“Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,… [and] see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” A Happy New Year to all of my readers!!! I get to celebrate New Year twice every year. The first on September 11, the Ethiopian New Year. The second on January 1. I also get to make two…
“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”, decreed Maya Angelou, the great African American author, poet, dancer, actress and singer. “I shall persevere!” wrote Eskinder Nega, the imprisoned and preeminent defender and hero of press freedom in Ethiopia, in a letter smuggled out of the infamous Meles Zenawi Prison in Kality,…
Cuba finally coming in from the Cold (War)? “I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun,” said Fidel Castro in an interview in January 1959, shortly after he ousted President Fulgencio Batista. With that declaration, Castro established Cuba as the…
International Criminal Court Prosecutor throws in the towel It is a dark and gloomy month on the “Dark Continent”! It is the worst of times in Africa when a man in the highest political office accused of egregious crimes against humanity waltzes out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) grinning like a Cheshire cat and…
Our government… teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis The tip of the iceberg: Not isolated cases On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner, a 43…
Last week, many Ethiopian families in the United States gathered in houses of worship with their relatives and friends to hold memorial services in remembrance of the victims of the massacre of the 24th of November 1974, a date that shall live in infamy in Ethiopian history. On that fateful day, a military junta gathered…
Author’s Note: For over four decades, the self-styled Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which clings to power by force in Ethiopia today, has been planning and waging a sustained and relentless political, social and cultural war to “de-Ethiopianize” Ethiopia. The TPLF’s de-Ethiopianization program and ideology are built around a set of specific strategies, policies, actions and practices…
The poet-artist with an “unconquerable soul”? Last week, Meron Getnet, the extraordinary young Ethiopian actress, put out on Youtube a powerful Amharic poem entitled, “Hagere, Hizbe, Kibre” (My Country, My People, My Honor). The last time I “saw” Meron was this past September in a video clip intended to be a promotional for the film DIFRET (COURAGE), a film…
Oh, Cruel November 2005! In 2005, Ethiopians faced unspeakable horrors. Following the parliamentary elections in May of that year, hundreds of Ethiopian citizens who protested the daylight theft of that election were massacred or seriously shot and wounded by police and security personnel under the exclusive command and control of the late regime leader Meles…
Gebremedhin Araya (L), Max Perbedy (C), Tekleweyne Assefa (R) Remembering the Great Ethiopia Famine of 1984 (Part II) In my commentary last week, (Remembering the Great Ethiopia Famine of 1984, Part I), I reviewed various commentaries I had written over the years challenging the fabricated and false claims of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and its…
