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Ethiopia’s dictator gives warning to parents

Posted on , Updated on by EthiopianReview.com

As the revolution clock is ticking in Ethiopia, the Meles regime is acting and behaving like any other dictatorship — intensify its repressive measures. This week, the ruling party’s security agents have started to gather parents and give them stern warnings to prevent their children from participating in any anti-government activities.

Two days ago, prominent Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega was taken to the Federal Police Headquarters where he was warned not to write any thing that may incite uprising.

The regime has tried to once again force Ethiopian Satellite TV (ESAT) off the air. But ESAT came back on air within 24 hours on a more secure satellite.

EthiopianReview.com and all other independent news web sites remain blocked in Ethiopia.

During the past few days, eyewitnesses at Woreda 23 told Ethiopian Review that officials from the Woreda police and Kebele 11 summoned some parents to the police station and threatened them that they will be sorry if their children participate in any protest. The Woyanne security agents warned the parents that Ethiopia is not Egypt and that there is a serious consequence for any one who engages in anti-government activities.

It’s true that Ethiopia is not Egypt because although Mubarak is a dictator he is not the enemy of the people of Egypt and the army is a national army. The Meles regime is an anti-Ethiopia entity and his ruling junta is a gang of blood thirsty thugs who have been committing atrocities through out the country for the past 20 years while receiving billions of dollars in assistance and loans from the U.S. and EU.

No matter how savage and barbaric Woyannes are, they cannot stop the people of Ethiopia from asserting their freedom.

42 thoughts on “Ethiopia’s dictator gives warning to parents”

  1. WE know that their intention is to kill us here is where we need to be smart how to defend our selfs in case when the uprising begin stick and stones will not do the job since we are dealing with a brutal killing click.
    if we out smart them they don’t have popular power no body is with woyane except those paid actors . but
    there is gonna be casualty even with any uprising . we need to make sacrifice regardless if not people will
    die time to time by this regime and the choice is ours where to make sacrifice or die a slow death evethough
    we don’t wont any body to die in this case we must need to do this country is belongs to us in order to create
    a democratic ethiopia we need to fight WOYANE no matter what ….

    NOTE: feri yegelal menem amarache yelewem ena mote degemo ayekerem / enkefat metetoh limot yechalal

  2. Anticipation of death is worst than death it self that is why they are trying to intimidate the people they don’t
    have no choice .they think they will stop the popular uprising of this democracy hungry people which they have been torturing and killing for two decades but the people have experience from the past and most recent incidence of Tunis and egypt off course they will try to kill us but now is the time to bring a change
    while the whole world is watching and the death will be minimal otherwise they are keep on killing us a slow
    death any way and let us make some sacrifice and remove this Poison regime once for all . as much as we hate no one to die some one will even with peace full uprising ….

  3. Indeed, Woyane is frigthend and they know that the people of Ethiopia are reday to throw soon.
    I wish if someone will try to facilitate and organize simillar mass movements in Ethiopia. All the ears and eyes of Ethiopian people are waiting for this news!
    God Bless Ethiopia.

  4. Inside the Mind of a Dictator
    By By Jeffrey Kluger, time.com

    Despots are good at a lot of things — suppressing dissent, muzzling the press, crushing hope, the whole tool kit of talents necessary to cling to power for 30 or 40 years. What they tend to be a little rusty on are their people skills — the ability to understand the motivations of others and act in a way that effectively communicates their own. That interpersonal obtuseness was on breathtaking display on Thursday, when Hosni Mubarak made his last globally televised stand, informing the Egyptian people that, no, he still wasn’t going anywhere — before finally giving up and packing it in the next day.

    That Mubarak at last did heed the will of his people is a good and sensible thing for him to have done. That it took him so long says a lot about what goes on in the mind of a dictator and how hard it can be to make him see the world the way everyone else does.

    Despots are good at a lot of things — suppressing dissent, muzzling the press, crushing hope, the whole tool kit of talents necessary to cling to power for 30 or 40 years. What they tend to be a little rusty on are their people skills — the ability to understand the motivations of others and act in a way that effectively communicates their own. That interpersonal obtuseness was on breathtaking display on Thursday, when Hosni Mubarak made his last globally televised stand, informing the Egyptian people that, no, he still wasn’t going anywhere — before finally giving up and packing it in the next day.

    That Mubarak at last did heed the will of his people is a good and sensible thing for him to have done. That it took him so long says a lot about what goes on in the mind of a dictator and how hard it can be to make him see the world the way everyone else does. (See how the U.S. plans to aid democracy in Egypt.)

