Columbia University Protest Organizers issue the New York Manifesto
Following the successful demonstration staged against the visit of the Ethiopian dictator to Columbia University, the organizers of the protest from New York, D.C. area, and other north-eastern states issued the attached Manifesto.
In the coming few days and weeks, there will be extensive discussion on each of the three items constituting the Manifesto. We encourage all pro-democracy individuals and groups to participate in the discussions using all available forums and media, including the popular Websites, radio, focus groups, etc.
WHEREAS, On September 22, 2010, Ethiopians in the Diaspora staged an extraordinarily successful demonstration against the invitation of Meles Zenawi to Columbia University in the City of New York; and
WHEREAS, in the days leading to the said demonstration, there was a manifestation of unsurpassed unity among the democratic forces; and
WHEREAS, This unity was further galvanized by the 99.6% victory blatantly declared by the Dictator in the sham election of May of 2010, his continued violation of human rights, his untamed embezzlement of the country’s resources, and his remorseless use of land and jobs as means of subjugation; and
WHEREAS, There is a clear recognition of the need to maintain the momentum exhibited by the democratic forces in the Diaspora.
THEREFORE, The coordinators of the protest from the North Eastern part of the United States met immediately after the successful demonstration, and issued the following declaration, hereafter referred to as
The New York Manifesto
1. Henceforth, the FOCUS of the struggle by ALL individuals and groups of Ethiopian origin shall be solely on the liberation of Ethiopia from the TPLF tyranny.
2. The immediate launch of a capacity building initiative, with full transparency and accountability, shall be a critical component of the struggle to remove the dictatorship of Meles Zenawi and his ethno-centric party.
3. In the short term, meaningful, realistic and achievable goals shall be formulated and implemented to further motivate, rally and engage the Ethiopian community in the Diaspora.
Organizers from New York, Virginia, DC, Maryland, and other north-eastern states.
16 thoughts on “The New York Manifesto”
I love it. Everything must be done to eliminate TPLF shiftas and theit supportrrs. Enough is enough.
Manifesto and building on the momentum is excellent. Even more excellent for its sustained growth and success is behind the scene active broad based new consensus and trust building efforts among major stockholders on win-win basis.
With carefully constructed creative new alliances and unities within our GOOD natural diversities we can surly convert that entirely neglected and deep down to its bones exploited human and material resources in to a sustainable and vibrant heaven on earth that is more than enough for all of us, and even beyond.
“If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.”
~Thomas Paine stated long ago. American writer 1737-1809
Haven’t we been entertaining illusions, divided and hanging separately for the the last some 20 years and the misfortune getting even stronger and stronger with each passing days and years, giving the hangmen 99.6% upper hand?
So, what is the point of saving the inhuman tortures and nasty troubles of the evil empire for our children down the line? Hmm…
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace”
~Thomas Paine again :)
The almighty God with his ever merciful presence shall see the final emancipation of our nation.
By accepting all forms of struggle, and by pledging never to criticize any political group that are against Woyane, I hereby commit myself to this Manifesto.
God Save Ethiopia, Amen!
