PLAGIARSIM AND PLAIN THEFT

A WOMAN CALLED MEAZA MENGSITE plagiarized one of  my short stories (1993) and wrote a fulll book  " Beneath the Lion's Gaze" and has refused to apologize up to now. I have no lawyer to take to court in the USA. In Ethiopia, a certain Awgchew (a book seller) violated the copyright of Babile Tola and translated into Amharic the book entitled :The Red Terror in Ethiopia--To kill a Generation. It was also a very bad translation. The authorized translation was actually made by the late Tsegaye Gebre Medhin debteraw killled by the TPLF regime. Awgchew later apologised but a like thieving cat has come back again to republish the  unauthorized translation (Empress Publisher,Addis Abeba). Babile has also no lawyer to argue for his rights as the writer. Injustice at all levels.

OBAMA'S BAD WOMEN

OBAMA'S BAD WOMEN Hama Tuma Michelle Obama aside, Barack Obama has a penchant for very bad women. Wendy Sherman, the windbag of Foggy Bottom, and Gayle Smith, the new USAID chief who loves dictators, and the notorious Susan Rice are cases in point. Smith has been around more time to do more damage and to contribute to the putrefaction of the Clinton--Obama policy on Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular. Gayle Smith first let her white face get burnt by the Sudanese sun in 1984 when she came over to fulfill her role in the destabilization of the pro soviet regime in Addis Abeba. She was a correspondent in Cairo and conveniently made her way to the Sudan and as a journalist and aid activist leeched herself on the then rebel fronts called the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and its then puppet the Tigrean People's Liberation Front, the same one that is now in power in Addis Abeba and is being praised by Susan Rice and Wendy Sherman . Gayle even went to the so called liberated areas, became the lover of one of the top TPLF leaders (Yemane Jamaica--an EPLF fighter seconded to supervise the TPLF), learned some Tigrigna, advised TPLF women to set up a union and wrote fan articles on the two fronts and other secessionist groups not forgetting to attack and belittle the pan Ethiopian organizations like the EPRP. She had fellow travelers in Dan Connell, James Firebrace, Paul Henze, Alex de Wall, Oxfam, World Vision, UNICEF. the Norwegian Council of Churches and many other dubious groups and fellows with more suspicious connections and motives. As some observer had written, Gayle Smith was the connection between the CIA and the Tigrean front and behind the diversion of aid for the famine victims to the TPLF coffers to buy arms from China and favors from the Sudanese regime. Bono calls Gayle a force of nature though he does not mean gale, catastrophe, hurricane, and total disaster-- all of which she was for Ethiopia's future. Bob Geldof, on his part, has refused to admit that he was either duped or persuaded to be part of the food aid swindle, and will likely refuse to admit the nefarious role of Gayle Smith. But, she was a disaster indeed. When the pro soviet regime fell she ended her "journalistic" cover and moved on to become the chief of staff of USAID and later the special assistant to Clinton and head of the African affairs in the National Security Council. In both these positions, she gave aid and advice to the now dead dictator called Meles Zenawi, the boss of her lover Yemane. According to one reporter, as an NSC serious member " she rose early every morning to help prepare the National Security Estimate, the report given to the President first thing every morning at the start of the Presidential work day. Every morning, rain or shine, she was in the White House ready to brief President Clinton and answer any questions he may have about the various activities of the CIA et al in Africa". Gayle Smith remained so smitten by the Ethiopian dictator that she backed him on his war with Eritrea, his election rigging and tyrannical rule. So much so that Obama sent her along with Susan Rice to the dictator's funeral to heap eulogy on the enemy of Ethiopians thereby sprinkling salt on the open wounds of our people. Worse still, Gayle Smith had a hand in bringing forward Susan Rice, the Madeline Albright disciple, to the attention of her boss Anthony Lake. Wendy Sherman is, on the other hand, the fourth ranking official of the US State Department where she serves as undersecretary for political affairs. A feather weight by Smith's standards. this social worker was, during the Clinton Administration, a Counselor of the United States Department of State and Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State specially on North Korea Policy. Recently, she reared her head in Addis Abeba to stamp the repressive regime as democratic and the coming May general election as fair and just. Statement that must have shocked the regime itself as it knows like everybody that the coming election is as rigged as the earlier ones. Sherman appeared as a windbag with little or no knowledge of the Ethiopian reality. The Washington Post politely called her comments "irresponsible" but Ethiopians are not obliged to be polite towards her. A dog does bark for the master who feeds it. Sherman is a "Riceist" and if this word rhymes with another she may also be one. Her wanton and more than irresponsible words echo that of Susan Rice, the darling of African dictators who are pro American unlike Beshir and Mugabe. It will be a waste of time on my part to explain to Sherman why her words shame her to the core but she knows the situation no less than most. She knows of the repressive laws against NGOs and the Press, how the so called anti terror law is used to stifle dissent, how the regime is the predator of the free press, how the election board and the election laws serve the regime, how the regime holds more than forty thousand political prisoners, the torture in jails and ghost prisons, the sale of children and young women unto modern slavery, the massive corruption, the ethnic discrimination and so on and on. She knows the regime is ethno-centrist, if not fascistic, and outright authoritarian with a visible Stalinist nostalgia--totalitarian-- but as a good diplomat she lies and sleeps with the enemy of democracy (figuratively for her and literally for Gayle Smith). On top of all this is Obama, the big time disappointment for Africa, with Samantha Power at the UN (heaven forbid!) and the inept Kelly as the foreign minister (he popped into Somalia recently and declared to the world things are turning around for the better!). We await his never to come apology. Obama promised a lot to Africans but failed to respect any of his words. He cuddles and supports dictators and, under the cover of an anti terror war, has unleashed destruction in the Horn, to Libya in North Africa and Yemen across the Red Sea. The instability in the region brings to the fore the primary responsibility of the misguided (Rice, Smith, Sherman, Vicki Huddleston and co. ) American foreign policy with Obama playing the drone master. However, to be fair to the conceited Americans, I must reveal to them that those in power in Addis Abeba have had a long experience in duping visitors and making wide eyed fans out of them. They were trained by none other than the likes of Gayle Smith. The visits to the so called liberated areas were organized like the visit of the Potemkin villages, women farming the land, guerrillas being welcomed by ululating village women, prepared fighters acting world savvy and asking prepared political questions on the international situation and the visitors leave mesmerized, some comparing their experience to utopia being built amidst war and penury, Worthwhile to read the reports and articles by Smith and her likes during the eighties. The arrogant Geldof was "robbed" in broad daylight but I am inclined to believe that he was an accomplice to or in his own fate. and he is refusing to admit his bad actions because he can't accept he was outwitted by thieving guerrillas in plastic sandals. Gayle Smith as chief of staff of USAID gave the TPLF $30 million in food aid for Tigrai. She is expected to use the agency to give more help to the brutal regime. Nothing new is expected from Rice and Sherman. Nothing new from Obama too whose confused and war mongering policies will continue to wreak havoc all over the world. And if at all Hilary wins, the Rice and Smith band may have it even better than now. After all, Hilary and her daughter danced in the street of Asmara, Eritrea , and together with her husband called the ruler there (along with Meles, Museveini and Kagame) "one of the new democratic leaders". Just think where this praise took all of them! At the end of the day, what is going on is crude and cruel real politics. Obama and his bad women (and men) serve, as they should, America's interest. They hobnob with and help tyrants because the tyrants are their own blood soaked SOB s. Donald Yamamoto was not yet ambassador to Ethiopia when opposition figures went to meet him at the State Department to complain about the rigging, stealing of votes and killings during the 1997 general election. He replied to their complaints and said (not verbatim); we know more people than your number (193) have been killed. We have photos of snipers on rooftops indiscriminately shooting and killing protesters. We know but we cannot touch Meles. America needs him. End of speech. America's policy has been anti African from time immemorial, it has worked against nationalist African leaders. It was behind the murder of Lumumba and the installment of the dictator Mobutu, it helped to foil the coup against Haile Sellasie, it overthrew Nkrumah, it fully backed Apartheid and categorized the ANC and Mandela as terrorist, and more. What is odd is for Africans to expect a pro African stance from Washington, London or Paris. America needs Rice, Gayle Smith and other surreal windbags like Wendy Sherman to defend and foreword its national interests that are still imperialist by all standards. Its allies are retrograde monarchies like that of Saudi Arabia or repressive regimes like the one in Ethiopia praised by Rice, Gayle and Sherman, Sleeping with dictators has for long been the pleasure of America whose rhetoric otherwise sounds hollow to the core. Sadly also, America needed Obama himself, alas, and we console ourselves by saying the darkness of night will not prevent the morning from coming.

