Un rappel nécessaire d'Eric Margolis

Le journaliste américain Eric Margolis est de ceux qui aiment mettre les pieds dans le plat et rappeler quelques rudes vérités aux élites anglo-saxonnes qui nous gouvernent.

A l'occasion de la visite d'Obama aux plages du débarquement de 1944, il s'est amusé à corriger quelques uns des mythes les plus répandus dans la culture populaire de nos amis américains et de nos voisins britanniques.

Premier mythe : l'Armée française de 1940 ne s'est pas effondrée sans combattre. Nous avons perdu près de 90 000 tués en 45 jours, un chiffre épouvantable qui se compare aux pires heures de la Grande Guerre. Les Anglais, quant à eux, ont à déplorer 3500 morts et les Allemands 45000. La comparaison entre ces chiffres éclaire bien le déroulement des opérations.

Les Français ont été battus non par manque de courage mais en conséquence d'une révolution technologique.

Deuxième mythe : la ligne Maginot n'a servi à rien. Faux, les Allemands n'ont pas tenté de la percer. Ils l'ont contournée.

Troisième mythe : Les Anglo-Saxons ont battu l'Armée allemande. Faux, ce sont les Russes qui l'ont fait en détruisant 75 à 80 % du potentiel de la Wehrmacht.

GETTING TO THE TRUTH ABOUT WORLD WAR II


President Barack Obama’s visit to Normandy to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-Day makes us think about the entire course of World War II, and the lingering propaganda or myths that still becloud it.

As a former instructor of military history and lover of history, let me address four of these myths that are particularly annoying and misleading:

First, France’s army did not simply surrender or run away in 1940, as ignorant American Know-Nothing conservatives claim.

The German Blitz that smote France on May-June, 1940, scattering its armies like leaves before a storm, was a historical revolution in warfare. Blitzkrieg combined rapidly-moving armor and mobile infantry, precision dive bombing, flexible logistical support, and new high technologies in C3 – command, control and communications. In 1940, Germany led the world in technology: 75% of all technical books were then written in German.

France’s armies and generals, trained to re-fight World War I, were overwhelmed by lightening warfare. France was then still a largely agricultural society. Blitzkrieg – now adopted by all major modern armed forces - was designed to strike an enemy’s brain rather than body, paralyzing his ability to manage large forces or to fight. The Germans called it their `silver bullet.’

Indeed it was. France still relied on couriers to deliver vital information. Germany was the world’s leader in mobile radio communications. Amazingly, the French commander in chief, Gen. Gamelin, did not even have a telephone in his HQ outside Paris.

Britain’s well-trained expeditionary force in France was beaten just as quickly and thoroughly as the French, and saved itself only by abandoning its French allies and fleeing across the Channel.

No army in the world at that time could have withstood Germany’s blitzkrieg, planned by the brilliant Erich von Manstein, and led by the audacious Heinz Guderian, and Erwin Rommel –three of modern history’s greatest generals.

They were also incredibly lucky. Just one bomb on a German bridge over the Meuse, or one impassable traffic jam in the Ardennes forest could have meant the difference between victory and defeat. The French had temporarily moved some of their weakest reserve units just into the sector the Germans struck. It was, as Wellington said after Waterloo, a damned close run thing.

Germany’s new, fluid tactics shattered France’s armies. They were unable to reform their lines in spite of often fierce resistance. The fast-moving German panzers were constantly behind them. Retreat under fire is the most difficult and perilous of all military operations. After six weeks, and a stab in the back by Mussolini’s Italy, France’s armies had disintegrated.

France lost 217,000 dead and 400,000 wounded. Compare that to America’s loss of 416,000 dead during four years of war in the Pacific and Europe. At least France did not suffer the 2 million dead it lost in World War I. Germany losses: 46,000 killed in action, 121,000 wounded, and 1,000 aircraft. By comparison, the US, British and Canadians lost some 10,000 dead and wounded at D-Day.

