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Kenya police detain 55 Ethiopians

By ALI ABDI | The Standard

KENYA — Administration Police officers in Merti District have arrested 55 Ethiopian immigrants who were being transported in a vehicle to an unknown {www:destination}.

The Ethiopians and the vehicle’s Kenyan driver and conductor were arrested at Kom on Wednesday at around 11pm. They were detained at the AP camp before they were transferred to Isiolo Thursday morning.

Regional Commissioner for Upper Eastern Isaiah Nakoru said Thursday those arrested were 18 women, seven children and 30 men, adding that initial investigation showed they were picked from the border town of Moyale by Kenyans.

Illegal routes

“The foreigners will be charged with being in the country illegally while the two Kenyans have to answer many questions before charges are preferred against them. They could be charged with {www:human trafficking},’’ said Nakoru in his Isiolo office. The administrator said they want to establish from the driver why he was carrying 55 people in a vehicle that at best should carry 12 to 15 people and why he avoided the Isiolo-Moyale highway and instead used illegal routes to reach Isiolo via Merti.

The administration, he added, also wants to establish the owner of the vehicle and his ties with the Ethiopians. Hundreds of Ethiopians pass through Isiolo every month on their way to Nairobi from where they are helped by Kenyans involved in human trafficking to reach South Africa.

Bribed

“We have instructed the police to {www:impound }the vehicle until the owner turns up. We are also interested to find out why his vehicle does this kind of illegal activity,’’ said Nakoru.

Junior officers in Isiolo lamented that when they arrest illegal immigrants and the drivers, their seniors usually release them after they are bribed.

5 thoughts on “Kenya police detain 55 Ethiopians

  1. People are running away from tyranny, dictatorship, starvation, endemic conflicts, etc. even if some of them face slavery, arrests, jail, death even while on the run.

    Ethiopia possesses one of the best virgin fertile farm lands, gold mines, platinum mines, oil and gas reserves, abundant agricultural primary products as well as abundant human resources.

    But all of these beautiful nature given abundant resources which would given all Ethiopians decent jobs, decent homes, decent as well as honorable happy lives right there in their homes and communities are totally being scavenged, robed, destroyed, mismanaged and looted by a tiny ignorant through corrupt minority tyrannical bad government for the last 20 long years as a result of which Ethiopians are facing constant starvation, constant displacements and constant dehumanizing slavery both at the hands of the corrupt minority bad government as well as foreign mafia both small and big.

    And the educated as well as the less educated diaspora only do the talking as an end in itself because they are only trained to talk and write the talking with out any trace of doing any practical on the ground activities. So life must go on as well as the Ethiopian exodus.

  2. Abdiwali and some others at Universal TV then turned to Abdi Shire Jama, who was a freelance interpreter in London and a talented songwriter. Jama thought a music video would help spread the word, so he produced a song called “Release the Couple,” soon broadcast on Universal and YouTube. It begins with a Somali kid with a British accent saying, “I hope this message gets to the people who are responsible for holding Rachel and Paul Chandler.” Then, after a burst of synthetic drums and some squeaky Somali music, five Somali singers break into song.

    “Our people fled their homes. . . .
    The host countries did not look at the color of our skins. . . .
    We need to show our debt to them,
    for it is the donkey who does not acknowledge the debt.”

    But Jama’s song also captures an ambivalence many ex-pat Somalis feel about piracy. While it implores the pirates to release “Rachel and her husband, Paul, and his wife,” it also says: “This song is to remind you to fight those foreign vessels which come to illegally fish from our seas and to dump poisonous wastes in our seas. This is national defense.” After Somalia’s central government collapsed 20 years ago, the 1,900-mile coastline became an unpatrolled free-for-all, with foreign fishing trawlers descending to scoop up Somalia’s rich stocks of tuna, shark, whitefish, lobster and deep-water shrimp. With no authorities to fear, the fishing boats were especially unscrupulous and used heavy steel drag nets that wiped out the marine habitat for years. Somali piracy was born when disgruntled fishermen armed themselves and started attacking the foreign trawlers. They soon realized they could attack any ship and get a ransom for holding the crew hostage. “In the beginning, the pirates had a lot of support,” explained Kayse Maxamed, a Somali who works in mental health in Bristol and who organized a “Save the Chandlers” rally in front of a mosque in early 2010. “Everybody liked them. They represented the Somali Navy.” The pirate gangs played on this sentiment, taking names like “Somali Marines,” “Defenders of Somali Territorial Waters,” “Central Somali Coast Guard” and “Ocean Salvation Corps.” – Taken by Pirates

  3. [Updated]
    Interesting facts about the late Mr. Jobs (The Man in Full)
    Founder of Apple, NeXT and Pixar.

