The bar, located on West 11th Street, faced heavy scrutiny from the city council Monday night. “I have zero tolerance for underage alcohol sales. and I am extremely disappointed, irritated, annoyed and flabbergasted,” says councilwoman De Knudson.
She’s upset over what transpired at Lalibela bar and restaurant. Just five days after the council tried to help them out, police discovered underage drinkers in the facility. The bar’s owner, Mulugeta Endayehu, an immigrant from Ethiopia, says the bouncer had one plan, while he had another. “The security guard told us 18 and over.”
Endayehu says he never authorized an 18 plus night, that the bouncer was acting on his own. The council had a tough time believing that.
“I just have a problem with the doorman being the fall guy for this. If you had a bad cook, you’d have gotten rid of him. You’d have known that right away. I just can’t see the doorman holding the bag on this,” says councilman Bob Litz.
Councilman Gerald Beninga echoed those comments. “You’re the person who is responsible for the facility. How are you going to prevent that from happening again?”
Endayehu response; it starts with better communication between he and his staff.
When the meeting was all said and done, the council had approved the renewal of a liquor license. However, it comes with conditions. Endayehu must attend an alcohol training course, and he’s not to allow anyone under 21 into the bar after 11:00 p.m..
After the meeting, he expressed his gratitude toward the council. “They gave us a chance. We’ll try to do what the law says.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Ethiopia’s dictatorship needs stop buying weapons and use the money to buy food. The current official military budget is $400 million. This doesn’t include the secret budget that is allocated to the intelligence services and the death squads.
(BBC) — The UN has warned that it has run out of food to provide for nine million Ethiopians who rely on its assistance.
A UN spokesman told the BBC the port of Djibouti was seriously congested and there was little prospect of supplies arriving for the next five months.
Following a border war, Eritrea denied Ethiopia access to its ports, so the landlocked country relies on Djibouti.
[This is not true. BBC needs to get its facts straight. The Government of Eritrea had offered free access to Assab port for donated food to Ethiopia. It was the Meles regime that has declined the offer. BBC needs to also report that tonnes of donated food intended for Ethiopia are currently rotting in the Djibouti port because the Meles tribal junta is unwilling and unable to provide transportation, although the excuse they give is port congestion, according to a U.N. report. Read here.]
Correspondents say this time of year is known as “the hunger season”, three months before the next harvest.
The UN World Food Programme says breast-feeding mothers, children and refugees will be among those worst hit.
It warns after it hands out final rations this month there will be no further deliveries until September or October.
The agency says it has no option but to cut back on the food they provide, which has already been cut by a third since July 2008.
“We have a small refugee population here and their ration is being cut by half beginning this month. We run out of food and people will be very hungry,” WFP’s Barry Came told the BBC.
BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says in the jargon of the aid agencies, the food pipeline has ruptured.
The port of Djibouti is full to overflowing and the Ethiopian government has prioritized the delivery of fertilizer [to be distributed to poor farmers at high profit margin by Woyanne-owned companies], to try to increase the next harvest.
But even when the grain gets through the WFP says there is an acute shortage of trucks, with the Ethiopian authorities preventing the agency from bringing in its own fleet from Sudan.
The UN says the Ethiopian authorities have exacerbated the situation by refusing it permission to use a fleet of trucks to transport the grain from Djibouti.
I am sure you have all heard that Ato Sebhat Nega aka Aboy Sebhat, the Prime Minster’s mentor and a very high official of the ruling TPLF party was a guest on Voice of America. I was very glad. We are always happy when TPLF officials submit to unrehearsed interviews. It seems that it is the only way we get to know them close and personal. I fondly remember Ato Meles’s appearance on Hard Talk with Stephen Sakur in 2005 and Zenib Badawi in 2009. Ato Sebat’s interview is another gem to be savored.
