Culture of the National Security State - Deepa Kumar on RAI (Last part)

This last part of the interview with Deepa Kumar is all about how US controls its own public through fear mongering of Soviets, Chinese, Koreans, Talibans, & "terrorist" Muslims.

During the Cold War, Americans were indoctrinated to fear & obey the authorities due to the supposed attacks from Soviets, & their outpost in North America, Cuba. After all, imagine the whole continental America is being afraid of a tiny island nation of Cuba. Ridiculous.

That fear mongering also helped the military-industrial complex to stockpile nuclear weapons by the thousands & thousands. Millions of taxpayers money was poured into making those nuclear weapons & several other kinds of weapons, & instead of being used to create industries & building infrastructure, or helping the poor citizens.

Then, as the "wall came down," the fear mongering shifted towards Muslims & Islam. 9/11 became a pivotal moment to start a drive for global dominance, in the guise of War on Terror, & make & sell billions of weapons around the world. Billions more are being spent on refurbishment of nuclear weapons. Surveillance at home & abroad has become common, so much so, that American citizens are being suspicious of each other. That kind of state where everyone is afraid of everyone else ... I thought that happened in tyrannical states of Syria & Zimbabwe where anything said against the government can get you in prison. But, no, that is the sad state of affairs, or security, in none other than the developed world, & the bastion of democracy & freedom, the United States of America.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFxtnN6olyM

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: So what is the cultural politics of the national security state?

DEEPA KUMAR, ASSOC. PROF. MEDIA STUDIES AND MIDEAST STUDIES, RUTGERS UNIV.: ... So ... I'm looking at the Cold War period, the post-Second World War period, and the emergence and the birth of the national security state after the National Security Act of 1947, which creates the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then the NSA in '52, and so on. And there is a wholesale militarization of American society. Every aspect of American life, social, intellectual, political, and so on, it gets militarized in this way.

And the question is: how does that become acceptable? And culture is very important in terms of understanding how that happens. And so you have these security rituals, right, the Civil [Defense] department drills, the kind of "duck and cover". ...
...

KUMAR: But the whole point of a security ritual is to cultivate fear and obedience. So you give your consent to Cold War policies, to hot wars, to the complete militarization of society. And so I want to look at those sorts of drills, the various shows, the propaganda work overseas as well as domestically, but build it up to the present, because after 9/11 you see a strengthening of the national security state. And if we had "duck and cover" back then, we have see something, say something, which is the idea that you've got to be suspicious of anyone and anything, and you see and you text. That's the new ritual. And it again cultivates a sort of obedience to the national security state and all the draconian things that are being done--surveillance, drone strikes, all the rest of it--which otherwise would be unacceptable if it weren't for these various cultural practices that make it so.
...

JAY: The origins of the national security state, I mean, it begins in World War II, except they don't demobilize. They go from World War II right into a kind of World War III, the Cold War with the Soviet Union. But it's somewhat a little different than what's happening now, in the sense that it seems to me that the leaders of the time and--Truman and such, they really did see the Soviet Union as an existential threat, partly because it isn't too long before the Soviet Union has nuclear weapons.

Now all of a sudden, America thought it was going to be the thing after World War II. There would be no one else on the planet to rival. And all of a sudden you have a rival. But not only you have a rival; you have what at least is perceived as a socialist rival. You have the beginnings of an enormous population not within the capitalist world. Not too many years later you have China. Now you have, what, almost half the population of the world not within the capitalist world. And this--I don't think--I mean, we've talked to people like Ray McGovern, who was briefing the White House during this period, and he was doing [it] to Reagan and others, and then before Reagan, and they were telling them, listen, the Soviet Union is not going to attack the United States, it's not that kind of a threat.

KUMAR: And mutually assured destruction, right?

JAY: Well, partly that, and partly there'd just be no reason for it. Well, how could the Soviet Union gain anything by attacking the United States?

But the underlying reason for this state is they're terrified of the spread of socialism around the world.

KUMAR: Absolutely. And therefore the Cold War is not only a sort of war that involves the setting up of bases and spheres of influence and all the rest of it, so as to prevent larger parts of the world from the domino theory, right, which is that the Soviet Union was going to collect larger and larger portions of the world and so on. So it was about that. But it's also about ideology. It's about presenting American capitalism and the free enterprise as being the same as free speech, as being the same as individual liberty and human rights and all the rest of it. Right? So it was in that sense both a war in terms of a militaristic war, an international policy, as well as a bolstering of a certain notion of what kind of society--a capitalist society--would actually realize the dreams and aspirations of individuals.

