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Last week, in a piece reporting on the eerie silence of Western diplomats in Addis Abeba on Birtukan Midekssa, the first woman political party leader in Ethiopian history and Ethiopia’s # 1 political prisoner, Xan Rice, a reporter for the Guardian wrote:
That foreign embassies, including Britain’s, which have been refused permission to visit Mideksa, have [...]

Conference on Good Governance, Peace, Security, and Sustainable Development in the Horn of Africa

Washington DC, April 9 to 11, 2010

The Horn of Africa continues to be extremely fragile. The sub-region’s volatility has increased significantly in the post 9/11 period.  The total collapse of Somalia and the irresponsible and imprudent intervention of outsiders in [...]

A search for allies in a hostile world
Iran’s proclaimed ambitions in Africa are particularly worrying for Israel, which once had a lot of friends on the continent and wants to keep the few that remain
Feb 4th 2010 | DAKAR AND NAIROBI | From The Economist print edition
ARRIVING at the airport in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, you [...]

SHAKESPEARE knew the course to true love never did run smooth.
And Brighton author Suzy Zail has discovered it still makes a good read.
Zail has published a book of 12 couples’ love tales, Smitten, which has been released in time for Valentine’s Day.
Covering diverse experiences, from gay relationships to open marriage, each couple’s story has a [...]

Press Release
A critical water-passage tunnel in the newly inaugurated Gilgel Gibe 2 hydropower project in Ethiopia reportedly collapsed this week.
With a price tag of 374 million Euros and a capacity of 420 megawatts, Gilgel Gibe 2 is currently Ethiopia’s biggest power plant. The project channels the water discharged from the Gilgel Gibe 1 Dam through [...]

Help the fight against tyranny by refusing to do business with  Ethiopian rulers affiliated organizations or corporations that fund the repression against  your own people in Ethiopia.
Did you know that the corporations listed below can be your boycott targets to help the struggle against tyranny?

By taking simple steps you can impose a major sanction against [...]

On Jan. 13, Ethiopia’s Chief Bandit Meles Zenawi inaugurated the Gilgel Gibe 2 scheme, the country’s biggest hydropower project. “It is possible to speed up development without polluting the environment,” Zenawi proudly declared as he cut the ceremonial ribbon. Yet this was wishful thinking.
Due to shoddy preparation, the project had already been delayed by more [...]

Ethiopia law forces journalists to reveal sources
(AFP)
ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia’s  rulers (the Tigrai Bandits) new anti-terror law strips journalists of the right to protect the identity of their sources, a top official said in a statement carried Saturday by the TRigrai Bandits national news agency ENA.
“The anti-terrorism law revoked the rights of journalists not to [...]

In mid-January, the ailing Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) declared once again that it is in need of rescue fund. The business weekly, Addis Fortune, reported that the bank called on the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) to inject more capital  to refill its empty cash registers.
Though the health of all state banks has been [...]

By: John Njiraini

The Ethiopian rulers are  preparing their case to attempt to convince the World Bank to fund a mega- hydropower project in the Horn of Africa country.
World Bank president Robert Zoellick was due to arrive in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, last week, amid some tension following revelations that the bank was considering withholding [...]

Sylvia in 1915, photographed by Malcolm Arbuthnot. Image reproduced by courtesy of the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam

Born in Manchester in 1882, Sylvia was the second daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women’s Social & Political Union; the movement known as the Suffragettes which campaigned to get women the vote. Sylvia’s father [...]

(CNN) — Judges at the International Criminal Court ruled Wednesday that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir may be charged with genocide for his role in a five-year campaign of violence in western Sudan’s Darfur region.

Al-Bashir, who remains in office, has already been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had the genocide [...]

All Man, No Myth
Hans Larson:
Teddy Yo, a young, vibrant rapper, has been making the local magazine headlines for sometime now. The rapper’s innovation in blending the Gurage melody and beat with a contemporary hip-hop beat has been appreciated by many. His trademark music, Guragetone (including a track by that name), was a hit three [...]

