30. September 2010 by Assimba.

By Yilma Bekele

It was a beautiful weekend in Oakland. It was sunny, warm and clear blue skies. We celebrated Meskel like never before. Every year you see more young ones scurrying around between your legs and all over the place. It is a population explosion with the new arrivals and the newly born. As usual it was both serene and lavish. The folks of Medhanealem cathedral know how to give a feast fit for Ethiopians.

We are both proud and happy to have a caring church that knows its responsibility to people and country. To watch so many Ethiopians having fun and rejoicing in celebrating their heritage is heart warming. You can take the Ethiopian out of Ethiopia but you cannot take being Ethiopian out of him/her. The fact we were treated to such a holiday spirit is not an accident. Here in Oakland we have a little advantage. We are blessed to have a caring and humble father that has managed to keep has flock together and avoid the bad and terrible things that are happening all around us. Our church is under constant attack and church leaders like Abatachen have shown us how to be to be resilient. We might bend but we will never snap and break.

I am sure it took a lot of planning to organize such an event. Since there is the issue of setting fire (Demera) both the City and the fire department have to be notified. There were tents to be pitched, table and chairs to be set. There was food and water to be brought and special playing pen for the young ones to be set. Traffic control is always an issue and setting up the sound system takes knowledge. It all went well due to excellent planning by the Church Board and their helpers. A lot of Ethiopians went home happy.

It is such a joy to see Ethiopians coming together. United and working for the same purpose and goal. Priceless!

Another important event took place on the other side of this continent. The location was Uptown Manhattan and the name of the place is Columbia University. Here on Wednesday September 22^nd. another set of Ethiopians defended our honor and hoisted our flag sky high for all to see with the lettering ‘Do not thread on me!’ embossed on good old green yellow and red. Our people chartered buses, drove in their private cars, took the train and flew to be present at this important event. They came as far away as Carolina, as close as Boston as next door as New Jersey or a tad far as Connecticut. They came to speak for the voiceless. They were a few hundred in real numbers but they were hundreds of thousands in spirit. They were not alone. All Ethiopia was with them. They showed the tyrant ferenji respect is not a substitute to our love and respect.

Columbia University got more than what it bargained for. The hired TPLF lobbyists and the Professors for ‘sale’ were exposed for what they are, tyrant coddlers! Columbia heard the cry of the Ethiopian people loud and clear. They were seen going around like a chicken with is head cut off. First they removed the crappy flattering autobiography, then their Professors rebelled and called foul, and were forced to move the venue to a lower setting and crowned their debacle by canceling President Bollinger’s appearance.

Ethiopians in the Diaspora worked together and waged a successful campaign to turn this unjust invitation into a teachable moment. Students and faculty of Columbia University were made aware of the plight of our people. We emailed, faxed, called and made a lot of noise. Our independent websites were relentless and our airwaves were filled with somber discussions. We were at our best. We did it not out of hate but out of love for our homeland.

I wrote an article regarding the individual’s visit. I gave the examples of Fascist Italy’s aggression of 1935 and Jimmy Carters blunder in the aftermath of the 2005 elections to lament on Ferenjis disrespect for our sensibilities. I mis-spoke. I apologize. Both examples are off target. When Italy invaded our motherland our people did not fold their hands and sit around waiting for the bombs to fall. No they marched north to confront the enemy. The fact that Italy possessed airplanes loaded with poison gas and heavy guns capable of doing great damage was not a deterrent to the sons and daughters of Tewodros, Menelik, Tona, Abajifar and Yohanes.

When our honorable guest lost the election in 2005 and decided to win by any means necessary our people did not throw their hands in the air and went back home. They rose up to confront a highly trained and lethal Agazi force of the Prime Minster and engaged the enemy in Merkato and around the nation. Merkato is our sacred ground. Our ‘ground zero.’ Let us just say we lacked the resolve to take the game to its natural conclusion. (Our Kenyan neighbors took note and called Mr. Kibabki’s bluff. Today, Kenya with a democratically drawn constitution will surpass our country in a short time and take the leadership position in African Affairs.) We lost over two hundred sons and daughters of Ethiopia. I did not mean to dishonor the memory of our brave people that stood up against all odds.

My rant against Columbia University is a misplaced anger and a feeble attempt to shift responsibility to others. The confrontation should have been against myself. Don’t you think it is about time we as a nation do some deep agonizing introspection? Self-examination is long over due. Columbia University, for whatever reason have decided to bestow such honor on an abuser of human right and that is their prerogative. It makes us sad and loose respect to an institution that is supposed to be a center of advanced learning and higher moral expectations. After everything has been said and done the problem is ours to solve or live with.

So the question that is keeping me awake at night is how come the people that go out of their way to keep our heritage intact even in exile are the same people that enable Woyane’s atrocity on our people. How come these sons and daughters of Ethiopia are helping a single ethnic based Junta that exiled them out of their homeland by investing their hard earned money in his ponzi scheme? How could you claim to love Ethiopia and give money to those that are destroying Ethiopia?

