mardi 30 juin 2009

Les ors de la monarchie


Les éditions Altera viennent de publier un ouvrage à la fois bien informé et amusant sur le coût de la politique en Espagne. Son auteur, Federico Quevedo (que son ennemi intime Federico Jimenez Losantos surnomme Ni-Ni, car « il n'est ni Federico ni Quevedo », a private joke que les hispanistes peuvent comprendre) a retrouvé dans les documents officiels ce que gagnent les hommes politiques de la péninsule. Rien à envier à leurs homologues français pourtant champions en la matière. On peut le commander ici.

dimanche 28 juin 2009

Les fosses rouges

Dans l'Espagne de Zapatero, il est convenu que seuls les Nationalistes ont commis des crimes. Que la République, en réalité le Front populaire, est blanc comme l'agneau qui vient de naître. Le devoir de mémoire mis en place par le gouvernement se limite à la mise en scène de l'ouverture de fosses communes où seraient enterrées les victimes de la répression franquiste.

Or les résultats de ces recherches se révèlent frustrants. Le nombre de victimes oubliées des escadrons de la mort de la droite semble très faible, insignifiant par rapport aux mythes véhiculés par les associations doloristes et la presse de gauche (El Pais, Publico), les radios de gauche (la SER) ou les télévisions de gauche (toutes les grandes chaînes).

Le malaise devient palpable dans les milieux de la gauche et du gouvernement quand apparaissent des fosses liées aux crimes du Front populaire, comme par exemple celle où aurait pu être enterré le marxiste indépendant catalan Andreu Nin.

Le dernier cas en date est relaté par le quotidien conservateur ABC. Il s'agit de la fosse contenant les restes d'une quarantaine de soldats républicains fusillés sans jugement par un général socialiste pour avoir refusé de repartir au front reprendre la ville de Teruel libérée par les Nationalistes.

Pour la première fois, le gouvernement a accepté de verser 20 000 euros de subvention à une association qui cherche à retrouver la fosse pour exhumer les corps de ces malheureux.


El Gobierno subvenciona por primera vez la búsqueda de fusilados por la República


Tres sargentos, doce cabos, treinta soldados y un tambor de la 84ª Brigada Mixta del Ejército de la República fueron ejecutados en la madrugada del 20 de enero de 1938, en el pinar de Piedras Gordas (en la localidad turolense de Rubielos de Mora), doce días después de que su unidad hubiera rendido Teruel, la única capital de provincia conquistada por su bando en la Guerra Civil. Lucharon como héroes en el invierno más aterrador que se recuerda, pero no les sirvió de nada: una ráfaga de ametralladoras acabó con ellos y sepultó sus vidas y su memoria.

Esta semana el Ministerio de Presidencia ha aprobado una subvención de 20.000 euros, aún provisional, a la asociación creada por los familiares de dos de esos soldados para que se busque la fosa, la primera ayuda que se concede a víctimas de la propia República. Los trabajos empezarán a partir de septiembre en una superficie de 40.000 metros cuadrados y con la tecnología más avanzada, que aporta el geofísico Luis Avial: fotografía aérea con infrarrojos, georadar y gradiométro de protones.

En busca de familiares

En el proyecto participa también la Fundación Aranzadi, con su presidente Francisco Etxeberría que ha sido el responsable, entre otros proyectos, de exhumar los restos del cantante chileno Víctor Jara. Alvial, por su parte, ha detectado ya unas 70 fosas de la Guerra Civil.

«La gente no puede estar enterrada en las cunetas en un país de tradición de cementerios, da igual qué bando fuera el responsable», argumenta Avial. «La dificultad de esta fosa es que es un terreno enorme, las víctimas no eran del pueblo y las referencias son relativamente fiables, pero tenemos muchas posibilidades de encontrarla».

A esa esperanza se aferra Concha Esteban, nieta de Anacleto Esteban Mora, tambor de la 84ª Brigada Mixta, fusilado junto a los otros 45 soldados. Su padre, que aún vive, no llegó a conocerle. «Siempre me había conformado con que le pudiéramos hacer un pequeño homenaje, un monolito, una cruz, algo, pero si tenemos la oportunidad de exhumarlos y el resto está de acuerdo, sería un sueño». Ella y otra familia, la del soldado Victoriano Alegre Navarro, han promovido la asociación. Hasta ahora no han podido localizar a más parientes, como es su deseo. Su testimonio, llegado de boca de terceros, es desgarrador. Un compañero de su abuelo salvó la vida porque escapó ante una posible represalia. Él le ha contado las palabras del jovencísimo tambor negándose a huir. «¡No nos van a hacer nada. Son nuestros mandos, son de los nuestros. Tienen que entender que sólo pedimos lo que nos prometieron»! Pero no. A Anacleto y a otros 45 hombres les pagaron su lealtad con balas. El episodio es descrito con precisión y primor en el libro «Si me quieres escribir» (Debate) del periodista Pedro Corral y ese texto es el germen de la asociación creada por sus familiares y la razón de que el geofísico Avial se interese por la fosa.

La 84ª Brigada Mixta, perteneciente a la 40.ª División republicana, sufrió la mayor masacre perpetrada entre sus propias filas por los mandos republicanos que ha podido documentarse, tan sólo doce días después de haber logrado para su bando la conquista de Teruel. Sus combatientes pasaron de héroes a traidores. «Como recompensa a su valerosa actuación la 84ª Brigada es retirada del frente y enviada a descansar a retaguardia, a la población turolense de Rubielos de Mora -narra Corral-. Pero a los dos días, Franco desencadena una ofensiva para intentar recobrar la ciudad. La 84ª Brigada recibe orden de suspender su permiso y marchar al frente. Dos batallones se insubordinan y se niegan a volver a primera línea. Los hombres sólo piden que se cumpla el permiso que se les ha prometido después de haber luchado en la ciudad de Teruel durante más de tres semanas, casa por casa, calle por calle, a veinte grados bajo cero, y tras sufrir más de un tercio de bajas». El jefe de la 40.ª División, el teniente coronel Andrés Nieto Carmona, del PSOE, que había sido alcalde de Mérida, ordena apresar a los insurrectos y fusilar a 46 de ellos, sin juicio previo, contraviniendo así las disposiciones sobre Justicia militar del Gobierno republicano. Sus cadáveres acabaron en una fosa excavada, se cree, la misma noche de la ejecución. La lista de muerte fue enviada por Corral al juez Garzón, en plena ebullición de Memoria Histórica, aunque nunca remitió una respuesta ni mostró interés por buscar esos restos.

La subvención aprobada esta semana es el primer paso para devolver la gloria que les fue escatimada. Se harán mapas en tres dimensiones y el georadar descubrirá cavidades, muros u otros elementos. «Un cuerpo enterrado emite una corriente eléctrica muy pequeña, una señal débil, de ahí la dificultad, pero seguro que los encontramos. Ellos son los olvidados de los olvidados», resume Luis Avial. Después habrá que plantearse si los exhuman o no, un proceso millonario que precisaría de otra subvención. Todos los protagonistas insisten en que no se busca ideologías, sino personas, que la Memoria Histórica es de todos y, por tanto, el dinero también es para todos.

La réalité du terrorisme islamique

Une attaque terroriste qui a frappé de stupeur le monde entier. Ce scénario peut se répéter à Paris, à Londres ou à New York, partout où l'on trouve des noyaux importants de populations musulmanes avec des secteurs radicaux.

Le quotidien populaire britannique Daily Mail publie ce matin une enquête dévoilant le contenu des écoutes faites aux terroristes musulmans ayant attaqué Bombay voici quelques mois en causant près de deux cents morts, dont de nombreuses personnes téues de sang froid.

A l'heure où Barack Hussein Obama en appelle au dialogue des civilisations avec l'islam, il n'est pas inintéressant de lire les dialogues entre les assassins et leurs donneur d'ordre.

Un article qui fait froid dans le dos.
Revealed: The chilling words of the Mumbai killers recorded during their murder spree This is Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, caught on film as he unleashed a devastating and indiscriminate attack in Mumbai that left 166 people dead. But this picture is not the most dramatic record of that day. During the raid, the Indian intelligence services intercepted mobile phone calls between Kasab, his terrorist comrades and a mysterious handler hundreds of miles away, who issued commands to shoot civilians without mercy. These shocking tapes reveal the sinister mind control used to turn young men into killing machines - and the casual, off-hand brutality of the men who masterminded the massacre


'Do you want them to keep the hostages or kill them?' asks Brother Wasi of someone else in the control room.
The person replies with a casual grunt, barely audible through the background babble of the news channels playing on a nearby television.
At the other end of the line, 500 miles away, Akasha, a 25-year-old Pakistani, is squatting on the floor inside a besieged building in the centre of Mumbai with a murdered rabbi's mobile phone in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other.
He knows with complete certainty that this will be his last night on Earth. For his mission to be a success, he must be killed.
The two women hostages are on a bed nearby, trussed up and blindfolded. Another gunman, Umer, is dozing.
Now Wasi comes back on the phone. His manner is warm and paternal - the kind of calm, commanding voice you instinctively trust.
Wasi: 'Listen up...'
Akasha: 'Yes sir.'
Akasha speaks in a gentle, dopey murmur. He sounds exhausted.
Wasi: 'Just shoot them now. Get rid of them. Because you could come under fire at any time and you'll only end up leaving them behind.'
Akasha: 'Everything's quiet here for now.'
Wasi: 'Shoot them in the back of the head.'
Akasha: 'Sure. Just as soon as we come under fire.'
Wasi: 'No. Don't wait any longer. You never know when you might come under attack.'
Akasha: 'Insh'Allah' (God willing).
Wasi: 'I'll stay on the line.'
There's silence for 15 seconds. No gunshots.
Akasha: 'Hello?'
Wasi: 'Do it. Do it. I'm listening. Do it.'
Akasha: 'What, shoot them?'
Wasi: 'Yes, do it. Sit them up and shoot them in the back of the head.'
Akasha: 'Umer is asleep. He hasn't been feeling too well.'
Wasi consults his associates in the control room, then comes back on the line.
Wasi: 'I'll call you back in half an hour. You can do it then.'


This conversation, remarkable for its off-hand cruelty, was intercepted by India's intelligence agencies at 8.40pm on Thursday, November 27 last year, two days into the three-day terrorist attack on Mumbai.
I first became aware of these wiretaps in January, when the Indian government released a dossier of evidence about the massacre. The dossier pointed an accusatory finger at Pakistan and included a few paragraphs of transcribed wiretaps as evidence.
At the time the thought of getting hold of the audio recordings themselves seemed fanciful. This was classified material, perhaps some of the most important wiretaps ever recorded by the Indian secret services.
Yet one morning four months later I returned to my hotel room in Mumbai looking over my shoulder and clutching an almost complete set of recordings. Soon the long-dead voices were playing through my headphones.


