If you are wondering why the government of Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia is doing the secretive land deals with Arab and Asian tycoons and agribusiness corporations without any public discussion and scrutiny, and why the officials are handling it in much the same way like thieves who sell their stolen stuff on street corners and dark alleys, you have asked a serious question and probably have almost gotten some of your answers. This is pure theft and burglary sugarcoated as investment — only in this case that the burglar has someone to open the door from inside. It is a dangerous venture that has little to do with solving Ethiopia’s economic problems but bound to negatively impact the country’s most strategic resources, land and water, and its posterity. It appears that we have reached a point where we are selling out our last belongings just like the desperate peasants I once saw in 1984 sell their last belongings for scrape as they fled their villages to escape an impending famine.
This land deal, now popularly known as “land grab” among other names, and becoming epidemic in desperately poor, irresponsible and corrupt African countries, is a neocolonial venture where land is being sold to foreigners at bargain prices. The “investors” are salivating over the cheap access to agricultural land, water and cheap labor which would definitely make them even richer in the lucrative food markets whose growing trends they are very aware of. This is in addition to helping them find a solution to the problem of serious food insecurity in their own countries. The Meles Zenawis of Africa are salivating over the quick cash that will go to temporarily solve their hard currency crunch and the opportunity of swelling their individual bank accounts. Those who likened these secret deals to the colonial scramble for African land, where some local chiefs signed and sold off tract after tract of land to colonialists under the influence of alcohol supplied by the colonialist and some glittering gifts, are not very far from an accurate description of these transactions.
The Ethiopian land grab, as we are gradually learning now, is such a huge undertaking, which according to various sources, involves millions of acres of fertile land, nearly the size of the former province of Arsi. The land for sale is spread across all regions of the country except Tigrai and the Somali region. Interestingly, this is being done in the dark, without a minimal of discussion, even a symbolic one, at least in that rubberstamp parliament, or on any national media. It is very ironic that an English newspaper in Addis Ababa named Addis Fortune, which also has an online version and hardly an opponent of the government, has to raise the more suspicious aspects of the land deal on its gossip column while also reporting on the same day about the activities of Shiek Mohammed Al Amoudi who is serving as a salesman to his wealthy Saudi friends that are heavily backed by Saudi Royal officials. I also saw an Amharic editorial on the Reporter the contents of which speak volumes about how the authors feared to directly talk about the land deal than the deal itself. But these papers should be commended at least for raising the issue.
I am sure the Ethiopian officials will sugarcoat this venture with such jargons as development needs, poverty alleviation, generating capital, and all the language of development they seem to have mastered. I am also sure many members and supporters of the ruling clique and its ethnic associates who are following the regime blindfolded would call me or any critic of this deal as anti-investment, anti-development or extremist, Tigre hater, as they often do when challenged with serious and substantive questions and criticisms. I know the drill. I am all for investment and opening the country to foreign capital. Our poverty is so real and tragic that I am not even romanticizing that my country, once a place where foreigners were asked to shake of their feet before they leave the country lest they take our sacred soil on their shoes, has come to this level of disgrace; nor am I troubled by the morally reprehensible thought that some of these investors are planning to grow barley to feed their camels when at the same time the children of the Ethiopia are dying of hunger. I believe this venture is distasteful on basic economic grounds and the long term problems it is bound to create.
I am one Ethiopian who feels deeply humiliated by the kind of poverty our people live under and the worsening spread of unmitigated hunger and famine. More importantly, I see the indicators and worry that the worst may be yet to come. So, I am not against investment in Ethiopia. But this secret deal is not an investment in Ethiopia’s interest by any stretch of imagination. For a starter, name me a country that has ever developed or solved a single major problem by selling itself to the highest bidder and I will buy you a pig that can fly.
Granted, some of the money may raise hard currency to buy fuel oil for the country for a year or two. Even some economy may trickle down to make a handful of people wealthy. But it may not also be worth the cost to be paid for the security of the farms which are likely to be targets of angry people that are being fenced off of their ancestral land. It is not difficult to predict that these people will organize and fight back or feed into some of the insurgencies that already vow to fight. In Madagascar, where the regime sold nearly half the country’s arable land for $12 an acre to a Korean agribusiness company, much more than what Meles is said to be ready to sell ours for, it did not take a long time before the people saw both their fortunes and their country going down the drain and rose in resistance, overthrew their government out of power and nullified the shoddy agreements. Responsible, intelligent, and patriotic citizens of that country saw the deal was incompatible with and dangerous to their fragile ecology and environment as well as the country’s posterity. I hate to see our problems solved though violence but I will be one Ethiopian who will not speak against any which may arise as a result of this theft.
