Emperor Meles’ New Clothes

Some images are etched in our minds—whether we experienced them first hand or because they are part of a collective memory—Abebe Bekila dashing barefoot to victory through old Rome. Richard Nixon, as he was boarding the plane, turning to face America and giving the country that infamous farewell…wave; Rosa Parks’ mug shot when she was arrested for refusing to bow to America’s Apartheid policy towards people of African descent.

Now to be added to these iconic images is the picture of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia that appeared in the January 21, 2010 issue of the Economist.

Dare we say, Dapper Don? Accoutered for taking on the world, he donned a classic European cap, a smart scarf, peeking underneath is an Armani suit perhaps, topped off with fashionable Palinesque glasses and without a doubt a mobile.

Who dresses, Monsieur is the question du jour. Ethiopians have always been enamored with all things French from Lycee to our French-speaking emperor. Naturally we assumed a French designer was to blame. But wait…we didn’t think that Prime Minister was well versed in the language of love. We then ventured the Italians might be the culprits—having spent a significant amount of time in the jungles of Eritrea, perhaps he had fallen in love with those troublesome invaders. We put the call out to our favorite couturiers to see if anyone will lay claim to this look.

Was it extraordinary confidence that we see bubbling over his scarf? Hermès, Monsieur? Is it a semblance of cowardice? What lay behind those—Prada?—glasses is more mayhem and murder. Try as he might, not even Chanel has invented a cologne strong enough to mask the repugnant nature of his government’s crimes.

We dissect the Prime Minister’s clothing because it is obviously his stunning fashion sense that has charmed the pants off the West. You know what they say: Good clothes open doors! And boy have they for our young boy from Adwa! Who would have imagined that a fine pair of trousers would mean entrée into an exclusive club where the United States and its allies shower you with billions that you in turn use to slaughter your people! Yay for fashion! Of course the Mitmita Girls would never dream of using our Givenchy mascara and stilettos in such a vile manner. And so we are forced to ask, has dictatorship ever looked this damn good? We scoured the historical annals in search of portraits of Pinochet and Stalin, from whom Meles proudly inherits the mantle of repression. No, we assure you, while his predecessors were fascinated with military getups, no one even comes close to achieving that cold calculating look that is Meles’ signature.

Yet we couldn’t help wondering why we are giving the Prime Minister enough credit to get designer duds? Since his governing style is purely counterfeit, it is befitting that his outfits should also be knockoffs! Enter China! In addition to importing Chinese prisoners to build roads and Chinese technology to censor the Internet, his apparatchiks must have also assigned the illustrious job of clothing the leader of our fabled land to those from the Far East. Our poor shmanayWouch! What a discount he must get from China!

As if the threads weren’t impressive enough, it’s the mobile telephone that had us teetering on our four-inch heels. Is that a Blackberry, a Treo, an Iphone, we see pressed against your ear, Prime Minister? We suppose where he lives, he gets better service. Whenever we try our luck with the phones, some Girl 6 sounding operator comes on and says in her most seductive voice: “YedeweLoot silk teyezwal. Ehbakoat Coyetoe YemoeKeroot.” Basically: better luck next time, suckers!

Can you hear us now, Prime Minister?

Curious isn’t it to see our Meles parading around town and abroad with a cell phone when his government has crippled Ethiopian telephonic communications. No adequate and reliable communication lines; yet we are asked to swallow a lie like the commodity exchange. Chinese technology is used to block any websites the government finds objectionable but we have no medical technology to control the outbreak of cholera. You “own” your land only until eminent domain intervenes. This of course means some government honcho just wanted to build a condo for his mistress on your inopportunely placed property. You better be glad that all they took from you is your land—fair market value is hardly a worry when along with your confiscated land, you could be mourning your confiscated freedom.

The machinations of Meles aside, we love our country. As the azmari would sing: Sedet godolonew; WholgeZem aymolah. But for the children of Ethiopia it is either prison a la Birtukan Mideska or exile.

And speaking of our comrades in exile, while the rest of us were taking apart Meles’ closet, the world was enraged over the United States Supreme Court’s most recent decision regarding corporations. What is this! Corporations can influence US elections! How insane! How perverse! Ah! If only Ethiopians had the luxury of such outrage. We are still trying to get the roadmap together to find our way out of electoral buffoonery and into some semblances of freedom.

The Mitmita Girls giggled at everyone’s reaction! Must we be everyone’s financiers, lawyers, freedom fighters AND educators?  For the uninitiated, allow us to inform you that corporations have long had greater rights than human beings. (Never mind that lawyers and other scholars have maintained that neither the US Constitution nor any court decision has explicitly provided companies with “corporate personhood.” Even more amazing is that the amendment which corporations have relied on to amass greater rights than the rest of us is the Fourteenth Amendment—the law passed to provide full United States citizenship rights to former enslaved Africans! Oh the irony!)

Allow us to enumerate but a few examples of corporate expansion of power over the years: Governments have been toppled for corporate dominance (See Confessions of an Economic Hitman for an eye opening account of what corporations do in the “developing world”); Wars have been fought and continue to this day for the benefit of corporations (See Bechtel, Halliburton, Blackwater and their profit margins after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan); The pursuit of the mighty dollar has also led corporation and their representatives—lawyers and bankers—to build countries (See How Wall Street Created A Nation recounting how Wall Street banks and law firms, working to finance the Panama Canal, fomented revolution in Columbia to cause the secession of a province which became the present day nation of Panama); and as ET Recycler reminded us last week, corporations conspire with governments to murder in the name of profit (See history of United Fruit Company).

And here you thought we only read Italian Vogue!

So this latest iteration of corporate domination—that companies now have unfettered ability to contribute to political campaigns—bored us to tears. What we do find worthy of discussion is that in the West and on our beloved African continent, corporate interests reign supreme. To be sure under Meles’ junta, corporate/governmental interests have always had greater rights than the denizens of Ethiopia. Granted the corporate structure in our country is under the larger umbrella of Meles & Co., thus whatever line that would be drawn, in a true democracy, between private companies and the government is nonexistent. Even in the West, despite the illusion of diversity, a minority of companies and individuals control the largest amount of wealth.