Second, the forts of France’s Maginot Line were not tactically outflanked, as myth has it. The Germans struck NW of the Line’s end, through the Belgian/French Ardennes Forest, a route anticipated by the French Army which held war games there in 1939. The immobile French field army failed, not the Maginot Line. It may have been too costly, tied down too many men, and came to symbolize France’s defensive attitude, but the Great Wall of France fulfilled its designated mission.

The Line was intended to only defend the coal and steel industries of Alsace and Lorraine, which it did.
The Germans concluded an attack on the Line would be too costly, and opted for a different route – through Belgium.

But the high water table of Flanders and France’s aversion to building forts behind its Belgian ally left the Franco-Belgian border with only scanty fixed defenses.

Ironically, after the German breakthrough at Sedan on the Meuse, a French corps held in reserve to
cover this vital sector moved east to the Stenay Gap to protect the Maginot Line’s left flank,
opening the way for Guderian’s panzers to fan out to the NW behind French lines.

The second largest amphibious operation in Western Europe during WWII was the totally forgotten German crossing under fire of the Rhine in June,1940.

The crews of the unconquered Maginot forts held out until the armistice. Those who mock France for building forts that were supposedly `outflanked’ should know the `impregnable’ modern US fortifications at Manila, and Britain’s Fortress Singapore, were both taken from the rear by the Imperial Japanese Army. Germany’s much vaunted `Westwall’ and coastal defenses fared no better.

Third – Germany’s Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were crushed well before D-Day. In commemorating the war, we must remember to salute the courage and valor of Russia’s dauntless soldiers and pilots who, like German soldiers, fought magnificently albeit for criminal regimes. World War II in Europe was not won just at D-Day, as popular myth has it. Germany’s army and air force were broken on the Eastern Front’s titanic battles.

The numbers speak for themselves. The Soviets destroyed 75-80% of all German divisions – 4 million soldiers - and most of the Luftwaffe. Russia lost at least 14 million soldiers and a similar number of civilians. The Red Army destroyed 507 Axis divisions. On the Western Front after D-Day, the Allies destroyed 176 badly under-strength German divisions.

When the Allies landed in Normandy, they met battered German forces with no air cover, crippled by lack of fuel and supplies, unable to move in daytime. Even so, the Germans fought like tigers. Had the invading US, British and Canadians encountered the 1940’s Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, the outcome may well have been different.

Fourth – World War II was not a good and evil struggle between `western democracies’ and `totalitarian powers,’ as we are still wrongly taught.

It was a world conflict over land and resources pitting the British Empire which controlled 25% of the entire globe, the French Empire, Dutch Empire, and Belgian Empire, and, later, the US imperium(Philippines, Pacific possessions, Cuba, Central America), against the Italian and Japanese empires. The Soviet Union was an empire unto itself.

In 1939, the only major powers without colonies - that were not imperial powers - were Germany(who lost her few colonies in World War I) and China. Once the war ended, Britain and Holland, who complained mightily about the evils of Nazi occupation, scrambled to reoccupy their former colonies, some of which had declared independence.

One can hardly call this a crusade for freedom. Liberation for the white people of German-occupied Europe, certainly. But not for the peoples of Africa and Asia. However, in the end, the war did set in motion forces that would eventually spell the end of colonialism. The collapse of the British Empire, which Winston Churchill had vowed to defend at all costs, opened the way to worldwide decolonization.

We should not forget all this.


copyright Eric S. Margolis 2009

Race et santé

Sur cette photographie, prise en 2008, Carole Wiegand est aux côtés de son fils Nick Glasgow. Peu de temps après, ce jeune homme apprendra qu'il est atteint d'une forme aiguë de leucémie et que seul un don de moelle peut le sauver. Malheureusement, il n'existe pas de donneur référencé correspondant à son cocktail génétique métissé. (AP Photo/Carole Wiegand).

Une des facettes les plus inattendues de l'appartenance de chacun à un groupe racial est celle des conséquences sur la santé.

Dans une très intéressante dépêche de l'Associated Press datée du 27 mai dernier, la journaliste Juliana Barbassa dévoile le drame que vivent les malades métis.

