www.globalbelai4u.blogspot.com
African(Ethiopian) Renaissance Millennium Foundation Presents the Sacred & Divine Feminine Slef as a transformational agenda for the 21st Century Vulnerable world!
We believe there is a Sacred and Divine Feminine Self in all of us and empowering our nurturing, creative, interactive self within ourselves, our neighbors and our ecosystem will change our individual and collective potential.
We have tried the Destructive and Competetive Masculine Self for so long and it is time to try the Divine and Sacred Self- the complementary side of our biology, character and spirit!
The following story of Queen of Sheba and her Kingdom is a clear indication that given the opportunity, our Sacred and Divine Femine Self can be a source of Great Good Governance.
BLOOMBERG NEWS
May 8, 2008
Queen of Sheba's Palace Discovered in Ethiopia,
University Says
By Catherine Hickley
May 8 (Bloomberg) -- A team of archaeologists from the University of Hamburg, Germany said they discovered the Queen of Sheba's palace and an altar that may have
once held the Ark of the Covenant in Axum, Ethiopia.
A Christian king built a new palace over the 10th-century B.C. structure, which probably didn't survive for very long, the university said in a statement. The altar, oriented toward the star Sirius, has two columns and may have been where the Ark of the Covenant, the holiest treasure of early Judaism, was kept until the first temple was built in Axum, the researchers said.
``The special significance of this altar must have been handed down over centuries,'' the statement said. ``This is shown by the many sacrifices found around
this spot.''
The Ark of the Covenant, featured in the Indiana Jones movie ``Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' was kept in Jerusalem for centuries, according to the Old Testament. After Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonians in the 6th century B.C., the ark's fate
isn't documented in the Bible and it entered the realm of legend.
Ethiopian Christians contend that the ark left Jerusalem much earlier -- during the realm of Solomon -- and was brought to Ethiopia, where it has long been enshrined in a church and is now accessible only to its guardian, a monk. This theory was explored by the British author Graham Hancock in ``The Sign and the
Seal.''
Fate of the Ark
The Hamburg team led by Helmut Ziegert has for nine years been investigating the origins of the Ethiopian state and the Ethiopian orthodox church. The central
purpose of the field trip was to find out how Judaism arrived in Ethiopia in the 10th century B.C., and to seek clues to the present location of the Ark of the
Covenant, the university said.
The palace built over the Queen of Sheba's home was also aligned with the star Sirius, the statement said. The researchers conjecture that the second palace was
built by Menelik, who, legend has it, was the son of Sheba and King Solomon.
The results of the Hamburg field trip suggest that together with Judaism and the Ark of the Covenant, a cult worshipping Sirius came to Ethiopia and practiced
its religion until about 600 A.D., the university
said.
According to the Old Testament, God ordered Moses to build the Ark of the Covenant, a box made of acacia wood and plated with gold. It is believed to have
contained the tablets listing the Ten Commandments.
To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Hickley in Berlin at chickley@bloomberg.net.
URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aHkn1LT4dQcU
Global Climate Change demands we become creative, interactive and nurturing!
Re: Responding to the call of the Sacred and Divine Self will promote a healthy interactive and nurturing environment in dealing with the most serious challenge of out time, Climate Change and its repercussions.
We are all observing the negative impacts of rapid adverse global climate change, and its fundamental challenges of our neighborhoods on every continent and every ocean. No geographic region is immune to the adverse impact of Global Climate Change. The challenge remains, how we respond to it to ensure that the organic life as we know it survives and thrives.
A. The facts.
A.1 Changes in the Ocean:
Sea level is slowly rising at the rate of one inch per decade due to increase in thermal average sea temperature and runoff from melting glaciers.
Emissions from burning fossil fuels have driven Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere to the level of just over 380 parts per million- higher than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years.
A.2 Acidity of the Sea and Air
Carbon dioxide readily mixes with water to form carbonic acid- the same stuff that gives soda fizz and helps it dissolves your teeth-and the oceans are now absorbing so much Carbon Dioxide that they are becoming increasingly more acidic and toxic.
The acidity is is newly recognized as a threat to marine life, as it depletes the carbonate ions that coral reefs and other sea creatures use to build their hard skeletons. The rate of acidification is so great that the trajectory we are on is expected to destroy most reefs around the world.
A.2 Toxic Acidity at cellular level:
As the toxicity is raging in the macro-ecology at micro level, similar toxic changes are taking place where the level of acidity at cellular level due to carbonic drinks, coffee and alcoholic and other acidic substance consumption, etc.
A.3 Unhealthy dietary habits
Our changing dietary habits where we are consuming increasing animal products such as meat and consumption of acidic products such as amino acid concentrations at cellular level is making metabolism at intercellular level so toxic that the normal compensatory cell ecology tries to address the challneges by inadvertently making our cells adopt to the new toxic environment. The level of malnutrition as evidenced with protein-energy deficiency in developing nations and obesity in developed countries is becoming a source of immunologic challenges increasing the metabolic diseases such as diabetes, atherosclerosis, arthrities, allergies, asthma and cancer epidemics.
A.4 Compensatory mechanism challenging our immune system: Rising Pandemics of Allergies, Astham, carcinogens, malnutition etc.
The normal compensatory actiivities to keep the cellular pH near optimum range takes effect by galvanizing calcium and other trace elements from our cartlages and endocrine glands leading to a series of chnornic metabolic, musculoskeletal and and joint problems such as Diabetes, Hypertension, Atherosclerosis, Arthrities, as well as evolving mutagenesis resulting into a series of cancer epidemics in our cellular and organic systems literraly imapcting our health and wellbeing.
Similar compensatory mechanisms are involved when our cells try to manage the challenges of allergens in the spring and summer seasons, activating the immune system that results in asthma and other hypersensitivity based alergic responses that is becoming common and pandemic in certain seasons and geographic locations.
A.5 Bleaching events of the coral reefs
Rising sea surface temperatures have made bleaching events more common- in which the water gets so hot corals expel the symbiotic algae they need to survive.
The global bleaching even in 1997-98 killed 16 percent of the world's corals, leading to researchers to estimate that more than 20 percent of the world's reefs have been damaged beyond repair by climate change, pollution, and destructive fishing methods.
A.6 30 Billion dollars cost to the aquatic ecosystems
Reefs are the bedrock of an entire aquatic ecosystem, including habitat for fisheries that feed more than a billion people in Asia. Their economic value for food, tourism, even coastal flood protection, among other services, has been valued at 30 billion dollars.
A.7 Extreme weather in Africa and Europe
Extreme weather: Rising average temperatures puts more heat energy and water vapor into the atmosphere, fueling heavier rainfall, more powerful hurricanes, and more frequent heat waves, while increasing the risk of drought and wildfires. Human-caused warming may have doubled the likelihood of the heat wave that hit Europe in 2003.
A.8 Drought in Ethiopia
Drought: Ethiopian farmer's livelihood has been ruined due to persistent drought has pounded the region since the 1970s, wiping out crops and contributing to famine and disease among millions of Africans. Climate change has already caused arid areas to become drier and may be intensifying droughts in Africa and other parts of the globe.
Any lessons for Africa?
African countries like Ethiopia, are among the most at risk, since they remain heavily dependent on rain-fed agrictulrures and often cannot afford technology that would help them adapt. The recent food crisis is reminiscent of 1974Oil Embargo, that reaulted the 1984 famine, 1994 food crisis and now in 2008 the report below shows another wave of new food crisis pandemic around the world.
A.9 Desertification and Rising Seas:
Desertfication. A recent UN study warned that desertification could displace 50 million people in the next decade, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Rising Seas. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IGPCC) recently estimated that seas will rise 7 to 23 inches by 2100 but could not rule out a rise of three feet or more. A 16 inch rise would submerge 11 percent of Bangladesh's land area and displace seven to ten million people.
A.10 US families Contributes 50,000 ponds of Carbon Dioxide
It is reported that in the US alone, each year, the average American family contributes about 50,000 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere-many times more than families in Botswana or India. (Changing Climate, National Geographic Magazine, 22 June 2008.
The Greed and Ignorance of the so called "Developed Polluting Nations" is burning the globe:
All the above ten points indicate that the so called developed polluting nations are contributing a significant proportion of the toxic pollution of the environment that is adversely affecting the global climate change where developing nations such as Africa and even Europe are bein negatively impacted with adverse climate for the past 30 years.
Three Countries and Europe are the main culprits!
The United States, China, India and Brazil and Europe, are now top nations contributing to the global climate change and other emerging nations in Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa are joining this new team of polluting nations without impunity. The United Nations and its associate organizations like the WHO and World Bank etc are encouraging nation states and the global communities to change their life styles.
Changing our polluting life styles!
Will the Polluting nations and eonomies pay attention? Will they listen? They are worried about nuclear pollution in Iran and Syria but should really focus in their backyard where the Carbon foot prints and other toxins produced in their respective industries and waste disposal system is turning the globe in to a junk yard.
It is critical that we pay attention to the US based American Public Health Association most recent campaign that is well researched and developed that all global citizens should pay attention.
We encourage our respected global readers and contributors to pledge in changing our life styles after reading the following pledge letter.
Dear Colleague:
Climate change is a public health issue. As public health professionals, we are in the unique position of playing an important role in both keeping people healthy and addressing the impacts of climate change.
Thankfully, these twin goals are not incompatible, but we must act — and we must act now. Attached please find the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) first step toward a blueprint for the public health community’s approach to climate change.
As you may know, Climate Change: Our Health in the Balance is the theme for National Public Health Week 2008.
In preparation, APHA developed a background document and then invited leaders from public health, environmental science, faith-based and other community organizations to comment on the document.
In addition, we held a virtual summit to reach consensus on what the most important steps for the public health community should be in the fight against climate change.
Throughout this process, we have come to realize that much work has already been done by our colleagues in the field, but as a community, we have never attempted to reach consensus about our collective role in preventing and responding to climate change.
It is with that in mind that we present to you these recommendations, which were reached by an inclusive and interactive process and which we hope represents the majority of concerns and aspirations of the public health community.
These recommendations focus on what is feasible and where it is critical for public health to engage in the discussion and fight against climate change. We would like your support as we move forward and try to address the pressing needs that are part of all of our daily work.
Please read the attached recommendations. The recommendations were formally released on March 31, 2008 and the next step is building up the list of supporters in anticipation of several events during National Public Health Week.
Addressing climate change is a long-term goal for APHA, so we will be continuing to gather support and signatures long after National Public Health Week is over. However, we would like to present the media and other opinion leaders with a document illustrating our strong cross-cutting support for public health’s critical role in tackling climate change.
Please feel free to share these documents with your colleagues and partner organizations.
If you have already signed on in support of these recommendations, we thank you and apologize for the multiple requests.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Susan Polan, PhD, Associate Executive Director, Public Affairs and Advocacy, at susan.polan@apha.org or by phone at 202/777-2510.
Name:________________________________________________________________________________
Organization;________________________________________________________________________
City, State, Zip:_________________________________________________________________________________
____I am signing this as an individual
____I am signing this as a representative of my organization
Please return via fax (202/777-2532) or e-mail to Susan Polan (susan.polan@apha.org)
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The Issue and the Challenge
Over the past year, scientists from around the globe have stated in the strongest possible terms that the climate is changing, and human activity is to blame.
Greenhouse gases — mainly from the fossil fuels we burn in our cars and trucks, the power plants that bring us electricity and the industries that manufacture our goods and produce our food — are causing temperatures on Earth to increase.
These changes are already dramatically affecting
human health around the world. The World Health Organization reported that the climate change which occurred from 1961 to 1990 may already be causing over 150,000 deaths or the loss of over 5.5 million disability adjusted life years annually starting in 2000.
These numbers are staggering, but they should not be surprising: climate change influences our living environment on the most fundamental level, which means it affects the basic biological functions critical to life. It impacts the air we breathe and the food available for us to eat. It impacts the availability of our drinking water and the spread of diseases that can make us sick.
These impacts are different in different parts of the world — and equally troubling, they are disproportionately burdensome for the world’s more vulnerable populations. Children, the elderly, the poor and those with chronic and other health conditions are considered the most vulnerable to the negative health impacts of climate change because they are most susceptible to extreme weather events like heat waves, drought, intense storms and floods.
They are also least likely to have the resources to prepare or respond. This unequal burden seems especially unjust given that these populations are the least likely to contribute to climate change. Any strategies for managing climate change impacts must take their unique challenges and needs into account.
Why the Public Health Community Is Uniquely Qualified to Respond
There is growing recognition that we must act and we must act now. As public health professionals, we are in the unique position of playing an important role in both keeping people healthy and addressing the impacts of climate change. Thankfully, these twin goals are not incompatible.
In fact, many of the choices individuals should make for the sake of their health — and the health of their communities — are the same choices that benefit the health of the planet. Making the climate change issue real means helping people understand how the way they live affects themselves and others, whether through transportation choices, the use of water and electricity or the types of goods purchased and consumed.
Encouraging behavior change is familiar territory for public health experts, and it is a key part of the solution. The shift away from fossil fuels and a movement toward general environmental awareness aligns with existing public health priorities:
n The transportation sector is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases.
Encouraging people to walk, bike, use public transportation or carpool is co-beneficial, as it helps reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions and helps improve an individual’s health by increasing physical activity.
n Similarly, improving community design to reduce reliance on cars means less greenhouse gases and also less obesity, diabetes and even asthma exacerbation because of cleaner air.
n Eating less meat reduces the need to convert land from rainforest or grassland to grazing fields; requires less corn to be grown for feed (meaning less pesticides and other fossil fuel-based products needed in the growing process); and reduces the output of methane gases from manure.
There is a direct connection between climate change and the health of our nation today.
Few Americans, however, are aware of the very real consequences for our communities,
our families and our children. It is time for the public health community to take a seat at the table for this critical discussion.
Climate Change Is a Public Health Issue
There are public health professionals around the country already implementing groundbreaking strategies to respond to and prevent the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. Others are in the trenches, tackling public health problems day in and day out without recognizing that many of them are directly related to climate change.
The public health system will be a frontline responder to potential emergency conditions caused by climate change. It will also play a key role in informing, educating and empowering the nation to make the changes needed to mitigate the problem.
Moving Forward
As representatives of the public health community, we acknowledge that it is our responsibility to make the connection between the way Americans lead their lives, their impact on the planet and the planet’s impact on their health. By highlighting these links, we can help Americans make choices and lead lifestyles that are healthy for them, their families, their communities and the climate. Doing so will help communities prepare to manage and lessen the impacts of climate change.
We recognize that climate change requires serious actions and we have no time to waste. We support the development of a detailed blueprint around which the public health community can continue to build consensus about how to prevent further damage and respond to existing problems. We believe the following recommendations are the starting point and reflect the unique contribution of the public health community.
Recommendations
Education and outreach
n Educate yourself, your family and your community about the connection between climate change and health.
n Build partnerships with stakeholders to ensure inclusion of public health concerns on policies and programs related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Reach out to colleagues in other programs and departments at the local, state and federal levels, such as emergency management agencies, departments of agriculture and water resources, and others to form a cross-agencies committee to collaborate on climate change-related risks.
