The net worth of Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi is listed as $1.2 billion in Wikipedia.org, the most referenced encyclopedia in the world. Meles is also listed as the 11th richest head of government in the world. (See here.) This has caused the Adwa Mafia (a clique within the ruling Woyanne junta that is mostly composed of close family members and friends of Meles) to scramble and remove their boss from the list. After several back and forth between those who wanted to keep Meles in the list and members of the Adwa Mafia who are terrified of the exposure, Wikipedia editors stepped in yesterday and “called off” the war until December 20.
One may wonder why Meles Zenawi’s clique is scrambling to suppress such information. First of all, the information is correct. Secondly, the Adwa Mafia has amassed such incredible wealth during the past 18 years while most Woyanne cadres and fighters, particularly those who are not from Adwa Awraja, have gotten only frifari (crumbs). Such disparity in wealth is causing friction within the Woyanne hierarchy.
Currently, the Adwa Mafia (a.k.a. the Meles Crime Family) controls 60 mega corporations through an organization named EFFORT (Endowment Fund For Rehabilitation of Tigray). These companies — doing businesses ranging from mining to transportiaon — are estimated to worth over $15 billion. EFFORT, which is currently headed by Meles Zenawi’s wife Azeb Mesfin, has never been audited, pays no tax, and is shielded from inspection of its books. All the profits from EFFORT go into offshore private bank accounts of Meles, Azeb, Sebhat and the other members of the Adwa Mafia.
Azeb Mesfin, the wife of Ethiopia’s tyrant Meles Zenawi, had captured the attention of U.S. media last September when she gave her husband an angry stare in Pittsburgh (read here). While in the plane flying from New York and after leaving Pittsburgh, Azeb’s anger did not let up. She was heard calling Meles “shermuta,” and hurling other insults.
The Ethiopian Review Intelligence Unit (IU) has now learned from sources inside Woyanne that Azeb was angry after she heard about a meeting between Meles and Ethiopian supermodel Liya Kebede in New York.
Meles met Liya Kebede through her husband, Kassy Kebede, who is a hedge-fund manager and investment consultant in New York. Kassy reportedly manages multimillion-dollar investment portfolios for Meles, Azeb and other members of the Woyanne junta. Meles is currently 11th richest head of government in the world with an estimated networth of $1.2 billion.
An endangered species is a population of organisms that is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters. The free-press journalists in Ethiopia fit such description. The definition is true on both points. Our journalists are becoming extinct because of the draconian laws passed by the minority government and the predatory nature of the TPLF regime. The number of Independent publications is close to zero whereas the threat from the minority based TPLF regime has grown exponentially.
I was going to mention the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the different articles such as Article 29 of the Ethiopian Woyane Constitution that supposedly protect the citizen from the long arm of the state. But all that really don’t make sense in a totalitarian state. Words are stripped of their meaning in a police environment. The slogan ‘what you see is what you get’ is an attempt to show there is no trickery but in Ethiopia it means the exact opposite. Department of Public Security is the fountain of public insecurity, Ministry of justice is the breeding ground for injustice, Defense Department is where aggression against neighbors is formulated and the Communication Office is where lies and defamation is concocted.
So this last week it was the turn of another independent paper to be hounded out of existence. Addis Neger became the latest victim of the illegal regimes attempt to dim the flow of information. Why we are surprised is very perplexing. Is this an isolated incident is a very good question. Isn’t it another of the many humiliations dished on us? What did we do when we were confronted by the previous injustice? Big fat nothing is the answer. What are we going to do this time around other than having a leisurely conversion while sipping our morning coffee? I see another nothing around the corner.
There are three predictable responses that have become our trademark. One is silent condemnation of Woyane while feigning surprise. The second is blaming the editors of Addis Neger for going too far and angering the power to be. Those in the third category have the chutzpah to condemn the exiled journalists for leaving the country instead of staying and confronting the regime.