Bertu
September 25, 2010
Egypt and Thirsty Neighbors Are at Odds Over Nile
By THANASSIS CAMBANIS BATANDA, Egypt —
One place to begin to understand why this parched country has nearly ruptured relations with its upstream neighbors on the Nile is ankle-deep in mud in the cotton and maize fields of Mohammed Abdallah Sharkawi. The price he pays for the precious resource flooding his farm? Nothing. “Thanks be to God,” Mr. Sharkawi said of the Nile River water. He raised his hands to the sky, then gestured toward a state functionary visiting his farm. “Everything is from God, and from the ministry.” But perhaps not for much longer. Upstream countries, looking to right what they say are historic wrongs, have joined in an attempt to break Egypt and Sudan’s near-monopoly on the water, threatening a crisis that Egyptian experts said could, at its most extreme, lead to war. “Not only is Egypt the gift of the Nile, this is a country that is almost completely dependent on Nile water resources,” said a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Hossam Zaki. “We have a growing population and growing needs. There is no way we can accept this kind of threat.” Ever since civilization first sprang forth here, Egyptians have clustered along the Nile’s silt-rich banks. Almost all of the country’s 80 million people live within a few miles of the river, and farmers like Mr. Sharkawi have hardly changed their farming methods in four millenniums. Egypt’s population is growing briskly, however, and by the year 2017 at current rates of usage the Nile’s water will barely meet Egypt’s basic needs, according to the Ministry of Irrigation. And that is assuming that the river’s flow is undiminished. Under British colonial rule, a 1929 treaty reserved 80 percent of the Nile’s entire flow for Egypt and Sudan, then ruled as a single country. That treaty was reaffirmed in 1959. Usually upstream countries dominate control of a river, like the Tigris and Euphrates, which are much reduced by the time they flow into Iraq from Turkey and Syria. The case of the Nile is reversed because the British colonials who controlled the region wanted to guarantee water for Egyptian agriculture. The seven upstream countries — Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda — say the treaty is an unfair vestige of colonialism, while Egypt says those countries are awash in water resources, unlike arid Egypt, which depends on just one. Today’s confrontation has unfolded in slow motion. In April, negotiations between the nine Nile countries broke down after Egypt and Sudan refused to give ground. The upstream countries quickly got together and in May came up with a formula that would free them to build their own irrigation projects and dams, reducing the flow to Lake Nasser, the vast man-made reservoir that straddles Egypt and Sudan. So far Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda have signed the new Nile basin accord, which would require only a simple majority of member countries to approve new projects. Egypt wants to retain veto power over projects in any country, and with Sudan argues that the main provisions of the colonial-era treaty should be preserved. Congo and Burundi have not yet taken sides. Egypt and Sudan have until May 2011 to resume negotiations, or else the upstream countries will activate the new agreement. The threat of losing Nile water has animated Egypt, which until recently had virtually ignored the upstream countries. And Cairo received another jolt this spring, when Ethiopia inaugurated a $520 million hydroelectric dam on a Nile tributary, part of a decade-long project to create a modern electricity infrastructure. Italy, Ethiopia and the European Investment Bank financed the project, according to Ethiopian media reports. Adding urgency, say diplomats and water experts in Egypt, investors from China and the Persian Gulf region have expressed interest in underwriting enormous agriculture projects in Uganda and Ethiopia, which would use Nile water. Currently, several upstream nations, including Ethiopia and Uganda, are planning hydroelectric dams. If the upstream countries move slowly and fill the reservoirs over a period of 5 to 15 years, however, Egyptian officials concede that the hydroelectric plants will not significantly hurt Egyptian consumption. Egyptian officials are also confident that the World Bank, the traditional donor for dams, would not approve them over Cairo’s objections, even if the officials remain concerned that governments and private investors might feel free to lend the money. But agricultural projects, potentially far more damaging to Egypt, are another matter. Not only would they permanently reduce the amount of water that reaches Egypt’s border, but they have also already attracted the interest of wealthy Arab nations and the Chinese, who see an enormous profit potential in them. Egyptian water experts said that the upstream countries wasted colossal amounts of water that run off unused into swamps. The upstream countries point to Egypt’s own wasteful practices, saying that 75 percent of Egypt’s water is used for agriculture, most of it wasted by inefficient, old-fashioned practices. “I feel that we are all mad,” said Diaa el-Quosy, an American-trained water expert who advises Egypt’s irrigation minister. “Everyone wants to take his own share and then more.” He said that once political tensions cooled, the nine Nile basin countries could find “creative solutions” to manage the river’s flow effectively. “There is water enough for everyone,” he said. In Egypt, however, decades of bellicose rhetoric about the Nile have made the river’s water an explosive issue. “Violating Egypt’s quota of Nile water is a genocidal war against 80 million people,” an Egyptian commentator, Hazem el-Beblawi, wrote this year in Al Masry Al Youm, an Egyptian daily. Water experts say that Egypt has done little to curtail its own misuse of water. Despite periodic government efforts to promote less wasteful practices, irrigation water still flows largely through dirt channels often choked with weeds. Much of it leaches into the ground before reaching crops. “Egypt doesn’t act like a country dying of thirst,” said Dan Morrison, author of “The Black Nile,” in which he chronicled his journey from the river’s origins to its mouth at the Mediterranean, and encountered the most pronounced waste in Egypt. So long as water is free for farmers, Mr. Morrison said, there is little incentive to conserve. One solution Mr. Morrison proposed would entail Egypt’s importing food staples from upstream nations that can farm more efficiently with Nile water. Isam Abdurahman, a Ministry of Agriculture farm