💭 Florida (FL) – ADI rolf = ADI Daero (E) – ADOLF + ELF (Eritrean Liberation Front ‘Jebha’)
Eritrean war planes bombed ADI Dearo. ELF is a Jihadist group created by Arabs. USA + Canada + Europe + Israel + Russia + Ukraine + China supported UAE + Iran + Turkey drones massacring Orthodox Christians in Tigray, Ethiopia.
The DAY after the ADI Daero (The region of Ethiopia where The Ark of The Covenant is preserved) Massacre – this tragedy in Florida – ADI rolf = ADI Daero
💭 Catastrophic Destruction Leaving Hundreds Dead In Florida Hurricane Aftermath. Hurricane Ian ravaged the area and collapsed part of the Sanibel Causeway
💭 The Conspiracy of Silence: The world and its media outlets are of course silent on this story: Ethiopia: Christians Carpet Bombed by The Nobel Peace Laureate & His Foreign Mercenaries – over 50 children massacred.
💭 Residents in the Northern Ethiopian city of Adi Daero, in Tigray scream in agony while searching for their families in the ash and trying to rescue people trapped under a rubble. A mother is heard shouting loudly “my son, my son, I lost him…”
The unEthiopian fascist Oromo regime’s and Eritrean air forces bombarded many towns in Tigray including Shire, Adi Daero and Mekelle.
Adi Daero Massacre, in Tigray Ethiopia, 27 September 2022
This barbaric act was carried out on 27 September 2022 – on the very day Christians celebrated the annual Christian festival of the Meskel (which means “CROSS” in Ethiopic), marking the finding of the “True Cross” on which Jesus Christ was crucified. The festival is one of the major religious celebrations of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia.
“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.”
☆ Increasingly, Abiy’s vitriol toward the TPLF appears to be a projection or his own mindset, and not rooted in reality.
☆ Abby treats anyone who does not agree completely with him as an enemy. Here, he repeats the experience of Erdogan, Turkey’s president.
☆ Rather than engage professionally, the Abby regime prefers to rely on trolls. Such tactics always backfire.
☆ That Abiy appears to have blessed a foreign invasion of Ethiopia is treasonous on its face.
☆ Abby embraces the attitude, l’état, c’est moi, but he is wrong. Ethiopia is a great nation. It is not a single man. Abby’s campaign in Tigray has been a disaster. It should mark the end of Abby’s rule, but that does not mean an end to Ethiopia – unless Ethiopians continue to follow Abiy on his suicide mission.
It has now been almost three years since the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Abiy Ahmed as the recipient of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation.” Abiy received international plaudits. CNN called him a “modern day African leader.” Other African leaders congratulatedhim on twitter.
Terrence Lyons, a professor of conflict resolution at the Carter School, praised other aspects of Ethiopia’s tremendous progress under Abiy. He released political prisoners and opened political space. “Political prisoners were released, the repressive civil society law scrapped, and independent media rebounded. Exiled movements that had been labeled as terrorists – such as Ginbot 7, the Oromo Liberation Front, and the Ogaden National Liberation Front – agreed to end their armed struggles and returned to Ethiopia and registered as political parties,” Lyons explained. He continued to report that Abiy had strengthened civil society and laid the groundwork for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to explore the abuses of previous regimes. As important, Ethiopia began to meet its economic potential as an African giant.
From Promise to Pariah
Today, that promise is gone. The Nobel Committee may not be able to revoke its prize, but it chastised Abiy in a way that exceeded admonishments of other recipients whose commitmentto peace eventually waned.
Abiy and his partisans believe such criticism is unfair. He and his supporters grow frustrated that the international community largely discounts their narrative surrounding the start of the Tigray War and its conduct. Too often, this frustration manifests itself in either personal attacks or conspiracy theories, both of which exacerbate Abiy’s relationship with the broader international community. It may be satisfying to blame others, but it is immature. If Abiy wants to know how he lost the world, he need only consider his own actions.
Alas, he is unwilling to do this. Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to sit in on a conversation with an Ethiopian Cabinet-level official and ask him what lessons the Abiy government had learned from the past two years of civil war. After all, there are two major parties to the conflict, and to suggest the fault rests solely with Abiy’s enemies is not realistic. Even if Abiy believes truth is fully on his side, responsible political and military leadership should constantly assess and adjust tactics. Abiy’s does not, for the simple reason they do not acknowledge mistakes.