JAY: And so you create this massive machine, which is really about global dominance. And certainly for many years, until ... Soviet Union starts to implode and China starts to transition to capitalism. That kind of threat clearly isn't there anymore.

KUMAR: But then the terrorist threat comes along. And, actually, the terrorist threat, interestingly enough, the word terrorism never used to be used in the U.S. up until the late 1970s. One study of presidential speeches all the way up to the middle of the 1970s finds that the term was rarely used. It's not to say that things that are today called terrorist, such as hijackings of airplanes or kidnappings or what have you didn't happen, but the people who carried out these acts were called air pirates, sky pirates, bandits, rebels, and so on.

But there's a process through the 1970s--and Israel plays a part in this--in terms of defining who the terrorist is. And in the 1980s, in fact, you see this novel theory come into being, which is that terrorists are in league with the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union sponsors an international network of terrorists, and therefore the West should not only fight against the Soviet Union, but it should also be ready to take on the terrorist threat. And, of course, after the collapse of the Soviet Union--.

JAY: The baton gets picked up by Iran, supposedly.

KUMAR: Right. Exactly.

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's not immediately the terrorist threat. You have this idea of rogue states, failed states, and a whole bunch of enemies, and so forth. But 9/11 becomes the pivotal moment around which the war on terror can be launched, which in many ways is analogous to the Cold War. You have this enemy. Of course, it's not the same kind of enemy. Terrorists don't have nuclear weapons and all the rest of it. But nevertheless, it's the kind of ideology that's needed to justify war, intervention, and global domination.

JAY: And 13 years or so after--of war on terror, we get something more robust than al-Qaeda ever was, apparently, the Islamic State. What do you make of the media depiction of Islamic State, how this is being dealt with?

KUMAR: I mean, if you look at the very fact that there is a group like Islamic State and that it poses a threat to the United States, you can say one thing, that the world war on terror has failed, right, because if it was working, these groups would be dissolving and so on. And so they're not. But we have been so primed over the course of the 1980s, the 1990s, and so forth with Hollywood films which consistently show terrorists as brown people, as Middle Eastern people--. And there's a whole slew of films from Cannon--this is a company that two Israelis create in which they consistently--they put out dozens of films in which Palestinians fighting for national liberation are seen as the bad guys and so on. And so that's the steady diet on which a whole generation of Americans have grown up, automatically seeing brown people and Middle Easterners and so on as being terrorists. And so by the time we come to 9/11, we're so primed to think of these people as just being these horrible individuals that we need to go off and make war on them.

And it's not just culture. It's even in the news media sphere, right? Remember after the Oklahoma City bombing, when Timothy McVeigh, a homegrown terrorist we later discovered is responsible for it--. The immediate response, however? Middle Eastern. Right? And this was back in the 1990s, when the Oklahoma City bombing takes place. Before it was discovered who the perpetrators are, all of the talking heads, these so-called terrorism experts, are saying this is Middle Eastern, it has Middle Eastern marks all over it, and so forth. So that's sort of been the evolution, which then gets ratcheted up post-9/11.

JAY: One of the things Homeland's been critiqued about and shows like Homeland, and 24, for that matter, is that it justifies mass surveillance of mosques and Muslims in America. But isn't that kind of understandable? I don't mean the shows. But, I mean--and, frankly, that is where--if there's a terrorist threat right now, there's some from right-wing organizations. And in theory we hear about the arrests. And there is surveillance of them as well. And as far as I know, the FBI has people looking into some of the far-right militias and such. ... Now, I know it's a tiny sliver of mosques, it's a very small, marginal number of mosques, and what we're given the context for is mass surveillance of everybody in every mosque, but there's not like there's no basis for it.