Research
n Conduct vulnerability and needs assessment(s) and determine the potential impacts of climate change within your community. Evaluate how a future climate could affect the ability of programs to achieve their goals, and identify where and when modifications are likely to be needed, and what additional human, financial and technical resources will be required.
n Support and promote federal funding of research on the health impacts of climate change and how the impact varies by geography, climate and community, in particular among vulnerable populations.
Advocacy
n Educate decision-makers (policy-makers, opinion leaders) about the connections between climate change and health with a particular focus on its impact on vulnerable populations.
n Support and promote policies that strengthen public health leadership and work force capacity to ensure the infrastructure is in place to be ready.
Support Best Practices
n Identify and build upon existing public health programs that can also help to address the health impacts of climate change. Ensure that surveillance and data monitoring programs capture information needed to improve public health programs and effectively identify and address the health risks of climate change.
n Support and promote policies to develop and design communities that benefit both health and the environment.
Healthy Behavior
n Help the public health system go green and initiate programs to green your work environment.
n Adopt as many good practices as possible to reduce your contribution to climate change. For example, reduce, reuse and recycle, and give your car a break. If possible and you are not already taking advantage of available opportunities, use public transportation, carpool, walk, bike or telecommute.
Climate Change Is a Public Health Issue
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The crisis of Climate change is impacting the world with a serious food criss that is reverberating all of the world
As usual such crisis attracts the kind hearted but misguided charties who perperuate the problem instead of strategically solving the problem. We will produce few saints and perpertuate more tragedy for generations to come.
Can we we change these saints into development and enterprise heroes is the challege of the time. As they consume so much resource in the wrong direction on the wrong people for a short time, and not allowing creative solutions to emerge as they suck in all the oxygen of compassion into another charity instead of long term strategic enterprises,etc. We have been there in 1974, 1984, 1994 and now in 2008 we should seek some alternaives and not be fooled again and again into compassionate charities who allow events and problems to perpetuate to the next generation.
We need new ideas to solve the impact of Global Climate Change in a way that is sustainable and pre-emptive.
All the same, here is the response of some charities. I never like Charities but Enterprises, as charities reduce our Divine self into beggars, while enterprises bring dignity and self help. One is short term and the other is long term and sustainable.
I wish charities will convert themselves into empowering enterprises and our world will be a different one. All the same, here are the charities at it again, and again. Will they ever learn and convert into enabling enterprises? I wonder! May be the Bill Gate Foundation will change this hopeless paradigm of charities who love crisis into enterprises that solve problems. Who knows it could happen in our life time.
Dr B
News
Oxfam and Care call for fundamental changes in tackling global hunger and soaring food prices
News Release | April 21, 2008
Austrian Karlheinz Boehm (2ndL) founder of 'Menschen fuer Menschen Foundation' (Aid for Ethiopia), his wife Amiz (C) and German President Horst Koehler (R) with his wife Eva Luise (L) pose for the media before a lunch at the presidential residence Bellevue castle in Berlin April 21, 2008. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch (GERMANY) Oxfam and CARE today said the international aid system was not fit for purpose and called for fundamental changes in order to tackle the challenge of food price hikes and impending food crises in East and West Africa. The call comes at the end of a conference on how best the world can address global hunger attended by some 30 leading UN and aid agencies in Rome.
"Food riots have pushed global hunger onto the political agenda but the aid business will not be able to tackle global hunger while it remains stuck in the past, seeing food crises as one-off events and not tackling the underlining problem - chronic poverty. The world has become much better at sending in teams to save lives but it seems incapable of doing what is needed to prevent crises happening in the first place," said Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's Chief Executive.
"When governments fail to act early enough," said Dr. Robert Glasser, CARE International's Secretary General, "the costs of dealing with a crisis increase enormously, both in economic terms and in loss of life. Television pictures of aid being flown out to the latest food crisis is not a triumph of compassion but a sign of failure to act soon enough."
CARE and Oxfam warned that besides the impact of food price hikes there are also early signs of impending food shortages in East and West Africa. These potential disasters could be averted if the world takes immediate action.
In East Africa the March to May rainy season has been slow to start, triggering concern that another widespread humanitarian crisis might strike for the second time in less than three years.
Although there has been some rain over the last week, CARE and Oxfam are particularly concerned about hunger striking the poorest in southern Somalia and the Somali Region of Ethiopia and in West Africa there are worrying warnings of increased hunger hot spots in Mauritania and Niger.
Acting earlier not only saves more lives but makes economic sense. In 2004 and 2005 early warnings alerted world donors that in West Africa, Niger needed aid to avert a famine.
There was no immediate response, and it was not until television cameras showed emaciated children dying that the world acted. The cost of the delay was high in human life and in economic terms. The UN estimated that acting earlier would have cost $1 a day to prevent a child suffering from malnutrition. Because of delay it cost $80 to save a malnourished child.
Another area of concern is the inefficiencies and high costs resulting from self-interest on the part of those delivering aid. Shipping surplus food aid thousands of miles provides a boon to shipping companies, but also increases the cost of delivering food anywhere from 50% to 100%.
"Food aid can and does save lives. But due to powerful interest groups and outdated policies, food aid generally arrives too late, is too expensive and, when it floods weak, local markets, puts local farmers out of business and consequently puts back chances of recovery after the famine has passed," said Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's Chief Executive.
CARE and Oxfam are calling for more aid of the right kind in the right place at the right time. Specifically, the organizations want:
Appropriate aid delivered according to needs:
The nature of food insecurity and vulnerability needs to be better understood in order to design more appropriate responses.
Alternatives to emergency relief, including food aid, to be delivered when appropriate, for example cash for work and other cash transfer schemes. Often food is available during a food crisis. The issue is that it is too expensive for the hungry to buy it. Buying food aid locally can help stimulate the local economy and keep farmers in work.
Chronic and cyclical problems need to be addressed through social protection mechanisms, such as social insurance and assistance.
Support development of poor country governments' capacity to respond to chronic crises:
National governments need to invest in the social protection of their citizens, implement 'safety net' programmes (cash for work schemes or targeted assistance to the vulnerable) for populations at risk of hunger, intervene before livelihoods collapse.
Donors need to commit resources to support the establishment of local response and safety net mechanisms, eg the donors backed 'Productive Safety Net Programme' ensuring predictable assistance to eight million people in Ethiopia.
Mechanisms allowing more effective monitoring and coordination of international aid against hunger need to be established within the UN system, and with NGOs.
Disaster risk reduction is a key factor in preventing future crises. Many weather-related crises are cyclical and preparedness and risk reduction strategies can reduce the loss of valuable agricultural production, but this requires a substantial change in emphasis from donors, who will need to make an investment before public support has been mobilized by images of starvation.
On the recent food price crisis CARE AND Oxfam called for:
Increase donor and national government investment in small-scale agriculture in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most African governments have failed to meet their 2003 promise to allocate at least a tenth of their spending to agriculture and they are now reaping the consequences.
Countries such as Malawi and Zambia have shown the way, moving from dependence on food aid to become cereal exporters in recent years. Greater international support is needed. It is important that humanitarian organizations ensure that women can access the opportunities that are created.
Large-scale growth in biofuels demand has pushed up food prices and so far there is little evidence that it is reducing overall carbon emissions.
Natural carbon sinks such as rainforests and grasslands are being destroyed to make way for new biofuel plantations and biofuel crops are displacing food production. Countries driving biofuel demand need to monitor the impacts of their policies on global food security and provide financial support for affected countries.
Mandatory targets need to be reassessed in terms of likely impact on emissions and negative social and environmental side effects in developing countries, including higher food prices, land grabs and labour rights abuses. Developing countries need to integrate their biofuel strategies with food security policies to address issues such as land allocation and crop use.
Ensure financial services such as insurance and credit are available to poor farmers. In Thailand, for example, small producers are going to the wall because banks will not lend them money to manage between harvests.
Allow space for national trade policies to manage food security and rural development and to support the poorest and most marginalised farmers to gain from current price rises.
Recognise that climate change is going to exacerbate these problems, requiring urgent mitigation and adaptation response
Eliminate trade-distorting export agricultural subsidies, export restrictions and price controls. This will correct distortions in world markets and pave the way towards a long-term solution to unstable food prices.
"There is clearly a lot that governments and aid agencies must do to tackle hunger, " said Jonathan Mitchell, CARE's emergency response director. "What emerged from this conference is that humanitarian and relief agencies are committed to new solutions. We now need aid agencies to be held accountable and for donor governments to get behind these changes."
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BLOOMBERG NEWS] FOOD CRISIS ERASES ETHIOPIANS' GAIN; RISKS HEALTHSunday, May 4, 2008 7:05 PM
By Bill Varner and Jason McLure
May 2 (Bloomberg) -- Shagay Shanko and her husband
left a struggling family farm in southern Ethiopia 12
years ago to seek work in the nation's capital. The
couple found construction jobs that paid $2 a day,
enough to add meat to their diet.
``It used to be good,'' Shanko, 25, said of their
lives in Addis Ababa. Not any more. Soaring food
prices mean they can't even afford injera, a
nutritious, spongy bread that is a staple of Ethiopian
cooking. Their three children eat only two meals a
day, and the family relies on government-subsidized
wheat to stave off hunger.
Millions of people in Ethiopia and dozens of nations
from Bolivia to Indonesia were on a path out of
poverty before the food crisis. Now they are at risk
of backsliding amid the surge in prices for wheat and
other commodities, according to the World Bank and aid
groups. Vulnerable developing economies might shrink
as much as 10 percent because of malnutrition and
falling school attendance, a United Nations study
found.
Ethiopia, where the economy last year grew by almost
10 percent after recovering from droughts and a border
war with neighboring Eritrea, is one of 21 African
nations that might regress. Annual inflation in
Ethiopia climbed to 29.6 percent in March, the highest
in more than a decade, on food costs.
``Feeding 6.7 billion people is no easy task,''
Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Millennium Villages
Project at the Earth Institute at Columbia University,
said in London today.
Rapid Global Growth
Shortages are mainly caused by ``rapid global growth,
against a backdrop of tightening biophysical
constraints without a systematic understanding or a
systematic view of what to do,'' he said. ``We have a
world population that has increased 10 times in the
last two centuries,'' he said in a speech to promote
his new book, ``Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded
Planet.''
Countries ``getting their economic house in order''
are at greatest risk, Divya Reddy of the Eurasia
Group, a New York-based political-risk consulting
firm, said in an interview. ``They face tough policy
choices, such as putting reforms on hold or increasing
food subsidies that compromise other budget
priorities.''
Relief officials fear that 1 billion impoverished
people worldwide will be hurt for a generation as they
have less to spend on medical care and education.
Illnesses will spread and fewer children will attend
school, according to John Holmes, the UN's
emergency-aid chief.
``It is the perfect storm of rising hunger and lack of
availability of food,'' Holmes said in an interview.
``It is serious, it is structural, it will last a long
time, and we don't have any experience in how to deal
with it.''
Emergency Food Aid
As many as 9 million Ethiopians in a nation of 80
million that is sub-Saharan Africa's second-most
populous will need emergency food aid this year,
according to the U.S. Agency for International
Development. That is six times more than the 1.4
million fed last year by the Rome-based World Food
Program.
Ethiopia's government, which unlike Sudan and Angola
has no oil production to offset the economic damage,
is trying to lower food prices. It will cut taxes on
grain sales and has opened a commodities exchange
along with regional warehouses for grain and beans.
The exchange may alleviate shortages by helping
farmers and wholesale buyers connect.
The moves, including pay raises for government
employees and fuel and food subsidies that will trim
revenue by $445 million, will have a ``negative
impact'' on development projects, Prime Minister Meles
Zenawi told lawmakers March 18.
Health Care Cut
The spending is ``very difficult to bear for a poor
country such as ours,'' Zenawi said. Education and
health care are among the programs facing cuts.
In Indonesia, escalating prices for rice, soybeans,
corn and palm oil may slow economic growth this year
from a 2007 pace of 6.3 percent, the highest rate
since 1996. Indonesians have rioted over food.
Bolivia, already hurt by $500 million in crop damage
from floods, is seeing inflation accelerate because of
food prices. While natural gas exports may help soften
the blow, much of the money doesn't reach the poor,
the Argentine government, speaking for countries in
the region, told the International Monetary Fund last
month.
Food demand from China and India is driving global
prices, along with wider use of crops for fuels.
Natural disasters last year reduced cereal harvests.
Surging prices might mean ``seven lost years'' in the
fight against hunger, according to World Bank
President Robert Zoellick. That would make the UN goal
of halving global poverty by 2015 unattainable.
Markets of Abidjan
The crisis is evident even in the markets of Abidjan,
the commercial capital of Ivory Coast in West Africa,
which is benefiting from the end of a civil war and
rising exports of cocoa.
Cow's feet have replaced better cuts of meat and many
people eat only once a day, according to Nafissatou
Ganame, a 25-year- old mother of three.
``This is probably the main reason why women took to
the streets,'' Ganame said, referring to an April 1
demonstration that ended when government troops used
tear gas to disperse protesters. ``It wasn't like that
before, not in Ivory Coast.''
In Ethiopia, diminished expectations are also taking
hold.
Getachew Alemu, a 27-year-old Addis Ababa taxi driver,
said he used to save some money from fares. That's no
longer possible now that bakers are skimping on flour,
forcing him to buy three bread loaves to get the
nutrition one used to provide, he said.
``The government is claiming the economy is growing,''
Alemu said. ``What does it mean to grow? We are
working just for food.''
To contact the reporters on this story: Bill Varner at
the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net; Jason
McLure in Addis Ababa via the Johannesburg bureau at
abolleurs@bloomberg.net
URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=agKWcT12WmQ0&refer=africa#
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Strategy in Changing the Image & Opportunities of People of Ethiopian/African Descent Around the world
by
African (Ethiopian) Renaissance Millennium Foundation; 01 March 2008
SMART Objectives: Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Realistic and Time Sensitive
Purpose: To convert our challenges into new opportunities during the African Millennium
Strategy: Continuous Positive image development communications at all opportunities
I. Immediate: One Week Strategy; Converting our challenges into opportunities
Purpose: to respond to the Senate Hearing of Tues 12 Mar 08@10 am
1. Develop a working paper in line with African Union, Ethiopian Government/Embassy and Communities around the world.
2. Post the working paper on Africa, Ethiopia/Horn on web sites, e-mail systems and broadcast it via radio, pal talk promoting the new developments in Ethiopia/Horn
3. Send e-mails to the Senate Africa Subcommittee, its chair and the Senate International Relations to pre-empt its evolution into a positive win-win partnerships.
4. Have a series of writers on the Ethiopian as well as US-Ethiopia perspectives and publish them on websites, papers and e-mail distribution networks.
5. Contact Pro-Ethio-US (US-Africa) relations academicians, think tanks and former diplomats
II. Intermediate: First three months: Setting the Agenda for interactive dialogue with all stakeholders
Purpose: To Promote image of Peace, Prosperity and Investment Opportunity by
Improving dialogue and understanding about the current progress in the Continent, Horn and Ethiopia within the regional and global context.