This could suggest many dynamics, none of which is good for Ethiopia. First, Abiy may truly be unable to recognize the error of his ways. He may have a messiah complex and believe that he can do no wrong. Second, Abiy may so terrorize those around him that they either self-censor or fear contradicting their boss. In a sense, this was the dynamic at play when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist and Muslim Brotherhood activist Jamal Khashoggi. That many long-time visitors to Ethiopia report public fear approaching what Ethiopia experienced under the Derg should raise alarms.
Volume over Substance
Also contributing to the collapse of Abiy’s reputation has been the Ethiopian government’s over-the-top response to criticism and its ineffective diplomacy. Too often, Abiy and his regime substitute volume for substantive engagement. The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C. is a non-entity. Its diplomats are less active than those of countries a fraction of Ethiopia’s size.
Rather than engage professionally, the Abiy regime prefers to rely on trolls. Such tactics always backfire. They did not work for Somalia’s Mohamed Farmajo or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Rather, online polemics became self-defeating as the leaders themselves began to confuse paid and imaginary courtiers with legitimate opinions. Trolls seldom change the opinion of policymakers for the simple reason that the latter do not spend their time online, let alone on a platform prone to manipulation and dominated by anonymous persons.
For the Ethiopian government to use trolls to punish opinions it dislikes also backfires because it antagonizes rather than changes minds. If Abiy’s government believed in the justice of its cause, it should be able to use facts to cajole and convince rather than simply lob insults. Perhaps Abiy believed he could use trolls to attack diplomats, foreign analysts, and academics, and then conduct business as usual through official channels. This fools no one. When government-paid trolls throw fireballs, it reflects on all serving Ethiopian diplomats and ministers. It disqualifies them in the court of normal relations.
Perhaps one of the reasons for Abiy’s slash-and-burn diplomatic strategy is a mindset that exaggerates Ethiopia’s importance to non-Ethiopians. At its core, Abiy treats anyone who does not agree completely with him as an enemy. Here, he repeats the experience of Erdogan, Turkey’s president. The West once saw Erdogan as a moderate and a bridge-builder. But years of dismissing even mild criticism as evidence of affiliation with terrorist groups backfired. Rather than being silenced, Abiy’s critics, diplomats, and even his earlier cheerleaders began to question his grip on reality. He antagonized so many figures at home and abroad that today he can rely only on his own family.
It is also incorrect to adopt the “with us or against us” mindset for domestic politics. When Abiy supporters suggest criticism of his conduct of the Tigray war means affinity for the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), he appears paranoid if not a loon. That his supporters suggest criticism of Abiy and partiality toward the Tigryans is racist does Abiy no favors. It makes as much sense as suggesting that support for Ukraine over Russia is motivated by anti-white sentiment.
Confusing Propaganda with Reality
Abiy may be frustrated that the world in general and Washington, in particular, do not share his conclusions about the TPLF as a terrorist group. Arguments that the TPLF is to Addis Ababa what al Qaeda is to Washington are ridiculous. The TPLF was the dominant party in Ethiopia’s governing coalition from 1991 to 2018. While Abiy is correct that the TPLF committed human rights abuses during its rule – one in which he participated both as director-general of the Information Network Security Agency and later as a minister – simply reclassifying political rivals as a terrorist group and then growing angry when the international community does not follow suit is self-defeating. Even if the TPLF was a terror group, there is no justification for the collective punishment and mass starvation that Abiy has directed. Increasingly, Abiy’s vitriol toward the TPLF appears to be a projection or his own mindset, and not rooted in reality.
Abiy’s arguments fail to resonate in other ways. His supporters say the TPLF fired the first shots on Nov. 3, 2020, when Tigrayan forces attacked the Northern Command headquarters. But the speed and scale of the Ethiopian reaction suggest prior planning on Abiy’s part. This in turn leads foreign analysts to interpret Tigrayan action as pre-emption rather than aggression.
Allies also matter. To make peace with Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki is one thing; to collaborate actively with him is another. That Abiy appears to have blessed a foreign invasion of Ethiopia is treasonous on its face. Abiy’s alliance with former Somalian President Mohamed Farmajo, a man who collaborated with Al-Shabaab and sought to extend his own term illegally, is almost as stigmatizing. Friends matter. Simply put, Abiy’s hatred led him to the disqualifying embrace of rogues. He may blame the outside world, but he took that journey of his own accord.