    Disputes between the leader and the led usually flow from the bottom up. There is no happier autocrat than one whose rules are being unquestioningly obeyed and whose authority is being docilely accepted. The problem comes not so much when there are small stirrings of dissent — those can be quickly snuffed — as when there’s a large-scale popular uprising.

    Biological anthropologist Chris Boehm at the University of Southern California studies the human revolutionary impulse and has been struck in particular by how it plays to a unique tension in the psychology of our species. On the one hand, humans are extremely hierarchical primates, readily picking leaders and assenting to their authority for the larger good of the community. On the other hand, our hunter-gatherer ancestors were a very egalitarian bunch, doing best when the group operated collectively, with dominance asserted only subtly. When one individual — usually a male — began to overreach, he was dealt with swiftly. That impulse — to challenge the bully and take him down — is one that stays with us today, and that we practice with great relish.

    “The revolutionary urge is the universal reaction to power being exerted over us in an illegitimate way,” says Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia, whose own work parallels Boehm’s. “It’s absolutely thrilling and intoxicating to people.” How thrilling and intoxicating? “Put it this way,” says Haidt, “the flag of my state is an image of a woman warrior with a bared breast and her foot on a dead man, who represents tyranny. The state emblem is a murder.”

    But it’s not typically a single, half-clad Joan of Arc who brings down a dictator like Mubarak. It’s a mobilized force representing a deeply fed up nation, and that happens in a very predictable way. Political wildfires, like all fires, start small, with scattered acts of defiance or rebellion. When the conditions are right, many of those little fires come together, and then the blaze accelerates fast.

    “It has to do with a lot of things,” says political science professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania, “the density of the social networks, how fast the second movers follow the first ones, and the third then follow the second. The pattern is the same in most such rebellions, with a cascade of events leading to a tipping point.”

    Of course, even a revolution that looks fast in hindsight can seem awfully slow while it’s unfolding, and eighteen full days elapsed between the time Egyptians began rising up and Mubarak finally quit the field. For most of that period, it was clear to any rational observer that his position was untenable, so why did it take him so long to reach that conclusion too?

    First of all, never underestimate the impenetrability of the presidential bubble. “Dictators dislike dissent and they surround themselves with sycophants,” says Haidt. “It is quite common for them to have no idea about how they’re actually viewed by their people.”

    This may make the dictators seem almost absurdly clueless, but in this sense, Mubarak is no worse than the rest of us. As a rule, Haidt explains, we all have a more accurate impression of other people — their skills, temperaments and talents — than we do of ourselves. There’s a reason for the much-cited findings that while American kids rank in the middle of the pack on global measures of academic skills, they rank at the top in self-confidence. We’re just not good self-evaluators. “Now,” says Haidt, “scale that up to an aging dictator who’s been in office for decades.”

    Defiance plays a role too. David Ottoway, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, was once a journalist for the Washington Post reporting from Egypt — and was in fact on the reviewing stand in 1981 when Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated. In the preceding months, he says, Sadat had been consolidating his power in much the way Mubarak did, with harassment and arrests of his political opponents. When the West condemned these moves, Ottaway says that Sadat, quite literally, underwent a mental breakdown.

    “He had been a global hero for a long time, but then the western press turned against him,” Ottoway says. “He responded by kicking out the reporter for Le Monde. He kicked out NBC. At a press conference, someone asked him if he had consulted with Washington before he began his domestic crackdown and he went nuts, saying he would not respond to Western diktats. He couldn’t believe he was being questioned. In Mubarak’s case, I’m once again thinking of the last weeks of Sadat.”

    Mubarak’s decision, at last, to throw in the towel may have played out in his mind in the same incremental way the demonstrations played out across the country. Lustick believes that in both cases, there is a slow building of momentum, with different voices arguing different options, until, again, a cascade begins.

    “There’s always a voice in the dictator’s brain that says you should get out now,” Lustick says, “but the voices in the middle, the ones that are unsure, are the loudest, and that keeps him where he is. After a while, however, the dictator stops worrying about the longer-term future and instead worries about the near-term danger of being wrong. You saw the same thing from the Shah and Nicolae Ceausecu. They made all these speeches saying I’m never going to leave and then boom, suddenly they’re gone.”