On connaît bien les difficultés auxquelles font face les malades noirs en attente d'un organe. Ils pâtissent du fait que les donneurs noirs sont moins nombreux proportionnellement que ne le sont les Blancs. On s'est aperçu que cette réticence des Noirs à offrir leurs organes après la mort naît de la croyance infondée qu'ils pourraient bénéficier à des Blancs.

Ce manque de donneurs conduit à un tragique allongement des délais d'attente et ce retard entraîne parfois la mort du malade.

Mais une difficulté nouvelle se fait jour aux Etats-Unis. Dans ce pays, le nombre de métis est en grande augmentation. J'utilise ce terme dans son sens strict afin de ne pas confondre ces personnes, résultant de l'union de parents de races différentes, avec les mulâtres qui eux sont le fruit d'une union entre Blancs et Noirs.

Si les mulâtres, comme le président Obama, sont nombreux, en revanche les métis sont non seulement moins nombreux mais ils présentent à chaque fois des caractéristiques particulières qui réduisent considérablement leur compatibilité avec des donneurs.

Nick Glasgow, left, who has Leukemia, is comforted by his mother Carole Wiegand at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hayward, Calif., Friday, May 22, 2009. If Glasgow were white, he would have a nearly 90 percent chance of finding a matching bone marrow donor to treat the leukemia that has robbed him of his dark hair and whittled 20 pounds off his bodybuilder's frame. But because the 28-year-old is one-quarter Japanese, his doctor warned him the outlook was grim: Glasgow's background would make it almost impossible to find a match, which usually comes from a patient's own ethnic group. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Mixed-race patients struggle to find marrow donors

HAYWARD, Calif. (AP) — If Nick Glasgow were white, he would have a nearly 90 percent chance of finding a matching bone marrow donor who could cure his leukemia.

But because the 28-year-old bodybuilder is one-quarter Japanese, his doctor warned him the outlook was grim. Glasgow's background would make it almost impossible to find a match, which usually comes from a patient's own ethnic group.
The doctor "didn't say it was slim-to-none. He didn't say it would be hard. He said 'zero chance,'" Glasgow's mother, Carole Wiegand, recalled with tears in her eyes. "When Nick heard that, it sent him plummeting."

At a time when the number of multiracial Americans is rising, only a tiny fraction of donors on the national bone-marrow registry are of mixed race. The National Marrow Donor Program is trying to change that by seeking more diverse donors for patients suffering from leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases.
"The truth is, when people of different backgrounds marry and produce offspring, it creates more types that are harder to match," said Michelle Setterholm, the program's director of scientific services. "The probability just gets lower when you have people of mixed ancestral DNA."

The number of people who identify themselves as multiracial in the United States has grown from 3.9 million in 2000, the first year the census included the category, to 5.2 million in 2008. Mixed-race people account for 1.6 percent of the U.S. population.

The donor program has been pushing for years to recruit more racial minorities and mixed-race donors. So far, multiracial volunteers make up just 3 percent of the 7 million people on the registry.

That is higher than the percentage of mixed-race people in the U.S. But there are so many possible racial and ethnic combinations that finding a match can still be extremely difficult.

The reason that mixed-heritage patients are so hard to match can be found in the immune system.

Populations in different parts of the world developed certain proteins, or markers, that are part of the body's natural defenses. These markers help the immune system determine which cells are foreign and should be rejected.

A match between two people who share many markers will reduce the risk of the donor and recipient cells attacking each other. Because certain markers tend to cluster in particular ethnic groups, matches are most often found among people of shared backgrounds. Multiracial patients often have uncommon profiles and a much harder time finding a donor.

About 6,000 patients in the U.S. are awaiting a bone marrow match.
Finding compatible organs for transplant is simpler. Organ matches rely essentially on blood type, which is not related to race.

Glasgow's grandfather, an Army soldier from South Carolina, fell in love while stationed in Japan after World War II and married across racial lines at a time when it was illegal to do so in many states.