Despite our indifference the Woyane policy has real victims. Due to the decisions made by the Prime Minster and those around him real people pay the price. The closure and elimination of Addis Neger is another instance in the life of the independent press in Ethiopia. Moged, Muday, Urgi, Tobia, Maebel, Fiameta, Mebrek, Goh, Ruh, Tomar, Ethiop, Ethiopis, Zegabi, Askual, Tikuret, Admas, Express, Menilik, Satenaw, Aemiro, Feleg, Dink, Agere, Damotra, Hilina, Seyfe Nebelbal etc. etc. etc. are a few of the victims of TPLF injustice. You see these are not just names of News Papers. There were real people behind them. People with families that cared for them, people with dreams of informing their fellow citizens and people that worked hard saved and established a thriving enterprise. The papers were shut down by the regime. Do you wonder what became of the people?
Some were murdered. Some are still in prison. A good many were scattered around the globe. Kenya, Yemen, Egypt, South Africa Europe and USA are where they dislocated. No one enters the news business to make money and get rich. Our journalists are the truest of professionals in every sense of the word. They play hide and seek with Woyane tugs endangering their lives and the lives of those around them because they love the truth and they love their country. So many of them have been imprisoned, abused, beaten and humiliated but they are back on their desk the following working day. It has been said that their terrorizes envy the reporters dedication. All that is being done to them is part of our glorious history. It is written with blood. I will give you a few examples as told by my friend Ato Dawit kebede of Fiameta, himself a victim of TPLF injustice. I thank Dawit for giving me permission to quote extensively from a plea he made regarding the plight of our journalists back in 2007.
There is Ato kifle Mulat, the President of the Ethiopian Free Press who was thrown in jail because his association wrote demanding the release of Urgi editors. The court decided Urgi editors to be sympathizers of OLF that is considered to be a ‘terrorist’ group. Ato Kifle was asked to retract the statement or go to prison. He spent many months in Jail. He is now in exile.
There is Eskinder Nega who was publisher of the successful paper ‘Ethiopis’. Eskinder and his editor in chief, the late Tefera Asmare were jailed with made up charges and the paper was closed. Upon his release Eskinder established ‘Habesha’ in English that became popular among the diplomatic community. Addis voice’s Abebe Gelaw was Habesha’s editor in chief at that time; their biting articles and successful cartoons made them famous. One of Eskinder cartoons that depicted the Eritrean President as a snake did not go well with the TPLF cadres and Eskinder was taken to ‘maekelawi’ jail and confined in the famous room # 7. After a few days without food and water; one late night his jailers took him out and tortured him in a separate room for hours. They beat him up badly including his writing hand. He was released and the case dropped when TPLF went to war with their former friend.
There is Zegeye Haile owner and editor of Genanaw who has the misfortune of reporting on the unsuccessful attempt to kill Mengistu in Zimbabwe. Zegeye report the informed speculation that the attempt was made by Eritrean intelligence. He was prosecuted for defaming the good name of Eritreans; fined ten thousand bir and banned for two years from writing.
There is Dawit Kebede of Fiameta who wrote an investigative piece on a certain police colonel. He was hauled to jail because his publication included a picture of police insignia. That was enough to land him and his brother in jail in wereda 10 where they train police dogs. Being terrorized by dogs trained to kill was the punishment he encountered.
The editor Aklilu Tadesse was brought to court because he wrote regarding the existence of an organized opposition group in northern Shoa. He was charged for fabricating a story and the prosecutor demanded a two years jail term. The same day, in the same courthouse Professor Asrat was being charged for organizing an army in northern Shoa.
There is Abera Wegi of Maebel that reported on the curious covering of Yekatit 12 martyr’s monument. He wrote an investigative piece regarding Woyanes crime of erasing a few key words from the monument.
“ቢነገር፣ ቢወራ፣ ቢተረክ ቢጻፍ፤
ፍጻሜ የለውም፤ የፋሺስቶች ግፍ።”
Those words were removed from our monument. Abera Wegi was right and paid the price in Kerchele Prison.
In the aftermath of the famous 2005 general election several Ethiopian journalists were victims of Woyane terror. We will remember Serkalem Fasil who gave birth in a dirty rat infested jail her husband Eskinder Nega, with Sisay Agena, Dereje Habtewold, Fasil Asefa, Fasil Yenealem, Feleke Tibebu, Nardos Meaza, Mesfin Tesfaye, Andualem Ayalew, Wenag Seged Zeleke, Dawit Kebede and Dawit Fasil.
