ETHIOPIAN COMMENTATOR Editorial

But since about eighteen months ago, a new phenomenon, something uncharacteristic of our historical metamorphosis has crept in into our culture. Despite the disfiguring and plundering of our country and resources, betraying of our armed forces in times of war, and auctioning our soil, the wholesale massacre of our university students and our compatriots in Tepe, Awassa and Raya, and despite the wholesale trampling of the Ethiopian constitution and replacing it with pure and simple dictatorship, and even at that with a dictatorship by one of the most illiterate and childishly incompetent dictator in the payroll of Ethiopia's mortal enemies, the whole Ethiopian superstructure seem to have abdicated its responsibility to act in Ethiopia's salvation!

Sad to say but it is not the dictatorship, which is the tragedy. Ethiopia has never in fact had democracy. Although we fought off foreign domination, homegrown dictatorship has been a way of life through out our history. What has also been a part of our history is that our homegrown dictators, despite their disdain for democratic rule, when it comes to faith, love of country and patriotism, they were one and the same with the very people they brutalized!

The horrific and uncharacteristic tragedy is that in the face of overwhelming evidence that Ethiopia has fallen to the jaws of foreign powers, the Ethiopian intelligentsia has abdicated its cardinal responsibility to defend and liberate the Motherland. It has abdicated its historical responsibility not only to stand and defend the timeless honor of Ethiopia, the earned honor of being the shining symbol and substance of resistance and independence, the educated man/woman of Ethiopia has become a spineless coward finding meaning of him/her self only in reciting the glory of the past earned by the sacrifices our forefathers and mothers! The Ethiopian intellectual class, long known for its struggle for liberty, appears to have lost all sense of responsibility and surrendered to the midgets in content and substance. It appears that the learned community of our country has not only yielded to the intellectual thugs currently desecrating and ruining Ethiopia, it has accepted to be led by the scum of the earth! What a shame!

How else can one explains the current silence of the learned when a little man from Asmara is deciding the vital affairs of our country? What else would it take for the intellectual Ethiopian to come to its senses and play its role as the nation's conscience? What ultimate abomination can there be than seeing the thugs at the helm of power in our country making a case against our country not only in the heart of our country but also in the international court of The Hague? What ultimate treason can there be that is more criminal than betraying the armed forces of our country in hot pursuit of Ethiopia's mortal enemy- Shaibia? What ultimate crime can there be than handing out our land without our consent? Not only "Eritrea" mind you but Badime and Irob! What more siren should be sounded than the demolition of our banks and industrial infrastructure for us to wake up? More importantly, what other insult can there be to wake us up than seeing Ethiopia at the hands of those groomed and left behind by Mussolini? How is it that Ethiopia endowed with a huge reservoir of intellectuals fails to find a few who can rise to defend it? Why is it that the Ethiopian intellectual in the Diaspora or at home fails to mount an effective undertaking to hold accountable the current thugs in Ethiopia? If nothing else, how come those in the Diaspora can not mount a legal offensive on behalf of the University student slaughtered dead? And how come it is that the massacre of our citizens in Tepe, Awassa and Raya has not become an intolerable case of criminal act fit for a Court of genocide?

The student movement of our country seems nothing like those of the past. It used to be that the students of Mother Ethiopia were its conscience speaking and fighting for the powerless, and for liberty and democratic rule. It used to be resilient unbreakable and unyielding to tyranny. And it used to be the united front in our country. But if Tilahun, Walelign, Marta, and the many others who fell for their country were to make a stop over, no doubt, they would have been ashamed of what has become of us! Then again, if the teachers are spineless cowards, it may be too much to ask of the students!

Enough is enough! If not for the sake of our proud country, the legacies of the giant heroes of our country, and for the sake of the towering history of our country, which evokes tidal waves of pride in us, we must wake up for our very survival! There can be no question that Mother Ethiopia is in the hands of foreign powers. There can be no single soul worthy to be called an Ethiopian who does not know that Meles and his thugs are not ours; they have been and will always be killers for hire!

Yesterday, it was the TPLF that was the cover for their hidden agenda. They used the Tigrean people to dismember and land lock Ethiopia. But that was not the only crime. Not only Ethiopia lost its timeless land to Mussolini but Mussolini's children were given a first class status in our country relegating the rest of us to powerless bystanders in our own home! TPLF was used to have our country literally run sacked not only of its wealth but also of its soul! When times changed and the Tigrean people realized the whole scheme, the mortal enemies of our country have recruited another disguise.

