Skepticblog

Maddie?

Connie Sonne sent me pictures supposedly taken by her of the missing British child, Maddie Mccann. She is sticking to her story that “all will be revealed” in some form on her website in September, including all her “evidence” accusing Banachek and the entire JREF team of “cheating and lying.” Personally, I can’t see that there’s any reason to think that these photos are anywhere near looking like the tot shown in the other collaged shots, even if she had grown up a few years. But who am I? I’m not psychic, so what do I know?

To me, these shots look suspiciously like bad scrapbook attempts and I for one would have opted for a more close-up CIA style blow-up if I was out to Photoshop some kind of mock-evidence.

But Connie is into psychic stuff and providing clear evidence (or even clear writing style) is not one of her talents. She’s a dowser, not a secret agent.

In her interview that I conducted after her failed Million Dollar afternoon, she kept to her story of high government corruption and Maddie’s part in some global conspiracy having to do with vast amounts of secret money and everything shy of a Bilderberger profecy. Her note (spelling and English un-corrected for accuracy) attached to these photos reads:

“Mark Edward, I think you should know.-……. here is Madeleine Mccann, the british missing girl, on a plain for Southamerica last year, and you are welcome to publish it on your site !! And yes, she has the mark in her eye and yes she speaks english. The photo is compared with photos from the internet.”

It’s nice of her to think I should know this isn’t it?

Mark in her eye? What? I’m not familiar with any marks on any eyes. But like the tabloids will probably say when Connie sends this in to them for publication, there’s “evidence” somewhere in the picture, even if they have to invent it. I have sent these pics to Bryan and Baxter who will be examining them closely. We will no doubt be discussing them and other Connie issues on Warning Radio this coming Monday night, August 17th at 8:00 p.m.  www.warningradio.info/Warning/Home.html 

The "evilglobe" including eye (evil of course)

I don’t see what Connie’s  talking about. But this is not unusual. If Maddie is such a lynch-pin to world dominance like Connie says, would they take a child out into the open where she could be seen and photographed! Connie’s logic defies the wildest imagination, but I suppose that’s what psychics have been known to do for centuries. Look at the wild stuff Jean Dixon and Nostradamus put out.

In our 20 minute interview, I stayed focused on her every move as I would have with a client or sitter I might be doing a reading for: watching for body language, ticks, voice patterns and other telltale clues. She was very slick and well rehearsed in her delivery of the conspiracy theory she was pitching. There was not the slightest bit of nervousness or tension one might expect from a person in possession of such dangerous information. It was as if she was talking about re-painting her garage. All the while I kept thinking to myself that if even a tiny bit of what she was telling me had any speck of truth to it,  (huge government conspiracies, secret societies, tons of money, murder and kidnapping, 2012 doom and gloom and the standard New World Order line) it would seem reasonable that spreading around such talk could well take a turn for the worse for Connie and anyone around her. If what she’s saying is all that top secret and hush hush, she would probably have been “disappeared” long ago by the dark forces she’s in such a dither to track down. How can she go outside at night? How could she manage to get any laundry done, tie her shoelaces or go from day to day with such momentous infromation in her head? How does she just slip past the very thugs she’s tagging? If it was me, I’d be keeping my big mouth shut. It would seem an easy matter to dispose of her rather quietly. What’s one less psychic in the grand scheme of Bilderbergers, Illuminati henchmen and government goons anyway? She has traipsed around Spain, England, France, Portugal and America on the trail of Maddie. Surely at one of those places she could have been poisoned, strangled or taken out by now? Even a little food poisoning incident would lend some credence to her story. Connie: If you want some realism, figure out how to hog-tie, Duct tape your mouth closed and get deposited in some landfill somewhere. Now that would be news that will get you noticed.

Illuminati Descendants Assemble for an Eyes Wide Shut-like "Heaven and Hell" Bash

I don’t want to end up as part of a freeway underpass myself. If I’m to believe all her fear mongering, it could have the effect of making me  more paranoid than I already am. If The Bilderbergers really have control over Ben Bernanke, use live puppies for ashtrays, have space lasers in place and anal probes everywhere, Connie may well have a place in history.  But cooler heads must prevail. In the unlikely event that dear Maddie is out there reading this on some errant computer screen in some Bond villain style bunker deep beneath the earth’s crust, please sneak a note out in a clothes hamper and let us know where you are and if you are eating well. I’m certainly interested in what you or any of the other inmates down there have to say.

