White House spokesman Jay Carney announced last week that President Obama has invited the presidents of Ghana, Tanzania, Benin and Meles Zenawi to attend the G8 Summit (the forum for the governments of eight of the world's largest economies) for a discussion of food security on May 19 at Camp… Read full post »

Warlord Charles Taylor Caged!

After 420 days of trial (over nearly four years), 115 witness, over 50,000 pages of testimony, and 1,520 exhibits, Charles Taylor, warlord-turned-president of Liberia, was found guilty on 11 counts by the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone. Taylor was found gui… Read full post »

Reeyot Alemu

The past two weeks have been glorious days for Africans. Eskinder Nega, the heroic Ethiopian journalist was honored with Pen America’s Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. The award honors writers throughout the world who have fought courageously in the face of adversit… Read full post »

Eskinder Invictus! 

On May 1, 2012, Eskinder Nega, Ethiopia’s foremost journalist and political prisoner, will be awarded the “Freedom to Write Award”, the highest honor given out by Pen America, one of the great international free press institutions that has been in co… Read full post »

Blaming the Victim

Last week, dictator Meles Zenawi hectored his rubberstamp parliament in Ethiopia about the forced expulsion (or as some have described it “ethnic cleansing”) of Amharas from southern Ethiopia and zapped his critics for their irresponsibility in reporting and pub… Read full post »

Last week I had an opportunity to address a town hall meeting in Seattle sponsored by the Ethiopian Public Forum in Seattle (EPFS), a civil society organization dedicated to promoting broad dialogue, debate and discussion on Ethiopia’s future. I was asked to articulate my views on Ethiopia&rsqu… Read full post »

History Keeps Repeating Itself in Ethiopia 

Last week, the Voice of America Amharic radio program reported on the forced official removal (“displacement”) of a large number of people e from the southern part of Ethiopia. According to the report, numerous Amh… Read full post »

Rule of Law, Rule by Law, Rule by Unjust Law, Rule by Man

All of the weekly commentaries I have written over the years have been structured on a single fundamental principle: the rule of law. What is it? How does it configure in Ethiopia’s transition from dictatorship to democracy?… Read full post »

Ethiopians are having a very hard time. Inside their own country, they are victimized by dictatorship, famine and pestilence. Thousands of Ethiopians who have fled political persecution and economic privation caused by systemic and massive corruption and poor governance are facing unspeakable… Read full post »

Cry Me a River, Cry Me a Lake

Three years ago to the week, I wrote a weekly commentary entitled, “Cry Me a Lake: Crime Against Nature”. That commentary focused on the plight of tens of thousands of Ethiopians who are sick and dying from drinking  the polluted waters of… Read full post »

Donald Payne Was a Drum Major for Democracy and Human Rights

Grassroots Ethiopian human rights groups and activists have been stunned by the death last week of  Donald Payne, our strongest ally and advocate in the U.S. Congress. His passing marks a major setback to the cause of freedom, democra… Read full post »

How does one say farewell to a great friend of Ethiopia and Africa? Representative Donald Payne, the dean of New Jersey's House delegation and the first black congressman elected to represent New Jersey, died at age 77 from colon cancer on Tuesday. He was elected to 12 terms in the U.S.… Read full post »

Mahatma Gandhi first formulated the iron law of history for dictators: “There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always.”  Just in the past year we have seen Gandhi’s words come to pass as dictator… Read full post »

The Plight of Andualem Aragie and Other Political Prisoners in Ethiopia 

The “Gulag” prison system in the old Soviet Union was infamous for warehousing and persecuting dissidents and opponetns. The gulags were used effectively to weed out and neutralize opposition to the Soviet state… Read full post »

In a memorandum sent to Deutsche Welle’s (DW) [Germany's international broadcaster] “correspondents outside Ethiopia” in late 2010,  Ludger Schadomsky, editor-in-chief of DW’s Amharic program, blasted “ethiomedia and similar sites by extension” as a “dis… Read full post »

The Chinese Dragon is dancing the Watusi shuffle with African Hyenas. Things could not be better for the Dragon in Africa. In the middle of what once used to be the African Pride Land now stands a brand-spanking new hyenas’ den called the African Union Hall (AU). Every penny of the… Read full post »

The new African Union (AU) headquarters was inaugurated last week. It was “China’s gift to Africa.” China picked the entire USD$200 million tab for the building, fixtures and furniture. The China State Construction Engineering Corporation constructed the building usin… Read full post »

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is on the chase; and over the past few months, things have taken a slow turn for the worse for African dictators and human rights violators. They are finding out that they can’t run and they can’t hide.

Laurent “Cling-to-power-at-any-cost&rdq… Read full post »

Crimes Against the Mind

If a person were to maliciously burn or vandalize another’s house, it would be regarded as a serious property crime under the laws of any nation. If one were to walk into a bookstore and steal thousands of books and give them away to any passerby,… Read full post »

From the International Slave Trade to the International Maid Trade

In the days of the Atlantic slave trade, the Middle Passage was the journey of slave trading ships from the west coast of Africa to the New World. Portuguese, British, French, Spanish, Dutch and other slave traders maintained outpost… Read full post »

Ethiopians Unite! 

The great Bob Marley always sang songs of African unity and liberation:

How good and how pleasant it would be before God and man,                                     To see the unif… Read full post »

Waiting for the Dawn of “Africa’s Spring” in 2012? How about an “Ethiopian Tsedey” in 2012?

In 2011, we witnessed the “Winter of Arab” discontent made glorious by an “Arab Spring” followed by an increasingly hot “Arab Summer” and deep… Read full post »

In December 2008, I wrote a weekly column entitled “Groundhog Year in Prison Nation” summarizing some of my weekly columns for that year. I used the “groundhog” metaphor from a popular motion picture in which a hapless television weatherman is trapped in a time warp and finds… Read full post »

Portrait of A Poor Country 

Lately, the portrait of Ethiopia painted in the reports of Transparency International (Corruption Index) and Global Financial Integrity shows a “Land of Corruption”. That contrasts with an equally revolting portrait of  Ethiopia painted… Read full post »

Ethio-Corruption, Inc. (Unlimited)

 “The people of Ethiopia are being bled dry. No matter how hard they try to fight their way out of absolute destitution and poverty, they will be swimming upstream against the current of illicit capital leakage”, wrote Economist Sarah Freitas who c… Read full post »