Ato Sebhat was interviewed by Ato Addisu Abebe of VOA Amharic program. Ato Addisu is a consummate professional. He did his job very well. He was not there to prove Ato Sebhat right or wrong. He knows it is up to the listener to make that determination. Like a language surgeon he is, with his soothing voice he lulled his subject into an incredible comfort zone. Then it was a matter of pealing the public fake persona TPLF have constructed for him. Ato Addisu was able to draw Aboy Sebhat out of his skin and reveal the inner self. It was not a pleasant sight. The Sebhat Nega we saw is a very embarrassing figure. Full of hatred, suffering from an inferiority complex, very angry and a pathological liar are the descriptions that come to mind.
I do hope that Aboy Sebhat took some lessons from his experience with VOA. Although his party controls all media outlets and does not allow the airing of ideas different than the ruling party’s here in America it is the responsibility of the press to present different views and let the public be the judge. It has served them very well for over two hundred years. We hope Aboy Sebhat’s outfit Ethiopian Radio and TV will invite leaders of the real opposition and have them explain their vision for their country. The opposition is more than happy to comply.
This was a two-part interview. In this short piece I will concentrate on a few of the ill conceived ideas he was trying to disseminate. I knew it was going to be interesting when I heard his title in the introduction. He is a member of the Ethiopian Parliament, I guess from Tigrai (one never knows since Ato Berket represents Wollo) and President of International Center for Peace and Development. There is no one opposed to peace and development, but this one in Addis it is nothing but. The truth is it is Orwellian double speak at its best. The Center is one of those TPLF created outfits to swindle cash from European Union and Western aid agencies. Ato Sebhat and his organization have never known peace nor developed any enterprise using legal means. As for being elected, I am sure he garnered 99.9 percent of the vote and he did not even have to campaign for it.
He started the interview with a bold lie. There was no need to lie. He can’t help it. His quick motor response is to lie at a drop of a hat. There was no stopping him after that. Blinded by his hatred, emboldened by his false sense of self worth Sebhat Nega was swimming in a cesspool of lies, falsehood and ignorance. We wouldn’t give a damn what he have to say if it wasn’t for his influence and advice to that other powerful person sitting in Arat Kilo with a loaded gun in his hands aimed at our country.
To start him off Ato Addisu thanked his guest for accepting the invitation and out of curiosity asked him regarding TPLF’s policy of not granting interview to VOA’s Amharic programming. That they do not is an established fact. The question was simply what the reason is for such a policy. His response was outright denial of the existence of such a decision.
Could this be true? There is one Nation wide radio station in Ethiopia, Radio TPLF. By all accounts VOA and Deutche Welle are the two most listened to independent news services favored by the population. The minority based government views unfiltered news as a threat. Thus on numerous occasions it has officially complained to both the US and German government regarding the radio stations. The TPLF regime has invested millions of dollars in purchasing radio signal jamming devices from Chinese and East Europeans to silence independent voices.
Is Ato Sebhat’s claim of the Politburo not discussing VOA and formulating different policies credible? To top if off he said he personally does not listen to VOA! When you consider that the Prime Minter himself anonymously participates in Radio call in shows isn’t this assertion a little difficult to swallow? So he claims that he personally does not listen to VOA and since he came to the US he has been told that ‘VOA lacks objectivity, that it is not balanced and it is in the camp of the opposition’. The word he choose to translate the word ‘camp’ into Amharic is very revealing. He said ‘yetequamiwoch Beret’. As far as I know ‘Beret’ is where we keep animals. Enclosed so they do not escape, watched by guards and dogs so wild animals do not harm them. Is that how he views his fellow Ethiopians. Which of these two are we? The domesticated animals fattened for labor or dinner? Or the stupid and gullible sheep and cows and have to be watched by TPLF cadres from undue influence? A curious choice of words but it speaks a lot about the mindset of the individual and his friends.
