Dear Patriotic Global Citizens and Friends of Ethiopia:
Ethiopia has been at the fore front of Counter-terrorism efforts for millennial, be it in the Red Sea region, Gulf of Aden or Indian Ocean as well as the Mediterranean Seas.
The recent developments in the Horn both on land and see are being reviewed by the international community with vigilance, especially after the successful operation to release Captain Philips Richards by the Special Navy Seal Commandos.
As the US is combating terrorism across the globe, another set of elite terrorist sleeper cells are found to hide in the midst of University students and professors here in the United States of America. Surprisingly, these set of new sleeper cell terrorists are vocal on your face and have web sites, www.guinbot7.org, and interview regularly on the Voice of America, Africa news services and have good friends like Rep Donald Payne, who recently barely scarped the bullets of terrorists in Somalia.
Many in Global Good Governance community that demand transparency and accountability from US representatives, Voice of America and the international community have been asking the real question, Does Bucknell University in Pennsylvania know what we know?
The main ring leaders are known operatives by the name of Berhanu Nega Bonger, a visiting International professor at Bucknell University, in Pennsylvania and Andargachew Tsigie who recently was given British Citizenship according to his own account on one of his interviews. So, the question posed by many Global Patriotic Citizens, is do the two countries in the fore front of the War on Terror and Ethiopia's main partners against Counter Insurgency and Terror in the Horn know that two of their guests are Sleeper Terrorist Cell Operatives?
It has become necessary to review the laws of US and Britain on immigration that accommodates genuine refugees from sleeper cell terrorists like the ones who managed to succeed on 11 September 1009. Regardless of the Strict sets of intelligence reviews and Patriotic laws, it has become critical to review these loopholes that allows universities and institutions like the BBC and VOA as tools for terrorist propaganda instead of protecting the global community against terror and insecurity.
We were exploring for some time, how the US can deport some of the hard core criminals who have misrepresented themselves and got US Refugee status and even citizenship and continue to master mind a serious Terrorist Sleeper Cells which grave consequences.
The real question is that can the US be challenged to respect its own laws about allowing terrorists in its soil to use the university campuses and Voice of America services to propagate terror against its Counter Terrorism partners?
Here is the law and if the Justice Department cannot implement it, then citizens have to encourage it to do its job, that is implement the US legal system.
As we are reviewing the Torture Memos of the last administration, perhaps we should also review past administration policies of giving refugee and citizenship to known criminals and terrorists through out history and especially the recent case of a part time visiting professor of Economics at Bucknel University n Pennsylvania.
Global Center for Good Governance and Patriotism believes it is critical to demand the same level of transparency and accountability from governments as well as sleeper cell terrorists and the international organizations set up to protect global citizens from the evolving nature of terrorists using legal and public institutions to promote their hidden evil agenda. Imagine a university allowing an active terrorist to lecture its students on global economic terror.
We will start first with US laws and then publish the British law as it relates on combating local and international terrorism. In the end the security of citizens is so critical that all laws and manners of governance would have to focus first on security.
Here is what the law say and let us see how the US Justice Department will react to it.
Dr B
Immigration and Nationality Act Section212
Fact Sheet
Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism
Washington, DC
April 8, 2008
Return to Foreign Terrorist Organization factsheet.
Section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) defines "terrorist activity" to mean: any activity which is unlawful under the laws of the place where it is committed (or which, if committed in the United States, would be unlawful under the laws of the United States or any State) and which involves any of the following:
(I) The highjacking or sabotage of any conveyance (including an aircraft, vessel, or vehicle).
(II) The seizing or detaining, and threatening to kill, injure, or continue to detain, another individual in order to compel a third person (including a governmental organization) to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the individual seized or detained.
(III) A violent attack upon an internationally protected person (as defined in section 1116(b)(4) of title 18, United States Code) or upon the liberty of such a person.
(IV) An assassination.
(V) The use of any--
(a) biological agent, chemical agent, or nuclear weapon or device, or
(b) explosive, firearm, or other weapon or dangerous device (other than for mere personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property.
(VI) A threat, attempt, or conspiracy to do any of the foregoing.