THE HIGH COST OF SATIRE AND DOUBLE STANDARDS Hama Tuma Ethiopians have bitter sweet sayings and proverbs in line with their tradition of double entendres-- or wax and gold. What you hear is not the real message, what you see is not real at all. Go figure. Your mouth is your first enemy--shut it up. And so we say God does not quarrel with you without first preparing a big feast for you. Saydegis aytalam. Self delusion? Maybe, maybe not. Many a cloud has actually no silver lining. At the risk of offending some late comers to the magazine, I have to admit that the murder of the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo has become a god sent relief for the satirical magazine which was facing bankruptcy and sold no more than 30,000 copies. It now has 200,000 subscribers and has become world famous. Sad as the death of the satirists maybe, it is a blessing in disguise for the magazine. The blessing has also concerned Francois Holland, one of the dullest French president in recent history. His shockingly low public opinion support has shot up to 40%. On the fringe, there was also Netanyahu, responsible for the deaths of thousands in the Gaza, who waxed lyrical against what he called terrorism while the terrorist gangs of Stern and the Hgannah and their leaders like Menahem Begin are part of his recent history. He is busy using the incidents to call on European Jews to return to Israel. Even the keleptocrat Paul Biya of Cameroon used the Paris murders and his so called campaign againt Boko Haram to appear in patriotic garb and to dupe people enough for sane and honest citizens to delare Je suis Biya. For these of us who grew up in the sixties, the sight of people kissing soldiers and police does jar. It would have shocked he martyred cartonnists themselves who had little paience for authority and tyrants of all hues. Dictators who are persecuting journalists in their own countries were part of the massive Paris demonstration and declaring I am Charlie in straight faced mockery. It was a double standard show that verged on the inappropriate and grotesque. The imposed limits on Satire these days would haev resulted in the continuous banning of Charlie Hebdo's irreverent predecessor, Hara Kiri. Charlie Hebdo was secular at best and in contradicrion with the existing intolerance and religious fanaticism. God is humour is considered as a heresy with men rushing to kill and anticipating paradise and virgins if at all such belief is in their books, The tolerance of the feudal and medieval Saudi regime by the hypocrite West comes to mind. Every Friday, the Saudi regime beheads prisoners (including women ) in public just as the ISIL slits the throats of soldiers,civilians,Copts and journalists. Mostly Muslims we should point out. Much as some may look for social reasons for the religious extremism, it is evident that political ends are indeed being sought using religion as a reason for war. The concerted attempt by many in the West to link the actions of extremists to Islam as a religion and the demand that all Muslims apologize and/or come out in condemnation of the extremists is two-facedness at its best. No one demanded Norwegians to apologise for Anders Breivik when this bigot killled nore than 70 people in Norway. Baruch Goldstein, a Jew, murdered 29 praying Muslims in Palestine but no one called on Israelis to apologise en masse for his act. The asassination of Ytzhak Rabin did not suggest that eery Israeli was responsible for this act. And the unending saughter in Gaza? That a handful of fanatics killed the Charlie Hebdo journalists does not make Muslims and Islam resposnsible. From the Crusades to Indochina, to Iraq and Afghanistan the burden has not fallen on the White Christian world as a whole. The French prime minister is prattling about Islamo-fascism without adding to this Christiano-fascism for the Crusades type destructive campaign by the West itself to destroy Iraq, Libya. etc.. The protest around Charlie Hebdo was hijacked by the powers that be and behind it all there looms the question on beliefs, censorship and the freedom of the press. In Africa, we are familiar with self censorship unless you have the martyr's complex. Washington's close friend,Saudi Arabia, flogs bloggers. Washington's main African ally, that is to say Ethiopia, is a prdator of the free press and has jailed nine bloggers and many more journalists. The so called fight against what the West calls terrorism has made a democrat out of the likes of Idris Debi and imperialist invaders are being praised as liberators. Who at first stoked the fire of extremism? If not the Wahbists and Salafists, and the West ever hungry for resources and obsessed with domination and hegemony, then who? Saudi Arabia and Qatar-- from the Taliban to ISIL and the Boko Haram their hand is evident at the same time as they jockingly join the so called coalition set up by Washington. The destruction of Libya by NATO is at the centre of the chaos in the Sahel and the strengthening of the extremist elements. The Bokos are Salafists par excellence. Let us say show me the money, follow the money and ask where do all these barbaric elements get their support, money and weapons? The Boko Haram does not even kidnap that many foreigners and ransom them for money and yet it is evidently not lacking finance and modern arms. ISIL enjoyed surreptitious support from Turkey and Qatar to name a few. Sudan's Omar Beshir states that Boko Haram is funded and backed by the CIA and Mossad. Conspiracy theory aside, who gives these barbaric groups their military and financial backing. It cannot be Al Qaida only. In Yemen, the Saudi hegemony has collapsed with Iran gaining the upper hand. The West wants to insinuate that all struggles by the oppressed desrve the denigrating tag of terrorist but who is the terrorist par exclence in our world ? This is the poppy field of double standard and you can go dizzy at a whiff. The same time as 17 people got murdered in Paris, Boko Haram slaughtered hundreds (Amnesty says 2000) in Baga but this got little coverage. This has surprised many, including Africans who should have known better. Not every life is the same--one white nun killed in the Congo amounted to hundreds of Congolese lives and that was years and years ago before such terrible inflation and economic crisis. Black lives are not, as someone aptly pointed out, "grieveable", they are on the contrary "losable". How many journalists have been killed elsewhere than in Paris with little or no outcry? American trained Iraqis have killed many including one inquisitive American freelancer killed by a sniper. The recent hullabaloo about a psychotic and ultra patriotic, ( is there a different kind of this animal?), American sniper who killed at least 160 Iraqis (some say including women and children) comes to mind. Boko Haram's great great grandfather was surely perfidious British colonialism but its godfathers are the same ones who spawned Al Qaida itself. Who backed the warlords of Somalia and paved the ways for the Islamic Court and today's Al Shabab? Who are ones who paved the way for the extremists in Libya? who are the ones who, under the cover of Attacking Beshir Assad, gave support to hard liners and fanatics? Uncomfortable questions that one cannot expect the CNN or Fox news to ask. America backed the supported the separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia and stated that referendum only concerns Eritreans and has nothing to do with Ethiopians who were actually losing territory and becoming landlocked among other losses. When Crimea wanted to hold its own referendum the first one to oppose was Washington fuming that it concerns all Ukrainians. Double standard is more than alive and kicking and as usual Africa is the main victim. In this broad space, the field left for satire to roam free as it should is very limited. Many years back a French cinema hall showing the film on Jesus by Scorsese was fire bombed in San Michel, Paris. If people who consider someone as their prophet see him depicted as a dog their anger and consternation is understandable. I am sure a book or film blaspheming the virgin Mary would be confronted by similar anger and denunciation in Ethiopia. The attempt to understand the reality does not in any way mean condoning censorship and the abridgement of the right of expression. As a longstanding foe of obscurantism, dictatorship, censorship and any form of religious fanaticism I have no intention of tolerating aggression against free expression. laicism and irreverence. The problem is multi -dimensional though and the state of our world now does not favor tolerance at all. Racism has become routine and widespread. And if 17 lives lost in Paris draw more attention and indignation (America sent only its ambassador to the Paris demonstration) than hundreds and millions more killed in Nigeria or Congo this is to be expected. It was and is our world. Satire and truth cost and even the big powers are not interested in paying the cost but in perpetuating the crisis. And Africans, with more serious political problems have instead on rampage burning mosques and churches. The broad plan of wrecking the Middle East and Africa is in action.

THE GELDOF SWINDLE

THE GELDOF SWINDLE ( or THE BUSINESS OF AID ) " Bod Geldof is a humanitarian activist. He is also an egotist, a celebrity economist, and quite wrong on Africa". So wrote, politely, Mr.Greg Mills in the Guardian of March 8/2013. Bob Geldof is a also a businessman who has much profited from the aid business or from what some call the business of hunger. Those who remembered the Live Aid concert to help the victims of famine in Ethiopia cannot forget the paternalist, if not racist, song called "Do they know it is Christmas?",The song has reared its head again ostensibly to aid victims of Ebola in West Africa and many Africans there are not amused at all. This time again the infamous song (which even Geldof himself had termed horrible in the past) has been sung for Ebola victims and widely condemned as a symbol of ignorance, cringe worthy, demeaning and racist to boot. During the 1984 famine, Geldof, an almost washed out singer of the C list Boomtown Rats, rose to prominence through Live Aid, was knighted in Britain and used the aid money and trucks to finance and arm the now in power repressive Tigrean front in Ethiopia. Geldof vehemently denies this but much evidence is present to prove that he was not duped by the street smart and now dead Meles Zenawi. War on Want, which stole more than a million pounds of aid money, did not hide the fact it was directly helping the front and not the famine victims. Numerous NGOs helped the Tigrean front under the cover of aid for the famine victims to use the situation to bring down the pro soviet regime in Addis Abeba. Geldof, who wanted to preach to Ethiopians on what is known as Christmas, forgot then that Ethiopians were Christians long before his ancestors. With the Live Aid fame, he was also able to join the Bono fellow to self appoint themselves as the mouth pieces of Africa. A pretension that got them next to cruel dictators and other world leaders. Geldof was a fan of the Tigrean dictator in Addis Abeba and has recently gone on record to praise the war monger and corrupt Tony Blair who had embraced Meles Zenawi. Actually, Geldof, like his friend called Bono, has failed to realize the economic problems of Africa and their causes. Not drought but bankrupt agricultural policies, not humanitarian aid to sustain development but real investment and democratic rights in the countries. Geldof was recently in Ethiopia to watch over his wine business together with a Tigrean (the ethnic group of the ruling front) millionaire who declares publicly and without shame that the people need food and security first and not democracy . The much touted economic double digit growth is obviously fiction in the light of the reality of mass impoverishment which even the World Bank (often an apologist of the tyrannies) has admitted a few months back. A few Tigrean elites and front leaders control the economy and have embezzled the nation's wealth and enjoyed the support of the likes of Blair and Washington because they have accepted the western diktat and invaded Somalia and given a drone base to America in Arba Minch, Southern Ethiopia. This is the regime that Geldof admires and with whom it is doing business on a big scale. Massive donor aid from Britain and the USA has sustained the repressive regime and with the added help of China the regime has been able to stifle dissent. Journalist are persecuted, bloggers in jail, opposition web sites and radios blocked and jammed, extra judicial executions systematic. The regime in Addis Abeba is one of the top predators of the free press, practices routine torture and holds close to 40,000 political prisoners all over the country in known and secret prisons. It has enabled foreigners (Indian, Chinese, Arabs mainly) to engages in a gigantic land grab which has led to the dislocation and forced resettlement of hundreds of thousands. If construction of buildings and villas is a sign of development it must be said that the routine power failure in the cities and the lack of adequate drinking water has made the so called buildings and condominiums unlivable. More than half a million street dwellers or homeless people contrast with the indecent opulence of the ruling clique. It is to this type of country that Geldof often travels for profitable business and to praise the dictators to the skies. His friend, the late Meles Zenawi, shrieked that economic progress and democracy are not necessarily joined, that China and South Korea under Park developed while being politically repressive. However, the so called Chinese model is flawed and Ethiopia is not China to begin with. This same conception has been forwarded to portray the Kagame regime in Rwanda as developmental. However, recent reports by an economic expert who defected has revealed that Kagame had ordered him to doctor the economic statistics to present impressive development. 10 million people in need of food aid, a population that can ill afford to eat three times a day, 50% youth unemployment, average 28% inflation, and many more factual and real statistics indicate that the great leap forward by the regime in Addis Abeba is pure fiction. The deception is entertained by Geldof and co, and the West, to sustain a treacherous and repressive regime. America and Britain back the savage regime in Saudi Arabia and they have not found it onerous to back the regime in Ethiopia. Geldof finds himself in the middle of this. In the Awash winery, Bob Gelfof holds a substantial share and he persuaded a wine expert called Phillip Pritchard to come to Ethiopia to give expert advice. Awash bottles seven million liters annually and is mainly owned by a Tigrean millionaire working tightly with the tyrannical ruling elite. As one newspaper wrote : Geldof owns a private equity he chairs, 8 Miles, which owns Blue Nile, a company which acquired the 70 year old winery (producing Gouder wine) based in Addis Abeba and a vine yard near the town of Ziway" from the privatization agency.. Recently, in Addis Abeba, Geldof dined at the famous Castelli restaurant with the notorious officials and hirelings of the regime (Dawit Zewde, Sebhat Nega, Elleni Gebre Medhin) and waxed lyrical on his business activities. Geldof has used the aid business to profit personally just as the man he admires, Tony Blair, has become a distasteful example of using one's government post for personal profit and corruption. Geldof hobnobs with ethic chauvinist dictators in Ethiopia and Blair is a consultant of notoriously anti democratic tyrants ranging from Saudi Arabia to Kazakhstan. Does Geldof know he is exposed and finished? Not yet, and he continues to peddle his ignorant "Do they know it is Christmas?" song without shame. He has allied with the Tigrean regime in Ethiopia to exploit right less workers and the country as a whole. From a self proclaimed humanitarian to a merciless business partner of the enemies of Ethiopia-- the voyage did not take that many years. And that Bono fellow? Read the following: ‘As his career continues to free fall into total irrelevance, pop star “Bono” of the rock group U2 has announced his support for a U.S.-backed plan to rape and pillage Africa by stealing its land and agricultural systems and replacing them with corporate-owned GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) and chemicals. At the recent G8 Summit held at Camp David in Maryland, the Obama regime met with private industry leaders to announce the launch of the “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,” a thinly-veiled Green Revolution 2.0 that aims to uproot autonomous family farming systems throughout Africa and replace them with toxic monoculture systems controlled by multinational corporations like Monsanto.’ The charity business is well and alive. The business of aid and hunger is benefitting the lords of poverty. Geldof, who had boasted he has helped British business in Africa, maybe knighted by the Queen but he is considered by Africans as a front man for neocolonial plunder of Africa.