A report cited here states that Shiek Mohammed Al-Amoudi is charged by the Saudi King to spearhead and facilitate the venture in Ethiopia and that the shiek has gained the support of Meles Zenawi. His agribusiness company has recently sponsored some 50 Saudi companies to attend an expensive promotional exhibition and party in Addis Ababa though his company, Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc. which is already producing rice for the Saudis. I have seen many people who hated the Shiek for being a supporter of the TPLF regime, for corrupting officials with generous gift, and giving extravagant parties. To be frank, I argued in his favor and considered all of those his rights. As a wealthy person he has every right whatever he wants to do with his money. But buying and selling our country is not one of them. Now this Shiek has crossed the line by turning himself into a salesman of our land to his fellow rich petrodollar swollen sheiks. It appears that he has crossed the Rubicon.
Who are this wealthy individuals and corporations and what drives them into this dangerous scramble on our land? These are basically people and entities from the oil rich Middle East and from rapidly industrializing East and South Asia. Most of the Asians are from countries heavily populated. They have virtually little land for extensive agriculture and a huge and growing population to feed. Most have chemicalized their soil to perdition over three decades of green revolution but have fortunately helped themselves to industrialization. The others are from wealthy oil rich Middle East and Arab Sheikdoms that are alarmed by the dwindling ground water in their own countries to support agriculture and a growing population to feed. More importantly they are attracted by the lucrative market and the rising trend of the cost of food products. Over the last several years, they have made their studies and consulted economists who delivered this “innovative” idea of land grab. That is when they began roaming the continent of Africa looking for corrupt and desperate governments that would sell agricultural land along with scarce water and cheap labor to meet their consumption needs. That is how they met the Meles Zenawi’s of Africa. Mr. David Hallam, deputy director at FAO, who I believe is privy to these transactions is quoted on a Washington Post Article as saying that the contracts being signed “ are thin” and “have no safeguards” adding that he sees “ statements from ministers where they’re basically promising (to the wealthy foreign companies) everything with no controls, no conditions”. This is from the mouth of an expert of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization.
What is happening in Ethiopia is sad on another very important level. Ethiopia has an economic geographic advantage it potentially enjoys in the part of the world it is located. With its huge agricultural potential it is strategically located in close proximity to reap the benefits of exporting food to these oil rich but agriculturally poor customers most of which survive by importing their food. Their demand and Ethiopia’s potential for supply was a perfect match. In the past, Ethiopia had not had the opportunity to harvest this potential. It is a failure of all past governments including this one. Had Ethiopian rulers were wise and thinkers beyond their political shelf lives, they could have already exploited it. But this potential can be maximized only if we Ethiopians are the producers and sellers of our own agricultural products. What Meles Zenawi is doing now is putting this upside down. He, in effect, made our potential buyers the sellers of our commodity. He is helping them sit on both the demand and supply side of the equation. Have you heard of a saying in Amharic- “kemogn dej Mofer Yikoretal”. This is an economic suicide that no country with rational people living inside it should even think of doing. I think Ethiopians need to seriously discuss impending problem and create public awareness before it is too late and too costly.
Some points we need to understand clearly:
1.The idea of unused land, idle land or virgin land is a complete misnomer. True, there is a lot of uncultivated arable land in Ethiopia. That doesn’t make it unused or idle. Land must not necessarily be cultivated to be classified as utilized. The term I am comfortable with is underused or underutilized. Anybody who has seen these areas identified as unused understands that there is no land in Ethiopia that has no owners and users. In areas where we have more land relative to the inhabitants in the area, it is often that the way of life of the population requires more land per person. Nomadic areas and food gatherers in west and southwest Ethiopia need more land per person to survive for the type of economy they practice. But even in situations where land is least economically utilized, if often helps keep the ecological balance in the area and the region. I should add that these lands are not used to their maximum potential mostly because of the wrong or misguided government policies and interventions and that seems to be where the central problem is located.
