Washera
April 20101
In the last five years, I have been involved in the political debate affecting our country, Ethiopia. My interest peaked following the historic 2005 elections and the debacle that followed its outcome. The refusal of the opposition party members to join parliament and head to prison instead, caused me unimaginable grief and loss of hope to what could have been a remarkable achievement in the democratic movement in Ethiopian.
As a combination of luck, pursuit of professional career and family obligation, I was spared the successes or dramatic failures of political players in Ethiopia in the past decades. Except a brief stint in the early ninties, I was an unknown quantity in Diaspora politics. This afforded me an opportunity to explore the Ethiopian political landscape with pure objectivity. I consumed all the writings of Ato Lidetu Ayalew, Dr. Berhanu Nega’s diatribe and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s dissertation on his policy to improve the plight of the Ethiopian farmer. Countless other books on democracy and the numerous articles on the internet became my daily ration. The hundreds of hours I spent in paltalk political rooms educated me on Ethiopian politics more than the opportunity it gave me to polish my public speaking abilities. I met a large number of wonderful Ethiopians and Ethiopian political leaders through this medium. These and my own humble beginnings in Gara Kuffa, gave me a remarkable perspective about my role in Ethiopian politics, in the twilight years of my life.
As I was getting ready to formulate my political opinions and design the path I wanted to follow, I had all the information I needed minus the baggage of previous political junkies.
In addition to freely expressing my feelings on paltalk, radio or television debates, I practiced my desire at becoming a wordsmith through a personal blog and by sending articles to favorable outlets.
My participation in the debates to have the imprisoned political leaders from the 2005 elections released, brought me in close contact with some of the political leaders of EPRDF, both in Ethiopia and in the United States. Not only did these people impress me with their commitment for their political philosophy, but the fiasco that followed the release of the Kinijit leaders, was paramount in my decision to side with EPRDF. From early on, I have articulated, in no uncertain terms, why I supported EPRDF and what my reservations were. I have stood by those reservations, even as I ploughed alongside my EPRDF colleagues.
For someone who has spent over 30 years in the United States of America and become a proud citizen of this fascinating country, I should be the first one to speak about the need for following the principles of democracy and freedom of expression anywhere in the world. I believe in the rule of law and resolving differences through a civil dialogue and the ballot box and not through the use of a bayonet. I will hold all politicians to these same standards and will fight those who believe otherwise. I will leave no stone unturned to express these believes.
These expressions have come at some cost, though inconsequential, to me and my family from early on. A recent castigation by a certain Hana Teffera from Switzerland, and another anonymous individual, came to the attention of my wife and made for an intimate discussion between us. I will spare you the details, but assure you that the above authors made me even more convinced that I have been doing the proper thing all along.
We will not stop here. We will knock at all your doors and challenge you on your own turf. We will not sit idle as VOA, Ethiomedia, Al Mariam or some of the Washington, D.C. airwaves, continue to spew their hate politics toward our Diaspora members and Ethiopians at home. We will not stand still as fake Horn of Africa conferences mislead foreign sponsors to end up with laughable declarations on good governance, peace, security and sustainable development in Ethiopia.
We will not stand aside and watch the likes of Ato Seye Abraha use flagrant language toward our Ethiopian leaders and invite us to war against our Eritrean brothers and sisters. We will not watch as war mongers like Dr. Berhanu Nega, empty the pockets of confused Diaspora members to subsidize their trips abroad.
We will fight the good fight and leave the voting to the people.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
FREEDOM OF SPEECH: The Paradox of its Exercise
Mesfin Ayenew
March 29, 2010
I had remained in hibernation with the exception of few and far apart anonymous scribbling here and there on selected issues judged to be pertinent at the time. My reservation emanated from two basic reasons. One is the obvious necessity to remain outside the fray as I am developing my own capacity in civil society capacity building, advocacy and organizational work. Second, I had felt that an open expression of support or criticism of policy will be counter-productive in an often heated, partisan, and toxic Diaspora discourse. Instead I had chosen to express my views directly through the appropriate channels and mediums. I should mention that I have had misgivings about certain policies of the government of Ethiopia, and yet, I have always been one who sees the glass as half full not half empty.
So you may ask, why not remain anonymous and still write? What changed? For one, despite the challenges ahead, the seeds of democracy have been planted in our country, and the roots have a firm grip. Important and measurable economic progress has been made and the policy frame work for future development appears to be on track. Most importantly, in the past few years the government and the party have increasingly exhibited the desire to solicit and listen to the people’s opinions. Mistakes are readily acknowledged. These changes should be welcomed and deserve support.
Second, there appears to be ferocious and well orchestrated onslaughts to derail the progress made and discredit the achievements accomplished. These attacks have become vicious and frequent at a time when Ethiopia is prepared to hold its fourth national and regional elections. Obviously, these attacks are intended to incite violence and create disorder. This must be opposed categorically.
Having said this let me come back to the issue at hand. My deepest sensibilities and understanding of democratic values were recently caught in the crossfire between the Ethiopian government’s threat to jam VOA Amharic program and the US Department of State’s condemnation of that threat. The news, on the surface of it, incited an inner discomfort about interference with the freedom of speech by Ethiopian authorities. It was therefore, tempting to arrive at a certain conclusion regarding the government’s tolerance for the media or lack thereof. Putting temptation aside, I feel it is important to revisit aspects of the concept of the freedom of speech and its parameters.
To begin with, the essence of free speech is the ability to think and speak freely and to obtain information from others through publications and public discourse without fear of retribution, restriction, or repression by the government. And through free speech, people could come together to achieve political influence, to strengthen their morality, and to help others to become moral and enlightened citizens.
Freedom of speech is the single most important political right of citizens, although private property is required for its operation. Without free speech, no political action or resistance to injustice and oppression would be possible. Without free speech elections would have no meaning at all. The policies of contestants become known to the public and they in turn become responsive to public opinion only by virtue of free speech. Without this freedom it is futile to expect political freedom or consequently economic freedom. The end product of a democratic society is the freedom of speech.
On a more practical plane, freedom of speech serves many functions. One of its most important functions is that decision-making at all levels is preceded by discussion and consideration of a representative range of views. A decision made after adequate consultation is likely to be a better one which less imperfectly mirrors the opinions, interests and needs of all concerned, than a decision taken with little or no consultation. Thus freedom of speech is important at all levels of society.
Furthermore, freedom of speech is perhaps even most important for a government. A government which does not know what the people feel and think is in a dangerous position. The government that muzzles free speech runs a risk of destroying the creative instincts of its citizens. Freedom of speech is also important to governments because when criticisms of a government are freely voiced, the government has the opportunity to respond and to answer unfair comments and criticisms about its actions. On the other hand, when freedom of speech is restricted, rumors, unfair criticisms, comments and downright falsehoods are circulated by word of mouth. These have a habit of spreading across the length and breadth of the country through conversations and surreptitiously circulated writings. The government is in no position to answer to these views, because they are not publicly stated. It is in a government's interest to have criticisms in the public arena, where it can answer its critics and correct its mistakes.
The importance of freedom of speech to both the people and the government cannot be overemphasized. But both have responsibilities in the exercise of this important and inalienable right. A balance must be struck between the ability of individuals to be unrestricted in the free expression of thoughts and ideas, and the need to ensure that governments are able to efficiently carry out their function of administration, law and order, and preserving the rights of individual’s vis-à-vis each other. In a civil society no right to freedom, how so ever invaluable it might be, can be considered absolute, unlimited, or unqualified in all circumstances. The freedom of the media which is an important element of free speech, for instance, like any other freedom recognized under the constitution has to be exercised within reasonable boundaries. The strength and importance of media in a democracy is well recognized. The existence of a free, independent and powerful media is the cornerstone of a democracy. Media is not only a medium to express one’s feelings, opinions and views, but it is also responsible and instrumental in building opinions and views on various topics. However, there are always two sides to a coin. With this increased role and importance attached to the media, the need for its accountability and professionalism in reportage cannot be emphasized enough.
This therefore, raises a legitimate question. When does the government exercise the right to restrict freedom of speech without trampling upon those rights?
I am, for example, opposed to paternalism in general and that of government in particular. But I also believe there are certain instances when intervention is warranted. For example, if a public official is certain that a bridge will collapse; he can stop people from crossing it. If, however, there is only a danger that it could collapse, the people can be warned but not coerced. The decision here depends on the likelihood of a serious outcome; the more certain the danger becomes, the more legitimate the intervention. If we were to take this metaphor to its logical conclusion therefore, it is entirely within its legal boundary for the government to limit, restrict and prevent certain of these rights. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the celebrated United States Supreme court justice in the Schenk vs. US. Ruling affirmed, that, “a government’s act to restrict is legitimate if the speech in question poses a "clear and present danger" — i.e., a risk or threat to safety or to other public interests that is serious and imminent.
In conclusion, was the government of Ethiopia right or wrong in making good on its threat, much less the threat itself? The answer to this will depend on the following fact. Though the Voice of America Amharic program had long standing bias against the current government, the government must present that the programming indeed presents a “clear and present danger”. Not being privy to such concrete information, it will be difficult for me to arrive at that conclusion at this time. However, I can confidently say that the Prime Minister will not put the prestige and reputation of his good office on line, without having the information whose veracity and authenticity can be proven. Assuming that material evidence is present, the government therefore, is within its legal boundary to mitigate the danger posed by irresponsible reporting.