From his Japanese grandmother, Glasgow got the almond shape of his eyes and cell markers that set him apart from most other whites. From his white grandparents, he got markers that set him apart from other Japanese.

Geary Moya's background — part Navajo, part Mexican — has kept his life on hold since 2005, when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Chemotherapy has put his cancer in remission, but a bone marrow transplant is his only hope for a cure.

"I can't work. I can't plan. I just don't know what tomorrow will hold for me," said Moya, a 51-year-old former manager of an appliance company.

He often visits bone marrow drives, where he tries to encourage prospective donors to sign up.

"If it's not for me, it'll help someone," he said last week as he stopped by a booth registering potential bone marrow donors at California State University in Hayward. "There's a whole list of people out there waiting for someone to come along."

Moya watched and answered questions as a trickle of students filled out forms with their health history and ethnic makeup before swabbing the inside of their cheeks to collect the genetic material that will be used to match them to waiting patients.
If a match is found, they will undergo a painful procedure in which doctors withdraw liquid marrow from the back of their pelvic bones.

Among those filling out donor forms was Abe Rindal, a retired engineer who heard through friends about Glasgow.

Rindal was born to a Norwegian-American father and Japanese mother who met in Japan after World War II. They started a family before interracial marriage bans were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1967. Rindal remembers meeting only two other people with similar ethnicity.

"It was socially unacceptable back then," he said.

The chance to help someone of similar ethnicity appealed to Rindal. He not only filled out his form and swabbed his cheeks, he also sent test kits to his four siblings and their children in the hope they might be a match for Glasgow.

At the hospital, Wiegand prays for her son. Her niece started a Facebook group that has collected upward of 1,000 members interested in helping. The Asian American Donor Program has been contacting Japanese-American organizations, and large corporations such as Cisco have reached out to their employees via e-mail.
If chemotherapy sends Glasgow's cancer into remission, he might have months to find a match. If not, he might have far less time.

"I just keep thinking, `Please, everyone, get into that database,'" his mother said. "I just know there's a match out there somewhere for him.

Les tragédies du débarquement

Des héros au travail.

Dans un article long et bien argumenté publié ce matin dns le Guardian, le journaliste Antony Beevor rappelle les multiples tragédies vécues par les femmes au cours de la bataille de France, ces longs mois de combats durant lesquels les troupes britanniques et américaines ont repoussé les Allemands de France.

L'auteur Britannique note qu'en Bretagne le tiers des victimes civiles ont été des femmes. Souvent pour des raisons très éloignées de motifs politiques. Je suis frappé par le cas d'une jeune femme, agressée, violée, frappée à coups de pierres et achevée noyée dans l'Oust par un de ses anciens amants éconduits. Avec d'autres « résistants » armés de bric et de broc, ce monstre est venu la chercher chez elle une fois les Allemands partis, l'accusant de collaboration (ce qui était faux!) pour mener à bien sa vengeance. Ce crime, comme bien d'autres commis en Bretagne, a bénéficié d'une inexplicable mansuétude.

Ce qui me scandalise est que ce coupable de ce crime de violence contre les femmes, que le tribunal international de la Haye considère désormais être un crime contre l'humanité, donc imprescriptible, finit ses jours tranquillement à Renac. A deux pas d'ici.

An ugly carnival

As we mark the 65th anniversary of the D-day landings, Antony Beevor describes a dark side to the liberation parties: the brutal head-shaving and beating of women accused of collaboration