What is happening is just a continuation of eighteen years of crime against the Ethiopian people. Our journalists are a glaring example of the abuse of power by the minority-based government.
Our journalists did their part to tell the Ethiopian people the truth so they will be able to make an intelligent decision. They did not do it for fame or glory. They saw their friends being killed, hunted like wild animals, tortured to make them deny the truth, their property being confiscated and ultimately exiled from their home and country. It requires a person of strong will and unselfish character to withstand such injustice. It is a testimonial that there are still some left imbued with that heroic Ethiopian character that puts country ahead of personal gain. It is a strong indictment against all of us that dwell on our petty differences instead of our collective strength. Our journalists are holding a mirror forcing us so we can truly see our selves and question our commitment to the truth, justice and a united and free Ethiopia.
This is not an attempt to lament what is lacking but to see what is possible when individuals are held accountable for their actions. When we see the strength and resolve of our journalists shouldn’t we all ask ourselves what is required of me to save my people and country? Shouldn’t the question be what is good for the many instead of what do I gain from this? Those of us outside are truly lucky. We are spared from watching the crimes of ordinary cadres against our people; we are shielded from witnessing the hunger of our elders for one meal a day, the plight of our sisters on their hopeful attempt to go where danger awaits them, the hopelessness of our little brothers reduced to drug consumption to forget.
Addis Neger is our humiliation. Addis Neger is our call to action. Addis Neger should anger all of us. It is time we channel our anger and work collectively to overcome injustice. It is time we wholeheartedly support those who are fighting on our behalf. It is not about what happened yesterday, but rather what is possible tomorrow.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech Mr. Obama said:
“Make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.”
Something to think about. May the Ethiopian god safeguard our recent exiles and protect their loved ones left behind.
WASHINGTON — Advocacy for Ethiopia, an Ethiopian civic group based in the U.S., held a press conference Sunday to air its views on the Copenhagen Climate Conference in Denmark that has started today.
The group’s main message was: “The importance of Human rights, good governance, and poverty reduction for a sustainable protection of our planet”
The panel of experts who participated in the press conference include Dr Seid Hassan, Dr Robsan Itana, Dr Minga Negash, Wz. Meron Ahahu, Ato Neamin Zelleke, Wz. Wassi Tesfa, and Dr Gezahegn Bekele.
The panelists explained, among other things, that Ethiopia’s tyrant Meles Zenawi has no mandate to represent Ethiopia and Africa at the conference. A letter sent to all participants of the conference states:
“… we are disappointed that the African Union has selected and the Climate Summit has given an opportunity to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia to represent the African continent. We believe that Meles Zenawi is the wrong person to represent Africa, since his policies are the causes and drivers for the incalculable environmental degradations currently taking place in Ethiopia.”
Advocacy Ethiopia has released the following statement, which is signed by 21 Ethiopian political and civic groups:
No Blank Checks for African Despots at Copenhagen Climate Conference
From December 6 to 18, 2009, leaders and representatives of nations around the world, international organizations, and prominent individuals will convene in Copenhagen, Denmark at the much anticipated Summit on Climate Change. We look forward to a positive outcome of this gathering and are hopeful that the conference achieves its objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to avert the colossal implications of climate change globally. We also recognize that those who would be most affected by ongoing damaging climate change are the people of developing nations, particularly those living in the continent of Africa.
Nevertheless, we are disappointed that the African Union has selected and the Climate Summit has given an opportunity to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia to represent the African continent. We believe that Meles Zenawi is the wrong person to represent Africa, since his policies are the causes and drivers for the incalculable environmental degradations currently taking place in Ethiopia.