The Problem is Abiy, not Ethiopia
Abiy embraces the attitude, l’état, c’est moi, but he is wrong. Ethiopia is a great nation. It is not a single man. Abiy’s campaign in Tigray has been a disaster. It should mark the end of Abiy’s rule, but that does not mean an end to Ethiopia – unless Ethiopians continue to follow Abiy on his suicide mission. Here, an Iraq analogy is useful. In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein slaughtered the Iraqi Kurds in the Anfal genocide. Rather than divorce Iraq completely, Iraqi Kurds still mark Iraqi Army Day each year on Jan. 6. To date, they realize Saddam was the problem, but see the Iraqi Army as an institution to respect.
A year ago, Abiy might have used external diplomacy to shield himself from accountability for his own actions. Today it is too late. He has condemned himself and Ethiopia to pariah status, and has become an impediment to both peace and to Ethiopia’s efforts to secure an influence commensurate with its size, history, and economic potential.
Abiy may persevere as Robert Mugabe did, but Ethiopia will pay the price, just as Zimbabwe did. The simple reality is the United States, European Union, and many African countries no longer see Abiy as redeemable. For peace and prosperity in Ethiopia, the only course of action is Abiy’s exit. If, when, and how that happens will be a question for Ethiopians only. The lone certainty is that Abiy’s legacy will be shaped less by his Nobel Prize and more by the revelations of a future Truth and Reconciliation Committee.
💭 Residents in the Northern Ethiopian city of Adi Daero, in Tigray scream in agony while searching for their families in the ash and trying to rescue people trapped under a rubble. A mother is heard shouting loudly “my son, my son, I lost him…”
Yesterday, ‘unEthiopian’ fascist Oromo regime’s and Eritrean air forces bombarded many towns in Tigray including Shire, Adi Daero and Mekelle.
This barbaric act was carried out yesterday, 27 September 2022 – on the very day Christians celebrated the annual Christian festival of the Meskel (which means “CROSS” in Ethiopic), marking the finding of the “True Cross” on which Jesus Christ was crucified. The festival is one of the major religious celebrations of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia.
👹 Evil Jihadist Abiy Ahmed Ali Blessed A Foreign Invasion of Ethiopia is Treasonous on its Face
It’s tragic that the ‘PEACE PACT’ – actually a WAR PACT — that earned evil Galla-Oromo Abiy Ahmed Ali the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize allowed him to borrow Eritrean soldiers, U the Eritrean army UAE + Turkey + Iran drones, to conduct this genocidal war against Christian Tigray, Ethiopia„
👹 Kosovo 2.0 in the making. This is the evil did of Ahmed’s PP Oromos, Isaias’s EPLF, Debre Tsions’ TPLF and Amhara PP/ Fano.
💭 This satellite image shows the mobilization of military forces in the town of Shiraro
Satellite images show the mobilisation this month of military forces in towns on either side of Ethiopia’s northern border with Eritrea, a private U.S. company said on Wednesday.
Reuters could not independently verify the contents of the images showing reported military activity in the aftermath of the breakdown on Aug. 24 of a five-month ceasefire in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
Tigray forces have battled Ethiopia’s federal army and its allies, including Eritrean troops and fighters from neighbouring Ethiopian regions, over the course of a nearly two-year war.
Images collected on Sept. 26 show military forces, vehicles and artillery positions in the town of Shiraro, near Tigray’s northern border with Eritrea, according to Maxar Technologies Inc, which collects and publishes satellite imagery of the region.
The images from Eritrea were taken on Sept. 19 and show the deployment of heavy weaponry in the town of Serha, near the Tigray border, Maxar said.
Most communications to Tigray have been down for more than a year.
Tigray forces said on Sept. 13 that Eritrean troops, fighting alongside Ethiopian soldiers, had at one point taken control of Shiraro since fighting had resumed but suggested they had since been beaten back.
They have also accused Eritrea of shelling Tigrayan towns from its territory in recent weeks.
The Ethiopian and Eritrean authorities have not responded to requests for comment about the recent fighting.
Eritrean troops supported the Ethiopean military in earlier phases of the war. The Eritrean government has not confirmed its participation in fighting since the ceasefire broke down, but said earlier this month that some reservists had been called up for military service.
Ethiopian government spokesperson Legesse Tulu, military spokesperson Colonel Getnet Adane and the prime minister’s spokesperson Billene Seyoum did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the images on Wednesday.
Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel and Getachew Reda, a spokesperson for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that leads Tigray’s regional government, also did not immediately comment.
💭 My Note: No coincidence that this story came out during the annual Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Celebrations of Meskel (The Cross) / Demera. Of course, the attention seeker evil Oromo fascist Abiy Ahmed Ali gave him his blessing.
„Abiy spoke about how Ethiopia could be useful to its allies. For one thing, he suggested, Ethiopia could “fight their wars” for them. He had noticed that Westerners no longer seemed eager to send their sons into combat, but Ethiopians were good fighters, he said, and did not have the same qualms.
“But Abiy has other funders who are less concerned with human-rights violations. On a helicopter trip to Awash National Park, a swampy wilderness east of Addis, he travelled with a group of Emiratis, whom he introduced vaguely as “friends.”
“Ethiopia’s relationship with the United States was a preoccupation for Abiy. During a helicopter trip through the countryside, he turned away from the view and declared how much he “loved” the U.S. “Really,” he said. “America is a beautiful country. And the Americans are very good people. And I know the country, maybe better than some Americans!”
After Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, ended a decades-long border conflict, he was heralded as a unifier. Now critics accuse him of tearing the country apart.
Abiy’s interventions can seem counterproductive, even to his allies. As one of his advisers told me, “Sometimes we are angry at him for planting flowers when we have so many other things wrong in the country. But he says, ‘This is for the future generations.’ His attitude is ‘Why only concentrate on the problems? We need to show that we are more than the conflict.’ ”
“Abiy likes to present himself as this charismatic leader who puts himself above it all,” Stefan Dercon, who teaches economics at Oxford and who has advised Ethiopian governments for decades, said. “But his vision is vague, as leaders’ visions often are.” Dercon described a kind of faith-based economics: “He has this belief in free enterprise and prosperity through hard work. It’s the prosperity gospel—he’s directly coming out of that. I think he just likes the shiny projects.”
Many of the impressive results that Abiy touts—huge wheat farms, irrigation programs, industrial facilities—are the continuation of programs started under the T.P.L.F.-led government, which focussed its development efforts on the countryside. Abiy’s own initiatives tend to cluster in cities, where they can benefit young constituents—and, he hopes, impress foreign visitors. Without enough access to domestic investment capital, he needs money from outside.
There is much in Ethiopia to attract investors. The country has an educated population, decent infrastructure, and enormous supplies of minerals, water, and arable land. But development, according to a recent I.M.F. report, has faced a long list of impediments: covid-19, the war in Ukraine, a ferocious drought worsened by climate change. Most significantly, the conflict in Tigray has frozen international aid. As a result of the fighting and the evidence of war crimes, the Biden Administration has cut off Ethiopia’s access to credits and loans.
But Abiy has other funders who are less concerned with human-rights violations. On a helicopter trip to Awash National Park, a swampy wilderness east of Addis, he travelled with a group of Emiratis, whom he introduced vaguely as “friends.” Abiy had built a lakeside tourist resort in the park. The water was disconcertingly infested with crocodiles, but the landscape was ruggedly beautiful, and the developers had erected kid-friendly animal statues around the grounds. The resort was one of half a dozen that Abiy was having constructed in Ethiopia; the idea was to seek international partners that would run them as concessions, and to use them as hubs to develop the countryside.
Over dinner, at a long table by a swimming pool, we listened as Abiy spoke about how Ethiopia could be useful to its allies. For one thing, he suggested, Ethiopia could “fight their wars” for them. He had noticed that Westerners no longer seemed eager to send their sons into combat, but Ethiopians were good fighters, he said, and did not have the same qualms.
Abiy occasionally fretted over how much money he was borrowing. “If you are a really good person,” he told me, “pray for me for just one thing—that I can manage our debt.” He told me that he would like to work more with Western companies, but that the Chinese had been useful. “The Americans should step up their role here,” he said. “But, if they don’t come, there are others, you know, who are interested.”