2.Second, for agriculture to prosper, it is not necessary that we have large scale commercial farms. Small holder farms of reasonable size can be economically as effective. If we are, for example, able to produce organic food products by small holder farmers, it is possible to get as much money or even better money than large scale plantations that use chemical fertilizers. In other words, you don’t need billionaire investors to cultivate the underutilized land. It is not difficult to find some 50 Ethiopians that will amount to one Arab millionaire investor. The problem is that the government policies are faulty and unattractive to Ethiopians. There was a time in the early seventies where fresh graduates from Haramaya University were able to start farms in the Awash valley with loans from government banks who did it with brilliant success. Does anybody remember AMBASH, a farm operated by a group of young graduates of Agriculture from Haramaya College? If it was possible thirty five years ago, it should be more possible today.
3.The land currently under intensive cultivation which is mostly overused and becoming unproductive, as in northern and north central Ethiopia, needs to rest and remain fallow for many years if we want the soil to regenerate and become supportive again. We also currently farm a lot of marginal lands that should not be cultivated at all. Farm lands are running uphill in most parts of Ethiopia as farmers try to bring more and more land to cultivation in response to population pressure. This is a big rational for resettlement programs and developing underused arable lands. Selling more existing underused land apparently means more pressure on existing peasant farms which are already being pressure. So the impact of selling this land to foreigners reverberates throughout the agricultural system and is not limited to the areas where the farms for sell are located.
4.Water is increasingly becoming a scarce resource and global trends are that it will get more and more scarce and expensive. When we are selling land to these so called investors we are also selling water that comes in the form of precipitation, overland flow and ground water. In some cases the water is more expensive than the land. Allowing foreign investors to engage cultivating water intensive crops such as rice is a bound to create a disaster.
5.Economic prosperity, even in poor countries like Ethiopia, does not necessarily have to depend on farming land alone. Only stupid minds think that the region of Gambella is more useful when cultivated than left for the tropical forest that it is. Rich people in the west who live in concrete jungles and monotonously humanized landscapes would pay a lot of money to pass weekends in that beautiful wilderness if we do some investment. If we do the thinking as to what we can do with the forest without destroying it, I am sure we can come up with something to generate the hard currency that being worshipped in Ethiopia. If we develop a good hospitality industry and promote it, it is possible to make much more hard currency than what Al Amoudi pays us for his rice farms.
Conclusion:
The ultimate solution to the country’s economic woes, to this grinding poverty, to the hunger and famine that is eating down into our humanity, must begin with an honest reexamination of the failed agrarian and all economic policies in the country. It has to be a reexamination that is dispassionate and free of politics. We are a people that have gone though enough hardships to learn from our past. We are a textbook case of how bad governance and misguided policies can crush a country with rich agricultural potential. Unfortunately, we live under a dictatorship that is willing to believe its own lies than learn from these experiences. That we are the original home of some of the worlds cultivated crops and still beg to feed our people should be unconscionable to all decent Ethiopians irrespective of their politics. Meles Zenawi and Bereket Simon do not seem to have any sense of humiliation. Their narcissism is over their head. That we are selling out our land to others to produce their food while parading our own famine stricken bodies is downright shameful but more importantly economically senseless. Yes, there is a need for hard currency and there is a need to plug into the globalizing economy. As others, including the aspiring new colonizers are showing us, financial and capital strength can be achieved in various ways. Some did it by educating their people for the future. If Meles, for example, folds down these jokes he calls universities and chooses to work on having one or two good institutions where you teach good math and science and finds some way of retaining the educated people in the country, we can do much to generate foreign currency than sell our last belonging.
The most crucial policy is one that makes the country attractive first and foremost to its own citizens. This means freedom and the rule of law. The scary regulations being issued by the TPLF and the ethnicization of politics may have served TPLF’s success in staying in power for long, but it is not helping the country and the people a bit.
If we have a government that works extra time to resolve internal conflicts, potential investors would come in droves and will be willing to pay large sums of money. We see them do it on a daily basis in other countries where that is the case. Capital moves to where it gets a higher rate of profit and safe and secure operation zone. Unfortunately, the TPLF is the biggest manufacturer of conflicts in the country and the source of all potential instability.
By providing incentives for Ethiopians at home and abroad to engage in agriculture it is possible to transform the country’s food production and the general economy. Many returnee Ethiopians who open go-go clubs in Addis would not hesitate to take their money to agriculture if they are given appropriate incentives. It is not necessarily expensive to engage in farming at least as compared to engaging in extractive industries such as mining.
When Meles Zenawi landlocked the country and told us that losing direct access to the sea “is not going to affect us 5 cents worth” with a straight face, we sat back and listened and perhaps laughed. Now we are told we are paying a billion dollars a year for the port to Djibouti. The cost is rising every year.