Under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s regime, Ethiopia is facing an ecological catastrophe: deforestation, recurrent drought, and desertification. Water pollution, air pollution, soil erosion are becoming alarmingly high due to Zenawi’s regime lacks both sustainable development plans and non-transboundary environmental policies. It is due to this fact that UNDP and other environmental organizations have been reporting about the alarming state of the ecological degradation in Ethiopia. Mr. Meles Zenawi’s colossal failures in environmental policies are highlighted by his regime’s land tenure policy and his relentless suppression of civil and economic rights. Millions of Ethiopians are exposed to periodic hunger and famine in part due to his regime’s land tenure policy. After almost two decades of Zenawi’s rule, in 2009 over ten million Ethiopians are exposed to hunger and malunitrition.
As is customary, Meles Zenawi’s regime has signed numerous international and environmental treaties that it never implements. To add insult to injury, Mr. Meles Zenawi even chairs Ethiopia’s Environmental Council. It is partly due to his control that the existing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lacks the political clout to discharge and enforce the duties and responsibilities vested in it. To those who pay attention to what is going on in Ethiopia, the story of the EPA’s feebleness is a direct byproduct of profuse lip service given by the regime of Zenawi about its concern for the environment– as is the case about good governance, democracy, human rights, etc,. In addition, Mr. Zenawi’s hostile attitude towards Environmental NGOs – and civil society organizations, in general, has created enormous hurdles for those who want to mitigate the colossal environmental crisis facing Ethiopia.
According to the government’s own Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute, Ethiopia has been losing up to 200,000 hectares of forest every year. In a very recent statement, the head of the same Institute, stated: “deforestation has continued at an alarming rate in several parts of Ethiopia as a result of illegal logging, deforestation and other human induced activities”. Forty percent of the land covered by forest by the turn of the 20th century had gone down to 5.5% in 1987 and only 0.2% in 2003. If the current trend continues, Ethiopian forest covers would be extinct along with the loss of the country’s uniquely rich wildlife, fauna, flora, and a broad and general loss of its biological diversity.
The governance problem is one of the main causes of the environmental distress taking place in Ethiopia Soil erosion, which is linked with deforestation and Meles Zenawi’s land tenure system, continues to contribute to the drying up of the country’s lakes. Major Ethiopian Lakes such as Haro Maya (Alemaya), Adele, Awasa, and others have dried out totally. Acute shortages of water afflict major towns such as the city of Harrar and the capital city, Addis Ababa. As a result of the shortage of water resources, thousands of Ethiopians are affected by water born diseases.
The use of pesticides, untested and unfitting fertilizers, other toxic chemicals, some of them long abandoned by the industrialized countries, are now common in Ethiopia. The excess chemicals that are being washed off from the farms to rivers, streams, and lakes, are causing a plethora of problems including the poisoning of inhabitants, increasing algae blooms, and excessive plant growth leading to eutrophication, thereby making the water bodies and vegetation harmful to humans, wild and aquatic life and polluting the underground water. The level of environmental destruction caused by the chemicals used by foreign and party owned commercial flower farms and the leather industry is among the worst in the world. The environmental destruction and its hazardous impacts on human life and other inhabitants at and around Lake Koka, for instance, are captured by a few investigative reports and were televised recently by the members of the International media such as the Al-Jazeera Television Network and detailed by an eminent British Scientist.
Vehicular emissions in the capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, are alarmingly high. The presence of lead and sulfur in imported fuels, despite a ban since 2002, and the absence of emission inspection clearly indicate that the laws Zenawi passes only give lip service to clear and present dangers to the lives of Ethiopians.
Ethiopia’s government human right abuses and suppression of press freedom are well-documented, by Human Rights Watch; The US State Department Annual Report on Human Rights, Amnesty International, the New York based Center to Protect Journalist (CPJ), Journalists without Borders, and many other creditable international and regional human rights and press freedom organizations. The organization–Genocide Watch– has called on the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to initiate an investigation against the atrocities committed by the government of Meles Zenawi. Wide spread corruption also adds to the malaise of ordinary Ethiopians. Transparency International’s most recent report has ranked Ethiopia as 126th most corrupt country in the world.
Periodic ethnic conflicts in the country are destroying and weakening the institutions and these in turn are prohibiting the citizens and the NGOs to make informed decisions about the environment. The governance problem is one of the main causes of the environmental distress taking place in Ethiopia.