My question to my brethren and myself is how did we get here? At what point did our character get devalued like our useless currency the Bir? Despite the on going attempt to rewrite our history Ethiopia has existed for centuries as a Nation State. Believe me there aren’t that many countries that can claim that. Today in 2010 how come we have become the poster country for an example of a failed state? Is there a historian, a sociologist or political scientist that can pin point the date of our collective rush to disintegrate?

It has been forty years now since we started this down ward spiral. We have managed to pick a few nasty habits in this difficult journey we embarked upon. The sons and daughter of those proud and brave souls that defined Ethiopia have been bullied to submission at home or reduced to a bunch of destitute nomads roaming the planet in search of a peaceful corner to lie down and die in peace.

There are two psychological terms that come to mind when we think of the predicament we find our selves in. I am speaking about the concepts of ‘intervention’ and a term known as ‘the Stockholm syndrome.’ In part two this search for explanation I will put my two cents worth to elaborate our dysfunctional behavior that is feeding the monster we have created. In the mean time we thank both groups in Oakland and New York for keeping hope alive. Melkam Meskel sons and daughters of brave Abeshas.

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24. September 2010 by Assimba.

Hama Tuma

“Education for colonial people must inevitably mean unrest and revolt; therefore, had to be limited and used to inculcate obedience and servility lest the whole system be overthrown.”

W. E. B. Du Bois

“It is the white man who creates the Negro. But it is the Negro who creates negritude.”

Frantz Fanon

“White is right

Yellow mellow

Black, get back!”

Langston Hughes

Diatribe it is not. Certainly not vitriolic. Anger at a sad situation? Maybe. Fury at our inability to be free? Perhaps. The whole thing was spurred by me seeing a security guard at a super market asking (once again) a black man to open his bag for inspection.

Africans who live in Paris know a particular African species, black of course, often bald and muscular, sometimes puffed up but still looking less menacing and more pathetic, dressed in a cheap standard issue black suit, sometimes wearing dark sunglasses, often found at the doors of super markets and department stores. Maybe the species exists elsewhere. This is no African to be categorized as a paperless émigré, a street cleaner, a frightened unemployed soul, the majority, as it were, in the increasingly unwelcoming capital that Paris has become. This special species is the security guard, the keeper of His Masters gates, a trusted mastiff, underpaid but still proud–he has a job and he has his working papers in order. Two valuable things that thousands other Africans do not have at all. These guards and elderly white women share the same phobia –they fear the African. In the Metro or in the buses, if an African stands close to her, the elderly white woman will usually hold her purse tighter after casting a fearful glance towards him. The black, often African, security guard will also stare at the African entering the supermarket or the department store, follow him with his eyes and more often than not accost him as he leaves to ask him to open and show the contents of his bag just as (or while) the whites, some of whom may have indulged in shoplifting away from the prying eyes of the camera, calmly walk out. “Good day Bwana, Have a nice day Sir, Please open the bag!”– This last one addressed to the African, of course. At the airport, the black policeman or woman soften stop the black person and rarely dare to do the same with the white ones.

It is all connected to the colonization of the mind, an inculcated self hatred and inferiority complex. There is no denying that the slave trade and colonialism ruined Africa to no end and that the wounds open up even today to debilitate Africa’s search for development and overall progress. That said, it is equally true that all of Africa’s woes cannot be traced back to those two evils even though 50 years after the so called independence from colonialism, the enslaved African bourgeoisie owes its rottenness and lack of nationalism to the colonial (mis)– education and formation. Colonialism was wanton murder but it was really worse than that. True that Germans almost wiped out the Herero in Namibia, the French killed thousands over thousands in the Maghreb, the British committed heinous crimes in Kenya and in their colonies, the Belgians slaughtered 15 million Congolese, Mussolini killed at least one million Ethiopians as he attempted to colonize Ethiopia, but all this and other crimes pale when it comes to the crime of the colonization of the minds of millions of Africans. The former passed, the latter crime still persists. Slave owners of America called it seasoning, the deculturization process that knew no end, leading to total subservience of the mind and the acceptance of the slave holder’s beliefs. The slave hated himself or herself, his culture, his blackness, his name his, kinky hair, lips and nose and in general his very being. This variety of “epistemic violence”, as some call it, afflicted many colonized Africans and Indians too. Structurally, British colonial control over India ended a longtime ago but the British left “persons, Indian in blood and color, but British in taste, in opinions, morals and in intellect”. Indian society worships the white skin, hates black and millions of the untouchables are, yes, quite black. In Kenya, a typical example was the Attorney General Charles Njonjo who assumed he was British and refused to shake hands with ordinary Kenyans thereby provoking the anger of Kenyan students who, when they demonstrated, often held placards calling on Njonjo to ” Go Home to England!”. And they were not joking at all.