IS EBOLA WHITE? EBOLA or whatever that is ravaging people in West Africa is no joking matter and trivializing it is not my intention at all. Condolences and sympathies to those who lost a kin or are suffering is due. And yet, Ebola raises many questions needing immediate answers. Is Ebola really Ebola? is Ebola a plot? Is it man made? Is it an inflated malaria? A Meningitis gone wild? What is its color--black? white? Is it the white man's perpetual desire to reduce the black population? In Ethiopia, we say a person who escaped from a snake's attack will jump in fright when he or she sees a vine on the ground. Aggrieved, duped and hurt so many times, we Africans have become suspicious of all things bad attributed to our beloved continent. Some people attribute most viruses and plagues to Africa. Some think the A in AIDS refers to Africa. Bill Maher said AIDS came from the copulation of an African with a monkey. Ebola is now said to be a result of eating monkeys though it did not appear in Asia where monkey meat is a delicacy in some countries. Is Ebola a conspiracy against Africa? Some seem to think so as the following article does suggest: http://www.undergroundworldnews.com The recent Ebola outbreak in Africa coincides with a massive Meningitis Vaccine campaign targeting over 100 million Africans; notably including all four African countries (Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone) caught in the epicentre of the viral spread. The cost-effective vaccine, MenAfriVac®,(less than US$0.50 per dose) was “kept outside the cold chain for up to four days at up to 40°C”. Vaccine Resistance Movement is investigating the link between this extremely toxic experimental vaccine and the sudden surge in cases of Ebola. Symptoms of ‘Acute fulminating Meningococcal Septicemia’, a virulent form of bacterial meningitis (marked by extreme vomiting, hemorrhaging – excessive bleeding around the eyes & mouth, severe blackish bruising on the arms & legs), closely resemble those seen in Ebola victims. Why has the Ebola virus suddenly erupted in a region of Africa known as the “Meningitis Belt”? Because the WHO & CDC/enter for disease control--USA) are deliberately trying to cover up their bloody tracks once again. This supposed outbreak of Ebola bares all the hallmarks of a rarified, virulent strain of bacterial Meningitis, ‘Acute fulminating Meningococcal Septicemia’, also known as ‘Waterhouse-Friderichsen Syndrome’. Another case of a dangerous, untested vaccine triggering a tsunami of viral mutations – in impoverished regions". The accusation that the depopulation of blacks--specially Africans--has for long been on the agenda of western countries is not to be dismissed as a stupid right wingers' raving. More, Ebola must definitely be worse and more dangerous than Boko Haram and the region's version of Al-Qaida for America to send soldiers and not medical personnel like Cuba. Deadly as it is, the color and texture of Ebola baffles. My very cynical friend from Ghana insists that Ebola is as African as Cassava and caused by a costly desire to be noticed on the part of a West Africa jealous of the Somalia status (drones and invasions). He further stated that Syria, and the Kurds especially, are dying with envy as Syria has no American soldier on its soil and is praying for a Middle East Ebola. Africa's alleged double digit annual economic growth that ought to be envied by China and France among others has not become a best seller fiction (though fiction it is) --we need money and attention and voila Ebola! And so, Ebola could very well be an African greed and money con act that misfired--curse on the corrupt regimes. Attractive as this argument seems, I am not satisfied that Ebola is black. It is obvious that Africans are prone to slaughter Africans so much so that some African Americans do not want to be called African at all and one TIME magazine journalist even blessed his ancestors for leaving Africa as slaves. (By the way can one take the slave trade as mass migration, forced as it was, and a blessing?). After much observation and absolutely no research in West Africa, I am convinced that Ebola is white. Such catastrophes over Africa were in the past the doings of whites--colonialists and imperialists. Western pharmaceutical giants (Pfizer in Nigeria for example) have always taken Africa and blacks as guinea pigs or monkeys for experiment. Why not Ebola then? Could it be the result of their misfired experiment? Ethiopians, who are a suspicious lot and know far too much about death be it from famine or brutal State terror, say those who are not suspicious (doubting) will be weeded out (killed) . Or as Mizner said: " I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education" is worth quoting in this instance. Now that Ebola is appearing in the Western countries, its alleged "Africanness" is also being put to test. In this connection, one wonders why the vaccine that saved another American was not given to the Dallas patient (color black) who has now died. While more than 4000 Africans have perished and millions are expected to be infected come next year, not one white person has died from Ebola (minus two Spanish missionaries--we know how they always steal our thunder- and a very sick nurse who may try to challenge my assertion by dying) . What about the thousands of Chinese in West Africa ? I have not heard of one dying up to now. The thousands of exploitative and racist Lebanese merchants? Not one has died from what I have tried to gather. Ebola is apparently very much anti black. As was and is Aids. As they say, no statue has ever been erected for a critic but this should not frighten us unto saying nothing. Ebola is anti African. If it has now appeared in the West then it can only mean that THEY have goofed somehow. Of course, some Africans would see it as deserved revenge on the colonialists and predators of the West. Ebola in the West would force them to find a vaccine, Ebola in Africa who cares ! It is like malaria, perhaps more deadly but so long as it is an African curse why bother. All those who argue that Africans are already too many and not concerned by birth control would be happy. The less blacks the better. Ebola is definitely white and racist if we have to bluntly put it. So, what is the tomorrow of Ebola? It will kill more Africans and will, as they say now, spread to the West too and shake up their world till they realize that sending soldiers is not the solution. Till they get it that Ebola may be as dangerous as those the West calls terrorists and the solution is not soldiers and drones but medical mobilization and vaccines. That said what the hell is Ebola? The result of messed up experimentation? a biological test gone awry? a virus on Africa? The easiest is to conclude that Ebola is some devil that detests Africa and Africans. As the Chinese would say a white devil. All said, Ebola is, alas, very real. Fortress Europe and America have now one more reason to say blacks please go back.