The 65th anniversary of the D-day landings this week is an occasion to revisit joyful pictures of the liberation of France in 1944. But among the cheering images there are also shocking ones. These show the fate of women accused of "collaboration horizontale". It is impossible to forget Robert Capa's fallen-Madonna image of a shaven-headed young woman, cradling her baby, implicitly the result of a relationship with a German soldier.
The punishment of shaving a woman's head had biblical origins. In Europe, the practice dated back to the dark ages, with the Visigoths. During the middle ages, this mark of shame, denuding a woman of what was supposed to be her most seductive feature, was commonly a punishment for adultery. Shaving women's heads as a mark of retribution and humiliation was reintroduced in the 20th century. After French troops occupied the Rhineland in 1923, German women who had relations with them later suffered the same fate. And during the second world war, the Nazi state issued orders that German women accused of sleeping with non-Aryans or foreign prisoners employed on farms should also be publicly punished in this way.
Also during the Spanish civil war, Falangists had shaved the heads of women from republican families, treating them as if they were prostitutes. Those on the extreme right had convinced themselves that the left believed in free love. (The most famous victim in fiction is Maria, the lover of Robert Jordan in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.)
It may seem strange that head-shaving, essentially a rightwing phenomenon, should have become so widespread during the leftist liberation euphoria in France in 1944. But many of the tondeurs, the head-shavers, were not members of the resistance. Quite a few had been petty collaborators themselves, and sought to divert attention from their own lack of resistance credentials. Yet resistance groups could also be merciless towards women. In Brittany it is said that a third of those civilians killed in reprisals were women. And threats of head-shaving had been made in the resistance underground press since 1941.
There was a strong element of vicarious eroticism among the tondeurs and their crowd, even though the punishment they were about to inflict symbolised the desexualisation of their victim. This "ugly carnival" became the pattern soon after D-day. Once a city, town or village had been liberated by the allies or the resistance, the shearers would get to work. In mid-June, on the market day following the capture of the town of Carentan, a dozen women were shorn publicly. In Cherbourg on 14 July, a truckload of young women, most of them teenagers, were driven through the streets. In Villedieu, one of the victims was a woman who had simply been a cleaner in the local German military headquarters.
Many French people as well as allied troops were sickened by the treatment meted out to these women accused of collaboration horizontale with German soldiers. A large number of the victims were prostitutes who had simply plied their trade with Germans as well as Frenchmen, although in some areas it was accepted that their conduct was professional rather than political. Others were silly teenagers who had associated with German soldiers out of bravado or boredom. In a number of cases, female schoolteachers who, living alone, had German soldiers billeted on them, were falsely denounced for having been a "mattress for the boches". Women accused of having had an abortion were also assumed to have consorted with Germans.
Many victims were young mothers, whose husbands were in German prisoner-of-war camps. During the war, they often had no means of support, and their only hope of obtaining food for themselves and their children was to accept a liaison with a German soldier. As the German writer Ernst Jünger observed from the luxury of the Tour d'Argent restaurant in Paris, "food is power".
Jealousy masqueraded as moral outrage, because people envied the food and entertainment these women had received as a result of their conduct. When Arletty, the great actor and star of the film Les Enfants du Paradis, died in 1992, she received admiring obituaries that did not mention the rumour that she had her head shaved at the liberation. These obituaries even passed over her controversial love affair with a Luftwaffe officer. But letters to some newspapers revealed a lingering bitterness nearly 50 years later. It was not the fact that Arletty had slept with the enemy which angered them, but the way she had eaten well in the Hôtel Ritz while the rest of France was hungry.
After the humiliation of a public head-shaving, the tondues - the shorn women - were often paraded through the streets on the back of a lorry, occasionally to the sound of a drum as if it were a tumbril and France was reliving the revolution of 1789. Some were daubed with tar, some stripped half naked, some marked with swastikas in paint or lipstick. In Bayeux, Churchill's private secretary Jock Colville recorded his reactions to one such scene. "I watched an open lorry drive past, to the accompaniment of boos and catcalls from the French populace, with a dozen miserable women in the back, every hair on their heads shaved off. They were in tears, hanging their heads in shame. While disgusted by this cruelty, I reflected that we British had known no invasion or occupation for some 900 years. So we were not the best judges."