Approach: A series of conferences, workshops and presentations at different fora
1. Reviewing the past and chartering a better future series of conversations and presentations.
2. Assessing current challenges and opportunities of Africa (Ethiopia) and the Horn
3. Risk Assessment and Option Appraisal of the security, development and diplomatic agendas
4. Africa’s role in the Millennium: Lessons from OAU and AU and the respective international organizations, such as ASEAN, EU, Inter-American States, etc.
5. The role of international development and diplomatic agencies in Africa (EU/World Bank Group, NATO and AFRICOM, Non Aligned Movement and Common Wealth Groups, etc.
6. Defining African Future and Promoting the Interests and Potential of All People of African Descent- The OBAMA factor in US politics.
7. Defining US-EU and Asia Africa Policy Visa Vi's US Presidential Elections
8. Lessons from HR 2003 & Wuchale Treaty lessons of Adwa and US Voice Vote Congressional Bill
9. The Future: Converting our Challenges into Opportunities
III. Short Term: Up to November 2008 US Elections
Purpose: To deliberate the process of US-Africa Policy and make positive contributions
1. Win-Win Partnerships: Set up Democratic and Republican Caucuses to influence US-Africa Policy
2. Common Shared Value: Define the Transformational Renaissance US-Africa Policy and Agenda
3. Promote a Positive Investment opportunities. Encourage the promotion of transformational renaissance Africa Policy across the world
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Dear Global Patriotic Citizens and Friends of Ethiopia and USA:
Re: Thriving US-Ethiopian partnership regardless of the grim assessment of the Loony Left Economist Magazine:
Managing the Challenges of Global Climate Change by Pre-empting Crisis!
Converting International Charities into Global Enterrises, that will be the day!
The people of Ethiopia and the United States have had a very long relationship lasting more than 100 years and have managed a series of challenges and opportunities in the past.
The attached series of articles and news testify that this relationship is mutual and beneficial to each other's interests.
Global Climate Change has negatively impacted the Horn more than any other region in the past. The challenge continues to be apparent even with highly coordinated information and resources to match the damages.
It is critical to understand the root causes of the problems, and focus on potential solutions,instead of wasting time on blaming people, and even the climate itself. Global Climate Change has been taking place for millennia, and, will continue to do so impacting the regions in different ways. Some part of the globe are cooling fast while others are heating up depending on the global and solar events.
The solution is to manage them, and ensure that catastrophic events do not happen without appropriate accommodation of the evolving challenges.
In the mean time, pre-empting the Catastrophic impacts of Global Climate Change is the duty and responsibility of all Governments, Scientific and Food and Energy institutions around the world.
We trust this challenge will also be converted to new opportunities by allowing all stakeholders to invest in new and creative solutions. As such, the leadership of the Horn has to evolve to new ways of thinking where the challenges of the region are looked at from regional perspective and not few isolated tribal communities.
The clashes we see over millennia on grazing lands due to climate change has to stop with this generation; by creating a common grazing land without borders where the local people can move to places where there is productive grazing land.
Another reason not to tribalize, nationalize or privatize land but make it a communal property of the People of African Descent. Then, we all have a home to go back to and to nurture and look after.
After all movig around the grazing or cultivating popultion is helpful as each group brings with it different skills and level of competence that the ecology deserves. So, let us not make it an individual private issue but a communal social issue for divine and sacred human beings.
If our focus is only to Privatize, Tribalize and Nationalize land, Global Climate Change will force us to live like animals instead of humans. We need to create a common homeland that accommodates the needs of each stakeholder at public and private level.
It is critical to create a reserve of highly intelligent, and learning institutions that can solve our on going problems. Let us think strategic, long term and win-win always!
with regards
Dr B
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/PANA-7DJHJG?OpenDocument
Source: ENA, Ethiopian government news agency
April 8,2008
Ethiopia, WFP sign LoU for food assistance worth 448.5 million USD
Ethiopia and World Food Program (WFP) here on Tuesday signed a Letter of Understanding (LoU) for the provision of food assistance worth 448.5 million USD.
According to the LoU, WFP would provide a total of 595,325 metric tones of food assistance to support the country's productive safety net, relief targeted supplementary feeding and HIV/AIDS programs during the coming three years (2008-2010).
The assistance aims at reducing malnutrition, rehabilitating children under the age of five years and pregnant women, improving the nutritional status of people living with HIV/AIDS and increasing school enrollment.
State Minister of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED), Mekonnen Manyazewal and Senior Deputy Country Director of WFP Abenzer Ngowi signed the LoU.
The assistance will be coordinated and implemented through federal /regional food security coordination bureaus, Federal /Regional Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agencies and Federal /Regional HIV/AIDS prevention and control office.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL09310828
Land clashes kill 18 in Ethiopia
Wed Apr 9, 2008
ADDIS ABABA, April 9 (Reuters) - Clashes over grazing and farm land killed 18 people last week near the southern Ethiopian town of Wondo-Genet, police said.
A police commander told Reuters the fighting on April 3 pitted members of the Gugi Oromo and Sidama clans, some 260 km (160 miles) south of the capital Addis Ababa.
"Clashes between the two clans have been brought under control and the government is investigating their cause," Demsash Hailu, public relations head of the Federal Police, said late on Tuesday.
Fighting between the two clans in the region, which is known for its hot springs and lush forests, flare up sporadically.
They normally centre on disputes over land used for grazing and for growing khat, a narcotic plant that is one of Ethiopia's main exports and chewed across east Africa and the Middle East
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http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2302299,00.html
Source: News24, South Africa
UN staff escape Somalia ambush
08/04/2008
Nairobi - Two staff members of the UN refugee agency narrowly escaped an ambush on their vehicle by armed militiamen in Somalia's northern breakaway region of Puntland, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday.
The vehicle was carrying a foreign aid worker and a local driver, both employed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and was ambushed on Sunday in the town of Garowe.
"More than 20 bullet holes were counted in the UNHCR vehicle," the statement said, adding that the pair escaped unharmed.
The police escort later arrested four suspects and recovered assault rifles, it said. One policeman was wounded in the leg during an exchange of fire with the militiamen.
"The security situation in Somalia's Puntland region has been deteriorating for the past few months, making the delivery of assistance to vulnerable people increasingly difficult," the UNCHR said.
Two aid workers and a journalist were abducted late last year and a German aid worker was briefly held in February in a region disputed by Puntland and the neighbouring breakaway region of Somaliland.
Two other aid workers - a Kenyan and a Briton - employed by an India-based organisation and contracted by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation are currently held by gunmen in southern Somalia.
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Dear Patriotic Global Citizens and Friends of Ethiopia:
RE: Evaluating and Assessing the Economist Article on Ethio-US relations!
Assessing the Economist analysis of Ethio-US Relations and the Security and Economic Challenges of the Region.
Why refer to the Ethio-American relationship as loveless liaison in the first place. Who decides whether there is love or no love, the Economists or the two interested parties? What does the Economist analysis mean to Ethiopian and United States Citizens and stakeholders?
How can the Economist make sweeping statements about their sacred relationships in this critical times of global security and survival challenges? Should we respond by making similar if not challenging analysis of the changing behavior of the Economist itself in the current critical economic crisis around the globe and what this means in terms of the US and Ethiopia relations?
This rather callous assessment of Ethio-US relations, one can make an assumption of why the Economist takes such a negative and rather disingenuous assessment of the two nations and their respective governments.
One can only see that the British Economist does not like the decline of UK-US receding relationship when it comes to security and global insecurity and does not like the ascending relationship of Ethio-Americans that is based on common value and interest, especially when the British are gradually pulling out of their respective US-British Alliance in the Middle East and especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Current British Labor Governments got rid of their shining genius PM (Tony Blair) due to misguided BBC disinformation campaign and followed the decline of the influence of the once Great British Empire and chose not to materialize in a world where the security crisis is unfolding.
The unfortunate development of Britain becoming the nerve center of the European terrorist is rather disconcerting and alarming to the rest of the world. The Economist does not seem to recognize this and make appropriate analysis of the role Britain is forced to play under the misguided liberal British Media such as itself.
This story is well documented by the CNN International program under different headlines and titles that interviews overt and covert operatives in Britain in the recent series of international broadcasts.
Just reviewing the CNN series entitled "The Enemy Within" showing how Britain is empowering terrorists to convert the island into their European Base should have been a concern for a British Journal such as the Economist. Alas! The Economist Editorial Board is converting into a rumour monger and shabby journalism.
When the world is being seriously challenged by a new set of threats such as sleeper cell terrorists that use liberal media as its propaganda outlet, we had thought the age old respectable Economist will not oblige.
Sure enough that is not what is happening. Compare this fact with what the Economist is trying to portray about the unique Ethio-US relations in terms of the current transformational security and prosperity agenda of good governance and pre-emptive security strategies.
Ethiopia refused the same pressure and strategy when the BBC tried to lionize the Oganden terrorists as liberation fighters and secured the area for economic and development security of the region. This was negatively portrayed by the Economist, the BBC and the US based New York Times and Washington Post to no avail. The Economist is at its rather disquieting analysis of the Horn once more again.
In Somalia, Ethiopia did not wait to be infiltrated by the terrorists like Britain did, but made a pre-emptive strike to sustain its security and succeeded. Is this news or a story worth analysis? Why portray the success in the Horn so grudgingly and even callously?
The Economist will learn when the terrorist blow up its own interests as it does not see the challenges to its home country. After all, it is an International Journal and can operate from other cities, and countries, and even from the web, but the domain language of the web require a secure Britain and Ethiopia and for that matter Globe. That is what the Economist cannot visualize or project in to the future! Analysis Paralyses is the state of the Economist!
The Liberal Media such as the Economist and the BBC are failing miserably the Great British people in Basra, Iraq and other international fora by second guessing their leadership instead of creating a win-win partnership with like minded global partners and addressing the Global Security Challenge of the time.
The tragedy of misunderstanding the terrorist network and sleeper cell terrorists among Europeans and across the world that was started in Britain has changed the paradigm across the world and is being actively debated by the current US Presidential elections. But in Britain, it has also cost the leadership of one of the brightest Prime Minister of modern Britain, Tony Blair and Spain to be forced out of their respective office.
The current set of disinformation and misinformation in Europe, by the liberal media should not be allowed to cascade around the world and especially here in the US and Ethiopia.
Eventually the challenge is that of common shared value and not old archaic racist ideologies that have betrayed the common heritage of all the 6.5 Billion people of the globe, the real stakeholders indeed! That old rather out of sink perspective of global security and national interest agenda is being transformed with the modern consciousness of common shared value for global security and prosperity.
We need a new Global Security Strategy based on Common shared value of all peoples of the world and not continue with the current racist and rather narrow minded out dated philosophies that guide the current set of national intelligence and security strategies.
British liberals like their counter parts in Europe and America are not learning from history. They will continue to appease terrorists to their peril. This time they will loose big time as the people are smarter than them and will be exiled from power across the globe for a long time to come. They can learn and change their course or face bankruptcy and be part of the trash basket of history.
The Economist as well as all the Liberal Media across the world have shown a series of intelligence disregard for facts, and will left behind with the advent of modern interactive digital information age, where their editorial power has been completely usurped by the intelligent common man with a lap top. Technology has really empowered the global decision makers and every one with access to an internet account, and the liberals are loosing big time! May be they should, learning from the experience of the Economis Africa editor's continous misrepresetation of facts in the Horn.
The British Army in Basra failed to do the small task of keeping the Southern Iraq safe and the fiasco is unfolding. While Ethiopia is containing the terrorists in Mogadishu instead of succumbing to their aggressive advancing into Baidowa and Ethiopia last Christmas 2006. Just imagine where we would be had Ethiopia not interfered early! Just imagine what the economist would be writing or analyzing today, the collapsing Horn and Africa? You be the judge! Foresight and leadership by Ethiopians should be appreciated and not scorned!
The Economist is showing jealousy of the Ethiopian success in pre-emptive security and wants to write a rather sarcastic and misguided analysis about the Ethio-US relations based on our common shared value and interests.
The current set of British leadership be it at the BBC or Whitehall or Downing Street failed miserably in standing for what Britain is known to do so throughout history.
The current set of leadership in Parliament or Downing Street is not the same caliber as that of Churchill’s or Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street, nor the British Parliament is of the same caliber. It is clear now how London is being converted into the most powerful Terrorist Cells in the world due to the liberal/labor media and security incompetence.
Addis Ababa by comparison is way ahead into making the region and its people safe from on going terrorist assaults. Addis is home to African Union and the UN Economic Commission for Africa and cannot afford to misfire on Security and Prosperity challenges of the time.
Addis Ababa may be slow in its Diplomatic and Information offensive as it does not have a BBC or CNN or Arabic Alegezira to mention. That too is changing fast. The series of web sites, media and information dissemination efforts are changing rapidly.
The US Presidential Election is also uncovering the security and economy fiasco where both parties are not ready for a competent response.
The Diaspora is becoming more aggressive in articulating its immediate, short and long term interests in line with Africa (Ethiopia) Renaissance Agenda.
The Economist is again failing in its competency to analyze events just as BBC continues to fail in enabling terrorists by misinforming its international audience.
Eventually, the truth, common shared value and interests is the basis of the Ethio-US relations and the Economist failed to understand this as it continues to fail to understand the current global security and economic crisis.
Economy flourishes with secure and good governance environment, and the Economist does not seem to appreciate this. The new move in the global economy is to move towards a fair and free economic system, yet the Economist has failed to understand this basic global shift in Economic and Security framework.
All the same, the Economist has failed itself with poor intelligence and poor economic and security analysis. The liberal media continues to fail to appreciate the challenges of the globe where fair and free economic system is needed to address the challenges of economic and security disparity that is unfolding before us.
This Economist article is one clear example of how wrong the liberal media like the BBC, CNN and now the Economist are failing to understand the current and future challenges of the global economy and emerging security crisis.
The labor and liberal politicians are making the same mistake they made at the dawn of the second world war where they tried to appease Hitler, Mussolini and Imperial Japan and eventually tried to sell out Ethiopia at the League of Nations where Emperor Haile Selassie was betrayed and Ethiopia was abandoned.
Ethiopians have learned their lesson, the Economist and the liberal politicians and media has not learned their lesson, and this article is an excellent example. Ethiopia will treasure its sovereignty, security and prosperity and will never allow any power or interest group on earth or heaven to dictate terns to Ethiopia.
Ethiopia, the only nation on earth never colonized by any colonial power, will not change it long held sacred duty of advancing its sovereignty and freedom in the Horn and Africa and the Middle East in general. I am sure the British and American allies also will rise up to the occasion and support Ethiopia's challenging role in global security.
Please read on.
Dr B or Global Strategic Enterprises, Inc 4 Peace & Prosperity
Ethiopia and the United States
A loveless liaison
Apr 3rd 2008 | ADDIS ABABA
From The Economist print edition
America and Ethiopia need each other, but their needs are not equal
Pragmatism. THE alliance between the United States and Ethiopia was born of pragmatism. In another time, they might have been enemies.
Sovereignty paramount. Ethiopians do not like American soldiers tramping on their soil.
Human Rights the contending issues. Americans dislike Ethiopia's bad human-rights record.