    It is perhaps the ultimate indignity for vainglorious types like dictators that their final acts in office so often involve nothing more heroic than saving their own skins as well as their own fortunes — and Mubarak appears to have salvaged both. But scientists see an even greater humiliation at work than that. Mubarak’s sudden, Thursday-to-Friday transition from rigidity to capitulation is what Lustick describes as a “cusp catastrophe. Think of a dog that’s snarling at you and looks like it’s ready to snap,” he says. “The fact is, at the same time, he’s right at the point of running away with his tail between his legs.”

    Let that then capture the long-in-coming departure of Hosni Mubarak — dictator, oppressor, very bad dog.

  5. Elias

    Why don’t you shut your mouth and settle yourself in one of local sychytric hospital in DC area rather than dreaming something unrealstic?.

    EthiopianReview.com blocked in Ethiopia? Who is going to give care about your tabloid site, Mr. Ediot?

  6. ER Editor is well on course to becoming an independent source of information and inspiration for the struggle aginst TPLF tyrannical rule.

    Elias, keep up the good job.

  9. hi i am from ethiopia i am reading every morning by my mobile except some past weaks y are on the air.i did not anychaleng to see yr web please edit yr news that yr web is blocked. y wll loose yr crediblity

    EthiopianReview.com replies:
    February 13th, 2011 at 12:12 PM

    #15, wushetam donkoro woyanne. you are in Norway.

  10. Absolutely true that no other dictator in the world compares to the TPLF evil Meles that has deep rooted hate towards the country and the people he supposedly leads. Even the world known evil Hitler that killed close to 12 million innocent Jews never hated his country. One of the saddest thing is knowing that the brutal TPLF dictator is surrounded by more evil, spineless, and brainwashed woyanes who think and believe just like tyrant Meles and fulfill all his evil deeds. I still believe, it is a matter of time that woyanes will get what they deserve. God is watching them and He works on his own timetable.

  11. History is the wittness without paying price there is no freedom. Ehiopians’ should pay to gain price. It is possible people power is higher than any army and polices. Let stand up! Death for weyani and agazi!

  12. Time is not on your side EPRDF. When a society is ready to die and no more fear , no force on earth will stop it. You can say what ever you like as this is the nature of a falling dicatator. We have seen what measures Mubarek and the Tunis leaders taken.

    When the going gets tough , the tough keep going. We will move and kick your a$$ from Addis.

    God Bless Ethiopia !!!

  13. Yes Ethiopia is Not Egypt. It reminds us about the need for a different strategy. We can not copy Egypt for everything. But for sure we will topple ‘Woyane’ very soon! It is eminent. They will be forced to step down. God is a God of justice. He will side with those hungry for justice and piece. God can disable the thanks and guns of ‘Agazi’. The day closer than ever! We are almost there! I can feel it! We are almost there!

    God Bless Ethiopia!

  14. It is true just ask recent returnees from Addis, they will tell you that, kebelle cadres are going house to house threatning parents to keep their children off the street and if they don’t they will be in great danger. This is the true behaviror of TPLF, the TPLF cadres are th emost coward and savages. They are not courageous as we have come to understand how they think and operate. During their struggle, they killed many of the non-TPLF tigrians including their parents and families in the dark and in the day they preached how they cared for Tigrians. In this case they are going directly to your parents and creat fear and discomfort even worse agony. you know how our people are, we have been sufocated for 37 years now and revolution has not materialized to change the situation of our people to the better (17 years during derg and 20 years during the anti-Ethiopian TPLF), our people never tasted freedom but they yearn for it and one day they will get it b/c they deserve it, it is a matter of time. Barbarien meles can’t go like this for ever, at some point he will come to realize that his time is up and he has to pay the price for committing some of the worest attrocities on our innocent Ethiopians and the state of Ethiopia mainly his treason unparalled in our hisotry. Meles prepare your self and your anti-Ethiopian cliques to march to the gallow. You have no where to escape b/c you have no friends any where in the world. We will get you soon very soon.

  16. Let us not keep exaggerating the dictator’s willingness and power of over killings based on the past traumatic experiences of the Red-white terror, the 2005 massacres and all of those other gruesome brutalities. They may kill some of the people some of the time, but they ca not kill all of the people all of the time.