The crazy part of this farce is that he is telling all this to Ato Addisu Abebe, a VOA correspondent and victim of TPLF injustice. You see Ato Sebhat’s government charged Ato Addisu and twenty-one Ethiopian journalists with ‘involvement in an attempt to overthrow the government’ in the aftermath of the famous 2005 elections. Ato Addisu is lucky. He has the US government behind him. The Ethiopian journalists suffered a lot. They all lost their livelihood. Some are still in prison. Some were jailed for over two years and their license revoked. A few were hounded out of the country. Many were scared for life. Our country lost its brave and brightest sons and daughters. Ato Sebhat as member of the Politburo is personally responsible and will be asked to account for his actions. Whether this will happen or not is not relevant. He is responsible in the eyes of the Ethiopian people.
The next discussion was about EFFORT (endowments fund for the rehabilitation of Tigrai). The eight hundred-pound gorilla. Ato Sebhat’s claim is that it is the premier corporation in Ethiopia both in asset and reach. After confirming that it is audited both internally and by external government agencies he feigned memory loss when asked to disclose the capital of the multi national in numbers. What he said was ‘it is not important’. It was very curious answer for a person who has been the CEO and President of the company. A company without a balance sheet and net worth unknown to the CEO can only happen in TPLF fairyland.
What was absolutely laughable is the claim that TPLF brought the capital from outside to establish the company in Ethiopia. That is insulting the intelligence of eighty million people. For the life of me I do not remember our Tigrai cousins being known for their special skills in being traders and merchants in our Ethiopia. Here we are in 2009 and the most visible conglomerate is EFFORT and the richest and smartest merchants are our Tigrai cousins. Wonder never ceases. Keep talking Aboy Sebhat.
The next line of questioning has two threads and it is full of the most bewildering mish mash of ideas put together in a very haphazard manner. The first one consists of TPLF’s philosophy of what he refers to as ‘bourgeois revolution’, followed by the party’s view of our country Ethiopia.
Ato Sebhat’s attempt to describe the theory of ‘bourgeois democracy’, ‘revolutionary democracy’, ‘emerging democracy’ or ‘developmental state’ (depending on the mood) the society his party is trying to build in Ethiopia completely went over my head. His claim is that TPLF masquerading as EPDRF is accelerating the growth of capitalism in Ethiopia and will wither away on its own is a very lame interpretation of the Marxist idea of the ‘withering away of the state’ as the final stage of capitalist development. Suffice to say that it is proven to be a fairy tale. So, at a certain point in time EPDRF will hand power to the new classes and disappear. That is what he said and he is sticking by it. He did not elaborate when this is projected to happen or who these new classes are. Why there still are classes upon the withering away of the state is left open. May be the theory is in a developmental state. Let us just say it is not well thought of.
The second thread is where Abboy Sebhat’s version of Ethiopia is defined. When he started the journey to liberate Ethiopia this is where he began. His assertions are very troubling. In computer speak there is something they call GIGO. It stands for garbage in garbage out. A ‘computer will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output.’ The same with leaders saddled with faulty, incomplete, or imprecise and utterly wrong data they come up with wrong and imperfect solutions that cause harm and agony to their people.
His claim that we stayed enclosed in our own regions isolated from each other is utterly false. His assertion that we have been fighting each other for hundred years and lived with our hands in each other’s throat is both ugly and abhorrent. His very violent statement that we do not know each other uttered in such forceful manner is very alarming. He repeated ‘Anetwawekem! Antewawekem!’ twice. It made me very sad. It is far from the truth. It is not the Ethiopia I know and I am a typical Ethiopian.
How he is able to hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time is bewildering. He said that he embarked on the struggle to get rid of national oppression. Well and good. But the solution he came up with is very strange to describe it mildly. In order to foster equality they decided to divide the country into Kilils. Everybody was ordered to get an identity card with his/her ethnicity registered by the authorities and was encouraged and forced to go settle in his own enclave. Those with mixed ethnic identity were forced to pick one. I am sure this did not pose a problem in Adwa, but in the rest of Ethiopia many people were put in absolute quandary. How being strangers to each other was going to foster one people one country is not clear. This was a sad moment in our history
So the theory goes the TPLF as an advanced and vanguard party under the tutelage of Meles Zenawi, Sebhat Nega, Azeb Mesfin, Seyoum Mesfin, Arkebe Uqbai and their immediate families will preside on this lofty Nation building endeavor. The Military and security forces with Woyane Generals and high-ranking officers will work in bringing the Oromos, Amharas, Sidamos, Wolamos, Anuaks and other assorted Nationalities to a newer level of preparedness to build the new emerging Ethiopia.
