Ginbot 7 has issued its own press released regarding the Woyanne cliam. Click here the statement. Below is a report by the Woyanne-controlled Ethiopian News Agency (ENA).
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (ENA) – Terrorist operation being advanced by a terrorist group calling itself “Ginbot 7” was foiled, the National Intelligence, Security Service and Federal Police Joint Anti-Terrorist Taskforce, disclosed.
In a press statement it sent to ENA on Saturday, the taskforce said the subversive activities of the terrorist group, which was established by Dr. Berhanu Nega, has declared an armed struggle to dismantle the national constitutional system through force saying that there is no more peaceful struggle.
However, the taskforce said, the activities of the terrorist group was foiled by the security force.
It said the operation of the anti-peace group has organized a military and civilian sub-team in the country with millions of Birr which it said has been foiled.
The military sub-team embraced some members of the army and a lot of x-army members who were dismissed from duty for disciplinary reasons, according to the Taskforce.
It further said the civilian sub-team comprised employees working in various private and government organizations.
The taskforce, which has been closely following up the activities of this terrorist network for a longer period, detained 35 suspects on Friday based on the country’s law.
In addition to this, the taskforce through a search warrant issued by the court has caught different arms, bombs, satellite, computers, radio communications, military uniforms and planning documents, among others.
The taskforce said it is investigating the cases on the suspects and will disclose the details soon.
It expressed appreciation to the cooperation shown by the public and the active participation of members of the army in foiling the conspiracy against the national constitution.
The top leadership of Ethiopian People Patriotic Front (EPPF) has issued a statement regarding accusations that was posted on an anti-EPPF web site against Ato Sileshi Tilahun, head of EPPF International Committee’s organizational affairs.
The statement, which is signed by the EPPF chairman and posted on the official EPPF web site, clarifies that only the top leadership has the authority to issue statements about the organization and that internal disagreements, if they occur, are resolved based on the organization’s bylaws and rules.
The EPPF fighters and leaders in the field continue to express confidence in Ato Sileshi’s ability to perform his task of organizing EPPF support chapters around the world and appreciate his tireless work on behalf of the organization.
EPPF is making advances both inside the country and worldwide. For more information watch the following videos that were recently released by the EPPF Press Office.
Below is Part I (Watch Part 2, 3 and 4 here)
EastAfro.com has started to carry Eri-Tv live. Eri-Tv’s Amharic program is being watched by more people than the Woyanne-controlled ETV in Ethiopia. Click here to watch.
Lately, in the past four years, I learned the hard way how deep pain and grief can penetrate due to the loss of someone you love or admire. Although I’ve always felt sad when someone I know very well or someone close to me dies, the grief I used to experience has never been all consuming; not until 28 October 2005.
That fateful day was the day I was bundled to the notorious detention center called “Maekelawie”whereupon I got transferred after a few days to Kaliti concentration camp to rot for one solid year. While I was there I learned the death of three people I cherished dearly. Two were prominent Ethiopians who had been distinguished in their own respective career. They were the late Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gebremedhin and the renowned former NASA scientist Kitaw Ejigu. Of course, Kitaw died in America and was buried there. Nonetheless, to learn of their loss in a highly congested place not even fit for animals which is mostly inhabited with all sorts of weirdos interspersed with guys like me and some other decent fellows was really devastating. But that’s what happens in a repressive system where your incarceration would surely be protracted indefinitely. And, so I learned about the third person’s death who had been a senior colleague and whose unsung integrity and patriotism I used to admire. Ato Aseffa Taye — a lawyer who worked for Ethiopian Insurance Corporation for nearly 30 years, before and after the nationalization of insurance companies by the military regime.
I thought that kind of ordeal would be over once I get released. But, no Sir! I had to come to exile in January 2007 and learn about three more deaths that really shook me up. Again, I had to learn about the death of a friend who was also another lawyer but much younger, even some three years younger than me. Apart from being known as a symbol of generosity in our circle, he was a genial man always with an exploding infectious laughter. Most of us beer drinkers in our office used to enjoy our nectar with him after a long hard day. Though Betre Dawit –that’s his name — had been terminally ill for some time due to the inefficiency of health care — no care really — system that was unable to diagnose his problem on time, his death still came as a shock. I witnessed before I sneaked out of my country that his positive mentality and cheerfulness never deserted him despite being bedridden for long. You go to cheer him up but you get back being cheered up. And, there was this friend of mine with whom I grew up in a neighborhood at Bole and whose bohemian lifestyle never failed to give me a kick despite his background from a stiff “petit bourgeois” family. Unfortunately, unlike Sebhat Gebregziabiher’s generation when one can afford to be a bohemian without running any fatal risk, this bohemian friend of mine called Abiy Gudeta bought the farm with his untimely death a couple of months ago. I was unable to bid him farewell except grieve in a distance as had never grieved before, while reminiscing all his mischief, witty remarks, sarcastic humor and his total disdain for the uptight society in which he grew up.