    The realities of Tunisia and Egypt unfolding directly in front of our own eyes testifies to the limits of dictatorial power which is in fact a kind of Giants with Clay Feet. :)

    Those brutalities have taken place in different times and circumstances that were not favorable for the oppositions, the nation and human rights defenders. Currently, the circumstances, atmosphere and contexts of the opposition is much more favorable both globally and domestically but still needs states of minds that are positive, just, future oriented, region wise, religion wise, ethnic wise, language wise, etc. crosscutting and networked in a new way in order to mobilize sustainable and broader segment of the society, both urban and rural.

    Yes, dictators will always kill those who are willing to challenge their brutalities in order to protect their minority political and economic domination. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been called dictators and they wouldn’t at all throw flowers at their opponents even though flowers are much more cheaper and much more healing.

    We need to remember also the fact that dictators are down right cowards. As a result of they are/were willing to kill in order to spread fear among the opposition and the general public.

    Fearlessness and unity within diversity(should come to be) is the direct and antidote of fearfulness and division (as has been).

    When the Egyptians and Tunisians discovered fearlessness and sustainably(underline the word “sustainability”, where demonstrations may continue for days in a protracted ways, for weeks, months, etc.depending on the developments on the ground regardless of killings, beatings, jailings, kidnappings, assassinations, tortures, confession extractions, etc.) challenged the brutal overarmed, overfed, over organized, over networked chest pumping killer dictators, after which time absolutely victory came to knock at their doors and entered their brave camp. ONLY eighteen days of SUSTAINED and well ORGANIZED mass uprisings brought down 30 years of nationally and internationally established dictatorship.

    Nothing can beat the spirits and the motivations of an organized and networked united positive and forward looking power of the people, other than division, pessimism, backward looking, fearfulness, etc. that have been keeping them weak and submissive until now.

    The organizing opposition camps need to be able to negotiate and remove divisions, fearfulness and other factors of weaknesses from within the population.

    If so, we may rest assured that both the parents currently being intimidated by the dictator’s cadres like always and their children will come out to demonstrate on the “Days of Rage” against the outrageous minority dictatorship that has reduced that great country in to the least developed country constantly going down to the drain and even selling the entire natural and fertile land areas to distant exploitative foreign money men where the dictator and his cliques hold BIG secret behind the scene investment shares.

    What a cunning fox new era of new colonialism where brutal dictators and brutal investors join hands in order to exploit and exterminate both the physical environment and the human well being and welfare. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! ):

  17. The diaspora should support Eskinder Nega. We have to campagin to free him from danger. The Ethiopian government intimidation and bullying nothing new for Eskinder. But this time they threat him with his life and now his life is in danger. The Egyptian protect thier young leader like Google excutive Wael Ghonim. The Egyptian authority detained him for 12 days. But the people campigned in the western world and obliged the Egyptian authority to realese him and join the revolution. In his recent CNN interview he burst to tears when he remember the young Egyptian that sacrified in the revolution. He told the CNN journalist that he is ready to die for his cause that is democracy in Egypt.

    So our beloved son Eskinder Nega should prepare like the Egyptian Wael Ghonim to lead the Ethiopian youngs for revolution. He should be a leader of this movement. He should avoid fears. Woyane police commissioner already told him that they are tired of puting him to prison. His voice sounds scared for his life in his recent VOA interview. But he should say like Wael Ghonim that he is prepared to die for his cause. The Ethiopian people will campign in the western countries to get protection from life threating condition. Otherwise the Woyane will be successful in silencing him and effectively stop him not to organise the Tunisia and Egyptian like revolution in Ethiopia. Go Eskinder God of Ethiopia will be with you and Woyane days are numbered and thier dawnfall will be soon. God Bless Ethiopia and protect from its enemy Woyane.

  19. Unlike the previous Egyptian dictatorial regime, the Woyanne regime is for all intenses and purposes is un-Ethiopian at its core, its Army is a tribal occupation force, not a force of composed and commanded by Ethiopians.

    The only way to get rid of the Woyanne tribal junta is through force of ARMS, that is the only language Woyannes understand, the role of youngsters and opposition media should be to agitate able bodied youngsters to pick up arms and militarily dislodge Woyanne’s police and military. That is the only way!!!

  20. ITS CLEAR THE WOYANE REGIME IS STANDING ON ITS LAST LEG.

    INTIMIDATION AND HARASSMENT OF JOURNALIST AND PARENTS IS NOT GOING TO PREVENT THE CURRENT REVOLUTION IN AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST AGAINST DICTATORS.

    THE CURRENT ACTION THAT IS TAKEN BY WOYANE LEADERS IS

    “THE KICKING OF THE DIEING HORSE”.

