How do you compete with THIS?

Good parody, I am told, requires a steady stream of woozy, earnest and disdainfully unglued ammunition. And who is woozier or more unglued than the EPRDF? It is the gift that keeps on giving.

Prime Minister Meles, God bless his, um, heart (?), stomps around like a bull in a botanical garden, regurgitating terribly cliff-noted diplospeak about democracy, rule of law and justice with the kind of earnestness that unclogs arteries. For those of us who feed off the wackiness of aberrant, AK 47-wielding pseudo intellectuals, it’s been one helluva trip.

Who can keep up? El primo mysterio’s tragically besotted ode to himself was a high low point in Ethiopian politics, only to be upstaged by legions of loyal EPRDF valets (here, here and here) who are sprayed all over the world to help spread the Gospel according to Melesocracy.

But now the EPRDF is beginning to parody itself, and really, who can compete with that?

So exactly one year into doing this blogging thing, I find myself sitting in front of my computer trying to satirize the on-going ‘genocide and treason’ trial of the opposition leadership, journalists and civic movement activists. But no matter what I dared come up with, nothing could beat the real thing as chronicled by Seminnawerq. You have to read it to understand why I am vexed. Goddammit, who can compete with mercurial warlords who are running low on Lithium?

The Sub Saharan Informer also covered the resumption of the trials, where the government unfurled its rock solid evidence to support ‘attempted genocide’ and treason charges.

Stuff entered into evidence? A two- hour videotape labeled, “…it is impossible to be elected by intimidating and menacing people.” Huh?!

Okkkayy. Habeas corpus on crack, but okay. Anything else?

The prosecutor also stated that on the cassette, the defendants alleged that a free election could not be expected, as there is no free government, and this made the people lose trust in the May election.

They lost so much trust that 80-90% of registered voters voted in the elections. So this was Monday. I hope they are serving popcorn and Jujubes at these CUD home movie screenings ‘coz apparently there’s a lot of ‘em.

The court sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday looked at the second and third evidence presentations, also videos lasting well over two hours.
The second videocassette, filmed on December 2nd, 2005, showed the demonstration the CUDP called against the five-point peace plan of the Prime Minster and dealt with the issue of Ethiopia and Eritrea border tension.

“The cassette shows two of the defendants saying there will [be no] peace under a dictator regime, and speeches that incite the people to violence,” [the prosecutor] said.

Whatever.

Okay. It’s official. I am mad. I am mad because on my best day I could not come up with a line like “The cassette shows two of the defendants saying there will no peace under a dictator regime, and speeches that incite the people to violence.”

Makes you wonder what the evidences presented against journalists and civic organization members will entail. (“Your honor, as we shall show in this 5 hour video, these journalists, these peace-haters, these unsightly genocidal maniacs working for NGOs are seen passing by the CUD subvert-ors and sniffing in the air of constitution overturning. Would you like butter on your popcorn?”)

[Sigh] It just ain’t the same. (Read just how freaky inane these trials are here .)

So you get I am morbidly fascinated by these trials. Damn straight. They are the most fantastic courtroom proceedings I’ve read about since that time a macho classmate demanded the uncooperative judge at a moot court recuse herself because he felt inexorably attracted to her, thereby impeding his ability to adequately defend his case.

It is all sooo wonderfully creepy.

So then, then comes news of a petition signed by members of the Ethiopian parliament decrying how Voice of America and Deutsche Welle are hell bent on, goodness gracious me…

disseminating reports aimed at smearing the image of Ethiopia and marring the ongoing democratization process.

[emphasis mine]

Hm. Might have sounded credible if the Ethiopian government had not, what’s it called, charged VOA journalists with genocide! International pressure, including a strapping condemnation from the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, forced the Ethiopian government to drop the charges.

So instead of dropping the whole thing and hoping people won’t remember that the Ethiopian government had once upon a time contended American journalists hired by the US government were complicit in genocide, the brainiacs in the EPRDF insist on picking the wound.

The Ethiopian Embassy will hand over the petition to the US Congress, and (God forbid) should an ambitious congressional staffer bother to crack his fingers and Google the EPRDF’s hazy record on “freedom of the press”… wonder what that would reveal? Hopefully not Reporters without Borders’ assessment. Nor the Committee to Protect Journalists’ musings. Hmm.

For God’s sake, let… it… go, already!

Unlesssssss… does “ongoing democratizing process” includes expelling AP journalists for "tarnishing the image of the nation" and jailing local ones under draconian press laws?

Has the fact that the Ethiopian government, ranked fourth in countries jailing journalists, petitioning for the censure of American and German journalists struck anyone in the EPRDF as, mmm, ironic, for example?

What exactly was the purpose of the petition? It was the EPRDF’s cripplingly lame and awkward attempt at appearing ‘statesmanlike.’ Cute. But if anyone had written a story about the Ethiopian government collecting signatures from parliamentarians to complain about radio broadcasts… Oh wait. Someone has.

Please God, don’t wake me up.

Is this the real life-
Is this just fantasy-
Caught in a landslide-
No escape from reality-

And just when we all thought the EPRDF could not possibly hand us another gift, it slaps a pretty bow on the biggest one yet.

Seminnawerq reported all ‘blogspot.com’ pages have been blocked in Ethiopia.

Scaramouche, scaramouche will you do the fan-dan-go!

How big was that gift? Big enough to compel His Punditness Ethiopundit to come back early from a blogging vacation. Sign of Desperation tears the EPRDF a new one.

Ego Portal joins the fray. Mesqel Square confirms the story. Ethiopian Politics opines. Aqumada provides details on how to subvert the blockage.

So how do we say ‘thank you’ to a government that has everything?

Let’s see. What makes bloggers, a tempremental bunch, from all over the world go into collective convulsions? The stench of a government … with close ties to China, a so called “ally in the war against terrorism’… pawing at the Fifth Estate that is the Blogosphere. And whose duty is it to tell all these bloggers what’s going on?

Thunderbolt and lightning-very very frightening-

Yours.

Apparently, the Ethiopian government learnt nothing from the aftermath of deporting /expelling Addis Ferenjie. Yeaaaah. This latest bone-headedness move was more to control information getting out than coming in, which means that the Ethiopian “Byte (Me)” Revolution is on full force. Ethiopian bloggers in Ethiopia have touched a nerve, and leave it up to the Ethiopian government to completely miss the point of blogging.

The self destruction has shifted to second gear.