supervisor, said the government was taking steps to try to conserve water, including paving some irrigation canals and managing farmers more strictly. This year, for instance, because of low river levels, rice cultivation was banned entirely in some areas, while the cotton quota was severely restricted. Mr. Sharkawi was permitted to plant only one field with cotton, rather than four. And in a few desert areas like Toshka, near the Sudanese border, Egypt has experimented with large-scale modern drip irrigation. The vast majority of its farmers, however, are small land holders like Mr. Sharkawi, who cultivates maize, cotton and alfalfa in the Nile Delta. He cannot afford to invest in drip irrigation or sprinkler systems that would lose less water to evaporation. Furthermore, like most Egyptian family farmers, he favors the most water-hogging crops, like rice, maize and cotton, rather than lower-intensity fruits and vegetables. Upstream leaders like Ethiopia’s prime minister caution that Nile water use is “not a zero-sum game,” but in Egypt’s Delta that’s exactly how millions of farmers view it. If he had to pay for his water, Mr. Sharkawi said, he simply would lose his land. “Since the time of the ancient Egyptians,” he said, “we’ve always lived like this. It is the same for me, and it will be the same for my children.” – The New York Times
Way to go
tt7#4 above,
Come on chief put issues in their natural perspective
Please stop for the great GOD’S sake this Wayane style of established working method of diverting attention from the MAIN INTERNAL issue and opportunistically pointing fingers at dogs, cats and hens just to let the wayane fox dressed in sheep skins bent on dividing Ethiopians and Ethiopians from inside as well as Ethiopians and neighbors from the outside in order to and establish its dictatorial 100% minority grip of power over Ethiopia the wretched of 80 million people.
Please keep your too long and too boring incomprehensible and irrelevant topic for another day and another relevant discussion web site.
whoever neglects this unity call neglects Ethiopia.I always dream such a tremendous unity call in action against the venomous regime and hodams.
UNITY is the only way out.
Meskerem መስከረም 17 (September 27)
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT, ONE GOD. AMEN.
On this day is celebrated the festival of the Honorable Cross መስቀል of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be praise, for this is the day on which the holy woman, the Empress Helena, beloved of God, mother of the righteous Emperor Constantine, revealed the Cross, for having cleared away the hill of Golgotha she found [there] the Honorable Cross. And why did this great hill come into being? It was because of the many signs and wonders, which were made manifest at the holy tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ; for the dead were raised, and the paralytics were healed, and the sick were made whole. And because of these things the Jews were furiously angry, and they sent forth a decree throughout all the country of Judea and Jerusalem ordering that every man should cast the sweepings of his house, and the ashes, and offal of every kind on the grave of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the Jews did this for more than two hundred years, and the ashes and the offal formed a very great heap, and they did so until the Empress Helena came to Jerusalem. And Helena seized certain Jews and shut them up in prison until they told her where the grave of our Lord Jesus Christ was, and she forced them to remove that hill, and the Honorable Cross was discovered. And she built a beautiful church for it, and she consecrated it, and she made a great festival in honor thereof on the seventeenth day of Mesekerem, which is this day. And all the Christian people came from all their countries to Jerusalem, and they made a great festival in honor of the Honorable Cross, similar to the festival of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now as certain Christians were journeying along the road, there was with them a certain man, a Samaritan, whose name was Isaac, and there were many Samaritans with him. And that Isaac the Samaritan was jibing at the Christians and reviling them and saying unto them, “Why do ye trouble yourselves in vain? Why do ye go and bow down before a mere log of wood?” And among the Christians was a certain righteous man, a priest whose name was ‘Odokis (Eudoxius), and as they were traveling along the road some of the Christians became thirsty, and they could not find water to drink. And they arrived at a certain well, and they found in it foul and bitter water, and they were suffering greatly from thirst. And Isaac the Samaritan began to laugh at them, and he said unto them, “If your faith was the True Faith this foul and bitter water would change itself and would become sweet water.” And when ‘Okokis (Eudoxius) the priest heard these words from him, he became moved with a divine zeal, and he debated with Isaac the Samaritan. And Isaac the Samaritan said unto him, “If I saw any power in the Name of the Cross then I myself would believe in Christ.” Then the holy man ‘Odokis (Eudoxius) prayed over that foul water, and it became sweet immediately, and all the people and their animals drank there from. When Isaac the Samaritan was athirst and wished to drink of the water which was in his own water-skin, he found that it was stinking and that there were worms in it. And he wept very bitterly, and he came to Saint ‘Odokis (Eudoxius) the priest, and he bowed down at his feet, and he believed on the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he drank of that water which had become sweet, through the prayer of the holy man ‘Odokis (Eudoxius). Now there was in that water such great power that it became sweet to those who were believers and bitter to the infidels and pagan folk. And there appeared in that water a cross of light, and they built over that water a beautiful church. When Isaac the Samaritan came to the city of Jerusalem, he went to the bishop, who baptized him with Christian baptism, him and all the men of his house, and they entered the Christian faith and became believers. Now the Honorable Cross appeared unto them on the tenth day of Megabit, but as they were unable to celebrate a festival in its honor during a fast, they celebrated its festival on the day of the consecration of the church, which was the seventeenth day of Mesekerem, the day of its appearance in the holy tomb. -Ethiopian Synaxarium
As far as I am concerned the GODs can be one in this 21st century new world like those of Christians, Muslims, Judaism, Waqqefanna,etc.