This will bring me to my second point i.e., the reaction of the US Department of State. The State department in its condemnation of Ethiopian government’s decision stated that “…. the decision to jam VOA broadcasts contradicts the Government of Ethiopia’s frequent public commitments to freedom of the press. We note that the Ethiopian Constitution states that all citizens have the right to freedom of expression “without any interference”. It is acceptable and it is within its right for the Department of State to raise concerns on issues it deems detrimental to democratic progress in any country much less with a friend, ally and important partner. It is clear, the long standing bilateral relations between the US and Ethiopia is enduring, vibrant, and based on mutual interest. Yet, the statement in relation to the VOA Amharic program can only be understood in the context of the State’s need to appease some of the opposition elements in Ethiopia, vocal Diaspora in the US, and their supporters in Congress. Otherwise, it is clear to any one that even under the 1st and 14th Amendment of United States Constitution, that guarantee to freedom of speech is understood to impose certain limitations to its exercise.
Without equating the relationship between Ethiopia and US to that of US and Hezbollah, I, as citizen, supported the US government’s decision in 2004 and in 2006 to ban Al Manar and Al Nour known to be the Hezbollah satellite television and radio station respectively primarily for their propaganda material. They were also designated as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity”. In addition, France, Spain, Germany and other European countries, have imposed similar ban without designating Al Manar or the Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Their sole criterion was the content of the broadcasted materials which was deemed to contain incitement of violence, racist and anti-Semitic programming. These steps taken by both the US and the European countries are indisputably within the bounds of guaranteed freedom of speech. It is done in the interest of protecting their citizens. Therefore, the benefit for the Ethiopian government to make such a legitimate decision should of course be accorded. This not, in any way is to suggest, that the government should have a free ride to trample on freedom of speech based on any flimsy excuse. When and where such concerns are raised, both by the government and other stake holders, the Department of State should take the allegations seriously, investigate them fairly. Should it establish transgression, it is then appropriate to take appropriate course of action. Otherwise, an attempt to gloss over the issue under the veil of lofty pronouncement can be nothing short of disingenuous. The need to appease should not be at the cost of promoting democracy or jeopardizing partnership.
By the way, the State Department should find nothing new in the Diaspora and local opposition’s assertion that everything the Ethiopian government does is evil. These extremists have their parallel in the US as well. It is called THE TEA PARTY, who also sees nothing good in the current US administration.
March 29, 2010
I had remained in hibernation with the exception of few and far apart anonymous scribbling here and there on selected issues judged to be pertinent at the time. My reservation emanated from two basic reasons. One is the obvious necessity to remain outside the fray as I am developing my own capacity in civil society capacity building, advocacy and organizational work. Second, I had felt that an open expression of support or criticism of policy will be counter-productive in an often heated, partisan, and toxic Diaspora discourse. Instead I had chosen to express my views directly through the appropriate channels and mediums. I should mention that I have had misgivings about certain policies of the government of Ethiopia, and yet, I have always been one who sees the glass as half full not half empty.
So you may ask, why not remain anonymous and still write? What changed? For one, despite the challenges ahead, the seeds of democracy have been planted in our country, and the roots have a firm grip. Important and measurable economic progress has been made and the policy frame work for future development appears to be on track. Most importantly, in the past few years the government and the party have increasingly exhibited the desire to solicit and listen to the people’s opinions. Mistakes are readily acknowledged. These changes should be welcomed and deserve support.
Second, there appears to be ferocious and well orchestrated onslaughts to derail the progress made and discredit the achievements accomplished. These attacks have become vicious and frequent at a time when Ethiopia is prepared to hold its fourth national and regional elections. Obviously, these attacks are intended to incite violence and create disorder. This must be opposed categorically.
Having said this let me come back to the issue at hand. My deepest sensibilities and understanding of democratic values were recently caught in the crossfire between the Ethiopian government’s threat to jam VOA Amharic program and the US Department of State’s condemnation of that threat. The news, on the surface of it, incited an inner discomfort about interference with the freedom of speech by Ethiopian authorities. It was therefore, tempting to arrive at a certain conclusion regarding the government’s tolerance for the media or lack thereof. Putting temptation aside, I feel it is important to revisit aspects of the concept of the freedom of speech and its parameters.
To begin with, the essence of free speech is the ability to think and speak freely and to obtain information from others through publications and public discourse without fear of retribution, restriction, or repression by the government. And through free speech, people could come together to achieve political influence, to strengthen their morality, and to help others to become moral and enlightened citizens.
Freedom of speech is the single most important political right of citizens, although private property is required for its operation. Without free speech, no political action or resistance to injustice and oppression would be possible. Without free speech elections would have no meaning at all. The policies of contestants become known to the public and they in turn become responsive to public opinion only by virtue of free speech. Without this freedom it is futile to expect political freedom or consequently economic freedom. The end product of a democratic society is the freedom of speech.
On a more practical plane, freedom of speech serves many functions. One of its most important functions is that decision-making at all levels is preceded by discussion and consideration of a representative range of views. A decision made after adequate consultation is likely to be a better one which less imperfectly mirrors the opinions, interests and needs of all concerned, than a decision taken with little or no consultation. Thus freedom of speech is important at all levels of society.
Furthermore, freedom of speech is perhaps even most important for a government. A government which does not know what the people feel and think is in a dangerous position. The government that muzzles free speech runs a risk of destroying the creative instincts of its citizens. Freedom of speech is also important to governments because when criticisms of a government are freely voiced, the government has the opportunity to respond and to answer unfair comments and criticisms about its actions. On the other hand, when freedom of speech is restricted, rumors, unfair criticisms, comments and downright falsehoods are circulated by word of mouth. These have a habit of spreading across the length and breadth of the country through conversations and surreptitiously circulated writings. The government is in no position to answer to these views, because they are not publicly stated. It is in a government's interest to have criticisms in the public arena, where it can answer its critics and correct its mistakes.
The importance of freedom of speech to both the people and the government cannot be overemphasized. But both have responsibilities in the exercise of this important and inalienable right. A balance must be struck between the ability of individuals to be unrestricted in the free expression of thoughts and ideas, and the need to ensure that governments are able to efficiently carry out their function of administration, law and order, and preserving the rights of individual’s vis-à-vis each other. In a civil society no right to freedom, how so ever invaluable it might be, can be considered absolute, unlimited, or unqualified in all circumstances. The freedom of the media which is an important element of free speech, for instance, like any other freedom recognized under the constitution has to be exercised within reasonable boundaries. The strength and importance of media in a democracy is well recognized. The existence of a free, independent and powerful media is the cornerstone of a democracy. Media is not only a medium to express one’s feelings, opinions and views, but it is also responsible and instrumental in building opinions and views on various topics. However, there are always two sides to a coin. With this increased role and importance attached to the media, the need for its accountability and professionalism in reportage cannot be emphasized enough.
This therefore, raises a legitimate question. When does the government exercise the right to restrict freedom of speech without trampling upon those rights?
I am, for example, opposed to paternalism in general and that of government in particular. But I also believe there are certain instances when intervention is warranted. For example, if a public official is certain that a bridge will collapse; he can stop people from crossing it. If, however, there is only a danger that it could collapse, the people can be warned but not coerced. The decision here depends on the likelihood of a serious outcome; the more certain the danger becomes, the more legitimate the intervention. If we were to take this metaphor to its logical conclusion therefore, it is entirely within its legal boundary for the government to limit, restrict and prevent certain of these rights. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the celebrated United States Supreme court justice in the Schenk vs. US. Ruling affirmed, that, “a government’s act to restrict is legitimate if the speech in question poses a "clear and present danger" — i.e., a risk or threat to safety or to other public interests that is serious and imminent.
In conclusion, was the government of Ethiopia right or wrong in making good on its threat, much less the threat itself? The answer to this will depend on the following fact. Though the Voice of America Amharic program had long standing bias against the current government, the government must present that the programming indeed presents a “clear and present danger”. Not being privy to such concrete information, it will be difficult for me to arrive at that conclusion at this time. However, I can confidently say that the Prime Minister will not put the prestige and reputation of his good office on line, without having the information whose veracity and authenticity can be proven. Assuming that material evidence is present, the government therefore, is within its legal boundary to mitigate the danger posed by irresponsible reporting.
This will bring me to my second point i.e., the reaction of the US Department of State. The State department in its condemnation of Ethiopian government’s decision stated that “…. the decision to jam VOA broadcasts contradicts the Government of Ethiopia’s frequent public commitments to freedom of the press. We note that the Ethiopian Constitution states that all citizens have the right to freedom of expression “without any interference”. It is acceptable and it is within its right for the Department of State to raise concerns on issues it deems detrimental to democratic progress in any country much less with a friend, ally and important partner. It is clear, the long standing bilateral relations between the US and Ethiopia is enduring, vibrant, and based on mutual interest. Yet, the statement in relation to the VOA Amharic program can only be understood in the context of the State’s need to appease some of the opposition elements in Ethiopia, vocal Diaspora in the US, and their supporters in Congress. Otherwise, it is clear to any one that even under the 1st and 14th Amendment of United States Constitution, that guarantee to freedom of speech is understood to impose certain limitations to its exercise.