The Dollar side of War

THE DOLLAR SIDE OF WAR Or (HOW LOVELY IS WAR?) A wise person once wrote as follows: “A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. (…) How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? None or very few is the number. Vladimir Putin came up with a proposal that the beleaguered Obama could not refuse even if the self-declared Socialist Francois Hollande of France fumed at the mouth calling for war. But it was not only powerless Holland (Syria not being Mali) who was disappointed by the non-declaration of war against Bashir Al Assad. The war profiteers felt jilted out billions of dollars. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have benefitted many petroleum connected companies, tomahawk sellers (1.45 million dollars per missile),health care and construction firms, Halliburton, Bechtel, DynCorp, General Dynamics, Aegis Defense services, soft drink companies, Lockheed, several other defense contractors including private guards and mercenaries etc. to the tune of US $ 70 billion for a decade long war in Iraq alone. A full out strike against Syria would have brought in billions to the war profiteers as was the case during the attack on Libya which is now verging to a failed state status. The collapse of Gadhafi and Libya has upset the whole security situation and balance in the Sahel area and had led to more wars that are benefitting the defense contractors and suppliers of petrol, jet fuel, bombs and the like. Dick Cheney was with Halliburton and, a former friend of Sadam, a big beneficiary from the war on Iraq. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have their own agendas on Syria as has Turkey and the much trumpeted rebel arenot beautiful democrats that Cameroon and Hollande resent them to be. Between Assad and Al Qaeda it is a beauty contest between monkeys as we like to say in Ethiopia—all ugly. But the war profiteers may still have their way on Syria. Sartre said: when the rich wage war it is the poor who die. In African wars, thousands millions of poor people die and have died and I for one have never heard the multinational mining companies and firms losing one of their CEO. Wars in Africa displace thousands if not millions and have created millions of refugees that benefit the charity business and on the side, as the French NGO in Chad, engage in sale of children or as in Ethiopia in abusing young boys. Many NGOs make millions out of the consequences of the war, the sale of alleged orphans unto adoption also brings in millions for various quarters. The war between the Meles regime and that of Isayas brought millions of dollars to arms sellers China, Russia, Ukraine and others. Both regimes also found many contractors, often associated with States, making millions. The invasion of Somalia by the Meles troops net millions for the ruling clique and the general who headed the invasion force was accused of making millions from bribes given to him by smugglers and traders in Somalia. When a collection of African countries sent soldiers to help Kabila they got their pay in gold and diamonds, millions of dollars’ worth. So on and on for South Sudan, Darfur, the AU troops incursion into Somalia. War is business, war is profit for the war mongers and a disaster and a catastrophe only for the people. The dollar side of war is indecent but only we the naïve get vexed over it. 130,000 Ethiopians died in the Badme war for nothing. The cruelty of war is also unbelievable. In Eastern Congo, no less than half a million women have been raped by ferocious militias backed by Western mining companies as well as by Rwanda and Uganda—5 million or more have died. No wonder the millionaires in the West and in African capitals swoon with joy when a war erupts or when they provoke wars against their neighbors or against their own people. There is money to be made War gives tin pot dictators the chance to play the leader. We have seen that in Ethiopia when a coward, now dead, played at being a leader and a hero over the corpses of thousands. Poor countries spending millions on defense allocation and ignoring the social sector (Ethiopia, Sudan and other countries spend at least a million dollar a day for their futile war ventures). The dry ration suppliers, the fuel vendors, the medicine and health care firms make millions. The regimes profit the wars and this so true that one can feel the anguish of those who wanted an all-out strike against Syria. Some of the bloodletting is for foolish causes as we have seen time and again and most of the time it is for greed, for the enrichment of the few with calloused hearts. It is what Martin Luther called a spiritual doom that has crippled many, alas. The Tigrean clique that now rules Ethiopia by force used to compose crude songs hailing the Kalashnikov gun as their protector and liberator. Worshipping crude metal of sorts. In almost all wars truth dies first and in the process the cause that one fights for is covered up, becomes elusive,is even forgotten. Fools believe what they are fed. The sight of Colin Powell in the UN trying to flash a test tube and tell us that Sadam has for sure WMDs is unforgettable but a costly charade that the money hungry Blair fellow imitated. The war against Iraq was for oil but many lulled themselves into sleep and chose to be duped. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have perished as a result, the country is in ruins and every day the death toll mounts. The same situation is diversely but surely trying to repeat in Syria and behind it all stand the war profiteers. Same situation in Somalia where Ethiopian and other African troops have invaded and wreaked havoc trying to fulfill a misguided American policy that would not end the tragedy and the terror at all. But, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Burundi regimes profit. And others too. Oh, how lovely war is!

THE JENNIFER TURN

The primary curse goes to that Angelina Jolie person. “Haro sur Angelina”, curse on that Joly who started out with much fanfare the adoption racket of Ethiopian children. The famous actress adopted an alleged orphaned child who was sold away by her own mother and a very cruel government that controls the adoption industry. The little girl was renamed Zahra and taken to Hollywood with the actress padding her resume as a “do gooder”. One fellow wrote that Ethiopians live under stone-age poverty (what exactly does this mean really? Were people starved during the stone- age?) and Angelina type of actions is God sent and to be praised. It is nowadays called Child Harvesting, using the suffering of parents to take away their children with false promises and money. Divas and actresses compete fiercely and Madonna made her foray in Malawi and adopted two children thereby giving the Malawi president then ( Dr. Bingu Mutharika formerly known as Brightson Webster Kyson) the chance to shame himself, his country and all Africa by declaring publicly: “I wish someone had come and taken 10,000 Malawi children because then I would know that 10,000 Malawians would have better education and opportunities”. As I wrote years ago why don’t they adopt us all and put an end to our so called stone age-poverty? And now it is the turn of Jennifer Lopez, the singer actress who reportedly insured a part of her body for a cool six million and received a jewel studded toilet seat worth 120,000 euros from her boyfriend of the time who is none other than another actor who got rewards for a CIA sponsored film that presents Iranians as savages and who claims to be concerned for the Eastern Congolese so much so he is living at $2.50 a day for two days as a show of solidarity. Call it slumming of a sort, fake and hypocritical, once again using us as pets and inflating their names and publicity in the process. Jennifer has now trekked to Ethiopia and adopted a rural boy (child) with priests present (these days Ethiopian priests could hold mass at any time of the day if ordered or paid well as they did for Beyoncé shaming the Church) and a humiliating ceremony accompanied by an oath and Lopez’s unconvincing actress tears. One more child sold and the whole process registered as a video and You Tube presentation. The director? No known but it is nauseating at least for us Ethiopians. Ethiopia accounts for more than a quarter of the international adoption. Ethiopia’s cruel rulers sell children cheaper than the fertile land (the size of Belgium) sold or ceded to Arabs, the Chinese, Indians and Sudanese. The adoption industry is flourishing and very profitable. Ethiopia has many orphans (thanks to the wars and the political repression that takes away parents) and millions of children with poor parents. Dozens of orphanages are actually transit and trafficking agencies harvesting children from poor rural parents and selling the children to foreigners cheaper than Haitian, Vietnamese and Russian children. Ethiopian children are said to have “no future” and thus their sale is justified. The regime in Addis Abeba has been selling young women to modern slavery to the racist Middle Eastern countries that torture and even kill them.. The business nets millions to the regime that controls the option and the sale of women to the Middle East. Foreign agencies and embassies are involved in the shameful process. One American woman who adopted an Ethiopian child testified that the American embassy in Addis Abeba told her to lie and to assert that the adopted child’s parents are dead. UNICEF had worked hand in glove with the Tigrean front (TPLF) when this criminal outfit was claiming to be a liberation front and enjoying the support of Live Aid, Geldof, War on Want, Grassroots International, World Vision, USAID, Norwegian Council of Churches, etc and even now this outfit is supporting the criminal regime on all fronts. Doug Webb, a UNICEF official in Addis Abeba, has bent backwards to tell us that the adoption racket, the new export industry that is bringing in in millions of dollars to the regime, is actually the work of “local cadres” and the regime is trying to correct the mistakes.. There is actually no “local” in Ethiopia. All is centralized, all is controlled by the ethnic Tigrean elite or ruling class. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the adoption agency body are all under the regime and headed by ethnic Tigreans. Shame on the UNICEF once more! Talking of cover up we can go to mention the IMF, World Bank, the US Department. The Western embassies in Addis Abeba, that all are desperately trying to present the tyranny in Addis Ababa like Park of South Korea and the former dictator of Singapore as an outfit that is registering double digit economic growth in Ethiopia despite political repression and gross human rights violations. Statistics are numbers that one can manipulate. Imagine a country that is said to have a growth annual economic record more than China but has 12 million famine affected people waiting for food aid, more than 85% of the population below the poverty line, and as they say, afflicted by “stone-age poverty” and one can have an understanding of a people subjected to crushing poverty, absence of rights and, again as they say as they snatch our children, no future. Debilitating poverty like the one the rich actresses can never imagine or the millionaire actor who wants to try living at $2.50 per day for a few days can never envisage forces parents to sell their beloved children. Poor Ethiopian parents were/are never told that what adoption meant but informed that their children will go abroad, get all opportunities and will help them. Most of the parents were duped to say the least and have lost their children. The charade is promoted by the regime in place which is getting thousands of dollars per child and the number of Ethiopian children sold to adoption in now in several thousands. Ethiopian children have become favorites because they are cheap, sufficiently exotic, little wait time and scant control or checkup. A woman who adopted a child and beat him to death in Amsterdam went back to Ethiopian and easily adopted another. Here below are some other reports: “A deputy Pennsylvania attorney and his wife have been arrested after their two adopted Ethiopian children were found starved and beaten to near death according to police. Deputy Attorney General Douglas Barbour and his wife, Kristen were arraigned today after their 6-year-old boy was found malnourished with skin lesions and the 18-month-old girl having multiple skull fractures and being possibly permanently blind”. “Hana Grace-Rose Williams came to Washington State from Ethiopia in 2008 with ringworm, cold sores, parasites and hepatitis B. But none of those things killed her. Instead, Skagit County authorities say, 13-year-old Hana died because her adoptive parents chronically starved her, abused her and left her outside on a cold May night with inadequate clothing”. How many children have been starved, beaten, sexually abused and sent to their deaths? The countries that are adopting Ethiopian children are the USA, Denmark, Sweden, France, Norway, Canada, etc. The countries that are enjoying the traffic of young Ethiopian women are in the Middle East including Yemen. Not a pip is heard from otherwise loud and shrill international human rights bodies. The sale of Ethiopian children is also passed in silence. Actors and actresses with more love for their pets than for black children adopt Ethiopian children. Adopting Ethiopian children is a la mode as the French would say—it is fashionable and they are cheaper than Cambodian, Haitian, Russian or Vietnamese children. Ethiopian law insists that children should be orphans to be adopted but these days the dollar/money kills thee parents when they are very alive. Parents duped and induced into handing over their beloved children are made to believe anything but the reality of adoption. Most do not know that their children are lost, sold away. The duplicity is backed by the regime, the so called adoption agencies, the child harvesters, the western embassies, who all claim great economic success on the part of the regime (to hide the incredible poverty of the majority of the people forced to sell their own children), and tolerate the violation of the human rights of children and of young women sold to modern slavery. Indignation aside, we should perhaps heed the advice of the former president of Malawi and call for the adoption of all African children by foreigners to give them a chance for education and more opportunities. If a woman can insure her body part for millions of dollars she can surely afford to buy not one but a few thousands of children for adoption (and for sale if she so desires). That is life as the stone- age impoverished Africans have no life to talk of. If you want to buy fertile land at no cost and to have the right to beat, oppress and play slave master on workers go to Ethiopia. If you want to buy children cheap even if they have their parents go to Ethiopia. You can starve them to death, feed them dog food, beat, mutilate and kill them. No problem. Millions others are there for sale. As far as I am concerned, my problem has to do with why these rich and self-proclaimed humanitarians are not ready to adopt all of us Africans repressed and impoverished by tyrants backed and supported by their countries. In Ethiopia we say “manew balesamint , in France they say a qui le tour, the English speaking say who is next. Who will be there and ready to adopt us with all the fanfare, tears, oaths, video, you tube and all?