We have seen our beautiful sisters travelling to the Middle East as domestic workers. We are sitting and watching as our sisters are abused and dehumanized in these countries and the government that eats their remittance refuses to say a pip or anything on their behalf. We are watching this unfold under our eyes helplessly.
Now the rich guys from the Middle East themselves are coming to buy our land at bargain prices, suck up our water, fence off our children from the land of their forefathers, in order to produce food for themselves and their camels using our cheap slave labor. All of this while we beg food for 13 million destitute people!
These deals are like dragging your mother by her hair to give her to a rapist for scrape money. I don’t know how many of you would contemplate doing this and for what amount of money. Yet this is what is happening to Ethiopia right now. I was once a kid who was crying “land to the tiller” on the streets of Addis fighting to make life better to exploited peasants. Some of the TPLF people now in power were there singing the same song. How regressive is it that our children are to sing the same song three and half decades letter?
How did we come to this? When is this going to end? And, by the way, what kind of people are we?
A mind-boggling usurpation of moral authority at the highest global level is set to unfold at the United Nations Climate Change Conference that begins in Copenhagen next Monday.
Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia and one of the world’s worst dictators, is preparing to use that global platform to scold other nations for their irresponsible energy policies – and to demand hundreds of billions of dollars for African nations to compensate for global warming damage done to the continent.
The hypocrisy of Meles playing a role in Copenhagen – indeed a leadership role where he could potentially block a global agreement – is outrageous.
As Africa’s top negotiator in Copenhagen, Meles in recent weeks has already begun posturing as the moral environmental voice of Africa by criticizing industrialized countries for their “lack of seriousness” on global climate policy, and by threatening to lead a walk-out of the 52 African countries at the conference (out of 190 total participating nations) if their demands for compensation aren’t met.
Gulag Prisons
This theft-in-plain-sight of a critical global role is being carried out by a man who runs his own country by a “divide and conquer” strategy – hardly the best model for global collaborative decision-making.
Why would Denmark even allow this man to step foot in their country?
Directly to the point of the hypocrisy of Meles’ role as Africa’s chief climate change negotiator, Ethiopia is now facing one of the worst famines in its history as a consequence of his own environmentally disastrous laws and policies.
These include property laws that prevent farmers from owning their own land; that forbid foreign research and aid groups from entering the country; and a governing system that prevents any orderly agriculture and environmentalism, because Meles stays in power by keeping his country mired in a permanent state of war.
Ethnic Cleansing
By now the evidence for Mele’s crimes is far too extensive, public, and exhaustively well-documented to summarize in detail here.
The picture collectively painted is a tyrant who stays in power through total control of the political, economic, legal, media and military systems.
Here in Minnesota, where thousands of Ethiopians refugees have fled Meles’ brutality, tales of personal witness to all of these crimes, and many more, abound.
Minnesota, and other centers of the global Ethiopia diaspora, are often the best sources of close-to-firsthand information about Meles’ savage rule, because refugees stay in constant contact with friends and family at home while foreign journalists, aid workers and human rights workers are banned from the country.
Unstoppable Hatred
By no means least in the way of evidence against Meles is the Ethiopian blogosphere which is a bitter veil of tears, a deeply wounded cry of the heart.
In this global forum thousands of Ethiopians every day figuratively rend their garments, cry out to God, offer first-person testimonials of beatings and torture, and maintain online records of Meles’ crimes against humanity. Sometimes, overflowing with unstoppable hatred, they violently attack each other with words.
The only mystery that remains is why the world appears simply not to notice, to respond, or even to care in the least about the Ethiopia’s abysmal suffering.
It’s Rwanda and Darfur all over again. And it has been that way, although getting progressively worse, since 1991, the year that Meles took power in a coup and immediately began ethnic cleansing as a central tactic of his governing style.
And now the world’s leaders at Copenhagen have embraced this man into their highest deliberative council, and given him voice. What are they thinking?
Absolute Power
Meles’ 18-year rule of terror in Ethiopia has easily earned him a place alongside dictators such as Kim Jong-Il, Slobodan Milosevich, Muammar Qaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Omar al-Bashir, Than Swhe, and Ali Khamenei.
Would any of these despots be welcomed in Copenhagen?
Would any be given the chance to potentially veto a global climate accord?
Of course, Meles won’t do that. What he will do, though, is maximize his leverage through every means possible to further secure what for 18 years he has ruthlessly sought and won in Ethiopia, which is absolute power.