Local elections due this month are a case in point.
Emasculated opposition. Ethiopia's opposition, emasculated by the long imprisonment of its leaders (most of whom were pardoned last year) and weakened by its own divisions, will almost certainly be crushed in an unfair contest.
The Upcoming 2008 Elections. “It's going to be a stitch-up,” says a Western diplomat. “Control is what this government is all about.”
Keeping the Intelligence secret. America jealously guards information about its more discreet military activities in Ethiopia, while advertising its soldiers' do-gooding: digging wells, vaccinating animals and so on.
Defense budget: Officially, it contributes only a sliver of Ethiopia's $300m defence budget. Unofficially, it may have helped pay for the rising costs of Ethiopia's army, one of Africa's largest.
Secret Base in Eastern Ethiopia? Some say America has a secret base in eastern Ethiopia to move CIA, special forces and “friendlies” into next-door Somalia; America says not.
Closest Military Ties. What is certain is that the closest military ties between the two countries involve Somalia, which America fears may have already become an incubator of Islamist terrorism.
That is why America backed Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia at the end of 2006.
Ethiopian Intelligence and American Power. Its own air raids on supposed terrorist targets in Somalia have relied on Ethiopian intelligence, though nearly all appear to have missed.
American officials praise the Ethiopian troops who are still in Mogadishu, Somalia's battered capital, as peacekeepers; most Somalis see them as occupiers.
Ethiopia stands for its own sovereignty. Leftist hardliners in Ethiopia's government think that its prime minister, Meles Zenawi, is doing the Bush administration's bidding. That is not how the Americans portray it.
Zenawi Answers to party central committee. Regardless of Mr Zenawi, who must answer to his party's central committee and is anyway due to step down in 2010, the Pentagon wants to make Ethiopia a bulwark in a region where Somalia is a dangerously failed state, Sudan and Eritrea are pariahs and Kenya has troubles of its own.
Ethiopia has other selling points. The African Union is based there. Its ancient Christian history stirs American evangelicals.
Capital of Development Activists. Its poverty and population (at 80m, Africa's third-largest) attract development-minded foreigners.
Poverty and A-list Client State. But Ethiopia is too poor to be rated an A-list client state. Even American hawks admit that selling guns to one of the planet's hungriest countries, the “cradle of humanity” to boot, would look bad.
America says the little it gives Ethiopia's forces is “non-lethal”: boots, night-vision goggles, medical kits and so forth.
Peace Keeping Army. It would like to do more to train Ethiopian troops for peacekeeping work.
Ethiopia can buy arms from any where it wants. A measure of America's realism is the way it has allowed Ethiopia to buy arms from North Korea.
So differences remain.
Role of Diaspora. Many in Ethiopia's 1.2m-strong diaspora in the United States have lobbied their congressional representatives to condemn Mr Zenawi's government as tyrannical.
HR2003 and its implication. A bill passed by the House of Representatives last year called for curbs on aid to Ethiopia, but is unlikely to be passed by the Senate.
Yet it points to a division between those in Washington (mainly Republicans) wanting to reward Ethiopia for fighting terrorism in Somalia and those (mainly Democrats) wishing to punish it for its human-rights abuses at home.
Ethiopia, for its part, had hoped for stronger support from America over its border dispute with Eritrea. It wants the administration to list two Ethiopian separatist groups, the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Front, as terrorists.
America is reluctant. The process is complex; it has taken a long time to complete listing the Shabab, a Somali jihadist group. The Ogaden and Oromo fronts will go on fund-raising among their supporters in America, just as the Irish Republican Army once did.
Aid from European Union countries will probably keep flowing, however patent Ethiopia's human-rights violations.
China will invest more. But Ethiopia's luck may run out. After several years of good harvests, a famine may set in this year.
With 8m of its people likely to depend on food aid, much of it paid for by the Americans, Ethiopia still needs America a lot more than America needs it.
A Loveless Liaison or Endemic Dishonesty?
Desta Berhe
April 06, 2008
The Economist published this article on April the 3rd, 2008 describing the Ethio-US relations as loveless liaison. I am responding to the article’s allegations and claims. All of the points are repetitions of previous relentless distortions by many Western media outlets bashing the Ethiopian peoples.
Moreover, the claims demonstrate the shameless, two-faced nature of the people behind those media outlets. It has long been known that Western media outlets rarely serve the interest of the people who deservedly need to be served. The rule of thumb of Western media outlets is: ‘Do not utter anything positive about Ethiopia in particular and Africa in general’.
It is not in their interest to do so. Those media outlets are nothing but destructive forces in the affairs of the people of Africa. We have recently watched how a 10 second video clip was played out of a full Sunday morning sermon by a certain reverend for sinister purposes. Every Western media uses the same sinister approach, and the Economist is not an exception. Now, I will expose the distortions and lies packed in the article and refute the absurd claims.
The article begins by stating that the alliance of Ethiopia and the US was born of pragmatism. Then, it foretells that both countries can be enemies at another time. It is true that the Ethio-US relations had been unpleasant during the previous regime. Nevertheless, they have never been enemies. And there is nothing that would suggest anyone to conclude that Ethiopia and the US can be enemies. Such a scenario is only possible in the distorted understanding of the writer of the article.
Ethiopia’s foreign relations policy strives to ensure security, through realizing national development and democracy. This shows that the purpose of having relations with other nations is to promote economic development and democracy, which requires Ethiopia to have more friends.
It emanates from the notion of reducing vulnerability through building capacity at home in order to reduce external threats. This policy shows that Ethiopia seeks foreign relations based on mutual respect. Incidentally, the foreign policy doctrine of Ethiopia does not clash with the foreign policy of the US. Thus, there is no reason for both of them to be enemies. The prophecy that says ‘Ethiopia and the US may be enemies at another time’ can only come from bounty hunters turn journalists, doomsayers.
The article assures readers that Ethiopians do not like American soldiers tramping on their soil. The presence of the US military in Eastern Ethiopia is known. However, the assertion that Ethiopians dislike the US military presence is bogus. God knows how many Ethiopians were invited for reflections on the US military presence to lead the writer to that conclusion. But, I can certainly say this. The US military presence in Eastern Ethiopia cannot be more of a concern than the US presence at Entoto Avenue.
Any journalist who attempts to say something about what the US dislikes or likes needs to demonstrate some degree of honesty for it is easy to understand the US. Americans dislike anything that could lead to one thing: threatening their self-interest.
Let us come to the human right record issue. If the people of Economist believe that the US government has better human right record than the Ethiopian government, it will be hypocrisy. Respecting or violating human right has no boundary. Thus, the US government is neither clean from human right violations nor better than many other nations. If truth is to be told, the US government lacks moral high ground to dislike another nation for human right violations.
If that happens, it is hypocrisy. So, if the writer of the article overheard of any American complaining about a bad human right record of the Ethiopian government, s/he must be courageous enough to ask how is the Ethiopian government worse than the US? Or, how is the Ethiopian government worse than many of the US allies?
The article argues that the unfair contest of the upcoming local election is a case in point for Americans to dislike Ethiopia. First, EPRDF (the governing party) has little to be blamed for the problem within the opposition.
It can only be blamed for its goodwill to providing the opposition with fair playground to compete, who later got loose to abuse the very rule of the land that allowed them to get into fair political contest. And the US government had the knowledge of where the problems lied.
That cannot be genuine basis for the US government to feel uncomfortable about. Such an argument is coming from false premises to support false assertion (Americans dislike Ethiopia). When the opposition parties were tested in real life politics, they proved themselves that they were barely a house of cards. The governing party is not supposed to baby-sit the opposition.
The argument that the upcoming local elections are unfair would make sense to uninvited guests who have no clue or are not accustomed to tell the truth at the ground. If there is anything unfair about it, it is because the contest is going to be between fulltime politicians of three and half decade old party with solid and realistic political programs and clueless turncoats specialized in demonizing the governing party.
There is no opposition capable of taking power to lead any of the local districts. If the writer met a Western diplomat who believes that the government is holding down [a capable] opposition because ‘Control is what this government is all about’, the diplomat must be advised to go fishing and reminded that the size of the catch depends on the depth of the waters.
The article portrays Ethiopia as an invader of Somalia. Here there are so many things that are certain. (1) Somalia has been without government for a decade and half. (2) Somali elites established the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in January 2005, which was recognized by the UN and other international communities. (3) The TFG moved to Baidoa in August 2005. (4)
In 2006, a group of Somalis established the Union of Islamic Courts to takeover the internationally recognized TFG, and declared war against Ethiopia. (5) The TFG sought Ethiopia’s help and formally asked the Ethiopian government to get rid of UIC. (6) The Ethiopian government met with the UIC eight times to help them make peace with TFG, which they refused. (7)
Ethiopia later accepted the call of the TFG and annihilated the UIC in December 2006. There is nothing invasion here. Would the Kuwaitis regard the Americans as occupiers/invaders when Sadam Hussein was in power? Would the S. Koreans regard the Americans as invaders/occupiers when their country was at crisis with its neighbor?
In line with this, the claim that most Somalis see the Ethiopian army as occupiers is unwarranted. Any rational person would ask: ‘how many Somalis of this clan, that clan, this age, that age, in this place, in that place, this gender, that gender, this profession, that profession, etc see Ethiopians as occupiers or as peace keeping brothers from next door?’ And layperson knows where journalists look for dissents to backup their preconceived lies. The truth of the matter is that Ethiopians always extend helping hands to their Somali brothers and sisters even when they were least expected to do so.
It is true that the last Somali regime was at war with Ethiopia, but the Somalis as a people did not, are not, and will not see their Ethiopian compatriots as enemies. After the culmination of WWII and the defeat of the Axis Powers, Ethiopia engaged itself in fierce diplomatic battle to help the Somali people reclaim their freedom. Likewise, after the fall of Somalia in 1991, so many Somalis left their home to their second home, Ethiopia and lived in peace and harmony.
It would require a journalist a 10-minute ride to Little Mogadishu in Addis Ababa and seek for genuine information instead of hunting for dissents to backup preconceived repetitive lies.
Another bogus claim of the article is the existence of a difference between leftist hardliners and PM Meles Zenawi in dealing with the situation in Somalia and Ethiopia’s relations with the US. Only God knows if indeed leftist hardliners really exist within EPRDF. Everybody knows, though, that there is no meaningful ideological difference among the EPRDF party elites.
It is even hardly possible to come up with any sort of significant ideological difference between the EPRDF party elites and those who left the party in 2000. To whisper that there is ideological difference between PM Meles Zenawi and his colleagues in dealing with the situation in Somalia and Ethio-US relations, as well as anything else is laughable. There is nothing left or right in EPRDF. There is fine-tuning in response to changing scenarios.
Despite the article claims that the Ethio-US relation is a loveless liaison, it declares that the Pentagon wants Ethiopia to be a bulwark in a volatile region. If the US wants Ethiopia to be a bulwark in an unstable region, there is less reason for the US to dislike Ethiopia.
An observation that Ethiopia is reliable alley of the US in a dangerous region followed by a claim depicting the alliance as loveless liaison (because of Ethiopia’s bad human right record—another hypocritical claim) demonstrates the lack of understanding of the yardstick of US foreign policy relations or sincerity. The other side of the truth is that Ethiopia has more reasons to be strong (as its history proves) in this volatile region.
The need to be strong is not a matter of conforming to the foreign relations interests of other nations. Ethiopia has historical reasons of over 3000 years to be strong. Moreover, despite the blemish of the last few decades in her long and proud history, Ethiopia is very dependable for any nation to establish a trustworthy relationship of equals.
The allegation of the article that suggests Ethiopia’s history, resources, and potentials are cheap tradable commodities (selling points) to maintain a loveless liaison with the US is appalling.
Ethiopia’s proud history, resources, and potentials are always appealing to the US to maintain a dependable and sustainable relationship. Thus, there is less reason to be unhappy about Ethiopia. In fact, Ethiopia had been attracting so many nations for so ago. How is Ethiopia less dependable than China, Egypt, England, India, Pakistan, Nigeria or Saudi Arabia?
The article further demonizes Ethiopia as too poor to be rated as A-list client State for US’s arms market. This claim displays the lack of common sense. One. Ethiopia is not a terribly weak and poor nation as the article is trying to make the world believe. Ethiopia is one of the strong nations on the planet. No other nation in the world has proven itself to be as strong as Ethiopia. A sane and professional journalist can go and open a history book and see how many nations disappeared because of minor shocks Ethiopia has endured so many times like normal. It is not surprising if a bounty hunter turn journalist failed to see that.
Two. Only stupid folks would solicit for expensive guns from expensive markets in faraway lands while they could acquire cheap ones from unwavering, long time allies next door. Three. There is one last important point the writer didn’t like to explain (most likely doesn’t understand).
Despite Ethiopia becomes an A-client state (i.e. capable of buying big guns from the US) tomorrow; there is no reason for anybody to believe that She will enter into such kind of transaction. But, let us assume Ethiopia will go for the purchase top guns from the US. And yet, anybody who tempts to believe that the US will get into such kind of a deal must be downright naïve.
The likely scenario to follow would be like this. Ethiopia’s purchase of top weaponry triggers Egypt to acquire even more top weaponry, which in turn triggers Israel, to go far more. This chain of events trigger the Ayatollahs in Iran to strongly peruse their nuclear ambition, which can be more reason for someone in the Western hemisphere to sing Bum-Bum-Bum, Bum-Bum, Bum-Bum-Bum. Am I getting into Newton’s Third Law?
Another claim of the article suggesting many of the [1.2 million?] Diaspora in the US to have lobbied their congressional representative to condom PM Meles Zenawi government as tyrannical is flimsy.
How many are the many? It is known that there are few fulltime, noisy political elites from the previous regimes and outlaws who work with some US belly-politicians (lobbyists) against Ethiopia. But, the claim that suggests the existence of many Diaspora Ethiopians who are at odds with the governments is simply untrue.
The astounding investment worthy of several billion Eth. Birr by the Diasporas at home shows that the ordinary, law abiding, and respectful Ethiopians have little doubts in the sincerity and determination of the government to pull Ethiopia back into Her right position.
In line with this, the sense that Republicans and Democrats in the US differ in relation to Ethiopia has nothing to do with Ethiopia’s business. We all know that the Democrats lost the Presidency, the House, and the Senate because of their own problem. We also know that they approved the invasion of Iraq. Once they started to learn that they are getting screwed by the day even after they regain the House and the Senate, they started to discredit the very invasion they approved.
They started to play another version of President Bush’s: ‘either you are with us or against us’ rant against nations that befriended their own country. Any government, which had healthy relationship with the US, was reduced to be a promoter of President Bush’s agenda, thus the Republicans’.
Democrats relentlessly demonized Ethiopia for having a usual and dependable relationship with their own country. They went as far as digging 100 years historical scar in Turkey, because that nation happened to be the ally of the US in the war against terrorism they approved, while suppressing their own several centuries dirt and its effects. A hypocrite from New Jersey could not be ashamed of himself to visit a brutal beast who incarcerates people because they chose to pray to God. To make human right defenders out of those people is outright hypocritical.