The American historian Forrest Pogue wrote of the victims that "their look, in the hands of their tormentors, was that of a hunted animal". Colonel Harry D McHugh, the commander of an American infantry regiment near Argentan, reported: "The French were rounding up collaborators, cutting their hair off and burning it in huge piles, which one could smell miles away. Also, women collaborators were forced to run the gauntlet and were really beaten."
Elsewhere some men who had volunteered to work in German factories had their heads shaved, but that was an exception. Women almost always were the first targets, because they offered the easiest and most vulnerable scapegoats, particularly for those men who had joined the resistance at the last moment. Altogether, at least 20,000 women are known to have had their heads shaved. But the true figure may well be higher, considering that some estimates put the number of French children fathered by members of the Wehrmacht as high as 80,000.
In Paris there were cases of prostitutes kicked to death for having accepted German soldiers as clients. And at the other end of the social scale, several women from the highest reaches of the aristocracy were sheared for consorting with German officers. But resistance leaders in Paris made a determined effort to stop all head-shaving. Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy had posters run off warning of reprisals against would-be tondeurs, and René Porte, another leader who was renowned for his strength, knocked together the heads of a group of youths tormenting a young woman.
While many allied troops were sympathetic to France's suffering under the occupation, a considerable number had their worst prejudices confirmed by what they saw. American troops who had never been abroad before tended to see France itself as an enemy country, despite the attempts of the military authorities to inform them of the true situation. Some officers gave orders to arrest or shoot any French civilians encountered in the immediate invasion areas. Certainly French men and women found with German weapons were shot on the spot before they had a chance to explain. The possibility that they might have been collecting these weapons for the resistance never occurred to the soldiers concerned.
An extraordinary battlefield myth soon spread like wildfire. This maintained that young French women, the lovers of German soldiers, were fighting as snipers against the allies. These rumours were soon picked by British and American war correspondents eager for sensational stories. But a number of incidents also found their way into official reports without any doubts expressed about their authenticity. For example a lieutenant with the American 1st Infantry Division reported that they had encountered "four women in German uniform as snipers in trees and five in the town. I only saw one closely enough to identify her as a woman. She wore the German uniform and looked like a French woman."
Churchill heard these stories of women snipers during his visit to Normandy on 12 June and wrote about them to Anthony Eden on his return. British officers, however, later became increasingly sceptical of these "latrine rumours".
Moral confusion, if not outright hypocrisy, existed on the allied side too. At his airfield near Bayeux, Colville found it ironic when General Montgomery ordered all brothels to be closed. "Military police were posted to ensure that the order was obeyed. Undeterred and unabashed, several of the deprived ladies presented themselves in a field adjoining our orchard. Lines of airmen, including, I regret to say, the worthy Roman Catholic French-Canadians, queued for their services, clutching such articles as tins of sardines for payment."
The French, meanwhile, were shocked by the attitude of some American soldiers, who seemed to think that when it came to young French women "everything can be bought". After an evening's drinking, they would knock on farmhouse doors asking if there was a "mademoiselle" for them. Supposedly useful gambits were also provided in daily French lessons published by the US Armed Forces publication Stars and Stripes, including the phrase for "My wife doesn't understand me."
Americans and British saw liberated Paris not just as a symbol of Europe's freedom from Nazi oppression, but as a playground for their amusement. "As we neared the city we were seized by a wild sort of excitement," wrote Pogue. "We began to giggle, to sing, yell and otherwise show exuberance." But when Pogue reached Paris, he was shaken to find that American military authorities had taken over the Petit Palais and erected a large sign announcing the distribution of free condoms to US troops. In Pigalle, rapidly dubbed "Pig Alley" by GIs, French prostitutes were coping with more than 10,000 men a day. The French were also deeply shocked to see US soldiers lying drunk on the pavements of the Place Vendôme. The contrast with off-duty German troops, who had been forbidden even to smoke in the street, could hardly have been greater.
The basically misogynistic reaction of head-shaving during the liberation of France was repeated in Belgium, Italy and Norway and, to a lesser extent, in the Netherlands. In France, another wave of head-shaving took place in the late spring of 1945 when forced labourers, prisoners of war and concentration camp victims returned from Germany. Revenge on women represented a form of expiation for the frustrations and sense of impotence among males humiliated by their country's occupation. One could almost say that it was the equivalent of rape by the victor.

