Over two-years passed since the new ‘reformist’ Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed of the Former ethnic apartheid ruling member OPDO party of the Ethiopian People Democratic Revolutionary Front (EPDRF) came to power and replace the 27-years old colonial modeled ethnic apartheid party of disunity, deception and ignorance led by Tigray People Liberation Front with Prosperity Party of Unity, Truth and Knowledge.
Ever since and as expected, TPLF and its sponsors resorted in treats, warmongering, assentation… propaganda to sustain the status qua that served them well.
Not fully knowing what PM Abiy Ahmed is up against and his capacity to dismantle the 27-years old apartheid institutions from its roots may be, it took the politically motivated assassination of the popular Oromigna singer Hachalu Handersa by the usual suspects and the killings and distractions that followed for the PM to declare, from hereon only the rule of law is the term of negotiation with self-confessed lawless parties involved in Ethiopia affairs.
It was another milestone in Ethiopian political history, a PM who invited all disputing political elites to put down their arms and their sponsors interest and peacefully built democratic society based on unity, truth and knowledge and the rule of law that earn him respect at home and in the world stage with a Nobile Peace Prize that came with it.
Declaration of the rule of law or ‘there is pie in the sky’ is not new for any ruling party anywhere in the world. After all, the most brazen TPLF led apartheid regime declared ‘the rule of law and a pie in the sky for 27-years as political hitjob to cover up the rule of the jungle and corruption on the behest of its sponsors and continue to do so in the territory it occupies to sustain the status qua indefinitely.
Therefore, PM Abiy Ahmed reform effort is confronted with the old lawless British Empire modeled ethnic apartheid regimes against the people of Ethiopia that started way back in Feb of 1835 when Wing Party Member of the British Parliament Lord Thomas B. Macaulay plea to the House of Commons against the people of Ethiopia and the nation in a speech stating;
“I have traveled across the length and breadth of Africa and have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is thief such wealth seen in the country. Such high moral value, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation which is her spiritual and cultural heritage and therefore, I propose we replace her old ancient education system, her culture, for if the Africans think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own; they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”
From the Warlord Macaulay’s statement, one can draw why he ‘traveled across the length and breadth of Africa’ by his own confession and what Britain Colonial Empire did to Africa ever since.
Therefore, the 17 century South African modeled apartheid rule that swept the entire Africa came 50-years later at the 1884-85 Berlin Conference where seven European colonial powers led by the British colonial Empire made a pact to divide, invade and occupy the remaining African nations among themselves and institute ethnic apartheid rule as a strategy to sustain their occupation as Macaulay envisioned.
A brief documentary of How the Europeans divided Africa following the Berlin Conference illustrates, the political, social and economic apartheid Africans lived under ever since.
But that treacherous decision and the invasion that followed turn into a disaster in 1896 when Ethiopians not only defeated the invading Italian army in unity under the legendry Emperor Menelik II in battle better known as the Adwa Victory but the aspiration of all colonial empires, puppets and mercenaries of colonized nations across the globe as Macaulay uttered.
The recent half-witted Yahoo news that injecting colonial powers’ manufactured race in a-war-of- independence from foreign invasion and occupation around the world titled 124 years ago, Ethiopian men and women defeated the Italian army in the Battle of Adwa as;
“News of African victory spread throughout the world.
Adwa turned Ethiopia into the symbol of redemption and freedom for black people. Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Bob Marley, Gorge Padmore and others drew inspiration from African victory. The first Afro-Brazilian newspaper was named O Menelick, published pride in black identity and African connection with prominent women writers from 1915-1916.
Adwa connected black people with Africa’s ancient glory and future hope, as Marcus Garvey wrote.
Look to Africa for the crowing of black king. He shall be the redeemer.”
The irony yahoo news like all mainstream Medias does not mention the inspiration for all colonized peoples and nations around the globe for independence regardless of race, ethnicity, language… and to down play the role of the legendary Emperor Menelik tells a whole other story about mainstream Media masquerading as Free Press to propagate the same colonial racist attitude that prevails to this day.
But that was not the end of colonialist ambition to reinvade and occupy Ethiopia and “break the very backbone of this nation which is her spiritual and cultural heritage” as Warlord Macaulay recommended.
Fifty-years later in 1936, the second invasion and occupation followed. As expected, the target once again was the unity of Ethiopians that defeated colorism as expressed by nonother than Nazi Baron Roman Prochaska, the Austrian envoy to Ethiopia ousted from Addis Ababa for subversion in 1934. A year later, in a book titled Abyssinia the Powder Barrel (Vienna 1935) he confessed what colonial powers need to do to defeat Ethiopians following Warlord Macaulay que.
It reads,
“The numerous peoples and tribes who inhabit the territory of the Ethiopian state, and which differ in race, language, culture and religion from the ruling minority of the Abyssinians proper, would long ago have thrown off the Abyssinian yoke if they had been given the right of self-determination. Instead, they are being forcibly kept cut off from European influences and from the advantages that progressive colonization could confer upon the country. The final aim of (Abyssinian) policy of antagonism to the white race, in co-operation with Japan, is nothing less than to act as the champions of all the colored peoples of Africa. It is incumbent on the delegations of the civilized nations in Abyssinia to warn their governments to take a definite stand before the Abyssinians attack and destroy western culture and civilization in its entirety. There is no such thing as a united Abyssinian people. The greater part of the non-Christian tribes in Abyssinia has no more burning desire than to be freed from the tyranny of the Amharas… If they would vote freely, they would certainly prefer a European protectorate to universally hated extortionists and slave drivers. This country is cracking at all its joints and has only been kept together up to the present by methods of ruthless coercion.”
Subsequently, Fascist Italy invasion and five-years occupation (1936-41) instituted ethnic apartheid rule in six regions of Ethiopia drawn by Mussolini army to make sure Ethiopians are no more treat in unity for European colonizers again as Prochaska subscribed.
As faith would have it, Ethiopians kept fighting the occupying Fascist Italy army and the apartheid administrations it set up in six ethnic regions as well as the surrounding colonial Britain, Belgium and France occupying armies alone until Nazi Germany led by Hitler aligned with Fascist Italy led by Mussolini and marched to control Europe as well as the leading colonial empires’ territories around the globe that brought about what is known as the Second World War. The subsequent defeat of Fascist-Nazi regimes by allied force led by the United States and the Soviet Union helped restore the unity of the people and the independence Ethiopia under Emperor Haile Selassie I once again to the dismay of British colonial force in East Africa and elsewhere that came to help defeat Fascist Italy army.
But colonial Britain under the celebrated Warlord Winston Churchill that supposedly came to help defeat Fascist Italy had a different plan for Ethiopia as she practiced in her African colonies.The devastation Fascist Italy invasion caused on the people of Ethiopia is better captured by The Second Italo Ethiopian War Documentary that became public 50 years later under Freedom of Information Act.
Emperor Hale Selassie Administration Vice Minister of Finance Lij Yilma Deressa’s correspondence with US President Roosevelt seeking support for his Fascist’s devastated home country as he did to Nazi devastated Europe reconstruction and for help the British force to leave Ethiopia is instructive — the odd against Ethiopia (one of the two-dozen Founding member of the League of Nations) with no friends in the world. (See the Diplomatic Paper of Ethiopian Vice Minister of Finance Ato Yilma Deresa to US President Roosevelt dated July 12, 1943 and US Minster in Ethiopia J.K. Caldwell to US Secretary of State dated October 21, 1943 released 50-years later under the Freedom of Information Act.