Despite the difficulties we had in obtaining the tapes, I immediately questioned whether they were genuine, as it's well known that the Indian government was keen to pin blame for the attack on Pakistan. I recognised in the recordings the voices of people I'd spoken to at length - a surviving hostage and an interpreter.
I also came across telephone interviews the terrorists had made with TV stations, which had been aired live during the seige, and the preceding off-air discussions with presenters and studio staff. This, combined with the sheer volume and complexity of the recordings - which include firefights, conversations with hostages, and hours of banal discussion about the practicalities of the terrorist operation, convinced me that the recordings were absolutely authentic.
Akasha and Umer had been under siege for nearly 24 hours on the upper floors of Nariman House, a Jewish study centre run by the orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch organisation in New York. The bodies of rabbi Gavriel Holzberg, who ran the centre, and his pregnant wife Rivka lay downstairs, next to those of two visiting Israeli rabbis. The hostages whose fate was being so casually discussed over the phone were an Israeli and a Mexican.
No one knows the true identity of the man known as Wasi - the puppetmaster. He is heard deferring to more senior figures in the control room, but it was he who cajoled, reassured and inspired the young gunmen forward minute by minute until they were killed. He is presumed to be a senior officer of Lashkar-e-Taiba ('Army Of The Righteous'), a militant group now considered to be a global threat on a par with Al-Qaeda.
When Wasi calls Akasha back at 9.20pm, his chief concern is ricochets. He reminds his neighbours in the control room that Ali, Soheb and Fahadullah - half the members of a six-man squad who've seized two hotels - have already been hit by their own bullets while executing hostages. He has a tip for Akasha.
Wasi: 'Stand the women up in a doorway so that when the bullet goes through their heads it then goes outside, instead of ricocheting back into your room.'
Akasha: 'OK.'
Wasi: 'Do one of them now, in the name of God. You've tied them up, right?'
Akasha: 'Yeah. I'll untie their feet.'
Wasi: 'Just stand them up. If they're tied up, leave them tied up.'
Akasha then raises another objection. He doesn't want to kill the two women in the room where he and Umer are sitting.
Wasi: 'It'll only take two shots. Do it in the room where you are now.'
Akasha: 'All right, yes.'
Wasi: 'Do it. Shoot them and shove them over to one side of the room.'
Akasha shuffles off somewhere but leaves the line open. Wasi holds the line for a full seven minutes. He calls Akasha's name a few times, then hangs up. In the next call, ten minutes later, Akasha seems more upbeat.
Akasha: 'Please don't be angry. I've rejigged things a bit and now...'
Wasi: 'Have you done the job yet or not?'
Akasha: 'We were just waiting for you to call back, so we could do it while you're on the phone.'
Wasi: 'Do it, in God's name.'
Akasha: 'Just a sec... hold the line...'
Akasha places the phone in his pocket. There is a lot of rustling (presumably Akasha crawling over to the hostages) followed by silence. Then a loud burst of gunfire. And then silence. More rustling, then Akasha is back. His voice has changed markedly. It's now a deep, eerie rasp.
Wasi: 'That was one of them, right?'
Akasha: 'Both.'


At 9pm on Wednesday, November 26 last year, ten gunmen arrived in Mumbai by boat, having sailed from Pakistan in a hijacked Indian trawler. As they came close to the city they switched into a dinghy and landed on a small beach close to the middle of south Mumbai, the wealthy downtown area, home to the city's tourist hotels, banks and government offices.
The gunmen split into pairs and headed for their targets. All of them carried heavy backpacks and were dressed in western-style clothes.
The first pair of gunmen stopped at the Leopold Cafe, a popular hangout for Western tourists. They chatted outside for a while, then embraced. They were still smiling as they tossed hand grenades and mowed down everyone in the cafe.

At the same time down the road at the Taj Palace and Tower, Mumbai's grandest hotel, the CCTV footage shows two backpackers strolling casually into the lobby. Each of them is weighed down with 8kg of high explosives, a Kalashnikov, a pistol, eight hand grenades, hundreds of bullets and enough dried fruit and nuts to last a couple of days.
After rubbing shoulders with the well-heeled guests for a few minutes, they go to work, gunning down guests and staff in the hotel hallways, before linking up with the gunmen from the Leopold Cafe, who had smashed their way in through a hotel side door.
By 1am on Thursday, the Indian intelligence services had locked on to the terrorists' mobile phones. The first few traces led them to VOIP internet numbers used by the handlers in Pakistan, which can't be traced in the same way a mobile or landline can.
From this point on, the Indian police listened in to the hours of conversation between the gunmen and their handlers. The recordings provide a picture of total control. The gunmen were not battle-hardened mujahideen fighters but vulnerable youngsters, groomed over a period of months to foster obedience and a lust for death, which the controllers were able continuously to reinforce by mobile phone calls.
The gunmen at the Taj, young Pakistanis from villages in the Punjab, had never set foot in a modern hotel before, let alone the vast suites on the upper floors of the Taj. By 1.04am on the Thursday, police had recorded their very first intercept...
Ali: 'There are so many lights, so many buttons... and lots of computers with 22in and 30in screens.'
Wasi: 'Computers? Haven't you burned them yet?'
Ali: 'We're just doing it. You'll be able to see the fire sometime soon.'
Wasi: 'We'd be able to see the fire if there were any flames. Where are the flames?
Ali: 'The entrance to this room is fantastic. The mirrors are really grand. The doors are massive too.'
Wasi urges him to throw grenades at the police and prepare a bucket of water and towels to use against tear gas. But the gunman keeps talking about the hotel.
Ali: 'It's fabulous. The windows are huge, but it feels very safe. There's a double kitchen at the front, a bathroom and a small shop. And mirrors everywhere.'
About 20 minutes later Wasi is concerned the gunmen have still not taken proper control of the hotel. He calls to ask what they have done and speaks to Ali.
Wasi: 'We told you to find an axe, did you not find one?'
Ali: 'No, we couldn't find an axe.'
Wasi: My brother, there will be an axe hanging next to each fire extinguisher in the hotel. On every floor in every corridor. Now you must start the fire. Nothing will happen until you start the fire. When people see the flames, it will cause fear outside.'
Ali: 'OK, we'll start the fire. The other brothers are nearly here now.'
Wasi: 'Throw grenades my brother. There's no harm in throwing a few grenades.'
Thirty minutes later the gunmen confirm that they have got the hotel under control.
Ali: 'They're massive rooms. Some of them are amazing. We burned some and cleared a few more.'
Wasi: 'Did you start a fire in the ones you cleared out?'
Ali: 'No, they're right next to each other. We'll set the fire on our way out. We don't want the fire to spread too quickly in case we can't get out.'
Wasi: 'No, burn everything as you go along. The bigger the fire, the more pressure you will bring to bear. We're watching it on TV. If you start the fire it will put pressure on the security forces. They won't come up.'
Ali: 'Listen. We don't even walk around our own houses as freely as we do here. We own the third, fourth and fifth floors, thanks be to God.'

While the Taj came under attack, a mile away a third pair of gunmen ran into the lobby of the Oberoi Trident, another famous five-star hotel, slaughtering diners in the restaurants and herding hostages towards the upper floors. A few minutes later a taxi pulled up outside Mumbai's main railway station, Victoria Terminus.
The car contained two more gunmen: Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab and Ismail Khan. They slaughtered 52 people before melting into the backstreets, murdering as they went.
Then, as they sped o in a hijacked Skoda, Mumbai police got their first break. Kasab and Ismail drove straight into a police road block. Ismail was shot dead but 20-year-old Kasab survived thanks to the heroism of Assistant Sub Inspector Tukaram Omble, 48.
He grabbed the barrel of Kasab's Kalashnikov and hung on to it as bullets tore into his chest. The manoeuvre, which cost Omble his life, bought the other policemen at the road block enough time to jump on Kasab and take him prisoner. It was a Lashkar gunman's worst nightmare: being taken alive (see box, previous page).
It caused concern among the controllers. The gunmen were supposed to die. To ensure no others were taken alive, the controllers started to impress on the gunmen the importance of dying. First, Wasi spoke to Fahadullah at the Oberoi hotel, who was sitting with his partner Abdul Rehman in a room on the 18th floor, watching the news coverage on TV. The intercept is timed at shortly after 1pm on Thursday.
Wasi: 'The manner of your death will instill fear in the unbelievers. This is a battle between Islam and the unbelievers. Keep looking for a place to die. Keep moving.'
Fahadullah: 'Insh'Allah.'
Wasi: 'You're very close to heaven now. One way or another we've all got to go there. You will be remembered for what you've done here. Fight till the end. Stretch it out as long as possible.'
In the evening, Fahadullah and his partner, at Wasi's insistence, leave the room and are ambushed by Indian commandos. The next intercept is timed at 8.13pm. The whooshing sound of the hotel fire sprinklers can be heard.
Wasi: 'How are you my brother?'
Fahadullah (sounds weak): 'Praise God. Brother Abdul Rehman has passed away.
Wasi: 'Really? Is he near you?'
Fahadullah: 'Yeah, he's near me.
Wasi: 'May God accept his martyrdom.'
Fahadullah: 'The room is on fire, it's being shown on the TV. I'm sitting in the bathroom.'
Next time Wasi calls, he urges Fahadullah to go out and fight.
Wasi: 'Don't let them arrest you. Don't let them knock you out with a stun grenade. That would be very damaging. Fire one of your magazines, then grab the other one and move out. The success of your mission depends on your getting shot.'
Fahadullah: 'Yes, I know.'
Wasi: 'God is waiting for you. Stay on the line and keep the phone in your pocket. We like to know what's going on.'

These are the last words Wasi says to Fahadullah, who left the room and was eventually killed at dawn on Friday, just before Indian commandos staged a show of force with a helicopter landing on the roof of Nariman House.
There, too, Wasi had been trying to persuade Akasha to run outside and be shot dead.
Wasi: 'A stronghold can only last for as long as you can handle it. And now we're crossing that limit. What do you think?'
Akasha: 'Please God.'
Wasi: 'It's Friday today, so it's a good day to finish it.' Once the helicopter lands on the roof, Akasha and Umer suddenly find themselves under fire.
Wasi: 'Put the phone in your pocket and fire back.'
Two hours later, at 8.47am on Friday, Wasi finally gets the news he's been waiting for.
Akasha: 'I've been shot.'
Wasi: 'Sorry?'
Akasha: 'Pray for me.'
Wasi: 'Oh God. Where have you been hit?'
Akasha: 'My arm. And one in my leg.'
Wasi: 'May God protect you. Did you hit any of theirs?'
Akasha: 'Yeah, we shot a commando. Pray that God will accept my martyrdom.'
Wasi: 'Praise God, praise God.'
Akasha: 'Bye.'