Brainwashing is another word for it, massive brainwashing or what some have called “menticide”. Mental colonialism as the Iranian Jalal Al-e Almadi argued in his book Occidentosis. It has afflicted most colonized peoples. African Americans had to struggle against “seasoning” to decolonize their minds, to realize that black is also beautiful. It took a long time and is still not victorious. Even James Baldwin, as Eldridge Cleaver put it in his “Soul on Ice”, could himself qualify as a “reluctant black”, Malcolm X and others had to spend hours “conking” their hairs. The struggle for national liberation in Africa was not accompanied by a cultural struggle that was just as fierce. The African leaders and ruling elite left in power by colonialism were black in colour but white at heart and in desire. The Western companies that make skin lightening creams and lotions profit millions in Africa and India as their products spread skin diseases and reinforce the feeling of self loathing. Having a pale or white skin has become a must. Many colonized people bleach their skins, want to identify themselves with the colonial entity, are ashamed of their origin and punish their hairs. The French refer to light skinned blacks as the “saved colors” (couleur sauvé) meaning saved by a miracle from the disaster that would have been “being black”. Even in Ethiopia, where colonialism never took place, we talk of color of various hues, differentiating Ethiopians as black, red and brown–ignorance being bliss and you can imagine what color is frowned upon. Wearing wigs over kinky hairs has earned millions for wig makers (Comedian Chris Rock has made an interesting film on the hair issue amidst African Americans). And the African male is accused of going wild for blondes fulfilling the white stereotype of ages–the black man yearning and lusting for blue eyed blondes. We are the eternal King Kongs, no? This is the most serious colonial crime committed on Africa–the colonization of our minds, now continued by the West under new forms. The African yearns to be a caricature of the white, to ape the white man’s culture, to have little or no self respect. We do not even consider ourselves able to express our woes and look up to self appointed stars and foreign self declared do-gooders to voice our plight and find us some solutions. The African was colonized and now he himself, devoid of an independent mind, continues with his own colonization, perpetuates negritude.

I am, however, of the opinion that Afro centrist positions often reflect, albeit in reverse and at times unwittingly, the base inferiority complex that characterizes the colonized mind. We do not have to insist that everything under the sun originated with the black person or in Africa to be proud of our heritage. Mobutu launched the authenticité campaign and changed his name from Joseph Desiree Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Wazabanga but that did little to change his colonized mind or state of servility to the West. Civilization, what is right, progress and what is or is not modern are all relative and not always white. The concept of the mind as an occupied territory, this same mind becoming the enemy within of the assimilated “natives”, filled with self contempt, who imbibe the education of the colonizer (language and all) and become carbon copies of the colonizer highlights the confusion and debilitating trauma and tension the colonized have to live under. Ngugi wa Thiongo, in his book “The Decolonization of the Mind”, raises the problem as it relates to language and the dominance of English. He argues that writers should write in their native languages as a means of decolonization of the mind. How far is the relevance and even importance of Western education? Should the African elite feel proud and gloat just because, as one Western African put it, he has “sat at the foot of the white man and drank from the fountain of knowledge” in some Western university and got a degree. And yet the resort to what is generally known as tradition is fraught with deadly mines. Automatic deliverance is not offered–actually this solution may be worse than the problem in many instances. Harmful traditions are many; the overall rejection of all that is labeled Western (what is really Western and not universal?) could also be disastrous. After all the Taliban mind is not decolonized, they and the likes of the Somali Al Shabab, who rile against music, sports and the rights of women and decapitate, stone or throw acid at the faces of young girls going to school, are not a better deal over the colonized mind. Choose your poison.

Hence, the black security guards and policemen who tend to believe that all blacks are first class suspects are not to be blamed–they need to be pitied. Next time you go to a supermarket or a department store, do open your bags voluntarily to give the black security guards articles and books on the need to decolonize our minds. It is tragic to stay a slave and not know it at all. Fifty years after mostly fake independence, the real liberation of Africa demands an end to servility and to the colonization of our minds.

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18. September 2010 by Assimba.

 By Yilma Bekele

Let just say it is painful to hear that a prestigious University like Columbia has invited Ethiopia’s tyrannical leader Meles Zenawi to speak at the annual World Leaders Forum. As an Ethiopian I feel insulted and mocked upon.

Then again we Ethiopians are used to having our country and people judged with different sets of values and standards than what is applied to others. The cowardly stand taken by the League of Nations that failed to condemn Italy’s aggression against a member state served a severe blow to the Organization. Emperor Haile Selassie’s prophetic words ‘“It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” Still rings true today.

We will always remember former President Jimmy Carter’s retreat from telling the truth on the aftermath of the 2005 general elections. When the PM declared state of emergency this is what Mr. Cater said, “We believe collectively that the decision of the prime minister was not excessive in preventing any possible arousal of animosity or violence among his own supporters or the opposition.” Such endorsement of an illegal action emboldened the tyrant to let loose his private Agazi force and specially trained sharpshooters on unarmed civilian protesters and the world ignored our cry.

Columbia University is not ‘just another’ institution. It is the fifth oldest in the US (1754) and is credited with affiliation with the most Noble Prize winners in the world. The World Leaders Forum that extended the invitation has the following regarding its guest:

Under the seasoned governmental leadership of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, now in his fourth term, and vision of the Tigrai Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), Ethiopia has made and continues to make progresses in many areas including in education, transportation, health and energy.