Lij Deresa letter in part reads,
“But when victory was won, and our country was free from the enemy, our ally told the Emperor that Ethiopia was an Occupied Enemy Territory and would be administered as such until a special treaty was signed between His Britannic Majesty’s Government and the Emperor. The draft of the treaty was not presented to His Imperial Majesty for months, and in the meanwhile, every possible pressure was exercised to make the Emperor and the people of Ethiopia wish for the signature of a treaty in order to end the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. During this time, industrial and mechanical equipment, means of transportation, telephone, and electric lines, much needed and vital to the program of rehabilitation, were either removed from Ethiopia or wrecked.
The first draft of the agreement proposed amounted to the imposition of the status of a protectorate on Ethiopia. It was rejected by the Emperor. The actual agreement which is in force until January 1944 is regarded in Ethiopia as an agreement which imposes upon her Government conditions which are incompatible with either liberty or the exercise of her sovereign rights as a free nation. Its spirit is not in accordance with that of the Atlantic Charter. It was imposed upon her by pressure and is, therefore, regarded as having been signed under duress.
This agreement is due for revision next January. His Imperial Majesty has requested Your Excellency to use your good offices in affording him a competent American jurist to help him in this task and is appealing to the Government of the United States to give him diplomatic cooperation in the matter so that a settlement, consistent with the spirit of the Atlantic Charter might be reached.
Outlet to the Sea
It is recognized that in the world of tomorrow, the world which all freedom-loving peoples are striving to build, there must be a free [Page 105]interchange of the world’s resources. A nation to grow, must be able to export freely her native commodities and to secure in exchange needed supplies and equipment from other countries. Ethiopia, with, an area of 350 thousand square miles, a population of 14 million inhabitants and with vast natural resources, has been in the recent past without territory bordering on the sea. The development of our country has been hindered by this fact. Not having had a seaport resulted, unfortunately, in the inability of Ethiopia to import necessary arms and ammunition to defend herself before and during the time of the Italian invasion; this, in addition to the fact that as far back as 1884, certain nations through treaty,32 agreed between themselves not to allow such materials destined for Ethiopia to pass through territories dominated by themselves.
The people in what is now called Eritrea are ethnically and culturally akin to the Ethiopian people, and in times past, that territory was a province of Ethiopia called Hamassen. In 1940, during the attack on Eritrea from the Sudanese border, our British allies, by pamphlets dropped from airplanes, promised the people of Hamassen (the Eritreans) union with Ethiopia as a reward for deserting from their Italian conquerors.
His Imperial Majesty hopes that Your Excellency will use your good offices to help us effect this union and to secure a seaport for our country.
His Imperial Majesty has instructed me to convey to Your Excellency Ethiopia’s gratitude for the generous unilateral gesture on the part of Your Excellency to declare his country eligible to the benefit of Lend-Lease Aid. Ethiopia is a country which has been devastated by seven years of war, and, therefore, needs financial and material assistance to be rehabilitated. Financial difficulty is acute, and the primary equipment to run a government is lacking. His Imperial Majesty hopes that Your Excellency will recommend his country’s case to the Administration to secure a loan and to acquire the materials which are urgently needed.
His Imperial Majesty will be glad to have American citizens to advise him in financial, military, judicial, and other technical affairs. His Imperial Majesty will welcome the cooperation of American capital and technical skill to help him develop the natural resources of his country. It is further the feeling of His Imperial Majesty that Ethiopia can be of aid in supplying foodstuffs to needy European and [Page 106]Eastern nations during the post-war period of reconstruction. If help could now be given her in the form of technical aid and equipment, the temperate climate and fertile soil in the highlands of our country would lend themselves favorably to the production of important crops and cattle for food. Ethiopia would have the advantage of being much nearer to the needy territories than America, thereby effecting a saving in transportation and time. The people of Ethiopia are anxious to join with the people of the United States in their magnificent effort to rebuild a war-torn world.
Ethiopia is not unmindful of the asylum offered by the people of England to their Emperor during his stay there; the Ethiopian people are simply striving toward self-determination, the right of every free people, and look to America, the arsenal of democracy, for aid in the complete realization of this desire.
At a date convenient to Your Excellency, His Imperial Majesty will be pleased to pay a visit to Your Excellency to discuss matters affecting the future of his country.
Yilma Deressa
[ Washington,] July 12, 1943.
Just one historical letter of Lij Deressa summarizes the entire problem Ethiopians in particular and Africans and every colonized nations in general are facing from the old colonialists to proponent of ethnic apartheid functionally illiterate elites’ collective amnesia of the crimes of colonialists led by Britain committed on their own people.
Born in Wollega from his father Bilata Deressa Amante — the decedent of Leqa Naqamte, Moti Moronda Bekere Kingdom of Wolega. The London School of Economics educated Lij Derrsa served as a Director of Ministry of Agriculture of Ethiopia in the 1930s and Minster of Finance after the war and played a pivotal role not only fighting Fascist occupation but, colonial Britain’s sinister plan to control Ethiopia by sustaining Fascist Italy’s ethnic apartheid rule as she did in her African colonies.
But one paragraph in Lij Derrsa’s letter to US President Roosevelt stand out what colonial Britain had in mind to undermine the authority Emperor Haile Selase and viability of Ethiopia.
It reads, “During this time, industrial and mechanical equipment, means of transportation, telephone and electric lines, much needed and vital to the program of rehabilitation, were either removed from Ethiopia or wrecked.”
Why would the British force under the celebrated Colonial Warlord Winston Churchill for defending “Europe’s liberal democracy from the spread of Fascism” that supposedly sent his troops to help fight Fascist Italy army in Ethiopia would dismantle the infrastructure of a war-torn nation victimized by Fascism like he never did to liberated Italy and Germany territory speaks for itself if it wasn’t an Act of War on a war torn liberated nation.
A brief history of British Kenya (the present British Common Wealth member) explain why Warlord Churchill led Empire dismantled the infrastructure of a war-torn Ethiopia.
A recipient of the Noble Prize for Literature among many awards, glamorizing the 20th century Warlord like Churchill further illustrate, European institutions including Medias remained nothing more than modern-day propaganda machines for political elites doing essentially same as their predecessors.
British government refusal to acknowledge its war crime on the top of Fascist Italy war crime to a member of the League of Nation Ethiopia then and supporting TPLF to impose ethnic apartheid rule and wage war to undermine Ethiopians’ unity in the last four decades is historical crime every African and the global community should learn and demand accountability.
Incidentally, the first Woyane movement was established in 1943 when colonial Britain gave up to control Ethiopia. It is not clear what role Colonial Britain army that supposedly came to help fight Fascist Italy in Ethiopia played on the foundation of the Woyane base in one of the six Fascist Italy imposed and administered ethnic apartheid regions of Ethiopia known now as Tigray Region under TPLF.
Regardless, Ethiopians unity have always been (at least since the 1830s) and continue to be the target of the old colonial powers as well as the new democratic regimes of Europe, their puppet regimes and mercenaries from the Middle East and Africa and from as far as India in one-form-or-another.