Other pertinent portions of section 212(a)(3)(B) are set forth below:
(iv) Engage in Terrorist Activity Defined
As used in this chapter [chapter 8 of the INA], the term '"ngage in terrorist activity" means in an individual capacity or as a member of an organization–
to commit or to incite to commit, under circumstances indicating an intention to cause death or serious bodily injury, a terrorist activity;
to prepare or plan a terrorist activity;
to gather information on potential targets for terrorist activity;
to solicit funds or other things of value for–
(aa) a terrorist activity;
(bb) a terrorist organization described in clause (vi)(I) or (vi)(II); or
(cc) a terrorist organization described in clause (vi)(III), unless the solicitor can demonstrate that he did not know, and should not reasonably have known, that the solicitation would further the organization’s terrorist activity;
I. to solicit any individual–
(aa) to engage in conduce otherwise described in this clause;
(bb) for membership in terrorist organization described in clause (vi)(I) or (vi)(II); or
(cc) for membership in a terrorist organization described in clause (vi)(III), unless the solicitor can demonstrate that he did not know, and should not reasonably have known, that the solicitation would further the organization’s terrorist activity; or
II. to commit an act that the actor knows, or reasonably should know, affords material support, including a safe house, transportation, communications, funds, transfer of funds or other material financial benefit, false documentation or identification, weapons (including chemical, biological, or radiological weapons), explosives, or training–
(aa) for the commission of a terrorist activity;
(bb) to any individual who the actor knows, or reasonably should know, has committed or plans to commit a terrorist activity;
(cc) to a terrorist organization described in clause (vi)(I) or (vi)(II); or
(dd) to a terrorist organization described in clause (vi)(III), unless the actor can demonstrate that he did not know, and should not reasonably have known, that the act would further the organization’s terrorist activity.
This clause shall not apply to any material support the alien afforded to an organization or individual that has committed terrorist activity, if the Secretary of State, after consultation with the Attorney General, or the Attorney General, after consultation with the Secretary of State, concludes in his sole unreviewable discretion, that that this clause should not apply.
(v) Representative Defined
As used in this paragraph, the term "representative" includes an officer, official, or spokesman of an organization, and any person who directs, counsels, commands, or induces an organization or its members to engage in terrorist activity.
i. Terrorist Organization Defined
As used in clause (i)(VI) and clause (iv), the term "terrorist organization" means an organization--
I. designated under section 219 [8 U.S.C. § 1189];
II. otherwise designated, upon publication in the Federal Register, by the Secretary of State in consultation with or upon the request of the Attorney General, as a terrorist organization, after finding that the organization engages in the activities described in subclause (I), (II), or (III) of clause (iv), or that the organization provides material support to further terrorist activity; or
III. that is a group of two or more individuals, whether organized or not, which engages in the activities described in subclause (I), (II), or (III) of clause (iv).
For more information, see Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website.
Return to Foreign Terrorist Organization factsheet.
1 comment:
Dear Patriotic Global Citizens and Friends of Ethiopia
Here is the Memoriam from Ethiopian Peace Corps Volunteers
Scholomo and Charles who continue to enhance and love Ethiopian Cultural and Musical Emperor Tilahun!
I trust North American communities including Bucknell University Economics students will appreciate that Ethiopia is more than what Bonger tells them.
It is a beautiful and rich cultural center with a deep history and civilization not paralled in any other society.
Here Shlomo and Charlie testify in the rich personal character and contribution of one of its most famous modern son who just slept the other day but continues to mesmerize many music lovers all over the world.
With my respect and appreciation to Tilahun's Memory!
Dr B
Charles Sutton -- usually known as Charlie -- came to Ethiopia with the Peace Corps in 1966.
He was a musician, and even before he arrived, Charlie had discovered Ethiopian music through his Amharic language instructors. He describes the impact of that discovery, which directed his life toward a deep and lasting relationship with Ethiopia, its people -- particularly musicians, and its language, in which his fluency and elegance continue to astonish.
Charlie needs only a brief introduction from me since he will provide the rest himself. His friends and acquaintances know Charlie to be a gracious, warm and generous man, thoughtful and polite to a fault.
He is still a working musician both as a teacher and a performer. In his jazz, Charlie's improvisations reveal the depth to which Ethiopia has entered his soul.
In a recent recording, Charlie played masinko and sang, in Amharic, naturally, with two long-time Ethiopian musician friends. Characteristically, Charlie often directs the proceeds from his CD sales to the Institute for Ethiopian Studies or another deserving beneficiary.