The article completes its distortions by putting the likely scenario of Ethiopia’s future. One thing must be clear here. The flow of aid and other support from those who can afford to those of us who need it should not be played beyond it should be played. The big deal in this affair is that if the support is not delivered without strings in a meaningful way.
Trickling support to Ethiopia and other African nations to make them look terribly dependent on the handouts of the West for too long, despite the source of the wealth of the West is Africa, is not acceptable. Europe as well as Japan and its allies had recovered from the ashes by none other than the support of the US through the Marshal Plan. The fact that the EU will trickle or pump their support to Ethiopia is for their benefit. No one is getting free lunch
African Renaissance Millennium on International Women's Day!
International Women’s Day: Reclaiming the Divine and Sacred Feminine in all of us!
The Divine and Sacred Feminine is the source of our regeneration in this Millennium!
Women are generally sacred and nurturing in their nature. They become Divine when they take part in our social regeneration, by participating in conception, pregnancy and delivery of the next generation. We become Divine by their sacred duty of procreation and delivery of the future generation.
Imagine, a world without the manifestation of Divine and noble charcteristics and its blessings on all of us, we will all be extinct in two generations. Alas, we maintain our divinity and perpetual existence by the sacred role of women and the Divine Feminine in all of us regardless of our appreciation and deliberate choice.
What is International Women’s Day? Why is it important to remember?
March 8 gives us the unique opportunity to connect to our sacred and divine self on International Women's Day!
March 8, 2008 is considered the Millennial International Sacred Feminine Day by those who believe the characteristics of the sacred feminine is the link between our humanity and divinity.
What does the global sacred feminine mean to all of us: half human and half divine beings? This duality has been recognized for Millennia and has been challenged only in the last Millennium without relevant evidence and to our current hopeless state of affairs around the world.
I say, half Divine because it is the feminine part of us that is sacred and divine. In terms of the whole divine feminine construct, we are talking about 50% of 6.5 Billion people around the globe, and even the rest 50% of living humanity has a significant proportion of this unique Divine and Sacred Feminine constituency, making the proportion even much higher.
For those who appreciate scale and context, this is a huge phenomenon that should demand our immediate attention. The role of the Divine feminine in modern life is not expressed nor appreciated due to our intentional ignorance or callous disregard and the consequences are too often seen in their devastations, be it a individual, community or ecology level today.
The presence, distribution and determinants of the Divine Feminine amonst us, is s a significant statistics we cannot ignore. If we do try to ignore this glaring facts and potential, we do it at our own common peril. The current social, economic ecological and security crisis around the world is mainly due to this gross negligence of our divine feminine self and giving too much emphasis to our masculine and at times destructive self.
Why allow our future to be so vulnerable ! when we can bless it and empower it to a better future? The challenge remains to be the deliberate choice of promoting our individual and collective potential! That potential is the appreciation and deliberate affirmative action we take to enhance the role of our Divine Feminine Self at individual and collective existence. We are talking about fundamental life style and governance change.
The current open political discussions around the world, and especially in the US Presidential elections is very interesting.
It appears race (ethnicity) and gender is becoming a point of departure when it should be a point of our common consensus and opportunity for seeking win-win partnerships between key stakeholders that is our gender, cultural diversity and convergence of our common heritage as human beings, where there is concordance of about 99,7 percent of our genetics as the Genome project testifies.
For some reason biological markers are being taken as primary markers of competence, out of context of reality rather than character, experience and most of all well articulated policies and strategic plan. For some reason, the election is becoming a genetics and gender contest instead of representation, good governance and visionary solutions to change the future for the better.
Can we ever go back to the real issue of selecting a competent leadership that can be verified with facts rather than sheer biological determinants. It is so funny, where the diminishing role of our Divine Feminine has left us due to our intentional and casual ignorance of innate characteristics that is human and divine.
Our African ancestry for common humanity has been proven without doubt, and yet we deny our African connection and discriminate against people of African descent all over the world, the worst disparity being in our home continent Africa itself.
The person of African descent all over the world is at the bottom of socio-economic ladder. Is this by design or by accident?
The current debate in the US Presidential Primaries among Obama and Clinton testifies that a detached African Sperm with no social and cultural connection has turned out to be a handicap instead of a blessing for the Genius European American Obama who chooses to refer to himself as a Black Man, although he is almost 99 percent white that has been brought up in European American Womb, family and community.
What type of consciousness allows this level of discrimination to proceed against a Harvard Graduate and relative of six former presidents including the current Vice President.
There is some things seriously wrong with a society that even bothers to discuss this in such context. Then this same society wants to export its racism and willful disregard to the truth that the African Ancestry is common to all human race and one is really discriminating against self by disregarding this fact.
Imagine the precious son of America from an African sperm and Euro-American egg, fertilized in the European American womb and brought in the home of an European American family and community being asked to disown the cultural base of his absent father's spiritual family regardless his almost 99.9% cultural home of European American.
Just imagine an Obama of an American genius of a Presidential Candidates, being asked to choose between a culture and father he has never owned nor been part of. He is truly an European American of great heritage of six presidents and yet his African or Kenyan Father only donated his sperm and disappeared from the scene.
How can an absent father or the son who had no choice in the matter, be blamed by the actions and words of an adopted pastoral father's speech. Where is the justice and human rights that America boasts itself with. Can it see its own hypocrisy and why the rest of the world is claiming please look at the mirror.
Then Obama gets an African American pastor (Rev Jeremiah Wright) to adopt him, that too after acquiring first class degree from Harvard the best institution in the country, and he is blamed for what the pastr allegedly said in a different era out of context with the current campaign.
Why should an American genius be punished for his adopted pastor's comments, that too when the comments were taken out of context. What is this lynching the wrong man for the wrong sin by the wrong person.
Where is the Supreme Justice Court when you need it! What is the American consciousness coming to in the new Millennium. It definately needs the Divine and Sacred Feminine Mindset more than ever! Can one take to any court of justice such level of ignorance and apparent disregard for the truth? Not in America, he has to prove damage by refering to some clasue written by some one before him first with some reference to precedence. That is what the so called Good Governance allows, where as Divine Governance demands that we love our neighbor as our selves and even more because all humans are in essence divine.
Why excuse such level of ignorance and departure from our common human heritage? Why not adopt our divine feminine self that promotes both an Obama and Hilary as well as a McCain hero that is part of our common existence. In the first place why compete when you can collaborate? One can easily share roles and even rotate responsibilities. Wasting so much money on such campaign, when oen can use it to support the sagging economy be it homelessness, lack of health insurance or accelerating petrol price is beyond common sensse.
Why International Women’s Day?
Honoring and remembering the unique contribution of women, the sacred and divine feminine! the promise of our renaissance in the 21st century!
The International Women Day is an attempt to capture at our divine potential that has been ignored for millennial due to ignorance and callous disregard to the most valued and respected members of our community, the divine and sacred feminine in all of us!
The Sacred Feminine is the agent of holistic change. This fact is corroborated with evidence in classical and ancient civilizations where the sacred and divine feminine administered and graced over the temples, palaces and governance of the Blue Nile and Mediterranean civilizations. The history of the Ethiopian Empresses, Egyptian Queens and Goddesses and the Greek and Mesopotamian Priestesses and Goddesses is a case in point.
The sacred feminine in all of us is what makes our mothers, sisters, wives and daughters special that connects us the fathers, brothers and sons to our natural divine self.
What do we mean by sacred and divine feminine?
The famous Davinci Code series were trying to highlight the sacred feminine and divine feminine in our lives from time immemorial to the recent Christian era, where the feminine part of us was considered as goddesses, divine and were chairing the temples, palaces and governance centers all along the Nile Basin Civilization and Mediterranean civilizations.
Can we reclaim our sacred and divine selves?
All the Renaissance artists point to this divine feminine and we should review it and may be even take it to the next level of “Divine Governance , led by the divine feminine in each of us, (as good governance is a pretension of what can be, created by loony liberals to pretend that they care) with empowered and enlightened feminine leadership across the world in the new Ethiopian/African Millennium.
African Divine Feminine has taken over its natural leadership role. We have wasted too many centuries with the misguided evil masculinity that denies our sacred and divine feminine its important leadership role.
Who were the heroines of Sacred and Divine Feminine?
The few names that come to mind are Isis, Cleopatra, Aphrodite and then the series of Queens and Impresses that range from Queen of Sheba, Azeb, Bilquis, Judith-Gudit, Empress Tayitu and Zewditu Menelik that ruled the Upper and Lower Nile Civilizations in the heartland of Axumite, Azania and Beja neighborhoods of the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, the Mediterranean Sumerians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans and later the Germano-Slav Civilizations.
Is America catching up with the rest of the world?
Today, Hilary Clinton is trying to take over the Northern American Continent like all her predecessors in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa have done. It is time that we give the divine and sacred feminine part of us a chance to ensure our survival in the next Millennium.
Hilary is not leading, she is just following Isis, Nefertiti, Cleopatra, Queen of Sheba, Empress Victoria, Zewditu, Goldameir, Indira Ghandi, Margret Thatcher, Evita, Bhutto and thousands before her. America is just waking up and not leading, but merely catching up, that is if the Obama Fever allows her to recover!
How are we sacred and divine?
Our ancestors had recognized that the divinity in all of us our ability to re-generate at cellular, organic and organism level.
We turnover up to 300 billion cells every day with new cells from our toes to our central nervous system, second by second, minute by minute building the intricate network of our cellular and organic system of chemical, hormones, immune, nervous, cardio-vascular, respiratory, gastro-intestinal, reno-genital, muscular, connective and skeletal systems, etc.
The change is taking place at our organic and non organic ecosystem too, some times with too much human and not divine interference from us all!
Any evidence for our divinity and sacredness?
The historical temples, archaeological artifacts testify to our divine and sacred selves! The modern saints, angels amongst us who quietly serve the weak, young and old vulnerable members of our society, more or less living for others are our living testaments.
Do we see them, do we appreciate them, that is a different question.
Many African, Asian and Mediterranean temples testify the divinity of all human beings.
The European caves are testimony to our divinity. It is only fairly recently that the foolish mind declared that we are human, material things and tried to deny our divinity to our peril. Jesus the Christ was crucified for challenging such ignorance and paid with his Divine life.
Many after him, continue to declare our sacredness and divinity to their demise. The struggle goes on between evil and divine.
The sanctity of life and the divinity of the embryo!
The major transformation happens during fertilization, implantation, growth and development of the embryo in the womb until it is ready to come out with all the ready made pats as the human body after nine months of incubation. That is where the Sacred Feminine becomes divine and literally produces another divine human being.
Our modern non divine life has chosen death and destruction!
Our choice is to be divine, and yet, the modern debate in the halls of congress looks like ....we want to fight to choose to be evil. The choice is to have the ability to destroy embryos via abortion. The other choice is to destroy the remaining adults via a series of amendments to poses gun in civil life with serious consequences.
The freedom to consume the the evil drugs such as Alcohol, Marijuana, Cocaine that are ingested over the weekend, with the deadly combination of gun possession and its abuse, the streets of Washington DC or any Metropolitan city are crowded with chaotic and brainless Ambulance Drivers trying to collect the casualties, be it disabled or comatose bodies. The casualties that take place in the process is mind boggling. What a choice and at what expense?
The system is so bizarre that we literally dump all our precious resources at the emergency department to callous drug abusing and gun abusing fools when we deny our seniors and our children access to health care.
Some one has to say this is crazy, even evil to happen to the richest country in the world that does not bother to stop and think, to choose ife over death, bankruptcy over wealth creation.
The worst part is that we want to have the divine right to spread this corrupt system around the world in the name of human rights instead of divine rights that every one wants and deserves.
What is human rights if we protect the fertilized embryo but ignore the delivered baby or send our best and brightest youth to die in vain in a chaotic civil war we helped create for nothing.
The Oil is not worth it as it pollutes the globe and creates a series of respiratory distress in the cities and hurricanes in the gulf and dangerous blizzards and tornadoes in the Mid West.
We look after our new cars better than our babies, and our old cars better than our seniors, This is madness not civilization. Add to this the Holy Wood Criminal activities promoting evil to our kids at home, we are left with no future.
The streets in Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Karachi are not faring any better. Guns, drugs and evil spirituality is claiming innocent lives every where! What a choice: life or death is becoming a day to day choice of every innocent people across the world.
The cellular and organic regeneration happens every day!
We replace 300 billion cells every day. We either replace them with new invigorated cells or old rather deteriorated ones depending on our nutrition, life styles that range from that over crowded with day to day stressors or restful and creative interactive encounters. Our nutrition, our emotional and spiritual existence impact the cell regeneration process in obvious and imperceptible ways.
Managed Change does not have to be ignored!
Change is a constant part of life and we normally are not aware of it, or tend to ignore it as the process is rather slow and imperceptible, at least to those of us who want the status quo to continue. However, this is an illusion.
Managing change in our personal, family, school, work and social life is the critical issue of our day. What does it mean to manage change when can run have revolutions that sacrifice the present and our future. Just look around the world what revolutions have done in Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia, Cuba and Soviet Union, where millions perished for nothing!
Do we want revolution or evolution or managed chage, that is the question of the day. Manage change demands deliberation, dialogue and engagement, that the Evil Masculine has no time for. However, our Sacred Feminine and Divine Feminine self has a lot of time to build and no time for destruction. That is the fundamental difference!
Within our organ system, each organ needs its daily, minute by minute and some second by second nutrition be it in the form of Oxygen, Iron, Zinc, proteins, carbohydrates and other electrolytes. We consume these common and rare elements in our daily feeding habits.
When we slack or deprive our body the natural nutritive ingredients our cells and organs began to fail and die gradually, that is what is called premature aging and slow death that is so common in modern life.
Lessons from US Congress and Senate on Horn of Africa (Ethiopia) hearings!
The recent Horn of Africa Bush Policy Evaluation hearing at US Senate testifies the impact of Sacred feminine!
The recent March 11, 2008, 10:00 am hearing at US Senate testifies what happens when the Sacred Feminine is empowered and four of six witnesses both from Government and non government side were mainly intelligent, articulate women.
Compare this to what happened last time in US Congress with the ill-fated HR2003 bill was passed by vote voice by the US Congress against the sanctity and divinity of Ethiopian sovereignty.
Comparing the US congressional and Senate hearing on the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia)
The content, approach and substance of the two hearings are testimony to what happens when we ignore our sacred and divine feminine side and crowd our social and political life with masculine and vulgar selves as evidenced by Congressman Donald Payne and his cronies at the recent US Congress Subcommittee on Africa hearings.
Just watch the two hearing by two different sectors of the US Congress, one led by the Jewish American Senator Feingold and another by an African American Donald Payne, both democratic leaders but different perspectives as one had more of the sacred feminine testifying while the other ignored them or did not include them.
Positive Affirmative Action to empower our Divine and Sacred Feminine selves!
The time has come for all humanity to honor our sacred and divine feminine who make up 50% of 6.5 Billion humanity.
We need to have an affirmative action that demands all institutions have 50% divine feminine, be it at managerial, leadership positions that includes presidential, cabinet ministers, congress, parliament, captains of industry and throughout all our lives.