But modern Woyane led by Tigray People Liberation Front that masterminded the ethnic disunite Ethiopians in the name self-determination of Nations and Nationalities was based in London and supported by the British government remain a historical fact. More importantly, its action modeled by Colonial Britain ethnic apartheid institutions — from using British police force rank designations for the Ethiopian Federal Police force to setting up ethnic political, economic, educational … institutions is tell-tale sign, TPLF was and continue to be under the mercy of the British government.
Unfortunately, indigenous elites’ submission for the rejected colonial apartheid rule against the unity of their compatriots and the independence of their country are repeating history of treachery once gain.
In a July, 2015 article titled Zone 9 bloggers, the lawless apartheid regime and fascist Italy we explored why TPLF repeated history by reinstituting Fascist occupier’ designed ethnic divide in 1991 targeting the unity of Ethiopians that defeated it and wrote,
“After over two decades of TPLF’s Apartheid rule, Ethiopians defiance to thwart its tribal mission cost many Ethiopians their lives and livelihoods. Zone 9 bloggers were among many that earned terrorism charge and a year-and-half of their lives and the torments under TPLF’s gulags simply for being Ethiopians.
Abel Wabela statement better describes the mercenary TPLF’s mission in line with Fascist’s agenda during the occupation.
ጥቅል ማንነት ነው እንጂ የሚገዛኝ የብሔር ታርጋ ሊለጠፍብኝ አይገባም ብዬ መርማሪዎቼ ልዩ ፍጡር መስያቸው ሲደበድቡኝ አምሽተዋል::”
Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise anyone nor should it be difficult to find out who may be behind the self-proclaimed minority ethnic apartheid group known as modern Woyane’s ascendency to power masquerading as the ruling ethnic member Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) Party to reinstitute Fascist Italy’s ethnic apartheid rule in the 21st century.
Quite frankly, since the Soviet Bolshevik Revolution inspired Marxist ruling elites’ led by the Derg instituted class divide followed by the European Colonialist inspired ruling elites’ led by the Marxist and Leninist League of Tigray (MLLT) masquerading as the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) instituted ethnic divide modeled by Fascist Italy occupier, the jungle law overwhelmed the political, social and economic discourse of the nation and produced ‘functionally illiterate’ elites. Ever since, foreign sponsored narratives and the resulting disunity, deception, and ignorance thus, death, displacement, violation of rights, liberties and corruption that logically followed became the way Ethiopians were governed.
Unfortunately, Ethiopians went through two of the worst ideologies one-after-another that inflected the most death and distraction of many nations in the world unlike any other nation in the world — making the pursue of unity, liberty, representative democracy and the rule of law more challenging than ever.
Thus, two generation of dysfunctional political elites that rely on division, deception, and ignorance thus the rule of the jungle for position of power and privilege kept Ethiopians as their subjects and politics (the art of the possibilities) into impossibility.
In a December 2013 article titled; What is there to negotiate with apartheid besides the surrender for democratic rule, we wrote,
“At this juncture of the struggle, Ethiopians must speak in one voice and make it abundantly clear, TPLF led ethnic apartheid regime’s rule must end now without delay. People must realize the regime’s crime isn’t isolated incidence of a typical tyranny we are used to in Africa but a well-orchestrated conspiracy against the people of Ethiopia and the nation.”
And,
“If the regime’s apologists want a quick resolution to the havoc their conspiracy caused, for their own sake, they should abandon the regime while they can. The last thing they should do is stick with the regime and run around the globe searching for diversion in attempt to sustain a modern-day apartheid”.
The willfully ignorant journalists’ narratives about the deadly ethnic apartheid rule and failing to identify the source of who is responsible did not help either.
Take global mainstream Media networks’ coverage on the assassination of Hachalu Handersa. As expected, none mentioned TPLF and its sponsors that perpetuated Oromo-Amhara conflicts publicly not to mention their own role in sustaining ethnic apartheid rule as-long-as it did at expenses of the death of Hachalu and many other innocent Ethiopians. Instead, pointing finger on the new PM Abiy reform effort particularly for abolishing the antiquated and discarded apartheid party to unite the people of Ethiopia became the target as the old colonialists did once again.
Ironically, “a thorn in the flash of the successive governments” Bekele Atoma of BBC’s Afaan Oromo reporter referring is, TPLF led ethnic apartheid government that ruled for 27-years BBC conveniently failed to inform its audience for obvious reason.The UK government funded infamous BBC that out-of-nowhere began multiple Ethiopian languages program in recent past on its July 2020 piece titled Hachalu Hundersa – Ethiopias murdered Musician who Sang for Freedom and featured its own Afaan Oromo reporter Bekele Atoma, “who writes about the musician who was a thorn in the flash of successive governments” and zeroed in on the same Emperor Minilk I as a villain and skipped altogether TPLF and its sponsors, including the British government role reinstituting Fascist Italy ethnic apartheid rule in Ethiopia.
To make matter even worst, BBC “Senior Broadcast Journalist” Bekele Atoma LinkedIn background profile started in Jun 2012 at Oromia Radio and TV Organization, “a Mass Media Organization of the Oromia Regional State Government in Ethiopia” according Telmaco, a Greek based Media platform. Two-years later (June 2014) he moved to Oromia Broadcasting Service, “an independent and impartial international broadcaster” according to its Face Book page. Three years later (May 2017) Atoma moved to BBC as ‘Senior Broadcast Journalist’. How a Social Science graduate of 2011 from A.A. University ended up a Senior Broadcast Journalist for BBC says more about BBC in search of dysfunctional elites than journalists.
In all fairness BBC is not alone. Early in the 1990s, Voice of America established multiple Ethiopian language programing and hired TPLF and OLF operatives to fan ethnic division in the diaspora and at home country. The US government agency VOA was so bad at one point, it was taking order from TPLF warlords in Addis Ababa what to or not to say.
But, if history is any lesson, unlike any Media, the British colonial empire mouthpiece BBC’s rant against her African colonies was so racist and divisive in the late 1930s and early 40s even by the Colonial Office standard, the Colonial Secretory Malcolm MacDonald forced BBC to apologize to the people of the Gold Coast (the present-day Ghana) in multiple occasions.
Therefore, BBC establishing multiple Ethiopian language broadcasting with proponent of ethnic apartheid elites masquerading as journalists and siting scrupulous Media outlets like a one-man Oromo Media Network (OMN) show led by US national and proponent of ethnic apartheid Jawar Mohammod is no accident but a well-orchestrated propaganda similar to the old colonial Britain.
The British Government funding propaganda around the world through BBC and shell companies is not new either. According to Reuters own report — Britain Secretly funded Reuters in 1960s and 1970s reviled, declassified government documents shows, “at the behest of anti-Soviet propaganda unit linked to the British Intelligence funded Reuters and concealed the funding using BBC to make the payment”.
Therefore, if the most important international wire service Reuters use a one-man operated OMN ethnic apartheid Media as reliable source on the assassination of Handersa titled Killing of Ethiopian protest singer triggers unrest in leader’s ethnic heartland it shouldn’t surprise anyone what Ethiopians and PM Abiy reform is up against from the most important global news wire service that cannot tell the difference between one source from another.
Founded in 1851 in London and owned and operated by Thomson Reuters Corporation, it supports many Media outlets and journalists around the world through its corporate philanthropy (Reuters Foundation). But no one knows, how they vets Media outlets as a source nor why it takes propaganda outlets as legitimate and reliable source for its news to mislead its audience. Again, in all fairness Reuters is not alone. The Associated Press (AP) and France Press Agency (AFP) are not far behind hiring political hacks as journalists and sourcing news from scrupulous media outlets.