One can see the common thread in this new philosophy of Nation building process. Our Tigrai masters seem to be the center of the Ethiopian universe with wealth and power emanating out until it engulfs the whole society. Le Ras Sekorsu Ayasnasu comes to mind. What do I think? I think Komatan Komata kalalut Gebeche Lefetfit Yelal is most approperate. I believe for so long no one have bothered to tell Aboy Sebat ‘with all due respect sir, you are full of crap!’ I know it is not grown up, but it serves the purpose. I could put it delicately in a more civilized way. But what is the point?
To come up with such preposterous idea it is possible Ato Sebhat’s Adwa was different. That must be the glass he is using to see Ethiopia. But he lived in Addis while going to Haile Sellasie I University. Did he not see how the others lived together? Wasn’t the cry ‘land to the tiller’ by the privileged University students of the time? Surely the students were not fighting for a plot of land. How about during the fight against the Derg? We are told that the TPLF army was composed of all Ethiopians. Weren’t Addisu, Kuma, Tefera, Aba Dula in the TPLF military or did they have their own regiment? Did they fight for the freedom of all Ethiopians or freedom for their ethnic group?
During the process of Nation building animosity does arise between people. Solving such problems and emerging stronger is a difficult task. Some countries are blessed by visionary leaders that harness the positive power of their people and lay a strong and unshakeable foundation. Some are cursed by the likes of the Rwandan Hutu leaders, Milosevic of Yugoslavia and Stalin in Armenia. They bring war and destruction on their people. They go away but they leave animosity and mistrust behind. It takes a long time to undo the damage they cause. In the mean time the rest of humanity marches forward. Evil has to be stopped at its inception before it takes roots. Silent people allow evil to flourish.
Lots of things were said by Aboy Sebhat. The assertion that there were no national Organizations that fought the Derg is not correct. Without going far both EDU and EPRP were National based and stood for the unity of our country. Both were violently attacked by TPLF. Both were expelled out of Tigrai by TPLF. The EDU leader His Excellency Prince Ras Mengesha Seyoum was warned regarding an official trip to his beloved Tigrai. His presence in Tigrai was a threat to the mighty TPLF. The existence of EPRP was denied. When he said that TPLF was ‘overjoyed’ when they found the existence of Ato Kifle Wodgajo’s party in the USA it was nothing short of wonder about the capacity of Aboy Sebhat’s brain to have woven such a tapestry with imaginary yarn of silk. Listen to it and you be the judge my friends in the Diaspora. You can go to VOA website and listen to it from the archives. Unfortunately our people in Ethiopia cannot do that. There is no electricity; when Internet service is available it is a slow crawling modem with all the independent Ethiopian websites blocked. That in a nutshell is the Ethiopia TPLF is building deaf, blind and ignorant.
The shortage of foreign currency reserve has helped drop tax revenues following [a slower] foreign trade performance, Belachew Beyene, Director of Duties and Tax Audit with the Ethiopia Customs and Revenue Authority (ECRA), said Thursday.
“The import/export trade [during the current Ethiopian fiscal year] has not performed as expected partly due to shortage of foreign currency,” Belachew said. “And this has led the tax revenue to decline.”
The director made the remark while presenting a paper at a half-day seminar on “tax compliance” organized by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).
Foreign trade accounts for 48 percent of the total tax revenue, with direct and domestic tax constituting 21 and 31 percent, respectively, according to the director.
Revenues secured from the export sector during the first nine months of the current fiscal year has fallen USD 800 million short of the target while the import trade showed a slight slowdown.