OF TABLETS AND ETHIOPIAN KIDS

OF TABLETS AND ETHIOPIAN KIDS (or THE MESSIAH COMPLEX) This article is provoked by a recent article in the German Der Spiegel under the title of “Ethiopian Kids using Tablets to Teach Themselves”. This is how the magazine article told the story: “A US aid organization has handed children in the remote Ethiopian village of Wenchi tablet computers in an experiment aimed at enabling them to teach themselves. They are now speaking their first words of English -- without ever having encountered a teacher”. The Charity business is funny in a cruel way. Giving a handful of Ethiopian rural kids Tablets is as bad and ridiculous as the used soaps sent to Uganda, the spiced ham sent to Muslin Asian Tsunami survivors, dog food to Kenya, and the knickers for Africa and bras for Haiti programs. Just give Tablets to Ethiopian kids and they will have no need for teachers and to hell with the already reduced budget for education. It is a novel idea and the Tablet/computer idea for Ethiopian kids, which will make teachers irrelevant, belongs to the new America Messiah called Matt Keller who works for the “One Laptop Per Child” NGO and states that this way the kids can just leap into the information age. The harshly criticized Chinese Great Leap Foreword was more realistic and to the point. Recently, African singers made a sort of “We are the world song “to collect fund” to buy heaters for the poor in Norway (oh yes, there are poor people in Norway!). It was a well aimed spoof much like the late Idi Amin collecting goats, sheep and food aid for the malnourished British in England. Such spoofs are vendetta par excellence on the White so called do gooders who consider Africans are like babies who need white caretakers through out their lives. Some of these nannies are called Bob Geldof, Bono, World Vision, Oxfam and even belong to the UN itself.. They are like worms festering in places and mess of misery, using images of children surrounded by flies, with bloated stomachs and weeping to the cameras their publicity stunts. Save a child, sponsor a child, buy one of our goods and we will send another free to the starving shoeless Third World—we have heard it all actually. In some African countries, some UN agencies and NGOs are effective cover for the CIA and western intelligence agencies. Just check Darfur, South Sudan, and Eastern Congo. All such places have their celebrity adopters. Kony 2012 was a sad joke of an initiative. George Clooney cries for Darfur. Ben Affleck is for Zaire or the DRC. Bill Clinton is for Haiti. Even the fellow called 50 Cents who voted for Romney went to Dolow, Somalia, for the World Food Program. For some of these people the whole thing is called a “hug vacation “. You go with your expensive safari suit, hug a few people, look sad, and talk to the press and presto you figure as a messiah for the impoverished Africans. The victims are rats and guinea pigs in the whole experiment and operation anyway. It is a business and millions are made from the charity business. Most of the money often goes back to the donor countries. Western youths get employment, are well paid and act as Masters over us all. Some of the NGOs are filled with conmen, inept and fakes. There are of course others who really feel and think that they are really doing well. Much as we respect their fine sentiments, they are on the wrong path. Swedow who wanted to send Africa a million T-shirts, Keller who wants to send more and more PCs to Ethiopian rural kids so that they can learn without a teacher at all, those who want to send us used shoes, those who send us expired medicines, those who send us used clothes (the used clothes business has caused a 40% decline in apparel production in Africa) are all suffering from what one critic called “ white savior industrial complex” as exhibited so blatantly by the likes of Geldof, Bono, Jolie or Clooney. Some of these are people with huge mansions bought at a price that passes the health and education budget of quite a few African countries. Some of them buy some of our children and they think they own us. Imagine the problem of Africans being having T shirts, used shoes, old pants, Tablets, used soaps and other such nonsense! The Der Spiegel report states “Keller, 48, is a thoughtful American in safari pants. The villagers refer to him as the "ferenji," or white man. Everything has changed in Wenchi since he began making his occasional visits to the village”. It is always the white Messiah who saves the African. Colonialism reborn, the thieving white missionary, the cruel Bwana with the colonial hat and boots and, never forget, the whip and the gun. The so called saviors of Africa have their own interest be it personal, financial or colonial. Some are naïve enough to believe that without confronting the basic problems of Africans they can bandage minor wounds and solve it all. Unfortunately some foolish Africans also imagine that without fundamental change they can defeat the malaise that has gripped and debilitated Africa. Corruption, bad governance, the absence of rule of law, gross violation of human rights, sale of fertile land to foreigners, displacement of the poor people, subservience to western and Chinese imperialism, the disaster of neo liberalism and capitalism—now these are the main problems. Millions of children sleep on the streets, denied education and their childhood, This is one gross problem Keller should have considered inn relation to the why of it all instead of going to a small rural village, handing out Tablets and claiming a miracle and projecting himself as a pioneer and liberator. By the way, how many days a week does the small village of Wenchi get electricity? Oh yes, charity is a business. It is also a fame machine for actors and singers who are actually doing their thing within the framework of official American or Western politics. Why the silence on the repression in Ethiopia? Why the little concern for Eastern Congo (more than 5 million killed as western companies hungry for coltan and other minerals finance murderers and rapists) and the hue and cry against Beshir of the Sudan whom the ICC wants to arrest? Who said we Africans need used underwear, shoes and soaps? Did we ask them to come and buy our children thereby making the regimes who sell our children richer? But then again there is another way of seeing the whole thing. 47 Tablets in the hands of Ethiopians may bring about a revolution. No teachers needed at all- the kids are said to be speaking English. And of you speak English you are educated and way up on the ladder of “civilization “. Haiti is still waiting for the promised aid but they are being sent bras. The problem of African women is not the lack of knickers at all. As things stand there are presently more than 300 NGOs in Juba, South Sudan--our condolences to the citizens. They should demand for more Tablets and not for help to get more schools and power for their development. Alas, aid is political as we all know. The Yemeni ambassador to the UN who voted against the war in Iraq was told by the US ambassador, Thomas Pickering, that the “no” will cost Yemen a lot –US aid consequently stopped its operations in Yemen. NGOs are mostly political; even human rights organizations are under the heel of or infiltrated to their noses by western intelligence agencies. The world is complicated and charity a cruel business, and pity the naïve ones who believe otherwise.

THE HOMELESS PRIME MINISTER

Sometimes we Ethiopians like to boast. The first in everything! The cradle of mankind. The first bare foot runner to win the marathon... ... The first to claim an annual economic growth of 12% whilst begging for food aid for more than 12 million people. The first country since the 1970s to record a 99.9% win for the ruling party in a general election. This year, we have done it again in grand style. We stunned the world with our first ever homeless prime minister. The first in History. Ever. Not that the new power-less Prime Minster was evicted from his home, or has been made homeless for the same land grabbing reasons that have made more than a half million Ethiopians homeless. Oh no. He is "homeless" because the wife of the dead and departed (all believers can add here: praise is to God or Allah) Prime Minster has refused to evacuate the official residence. Now, the former First Lady is no ordinary woman. After usurping the title of First Lady, she delicately dipped her hands into the national coffers and made away with a few cool dollars - 2 billion dollars according to those in the know, and lied with fewer blinks than her late husband, who was admiringly described by one American Ambassador as a professional liar. To the point: she has refused to evacuate the official premises of the Ethiopian head of state. So, the PM, who says she can stay, has been left without an official home. The first prime minister without an official abode! Ok, maybe I am not being fair. Azeb has made it clear that she will only leave the PM's palace if she can go instead to the palace of the president (a nominal appointee). We get it. What she wants is a big palace in Addis Ababa. Yes, she has visited a property near the Sidist Kilo University, but her security concerns could see her staying put for a while. And why should the new PM object? Sure, she can stay. Sadly, however, as Ethiopia achieves another first, only few people have noticed that the 540 plus seat parliament has only one opposition member. Ethiopia's Prime Minister's recent situation has been challenged by a few unusual firsts among African leaders. After the controversial shooting of miners in South Africa, President Zuma tried to interest us on who among his four wives should get State subsidy. No one listened. And then came the president of Benin who claimed three of his close fellows were trying to poison him. Unfortunately, this is far from being a first. Mauritania's president got "accidentally" shot by a soldier. Not the first either. Ask the former erratic coup leader from Guinea, Moussa "Dadis" Camara. Kenya's Mwai Kibaki shouting he is not a polygamist was a massive failure. Did he not know that that trick had been tried more than once? In fact, Kibaki's denial has tickled old memories back to life. It reminds me of that fateful day when Jomo Kenyatta publicly forced his wife, Mama Nigina, to deny his alleged impotence. Luckily, those blue pills were not yet on sale in pharmacies. Yes, the same Viagra that sent Nigeria's Abacha on his final journey to meet with his maker, as he lay stiff on a bed among a bevy of European ladies he had handpicked from a red light district or lounge or... who knows where? But far from Abacha's global taste, the King of Swaziland thinks local. Unfortunately, the novelty of marrying maidens at the annual Umhlanga or Reed ceremony has grown intensely boring, especially as King Mswati III struggles with a harsh economic meltdown. And just when we thought our boredom was coming to a screeching halt, Uganda's Museveni gets re-elected and continues his decades-old search for his arch enemy, Joseph Kony, the man who wheeled him back into the Great Lakes' spotlight. Kagame on the other hand has done all in his power to let the world know that he is not interested in the Great Lakes' spotlight, after he was accused of arming the M23 rebels of the Congo. If only we could read poor old Paul's mind: "Been there done that, anything new?" Talking about new things. Why is no one reminding the world that the destruction of historical heritage sites in the northern Mali towns of Gao and Timbuktu by so-called Al Qaeda rebels and Islamists is not a first? The Taliban and Al Shabab have done more destruction on historical heritage sites. They even razed their countries to the ground, for crying out loud! So you see, this is what makes the Ethiopian first experience so original. It is carefully planned. Let's admit it, a homeless Prime Minister is imaginative, ingenious and admirable. A real First! However, competition is tight these days. Take the defeated Senegalese president (who wanted to pass the mantle on to his son like in Korea and Syria) declaring: "I am the only president in a perpetual state of grace. It is a special phenomenon linked to my personality.— probably, I am a man of action rather than just talk". The man of action was defeated and sent packing with his tail between his legs. Chad's Idris Deby, with his 13 children and many wives, tried to become another first when he got married to the 21 year-old daughter of a Sudanese Janjaweed chief, paying a 27 million dollar-dowry (plus an extra million dollars for her jewelry). Naturally, he became a laughing stock among the high-dowry society. Multi-million dowries are not new. Back to the Ethiopian originality. Where corpses of Heads of State are moved out of presidential palaces militarily with families rushing out and thanking their stars for being spared, Azeb's plans of redecorating her humble abode remain unperturbed. The palace is where she belongs and it is where she will stay, come what may! Delusion, illusion, desperation or an Ethiopian tragicomedy par excellence? A serious question. That the answer is not yet in the hands of the Ethiopian people adds to the sorrow. Though the situation is bleak and the future uncertain, we Ethiopians can snatch some comfort from the fact that we give the world surprises and we are unique. We still have the syndrome of the chosen people like the Israelis or the Chinese, among others. After all the very first human beings were Ethiopian, non? We think we are neither black nor white but some special brand of brown or "red". More questions: How many countries in the world can boast of tens of thousands of political prisoners and still get hailed as being democratic? How many are those who can slaughter hundreds, if not thousands, and still be pampered as democrats? One is inclined to say none in this twenty first century we are living in. But, alas, Ethiopia has reversed the whole equation — you can imprison, kill, starve, impoverish millions and ruin and shame a country but you can still be admired and supported. After all appearances do matter and we have to keep our first reputation in mint condition, even without having the original show of a homeless and puppet Prime Minster who fronts for the Tigrean rulers, controlling things behind the scenes. .