Without equating the relationship between Ethiopia and US to that of US and Hezbollah, I, as citizen, supported the US government’s decision in 2004 and in 2006 to ban Al Manar and Al Nour known to be the Hezbollah satellite television and radio station respectively primarily for their propaganda material. They were also designated as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity”. In addition, France, Spain, Germany and other European countries, have imposed similar ban without designating Al Manar or the Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Their sole criterion was the content of the broadcasted materials which was deemed to contain incitement of violence, racist and anti-Semitic programming. These steps taken by both the US and the European countries are indisputably within the bounds of guaranteed freedom of speech. It is done in the interest of protecting their citizens. Therefore, the benefit for the Ethiopian government to make such a legitimate decision should of course be accorded. This not, in any way is to suggest, that the government should have a free ride to trample on freedom of speech based on any flimsy excuse. When and where such concerns are raised, both by the government and other stake holders, the Department of State should take the allegations seriously, investigate them fairly. Should it establish transgression, it is then appropriate to take appropriate course of action. Otherwise, an attempt to gloss over the issue under the veil of lofty pronouncement can be nothing short of disingenuous. The need to appease should not be at the cost of promoting democracy or jeopardizing partnership.
By the way, the State Department should find nothing new in the Diaspora and local opposition’s assertion that everything the Ethiopian government does is evil. These extremists have their parallel in the US as well. It is called THE TEA PARTY, who also sees nothing good in the current US administration.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
The Tragicomedy of the anti-sanctions demonstrations by the Eritrean Diaspora.
March 4, 2010
Washera_2
From the outset, let us be very clear about the important points in the UN Resolution, which passed by a vote of 13-1, as a result of Eritrea’s refusal to withdraw its troops following conflict with Djibouti and arming groups undermining peace and reconciliation in Somalia.
Resolution 1907 (2009) stipulates:
1. Arms embargo.
2. Travel restrictions, and
3. Asset Freezes.
When you breakdown the above statements, it means that the resolution bans weapon sales to and from Eritrea, which has been known to supply weapons to opponents of the Somali government, including the Islamist insurgent group Al-Shabaab. It also imposes an asset freeze, and restricts the travel of those who violate the terms of the embargo and impede the resolution of the border conflict with Djibouti -- including black-listed individuals from Eritrea's political and military leadership.
Before these sanctions were imposed, there were endless talks and countless threats thereof for years in the unlikely hope that the Asmara regime would come to its senses where it did not have any. Its direct involvement in war torn Somalia and reckless encroachment into Djibouti demanded punitive action. It should be remembered thatthese sanctions are selective and do not target the economy or trade, to minimize its impact on the population at large.
The defiance of the Eritrea leadership could not have come any sooner. It instructed its diplomats abroad to blame the US, Britain and Ethiopia among others for this resolution and to go on the “offensive” by labeling the resolution "fabricated lies mainly concocted by the Ethiopian regime and the U.S. administration."Esaias Afewerki’s Al Jazeera interview, which predated the Diaspora anti-sanction demonstrations,was full of words like “lies”, “fabrications”, “cover ups”, “jokes”, “fantasy”, “deliberate distortion of facts”, “ never” done this or that, and placing blame on the US, Britain, France and Ethiopia. The journalist herself was not spared from being labeled as a fabricator of lies, putting to question her journalistic credibility. This interview would have been passed as comical and goofy, if it were not a response by Eritrea’s leader to very serious questions raised by the international community.
It would also have been discarded as another aha moment exposing the egomaniacal personality of Esaias Afewerki. However, the Eritrean Diaspora’s anti-sanction demonstrations was impacted by the Eritrean leadership which told its Diaspora members that they will not be considered Eritreans if they did not take part in these demonstrations. The implications are clear. Your family members and businesses in Eritrea will suffer if you did not take part in the protests.
These threats were taken very seriously by those few whose interests are intertwined with that of the regime in Eritrea. But, the best they could show for in the Washington, D.C. demonstrations was no more than 1,000 supporters, most of them allegedly bused-in from other states. There were very few foreigners and Ethiopian nationals were conspicuously absent from this demonstration. However, the sad part of this particular demonstration was the presence of several young children, who were potentially in harm’s way, if riots were to break. Although the freedom to protest is a basic human right in democratic countries, unlike in Eritrea, exposing these children to dangerous situations is tantamount to child abuse. What was more tragic was the choice of an 8 year old boy, to be the main spokesperson of the demonstration. This smart looking child, with a good mastery of the English language, was given the entire stage to spew very choice words for the United Nations and President Barrack Obama. You can see that he was well-coached and told to memorize his speech.
Is this how low we have fallen? Are we so incapable of articulating our differences on the adult forums that we subject our young to brainwashing and outright abuse for our selfish motives?
My hope is that our Eritrean brothers and sisters in the Diaspora will be able to see through this charade by Esaias Afeworki and his elk and that the sanctions will give them yet another opportunity to rally against the dictator in Eritrea.
In the meantime, U.N. member states are urged by the resolution to conduct inspections on suspicious sea and air shipments “to and from Somalia and Eritrea.”The regime´s notorious leaders will now have no additional arms to play with, their travels abroad will be banned and their bank accounts will be frozen. This will give a fresh opportunity and ammunition for Eritrean opposition forces and civil society members to weaken the regime in Asmara. Foreign investors and nations will realize the negative consequences of dealing with a ruthless and inept regime and will shy away from investing in Eritrea.
Let us vow to support the heroic peoples of Eritrea, who will soon see their independence and freedom that they have fought for many decades.
Washera_2
From the outset, let us be very clear about the important points in the UN Resolution, which passed by a vote of 13-1, as a result of Eritrea’s refusal to withdraw its troops following conflict with Djibouti and arming groups undermining peace and reconciliation in Somalia.
Resolution 1907 (2009) stipulates:
1. Arms embargo.
2. Travel restrictions, and
3. Asset Freezes.
When you breakdown the above statements, it means that the resolution bans weapon sales to and from Eritrea, which has been known to supply weapons to opponents of the Somali government, including the Islamist insurgent group Al-Shabaab. It also imposes an asset freeze, and restricts the travel of those who violate the terms of the embargo and impede the resolution of the border conflict with Djibouti -- including black-listed individuals from Eritrea's political and military leadership.
Before these sanctions were imposed, there were endless talks and countless threats thereof for years in the unlikely hope that the Asmara regime would come to its senses where it did not have any. Its direct involvement in war torn Somalia and reckless encroachment into Djibouti demanded punitive action. It should be remembered thatthese sanctions are selective and do not target the economy or trade, to minimize its impact on the population at large.
The defiance of the Eritrea leadership could not have come any sooner. It instructed its diplomats abroad to blame the US, Britain and Ethiopia among others for this resolution and to go on the “offensive” by labeling the resolution "fabricated lies mainly concocted by the Ethiopian regime and the U.S. administration."Esaias Afewerki’s Al Jazeera interview, which predated the Diaspora anti-sanction demonstrations,was full of words like “lies”, “fabrications”, “cover ups”, “jokes”, “fantasy”, “deliberate distortion of facts”, “ never” done this or that, and placing blame on the US, Britain, France and Ethiopia. The journalist herself was not spared from being labeled as a fabricator of lies, putting to question her journalistic credibility. This interview would have been passed as comical and goofy, if it were not a response by Eritrea’s leader to very serious questions raised by the international community.
It would also have been discarded as another aha moment exposing the egomaniacal personality of Esaias Afewerki. However, the Eritrean Diaspora’s anti-sanction demonstrations was impacted by the Eritrean leadership which told its Diaspora members that they will not be considered Eritreans if they did not take part in these demonstrations. The implications are clear. Your family members and businesses in Eritrea will suffer if you did not take part in the protests.
These threats were taken very seriously by those few whose interests are intertwined with that of the regime in Eritrea. But, the best they could show for in the Washington, D.C. demonstrations was no more than 1,000 supporters, most of them allegedly bused-in from other states. There were very few foreigners and Ethiopian nationals were conspicuously absent from this demonstration. However, the sad part of this particular demonstration was the presence of several young children, who were potentially in harm’s way, if riots were to break. Although the freedom to protest is a basic human right in democratic countries, unlike in Eritrea, exposing these children to dangerous situations is tantamount to child abuse. What was more tragic was the choice of an 8 year old boy, to be the main spokesperson of the demonstration. This smart looking child, with a good mastery of the English language, was given the entire stage to spew very choice words for the United Nations and President Barrack Obama. You can see that he was well-coached and told to memorize his speech.
Is this how low we have fallen? Are we so incapable of articulating our differences on the adult forums that we subject our young to brainwashing and outright abuse for our selfish motives?
My hope is that our Eritrean brothers and sisters in the Diaspora will be able to see through this charade by Esaias Afeworki and his elk and that the sanctions will give them yet another opportunity to rally against the dictator in Eritrea.
In the meantime, U.N. member states are urged by the resolution to conduct inspections on suspicious sea and air shipments “to and from Somalia and Eritrea.”The regime´s notorious leaders will now have no additional arms to play with, their travels abroad will be banned and their bank accounts will be frozen. This will give a fresh opportunity and ammunition for Eritrean opposition forces and civil society members to weaken the regime in Asmara. Foreign investors and nations will realize the negative consequences of dealing with a ruthless and inept regime and will shy away from investing in Eritrea.