Aside from the shortage of foreign currency reserves, non-tax compliance was to account for the slowdown in tax revenues, according to Belachew.
“The average tax revenue /GDP ratio in sub-Saharan Africa, middle income countries and high income economies is 16 percent, 25 percent and 40 percent, respectively,” Belachew said. “The average tax revenue/GDP ratio for Ethiopia is 11 percent [which shows a weaker tax compliance rate compared to countries around the world].”
A group charged with conspiracy to overthrow Ethiopia’s government has asked a court for special protection, alleging their human rights have been violated during detention. Our correspondent reports relatives say some defendants have been tortured.
At a pre-trial hearing, attorneys and defendants in the so-called “Ginbot Seven” case indicated the accused had suffered physical and psychological abuse while being held in pre-trial detention.
Former army general Asamenew Tsige, one of five leaders of an alleged coup plot being held in solitary confinement, pleaded for special human-rights protection. An attorney for another defendant, businessman Getu Worku, asked that her client be allowed to see a private doctor for injuries suffered in detention.
Both requests were denied.
Getu Worku’s wife, Rakeb Messele, who is also an attorney and human rights activist, said her husband was told he could only be examined by prison doctors.
“He was told he can try to address those issues through the health personnel of the prison administration,” said Rakeb Messele. ” [They said] you cannot ask for a private doctor to examine the client because now he is at the custody of the prison administration. What she said that the report of the medical examination might serve as evidence for her client.”
Rights groups have expressed concern about the political implications of the arrest of the 32 Ginbot Seven activists. The organization is led by Berhanu Nega, who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in 2005.
Berhanu was later jailed along with other opposition leaders in connection with violent post-election protests and sentenced to life in prison. He was pardoned in 2007 and went to the United States, where he founded Ginbot Seven, named for May 15th, the date of the disputed election. He has repeatedly stated the group’s goal is to oust Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government, which it considers illegitimate, but he denies the existence of any assassination plot.
Thirty-two accused conspirators appeared in court for pre-trial hearings. Berhanu Nega is among 14 others charged in absentia.
Most of those in custody are current or former military officers, including two generals. But the government has rejected suggestions that the group was planning a military coup.
Relatives of some of the defendants told reporters their loved ones had been subjected to harsh physical abuse during interrogation.
Government spokesman Shimelis Kemal rejected the charge, and pointed out that in three court appearances, the defendants had not filed any specific charges of abuse or torture. He said investigating officers never resort to what he called ‘third-degree measures’ to procure information from prisoners.
The case was adjourned for further study until June 30, when a bail request will be heard. The court also turned down a special bail request by the 83-year-old father of a top Ginbot Seven official. The official is living in Britain, and is among those charged in absentia.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — I am not good at joking. I don’t even remember most of the jokes I hear, nor do I have the habit of memorizing them to tell others. But I cannot forget the jokes I have heard about “Cherkos” – the slum known for its poor and overpopulation. May be because the stories are touching, or they have great relevance to life for most of our population. In that sense, I don’t believe the jokes are only about “Cherkos” but, rather, about the majority of us.
Whenever the name “Cherkos” is mentioned on any casual talk, I expect scary jokes. One day, I was thinking about these jokes and started wondering what part of our city (Addis Ababa) does not have such places? I could not find any. Semien, Debube, Misrak and Meirab – all have something in common. You will find all kinds of people: millionaires, rich, upper middle class, middle class, average, below average, poor, very poor, and the homeless.
I don’t hate seeing the rich live near the poor, or the co-existence of the palace with the slum. In fact it’s good thing that at least we share the same place and air, although we use it differently.
I assume sometimes we become blinded by names regardless of what is behind them. When we hear about Bole and Cherkos, we see the stereotypical images we have of them. We just feel Bole is a place only for those who can afford the expensive supermarkets, pricey cars, and those who live in the “palaces”. Of course, the opposite is true for Cherkos and the other slums in our town.