Perhaps American outrage has us flummoxed because Ethiopians are used to wealthier interests dominating our politics. Meles even attempted to import that thinking to the States. When he isn’t busy being a fashion plate, Meles has worked overtime to influence US policy towards Ethiopia. Hiring the firm DLA Piper and schmoozing that snake charmer Dick Armey to sink the Diaspora’s legislative efforts were the least of his efforts. We wouldn’t be surprised if Meles & Co. had filed amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs urging the US Supreme Court to allow them to control American elections!

Good clothes open doors, indeed!

Emperor Meles’ New Clothes

The Mitmita Girls’ Naughty Or Nice List

Basking in the double consciousness that is our Ethiopian hearts and western habits, the Mitmita Girls are in full swing of the holiday spirit! First comes the depravity of the European Christmas, followed by the more sober and deliberate “Gena” celebrations—after all everyone knows that Jesus hails from Nazret, Ethiopia and was born on January 7^th!

So it is with pure delight and the hopes of closing out the year in a reflective mood that we offer you our First Annual Mitmita Girls’ Naughty or Nice List! We will review the past year and provide our faithful readers with our recommendations as to who deserves a present from Santa and whose stockings we will be filling with coal.

We begin our list with a most impressive person indeed.

Name: Meles Zenawi

Title: Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Judge, Jury, Executioner

Designation: The Devil called and wants his job back. Monsieur Premier Minister is doing such a bang up job of screwing over Ethiopia, that Lucifer is wondering if there will be much of anything left for him to do. Ergo our designation for Mr. Meles is Naughty. Naughty as hell.

We never know where to start with our Prime Minister. Researching him is always an exercise in absurdity. For instance, who else, when asked about a prisoner of conscience who was rearrested for no other reason than opining about the conditions of her pardon, would say, “[t]here will never be an agreement with anybody to release Birtukan. Ever. Full stop. That’s a dead issue.”

There is something in the lovely pronouncements of our Prime Minister that brings to mind the misery so aptly described by Charles Dickens.

“But its Christmas season, prime minister!” we say in our most earnest voices.

He would respond, “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”

It seems that Dickens’ tale of cruelty, power, poverty and greed would be most apropos to our current state of Ethiopia. Except unlike the scrooge of the Christmas Carol, Meles will not be visited by the Ghost of Ethiopia’s past, present and future. He has effectively erased our history, is ruining our present and our future has been sold—lock stock and barrel—to the Arabs and Chinese.

Ethiopia under Meles, in addition to being Dickensian-with its street urchins, lack of healthcare—remember Tiny Tim, who because of the lack of access to medical attention was gravely ill—also reminds us of another British author’s view of a dystopia. With Meles’ penchant for arresting journalists, shutting down newspapers, and accusing every Tom, Dick and Shimeles of treason, we think he might have taken George Orwell’s “1984” literally. Where else would he get the idea for the terrorism and the charities and civil society’s bills but in a book where the department of war is called the Ministry of Peace, the state propaganda machine is called the Ministry of Truth and police and security forces are called the Ministry of Love? While the book makes for a fascinating Sunday afternoon read, Prime Minister, we hardly think it is a manifesto on how to run a country!

It is in the hopes that Twenty Ten rids of your machinations and your ethnocentric policies that we nominate you as our inaugural Naughtiest Person of the Year.

On the other end of the spectrum lies our next honoree.

Name: Human Rights Watch

Description: International non-governmental organization (NGO)

Designation: Very, very Nice

The Mitmita Girls are not much for nonprofits and NGO—they usually have their own agendas and at times they implicitly and other times explicitly, conspire with repressive regimes for their own benefits. Nevertheless, it is with extreme pleasure that we applaud Human Rights Watch (HRW) for their recognition of Daniel Bekele as their human rights advocate of the year. As you recall, Daniel was one of the one hundred plus individuals who were arrested in the Meles’ created melee that ensued following the 2005 elections. HRW’s gala celebration honoring our illustrious attorney and human rights defender was held in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History. The Mitmita Girls were fortunate enough to snag a few of the coveted tickets to the grand affair. In attendance were other luminaries of the Diaspora, including a certain charming Professor of a renown New York school who regaled us with fantasies of an Ethiopia under his rule as well as an accomplished PhD who delighted us with discussions of women’s rights, a topic near and dear to our feminist hearts. We were so engrossed with the conversation that we almost neglected to indulge in the culinary delights for which some in attendance donated upwards of $10,000! Who knew human rights work was sexy and oh so rewarding?

Did we mention that recipients of the HRW award are generally short listed for the Nobel Prize? Eat.Your.Heart.Out.Woyanes. We suppose we will have to consult with Michelle Obama on what one wears to Oslo?

Back to the naughty list, our next honoree is a fascinating persona who came into our lives in a whirlwind.

Name: Eleni Gabre-Madhin

Title: CEO of Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), Affectionately known to the Mitmitas as “Madame Financier”

Honors: Introducing ethnicity into the discussion of the ECX; Giving each of us a hearty laugh at the notion that a country still struggling with food insecurity could have a commodity exchange.

Designation: Oh so very Naughty!

This would be mitmita had our hearts at the mention of the word “exchange.” Being Wall Street aficionados in one of our former lives, we welcomed the debauchery that would ensue once a commodity exchange opened in Addis. The parties! The bribery! The hot handsome bankers! Alas! Far from being debauched, we are simply bored. There were the Op-ed pieces, the documentary, and the all out media assault on our senses to convince us what our poor country needed was a fancy new gadget for the plutocrats. Really, Madame Financier, these efforts are akin to when we dress up a drab love affair with jewels—the fancy is lovely cover-up but what lies beneath is still a dull fellow who no doubt can afford the foie gras but can barely keep us entertained through dessert.

And because we are such mean, mean girls who don’t appreciate all that Madame has done for us, her oft-cited cri de coeur traced her lineage. You see, under Meles’ Ethiopia, your accomplishments don’t count; it’s your bloodlines, stupid. Since ethnicity and genealogy have done just so much for Palestine and Israel, as well as for the Hutus and Tutsis we might as well copy that healthy formula in Ethiopia! Oromos, can you hear me? What about Welietas? Amharas, anyone? Woe are those of us of mixed ethnicity! How do we pick? Maybe senyo through hamoose, we can claim Mimi’s grandmother’s Gurage line but only if it is politically advantageous and then on oohood, at church we can find out whether the Abuna’s family is Tigre and we can pray in Tigrinya?

This whole thing is strange for us ex-pats since when the Mitmita Girls were tots and teens, once upon a time, we were simply Ethiopian.