President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the next US ambassador to Ethiopia pledged on Tuesday to press the government in Addis Ababa to improve human rights, free political prisoners and make upcoming elections fair.
Donald Booth said the United States had “complex interests” in Ethiopia, and that the two nations, while differing in tactics, saw largely [...]

Retiree’s photos reveal struggles for equity, justice in Israel. 
by Leslie Berliant, Contributing Writer: 
The first thing you notice about photographer Irene Fertik is her long, gray hair, which flows well below her waist. Although she usually wears her hair up, Fertik has left it down today, because when she does “the lioness comes out.” 
It’s hard to [...]

XAN RICE
At noon every Sunday an old Toyota sedan donated by supporters of Ethiopia’s most famous prisoner pulls up near a jail on the outskirts of the capital.
A 74-year-old woman in a white shawl and her four-year-old granddaughter — the only outsiders the prisoner is allowed to see — step out for a 30-minute visit.
Most [...]

Last week, there was a great deal of teeth-gnashing, knuckle-cracking and gut-wrenching by Ethiopia’s dictators over Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) 2010 report. The dictators belched out much sound and fury that signified nothing. Their fury had to do with HRW’s conclusion that “Ethiopia is on a deteriorating human rights trajectory as parliamentary elections approach in [...]

The identity of the alleged Saudi Princess given secret asylum in the United Kingdom early last year has now been revealed. The young woman, who is in her late 20s is reported to be Sarah Mohammed Al-Amoudi, originally from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and now living in London. Sarah Al-Amoudi told British authorities that she is [...]

By JOSEPH FEIT, For The Bulletin

In Tuesday’s Jerusalem Post, Ruth Eglash, reporting on the aliyah (immigration to Israel) conference in Ashdod, noted that, “ braving the pouring rain … hundreds of immigrants from the local Ethiopian community gathered outside to protest the government’s failure to approve for aliyah some 9,000 Falash Mura still waiting in [...]

The West has provided hundreds of millions of dollars of food aid to Ethiopia in the past several years. However, donor countries have placed few monitoring and accountability mechanisms to ensure that the aid provided is delivered to the target populations.
As a result, the ruling party has been able to effectively use relief aid to [...]

Some images are etched in our minds—whether we experienced them first hand or because they are part of a collective memory—Abebe Bekila dashing barefoot to victory through old Rome. Richard Nixon, as he was boarding the plane, turning to face America and giving the country that infamous farewell…wave; Rosa Parks’ mug shot when she was [...]

Peter Heinlein | Addis Ababa
An Ethiopian opposition group says the international community is ignoring the plight of its jailed leader, who is listed by an arm of the United Nations Human Rights Council as a victim of arbitrary detention.
Ethiopia’s Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJ) held a candlelight vigil Thursday to mark the 13th [...]

Last year Madagascar cancelled a controversial agreement with South Korean company Daewoo Logistics that would have allowed the firm to produce corn and palm oil on 1.3 million hectares, around half of the country’s arable land. Public anger over the deal contributed to the collapse of the Madagascar government.  In Ethiopia, however, the  Tigrai bandits [...]

By MICHAEL POWELL
Published: January 28, 2010
Howard Zinn, historian and shipyard worker, civil rights activist and World War II bombardier, and author of “A People’s History of the United States,” a best seller that inspired a generation of high school and college students to rethink American history, died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87 [...]

President has set different tone to Bush, but failed to end abuses, says Human Rights Watch
By Chris McGreal in Washington:
America’s leading human rights organisation has said that Barack Obama is falling far short of his rhetoric by continuing some of the abuses of George Bush’s war on terror and by shielding foreign allies responsible for [...]

Dear friends and brothers,
We, the Somali media freedom and human rights activists received with great concern the annoying news about the recent meeting in Addis Ababa Between Omar Faruk Osman, the head of National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) and the most brutal dictator in Africa Mr.Meles Zenawi, its really shocking and embarrassing to see a [...]