More mesmerizing is the Qatar of Amir sponsored Al Jazeera English coverage on Handersa assentation titled, Is Ethiopia a spiraling into political crises? by inviting two incoherent ethnic apartheid proponents in the diaspora namely, the self-proclaimed ethnic Tigre spokesperson in North America Alula Solomon
masquerading as CEO of Tigray Media House and the self-proclaimed ethnic Oromo human right spokesperson Awol Allo masquerading as Senior Lecture of Law at Keele University in UK and an individual presented as “international lawyer” of undisclosed entity and location by a name Zelalem Moges.
As expected, a simple challenge by the self-described ‘international lawyer’ Moges for the two ethnic apartheid proponent presented as experts speaks volume; Al Jazeera is not a Free Press by any stretch but another version of BBC that sponsors the rejected colonial ethnic apartheid rule by inviting flyby ethnic political hacks and interest groups as ‘experts’.
Unfortunately, what Al Jazeera failed to disclose to its worldwide audience is, Alula Solomon is the Chairman of Union of Tigrayans in North America established 44-years ago by TPLF operatives in London, UK to begin an ethnic apartheid project on the people of Ethiopia before he established Tigray Media House right after PM Abiy came to power. Why the celebrated global Media Al Jazeera failed to do basic due diligence on the background of Solomon as it failed to do so with its most prized and frequent TPLF operative by name Dr Mehari Maru masquerading as expert in many things including “security, peacekeeping, terrorism, migration, governance, human right…” says more what the people of Ethiopia are up against.
In his most recent OP-ED titled Can Trump Resolve the Egypt-Ethiopia Nile dam dispute? Dr Maru whose last Al Jazeera announced job was ‘Senior Researcher at European University Institute, Milan, Italy’ is missing in his latest OP-ED profile and, begs for an answer from Al Jazeera who he may be working at the present and where his whereabout may be, not to mention how European University Institute hired and if he no longer working there fired him?
At the meantime, Dr Awol Allo, the Former self-described Oromo human right activists at London School of Economics is the present ‘Senior Lecturer of Law’ at Keele University UK and became a permeant fixture in Al Jazeera’s roster of Ethiopian experts. But, what the Former human right expert and the present “Senior Lecturer in Law” failed to articulate in all his appearances as law and human right expert nor Al Jazeera altogether failed to investigate is what kind worthy human right advocacy and laws allows ethnic apartheid and to whose benefit reveals, functionally illiterate elites that infested the political, social and economic narratives of the nation is by design of the sponsors.
In previous program titled Can Ethiopia Bridge its ethnic divide?, Al Jazeera not only sited OMN as a source but featured again Dr Allo as Senior Lecturer of Law at Keele University, Laetitia Bader as the Human Right Watch African Director in Rome and the Former US Ambassador David Shinn, the Former US Ambassador to Ethiopia from Washington better known for overseeing TPLF’s ascendency to power in Ethiopia. As expected, the host of the Al Jazeera program nor all the three ‘expert’ guests conveniently skipped to mention the defunct TPLF ruling ethnic apartheid member party of Ethiopia nor its sponsors as the main cause of ethnic divide and the crises the new PM Abiy reform effort is facing visible for a necked eye.
Al Jazeera’s selective amnesia on colonial ethnic apartheid rule imposed on the people of Ethiopia by TPLF and its sponsors in 1991 is rather telling but not surprising for all Middle Eastern autocratic regimes’ sponsored Media outlets that claim to be an independent voice of the Middle East. After all, most of Al Jazeera’s English program journalists are X-BBC reporters on steroid with no accountability to anyone but the Amir of Qatar that pay their salary. Therefore, like every propaganda mouthpiece of a regime or interest group, the usual buzz words used to claim they are Free Press is ‘Editorial Independence’ to the determinantal of the people under authoritarian regimes and the Free Press itself.
Interestingly, in the middle of the worldwide Black Lives Matter Movement that is unraveling the British Colonial Empire’s institutional racism and the practice of ethnic apartheid rule allover its Former colonies that started in the 16th century and more so since the 1884 Berlin Conference and the invasion and occupation of African nations that followed shows; ethnic apartheid rule proponent of Ethiopia ‘don’t fall far from the tree’.
As early as 2004, Mathew J. McCracken of Case Western Reserve University in Journal of International Law Volume 136 Issue 1 titled- Abusing Self-Determination and Democracy: How TPLF is Looting Ethiopia underline what Ethiopians should expect from the lawless ethnic parties crying empty self-determination and ethnic revolutionary democracy to remain or climb to unmandated power as their sponsors expect them and as they continued to treat the people of Ethiopia as their subjects and Weapon of Mass Distraction — threatening PM Abiy to stay away from uniting their subjects and instituting unity, truth, knowledge and the rule of law.
Therefore, the challenge for the new PM comes not from the people of Ethiopia that paid the ultimate price for ‘unity, truth, knowledge’ and rule of law, not to mention their independence over-and-over again for generations but from the same-old Revolutionary Democracy elites and their foreign sponsors that can’t tell revolution or democracy nor the rule of law if their own lives and livelihoods depended on it as we witness the self-proclaimed ethnic Tigray warlords led by Debertsion Gebremichael and his elks led by the self-proclaimed ethnic Oromo warlord and Media operator Jawar Mohammed making mockery of unity, truth, knowledge and the rule of law to sustain the antiquated ethnic apartheid status qua that benefited them at the expenses of the people.
The blubber the Former Federal Minster of Communication and Technology of the ethnic apartheid regime of Ethiopia and the present Chairman of TPLF Party Debertsion Gebremichael, he will hold election in his self-declared ethnic apartheid Tigray Region he considers a private property and the inhabitants as his subjects confirms; maintaining the institution of ethnic division, deception and ignorance as means to social, political and economic end in contempt of the new PM call for unity, truth and knowledge remained TPLF and its sponsors lifeline.
His most recent treat (more a bluff) against PM Abiy led government following the assentation of Hachala is a reminder; TPLF warlords known for assassinating their own ‘comrades-in-arms’ as well as innocent Ethiopians and shedding crocodile tears at the same time to accomplish their sponsors’ mission is real.
Debertsion’s own comrade and the self-declared General Tekleberhan Woldaregay’s brazen confession; TPLF doesn’t give a hoot what happens to the people of Ethiopia as long as it gets what its sponsors empowered it to do sums up, reforming an ethnic mercenary turned Mafia masquerading as a political party to accept unity, truth and knowledge in direct refutation of its core foundation is self-defeating proposition that would contribute absolutely nothing to the reform effort the new PM forwarded as Ethiopians witness ethnic warlords behave like drunken sailors drinking their sponsors punch in real-time.
Regardless, it is not clear whether Debertsion is telling Ethiopians in general or his hostages in the self-declared ethnic apartheid Tigray Region he controls in particular that, election need no reform or opposition other than the handpicked ethnic opposition and the endorsement of its sponsors to win by 100% vote and legitimize apartheid rule like it happened in the 2015 national election. Nor is he saying, unity, truth, knowledge, or rule of law are not necessary in his private island of Tigray Region he plan to declare independence according to his sponsors’ plan.
