Does your kid have skin the same colour as a potato’s skin? If so, you’re in trouble (or the kid plays in the dirt a lot).
Just to clear things up - and as I stated in my earlier post - when she was first found she was nicknamed “Pumpkin” because her name was unknown and she was wearing Pumpkin Patch clothing, a well known kids clothing brand here in New Zealand: how anyone reads racism into that is beyond me.
Oh it’s on.
I think “pumpkin” is actually better than using her real name. Some day she’ll want to not be famous, at least not for this, and if few people know her name is Qian Xun, then it can be up to her who knows that she was That Little Girl.
The media is continuing to call her “Maddie” even though her family never used that as a nickname, and never called her anything but Madeleine.
You’re really reaching.
I’ve seen him eat sand, does that count?
Damn, did you eat an extra helping of stupid flakes this morning?
The little girl was abandoned on the 15th. We now know that within a few hours her father boarded a plane for the US. The flight is no more than 16 hours long cite.
So if the father flew out on the fifteenth, it was the 16th in Australia when he landed and cleared customs. So the question was what did the police know about her and who the mystery man was on the 16th?
As stated in my second cite in my first post
(Bolding and underlining for the comprehension impaired.)
So at midday on the 16th the police in Australia had no idea who this little girl was, and therefore no idea who her father was, and no fucking clue that he had gotten on an airplane for LA. BTW this is quite likely after the plane landed, or it was just about to land. Yet you think
Listen Sparky, real life does not work like an episode of CSI. Here in the real world solving crimes often takes a lot of grunt work and time. I guess on your planet the police should interview every male passenger on every flight going to every destination, just because a little girl was abandoned in Melbourne. Good idea, we don’t have enough threads here about Customs, and the police acting like everyone is guilty. :rolleyes:
I stand by my original comments.
I used to work with a guy called Spud and the last I heard of him, he was a pedophile.
Don’t feel so clever now, do we? Eh? Eh?
I think you’re reading more into the story that what it says. As in associating the time-stamp of the report with respect to what the police know. No need to raise your hackles, I’m just looking for information. ::shrug::
Jack Bauer coulda’ done it. Of course, he would have returned from LA with the guy’s head in a duffel bag and shown it to li’l 3 year old pumpkin* while screaming “TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS!”, but he could’a done it.
*I’m sorry if I offended with that racist remark. I’ll check myself into rehab first thing tomorrow
Bullshit.
You were accusing the Melbourne Police,the LAPD and FBI of incompetence.
Unless you can produce a cite that says that the police knew the father’s identity and travel plans before the plane landed, you got no leg to stand on.
No, I’m pretty sure calling her ‘Hitler’ wouldn’t have worked in the popular press.
Have the newspapers started calling this ‘Pumpkingate’ yet?
Um… she did. In fact, kambuckta started a thread (this one, as it happens) about it. On the other hand, you started a thread over in GD focusing on the name “Pumpkin”.
So, the line I quoted is a bit rich coming from you.
The earliest reference on GoogleNews to “pumpkin identified” is Monday, September 17, at 8 a.m.
http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2007/09/17/Police_identify_man_who_abandoned_Pumpkin
So, the timeline:
She’s found at the train station mid-morning Saturday morning. Her dad gets on his plane at noon-ish Saturday. It’s a 16-hour flight to L.A., which means that he arrives in the U.S. at at the crack of dawn early Sunday morning, Australian time.
The police do not publicly identify her until Monday morning at breakfast, Australian time. Now, it’s possible that they might have known who she was right away on Saturday, in time to intercept his plane at L.A. at the crack of dawn Sunday morning Australian time–but why would they sit on that information and not release it to the press until Monday morning? If they had somehow found out who she was, and where her dad was headed, during that Saturday afternoon, evening, and night, they would certainly have met him at LAX. The fact that they didn’t says that they didn’t know who she was until after his plane had landed.
The perceived problem is not with the Victoria (Melbourne) Police nor with the LAPD, but the New Zealand Police (and they’ve issued their own justifications since, so I make no comment either way there). I’m just surprised that this guy came to Australia in the first place. I don’t understand why anything beyond something minor like a cheaper air ticket would have stopped him hightailing it to the US straight out of New Zealand.
Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t I read something somewhere about this guy going back to the US with his Samurai Sword? Can you fly out of New Zealand, and Australia, and then to the United States with a frickin’ Samurai Sword? Can you even walk around an airport in the US with one?
Where was the guy who is in charge of confiscating nail clippers, man?
“Hey, man, Samurai Swords ain’t on the list.”
Tris
I was being diplomatic before, but now, by their own admission, the New Zealand Police were too cautious.
I can’t even indulge in a little black humour at the street being Keystone Ave. It’s beyond that. My understanding of police operations involving a suspicious event regarding a motor vehicle (even a marginally dangerous one such as an old wreck car being burned at a place known for bored teenagers to do it) is to POP THE TRUNK as the Very. First. Thing.
But 16 hours? 16 hours with the car cunningly hidden by being PARKED OUTSIDE THE FAMILY HOME??? During this time we were being told about “grave concerns for her wellbeing”.
The level of incompetence shown here is beyond belief. Preserving evidence? Arse! According to the article:
Keystone Avenue indeed.
For Anan Liu, it doesn’t matter. For the police, I hope they are right that she was already dead, not wounded and suffocating in that car.
I’m with saoirse here.
I actually find continuing to refer to the little girl by a nickname to be preferable. In ten years, she may not want to field the question “Oh, are you that Qian Xun Xue? The one who’s father murdered your mother and abandoned you on a train platform?” a million times. Frankly, as long as the media keeps on referring to her as “Pumpkin” (and, as an aside, how the fuck are people construing that as a racist nickname anyway? There wasn’t enough material for RO in this story already, you had to make some up?), then she can decide *for herself * to what extent she wants to clue total strangers in to the details of her personal history, as opposed to having everyone who follows current events knowing the whole dirty, filthy story already.
I always felt badly for surviving child victims of crimes like this that get major publicity. How much harder must it be to come to terms with what happened to you if you’re never allowed to put it out of your mind completely because you never know when some well-meaning nosy person might chirp in with “Oooo! Are you *that * Victim-Of-Tragedy” and then starts asking questions? At least with cutesy-poo nicknames stuck on them by the press and used consistently over the life of the story, the vast majority of people will only remember “Pumpkin” and not “Qian Xun Xue” past the next couple of months.
I agree that it’s preferable for the media to continue to use “Pumpkin”.
Also, I *think * (and please feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken) that **blinkinblinking’s ** complaint isn’t that “Pumpkin” is an inherently racist nickname, but that the media continues to use it because they are somehow averse to her real Chinese name, and therein lies the racism. I don’t agree, but I still think it’s a more reasonable opinion than the one people seem to think s/he is espousing.
Randall Larsen, founding director of the Department of Homeland Security, says those charged with keeping us secure aren’t focusing on the right things. Within two weeks of 9/11, he was able to get a surgical mask and a vial containing a “weaponized biological agent” past security into Cheney’s office. Security asked him about the mask but not the vial.
The same thing when he visited Langley.