Let us vow to support the heroic peoples of Eritrea, who will soon see their independence and freedom that they have fought for many decades.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
ከፍርሃት ነፃ መውጣት
ከፊልስ ከርክ
ትርጉም - ከዋሸራ
Sunday, January 17, 2010
በዘመናችን የሰው ልጅ ዕድሜ ሰባ-አምስት ዓመት ገደማ ነው ብለን ብንቀበል በቅርቡ ሲሶውን ዕድሜዬን አገባድጄዋለሁ ማለት ነው። ሆን ብዬ ያለፈውን ህይወቴን ስቃኘውና ስመረምረው ብዙ አዳዲስ ግኝቶች ታይተውኛል። ብዙዎቹ ተስፋ ሰጪና የሚያስደስቱም ናቸው። በጣም የሚያስደነግጠው ነገር ግን የመጀመሪያውን የህይወቴን ክፍል በሙሉ ፍራቻ ማሳለፌና የተረፈውን ጊዜ ደግሞ እነዛን ፍራቻዎቼን ከሰው የምደብቅበትን ብልሃትና ጥበብ ስማርና ሳጠና ማሳለፌ ነው። የዚህ ድርጊቴ አሳዛኙ ክፍል፣ አለመፍራቴን ለሰዎች ለማሳወቅ የወሰድኩት የድለላ ተግባር መልሶ እራሴን መደለሉ ነው።
ፍርሃት በህይወቴ ውስጥ ያሳደረውን ትልቅ ተጽዕኖ ድንገት በተገነዘብኩበት ጊዜ ይህ ነው የማይባል ድንጋጤ አደረብኝ። ምክንያቱም ለህይወት ያለኝ ፍቅር መጠን የሌለውና ህይወትን ለመኖር የሚያስፈልጉትን ሙከራዎች በሙሉ ስራ ላይ የማዋል የፀና እምነት ስላለኝ ነው። ለፍርሃት በምናጎበድድበት ጊዜ የግላችንን ኑሮ ያለፍርሃት በመኖር የምናበርክተውን የሰውን ልጅ ህይወት ትርጉምና ዋጋ የመስጠት ሃላፊነት እንገድበዋልን የሚል የጠበቀ እምነትም አለኝ። በህይወት ኑሮአችን ጊዜ ለራሳችን ብቻ ሳይሆን ለርስበርሳችንም ጭምር ትልቅ ሃላፊነት አለብን ብዬ አምናለሁ።
ፍርሃት አለመቻቻልንና አግባብ የሌለው ጥላቻን እንድንፈጽም ከማድረጉ ባሻገር በጣም የሚያሳዝነውና እንደ ከባድ ወንጀል ሊቆጠር የሚገባው ድርጊቱ ለውጥን የመቀበል ችሎታችንን የመስበር ሀይሉ ነው ብዬ አምናለሁ። ፍርሃት የለውጥን ተፈጥሮአዊነትና ለውጥ የዕውቀትና የዕድገት ፍሬ መሆኑን እንድንዘነጋ ያደርገናል። የለመድነውና የማያሰጋ የሚመስለን ነገር ላይ እንድንጣበቅ ይገፋፋናል። በአንድ ዳሰሳ የማናውቀውን እንድንጎዳና ፍርደ-ገምድል እንድንሆን ይጋብዘናል። በፍርሀት ወጥመድ ውስጥ ሆነን የውጭን ፍቅር ለራሳችን ብቻ ስናሳድድ ውስጣችን ያለውን ፍቅር እንድንረሳ ያደርገናል።
በመፍራት የሃይማኖት ቤታችንን በር እንዘጋለን የአባሎቻችንንም መጠን እንወስናል። የምናውቀውን ዜማ ለማዜም ፈቃደኛ የሆነውን ሰው እንጠጋለን። የራስን ችግር አውቆና እምነትን በማጠናከር ጥሩ ምግባርን የበላይነት ቦታ ከሚሰጥ ይልቅ የምናመልክበትን ስርዓትና የአምላኪውን አምላክ ስም የበለጠ ከብሬታ እንሰጠዋለን።
በልጅነታችን የወላጆቻችንን ራዕየ-ቢስ የሆነ አግባብ የሌለው ስርዓት እንድንናውቅ እንደረጋለን። እኛም በተራችን ለልጆቻችን ይሄንኑ ወይም ይሄንኑ መሰል በፍርሃት የተመሰረተና የታጠረ ስርዓት እናስተምራቸዋለን። እኔ የማይፈራ የራሴ የሆነ ልጅ እፈልጋለሁ። የሱ ከፍርሃት ነፃ መሆን ግን ከኔ ይጀምራል ብዬ አምናለሁ። ምክንያቱም የግሌን ህይወት ያለፍርሃት በመኖር ለህይወት በሙሉ ያለኝን ሃላፊነት እወጣዋለሁ የሚል ፅኑ ዕምነት ስላለኝ ጭምር ነው። ልጁ ውስጤ ገና ስላልተጸነሰ የትላንትናውን ስህተት ለመቐቐም ዛሬ በቂ ዕድገት ማሳየት አለብኝ ብዬ አምናለሁ።
ነገ ተስፋ ያለው ቀን መሆኑንም አምናለሁ። ነገ ይህንን ዓይነት ተስፋ ካለው ከዛሬ የተለየ በመሆኑ ነገን መፍራት የለብኝም። በማውቀውም ሆነ መፍራት በሌለብኝ በማላውቀው ነገር ሁሉ ዳግመኛ ላለመፍራት ትልቅ ጥረት ማድረግ እንዳለብኝ አምናለሁ። ሁላችንም ጥፋት አጥፍተናል፤ ሁላችንም ብቸኛ ነን። ጥፋተኛም ሆንን ብቸኛ ሁላችንም በዚች ዓለም ላይ አብረን ነዋሪዎች ነን።
ትርጉም - ከዋሸራ
Sunday, January 17, 2010
በዘመናችን የሰው ልጅ ዕድሜ ሰባ-አምስት ዓመት ገደማ ነው ብለን ብንቀበል በቅርቡ ሲሶውን ዕድሜዬን አገባድጄዋለሁ ማለት ነው። ሆን ብዬ ያለፈውን ህይወቴን ስቃኘውና ስመረምረው ብዙ አዳዲስ ግኝቶች ታይተውኛል። ብዙዎቹ ተስፋ ሰጪና የሚያስደስቱም ናቸው። በጣም የሚያስደነግጠው ነገር ግን የመጀመሪያውን የህይወቴን ክፍል በሙሉ ፍራቻ ማሳለፌና የተረፈውን ጊዜ ደግሞ እነዛን ፍራቻዎቼን ከሰው የምደብቅበትን ብልሃትና ጥበብ ስማርና ሳጠና ማሳለፌ ነው። የዚህ ድርጊቴ አሳዛኙ ክፍል፣ አለመፍራቴን ለሰዎች ለማሳወቅ የወሰድኩት የድለላ ተግባር መልሶ እራሴን መደለሉ ነው።
ፍርሃት በህይወቴ ውስጥ ያሳደረውን ትልቅ ተጽዕኖ ድንገት በተገነዘብኩበት ጊዜ ይህ ነው የማይባል ድንጋጤ አደረብኝ። ምክንያቱም ለህይወት ያለኝ ፍቅር መጠን የሌለውና ህይወትን ለመኖር የሚያስፈልጉትን ሙከራዎች በሙሉ ስራ ላይ የማዋል የፀና እምነት ስላለኝ ነው። ለፍርሃት በምናጎበድድበት ጊዜ የግላችንን ኑሮ ያለፍርሃት በመኖር የምናበርክተውን የሰውን ልጅ ህይወት ትርጉምና ዋጋ የመስጠት ሃላፊነት እንገድበዋልን የሚል የጠበቀ እምነትም አለኝ። በህይወት ኑሮአችን ጊዜ ለራሳችን ብቻ ሳይሆን ለርስበርሳችንም ጭምር ትልቅ ሃላፊነት አለብን ብዬ አምናለሁ።
ፍርሃት አለመቻቻልንና አግባብ የሌለው ጥላቻን እንድንፈጽም ከማድረጉ ባሻገር በጣም የሚያሳዝነውና እንደ ከባድ ወንጀል ሊቆጠር የሚገባው ድርጊቱ ለውጥን የመቀበል ችሎታችንን የመስበር ሀይሉ ነው ብዬ አምናለሁ። ፍርሃት የለውጥን ተፈጥሮአዊነትና ለውጥ የዕውቀትና የዕድገት ፍሬ መሆኑን እንድንዘነጋ ያደርገናል። የለመድነውና የማያሰጋ የሚመስለን ነገር ላይ እንድንጣበቅ ይገፋፋናል። በአንድ ዳሰሳ የማናውቀውን እንድንጎዳና ፍርደ-ገምድል እንድንሆን ይጋብዘናል። በፍርሀት ወጥመድ ውስጥ ሆነን የውጭን ፍቅር ለራሳችን ብቻ ስናሳድድ ውስጣችን ያለውን ፍቅር እንድንረሳ ያደርገናል።
በመፍራት የሃይማኖት ቤታችንን በር እንዘጋለን የአባሎቻችንንም መጠን እንወስናል። የምናውቀውን ዜማ ለማዜም ፈቃደኛ የሆነውን ሰው እንጠጋለን። የራስን ችግር አውቆና እምነትን በማጠናከር ጥሩ ምግባርን የበላይነት ቦታ ከሚሰጥ ይልቅ የምናመልክበትን ስርዓትና የአምላኪውን አምላክ ስም የበለጠ ከብሬታ እንሰጠዋለን።
በልጅነታችን የወላጆቻችንን ራዕየ-ቢስ የሆነ አግባብ የሌለው ስርዓት እንድንናውቅ እንደረጋለን። እኛም በተራችን ለልጆቻችን ይሄንኑ ወይም ይሄንኑ መሰል በፍርሃት የተመሰረተና የታጠረ ስርዓት እናስተምራቸዋለን። እኔ የማይፈራ የራሴ የሆነ ልጅ እፈልጋለሁ። የሱ ከፍርሃት ነፃ መሆን ግን ከኔ ይጀምራል ብዬ አምናለሁ። ምክንያቱም የግሌን ህይወት ያለፍርሃት በመኖር ለህይወት በሙሉ ያለኝን ሃላፊነት እወጣዋለሁ የሚል ፅኑ ዕምነት ስላለኝ ጭምር ነው። ልጁ ውስጤ ገና ስላልተጸነሰ የትላንትናውን ስህተት ለመቐቐም ዛሬ በቂ ዕድገት ማሳየት አለብኝ ብዬ አምናለሁ።
ነገ ተስፋ ያለው ቀን መሆኑንም አምናለሁ። ነገ ይህንን ዓይነት ተስፋ ካለው ከዛሬ የተለየ በመሆኑ ነገን መፍራት የለብኝም። በማውቀውም ሆነ መፍራት በሌለብኝ በማላውቀው ነገር ሁሉ ዳግመኛ ላለመፍራት ትልቅ ጥረት ማድረግ እንዳለብኝ አምናለሁ። ሁላችንም ጥፋት አጥፍተናል፤ ሁላችንም ብቸኛ ነን። ጥፋተኛም ሆንን ብቸኛ ሁላችንም በዚች ዓለም ላይ አብረን ነዋሪዎች ነን።
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Freedom From Fear
Phyllis Kirk - Hollywood, California
If it is accepted that the life span of the human being of our time averages approximately seventy-five years, I will, in a short while, reach the end of what may be the first third of my life. In the course of deliberately walking into the past of myself I’ve made many discoveries, some of them encouraging, even happy ones. But it disturbs me deeply to also discover that I’ve spent so much of this first portion of my life being afraid of almost everything and that I have spent so much of the remaining time in learning the myriad tricks there are by which one may hide one’s fear from others. It disturbs me to realize that in the seemingly harmless act of deluding others into believing me to be unafraid, I have also deluded myself.
