Bloodletting Re-Redux
Here’s my proletarian assessment of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border issue: it ain’t an issue. The last thing Mr. Muffet Issayas Afewerqi wants is for the border issue to be solved because that would mean he’ll have to attend to the issues that have made the State of Eritrea such an abysmal failure. Seriously, what’s Issayas gonna do? Take back Badme? And then what? Occupy it? Hm. So not shock and awe.
On the other hand, Robo Cop Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is known to have said, “If Badme goes, I go.” Here’s the thing about signing up to have your testosterone checked by an international court, Mr. Prime Minister: it is binding. The last thing our fearless leader wants is for
Neither warlord wants peace. We know it. Bob Dole knows it. The American people know it.
So it is interesting that the State Department is all of a sudden wicked spooked about the two most absurdly unbalanced leaders in
Now here’s the interesting part: today, Friday, Ms. Frazer was supposed to meet with our fearless leader in Addis Abeba. Probably while they were meeting, Ato Meles’ fidgety soldiers were spraying a new crowd of stone throwers with live ammunition.
"I don't really know what was happening to me. I was shot by the police twice, one on my stomach and one on my throat," Wubishet Solomon, 16, told the AP news agency.
Awwwwwwkwarrrrd!
You have to wonder what the talking points for the EPRDF is going to be on this one. It can’t quite blame the EU for the protests. The CUD leadership is all in jail. Well, since it happened on a religious holiday, I have $100 on the EPRDF putting out a statement that God made the crowd throw stones. “We have a warrant out for God’s arrest. He created the stones. And he created the hands that threw it. God has to respect rule of law.”
Oh wait. Hold off on charging God with treason and genocide.
"The problem started when this hand grenade was thrown by unidentified people during the religious celebration in Yeka Michael church. Police were trying to cool down the problem where some people were injured," the officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not the official police spokesman.
Ah, the regurgitating of the grenade story. Hm. Not as peppy as “God did it” but cute nonetheless.
So the Ethiopian government has proved yet again that it is incapable of governing people without having to shoot them. So here is a scenario:
Demonstrations were reported in several neighborhoods across
Someone tell Ms. Frazer’s motorcade to look right and left at intersections. It’s a thankless job zipping from one church to another to “restore peace.” And watch out for falling snipers, dead bodies or both.
"The majority of them are shot in the legs and in the chest, but there are a few shot in the head. They are getting treatment so I can't tell you the figure," one doctor said in between treating patients.
Is there any chance of Ms. Frazer visiting some of the hospitals to find out for herself if this is true? Sure, it isn’t anything like visiting the border, but I’m sure there’s less dust.
So in summary: Ethiopians being shot at during the Tmqet holiday. A few miles away Ms. Frazer is in talks with Meles. That’s gotta be uncomfortable. I hope she at least mention that it is internationally unacceptable to fire live ammunition into a crowd. It’s just not done. (Maybe it’ll help if she quotes Tina Turner.)
Now it’s going to be verrry interesting what Ms. Frazer will say in her press conference and her trip report. Now that is worth holding our breath for.
The thing is, this effectively ends all issues about the Ethio-Eritrean border because… the border issue is not an issue.
I ask again: Condi, what is your threshold?
Wubishet Solomon, 16 said he was listening to religious music when the shooting started.
First hand accounts from Things We Should Have Written Down and Addis Ferenjie.
Goodness to Betsy! Does all this mean that Hilary Benn has to re-state his statement that Britain is not not going to cut off aid to the Ethiopian government that it had not said it was going to cut after is said it was going to cut aid? It’s the hardest thing being Ato Meles’s friend.
posted by ET Wonqette at Friday, January 20, 2006
12 Comments:
You know, the derg regime used to make families pay for the price of the bullets that killed their loved one so the family could collect the body from the morgue. Look how far we've come. No more paying for the bullets.
Wonq,
Negative. Give it a few days. Meles will find a way to blame Frazer for the unrest. Since the US stopped 'selling' Humvees to it, the EPRDF has had to roam the country on foot. That makes "peacekeeping" a very messy job. Shame, shame, Jendayi. Now start selling Humvees that you were not selling to the Ethio gov't before more people die.
Check this out http://www.ethiomedia.com/courier/punishment.pdf. Abebe Gelaw dug up yet another example of EPRDF's duplicity. They even have a human rights comission?!
