It has been crystal clear for a while that the West (U.S., U.K., Germany others) will not be of any help to the struggle for freedom in Ethiopia. In fact, they are fueling the repression with billions of dollars in assistance to the brutal regime led by their favorite beggar despot Meles Zenawi. However, Ethiopians are not without options. We just need to take matters into our own hands. In the following article German-Foreign-Policy.com reports that the German government is offering an expanded bilateral military cooperation program to the Meles regime in 2011 in order to serve its east African interests:
The German Bundeswehr is expanding its support for Ethiopia’s armed forces, despite persistent accusations that they committed serious war crimes. As was confirmed by the parliamentary state secretary in the German Defense Ministry, Thomas Kossendey, Berlin is offering Addis Ababa a bilateral military cooperation program for 2011, which includes the training of army and air force officers. A so-called organization for development aid is also involved. Berlin has been supporting the Ethiopian regime for years, because it has made itself useful as the West’s East African proxy. Over the past few years, Ethiopia, in coordination with Washington and Berlin, dispatched its troops to Somalia to overthrow forces displeasing to the West and committed grave war crimes, according to reports from human rights organizations. These organizations are also accusing the Ethiopian army of ignoring the rules of warfare in their repression of Ethiopia’s domestic rebellions. In his talk with german-foreign-policy.com, Dr. Berhanu Nega, who opposes the regime in his country, raised grave accusations against Germany’s policy toward Ethiopia. Dr. Berhanu considers the hope that the West would be helpful in Ethiopia’s democratization process is doomed from the outset.
Germany’s interest in Ethiopia and east African can be protected by supporting the people of the region to get their freedom, not by funding the parasite Woyanne regime that has made the region a perennial war zone.
Just a couple of decades ago Khat (ጫት) consumption was limited to a small area of Ethiopia, mainly eastern and south eastern of the country. Today, Khat use is {www:pervasive} in all parts of Ethiopia, except the Tigray region where it is outlawed.
As a result, currently a growing number of Ethiopian youth are addicted to khat, causing most of them to be less productive citizens who walk around like zombies.
The ruling party doesn’t want to control khat — although it knows about its debilitating effect on the society — because many of its officials are deeply involved in the khat trade
It is estimated that the khat market in Ethiopia alone generates well over one hundred million dollars per year.
Attracted to the fast money from trafficking in Khat, the Meles regime officials are upgrading to heroine, a dangerous drug that fries the brain. These days, in Addis Ababa and other major cities in Ethiopia, heroin use is becoming rampant, destroying the lives of a significant number of young Ethiopians.
According to Ethiopian Review sources, most of the heroine is entering the country via Ethiopian Airline flights from Asia. The traffickers include airline hostesses and airport officials who are affiliated with the ruling party who easily bypass security checks.
The heroine market in Ethiopia has become so lucrative that as a business strategy, Ethiopian aviation officials, and Ethiopian Airlines itself, are giving blind eye to heroin traffic, turning Ethiopia into a major narcotics transit route between Middle Eastern, Asian, and West African heroin markets.
The amount of drugs transiting via Ethiopia is increasing., according to OSAC. “Heroin transits Ethiopia for markets in West Africa, Europe, and the United States, primarily due to Ethiopia’s good airline connections between those markets and Asia. Nigerian and Ghanaian traffickers use Ethiopia as a transit point on a limited but increasing basis.”
Swedish based international call firm Rebtel have been making a splash in the area of international calls for quite some time now and once again, the company have posted outstanding results from the US, based on their share of the number of people in the US who call Ethiopia on a regular basis.
Since Rebtel lowered rates to Ethiopia by a staggering 20 per cent in December 2009 and then followed this reduction with a further rate cut of 6% in February 2010, Rebtel has reported an increase in traffic to the African nation of 100% since.
Currently, if you are looking to call Ethiopia via the Rebtel service from the United States then you can pay as little as USD 0.205 per minute via a landline and USD 0.225 per minute on a mobile device. These are amongst the cheapest rates available currently in the US, or indeed anywhere else in the world.
Rebtel’s operational controller, Mikael Rosengren revealed that the Ethiopian call market is one of the company’s ten largest corridors in terms of revenue and that 90% of Rebtel’s call traffic to Ethiopia, originates from Ethiopians now residing or studying in the United States.
The research also threw up some other interesting findings with most of the traffic to the country originating in the five states of California, Virginia, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota. The average call duration is around eight minutes and it seems Ethiopians prefer to call home on a Saturday!
It certainly seems that Rebtel is gaining quite a positive reputation across the whole country but particularly in the states of California, Virginia and Maryland as similar findings have been discovered in research conducted by Rebtel for several African countries, including Ghana, Ivory Coast and Kenya.
