Saudi Arabia security forces have been deployed in huge numbers across the region. King Abdullah is also reported to have told neighbouring Bahrain that if they do not put down their own ongoing Shia revolt, his own forces will. In response to the massive mobilisation, protesters are planning to place women on the front ranks to discourage Saudi forces from firing on them. On Thursday, Saudi Shias population staged protests in two towns in Saudi Arabia’s oil-producing Eastern Province. – The Telegraph

By Teodros Kiros

Silence is enigmatic. Silence speaks without speaking, hears without hearing, and sees without seeing. On the surface these enigmas are contradictory. How can silence hear without hearing, and see without seeing?

Those contradictions are the essence of silence.

We cannot see silence seeing, nor can we hear it, hearing.

Silence is silent because it has heard; silence is silent because it has seen. Sometime silence sees too much and hears too much; that is when silence remains silent.

Ever since the historic voices of the people were heard and seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen and now Libya, the Ethiopian landscape is environed by silence. You must be wondering what the people are thinking, what the people must be saying. Keep on wondering, because have determined to remain silent, for they think that silent is golden, or they may be secretly listening to Fortuna, to that moody teacher of time.

There is wisdom in this silence, in this stillness of time, when the mind is at its most active condition, when the mind is thinking about when and how to act.

The Ethiopian people have seen without seeing, heard without hearing, but they remain steadfastly silent. Perhaps, they have seen and heard it all. Some are still mourning the deaths of their beloved first in the hands of the Derg and now in the hands of the existing Tyrannical/Oligarchy.

Do not let the silence of the people disturb you. Great actions are always preceded by long periods of reflection during the stillness of time, when time is borrowed by deliberation, by public reason.

Britain has decided to give upwards of $250 million a year to shore up the Zenawi regime under the guise of helping the Ethiopian people.  There is ample evidence that much of foreign aid to the Zenawi regime is used to brutalize and keep Ethiopians poor.

Human Rights Watch has put it bluntly to donors who pretend to help the poor in Ethiopia.  “Ethiopia’s repressive government has put foreign aid to a sinister purpose, with officials in Ethiopia’s ruling party using their power to give or deny financial assistance to citizens based on their political affiliation. Perhaps even more shocking, international donors appear to expend more energy pretending these abuses don’t exist than trying to address them.”

After thirty years of famine assistance, Ethiopia still can’t feed its people.  So-called aid is used to enrich a tyrant and his coterie who make Ghaddafi look like a boy scout.  Yet donors continue to turn a blind  eye to the suffering of the average Ethiopian as long as the regime in power continues their bidding.  Is it too much to ask “Donor Do No Harm”?

Ethiopia is Top UK Aid Recipient

Peter Heinlein | Voice of America |

Ethiopia will receive $2 billion in British development assistance in a four-year period.

Howard Taylor, head of the British aid program in Ethiopia, says the decision to boost assistance was based on need as well as evidence that the country has made major strides in recent years.

Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says his country’s economy has grown at a rate of 10 percent or more during each of the past seven years.  International aid agencies question the method of calculating the figure.  But Mr. Meles says that even double-digit growth would not be enough because Ethiopia’s population has increased faster than the country’s rate of economic growth.  The population now stands at around 80 million people.

Taylor says that although the accuracy of the government data can be debated, there is no doubt that Ethiopia’s economic growth is accelerating. “The precision of the data is disputed, and we have an ongoing conversation ourselves with partners, including the government itself, about some of that data.  But the headline issue, which nobody disputes, is that there has been from a low base tremendous development progress in Ethiopia over the last eight to ten years or so,” he said.

Taylor says recent studies show that Ethiopia receives far less aid than it needs – half as much in assistance per capita compared to other African countries.  He attributes that partly to donor concerns about the killing of anti-government demonstrators following Ethiopia’s disputed 2005 election.

“It’s a fact that overseas aid to Ethiopia did decrease after the 2005 election.  It has since increased.  I think the size of the population in Ethiopia is a key factor in why the per capita aid is low because Ethiopia is so populous and still growing so fast,” he said.

A poverty index released by Oxford University and the United Nations last year ranked Ethiopia as the world’s second poorest country, after Niger.  But the Ethiopian government’s latest five year economic plan includes the ambitious goal of achieving self-sufficiency in food.