But, in reality, I find that it is just a matter of degree but all have various types of people in different proportions. Recently, I visited the big slum in the Bole area (the so-called high class “sefer”) around 2Km from Bole International Airport. Bole, as we all know, is the place that everyone wishes to reside. Although there are pockets of Bole where we find slums, I focused mainly on the one slum that is commonly called “Wollo Sefer” – the one that is hidden from Bole Road (Africa Avenue) by the colorful wall.
They proudly call it Bole!, with a stress on ‘e’. Many people think of Bole as a “Sefer” with full of abundance, stability, tranquility, and a place reserved for only those who can afford to be Bole residents. I wondered what makes the slum in “Wollo Sefer” different from the slum in “Cherkos” that people joke about so often? Is there any difference with being homeless and needy regardless of where you live? Do the residents of these two slums live differently? I wondered if the people at the Cherkos slum look at people at the Bole slum with envy. It is difficult to see any difference in being poor and homeless in any part of the city.
Anyway, I went to check out for myself into the smaller slum at the beginning of Wollo Sefer, just behind the colorful and greenish wall, which I believe divides the slum residents from the stereotypical Bole.
I headed into the village right away and unplanned (of course, you cannot plan to visit a slum – you just go) to see the messy and very destitute “houses” there.
I was looking at households with 3-10 occupants. I started looking for someone who was willing to take part in my interview. I met girls who were eager to show me their compound and to get me someone for my interview. When I reached their compound, I noticed three houses irregularly placed – houses that cannot really be called houses. I was expecting the girl to take me to one of the houses but, instead, she invited me to follow her to the back of the houses. I didn’t hesitate. She took me over a drainage covered by 60 cm wide fragile “bridge” made with sticks, in between the two walls. I should have been careful not to break my legs if I missed the sticks. I tried to see the running flood; it was a mix of toilet and other waste substances.
The girl happily took me to the lady that she thought may accept strangers for an interview. At the back side of the compound (which has no particular fence but has territory marks), I noticed single room “houses” that were placed arbitrarily, which I doubt most people can get in standing straight. The houses seem to be shrinking and sinking to the ground, since almost all of them are less than 2 meter high. In the very small open area, there were red pepper and grains left to dry by the sun. One must be careful not to walk over these items along the passage between houses.
My guide introduced me to W/o Etalem Worku, a mother of four. I asked her permission to talk to her for few minutes. She nicely welcomed me to share her life experience. She has been living here for 30 years, 18 years of which in the single room that she is living now. Etalem, her husband, the four children and her mother live in this single room. Etalem washes clothes at various places for a living, and her husband is a laborer at different construction sites. She told me that they are trying to fulfill the need of their family, although it has been very difficult to attain any of their goals.
I have asked Etalem what is their most important need. She did not even complain about living in a single room with a family of seven. She just told me how hard it is to live in a place where there is no sanitation facility. “Sometimes the lavatory overflow comes right into our door. Usually our children are playing and we are cooking outside; you can imagine how difficult it is” Etalem said.
I asked here if she feels their life will improve if they resettle somewhere else. Etalem said exhaustedly, “I believe so.” She continued, “The government told us many times that they will give us a place to settle, something like a condominium. That would have been much better for us, but we got nothing so far. We don’t have anything to live a decent life here.”
I asked her for her picture at the side of her door. She was positive and agreed to be photographed. Fortunately her mother was also nearby and was included in the picture. As I was taking her picture, I noticed that she stood just right on her door near the open drainage that I walked over so carefully.
I thanked Etalem and left their “compound”. As I walked out of the slum, I noticed a “Kuralee’w” (a person who buys old commodities – metals, plastics, glass, etc., going door to door). He was counting items excitedly and forecasting his profits. I assumed he brought it from the so-called high class Bole Sefer.
So, this is life at the Wollo Sefer slum in short. There is little difference from what I saw in Cherkos, Abenet, Sebatega, or even at “egna sefer”, the place I live in right now. In the end, it is all the same – a slum is a slum.