This is the first of a three-part appreciation and reminisence by Charles Sutton about his friend, the supremely gifted singer, Tilahun Gessesse, who passed away on April 19, 2009 in Addis Ababa. All of Ethiopia, and music lovers around the world, are in mourning.
Shlomo Bachrach
Washington DC
May 10, 2009
Oo-oota Ayaskeffam
It has been three weeks since we heard the tragic news of Tilahun's death. I remain stunned by it.
No doubt like many others, I have derived some comfort from the multitude of deeply felt tributes poured out by his family, friends, colleagues, and fans.
Although there is little I can add to these, I still wish to offer in Tilahun's memory my own words of respect, appreciation and love--which I do from my heart.
I am an American. But when an Ethiopian calls Tilahun, as Ahadu Selamu did recently in his moving Aiga Forum eulogy, "just larger than life...Tilahun was a walking history that embodied the narrative of five decades of our lives in his songs," I understand very well what he is talking about. Before I ever saw Ethiopia, I knew instinctively that something of that country's deepest essence had been revealed to me when, 43 years ago, on a warm June night, in the unlikely precincts of Salt Lake City, Utah, I first listened spellbound to Tilahun's voice.
Along with 100 other recent college graduates from all over the United States, I had completed the first day of an intensive three-month Peace Corps training program at the University of Utah that would prepare us to become secondary school teachers in Ethiopia.
We studied TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) under the supervision of a youthful Shlomo Bachrach; Ethiopian history, geography, customs, and culture; and Amharic.
I was assigned, along with four other beginners, to a gifted young teacher named Mengesha, who had his students exchanging gender-and-status-specific greetings and forming elementary sentences in Amharic on the first day of class.
When we were chatting during a break, Mengesha and I found we had something in common: both of us loved music, sang folksongs, and played the guitar. Finally I had found someone who could explain to me what I had been wondering about for months. (In 1966, the Internet, with its vast store of instantaneously available information on every conceivable subject, was still a quarter-century in the future). "Mengesha," I confessed, "I've never heard any Ethiopian music. None at all! What is your music like?"
That evening, on a bulky Norelco portable tape machine in the dormitory common room, I listened with Mengesha to selections from his extensive collection of Ethiopian popular music, contained on large reels of magnetic audiotape he kept in a suitcase.
Though the unfamiliar timbres and modes were strange-sounding at first, I enjoyed everything Mengesha played. There was one song--it had a plaintive minor-key melody made twice as sad by the vocalist's incredibly intense, passionate, and grief-stricken rendition of it--that I loved. It was like nothing I had ever heard in my life and brought tears to my eyes.
"Could we listen to that again?" I asked Mengesha. "Who is that singer? I can't understand what he's singing, but it's breaking my heart."
"That is Tilahun Gessesse, star vocalist with the Imperial Bodyguard Orchestra," Mengesha replied as he obligingly pressed rewind. "Tilahun is a young guy in his twenties, but he's been performing since he was practically a kid, and a lot of people are already calling him our greatest singer."
"I'm not surprised. And what is he singing?"
"The song is called "Oo-oota Ayaskeffam". That means, "There's nothing wrong with crying."
Amharic instructors and Charles performing Tilahun's "Oo-oota Ayaskeffam" during a music show for Peace Corps trainees and staff members at the University of Utah, September 7, 1966.
"Nothing wrong with crying?"
"You see, Charles, you will learn when you get to know us better that we Ethiopians have a tendency to conceal our deepest feelings, to keep them locked up inside us.
And Tilahun is proclaiming that when we suffer the worst anguish of all, separation from or loss of someone we love, we must express our sorrow and let it come out, for that is the only way of easing it, if only just a little."
Mengesha taught me the words to "Oo-oota Ayaskeffam". I worked out arrangements of it on my guitar and accordion. We formed a vocal group and performed the song in a concert of Ethiopian music at the end of the training program.
So began my appreciation of the artistry of Tilahun Gessesse, which grew over the next four decades into reverence and love. I was actually fortunate enough to meet and get to know Tilahun the man, as I will explain when my tribute continues.
Perhaps along with everyone else, I never imagined the day when Tilahun would leave us. But now it has come. Oo-oota Ayaskeffam.
Charles Sutton
Old Saybrook, Connecticut
May 10, 2009
Post a Comment