Does that statement reflect facts on the ground, as we Ethiopians know it? For such a prestigious research University the statement seems to have been written by a freshman that is not yet clued on the importance of fact check and adherence to higher academic standard of proof before publishing. TPLF is neither visionary (student of Albania’s Enver Hoxha) EPDRF is a subsidiary of TPLF and the progress is a mirage concocted for donors and enablers and we can prove that without much fanfare.

Here is your ‘visionary’ leader undressed as seen by his poverty stricken subjects that pray daily to all the Gods for his quick departure from the land of Abeshas.

His visionary policies include:

Land: The State owns all of Ethiopia and the people lease the land and pay rent. The State uses its ownership to reward or punish the citizen depending on ethnic and political affiliation.

Business and Industry: All key industries and private businesses are owned by the TPLF party and it affiliates. EFFORT is a super conglomerate owned and controlled by the party. It owns Banks, Cement factory, Brewery, Insurance, Transportation, Tannery, Engineering etc. EFFORT is bigger than Ethiopia and is not accountable to the State.

Communications. Telephone service both land and cellular is owned by the state. It is a cash cow for TPLF that uses the income for its own survival (on security, bribing Bantustan chiefs, and buying individuals loyalty) instead of upgrading and modernizing the system, Thus in this day of explosion of cellular technology Ethiopia is next to last in Africa.

Media: The state controls the single Television and short wave radio transmission services. ESAT (Ethiopian Satellite Television) that is trying to level the playing field by offering independent news and entertainment service from abroad is being subjected to jamming using sophisticated Chinese technology. The print media has been decimated and at the moment on life support with no chance of survival. Publishers, editors and reporters are victims of secret service death squads and forced exile from their homeland. Internet when available is still slow dial up service with all ‘independent’ sites blocked.

Politics: TPLF divided our country into ethnic Bantustans called ‘Kilils’ like as in South Africa during Apartheid rule. This is your basic ‘divide and rule’ policy pursued by colonialists to have the natives fight for the limited resources. In theory although the Kilils supposedly have their own people in charge, in practice it is TPLF cadres that are running the show.

The so-called EPDRF is a Hollywood style façade for show. The different Party’s are the brainchild of TPLF and nothing more than puppets on a string. Any opposition that dares to challenge the mighty TPLF is subjected to intimidation, harassment and cooption. No viable opposition is tolerated. The Chairman of Andenet Party Bertukan Mideksa is solitary confinement and denied visitors, Red Cross and medical attention. As for the four elections they were nothing but a farce. The recent one in May of 2010 was the ultimate joke played on the world where the single ethnic based party garnered 99% of the vote. So much for participatory democracy.

Dear organizers, if you have only talked to Ethiopians at home you would have found out that famine is a fact of life in TPLF’s Ethiopia. ‘According to estimates by the United Nations World Food Program, 14.3 million people in Ethiopia are threatened with starvation—every fifth person in the country http://www.wfp.org/

When we say your ‘visionary’ leader is a murder it is not some kind of metaphor rather a statement with verifiable facts. Ask Addis Abeba University students that have been recipient of Woyane justice. Unlike Columbia University, AAU has become a cadre training institutions with most of its able and seasoned professors dismissed by the PM (1991) students murdered (1993, 2001) and independent associations banned.

We Ethiopians are a little confused when you claim ‘progress’ that is being made by the regime under the PM. On the other hand we are perfectly aware of the fact that our country ranks 171 on the UN Human Development Index. I doubt being ahead of nine countries is a source of pride. I am sure the PM will mention stability and peace as one of his legacy. That is not rue either. Since his assumption of power there has been inter ethnic clashes in Gambella, Awasa, Jimma, Ogaden, Afar, Arsi and all university campuses including the TPLF capital Mekele. Today’s Ethiopia is a police state with security personnel in every government office, neighborhood control centers (Kebeles) and so called Kilils or Ethiopian Bantustans.

With all due respect your invitation of a dictator whose crime has been recorded by such credible organizations as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors without Boarders, International Federation of Journalists and your own State Department Human Rights Report is very perplexing for his victims. I very much doubt you will sleep easy after reading any of the above organizations reports.

You can talk all you want about ‘freedom of speech’ but the fact of the matter is that your honored guest does not believe in that. It also makes one wonder if you will accord the same right to Osama Bin laden or how you would feel if the shoe is on the other feet and Addis Ababa University invites Mr. Bin laden to expound on the his ‘seasoned leadership’ of a terrorist organization and the progress he is making in extending his tentacles all over the world.

I assure you with or without your help Ethiopia will be free. Your honored guest will be tried by the Ethiopian people for his crimes and our country will rise up one day to usher liberty and the rule of law in our ancient land. After over thirty years of civil war, dictatorship, famine we are one tired people. Your ill advised action makes us sad but not despondent because we know we are capable of overcoming any hurdle and rebuild our country to join the international community as free and equal.

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14. September 2010 by Assimba.