For all her Oscar worthy performances, we think Madame Financier should have headed south from Stanford to Hollywood rather than gracing us with her presence in Addis. We were just not ready for her brilliance, for her valiant attempts to drag us kicking and screaming out of the darkness and into Ethiopia’s Wall Street. Yet, all we ever wanted was access to some clean water, for a start.

No doubt Madame Financier is miffed at being slighted by the Nobel Committee for her contributions to the field of economics. Don’t fret, our little economista, the Mitmita Girls will give you all the accolades you deserve.

Our final list of Nicies are a group of amazing women! Surely you are not surprised! For every Eleni, there are a million Almazs, two million Taitus, and 40 million Sarahs who are committed to liberating Ethiopia.

Name: Ethiopian Women’s Human Rights Alliance

Title: Grassroots human rights organization

Designation: Tres, Tres Nice

The very seriously accomplished ladies of the Ethiopian Women’s Human Rights Alliance (EWHRA) stylishly make up our list of the Nicies for 2009. This is yet another example of women taking charge. Full of moxie, brilliance, sugar and spice, no doubt, EWHRA filed a report with the Universal Periodic Report of the United Nations detailing the violations of human rights committed by the Ethiopian government. You can read the full report here: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/UPRETStakeholdersInfoS6.aspx

If we would be so bold as to summarize their findings: International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) violated! Freedom of Speech violated! Convention Against Torture (CAT) violated! You get the gist--across all internationally accepted standards, the Ethiopian government earns a big fat "F" for failure. Their report even provided recommendations for improvements, which no doubt, will be ignored by the illiterates running our country.

And what timing EWHRA had! For years, Ethiopia has neglected its reporting obligations under international treaties; yet all of a sudden Meles’ sycophants are falling all over themselves to submit reports and appear in Geneva to defend their human rights record. It must be those pesky women and their report!

We applaud the women of EWHRA for their perseverance and their genius!

Speaking of women leadership, we remind you that next week marks the one-year anniversary of Birtukan Mideksa’s incarceration. In light of that bleak fact and because actions always speak louder than our words on paper, we pass on the following bit of information from the Free Birtukan and All Prisoners of Conscience (FreeBirtukan.org) Task Force: Please help us reach our goal with your tax deductible donation. Please donate here at http://www.freebirtukan.org by clicking on the Donate button or mail your donation to:

FreeBirtukan.Org

P.O.Box 3158,

Cypress, CA 90630

So there is our list for 2009! You must be wondering what is on the agenda for us in Twenty Ten.

The Mitmita Girls are running for office! We believe the issues of governance in Ethiopia can be resolved if the Mitmita Girls controlled the finances and the politics of our country. In preparation, we are brushing up on our Niccolo Machiavelli, Tzun Tzu, Friedrich Engels and Hillary Clinton. In the event we lose the National Elections of Twenty Ten, we have already made plans to establish a “shadow government” (Thanks Dick Cheney for the idea!) From the comfort of our libraries, cafes, hair salons and blogs, we think we can do a better job governing than the current clowns in office. For starters, we would make sure everyone is very well dressed! You choice of agerlebs on us! We will call you when it is time for the fittings—or as they say in Addis for the “prova.”

Enkuan le Gena abren aderesen and to all a happy new year!

The Mitmita Girls’ Naughty Or Nice List

The Mitmita Girls & The Meles Mercenary

The Mitmita Girls shuttled down to Little Havana from our beloved Manhattan to attend the opening of the über impressive W Hotel in Miami. Inevitably talk of Ethiopian politics crept into the mix and so we found ourselves trying to extricate our four inch Christian Louboutins from between the Anti Castro and the Pro Ethiopian Dictatorship crews.

So how did we end up in this predicament? We were stuck waiting on our friend who is half Ethiopian and half Italian and therefore doubly fashionable and exceptionally late to everything. La Femme Italienne, for whom we had snagged the coveted invitation to opening night, is ill-mannered—which is the problem with these molqaqa...spoiled girls… whose lives are nothing but a series of nights in Addis, Paris, Milan and New York. Which begs the question of why we befriended her? Well…She always has the most delicious gossip from Addis!

When she did finally decide to grace us with her presence, la Femme Italienne, arrived with two unexpected guests. As it turns out, joining our coterie of bon vivants was a dignitary of some sort from the Ethiopian Government. Granted it wasn’t the Prime Minister but rather one of his sycophants. So there we sat, wearing our nicknames as our fashion accessories—Miti, Mimi, Mitu and Mitmitaye—collectively the Mimita Girls—about to engage in verbal jujitsu with a totally. unworthy. opponent.

One of the gentlemen, pointing to his compatriot, announces: “This is a very important man in Ethiopia. He makes things happen.” He nodded knowingly.

My my. What a song to a Mitmita Girl’s ears. Since we are all gold digging social climbing kinda women, we are just charmed, charmed to find out how deeply important this chap was.

Paunchy, sparse of hair up top, plenty of hair on the chest with a fashion palate circa nineteen seventy something, our honored guest, leaned back on the couch trying to deflect what was an intended compliment but what was to our ears an insult; a deeply important man in Ethiopia’s government evoked sentiments of pure terror in our innocent hearts.

And whenever we, Mitmita Girls are scared, we summon from within us warrior women wielding machetes.

We are by nature peace loving girls. Truly we are! However, there is something about the murderous machination of Meles and his crew which induces urges of great violence in us—justice seeking violence, of course!

Back to our important guest. He looked like he could be a mercenary. More importantly, he was disastrously underdressed for the occasion of having drinks with the Mitmita Girls; We are awfully suspicious of people who dress poorly as a way of disguising their theft. He was a definitely a mercenary, we decided.

“Oh? Important?” we quipped. And oozing pure boredom we asked, “Esachew mindenew emitserut?” in perfectly well-honed Amharic with an American accent procured after years of privileged over education “and what is it you doooooooo, Monsieur Very Important?

We have just been dying trying to figure out how to smuggle Ethiopian artifacts out of the country…”

We smile sweetly.

The machete wielding warrior women within us thought it was almost too perfect to have this imbecile sitting before us. We should just let the warriors out and let them have their way with Monsieur Tres Important.

But we just bought these vintage LaCroix and Yves Saint Laurent dresses for the occasion of this opening and no sense in ruining perfectly good couture.