The sudden awareness of the enormous part which fear has played in my living has been particularly shocking to me because I’ve always thought that I loved life in its fullest sense of loving it as I could, and I’ve always thought that I believed intensely in the experiment of living it. I believe that when we permit ourselves to fear, we negate the chance we are each given to contribute through the unique patterns of our respective lives to the meaning and validity of all life. I believe that in merely being alive we have a tremendous responsibility, and that the responsibility is not only to our separate selves but to one another.
I believe it is in fear that we commit the crimes of intolerance and prejudice and what seems to me to be perhaps the saddest, most grave crime of all, our resistance to change. Afraid, we fail to see that the change is the natural and good fruit of knowledge and growth. We cling to the familiar because it is familiar and seems, therefore, to be secure. We butcher the unfamiliar and slaughter justice with the same stroke. Frightened, we seek love only for ourselves and forget to search for love in ourselves.
In fear, we restrict the membership and close the doors of our churches. We court the man who is willing to chant the service least alien to ours. In fear, we make the manner of worship and the name by which a man identifies his god more important than a man’s knowledge of his need, and his striving for faith and a power of good greater than himself.
As children we are taught the visionless prejudices of our parents. We are taught and we, in turn, teach our children perhaps not the same prejudices, but each of them common to one another, for they are born and sustained in fear. I want a child of my own, and I want him to be unafraid. I believe that for him, freedom from fear can have its beginning now in me because I feel so strongly that in the living of my life, I have a responsibility to all life. Because of the child not yet conceived in me, I believe I must grow enough today to face yesterday’s mistakes.
I believe tomorrow is hopeful and that if I am to recognize tomorrow as promising, I must not fear its being different from today. I believe I must try with all I know—and without fear of all I don’t know—to never really be afraid again. Each of us has known guilt; each of us is alone. I believe that guilty and alone, we are all here together.
Actress Phyllis Kirk starred with Vincent Price in the horror film “House of Wax,” and with Peter Lawford in “The Thin Man” television series. She later worked in public relations at CBS. Throughout her career, Kirk was active in various social and civil liberties causes.
If it is accepted that the life span of the human being of our time averages approximately seventy-five years, I will, in a short while, reach the end of what may be the first third of my life. In the course of deliberately walking into the past of myself I’ve made many discoveries, some of them encouraging, even happy ones. But it disturbs me deeply to also discover that I’ve spent so much of this first portion of my life being afraid of almost everything and that I have spent so much of the remaining time in learning the myriad tricks there are by which one may hide one’s fear from others. It disturbs me to realize that in the seemingly harmless act of deluding others into believing me to be unafraid, I have also deluded myself.
The sudden awareness of the enormous part which fear has played in my living has been particularly shocking to me because I’ve always thought that I loved life in its fullest sense of loving it as I could, and I’ve always thought that I believed intensely in the experiment of living it. I believe that when we permit ourselves to fear, we negate the chance we are each given to contribute through the unique patterns of our respective lives to the meaning and validity of all life. I believe that in merely being alive we have a tremendous responsibility, and that the responsibility is not only to our separate selves but to one another.
I believe it is in fear that we commit the crimes of intolerance and prejudice and what seems to me to be perhaps the saddest, most grave crime of all, our resistance to change. Afraid, we fail to see that the change is the natural and good fruit of knowledge and growth. We cling to the familiar because it is familiar and seems, therefore, to be secure. We butcher the unfamiliar and slaughter justice with the same stroke. Frightened, we seek love only for ourselves and forget to search for love in ourselves.
In fear, we restrict the membership and close the doors of our churches. We court the man who is willing to chant the service least alien to ours. In fear, we make the manner of worship and the name by which a man identifies his god more important than a man’s knowledge of his need, and his striving for faith and a power of good greater than himself.
As children we are taught the visionless prejudices of our parents. We are taught and we, in turn, teach our children perhaps not the same prejudices, but each of them common to one another, for they are born and sustained in fear. I want a child of my own, and I want him to be unafraid. I believe that for him, freedom from fear can have its beginning now in me because I feel so strongly that in the living of my life, I have a responsibility to all life. Because of the child not yet conceived in me, I believe I must grow enough today to face yesterday’s mistakes.
I believe tomorrow is hopeful and that if I am to recognize tomorrow as promising, I must not fear its being different from today. I believe I must try with all I know—and without fear of all I don’t know—to never really be afraid again. Each of us has known guilt; each of us is alone. I believe that guilty and alone, we are all here together.
Actress Phyllis Kirk starred with Vincent Price in the horror film “House of Wax,” and with Peter Lawford in “The Thin Man” television series. She later worked in public relations at CBS. Throughout her career, Kirk was active in various social and civil liberties causes.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Tiger Woods, Person of the Year
December 21, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
By FRANK RICH
AS we say farewell to a dreadful year and decade, this much we can agree upon: The person of the year is not Ben Bernanke, no matter how insistently Time magazine tries to hype him into its pantheon. The Fed chairman was just as big a schnook as every other magical thinker in Washington and on Wall Street who believed that housing prices would go up in perpetuity to support an economy leveraged past the hilt. Unlike most of the others, it was Bernanke’s job to be ahead of the curve. Yet as recently as June of last year he could be found minimizing the possibility of a substantial economic downturn. And now we’re supposed to applaud him for putting his finger in the dike after disaster struck? This is defining American leadership down.
If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).
As of Friday, the Tiger saga had appeared on 20 consecutive New York Post covers. For The Post, his calamity has become as big a story as 9/11. And the paper may well have it right. We’ve rarely questioned our assumption that 9/11, “the day that changed everything,” was the decade’s defining event. But in retrospect it may not have been. A con like Tiger’s may be more typical of our time than a one-off domestic terrorist attack, however devastating.
Indeed, if we go back to late 2001, the most revealing news story may have been unfolding not in New York but Houston — the site of the Enron scandal. That energy company convinced financial titans, the press and countless investors that it was a business deity. It did so even though very few of its worshipers knew what its business was. Enron is the template for the decade of successful ruses that followed, Tiger’s included.
What makes the golfing superstar’s tale compelling, after all, is not that he’s another celebrity in trouble or another fallen athletic “role model” in a decade lousy with them. His scandal has nothing to tell us about race, and nothing new to say about hypocrisy. The conflict between Tiger’s picture-perfect family life and his marathon womanizing is the oldest of morality tales.
What’s striking instead is the exceptional, Enron-sized gap between this golfer’s public image as a paragon of businesslike discipline and focus and the maniacally reckless life we now know he led. What’s equally striking, if not shocking, is that the American establishment and news media — all of it, not just golf writers or celebrity tabloids — fell for the Woods myth as hard as any fan and actively helped sustain and enhance it.
People wanted to believe what they wanted to believe. Tiger’s off-the-links elusiveness was no more questioned than Enron’s impenetrable balance sheets, with their “special-purpose entities” named after “Star Wars” characters. Fortune magazine named Enron as America’s “most innovative company” six years in a row. In the January issue of Golf Digest, still on the stands, some of the best and most hardheaded writers in America offer “tips Obama can take from Tiger,” who is typically characterized as so without human frailties that he “never does anything that would make him look ridiculous.”