The human rights movement can look back on 2009 with some satisfaction in exposing abuses almost anywhere in the world. By shaming, diplomatic and economic pressures, the human rights movement is making it more costly for abusive governments to violate fundamental human rights, according to Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of New York-based Human Rights Watch [...]

Even though there were nine nationalities aboard the Boeing 737 jet which burst into flames and crashed into the sea minutes after taking off in a violent thunderstorm on Monday morning, the Lebanese, naturally enough, only concerned themselves with one.
54 Lebanese, almost all from the country’s predominately Shiite southern region, are probably dead and the [...]

Sun Jan 24, 2010 9:52pm EST
BEIRUT, Jan 25 (Reuters) – An Ethiopian Airlines [ETHA.UL] plane with 85 passengers on board crashed into the Mediterranean sea shortly after taking off from Beirut international airport in the early hours of Monday, airport sources said. The plane, said to be a Boeing by one source, disappeared off the [...]

Alemayehu G. Mariam

Since the dawn of African independence from colonialism in the early 1960s, African liberation leaders and founding fathers qua dictators, military junta and “new breed” leaders have sought to justify the one-man, one-party state — and avoid genuine multiparty democracy — by fabricating a blend of self-serving arguments which converge on [...]

The Irish Times – Monday, January 25, 2010
The inherently Shameless Tyrant Says  ‘If push comes to shove, we can survive on our own’

ETHIOPIA’S MELES ZENAWI, like Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, was among a new generation of African leaders who came to power in the early 1990s whose role in kicking out murderous regimes and commitment to [...]

Today, Ethiopian American students from San Diego State, UC Riverside & UCLA demonstrated in Little Ethiopia, Los Angeles against the tyrannical rule in Ethiopia. The students gathered to rally against dictatorship , the wrong foreign policy of the USA and to demand the release of political prisoners in Ethiopia including the pro democracy [...]

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s year-on-year inflation rose to 7.1 percent in December from 0.6 percent in November on the back of rising fuel, food and construction material prices, the statistics office said on Friday.
Inflation in the vast Horn of Africa nation hit a high of 64.2 percent in July 2008. It then entered a [...]

By Africa Action and FPIF Staff

The year 2010 will be critical for U.S. policy toward Africa, from Sudan to Somalia and the Congo to Zimbabwe. President Barack Obama should use the fast-closing window of opportunity to begin a new era in U.S.-Africa relations characterized by a people-centered development strategy and respect for human rights, the [...]

Jangling nerves
Meles Zenawi will probably win the election. But that may not bring calm
“Unlike the Economist, Ethiopians know that the 2010 election  is another sham ritual supported by the Westerners.”
Jan 21st 2010 | ADDIS ABABA
From The Economist print edition

WORRIES about Ethiopia’s election, due in May, are growing. Aid-giving Western governments hope it will pass off [...]

TED: Dambisa Moyo’s new book is drawing new attention to the question of aid in Africa, andher thesis is quite like yours, but aimed at a mass-market audience, as she said on Charlie Rose.
Do you think it is risky to sensationalize the issue?
AYITTEY: I don’t think Dambisa is sensationalizing the issue strong enough. Americans were [...]

By George Ayittey:
The foiled attempt by young Nigerian extremist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day has baffled many Africans and sent them scrambling for an explanation. This is not the stereotypical poor and desperate young man usually associated with violence on the continent. For one, Abdulmutallab is the [...]

Ethiopia

Events of 2009
Ethiopia is on a deteriorating human rights trajectory as parliamentary elections approach in 2010. These will be the first national elections since 2005, when post-election protests resulted in the deaths of at least 200 protesters, many of them victims of excessive use of force by the police. Broad patterns of government repression have [...]

Saudi Arabia has attempted to compete for regional influence in the Horn by funding a massive proselytization of Ethiopians [ the money launderers at Sheraton are funded by the larger body than what many Ethiopians  think]   to increase the numbers of Muslims over the historically Orthodox Christians there, in stark disavowal of the Prophet Mohammed’s [...]