We believe that in an age of Globalization humanity’s interest, wellbeing, and destiny are directly intertwined. In view of this, we urge you to take tangible steps that include the following concerns of ours:
1.Mr. Meles Zenawi must be held accountable to the massive environmental degradtion in Ethiopia. We urge you not to ignore the environmental damages that the Zenawi’s regime has committed inside Ethiopia. For doing so sends a very bad message to all of us who care about the environment. Zenawi should not be rewarded for the seemingly non-transboundary environmental degradation he has brought to Ethiopia.
2.Emphasize the crucial roles of a representative’s records in environmental protection, social justice, good governance, human rights, and the rule of law that are important in shaping and averting Global crisis in climate change.
3.Ensure the appropriate use of any climate change financing package to nations with non representative leaders with bad track records on environment, human rights, good governance, and social justice by binding conditions tied to strict measures that would ensure that the funds would not be siphoned off by corrupt leaders such as Mr. Meles Zenawi and others in Africa.
4.Refrain from giving funds to a corrupt regime such as Zenawi as doing so would be a waste of resources and tantamount to committing the same mistakes that the world community has made during the 1983/4 Ethiopian famine when., as recently revealed by Zenawi’s rebel comrades, the food aid and money was used to build his Red Army. Mr. Zenawi will use the same international funds, as in the past, to keep political and ethnic cronies to continue suppressing the Ethiopian people.
5.Do not undermine the importance of social justice, good governance, human rights, and the empowerment of citizens, and their civil societies in shaping and in averting Global warming
We urge countries of the industrialized world attending the conference not to write a blank check and reward dictators, such as the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, who have abysmal records of human rights and the environment.
The inconvenient truth about Africa today is that dictatorship presents a far more perilous threat to the survival of Africans than climate change. The devastation African dictators have wreaked upon the social fabric and ecosystem of African societies is incalculable. Over the past several decades, bloodthirsty dictators like Uganda’s Idi Amin, Zaire’s (The Congo) Mobutu Sese Seko, Central African Republic’s Jean Bedel Bokassa, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, Chad’s Hissiene Habre, and the political fraternal twins Mengistu Haile Mariam and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia have been responsible for untold deaths on the continent. Millions of Africans have starved to death because of the criminal negligence, depraved indifference and gross incompetence of African dictators, not climate change. Millions more suffer today in abject poverty because corrupt African dictators have systematically siphoned off international aid, pilfered loans provided by the international banks and plundered the tax coffers. Africans face extreme privation and mass starvation not because of climate change but because of the rapacity of power-hungry dictators. The continent today suffers from a terminal case of metastasized cancer of dictatorships, not the blight of global warming.
The fact that greenhouse gas emissions (global warming) from human activities are responsible for a dangerous elevation of the global temperature is accepted by most climatologists in the world. Only clueless flat-earther troglodytes like U.S. Senator James Inhofe believe that climate change is a conspiracy hatched by “the media, Hollywood and our pop culture.” The general scientific understanding is that the planet is facing ruin from an unprecedented combination of extreme weather patterns, floods, droughts, heat waves and epidemics. The developed countries are primarily blamed for the rise in temperatures caused by excess industrial carbon emissions. This is evident in the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans. Africa has contributed virtually nothing to global warming. For instance, Africa produces an average of 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide per person per year compared to 16 metric tons for every American.
For Africa, climate change paints a doomsday scenario: Global warming will severely aggravate the atmospheric circulation and precipitation in the African monsoonal system resulting in severe shortages in agricultural output. Millions of Africans will die from famine, and the continent’s agriculture will be crippled. Deforestation and overgrazing will cause further increases in global temperatures through emission of greenhouse gases. Africa’s subsistence farmers who already operate in marginal environments will face catastrophic consequences in terms of decreased tillable and pastoral lands. Competition for water, agricultural and grazing land and other resources will inevitably result in conflicts and wars. Vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, trypanosomiasis and others will spread rapidly causing large scale deaths in Africa.