    Steve Jobs was born and given to adoption in San Francisco, Ca., 56 years ago. His natural father was a Syrian, Abdulfatha “John” Jandali and his mother, an American with German descent, Joanne Carole Schieble. The parents were the same age, yet Jandali having earned a Phd at early age was her teacher. All this took place at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Because Joann’s father forbade any union of the couple, they had to give up Steve to an adoption. However, a few months after Steve’s birth, Joanne’s father would die and the couple would marry.

    A daughter, Mona, would be born to the Janadalis and they would move to Syria. Having lived there for several years, they’ll divorce and Joanne would return to the U.S with Mona. “John” Jandali, would also return and eventually becomes a vice president of Boomtown Casino and Hotel of the Reno, NV, which he, at the age of 80, still holds. [He looks like a white man by the way, works six days a week, works out every day and drives Jeep Cherokee] Joanne Carole earns a graduate degree, remarries, becomes Joanne Simpson and works as Speech Therapist. Mona Simpson becomes famous on her own right having wrote some best sellers including A Regular Guy about her famous brother. Mona Simpson is married to the producer of The Simpsons, but her last name is a coincidence; its from her mother’s last name. Steve Jobs never acknowledged his father even though Mr. Jandali unfailingly emailed Happy Birthdays on Steve’s birthday for many years.

    Steve Job’s adoptive parents never attended college although one of Joanne’s conditions when she gave up Steve was that the adopting parents be college graduates. Clara, the adoptive mother of Steve is an Armenian. And the elder Mr. Job was a machinist. They later adopted another child, a daughter, Patti.

    Steve briefly attended a college, Reed College, in Portland OR., as well as living in India for a year. His other early forays include the counter culture (Hippie) movement in San Francisco and the drug LSD, which he considers as one of three or four best experiances.

    His first child, a daughter, was out of wedlock. Her name is Lisa Jobs Brennan’s and her mother was a painter. She was raised on a welfare until the age two. Steve eventually accepted responsibility and raised her. She went to Harvard and became a writer for magazines such as O, Oprah Winfrey’s Magazine and Vogue. He eventually fathered three more children with Laurene, his wife.

    For a man very rich and famous, Steve Job’s house in Palo Alto, Ca, is so modest and regular, a lot of average Ethiopians have houses bigger than his. His net worth from Pixar and Apple is about 7billion making him the 105th richest person in the world. Had he not sold his Apple shares when he was fired from the company he co-founded, he would have been the 4th richest. The Apple Board gave him a cool Gulfstream 650 Jet for $80 million whose tail number is N2N. Otherwise, he always drove a silver Mercedes. Modest, Steve, modest iMan.

    He once showed up dressed as Jesus Christ at Apple Haloween Party. He was also very critical of the performance of his employees, most including the co-founder of Apple did not survive his wrath. Steve Wozniak, the co-founder, makes a token $11,000 a year but no access to the company or his former friend. Steve Jobs fired an employee who showed the first iPad to Wozniak before the release date. The typical Steve verbal jab goes like this: “You have baked a nice cake, but it has dog feces on it” – to a poor Apple designer.

    Despite Steve Job’s unyielding and slash and burn personality, he was a shy and private person for most of his life. His hippie and Buddhist background has made him shun worldly stuff – materials – himself while pipelining quality products for the masses decades after decades.

    Steve Jobs was the true star, zen and prince of the personal computer and digital age.
    The inventor of HTML, Tim Berners-Lee, used Steve Job’s creation, the NeXT computer, to advance the Internet. While Bill Gates was in a mere software, most of it acquired from other companies, DOS for example, Steve’s Apple was both in hardware and software, design, vision et al from inception. However, for his share, Steve molded most of his products from others: GUI and Mouse from Xerox’s Alto; iPod from hard disk; quality product lineup from Sony; iTunes from Napster; Apps from ringtones and iPad from iPhone and Kindle etc.

    According to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, Jobs, after visiting Sony decades ago and being impressed by the designer uniforms the employees wore, wanted Apple to do the same, but the employees at Apple “howl”. So he asked the the same Japanese designer who designed for Sony to design for him personally and the Japanese made him hundreds of the turtleneck “for the rest of my life” which Jobs showed to Isaacson.

    Steve Jobs and Apple have instituted University of Apple within Apple staffed with the best ex-prefessors from Harvard, Princeton and other Ivy Leaguers to continue teaching future Apple leaders on how to continue to think like Steve Jobs and to make Apple an enduring company. But nothing last forever Steve, nothing. His book Steve Jobs($35) by Walter Isaacson is due this month.

    Upon hearing the bad news of his death, the Syrians are quoted as saying that the cancer killed the wrong Syrian i.e Jobs; the cancer should have killed the cancer, i.e. Bashar instead.

    He was buried in Santa Clara, in a very private ceremony on Friday, October 07, 2011.

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