrollwood/1151437

Friday, February 11, 2011

Killer convicted! Illegal immigrant from El Salvador sentenced to 60 years in prison by D.C. jury for 2001 murder of Chandra Levy


Ingmar Guandique convicted of first-degree murder of former intern Chandra Levy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/11/22/VI2010112204678.html

Washington Post
Guandique sentenced to 60 years for Levy murder
More than nine years after former federal intern Chandra Levy disappeared, a D.C. Superior Court jury found Ingmar Guandique guilty of first-degree murder in her death

By Keith L. Alexander, Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, February 11, 2011; 10:37 PM


Susan Levy stood about two feet from the man convicted of killing her daughter Chandra and wasted no time telling Ingmar Guandique what she thought of him.


"Because of you, young man, you have caused us to live a Holocaust again," Levy said in a packed, hushed and rapt D.C. Superior courtroom Friday. "You have sentenced our entire family to days of sadness, tears and heartache. You are a hideous creature."

Levy stood at a podium, with Guandique two seats away, separated by his two attorneys.
At times, Levy addressed Guandique directly and pointed at him. "How could you take my daughter's life? Did you really take her life? Look me in my eyes and tell me."


Read the rest of the story, along with many other related features, at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021103591.html

Chandra Levy
belonged to the same sports gym I belonged to in downtown Washington, D.C., including that time period when she went "missing."


"Missing" -what a completely meaningless f-ing word when it applies to someone you have a connection to, no matter how tangential.

That "missing" photo of Chandra Levy, the one you you think you saw a million times on TV newscasts and insipid tabloid entertainment shows ten years ago, the one that was taped in the gym's front window on Connecticut Avenue north of M Street, and the other branch west on M Street towards CBS News' Washington bureau, that I and all the other gym members passed by everyday, well guess what, we saw it two million times.

And speaking of "missing," where were all the Lynda Meier "missing" posters in Hallandale Beach retail stores and restaurants and parks in the days immediately after she disappeared last summer? Oh, that's right, there weren't ANY.
Oh, so NOW you understand a little bit why that Hallandale Beach Police Dept. royal fuck-up last year under Police Chief Thomas Magill, that unprofessional Keytone Kop who threatened city residents and who used city funds and resources in an outrageous attempt to frame two innocent people to impress his dumb-ass boss, Mike Good -the useless former city manger that helped ruin this city through his sheer ineptness and incompetency, along with mayor Joy Cooper's full cooperation- an effort for which Magill was NEVER publicly punished or prosecuted for, made my head explode month-after-month?
Yes, Mendacious Magill!

See my July 1st, 2010 post,
What's THE worst possible thing you can do during an active search for a 'missing person'? Another tale of HB incompetency under Police Chief Magillhttp://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/whats-worst-possible-thing-you-can-do.html

Yes, that jaw-dropping fiasco last year where the HB Police Dept. NEVER put up ANY posters at ANY of the dozens of restaurants, retail stores, parks that residents visit daily, in the days immediately after Meier's disappearance, where a possible witness may've been found. Not one.

They NEVER even so much as put one up at next door City Hall, but sure as hell, there was a
taped missing poster for someone's pet at the time, right next to the City Hall front door.
But not for Lynda Meier.


Yes, I have THAT incriminating photo of the missing pet flyer at City Hall, just like I have the photos of all the dozens and dozens of storefront windows that had nothing in them about this missing HB resident, even though store/restaurant owners and managers I spoke to all over the city unanimously said they'd have put one up IF the HB Police Dept. or HB Crime Watch had merely asked them to.But they NEVER asked!
!!

And where exactly was the HB Crime Watch crew under their brown-nosing dear leader, Alexander Lewy, who never said anything the least bit critical about what Magill was doing or saying -or not doing- all those years when he was police chief, and alive?
Sitting on their fat asses!

They sure the hell weren't passing out flyers at busy intersections or stores or restaurants like they would be in other cities across the country in the first 72 hours, when time is of the utmost essence in looking for her and witnesses.
Yes, now that I've given you more context, the parts of the Lynda Meier puzzle and the City of Hallandale Beach's abject incompetency are starting to become clearer to you now, aren't they?

Me, I wish that illegal alien Ingmar Guandique was going to be executed next week.
The more painful, the better.

I'd be happy to pull the switch, push the button or tell him for the last time, "Adios!"


As of today, Friday February 11th, 2011, Hallandale Beach resident Lynda Robyn Meier has now been missing for 251 days, and the city's incompetent Police Dept. has still NEVER publicly posted one missing poster of her at a site where HB residents would have seen it.

Extra, extra, read all about it.
..

But not in the sleepwalking South Florida news media of 2011, eh friends?

I could tell you which print and TV reporters/columnists/editors/producers know all about that scandal in Hallandale Beach, but who have consciously said or written NOTHING about it.

Just ask me their names, I'll be happy to tell you.
And watch how rarely the words illegal alien ever come up in the Chandra Levy murder story over the weekend.
How utterly predictable it all is.