THE KOREAN DEATH OF A TIGREAN DESPOT

Meles Zenawi , a man who identified himself as a Tigrean (his ethnic group) and hated Ethiopia, was not able to say all reports of my death are exaggerated though his death was announced long before he kicked the bucket from an ailment that his friends have decided to keep secret. His death was late by Ethiopian standards and expectations while his masters, loyalists and sycophants wailed at his “sudden” passing away. The death of this cruel despot has highlighted the degeneration of his regime unto a North Korean type of immense shame and parody and has exposed the level of ridicule that sycophants can sink into voluntarily. For most Ethiopians, Meles Zenawi was dead more than a decade ago when he emerged as a narrow Tigrean nationalist and advocated the breaking up of Ethiopia based on ethnicity. The corpse moved on spreading havoc, ceding Ethiopian land to the Sudan, forcing thousands of peasants and pastoralists out of their land and handing it over cheaply to environmental disaster making Indians, Chinese and Arab so called investors, fanning ethnic and religious division, proving himself as a loyal puppet of the West. Meles Zenawi was a pest hated by Ethiopians as much as the cursed famine that plagued the country time and again including under his rule. Those who declared that the people respected the tyrant do not know the meaning of respect. The North Korean type funeral show was, to put it mildly, disgusting. Quite a few uninformed souls and those who had deliberately been covering up for the despot talked of Ethiopians “mourning their leader”. Ethiopians in the know wonder even if the tears of Azeb Mesfin, the wife of Meles, were for real. The choreographed funeral show suggested that the tyrant died before they announced it and they had had time to prepare for the show. The sight of North Koreans when their tormentor Kim Jong Il died a few years ago was a comedy of sorts—with soldiers and women and citizens all wailing for the camera (see below) . No one missed the fact that they were all marshaled out and ordered to weep. The Meles cabal has done the same. State media interviewed street children and the homeless who “proudly” declared that Meles brought security and development and they were thus able to sleep on the streets without fear of any violence. Thank you Meles indeed! Families mourning the deaths of their kin were rounded out of their tents and taken to the government erected tent of mourning for Meles and told to cry there and get filmed and interviewed by the State controlled TV/media. And with the official cameramen active with their videos who dares not to be seen weeping? Money was paid to drag out tears out of people who were otherwise full of joy to see the dictator dead. Evidently, Meles was genuinely mourned by those whose life and wealth depended on him, the young and inept officers raised to higher ranks by him and all those who feared his death may herald the end of the Tigrean front’s domination and control of Ethiopia. Paid for and choreographed mourning. Even refugees in Khartoum seeking laissez passer documents to return to Ethiopia were told that they have to publicly mourn and demonstrate support for Meles before they get the paper. If you do not weep you are punished. Remember Kim Jong IL’s death. This was the report with photos to accompany it: “ North Korea's hardline regime is punishing those who did not cry at the death of dictator Kim Jong-il, according to reports. Sentences of at least six months in labour camps are also apparently being given to those who didn't go to the organized mourning events, while anyone who criticized the new leader Kim Jong-un is also being punished. Those who tried to leave the country, or even made a mobile phone call out, were also being disciplined, it has been claimed. Hysteria: North Korean soldiers mourn Kim Jong-il at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace Real or fake? Pyongyang residents react as they mourn over the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il Weeping: Children weep at the death of the supreme leader, Did theynreally know who he was? And the foreigners who enjoyed his servitude, who have been given Ethiopian land to exploit or, as in the case of the Sudan, to take as theirs are also sad. And those who have established military bases on our soil and were able to use Ethiopians as cannon fodders for their wars in the region (the tennis court partner of Meles was none other than the American ambassador). And political fools like Bill Gates and African dictators who lost a brother. For all these, Meles was an intelligent leader, a visionary, and for Bill Gates, who only talked no more than a few hours with the forked tongue Meles, Ethiopians are enjoying great health progress thanks to Meles. If there has been so much progress in the health sector how come Meles went to tiny Belgium for medical treatment? The malaise is actually widespread—many African leaders go abroad for routine medical check up and some of them die there also. In Ethiopia, the health system has almost collapsed, the public hospitals are a disgrace, the private clinics expensive and most of the time ran by quack doctors who Swear to God. Bill Gates attended the tyrant’s funeral and was quoted praising the departed. Not more than 5% of children are vaccinated, life expectancy is 56 years at best and infant mortality rate among the highest in the world. The budget for health is only 3.6 % and so one wonders why Bill Gates talks of miracles in the health sector. Susan Rice represented Barack Obama who has himself praised the defunct (many Ethio-Americans had voted for Obama and I am sure some of them for whom Ethiopia does not matter will do so again) and gushed out praise and eulogy to a murderer and a war criminal . She has for long been a political idiot of sorts who advocated the cover up of the Rwandan genocide arguing that using the G word may not be good during election time. The Meles eulogized by Susan Rice never lived in Ethiopia. If he was “uncommonly wise” as Rice claimed unabashedly he would have ruled Ethiopia democratically, depending on the choice and will of the people and would not have relied on repression and massacres to stay in power. What is being intelligent and wise anyway? Serving Washington or being wise enough to gain the support of the people to justify one’s rule? The foreigners loved Meles so much so that Ethiopians wonder if there were two Meleses in the world. Ethiopians know a street smart lying tyrant, responsible for the killing and disappearance of thousands, an ethnic fanatic with enough hatred to arm an anti people WMD, the butcher of the Ogaden and Gambella, the man who has more than 35,000 political prisoners in his dungeons and secret prisons, a cruel and corrupt anti Ethiopian who has aggravated the impoverishment of Ethiopians. 12 million people depend on food aid, inflation is at 25% minimum and even people in the urban areas are unable to afford two miserly meals per day. Meles, one apologist said, was not corrupt “in the usual sense” but the despot was corrupt in the best African sense whisking away, along with his wife and family, no less than 2 billion dollars. He may have no Swiss bank account but he has American, British, Cayman Islands and Malaysian bank accounts. Meles was corrupt since his guerrilla days, depositing millions of dollars in the Saudi American bank (Jeddah) and buying property in London and other European cities. He used more than a hundred million dollars of aid money to the famished for his own speculation and trading in the stock market. Bob Geldof mya deny it but even LiveAid was swindled and the money used for buying arms. If there is any economic benefit it is in and around the palace and around the Tigrean ruling elite and does not concern the majority of the poor Ethiopian people. The West helped and backed Meles and his Tigrean group long before the tyrant took power. Meles worked, hand in glove, with Britain and the USA, with Germany and Sweden, with Norway, Libya and the Sudan. He sold Ethiopia long before he got to control the country. He chased away the South Sudan SPLM and opened the border for the Sudan of Omar Beshir to attack the SPLA (the present rulers of South Sudan seem to have forgotten this!). He was instrumental in the secession of Eritrea and gave permission for the security forces of Isaias Afewerki to murder Eritrean dissidents on Ethiopian soil. Most of all, Meles proved a determined puppet, backing the invasion of Iraq, registering as a foot soldier in the so called war against terrorism, serving the West’s interest in the Horn and all over Africa and invading Somali twice to serve Western interests. This and more is what have made him adorable in the eyes of the West. This is why the West lies about the reality of Ethiopia and hails and praises the predator of the free press and one of the vilest human rights violators in Africa. As Susan Rice knows, dictators like Nguema and Idris Deby, not to mention Museveni, Kagame and many others, are tolerated and praised because they are America’s babies. As Kirkpatrick said years ago, because they are “our own SOB s”. Meles was an SOB par excellence and those who hailed the mass killer are no less guilty of condoning his crime against the Ethiopian people. And where is the so called economic progress? It is not an endangered animal but an extinct one. Hirelings like Abdul Mohamed (a confirmed CIA operative now working in Darfur) and so called human rights activist Alex de Waal (a long time Meles groupie) have even dared to assert that Meles has followed the Chinese path and transformed Ethiopia. What transformation? A ring road in Addis Abeba? Half built buildings? Shoddy roads? The lack of electricity and drinkling water? A stinking city? Half a million homeless and more than 75% below the poverty level? An agricultural sector in ruins and permanent starvation stalking the land? A modern hotel in remote Hawzein not visited by anyone? A joke of an MIT in Makalle, Tigrai ? Kiosk and grocery type colleges? The fleecing of Ethiopia by Tigean state controlled conglomerate called EFFORT ? The 11% annual economic growth is a result of false government statistics backed by the IMF and others for political reasons to cover up the bankrupt economic policies of Meles Zenawi. There is little or no economic transformation other than benefits for the Tigrean sold out bourgeoisie and for foreign investors of all sorts. No wonder the fat degenerate Saudi billionaire Sheikh Alamoudi wailed that he has lost his right hand with the death of Meles (thereby disappointing Ethiopians who had expected the Sheikh to lose more than one hand). Meles was surely a hardworking man. It takes a lot of work to steal hundreds of millions, to push ten million people to starvation, to put thousands in prison, to supervise torture, to ruin a whole country, to chew choice Kat every afternoon and to toe the line as set by the West. It is hard work to lie day in and day out, to play the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde show all the time, to decide on big and small issues, to supervise the theft of millions of dollars by one’s own wife and cronies. Meles Zenawi has to work hard to handle and deal with so much hatred for millions of Amhras and Oromos, Gurages and Somalis, etc. and to plot and actualize their suffering and pain on a constant level. In the end he was a tiny man at al levels and he could not contain his hatred and thirst for exclusive power and mix it comfortably with his addictions. Meles Zenawi had to die by his own folly depriving his kin and ethnic fanatics their ease of riding roughshod over millions. The time of reckoning has come and those from his ethnic group who hope that some other Tigrean substitute will salvage them from the impending doom are fooling themselves dangerously. Ethiopians have had to endure the totalitarian regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. They were ordered out to demonstrate and express support for the regime or face sanctions on basic necessities and so they went out en masse and cried “death to our enemies” and “long live Mengistu”. Some people did not even go out before they heard over State radio that they have demonstrated in favor of the “great chairman’. A similar event has taken place. The carrot and the stick to bring people out on the streets and to weep for the very man who made their life miserable and humiliated their country. A charade and as one report puts it the North Koreans are not amused by the pale imitation. Ethiopians, as we know, may be a quiet and private lot but they are wily and with their own sense of humor. It is not beyond them to cry and weep when they are actually bursting with joy. Let no one take them for dupes, no. They did not keep Ethiopia sovereign and independent by being fools even though they had and still have their share of traitors. Those in fear of losing their drone base and mercenary are shedding real tears and worried if the crisis ridden group in power may weather the storm. They have and they will have more to weep about. Amen. Aside from that, saying good riddance is in order! May his loyal friends follow him on his journey to the end of the damned!

