Alemayehu G Mariam The new African Union (AU) headquarters was inaugurated last week. It was “China’s gift to Africa.” China picked the entire USD$200 million tab for the building, fixtures and furniture. The China State Construction Engineering Corporation constructed the building using nearly all Chinese workers. Meles Zenawi, the dictator in Ethiopia,…
Alemayehu G Mariam The International Criminal Court (ICC) is on the chase; and over the past few months, things have taken a slow turn for the worse for African dictators and human rights violators. They are finding out that they can’t run and they can’t hide. Laurent “Cling-to-power-at-any-cost” Gbagbo of Cote d’Ivoire was snatched from his…
Alemayehu G. Mariam Crimes Against the Mind If a person were to {www:maliciously} burn or {www:vandalize} another’s house, it would be regarded as a serious property crime under the laws of any nation. If one were to walk into a bookstore and steal thousands of books and give them away to any passerby, that would…
Alemayehu G Mariam From the International Slave Trade to the International Maid Trade In the days of the Atlantic slave trade, the Middle Passage was the journey of slave trading ships from the west coast of Africa to the New World. Portuguese, British, French, Spanish, Dutch and other slave traders maintained outposts along the African…
Alemayehu G. Mariam Ethiopians Unite! The great Bob Marley always sang songs of African unity and liberation: How good and how pleasant it would be before God and man, …
Alemayehu G. Mariam Waiting for the Dawn of “Africa’s Spring” in 2012? How about an “Ethiopian Tsedey” in 2012? In 2011, we witnessed the “Winter of Arab” discontent made glorious by an “Arab Spring” followed by an increasingly hot “Arab Summer” and deeply troubled “Arab Fall”. Bashir al-Assad continues to massacre his people by the dozens…
Alemayehu G. Mariam In December 2008, I wrote a weekly column entitled “Groundhog Year in Prison Nation” summarizing some of my weekly columns for that year. I used the “groundhog” metaphor from a popular motion picture in which a hapless television weatherman is trapped in a time warp and finds himself reliving the same day…
Alemayehu G. Mariam Portrait of A Poor Country Lately, the portrait of Ethiopia painted in the reports of Transparency International (Corruption Index) and Global Financial Integrity shows a “Land of Corruption”. That contrasts with an equally revolting portrait of Ethiopia painted in a recent broadcast of a fear-mongering three-part propaganda programentitled “Akeldama” (or Land of Blood) on state-owned…
Alemayehu G. Mariam Ethio-Corruption, Inc. (Unlimited) “The people of Ethiopia are being bled dry. No matter how hard they try to fight their way out of absolute destitution and poverty, they will be swimming upstream against the current of illicit capital leakage”, wrote Economist Sarah Freitas who co-authored an upcoming report with Lead Economist Dev…
Alemayehu G. Mariam Awramba Times: More Powerful Than Ten Thousand Bayonets “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets,” fretted Napoleon Bonaparte, dictator of France, as he summed up his determination to crush that country’s independent press. For dictator Meles Zenawi, Awramba Times, the tip of the spear of press freedom…