KUMAR: Well, the way this can be done in a way that is fair and that is constitutionally valid is if there is sufficient grounds to suspect somebody, then institute some form of surveillance, right? And, actually, it's in response to the sort of complete, indiscriminate surveillance that we saw in the 1960s against all kinds of people, from Martin Luther King to Jane Fonda and so on, that some restrictions were actually placed around who you can surveil and so forth, and there had to be some basis for suspicion. That has been completely done away with in the post-9/11 context. And now, if you're Muslim, you're automatically suspicious. And if you see the theories of radicalization that the FBI, the NYPD, and so on operate around, they have, like, a four-stage or five-stage process where just being a Muslim puts you on the first stage; and then you happen to be religious, you start growing--you know, if you're a man and you start to grow facial hair and wear religious clothing and so on, you're automatically on a fast track towards jihadism. And that is ridiculous. You know, that's such a violation of people's religious freedom rights.

And the end result of that is that you've seen a massive infiltration. For instance, in New York, the NYPD Demographics Unit has people all over, not just in New York City, but in the entire Tri-state area, infiltrating college groups, infiltrating mosques, bookstores, and so on, and keeping detailed records of what people do, how they live their lives, which is such a violation of your privacy, not to mention that it creates such a chilling effect on free speech and all the rest of it. I have students who say, I'm so scared in terms of who to trust who not to trust, because I know that there are agents in our midst. That's not the way in which a free society should treat its citizens.

JAY: Well, ... I understand the logic of doing this, I understand systemic surveillance, I understand infiltrating mosques and all the rest, because if you're going to be a marauder abroad, you're going to have to have a police state at home.

KUMAR: Yes.

JAY: So if you won't question your role in the world, if you just leave that off the table, then, yeah, you're left with these kinds of policy options, because people legitimately want to come and get you. But you've got to kind of add that to it, because--.

KUMAR: No doubt, because actually the current surveillance practices that we have today come out of the U.S. occupation of the Philippines. And Alfred McCoy has a book called Policing America's Empire, in which he talks about this constabulary unit that's formed in--American unit that is formed in Manila which uses things like, recruits a bunch of informants, which uses things like spread disinformation about the leaders in the Philippines who are fighting back against American occupation, and so on. And those things come back home and inform the kind of surveillance practices that we have right here. So there's always absolutely--empire is not just something that happens elsewhere; it happens right here.

And I think the key thing that the American state is afraid of is that if people who live in this country, who have relatives who live in Egypt or in Iran or what have you, they will tell a very different story of what the U.S. has done in those countries and therefore have the potential to disrupt the propaganda narrative and feed into an antiwar movement. And they don't want that, and therefore keep them scared, monitor them, police them as a way to stop this kind of information from getting out.

"Cold War Mentality" by Loujie

 
"Cold War Mentality" - Loujie, China Daily, China

Margaret Atwood on Free Will, Safety & Modern Romance

I liked this Chatelaine interview with Margaret Atwood, Canada's most celebrated author & novelist, because of a few comments she says about prison-industrial complex, political infatuation with terrorism when more people die of cancers & car accidents in the West, & modern-day change in people's behaviours towards family & work commitments. I, however, am more interested in the first 2 points than the third.

1. As she says about prison-industrial complex that "now that we have for-profit prisons, they have to be kept supplied. It’s actually an incentive to create more criminals." As I've blogged earlier that we can clearly see in US prisons that are being transferred from government care to private companies' care, who do everything in their power to lower their costs & increase their profit margins. This is also shown in the Netflix's series, "Orange is the new black," where female prisoners in Litchfield minimum security woman prison are being fed unhealthy slop, experienced full-time correctional officers are being replaced by inexperienced part-time guards, & prisoner rehabilitation is not even a word in new company's operation manual.

On top of that, the justice system is being skewed towards lowering the bar for crimes to the point where more criminals are somehow actually good for the society. Since when creating more criminals & destroying the lives of people, instead of trying to "address the underlying issues that drove them to commit crimes" is the new norm?

2. Some 3,000 people died on 9/11 some 16 years ago, & it become a rallying cry for American politicians, & every other politician around the world, to "fight terrorism". Majority of the public also blindly supports whatever the politicians come out chanting for the day. Although, that incident & several terrorist attacks after that one, around the world, are reprehensible, one has to wonder why the public & government don't try to tackle vehicle accidents, gun deaths, & numerous other fatal diseases with as much intensity & commitment as much as they do with "terrorism". Terrorism has never killed so many people as much as thousands upon thousands die every year, unlike a terrorist attack, due to non-terrorism causes.

Main reason is that in the guise of terrorism, military funding can be increased, & the government can easily put in place strict draconian controlling measures for the public. As we all know (or should know) that fear is the best way to control the public. All other non-terrorism activities don't help in increasing military funding, & hence, no new "toys" for the army to play with & the government can't control its public since it can't generate that life-ending fear with the promise of that miraculous cancer cure.