By Saturday morning, 60 hours after the first shots at the Leopold Cafe, the operation was over and nine gunmen lay dead. Only Kasab survived - he is currently on trial and faces the death penalty if found guilty. Across Mumbai 166 victims lay dead and 308 injured.
Lashkar-e-Taiba remains one of the most active terrorist organisations in South Asia. It has tens of thousands of recruits. The Pakistani government has yet to find its leaders and put them on trial. It is only a matter of time before the Lashkar handlers get back in their chairs at the control room.
There's a passage in the phone transcripts that is grimly prophetic. At Nariman House, Akasha was being briefed by his handler for an interview he was to give over the phone to an Indian TV channel.
'Give the government an ultimatum,' says a handler named Jindul, who was clearly the media consultant in the control room.
'Tell them that this is just the trailer. Just wait till you see the rest of the movie.'
Akasha takes notes for his interview.
'Let the government know...' he mutters as he writes, 'this is just the trailer.' But he doesn't seem to understand. Jindul explains impatiently:
'It's a small example. A preview.' Akasha eventually gets the metaphor: 'The rest of the film remains to be seen. Should I write that?'
'Tell them this is a small drop,' says Jindul, warming to his theme.
'Let them sit and watch what we do next.'
Dan Reed's 'Dispatches Special' on the terror attacks in Mumbai is on Channel 4, Tuesday at 9pm

THE POLICE INTERROGATION

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab was the only terrorist to survive the Mumba iattack. His shocking confession to police reveals what drove him to commit mass murder
During my investigation into the attacks I also obtained the video of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab's confession. It's another remarkable piece of evidence, taken just after 1am on Thursday November 27. Three hours previously, the 21-year-old on the hospital bed was gunning down women and children.
As Kasab begins to speak, it's hard to see the mass murderer in him. There's no sign of the fanatic, the zealot. He curses his Pakistani handlers, calling them 'dogs' and immediately blames his father, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba 'uncles'.

Kasab talks to the police in the Nair Hospital, Mumbai, after his capture
Kasab: 'He made me do it,' he moans.
Police interrogator: 'Who made you?'
Kasab: 'Uncle.'
Interrogator: 'Which Uncle?'
Kasab: 'The one from Lashkar. They told me you'd beat me up, so before you do that I'm telling you the truth.'
Interrogator: 'What's your gang called?'
Kasab seems not to understand. Some of the other officers present chime in: 'Your organisation, your gang, your team?'
Kasab: 'Oh... It's Lashkar-e-Taiba.'
When asked about the massacre at the railway station, Kasab is equally direct.
Kasab: 'They told us we had to do this job.'
Interrogator: 'What do you mean by job?'
Kasab: 'I was supposed to kill people.'
Interrogator: 'Which people?'
Kasab: 'Whoever was there.'
Interrogator: 'What kind of people did they tell you to kill?'
Kasab: 'Just ordinary people, no one in particular.' Next, the policeman tries to figure out the terrorists' exit strategy.
Interrogator: 'After completing your job today, where were you going to go?'
Kasab: 'We were all going to die.'
Interrogator: 'How's that?'
Kasab: 'He told us we'd be going to heaven.'
Interrogator: 'How many people did you kill?'
Kasab: 'I don't know.'
Interrogator: 'OK, how many rounds did you fire?'
Kasab: 'Er... dunno. Two-and-a-half magazines.'
Interrogator: 'And how many people did you kill?'
Kasab: 'I don't know. I just kept firing and firing.'
Interrogator: 'And this job. What time was it supposed to finish?'
Kasab: 'They said as long as you're alive, keep killing, keep killing, the dogs.'
Kasab then starts to weep - or pretends to. It's hard to tell from the recording.
Kasab: 'I mean, those were human beings, man...'
Later, the policeman asks Kasab whether he had ever questioned his handler's instructions.
Kasab: 'I did ask... but he said, "These things have to be done if you're going to be a big man and get rewards." So I asked him if he'd done these things too, and he said yes, he had. So then I thought, well if he has done it, then I should do it too.'
Kasab recounts to the policeman his father's words when he took him to the Lashkar office.
Kasab: 'Look son, these people have a good life, they eat well, now you can too. These people earn lots of money and so will you. Then we won't be poor any more.'
Interrogator: 'Your father said that?'
Kasab: 'Yes, so I said, "All right then, fine, whatever."'
Somehow Kasab seems too quickthinking, too much of a live wire, to agree to die in order to earn his father a couple of thousand dollars. Yet the fact is, as he freely admits, and as we know from the phone intercepts, the Mumbai gunmen were ordered deliberately to go to their deaths. There was to be no other possible reward than heaven.
At one point during the interview, Kasab describes how the recruits are filtered down into a small group.
'The proper training - the one where they say, "Now this boy is ready to go" - that takes three months,' he says. 'After that, he's ready. He waits. Then they get him ready and say to him, "Off you go and die."'
Rakesh Maria, Mumbai's legendary police investigator, questioned Kasab later that day. Kasab told Maria that his handlers had seen how, once a fighter was martyred, his face would glow like the moon and a smell of roses would emanate from his dead body.
So once he had squeezed every drop of information out of him, Maria had Kasab taken to the morgue, where he was shown the bodies of his nine associates, charred by fire and mangled by bullets.
Kasab, says Maria, broke down and wept.

Dépenser à en mourir

Un goupe de libéraux américains a réalisé un petit film qui a le mérite de mettre en perspective les différents plans de relance et de secours aux banques.



Sommes nous plus vertueux ? A peine. Au Royaume-Uni, le gouvernement a dépensé davantage par habitant que Barack Hussein Obama (BHO). L'Europe continentale échappe aux pires excès, mais le gouvernement français poursuit un endettement chronique depuis bien plus longtemps.

vendredi 26 juin 2009

La mort d'Ilan Halimi vue par le judaïsme américain

L'horrible meurtre d'Ilan Halimi entre les mains d'une bande de criminels que l'on hésite à qualifier encore d'être humains suscite relativement peu de commentaires en France. Le procès d'assises qui cherche à déterminer les différents degrés de responsabilités parmi une bande de jeunes gens issus de l'immigration afro-musulmane se déroule à huis clos, ce qui ne facilite pas le travail des journalistes.

Lois des travers des professionnels des médias français, toujours disposés à excuser un xénophobe ou un raciste dans la mesure où il est musulman ou originaire du continent africain, la journaliste américaine Pamela Geller, interrogée par Jamie Glazov de Front Page Magazine appelle un chat, un chat et enfonce les doigts où ça fait mal.

Ses propos sont souvent excessifs et injustes, mais comment rester de marbre en écoutant le détail du martyre du jeune homme, de l'indifférence de la police et de la complicité des habitants de la cité ?


France’s Private Concentration Camp


Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog Atlas Shrugs.com. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye'or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories -- notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign. Her op-eds have been published in The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Israel National News, Front Page Magazine, World Net Daily, and New Media Journal, among other publications.

FP: Pamela Geller, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Geller: Thank you for having me Jamie.

You’ve been following the trial of the torture and murder of a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, in Paris. Tell us about the case and the trial.

Geller: The death of Ilan Halimi can only be described as an unspeakable horror, and yet typical of the increasing Islamic Jew-hatred and violence against the Jews. A group calling itself the Muslim Barbarians targeted Jewish men for torture and murder. Their first attempts to kidnap a Jew were unsuccessful, despite the lure of a beautiful girl. Ilan Halimi was not so lucky. He did not escape the Islamic homemade concentration camp the Muslim Barbarians had set up.

The banality of evil lived in that apartment building. Apartment dwellers, all Muslims, heard Ilan's screams and cries of torture over a period of three weeks, and yet did not call the cops. The screams must have been loud because the torture was especially atrocious: the thugs cut bits of flesh off the young man. They cut his fingers and ears. They burned him with acid. They poured flammable liquid on him and set him on fire. Not only did those in the building not go to the police -- they did nothing at all. Worse, many took part in the tortures.

So systemic is the Jew hatred in France that it impeded rescuing Ilan or securing his release. Halimi's family said that throughout Ilan's entire captivity, the French police refused to move on any of the evidence that pointed to an anti-Semitic motive. Instead, the police conducted a routine kidnap investigation (which invariably involves ransom, not death). The police refused to pursue the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that, according to newspaper accounts, "in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan's family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background".

The family begged the police to listen to torturous phone calls from the kidnappers and acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish. Clearly, had the police not acted in judeophobic fashion, they would have recognized that Ilan's life was in terrible danger and taken urgent action. But law enforcement was not the only guilty party. The government refused to acknowledge the anti-Semitic motives behind the torture and killing a full week after the Halimi turned up mutilated and dead.

This was not new, of course. In 2003, Sebastian Sellam, a popular disc jockey at a hot Parisian night club called Queen known as DJ Lam C (a reverse play on his surname) was on his way to work when in an underground parking lot, a Muslim neighbor slit Sellam’s throat twice. His face was completely mutilated with a carving fork. Even his eyes were gouged out.

It has taken three years to bring this case to trial and even now, they are hiding their dirty little secrets behind closed doors.

FP: How come this trial is not receiving any attention or coverage?

Geller: The French would like this ugly little business to go away. Like Al Dura. Like
their sordid national behavior when the Nazis occupied France.

The latest outrage in the closed (more like hidden) trial of the "Muslim barbarian" ringleader Fofana and his 26 accomplices (it was more like 50) in the savage torture and murder of Ilan Halimi is suspension of the trial, with no indication of when it will begin again. Why isn't Youssouf Fofana, in a glass box like Eichmann at Nuremberg, chained like the wild animal that he is?

In a shocking display of proud Islamic Jew hatred (consistent with the most sacred teachings of the Koran), the brutal Halimi murder trial was suspended after the defendant spewed vile invectives and threw his "Arab shoes" across the courtroom at the jury. Throwing shoes at someone is a powerful insult in the Arab world.

According to a prosecution lawyer, Fofana's shoe throwing occurred during the presentation o f evidence by doctors who examined Halimi's body.

It is not clear when the hearing would be resumed. The trial is being conducted behind closed doors, with no press or public allowed, at the request of two of the defendants who were minors at the time of the killing. The trial is closed at the request of barbarians so evil, so savage that it defies the normal mind. And yet the vichy French acquiesced to the Muslim nazis and are hiding their pathetic attempt at justice behind closed doors.