As with all deeply important people, the target of our inquiry deferred to the accompanying and évidement less important gentleman to explain his role in one of Africa’s most vicious plutocracies.

The details are of course inconsequential. The gentleman’s job could have been any number of troubling minamin… things.

For instance he could have been the person in charge of these outrageous land grants to foreigners…suddenly we have an abundance of Ethiopian landowners so we have began gifting our soil to others. Look at Prime Minister trying to convince everyone that he isn’t a land hording communist—its a land giveaway! Are you a foreigner? Do you have cash? Well Melesocracy has a stimulus plan for you! The Mitmita Girls are quite familiar with a few project finance deals ourselves; from what we understand, in these intricate transactions, Third World governments in collaboration with First World financiers orchestrate what are tantamount to beads for Manhattan deals where like the Native Americans, ordinary Ethiopians are bilked out of inheriting our land because a man with an uncanny resemblance to a goat has sold it to the Chinese.

The Warrior Women within us are seriously considering unsheathing a machete. Damn the consequences.

Or he could be the minister in charge of infrastructure—for example electricity and other such frivolities—which would sans doute explain what he was doing in Miami instead of being in Bole… seeing as how electricity is being rationed in Addis Ababa. Which as you know is all the rage in the industrialized and tres sophisticated countries with commodity exchanges. How totally modern! Why does everyone need to use electricity at the same time anyway, you wasteful fools! Everyone knows that we are on the cusp of the green revolution! You didn’t know it but Ethiopia’s Prime Minister is leading the way to greening the planet by conservation! That’s right, this is all about saving mother earth. Who knew the former jungle inhabitants now running our country are a hippie, tree hugging lot!

With the rush to introduce the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange some basic necessities, such as clean water and sanitary conditions have been left by the way side. All of this so that we can achieve that perfection of capitalism and all kneel at the alter of the market. Never mind that cholera has seized the city.

Those Warrior Women are now considering jumping on the table, channeling Legendary Singer Tilahun Gesesse, brandishing his sword and screaming, Zeraf Zeraf!

Or he could be from the Ministry of NGOs which is in charge of ensuring that pesky organizations like the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) stop publicizing such horribly sad depressing news unworthy of coverage! Look at this report from EHRCO’s May 2008 Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ethiopia:

Wubit Legamo Leka: 28, She lives in SNNPR, Wolayita Zone, Boditi town….During the 2005 national election, when her husband was running for Parliament she was an observer. She was arrested on 16 December 2007 and was beaten and tortured as a result of which she had a miscarriage of her four months pregnancy. She told EHRCO that while she was detained her four-year old child was taken by police to a childcare center. She said she was released on bail by the order of the high court.

Yikes! Beatings, tortures, miscarriages, oh my! We can so understand why the Diplomats are working with the Prime Minister to rid us of EHRCO! No one will come to visit our beloved land if every five minutes there are reports of beatings, torture, arrests and murders. Obviously the answer is not for the Ethiopian Security Forces to stop committing these crimes—that would be too absurd or surreal—instead we will put pressure on a human rights organization to stop it from doing work!

Meanwhile did you see where the Economist, oui, THAT Economist, called Birtukan a charismatic young leader and alluded to her unjust incarceration? Do you think Prime Minister just died when he read that? We think he should call back the Ambassador from London and have him summarily tarred and feathered for not blocking the Economist from printing that story. What the hell is it with these Europeans and their inability to control the press anyway!

Monsieur Tres Important might have held all of those positions or he might have been some other overlord. What we did find out was that Monsieur Very important is very loyal to Prime Minister.

Before the appointed mouthpiece could launch into the multitude of sins committed by our guest, La Femme Italienne announced that in all faireness, that we are not at all interested in his life. Elles ne s' interessent pas a sa vie! In fact, each one of them hates the Ethiopian government. Especially Prime Minister.”

Don’t you hate girls from one continent, speaking a language from a second one, sipping Martinis on a third continent while entertaining a murderous regime apparatchik?

“oh no no no.” insisted Monsieur Tres Important. “Surely you don’t mean Meles? No he can’t possibly be who you mean?” He gave us a peculiar look. If we weren’t so versed in Meles’ crimes we might have hesitated for a second under Monsieur’s withering gaze.

We and the warrior girls within us stood our ground as Meles’ mercenary took on the awesome responsibility of defending his boss’ record.

According to the gentleman, our beloved PM is a peaceful man. Not one to hold on to grudges. One that is often misunderstood. Indeed it seems he is a huge yoga practitioner. Believing in forgiveness, nirvana and meditation. Quite a departure from the egomaniacal, prisoner torturing, dissident disappearing, polpot wanna be we have been despising all these years.

As though this bit of tidbit wasn’t enough to sustain our gossip for weeks to come, Monsieur Very Important announced that he is quite familiar with the work of the Mitmita Girls. As it turns out, Monsieur was a huge fan of ours! Perhaps “fan” is too strong an emotion for what he feels. In fact he despises us! (We are shocked!) He thinks the Mitmita Girls’ missives are pure drivel (We are heat broken!) He laments our devious nature. (We are so misunderstood!)

As with apologists for criminal regimes, Monsieur’s quarrel wasn’t so much with any of our accusations of human rights violations leveled against the Ethiopian regime. He believes us to be very cavalier with certain bits of minutae. For instance, he was practically blue in the face when he explained that our writings on water shortage in Ethiopia were subpar because we didn’t know what the role of a water engineer was. Or how shameful it was that we didn’t know that houses in Addis were made out of tin!

What can we say—we are dilettantes! What do we know about engineering! As to the houses, we usually stay at the Sheraton and if forced to, at the Hilton when we are in Addis. Otherwise we spend all of our time being shuttled by black tinted SUVs from one gated community to another. So forgive us if we didn’t translate “korkoro” properly. In any case whether Korkoro means aluminum or tin, the greater issue, we stressed, is the Ethiopian government's inability to provide sustainable affordable housing to the population.

But really monsieur we can’t very well take your criticisms seriously when you have not even considered ours.

What say you about the charge of war crimes? About the torture of human rights defenders? The cold blooded murder of citizens? What say you about the rampant violations of human rights?

Monsieur Tres Important looked at us as though we were discussing eating babies for breakfast. He continued with his accusations.