    I PLEAD WITH THE ARMED FORCES OF PATRIOT ETHIOPIANS TO NOT AT ANY TIME OF THE UPRISING POINT THEIR GUN AT PEOPLE OF ETHIOPIA WHO ARE NOT ONLY STANDING UP FOR THEIR GOD GIVEN RIGHT BUT FOR ALL CITIZENS OF ETHIOPIA.

    I ASSURE ANY ARMED FORCES WHO WILL TAKE THE ORDERRS OF WOYANE GENERALS AND SPILL THE BLOOD OF PEACE LOVING ETHIOPIANS THAT

    “THE INNOCENT BLOOD OF ETHIOPIAN CHILDREN WILL HUNT THEM FOR LIFE”.

  21. Banking system was disrupted during revolution in Egypt. People had no access to their money in Banks. Revolution is coming to Ethiopia. Are people prepared food, water, money, candle, flashlight, first aid kit are good thing to have in hand. Teamwork, networking is also very important. Think of it as team effort for a perfect goal. I like Football.

  22. Minale wrote: “no body reads your (Ethiopian Review’s) trash.”

    I beg to differ… according to Alexa’s traffic ranking Ethiopian Review has a tremendous traffic rank and and its popularity is growing every day. Just for the record, while ethiopianreview.com is ranked #41,000 in the world according to Alexa, Weyane’s ena.gov.et is ranked #71,000. What do you say now, TPLF lover?

  23. This is the moment for Ethiopians, this is the time, this is the stage to show who is genuine Ethiopian and who is not. All the Woyanes are terrified of the coming TSUNAMI, and all Ethiopians are hyper on the arrival of the first tide. Woyane advised its soldiers to scare Ethiopians, but we are not scared. Five years ago we have seen the mountain top and we witnessed what’s possible. This time we will take it all the way to the nine yard, some of us who are spearheading this march may not get there with everyone, but we will take you to the final destination.

  26. 17# Abesha,

    So you are already fighting for the leadership position rather than for the broader liberation of the country? This way of premature thinking will only help the dictator or else you might be just the dictator’s cadre yourself.

  27. to 19. Eritreawi says

    Ethiopians will craft their own strategy. Thanks but no thanks for your advice. You said that woyane understands force and arms struggle is the only way. First of all get woyane out of your claimed land by force and lead us the way. In Egypt people did it with out arms. All we need is unified and peaceful sturggle at this moment. Look what your leaders did to us when we tried to fight from Eritrea. Keep your advice to yourself.

  28. 19#Eritreawi,

    Yes, your recommendation is ONE option but not at all the only.Now we must try the living and winning option being displayed in front of our own eyes. Do you want to always believe your ears than your own eyes and also want us to do the same? No good!

    People’s power will definitely OVERPOWER and clean away the Wayane dictator even better than Guns and arms if based on united and sustainable unbending and coordinated struggle. I suspect your SCARE CROW strategy.

  30. Ethiopians,the end of our struggle against Meles Naziawi and the fascist woyanai is victory.The fact is,Ethiopia is not in the hands of true sons and daughters of Ethiopia;therefore,we,Ethiopians can not sit and watch the enemy distroying the lives of Ethiopians.we now say to the enemy,as we have been saying that we are fully determined to remove the enemy from the surface of Ethiopia with no trace of our common enemy;Zinawianrobbers.

    The enemy entered into Ethiopia barefoot with a lot of guns and bullets and with the deepest dislike towards Ethiopians.Time favored the enemy and invaded Ethiopia;it then moved into villages,towns,cities,and neighborhoods and broke into homes and vandalized the lives of the families.

    Meles Naziawi and the fascist Woyanai together have committed the most dispecable crimes against Ethiopians and have brought the dignity of our country to the bottom,but we,Ethiopians have now determined more than we were before to bring down the enemy to its complete defeat and bring Meles Naziawi,Madame crimelady Azeb Golla Mesfin and other chief criminals,and members of the crimefamily to justice to receive their final judgment tantamount to the crime that they committed against anything and everything in the lands,in Ethiopia.That,we will definitely do.Ethiopians,the end of our struggle against the enemy is victory.Mothers too deserve victory.

    Today,everything and anything that is available above and below the lands in Ethiopia is owned,controlled,and run by a group of bandists collectively known as Zinawianrobbers.Ethiopians,we can not aford losing our precious babies sold to international marketers;we can not aford losing sacred farmlands to foreigners and Arab sheik;we can not aford our valued children being shipped to the customers in the Middle East;we can not aford watching our children homeless and born homeless,and we can not aford losing our priceless country to the enemy.Ethiopians,our valued struggle against the fascist regime ends in victory.

