The McCanns have released a new video of Maddie

http://sosmaddie.dhblogs.be/

This Saturday, Kate and Gerry MCann started off the release of a new series of video images of their daughter Madeleine, recorded in the couple's house, in December 2006, five months before her disappearance in the south of Portugal.

The video shows Madeleine sitting on the steps of the stairs of the Rothley house, flanked by the twins Sean and Amélie, whom she is encouraging to copy her actions.
The couple do not appear in the video, but it includes an appeal from them calling for Madeleine to be returned to them: "Christmas is a time for children. Please help bring our daughter back." The video ends with the message "This will be our second Christmas without our daughter. Please help us make sure we don't have a third."

The release of this new video, which the McCanns had promised for Christmas, started off tonight in Australia. Clarence Mitchell, former director of the Media Monitoring Unit and spokesperson for the family, stated that the couple "do not wish to say anything further. They feel that the video will speak for itself."

The video can be seen on the SOS Madeleine McCann web site, as well as on various news channels on TV and on their web sites. It seems rather odd that the McCanns are only now releasing this video, which is the first time the public will have heard Madeleine speaking. It also gives a much better impression of the real child who disappeared from her family's holiday apartment than any photos the McCanns chose to release as posters of their child.

So, what does the video say to Madeleine, whom her parents are telling us is still out there? Does it say, this Christmas, we are thinking of you and hope you are safe and well? No, it says, Kate and Gerry McCann are having a hard time, please help us.

This is the poster the McCanns are asking people to download and take with them if they are going abroad this Christmas.

The central image looks like it was taken quite some time before the Praia da Luz holiday and it doesn't appear to show a child with blonde hair. Rather, it shows a child with mid-brown hair. I really don't see the point of producing another poster with very old images of Madeleine, who would now be aged five years and seven months and look quite different from any of those photos, simply from the natural process of growth and development, never mind the efforts of any abductor to alter her appearance.

I guess I am being very cynical here, but that poster would surely not help to find a child who could be around two years older than shown in the central image. What is the real intention here, I ask myself. And the answer I come up with is related directly to the rather prominent Paypal button on the McCanns' Christmas page of their web site.

http://www.findmadeleine.com/2008/