“You are all “ethnicists!” He spat the word as though expecting us to acknowledge our prejudice and repent. He believes the Mitmita Girls adored Teddy Afro because of his ethnicity. We explained that we understood Teddy’s ethnicity to be “Konjo,” born of the tribe of Konjo Hager to his mother Konjit and his father Konjiyay—so we are totally guilty as charged. We have always maintained that high among the goals of the Ethiopian government, right between completely bankrupting the nation and obtaining a totalitarian control over the lives of ordinary people, is eliminating eligible bachelors from the dating pool.

When we laughed at the ethnicist charge, he moved on to censorship. Monieur thinks we engage in censorship because we don’t post all of the hateful mail that we receive, we asked him if he wanted us to post the comment where people have called us “whores.” He blushed purple.

We laughed. “If the comments calling us ‘whores’ are an attempt to launch into the much neglected issue of sex workers in Ethiopia and more importantly the trafficking of women in and out of the country, then we would be more than happy to engage you in this discussion. Granted as Mitmitas, smart women, women workers, and hell as women generally, we are accustomed to the misguided notion that we screw people for money.”

Then we smiled sweetly. “We just don’t think that people who prostitute themselves for Meles Zenawi, screwing a population of 80 million while they get filthy rich in the process, should be the first ones to throw around the word ‘whore.’”

Monsieur indicated he was tired of our “sarcastic journalism.” We responded that we were tired of our people dying.

Not even crème brule could bridge the divide between us and so we politely ended the cocktail hour.

True to the nature of a mercenary, Monsieur tried to stick us with the bill; it seems whether it is the tab for overpriced cocktails or the looting of our country, ordinary Ethiopians are always charged with picking up after the mess that Meles and his cronies have created.

The Mitmita Girls & The Meles Mercenary

Love in the Time of Cholera (With profuse apologies to our beloved Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Just in time for New Years, the Ethiopian capital is abuzz with the latest punishment from God because we just refuse to get rid of Prime Minister! Oh what a love affair we are having with Meles Zenawi and his many games! We were so caught up in the rapture that is the Commodity Exchange that we neglected to notice that some as yet, unclaimed, unidentified and undiagnosed disease has let loose in Addis!

Now that diseases are running rampant, could locusts and the four horsemen of the apocalypse be far behind? Must everyone conspire to ruin our capitalist dreams?

Actually we have decided it is not God that is punishing us! Obviously it is the Diaspora that has conjured up this unnamed, unclaimed, non-epidemic in an attempt to ruin your new years’ plans. Damn Diaspora!

You see this is the problem with the Third World. Just when you introduce something as shiny and as impressive as a commodity exchange, surely an instrument of First World Arrival Status, here comes some Third World Problem like a monstrous disease to ruin everything. Why is it that Africans can’t have nice things? Gosh! We have been so looking forward to initial public offering shindigs and closing deals once we build our stock market! But now it all seems ruined!

Does this mean we should not count on our year-end bonuses?

What is this disease threatening to cause financial and social chaos in Ethiopia? The officials won’t confirm.

We wonder if it is the same way that whenever someone dies of AIDS in Ethiopia, they kept telling us it was Nefas. So at first we thought, WOW why is this disease call “wind?” Then we thought WOW! What a lot of Pneumonia cases there must be in Ethiopia! Then we discovered that every family, every house, every town and village has several Nefas stories. Although the name was innocuous, the disease was deadly and took out generations in the same family.

Isn’t it amusing how fatal diseases have serene names in Amharic—AIDS is wind and diabetes is sugar. No doubt this latest scourge will be called sparkles or cotton candy. Even our language is in denial about our problems.

Since the whole denying AIDS is an issue and refusing to call a rose a rose was such a rousing success not only in Ethiopia but also in Africa, let’s just repeat the same cycle of denial, cover-ups and diversion one more time! With a thousand people catching this waterborne disease daily, won’t it be a hoot to just sit and watch as panic grips an already crippled population. Who has the champagne to toast because clearly we are not touching the water! Ambo, anyone?

According to almost all sources, the Disease Whose Name No One Dare Speak is cholera. Dagmawi even reports that the Ethiopian government has banned use of the word “cholera.” Can the Prime Minister’s regime get any more surreal? George Orwell couldn’t have dreamed up a better setting for his dystopia.

“Today the Ethiopian Government declared that the word “Cholera” will be stricken from Amharic, Tigrinya, Oromiya and all other languages, including Geez, and Jesus Christ’s language of Aramaic. The word is now illegal and its use will be considered treasonous. Punishment for disobedience is Death.”

Yes, Meles. The big boys over in Europe, China and America will be soooo impressed when you tell them you can’t control the outbreak of diarrhea in your capital. Maybe you can still distract them by pointing at the Commodity Exchange and the Sheraton. “Look! Look! We can have dinner for the price of one family’s monthly or heck yearly salary!”

The outbreak of Cholera (let’s call things what they are; it makes things much simpler!) is telling; a brief search into its origins and its impact reveals it is an issue of poverty. One handy internet source explains the issue as follows:

The disease is transferred from person to person through ingestion of water contaminated with the cholera bacterium, usually from feces or other effluent. The source of the contamination is typically other cholera patients when their untreated diarrhea discharge is allowed to get into waterways or into ground water or drinking water supplies.

We bet you are just over the moon with joy that we spent money building fancy hotels and commodity exchanges! Disease prevention be damned! The way to dig ourselves out of poverty is to create a big ole distraction somewhere else and hope no one looks at the huge pink elephant in the room labeled “Utter Disaster."

Can we put aside the ostentatious “development” plans that the junta has in place for us and instead focus on basic necessities? Access to clean water and sanitation are fundamental human rights issues which the government has been reticent to address. Instead, the concentration is on building playgrounds for rich ex-pats and their friends and finding deluded economists to sell pipe dreams of an Ethiopian version of “Wall Street” to the public. Meanwhile, where is our clean water?

What will be interesting is how these code words for the disease, “Acute Watery Diarrohea,” will play out as the cholera fighting and prevention resources arrive from the various international entities. The United Nations has already dispatched its crew. Will the esteemed and all knowing Prime Minister turn them away, assuring them that all is under control? Move along, now. Nothing to see here. Let’s dispense with the euphemisms. A dictatorship is a dictatorship is a dictatorship. A regime that can’t feed a population, prevent an outbreak and stifles even the mere discussion of diseases is a failed state. Face it, Prime Minister. No one is going to laud you for your governance when a disease whose stench reveals your incompetence and ultimately your disdain for the population.

