Le New York Times et les races humaines

A droite, M. Gaines qui choisit de gagner sa vie par des attaques à main armée. Mais il ne fut pas assez malin pour échapper à la justice. Après 13 années passées en prison, il retrouve ses fils Shane et Adam lesquels expliquent leur échec scolaire par l'absence de leur père.

Le New York Times a un gros problème avec les races humaines. Il lui est difficile de ne pas rendre compte de la criminalité aux Etats-Unis et de son impact sur la communauté noire. Pourtant, il réussit à chaque fois à décrire le phénomène sans en tirer les conclusions qui s'imposent à tout spécialiste et tout simplement à tout lecteur doté d'un minimum de bon sens.

Cette fois, il s'intéresse au sort des enfants des détenus de droit commun. Il aboutit à la conclusion que les enfants de ces détenus ont bien plus de chances de devenir des criminels à leur tour. Conclusion du journalisme : c'est l'incarcération des pères qui conduit les enfants à la marginalisation sociale et au crime.

Recommandation implicite du New York Times : libérer les pères pour que les enfants ne deviennent pas des criminels à leur tour.

C'est l'exemple même de pensée de gauche qui devient folle.

Pourtant, si autant d'enfants noirs ont des pères en prison c'est tout d'abord parce que leurs géniteurs ont choisi un mode de vie criminel.

Il faut donc s'interroger sur la dérive des jeunes noirs et sur l'impact des discours victimistes dont ils sont abreuvés et dont cet article est un exemple parfait.

Le cas de Terrisa Bryant est particulièrement frappant. Pourquoi est-elle tombé enceinte à 14 ans ? La faute à son père. Celui-ci étant en prison, sa mère devait travailler de longues heures pour nourrir la famille et la miss Bryant a contribué à la vie de la famille en s'occupant de ses frères et sœurs à la place de sa maman. Ne pouvant sortir avec ses amis pour faire la fête, la miss Bryant s'est sentie exclue et ce sentiment a nourri une colère et une frustration qu'elle a voulu compenser en se faisant engrosser par le premier venu.

Cette situation tragique de la communauté noire, que l'aveuglement idéologique de la classe dominante contribue à empirer, se retrouve aussi de manière croissante dans les couches les plus défavorisées de la communauté blanche. Une sorte de quart-monde où se recrute la majorité des criminels blancs. Dans cette population, la criminalité est aussi un phénomène qui se reproduit de génération en génération.

Enfin, n'oublions pas de mentionner le facteur explicatif que le New York Times ne veut jamais prendre en compte : le QI des populations criminogènes, blanches comme noires.

In Prisoners’ Wake, a Tide of Troubled Kids Adam

The circumstances were not promising. Mr. Scott, 20, was awaiting sentencing for drug possession and robbery, but he was allowed supervised release from jail in May to attend a job preparation class — a chance to turn his life around. As he spoke, he wriggled his neck, trying to get used to the necktie required, and he tried to ignore the tracking device on his ankle.

“I had low self-esteem and depression,” Mr. Scott said of his teenage years. Now, his ex-girlfriend was pregnant, and he pondered his child’s prospects.

“I want to be there for this child, and I want the child to know that jail ain’t no place to be,” he said.

The chances of seeing a parent go to prison have never been greater, especially for poor black Americans, and new research is documenting the long-term harm to the children they leave behind. Recent studies indicate that having an incarcerated parent doubles the chance that a child will be at least temporarily homeless and measurably increases the likelihood of physically aggressive behavior, social isolation, depression and problems in school — all portending dimmer prospects in adulthood.

“Parental imprisonment has emerged as a novel, and distinctly American, childhood risk that is concentrated among black children and children of low-education parents,” said Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who is studying what some now call the “incarceration generation.”

Incarceration rates in the United States have multiplied over the last three decades, in part because of stiffer sentencing rules. At any given moment, more than 1.5 million children have a parent, usually their father, in prison, according to federal data. But many more are affected over the course of childhood, especially if they are black, new studies show.

Among those born in 1990, one in four black children, compared with one in 25 white children, had a father in prison by age 14. Risk is concentrated among black children whose parents are high-school dropouts; half of those children had a father in prison, compared with one in 14 white children with dropout parents, according to a report by Dr. Wildeman recently published in the journal Demography.

For both blacks and whites, the chances of parental incarceration were far higher than they were for children born just 12 years earlier, in 1978.

Scholars agree that in some cases children may benefit from a parent’s forced removal, especially when a father is a sexual predator or violent at home. But more often, the harm outweighs any benefits, studies have found.

If a parent’s imprisonment deprives a struggling family of earnings or child support, the practical consequences can be fairly clear-cut. While poor urban children had a 3 percent chance of experiencing a period of homelessness over the previous year, those with an incarcerated parent had a 6 percent chance, one study found.