3. For the 3rd point, I am not going to blog too much but I really liked what she said about the sad state of modern human's isolation; "the ultimate vision of our desire & increasing ability to control everything in our lives is that there are no other people in our lives. People do what they do — & some of it is really bizarre, & always has been." Isn't this what "YOLO" is all about that hence I am only going to live once, why should I listen to someone else & instead follow my own head & heart. Well, we can very well see where that is leading us?

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http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/qa-margaret-atwood-on-free-will-safety-and-modern-romance/

"The Heart Goes Last", Margaret Atwood’s latest book & her first stand-alone novel since 2000’s Booker Prize–winning "The Blind Assassin", follows suit. Set in an only slightly alternative contemporary America, it tells the story of Stan & Charmaine, a married couple left homeless after an economic collapse. Enticed by the offer of good jobs & a nice home, they sign up to participate in the Positron Project in a corporate-run town called Consilience. The catch? Residents spend every other month in their civilian Pleasantville paradise, & the rest of their time as inmates in a massive & mysterious work prison.

As she did with "The Handmaid’s Tale" & the "MaddAddam Trilogy", Atwood pushes current, real-life dilemmas to their logical & darkest conclusions. In the case of "The Heart Goes Last", she takes on income inequality, the privatization of the justice system & government surveillance. As Atwood explains, “No one is ever really writing about the future, because we can’t know the future. My speculative fiction is a commentary on the past and the present.” Here, she reflects on free will, feeling safe & super-realistic sex dolls.

...
Chatelaine: Let’s get to your writing & "The Heart Goes Last". It takes place in the fallout of an economic recession much like the one that began in late 2007, which was around the time you were writing "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth". Has the issue of economic collapse been long on your mind?

Margaret Atwood [MA]: Actually, when I was writing Payback, the economic collapse hadn’t happened yet, but the book came out in 2008, just as we were really feeling its effects, so everyone thought I had a crystal ball — which I kind of did. I had been looking at ads on the subway, as is my habit, for all those credit relief & payday loan companies, & I could see something was happening.

But for "The Heart Goes Last", I had been thinking more about prisons, in part because of protests over the shutting down of prison farms. [In 2009, the Conservative government announced it would be closing its operating farms at six prisons across Canada. The program was one of the country’s most successful prisoner rehabilitation projects.] We haven’t really decided what prisons are for. Are they to punish people, to rehabilitate them, to give them a fresh start? Are they to protect the public? In some cases, the answer to the last question is yes — you don’t want Hannibal Lecter running around eating people. But in many cases, there is a knee-jerk reaction to imprison people, without looking at other options to address the underlying issues that drove them to commit crimes.

One of my models was Australia’s history as a penal colony. With only men at first, it was quite unruly, so the idea was to settle men down by sending them women. But there simply weren’t enough women in prison to meet the demand, so they lowered the bar, criminalized more behaviours & sentenced women more harshly to supply the demand. Today, now that we have for-profit prisons, they have to be kept supplied. It’s actually an incentive to create more criminals.

Chatelaine: The shadow that hangs over the book is the choice between freedom & security. Stan & Charmaine have been in terrible circumstances, pursued by gangs of rapists & murderers. They opt to give up their freedom to have some sense of safety & stability. Consilience would have an appeal.

MA: The good side for Stan & Charmaine is they’ve finally got a nice house.

Chatelaine: And the bad side is that they spend half their lives in prison. That’s the compromise.

MA: It’s a serious compromise & one that’s so old in how it’s played out over time. It’s one of the most primal questions: “What do I have to do to keep my family safe?” If we didn’t have those feelings, the human race wouldn’t be here. But the real question should be: “What is safety?”

Chatelaine: Because those fears tend to get exploited?

MA: Yes. Way more people are going to die from car accidents than terrorist attacks [but we’re more afraid of terrorism]. If you really don’t want people to die, reduce the speed limit or install blood-alcohol monitors that would prevent drunk people from driving.
...

Chatelaine: In the novel, Stan & Charmaine also grapple with commitment & freedom in the context of their marriage.

MA: It’s not just a political question. It’s a fundamental question for all of us — how much free will we actually have & how much we actually want. The answers are going to be individual. Some people don’t want that much choice. They want other people to make choices for them. Other people want infinite choice.