The silence in the media and across the world is a crime against humanity. Imagine, if you will, the unthinkable, the impossible -- if Ilan had been a Muslim and his attackers had been Jews. Stop laughing -- I know it is impossible, but that's not my point. This is damning proof of the Jew hatred that is running wild across the world. Israel shuts a light off in Gaza and the world wants to eliminate her. Imagine if Ilan had been black and his attackers had been white. Stop and think about it.

FP: So let’s dig a bit deeper here: why did the police turn a blind eye to the evidence indicating that Islamic anti-Semitism was behind the kidnapping? Why is the French government, law enforcement and the media now covering up why this horrifying crime was committed? Better to let a Jew get tortured and killed than to point to the truth about what Islam teaches and what many Muslims believe and are ready to act upon, yes? This is Jew-Hate and a surrender to Islam simultaneously, yes?

Geller: Yes, exactly. This is a strain of anti-Semitism in Europe that has never been eradicated. There is never any discussion of Islamic anti-Semitism, and it is fundamental to Islamic teachings. This refusal to acknowledge the obvious gives tacit approval to incitement to violence. It is unsafe to walk about many European cities with any identifying Jewish apparel or accessories on. Is that what Europe learned from World War II? Is that the lesson that Europe took away from the holocaust?

The lesson that Europe had decided to avail itself of in the aftermath of Auschwitz was not that evil is bad and that they behaved like monsters, but rather that everything was caused by nationalism -- and therefore, what they really needed to do was have a European Union that would obviate their need for nationalism, so that they could become this transnational gobbletygook. They'd all get together and therefore they wouldn't have another Auschwitz.

But really the lesson should have been that they were evil and they had to be good. And that is the lesson they still have to learn. You have to be able and willing to make moral distinctions and stand up for the good and fight evil, and that is something the Europeans refuse to do.

They are constantly having memorials to dead Jews, while condemning Israel for every act of self defense, no matter how benign it is, in the defense of innocent Jewish citizens.

Ilan Halimi best demonstrates the horror of this lack of humanity. But certainly the "death to Jews" rallies that spread like a cancer across the Europe (and major US cities) during the Gaza defensive in January is certainly a gross demonstration of this evil.

FP: What are your own personal thoughts on this case?

Geller: It is an indescribable horror. Unimaginable. It demonstrates the free hand Jew hatred is given. It was not just the Muslims that reveled in the torture of this young Jewish man; it was law enforcement's response (or lack of it), and the circus-like atmosphere of the trial. It is a stunning indictment of French society. Flagrant and unabashed hatred.

FP: What can ordinary citizens do to try to bring some kind of justice to this horrifying crime and to expose the shameless, hateful and cowardly behavior of French authorities and the media etc?

Geller: Speak up! Write, call, email, fax media and elected officials. Burke was right when he said all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. Speak up! Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction (channeling Ayn Rand here).

FP: What do we get from the reality that this happened, as you relate, in an apartment building where myriad dwellers, all Muslims, heard Ilan's screams and cries of torture and did not only did nothing but came to participate? This wasn’t a secret between three people. Dozens and dozens of people knew about this, and supported and engaged in it. What does it tell us?

Could it possibly have something to do with the Islamic theological teaching about not only the importance of hating and killing Jews, but also that a Muslim will go to heaven if he kills a Jew?

Hmmm I wonder.

The liberal and leftist milieus cannot accept what it tells us of course, but they know there would never be a reverse situation (i.e. an apartment building full of Jews who hear a Muslim screaming from being tortured and they support it and participate in it, etc.). And if this did happen, which it wouldn’t, imagine the media being completely silent about it.

Geller: This is the terrible truth about Islam, well documented in Dr. Andrew Bostom's encyclopedic tome, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. The Islamic dehumanization of the Jews mirrors what the Nazis did during the Hlocaust. I find it troubling in all of my research and personal dealings it is difficult to find devout Muslims (any Muslims that are not apostates) who are not hostile to Israel. It speaks volumes. And of course, none of this would be possible if the Left were not aligning itself with political Islam. But this is consistent with the modus operandi of the left. Historically they align themselves with the totalitarian ideology du jour.

FP: Pamela Geller, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.

Florence Rey retrouve la liberté

Florence Rey à son procès.

Florence Rey, condamnée en 1998 à 20 ans de réclusion criminelle à la suite d’une fusillade qui avait fait cinq morts dont trois policiers, en 1994 à Paris, a été libérée en mai. Elle est donc resté environ quinze ans derrière les barreaux.

Florence Rey avait été impliquée, avec son compagnon Audrey Maupin, dans une fusillade au cours de laquelle trois policiers et un chauffeur de taxi avaient été tués le 4 octobre 1994 à Paris. (Lire le récit de cette nuit sanglante dans un article paru en 1994 dans Libération)

Audry Maupin avait également trouvé la mort dans cette action, qui avait suscité une très vive émotion en France en raison de la jeunesse et de la personnalité du couple, des étudiants en rupture de ban. Elle était âgée de 19 et lui de 23 ans au moment des faits.

Florence Rey avait été reconnue coauteur du meurtre d’un des policiers tués et complice de ceux des trois autres victimes.

Aujourd'hui âgée de 34 ans, la jeune femme, qui a passé quinze ans en prison, est «transformée», selon France Info. Grâce au soutien de sa mère, elle a poursuivi des études universitaires d'histoire-géographie et fait beaucoup de sport.

Pas un mot de condamnation dans la presse pour l'idéologie anarchiste qui a justifié a priori pour ceux marginaux le recours à la violence. Imaginons un instant que ces deux jeunes gens aient professé des idées politiques différentes, il est difficile d'imaginer des journalistes aussi indulgents. La presse, et Libération en tête, aurait réclamé des peines exemplaires et l'interdiction des mouvements politiques partageant la même idéologie du couple.

Il est frappant de constater qu'à chaque fois que des hommes et des femmes partageant l'idéologie majoritaire des journalistes sont pris la main dans le sac, empêtrés dans des turpitudes diverses, la presse se révèle d'une grande indulgence. Le dernier exemple en date étant celui de Daniel Cohn Bendit.

Florence Rey, ayant sur la conscience la mort de cinq personnes, est sortie de prison après avoir purgé une quinzaine d'années de sa peine. Je ne puis m'empêcher de penser à un autre cas dont j'ai eu connaissance par le mail d'un lecteur, celui de Michel Lajoye. Ce jeune marginal xénophobe a posé une bombe dans un café arabe de la banlieue de Rouen. Cet attentat n'a fait ni victimes, ni dégâts, ni blessés, même si l'intention de son auteur était probablement autre. Mais ce jeune homme a fait plus de vingt ans de prison.

De même, Carlos est en prison pour encore longtemps car il ne se contente pas d'afficher des opinions de gauche bien comme il faut qui le rendraient sympathique aux yeux des journalistes de Canal + et de Libération.

Quoi qu'il en soit, je me réjouis de la sortie de prison de Florence Rey. Les personnes condamnées pour avoir eu recours à la violence politique ne se comparent en rien avec les criminels de droit commun. Comme des prisonniers de guerre, ils sont parfaitement réinsérables dans la société.

A condition qu'ils acceptent que la guerre est finie pour eux.

jeudi 25 juin 2009

Origines de l'insularité britannique

L'insularité britannique ne naît pas de la géographie, elle trouve son origine dans les choix personnels d'Henri VIII qui pour satisfaire un égo démesuré a choisi de rompre avec Rome. Contrairement à ce que l'histoire officielle anglaise répète depuis le XVIe siècle, le protestantisme n'étaient en rien un mouvement populaire, il a été imposé du haut en bas de la société britannique avec les tristes conséquences que l'on sait.

Ce matin, dans les colonnes de The Independent, Paul Valley répond à la question : « Que se serait-il passé si Henry VIII avait puy obtenir de Rome son divorce ? »

The Big Question: What would have happened if Henry VIII had obtained his divorce?

Why are we asking this now?

Because the Vatican has just announced that it will market 200 facsimile copies of the elaborately decorated parchment from 1530, which bore an appeal by English peers to Pope Clement VII asking for the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon.

The document is key, historians said, to understanding the formation of the English national character. It marks, said Professor David Starkey in Rome yesterday, the most important event in English history. "This is the moment at which England ceases to be a normal European Catholic country and goes off on this strange path," he said, "that leads it to the Atlantic, to the New World, to Protestantism, to Euro-scepticism."

Why did Henry want a divorce in the first place?

It wasn't a divorce, it was an annulment. To cement an alliance with Europe's most powerful country, Spain, Henry's father, Henry VII, had arranged a marriage between Henry's elder brother Arthur and the daughter of the Spanish monarchs, Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon. When Arthur died she was married off to Henry.

But by the end of the 1520s, Henry's wife, Catherine of Aragon, was in her forties and he was desperate for a son to secure the Tudor dynasty.

Henry applied to the Pope for an annulment of the marriage, on the grounds that it was not lawful in those days for someone to marry his brother's widow. Technically that was correct. And royal annulments had happened before: Louis XII of France had been granted one in 1499. But, by then, Catherine's nephew had become the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and he did not want to see his aunt humiliated. So the Pope dilly-dallied.

What happened?

Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn and by 1533 she was pregnant. He married her in secret. Meanwhile he had pushed through Parliament a series of Acts cutting back papal power and influence in England. Several months after the wedding he got the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer to unilaterally declare his first marriage invalid. Anne Boleyn was crowned queen a week later. A year later the Pope declared that Henry's second marriage was invalid.

Henry declared that the Pope no longer had authority in England and in 1534, Parliament passed an act that stated that Henry VIII was now the Head of "The Church of England". The Pope responded by excommunicating Henry. The king passed the Act of Supremacy. Those who would not swear allegiance to him as head of the Church were executed for treason. Then followed the Dissolution of the Monasteries, under which all the lands and possessions of Britain's religious orders were purloined by the king and his apparatchiks.

Wouldn't the reformation have happened anyway?

That was the myth peddled by the English establishment for centuries. The propaganda was that a corrupt and decaying Catholicism was replaced by a more morally pure and progressive Protestantism. But historians now challenge that view. They are led by Cambridge University's Eamon Duffy whose scholarly masterpiece, The Stripping of the Altars, was a meticulous study of the accounts, wills, primers, memoirs, rood screens, stained glass, joke-books and graffiti of the period.

What did this book show?

It showed beyond doubt that medieval Catholicism was in fact flourishing and much loved by the ordinary English people for whom it offered social and spiritual sustenance. Luther's Protestant reformation had taken no root.

"Very few people were remotely interested in ideas from Germany," said David Starkey. But "because Protestantism won and because history is written by the winners, the Protestant account of the Reformation triumphed". The Reformation in England was imposed from the top.

How was the Reformation imposed?