It is now the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) that is the Trojan Horse. If TPLF was used to deliver Eritrea to Mussolini, ANDM is being used to set the stage for the final destruction of Ethiopia! In effect, Meles is using the very staunchest guardians of Ethiopian unity and independence that is the people of Amhara to undo Ethiopia! And what is sad is that despite the writing on the wall, and despite the ample experience with the use of the TPLF to start the destruction of Ethiopia, the intellectual community of Ethiopia appears to be clueless of the mortal danger wrapped in ANDM wardrobe!

What would it take to wake us up? What would it take to get us to march to Minilik's Place and to the other dens of tyranny and bring those stooges of evil to the court of law? Prayer will not do! If it could, we know that we Ethiopians pray more than anyone prays pray and live by the good Books. And we know that, despite this consecration to God's will, we Ethiopians are bedeviled by the bounties of man's inhumanities. Since times of antiquities to the present, the Ethiopian people have endured tidal waves of horrors, none of which instigated by us. We know that too, throughout our history, the religiously inspired infernos of the Gudits and Gragns, the Turks, Egyptians and the Dervish, were not extinguished by prayers alone! We know that the ideologically inspired flames of hell lit by Italian Fascism and the communism of Mao and Stalin was not vanished by prayers alone. And we must know that the Albanian inspired thugary currently king in our country can not be an exception!

We must learn from those who have learned it so well that liberty demands not only responsibility but also sacrifices. The American people did not attain the liberty that they enjoy and share with those who made it to their shores, by lip service; they guaranteed their liberty with their blood and maintain it with a hyperbolic patriotism and unmatched commitment in their responsibility! We must learn from them! Our motto, just like the great American people, must be "give me Liberty or Death!" And we must buttress this cry for liberty with the beautiful bouquet that is "from many one!" We must understand that it is us who are accountable for our own destiny. If liberty and the pursuit of happiest are our mission, it is only us who can make it happen, and more importantly, we must be absolutely be clear and an unambiguous that liberty calls not only for the highest moral and ethical callings but also for the ultimate and precious sacrifice!

Liberty is not charity that can be donated. It is not like the current famine, which can be addressed with the good will of good people of the world. Democracy is earned, and earned so by a people with the commitment to deserve it, and with the resiliency to maintain it! At this juncture in our history, we are heard calling for liberty. But we can fool no one, and the forces of evil that is the Meleses know that we do no mean it! They know it that we have no longer the Yohanneses, Miniliks, Alulases, Belay Zelekes, and Hayeloms. They know that we have neither the commitment required for the birth of liberty nor the discipline to maintain it! They know that, although we accuse them of ethnic bantustanism in our country, we ourselves are ethnically fragmented! And worst, the Meleses know that the Ethiopian intellectual is shackled to the tyranny of narrow and ethnic enslavement! The Meleses know that an intelligentsia that is not free from its narrow constraints can not build the bridge required to atomize them. And no wonder, Meles, born condemned to market evil and destruction, is at ease be it in a sham debate in the "higher Education" of our country or television.

We must wake up. Already, our country Ethiopia, known for eons of time as the hope and substance of black people the world over, is being editorialized as the "embarrassment of Africa!" Let us not get mad at such commentary! We need to admit that it is true. If we make a sober assessment of the state of our current realities, in fact for the past forty years, it is legitimate for others to call us not only an "embarrassment of Africa" but we must accept for us to be called the "the misery index" and the "welfare Queen" of careered NGOs! No question about it; we have earned! What happened in the latter years of Emperor Haileselassie and what took place since the reign of Menguistu right down to this very hour can be nothing else but a cascade of cataclysmic tragedies! We must admit that we have hit rock bottom; no progress can ever be possible without first recognizing that we have become in deed an "embarrassment for Africa" and that we have earned to be referred to as the "misery index" and a "welfare queen of careered NGOs!"

There is even worst! The embarrassment, misery index and welfare queen are related to our misfortunes with food brought about by administrative malpractice. In the past, be it Haileselassie or Menguistu have been one of us with major shortcomings in administration but with a flaming devotion for the security of our country! What we have today is different and unimaginable: Ethiopia is not only agonizing in the worst kind of an administrative mal-practice but it is, like never in its history, ruled by a group of foreign thugs loyal to a foreign agenda! And if we hated by called an embarrassment, misery index and a welfare queen, unless we come together and act, the worst is yet to come!

We have seen the effect of the TPLF Trojan Horse; we need to kill dead the ANDM Trojan Horse before it is too late! And no one else has the highest responsibility to unmask and destroy the Trojan Horse other than the intellectual community of Ethiopians the world over! It is this reservoir of Ethiopia's conscience that must rise beyond its narrow interests and make the case in Ethiopia's defense! Although as of late there seems some rays of hope radiating from Addis Ababa University determine to stand for the liberty and independence of our country, for the most part, the Ethiopian intellectual and especially so that in the Diaspora has

betrayed and abandoned Mother Ethiopia!