Ethiopia could poetically be said to have infected Somalia with famine

Ethiopia: America’s Model for Civil Liberty?
Jeremy Sapienza,
December 21, 2011


Remember how the US contracted Ethiopia to “restore order” in Somalia? The East African dictatorship was to help install a UN-backed government of warlords and former communist apparatchiks in order to “free” Somalia. They ended up obliterating the delicate gains the impoverished society had made in the early 2000s.

Ethiopia, whose government purposely starved Its Own People to death in the 80s, such that Americans sang songs about them, was Washington’s light of freedom unto the Somalis. That turned out horrifyingly as we know — Ethiopia could poetically be said to have infected Somalia with famine; many other African despotisms have been roped in to somehow deliver democracy at missile-point, killing and displacing thousands in the process; an insurgency of war-scarred children runs wild.

But the point isn’t to mock yet again the utter, utter failure of US foreign policy with regard to Somalia, but to note that Ethiopia — DC’s go-to for regional freedom delivery — is run by terrible people who monitor and punish journalism they feel threaten them. Two Swedish journalists were just sentenced to 15 years in prison for “terrorism,” i.e., the crime of attempting to report in the Ogaden, an ethnic Somali region ruled brutally by Addis Ababa. Ethiopian journalists have been charged with terrorism as well. Many flee, shuttering their papers, in order to avoid what I imagine are quite inhospitable prisons — all for speaking their minds.

In the US, meanwhile, a sort of terror-fueled guerrilla law has taken hold, which will now soon be properly codified thanks to a few hawks and an ocean of cowards in Congress, plus a power-mad president. One could wonder if Ethiopia might be the model for the US government lately, whose leaders have seen fit to torture, imprison, and murder Americans for their own crimes of speech.

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/12/21/ ... l-liberty/

Readers' comments:

Sam Goulet
December 21st, 2011 at 9:32 pm

If it were not for the usually sort-sighted US policy around the world, Ethiopia's current regime would have been the last government we assist. Little do American (leaders) hawks know that the Tigray Manifesto, the book by which Meles Zenawi's party Woyane is guided specifically puts it as its goal the separation of Tigray state in the north from the rest of Ethiopia. According to the widely believed belief in the region, the separation is to occur once the currently relatively less developed Tigray region is brought up to par (or even ahead of) with the rest of current Ethiopia. Resources are currently being siphoned off from the entire Ethiopian regional administrations to the Tigray region where the currently despotic top officials in the country originated from.

If the current Ethiopian minority regime is left unchecked, as a nation composed of 50% muslims and 50% christians, and multiple ethnicities, the current ethnic federalism will worsen, separation of states will ensue, and most importantly, a great human tragedy of genocide is doomed to occur against the very people the current dictatorial leaders come from. To the envie of Al Qaeda, the red sea along the Eritrean coast line could be destabilized by Ethiopia's minority dictatorship, and become a haven for terrorists. This way, the US will have little control of the region much like the current southern Somalia.

It is high time the US addresses the real problems the horn of Africa faces namely the fanning of wars and ethnic / religious animosity for cheap temporary political gain perpetrated by Ethiopia's minority brutal dictatorship. For starters, the US should work towards bringing peace between the different states of the horn of Africa starting by tackling one of (if not the main) source of instability namely the already internationally arbitrated border demarcation decision that is yet to be realized if it were not for the clear obstruction / refusal by Ethiopia's minority dictatorship.

shabo,
You're in no position to talk about civil liberties when your gross human rights violations are second to none. Hell, you don't even have a freakin' constitution. IDIOT.

If the current Ethiopian minority regime is left unchecked, as a nation composed of 50% muslims and 50% christians, and multiple ethnicities, the current ethnic federalism will worsen, separation of states will ensue, and most importantly, a great human tragedy of genocide is doomed to occur against the very people the current dictatorial leaders come from.

You're in no position to talk about civil liberties when your gross human rights violations are second to none. Hell, you don't even have a freakin' constitution. IDIOT.

That's why I'm supporting the honorable congressman from Texas, Presidential hopeful Ron Paul who is fighting to restore our Constitution, our Civil Liberties, and to stop US foreign-aid used to propping up the genocidal woyane regime that is killing its "own people" in Ethiopia. Your aid-addict, beggar-slave, genocidal woyane regime's fate will be decided by the 2012 US presidential election. I love it. I really love it.

“ሳንፈልጋቸው - ሃያ አመታቸው!” Я Ξ √ Ω L U T ↑ ☼ N

shabo,

Civil liberties? What do you know about civil liberties, moron?

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Heck, you don't even know a darn thing about basic human rights, fascist.

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