House cleaning or window dressing?

Are they playing us like a cheap fiddle again? For a while, it was all about the Meles Dam and how to collect nickels and dimes to build it. That kind of played itself out. (Not to worry. That circus will be back in… Read full post »

Educorruption and the miseducation of Ethiopian youth   

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world,” said Nelson Mandela. For the late Meles Zenawi and his apostles (the Melesistas) in Ethiopia, the reverse is true: Ignorance is the mos… Read full post »

 Meles Zenawi when he was alive and his apostles today (“Melesistas”) keep playing us in the Diaspora like a cheap fiddle. They make us screech, shriek, scream and shout by simply showing their mugs in our cities. How do they do it? Every now and then, the Melesistas suit up a… Read full post »

 America is Watching!?

Diplomacy by hypocrisy is “diplocrisy”.

Edmund Burke, the British statesman and philosopher, said “Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.” We’ve heard many p… Read full post »

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”, said Edmund Burke. But what happens when evil triumphs over a good young woman journalist named Reeyot Alemu in Ethiopia? Do good men and women turn a blind eye, plug their ears,… Read full post »

Ethiopia today is a “prison of nations and nationalities with the Oromo being one of the prisoners”, proclaimed the recently issued Declaration of the Congress of the Oromo Democratic Front (ODF). This open-air prison is administered through a system of “bogus federalism… Read full post »

Last April, I wrote a “Special Tribute to My Personal Hero Eskinder Nega”.  In that tribute, I groped for words as I tried to describe this common Ethiopian man of uncommon valor, an ordinary journalist of extraordinary integrity and audacity. Frankly, what could be said of a… Read full post »

The silence of Ethiopia’s “beautiful minds”

Professor A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the renowned Indian scientist  (“Missile Man of India”)  and Eleventh President of India (2002-2007) said, “If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation… Read full post »

In June 2011, during her visit to Zambia U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton pulled the alarm bell on a creeping “new colonialism” in Africa. While dismissing “China’s Model” of authoritarian state capitalism as a… Read full post »

 The great American poet Walt Whitman said, “Either define the moment or the moment will define you.” Will the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president of Kenya define President Barack Obama in Africa or will President Barack Obama use the election of President Kenyatta to defi… Read full post »

Dam War of Words

Late last month, Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid Bin Sultan fired a shot across the bow from the Arab Water Council in Cairo to let the regime in Ethiopia know that his country takes a dim view of the "Grand Renaissance Dam" under “constructio… Read full post »

Ethiopian Muslims engaged in the moral equivalent of an anti-Apartheid movement?

In her recent commentary in the New York Review of Books, “Obama: Failing the African Spring?”, Dr. Helen Epstein questioned the Obama Administration for turning a blind eye to human rights violations… Read full post »

The sights and sounds of an African police state

When Erin Burnett of CNN visited Ethiopia in July 2012, she came face-to-face with the ugly face of an African police state:

We saw what an African police state looked like when I was in Ethiopia last month… At the airport,… Read full post »

2011: Dictatorship, corruption and the politics of fear and smear

In December 2011, I wrote a commentary entitled, “Ethiopia: Land of Blood or Land of Corruption?” contrasting two portraits of Ethiopia. At the time, the portrait painted by Transparency International (TI) (Corrupti… Read full post »

On the road to democracy and unity?

For some time now, I have been heralding Ethiopia’s irreversible march from dictatorship to democracy. In April 2011, I wrote a commentary entitled, “The Bridge on the Road(map) to Democracy”. I suggested, 

We can conceive of the transition… Read full post »

The Sandcastles and Dams of African Dictators

All dictators on the African continent have sought immortality by leaving a legacy that will outlive them and endure for the ages. But all have inherited the wind. 

Kwame Nkrumah led the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence… Read full post »

The Silent World of Hippos on Planet Cheetah

In my first weekly commentary of the new year, I "proclaimed" 2013 “Year of Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation” (young people). I also promised to reach, teach and preach to Ethiopia’s youth this year and exhorted members of the Ethiopi… Read full post »

Recently, Naom Chomsky, MIT Professor of Linguistics and arguably America’s foremost public intellectual, gave an interview to Al Jazeera on the social (ir)responsibility of American academics and intellectuals. Chomsky, 84, has been raising hell for over four decades, getting into the faces of… Read full post »

Last week, The Reporter reported:

An ethnic-based conflict between Addis Ababa University (AAU) students following derogatory graffiti posted on toilet-walls and library walls has left half a dozen students with severe injuries while others had faced arrest. For decades, the clash b… Read full post »

2013 shall be the Year of Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation.

“The Cheetah Generation refers to the new and angry generation of young African graduates and professionals, who look at African issues and problems from a totally different and unique perspective. The… Read full post »

 2012 is gone. 2013 is on the way. Let us ring in redress to all humankind. 

I wish a happy and prosperous new year to all of my readers throughout the world. To those who have unwearyingly followed my columns for nearly three hundred uninterrupted weeks, I wish to express… Read full post »

Another Groundhog Year

In December 2008, I wrote a weekly commentary lamenting the fact that 2008 was "Groundhog Year” in Ethiopia:

It was a repetition of 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004... Everyday millions of Ethiopians woke up only to find themselves trapped in a time loop where their lives… Read full post »

If History is on the Side of Brave Africans, Shouldn’t the U.S. be Too?

When President Obama visited Accra, Ghana in 2009, he delivered two distinct political messages within one overarching moral imperative: “History is on the side of brave Africans”. His message to African… Read full post »

The Precarious State of Religious Freedom in Ethiopia 

In a weekly column entitled “Unity in Divinity” this past June, I expressed grave concern over official encroachments on religious freedom in Ethiopia. I lamented the fact that religious freedom was becoming a new focal t… Read full post »