Indeed with such growth in its Ethiopian call base, Rebtel may well be looking for substantial further growth in this area next year. The company has ambitious plans to tap into the market of those who call Ethiopia in Europe and beyond. In addition, further research has shown that 95% of Rebtel customers would happily advise their friends and family to use the Rebtel service for international calling.
In addition, another study revealed that large numbers of Rebtel users felt that the company not only offered the best value call packages, ease of use and call quality, but that they were the fairest and most transparent operator. Over 75 per cent of respondents on several recent surveys complained that when they had called African countries using other company’s calling cards, they had received far fewer minutes than they had paid for.
Against this current climate of rip off international calling cards, Rebtel’s commitment to the lowest rates possible to call Ethiopia, their superb call quality and a simple, effective and honest international calling system, is a refreshing change. Furthermore, it seems likely that the current base of Rebtel users who call Ethiopia regularly from the US will continue to grow still further and may yet be joined by a great many new Rebtel users from across the globe.
Ethiopian civic and political groups, media, activists, scholars, and artists announce that November becomes “Ethiopian Election Massacre” commemoration month around the world. In preparation to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the Ethiopian Election Massacre, a worldwide task force has been formed. The task force organizes various activities and a worldwide conference next month.
On May 15, 2005, over 26 million Ethiopians voted peacefully to elect their leaders. As the results started to come in, showing a landslide victory for the opposition party, Meles Zenawi went on TV and declared a state of emergency. He also ordered re-votes in several districts where members of his party went down in defeat, banned political rallies, and unleashed his killers against peaceful citizens who protested his attempt to steal the election.
When the Addis Ababa Police showed restraint, Meles ordered all of them to be disarmed, and gave the Federal Police and his personal army, the Agazi, a shoot-to-kill order.
The Agazi and Federal Police snipers from roof tops and military trucks gunned down young, hundreds of unarmed protesters with 50 caliber rifles. Over 50,000 students and other individuals were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in remote parts of the country. All senior members of the opposition CUD were arrested. All the private press were shut down.
The 2005 election massacre was one of the darkest moments in the history of Ethiopia.
This coming November, we will remember those fellow Ethiopians who gave their lives for their right to vote and for their vote to be counted.
Let’s come together to remember the victims of Ethiopian Election Massacre.
Let’s also unite and devise a new strategy to fight for a better Ethiopia where freedom, democracy and justice will prevail.
More details will released by the organizing committee in the coming few days.
===
The Ethiopian Election Massacre Remembrance Task Force
The man who is fondly called by TPLFites (Woyannes) as Abo Sebhat is reportedly spending more of his time in his home region of Tigray after the ruling couple Meles Zenawi and Azeb Mesfin unceremoniously ousted him from the party last month.
More than Meles, according to observers, it was Azeb who orchestrated Sebhat’s humiliating {www:departure} from TPLF, enraging his supporters in Ethiopia and the Diaspora.
Azeb has been amassing {www:enormous} wealth to the point now she is the second most powerful person in Ethiopia next to Meles, who also has consolidated his power in a recent leadership reshuffle. However, by going after Sebhat, who is called the father of TPLF by Woyanne veterans, Meles and Azeb might have overreached.
Sebhat may be a {www:drunkard} old man, but he still commands the loyalty of a significant number of {www:rank-and-file} TPLF members.
Another disgruntled member of the ruling junta is Berhane Gebrekristos, who had hopped to become Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The internal squabbles inside the Woyanne camp is affecting the social life of Woyanne kids as well. Recently Sebhat Nega’s son Tekeste has removed from his Facebook those “friends” whose parents are thought to be Meles loyalists.
Billionaire Al Amoudi is also unhappy these days with the Meles regime. Azeb is taking over the real estate industry, which forced his high rise office buildings to remain vacant. Sheraton Hotel is losing money and could be taken over by the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia.
When Al Amoudi’s chief assistant, Abinet Gebremeskel, was in Washington DC recently, he was bitterly complaining about Azeb to friends. He confided to friends that he might drop every thing in Ethiopia and move to the U.S.
On the surface, Meles and Azeb may currently seem to be in full control, but there is trouble brewing every where.
TIME magazine writes about opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa’s release and questions whether it is for show. TIME also points about the West’s {www:implicit} approval of Meles Zenawi’s anti-human rights conducts by continuing to give him hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance every year. His regime has received over a billion dollars from the U.S. Gov’t alone in 2009.
Meles has come under little pressure to lead his country any other way — and his {www:semantics} come straight from his allies. A U.S. State Department briefing note on Ethiopia exemplifies Western {www:equivocation} by giving the impression that the country is moving forward. – TIME
The billions of dollars in assistance and military training the Meles brutal regime is receiving from the Obama Administration makes the Ethiopian people’s struggle for freedom extremely difficult.