And, now came the passing away of the greatest Ethiopian celebrity to whom I became a fan just like any child in any modern Ethiopian family through inheritance. My love for Tilahun’s music, my perception of that great artist is no different than any other modern Ethiopian. I cannot tell a different story about how I passionately became his fan. Like Fekade Shewakena said in his piece titled “Tilahun’s passing away: End of an era,” once again I also felt bitter about “Sidet.” Yet, this time my bitterness emanated not only due to the frustration of not being there to salute this great Ethiopian artist for the last time. Rather, it’s due to the inability of transferring the legacy of Tilahun to my kids as had been transferred to me by my parents, especially by my father who was absolutely crazy about Tilahun’s music.
My father used to tell us how they used to waltz to their hearts content after inviting the Orchestra of the Imperial Bodyguard at Army Aviation where he served during the good old days before he joined Ethiopian Airlines in May 1974. At home we had loads of reel and later cassette tapes of Tilahun and his contemporaries. Perhaps, they would hook up again, up there in the heavens and waltz in the after-life for my father too became no more in August 2000. At any rate, the day I learned of Tilahun’s death was just like any other day. Expecting nothing out of the ordinary, I went out in the morning of April 20 to check my email. Before I settled down at the Café, a friend of mine and a fellow refugee in Kampala called me to break the sad news about Tilahun. Considering his declining health for some time, I wasn’t that much jolted. However, a creeping void began to overwhelm me as the enormity of it hit me. He was the first, the best and unparalleled vocalist in the modern Ethiopian music. He dominated the scene for over five decades. So, like everyone agrees, his death entails the closing of a big chapter in the formidable continuing Ethiopian saga. Anyway,to confirm the news, I went directly to ethiomedia.com. But no mention about Tilahun. Then to Addisvoice, nothing. Finally EMF confirmed my worst fear on which I scribbled some words about the loss I felt.
While leaving the café and still reflecting about Tilahun, I called my wife and broke the news to her which she naturally found shocking. Around lunchtime, I went to my kid’s school to pick my second daughter who only spends half a day there. She is eight years old. Though, normally I don’t discuss death or about dead people with her, this time I couldn’t resist.
I said “Sophie, Tilahun Gessese died.”
Her response: “who the hell is he?”
Now that shocked me more than Tilahun’s death. It’s only been two years since we sought refuge in Uganda, a tiny country not very far from Ethiopia. Though there are many Ethiopian exiles here, because of absence of economic opportunities, the Ethiopian community is weak to address its basic needs let alone to pass on Ethiopian history and culture to children born in exile or who came to exile in their infancy.
The other factor is the majority of Ethiopian exiles here are waiting for resettlement to a third country which is an impediment to strengthen the community with people who can dedicate themselves with long term commitment. Thus, it’s impossible to even find a story book in Amharic. Consequently, many Ethiopian kids are finding it more and more difficult to speak in their own mother tongue. Reading in Ge’ez script, a truly indigenous and sole African script, has become a luxury to contemplate here. Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s easier for an Ethiopian kid in Northern America to learn Amharic than an Ethiopian kid who is unfortunate enough to be exiled with his family in another African country such as Uganda.
In any case, to provide answer to my kid’s question, I asked her and her elder sister, who’s 12 years old, to listen to VOA Amharic service with me so that she will know or remember who Tilahun Gessese was. They both snubbed me for a fool who expected them to trade off their favorite program from the many channels of Ugandan TV. I was forced to listen to VOA alone through my headset. I didn’t give up hope. I just decided to bid my time and when the right time comes, I deluge them with the power of Tilahun’s music. After all, it’s the hallmark of Tilahun’s music to galvanize anyone without even paying attention to the lyrics.