He’d let the world burn to a crisp before he relinquished that.
When it comes to the ruling tribal junta in Ethiopia, there is no one who has as much clarity as President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea. He knows their real nature, what and how they think, their weaknesses, strength, and modus operandi. This is hardly surprising since he is the one who guided them all the way to Menelik’s palace in Addis Ababa. A few years later they turned around and stabbed him in the back and waged a war of attrition against Eritreans. Simply put, to Isaias and the Eritrean leadership, Woyanne is an experiment that went terribly wrong. To Ethiopians, it is a long nightmare. This monster must be eliminated soon in order for peace to prevail in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and whole Horn of Africa region.
Meles Zenawi and members of his Woyanne junta know full well Isaias Afwerki’s intention and what he is capable of. They live in constant fear with the realization that their treachery, as well as the ethnic cleansing they perpetrated against Eritreans will not go unpunished. That is why mere mention of the name Isaias, and discussions about cooperation between Ethiopian opposition groups and the Eritrean government send chills through their spine.
To protect themselves from Eritrea’s wrath, Woyannes have stationed over 80,000 troops right at the border in Tigray and moved most of their air force from central Ethiopia closer to Eritrea. They are also laboring day and night to have the U.S. Government and European Union to label Eritrea as a terrorism sponsoring state, to no avail so far.
Meles and gang, however, need not worry too much about Eritrea, because when the time comes, they will face fire not just from the north. Even the Agazi, Meles and Azeb’s Praetorian Guards, could turn against them. A few months ago the Deputy Commander of Agazi, Col. Alebel, has defected and he is now advising EPPF and Ginbot 7. We all remember what happened to Romanian dictators Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu in not too distant past. They appeared invincible, protecting themselves with layers of secret and intelligence services, while perpetrating horrible crimes against their people. The two monsters were later executed by their own special forces after a hasty trial and conviction on genocide and corruption charges when the people of Romania finally said enough.
Meles and Azeb are similarly responsible for genocide and massive corruption. They have committed mass murder against the peoples of Ogaden and Gambela where they burned entire villages, and in Somalia where Meles Zenawi’s soldiers raped Somali women, slit the throats of religious leaders, slaughtered over 20,000 Somali civilians and made 2 million Somalis homeless. Woyanne crimes in Addis Ababa, Gonder, Gojjam, Wollo, Ambo, Beninshangul, and other cities and regions of Ethiopia are too numerous to list. A time will come to account for all of them.
Discussion with Isaias Afwerki
It is with all this in mind that I met with President Isaias for the second time last month at his office in Eritrea’s capital Asmara. I went to Asmara on my way to visit leaders and fighters of the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF) and attend their 2-day conference. The President invited my colleague Sileshi Tilahun and I for tea, which turned into a long conversation that took almost 3 hours. A few months earlier, in May this year, he gave us a 4-hour interview that has created a political wave in both the Ethiopian and Eritrean communities.
What I found striking when I met with Isaias Afwerki on both occasions was how humble, casual, and approachable he is. In describing President Isaias, the Woyanne propaganda machine tries to draw a picture of a power crazed madman, some one like Stalin or Idi Amin — chest full of medals, protected by a battalion of heavily armed, bulking bodyguards, living in huge palaces. I have seen none of that. There is no pomp and circumstance around Isaias Afwerki, and I did not see a horde of assistants circling him. I saw only one secretary who let us into his office. There is a spartan simplicity to the office itself — little decoration and some very uncomfortable chairs. I was told later that he made the chairs himself in his workshop.
The president received us warmly, with a broad smile and genuine sense of friendship. Sipping tea, we began our conversation. Sileshi and I started out by discussing the effect of his May 2009 historical interview. We delved into specific examples of the impact it is having. We summed it up by saying that there is now a much more improved atmosphere between Ethiopians and Eritreans as a result of what the president said in the interview. For many Ethiopians, the president’s words had a transformational effect on their view of Eritrea and its current leadership.
As some one who keeps himself well informed (some say he is an information addict), President Isaias is well aware of what is being said and discussed in the Ethiopian community. And he seems to be encouraged by the numerous positive comments he has heard and read, many of which were coming from some of his harshest critics in the Ethiopian community. He said that awareness of the need to come together “is now better than a year ago.”
The president is eager to build on the success of his outreach to Ethiopians. He urged us to help organize dialogue — similar to the public meeting that was held in Washington DC on August 9, 2009, by the EPPF chapter — between Ethiopians and Eritreans around the world.