Chatelaine: Speaking of infinite choice & intimacy, I want to ask you about sex in the book. Without revealing too much, there is a subplot involving the manufacturing of elaborately realistic sex dolls, which people have designed to look like anyone or anything they desire —

MA: Which are in process right now. In Japan, they’re making them so realistic that they have goosebumps on their skin & human body temperature!

Chatelaine: What’s the appeal?

MA: I think that people are afraid of rejection. But I read an article about people who buy these expensive sex dolls, & they say that they like them because there’s no hassle. No one’s bothering them, no one’s nudging them, no one’s laughing at them or asking them to take out the garbage.

Chatelaine: That seems like a sad statement about modern romance.

MA: It’s a sad statement about human isolation. The ultimate vision of our desire & increasing ability to control everything in our lives is that there are no other people in our lives. People do what they do — & some of it is really bizarre, & always has been.

I love the quote that I put at the beginning of the book from the journalist Adam Frucci. He wrote a story for the website Gizmodo in 2009 called “I Had Sex with Furniture,” about all about these weird new sex toys that are being developed. And he says in the story, “I did the deed with an inanimate object so you don’t have to.” In a consumer society, where it all comes down to whether or not you can pay for something, it all becomes acceptable. So the question is: How do you measure normal?

A journey with migrants willing to risk everything

As you may have come across several stories like these of migrants from Africa & Middle East trying to enter illegally in Europe nowadays, & I read stories like these & then reflect upon my life. Regardless of what & how many problems I might be having right now, those seem miniscule by comparison to the problems thousands of people around the world are enduring on a daily basis.

Stories like these give a human face to the harsh problems people are facing; be it the local Yemeni population being mercilessly bombarded by a Saudi coalition, or Rohingya Muslims being stranded on boats in the sea, or migrants trying to run from chaos & destruction in their own countries (which, btw, caused by European & American coalition in the first place) to find refuge in the developed countries.

As the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that always compare your life with the person below you, so you will see that your life is still better than his/hers, & you will feel contentment. Otherwise, if you compare your life with the person above you, then you will never feel happy & always want more.
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/06/fear-fatigue-separation-migrants-western-balkans-west-africans-eu-back-door

After a 10-day trek over 150km, Sandrine Koffi’s dream of a new life in Europe ended & her nightmare of losing her infant daughter in the Macedonian night began.
 
As police wielding clubs closed in, the 31-year-old woman from Ivory Coast couldn’t keep up with her fellow migrants. Not after more than a week of treacherous hikes through mud & bone-chilling rain; of leaky tents, stolen food & fitful sleep; of loads too heavy to bear.
 
Koffi had given her 10-month-old daughter, Kendra, to a stronger person to carry as the 40-member group of west Africans walked with trepidation into Veles, Macedonia. They hoped, because it was pitch dark & miserably cold, that no one would see them & raise the alarm. But their luck ran out.
 
Officers captured Koffi & deported her with most of the group back to Greece. Others who escaped carried Kendra all the way to the Serbian border. That was more than 2 weeks ago. Now, Koffi cannot stop crying for her distant daughter – or wondering why they can’t travel like “normal” people.

“I feel like I’m not a human being,” says Koffi from the migrants’ safe house in Greece, where she & her daughter had arrived last month with the hope of being escorted through the Balkans to Hungary &, eventually, to relatives in Paris. “Why is it necessary to separate a mother from her child? Why is all of this necessary?”

Each month, a tide of humanity pours through the hills of Greece, Macedonia & Serbia in hope of entering the heart of the EU through its vulnerable back door in the Balkans. This is the newest of a half-dozen land & sea routes that Arab, Asian & African smugglers use to funnel migrants illegally from war zones & economic woes to opportunities in the west.
 
Most don’t make it on their first attempt. Nor their third or fifth. Many, it seems, just keep trying – & failing – again & again.
 
Journalists followed a group of migrants to document the challenges of the western Balkans route, witnessing key events on the journey: the confrontations between police & locals, disagreements with the smuggler leading them, dissent among themselves, & other difficulties.
 
The flow of migrants along this route has grown from a trickle in 2012 to become the second-most popular path for illegal immigration into Europe. Only the more dangerous option of sailing from north Africa to Italy is more widely used.
 
