Tuesday, October 17
Coming Attractions
Eventually, in January or February we will get around to the continuation of another series about Meles Inc.'s attempts and successes at creating an American Kebele apparatus. A kebele or rural association is like the oppressive neighborhood Revolutionary Cuban "Committees for the Defense of the Revolution", a means for the state to regularly spy on and intimidate not only whole communities but even families and individuals that the secret police apparatus may have missed.
We wrote about the Dergue's own neighborhood version of those committees that was captured intact, then eagerly made more efficent by Meles Inc. after 1991 in the post, Defending the Revolution. That refinement was all the more easy because the TPLF already had the equally brutal and bloody Goat and Guree system in place down to the household level in Tigray from the 1970s on.
So, getting back to the point, the answer is yes dear reader, under cover of diplomatic status, the Ethiopian government has exported to the U.S. not only plans for but an actually functioning system of espionage and intimidation within the United States against American citizens and legal residents - and ultimately American taxpayers are paying for it all.
Why would the regime bother? Well, the only thing that Meles Inc. is more scared of than its normal 70 million Ethiopian victims is those Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia who can make themselves heard abroad. Although inspiration always travels from Ethiopia to its diaspora - the regime is terrified that either group may get any vision of a world without the current revolutionary aristocracy running the country or that they may get the counter-revolutionary notion that Ethiopians can be free.
Ferenjis in general may be surprised to know of this nasty business while Ethiopian-Americans who do are disgusted (or ashamed as the case may be for a very few). We began this series of posts without knowing it in 21 Months and Counting then continued it in Consent? and Icebergs & Pink Elephants.
In the upcoming post, "Encouragement", we will look at the phenomenon from the point of view of the regime's very own diplomats and agents to see how they do it (or thankfully in most cases how they just try to). Setting up kebeles in free American or Europe to 'manage' a diaspora against every tradition and the laws of those very sovereign host countries is by no coincidence the very same thing as setting up an espionage apparatus.
The only difference is that the targets in this case are more familiar to the hostile foreign government in question. Of course, both are equally illegal. Not surprisingly, the Ethiopian government's attempts and actual infiltration of the Ethiopian diaspora is remarkably similiar to how foreign organized crime networks establish themselves on new territory.
A post after that, Submission! will take at the psychology of collaboration. More accurately, the question is how the regime's efforts to have its will done on otherwise free people (who are certainly very far out of AK-47 range) is translated into obedience and ultimately justified by participants.
All humans need to justify themselves and some revel in a suburban (and city) kebele glory of imagined personal fiefdoms and power that substitute, perhaps, for longing to be "big" or even for absent memories of "fighting in the bush".
So to repeat, what we are trying to get at is what follows. How does someone who fled tyranny and found freedom and opportunity in a new home - keep alive in their bosom like a cherished tradition, the viper of immoral cadre culture they tried (apparently unsuccessfully) to flee?
We often get ideas and sources from readers and in this case as well we will eventually get around to asking for the opinions and experiences of readers on this matter. One reader just suggested we use a Hushmail account for those wanting to use encrypted emails. That seems a bit cloak and dagger, but then who knows where folks are writing from and what they are worried about so we will set one up.
...........................
A plan to list and comment on our favorite hip hop videos has been vetoed for now as 'not serious enough' amid complaints about gangster rap misogyny. Sometime soon we hope to return to the history of aviation in Ethiopia and to begin a 'virtual' museum of the Ethiopian Air Force over the past seventy years. Aside from that we will be back in a few weeks or so.
We wrote about the Dergue's own neighborhood version of those committees that was captured intact, then eagerly made more efficent by Meles Inc. after 1991 in the post, Defending the Revolution. That refinement was all the more easy because the TPLF already had the equally brutal and bloody Goat and Guree system in place down to the household level in Tigray from the 1970s on.
So, getting back to the point, the answer is yes dear reader, under cover of diplomatic status, the Ethiopian government has exported to the U.S. not only plans for but an actually functioning system of espionage and intimidation within the United States against American citizens and legal residents - and ultimately American taxpayers are paying for it all.
Why would the regime bother? Well, the only thing that Meles Inc. is more scared of than its normal 70 million Ethiopian victims is those Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia who can make themselves heard abroad. Although inspiration always travels from Ethiopia to its diaspora - the regime is terrified that either group may get any vision of a world without the current revolutionary aristocracy running the country or that they may get the counter-revolutionary notion that Ethiopians can be free.
Ferenjis in general may be surprised to know of this nasty business while Ethiopian-Americans who do are disgusted (or ashamed as the case may be for a very few). We began this series of posts without knowing it in 21 Months and Counting then continued it in Consent? and Icebergs & Pink Elephants.
In the upcoming post, "Encouragement", we will look at the phenomenon from the point of view of the regime's very own diplomats and agents to see how they do it (or thankfully in most cases how they just try to). Setting up kebeles in free American or Europe to 'manage' a diaspora against every tradition and the laws of those very sovereign host countries is by no coincidence the very same thing as setting up an espionage apparatus.
The only difference is that the targets in this case are more familiar to the hostile foreign government in question. Of course, both are equally illegal. Not surprisingly, the Ethiopian government's attempts and actual infiltration of the Ethiopian diaspora is remarkably similiar to how foreign organized crime networks establish themselves on new territory.
A post after that, Submission! will take at the psychology of collaboration. More accurately, the question is how the regime's efforts to have its will done on otherwise free people (who are certainly very far out of AK-47 range) is translated into obedience and ultimately justified by participants.
All humans need to justify themselves and some revel in a suburban (and city) kebele glory of imagined personal fiefdoms and power that substitute, perhaps, for longing to be "big" or even for absent memories of "fighting in the bush".
So to repeat, what we are trying to get at is what follows. How does someone who fled tyranny and found freedom and opportunity in a new home - keep alive in their bosom like a cherished tradition, the viper of immoral cadre culture they tried (apparently unsuccessfully) to flee?
We often get ideas and sources from readers and in this case as well we will eventually get around to asking for the opinions and experiences of readers on this matter. One reader just suggested we use a Hushmail account for those wanting to use encrypted emails. That seems a bit cloak and dagger, but then who knows where folks are writing from and what they are worried about so we will set one up.
...........................
A plan to list and comment on our favorite hip hop videos has been vetoed for now as 'not serious enough' amid complaints about gangster rap misogyny. Sometime soon we hope to return to the history of aviation in Ethiopia and to begin a 'virtual' museum of the Ethiopian Air Force over the past seventy years. Aside from that we will be back in a few weeks or so.
# posted by ethiopundit : 10/17/2006