The current tragicomedy state of Ethiopia is too absurd for words. If it wasn’t the lives of 80 million that Meles was playing with, the Mitmita Girls would be dying with laughter. Where else but in Prime Minister’s version of our Ethiopia would a commodity exchange be discussed quite seriously in the same breathe as “cholera.” We understand quite well that looting and pillaging a nation necessitates a docile and demoralized population. We suppose instead of just letting us watch as he pillages our wealth, he has decided it might be better to also watch us die.

We will leave you with this passage from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love In The Time of Cholera. The protagonist of the novel and the love of his life are trying to figure out how to stay on a ship, surrounded by nothing but their love, blocking out the intrusions of a cruel world which judges their union.

“and speaking hypothetically,” [Florentino Ariza] said, “Would it be possible to make a trip without stopping, without cargo and without coming into any port, without anything?"

The Captain said that it was possible, but only hypothetically. The [ship] had business commitments that Florentino Ariza was more familiar with than he was, it had contracts for cargos, for passengers, mail, and a great deal more, and most of them are unbreakable. The only thing that would allow them to bypass all that was a case of cholera on board. The ship will be quarantined, it will hoist a yellow flag and sail in a state of emergency. Captain Samaritano had needed to do just that on several occasions because of the many cases of cholera along the river, although later the health authorities had obligated the doctors to sign death certificates that called the cases common dysentery. Besides many times in the history of the river the yellow plague flag had been flown in order to evade taxes, or to avoid picking up an undesirable passenger or to elude inopportune inspections.”

We wonder for what purpose and to what ends the Prime Minister will use the yellow flag of cholera in Ethiopia.

Even in this time of cholera, we profess our love for the women and men of Ethiopia who despite the unbelievably bad odds against them continue to live, resist and work towards a day free of cholera and Meles Zenawi.

Love in the Time of Cholera (With profuse apologies to our beloved Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Mar Ena Whehtet: Milk & Honey

Fresh from our return after feting the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange in Addis, we decided to spend a night enjoying our favorite activity of “Mar Ena Whehtet” (Milk & Honey). For those of you with a less active and wildly extraordinary imagination than ours, this is also known as “checking the Mitmita Girls’ Mailbags!” We get cozy with pajamas on, Macs in our laps, in the rocking chairs of our library and with a cup of Milk & Honey, we delve into greeting and salutations from the blogosphere.

From the start, we are reeling from all of the attention that our little innocent piece on the commodity exchange has garnered from those who find Mitmita’s humor so attractive and from those who are well…our detractors. It seems everyone has an opinion on the exchange.

One surly gentleman whose correct and fantastic use of a semicolon was practically orgasmic, vehemently defended the architect of the exchange and demanded that we answer for our selves: “When you look at the mirror what do you have to say you have done for your country?” oooohhhhhh snarky!

Well. Generally we like to think that our existence as simply gorgeous creatures with an out of this world brilliance is enough…mais parceque our fans demand so much more, we take the time to regale you with our thoughts on this blog whenever we can.

So now for our contribution: we want to say a la Dante that in these times of great moral crisis, we did NOT maintain our neutrality; rather that we stood firmly on the side of the oppressed; that we were among the throngs screaming that the Prime Minister has no clothes and a commodity exchange in Ethiopia is not only beyond the pale—it is an affront to our people. And if that doesn’t justify our completely glib position in life, while the rest of the sheep have been oowing and aahhing over the shiny piece of distraction known as ECX, we have been working on behalf of Birtukan Mideska. Remember her? Yes. The political prisoner and prisoner of conscience, who is now entering her seventh month in her reinstated life sentence? She is still there. Languishing in Kaliti…

How about reading up on her Ethiopian story?

When you are done gawking at the Exchange and you realize that we are still not saved from the awful reality that is Meles Zenawi (but Madame architect you swore that the Exchange will feed everyone and make you...err...Ethiopia rich!), maybe you can go to this website http://www.freebirtukan.org/ and read this article and perhaps, if you are feeling particularly like a good citizen, even contact your elected officials and demand that Birtukan be released.

On our end, we are just through, through with the sham trials, the endless Shemagele process and reverse pardons. We have decided that we will opt for a different approach: we are organizing a prison break. So we have begun our recruitment drive for planners, connoisseurs of Ethiopian prison layouts and descendants of those men who broke out of Alcatraz prison. To top it off, we are holding study sessions on the most famous escape by a woman prisoner in history. Send us mail should you have ideas or if you want to join us as we search for couture black cat suits with alligator boots suitable for traversing the eucalyptus trees surrounding Kaliti prison.

But we digress…
Back to our Milk & Honey session…Not all is negative in our mailbox. We do adore our fans: Ethiopian Recycler —we are sooooo crushing!

Several other mail items were spam…Mr. Whittington is a barrister from London and he wants us to confirm our bank account number…Ms. Lucille wants a bone marrow/a green card/to claim the millions left by her husband and could we help her….

Then of course there was that where-did-that-come-from awkward apologia from the architect of the ECX. We were laughing so hard that we almost spit out our mar ena whehtet. All of a sudden the woman is laying out a veritable DNA sequence of her lineage… there was this bishop, that ras mekonen and some dude who did something with Menelik (we admit we fell asleep mid-read) and without a doubt, one must always, ALWAYS for legitimacy’s sake throw in some European connection—hence the reference to Rimbaud. Mais c’est trop! It’s all a bit too much!

One can always tell when privileged Ethiopians have spent too much time in the West—the poor little rich girl syndrome is never too far behind…we are betting that the next set of mea culpa writings she blasts through the blogospehere will be a denunciation of her class status… “oh I’m just a poor misunderstood girl from Harrar who just stumbled upon this theory of a commodity exchange and blah blah blah…”

Not to be outdone by Madame Financier, the Mitmita Girls have decided to trace our lineage just a little bit further. On our Christian side, we have pinned down our history, through His Imperial Majesty, Janhoi, King of King, our fellow Harrar royalty to the Mother of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s right! Mary, mother of Jesus, Qiddist Dingil Mariam herself, the most bless-ed among women, is our ancestor.

On our Muslim side—we are Harrar town girls after all and the walled city has a long history with Islam—our blood extends through various Caliphates right down to Fatimah, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

Finally, for our Beta Israel bona fides, we claim the original Jews through Mak’eda’s journey to see King Solomon and from him right down to Moses.