On Ethiopian opposition parties
In this our second meeting with Isaias Afeworki, the other main topic of discussion was the current state of the Ethiopian opposition movement. The President is straightforward about it. He said that “the leadership is detached from the people.”
Indeed, the only reason Woyanne continues to cause havoc in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa is that there is no viable opposition party that is prepared to take over power from Woyanne. Most of the Ethiopian opposition leaders are halfhearted about the struggle. As the president put it, “there has to be an effective leadership in the field. The country is vast. You can lead an opposition group from right outside of Addis Ababa. There needs to be action on the ground.”
President Isaias told us that “Ethiopian political leaders continue to fail their people.” He recommends that the opposition leaders need to leave their comfortable homes in Europe and the U.S. and relocate to Ethiopia’s mountains and jungles, if they are serious about bringing change. Any opposition leader who is not willing to do that cannot and should not be taken seriously.
“Woyanne will collapse through evolution. Let’s revolutionize the process,” the president said. To that end, Ethiopian opposition groups need to come together and craft a “common political platform, which is lacking today.”
He expressed his hope that such a common political agenda and an inclusive united front of Ethiopian opposition parties will be formed before the end of this year (European calendar).
President Isaias says that his government is not shy about supporting Ethiopian freedom fighters. But the actual struggle must be waged by Ethiopia’s opposition groups themselves. What Eritrea wants to get in return is a “safe neighborhood,” a peaceful region, according to the president. He also envisions the creation of an economic integration among Horn of African nations. That is not possible as long Ethiopia continues to be ruled by a ravenous tyranny that attacks any thing it cannot control and leach on.
Even though currently there are some encouraging signs — such as an increased effort to form a united front — the foot-dragging by many of the leaders of the opposition parties continue, unfortunately. If they don’t come together and form an effective united front before Woyanne’s fake elections in May 2010, there needs to be a revolution in the opposition camp itself — all the leaders of these parties must resign and give a chance to the younger generation to take the lead.
Would a Jewish, Russian, or Polish journalist ask Hitler such a question? Unthinkable.
It is what EthiopiaFirst.com editor recently asked Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s Hitler, who is currently carrying out a campaign of genocide against our people in the Ogaden region, not to mention the countless crimes he has perpetrated against all Ethiopians. A more apt question would be, “How many babies did you kill today?”
Ethiopia is being ruled by thugs and murderers because our so-called elite, those who are educated and fare better in life, have a conscience comparable to that of a pig — i.e., purely selfish, no sense of justice, no moral compass.
Meles, arrogant as ever, did not want to answer the idiotic question, but when Ben pressed him if he likes Tilahun, he said “yes, and foreign songs, too.”
The hate Meles has for any thing Ethiopian would not allow him to call out Ethiopian singers.
But what is new? We all know that Meles is thoroughly anti-Ethiopia. What irks many Ethiopians is the blase attitude of individuals like Ben — those who claim to care about their country — toward an individual who is systematically destroying Ethiopia and commits gruesome crimes against Ethiopians (watch these photos).
The interview serves only to expose Meles Zenawi’s contempt for Ethiopia. But it is also an indictment against the likes of Ben who are trying to humanize a monster and give legitimacy to his murderous regime.
Angry readers asked me to remove the interview from the comment section some one posted yesterday (click here to see). I feel differently. Let every one watch the monster and get angry enough to take action — such as starting to support those resistance groups that are fighting to overthrow him. – Elias Kifle
ABC News released its top 10 electronic gadgets of the past ten years.
By Ki Mae Heussner | ABC News
Maps. Compact disk players. Film. Paperback books. Ten years ago, we couldn’t live without them. Today, they’re inching closer and closer to obsolescence. The past decade has delivered a bounty of consumer electronics that make our lives easier, keep us connected and ensure that we’re endlessly entertained.
But a few have gone above and beyond, altering the way we organize, experience and share our daily lives.
Here are 10 of the gadget world’s greatest hits from the past 10 years.
The iPod — and its signature white earbuds — quickly became a cultural icon. But its impact was hardly cosmetic. Along with iTunes, the iPod popularized the mp3 player and changed the music industry forever.
Stacks of CDs? Gone. Trips to the record store? Gone.
Apple made buying music, TV shows and videos as easy as logging on to your home computer and clicking your mouse a few times.
In 2007, the company announced that it sold its 100 millionth iPod unit, making it the bestselling digital music player of all time.