By a fierce centralist onslaught by the King and a small group of brutal, greedy, self-serving henchmen out for loot. Protestantism was imposed – through coercion, spying and disenfranchisement – by a cadre of political opportunists during just three decades of Henry's and then his daughter Elizabeth's reign.

Public resistance to Elizabeth's dismantling of the Catholic parish system persisted until the 1570s. And some Catholic customs and loyalties lingered until the beginning of the 17th century. However, by then, as Professor Duffy put it, England's Catholic inheritance became for the English people "a distant world, impossible for them to look back on as their own".

Wouldn't Protestantism have flourished anyway?

Probably not. Henry had persecuted English Protestants until the row over the annulment. But once his estrangement from Rome was clear, Protestants flooded into England. There was a big influx from France after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 when a large group of wealthy and prominent Huguenots were slaughtered in Catholic Paris. There was also a steady wave of Protestant from the Low Countries after Spain began to assert its rule there. So Protestantism was a foreign import.

How did the move towards Protestantism manifest itself?

In 1536 Henry gave permission for an English translation of the Bible to be published in England, which was a very non-Catholic act for Rome was still hiding behind its Latin. Henry continued to regard himself to be a Catholic but by doing this he began to move the Church in the direction of Protestantism. From that point onward, the Church of England claimed itself to be both Catholic and Reformed (as distinct from just Protestant) a character which many proclaim to be its continuing compromising genius to this day. It was to be 100 years before the Protestants really showed their strength – by cutting off the head of the king in the Civil War.

Were it not for the annulment, as John Stuart Mill put it in his essay On Liberty, this country would almost certainly have followed the example of the majority of the Continent. "In Spain, Italy, Flanders, the Austrian empire," Mill wrote, "Protestantism was rooted out; and mostly likely would have been so in England, had Queen Mary [Henry VIII's first daughter] lived, or Queen Elizabeth died."

How would things have been different if England had remained Catholic?

"My offices might be in Rome and I might be writing in Latin," quipped Paul Handley, the editor of the Church Times, the leading Anglican newspaper, yesterday. "And what would have happened to the bolshy individualistic Englishman on which we base all our historical mythology?"

It would have been a unique Catholicism though, not fervent like the Mediterranean kind, but not separatist like the Catholism of France which is the product of a guillotine-crazed Revolution and a secularising Enlightenment. We might just be irreligious Catholics instead of irreligious Protestants. But the world may have lost something rather special.

Quand un historien s'amuse

Fabrice D'Almeida est un historien français qu'il faut surveiller du coin de l'oeil : toujours prêt à étonner par une audace ou une originalité où pétille le talent et l'humour. Il s'est livré dans les colonnes de Libération à un exercice convenu, se soumettre aux conditions du bac et rédiger un sujet d'histoire.

Et si on refaisait la conférence de Brioni ?

L'historien Fabrice D'Almeida a planché sur l'un des sujets d'histoire-géo proposés ce mercredi matin aux candidats au bac. Exercice de style totalement libre. Voici sa copie.

Fabrice D'Almeida, historien enseignant à Paris II Assas et co-auteur, avec Anthony Rowley, du livre Et si on refaisait l’histoire, s'est prêté au jeu proposé par Libération.fr: plancher sur l'un des sujets de l'épreuve d'histoire-géo du bac. Avec en ligne de mire: se faire plaisir, laisser libre cours à l'imagination. L'idée n'est pas de proposer un corrigé du bac mais un exercice de style, sans aucune contrainte.

Sujet choisi: L'étude de texte sur l'extrait de communiqué de Brioni, publié à l'issue de la rencontre entre Nasser, Nehru et Tito le 19 juillet 1956. (Lire le texte en version pdf ici)

Que trois dirigeants d’horizons aussi différents que Nehru, Tito et Nasser décident de se retrouver dans une jolie petite île au large de l’Istrie, voilà qui pouvait étonner les journalistes en cette année 1956. Certes, à Bandoung l’année précédente, un rapprochement s’était esquissé afin de fédérer les pays qui refusaient l’alternative géopolitique entre communisme du Bloc de l’Est et capitalisme du monde occidental. Mais le rassemblement paraissait fragile.

Or, le 19 juillet 1956, au terme de la discussion, un idéal politique a émergé, celui du non-alignement. Et de fait, les trois figures qui ont produit le texte final du communiqué s’inscrivent toutes en rupture. Tito, l’hôte de la réunion sur cette île où il apprécie de prendre ses vacances, tout le premier.

Dirigeant de la résistance communiste contre l’occupation nazie pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le maître de la Yougoslavie a abandonné le stalinisme et créé son propre modèle de développement. Il rejette les fantasmes soviétiques sur l’industrie lourde, fier de défendre la ruralité de son pays. Nehru, le disciple de Gandhi, a, lui, effectué une double rupture : avec l’empire britannique en menant le combat pour l’indépendance, et avec le pacifisme ensuite en assumant le conflit avec le Pakistan, depuis 1947. Nasser, enfin, vient de prendre la tête de l’Egypte en brisant une monarchie complice des Britanniques et des Français et cherche à imposer une république panarabe.

Un projet pour la planète
Or, la portée du message que les trois hommes lancent au monde va bien au-delà de leurs conflits et intérêts particuliers. Leur proposition de non-alignement est un projet pour la planète. Il se définit autour de trois «dé» qui structurent le communiqué : désarmement, développement et, surtout, décolonisation (aujourd'hui nous ajouterions décroissance). En les appliquant, les relations internationales prendraient un nouvel essor, propice à l’établissement d’une véritable communauté de nations sous l’égide de l’ONU. Sans un tel programme, les pires catastrophes sont envisageables.

Le désarmement? Voilà une première solution pour sauver l’humanité. La glaciation nucléaire est entrée dans la conscience historique des hommes des années 1950. Le souvenir d’Hiroshima est présent dans les esprits. Les actualités filmées ont, dès 1945, montré la violence des impacts des bombes atomiques. Les Etats-Unis et l’Union soviétique sont susceptibles dans leur affrontement d’user de cette arme effrayante. Leur course aux armements entraîne mécaniquement une prolifération nucléaire dont nul ne sait quand elle s’arrêtera. L’Inde, surtout, avec son puissant potentiel scientifique, est lucide sur l’avance que donne un tel arsenal. La peur caractérise aussi les peuples qui cherchent à échapper à l’emprise coloniale.

De fait, la décolonisation est rarement pacifique. Si Nehru et la péninsule indienne ont pu marcher sans que l’occupant britannique ne déclenche une guerre totale, il n’en a pas été de même ailleurs. En Indochine, il a fallu des centaines de milliers de morts et plus de sept ans de batailles pour que naisse le Vietnam. L’Indonésie a vu l’occupant néerlandais conduire de féroces combats avant d’échapper à son emprise. Le Kenya, lui, connaît la rébellion Mau-mau contre les Britanniques.

Mais surtout, l’ONU et l’opinion internationale regardent avec horreur le développement de la répression en Algérie depuis le soulèvement de 1954. L’armée française combat le FLN de toute sa violence, en appelant au contingent et aux auxiliaires recrutés sur place. Elle regarde l’Egypte de Nasser, ami du combat algérien, avec une haine sourde. Il faudrait briser cette base arrière. Cela servirait de leçon à la Tunisie et au Maroc, auxquels il a fallu concéder l’indépendance, sous le vocable pudique d’autonomie.

Brioni, ce petit lieu de paradis
Le développement, enfin, apparaît comme une nécessité absolue. La pauvreté est visible partout dans le monde. Les pays occidentaux, malgré leurs indigents, découvrent sidérés les effets massifs de la malnutrition. Les spécialistes de la toute jeune discipline démographique lancent les premières alertes sur les risques de surpopulation et produisent des rapports sur les ressources inégales. L’opulence, depuis peu retrouvée en Europe de l’Ouest, est un modèle que l’on croit alors exportable. Coopération disent les non-alignés qui sont conscients des carences de leurs pays. Car ils manquent encore de cadres capables d’alimenter une industrie ou d’inventer des solutions inédites. Cela viendra, malgré les résistances des grandes puissances, qui, tard, comprendront que, pour commercer, il ne faut pas être seul.

Plus de cinquante ans sont passés et Brioni, ce petit lieu de paradis, n’a plus l’heur d’être la résidence d’un dictateur. Tito est enterré et avec lui a disparu la Yougoslavie. Nasser s’est éteint laissant un monde arabe déchiré et brutal. Le parti du congrès de Nehru a, lui, connu l’alternance et les assassinats successifs de ses héritiers. Leur hypocrisie sur les inégalités sociales (castes), politiques (clientélisme) et ethniques a été fatal au rêve pacifique qu’ils tissaient. Pourtant, de cette lointaine époque, émerge encore un message de solidarité et d’attention aux autres qui conserve une étonnante vigueur. Les hyper puissances comme la Chine et les Etats-Unis ont pu remplacer les superblocs, elles devront un jour renoncer à leur supériorité et ployer devant le droit international afin qu’émerge une paix juste pour chacun.

Par Fabrice d’Almeida, professeur à l’Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris 2), Institut français de Presse. Dernier ouvrage paru, avec Anthony Rowley, Et si on refaisait l’histoire, Odile Jacob, 2009.

mercredi 24 juin 2009

Guerre atomique

L'abri antinucléaire de Kelvedon Hatch dans l'Essex.


Que se serait-il passé en cas de crise nucléaire grave ? C'est un secret encore bien gardé en France ou en Russie. En revanche, l'historien Peter Hennessy a obtenu la publication des rapports britanniques qui organisent en détail la survie du pays en cas de conflagration.

Le journaliste Stephen Bates publie une intéressante recension de cet ouvrage dans les colonnes du Guardian de ce matin.

War Book reveals how Britain planned to cope with nuclear attack

Historian Peter Hennessy persuaded officials to release document kept ready for use from 1960s to 1990s

New details of how Britain would have been governed in the event of a nuclear war from the 1960s into the 1990s have been disclosed with the publication of the secret War Book.

The document, over 16 chapters, gives precise plans and instructions for what would have been done by officialdom during the build-up to an international confrontation and after the bombs started falling.

There are indications that aspects of the arrangements have been adapted for use during other, domestic, emergencies since the cold war, including the fuel protests in 2000.

Although some of the plans have been revealed before – including earlier this year the scripts that would have been broadcast by the BBC in the event of a nuclear war, instructing the public not to panic – governments of the period left nothing to chance, including the censoring of private mail.

The country would have been divided into 12 regions, each governed by cabinet ministers with wide powers, aided by senior military officers, chief constables and judges and based in bunkers. Other senior figures would have retreated to a central government shelter under the Cotswolds.