The climate change debate has been honey in the mouths of forked tongue African dictators. It has provided them the perfect foil to avoid detection and accountability for their corruption and mismanagement of their societies, and a convenient opportunity to divert attention from their criminal state enterprises. Global warming has proven to be the perfect substitute for the old Bogeymen of Africa– colonialism, imperialism, neo-colonialism and poverty. Why is Africa reduced to becoming the “beggar continent of the planet”? Global warming! Why are millions starving (euphemistically referred to as “severe food shortages” by officials) to death in Ethiopia? Climate change. African dictators are using global warming as their new preferred ideology behind which they can hide and ply their trade of corruption while expanding their thriving kleptocracies.
The global warming debate has also offered African dictators a historic opportunity to guilt-trip the industrialized countries and rob them blind. Beginning on December 7, a phalanx of African climate change negotiators will swarm Copenhagen to attend the U.N. Conference on Climate Change. For Africa, the outcome of the negations is foreshadowed by pronouncements of comic bravado. On September 3, 2009, the Patriarch of African Dictators and head of the “single African negotiating team” on climate change, Meles Zenawi, huffed and puffed about what he and his sidekicks will do if the industrialized countries refuse to comply with his imperial ultimatum. Zenawi roared, “We will use our numbers to deligitimize any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position… We are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threatens to be another rape of our continent.” (Whether African dictators or the industrialized countries are raping the continent is an open question. Witnesses say it is a gang rape situation.)
It was vintage Zenawi with his trademark zero-sum game strategy writ large to the world: “My way or the highway!” It does appear rather preposterous and irrational for the master of the zero-sum game to open negotiations with his longtime benefactors by sticking an ultimatum in their faces. Obviously, the strategic negotiating bottom line is to shakedown the industrialized countries and strong-arm them into forking over billions in carbon blood money; and Zenawi did not mince words: “The key thing for me is that Africa be compensated for the damage caused by global warming. Many institutions have tried to quantify that and they have come up with different figures. The sort of median figure would be in the range of 40 billion USD a year.”
Curiously, we could ask what Zenawi and his brotherhood of dictators would do with the windfall of billions, if they could get it? It is reasonable to assume that they will use it to expand their kleptocracies and cling to power like ticks on a milk cow. They will certainly not use to meet the needs of their people. What they have done with the international aid money and loans they have received over the decades provides compelling extrapolative evidence of what they will do with any windfall of carbon blood money.
As Dambissa Moyo and others have shown, in the last fifty years the West has poured more than a trillion dollars of aid into Africa. Today, over 350 million Africans live on less than USD$1. Real per-capita income in Africa is lower today than it was four decades ago. Aid money and international bank loans have been stolen by African dictators and their henchmen to line their pockets and maintain their huge kleptocracies. In 2002, an African Union study estimated the loss of USD $150bn a year to corruption in Africa, and not without the complicity of the donor countries. Compare this to the USD$22bn the developed countries gave to all of sub-Saharan Africa in 2008. In 2006, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who faced impeachment for corruption and ineptitude, declared at an African civic groups meeting in Addis Ababa that African leaders “have stolen at least $140 billion from their people in the decades since independence.” Ghanaian economist George Ayittey citing U.N. data argues, “These are gross underestimates… $200 billion or 90 percent of the sub-Saharan part of the continent’s gross domestic product was shipped to foreign banks in 1991 alone. Civil wars in Africa cost at least $15 billion annually in lost output, wreckage of infrastructure, and refugee crises… In Zimbabwe, foreign investors have fled the region and more than 4 million Zimbabweans have left the country along with 60,000 physicians and other professionals….” Is it any wonder that Africa today is worse off than it was 50 years ago?