Perhaps the most conspicuous player in the Tiger hagiography business has been a company called Accenture, one of his lustrous stable of corporate sponsors. In a hilarious Times article, Brian Stelter described the extreme efforts this outfit is now making to erase its six-year association with its prized spokesman. Alas, the many billboards with slogans like “Go On. Be a Tiger” are not so easily dismantled, and collectors’ items like “Accenture Match Play Tiger Woods Caddy Bib” are a growth commodity on eBay.
From what I can tell, Accenture is a solid company. But the Daily News columnist Mike Lupica raised a good point when I spoke with him last week: “If Tiger Woods was so important to Accenture, how come I didn’t know what Accenture did when they fired him?” According to its Web site, Accenture is “a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company,” but who cared about any fine print? It was Tiger, and Tiger was it, and no one was to worry about the details behind the mutually advantageous image-mongering. One would like to assume that Accenture’s failure to see or heed any warning signs about a man appearing in 83 percent of its advertising is an anomalous lapse. One would like to believe that business and government clients didn’t hire Accenture just because it had Tiger’s imprimatur. But in a culture where so many smart people have been taken so often, we can’t assume anything.
As cons go, Woods’s fraudulent image as an immaculate exemplar of superhuman steeliness is benign. His fall will damage his family, closest friends, Accenture and the golf industry much more than the rest of us. But the syndrome it epitomizes is not harmless. We keep being fooled by leaders in all sectors of American life, over and over. A decade that began with the “reality” television craze exemplified by “American Idol” and “Survivor” — both blissfully devoid of any reality whatsoever — spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth.
The most lethal example, of course, were the two illusions marketed to us on the way to Iraq — that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and some link to Al Qaeda. That history has since been rewritten by Bush alumni, Democratic politicians who supported the Iraq invasion and some of the news media that purveyed the White House fictions (especially the television press, which rarely owned up to its failure as print journalists have). It was exclusively “bad intelligence,” we’re now told, that pushed us into the fiasco. But contradictions to that “bad intelligence” were in plain sight during the run-up to the war — even sometimes in the press. Yet we wanted to suspend disbelief. Much of the country, regardless of party, didn’t want to question its leaders, no matter how obviously they were hyping any misleading shred of intelligence that could fit their predetermined march to war. It’s the same impulse that kept many from questioning how Mark McGwire’s and Barry Bonds’s outlandishly cartoonish physiques could possibly be steroid-free.
In the political realm, our bipartisan credulousness has also been on steroids in this decade, even by our national standards. Many Democrats didn’t want to see the snake-oil salesman in John Edwards, blatant as his “Two America” self-contradictions were if you cared merely to look at him on YouTube. Republicans incessantly fell for family values preacher politicians like David Vitter, John Ensign and Larry Craig. Fred Thompson was seen by many, in the press as well as his party, as the second coming of Ronald Reagan. Karl Rove was widely hailed as a mastermind who would assemble a permanent Republican majority. Bernie Kerik was considered a plausible secretary of homeland security. Eliot Spitzer was viewed as a crusader of uncompromising principle.
But these scam artists are pikers next to the financial hucksters. I’m not just talking about Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay, but about those titans who legally created and sold the securities that gamed and then wrecked the system. You’d think after Enron’s collapse that financial leaders and government overseers would question the contents of “exotic” investments that could not be explained in plain English. But only a few years after Enron’s very public and extensively dissected crimes, the same bankers, federal regulatory agencies and securities-rating companies were giving toxic “assets” a pass. We were only too eager to go along for the lucrative ride until it crashed like Tiger’s Escalade.
After his “indefinite break” from golf, Woods will surely be back on the links once the next celebrity scandal drowns his out. But after a decade in which two true national catastrophes, a wasteful war and a near-ruinous financial collapse, were both in part byproducts of the ease with which our leaders bamboozled us, we can’t so easily move on.
This can be seen in the increasingly urgent political plight of Barack Obama. Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger’s public image — a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism (as the right sees it) or spineless timidity (as the left sees it). The truth may well be neither, but after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out.
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December 17, 2009
Accenture, as if Tiger Woods Were Never There
By BRIAN STELTER
How do you Tiger-proof an entire corporation? At Accenture, you start by telling employees to tear down all the posters that say, now somewhat awkwardly, that “we know what it takes to be a Tiger.”
For six years, Tiger Woods was the advertising face for Accenture, the big consulting firm. But now that Mr. Woods has confessed to infidelities amid an assault of media coverage, Accenture wants him to disappear.
On Sunday, hours after Accenture ended its sponsorship deal, the golfer’s face was replaced by an anonymous skier on the company’s home page. His name was scrubbed almost completely from the rest of the Web site. The company’s advertising campaign is about “high performance,” and Mr. Woods “just wasn’t a metaphor for high performance anymore,” a spokesman for Accenture, Fred Hawrysh, said.
By Monday afternoon, Accenture staffers had swept through the company’s New York office and removed any visible Tiger posters. The next day, marketing and communications employees around the world were asked to turn in any remaining Tiger-emblazoned posters and other materials. Accenture marketing employees did not respond to requests for comment about the Tiger purge on Wednesday.
Accenture said it did not tell all of its 177,000 worldwide employees to toss their Tiger T-shirts, caps and tchotchkes away. But when asked about branded merchandise, Mr. Hawrysh said, “Our intention is to ensure we are no longer using it internally or externally.”
But it takes time to erase the golfer’s identity completely. Accenture spent $50 million on advertising in the United States last year, and Mr. Woods appeared in 83 percent of the company’s ads — far more than for any of his other major sponsors — according to TNS Media Intelligence.
The remaining billboards and ads, now outdated, inspire smirks and jokes. In ads at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, Tiger is seen crouching on the green, studying a golf ball’s trajectory and endorsing outsourcing. In Atlanta, he is posed as The Thinker, adorned with a Nike hat, promoting management consulting. At Dulles International outside Washington, he is peering into the distance, dark clouds on the horizon. That ad, forebodingly, says it is “tougher than ever to be a Tiger.”
“The Accenture ads with Tiger finally make sense,” Quentin George, the chief digital officer for Interpublic Mediabrands, an advertising holding company, remarked on Twitter Wednesday.
Mr. Woods provided a big boost to Accenture when he became the company’s worldwide public face in 2003. At the time, the Accenture name was less than three years old, and was still regularly called by its old name, Andersen Consulting. The campaign’s initial theme was “Go on. Be a Tiger.”
Mr. Woods “was a powerful device for our advertising, there’s no doubt about it,” Mr. Hawrysh said.
But as allegations of Mr. Woods’s extramarital affairs spread in recent weeks, the titan of golf was transformed into a distraction. In the early days of the media frenzy, Mr. Woods still greeted visitors to Accenture’s Web site next to the words, “It’s What You Do Next That Counts.” Then on Sunday, the company proclaimed that Mr. Woods was “no longer the right representative” for its advertising and began scrubbing his name and face away.
On Tuesday, that meant telling staff members in an e-mail message to review their sales pitches and slide shows to ensure that they “no longer include Tiger Woods.” In New York, employees were asked to bring posters and other physical assets to the company’s front desk for disposal. The company would not comment on exactly how they would be disposed of.
They may be trying to avoid having the materials recast as collectors’ items. Already, some Accenture magazine ads and memorabilia, including an Accenture Match Play Tiger Woods Caddy Bib, are on eBay (Asking price for the bib: $175.)
Mr. Woods’s private life remains a daily topic on TV talk shows and Web sites, but some of his sponsors, including Nike, have stayed by his side. Nike’s chairman, Phil Knight, told The Sports Business Journal last week that when Mr. Woods’s career “is over, you’ll look back on these indiscretions as a minor blip.”
Accenture, however, is already preparing a new ad campaign. Jon Swallen, a senior vice president for research for TNS Media Intelligence, said it seemed notable that the consulting firm chose not to hide under a no-comment cloak or hire a new celebrity spokesman; instead, it separated from Mr. Woods publicly and swiftly.
“It struck me that they were taking him to the woodshed,” Mr. Swallen said.
Op-Ed Columnist
By FRANK RICH
AS we say farewell to a dreadful year and decade, this much we can agree upon: The person of the year is not Ben Bernanke, no matter how insistently Time magazine tries to hype him into its pantheon. The Fed chairman was just as big a schnook as every other magical thinker in Washington and on Wall Street who believed that housing prices would go up in perpetuity to support an economy leveraged past the hilt. Unlike most of the others, it was Bernanke’s job to be ahead of the curve. Yet as recently as June of last year he could be found minimizing the possibility of a substantial economic downturn. And now we’re supposed to applaud him for putting his finger in the dike after disaster struck? This is defining American leadership down.
If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).
As of Friday, the Tiger saga had appeared on 20 consecutive New York Post covers. For The Post, his calamity has become as big a story as 9/11. And the paper may well have it right. We’ve rarely questioned our assumption that 9/11, “the day that changed everything,” was the decade’s defining event. But in retrospect it may not have been. A con like Tiger’s may be more typical of our time than a one-off domestic terrorist attack, however devastating.
Indeed, if we go back to late 2001, the most revealing news story may have been unfolding not in New York but Houston — the site of the Enron scandal. That energy company convinced financial titans, the press and countless investors that it was a business deity. It did so even though very few of its worshipers knew what its business was. Enron is the template for the decade of successful ruses that followed, Tiger’s included.