And the iPod has come a long way. Since the original iPod that could hold 1,000 songs, Apple has updated the model nearly every year, expanding the line to tiny workout-friendly Shuffles and Nanos and, of course, the iPhone-like iPod Touch. The current iPod classic (the model closest to the original) can hold 40,000 songs.
GPS Devices
Oh, those folding maps. For a time, they were a staple car accessory, not to mention a road trip necessity. But now, they’re almost quaint reminders of a bygone era.
In 2000, the United States discontinued a feature that deliberately degraded GPS signals available to the public.
Overnight, civilian users of GPS devices could pinpoint locations up to 10 times more accurately than before. And in the years that followed, led by Garmin, GPS devices found their way on to dashboards across the country.
Drivers retired their maps, letting voice-enabled GPS devices (or in-car navigation systems) lead them to their destinations.
Now, turn-by-turn directions and information about the nearest gas station and other points of interest are available on car dashboards, iPhones and more.
The BlackBerry
They’re known to be so addictive that they’re often called “CrackBerries.”
Research in Motion’s highly popular BlackBerry mobile device was first introduced as a two-way pager in 1999, but the now-common BlackBerry smart phone was introduced in 2002.
The handheld devices, which were initially the gadget of choice for executives and jetsetters, let users send and receive e-mail, access the Internet, take pictures, make phone calls and more.
As the price dropped, their popularity surged, and BlackBerrys found their way into the hands of everyone from urbanites to college students to stay-at-home moms.
Though the launch of the touchscreen iPhone challenged its share of the smart phone market, BlackBerry has held its own with an easy-to-use keyboard and sophisticated office applications and security features.
Digital cameras
Think back to 10 years ago. Did you get married? Graduate from college? Welcome a new child into the world?
Chances are, you didn’t get to see images of those major milestones until at least a few days later. Now, thanks to the proliferation of the affordable digital camera, memories are captured — and in many cases, shared — nearly instantaneously.
Though the digital camera was introduced in the 1990s, it really came into its own in the 2000s, finding its way into the hands of millions around the world. Even little kids have their own digital cameras.
Unfortunately, the downside of digital photography’s expansion is that your most embarrassing moments might live on the hard drives and Facebook accounts of countless family members and friends.
But the upside is that if you’re fast enough, you can delete those pictures before they ever see the light of day.
TiVo Digital Video Recorder
Remember when you had to make appointments with your living room television? If you wanted to watch “Friends,” “Lost” or “Monday Night Football,” you had to adjust your schedule accordingly.
The TiVo Digital Video Recorder and its more recent competitors now let you record those programs and watch them at your leisure — commercial-free
TiVo pioneered the device in 1997, but it was in the 2000s that the ad-skipping DVR really took off, sending advertisers and television programmers back to their drawing boards.
LG now offers a DVR-integrated television and some cable providers also provide DVR services.
The memory disk, the jump drive, the pendrive — or the USB.
It goes by many names but always serves the same crucial function: storing mountains of information on a miniscule device.
More durable and with more memory than its predecessor the floppy disk, flash drives help us carry documents, photos and more between work and home and school. They may be among the more humble items on this list, but simple can also be significant.
The iPhone
In June 2007, diehard Apple fans camped out on city sidewalks for days to be among the first to score the hotly anticipated iPhone. The first iPhones dropped on June 29, and within 74 days Apple had sold 1 million of its new devices.
Now it’s said that the number of iPhone and iPod touch units sold has climbed to 40 million.
Whether it’s with iPhones, BlackBerries, Android-powered phones or Palm devices, consumers increasingly send and receive e-mail, play games, watch video and access the Internet from mobile phones.
Thanks to the advent of the mobile application, like those in Apple’s App Store and the Android Marketplace, consumers also look to their handheld devices for a host of other practical — and frivolous — functions.
What’s behind the growth of the ever-smarter phone? Technologists say the answer is easy: the iPhone.
E-Book Reader
Bye bye, books? Maybe not quite yet, but as e-readers, such as Sony’s Reader and Amazon’s Kindle, gain in popularity, printed novels, textbooks and even newspapers and magazines are slowly retreating into the background.
Sony was the first this decade to offer an e-book reader in 2006 and Amazon’s Kindle quickly followed in 2007. But since then, as prices fall and content options rise, the market has continued to grow.
This month, research firm Forrester said 2009 has been a “breakout year” for eReaders and eBooks. By the end of the year, sales will have more than tripled with content sales up 176 percent for the year.