The plans all assumed that the confrontation would be with the Soviet Union. Among the possible scenarios spelled out in the autumn of 1968 was escalating tension following a Soviet moon landing and troop movements in eastern Europe.

The historian and Whitehall specialist Peter Hennessy, who persuaded officials to release the document, said that the book spelled out what would have happened in detail.

Capable d'abriter 600 personnes, l'abri antinucléaire de Kelvedon Hatch était un des éélments clef du réseau de défense antiaérienne britannique ROTOR.


Hennessy, professor of contemporary history at Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC's Today programme: "The surprise really is the width and magnitude of it – 16 chapters to get the nation from a peacetime footing to a total war footing. It is a remarkable enterprise.

"It was done by people who had to do it. It must have been one of the most terrible jobs in Whitehall during the cold war. It literally was requiring people in immense security to peer into the abyss."

The book apparently formed the basis for regular exercises every two years by senior civil servants, with daily internal briefings, the organisation of national preparedness schemes including the stockpiling of food and building materials for shelters and, as the threat grew more imminent, the removal of art treasures from London to Scotland and the emptying of hospitals of all but the most acutely ill.

David Young, a former Ministry of Defence civil servant who took part in the mock exercises, told the programme: "R-hour would be the final release of nuclear weapons. There may have been an earlier tactical use … but R-hour was [when] everything that's left goes. That's not an easy decision to participate in. Even though you know it is just an exercise, it makes you think."

Young said ministers were not encouraged to take part in the exercises: "They would be disinclined to play by the rules. Some of them quite liked talking, so you'd get behind time and there would be a fear that if they showed a reluctance to do what the military believed was necessary, that this would weaken deterrence."

Another former civil servant, Sir David Ormand, who became permanent secretary at the Home Office, said he took part in exercises into the 1990s.

"My favourite measure, the one which always aroused a lot of debate … was the introduction of censorship for private correspondence. You can imagine that was something that ministers would only agree to right at the very end when it was clear that war was inevitable."

He said that some of the contingency plans had been adapted and brought into use during the 2000 fuel protests, which threatened to cut off petrol supplies: "We took over the bunker and installed a chief constable and representatives of the oil companies and some civil servants and we built from scratch a crisis management machine. That's exactly what you don't want to have to do in a crisis, because a lot of time's spent just organising who's going to talk to who and how it's going to work."

Young told the programme: "I participated in one R-hour in the early hours of the morning and I remember reporting on it afterwards through the newly installed closed circuit TV and foolishly saying, because of the day of the week, 'There we are, R-hour, sic transit gloria Thursday'.

"The exercise was taken very seriously and jokes were frowned on, even if they were elegant puns on Latin phrases - 'so passes the world's glory'. I subsequently learned the foreign secretary, Alec Douglas Home, said: 'Who is that very foolish young man?'"

Visiter également : www.secretnuclearbunker.com

dimanche 21 juin 2009

Un journaliste vend la mèche

Sorious Samura, un journaliste courageux.

Sorious Samura, un journaliste africain travaillant pour la presse britannique s'est intéressé au phénomène des viols en bande organisée après avoir appris que sur 92 violeurs interpellés entre 2006 et 2009, 87 étaient non-blancs. En revanche, il ne donne pas l'appartenance raciale des victimes, mais il semble probable qu'elles soient elles aussi majoritairement noires.

Pour quelles raisons ce crime qui en Afrique n'est associé qu'à des situations extrêmes de guerre se répand-il au Royaume-Uni et pour quelles raisons se concentre-t-il parmi les jeunes noirs, mineurs et jeunes adultes ?

Dans son enquête pour The Independent, le journaliste s'est entretenu avec de nombreux jeunes noirs et a découvert consterné qu'ils entretiennent à l'égard des femmes et de la sexualité une attitude très dévalorisante, aux antipodes de ce que les médias diffusent comme idéologie, faite de féminisme et d'homophilie.

Un des problèmes mis en lumière par le journaliste est l'impossibilité de prendre des mesures spécifiques car elles vont à l'encontre de l'idéologie égalitaire en vigueur dans les services sociaux et dans la presse.

Je vous invite à regarder ce reportage sur Channel 4 demain lundi 22 juin à 20 H. Remarquons que sur le site de Channel 4, il n'est à aucun moment question du problème spécifique posé à la communauté noirs par ces viols. La chaîne ne parle que de « jeunes ».

On peut lire ici, ici et ici des articles concernant des cas de viols collectifs. A l'inverse de la presse de gauche, les journaux populaires publient la photo des violeurs.


Gang rape: Is it a race issue?

A high proportion of such attacks appears to be carried out by young black men, according to Metropolitan Police statistics. Sorious Samura investigates this horrendous crime – and what it says about Britain today


In 1999 I witnessed a gang rape in Sierra Leone. I was forced to watch a group of rebel soldiers taking it in turns to rape a young girl in front of an audience of jeering men. It was the height of the civil conflict and rape had become a devastating weapon of war. When I moved to Britain I believed I had escaped such horrific sexual violence. As my Dispatches investigation tomorrow night shows, I was mistaken. Gang rape is happening here – and what I have found most disturbing as an African is that a disproportionate number of these attacks are being carried out by black or mixed-race young men.

Towards the end of last year, police and child welfare experts working on Channel 4's Street Weapons Commission told us of their concerns about gang rape. Then two big cases hit the headlines.

In December, nine schoolboys, some as young as 13 at the time of the attack, were convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl. She was dragged between tower blocks in Hackney where she was threatened with a knife, hit and raped during an ordeal that lasted an hour and a half – some of which was filmed on mobile phones. In January, three men were convicted of gang raping a 16-year-old with learning disabilities for two hours before dousing her with caustic soda in an effort to get rid of the evidence.

How prevalent is this crime and why it is happening in Britain? Despite the seriousness of the crime, I was amazed to discover that no national statistics exist: gang rape is simply not recorded as a separate crime category. So over a period of several months we set about collating our own.

We approached the Crown Prosecution Service, the Association of Chief Police Officers, all 50 police forces, crown courts, barristers and rape referral centres to try to establish the numbers.

One of the few police forces to have begun recording the figures of reported gang rape is the Metropolitan Police. In 2008 alone, they received reports of 85 gang rapes. Using the Met's definition of gang rape – those involving three or more perpetrators – we began to look at the number of convictions. We tracked down 29 cases, from January 2006 to March 2009, in which a total of 92 young people were convicted of involvement in gang rape.

One fact stood out. Of those convicted, 66 were black or mixed race, 13 were white and the remainder were from other countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Clearly this is not a crime exclusive to black communities, but I found it impossible to ignore the fact that such a high proportion were committed by black and mixed-race young men. As a black man as well as a journalist, I wanted to understand what lay behind such attacks. So I spoke to victims, groups of black and mixed-race teenagers, youth and social workers and community leaders.

The groups of young men I met in London expressed some profoundly disturbing attitudes towards girls and sex. The boys explained how they make arrangements for "line-ups" in which one girl has oral sex with up to six or seven of them at one time. These arrangements might be made at school or on mobile phones.

Sometimes these girls initially consent because they want to be popular. But these events can spiral into rape because the boys consider that any girl who is prepared to agree to a line-up can be considered fair game. One boy told me: "If she wants to go and meet a bag of boys then she's probably a jezzie [slut], and if she's going to a house it's over – she's going to get beaten [have sex]."

In other instances, as some of the victims in our film describe, girls can unwittingly walk into a trap, innocently visiting someone's house to listen to music or watch a film only to discover that a group of boys are lying in wait. Or they might be hanging out with friends in a park and suddenly realise they have become surrounded by a group of boys intent on sex.

For both boys and girls, the line between this sort of group sex and rape seems to be blurred. A girl might agree to have oral sex with two or three boys but then be ordered to have sex with six or seven. The teenage girls I met told me that boys simply don't understand what rape is. And yet this is a crime that can ruin lives and is punishable by life imprisonment.

Occasionally gang rape is used to punish a girl for minor transgressions against gang members. In one of my most shocking interviews, I met a girl who admitted she had helped to set up girls for gang rape. As the girlfriend of a gang member, she organised these rapes, partly out of fear and partly to fit in.

She admitted she was terrified of being raped herself and had walked away when witnessing a girl being gang-raped at a party because she feared she might be next: "There was just loads of boys and the girl's tights were ripped up, like, she was bleeding as well, because I think she was a virgin, and they were just taking turns on her basically, and she was crying, and I didn't get involved because I thought if I get involved they're gonna turn on me."

The victims' descriptions of their attacks are horrific. One young victim likened her attack to being "pulled and pushed around like a rag doll", while another 14-year-old girl described her ordeal when she was gang raped by a total of nine boys who told her that she was not the only girl they had attacked. In that case, nine boys were subsequently convicted of raping her. The youngest perpetrator was just 12 years old.

I found there was concern among black communities about this violence. The Rev Joyce Daley, from the Black Parents Forum in Hackney, told me that gang rape is not a rare or one-off phenomenon. It is happening on a regular basis. She said: "It could actually explode on our very streets." Steve Griffith, a youth worker in King's Cross, said: "I see too much abuse of young women on the streets."

Gang rape, while constituting only a tiny percentage of all rapes in the UK, is a horrible reality in this country. The nature of the crime is so appalling that much more research needs to be carried out into its causes. But what seems evident from my investigation is that the key to preventing it will be changing the way young men view women and the kind of group sexual activity they are engaging in at such a young age.

Sheldon Thomas, a youth worker in Brixton, said: "We've got a generation that looks at sex as if it's nothing, and treats disrespecting women as if it's nothing. These guys are like 13, 14 and 15, and their actual attitudes towards young girls – towards sex – is mind-blowing. It's actually leaving you asking: where are their morals, where are their values?"

Sorious Samura presents 'Dispatches: Rape in the City' on Channel 4 tomorrow night at 8pm

samedi 20 juin 2009

Les sacrifices des soldats de 1940

Dans son blog Secret défense, le journaliste de Libération Jean-Dominique Merchet a publié un bref compte rendu de l'ouvrage 100 000 morts oubliés de Jean-Pierre Richardot.

Nous invitons nos lecteur à se rendre sur cette page pour lire le commentaire des lecteurs.

Les soldats oubliés du 18 juin 40

Jean-Pierre Richardot, journaliste à la retraite et historien, vient de publier un livre retraçant les combats de l'armée française en mai-juin 1940. Comme l'avait fait Roger Bruge avant lui, il rend hommage à ces soldats qui se sont beaucoup mieux battu qu'une légende, inspirée de la propagande nazie puis vichyste, le laisse souvent croire. En 47 jours de bataille, 100.000 d'entre eux sont morts. Mais surtout, l'armée allemande a perdu 2.000 hommes tous les jours (tués, blessés, prisonniers, disparus) durant ces combats. Preuve s'il en était besoin que l'armée française et ses alliés n'étaient pas composée que de fuyards...