Ethiopia’s relationship with the United States was a preoccupation for Abiy. During a helicopter trip through the countryside, he turned away from the view and declared how much he “loved” the U.S. “Really,” he said. “America is a beautiful country. And the Americans are very good people. And I know the country, maybe better than some Americans! I’ve driven from Washington all the way to California.” In the mid-two-thousands, Ethiopia became a regional ally of the U.S., sending troops to invade Somalia to fight Al Shabaab, an insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda. After Abiy’s time in the military, he worked for the government in cybersecurity and intelligence and spent some time in U.S. training programs. “In the Iraq War, I fought with them,” he said. “I was the one who would send intelligence from this part of the world to the N.S.A., on Sudan and Yemen and Somalia. The N.S.A. knows me. I would fight and die for America.”
Abiy gave a disgusted wave of his hand. “Then these guys came.” He was referring to the Biden Administration. “They don’t know who their true friends are,” he said. Since the war began, “they made the mistake of talking publicly and down to me. Samantha Power announced she was coming to Ethiopia and was going to meet me. Without even consulting me! That’s not the way it’s done. So I didn’t see her, and she left very upset. Now there is a different approach—they know they must behave respectfully.” (U.S. officials have said that Abiy’s office ignored their attempts to schedule a meeting.)
Even though Abiy was desperate for American investment, he couldn’t bring himself to be too reverent about its politicians. He told me that he had “taken a big intake of breath” when he heard that Joe Biden had fallen off his bicycle. “I wish he acted his age,” he said. He went on, “Obama was good at making inspiring speeches, but he made more promises than he could fulfill.” Abiy grimaced when I asked about Donald Trump. “He did a lot of damage to America’s image. Let’s not even talk about him in the same way as the others.” Without discernible irony, Abiy said that he was concerned by the tumultuous condition of the United States. “America’s politics have been ruined by entertainment culture and media, which is why its politicians are always trying to behave as if they are in a drama,” he said. “The world needs America, but it needs it to be stable, and for its system to reflect institutional continuity.”
Jeff Feltman, who served as the U.S. special envoy to the Horn of Africa until this spring, told me that he was familiar with Abiy’s complaints, and with his habit of discounting the evidence of war crimes. “I had the same tour as you,” he said. “Abiy was saying what a man of vision he was, that the U.S. simply did not understand him, that he was trying to move Ethiopia into the future, and that Tigray was just a distraction. The charm offensive didn’t work.” A current senior U.S. official put it succinctly: “We’d like to support the P.M.’s economic domestic program, but we can’t until there are no more human-rights atrocities.”
Abiy’s war with the Tigrayans had a brutal second act. In June 2021, days after the election in which he secured his second term, the T.P.L.F. launched a lightning counter-offensive, retaking its capital, Mekelle, and parading thousands of captured Ethiopian soldiers through the streets. Abiy was humiliated. Almost overnight, his army had been routed and Tigray had been lost. There was even talk among some Tigrayans of seceding from Ethiopia.
The conflict settled into a dismal stalemate. Abiy’s government sought to isolate Tigray, cutting off its electricity, communications, air links, and food supplies. The United Nations warned of widespread starvation, and called for humanitarian relief to feed four million of Tigray’s roughly six million people.
Abiy’s aides insisted that he was still seeking unity. “The P.M. believes our strength lies in our diversity,” one told me. But, as the conflict grew more intense, Abiy began referring to T.P.L.F. members as “the cancer of Ethiopia,” and as “devils” and “weeds.” Even though he made a show of distinguishing between the T.P.L.F. and ordinary Tigrayans—the “weeds” and the “wheat”—the country’s ethnic factions understood that the constraints on conflict were gone. Both the Amhara and the Tigrayans continued to fight over territory. Oromo nationalist groups were increasingly restive.
This summer, militias in the countryside carried out a spate of massacres. In the first, in mid-June, hundreds of ethnic Amhara civilians were killed in Oromia; among the victims were women and children who were shot or burned alive. When I raised the slaughter with Abiy, he brushed aside the news. He said that there were always people “up to mischief” in the countryside, and that he knew how to deal with them.
When a second massacre took place, a few weeks later, the brutality became harder to ignore. Abiy blamed the violence on a militia called the Oromo Liberation Army, which was allied with the T.P.L.F. But the O.L.A. denied involvement, saying that the killings had been carried out by government-allied militias, while soldiers from the Ethiopian Army stood by. Ascertaining the truth was impossible, because the government had restricted access to the areas. (There were few international media outlets in Ethiopia; correspondents from The Economist and the Times, among others, had been expelled.)
After the second massacre, Abiy appeared in parliament, where legislators questioned him. “When is your government going to stop this?” one demanded. “Why is it difficult for you to hold those responsible accountable?”