What makes the golfing superstar’s tale compelling, after all, is not that he’s another celebrity in trouble or another fallen athletic “role model” in a decade lousy with them. His scandal has nothing to tell us about race, and nothing new to say about hypocrisy. The conflict between Tiger’s picture-perfect family life and his marathon womanizing is the oldest of morality tales.
What’s striking instead is the exceptional, Enron-sized gap between this golfer’s public image as a paragon of businesslike discipline and focus and the maniacally reckless life we now know he led. What’s equally striking, if not shocking, is that the American establishment and news media — all of it, not just golf writers or celebrity tabloids — fell for the Woods myth as hard as any fan and actively helped sustain and enhance it.
People wanted to believe what they wanted to believe. Tiger’s off-the-links elusiveness was no more questioned than Enron’s impenetrable balance sheets, with their “special-purpose entities” named after “Star Wars” characters. Fortune magazine named Enron as America’s “most innovative company” six years in a row. In the January issue of Golf Digest, still on the stands, some of the best and most hardheaded writers in America offer “tips Obama can take from Tiger,” who is typically characterized as so without human frailties that he “never does anything that would make him look ridiculous.”
Perhaps the most conspicuous player in the Tiger hagiography business has been a company called Accenture, one of his lustrous stable of corporate sponsors. In a hilarious Times article, Brian Stelter described the extreme efforts this outfit is now making to erase its six-year association with its prized spokesman. Alas, the many billboards with slogans like “Go On. Be a Tiger” are not so easily dismantled, and collectors’ items like “Accenture Match Play Tiger Woods Caddy Bib” are a growth commodity on eBay.
From what I can tell, Accenture is a solid company. But the Daily News columnist Mike Lupica raised a good point when I spoke with him last week: “If Tiger Woods was so important to Accenture, how come I didn’t know what Accenture did when they fired him?” According to its Web site, Accenture is “a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company,” but who cared about any fine print? It was Tiger, and Tiger was it, and no one was to worry about the details behind the mutually advantageous image-mongering. One would like to assume that Accenture’s failure to see or heed any warning signs about a man appearing in 83 percent of its advertising is an anomalous lapse. One would like to believe that business and government clients didn’t hire Accenture just because it had Tiger’s imprimatur. But in a culture where so many smart people have been taken so often, we can’t assume anything.
As cons go, Woods’s fraudulent image as an immaculate exemplar of superhuman steeliness is benign. His fall will damage his family, closest friends, Accenture and the golf industry much more than the rest of us. But the syndrome it epitomizes is not harmless. We keep being fooled by leaders in all sectors of American life, over and over. A decade that began with the “reality” television craze exemplified by “American Idol” and “Survivor” — both blissfully devoid of any reality whatsoever — spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth.
The most lethal example, of course, were the two illusions marketed to us on the way to Iraq — that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and some link to Al Qaeda. That history has since been rewritten by Bush alumni, Democratic politicians who supported the Iraq invasion and some of the news media that purveyed the White House fictions (especially the television press, which rarely owned up to its failure as print journalists have). It was exclusively “bad intelligence,” we’re now told, that pushed us into the fiasco. But contradictions to that “bad intelligence” were in plain sight during the run-up to the war — even sometimes in the press. Yet we wanted to suspend disbelief. Much of the country, regardless of party, didn’t want to question its leaders, no matter how obviously they were hyping any misleading shred of intelligence that could fit their predetermined march to war. It’s the same impulse that kept many from questioning how Mark McGwire’s and Barry Bonds’s outlandishly cartoonish physiques could possibly be steroid-free.
In the political realm, our bipartisan credulousness has also been on steroids in this decade, even by our national standards. Many Democrats didn’t want to see the snake-oil salesman in John Edwards, blatant as his “Two America” self-contradictions were if you cared merely to look at him on YouTube. Republicans incessantly fell for family values preacher politicians like David Vitter, John Ensign and Larry Craig. Fred Thompson was seen by many, in the press as well as his party, as the second coming of Ronald Reagan. Karl Rove was widely hailed as a mastermind who would assemble a permanent Republican majority. Bernie Kerik was considered a plausible secretary of homeland security. Eliot Spitzer was viewed as a crusader of uncompromising principle.
But these scam artists are pikers next to the financial hucksters. I’m not just talking about Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay, but about those titans who legally created and sold the securities that gamed and then wrecked the system. You’d think after Enron’s collapse that financial leaders and government overseers would question the contents of “exotic” investments that could not be explained in plain English. But only a few years after Enron’s very public and extensively dissected crimes, the same bankers, federal regulatory agencies and securities-rating companies were giving toxic “assets” a pass. We were only too eager to go along for the lucrative ride until it crashed like Tiger’s Escalade.
After his “indefinite break” from golf, Woods will surely be back on the links once the next celebrity scandal drowns his out. But after a decade in which two true national catastrophes, a wasteful war and a near-ruinous financial collapse, were both in part byproducts of the ease with which our leaders bamboozled us, we can’t so easily move on.
This can be seen in the increasingly urgent political plight of Barack Obama. Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger’s public image — a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism (as the right sees it) or spineless timidity (as the left sees it). The truth may well be neither, but after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out.
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December 17, 2009
Accenture, as if Tiger Woods Were Never There
By BRIAN STELTER
How do you Tiger-proof an entire corporation? At Accenture, you start by telling employees to tear down all the posters that say, now somewhat awkwardly, that “we know what it takes to be a Tiger.”
For six years, Tiger Woods was the advertising face for Accenture, the big consulting firm. But now that Mr. Woods has confessed to infidelities amid an assault of media coverage, Accenture wants him to disappear.
On Sunday, hours after Accenture ended its sponsorship deal, the golfer’s face was replaced by an anonymous skier on the company’s home page. His name was scrubbed almost completely from the rest of the Web site. The company’s advertising campaign is about “high performance,” and Mr. Woods “just wasn’t a metaphor for high performance anymore,” a spokesman for Accenture, Fred Hawrysh, said.
By Monday afternoon, Accenture staffers had swept through the company’s New York office and removed any visible Tiger posters. The next day, marketing and communications employees around the world were asked to turn in any remaining Tiger-emblazoned posters and other materials. Accenture marketing employees did not respond to requests for comment about the Tiger purge on Wednesday.
Accenture said it did not tell all of its 177,000 worldwide employees to toss their Tiger T-shirts, caps and tchotchkes away. But when asked about branded merchandise, Mr. Hawrysh said, “Our intention is to ensure we are no longer using it internally or externally.”
But it takes time to erase the golfer’s identity completely. Accenture spent $50 million on advertising in the United States last year, and Mr. Woods appeared in 83 percent of the company’s ads — far more than for any of his other major sponsors — according to TNS Media Intelligence.
The remaining billboards and ads, now outdated, inspire smirks and jokes. In ads at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, Tiger is seen crouching on the green, studying a golf ball’s trajectory and endorsing outsourcing. In Atlanta, he is posed as The Thinker, adorned with a Nike hat, promoting management consulting. At Dulles International outside Washington, he is peering into the distance, dark clouds on the horizon. That ad, forebodingly, says it is “tougher than ever to be a Tiger.”
“The Accenture ads with Tiger finally make sense,” Quentin George, the chief digital officer for Interpublic Mediabrands, an advertising holding company, remarked on Twitter Wednesday.
Mr. Woods provided a big boost to Accenture when he became the company’s worldwide public face in 2003. At the time, the Accenture name was less than three years old, and was still regularly called by its old name, Andersen Consulting. The campaign’s initial theme was “Go on. Be a Tiger.”
Mr. Woods “was a powerful device for our advertising, there’s no doubt about it,” Mr. Hawrysh said.
But as allegations of Mr. Woods’s extramarital affairs spread in recent weeks, the titan of golf was transformed into a distraction. In the early days of the media frenzy, Mr. Woods still greeted visitors to Accenture’s Web site next to the words, “It’s What You Do Next That Counts.” Then on Sunday, the company proclaimed that Mr. Woods was “no longer the right representative” for its advertising and began scrubbing his name and face away.
On Tuesday, that meant telling staff members in an e-mail message to review their sales pitches and slide shows to ensure that they “no longer include Tiger Woods.” In New York, employees were asked to bring posters and other physical assets to the company’s front desk for disposal. The company would not comment on exactly how they would be disposed of.
They may be trying to avoid having the materials recast as collectors’ items. Already, some Accenture magazine ads and memorabilia, including an Accenture Match Play Tiger Woods Caddy Bib, are on eBay (Asking price for the bib: $175.)
Mr. Woods’s private life remains a daily topic on TV talk shows and Web sites, but some of his sponsors, including Nike, have stayed by his side. Nike’s chairman, Phil Knight, told The Sports Business Journal last week that when Mr. Woods’s career “is over, you’ll look back on these indiscretions as a minor blip.”
Accenture, however, is already preparing a new ad campaign. Jon Swallen, a senior vice president for research for TNS Media Intelligence, said it seemed notable that the consulting firm chose not to hide under a no-comment cloak or hire a new celebrity spokesman; instead, it separated from Mr. Woods publicly and swiftly.
“It struck me that they were taking him to the woodshed,” Mr. Swallen said.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Adis Neger and the New Thing About Their War on Freedom of Expression in Ethiopia.