Either way, as the defunct EthioMedia masquerading as Free Press rightly used to say; “TPLF is a mercenary group that can’t be reformed, it must be dismantled” remained; as ethnic warlords and their operatives plead their old sponsors or find new to sustain ethnic apartheid rule their very survival depends on.
The million-dollar question is, why TPLF sponsors instigated and supported the antiquated ethnic apartheid rule in Ethiopia and who may be behind sustaining an ethnic Mafia masquerading as a political party and civic, Media, and business operator in the 21st century goes deeper and wider than the world is made to believe by the usual propaganda outlets.
The willfully ignorant elites with all the credential and status money can buy practicing “Omerta” (“a Southern Italian word that places importance of silence in the face of questioning banditry and mafia type criminal organizations where criminals do not compromise the criminal activities of other criminals”) by making mockery of election, representation, freedom of association, free press and economic freedom as well as the rule of laws is not helping the PM reform effort to end the quagmire lawless elites are inflecting on the people of Ethiopia.
Arabian proverb says, ‘lying and stealing are next door neighbors.’ More importantly, an Ethiopian proverb says ‘አካፋን አካፋንካላሉት ጭልፋ ነኝ ብሎ ገብቶ ይፈተፍታል as the legendary Ethiopian political leader Andrgachew Thige that understood TPLF warlords better than any contemporary Ethiopian political elite reiterated in his recent public address.
Unfortunately, Andargachew was kidnaped from Yemen airport and spent over four-years in prison charged with terrorism for advocating unity under nonother than the Former Foreign Minister of the ethnic apartheid government of Ethiopia led by TPLF warlord Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that somehow ended up the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO).
How the Former Health and Foreign Minister of Ethiopia and ethnic warlord of disunity, deceptions and ignorance ended up to be the Head of WHO against worldwide opposition tells a whole other story of how apartheid sponsors left the people of Ethiopia into perpetual division, deception and ignorance for so long and continue to evade scrutiny at home and in the world stage to the detrimental of reform remained unanswered.
The fact Dr Ghebreyesus with the blood and the treasure of the people of Ethiopia on his hand as many of his TPLF comrades are unchallenged by mainstream Media and donors is a million-dollar question yet to be uncover across the globe.
In a recent Menelik TV The View program titled the Genocide of Amhara & Amharic speakers in Ethiopia featuring David Steinman, the long-time historian of TPLF and the author of Money, Blood and Conscience (2018) and Lij Tedela Melaku, an Ethiopian historian and author of several books including Reason and the Sacred: Ethiopian Metaphysics (2018) and Reason and the Sacred: Handmaiden of Faith & Ancient Ethiopia (2015) explore TPLF’s delinquencies in its 27-years of ethnic apartheid rule and its top warlord Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus role as well as the source of the past genocide across the country and the recent killing spree in one of the nine ethnic apartheid region of Oromia TPLF reinstituted in 1991. Short of going in detail to how Dr. Tedros ended up in the UN agency WHO, the two experts explored all the facts how Ethiopian got here.
But, in the ongoing war-of-words between WHO led by Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus and the US Administration led President Donald Trump that accused the WTO General Director as the Communist Party of China apologist shades some light, what really is going on in global politics, economics, Media, human development and security behind closed doors led by global philanthropists and investors in partnership with rouge individuals masquerading as government officials and CEO of NGO and private enterprises
The Corbett Report titled “How Bill Gates Monopolized Global Health” shade some light to the evolution of the software mogul turn a global philanthropist that brough abroad TPLF warlord Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus through its Global Vaccine Aligns. More ‘philanthropist entrepreneurs’ like the Director of UN-MDG Dr Jeffery Sacks of Colombia University and his TPLF partner Dr Awash Teklehamanot at the Earth Institute of Colombia University and the CEO of The Center for National Health Development in Addis Ababa (its official website no longer exist) along several characters in Global Development Center at the same university tell a story; Gates’ partnership with rogue government officials, businessmen, investors and experts of one kind or another in the name of helping the world poor raises more question at best and illegality at worse if the laws applied across the board.In that regard, WHO General Director [s]election was made possible by nonother than the infamous global corporate philanthropist Bill Gates of Microsoft Corp and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Trust that generously funds WHO (the highest funder next to the US government) as well as UNDP and UN-MDG and many other multilateral and Bilateral organizations, NGOs, private enterprises, universities and Medias.
The championed of ethnic apartheid rule and divide of Ethiopians all his adult life as a Former Health and Foreign Minister, WHO General Director Dr Ghebreyesus’ briefing at the beginning of Covid-19 pandemic stating; “for God sake, we have lost… we have lost more than sixty thousand citizens of the world. Even one person is precious, whether young or old. We have more than a million cases. What are we doing?” is music to the ears of his Ethiopian victims’ families. But, more recently, shading his crocodile tears at Aspin Institute panel discussion hosted by Lester Holt of NBC, he called for unity among the world citizens to fight the Covid-19 virus but conveniently left his TPLF party’s ethnic apartheid virus he and his comrade brough to Ethiopia in 1991 on behalf of their sponsors. It speaks volumes how TPLF warlords’ survival depends on the complicity of their foreign sponsors and mainstream Media in undermining PM’s modest reform to unite Ethiopians at home and abroad.
In that regard, Vandana Shiva, the renown Indian Scientist and harsh critic of Bill Gates presentation is instructive, how globalists sponsored regimes, investors and NGOs got hold of the lives, liberties and the peruse of prosperity of millions of people around the world in the name of helping the poor and development.
In her most recent interview with the infamous Russia State-sponsored RT — Underground Program regarding the global pandemic, Shiva once again reinforced the role of what she referred as ‘philanthropy capitalists’ play — implicating the Gates Foundation that leads the pack.
Former US politicians turn investors, policy and development experts and fund raisers for the poor led by the Former US Secretary of State Ambassador Albright in the Clinton Admiration, the Former Senior National Security Adviser Ambassador Susan Rice and the Former USAID Administrator Gayle Smith during the Obama Administration with close relationship in business, investment, public health, development and security with TPLF warlords are not far behind by their action and inaction in not helping the new PM’s reform effort.
As it would be expected, Ambassador Albright, Ambassador Susan Rice and Gayle Smith along many celebrities including Lady Gaga that became stanch defender of TPLF warlord Dr Tedros Adhanom led WHO to protect their domestic and global interest as mainstream Medias willfully ignore their conflict of interests.
The number of former US government officials that worked for Albright Stonebridge Group and similar venture capital investment group and non-for-profit organizations involved in Ethiopia and ‘Horn of Africa’ or East Africa” in partnership with the ruling party owned and operated enterprises speaks volume; the revolving-door policy of former US officials turn investors using insider information and knowledge to cash-in for themselves with impunity and direct violation of US statues, including the 1938 Foreign Agent Registration Act and the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practice Act remained unexplored.
One notable example is the Former US government official (USAID) Addis Alemayehou that officially legitimized the ruling member party TPLF owned and operated Alameda Textile Plc. and Guna Trading House under African Growth Opportunity AGOA before he turned investor and the Founder and CEO of 251 Communications, “a full-fledged communication and public relations firm with office in Washington, DC Metropolitan Area and Addis Ababa”, according to its official website.
In July of 2008 as Chief of Party for USAID he address the private invite audience of the Ethiopian Diaspora Business Forum that was founded in 2008 by two brothers team operatives in New York to do busines in US. Few years later, he became a lobbyist and investor in Ethiopia himself.