    Ethiopians,we were born free;aren’t we Ethiopians? Meles Naziawi treatened Ethiopian mothers to put them to death;Meles Naziawi tretened young Ethiopians to murder them with guns;Meles Naziawi treatened Ethiopians to make them homeless,no country.Murder,looting,murder looting;what the enemy knows and it does.

    So,Ethiopians,what can we do?

    Ethipians,we will give eternal punishment to our common enemy because the enemy deserves death and we deserve vitory because we are Ethiopians.Our unity is the most dignified and holy;it is then only when we defeat the enemy we will bring freedom to fathers,mothers,babies,little girls and little boys with no fear of guns and bullets the enemy treatened to use against the mothers of our dear motherland.

    With our priceless sacrifices we shall face the enemy head-on;we might get imprisoned,even worse,we might get murdered,we will not budge with our unbrakable promises and determination to oust Meles Naziawi as Egyptians and tunisians did their respective oppressors,and we will not move back or walk an inch or less away from facing our common enemy;we will fight the enemy tooth and nail and bring it to its eternal defeat.That is we are talking about.

    Victory to Ethiopian mothers!!!

  31. It is surprising to learn that a government which claims to have won 96.9% of the electoral vote democratically feels insecure, fearing a democratic rally as in Egypt may spread to Ethiopia and oust him. To this end he is warning the same people who vote in him democratically to power, to stay out of any democratic movement. What a fallacy. A democratic nation is supposed to be bold enough to support any such movements, as in America, UK and many others did. In fact a 96.9% mandated government (supposedly a robust democratic nation) should out-support USA, US, Germany when it comes to supporting a democratic actions as in Egypt, because in the case of the latter countries they are mandated to lead their countries by 51-60% electoral votes only. Or is it the unfortunate comparable % electoral vote win that Mubarek enjoyed before he is ousted (i.e. 99%), which almost equals with that of the Meles’s case (96.9%), that is troubling, which the latter thought will send the wrong signal to the “people of Ethiopia” that it is still okay to oust governments despite they are “too popular”. This is really an insulting move by the Meles and co. camp to the human conscience.

    I am witnessing here that lies after lies are undoing Meles and co. and here again we see Meles’s and co. spiraling free fall from reality. What we are witnessing in Ethiopia is a huge comedy, where we should not.

    TAW

  32. We will win over Woyanes, all we have to do is keep on standing in their face. When they pick up guns we should not be afraid, just stand there and look the Woyane in the eye. Woyanes are like dogs they cannot lock eye contact long enough to aim and fire.

    ETHIOPIA TILEMLIM & TIKDEM
    WOYANE YIMOOT & YIWDEM.

  33. One of the most remarkable things about the Egyptian revolution was the level of organization and civility displayed by the people, even after Mubarek tried violence to provoke chaos. We have a lot to learn from the Egyptian revoltion, it was very well organized and executed. The same methodology may not be entirely applicable in Ethiopia, but the one thing we can all agree on is the need to have a well organized revolution. In this regard, the diaspora has a major role to play and must do its part by holding peaceful demonstrations and work hard to amplify the plight of the long suffering Ethiopian people. Furthermore, the diaspora has to coordinate its efforts with Ethiopians facing the Bandit regime.