Apart from being the first and the best in modern Ethiopian music, I think that is one of the factors that made Tilahun’s music abiding from generation to generation. The other factor was Tilahun’s ability to consummate a message in his music without appearing an activist for this or that cause. Also, despite the absence of his overt activism for any high sounding “lofty” cause, he never engaged in any scandal that compromised the sovereignty of Ethiopia nor the unity of its people. On the contrary, he moved heaven and earth with his shattering performance during the peak of the fight in 1977 with Ethiopia’s archenemy, TPLF and the then invading army of Siad Barre. The title of that song was “Atintem Yikeskes” which made him an object of hateful propaganda along with Neway Debebe, Tsehaye Yohannes and Tamegn Beyene by the current rulers of Ethiopia in the early 1990s.
So then, does the sending of letter of condolence on his funeral by Meles Zenawi, the number one enemy of Ethiopia and anything Ethiopian, mean that he has repented or modified his anti-Ethiopian stance? Or does it mean that he finally acknowledged the talent as well as the patriotism of Tilahun Gessese?
The answer is a resounding no! What forced Meles & Co. to put on a public charade was first, the universal appeal of Tilahun’s music, which even wooed tycoons and financiers of TPLF such as Al Moudi to the extent of becoming an unconditional patron for his past and current artistic works. Second, TPLF’s fall out with its erstwhile comrade-in-arms, EPLF, over a tiny barren land in1998-2000.
Woyanne realized then that its Eyassu Berhe et al weren’t enough to summon the public for that senseless war in the name of “sovereignty.” Hence, it had to dust off from ETV’s sound archive and play “Atintem Yikeskes” grudgingly. Later, it had even enlisted Tilahun in person as it had never detested him before so that he goes to the front and boost the morale of the army. When the war was concluded with the Woyanne side gaining the upper hand, Tilahun’s patriotic songs were sidelined. It’s also public knowledge that the current rulers of Ethiopia aren’t keen to hear any of Tilahun’s song that praises Ethiopia and Ethiopianess in the media they monopolized. The only time you get to hear these songs with ample opportunity is when the opposition political parties campaign once in every five year for farcical elections as the one that ended in bloodshed in 2005. Otherwise, it’s in your own private place. As the Ethiopian renaissance is in the horizon, to which Woyanne’s reluctant accession to Tilahun’s state funeral is a clear sign out of many, I will also find “Atintem Yikeskes” and play it again on a blaring gramophone to listen and make others listen to the following verses which is roughly translated.
Let my bone be crushed
Let my blood be spilled
Than to see my country
Be defiled by the enemy.
In the meantime, I say goodbye to the Ethiopian Star for the last time as the British bade farewell to their beloved Princess Diana to whom they dedicated a song titled “Goodbye England’s Rose.” Also all the dead I mentioned above: May they rest in peace, except Tilahun for he has an obligation there too to entertain his fans.
OSLO (Reuters) – A tree that covers a large area of eastern Ethiopia but has only recently been categorized by botanists raises hope for finding new {www:species} elsewhere, experts said.
The acacia fumosa tree, which grows in an area the size of the island of Crete, was not “found” for scientific purposes until 2006-7, mostly likely because its main habitat is a war zone.
“I have spent a lifetime looking at plants and describing species — it knocked me sideways when I heard about this tree,” David Mabberley of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England, told Reuters.
“The total numbers must be in the millions,” he said of the pink-flowered, 6-m (20-ft) tall tree that covers hillsides in an {www:inaccessible} area of 8,000 sq kms (3,100 sq miles) near the border with Somalia.
In an article in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, he wrote that the tree had been overlooked by generations of botanists, apparently because of few visits to the area where the Ogaden National Liberation Front is fighting for autonomy.
The discovery was an encouraging sign that other overlooked large species might still be found, from rainforests to the ocean depths. Still, he said, scientists were “highly unlikely” to find another tree dominating such a large area.
The discovery contrasts with gloom about destruction of habitats and global warming threatening more extinctions. Environment Ministers of the Group of Eight are meeting in Italy from April 22-24 discussing ways to slow a loss of biodiversity.
“It’s an upbeat story for a change,” Mabberley said. The tree was found by Swedish botanist Mats Thulin and previously described in a Nordic journal.
People in the sparsely populated region did not exploit the tree except for firewood but it might have commercial uses, for instance in gum used for foodstuffs or glues.
About 10,000 new species of plants or creatures are described worldwide every year, most of them tiny, he said.
COELACANTH
Among exceptions, a coelacanth fish known only from fossils was caught off South Africa in 1938. The wollemi pine, also known from fossils, was found in Australia in 1994. And the saola antelope in Vietnam and Laos was identified in 1992.
“I suspect there are still large species out there to be discovered,” Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of endangered species, told Reuters.
