South Africa, 1960 On March 21, 1960, exactly 55 years ago today, a crowd estimated at five thousand (according to apartheid police 20 thousand, inflated to justify their extreme response) gathered in front of a police station in the South African township of Sharpeville in Transvaal (presently Gauteng, one of the nine provinces of South…
The Thugtatorship of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation (T-TPLF) adopted its fabricated constitution for Ethiopia on December 8, 1994. The Preamble to that constitution declares, “We the Nations, Nationalities and People of Ethiopia…” have written the constitution to 1) “secure the right to self-determination” for “people of the nations and nationalities”, 2) ensure the territorial insularity (separateness) of…
On March 3, 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netenyahu addressed a joint session of the United States Congress to deliver his diktat: Pass a law to prevent President Obama from negotiating with Iran because any U.S. agreement with Iran is not worth the paper it is written on. “We’re better off without it,” exhorted Netenyahu. It was…
Young Diaspora Ethiopian musicians are rising fast and gaining attention on the international scene. They sing in English, but some include Amharic songs in their repertoire. Their lyrics are serious and spotlight social conditions. Their melodies are a fusion of Ethiopian, rock and jazz beats. They attract audiences across cultural lines. Their music has universal…
It was too good to be true. It is too bad it was true for the people of Gambella in western Ethiopia. Last month, the ignoble demise of Karuturi Global, Ltd. (a/k/a “Ethiopian Meadows Plc.”, “Gambella Green Valley Plc (Ethiopia)”, “Karuturi Agro Products Plc (Ethiopia)) in Ethiopia was announced quietly and without fanfare. Karuturi,…
Who knows about Ethiopia’s perfekt elektion in May 2015? It is the middle of February 2015 as I write this commentary. But I always remember in November. I see some of my Ethiopian friends carrying long forlorn melancholy faces. A few lines from Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” flash in my mind: Why,…
In my last commentary, The World Bank and Ethiopia’s “Growth and Transformation”, I cryptically observed in passing, “… The USD$600 million is money the World Bank loaned to the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (T-TPLF) in the name of the People of Ethiopia. Future generations of Ethiopians will be asked to pay it back….
The World Bank lies, Ethiopia dies… from onerous “odious debt” I had completely forgotten about the so-called “Growth and Transformation Plan” (GTP) of 2010, until the World Bank reminded me of it last week. by Alemayehu G. Mariam That “Plan” was the late Meles Zenawi’s gimmick about having an economic plan for Ethiopia. “Ethiopian economic growth…
The moral bankruptcy of the World Bank in Ethiopia Ethiopians have been the object of a cruel bureaucratic joke by the World Bank. Last week, an official investigative report surfaced on line showing World Bank bureaucrats in Ethiopia have been playing “Deception Games” of displacement, deracination, forced resettlement and a kinder and gentler form of ethnic cleansing in the Gambella region of Western Ethiopia….
When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [MLK] gave his “I Have a Dream Speech” in August 1963, he asked the “devotees of civil rights” a simple rhetorical question: “When will you be satisfied?” One of his answers was particularly poignant. “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the…
