Al Mariam’s Commentaries
A friend in need is a friend in deed, indeed! Last week, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi stunned the world by rescuing more than two dozen abducted Ethiopians marked for beheadings in Libya by the ruthless self-styled terrorist group known as “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) (also known as “Islamic State of…
In her Letter to the Washington Post, U.S. Undersecretary Wendy R. Sherman chastised the editorial board for “mischaracterizing her remarks” in its May 1 editorial. At issue is what Ms. Sherman said and meant by her words during her press conference in Ethiopia on April 16. I addressed that issue at length in my commentary…
The folly of willful ignorance I did not vote for Ronald Reagan to become U.S. president. But I appreciated some of his witticisms before he became president. In 1964, two years after he dumped the Democrats and joined the Republicans, Reagan astutely noted, “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s…
Ethiopian lives matter! Exactly ten years ago in 2005, almost to the month, the late supreme leader of the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (T-TPLF), Meles Zenawi, personally directed a campaign of brutal suppression of unarmed protesters following the general election that year. On May 16, 2005, Meles Zenawi declared a state of…
Author’s Note: The Armenian Genocide which began one hundred years ago this week inside present-day Turkey will be remembered worldwide on April 24. That Genocide began with a roundup of Armenian intellectuals, clergy, educators, writers, community leaders and other notable members of the Armenian community in Constantinople, (renamed Istanbul in 1923), the capital of the…
Donald Levine: The scholars’ scholar This past January, Prof. Levine emailed to tell me about his long-planned visit to Ethiopia that had been thwarted by his illness. He had set three objectives for that trip. He wanted to be present for the launching of his book Interpreting Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. He wanted to witness the opening…
To “build the dam” or to “abandon” it: That was Meles’ question! Exactly four years ago, almost to the day, on April 2, 2011, the late Meles Zenawi gave a speech in Guba, Benishangul Gumuz in Western Ethiopia, setting out his dream and vision for what he called the “Millennium Dam” (later called “Grand Ethiopian…
In my March 2013 commentary, “Rumors of Water War on the Nile?”, I argued: … Whether there will be an actual “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” [GERD] is the $5bn dollar question of the century. Because Egypt has been successful in pressuring multilateral development and investment banks not to fund the project, the regime in Ethiopia…
What does a malaria researcher know about the art and science of diplomacy? Or for that matter the difference between telling the truth and telling lies? Or condoning or condemning lies? These are not trick questions. Tedros Adhanom is the “foreign minister” in the Thugtatroship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF). In the official “Ministry of Foreign Affairs Biography of the Minister”, Adhanom is described as “an internatio […]
I am celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta Libertatum or the Great Charter of English Liberties. Whoa! Hold it! I understand your question! Why is a guy born in Africa (Ethiopia) now living in America celebrating a document written by a bunch of disgruntled and rebellious English barons quarrelling with a feudal monarch…