D-dayThe Battle for Normandy

Antony Beevor

Viking Penguin

La fin d'un juge

Le juge d'instruction Tartempion en voyage d'études.

Prenons quelques instants pour imaginer la situation suivante.

Le juge d'instruction Jean-Paul Tartempion, grand spécialiste des affaires en vue du parquet de Paris, a demandé un congé de 18 mois pour effectuer un séjour d'études à New York durant lequel il a prononcé plusieurs conférences sur le thème « Dialogues trans-Atlantiques » qui lui ont rapporté la coquette somme de près d'un million d'euros, le tout généreusement financé rubis sur ongle par la Société Générale. A son retour à Paris, le juge Tartempion prononce un non-lieu dans une affaire impliquant la Société Générale et qui aurait pu entraîner des pertes considérables pour cette banque.

Tout esprit un tant soit peu éveillé concluerait que la banque a payé un million d'euros des conférences bidon au magistrat pour s'acheter un non-lieu.

Bien sûr, ces événements n'ont pas eu lieu à Paris, le juge Tartempion n'existe pas et la Société Générale, au grand jamais, n'a pas payé de juges pour influencer le cours de la justice. Du moins je l'espère.

En revanche, cette affaire a bien eu lieu en Espagne. Remplacez le nom de Tartempion par Baltasar Garzón et la Société Générale par la banque Santander et vous aurez un scandale espagnol… qui n'a pas eu lieu (du moins pas encore).

Juge emblématique de la gauche espagnole, le juge Garzon a pu commettre toutes sortes d'abus de pouvoir, d'erreurs et de fautes sans que cela lui coûte un centime. Grâce à un système bien rodé de conférences payées une petite fortune, il a amassé une fortune personnelle considérable. Sans que cela ne suscite la moindre indignation en dehors de la presse libérale espagnole.

Mais le vent tourne et peut-être le juge préféré de Zapatero s'achemine peut-être vers une fin sans gloire.

Le quotidien ABC rapporte que la Cour suprême espagnole demande au Conseil supérieur de la magistrature d'enquêter sur cette affaire de corruption supposée qui a pourtant été classée sans suite dans le passé.

Cette indulgence des copains et des coquins a pourtant été à nouveau mise en évidence voici peu quand un magistrat a imposé une amande de cent euros (100 euros) au juge Garzon pour avoir laissé sortir de prison deux dangereux trafiquants de drogue faute d'avoir renouvelé les mandats de dépôt à temps.

Il faut dire que notre bon juge était fort occupé quelque part dans le monde dans une de ses missions humanitaires dont il a le secret.

Cette mise en cause par la Cour suprême s'ajoute à celle toute récente qui l'accuse d'avoir instruit à tort des dossiers pour inculper à Franco pour des « crimes contre l'humanité » sans avoir le droit de le faire. Une faute très grave pour un magistrat instructeur qui peut lui valoir l'expulsion de la magistrature.

Le vent, comme la roue tourne, et pour Garzon la roche Tarpéienne semble toute proche de l'Audience nationale où il officie.

Il était temps.

Comme on peut le supposer, sauf erreur de ma part, cette information n'a intéressé personne en France. Ici la dépêche de l'AFP. Ici, le site latin.reporters. Que fait la belle Diane pour le Figaro, elle dort sur son édition du Pais ?

Rappel à l'Ordre

De gauche à droite Casimiro García-Abadillo, un journaliste dont les enquêtes ont soulevé bien des lièvres sur les « lacunes » (pour ne pas dire plus) de l'enquête, l'expert Antonio Iglesias et Pedro J. Ramírez, directeur du quotidien El Mundo.

Le conseil de l'Ordre des chimistes de Madrid a validé l'étude de 500 pages menée par le chimiste Antonio Iglesias démolissant les bases factuelles de l'enquête sur les attentats du 11 mars 2004 à Madrid.

Voici un nouveau coup porté à la crédibilité de la thèse officielle sur les origines, les causes et les responsabilités de cet attentat.