  34. Big things have been happening in Tunisia and in Egypt that may have broader implications for Ethiopia, and Africa in general. We have got to ask ourselves, can we draw some lessons, any lesson from a country like Egypt with nearly 80 million people? How do the 80 million people survive? What do they produce? Back in ancient times Egypt supported a population of about 6 million, and rather comfortably for the era. In those days almost everyone was a farmer, and the annual flooding of the Nile insured both water and nutrients for crops that made Egypt the breadbasket of the ancient world. There are still plenty of farmers in Egypt, thanks to the Soviets who built the Aswan High Dam in the ‘60s, the Nile doesn’t flood anymore. Today the dam is said to generate about 12% of the country’s electricity, but it’s silting up with the estimated four million tons per year of alluvial fertilizer that flows down from the highlands of Ethiopia!
    As it turns out, farming and the dam, while important, don’t bring money into the country. As Doug Casey (commentator) explained in 2006: there are basically five things that keep Egypt going:
    1. Tourism, roughly 6% of GDP. In Egypt, this means foreigners taking pictures of monuments built largely between 3,000 and 4,500 years ago, capital provided by the locals’ distant ancestors. And it means other foreigners lying on Red Sea beaches, provided by nature. They keep coming, but every few years they’re scared away when a tour bus is bombed or machine-gunned.
    2. Remittances. Egypt’s most reliable export is workers, who send money home to their families.
    3. Oil. Net exports ran at roughly 300,000 bpd during the last couple of decades, but now the fields are in steep decline, and net exports are down to only 100,000 bpd, on the way to zero by the end of the decade.
    4. The Suez Canal, built in the 1860’s courtesy of Europeans. It is becoming less important as ships get larger (too large to use the Canal) and air transport grows.
    5. Foreign aid.
    Unfortunately, none of these things are a sound foundation for prosperity. They’re not economic pillars, they are reeds.
    And this brings us to Ethiopia. Compare the two regimes and you will notice a number of similarities. First, the two countries are physically linked through the Nile. Overall, the political structures of the two countries (at a very broad level) are quite similar. Look, they both have strong men at the helm tightly controlling every facet of our life. At the recent parliamentary elections the ruling parties of both countries obtained 90% plus of the votes. In both Ethiopia and Egypt opposition parties are made defunct and impotent. In both countries people are too scared to challenge the government (Correction: no more in Egypt).
    Like Egypt, Ethiopia is nearing towards (may be even surpassing) the 80 million population size, and growing. Like Egypt unemployment in Ethiopia is quite high and rising (40% plus?), which means that the ranks of young, unemployed, unmarried males continues to swell. In Egypt every plastic pyramid or sphinx sold to tourists seems to be made in China, in Ethiopia all tight jeans, fashionable clothes and jewellery come from China. In short, Ethiopia like Egypt is relying on nothing but accidents of history and nature, and on the kindness of strangers.
    From a strictly economic perspective Ethiopia faces challenging future, to say the least. But the same is more or less true of Egypt and many African countries for that matter. Many of them, like Ethiopia, produce little that can be traded. Economically, all are saddled with gigantic, entrenched corruption, concrete-bound bureaucracies that serve no useful purpose whatsoever, but do stop anything productive from happening. Politically, they’re all basically authoritarian, one-party states. The system depends on fear and intimidation of the masses. Sociologically, they’re all highly traditional, conservative and, outside major cities, tribal or ethnic. Technologically, there’s zero innovation, leadership, or guts; practically everything more recent than 18th-century products either is imported or made under license and with foreign capital.
    As of last week the people of Egypt have camped out on the streets of Cairo and other large and small cities, to do one thing – change the regime. They [the people] have risen to fight corruption, inequality, cronyism, rigged elections and all kind of injustices. They have risen to show us just how committed they are to tell the dictator it’s time to go.
    The people of Ethiopia revolted some forty years back to restore freedom and justice. Unfortunately, today as we witness people in Egypt taking to the streets in attempts to gain their liberty, in Ethiopia we are increasingly pulled downward to obeying people with power.
    Changing or transforming this situation (as the Government of Ethiopia wishes to do) is almost mission impossible, but one can’t just sit down and die! Would the ‘Growth and Transformation’ idea be the first step in sorting all this out?

    Kibur Gena, taken from Addis fortune weekly magazine.

  35. To #27 Zenebech

    First you should properly read the comment. The comment didn’t discuss my wish to be a leader of young Ethiopian revolution or any fighting of leadership with Eskinder Nega. I just call Eskinder Nega to stand tall and prepare to lead the Ethiopian youngster for the revolution. I am just express my wish for Eskinder Nega to be our Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google excutives who lead the Egyptian Youngs to the revolution.

    I suggested Eskinder to prepare to lead Ethiopian youngs for the revolution because there is leadership vacum. This is well discussed in the recent Henok, the VOA journalist interview with Abebe Bellew. Henok asked Addis Dimts Host Abebe Bellew about the Dispora role in organising protest. He asked him the Tunisia and Egypt were successful in organising protest because the Dispora go to thier country and participate in the revolution directly. But the Ethiopian protesting in western country like Washington couldn’t bring any change unless the Dispora go to Ethiopia and organise the protest in Addis. Abebe respond for question Meles Agazi Army will massacre the protester like november 2005 since the Ethiopia Army is not like Tunisia and Egypt. That is why I called Eskinder Nega to say like Wael Ghonim that he is prepared to die for his cause, that is Ethiopian democracy.