He said that countries that have suffered conflicts — such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia or Colombia — were likely places to find overlooked species.
And some types of beaked whales that dive to great depths were only known from washed up corpses. “There are probably still a few things in the deep ocean we haven’t found,” he said.
An acacia in northern Africa that grows six meters tall and dominates the {www:landscape} across an area almost three times the size of Rhode Island is new to science.
“It’s astounding,” says David Mabberley of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England. He summarizes the findings in the April 24 Science, though the tree was officially named Acacia fumosa online in the Nordic Journal of Botany in September 2008.
Finding a new species in itself isn’t such a surprise, he says. Scientists describe and give Latin names to some 10,000 new organisms a year. About 2,350 of these are flowering plants, with a new one from Africa appearing on average every weekday. Many of these new names go to plants that have been languishing misidentified or unidentified in collections, Mabberley says, and the complete surprises are typically uncommon plants or those that have tiny ranges.
But no herbarium specimens or botanical mentions of the new acacia existed, even though it’s widespread in its homeland, says Mats Thulin of Uppsala University in Sweden, who named the plant. He has named several hundred plants but never seen a case like this.
Science got such a shock from the tree because the acacia grows in Ethiopia’s Somali National Regional State, or Ogaden. Though politically part of Ethiopia, the sparse population of the region is mostly ethnic Somali, Thulin says. The Ogaden National Liberation Front is fighting for independence and has made traveling to the region perilous.
Thulin, who spent 18 years as editor of Flora of Somalia, had never visited Ogaden until 2006, when he joined a German zoologist who had arranged to study antelopes there.
“What happened to us several times both in 2006 and 2007 was that a group of rebels was suddenly standing on the road with machine guns directed toward us,” Thulin says. The scientists carried no weapons and had put a sign on their car saying so. Each time, after an hour or two of questioning, the armed party let them go. “An American, an Ethiopian or someone working for the Ethiopian government would have been in big trouble,” he says.
Almost immediately on seeing the acacia, Thulin says, he recognized it as an unknown species. It had unusual, smooth, gray bark, for example. On a later trip, he discovered that it burst into pink, sweet-smelling blooms during the dry {www:season}, when no leaves were on the trees. Its relatives bloom in yellow or creamy flowers during the wet season.
With a bit of travel and some help form Google Earth, Thulin realized how widespread the acacia is in its arid habitat. The tree provides vegetation in a landscape too dry for perennial grasses. And, like other acacias, has glands where ants sip nectar, so there may be a tree-insect mutualism.
Finding another such surprise may not be too likely, according to Tom Daniel, botany curator at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. New species, yes. Plenty to name. But something this widespread that scientists haven’t seen — “This is pretty unusual,” he says.
OTTAWA, CANADA -A decommissioned ambulance dedicated to former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar will soon be in service in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
At a handover ceremony outside City Hall yesterday, Councillor Diane Deans gave the keys to the ambulance to Samuel Getachew of Friends of Ethiopia, which organized the project and raised the money to ship the ambulance to Ethiopia. The group will also be shipping medical and educational supplies, along with computers donated by Algonquin College.
“It’s nice for citizens of Ottawa to give a second life to a decommissioned ambulance,” says Deans, who lobbied her fellow councilors to donate the vehicle. “That ambulance probably saved a lot of lives in Ottawa and now it will save a lot more in its new home in Ethiopia.”
Getachew has dedicated the ambulance in memory of Dewar, a “dear friend” who gave him advice in the early stages of this project. Her son, Ottawa Center MP Paul Dewar, was also at the City Hall ceremony yesterday.
“We wanted to send something useful, and Africans need something that can help them be self-sufficient, and we believe an ambulance is a good start,” says Getachew, who has worked on the project for almost two years.
The ambulance will be donated to the foundation run by Abebch Gobena, a well-known children’s activist in Addis Ababa. “She has raised 5,000 orphans, and she has a small hospital in her compound and branches all over Ethiopia.”
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (ENA) – Terrorist operation being advanced by a terrorist group calling itself “Ginbot 7” was foiled, the National Intelligence, Security Service and Federal Police Joint Anti-Terrorist Taskforce, disclosed.
OSLO (Reuters) – A tree that covers a large area of eastern Ethiopia but has only recently been categorized by botanists raises hope for finding new {www:species} elsewhere, experts said.
OTTAWA, CANADA -A decommissioned ambulance dedicated to former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar will soon be in service in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.