By Alemayehu G. Mariam Birtukan Midekssa condemned to life in prison by a vengeful dictator, but unconquered. Birtukan thrown into the dungeon of wrath and tears, but defiant. Birtukan beaten,…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam It was a remarkable display of raw machismo: “My way or the highway… or jail!” It was a one-man political theatre, a monologue about absolute power,…
Alemayehu G. Mariam The “delegation of African negotiators” rumbled into Copenhagen rubbing their palms and licking their chops to load up tens of billions of dollars in carbon blood money…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam Use a sledgehammer to smash a butterfly! That is the exquisite art of war unleashed on Ethiopia’s independent press by the dictatorship of Meles Zenawi today….
By Alemayehu G. Mariam The inconvenient truth about Africa today is that dictatorship presents a far more perilous threat to the survival of Africans than climate change. The devastation African…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam In his epic autobiography, the great Nelson Mandela used the metaphor of the “long walk” to describe his decades-old struggle against apartheid and minority rule in…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam Transparency International [TI] (the global coalition against corruption) has just released its 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Once again, Africa has the dubious honor of being…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam In his book Night, Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and the man the Nobel Committee called the “messenger to mankind” when it awarded him the peace…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam “No alternative in the opposition,” they whispered anonymously. What a disgusting phrase to use in justifying support for a ruthless dictatorship? That is apparently the scuttlebutt…
Alemayehu G. Mariam It is hard to talk about Ethiopia these days in non-apocalyptic terms. Millions of Ethiopians are facing their old enemy again for the third time in nearly…