Frontex, the EU agency that helps governments police the bloc’s leaky borders, says it seems nothing will deter migrants from embarking on the long walk that starts in northern Greece. Their monitors have detected more than 43,000 illegal crossings on the western Balkans route in 2014, more than double the year before. And 2015 already looks set for a record number, with 22,000 arrivals in Hungary in the first 2 months.
 
A pivotal point for the route is Turkey, which is a magnet for refugees of wars in Syria, Iraq & Afghanistan because the Turks provide easy travel visas to residents of most of Asia & Africa.
 
Another is Greece, where migrants can claim asylum & usually, after a short detention, are permitted to travel freely within the country. But few intend to stay in Greece because of its economic crisis – & locals’ antipathy to the migrants.

“Europe has not faced a situation like this since the second world war, with so many conflicts happening so near to home, with [failed] states from Libya to Syria & unrelenting conflict in Iraq & Afghanistan,” says Frontex spokeswoman Ewa Moncure. “And it’s a lot easier to take a boat from Turkey to Greece than to cross the open Mediterranean. Thousands drown taking the other route.”
 
“Never in my life was I even on a boat,” says Jean Paul Apetey, a 34-year-old Ivorian who has a reputation as a sharp-witted opportunist. And so, when smugglers ask him if he wants to pilot the vessel to Greece in exchange for a free ticket, he goes straight to the stern engine of the rigid inflatable boat, overloaded with 47 migrants, & acts as if he knows what he is doing.
 
Smugglers rarely ride on one-way journeys, since they face prison if they are caught. Instead, they charge €1,000 ($1,100) or more per passenger, rich compensation for the sacrifice of a boat. The smugglers point Apetey to a Greek island in the distance – he doesn’t know if it’s Kos, Samos or Lesbos because he has no map – but he boasts of reaching the target in 17 minutes flat.
 
The walls are sweating in the safe house in Thessaloniki, Greece, a windowless basement apartment with no furniture, 2 bedrooms & a camp-style cooker on the floor. It’s the end of February, & an African smuggler has brought 45 clients to this base camp to escort them on off-road paths through Macedonia to Serbia. Among the group are 11 women, including 2 with 10-month-old children.
 
The smuggler, a former soldier, agreed to allow a journalist to accompany them on condition he was not identified, because what he was doing is illegal.
 
He goes from migrant to migrant, checking their readiness for the journey to Serbia. By car, it would take less than 5 hours. On foot, the same journey takes about 10 days. When some giggle at his questions, he sets a stern tone: “Shut up. This isn’t a joke once you’re out there. If you think it’s funny, I’ll send you back to Athens.”

He’s taken 3 other groups on the route, & charges those on this trip a wide range of prices, averaging about $500 (£337), depending on their ability to pay. Discounts apply if they help him to keep others supplied & disciplined. Kids go free.
 
Most are French speakers from Ivory Coast, Mali, Cameroon & Burkina Faso. Only a few speak English. One – a Congolese man whose communist parents named him Fidel Castro – speaks both. All are hungry, so a Malian woman named Aicha “Baby” Teinturiere boils macaroni on the camp stove. The smuggler sends others to stock up on sleeping bags, socks & gloves for those who haven’t brought the necessities.
 
Some are confident of reaching Germany or France. Sekou Yara is not. The 28-year-old Malian has failed 3 times to breach EU immigration checks at airports, costing him at least €3,000 (£2,200). This is his first attempt on foot, & he has mixed feelings.

“I left many people whom I love so much. I left my wife & our four-year-old child,” says Yara, frustrated at sacrificing so much only to be stuck in Greece, where he says migrants can’t find jobs & sometimes must look for food in the rubbish. “It is shameful to live like this. I just want a normal life.”

Yara’s trip doesn’t last long. The next morning, he & another Malian are arrested after the 45 arrive at the Thessaloniki bus station. Unlike the others, the pair have no ID papers.
 
The smuggler keeps his distance at the station, communicating by phone to reduce chances of being spotted as a trafficker. Tell police you’re going to Athens, not the border, he instructs them. Don’t all sit together; spread out.
 
In every direction there are migrants from Syria, Afghanistan & Eritrea, all looking suspicious. Some hide in toilet cubicles as the police check documents. At least 20 people from other groups are taken to a police station.
 