December 14, 2009
I don't write these days. I find all kinds of excuses not to do it. I am productively engaged in contributing my two penny's worth during meetings with a bunch of dedicated Ethiopians in the Washington, D.C. area. I gain an ounce of satisfaction when I get a chance to grab the microphone in the Civility or Geza Tegaru Pal talk rooms and give a passionate semi-sermon about the state of affairs in Ethiopia, or vent out my frustrations about a bunch of losers that show up in Alula Aba Nega room, an abode for TPLF defectors.
I do browse the net, Aiga Forum, EthiopiaFirst, Reporter, Ethiomedia, Abugida, Nazreth.com and a couple more, in that order. This, on top of trying to do a job that pays the bills.
You would think this should fill a gentleman's day and leave very little time for scribbling a few more words to articulate one point of view or another. But, once in a while, I come across articles that completely distort the real situation in Ethiopia or Ethiopian politics and force me to pick up my pen. I am used to the deceptions, legal meanderings and verbal diarrhea by the likes of Al Mariam. I have long desisted from responding to his lies. But, a new crop of press freedom fighters are showing up on the radar, starting with the likes of Abiy Teklemariam Megenta of the now defunct newspaper, Adis Neger.
Let me share a recent brief e-mail encounter I had with this gentleman, following his article on Bertukan Mideksa. Here is a man who closed down his newspaper business; because the circulation was hurting bad and run away to what he thinks are greener pastures, with an excuse of an alleged political harassment.
Dear Abiye,
I enjoyed reading your piece, enjoyed it painfully! What a waste of talent. What a sad commentary on the state of opposition papers in Ethiopia. You did not have the nerve to follow the path of your Heroine. You would rather go hiding, of all places in the UK, to spill your conspiracy theory and your doom and gloom for our emerging democracy.
Good luck in your new life that is fading away very fast.
Washera
Dear Washera,
Thank you for the comments. If people couldn't understand the darker pages of Hegel, nobody can say it is for the lack of freedom.
Very best,
Abiye Teklemariam Megenta
Research Scholar
Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Oxford
Dear Abiye,
Thank you for responding. May be a little bit of research and re-education at Oxford U will do you a little bit of good. May be you will improve your acuity and develop a more refined view of how to advance a burgeoning democracy in Ethiopia. I will follow your writings and progress at Oxford.
If you happen to pass by Washington, D.C., do look me up. I will be glad to buy you dinner and help you out with your thesis.
Good luck
Washera
That is the spirit. At least you admit that even a fastly fading life has a chance to get new perspectives. Sadly, you can't help me because my work is highly empirical. There isn't enough soil here to nourish the roots of brothers.
Respectfully,
Abiye
And here is another one, word for word with grammatical errors and all , from some old timer whose hate fangs mix logic, religion and politics. He was responding to my couple of paragraphs on Tiger Woods.
Tiger Wood 's recent failure was not a surprise to me as such incidents are the problem of American society. This is not the problem of one person. We have seen it on politicians, business people, Hollywood stars and famous athletes. I don't understand why you took it as an extraordinary event. Mind you, I am not supporting in fidelity. I don't care for Golf, but that doesn't mean what Tiger did is good. Five years ago, Bryant did it, I got mad 'cause he was my ideal and my son liked him. But, I forgave him and Bryant is a different person now.
My main point is not actually Tiger. Did u follow the Geneva meeting and what the US government said this week? If you did, where is your pen? Why do u spend time with a golfer where no one cares in Ethiopia? If you stand for the right and freedom of Ethiopians, then the world has spoken that those two things are not respected in Ethiopia. You need to open your mouth whenever you see evil. Otherwise, you are just a trumpet of Meles Zenawi....Actually, u are!
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in
Christ God forgave you Ephesians 4:32
The freedom of all is, the freedom to worship the Son of God
Eprem Madebo
Dear Ephrem,
I think I have heard about you, heard you and even read some stuff that you have written about that loser politician wannabe, Berhanu Nega. Yes, I just googled your name and proved my point.
I feel so sorry for you guys. You are coming to the end of your life and you may die complaining, without doing anything tangible for your country. In fact, I would like to do you a fever. Instead of trying to waste my time on e-mail, I would like to challenge you to a television or radio debate, not about Tiger Woods, but about the merits of Meles Zenawi and Ethiopian politics.
Forget your biblical quotes and come out to defend your allegations.
Can't wait to hear from you.
Washera
ps: While you are at it, remind the big fish that his days are numbered.
What a sad commentary about the modern day Ethiopian opposition camp politicians. A newspaper editor who blames his newspaper's bankruptcy on political persecution and a religious guy who quotes words from the Bible that he himself does not keep.
I invite all of these guys to come out from their dungeons and organize debates and dialogues among opposition groups, rather than confusing their own flock with allegations and innuendos.
Washera
I don't write these days. I find all kinds of excuses not to do it. I am productively engaged in contributing my two penny's worth during meetings with a bunch of dedicated Ethiopians in the Washington, D.C. area. I gain an ounce of satisfaction when I get a chance to grab the microphone in the Civility or Geza Tegaru Pal talk rooms and give a passionate semi-sermon about the state of affairs in Ethiopia, or vent out my frustrations about a bunch of losers that show up in Alula Aba Nega room, an abode for TPLF defectors.
I do browse the net, Aiga Forum, EthiopiaFirst, Reporter, Ethiomedia, Abugida, Nazreth.com and a couple more, in that order. This, on top of trying to do a job that pays the bills.
You would think this should fill a gentleman's day and leave very little time for scribbling a few more words to articulate one point of view or another. But, once in a while, I come across articles that completely distort the real situation in Ethiopia or Ethiopian politics and force me to pick up my pen. I am used to the deceptions, legal meanderings and verbal diarrhea by the likes of Al Mariam. I have long desisted from responding to his lies. But, a new crop of press freedom fighters are showing up on the radar, starting with the likes of Abiy Teklemariam Megenta of the now defunct newspaper, Adis Neger.
Let me share a recent brief e-mail encounter I had with this gentleman, following his article on Bertukan Mideksa. Here is a man who closed down his newspaper business; because the circulation was hurting bad and run away to what he thinks are greener pastures, with an excuse of an alleged political harassment.
Dear Abiye,
I enjoyed reading your piece, enjoyed it painfully! What a waste of talent. What a sad commentary on the state of opposition papers in Ethiopia. You did not have the nerve to follow the path of your Heroine. You would rather go hiding, of all places in the UK, to spill your conspiracy theory and your doom and gloom for our emerging democracy.
Good luck in your new life that is fading away very fast.
Washera
Dear Washera,
Thank you for the comments. If people couldn't understand the darker pages of Hegel, nobody can say it is for the lack of freedom.
Very best,
Abiye Teklemariam Megenta
Research Scholar
Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Oxford
Dear Abiye,
Thank you for responding. May be a little bit of research and re-education at Oxford U will do you a little bit of good. May be you will improve your acuity and develop a more refined view of how to advance a burgeoning democracy in Ethiopia. I will follow your writings and progress at Oxford.
If you happen to pass by Washington, D.C., do look me up. I will be glad to buy you dinner and help you out with your thesis.
Good luck
Washera
That is the spirit. At least you admit that even a fastly fading life has a chance to get new perspectives. Sadly, you can't help me because my work is highly empirical. There isn't enough soil here to nourish the roots of brothers.
Respectfully,
Abiye
And here is another one, word for word with grammatical errors and all , from some old timer whose hate fangs mix logic, religion and politics. He was responding to my couple of paragraphs on Tiger Woods.
Tiger Wood 's recent failure was not a surprise to me as such incidents are the problem of American society. This is not the problem of one person. We have seen it on politicians, business people, Hollywood stars and famous athletes. I don't understand why you took it as an extraordinary event. Mind you, I am not supporting in fidelity. I don't care for Golf, but that doesn't mean what Tiger did is good. Five years ago, Bryant did it, I got mad 'cause he was my ideal and my son liked him. But, I forgave him and Bryant is a different person now.
My main point is not actually Tiger. Did u follow the Geneva meeting and what the US government said this week? If you did, where is your pen? Why do u spend time with a golfer where no one cares in Ethiopia? If you stand for the right and freedom of Ethiopians, then the world has spoken that those two things are not respected in Ethiopia. You need to open your mouth whenever you see evil. Otherwise, you are just a trumpet of Meles Zenawi....Actually, u are!
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in
Christ God forgave you Ephesians 4:32
The freedom of all is, the freedom to worship the Son of God
Eprem Madebo
Dear Ephrem,
I think I have heard about you, heard you and even read some stuff that you have written about that loser politician wannabe, Berhanu Nega. Yes, I just googled your name and proved my point.
I feel so sorry for you guys. You are coming to the end of your life and you may die complaining, without doing anything tangible for your country. In fact, I would like to do you a fever. Instead of trying to waste my time on e-mail, I would like to challenge you to a television or radio debate, not about Tiger Woods, but about the merits of Meles Zenawi and Ethiopian politics.
Forget your biblical quotes and come out to defend your allegations.
Can't wait to hear from you.
Washera
ps: While you are at it, remind the big fish that his days are numbered.
What a sad commentary about the modern day Ethiopian opposition camp politicians. A newspaper editor who blames his newspaper's bankruptcy on political persecution and a religious guy who quotes words from the Bible that he himself does not keep.
I invite all of these guys to come out from their dungeons and organize debates and dialogues among opposition groups, rather than confusing their own flock with allegations and innuendos.
Washera
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