This people know no shame!
I thought I knew all the pejorative remarks used to describe Meles and his henchmen,until Geja came up with “Uninvited Kosso!”
Weineee Geja-aaa! “Like a bad kosso . . staying uninvited . . . and worse than the stuff we leave behind in the latrine . .now removed from our system!”
You ain’t nothing if not original Geja, but lest you decide to dazzle us with yet another mildly graphic description, may I ask where your threshold lies?
Hey wonq, I disagree with your “patrician assessment” (oops, I meant “proletarian” sorry) that the Ethiopian-Eritrean border ain’t an issue.
It is an issue as long as Meles feels that “he goes if Badme goes.” I say, let Badme go, then! Fuck it!
Also, I wouldn't hold my breath about Frazer's trip report and all of that. This is the same woman who's been working diligently for the past couple of months to get Issayas to reconsider his decision to ground UNMEE! To the exclusion of all other issues of real interest to real ETs, she's strictly about getting that mission back in action, reducing tension, demarcation mnamin mnamin . .uff!
How to throw a goverment out is playing by the script..
Ok..First off..Killing no one is a good idea..government or otherwise.
But..what about using thugs to overthrow a government? What about the idea that the opposition should work to get the whole cake and nothing less 'cause it is now or never?
In due fairness, the opposition can not just complain..it is in this "shit" as deep as his excellency is. What is coming out is Ethnic resentment( deliberate) which will lead to another round of blood letting to "correct" past grievances.
Isn't it ironic that it was the patriarch who has been the patriarch for at least another 10 previous timkets presence that provoked this? How is this spontaneous? Same dude did this two years back and I can not find any protests in the news. Why? 'cause as the Americans would say.."it ain't the Patriarch stupid!!"
What this is..is simply another avenue to trap a bloodthirsty army to shoot more people and shout "foul" by the wonkettes of the world. Yeah, why shoot, but sure why provoke too? As I see it, this is going to end only with some ethnic blood letting and that is not going to get anybody anywhere. Believe me..Rwanda did not happen in a day.
Oh dear.
Wonqi's favorite PR machinary, Bereket Simon infamously called the people the governemnt mowed down "hooligans." Turns out the people our govenment killed included passerbys and, according to the NYT, mothers and children. The whole "opposition is using thugs to overthrow the government" argument is silly. This is an uprising-- something the eprdf is either incapable or unwilling to see, and that will be its undoing.
I still get tickled by the argument that we should not "provoke" a government into killing its citizens, although now its cushioned as "sure it shouldn't kill. But let's not provoke it." heh heh.
Yeah, sure. Trying to spin it as provocation and simmering "interhame"ism is politicaly expidient. But it just nails EPRDF further to the wall. No government has survived uprisings-- how can the TPLF not understand this? if that were true Mengistu, with so much arms at his disposal, would have crushed the tplf. he wasn't able to because the force against him was strong will. The simple truth is that meles and his henchmen know that they are going down. they just want to take ethiopia down with them. if there is a resulting ethnic bloodletting, it will be SQUARELY on the eprdf's shoulders. you can't call an entire ethnic group "chavanists" from "his excellency's" bully pulpit day in and and day out and not expect a backlash. when you play with fire, there is a distinct possiblilty that you'll get burnt. Trying to say that the opposition is as much responsible for the "shit" is a weak argument that is very welcome because it is the easiest to defend. :)
I hope my comment doesn't in any way provoke his excellency. I know how trigger happy he can be.
Anonymous, I am with you, brother.
Just for the record, are there other things we can do not to 'provoke' the ethiopian government?
- not provoke it into changing rules of parliament?
- not provoke it into reassigning tax basis income from the addis ababa admin?
- not provoke it into crony capitalism?
- not provoke it into playing the ethnic card whenever it loses an argument?
- not provoke it into randomly leveling genocide charges against his opponents?
- not provoke it into making a mockery out of due process?
- not provoke it into establishing draconian laws limiting a free and vibrant media?
- not provoking it into illegal mass and indiscriminate arrests that require establishing quasi-concentration camps?
Damn, people. Stop provoking Our Excellency! You renegade Imperial Revanchists, you.
Anonymous,
about your groundbreaking discovery that “killing no one is a good idea” . . . .