BOOk REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW





BENEATH THE LION’S GAZE
BY MAAZA MENGISTE
PUBLISHED BY JONATHAN CAPE, LONDON, 2010,
301 PAGES

IF ONLY MEAZA HAD READ KONJIT!

by Hilena Bayeh

Intro

The fact that more and more Ethiopians are putting ink to paper or typing away on the keyboards of their laptops and computers to produce books is turning out to be both good and bad. Good because our literature (in Ethiopian languages) and also in English can develop, our stories can be told, a heritage left for the coming generation. And bad because writers have become scribes like olden times, scribbling the praises of the power that be, spreading official lies as truth and retelling or recycling travesties of history. The absence of critical editors has made the slush pile, as they say in the publishing circles, non existent—any book is published and thanks to commercial printing and online publishing anyone can be a writer with a book or even a translator. Astute business men gauge the trend of the time, determine the selling subjects and plunge right on to “write” a book on the subject—it is very commercial. Ethiopia does not recognize international copyright laws and as such translators not only translate books without permission (many times badly) but they even change the persons to whom the writer had made a dedication and substitute their own dedication. . It is a wild and confusing world out there. That is why we find books nowadays explaining to us the history of this event or organization without ever really taking part in any one of them or without ever having made a research.

All this aside, it is, in my opinion, quite good to see Ethiopians writing in English. The new generation of writers like Dinaw Mengistu and Maaza Mengiste cannot help but write in English as they grew up abroad (in America in their case) and it is also commendable that their stories have not forgotten or ignored the Ethiopian reality (true more for Maaza than for Dinaw). I do not fully agree with the Wole Soyinka definition of the critic’s responsibilities “not merely to review an existing piece of work but also to create an atmosphere of appreciation and tolerance...” but I still say the critic has to take the writer’s reality into account to convey a fitting appraisal. In this respect, I concur with David Cook (African Literature: A Critical View. Longman 1977)) who wrote:
“All forms of the written word contribute to a major force of persuasion. All writings which argue important issues, reach a large public, and possess the literary qualities that are likely to make them more than merely ephemeral, not only deserve, but invite and demand critical analysis. The means by which a thoughtful public is convinced one way or another on crucial questions of real significance to a country or a continent”. (xi)

Still, one yearns for the old categorization of “pulp” literature, unworthy of critical concern but fulfilling the public’s tabloid hunger. Quite a number of books in Amharic and English could thus have been relegated to the sidelines though we as a people are still far away from saturation in the literary field. The books eulogizing Meles and Seyoum Mesfin, rewriting the history of the notorious TPLF, whitewashing the crimes and criminals of the Red Terror, attempting a Mein Kampf in a local language, biographies that are lies, memoirs that are fiction, etc contribute little of any literary or historical worth. Fortunately though, there are books like that of Konjit Berhane’s MIRKOGNA that appear out of the blue and fulfill our expectations by combining historical truth with fiction narration and giving us a readable, enjoyable book. I have my reasons for Saying ‘If Only Maaza had read Konjit!”.


The Young Writers

While my focus here is the book of Maaza Mengiste I would like to mention in passing The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (titled in England, heaven knows why, as Children of the Revolution) written by Dinaw Mengistu which, tangentially dealing with the Ethiopian Revolution of February 1974 (Maaza’s central subject or back ground) exhibits a careless approach to the historical truth of the period and Ethiopia. Dinaw, in my opinion, has also failed to mine the treasure trove of the Ethiopian émigré community in Washington Dc. Worse still, as he left Ethiopia when he was one year old, he has not lived or grown up to understand the conflict that defined that time. In one passage he writes that the Mengistu regime that launched the Red Terror nailed placards on the foreheads of its victims which proclaimed “I was a Communist!” when in actual fact Mengistu and his regime considered themselves Communists and labeled their opponents anarchists or CIA agents. Or, is all this enveloped within what Maaza on her part states as “taking liberty with the reality”? If so what do we make of Lewis Nkosi’s famous assertion (in Home and Exile) cited here below on the place of the writer:

“If we assume that any competent artist who retains a minimum of objectivity in using his materials should and must reflect his society, then writers are even more important in countries undergoing revolutionary changes, where the temptations are greater to suppress any but the desirable truths”?

I am not, by any stretch of imagination, calling for a socialist realism approach to fiction--that is another subject for discussion. However, taking liberty cannot mean representing falsehood especially when the narration concerns a historical truth or a memoir. Nega Mezlekia’s sister for example has denounced him for presenting a false memoir and many Ethiopians know that an Amhara joining the sectarian and separatist Somali front (WSLF) is pure fiction. And thus the primary question as regards Maaza’s book: has she taken too much liberty with the truth that the Ethiopian reader finds herself/himself in a lurch because Maaza has boldly taken up the February 1974 Revolution as the centerpiece of her book of fiction.

Maaza’s book

Maaza is apparently burdened by the fact that she has dared to use a single family to encapsulate the momentous and bloody period. This demanded from her to create characters that are whole and represent the various trends and cleavages that convulsed families and the whole society at that period. The story of Beneath the Lion’ s Gaze revolves around a foreign educated medical doctor, Hailu, who had been awarded a watch by Emperor Haile Sellasie, his two sons-the elder Yonas conservative and inclined to praying, the youngest Dawit taken up by the underground movement of the period, the EPRP, though Maaza treads carefully and creates a non existent organization. The travails of the family, the doctor’s agreement to help a tortured revolutionary girl die, his arrest and torture and the increasing radicalization of the youngest son Dawit serve for Maaza to illustrate the tragedy of the Red Terror period. Of course the corpses of the victims were not thrown on the streets for the hyenas to feast on (it was actually to terrorize the living and their families), there were no placard nailed to the victims which said I deserved to die dear mother and no EPRP activist defying curfew and collecting the corpses at night . I assume Maaza has taken liberties here, no matter.

Maaza writes well and in a style, as a graduate with an MFA from New York University, that would surely please her western readers—of snorting hyenas, of deep brown fields, a lush patchwork of green and browns, and of a blue haze drifting down from eucalyptus trees dotting the hillsides, of clouds of dust and smoke and early morning fog. I do not agree with one reviewer who said Maaza over explains. On the contrary, some of her passages get the reader into the atmosphere of the place in the story as the following illustrates:
“Intermittent car horns melted into a long, sustained blare. Buses and trucks dodged the boys. Irritated pedestrians brushed against blue-and-white taxicabs. Everything was noisy. Sound traveled from car to pedestrian to pack animal, rising and falling over the hilly street, Aged trees dotted the roadside and drank in the cacophony. Ethiopia would remain, despite all outside influences, a mix of ancient and modern, progress and ritual sitting as uncomfortably next to each other as Communist ideals and Coptic beliefs”. (p. 116)
Except for the fact that the ideals were Soviet/ real socialism (the ideological nuance does matter) and the mix included Islamic and animist beliefs.