Isn’t our pedigree much more impressive? And we didn’t even have to bring up Empress Taitu and her anti-colonial battle!

And while we enjoyed our little jaunt and hers though the genealogy pool, we are marveling at this diversionary tactic. Or rather an attempt at a diversionary tactic! What the heck does a Frenchman being holed up in some house in Harrar where her relatives lived have to do with the price of coffee on the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange? (Come now! While we know a PhD doesn't necessarily mean you are a genius, darling, don't you go assuming that the rest of us are idiots.) Because despite Madame Financier’s attempts to shroud herself in the proud green of our earth, the gold of our future and the red of our roses grown only to be exported, this is not a discussion of her lineage (or even sadly enough about our impressive ancestors) or identity politics. This concerns the wholesale trickery perpetrated by the Ethiopian government with the assistance of the likes of Madame Financier on the rest of us.

There are plenty of Ethiopians of the various ethnic groups that have conspired with the current regime against the rest of us for their own benefit. Whether you are oromo, tigrai, welaita, amhara or one of the myriad of other groups which makes up the colorful tapestry that is beautiful Ethiopia, complicity with the Prime Minister’s junta renders you an enemy of the Ethiopian people.

And so for the record, the Mitmita Girls could truly care less if Madame Financier was raised by a pack of wolves or if it turns out that her hairs were spun out of silk and placed on her head by angels. It is her choice to align herself with a dictatorial regime that we find completely repugnant.

Mar Ena Whehtet: Milk & Honey

THE EXCHANGE

We are delighted to invite you to the one-year anniversary gala celebrating the opening of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange in Addis Ababa. Popularly dubbed “ECX” by the five people who know of its existence, the innovative endeavor catapulted “ECX” into the lexicon of powerful names. Forget Wall Street! The next set of convoluted financial instruments—whether they be derivatives or swaps—will be Ethiopian inspired! The Mitmita Girls, as a public service, offer you an exclusive glimpse into the world of High Finance, Ethiopian Style! True to Wall Street tradition, we will be hosting the “ECX” (affectionately nicknamed by us as simply “The Exchange”) anniversary party at the Sheraton—(drinks and appetizers by the pool followed by dancing!)

Where capitalism and stock markets have in general been crashing and burning in the West, they are being resurrected in the horn of Africa. The US with its Bill of Rights and near fanatical obsession with freedom of the press and individual liberties saw Wall Street teetering on collapse. While many questioned the infallibility of the markets and capitalism as a whole, quite the opposite was taking place in Ethiopia. There, in the birthplace of humankind, no one is bothering with pesky concerns like regulations, oversight provisions or the invisible hand of the market. Discussions of that nature are academic here—by that we mean, they are nonexistent. It seems that we have had it wrong all along: capitalism doesn’t need a free society to flourish! Evidently it can sprout just about anywhere, even in a dictatorship. Much like building the perfect man, all you need is some magic dust known as US dollars, a sprinkle of an inflated Western Education via an Ivy League School and a dollop of that good ole “can do” attitude innate to Ethiopians!

The architects of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange appear to be students of history. It may seem antithetical to many, including we Mitmita Girls, that a ”free market system” can burgeon under the repressive conditions present in Ethiopia. The naysayers have already noted the obvious: lack of press freedom, a silenced opposition, no judicial independence, a petrified population, the government’s near chokehold grip on all aspects of the economy and finally the lack of any institutions that can support healthy trade and development. What we may view as obstacles are seedlings of hope for our potential traders and masters of industry. One need only look at the beginnings of capitalism in the United States to suddenly realize that conditions in Ethiopia are indeed ripe for the so-called unfettered functioning of the market.

Lest you have forgotten, dear reader, the greatest story of free markets began on the backs of African slaves and Native American blood. In short, whether John Adams admits it or not, the Wealth of Nations was secured by an out-and-out genocide. History has proven to us that the origins of the world’s most fabulous example of capitalism were something quite different from the usual themes of freedom, equality and brotherhood.

It is an antiquated and rather misleading notion that markets require a “free society” to function efficiently. In fact, discussions of capitalism in the United States would be quite remiss if they didn’t include a rather blunt admission of the existence of an essential element: slave labor. Institutionalized slavery and the wholesale extermination of indigenous populations on this continent contributed immensely to the wealth of this nation and to the phenomenal success of capitalism.

How? Here is a brief recap. To begin with, the land on which this nation blossomed was stolen from many other native nations. Recall Manifest Destiny? Second, bridges, roads, railroads, monuments and even the hollowed institutions of Washington—including the White House, were built by African slaves. Third, America’s industrious companies benefited from a convict lease system which following the “official” end of slavery, working to preserve the white supremacist status quo for decades. Fourth and most ironic of all, Wall Street, that venerable institution of capitalism is built on sacred soil—that gilded street rests on an African burial ground. Remains of Black slaves, who were brought to New York in the 1600s and who worked as skilled laborers and artisans were found in 1991 as contractors dug up the ground to erect another skyscraper in the financial district. It’s eerie to consider that on trading floors atop African bones, companies such as Aetna, slavery profiteers, bought and sold stock.

It is easy to sing the praises of capitalism and exalt the merits and wealth obtained through market efficiencies if one neglects history. Or as many do, engage in revisionist history, selectively choosing which history to acknowledge and which to discard as irrelevant.

So we surmise that the government of Ethiopia and the designers of the marvelous ECX must be counting on a similar road to success: before them lies a captive audience—80 million to be exact—whose lives and livelihoods exist at the whim of Meles Zenawi’s regime. They provide the free labor and serve as victims of a market experiment concocted by illustrious western educated economists convinced that the answers to chronic hunger in Ethiopia rests with the training of a class of speculators on grain, coffee and seeds.

As though the notion of some Ethiopian-inspired commodities and derivatives exchange isn’t fantastical enough for our big eager eyes to consider, we are reminded time and time again by the exchange mavens that the ECX is modeled after or inspired by the Chicago commodity exchange. This, no doubt, is supposed to inspire confidence in us because that mere fact alone speaks to the brilliance of an exchange in Ethiopia.

It is as if by any stretch of the imagination Chicago can resemble Addis Ababa. Because the last time we checked this metropolitan American city was like a third world capital rampant with corruption, greed and hunger. On second thought, maybe it can resemble Addis. If we hark back to when Al Capone or some other gangster ran the city, then perhaps the Windy city can resemble an African town with its working poor toiling day and night and the glitterati coming out to play only at night.