The Africa Report in its 2014 article titled Ethiopia’s Farms and Finance stated, Alemayehou is “starting up a company in the manufacturing sector to take advantage of two things; incentives for companies in the manufacturing sector and the huge young population that is starting to have some discretionary spending power” and, quoted the ‘communication and PR expert’; “there are more university students here than the population of Djibouti. Imagine all these people buying soap for the first time”. But he says finance is still a problem. “You could have a purchase order from God himself, you still couldn’t get finance”.
Alemayehou also joined Albright Stonebridge Group (ASG), a global investment strategy firm as “Senior Advisor” on undisclosed year. Unfortunately, ASG was Founded in 2005 by the Former Secretary of State and UN Ambassador in the Clinton Admiration Madam Albright where he “uses his expertise in telecommunication to support client engagement across East Africa”, according to ASG’s website.
Moreover, according to undisclosed individuals run Ethiopian Diaspora Business Network December 3, 2016 report “Addis Alemayehou joins ASG’s Africa practice. Based in Addis Ababa, he draws on his extensive public and private sector experience to address ASG client needs in East Africa. Alemayehou served as Chief of Party of USAID’s Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) Ethiopia Program, where he worked to increase trade between the U.S and Ethiopia. He is also the co-founder of Ethiopian entertainment channel KANA TV and CEO of 251 Communications.”
To make matter even more complicated, according to a Sep 2017 interview with The Reporter, the same Addis Alemayehou is reportedly ‘a Canadian national who settled in Ethiopia in 2001’. How a Canadian national became Chief of Party for USAID “to increase trade between the U.S and Ethiopia” under AGOA and ended up an entertainment TV operator, lobbyist, investor, and Senior Advisor for the Former US Secretary of State led Albright Stonebridge Group (ASG) run venture capital in ‘East Africa’ in a span of 10 years indicates, PM Abiy have a lot on his plate dealing with corruption, collusion and racketeering of the previous ruling party operatives in diaspora and foreign partners posed as investors, journalist and expert of one kind or another and raises yet more questions than answers.
Unfortunately, two-years out, the most important government agency for the reform – the Federal Ethic and Anti-Corruption Commission (www.feac.gov.et) that supposed to deal with graft doesn’t even have a working website anymore but Facebook page with more pictures than worthy content and doesn’t even revile who the Director General of the Commission in charge.
Alemayehou is a classic example of diaspora operatives’ lawlessness across borders using their privilege and protection in Western nations and TPLF led Ethiopia regime insider information in search of venture (more vulture) investment, philanthropy funds and foreign aid opportunities to finance business ventures as foreign investors and pass on the risk to the people of Ethiopia.
When that was not enough, the Co-founder of the private-invite Ethiopian Diaspora Business Forum Henock Assefa (with his brother Yohannes Assefa, a real-estate lawyer in the State of New York turn Consultant based in Dubai that recently joined the PM’s Diaspora Trust Advisory Council Board) until he established Precision Consult and the CEO Forum in Addis Ababa.
His recent rather bizarre CEO Forum guests discussion on the Economic impact of Covid-19 on Ethiopia that include, Dr. Eyob Tekalgn Tolina, the Former SGI Frontier Capital CEO and World Bank employee turned Deputy Finance State Minister of Ethiopia and Senior Economic Adviser in the PM Office, Amero Selassie, the Former Economic Adviser for Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE) turned Africa Director of the IMF, Khalid Bomba, the Former Wall Street sovereign fund manager and Gates Foundation official turned CEO of the Agriculture Transformation Agency of the Government of Ethiopia and Berhane Demissie, the Former Ethiopian Ministry of Finance employee turned Managing Partner of Cepheus Growth Capital (with her partner Kassay Kebede, CEO of Panton Wealth Management firm based in Cayman Island and Board Member of the Diaspora Trust Fund and the Privatization of State Enterprise Advisory Council).
Though it is not clear who may be the audience of CEO Forum’s English language discussion on Economic impact of Covid-19 on Ethiopia, one thing common to all the CEOs presented is, they all were or still are employed by multilateral organizations, corporate philanthropists or foreign venture capital investors operating in Ethiopia. Moreover, the fact none of them ever mention the Economic impact of TPLF’s apartheid virus indicates, they are part of the problem not the solution.
Therefore, the same diaspora operatives’ selective amnesia on behalf of global finance remained an impediment to reform effort as they scrambled to salvage the status qua that serve them and their sponsors well.
Record shows, the two-brother team and associates were conduit between the Ethiopian Investment Commission led by two successive General Directors and the last General Director and the present Ethiopian Ambassador to US Fesum Arega in collaboration with a low-profile TPLF operatives in New York led by Mani Amare (Amanuel Amare).Incidentally, the ever changing LinkedIn profile of Henock Assefa and Yohannes Assefa’s LinkedIn profile have everything they want the world to know but, their most relevant works of the past decade as Founders of the Ethiopian American Magazine and the privately-invite Ethiopian Diaspora Business Forum that picks-and-choose who among the diaspora will have access for investment in Ethiopia from 2008 until PM Abiy came to power.
The Founder and CEO of ModernETH PLC, a New York based ICT firm and associates that have exclusive contract to run key government agencies’ websites and database since 1991 including, the Ethiopian Investment Commission yet to be investigated.
ModernETH like many questionable ventures including Fairfax Africa Fund led by the infamous Former EY Investment Consultant Zemedeneh Negatu, Precision Consult led by the Co-Founder of the Forum Henock Assefa himself are also sponsors of the last Ethiopian Diaspora Business Forum held in July 2018 in Washington, DC. It is not clear why they deleted the important work they pride themselves to involve many unsuspecting Ethiopians in the diaspora.
Regardless, the willful ignorance and lack of transparency of CEO Forum’ guests’ hosted by Henock also reviles, absence of independent economic institutions and Free Press to investigate conflict of interest at best and out right corruption and racketeering at worst remain the ongoing problem facing the economic reform effort in the last two years.
In that regard, in an article titled Development 101 for willfully Ignorant economists, politicians, journalists, investors…, we highlighted the absence of independent institutions to investigate domestic or foreign economic actors sponsored by global finance that appear-and-reappear on same kinds of Forums and Medias without fully disclosing their activities with impunity as the author of the Confession of the Economic hitman (2004) John Perkins described in his yet another book titled the New Confession of the Economic hitman published in 2016.
Likewise, the renowned Economists William Easterly in his groundbreaking book titled The Tyranny of Experts: Economist, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of The Poor (2014) further elaborated; willfully ignorant elites he refers as ‘tyranny of experts’ are causing havoc on the rights and liberty of people on behalf of their sponsors and, traces the origin of “technocratic solution to development” to “a special meeting” held by the British Empire Secretary of State for the African Colonies Warlord Malcolm MacDonald’s “Future Policy in Africa” in October 6, 1939 (a month after Britain declare war on Germany that necessitate manpower of the colonies to fight Nazi Germany). Among many notable British Africanist present at the meeting was Warlord William Hailey, a retired Colonial Governor of India and the author of “African Survey: a more scientific approach to the problem of health and material wellbeing” of Africans a year earlier in October of 1938, according to the book.
Following the application of the ‘New Philosophy of Colonial Rule’, Lord Hailey in May of 1941 said, “we should not give our native population cause to complain that when they asked for bread, we had offer them a vote”.
