By Alemayehu G. Mariam Déjà Vu: Here We Go Again With the Charade Last April, we commented that the whole business of elections in Ethiopia is “much ado about nothing”. We offered a catalogue of reasons why the whole election rigmarole and ritual under the current dictatorship was an exercise in futility and absurdity: The…
Alemayehu G. Mariam Trying Times “These are the times that try men’s souls,” said Thomas Paine, one of the Founders of the American Republic, at the onset of the American Revolution. It could be said equally that these are times that try a nation’s soul. Ethiopia today is stranded in a sea of political, economic…
By Alemayehu Gebremariam Recently, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi warned that the African delegation he is expected to lead to the climate change talks in Copenhagen in December would walk out of any “negotiations that threaten to be another rape of the continent.” The Ethiopian dictator, who was speaking in Addis Ababa at a meeting…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam In Contempt … Commenting recently on an International Crisis Group (ICG) study dealing with rising ethnic tensions and dissent in advance of the “May 2010” elections, Ethiopia’s arch dictator wisecracked, “This happens as some people have too many billions of dollars to spend and they feel that dictating how, particularly, the…
Alemayehu G. Mariam Bluster of the Con Artists Last week Ethiopia’s arch dictator was in tears, crocodile tears that is, over the unfair and shameful treatment of Africa by the heartless Western imperialists on the issue of global warming and climate change. Frothing at the mouth and brimming with moral indignation, the dictator threatened to…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam Remember H.R. 2003? Do you remember H.R. 2003 (“Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act”)? That was a bill sponsored by Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.) to promote the “advancement of human rights, democracy, independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press, peacekeeping capacity building, and economic development in the Federal Democratic Republic of…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam Rent-a-Thug Against Democracy In a recent piece entitled “Mob Disrupts Political Meeting in Adama,” former Ethiopian President Dr. Negasso Gidada described how “an organized mob disturbed a public political meeting of the Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) in Adama, Oromia, and forced the discontinuation of the meeting.” Dr. Negasso explained:…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam The Masks of Dictatorship Last week, The Economist magazine painted a chilling journalistic portrait of Ethiopia’s capo dictator. The magazine described the ironfisted ringleader of the dictatorial regime that has “run Ethiopia since 1991” in starkly contrasting terms. “Meles Zenawi, still only 54, has two faces,” proclaimed the Economist. One is…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam The Actions of Our Enemies, the Silence and Indifference of Our Friends “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends,” said Dr. Martin Luther King. The silence and indifference of our friends could be just as harrowing. Thank you Gasha (Shield)…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam Ministry of Education or Ministry of Loan Sharking? Ethiopia’s “Ministry of Education”, (or more appropriately, the Ministry of Loan Sharking) has adopted a “new scheme” (new scam) of official extortion to professionally incapacitate young Ethiopian college graduates. According to a report by Addis Fortune, “Students graduating in the year 2008-2009 from…