By Obo Arada Shawl = September 13, 2010

Prologue

It took me sixty-seven years to own a car, a car that was manufactured fifty years after my birth date. Why am I telling this is to remind my readers that as Eathiopians we were neither producers nor consumers of goods and services? As a nation, we were and are still peasant/farmers where no science and technology existed. As I wrote many times Arts was created in Africa, exported to Europe and was integrated with science before it crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reach America where technology – the application of science was packaged for sale.

In other words, back at home, let alone during my generation even currently, there is hardly any industry or factory. There is no transport or communication. There is no science or technology. So what is to be done? Do Eathiopians still need Industry, Transport and Science? Or do we need Factory, Communication and Technology? The answer lies in the Eway model which will be explained when the time comes, a time of peace and harmony.

For now, I have some messages to all our young generation who are caught between the atom and the net. Here is the message.

I want you to completely understand that the age of the 20th century of the Atom was really the symbol of individuality. We were ignorant of the symbol as we were not part and parcel of this age. As Ethiopians we were centralized by family, religious and community values. While the Eway generation was struggling to be decentralized politically, all of a sudden a new age – the age of the net with no centre, with no orbit and with no certainty has emerged to symbolize the 21^st Century. The Eway Generation is beginning - though partially - do understand the century of your NET. We also ask you not to forget the Atomic age which brought psychological and political havoc to all Eathiopians. We will do our homework as you should do yours.

We have heard from the advocates of digital age and telecommunication of announcing the death of geography. We do not agree with them. We believe in the separation of place and space. My space or face book may be relevant for the net generation like yours but not so much for the Eway generation. As Eathiopians, place is very relevant and important for us all as God gave us the body, the mind and the soul in one place – dwk…

Anyhow, before delving into discussion on the above ideas and concepts, it is imperative to tell to the net generation about the History (Adwa I), the Politics (AADWA III) and the Religion (Adwa II) of Eathiopia. We have to come up with these three (HPR) concepts, theories and application before we can move on to the next level. Let me briefly explain in the following manner.

History: Adwa I

I should like to remind all Eathiopians (Eritreans and Ethiopians) to be able to recognize that there are hundreds of histories. Examples are social history, economic, military, political, and religious or any other history which we can not lump together. The best example to understand history is to read a book titled “What is history? By Edward Hallett Carr, Vintage Books, Cambridge1961

For people who are interested to know the history of Eritrea, “Amariya or Oromia” or whatever the case might be, I recommend to read, see or listen to the history of Adwa. All the so-called Liberation movements do base their claim on Adwa I.

Adwa I is about the battle of Adwa (1896) which was fought between Eathiopia and Italy. It was after this Adwa’s aftermath that our pride, our fear and our confusion have emerged and still continued to be evolved.

Again those who are interested in the history of confusion, fear and pride (CFP) as a result of Adwa I, can and should continue to harp on each other – if that is where their passion lie in contributing to solve our perceived problems.

I wish to all believers, supporters and funs for Adwa I, to receive clarity, confidence and independence (CCI) on this historic day of New Year 2003. It is to be remembered that number 3 is part of the Eway model.

Religion: Adwa II

“The age of innocence, and historians walked in the Garden of Eden, without a scrap of philosophy to cover them, naked and unashamed before the god of history. Since then, we have known Sin and experienced a Fall; and those historians who today pretend to dispense with a philosophy of history are merely trying, vainly and self-consciously, like members of a nudist colony, to recreate the Garden of Eden in their garden suburb. Today the awkward question can no longer be evaded.” (Quoted from what is History? P: 21)

So what is the relation and distinction between Adwa II and AADWA III? Adwa II which represents the current Ethiopian government, in terms of religion may seem complex to a lot of people but not to me personally. The core value of Adwa II, in my opinion is Protestantism which says that there is a ‘selfish man in everyman’. This principle has been here over three centuries and has succeeded so far in America but not in Monasteries or in the Vatican. Board Room is not only complex and complicated to the Tigrai people alone but it is also remains the same for a lot of educated Eathiopians. Christianity is the main problem in the current Ethiopian affairs. What kind of Christianity are we interested in? I leave the answer to the young generation of Eathiopians. The TPLF is playing with fire if it continues to dwell on confusing ideas and issues that were and are relevant to our societies. For now, however, let me say, happy, new year.

Politics: AADWA III

AADWA III is a generation which has come and survived for five decades. And it will continue with or without organized religion. If EPRP was the party of the government, it would be a perfect bridge between two distinct cultures of Agame and Hamasien to extend an Ethiopian hand to all be it to the majority or the minority groups of people for EPRP has worked hard to sell DEMOCRACIA.

Ethiopia was a nation with the soul of a church – moral inheritance belief in a nation. Small towns that cling to religion and prayer don’t fear EPRP as experience has shown.

AADWA III is the generation that understood the positive and negative aspects of history of religion. Although most of our parents belonged to either Christian or Islam, most of us have become less religious based on understanding our Ethiopian theology and philosophy. Historically, the majority of Eathtiopians don’t believe in rigid fundamental or rigorous practice. For this reason, the Eway Revolutionaries have become comrades so easily. Politics or Revolutionary politics have become the norms rather than the exception to a lot of the AADWA III followers.