Incidentally, the book explores further, Lord Hailey’s lecture in October 29, 1941 to members of the Royal Empire Society (formerly the Royal Colonial Institute) titled “a new Philosophy of Colonial Rule”. What stood out was his statements –
“it is the primary function of the State to concentrate its attention on the improvement of the standards of living and the extension of the social services in the Dependencies… We should within reason give some measure of assistance to territories which cannot afford the initial steps necessary to raise the local standard of life”.
In that regard, Quartz Africa in its Nov 2019 article titled How colonial rule committed Africa to fragile authoritarianism summed up, why contemporary dysfunctional elites that lead ‘fragile authoritarianism’ became an impediment to any meaningful democratic and economic reform forwarded in favor of the jungle law on behalf of their sponsors.
The irony, the British force that supposedly came to help fight Fascist Italy in Ethiopia dismantled the infrastructure of the war ravage Ethiopia when the Colonial office declare the “improvement of the standards of living and the extension of the social services in the Dependencies” at same time says it all.
Unfortunately, six-decades later, the Former PM of ‘[d]emocratic Britain Tony Blair’s African Governance Initiative essentially adapted Hailey’s African Colonial Policy. As expected, the leading African spokesperson for Blair’s new philosophy of African Governance Initiative turned out to be non-other than the late ethnic apartheid PM of Ethiopia and the Chairman of ruling member Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) Party Melse Zenawi that not only reinstituted colonial ethnic apartheid rule for the first time in history based in London but, Developmental State Economy – a mixture of colonial apartheid and Marxist central command crony capitalist political economy – ‘fragile authoritarianism’.
Disappointingly, the leading philanthropist pushing Developmental State Economy under ethnic apartheid ‘fragile authoritarian’ regime happen to be nonother than the world-renowned IT guru and Founder of Microsoft Corp and the Bill & Malinda Foundation & Trust, a US national from the longest democracy in the world Bill Gates. Talk about strange bedfellows.
Therefore, in Jan of 2017 article, Bill Gates: When smart person makes dumb decisions in the name of helping the poor, what could people do?, and wrote,
“the impatient optimist Bill Gates would be better off to come back to reality from his alternative universe he hides behind in Africa to save his reputation and Brand”
Hence, it should not surprise anyone why the partnership between Tony Blair’ African Governance Initiative and Bill Gates’ Development Initiative came up with the same old ‘technocratic solution’ of colonial Britain that persisted today. Nor, should it be a mystery why the late ethnic apartheid warlord, a hardline Marxist and ethnic Mafia capitalist Melse Zenawi of an independent nation of Ethiopia was picked as a de facto African spokesperson in the world stage made possible by nonother his stanch admirer and a graduate of New College, Oxford University and Rhodes Scholar Dr Susan Rice.
Dr Rice after working for the infamous McKinsey Management Consulting firm Toronto office began her politics career as Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Affairs for the Clinton Administration under Secretory of State Madam Albright. After Clinton Administration, she joined the now ‘shuttered’ consulting firm Intellibridge Service founded in 1998 by a Former Clinton staffer David Rothkopf along Gayle Smith in 2001 and “worked to sell Intellibridge service to African government clients” according to Huffington Post Aug 8, 2020 report titled Susan Rice Has A Mysterious Gap In Her Resume. Who the ‘African government clients’ of the defunct firm may be and, what Susan Rice got out of her “African government clients” remain mystery?
Rice return to government in 2008 as US Ambassador to the UN followed by a Senior National Security Adviser for the Obama Administration along Secretory of State Hillary Clinton and Gayle Smith that ended up the head of USAID in the State Department until she join the Irish singer Bono led fund raising group for the poor One Campaign.
One of Dr Rice’s only three published work including Tough Love published last year was her doctoral dissertation in the New College at Oxford University titled the Commonwealth Initiative in Zimbabwe: Implication for international Peacekeeping, 1979-1980. As odd as it may sound for a US national that ended up to be a US Ambassador to the UN and a high-profile Senior National Security Advisor for President Obama to be concerned about Britain’s Common Wealth Initiative and implication for her old colony of Rhodesia named for a British warlord Cecil Rhodes led British South Africa Company (renamed Zimbabwe after independence 1979), it shows where her admiration for an ethnic apartheid warlord turned PM of Ethiopia and her disdain for representative democracy, the rule of law and the rights and liberty of the people of Ethiopia in particular and Africa in general came from.
Therefore, President Obama’s July 2015th declaration in Addis Ababa, the ethnic apartheid ruling party led by TPLF “is democratically elected government of Ethiopia” to the dismay of the world got to be a work of Dr Rice on behalf of what she refer a ‘friend and advisor’ Melse Zenawi not only she call brilliant but the best thing that happen to Ethiopia and Africa in general.
The Oxford University Rhodes Scholar honored by “Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs – the UK’s most distinguished honor for her dissertation says more about how US-Africa policy is outsourced to UK than what the world is led to believe by mainstream Media.
The silence of Dr Rice along Ambassador Albright and Gayle Smith on the ongoing chaos in Ethiopia instigated by the “democratically elected” ethnic minority apartheid party of 27-years led by their favorite member TPLF party is no accident either. In many recent Media appearance in defense of WHO led by notorious TPLF Warlord Dr Tedros Gebreyesus from President Trump Administration onslaught, the triplites’ selective amnesia about TPLF warlord reviles, life and liberty nor the rule of law matters only when their political and economic interest is at stake. After all, what President Trump do different to stock division in US than what their favorite late tyrant Melse did in Ethiopia to cry their lugs out the sky is falling in America?
The author of “Tough Love: My Story of the thing Worth Fighting For” (2019) apparently includes ‘Always Africa’ chapter. But, it is not clear ‘what Tough Love got to do with’ ‘Always Africa’ beyond empowering African ethnic warlords she consider friends to cause havoc through disunity, deception and ignorance instead of empowering the people through unity, truth and knowledge under the rule of law she despise unless it serves her interest.
The urgent need for a paradigm shift on reform effort and what Ethiopians can do to help
“When bad men combined, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in contemptible struggle” wrote the 18th century Irish Stateman, Philosopher and Member of The House of Commons Edmund Burke.
Burke, known for championing the independence of the 13 American colonies from the British Empire to the dismay of his peers that live off of her colonies proven, colonialism and its extended residue throughout the globe is as rotten in 20th century as it is in the 21st century.
What Burke saw to campaign against ‘bad men combined’ in his mist and ‘good men must associate’ to defeat them then eluded contemporary dysfunctional political elites like Susan Rice and her African peers, in the middle of global Black Lives Matter movement is nothing short of treachery in disguise.
Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed Administration that embraced unity, truth and knowledge as a rallying cry rightly replaced the ruling ethnic apartheid EPRDF party with Prosperity Party in direct contradiction to Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) that adapted the colonial philosophy of disunity, deception and ignorance of Lord Hailey’s “we should not give our native population cause to complain that when they asked for bread, we had offer them a vote”.
Now PM Abiy finally declared only the rule of law is the way to deal with TPLF warlords and willfully ignorant elites who are comfortable to operate under the rule of the jungle, It is another giant step in the right direction.
Where are the outpouring of supports from “Democratic” donor nations and ambassadors and the rest?