Abiy was evasive. “Terrorists are operating all over the world,” he said, reeling off statistics of recent killings in the United States. “Without stopping their children dying in their cities, they are talking about our agenda.” He said that he was hearing a lot of “prescriptive” solutions from people, and added loftily, “I should point out that the government has more information than the general public.”
Abiy’s government had placed Tigrayans in internment camps—many of them makeshift facilities in schools and municipal buildings. She avoided armed security men in the streets, for fear that she’d be asked for I.D. and taken away.
Even non-Tigrayan residents had reason to be concerned about surveillance. Under the T.P.L.F.-led government, Abiy had helped found what is now called the Information Network Security Administration, which oversaw cybersecurity in a country where the state tightly restricted life online. Feltman, the former U.S. special envoy, told me, “Everyone knows that in Ethiopia the walls have ears.”
The director explained that the center was involved in everything from language and mining to national security. It was also working on a voice-identification system—“important for intelligence, for identifying terrorists trying to conceal their identities.” A command center had been established at the federal police headquarters, led by Abiy’s former chief of intelligence, where monitors showed live feeds from cameras at intersections around the city. “Since we built it, traffic crimes have gone down,” the director said. Of course, it was also useful for intelligence and crowd control: “If people are gathering, we see it.” Ethiopia’s main partner in the project was the U.A.E., which maintains one of the world’s most aggressive systems of citizen surveillance.
In April, the U.S. State Department released a dire statement on the ongoing siege in Tigray: “We note with the utmost alarm that thousands of Ethiopians of Tigrayan ethnicity reportedly continue to be detained arbitrarily in life-threatening conditions.” Abiy insisted that the Americans had it all wrong. “I am a real peacemaker,” he said. “I love peace. But the outsiders, they don’t understand what happened to us.” Throughout Ethiopia, Abiy’s allies contended that the T.P.L.F.—“the junta”—had hoodwinked the West into believing that Tigrayans were the real victims of the conflict. They argued that the T.P.L.F. had victimized the Ethiopian people for twenty-seven years, and was plotting to retake control of the country.
For Abiy, Hailemariam was perhaps his most significant link to the previous government. Yet Abiy disparaged him, over lunch at the palace: “He never expected to be P.M. He was picked because he was from a minority, and both the Tigrayans and the Amhara wanted someone without a constituency they could control.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 27, 2022
💭 My Note: We Christians are in sadness these days. And we should be deeply saddened. While we were rejoicing in the victory of distance running stars like Letesenbet Gidey, we should be very sad as well that the suffering mothers and fathers of Letesenbet Gidey and Co. are not able to celebrate the Meskel festival due to the weekly drone fire coming down on them. There is time for everything!
❖ But:
✞✞✞ [Romans 8:18]✞✞✞
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
The shadow of war hung over Ethiopia’s Meskel festival in Addis Ababa on Tuesday, with high security, low turnout and Orthodox Christian priests calling for peace and forgiveness in their sermons.
The event – usually a joyous affair where huge crowds gather around bonfires – marks the moment when the 4th century Roman Empress St Helena found Christ’s cross in Jerusalem.
As they do year after year, hundreds of priests, musicians and singers clad in white robes came together on the vast expanse of the capital’s Meskel Square.
But the mood was much darker and the clergy kept turning to the conflict raging again in the northern region of Tigray.
“Truly speaking, this year, we Ethiopians are not celebrating the festival in full happiness,” said Archbishop Abuna Markos, resplendent in a white robe with gold trim and embroidered silver crosses and blue floral designs.
“Just like the mothers were crying under the cross, our mothers in the North are also crying. They are suffering. This suffering is common to all of us. It’s our own,” he said, holding a gold cross encrusted with red gems.
The war in Tigray, which broke out in November 2020 and has spilt over into other regions, has killed thousands of people, displaced many more and left an estimated 13 million people in desperate need of food aid.
The conflict has pitted Ethiopia’s federal army, its regional allies and the Eritrean military against forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that controls Tigray’s regional government.
The central government and its allies accuse the TPLF, which long dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition, of seeking to reassert its dominance, while the TPLF accuses the central government of abusing its powers and oppressing Tigray.
Both dismiss each other’s accusations. After months of relative quiet, fighting flared again in August.