The netbooks, or mini-notebooks, can’t compete with fully-functional laptops and desktops when it comes to memory, power and battery life. But they can be had for below $300, a price closer to that of some smart phones than traditional computers.
In addition to the price, their compact size and mobility make them attractive options for consumers.
Taiwan-based Asus introduced the first netbook of the decade in 2007 when it launched the Asus Eee PC (the three “Es” stand for “Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play).
But its competitor, Acer Inc. (also from Taiwan), popularized the category with its 2008 launch of the Acer Aspire One. Analysts say Acer’s version was the first to do well among retail customers, as its operating system and overall look more closely resembled traditional PCs.
In March, research firm Garter predicted that PC shipments would fall in 2009 by 11.9 percent. Now, boosted by netbook sales, the firm expects shipments to actually grow by 2.8 percent this year.
Soon to be Implemented, Ethiopia’s Civil Society Law is the Most Restrictive of its Kind in Sub-Saharan Africa; Law Draws Inspiration from Similarly Repressive Laws in Zimbabwe, Russia and Singapore
Chicago, Ill. – The Northwestern University School of Law’s Center for International Human Rights, in a report released today and available at northwestern.edu, has found that Ethiopia’s new Civil Society Law violates Ethiopia’s human rights obligations by effectively silencing independent civil society organizations, particularly human rights defenders and advocates of democratic governance that provide critical services to Ethiopia’s most vulnerable citizens.
The report, entitled Sounding the Horn: Ethiopia’s Civil Society Law Threatens Human Rights Defenders, concludes that the new CSO law violates Ethiopia’s human rights obligations as well as the Ethiopian Constitution and thus should be rescinded immediately. Upon implementation of the new law in January 2010, all foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will be prohibited from engaging in activities pertaining to human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, disability rights, citizenship rights, conflict resolution or democratic governance. Even local NGOs that receive more than ten percent of their funding from foreign sources are considered “foreign” under this law. The report finds that: “Since the vast majority of domestic NGOs in Ethiopia receive the bulk of their funds from foreign sources, the new CSO law will force them to either close their doors or drastically alter the scope of their work.”
The Ethiopian government has long been hostile to human rights defenders. For decades the government has harassed civil society organizations and their leaders. In fact, the director of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association (EWLA) recently fled the country after the government retaliated against the EWLA for its description of the government’s human rights record.
Unless the Ethiopian government repeals the CSO law, it will be implemented one year after its enactment, on January 6, 2010. The report calls upon the Ethiopian government to rescind the law as soon as possible.
(The Center for International Human Rights is part of the Northwestern University School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic. The Center provides a comprehensive range of classroom courses on the norms and mechanisms of international human rights law, international criminal law, and international humanitarian law, provides valuable clinical experiences for students interested in the protection of human rights on a global scale, and engages in research and other projects regarding emerging human right norms and related issues. Contacts: Sandra Babcock, [email protected]; Nicolas Martinez, [email protected])
If you are wondering why the government of Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia is doing the secretive land deals with Arab and Asian tycoons and agribusiness corporations without any public discussion and scrutiny, and why the officials are handling it in much the same way like thieves who sell their stolen stuff on street corners and dark alleys, you have asked a serious question and probably have almost gotten some of your answers. This is pure theft and burglary sugarcoated as investment — only in this case that the burglar has someone to open the door from inside. It is a dangerous venture that has little to do with solving Ethiopia’s economic problems but bound to negatively impact the country’s most strategic resources, land and water, and its posterity. It appears that we have reached a point where we are selling out our last belongings just like the desperate peasants I once saw in 1984 sell their last belongings for scrape as they fled their villages to escape an impending famine.
When it comes to the ruling tribal junta in Ethiopia, there is no one who has as much clarity as President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea. He knows their real nature, what and how they think, their weaknesses, strength, and modus operandi. This is hardly surprising since he is the one who guided them all the way to Menelik’s palace in Addis Ababa. A few years later they turned around and stabbed him in the back and waged a war of attrition against Eritreans. Simply put, to Isaias and the Eritrean leadership, Woyanne is an experiment that went terribly wrong. To Ethiopians, it is a long nightmare. This monster must be eliminated soon in order for peace to prevail in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and whole Horn of Africa region.
Ethiopia is being ruled by thugs and murderers because our so-called elite, those who are educated and fare better in life, have a conscience comparable to that of a pig — i.e., purely selfish, no sense of justice, no moral compass.