They can also be several like those of the Hindus and their holy books, RIGA VEDA and BHAGWAD GITA. Can also be like those of Sikhism based on their holy books, GURU GRANTh SAHIB, or like the Buddhism based on its holy book, KARMA leading NIRVANA, that is uniquely not based on submissive FATALISM bust believes in cause and effects. Religion can also be Zoroastrianism based on their holy book known as ZEND AVESTA, or Jainism based on their holy books known as KALPASUTRA, SAMAYSAAR, etc. or Jewish based on their Holy books known as TALMUD and the TORA, the word “TORA” seemingly being borrowed from the early Kushitic Oromo language TOORA during the time of Mosses.
Religion can also be Atheism, the word atheism driving from the early Greek word ATHEOS which means “without Gods” or absence of DEITIES.
In short, the whole idea is to function in tolerances, democratically, pluralistically in unity within diversity since all religions are at the same time different as well as being equal in taking care of the welfare and well beings of their respective followers. Gods and religions are INNOCENT and never even a one legged one eyed fly. But cunning fox despots and high way robber barons hiding behind the good God and the good religions have been and still being in the business of causing worldly chaos.
guys tt7 @ #4 and ano @#8.. not cool, we are trying to unify here please please stop posting irrelevent and out of topic issues.. Mihiret @#6 thank you for saying it clearly.
let’s go forward with the New York Manifesto. and get down to business if we all do it together, putting our differneces aside.. we can make it happen.
so one big issuee that i always in these sites is that we need a temporary government set up in exile; so all fources with armed capability and other opposition groups can participate equally; knowing already that they will be represented in the new government. trust me no body is saying it; but almost all the time there issues is not wanting their victory to be hijacked by some of the stakeholders [for example simmilar to what happened to OLF with EPRDF; they fought together but they finaly kicked them out of the administration] so to avoid issues of trust; all forces come together try to agree on some kind of temporary administration where all is represented; which will transit us to a true democratic election with all campaigning freely and with a the national army controlled by the temporary administration equally so we don’t go through the same sham ever again!.. pleae comment guys! let’s get it going!
HALE LUYA I Accept the call unity is the way to liberate Ethiopia… the 1 the 2 and the 3 very simple
and #6,#7 and #9 thanks well said brothers and sisters.
Obama announces development plan at U.N
“……It’s the force that turned South Korea from a recipient of aid to a donor of aid. It’s the force that has raised living standards from Brazil to India. And it’s the force that has allowed emerging African countries like Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique to defy the odds and make real progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals, even as some of their neighbors — like Cote d’Ivoire — have lagged behind.”
President Obama September 22, 2010
Thank you and congratulation for the organizers of the protest also I just tell #4,8and 10 you are wayanes posting un related topoics to divert the idea of working for democracy.
@#13 no need
what part of my comment at #10 is about supporting weyane? are you crazy i will die before anyone calls me weyane.. please read carefully before you start naming names..
@Jegnawe Ethiopiawi — I endorse your comment as well!!
sorry # 14 ethiogirl for including #10 in my comments #13, that was typing error.unless otherwise I thoght to saport your comment about #4 and #8 like you do for #6 mihret.
–> no need @ # 15,
accepted, thanks for clarifying! feel much better now ;) have a great day; and let’s work for this initiative the — NY manuscript to grow into something bigger and stronger
God Bless Ethiopia