Taylor says international donors are increasing their aid budgets, even as they struggle with their own economic troubles. “They’re certainly in the poorest 10 countries in the world.  But I think that’s an obvious argument for continued support and increasing what we do here.  We are trying to help the millions of very poor, very vulnerable Ethiopians improve their lives,” he said.

Britain and the European Union are among Ethiopia’s biggest aid donors.

The United States is the largest bilateral aid contributor to Ethiopia, averaging more than $1 billion in assistance per year since 2007.  During that time, U.S. aid has included more than $1.5 billion in food aid to prevent famine and alleviate chronic food shortages.

INTERPOL has issued [see here] a global alert known as an Orange Notice against Colonel Al-Qadhafi and 15 other Libyan nationals, including members of his family and close associates, in a bid to warn member states of the danger posed by the movement of these individuals and their assets, to assist member states in their efforts to enforce sanctions under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 (2011), and to support INTERPOL’s assistance to the International Criminal Court investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in Libya.

With identifying information on each of the subjects on the UN travel ban and asset freeze list added to INTERPOL’s databases and circulated to frontline law enforcement officers at key areas such as border control points, INTERPOL’s alert will help ensure that law enforcement in each of the world police body’s 188 member countries will be able to take all necessary measures to protect civilians and to enforce travel bans against all 16 Libyan nationals, as well as the assets freeze targeting six of them. The individuals subject to the Orange Notice have been identified as being involved in or complicit in planning attacks, including aerial bombardments, on civilian populations.

INTERPOL’s alert will see its Command and Co-ordination Centre at its General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon liaise with its National Central Bureaus to pool and update all relevant intelligence to ensure that the Libyan nationals are not able to circumvent the travel ban or the assets freeze.

With the UN Security Council referring recent events in Libya to the International Criminal Court and calling on all states and concerned international organizations to co-operate fully with the Prosecutor and the Court in this matter, INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said: “INTERPOL’s constitution provides a clear mandate for the widest co-operation among law enforcement authorities in its member countries, within the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the prevention of serious human rights abuses.”

“As a first priority, we must work to protect the civilian populations of Libya and of any country into which these Libyan individuals may travel or attempt to move their assets,” said Secretary General Noble.

“If member states are expected to implement effectively the travel ban and asset freeze against the named individuals in order to prevent serious criminal conduct and abuse of human rights, they will need instant access to hard data. INTERPOL’s secure global communications system and databases will give them access to the information on which to act. The ICC Prosecutor will also need secure options for gathering and sharing information relevant to his investigation which INTERPOL can provide.

“Our co-operation with the UN Security Council on sanctions against individuals is strong and will get stronger. Once the relevant UN Committee for monitoring the implementation of these sanctions has had an opportunity to consider the matter, INTERPOL hopes to work with the UN to obtain the issuance of and ensure the reliability of INTERPOL – UN Security Council Special Notices for these individuals as we have done with the 1267 Committee,” added the head of INTERPOL.

INTERPOL’s co-operation with UN bodies has seen its global law enforcement network and system of international notices used by international criminal tribunals and the ICC to seek persons wanted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Every time the ethnic apartheid junta in Ethiopia faces domestic crisis, it resorts to inciting ethnic and religious animosity and clashes among Ethiopians. During the 2005 election-related revolt, Meles and gang had tried to instigate hostility between Amhara and Oromo ethnic groups, incited some Muslims in Jimma and other southern Ethiopian towns to attack Christians and the following year, December 2006, invaded Somalia. Meles is repeating the same thing now as his regime faces an imminent popular uprising. International Christian Concern has reported today, and Ethiopian Review has been able to confirm the report independently from its sources in Ethiopia, that several churches have been burned in southern Ethiopia this week. Read the full report below:

International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that today Muslims killed one Christian, burned down eight churches, a bible school, and 17 Christian homes in stepping up their attacks against Christians in Asendabo, Ethiopia.

Yesterday ICC reported that the attacks started on March 2 after Muslims accused Christians of desecrating the Qur’an. Today’s attacks bring the total number of razed churches to 13. More than 150 Christians are now without homes. The attacks have spread to the villages surrounding the town of Asendabo.

Christians are calling on the government of Ethiopia for protection. The Ethiopian government sent federal security forces but they couldn’t control ten thousand rioting Muslims from continuing their attacks.

Asendabo is a town located in Jimma Zone, Western Ethiopia. Western Ethiopia was the scene of violent attacks against Christians in 2006 when Muslims killed more than a dozen Christian and burned down several churches. The attacks forces thousands of Christians to leave their homes.