Quantifying other effects of parental incarceration, like aggressive behavior and depression, is more complex because many children of prisoners are already living in deprived and turbulent environments. But researchers using newly available surveys that follow families over time are starting to home in on the impact.

Among 5-year-old urban boys, 49 percent of those who had a father incarcerated within the previous 30 months exhibited physically aggressive behaviors like hitting others or destroying objects, compared with 38 percent of those in otherwise similar circumstances who did not have a father imprisoned, Dr. Wildeman found.

While most attention has been placed on physical aggression, a study by Sara Wakefield, a sociologist following children in Chicago, found that having a parent imprisoned was a mental-health tipping point for some. Thus, while 28 percent of the children in her study over all experienced feelings of social isolation, depression or anxiety at levels that would warrant clinical evaluation or treatment, about 35 percent of those who had an incarcerated parent did.

Such hidden issues can have lifelong consequences.

Terrisa Bryant, 20, who was in the same jobs class as Mr. Scott, with a group called Strive, said she grew up resenting her father’s absences, including his time spent in prison. With her mother working day and night to put food on the table, Ms. Bryant was the baby sitter for her younger siblings.

“I couldn’t go out,” Ms. Bryant said. “I felt isolated.”

Ms. Bryant said she thought her anger and isolation helped explain why she got pregnant at 14 and had to drop out of school to raise her child. Now, she hopes to get certified for a career in child care.

With financial woes now forcing many states to rethink the relentless expansion of prisons, “this intergenerational transfer of problems should be included as an additional cost of incarceration to society,” said Sarah S. McLanahan, a sociologist at Princeton University and director of a national survey of families that is providing data for many of the new studies.

Heather Mac Donald, a legal expert at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, agreed that everything possible should be done to help the children of people who were incarcerated. But Ms. Mac Donald said that it was hard to distinguish the effects of having a parent in prison from those of having a parent who is a criminal, and that any evaluation of tough sentencing policies, which she supports, had to weigh the benefits for the larger community. “A large portion of fathers were imprisoned on violence or drug-trafficking charges,” she said. “What would be the effects on other children in the neighborhood if those men are out there?”

Adam Gaines, 40, of Owings Mills, Md., has firsthand experience of watching his children flounder. He was freed last year after 13 and a half years in prison for robbery. Now, he is trying to be the father he never was to a son who dropped out of school in the 10th grade, another son who is just starting high school and a teenage daughter who had a baby and dropped out of school.

Mr. Gaines shook his heroin addiction after years in prison, has moved back in with his wife, Tasuha, and is studying to be a fitness teacher.

When his father was behind bars, said Mr. Gaines’s oldest child, Adam Jr., 19, “I didn’t have a role model, and I had to learn on the streets how to carry myself, what it meant to be a man.”

Mr. Scott, too, may not be around for his child. Despite his vow to break the cycle of failure and his job preparation class, he disappeared shortly after talking to a reporter in May, apparently to avoid a mandatory drug test, and did not report to his probation officer.

Mr. Scott was arrested on charges of absconding in the last week of May and is now in a Washington jail awaiting a sentence that could be three years or more — and making it more likely that his child, too, will join the incarceration generation.

Espions, les Anglais s'y mettent aussi !

Les secrets de famille du futur patron du MI6, sir John Sawers, révélés sur Facebook par son épouse.

Récemment, nous avons mentionné la démission du patron des espions espagnols, accusé d'avoir financé avec de l'argent public ses pêches au gros au sénégal et des dépenses somptuaires dans son domicile particulier.

Mais, voilà, les Anglais ne sont pas bien plus malins comme nous le révèle Jason Lewis dans le Daily Mail de ce matin, ici.

MI6 chief blows his cover as wife's Facebook account reveals family holidays, showbiz friends and links to David Irving The new head of MI6 has been left exposed by a major personal security breach after his wife published intimate photographs and family details on the Facebook website.
Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all Britain's spying operations abroad.

But his wife's entries on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, who their friends are and where they spend their holidays.

Amazingly, she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account, making it visible to any of the site's 200million users who chose to be in the open-access 'London' network - regardless of where in the world they actually were.

There are fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder may have compromised the safety of Sir John's family and friends.

Lady Shelley Sawers' extraordinary lapse exposed the couple's friendships with senior diplomats and well-known actors, including Moir Leslie, who plays a leading character in The Archers. And it revealed that the intelligence chief's brother-in-law - who holidayed with him last month - is an associate of the controversial Right-wing historian David Irving.

Immediately after The Mail on Sunday alerted the Foreign Office to the astonishing misjudgment, all trace of the material – which could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists - was removed from the internet.

The move suggests that MI6 or the Foreign Office, which is also responsible for the GCHQ electronic eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, had not vetted what sort of information Sir John and his family were distributing over the internet.

Nor does it appear that the new intelligence chief - who will be codenamed 'C' once he takes up his post - had considered the potential risks of what his family was revealing to the world.