“On this day, my prayer for the new year is that God says ‘enough’, because he is the owner of peace and he declared peace through his cross by denouncing hatred,” said deacon Haileyesus Meleku, holding an ornate silver staff.
☆ Today and tomorrow Ethiopian Christians celebrate ‘Meskel’. Today’s Meskel celebration includes the burning of a large bonfire, or Demera. Iranians protest in front of their London embassy Iranian & Ethiopian embassies are neighbors. Wow!
☆ President of the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia, Sahle Work Zewde was in London for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
This lady is one of the most cruel beings Ethiopa ever has seen. In the past four years, under her presidentship, over a million innocent Ethiopian Christians have been massacred, the whole region of Tigray besieged and starved, over 200.000 women and girls even monks were brutally raped. And this by the evil Oromo regime of Abiy Ahmed Ali she works for. Yet this lady has never spoken about this sad and serious matter. No condolences, no remorse, no regrets, no in fact this callous ‘woman’ made a mockery of her fellow girls and women by continuing to work for the criminal regime. We in Ethiopia are surprised that she was allowed to travel to Britain – then she and her genocider boss Abiy Ahmed Ali must face either the International Court of Justice, or after death they will have to face the divine court of justice over the genocide of Northern Ethiopian Christians.
💭 A “Feminist” Government: And It’s Repulsive Rape Cover-ups.
In 2018, Ethiopia appointed it’s first & Africa’s only serving female head of state. It also got the first female Supreme Court president. A female politician was now a chairperson of National Election Board. It even created a brand new ministry, named it Ministry of Peace & handed the leadership over to a woman. Out of 20 cabinet members, 10 of them were women. A notably male dominated post, the Defense Ministry, was also to be lead by a woman for the first time.
Ethiopians rejoiced, the rest of the world applauded and media covered this change with flying compliments. Representation mattered. This was seen as something that can level the gender field. Having a 50% women led cabinet was impressive by any standard since the global average for female government ministers is 18.3 percent . More than a dozen countries have no women cabinet members at all.
President Sahle-Work Zewde said in her first parliamentarian address vowed to be a voice for women — famouslytelling MPs that if they thought she was talking too much about women, that she had only just begun.Not only was this move symbolic, many believed it would open the door for gender parity. Who wouldn’t want that?
Mrs. Ashenafi, the Supreme Court President, was the founder and executive director of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association. A woman in a high court could do wonders. So this too was welcomed as a much needed step to move Ethiopian women’s agenda forward.
About two years into this gender reform, the country found itself in a political turmoil. The Prime Minister, a 44 year old Nobel Peace Prize recipient who was behind these gender reforms, announced a start of what would be a deadly conflict. This was followed by a complete black out of an entire state, Tigray, where this armed conflict was happening. The state housed over 6 million people. Women, children, elderly were trapped in a a highly secretive war operation. It is a well known fact that women pay dearly during armed conflicts especially a conflict of this kind were absolutely no media was allowed in.
Pressure was mounting on the The Prime Minister to ease up the black out. As the state opened up ever so slightly, horrific stories of war crimes started surfacing. Rape being on the top of the list.
The stories were gruesome to say the list. The Prime Minister defended his “operation” that happened in total darkness. “No women & children” he said “were harmed during this operation”. The families of the people of the state that were attacked begged to differ.
Most accounts detailed rape cases of Ethiopian woman by Ethiopian & a foreign army.Ethiopian Soldiers expressed their concern to Reuters. A soldier who refused to be identified said women were being raped, after the city fell to federal forces. The Prime Minister had allied with the neighboring country to defeat his political rivals. In doing so, he seemed to have no say in controlling the erratic behavior of the soldiers.
On an audio account, a witness told a reporter how “At the beginning of the war, soldiers would have their way with any women they wanted but after they were told to be careful of AIDS, they started raping little girls whom they believed to be safe from this disease”.
Desperate for answers, concerned citizens turned to the gender reformed government & its women “Leaders”. Surely they are here to speak for their sisters, mothers and children. They said so. The world thought so.
Days, weeks, and months passed. The ladies in high places chose the the age old technic of avoiding responsibilities related to rape & women grievance — Silence. There was no direct or indirect addressing of such horrific victims account. There was no urging of an immediate investigation into the matter. There was no expression of absolute outrage. There was no message to families of alleged victims to stay calm or that they are with them.
The last time the Press secretary mentioned rape was back in 2018 – right after she was appointed. The post was of a generic lip-service type she had come to be known for.