Fear of arrest keeps the west Africans from boarding their intended bus north to the border town of Polikastro. It’s not illegal for documented asylum seekers to board a domestic bus in Greece, so nerves settle, and all 43 get on four later buses: Greeks in front, Arabs in the middle, & Africans in the back.
 
They’re a half-day behind schedule as the last members arrive in Polikastro. The hatred of some locals toward the Africans is clear near the town square as women prepare to boil water for the babies’ formula milk. A motorist drives over their bags, smashing the milk powder & cooking gear as he curses them. The easy part of the trip has ended.
 
The first day’s hike from Polikastro takes the group along a railway line, & they must navigate a rickety wooden bridge, hoping no train comes. Within the first hour, both women carrying infants become weary.

“This is my souvenir!” jokes Apetey as he agrees to carry Sandrine Koffi’s daughter, Kendra. Another man takes Christian, the 10-month-old son of a Cameroonian woman, Mireille Djeukam. Kendra was born in Turkey, Christian in Greece. Both have relatives in Paris.
 
After 10 hours, the 43 migrants reach the border with Macedonia before midnight. They don’t bother with tents, preferring sleeping bags in the open air.
 
The smuggler doesn’t want the full group to cross the border in daylight, but they’re already short of supplies – & the cheapest local shop is on the Macedonian side. So he leads 3 men on a reconnaissance trip through the trees. A border patrol vehicle sits on a hilltop but doesn’t move.
 
The 3 others crouch down in the woods as he heads alone into the supermarket. Inside, a cashier warns the smuggler to hide because police are shopping in another aisle. After a tense wait, he emerges with six bags of bread, canned sardines, juice & water.
 
That night, the group crosses the border & a highway. Each approaching set of headlights is feared to be police. The chill means it’s time to sleep in the 10 tents they’ve brought. At the campsite, Hilarion Charlemagne illustrates his journey with a collection of cellphone sim cards.

“This one is from Togo, where I was a refugee for one year & eight months,” the 45-year-old Ivorian teacher says, identifying others from Mali, Mauritania & Algeria. He tells of being turned back at the Moroccan border because he lacked €500; of working as a tutor for an Algerian family for a month; of trying to reach Europe by boat 5 times & managing to reach Greece on the sixth attempt.
 
Charlemagne & others have another way to remember the countries they’ve visited: recounting the racial epithets hurled at them in several languages.
 
The group is startled by a Macedonian shepherd & his snarling dog. Tents are hurriedly packed. But in the rush, one of the smuggler’s helpers has lost his cellphone. Angry accusations are levied, & everyone is searched, without success.
 
The trek resumes at night. They scramble over an exposed ridge & sprint across a road junction, hiding in long reeds. They catch their breath under a full moon.
 
A Malian woman, 34-year-old Miriam Toure, falls with a cramp. Two young soccer players in the group offer her a sports massage as she howls in pain. A man with a chronic leg injury, Mohamed “Mo-Mo” Konate, applies some ointment he uses for himself.
 
Nothing works, so men take turns carrying Toure, joking she’s only faking to get a piggy-back ride. After a half-hour, they’re worn out & she’s told to walk or stay behind. She limps barefoot, weeping silently while trying to keep up.
 
As they pass through cabbage fields, some stuff the greens in their backpacks. They jostle to refill bottles when passing a tap bearing an Orthodox sign and the inscription “holy well”. At about 4am, in the rain, they pitch tents – difficult in the dark – under a highway overpass marked by graffiti from Afghan migrants.
 
After sunrise, several members accuse one another of stealing food, drink & bags as they slept. The smuggler threatens to return them to Greece, where Syrian smugglers will charge them triple for the journey. Apologies are demanded & given.
 
That night, the rain turns to snow, & the tents start to collapse. Sheltered campsites on the trail are occupied by other migrant groups, & the crying of the two infants is incessant. Some question whether the children, so cold & hungry, could be at risk of death if they continue.
 
They keep following the Vardar river north, but abandon the 41-year-old “Mo-Mo” near a village; he cannot continue, even with his cane.
 
Food is so scarce that sardines are rationed to one can daily for 3 people. On the sixth day of walking, they reach the town of Nogotino, 2 days behind schedule & lashed by a freezing wind. At 1am, Sandrine Koffi passes out & slides down a muddy embankment. She is revived, & they walk another hour.
 