Then and only then we can claim the Ethiopian/African Millennium Renaissance that will transform our world to a better future.
Let us try it, it has worked in past and can do magic to our future!
The new transformation agenda for the African Millennium
The African Renaissance Millennium Transformation Agenda that has been declared by the UN to be commemorated for a Year (Sep 2007-Sep 2008); was transformed into a new charge and vision as the African contribution to humanity by African Union. It seeks imaginative ideas, and making a positive affirmative action to ensure all public and private institutions have a 50% leadership positions for our sacred and divine feminine self will be a unique gift to humanity and the despairing globe that can never be matched by any thing else we do.
Imagine the Divine Feminine Majority at the UN, AU, EU, ASEAN and the Americas as well as the cabinet and parliaments of over 150 nations around the world.
Imagine the Iraq and Afghan Wars turned into development and free and fair market shopping malls, just imagine what the world would look like!
Imagine, African Gorilla fighters going to the food factory and super malls to fee their families and running free and fair market workshops in the bush instead of converting the beautiful green neighborhood into death camps! Jusrt imagine Divine and Good Governance being practiced across the fields, valleys and mountains as well as parliament offices in Africa. Just imagine, what this world would be!
So, let us begin the process of change and Divine Governance at home, school, work and community activities. Let us make our divine and sacred feminine selves empowered to replace the old selfish masculine self that ignores the divine and sacred part of our natural and spiritual existence.
Let me begin with me is the message!
Lessons of the Divine Feminine on Millennial International Women’s Day!
Please access a highly interactive and visionary Panel Discussion on the International Women Day addressing the special role of the Divine Feminine throughout history and the recent US-Senate hearing on Horn of Africa for additional information at www.wmet1160.com, Programs: Sunday 16 March 2008 @15:00=17:00 hrs.
The recent Voice of the Patriots (Hager-Fiker Communication) at the Fox World news radio broadcast of www.wmet1160.com, Sunday, 16 March 2008@15:00-17:00 hrs is an excellent panel discussion with Dr Belai Habte-Jesus of Voice of the Patriots with Mesfin Ayenew of Voice of Reason, Benjamin of Ethiopia=first and Joseph Gizatchew of One-Ethiopia on the Millennial International Women’s Day, An English transcript will be available on request.
Belai Habte-Jesus, MD, MPH; Global Strategic Enterprises 4 Peace and Prosperity
www.globalbelai4u.blogspot.com;Globalbelai@yahoo.com, globalbelai7@gmail.com, globalbelai@hotmail.com
An Interesting farewell from a Genius that has come to appreciate his Divine and Sacred Feminine self at the end of his life. Perhaps too late for him, but an excellent lesson for the rest of us.
Here are the words of...Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Â"
FAREWELL LETTER FROM A GENIUS:"
"Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a famous writer from Columbia . He is a Nobel Peace prize winner for literature and is undoubtedly a genius.
He has retired from public life for reasons of health. He has a form of cancer which is terminal. He has sent a farewell letter to all his friends and it has been circulated around the Internet.
It is recommended reading because it is moving to see how one of the best and most brilliant of writers expresses himself and with sorrow. It is so introspective about life's choices; and I want to share this with you.
HE SAYS:
If God, for a second, forgot what I have become and granted me a little bit more of life, I would use it to the best of my ability. I wouldn't possibly say everything that is in my mind, but I would be more thoughtful of all I say.
I would give merit to things not for what they are worth, but for what they mean to express. I would sleep little, I would dream more, because I know that for every minute that we close our eyes, we waste 60 seconds of light. I would walk while others stop; I would awake while others sleep.
If God would give me a little bit more of life, I would dress in a simple manner. I would place myself in front of the sun, leaving not only my body, but my soul naked at its mercy. To all men I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love.
I would give wings to children, but I would leave it to them to learn how to fly by themselves. To old people I would say that death doesn't arrive when they grow old, but with forgetfulness.
I have learned so much with you all, I have learned that everybody wants to live on top of the mountain, without knowing that true happiness is obtained in the journey taken and the form used to reach the top of the hill.
I have learned that when a newborn baby holds, with its little hand, his father's finger, it has t rapped him for the rest of his life. I have learned that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man, only when that man needs help to get up from the ground.
Say always what you feel, not what you think. If I knew that today is the last time that I am going to see you asleep, I would hug you with all my strength and I would pray to the Lord to let me be the guardian angel of your soul.
If I knew that these are the last moments to see you, I would say 'I love you'. There is always tomorrow, and life gives us another opportunity to do things right; but in case I am wrong, and today is all that is left to me, I would love to tell you how much I love you and that I will never forget you.
Tomorrow is never guaranteed to anyone, young or old. Today could be the last time to see your loved ones, which is why you mustn't wait; do i t today, in case tomorrow never arrives. I am sure you will be sorry you wasted the opportunity today to give a smile, a hug, a kiss, and that you were too busy to grant them their last wish.
Keep your loved ones near you; tell them in their ears and to their faces how much you need them and love them. Love them and treat them well; take your time to tell them 'I am sorry'; 'forgive me', 'please', 'thank you', and all those loving words you know.
Nobody will know you for your secret thought. Ask the Lord for wisdom and strength to express them. Show your friends and loved ones how important they are to you.
Send this letter to those you love. If you don't do it today...tomorrow will
be like yesterday; and if you never d o i t, it doesn't matter, either, the moment to do it is now.
For you, with much love,
Your Friend
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Â"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/black_guy_asks_nation_for_change
Imagine: Cultural and Linguistic Competency of the Working Class Euro-Americans as evidenced in this Chicago Onion Article.
Rev Right and Obama have a long way to go to get this crowd understand the paradigm of Change. They are still looking at the whole conversation in terms of a Black Man asking for change (begging for money) in the streets instead of demanding change for America.
Obama and Opra have a long way to go to change the Red Collar Euro-Americans to change their perspectives.
Imagine, Obama wining over the overwhelming red collar Euro-Americans who think asking for Change in the Paradigm of American Infrastructure, is the same as asking for change in front of shopping malls and the card board homeless shelters of the Grand American Metropolis which is an eye sore to human consciousness.
Just imagine, where America is in terms of its cultural and political competency. Now, one can see where the likes of Farakan, Rev Right, Ku Klax Klan and the so called Moral Majority leadership that called Obama, Osama, Oh Mamaa publicly,
There is no conversation about the Militant rather culturally incompetent South and their misrepresentation as Evangelical Christians where a substantial members burn crosses and continue talking about bringing the Black Lynching of yester years. So, how can Change make its way into the American consciouness is the real question.
It can come, when our Divine Feminine Self is given the appropriate place in our churches, mosques, schools, workplace and civic institutioins including congress, senate, the Supreme Justice and the White House.
I forgot the most noble profession the Military and intelligence. We need the Divine and Sacred Feminine Movement to take hold of the Presidential and Congressional Elections as well as the kindergarten, school, colleges and the work place. Then, we might have an Obama and Oprah presidence either in the Senate or Business Community like the Discovery Channel, etc
Already, Fox Morning shows are taking delight in the Obama Bashing Campaign. Just read below and see how far behind the Working Man in America is to accept visionary leadership from an African American of Obama caliber.
Should we wait until they go to college and read cultural diversity or move on with our lives of empowering the Divine Feminine in all of us.
That is the question of the day in this Millennium! Imagine what the Arab and Asian Man thinks about Obama asking for Change instead of demanding change and transformations.
Please read on for your perspectives!
Black Guy Asks Nation For Change
March 19, 2008 | Issue 44•12
CHICAGO—According to witnesses, a loud black man approached a crowd of some 4,000 strangers in downtown Chicago Tuesday and made repeated demands for change.
"The time for change is now," said the black guy, yelling at everyone within earshot for 20 straight minutes, practically begging America for change.
"The need for change is stronger and more urgent than ever before. And only you—the people standing here today, and indeed all the people of this great nation—only you can deliver this change."
Enlarge Image
The black guy is oddly comfortable demanding change from people he's never even met.
It is estimated that, to date, the black man has asked every single person in the United States for change.
"I've already seen this guy four times today," Chicago-area ad salesman Blake Gordon said. "Every time, it's the same exact spiel. 'I need change.' 'I want change.' Why's he so eager for all this change? What's he going to do with it, anyway?"
After his initial requests for change, the black man rambled nonstop on a variety of unrelated topics, calling for affordable health care, demanding that the government immediately begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, and proposing a $75 billion economic stimulus plan to create new jobs.
"What a wacko," Schaumburg, IL resident Patrick Morledge said. "And, of course, after telling us all about how he had the ability to magically fix everything, he went right back to asking for change. Typical."
"If he's really looking for change, he's got the wrong guy," Morledge added.
Reports indicate that the black man has been riding from city to city across the country, asking for change wherever he goes. Citizens in Austin, TX said they spotted the same guy standing on the street Friday, shouting far-fetched ideas about global warming.
Cleveland residents also reported seeing him in a local park, wildly gesticulating and quoting from the Bible. And last week, patrons at the Starlight Diner in Cheyenne, WY claimed that the black man accosted them while they were eating, repeatedly requesting change.
"I saw him walk in and I knew he was headed straight for our table," said mother of three Gladys Davies. "He just stood there smiling at us for a while, and asked how our food tasted. Then he went and did the same thing at the next table over. The nerve of some people."
Those who encountered the black man Tuesday said he engaged in erratic behavior, including pointing at random people in the crowd and desperately saying he needs their help, going up to complete strangers and hugging them, and angrily claiming that he is not looking for just a little bit of change, but rather a great deal of change, and that he wants it "right now."
"I'll be honest, when that black guy said he would 'stop at nothing' to get change, it kind of scared me," local mechanic Phil Nighbert said. "Just leave me alone."
Though many were taken aback by the black man's brazen demands, some, such as Jackson, MS's Holly Moser, sympathized with him. She gave the black man credit for boldly standing up and asking every last person around him for change.
"I told him I'd give him some if I saw him later, even though I probably won't," Moser said. "Very nice man, though."
Most, however, ignored his requests.
"I'm a hardworking American who pays his taxes, and the last thing I need is some guy on the street demanding change from me," said William Overkamp, a Springfield, IL gun-shop owner.
He added, "What he really needs is a job."
Here is what actually Obama said that was intentionally misunderstood
Barack Obama’s Speech on Race Transcript
The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia, as provided by his presidential campaign.
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Posted by EYASU SOLOMON 0 comments Links to this post
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The Ethiopian Jews or the Bete-Israel want to be in Israel and Ethiopia their spiritual and terrestrial home.
What is at stake is their material poverty that does not allow them to move between their spiritual and terrestrial home.
Who is to blame for their poverty? the Ethiopians or the Israelis, that is the question of the Millennium!
What about the rest of Ethiopians who have made their spiritual home in Saudi, Yemen, Europe and North America. Who are they going to blame for their poverty?
This is a very interesting question, may be the Rabbi, the Mulah and the Patriarchates, the Popes and Bishops of these countries should have a say as this interesting Rabbinate.
May be Israel loves blaming itslef and the Ethiopian Jews are an excellent excuse for their need for atonement, May be some thing else is at play, all the same is I like the Rabbi's comments and may be the Religious leaders of the world including those in Ethiopia should follow suit.
Dr B
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Harvard, Hebrew University and Addis Ababa University
Connecting Jewish, Christian and Muslim Ethiopia in the new Milllennail Age:
The following appears to be an interesting Ethioopian Renaissance Millennial Cultural Creativity connecting the Diaspora with Ethiopia/Africa and Middle East
The composers, authors and intellectuas are known Ethiopiaphiles trying to present the new renaissance for Africa
CULTURAL CREATIVITY IN THE ETHIOPIAN AMERICAN DIASPORA
April 13-14, 2008
Harvard University
Free admission to all events
Conference details
Conference participants
Concert: Mulatu Astartke and Either/Orchestra
MULATU ASTATKE AND THE EITHER/ORCHESTRA CONCERT
Works of Mulatu Astatke, performed by Mulatu Astatke and the Either/ Orchestra, with premieres. FREE
Monday April 14 at 8:00pm
Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall
45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Mulatu Astatke is an Ethiopian musician, composer, arranger, and creator of Ethio-Jazz. He was musically trained at Trinity College of Music in England and the Berklee College of Music in Boston. A multi-instrumentalist who plays the vibraphone, keyboard, and conga, Mulatu has performed numerous concerts in Ethiopia and worldwide. The concert will feature premieres of a number of Mulatu's new works, including a section of The Yared Opera.
Mulatu Astatke
Either/Orchestra
Sponsored by the Harvard University Committee on African Studies, in cooperation with the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, The Provostial Fund for the Humanities, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, the Office for the Arts, the Department of African and African American Studies, and the Department of Music.
CULTURAL CREATIVITY IN THE ETHIOPIAN AMERICAN DIASPORA
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
APRIL 13-14
SUNDAY, APRIL 13 8:00-10:00 p.m.
(Tsai Auditorium S010, CGIS-South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street)
Keynote: “Unto the Second Generation: Dual Perspectives on the Ethiopian Diaspora”
Dr. Getatchew Haile and Rebecca G. Haile
Welcoming Remarks by Jacob Olupona, Chair, Committee on African Studies and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Chair, Department of African and African American Studies and Acting Director, The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute
Session Moderators: Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Steven Kaplan
MONDAY, APRIL 14 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
(All Monday daytime sessions will be at Barker Center, Thompson Room 110, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge)
map
directions and info
Welcoming Remarks by Diana Sorensen, FAS Dean for the Humanities
Morning Session #1 9:00-10:30
2000 E.C., Dawn of the Ethiopian Diaspora?
Speakers: Solomon Addis Getahun, Jan Abbink, Kay Kaufman Shelemay
Chair and Respondent: James McCann
Refreshments 10:30-11:00
Morning Session #2 11:00-12:00
Discussion and Reading by Dinaw Mengestu from his novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Session Moderator: Francis Abiola Irele
12:00-1:30 Lunch Break
Afternoon Session #1 1:30-3:00
The Visual Arts and Performance in Ethiopian Diaspora Life
Achamyeleh Debela,, Marilyn Heldman, Leah Niederstadt
Chair and Respondent: Ingrid Monson
Refreshments 3:00-3:30
Afternoon Session #2 3:30-5:00
Diaspora Links: Networks for Communication among Ethiopian Americans
Elias Wondimu, Mahdi Omar, Nancy Hafkin
Chair and Respondent: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong
Afternoon Session #3 5:00-6:00
What Does the Ethiopian Case Study Teach Us About New African Communities in the United States?
Donald Levine, Steven Kaplan, Terrence Lyons
Chair and Respondent: Jacob Olupona
Monday Night Concert (Sanders Theatre)
Works of Mulatu Astatke, performed by the composer with the Either/ Orchestra, with premieres
8:00-10:00 Sanders Theatre
click for map
directions and info
Conference Participants:
Participants
Jon Abbink, Professor of African Studies, VU University, Amsterdam, and senior researcher, African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Abbink has carried out fieldwork with Beta Israel in Israel, with various ethnic groups in Southern Ethiopia, and on political culture and religious relations in Ethiopia. He is the author of some 150 articles, several monographs and edited works, among them (with I. van Kessel) Vanguard or Vandals.