Foreign Office staff are warned about their use of social networking sites when they join the department but MI6 expects its agents to maintain an even tighter secrecy, telling them not to reveal their true role to all but their closest family.

Sir John Sawers, currently Britain's Ambassador to the United Nations, where he sits on the highly sensitive Security Council, began his working life in MI6 but has spent the past 20 years building a career as a diplomat rather than a spy.

Senior politicians said the security lapse raised serious doubts about Sir John's suitability to head the intelligence service - and raised questions over whether an outsider should have been appointed to such a sensitive role.

On June 16, the very day Sir John's MI6 appointment was announced, she posted 19 pictures of the couple on holiday with their friends in the West Country earlier that month.

The following day, she added a further 26 pictures, including one of Sir John playing on the beach in his swimming trucks, posing with his wife and children and chatting with friends and his mother.

Among those who joined the Sawers on the break were actors Moir Leslie, who plays both Sophie Barlow and vicar Janet Fisher in Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, and Alister Cameron, a character actor who has appeared on The Bill and Footballers' Wives.

Lady Sawers' Facebook 'friends' have also used the account to send messages of congratulations to Sir John on his new job, with one relative joking that he will now be known as 'Uncle C'.

On the day his appointment was announced, she wrote: 'Congrats on the new job, already dubbed Sir Uncle "C" by nephews in the know!'

Over the past year, Lady Sawers has been regularly updating anyone who cared to read her page - which could be found via internet search engines - on everything from family parties and holidays to the health of their pets and her views on the crisis in the Congo.

She also posted 22 photographs from Sir John's mother's 80th birthday party, showing the future spy chief with his closest friends and extended family, including his 86-year-old father, his two sons, aged 25 and 24, their girlfriends, and the couple's daughter Corinne, 22, a recent Oxford University graduate who is now an aspiring actress.

Corinne recently began touring with Jenny Seagrove in the play Pack Of Lies, coincidentally about a middle-class household suddenly at the centre of an espionage drama when an MI5 spy turns up at their house.

Among those featured in family photographs on the website is Lady Sawers' half-brother Hugo Haig-Thomas, a former diplomat.

Lady Sawers met her husband after visiting her brother when he was posted to Yemen in the late Seventies. She liked the country and decided to stay, landing a secretarial job at the Embassy, where Sir John later succeeded Mr Haig-Thomas.

Mr Haig-Thomas is an associate and researcher for revisionist historian David Irving, who was jailed for three years in Austria in 2006 for 'glorifying the Nazi Party' because he questioned whether the Holocaust took place.

The historian describes Haig-Thomas as 'a researcher who has done fine work for me'. His work includes examining the papers relating to the capture of Heinrich Himmler, the man behind Hitler's plan to exterminate the European Jews.

But Mr Haig-Thomas said he had never considered his views controversial, nor did he regret his connection with Irving.

He said: 'We are not close friends. I am interested in history, particularly German history, and I was engaged to carry out research for Irving. I have also attended several of his talks, but I do not necessarily share his views.

'In my experience, the Foreign Office are very sensible about these things and will see that our connection does not amount to much.'

Edward Davy, the Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman, called on Gordon Brown to launch an inquiry into whether the Facebook disclosures had compromised Sir John's ability to take up his MI6 post.

He said: 'Normally, I would welcome greater openness in Government for officials or politicians but this type of exposure verges on the reckless.

'The Prime Minister should immediately commission an internal inquiry as to whether this has breached the security of the incoming head of MI6 too seriously to allow him to take up the post.'

And Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, an adviser to Government Security Minister Lord West, said the MI6 chief had left himself open to blackmail.

He said: 'Sir John Sawers is in a very sensitive position and by revealing this sort of material his family have left him open to criticism and blackmail.

'As a long-serving diplomat and ambassador, his whole family have been involved in his line of business for decades. I would have hoped they would have been much more sensitive to potential security compromises like this.'

The Foreign Office refused to discuss the affair and declined to answer questions, including whether the department warned Ambassadors and other staff about social networking sites; whether the details Sir John's family published on the internet had come up in security checks before he was appointed as head of MI6; and whether he had made officials aware of his brother-in-law's links to David Irving.

A spokeswoman said: 'We have nothing to add.'

Combien gagne un dictateur ?

Le quotidien numérique espagnol Ya a publié la dernière feuille de paye du général Franco. le généralissime gagnait 154000 pesetas, l'équivalent d'un peu plus de six mille euros de 2008. Traitement qui se compare avec celui de près de vingt mille euros pour Nicolas Sarkozy. Pour revenir à l'Espagne, le président du gouvernement catalan encaisse 13 000 euros mensuels et Zapatero, la somme plus modeste de 7 400 euros. Lire un article à ce sujet ici.

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 Frederico 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.

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.