Reinventing Ethiopian Politics
Aristotle wrote that “man is a political animal” to suggest that the defining characteristic of human beings is involvement in the civic life of their communities. Today, many Ethiopians across the board are strangely disengaged and alienated from Ethiopian politics. For the “alienated majority”, the disengagement is justified. They liken Ethiopian politics to [...]

By Coretta Scott King
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday celebrates the life and legacy of a man who brought hope and healing to America. We commemorate as well the timeless values he taught us through his example — the values of courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility and service that so radiantly defined Dr. King’s [...]

by Samuel Kinde, PhD
March 2002
According to a report published in 1999, a 6.5 magnitude earthquake, which seismologist say could happen in areas of close proximity to Addis Ababa, the country’s major city, could cause as many as 4000-5000 deaths, 8000-10,000 injuries and a displacement of as many [...]

Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and author from Martinique. He was influential in the field of post-colonial studies and was perhaps the pre-eminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization.[1] His works have inspired anti-colonial liberation movements for [...]

A conference in situ took place in Gondar, Ethiopia from 5-8 Nov. 2009 in co-operation with the University of Gondar. The opening ceremony took place on Thursday Nov. 5, 2009 at the University in the presence of Mengesha Admassu, President of the University, Habtamu Tedla, Mayor of Gondar, Ambassador Oded Ben-Hur, Ambassador of [...]

On January 12, Freedom House released its findings from the latest edition of Freedom in the World, the annual survey of global political rights and civil liberties. According to the survey’s findings, 2009 marked the fourth consecutive year in which global freedom suffered a decline—the longest consecutive period of setbacks for freedom in the nearly [...]

Monday, January 11, 2010
Today Ethiopian Americans held a successful demonstration across the street from the State Department in Washington where they expressed their outrage and concerns regarding the continued incarceration of the prominent political leader Mrs. Birtukan Mideksa and thousands of political prisoners in Ethiopia.
The protesters asked the US government and Secretary of State Hillary [...]

January 12, 2010
The President of the United States of America
The Honorable Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20501
Dear President Obama:

I am writing this to you on behalf of the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE), a grassroots social justice movement whose mission is to mobilize Ethiopians in the Diaspora and within Ethiopia [...]

Alemayehu G. Mariam :
“Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,” said Sir Walter Scott, the novelist and poet. Is there “famine” in Ethiopia, or not? Are large numbers of people “starving” there, or not? Is convulsive hunger a daily reality for the majority of Ethiopians, or not?

No one [...]

On June 11, 1964, at the conclusion of the sham trial, Mandela, like Birukan Mideksa was found guilty on charges of sabotage and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He began his sentence in the notorious Robben Island Prison, a maximum security prison on a small island off the coast near Cape Town.
IF YOU WANT TO [...]

Life sentence for Unity for Democracy and Justice leader casts shadow over May elections
At noon every Sunday an old Toyota sedan donated by supporters of Ethiopia’s most famous prisoner pulls up near a jail on the outskirts of the capital. A 74-year-old woman in a white shawl and her four-year-old granddaughter – the only outsiders [...]

Alemayehu G. Mariam:

Looking Through the Glass, Brightly
“Ethiopia is the country of the future,” Birtukan Midekssa would often say epigrammatically. Ethiopia’s No. 1 political prisoner is always preoccupied with her country’s future and destiny. Her deep concern for Ethiopia is exceeded only by her boundless optimism for its future. For that reason, her maxim [...]

By Alemayehu G. Mariam:
″Birtukan Midekssa condemned to life in prison by a vengeful dictator, but unconquered.
Birtukan thrown into the dungeon of wrath and tears, but defiant.
Birtukan beaten, bludgeoned and bloodied, but unbowed.
Birtukan mocked, ridiculed and disrespected, but gracious.
Birtukan denounced, vilified, strong-armed and manhandled, but unafraid.
Ethiopia under the crushing boots of soldiers of fortune.
Birtukan, Invictus!
Ethiopia, Invictus!”

I [...]