Linda Shallenberger (Hmmmmm, Shallen – Berger, as in Bilder – Berger?) sent me a note she received through Bart Farkas at JREF from Connie threatening to expose JREF and of their “cheating” her. In her message Connie called me a liar. Actually, she spelled it LIAR in all caps as she has an annoying habit of doing. My response was to wonder what exactly I had lied to her about? I can’t recall lying about anything.  Them’s fighting words where I come from. I simply gave Connie every opportunity to air her intrigues and machinations. I emailed Connie directly asking her to explain her accusation and at first she only responded that she would get back to me “later.”  This is one of her re-occurring strategies. Everything will be revealed at some later time.

Big Ben under Repair

Budding Psychics Take Note: Let’s call this ruse “The Big Ben Effect.”  Connie’s deflection technique reminds me of Uri Geller’s famous prediction he made in the British tabloids. He stated that he would stop Big Ben from ticking and for twenty years he kept harping on it until finally Big Ben actually did stop for 90 minutes, at which time Uri jumped to the occasion saying, “…You see! I told you I would do it!.”  This is called taking advantage of the moment and to his everlasting credit, Uri is a master at this subterfuge. I confess to using this dodge a few times myself anytime I can if something like a light bulb or a streetlight blinks out. Whatever:  take credit for it! Those thousands of people who didn’t know that Geller had predicted this would happen for years and only read the banner headline the day it happened of course thought he was a genuine clairvoyant. Timing is everything. I’m afraid that even though Connie has honored Uri by making use of his method, she just hasn’t got the same chutzpah (or track record) going for her to pull this off. 

Connie: We can’t wait for twenty years (or until 2012, whichever dire event comes first.) Perhaps you need a better agent or someone like Uri’s Shipi Shtang, who is “quietly present” at most of his public appearances and somehow manages to be around with extra spoons and watches whenever he needs them.

Finally got a message back from Connie today. Direct from her own email, again un-corrected and in its raw form. Not surprisingly, she wrote:

“Mark, you are a big liar, because you are NOT the person you acted like, when I met you. I did like you until I read what you wrote !! But we`ll see about it all, who are right and who are wrong!”

Jean Dixon predicted the Russians would land on the moon first and a cure for cancer by 1967.

Sounds a tad threatening doesn’t it? She liked me until she read my post “Connie’s Conundrum” here at Skepticblog. She’s not a very good psychic if it took that long to “read” me. Why couldn’t you see through my thin veneer of woo bait when you first met me?

In a second email, I asked her to explain these things and offered her an invitation to view “THE TRUTH!” Connie’s message to me:

“Mark, you are very wrong….the things are NOT what they seems too, but you will realize it when the time is right, and I don`t have to see your videos at all :-) !”
Connie

Okay, so don’t take nine minutes out of your busy psychic day to watch my youtube video and perhaps indulge in seeing my point of view. Noboby is forcing you to recant or convert. It was just a suggestion. So here’s yet another humorless shut-eye psychic!  The next email reply I recieved from Connie after merely asking two simple answers from her: 1) Prove it.  and 2) When?

She responded last night with:

“When the right time comes. As I have told before, I can`t say a time, only with some of it….you just have to take one step at time, like the rest of us!”

Only “some of it…?”  Okay, I’ll take “some”  if that”s all you can offer Connie. Let’s have it. Or is that “some” just the part you will be taking advantage of when news of Maddie’s death or some such clue one day hits CNN? Again she’s sticking to the “time is right” coda again. I’ll have to check with Uri to see what time that will be, but I won’t be setting my watch to it. Maybe Big Ben can tell us exactly when?

And what’s with the “one step at a time” deal? Is she in AA or something? I have no problem with that. Perhaps she should be in a twelve step program. It might help her commuincation skills. Maybe I should start a twelve step program for recovering psychics? Her “like the rest of us” response begs the question: Is she talking about the rest of us normal people? Or does she mean the rest of us dowsers and self-appointed psychic detectives? You simply can’t have it both ways Connie: If you are  psychic, you shouldn’t have to wait for anything, right? It’s all there floating around in “the ether” or stored up in the “Akashic Records” or wherever that stuff is kept on file.

FOR THE RECORD:

Connie,

I never lied to you. I  merely followed my own methods of getting information the way I have learned to do it when I was working the room like you. It’s not unlike your own methods, minus the dowsing shtick. It really works “like magic” too. Your responses were and are nowhere near what I have come to expect from a true believer. A true believer would have gracefully bowed out (as you initially did on the Sunday night after TAM7) and quietly gone back to the fold that embraced their belief in you and your powers. That should have been enough for someone who believes in their “gift” and their “mission.” Instead, you went on the offensive and made an issue against the very protocol you signed off on and chose to get snarky with some of the world’s biggest experts in the field. Sour grapes? A boatload full I’d say. A person in possession of any one of the powers and abilities you give yourself credit for having wouldn’t need to cry foul. They would have much better things to do. The truth about you is self-evident.  As far as me being a LIAR : When you fight fire with fire, you just might get burned. Skeptics Take Note.