It may be the reason why the uninitiated individual in terms of revolution accuse the Eway generation as anti-religion as anti-spiritual and what not. Actually the main reason, in my opinion, for the seemingly complex problem in political affairs in the Eway nation is because of the underlying theological and philosophical differences of Christianity among Eathiopian intellectuals. They all seem to divert from the real political solutions.

Conclusion

It is time to separate and distinguish among the three Adwas. Whom do we want to follow or to lead? Do we follow those who threaten us, cheat us or educate us? Let us not talk and counter talk about history or religion. They will lead us to nowhere.

Freedom is about society, state and government. Let us understand about our MAKK societies, Ethiopian state and what kind of government we should have? Those who want to follow Adwa I should get organized in order to have a common understanding of their history. Those who want to follow Adwa II, they can follow the TPLF trail and until they find themselves in more and more confusion and hallucination. Those who would like to follow the AADWA III; let them be educated mainly on political issues. Political education will liberate you as it has liberated me mentally, physically and psychologically.

The Eway model aims at justice and mercy whose duty is giving, lending and forgiving.

Happy New Year and N’GDET.

TRUTH WILL PREVAIL

For comments and questions

woldetewolde@yahoo.com

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9. September 2010 by Assimba.

By Hama Tuma

Ever since he was elected to power, French president Sarkozy has not disappointed those who were itching to ridicule and chastise him. A small man with a sharp tongue that has, alas, seceded a longtime ago from his big ears and common sense (if any), Sarkozy, of Hungarian descent, has proved from the outset that he would be more condescending and insulting towards Africans than his predecessor Chirac . Jacques Chirac was liked by many people but he was the very person who condemned Africans in France for their noise and smell and refused to apologize to former French colonies who suffered French brutalities and massacres or to properly acknowledge the role of African soldiers who fought for France in the world wars.

Sarkozy did start out by blatantly and boldly telling Africans that they have yet to enter the present century and he was not referring to the calendar of Moslems or Ethiopians which are not the same with his. He was telling Africans that they are actually retrograde, not yet civilized, and savage if you will. There was some hue and cry but this did not deter Sarkozy from sticking to his belief and befriending the dictators at the same time. Now, a French president who acts and talks like all French presidents of the past is not a problem for us Africans–we know how to deal with the creature after so many years of sad experience. We do not expect much and thus we are not really very disappointed when a president comes after another and the same racist and oppressive policy continues albeit with a different name. No African émigré or sans papier is really shocked when Air France planes routinely transport the deported ones back to Africa. The important thing is not to be caught without papers and not to expect France to really be the land for asylum seekers as the officials never cease to remind us. Liberté, Fraternité, Egalite, France terre d’asile and other such nonsense. What has now shocked us Africans in France is that Sarkozy has practically swept the rug from under our black and jigger–mutilated, coarse feet and blamed the Roma (otherwise known as gypsies) for all the ills and malaise of France.

Africans have lost again. What do we have but our notoriety as the problem children wrecking the peace and order, the conscience of the world? We are the famine children, the war mongers, the lands of warlords, symbolized by the killers in downtown Mogadishu, the rapists in the Congo, the mutilators of the LRA, the ones who perish en masse trying to invade Europe, the impoverished refugees, the ones who steal the menial and dirty jobs from the Europeans who would never be caught doing them , the criminals and dope dealers, the con men and swindlers, and more. Back in History, we were the nightmare of the white maidens and spinsters, the black Mandingo hordes, cruel and barbarian, the ones even those claiming to be enlightened, from the ancient philosophers to Voltaire and even Marx the “Moor”, considered alien to enlightenment and education. Of such notoriety we thrived, playing on the troubled conscience of the liberals and those desperately trying to suppress their racism by doing something good for us “boys”. Refer to those who rush to help famine victims in Ethiopia while spending much of their tax payers’ money bankrolling tyrants whose regimes cause the famines in the first place. Sierra Leone, Eastern Congo, Darfur, and more–who fanned the wars and why? Their slave trade, colonialism and imperialism, their unbridled exploitation of our resources, their cruel plunder assured and worsened our poverty, made us destitute, turned us into beggars, turned them into our unwanted benefactors and the circus continued. Much as we hate to admit it, we Africans benefitted from the situation, we were a permanent prick on their shriveled conscience, and, as they insist on telling us alleged lazybones, it seems it has been easy to wait for the dole rather than work. We even got bona fide guardians and defenders from the same West, men and women who told us they knew better what was good for us and vowed to campaign to have our debts cancelled no matter the question of ongoing agricultural subsidies and the continuing robbery of our resources. No matter if the greed for these resources, from oil to Coltan fuelled, the so called “tribal and militia wars” ravaging the continent. Some praised the malaria mosquitoes for reducing our number while others promised and did send us nets for protection. What do they really want?

