Ethiopia: Dark side of Oromo expansions and Menelik conquests

January 3, 2014

by Abera Tola

Through out history; people have migrated and expanded seeking greener pastures and more land. Globally, most countries have endured and were created thru expansions, wars, assimilation, migration; slavery etc. Even the most developed countries in the world today have dark pasts. For example; millions of Native Americans were exterminated or removed from their homelands while millions more African-Americans underwent the most cruel slavery in world history before the great democracy; the USA; was born. If not for the gradual improvement of human rights in America and its military superiority triggering an economic powerhouse; United States would have been just another poor country facing fragmentation and internal division due to its dark history of conquest and slavery. While Ethiopia did not have as much a bloody history as America; it did experience some conflicts and small level of slavery.

Ethiopian journalist sentenced to more than two years in jail – CPJ

Nairobi, December 30, 2013-An Ethiopian court convicted a journalist on December 25 on the charge of spreading false rumors and sentenced him to two years and nine months in prison, according to local journalists.

The First Instance Court in Hawassa, capital of the state of Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Regions, convicted Asfaw Berhanu, former contributor to the private bilingual paper The Reporter, in connection with a September 4 article he wrote for thepublicationthat claimed three state government officials had been removed from their posts, local journalists said.

The officials had not actually been dismissed from their posts, the sources said. TheReporter issued a front-page retraction in its next edition and dismissed Asfaw, ReporterManaging Director Kaleyesus Berkeley said.

Asfaw is being held in Hawassa Prison, local journalists said. He plans to appeal the sentence, the same sources said.

“Asfaw Berhanu should not be jailed for making a mistake, especially after the Reporterapologized and issued a retraction,” said CPJ East Africa Representative Tom Rhodes.

2013: The Year of Ethiopia’s Rising Cheetahs in Review

December 29, 2013

by Alemayehu G. Mariam*

In January 2013, I proclaimed, “2013 shall be the Year of Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation.” I promised “to make my full contribution to uplift and support Ethiopia’s youth and to challenge them to rise up to newer heights.” They rose to greater heights. I pledged to “reach out to them, teach them and preach to them”. I feel proud that I was able to deliver on my promise. In December 2013, I was delighted and immensely gratified to stand with Yilikal Getnet, Chairman of Ethiopia’s Semayawi (Blue) Party in Arlington, VA and show my solidarity with Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation (young people).

Global Poverty and Post-colonial “Development Agendas”: Ethiopia and the West

By Paul O’Keeffe - Global Research, December 09, 2013 –

When one thinks of the word ’agenda’ a few obvious  meanings may come to mind – a list of things to do, a plan for a meeting, a goal to achieve or perhaps even an ideology. In the context of international development aid an agenda often means something altogether very different  – a plan or goal that guides someone’s behaviour and is often not explicitly stated. Development aid agendas do not always reflect the needs and desires of the people they propose to serve. More often than not development agendas serve those who institute and organise them. Be it international development donors or governments who receive billions in aid subsidies, development aid and assistance is hardly ever free from condition or expectation on either the donor or receiver side.

The world of international aid is a multi-trillion dollar exercise with transactions affecting every country on earth. Some give, some receive, some give and receive, but all are involved in aid flows that are ultimately held up as virtuous considerations of man to fellow man.

The South Sudan blood bath and Kiir’s perfidious power consolidation act

President Salva Kiir

December 24, 2013

The Horn Times Newsletter

by Getahune Bekele, South Africa

Already castigated as another flop in tyranny prone Africa, the impenitent would-be-tyrant who is leading a corrupt and militarized autocracy, President of South Sudan Salva Kiir Mayardit is no longer sporting his trademark 10-gallon black cowboy hat he imports from the US state of Texas, some 7,000 miles away.

He first saw the hat in July 2006 when then President of the US, the peremptory George W Bush offered him one as gift at the White House during his first visit there. According to reports, Kirr wears the hat ever since in honor of President Bush who played an instrumental role in the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement, a measure that gave birth to the world’s youngest nation in 2011.

Witness for Ethiopia’s Semayawi (Blue) Party By Prof. Al Mariam

Why I support Semayawi party as a political party

In the days leading up to my speech at the first Semayawi (Blue) Party town hall meeting in Arlington, VA, just outside of Washington, D.C., on December 15, I was peppered with all sorts of questions. The one recurrent question revolved around my unreserved support for Semayawi Party after so many years of staying neutral and unaligned with any Ethiopian political party or group.

As I explained in my interview on ethiotube.com, my support for Semayawi Party should be viewed as an expression of my total confidence in the power of Ethiopia’s young people to change the destiny of their country and their readiness to struggle for peaceful change. The percentage of Ethiopia’s population under the age of 35 today is 70 percent. The vast majority of the victims of human rights violations in Ethiopia today are young people. The targets of political persecution and harassment, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, abuse and maltreatment in the prisons are largely young people. Young Ethiopians are disproportionately