Contrairement à ce qu'affirme le jugement, ce n'est pas du plastic provenant de la mine Conchita qui a explosé dans les trains, mais de la Titadyne, un explosif habituel de l'ETA.

Or, nul n'a été poursuivi ou condamné pour avoir livré de la Titadyne aux personnes présentées par la police comme étant les auteurs de l'attentat.

Le quotidien El Mundo est pratiquement le seul en Espagne à poursuivre l'enquête pour connaître les circonstances de l'attentat du 11 mars 2004. Il est dommage que les correspondants en Espagne de France Inter ou du Figaro ne lisent que la presse officielle comme El Pais.

Le « J'accuse » de Pedro J Ramirez

Le directeur du quotidien El Mundo, un des journalistes espagnols les plus connus et les plus indépendants se bat depuis des années pour connaître les responsables de l'attentat qui a dévasté la capitale espagnole le 11 mars 2004 (11-M).

Cet attentat, qui a causé plus de 190 morts et près de 2000 blessés, a eu de profondes conséquences sur la vie politique espagnole car il a transformé une victoire certaine du PP en une victoire inespérée des socialistes.

L'utilisation politicienne de l'attentat par les socialistes dans les derniers jours de la campagne électorale, l'intervention massive des médias du groupe Prisa en faveur de l'opposition (la radio SER, le quotidien El Pais) pour responsabiliser les islamistes de l'attaque, afin d'en rendre responsable le gouvernement libéral, coupable d'avoir collaboré avec l'Amérique, ont lourdement pesé sur l'enquête et sur le procès.

Non sans arguments, les journalistes du quotidien El Mundo, de la radio catholique Cope et de nombreux médias numériques ont mie en lumière des étrangetés de l'enquête, des bizarreries de l'instruction et des lacunes du procès.

Non seulement le gouvernement socialiste voulaient concentrer les efforts de la police sur la seule piste islamiste, mais toute déviation vers d'autres responsabilités venait compromettre ses négociations avec les terroristes de l'ETA.

Aux critiques, les médias officiels répondent par des accusations de conspirationnisme et par des arguments tirés de la commission parlementaire et du jugement.

Or voilà, l'enquête patiente de nombreux bénévoles qui ont épluché le dossier et poursuivi de nombreuses pistes délaissés par la police, les travaux d'experts ont permis de démontrer que des policiers importants ont manipulé des preuves, ont manqué à leurs obligations légales et que les magistrats, notamment dans le jugement, ont commis des erreurs de fait.

Deux livres récents, un par l'avocat José maria de Pablo, et l'autre par un chimiste expert auprès des tribunaux, relancent l'affaire en révélant ce qui pourrait être un complot policier au service du Parti socialiste et le second démontrant que l'explosif utilisé était de la Titadyne et non pas de la Goma 2 Eco.

En participant au lancement de l'ouvrage de l'expert, Pedro J Ramirez a la lancé publiquement un « J'accuse » dans lequel il donne les noms des fonctionnaires et magistrats qui, selo,n lui, ont gravement manqué à leurs devoirs. De Sanchez Manzano, patron des démineurs, à l'experte en explosifs n°17682, au patron de la police scientifique Carlos Corrales, au général Felix Hernando de la Garde civile et à bien d'autres, sans oublier les magistrats Juan del Olmo, Javier Bermudez, Olga Sanchez ou Javier Zaragoza, tous font l'objet d'accusations graves et précises qui ne peuvent rester sans réponse de leur part.

c'est sans doute ce que souhaite le directeur de El Mundo, être poursuivi pour relancer l'affaire. On attend que les correspondants à Madrid de la presse françaises rendent compte de ces nouveaux développements.

Voici son intervention :

Tous terroristes ?

Dans un continent où il est interdit de discriminer et ou la dictature de la pensée conforme se fait de plus en plus pesant, il est inévitable que le système considère chaque citoyen comme un terroriste potentiel.

Cette courte vidéo est très éclairante sur l'avenir qui nous attend.