Mireille Djeukam, the other woman travelling with a child, has tried & failed to pass through EU airports about 10 times already. She finds this trip much harder. “It’s very hard, too hard,” she says. “If I knew it was [going to be ] this difficult, I wouldn’t have done it. I’m not used to this type of walking.”

The youngest & fittest men grumble under their breath that they could have been in Serbia already were it not for the women & children. Laughter amid such suffering seems impossible, but a limping Miriam Toure brings down the house with an exasperated question: “Where is Macedonia?”

As the group reaches Veles, the first major Macedonian town on the route & 145km (87 miles) into their hike, Djeukam cannot go on because of her aching legs. The group leaves her & 10-month-old Christian at an Orthodox church.
 
The 40 remaining migrants try to stick to Veles’s riverside railway, but at about 10pm they are confronted by youths. They run on to a road, startling motorists. Two police arrive, brandishing clubs & beating stragglers. 5 are caught, including Koffi. In the melee, members of the group drop their gear & scatter. A woman breaks an ankle & is hospitalised in the capital, Skopje. By 3am, the smuggler has found only 8 of his clients.
 
The next day, Teinturiere returns to Veles to search for her bags & stumbles into the police. She claims, falsely, to be looking for her baby. The police believe her & agree to help search – in the process discovering & arresting many of her comrades.
 
By the end of the 10th day, all but 13 of the group have been in custody & are put on trucks back to Greece with scores of other people from Syria, Afghanistan & Bangladesh. But Teinturiere is not among them. The police set her free so that she can keep searching for her imaginary child.
 
Two days later, the west Africans reach a smuggler’s safe house in the border town of Lojane, Macedonia. Teinturiere is given responsibility for caring for Kendra until Koffi can complete the trip.
 
Others, mostly the strongest men in their 20s, cross into Serbia, where they meet the next lot of smugglers, who charge €100 each to drive them hidden in trucks to the Hungarian border. 3 weeks into the journey, the first few make it to Hungary & send triumphant messages to friends.
 
The Greek smuggler returns to Thessaloniki with his deported clients. He organises a second trek, combining new migrants with many from the original group – including Koffi & the first person arrested on the previous trip, Sekou Yara. They leave a week later but run into a police ambush south of Veles. All are returned to Greece.
 
Another attempt to complete the 250km journey on foot has begun this week. Joining the smuggler are at least 20 veterans of the previous two failed attempts, including Koffi.
 
Her earlier plan was to reach her husband, mother & other relatives in Paris. Now, she hopes simply to be reunited with her child.

Muslim groups accuse UK government of criminalizing Islam

If we replace Britain, in this news story, with Canada, we will still get the same story that government is trying to pander for votes by criminalizing Islam. Since, Canadian government also has nothing to show on improving economy & jobs, passing security bills like Bill C-51 & Muslim women's veils have been made the focal point of this year's election.

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More than 60 imams & leaders of Muslim organisations have signed an open letter to the government accusing it of criminalising Islam.

 

They said that the "terror threat" was being exploited for political capital ahead of the general election.

 

Signatories include journalist Yvonne Ridley, former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg & members of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

 

The 61 signatories criticised the "demonisation of Muslims in Britain.... despite their disavowal of violence & never having supported terrorist acts".

 

The letter accused the government of trying to deflect attention from crises in the economy & health service, while trying to silence criticism of foreign policy.

 

It condemned the exploitation of the "terror threat" for political capital as "the big parties inevitably try to outdo each other in their nastiness", in the run up to May's election by playing on public fears about security & immigration.

 

The letter cited the targeting of Muslims through anti-terror legislation: "The latest Act of Parliament, the Counter-Terrorism & Security Act, threatens to create a 'McCarthyite' witch-hunt against Muslims, with nursery workers, schoolteachers & Universities expected to look out for signs of increased Islamic practice as signs of 'radicalisation'".

 

"Such a narrative will only further damage social cohesion as it incites suspicion & ill feeling in the broader community.

 

"The use of undefined & politically charged words like 'radicalisation' & 'extremism' is unacceptable as it criminalises legitimate political discourse & criticism of successive governments," the letter said.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31834549

Leaders & Public

Regardless of where we live nowadays, in a so-called "democratic" country or a dictatorship, the public is molded & treated by respective government the same way. "V for Vendetta" -- put the fear in people's heart & they will follow you to the gates of hell.

 

People & Government