Al Mariam’s Commentaries
In January 2013, the late U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin G. Scalia declared the U.S. Constitution “is not a living document. It’s dead, dead, dead.” Justice Scalia made the remark at Southern Methodist University law school indicating his exasperation with school children coming to visit the Supreme Court and describing the Constitution as a…
Fifteen million Ethiopians are suffering Biblical famine right NOW! The Thugtatorship of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (T-TPLF) is chasing after “resort developers” from the Middle East. What about the fifteen million facing the Biblical Black Horseman? The T-TPLF says, “Let them eat cake!” It is said that Marie-Antoinette, the Queen consort of Louis XVI,…
It is the season for the Clintons to tar and feather Bernie Sanders. Could their campaign of fear and smear against Bernie Sanders succeed? I was shocked to see last week Chelsea Clinton rolled out in the role of attack dog against Sanders, the underdog. They say all is fair in politics and war. Chelsea…
Author’s Note: This is the fourth commentary in a series dealing with land, land use, misuse, overlordship and ownership in Ethiopia. In my first commentary, I examined the decline and fall of “Karuturistan”, the hundreds of thousands of hectares of land “owned” by Karuturi Global, in Western Ethiopia. In the second commentary, I questioned if…
I am now declaring my support for Bernie Sanders, the dark horse of the Democratic Party, to become the next President of the United States. It is refreshing act of moral self-affirmation for me to support a man who lives out his principles. Before explaining why I am supporting Bernie Sanders, I have some other…
Author’s Note: What’s in a label? Well, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet…”? That may be true, provided, of course, those roses are not roses raised on the land-grabbed farmlands of Karuturi Global in Ethiopia, a topic I explored in my recent…
Author’s Note: My commentary this week follows last week’s comment on the collapse of Karuturi Agro Products, Plc., in Gambella, Ethiopia. In 2010, the T-TPLF handed over 100 thousand hectares of land to the infamously “iconic land grabber” Sai Karuturi and “cancelled” its “land rent contract” earlier this month. On the heels of the Karuturi debacle,…
Authors note: I have written this commentary not because I care about the legal dispute between Karuturi and the T-TPLF over a land deal in Gambella. I could not care less how thugs and those who do business with thugs resolve or do not resolve their disputes. But I am deeply concerned about the economic…
“What if they were really set free?” That was the question The Economist asked in the headline of its article last week about Ethiopians. Its response was equally breathtaking: “If the government let people breathe, they might fly.” These sixteen words brought tears to my eyes, joy to my heart and resolute optimism to my…
A few days ago, I read a heart-rending article about the serious cash flow problems the diplomatic missions of the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF) are facing worldwide. According to the malaria-researcher-turned-“Ethiopian”-foreign-minister-overnight, Tedros Adhanom, “Ethiopian diplomatic missions abroad” are experiencing a “challenge of accessing foreign currency.” Adhanom moaned and groaned about a…