Politics, Youth and Conflict in Africa (2005). The recipient of various research grants, e.g., from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, CNRS, and various Dutch academic foundations, in Spring 2007 he was a visiting professor at the Asia-Africa Institute of Hamburg University, Germany.
Francis Abiola Irele, Visiting Professor of African and African American Studies and of Romance Languages and Literatures
Irele is the editor of many collections of African and Caribbean literature in English and French, and has published two collections of his own essays: The African Experience in Literature and Ideology, and The African Imagination: Literature in Africa & the Black Diaspora. He was President of the African Literature Association in 1992-1993 and is currently a member of the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association.
Achamyeleh Debela, Professor of Art, North Carolina Central University
Achamyeleh Debela specializes in multi-media arts, as well as computer graphics and painting. Trained at the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa, as well as in Nigeria, and the United States, he recently collaborated with curator Rebecca Martin Nagy in researching, curating, and publishing a catalogue for an exhibition titled Three Generations of Ethiopian Artists at the Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida.
Emmanuel Akyeampong, Harvard College Professor and Professor of History and of African and African American Studies
Emmanuel Akyeampont is a social historian with research and teaching interests in environmental history, disease and medicine, and comparative slavery and the African Diaspora. Akyeampong is also the President of the African Public Broadcasting Foundation (US), a non-profit organization of academic researchers, African broadcasters and producers dedicated to research and the production of development-oriented programming for broadcast in Africa via television, radio and the Internet..
Dinaw Mengestu, Author
Born in Addis Ababa in 1978, Dinaw immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1980, where he attended Georgetown University and received an MFA from Columbia University. He has published the acclaimed novel, named a 2007 New York Times notable book, about the Ethiopian diaspora titled The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears.
Dinaw Mengestu has been the Lannan Visiting Writer at Georgetown University, and is the recipient of the National Book Foundations "5 Under 35 Award," a Lannan Fiction Fellowship, and the 2007 Guardian First Book Award.
Elias Wondimu. Publisher
Elias Wondimu is the founder and head of Tsehai Publishers and Distributors in Los Angeles, which issues monographs and the International Journal of Ethiopian Studies. Former editor of the Ethiopian Review, Elias Wondimu arrived in the United States in 1994.
Nancy J. Hafkin, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Addis Ababa, ret. and Director, Knowledge Working
Nancy Hafkin worked for UNECA in Addis Ababa for 25 years, establishing the program to promote information technology for African development. Since her retirement, she has been writing on information technology in developing countries, with particular emphasis on gender issues; recent publications include Gender, information technology and developing countries: an analytic study (USAID, 2001), Cinderella or Cyberella:
Empowering Women in the Knowledge Society (Kumarian Press, 2006) and Engendering the Knowledge Society: Measuring the Participation of Women (ORBICOM, 2007). In 2000 the Association for Progressive Communication established an annual Nancy Hafkin Prize for creativity in information technology in Africa.
Getatchew Haile, Curator of the Ethiopian Study Center and Regents Professor of Medieval Studies at St. John’s University.
Getatchew Haile is a scholar of Ethiopian literature and history who arrived in the United States in 1976. A MacArthur Fellow and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Dr. Getatchew is a former member of the Ethiopian Parliament and a leading figure in the Ethiopian diaspora.
Among his recent scholarly publications are his editions and translations of The Ge‘ez Acts of Abba Estifanos of Gwendagwende (2006) and The Mariology of Emperor Zär’a Ya‘eqob (Tomarä Tesbet) (1992).
Rebecca G. Haile Attorney and Author
Rebecca Haile is a graduate of Williams College and the Harvard Law School. Born in Ethiopia in 1965, she came to the United States at age 11 in the wake of the Ethiopian revolution. She is the author of Held at A Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia (2007).
Marilyn Heldman, Adjunct Professor of Art History, American University
An art historian/curator and expert on Ethiopian painting, architecture, and manuscript illumination, Marilyn Heldman’s work has revealed the dialogue of Ethiopian arts with traditions abroad, including those of the Eastern Mediterranean world and of Europe. She is the author of African Zion: the Sacred Art of Ethiopia (1993) and The Marian Icons of the Painter Fre Seyon (1994), as well as numerous articles.
Heldman has been a Fellow at the Harvard Center of Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, and the recipient of foundation grants, including the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Steven Kaplan, Professor of Comparative Religion and African Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem (Radcliffe Institute Fellow, 2007-2008)
Steven Kaplan is a scholar of Christianity and Judaism in Ethiopia. His books and articles span a wide range of topics including the history of Ethiopian monasticism, studies of Ethiopian historical and religious texts, the Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia, as well as extensive fieldwork among the large Ethiopian (Jewish) community in Israel. Kaplan is currently researching Ethiopian Christian cultural adaptation in the United States.
Donald Levine, Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, University of Chicago
Donald Levine is an expert in classical social theory and modernization theory as well as a renowned scholar of Ethiopian culture. The author of two seminal monographs in Ethiopian studies, Wax and Gold (1965) and Greater Ethiopia (1974; 2nd.ed, 2000), in recent years Levine has turned his attention to the Ethiopian diaspora.
A former Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow at the Advanced Center for the Behavioral Sciences, in 2004 Professor Levine was awarded an honorary doctorate by Addis Ababa University.
Terrence Lyons, Associate Professor at the Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution and Co-Director of the Center for Global Studies, George Mason University
Terrence Lyons specializes in comparative politics and international relations with a particular emphasis on conflicts and transnational politics in Africa.
He has authored and edited a number of academic and policy-oriented studies, including "Conflict-Generated Diasporas and Transnational Politics in Ethiopia" (2007), and The Ethiopian Extended Dialogue: An Analytical Report, 2000-2003" (2004).
Mahdi Omar, The African Television Network
Mahdi Omar is the founder and producer of The African Television Network of New England, an innovative community- based network that is bringing African news, interviews, music and information to Greater -Boston Neighborhoods.
James McCann, Professor of History, Boston University
James McCann is an historian who has published books and articles on a wide range of subjects in Ethiopian history and environmental studies. A former fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University (2005-2006), McCann recently won the George Perkins Marsh Prize for his book Maize and Grace (2005). He has just completed a book manuscript titled Stirring the Pot: African Cuisine and Globalization, 1500-2000.
Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music, Supported by the Time Warner Endowment, Department of Music and Department of African and African American Studies
Ingrid Monson is Chair of the Harvard Music Department and both a scholar and accomplished performer of jazz. The author of Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction, which won the Sonneck Society’s Irving Lowens Award for the best book published on American music in 1996, she has edited The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective (2000), and recently published Freedom Sounds: Jazz, Civil Rights, and Africa, 1950-1967 (2007). Monson has also carried out fieldwork in Mali, where she specializes in the music of the balafon and of balafon virtuoso Neba Solo.
Mulatu Astatke, Composer and Performer, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Radcliffe Institute Fellow, 2007-2008)
Mulatu Astatke is a virtuoso vibraphonist and keyboardist known as the innovator and composer of Ethio-jazz. Trained in Ethiopia, England, and at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he has lived a transnational musical life engaged with musical performance, research, and media work at home in Ethiopia and as a composer and performer in musical circles internationally.
In 2005, Mulatu’s music was featured in the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers and he received the 2006 SEED (Society for Ethiopians Established in the Diaspora) Award.
Leah Niederstadt, Assistant Professor of Museum Studies/Art History and Curator of the College's Permanent Collection, Wheaton College
A 1994 Rhodes Scholar from the University of Michigan, Niederstadt completed graduate work in Anthropology at the University of Oxford (England) and in Museum Studies at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor).
She specializes in contemporary expressive culture in Ethiopia and is particularly interested in the production and consumption of painting and sculpture and of HIV/AIDS-related performance. A contributor to Painting Ethiopia: The Life and Work of Qes Adamu Tesfaw and Continuity and Change: Three Generations of Ethiopian Artists, Niederstadt will serve as co-editor for a forthcoming special edition on Ethiopia for the journal African Arts.
Jacob Olupona, Professor of African and African American Studies and Professor of African Religious Traditions
Jacob Olupona chairs the Committee on African Studies at Harvard. His publications include Kingship, Religion and Rituals in a Nigerian Community: A Phenomenological Study of Ondo Yoruba Festivals (1991) and the forthcoming The City of 201 Gods. Olupona has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and many other agencies, and in 2000, received an honorary doctorate in divinity from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University (Radcliffe Institute Fellow, 2007-2008)
Kay Kaufman Shelemay is an ethnomusicologist who has carried out fieldwork in Ethiopia, and with Ethiopians in Israel and the United States. She has published numerous books and articles on Ethiopian music, including the award-winning Music, Ritual, and Falasha History (1986/1989) and the three-volume Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant, An Anthology (1994- 1997, with Peter Jeffery).
A member of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences and the 2007-2008 Chair for Modern Culture at the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Center, she has recently received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Solomon Addis Getahun, Assistant Professor of History, Central Michigan University
Trained both in Ethiopia and at Michigan State University, Solomon Addis Getahun's research spans African and African Diaspora history, including contemporary African refugee and immigrant communities in the U.S, urbanization, identity politics in the Horn of Africa, and U.S. foreign policy towards the Horn.
His recent publications include The History of Ethiopian Immigrants and Refugees in the U.S. (2007) and The History of the City of Gondar (2006) as well as numerous articles and book chapters. Currently, he is collaborating on two book projects: Culture and Customs of Ethiopia: Culture and Customs of Africa Serie with Prof. Hakeem Tijani and History of Ethiopian Refugees in Seattle with Professor Joseph W. Scott.
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Dear Patriotic Ethiopoians and Friends of Ethiopia and Africa:
Re: We need competent tools to make the Diagnosis: Flu or Hypertension
Influenza is a disease that is spread by viral infection, whereas hypertension is a cardio-vascular and atherosclerosis disese due to diet, stressors, life style and metabolic problems.
Both are dangerous, but their ethiopathogenesis and prognosis are different. One is epidemic that comes with the season, temporar the other is endemic and constitutional.
Both are hard to treat and can be deadly. So, the analogy by PM Meles and Lidetu Ayalew in the Ethiopian Parliament Economic discussion needs a lot of reflection as both speakers may have not understood the ethiopathogenesis of the economy as well as the analogy they were making.
Transitioning from a command economy to free market economy is like jumping from one extreme to antoher within a short period of time. There are lots of shocks and counter shocks that take place as the famous UN Economist, Jeffrey loves to tell the Russians and the Asian Tigers before he converted himself as the Champion of Poverty Reduction Millennium Development Goals. The same man has published a new book called "The Common Wealth" addressing the challenges of China's economic growth and decline of European and American economic productivity.
In short, even Jeffery Sachs, the famous economist some times contradicts himself between his own reports and books depending what the political climate of the time is. The funny thing is one can use data to support any ideology and diagnosis and treatment to take the Ethiopian Parliament analogy. The fact is that the Economic System does not have a competent qualitative and quantitative indicators to measure change of the social economy in the immediate, short and long term. It is way behind the health and medical analogy the politicans in Ethiopia tried to refrence.
All the same we need Fair and Free Economic System that respects the interests of all stakeholders in the community. The recent waves of Economic crisis in America and Europe due to criminal and greedy speculators and mortgage banking system is an excellent example to learn from.
The real question is do we have a measure that is accurate to reflect the economic changes taking place in Africa where each transaction is not documented and one does not have a receipt for the financial transactions. That is the real fundamental issue we have to address before considering monetary, fiscal and government intervention tools. We need to know the cause of the problem before we suggest solutions.
all the same the following Forturne Article is an interesting analysis of the Ethiopian Parliamentary Debate and the Eritrean crisis and Israel Refugee treatment is another interesting news.
Just imagine how the Eritrean Ambassador and Israeli PM are responding both completely missing the point: It is such an interesting story of blaming the wrong person. The Israeli PM talking about his Foreign Minister, ie. ....." We asked you to take us to Uganda and do not bring Ugandans to us"...., is the quote of the Millennium.
Flu or Hypertension?
Tamrat G. Giorgis and Endale Assefa,
Fortune Staff Writers,
and Tesfalem Waldyes, Special to Fortune
Stifled by a runaway inflation whose year-on-year average picked to 22.9pc this month, what ails Ethiopia’s economy has been a subject of fierce debate in parliament last week. Tamrat G. Giorgis and Endale Assefa, Fortune Staff Writers, and Tesfalem Waldyes, Special to Fortune, have followed the parliamentary discourse and the mixed public reaction that has followed.
The polemical battle in Parliament held on Tuesday March 18, could not have been any more attention-grabbing. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi appeared before Parliament reporting his administration’s economic performance for the first half of the fiscal year; perhaps this was his shortest report ever but it was filled with plenty of confessions about what ails the Ethiopian economy.
Yet he was also somewhat voracious in portraying the economy as “sound”. He claimed that his administration had met its long-term objectives of gaining sustainable and speedy economic growth, for the fifth consecutive time this year.
This growth outlook has been challenged by runaway inflation, causing scepticism, if not bitterness, amongst the public. The majority, at least according to opposition MPs, are grappling with a rising cost of living.
“We keep listening to the phrase ‘fast growth’, while at the same time we see the emergence of the ‘development hero’ in rural areas,” said Ali Abegaz, an MP representing a self-describing Parliamentary Group. “On the other hand and at a time when we say we have registered fast growth, the economy is expanding and the living standard is improving; these assertions, publicized widely by the state media, are in contradiction with what is happening on the ground. The cost of living has soared and the low fixed-income group is suffering in an unprecedented manner.”
This is not an isolated feeling. Not only are the majority of opposition MPs of the same view but this view is also widely held by the majority of the members of the public surveyed by this newspaper late last week.
“In a country where we are now buying a quintal of teff for 700 Br, I don’t think the economy is healthy,” Genet Seyoum, a teacher from Sheno, told Fortune in a telephone interview.
She was one of the 53 respondents Fortune randomly surveyed last week by telephone, calling 100 people in Addis Abeba, Bahir Dar, Jimma, Awassa, Harar, Wolliso, Wukiro and Bishoftu (Debre Zeit). Almost half of the people surveyed did not follow the debate on the national TV, either when it was on live or when it was rebroadcast.
From those who followed it, the reaction to what the Prime Minister had argued was strikingly close; 51pc are convinced that the economy is fundamentally on the right track, while 49pc believe tht the current inflationary onslaught on the economy is only transitory in nature.
Prices have indeed been escalating since December 2005 and this has happened despite a series of relief measures taken by the federal government, such as subsidising the imports of oil products against skyrocketing international prices and discounted distributions of wheat and edible oil to the urban poor.
For instance, the price of cereals, a basket of grains including teff, has registered a jump of 18.4pc in the year-on-year average between February 2007 and February 2008, according to a Consumer Price Index (CPI) released this month by the Ethiopian Statistics Agency (ESA), the only authoritative source on the subject. Headline inflation during this period showed an increase of 22.9pc, according to the same source.