    But if you hate this idea, may be your motive clearly show you are one of the dictator lovers or may be one of Woyane Hode Ader. Otherwise there is no point to acuse me that my idea as premature thinking and call me as the Woyane Cadre. The most important thing is now Woyane is scared and thier regiem is shaken its base. The wind of change from North Africa is coming. So they start to threaten the Ethiopian beloved son Eskinder Nega and stop him not to be our Wael Ghonim.

  36. Minale’s (no 15) comment is indeed inappropriate ,i.e it does not precisely reflect the reality on the ground ! “trash” is a very mild word and I would consider this as tantamount to praising this low-graded blog for tabloid news. I would rather say ” every thing put up here is toilet stuff. The paranoid, jealous and pathetic liar “editor” shitting on himself and smearing his blog with his waste. That is the truth.

    Long live Weyane !

  37. There is time for peace, there is time for war.
    There is time to kill, there is time to heal.
    There is time for silence, there is time for a shout.
    There is time for being passive, and there is time for action.
    Ladies and Gentlemen,
    The time for action has come!
    Woyanes will kill some of us but the current climate means that they won’t have a hiding place. If we organise a rally in the capital, the world’s eyes would be on woyane and no one can ignore our quest for freedom as in previous years. Let us not pass this historic opportunity. It’s well and good saying that Woyane’s days are numbered. They won’t be if we don’t make it happen. It’s all in our hands. Let us be ready to pay the ultimate price for our children’s future! We have seen how a seemingly untouchable regimes fall like a house of cards. Let’s use the momentum of the domino to smash the house of woyane once and for all!
    The time for Revolution in Ethiopia is now! Pass this opportunity, and history will judge us.

  38. We know the TPLF thugs are murderers and criminals. They committed the ultimate national treason of giving up Ethiopian teritories, dividing people, facilitating in-fightings, carrying out Ethnic cleansing, and Ethnic divisions. They have been undermining Ethiopia’s strategic and economic interests. These thugs have been and still kidnapping, torturing, and killing nationals. Now, knowing their days are numbered they have luanched fear and terror.

    We, as Ethiopians must say “Enough” and save our country and bring the rule of law, democratic governance, and future for us and the generations to come. We need to strategize, plan, organize, and execute our plans.

    1. We need to effectively use of internet technologies to communicate
    and collaborate,
    2. Communicate and moblize the youth and the people at large,
    3. Communicate, teach, and influence the Army that its future is tied
    with Ethiopians not the TPLF thugs,
    4. Moblize and involve the international media very effectively,
    5. Execute the final push to its logical conclussion.

    Melesse, and his cronies can not withstand the power of Ethiopians.

  39. Tunisia yesterday ;Eygpt ,Algieria ,and Yemen today ;ETHIOPIA tommorow.We need to use the Internet ;cell phones ;computers ;social networks ;to communicate organize and execute an effective method to remove the genocidal dictator Melesse Zenawi and the minority Tigre administration.They are selling Ethiopian children to become involantary organ donners of ALL their vitale parts.Infantacide for huge profits .

  40. stop blaming the servant. If it not for the support that is coming his way from the western masters the woyane would have not lasted a day. trust me.
    stop kidding yourself. as it has been said, if you are fooled once shame on them but if you are fooled twice shame on you. simple put if u want freedom u have to fight for it. it has its price and it does come cheap. it worth a sacrifice. if u are not willing to pay that cost u will not get it. if u don,t know it by now u will never know it. the so-called leaders are just a puppet on a string. they are doing what they have been told. they will leave the stage when the master says so.

  41. REGEARDLESS OF THEIR WARNING ETHIOPIANS HAVE TO RISE UP AGAINEST THE DECTATORS IN ETHIOPIA.

    WE ETHIOPIANS HAVE GENERATIONAL RESPONSIBLIT TO FREE OUR CONTRY AND PASS IT ON TO THE NEXT GENERATION.

    FREEDOME IS THE MAIN VIHCLE TO ESTABLISH STRONG POPULAR GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS.

    LET US RISE UP AT ONCE TODAY.

    LET US FIGHT TO FREE ETHIOPIA TODAY.

    LET US FREE ETHIOPIA FROME THE DECTATORS, FOR OUR CHILDRENS AND FOR GENERATIONS TO COME.

    ETHIOPIA FOR ETHIOPIANS, FOREVER!

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