Boy, if you didn’t set my ass straight with that piece of wisdom! Not that I ever thought that killing someone was a good idea, but all this time I felt perhaps it might be a bit more than just a BAD IDEA. (Like gulping down a bottle of prune-juice while on a long stretch of country-road might be a bad idea.)
Still, I say, you are awash with wisdom, my friend anonymous, if the function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil!
Because, in declaring that killing is not good, you’re saying that respecting the sanctity of human life IS! Here’s what follows from that: If respecting the sanctity of human life is good, violating it is evil! So, my friend anonymous, His Excellency is not guilty of a “bad idea” but of an “evil deed.” I know you can’t say that publicly but . . .
You also had this to say about this not-so-good-an-idea called killing: “ by government or otherwise.”
Hmmmm! Cute! A little clumsy, but cute! The “otherwise” that is. Notwithstanding your difficulty in calling things what they are, HERE, I can perfectly understand why you couldn’t bring yourself to say killings “by the opposition!”
Deep down, you must be an honest
fellow in addition to your now established attribute of being a wise fellow! You HAD to go for “otherwise” because you know that the opposition hasn’t killed anybody!
Anonymous, wodajE, you MUST learn to be straightforward with your remarks! Here’s another one of your mysterious statements couched in complex language: “using thugs to overthrow a government.”
I know, I just know, you meant to write: “overthrow the thugs in government!” Right?
I rattled the horn nest of the sarcastic Wonkette's I see. Bear with me..we are not very different.
Let me try to explain myself.
Ok..I will give you something. This government in no form or shape is being a "government" in the sense of what a proper government should be. I know that as it is obvious.
What I have a beef with is the method being employed to change it. I, IMHO, believe that those "spontaneous" demonstrations provoking( sorry you do not like the word) government thugs are not that "spontaneous" nor are they as civilized as we are lead to believe. Why? Well! as it has been widely circulated, the opposition had reached a cross roads of joining the civil structure of the state or continue to protest akin the "orange" revolution for a complete takeover. It chose the latter. I disagreed because it was obvious to me that it was falling into a trap. It was painting itself into a corner where the only way out of it was going to be a mass uprising which given reading of the African development process was not going to be ending like Ukraine. The leadership should have understood this. Say, they were right and they won or will win in this bloody standoff, how amenable are they going to be to entertain others with a different outlook? After all, the frequent refrain from our "Bush-men" turned Presidents is that they paid with their blood.
We deserve better, and we need to learn and practise to change governments peacefully if this meant another election in five years.
Also, unlike Entin's ridicule, I do hold the gov't responsible, I just do not think it is worth the time to criticize it, it has run its course and it got to go. How it is replaced is what I think is what should be given a thought!
To those of you who think that some deaths should be dished the government's or its supporters way miss the point by a mile. We got to start somewhere my friends, otherwise, it is all another big circle.
The outrage is understandable, what we are not thinking about is the methods and what we use in my view is what is going to decide our future.
I personally would not like to not provoke seeing/expulsion of any Eprdf kosso.
its never ceases to amaze me how much sarcasm brings out an "explanation" of otherwise carefully vague assertions. amen!
Ok, a rant about "Mesqel Square": it' s probably unfair to have a go at Andrew from this blog, but I think a lot of Weichegud's readers visit his blog as well. His blog has degenerated into a platform for pro-government pseudo-intelleqtuals to taunt and twist by posting "leave poor Andrew alone, he's only reporting the truth" comments. Fair enough, Andrew's blog is not a political site and he's writing from the perspective of a foreigner coming to live in Ethiopia. As a journalist he has to be objective and report only issues he has proof of, but as a journalist living IN Addis, where he surely must have Ethiopian friends, he also has the responisbility to write about what is going on, surely he could have been trying harder to find out what exactly happened at Timqet so that he has some proof- what exactly is going on with him? Is it a new deal for his visa that he reports insipidly about a "calm and joyeous" Timqet? I find it insulting to Ethiopia and dehumansing that he doesn't at least offer less flippant and more serious ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of the situation we're in. But that'e probably a very English trait- press them for a serious treatment and they get all defensive and glib- all the concern and hoo-hah just for show, as we saw with Mr. Benn.
Welafen:-
Incredibly astute of you. LOL. Hurried 'explanations' about unspontaneous uprisings can only come after vitamin B shots of ...entin. But you managed to say it in one sentence. :)
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