Reduced to a state of “the scum of the earth” most repressed Africans got some solace and salvaged some pride from the fact that they were notorious as problem children of the world and that they were blamed for most of Europe’s ills and mostly incarcerated in camps, reduced to doing degrading menial work, subjected to racism and also deported. Of course, the Arabs had started to threaten this particular position and notoriety of the African but ask an European and he would tell you that the African émigré is lazy and present in Europe only to rob the riches of the hardworking white people, to engage in swindling of the social security system, to benefit from the medical care, to marry the innocent white (but preferably blonde) maidens. Many polls in Europe have confirmed this prejudice to be that of many if not the majority. That Sarkozy has from the outset exhibited his racism to Africans was also a solace and this is why his sudden diatribe against the Roma and his racist actions caught all Africans by surprise. Sarko did not consult or warn Africans before he took away their status as the main targets of his racist wrath and replaced them with the Roma ( who are not even that many in France!) whom he accused as a people (”they are….”) of being criminals, exploiters of children, drug traffickers, prostitutes and thieves, illegals. The accusation made no distinction between those living legally and without resorting to crimes and those who were not. It covered the whole people from child to eighty years old and the accusation brought to mind the same kind of stereotype used against the Roma by the Nazis (who murdered no less than 1.5 million Romas and dumped them into anonymous mass graves). The Africans carry their crime on their face–they are black and easily identifiable for the prejudice package, forever victims of the prima facie. The Romas had also the misfortune of looking somewhat different, having their own lifestyle and tradition and the tendency to be present day nomads (gypsies in trailers and whites in trailers are not the same as a Bedouin in a tent and Gadafi in a tent are not the same at all). Still, the Romas are not blacks notwithstanding the assertion that they did originate from Egypt which (sorry, Mubarek) is really black and Nubian (and not Arab) as many do insist.

Sarkozy has shamed republican France by this crude racism against Romas but he has hurt Africans the most by relegating them to a position of non importance. Compared to the fate of the Romas that of the sans papiers pales. The Romas are hogging the front page, eliciting not only condemnation ( which is not always bad so long as you are NEWS) but also sympathy all over the world and exposing Sarkozy and those French people (60% according to one poll) who backed his racist measures. Sarko’s popularity has increased a little bit and he has stolen the thunder of the vociferous and fascistic right wing but, care he may not, he has lost his salt amidst Africans. As for racial stereotyping and deporting people en masse, African tyrants wrote the book on it and are not that impressed by Sarkozy. In Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi had deported thousands of Eritreans and claimed he did not like the color of their eyes”( no, the tyrant in Addis Abeba does not have blue or green eyes!). African émigrés have also stopped being surprised by the racist stereotyping that has been their lot in Europe as they clean sewages and toilets, sweep the streets, take the pampered dogs for walks , labor as nannies, coolies, etc. Horrible as their condition was and still is, they had some pride in the masochistic realization that they were the main specters haunting fortress Europe. No more though, unless our marabous, juju and voodoo men come to the rescue. As for the Romas, they should stop complaining and enjoy their condition as they are now in the eye of the world and they, as deported Africans, can always come back with the help of the corrupted police, immigration officials and human traffickers of white European origin. To elaborate on this would not be proper but Romas should be happy that they have a position much more important than the perennial victims, the Africans. They have beaten the recession and so many other serious problems to become the main and foremost problems of France. What more can they ask after taking away this exalted position from Africans?

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3. September 2010 by Assimba.

“We don’t know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans,”( Col Gaddafi said in Rome, August 30/ 2010.

 By Hama Tuma

Arab racism to wards Africans has for long been taboo subject–it is politically incorrect to even say that Arabs who are Moslems are racists to boot and consider Africans–Moslem or Christian it does not matter- as inferior.

Reference is made to the Genesis and the three sons of Noah – Ham, Japheth and Shem with Arabs claiming that “the accursed Ham was the progenitor of the black race; that Japheth begat the full-faced, small eyed Europeans, and that Shem fathered the handsome Arabs with beautiful face and hair.” Arab philosophers also laid the ground for the racism of their kin towards Africans and all blacks. Ibn Sina (Avicenna 980–1037), Arab’s most famous and influential philosopher/ scientist in Islam, described blacks as “people who are by their very nature slaves.” He wrote: “All African women are prostitutes, and the whole race of African men is abeed (slave) stock.” He equated black people with “rats plaguing the earth.”
Ibn Khaldum, revered especially by Algerians, an Arab historian stated that “Blacks are characterized by levity and excitability and great emotionalism,” adding that “they are every where described as stupid.” Al-Dimashqi, often described as an Arab pseudo scientist wrote, “the Equator is inhabited by communities of blacks who may be numbered among the savage beasts. Their complexion and hair are burnt and they are physically and morally abnormal. Their brains almost boil from the sun’s heat…..” Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani said of black people: “…..the zanj (the blacks) are overdone until they are burned, so that the child comes out between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions…..”