Maaza left the country when she was only four years old but she has evidently gone back to soak up the atmosphere though I do not know if she went back after the present vermin took over power (1991) and the city changed or before during the time of the Derg. It should be of no significance really except for the fact that she did not live that period (unlike Konjit for example) and her references (see her note and bibliography at the end) indicate not such a good choice. Maaza states, alas, that she learnt the personal and political costs of the revolution by reading Nega Mezlekia’s Notes from the Hyena’s Belly, a book of memoir that has been exposed as totally fiction by Nega’s own sister and all others who knew him (and even his authorship has been contested but that is another story). As a former EPRP leader Kiflu Tadesse’s book would rightfully be informative on the organization at that time as would be the book by Markakis and Nega Ayele while Fred Halliday, who was a Derg apologist, wrote a horrible book. Paul Henze, the former CIA and the present apologist of the Meles regime cannot be credible reference on Ethiopia of that period ( or on Ethiopia of any period for that matter) and Marina Ottaway missed the whole essence of the Revolution when she concluded so wrongly that the whole thing involved the elites and not the people. The Ottaways (Marina and David) sought to give historical and popular legitimacy to the military regime, stated the Empire was held together by the divine rule of the Emperor, denigrated the workers’ general strike that brought down the Endlakatchew government as insignificant, and Marina Ottaway, in her “Social Classes and Corporate Interests in the Ethiopian Revolution, went as far as labeling the Ethiopian workers as a labor aristocracy or an “elite privileged by the modern system.”

Bad References

In short Maaza did not have the best reference at all. Imagine someone writing on that period and failing to read the books on the Red Terror like Babile Tola’s “ To Kill A Generation: The Red Terror in Ethiopia”! This could very well explain why Maaza’s character appear cardboard and unconvincing characters to the end. Maaza has tried to remember her uncles by giving Dawit and another character the names of her uncles, Mekonnen and Solomon, but for those who knew the Revolution and the battle in the cities Dawit and Solomon appear as caricatures all the way through. For me, here is where Maaza has failed, her inability to let her characters flesh out, portray the feelings and failings of the period and its protagonists. The change of stand in Hailu and the others is not explained in a credible way. The incident at the end of the book between the main characters and the brutal soldiers is very unbelievable. Compare her characters and actions with Frehiwot and others in the Mirkogna book and the Maaza characters become, in the word of one critic, just “props”. The torture sequences are also mild though some foreign critics found them shocking and brutal. Emperor Haile Sellasie in Maaza’s book is not of course the Haile Sellasie we knew and the symbolism of the Lion, attractive as it may appear to foreigners and Ras Tafarians, is unconvincing and out of place.

Strange Coincidence?

For a writer who does not mention anywhere (neither in the Notes. bibliography or interviews) that she has previously read Hama Tuma’s much commented upon short stories collection (The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories, Heinemann, London 1993) the reader is surprised to find eerie similarities in Maaza’s novel and at least one Hama Tuma story. It could be coincidence of course but strange nonetheless. In the Case of the Prison Monger Hama’s accused person is called Major Guddu—Maaza calls Mengistu Haile Mariam Major Guddu. There was of course a Guddu Kassa in another famous book. This aside, Maaza’s story opens in a hospital (Prince Makonen—now Tikur Anbesa) with a wounded boy and then with a tortured girl whom a nurse (Almaz) and the main character Doctor Hailu gives her cyanide and help her die to escape further torture. Back in 1993 Hama Tuma's one short story (Madman, Killer, Saint, You…) deals with a doctor in the same hospital who is mobilized by a male nurse and also helps his own tortured brother to die. Same hospital, almost the same scenario—strange coincidence? The world is too small. Hama wrote his story in 1993 and Maaza in 2010—how come they are almost identical except for some changes including names and gender? A troubling question indeed.

After all is said, Maaza’s book is an interesting read. She is a promising writer and we hope the next book will show more commitment to the craft, better character building and believable dialogue and plot, less similarity to other books and plots and a better grasp of the central theme she tries to tackle. She should read MIRKOGNA of Konjit Berhane to begin with. Maaza can surely be one of the writers to make us proud so long as she realizes that the pressing social problems and experiences demand that the writer becomes relevant in more ways than one.
.

THE FARCE CALLED KONY (2012)

THE FARCE CALLED KONY (2012)


To avoid any possible misunderstanding, let me start out by stating that Joseph Kony, the notorious leader of the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) , the relative of the equally infamous self declared witch Alice Lakwena ( frequented by many top Kenyan officials in Nairobi) is no joke at all. He is one who should not be taken lightly. For twenty years, he had led a rebellion against Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni, committed atrocities. Kidnapped children, chopped off ears, noses and lips, and, notwithstanding those foreigners who say he has no program at all, he did plan to set up different system in Uganda with, perhaps, himself as the top prophet.

The group called Invisible Children that uploaded the film called Kony 2012 is also no joke at all. Their film on Kony was seen by millions in just 48 hours and the group raised $ 5 million in the process. The group claims the money raised would be used for positive construction work and projects in Northern Uganda (where Kony’s rebel operate) even though last year the group raised $8.6 million and used only 32% of the fund for services in Northern Uganda. The white man as the savior is a worn out and threadbare theme—money is the issue and so called charity organizations who claim to wail for us clean their crocodile tears with lots of dollars ostensibly raised to help us Africans. The Kony 2012 film has caught the attention of millions though it is superficial and glosses over the real problems of Uganda. Invisible Children NGO or Co calls for and backs American military intervention in Uganda. Obama has obliged sending a hundred Special Forces operatives to assist the Uganda army (Africa Command officers were in Uganda before). Museveni’s regime is an ally of Washington in the so called war against terror, it is presently in Mogadishu trying to fulfill America’s bidding (as is Meles Zenawi). Hence, American military presence in Uganda or any other African country for that matter does not augur well for the continent even though there are naïve African souls sleeping what Senghor called “ the great sleep of the negro” and dreaming of an American modern cavalry saving Africa. In your dreams! A coterie of Hollywood actors/stars have also joined the fray and are calling on all of us to make Kony famous so that he comes infamous and gets “taken down” not only by Angelina Jolie (who seems to think real life is a movie when she declared if left alone with Kony in a room she would take down this person—“I hate him” is what she said--) but by the big power America. Such oversimplification of the Ugandan problem or the Kony dilemma has helped the Invisible Children group to pander to sentiments and to raise money but will not help an iota in finishing off the Kony problem which is actually a Ugandan political problem.

Advocating for American military intervention in support of the Ugandan regime is more than wrong. The Uganda regime has been continuously accused of violating the human rights of the citizens, the last February general election was a fraud with Museveni violating the Constitution to run for the third time, opposition leaders are continuously repressed, the Uganda army conducting operations in the Central African Republic has been accused of atrocities against civilians. This is the army that the Invisible Children group and its Hollywood cabal want to get American military help and assistance. Here is the fact that those in the know tell us to heed:
“The adult population recalls the brutal government-directed counterinsurgency campaign, beginning in 1986, which evolved into Operation North, the first big operation in the country that people talk about as massively destructive for civilians, and which created the conditions that gave rise to the LRA of Joseph Kony and, before it, the Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Lakwena. Young adults recall the time from the mid-1990s when most rural residents of the three Acholi districts were forcibly interned in camps. The Ugandan government claimed it was to "protect" them from the LRA. But there were allegations of murder, bombings, and the burnings of entire villages: first to force people into the camps, and then to force them to stay put. By 2005, the camp population grew from a few hundred thousand to over 1.8 million in the entire region - which included Teso and Lango - of which over a million were from the three Acholi districts. Comprising practically the entire rural population of the three Acholi districts, they were expected to live on handouts from relief agencies. According to the government's own Ministry of Health, the excess mortality rate in these camps was approximately 1,000 persons per week - inviting comparisons with the numbers killed by the LRA even in the worst year”. Museveni refused to sign an Amnesty Bill proposed by his own parliament. Instead, Museveni and his allies resorted to Washington’s main poodle called Luis Moreno Ocampo of the ICC and had Kony and the LRA leadership charged with crimes against humanity.
One would imagine that genocidal criminals like Bush and Blair, Kissinger and Nguema, Meles Zenawi and Deby would be on the list of the ICC. No chance. The ICC list is one to be accused of racism even. Check it:
Bashir Abu Garda, Mohamed Ali, Abadella Banda,Omar Bashir, Jean Pierre Bemba, Muamar Gadafi, Saif al Islam Gadafi,Laurent Gbagbo, Ahmed Haroum, Uhuru Kenyatta, Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti (LRA),Thomas Lubanga, William Ruto, and many more Africans. No Anglo Saxons, no pro Washington criminals and murderers. Only fools expect that all these things happen haphazardly, by accident, by luck. Uganda has discovered oil and made a deal with Tallow oil recently—this has a lot to do with American interest in Uganda. Eastern Congolese are dying in their millions for coltan, gold and other minerals. As of recently, independent South Sudan is important because of its petrol and land. The ICC indicts Kony and not the Ugandan army or government because who pays the piper does not say objectivity or fairness. Why all the hue and cry around Kony now after so many years of his barbaric rampage and when he is weak and on the verge of collapse? The demonization of Kony with his ragtag army is at best a diversion while the rebellion and overall dissatisfaction in Uganda is a serious political Ugandan problem. It is about oil and money, about land and corruption, about tyranny and ethnic grievances. The Invisible Children group’s call for American intervention and all out support to the Museveni regime, by demonizing a rather weakened Kony and LRA, is not the right call at all. Once again Westerners are playing cynical games with our misery and fate. May the demise of Kony be soon but, more importantly, may the end of the anti democratic regime of Museveni be soon and the solutions to the basic political problems of Uganda an actuality. In the meanwhile, Invisible Children will for sure make millions with the help of its U tube, American chauvinists, actors, the ICC and duped African fellow travelers.