But we digress…we think that what we are supposed to get from the comparison with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is that our beloved country may yet be saved from its descent into third world shenanigans by shopping! At the end of the day even the founders of the ECX describe a commodity exchange as a “central place where sellers and buyers meet to transact in a organized fashion”—basically a mall! And while we have spent a better part of our youth swearing that not owning a particularly hot pair of shoes would kill us, we are unequivocal in our belief that Ethiopia does not need a commodity exchange. What we need is freedom from Meles Zenawi.

So we will continue to ask the improbable and gauche questions that Western journalists seem reticent to broach as they fall all over themselves to praise forcing a square such as a commodity exchange into a circle such as Ethiopia: will there be an Ethiopian regulatory agency similar to SROs—Self Regulatory Organizations or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission? We ask because the Ethiopian government has just been so exceptional at the whole transparency and accountability thing; we are sure they are quite eager to start up yet another ad hoc committee dedicated to, among other things, ensuring that everyone adheres to generally accepted accounting principles.

Never mind that it is the quite visible hand of the esteemed Prime Minister that orchestrates everything. What is the point of this dog and pony show? The government will regulate the price of sorghum as they see fit, regardless of the existence of a commodity exchange! Being intimately familiar with Wall Street, however, we understand that much of the intrigue of securities is in perception and appearances. Now that we have ECX, aren’t we quite the thoroughly modern Millie?

So perhaps the bells and whistles of the ECX may distract a less worthy adversary but we are keeping our eyes on the prize: you can have your commodity exchange, Prime Minister and we will fight you for our land. Don’t let the stilettos and flippant remarks fool you, we understand quite well plots to steal our wealth and we will be watching you.

THE EXCHANGE

“Meles, We are just not THAT into you!”

We were channeling Mark Anthony, circa his famous speech, when we realized how applicable the words are to our own Prime Minister. How ingenious would it have been if while our esteemed Meles Zenawi was parading all over Europe, the Mitmita Girls had jumped up, took the stage and announced:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Meles not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Meles.”

Perhaps he would have continued to try to inculcate himself into the jovial pictures that President Obama and that pesky Italian Prime Minister were posing for, but at least he would have had egg on his face! There he was, looking sheepishly like a loser waiting to be invited to the cool kids’ club. So we asked ourselves: why is Meles Zenawi allowed to show his face anywhere and much less at the G-20?

Perhaps like Sarah Palin, Meles’ people don’t let him read any news that they haven’t properly vetted or which doesn’t come from state (read: Meles) controlled press. Last we checked, a rights group based in Washington DC, Genocide Watch, singled out Zenawi for his violations of human rights and specifically asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate evidence of genocide committed by the Ethiopian government in Gambella and in Ogaden. Genocide, despite what the Prime Minister thinks, is not an easy charge. Mitmita knows that our beloved leader has difficulty with these concepts—one need only look at the charges he leveled against opposition leaders, human rights defenders and journalists in 2005. Remember when he charged them with genocide and then the charges had to be dropped because, well, pretty much everyone in the international community agreed that under no acceptable definition would any of the activities of the opposition be deemed genocide?

Fast-forward to when Meles welcomed fellow dictator Omar Al Bashir of the Sudan to Ethiopia. Could it be that the Prime Minister is taking tips from Bashir on how to get indicted by the International Criminal Court? If that is the case, then we most welcome the visit from the Sudanese! Our Prime Minister, we realized, relishes living amidst chaos because he thinks he is the only stable one in the region—Sudan’s dictatorship is a pariah, one step away from being thrown behind bars; Eritrea, which served as Zenawi’s staging ground for his 1991 invasion is an isolated nation, whose dictator is similarly strangling our sister population; and of course Somalia, a beautiful country marred by Zenawi’s war crimes, is a humanitarian disaster. Among those three most appealing choices, our Prime Minister, with his servile attitude towards the West, comes off as the most obvious one to fund to the tune of billions—except of course for the fact that he is a calculating genocidal maniac. His whole existence is akin to a dating expedition—one in which the West is “pursuer” and the Horn of Africa countries are the ones being courted: one fellow has no job, no direction and no clear plan, is in debt up to his ears but is handsome to look at (Somalia); the second fellow just has crazy in his eye and you think he may have a neighbor tied up in the basement (Eritrea); the third dude has a brilliant smile while he is telling you how he has beaten all of his women but you know, obviously, they deserved it; and the last fellow, dresses in designer duds, seems to use the right nomenclature (if you like that kind of a thing) but upon further inspection you see that his clothes are knock offs and you are sure he was once featured on America’s Most Wanted (Zenawi). Less enterprising people would dismiss all of these men as unacceptable. But the West, seeing an opportunity in everything decides to date the last fellow since he seems to be the one who is making the most out of his situation and besides, he talks all pretty and dresses well enough and so what if it turns out he is a monster because he can still take the West out on dates, pay for all the drinks and give the West whatever she wants!

Which is why, undoubtedly, our Meles was seen running around Europe pretending as though he understands economics and turning his nose up at the wretched ICC. After that little escapade, it is only natural that the next logical step is an accusation of a conspiracy. As just about everyone knows, we adore plots of all kinds—for instance a conspiracy between our favorite couture designers and our jewelers is something we can’t resist. But we do suffer from great ennui every time that our Prime Minister believes that the boogeyman is out to get him. Honestly, he is just not interesting enough for people to try to upstage him at all hours of the day and night! Others, much more serious than we, are engaged in real life concerns like food, health, and building a sustainable existence in a country where the populations lives on fear and borrowed time. They have no time to plan a coup d’état.

The Prime Minister must believe in that old adage that the absence of any evidence confirms the existence of a conspiracy. So we of course circled back to the Bard, the expert on conspiracies, murders and corrupt leaders—unlike Caesar, we can’t think of a single good that the Prime Minister has done which would be interred with his bones, yet we know, the evil that he is doing will live long after him.

 So why don’t we give him something to really fret about? Contact your elected officials in Congress and ask them to pressure the Ethiopian government to release Birtukan Mideska and to stop funding terrorism in Ethiopia. Now that’s the kind of organized conspiracy to overthrow Meles that we can get behind!

 To the barricades!

“Meles, We are just not THAT into you!”