The question is not whether global warming could impact Africa disproportionately, or Africa is entitled to assistance to overcome the effects of greenhouse emissions caused by the industrialized countries. The question is whether African dictators have the moral credibility and standing to make a demand for compensation and what they will do with such compensation if they were to get it. Certainly, the capo African negotiator has as much credibility to demand compensation in Copenhagen as a bank robber has from the bank owners. It has been a notorious fact for at least two decades that Ethiopia is facing environmental disaster. Ethiopia’s forest coverage by the turn of the last century was 40%. By 1987, under the military government, it went down to 5.5%. In 2003, it dropped down to 0.2%. The Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute says Ethiopia loses up to 200,000 hectares of forest every year. Between 1990 and 2005, Ethiopia lost 14.0% of its forest cover (2,114,000 hectares) and 3.6% of its forest and woodland habitat. If the trend continues, it is expected that Ethiopia could lose all of its forest resources in 11 years, by the year 2020. What has Zenawi’s regime done to reverse the problem of deforestation in Ethiopia? They have sold what little arable land is left to the Saudis, the Shiekdoms, the Indians, the South Korea and others with crisp dollar bills looking for fire sales on African lands.
There has been a lot of environmental window dressing and grandstanding in various parts of Africa. In Ethiopia, lofty proclamations have been issued to “improve and enhance the health and quality of life of all Ethiopians”, “control pollution” and facilitate “environmental impact” studies. The “nations, nationalities and peoples” are granted environmental self-determination. There is an Environmental Protection Council which “oversees activities of sectoral agencies and environmental units with respect to environmental all regional states.” The Environmental Protection Agency is “accountable to the Prime Minister.” What have these make-believe bureaucracies done to save Lake Koka, just outside the capital, and the 17,000 people who drink its toxic water daily?
Zenawi and his minions will show up looking for a pot of gold at the end of the Copenhagen rainbow. It does not appear that a bonanza of riches will be awaiting them. If the advance Barcelona negotiations held last month are any indication, a deal does not appear possible in Copenhagen. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Barcelona summit that “global climate negotiations would inevitably drag out after the meeting in Copenhagen ends on Dec. 19.” African dictators deserve our grudging admiration for their sheer tenacity and brazen audacity. After sucking their people dry, they are now moving camp to the greener pastures of climate change to continue their vampiric trade.
The fact of the matter is that while the rest of the world toasts from global warming, Africa is burning down in the fires of dictatorship. While Europeans are fretting about their carbon footprint, Africans are gasping to breathe free under the bootprints of dictators. While Americans are worried about carbon emission trapped in the atmosphere, Africans find themselves trapped in minefields of dictatorship. Handing over carbon blood money to African dictators is like increasing industrial emissions to cut back on global warming. It is the wrong thing to do.
Africa faces an ecological collapse not because of climate change but because of lack of regime change. It is humorously ironic that African dictators who panhandle the industrialized countries for over two-thirds of their budgets should threaten to walk out on them. We know the bravado is nothing more than the “chatter of a beggar’s teeth”. As the bank robber will not walk out of the bank empty handed because of moral outrage over the small amount of money sitting in the vault, we do not expect the band of African negotiators to walk out Copenhagen because they are offered less than what they are asking. We expect to see them making a beeline to the conference door for handouts for there is no such thing as a choosy beggar. We wish them well. Go on, take the money and run….
Regime Change Before Action on Climate Change in Africa!
(Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on Pambazuka News and New American Media.)
The following is a testimonial letter from Amare Mammo — a former cadre of the ruling TPLF/EPRDF regime — who used to work for the Ethiopian Agricultural and Food Organization.
Letter addressed to: Dr. Seid Hassan – Murray State University
Received: November 23, 2009.
The net worth of Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi is listed as $1.2 billion in Wikipedia.org, the most referenced encyclopedia in the world. Meles is also listed as the 11th richest head of government in the world. (See here.) This has caused the Adwa Mafia (a clique within the ruling Woyanne junta that is mostly composed of close family members and friends of Meles) to scramble and remove their boss from the list. After several back and forth between those who wanted to keep Meles in the list and members of the Adwa Mafia who are terrified of the exposure, Wikipedia editors stepped in yesterday and “called off” the war until December 20.
Azeb Mesfin, the wife of Ethiopia’s tyrant Meles Zenawi, had captured the attention of U.S. media last September when she gave her husband an angry stare in Pittsburgh (read 
WASHINGTON — Advocacy for Ethiopia, an Ethiopian civic group based in the U.S., held a press conference Sunday to air its views on the Copenhagen Climate Conference in Denmark that has started today.