At the meantime, the endless bickering ‘what comes first, the chicken or the egg’ among dysfunctional elites and their sponsors remain an elaborate distraction from emancipating the people of Ethiopia as the old colonial powers hoped for.
Therefore, reform on unity, truth and knowledge require viable and independent institutions, especially Media, education, economic and data depository institutions to put the theory in practice and sort out ‘bad men from the good’ to make it happen.
Likewise, to replace the preexisting law of the jungle with the rule of law requires the separation of power between the three branches of government namely, the legislative, the judiciary and the executive and to put the theory in practice and watchdogs to make sure who-is-who causing havoc.
The legendary Nelson Mandala said,
“We have introduced a rule of law. That never existed for centuries in this country, [South Africa], especially under the apartheid regime, where law was reduced into disrepute”
Madiba whose first citizenship was Ethiopian (deprived of citizenship of his own occupied country of South Africa) disgraces the colonialist’s jungle law that operated in his home country of South Africa for over four centuries and throughout Africa since the 19th century. Experiencing what colonial warlords’ lawlessness can do to the people is precisely why he despised the apartheid regime of Ethiopia under TPLF not to set foot in a nation that afforded him citizenship when no nation would before he passed.
Ironically, every conceivable political leader of democratic nations and alike, including the apartheid regime of Ethiopia warlords and their sponsors came to his funeral not to honor him for his Long Walk to Freedom as they should but insult him.
The question is, where are the ‘good men’ of Ethiopia that failed to associate and end the ‘bad men combined’ that perpetuate ethnic disunity, deception and ignorance and the rule of the jungle of apartheid on behalf of their sponsors in Ethiopia?
Closer look at the institution of apartheid built in the last three decades reviles the bitter truth about the willfully ignorant elites, particularly from the diaspora that live under the rule of law in their adapted nations and perpetuate the rule of the jungle of their sponsors on the country of their birth as we witness them doubletalk their way out of their preindictment undermining the PM Abiy modest reform effort.
Therefore, the long-awaited failure to establish institutions and sort out the’ bad men’ from the good and implement the Rule of Law to punish offenders that crippled many nations to the detrimental of the rights and liberties of the people they consider their ‘subjects’ remained so in Ethiopia by the refusal for ‘good men to associate’ and stop their dysfunctional peers and their sponsors’ lawlessness.
The new PM is not expected to change the lawless apartheid institutions he inherited in short order. Nor changing the name of his party to Prosperity Party would change the dynamic of the existing apartheid institutions that created the Mafia state led by TPLF warlords and financed by the usual suspects.
Many examples can be lesson ‘Why Nation Fail: The Origin of Power, Prosperity and Poverty as the Arminian American economist Daron Acemoglu and British political scientist James A Robinson argued on the evolution political, social and economic institutions and the rule of law governing nations.
The Peruvian novelist, politician, journalist and educator and the 2010 Noble Prize recipient for literature Mario Vargas Llosa that swung from left-to-right ideology at the expenses of the people of Peru throughout his 84-years lifetime to become one of the 25 leading figures on Information and Democracy Commission established by Reporters Without Boarders also confess;
“The foundation of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible form of injustice, produces the greatest material and culture progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights. According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal”.
Though better late than never, the old Colonial Spain citizen Llosa argues the same thing in theory short of calling out the offenders to put it to practice remained problematic.
More practically and forcefully, his fellow countryman Hernando de Soto, the world-renowned economist and a stanch advocate of liberty and private property right for the poor argued, lawless ruling elites and their sponsors continue to stifle the rights and liberty of the people from participating in formal political social and economic process – essentially for the same reason colonial regimes did from the 16th to the 20th century.
The author of the Mystery of Capital (2000) and The Other Path (2002) is also the Founder and CEO of one-of -a kind institute in the world — The Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Lima, Peru put his theory in practice and, proven in yet another recent Reason TV documentary titled Hernando de Soto knows How to Make the Third-World Richer than the First as he describes a better path for ruling elites and their sponsors that refuse to accept the democratic right and liberty of the people not to mention respect for the rule of law they lecture in their respective countries.
Therefore, it is not a mystery why they emphasize ownership society under the rule of law vs. subjugated societies under the law of the jungle that separate the ruling elites governing democratic nation from ruling elite governing fragile authoritarian nations.
Thus, any public and private institutions and ‘experts’ in Ethiopia including, high-profile technocrats in multilateral, bilateral organizations and foundations that claim to help the ‘poor’ made poor by conveniently skipping ‘the foundation of liberty’ (private property and the rule of law) for the same reasons as the celebrated Colonial Britain’s War-Lord William Malcolm Hailey outlined in his African Survey must be challenged. They are the primary cause of why nothing fundamental change took place in the last six decades.
As the legendry 19th-century Hindu Monk Swami Vivekananda wrote, “Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die”.
PM Abiy came a long way to dissolve the ethnic apartheid party of disunity, deception, and ignorance by forming ‘Prosperity Party’ of unity, truth, knowledge and, declares the rule of law to end the law of the jungle. But, putting it in practice is where ‘the rubber hit the rough road’ remain challenging.
What PM Abiy needs more than anything is setting the ground work for ‘good men’ to associate in establishing Peruvian version of Institute for Liberty and Democracy of Ethiopia that would exposes willfully ignorant elites and sponsors led rotten institutions built to undermine the political, social and economic liberties of the people of Ethiopia and the rule of law.
In closing, no one enlightens Ethiopians to counters the British Empire’s War-Lord Thomas Macaulay’s plea of the 1830s what to do to ‘conquer’, in his own words ‘the most civilized people he had never seen’ than the honorable Ethiopian historian, educator and author Taye Bogal.For example, Media, education, economic and data depository institutions where truth and knowledge are buried for the convenience of the ruling elites and the usual sponsors that are most needed to advance the reform remained dysfunctional. Simply disclosing who run them, what they do, where they came from and when and, how they are financed goes a long way to end stalemate. Over two years since the reform started, the fact they are hiding behind walls to undermine reform testify, lawlessness still rule the day.
The homegrown public intellectual and a treasure of the people by just asking the right questions alone frightens functionally illiterate contemporary intellectuals sponsored by the usual suspects.
In a recent lecture, he once again narrated, “ያልተማሩ አባቶቻችን ያቆዬትን ሀገር የተማሩ መህይሞች አያፈርሷትም” — reinforcing; “when bad men combined, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in contemptible struggle”.
In that regard, in October 10, 2016 article titled Civilized people, uncivilized regime and dysfunctional elites we asked,
“Can we Ethiopians get over talking about how bad and ugly the uncivilized rogue regime is and deal with the dysfunctional elites that made its rule possible on the civilized people of Ethiopia?”
Once again, the endless bickering of “what come first — the chicken or the egg?” debate will only end when ‘good men associate and form the Ethiopian Institute for Liberty and Democracy to expose and enforce the rule of law and chase ‘የተማሩ መህይሞች’ and their sponsors out of body politics, economics, education, Media … and the rest.
Breaking ‘honor among thieves’ alone is not enough but relentlessly challenging willfully ignorant elites’ cat-and-mouse game habit to sustain the status qua in every turn. After all, “lawlessness is a self-perpetuating, ever-expanding habit” as the 20th century American journalist, champion of women suffrage and the author of I Saw Hitler (1932) Dorothy Thompson put it. That was why she was — expelled from Nazi Germany by a personal order of The Fuhrer in 1934.
Leave a Reply