Four months into this war, The President decided to travel to the war torn region. Part of her photo-op visit was to include a stop at a hospital were rape victims were also being treated. At the entrance, the President was politely asked by doctors and other stuff members to not go in with military men who accompanied her. The victims were traumatized & the sight of men in uniforms was additional trauma. The president took a personal offense to being morally lectured. So she refused. She demanded that the military men be allowed in with her. The hospital stuff reported that on catching sight of the soldiers, the victims began screaming, crying and shaking with fear. The president had to remove herself from the spot immediately since no amount of comforting or assurance could calm the victims down. She left — leaving the victims a little worse than she found them.
Her office then released statements & pictures. Showing her interacting attentively & kindly with locals. This would surely get her boss the good PR he very much needed. Still no mention of rape allegations. Continued silence. The president warned at the beginning of her term that she will exhaust the men by speaking up for women issues. Two years into her seat & tested with real life challenge, the world could see she has no intention of delivering on that promise.
It has become obvious now that the ladies in position of influence and power in Ethiopia have chosen to politicize the suffering of women. They too have decided to utilize the same weapon of covering up rape allegations just like men in history had. If you don’t talk about it, it has not happened. Some of their supporters believe them. Many more others are left wondering if this gender reform was genuine or if it was implemented merely to strengthen the power of the men behind this reform.
Amidst such horrifying moment, they all found time to stay connected on social media discussing everything but the war and war crimes. The Supreme Court President posted a glossy picture of herself with other women “leaders” of the country in the President’s office. She said she was so proud. Proud of the recognition the president had secured from Forbes as the only African woman to be listed “The World’s Most Powerful Women 2020” were the likes of
Vice President Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Sheikh Hasina Wajed & Rania Nashar were featured. The picture was clean. The office was modern. The ladies were smiling. On the pictures they share and topics they chose to discuss — Their male colleagues don’t need to be nudged, everything is under control & all is well in the land of the feminists.
“I have tested positive for COVID,” said Bourla on his Twitter account.
“I’m feeling well & symptom-free. I’ve not had the new bivalent booster yet, as I was following CDC guidelines to wait 3 months since my previous COVID case which was back in mid-August.”
“While we’ve made great progress, the virus is still with us,” he concluded.
I have tested positive for COVID. I’m feeling well & symptom free. I’ve not had the new bivalent booster yet, as I was following CDC guidelines to wait 3 months since my previous COVID case which was back in mid-August. While we’ve made great progress, the virus is still with us.
One user responded to Bourla, he said, “You’ve had Covid more times than many unvaccinated people. Is it possible that maybe… *just maybe* the boosters are weakening your immune system? I am no doctor or anything – I’m just a lawyer with half a brain.”
Another user said, “Again? We already know it’s not safe and thanks for once again confirming it’s not effective.”
This is the second time in 40 days that the CEO of Pfizer has been tested for Covid-19.
Last month, Bourla announced he tested positive for Covid and said he started a course of Paxlovid.
“I would like to let you know that I have tested positive for #COVID19. I am thankful to have received four doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and I am feeling well while experiencing very mild symptoms. I am isolating and have started a course of Paxlovid.” Bourla said.
I would like to let you know that I have tested positive for #COVID19. I am thankful to have received four doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and I am feeling well while experiencing very mild symptoms. I am isolating and have started a course of Paxlovid.
Just one year ago Albert Bourla claimed his Pfizer vaccine was 100% effective in preventing Covid in cases in South Africa.
“Excited to share that updated analysis from our Phase 3 study with BioNTech also showed that our COVID-19 vaccine was 100% effective in preventing #COVID19 cases in South Africa. 100%!” the Pfizer CEO said in April 2021.
Excited to share that updated analysis from our Phase 3 study with BioNTech also showed that our COVID-19 vaccine was 100% effective in preventing #COVID19 cases in South Africa. 100%! https://t.co/E2ksTJSopU
This is the same guy who said people who dare ‘spread misinformation’ about Covid vaccines are “criminals.”
Bourla saidpeople who circulate misinformation about Covid jabs and dare speak ill of his product are “criminals.”
“Those people are criminals,” Bourla told Atlantic Council CEO Frederick Kempe on Tuesday. “They’re not bad people. They’re criminals because they have literally cost millions of lives.”
_______
_______
_______
_______
_______
Addis Ethiopia Weblog 