Le 18 juin, une bataille oubliée s'est déroulée sur le canal de la Marne au Rhin. Jean-Pierre Richardot a bien voulu raconter cet épisode pour les lecteurs de ce blog : "Le 18 juin est l'anniversaire de la grande bataille du Canal de la Marne au Rhin. Les derniers chars français valides sont rassemblés et lancés contre les Allemands dans une contre-attaque sur un front de 125 kilomètres entre Nancy et Sarrebourg. Les Allemands ne croyaient faire qu'une bouchée des Français, mais ils sont très surpris en perdant dans cette seule journée du 18 juin plus de 2000 tués. Il y a environ mille morts du côté français. La veille, 17 juin midi, le maréchal Pétain, nouveau chef du gouvernement, a déclaré sa volonté d'arrêter le combat. Son allocution n'a aucune influence sur la volonté de lutte des soldats du 18 juin : troupes de forteresse, coloniaux, grenadiers polonais. Européens et Africains se battent avec la rage du désespoir. Ils n'ont pas connaissance de l'appel du 18 juin, qui ne sera diffusé de Londres que le soir. Ces combattants sont en quelque sorte gaullistes avant l'heure officielle. Nos soldats étaient partisans de la poursuite du combat, partout où cela était possible, et tout particulièrement dans les airs, sur mer et en Afrique du Nord. J'ai découvert des sacs de courrier postal montrant que de nombreux civils des différentes provinces ont cru jusqu'à la demande d'armistice au mythe d'une nouvelle bataille de la Marne, comme en 1914 "

Jean-Pierre Richardot "100.000 morts oubliés" Le Cherche-midi, 18 euros

Franchement, écrire que les combattants du 18 juin sont en quelque sorte « des gaullistes avant l'heure » est une réécriture de l'histoire qui est risible.

Curieusement, le journaliste ne mentionne aucune des thèses conspirationnistes de l'auteur pour expliquer l'armistice et qui justifient probablement que l'ouvrage ait été publié par le Cherche-Midi éditeur.

Enfin, mentionnons que le chiffre des 100 000 morts se réfère probablement aux morts sur une période plus longue. Les tués au combat en 1940 seraient plutôt 85 000 avec une évaluation des blessés oscillant entre 120 000 et 250 000.

De leur côté, les Belges ont eu 7500 morts, les Hollandais, 2890 et les Britanniques 3457.
Le nombre des tués allemands serait de 45 000.

Eta tue une nouvelle fois

L'attentat de l'ETA a fait la une de la presse en Espagne. A gauche, Gara, quotidien d'extrême-gauche, porte-voix de l'ETA et de sa mouvance. A droite, El Mundo, quotidien de la droite libérale espagnole.


Le groupe terroriste d'extrême gauche ETA vient de tuer dans un attentat spectaculaire à la voiture piégée à Arrigorriaga, Eduardo Puelles Garcia, un des chefs de la lutte antiterroriste.

L'explosion semble en effet avoir été provoquée par une « bombe ventouse» fixée sous le véhicule. Elle s'est produite vers les 9 heures du matin sur un parking, probablement au moment où le policier démarrait son véhicule. L'explosion a provoqué un incendie qui s'est ensuite propagé à d'autres voitures.

«En ces moments si durs et difficiles, je veux dire à la famille du policier qu'elle a toute notre affection et celle de l'immense majorité de la société basque qui ne supporte plus les assassins et canailles de l'ETA», a déclaré en fin de matinée le chef du gouvernement régional basque Patxi Lopez au parlement, où les députés ont observé une minute de silence.

Cet attentat tranche avec les opérations antérieures, marquées par l'improvisation et révélant la désorganisation de la bande.

Pour la première fois depuis longtemps, une attaque terroriste a pour objectif l'appareil policier chargé de la lutte contre l'ETA.

Elle démontre que les terroristes ont conservé non seulement des capacités opérationnelles, c'est à dire la mise au point de l'engin explosif, sa fabrication et son installation, ainsi qu'une réelle capacité de collecte de l'information.

Le policier a été non seulement identifié, localisé mais suivi durant une période de près d'un an, probablement par un voisin ou par une personne en mesure de se déplacer pour pointer ses mouvements.

Le choix de cette cible est, en se plaçant dans la problématique des terroristes, excellent. Il porte un coup sévère aux forces de l'ordre sans pour autant susciter la même réprobation que l'assassinat ignoble du jeune conseiller municipal Miguel Angel Blanco.

Toutefois, la situation globale a changé.

Pour la première fois, le chef du gouvernement régional basque s'est placé en première ligne pour manifester sa réprobation contre l'ETA. Pour la première fois, les uniformes des trois forces de l'ordre qui interviennent au Pays basque ont été vue ensemble aux côtés du cercueil du policier assassiné.

Cette opération tragiquement réussie n'est pas un signe d'une nouvelle vitalité pour l'ETA mais plutôt un chant du cygne. L'organisation, en dépit de tous ses efforts, est sur la pente descendante car son substrat politique et social se délite.

Les opérations policières tant en France comme en Espagne portent des coups constants à l'ETA et l'organisation terroriste doit sans cesse renouveler son personnel avec des recrues chaque fois plus jeunes et moins expérimentées.

vendredi 19 juin 2009

Modérer le désir

Pour protéger la vertu de leurs enseignants mâles, un lycée de Chester veut obliger Chloe (à gauche, 14 ans) and Stacey Tate (à droite, onze ans), ici en compagnie de leur mère Donna Parkinson, à allonger leurs jupes ou à porter des pantalons.

Les femmes ont le terrible pouvoir de susciter le désir des hommes. C'est pour cela que les sociétés musulmane et juive, par exemple, prescrivent des règles pour priver le sexe dit faible de ces armes de séduction massive.

Les sociétés chrétiennes ont également eu des règles de cette nature (qui ont survécu dans les habits religieux) mais elles ont progressivement été oubliées.

Mais, dans l'hystérie actuelle qui conduit à un tisser un cocon hyperprotecteur autour des enfants, certaines écoles tombent dans des excès des plus ridicules. Le Daily Mail rapporte que le lycée anglais Upton-by-Chester High School près de Chester a décidé de proscrire les jupes trop courtes car elles interdisent dans les faits l'usage des escaliers aux professeurs mâles de peur que leurs yeux, par inadvertance, puissent contempler l'arrière-train des jeunes filles trop court vêtues.

Cette décision a soulevé un vent de révolte parmi certaines jeunes filles désireuses de préserver l'éternel féminin de toute mise sous tutelle.

Le journaliste a rencontré Chloe et Stacey Tate, deux sœurs qui refusent d'allonger leurs jupes au risque que leur beauté fasse tomber les professeurs dans les rets de leurs charmes.

Je me demande si elle ne sont ou trop naives ou trop présomptueuses

A vous de juger.

Chloe et Stacey Tate refusent de porter des pantalons ou d'allonger leurs jupes.

lundi 15 juin 2009

L'autre église d'Obama

On dirait que titiller le nouveau messie interplanétaire Obama suscite bien plus de réactions que d'autres posts pourtant tout aussi à contre courant.

Mes interrogations sur l'identité religieuse de BHO m'ont conduit à creuser un peu et j'ai retrouvé la tracé de la participation du jeune Obama à un culte chrétien durant son enfance, avant d'émigrer en Indonésie avec son père adoptif.

Alors qu'il résidait à Honolulu, il a régulièrement participé aux activités dominicales de la First Unitarian Church. Toutefois, cette participation a été soigneusement cachée tant par le candidat que l'Eglise elle-même. Pourquoi ? Ce contact précoce avec le christianisme aurait pu jouer en sa faveur.

Mais voilà, alors que son adversaire, le républicain John McCain croupissait dans les geôles communistes et était torturé par les amis de Giap, le jeune Obama assistait de la main d'un de ses grands-parents (blancs) aux services religieux d'une église qui accueillait les déserteurs de l'US Army et ceux refusant le service militaire, une paroisse surnommée « la petite église rouge dans la prairie ».

Voici le long article d'Andrew Walden publié par The American Thinker. Il mérite d'être lu.

Obama's Other Controversial Church

"This is a guy (former Weatherman terror-bomber Bill Ayers) who lives in my neighborhood ... the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago - when I was 8 years old - somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense." -- Barack Obama on the Campaign trail, 2008

As President Obama prepared to commemorate D-Day, the Associated Press dug up old details and photos to write a warm fuzzy story about the WW2 service record of Obama's maternal grandfather and grand uncle. One could conclude that the actions of these two-nearly 20 years before Obama was born--are the closest Obama ever came to uniformed US military personnel prior to launching his political career.

But Obama has a much closer military connection-one he has not talked about publicly. Had a reporter asked Obama: "So what were you doing during Bill Ayers' fugitive days?" An honest answer would be: "I was going to Sunday school at a church which had provided sanctuary to US military deserters."

While John McCain was being tortured as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, First Unitarian Church of Honolulu -- at which the elementary-age Obama would later attend Sunday school after returning from Indonesia in 1970 or 71 -- was sheltering deserters and AWOLs recruited by ‘flirty fishing' coeds from a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) group known as "The Resistance". The deserters' exploits were front page news for months on end in mid-1969 Honolulu. They were also proudly trumpeted by the Honolulu SDS tabloid, "The Roach".

The contrast between the war hero POW and the Obama deserters' church would have made a pretty good campaign commercial. But nobody in Honolulu spoke up to claim Obama's First Unitarian connection until after Election Day. Even then it was hush-hush. As the Star-Bulletin explained December 24:

"(Rev Mike) Young, pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, could only tell his wife and a handful of church administrators that a small, private service was planned for Madelyn Payne Dunham on Dec. 23. It was very hard to keep this secret. ..."

Obama's maternal grandmother had passed away just days before the election. The story of his ties to the church began to emerge only after he attended her memorial service. They have never received wide media attention, but have been published just enough that-after being kept secret in the 2008 campaign -- this chapter of Obama's life can arguably no longer be considered a secret to be revealed in any 2012 campaign. The connection to Vietnam deserters has not been included in any of the Obama-related coverage.

Was sheltering deserters an aberration for First Unitarian Church? No. Long before anybody was thinking of Barack Obama as a Senator, much less a President, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin February 8, 2003 described First Unitarian's 2003 golden anniversary celebration complete with "Liberal Religion for 50 Years" T-shirts:

"The bumper stickers on cars outside the church gave an insight into its members' beliefs: ‘No War.' ‘If you want peace, work for justice.' ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'


"Activism for peace and human rights causes has characterized the congregation of the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu since it was organized 50 years ago. Members were instrumental in founding the League of Women Voters and activating a local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. It offered sanctuary to servicemen who went AWOL to avoid being sent to Vietnam. It helped launch the Save Our Constitution effort to fight the constitutional amendment on same-sex marriages....