Colonel Gadafi of Libya has continued in this tradition albeit masquerading as a Pan Africanist though he has been attempting since the early 70s to Arabize Africa.
Gadafi may not be an honorable man but he sure is a desperate man. He paid two hundred Italian female models 70 to 80 Euros each to listen to his lecture on Islam and his infamous Green Book. He told them quite blatantly that “Islam should become the religion of Europe” and gave them free copies of the Koran, after he had lectured them for an hour on the “freedoms” enjoyed by women in Libya. Where does one find women who are free in Libya? Is he referring to the majority forced to wrap themselves up like burritos in black covering dresses in the stifling heat? Or to the majority of women beaten as a matter of routine by the males including his notorious son Seif al Islam who has already shamed himself in Genève and Paris as a criminal spoiled brat?  And then again, Gadafi may be called a realist in that he knew not many people would voluntarily come to his lectures unless they get paid. For a vain dictator that he is, this is a commendable foresight and grasp of the cruel reality of his cheap worth especially when compared to other dictators who relish and wallow in their own lies and propaganda.

It is all a matter of perspective and having a modem of respect for the truth, for numbers, for the people and Africa as a whole. For all his claims to the contrary, Gadafi has no respect for Africa and Africans. This is not just manifested by how he treats African workers and asylum seekers (very, very inhumanely), nor by his self declaration as the King of All African tribes but mainly by his deeply ingrained chauvinism and pretension to be an African Messiah. No wonder he refers to Africans as starved and ignorant and violates the rights of Africans in Libya. Gadafi, in his recent visit to Rome, even went as far warning Europeans to beware of the starving and ignorant barbarians: “We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.” The desert prisons of Libya (some just containers for goods) are filled with African asylum seekers. Algeria refers to blacks as Kahlusha and black Africans are spat upon in many Algerian cities. The same is true in Morocco and Tunisia. Mauritania, its majority black and its minority considering itself as Arab, still has the salve system in place as was the case in Southern Sudan where the “natives” were compared to “haiwanin” (animals) by the self declared Arab North. The same so called Arab Sudanese are considered as abeed or slave in Saudi Arabia. The claim that Muslims cannot be racist is debunked in the Holy Land of Moslems itself where Africans on the Hajj pilgrimage are victimized by Arab racism and contempt. Lebanon has time and again shown its ugly racism towards Africans in its vile treatment of domestic workers from Ethiopia and other African countries. This crude racism was in evidence when an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed just off Beirut and the Lebanese authorities ignored the Ethiopian victims and their relatives and focused on the few Lebanese who were aboard. Even Arab Sudanese were called Nubian monkeys by the Lebanese police at one time. Egypt, itself an African country calling itself Arab, the Nubians and all blacks are discriminated against. Anwar Sadat was not happy when he heard a film on his life would have an African American actor portraying him and the late Hassan II of Morocco was never amused by a reference to his black ancestry.

Arabs think they are superior and exhibit racism towards Africans. This is the undeniable truth. Let alone white skinned Arabs even the black skinned ones (Sudan for example) consider themselves superior by virtue of their self declared Arab identity. Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia hoodwinked Gadafi and got Libyan aid during the struggle against Mengistu by assuring Gadafi that Ethiopians are Arabs, Zenawi (Meles’ father) a Yemenite and that Ethiopia under Meles will join the Arab League. Over the years Libya has been accused of racism and of officially provoking the beating and killing of African migrants. Gadafi’s pan African pretensions have always appeared shoddy and hollow as a consequence and his recent statement in Europe– calling Africans ignorant and barbarian invaders– has nailed his coffin as an Arab racist. Gadafi has brutally deported thousands of Africans and Saudi Arabia is doing the same every week. The degenerate Sheikhs and princes (who drink alcohol and maintain harems) have hypocritically been subjecting blacks to cruel punishment on flimsy charges of drinking alcohol, adultery and what have you. An Ethiopian woman was hanged in public in Riyadh a few years back while Saudi women who beat up and throw acid at the faces of African domestic workers have never been charged or tried. How many black skinned Libyans, Omanis, Saudis, Algerians and Moroccans hold high positions of government in their own respective countries?

There was a time early in his reign when the young colonel was somewhat funny with his proposal of unity to all and sundry countries with Sicily excepted, his female bodyguards, his tent palace, and his air of a true Bedouin lost in oil and a modern century. But that time has passed. Gadafi the racist has for long been also Gadafi the dictator, killing off his opponents both inside and outside the country, financing the likes of Fode Sankoh in Sierra Leone and meddling in the affairs of other countries like Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia, etc. During his Rome visit recently , Gadafi asked the EU for 5 billion Euros to block black Africans from Invading Europe and turning the continent into “another Africa” ( that is for Gadafi into a continent of starving and ignorant black barbarians). Yet, he told Europeans to open their doors to rich Libyans and offered to the Italian female odels he paid to attend his lecture that he can find them Libyan husbands so that they can be free like Libyan women. We can still take all this as funny but his alliance with Berlusconi has not augured well for Africans. Gadaafi in not funny, no–he is just a pathetic racist Arab who should be shunned by all of Africa.

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