"After leaving Hawaii to work at the Unitarian seminary in Berkeley, Calif., (Church co-founder Rosemary) Mattson and her husband were active in the international peace movement. She escorted more than 25 tours of Americans to the former Soviet Union for people-to-people experience...."

But six years later the coverage of the memorial service did not bring out any of this information. At first there was no revelation that Obama had any relationship to the church beyond simply holding the service there. Then a January 6, 2009 article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin brings out the hidden story of Obama's religious upbringing:

"When (UU Rev Mike) Young reminded Obama that he had attended Sunday School at First Unitarian, ‘his eyes lit up, and he said, ‘Oh that's right!'"

In response to an email query from Hawaii Free Press Rev. Young confirmed the Star-Bulletin's account.

Young also repeated the story in the March 28, 2009 edition of his hometown Tampa (Florida) Tribune:

When Obama was in elementary school in Honolulu, Young recounted in a telephone phone interview, either his grandmother or grandfather (there's confusion over which one) brought him to Sunday school there for several years.

The Dunhams had attended a Unitarian church in the Seattle area when Obama's mother was a teenager. Although there's no record of their attendance at the Honolulu church, Obama writes about it in his memoir "Dreams From My Father," and one family who still attends the church remembers him.

When Young reminded Obama at the memorial service, "his eyes lit up, and he turned to Michelle and said, 'Hey, that's right. This is where I went to Sunday school.'"

Obama spent some time on the second floor, where Sunday school is held, but didn't recognize anything. That's not surprising, Young said, because the church has been renovated over the years.

The Dunhams' Seattle-area Mercer Island Unitarian Church was infamous as "The Little Red Church on the Hill"-Obama's mother's attendance there had been exposed during the campaign-and had been associated with an ambiguous reference to Obama's grandfather Stanley Dunham in Obama's book "Dreams from My Father" (p17).

"In his only skirmish into organized religion, he would enroll the family in the local Unitarian Universalist congregation...."

But knowing Obama's connection to Honolulu's First Unitarian Church, it is possible this passage refers to either church -- or both churches.

Contemporary accounts of the SDS Resistance use of First Unitarian and nearby Church of the Crossroads as part of the 1968-70 sanctuary for deserters movement shows why Obama would not have wanted this information exposed.

Starting in 1966 University of Hawaii students and professors began raising funds to donate directly to the Viet Cong. By 1968 UH Manoa leftist activists had morphed into a chapter of the so-called Students for a Democratic Society and began publishing a newspaper called "The Roach."

On October 26, 1967 Lt. Commander John McCain was shot down over Hanoi. With two broken arms and one broken leg he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake where he was dragged from the water, beaten and bayoneted.

The June 4, 1968 edition of The Roach includes "memo from the resistance"-The Hawaii Committee for Draft Resistance-which urges supporters to show up at a June 10 court hearing for "the ten arrested for loitering when they attempted to block the 29th Infantry Brigade troops leaving Fort DeRussy...." On the very next page Mao Zedong's murderous Red Guards are described as, "...young activists full of joy who understand the potential for their society...."

In mid-1968, the Vietnamese communists realized they held the son of Admiral John McCain-commander of the Pacific Fleet, including US forces in Vietnam. The younger McCain refused an offer of early release because preferential treatment for the son of a high ranking officer would provide a propaganda opportunity for the communists. He would be held five more years.

The September 24, 1968 edition of The Roach describes Resistance leader John Witeck refusing induction right next to articles titled "Pot Talk" and "Revolutionary Orgasm." An obscure article in the October 23 edition mentions "two marines (sic), Young C Gray and Tom Mat, who are now in sanctuary...." This ‘sanctuary' apparently lasted four days.

The Roach, January 15, 1969, describes Gray receiving two years in the stockade after being found guilty of "‘attempting to possess' mescaline and marijuana." The Roach further explains: "Gray had also written some disparaging remarks about NCOs and lifers concerning their intellects and temperaments. These statements appeared in ‘A Call to Join Us', a piece read to the congregation assembled at the Unitarian Church."

After losing 50 pounds while receiving insufficient treatment for his injuries, John McCain was placed in a cell in December 1967 with two Americans who did not expect him to live a week. He was then locked in solitary confinement for two years beginning in March 1968. Here he endured beatings and rope binding tortures but refused to meet with anti-war delegations attempting to visit the POWs.

The August 16, 1969 Star-Bulletin shows deserters going shirtless with some of the dozens of hippy girls who had flocked to the sanctuary churches. The headline: "Hot showers for AWOLs at Church."

By August 23, 1969 the New York Times was reporting "24 G.I. War Foes now in Sanctuary...staying at both the Church of the Crossroads and the Unitarian Church of Honolulu...." The Resistance had grown but all was not well. As The Times explained:

"One of the protesters, Seaman Arthur parker, 17, turned himself in to the authorities at Pearl Harbor yesterday after talking to an Army Chaplain.

"Seaman Parker denounced the protest as ‘a movement to overthrow the government.'"

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin August 22, 1969 had much more of Parker's story.

(Parker) arrived in Honolulu from a Great lakes, (Ill.) boot camp and ... got drunk with buddies at Waikiki last Thursday night.

He told of meeting a young girl the next morning who promised love and relief from the military. Parker disliked violence and war....

"We were walking down the street. Man was I bombed, and these two girls came up and handed me a sheet of paper. It told about the servicemen at the church and what the Resistance stood for.

"I told the girls that I didn't like to hate and I didn't like the war but that all I neeed was love. One of the girls said, ‘Well there's a lot of that at the church.' Then we just talked.

"I went back to the hotel, drank three beers and a half pint of whiskey and then called the Rev Bob Warner to come pick me up....

...On that day the young man from Holland, Mich., became number 18 at the Church of the Crossroads....

"... It isn't a sanctuary anymore. Its become a movement to overthrow the government and I don't stand for that; neither do a lot of the others....

"Even though I don't like the military, I would rather be part of them than what's down at the church. They scare me now."

Four days later the following Letter to the Editor appeared in the Star-Bulletin:

SIR: Whereas the Congregation of the Unitarian Church of Honolulu acted on October 18, 1968, to adopt a policy of offering symbolic sanctuary to those who in conscience oppose the machinery of war by nonviolent means, the Board of the Church, at its regular August meeting, offers its commendation on behalf of the Unitarian Church of Honolulu to the Church of the Crossroads for its courageous support of the men now in sanctuary.

--Martha D. McDaniel, Secretary of the Board, Unitarian Church of Honolulu

On September 12, 1969 the Star-Bulletin reported a broadly sponsored US House resolution, "condemning ‘cruel and barbaric' treatment of American prisoners of war in Vietnam....

"The resolution cites reports that the POWs are subjected to ‘physical torture, psychological terror, public display, neglect of health and are denied dietary and sanitary necessities. They are unable to correspond with their families and are forced to comply with propaganda exploitation."

Just two days earlier the Star-Bulletin had interviewed Rev Donald Adams, a former associate minister of the Church of the Crossroads. Regarding the military personnel in ‘sanctuary' Adams explained:

"I think the majority of them are probably in need of counseling and psychiatric help. After the wraps are off, you find the real internal problems. Psychologically, some men are not for the military. Its not easy in there."

Interviewed for the same article, Church of the Crossroads member Rev. Ted Chinen explained:

"The men come for various reasons. We should look into their previous records. We may be assisting psychopathics or neurotics."

To be considered a deserter, a soldier must be AWOL for 30 days. Eventually the City of Honolulu cited both churches for violations of zoning and health ordinances related to the use of the church buildings for ‘sanctuary'. Then on September 12 military police raided the Unitarian Church, Church of the Crossroads and nearby Wellesley Foundation arresting 12 AWOLs. As many as 15 others evaded arrest.

The Star-Bulletin September 19, 1969 editorialized:

"It seems inconsistent that these men who were so willing to face television cameras and speak up before the nation on conscience-so long as they had the protection of the ‘sanctuary'-could not see their adventure through.

"That gives us reason to believe that these young men are not made of the fiber they would have had us believe.

"Their evasion of the consequences, which they admittedly knew would eventually come, casts a shadow over the sincerity of their convictions.

"We can be thankful that they decided to take their stand in the safe confines of a church.

"Had they gone to the jungles of Vietnam, it is entirely possible that their lack of intestinal fortitude could have got someone else killed."

While the deserters were hiding, the September 15, 1969 Star-Bulletin reports on another group of missing soldiers. A delegation of four women-wives of American MIAs believed to be POWs-went to the Paris Peace Talks. In a statement released to the press they wrote:

"Our husbands have been missing from eight months to four years and we are hopeful North Vietnamese representatives will tell us if we are wives or widows."

The November, 1969 edition of the Hawaii Free People's Press -- successor to The Roach -- recounts the story of a Schofield Barracks deserter who had a different type of relationship with women. The article titled "Fock the draft" begins with the testimony of underground Schofield Barracks stockade escapee Bobby Jay Norton:

"Some five or six months ago I was charged with rape which I did not commit. The girl that charged me with the intentions of rape was pregnant when she came to Hawaii, so instead of her letting her parents know of this, she thought that she could come here and charge rape on someone....

"While we were driving in Waikiki she started screaming louder and louder, so I told her that if she didn't be quiet that I was going to slap the s**t out of her.

"As we came to a stop sign she jumped out of the car and started running down the street crying. I started to go after her but I decided that I had had enough of her crying so I decided to let her go.

"The next day I was informed by some friends that I was being looked for by the H.P.D. and some M.P.s....I had previously gotten out of an assault on a chick."

Above this was an untitled piece by "Private Partz" and a cartoon of a naked general swallowing people whole and defecating them out as soldiers.

These activists eventually won their war against America in Southeast Asia. They and those who admired them are now our professors, our journalists, our ministers, moviemakers, and politicians. One of their understudies is President of the United States.

In 1973 and 1974 Nixon withdrew US troops from South East Asia. When the US war ended the real killing began. The Democrat-controlled Congress cut off US funding to the South Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. By April of 1975 Pol Pot took over Cambodia and began murdering as many as 3 million Cambodians. The Vietnamese communists murdered as many as 1.6 million people and forced millions more into exile as "boat people."

Those deaths and the domestic political means which made them possible are the most accurate reflection on the generation of activists who raised Barack Obama and created his values.

Andrew Walden edits hawaiifreepress.com.