This is a rate much higher than the annual seven per cent the government had anticipated when it designed its five-year growth and poverty reduction strategy approved by Parliament in 2006. Meles could not help but accept his administration’s failure to keep inflation at bay.
“Although our objective in achiving sustinable growth is succeeding, our effort to control inflation has not yielded the desired result,” he said.
The Prime Minister declared that his government has no worse enemy than inflation at the moment. Yet, Meles argued that the economy is healthy and in a good shape when looked at from a long term perspective; exports have grown by 32pc in the past eight months, he noted.
To the credit of his administration, revenues from exports reached 1.2 billion dollars in 2006/07, jumping by 18.5pc from the previous year, hence resulting in an impressive surplus of 85.1 million dollars in the balance of payment.
Unfortunately, this could not rescue the economy from a relentless inflationary pressure, a phenomenon Meles attributed to the escalating price of oil in the international market (which consumes a large portion of the nation’s import bills), underdeveloped commodities market, which he said is manipulated by speculative businesses, and a sudden unpredicted monetary expansion of the economy.
For Temesgen Zewdie, a vocal opposition MP, there are a few good excuses in the long menu of justifications made by the government. According to him, the prime minister has blamed everyone, apart from himself, for the country’s economic problems.
Temsegen told Fortune of how the prime minister had first blamed the farmers for holding onto their produce and waiting for better prices. Then he had blamed the traders for making the same mistake of hoarding; later on, the Prime Minister argued that inflation was a result of growth itself. “And now, he blames international oil prices”, Temsegen went on.
“This clearly demonstrates that the executive body has been doing nothing but come up with pretexts for the economic condition it didn’t understand,” said Temsegen.
Prime Minister Meles says he knows what is happening to the economy. It has caught something like the flu, he said, which is no worse than irritating.
Some people among are in the public do not buy it.
“Do you believe that?” said a stunned Tesfaye Tegegn, hairdresser from Addis Abeba. “He [the Prime Minister] has the courage to create a parallel between the cost of living and the flu.”
His bitterness is shared by Yassin Ahmed, from Adama (Nazareth). “I admire the Prime Minister,” he told Fortune. “However, I don’t agree with what he said. The raising cost of living could be like the flu to him. It is a burning flame to us.”
Although these are voices of a significant number of critics of the Prime Minister from among respondents to Fortune’s questionnaires, the majority of them - close to 60pc - were persuaded by his argument that the economy is strong enough to bear the cold and survive the inflationary storm.
“What the Prime Minister said is right,” Asherie Hussien, a housewife from Kaliti, told Fortune. “The problem is temporary; it will be resolved in time. The economy is growing.”
An employee of a printing press, Lemma Bonger is one of the respondents satisfied with the Prime Minister’s explanations. In particular he was pleased to hear Meles sympathise with the low income group in urban centres, whom he said constitute 10pc of the population that is left out of the economic growth.
“No one can deny the existence of growth,” said Lemma. “The hardship is the work of greedy businesses.”
The opposition, understandably, has not been generous. The toughest challenge to the Prime Minister came from Lidetu Ayalew (MP-EUDP). Despite his contention with the report that the governing party has recognized inflation and raised the cost of living to becme a major problem, and its belated move in lifting value as well as turn over taxes in a bid to boast income, Lidetu told Fortune he was not happy with the explanations the Prime Minister offered to his series of concerns.
He believes the economy, despite growth, is not sustainable; and neither is it distributed equitably to the majority of citizens. Lidetu sees an economy that suffers from “hypertension”, waiting to collapse, should it be left untreated. Chief among his worries is the real source of an increased monetary circulation in the economy, a view widely shared by other economists.
Traditionally, Ethiopia’s inflation is visible in times of distress caused by drought as was the case in 2003. Then gross domestic product (GDP) registered negative 3.9pc: productivity was down, so prices were high. This is what Wolday Amaha (PhD), president of the Ethiopian Economic Association, sees as a conventional phenomenon.
“When there is a bad harvest, prices increase and inflation follow,” he told Fortune. “Now, there is a good harvest and yet prices are going up. This demands different analysis and study; contrary to the normal demand and supply curve.”
A PhD economist, who requsted anonymity, told Fortune, he is doing exactly that, in collaboration with his students. He said the result of his research is due in two weeks, although he increased credit by banks and public expenditure as main culprits.
“When an economy registers growth as a whole, upward prices in the food sector slows down by a significant amount depending on the relative growth,” says this economist. “But this is not a major inflationary cause as it is presented by government agencies.”
Indeed, the size of monetary circulation in the economy has expanded significantly over the past few years. In the first half of the fiscal year, analysts estimate that it has grown by close to 20pc, to reach a little over 55 billion Br.
“There is more money in the market than could be gained from an increase in production,” said Lidetu. “The government knows this but does not identify where it comes from.”
There are suspicions that are widely circulating, rumours on the existence of illegitimate currency circulating in the economy, while other economists are pointing their fingers at an increasing state borrowing to finance budget deficit, estimated at reaching five per cent of GDP.
Indeed, there is a marked growth in the money supply. For instance, the total stock of outstanding credit by the state and private-owned commercial banks in 2006/07 was 31.1 billion Br, showing an annual growth of 16.3pc, according to a progress report produced by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development on the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), released in December 2007.
A policy advisor to the government says that a large part of this domestic lending by commercail banks goes to the private sector. He is probably telling the truth. Of the 15.5 billion Br these banks disbursed in 2006/07, a 25pc jump the previous year to an overwhelming 94 pc was made to the private sector.
The picture for the two quarters of the current fiscal year is not much different; of the eight billion Birr commercial banks advanced, 55pc went to the private sector.
Meles’ promises for fiscal discipline, limiting his government’s domestic borrowing to 2.7pc of the GDP, is estimated to reach 4.6 billion Br.
Although late, his administration seems to be keen in taking a mix of fiscal and monetary measures to combat inflation, aside from its bashing of what it described as “fraudulent businesses”.
It has already lifted taxes on grains beginning last week, in addition to monetary policy measures announced late last week by the central bank in putting up the reserve commercial banks keep from 10pc to 15pc, a second and two fold increase since June 2007.
He banks on the launching and operations of Ethiopian Commodities Exchange market, which is under formation, as a lasting fix to the problem, whether it is “the irritant common cold” he chose to describe or “terminal hypertention”, the preferred view of his opponents.
The Prime Minister announced his administration’s determination in keeping subsidising basic commodities to low income groups, while pursuing sustainable economic growth, still convinced that the current inflation is due to expansion in the economy, and could only be tackled by further growth.
“We can’t be sure when we will bring inflation under control,” Meles told Parliament. “But we can be sure it won’t take us long.”
In the meantime, he urged the public to be calm and patient. Judging from Fortune’s random survey, majority appear to have given him what he asks for.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/968083.html
Source: Haaretz, Israel
2. Eritrean ambassador: Jerusalem must repatriate 'deserters'
March 25, 2007
Barak Ravid
The vast majority - about 2,800 - of the Africans who have entered Israel illegally from Egypt via Sinai are from Eritrea. Israel and Eritrea have full diplomatic relations, with embassies in Asmara and in Tel Aviv, but there is no active dialogue on the refugee issue.
A few weeks ago, Eritrea's ambassador to Israel even registered an official protest with the Foreign Ministry, in which he complained about Israel's failure to repatriate the Eritreans. "These are not political refugees, but rather work migrants or army deserters," the protest said.
The Eritrean ambassador, Tesfamariam Tekeste, noted yesterday in an interview with Haaretz that his letter of protest included several issues of concern to his government.
First, he said, at least half of the infiltrators represent themselves as Eritrean while in fact they are from other African states, such as Sudan or Ethiopia. "They know the Eritreans automatically receive a six-month visa, so they pretend to be Eritrean," he said.
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The letter also mentioned the fear that hostile elements helping to smuggle Africans into Israel could exploit them for carrying out terror attacks. "If that happens, the accusing finger will point to Eritrea," Tekeste said.
"Israel is turning itself into a migration destination for Eritrean citizens fleeing from army service or looking for work," Tekeste said. "The fact that you issue six-month visas encourages people to come here."
Tekeste's letter also protested the lack of discussion between the two countries on the infiltration.
"No one has talked to us about it and I haven't received any response to my letter of protest," he said yesterday.
The ambassador is infuriated by claims that repatriated Eritreans face execution. "It's an unfounded accusation," Tekeste said. "Many of those who come to Israel leave Eritrea legally and won't be hurt if they return. Army deserters will be treated in accordance with the law and drafted."
He also expressed anger about Eritrea's characterization by Israeli officials as a dictatorship.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faces a dilemma with regard to Eritrea. He wants to find a human solution to the refugee crisis, but also wants to take decisive action to prevent the flow of refugees into Israel. He knows that a fence along the border with Egypt would stop the infiltration, but the NIS 700 million price tag is daunting.
Tekeste is not the only one who is worried about the lack of dialogue on the refugee issue. In a discussion on the issue on Sunday, Olmert asked Foreign Minister deputy director general for Africa Jacques Revah what was being done vis-a-vis Eritrea or other African states, and received only a vague response.
Olmert berated military and Foreign Ministry officials, saying: "You turned Herzl's vision upside down. Instead of bringing us to Uganda, you brought Uganda to Israel."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, "The actions of the Foreign Ministry are perfunctory."
The Foreign Ministry was directed months ago to come to an agreement with the African countries and the international community to find places for the infiltrators. One month ago, the request was repeated, but no progress has been made.
A senior Foreign Ministry official noted that talks with the U.S., Canada and Kenya on the subject have been fruitless, and that no state is willing to absorb the infiltrators. The Foreign Ministry is considering transfering a large percentage of them to Burkina Faso.
A few weeks ago, Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit cited Eritrea's "oppressive regime" as the reason for Israel's issuing of work visas to infiltrators. The Israeli embassy in Asmara recently sent a report to Jerusalem indicating that Eritreans who were returned to their homeland "will be placed in rows and shot or thrown into torture chambers."
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http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/business/ethiopia-wants-india-to-develop-its-bamboo-industry_10030240.html
Source: Thaindian, Thailand
3. Ethiopia wants India to develop its bamboo industry
March 23rd, 2008
Nayanima Basu
New Delhi, March 23 (IANS) With its expertise and entrepreneurship, India can help Ethiopia develop that country’s bamboo industry, a visiting Ethiopian official has said. “Ethiopia has huge potential in bamboo cultivation. We are eager to develop this as a small and medium industry for which we want India to come forward and help organise the sector,” said Ahmed Nuru, deputy director, privatisation and public enterprises supervision agency, Ethiopia.
Currently, bamboo plantations cover about one million hectares in Ethiopia. Eighty percent of these is of the lowland variety. Lowland bamboo is used in producing handicraft items while highland bamboo is used in paper mills.
“Bamboo has a huge demand locally due to increasing use in industry and housing. It has application in terms of home furnishing, curtains and decorated items and so on. And these are also environmentally safe,” Nuru told IANS in an interview here.
Bamboo production in Ethiopia constitutes 67 percent of the total in Africa.
“We want to now give our bamboo items an export edge for which we are inviting several countries to come and set up large-scale industries,” Nuru said. Chinese companies have expressed interest in making large-scale investments in Ethiopia’s bamboo industry, he added.
Ethiopia’s main concern is that expansion of agricultural land is eroding its bamboo groves; hence their preservation has become a major issue.
“We need to take urgent and immediate action as the resource has not been attended due to lack of due attention and only large-scale and sustained production can ensure its growth and sustenance,” he said.
Trade between India and Ethiopia stood at $127 million in 2006-07, up from $72.5 million in 2002-03.
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1. The world must stop ignoring Somalia - U.N.
Thu 20 Mar 2008
Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, March 20 (Reuters) - The international community must overcome its reluctance to get involved in Somalia and help put an end to abuses there, a special U.N. envoy said on Thursday.
"While more people are talking about Somalia, there is still little action to stop the violence," Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah told the Security Council during a debate on whether to send U.N. peacekeepers to the African country.
"I am not asking outside countries to become active for moral or altruistic reasons. They have a clearly mandated responsibility to become involved in a country where there are widespread violations of human rights and humanitarian law."
Last month the Security Council extended for six months U.N. endorsement of an African Union mission in the lawless country. It consists of two Ugandan battalions, totaling 1,600 troops, and an advance party of 192 Burundians.
Deputy U.N. peacekeeping chief Edmond Mulet outlined four possible scenarios for deploying international peacekeepers. One called for the deployment of up to 27,000 U.N. troops.
While the 15 Security Council members agree the situation is dire, many are reluctant to send U.N. peacekeepers to Somalia, where Islamist insurgents, warlords and Ethiopian -backed Somali government forces fight battles every day.
Britain's U.N. ambassador John Sawers described Somalia as a "failed state" and said more political progress was needed before the council could consider deploying U.N. forces there.
"Until there's further progress on the political front, it's difficult to see scope for a fully-fledged peacekeeping force," he said.
"BLACK HAWK DOWN"
French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said the council needed be certain Somalis wanted international peacekeepers.
"For the moment we have the African troops. It's a start," he said.
Talk of outside intervention is still colored by memories of a battle in 1993 in which 18 U.S. troops and hundreds of Somali militiamen died. The incident inspired a Hollywood movie, "Black Hawk Down" and marked the beginning of the end for a U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force.
Ould-Abdallah said: "Somalia remains a prisoner of the past, never forgiven for the violent actions carried out against the international community in the 1990s."
But he was encouraged by the country's Transitional Federal Government's attempt to reconcile with local faCtions and the government's decision to move back to the capital, Mogadishu, in January.
South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said it would take time to persuade the council to deploy peacekeepers.
"The ultimate goal is to have a U.N. peacekeeping mission on the ground. That is not going to happen tomorrow," he said.
The U.N. refugee agency has described the conflict, which has uprooted more than 1 million people, as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, even worse than Darfur. (Editing by Alan Elsner)
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http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1225207/
2. New Agreement Maximises Country, Ethiopia Trade
Pretoria, Mar 20, 2008
South Africa and Ethiopia are to maximise trade and capacity between the two countries through the Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement which was signed on Tuesday.
Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa and Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin signed the agreement at the Diplomatic Guest House in Pretoria.
The minister said the agreement would unlock potential between the two countries. "We should always see the trade and investment issues as interrelated," said Mr Mpahlwa.
The agreement must be seen in its totality, he said, as South Africa cooperating in ensuring we produce the conditions that will ensure trade goes beyond its current levels.
Ethiopia, with a population of about 80 million, is home to Africa's largest livestock population with more than 80 percent of Ethiopians involved in the agricultural sector.
"Ethiopia is a country that has huge strength in the area of agriculture; both in terms of its contribution to Gross Domestic Product, and in employment capacity with 80 percent of the people employed through agriculture.
"We have to work to make sure that Ethiopia can also [diversify its exports and produce] processed goods.
"The most immediate thing at the moment is to maximise on the trade taking place between the two countries, and the agreement will assist us to encourage South African companies to invest in Ethiopia to strengthen that capacity to produce goods that then feed into raising the level of trade between the two countries."
Mr Mesfin told reporters the newly signed trade agreement will create a framework of encouraging the respective business community members to fully utilise the opportunites that exist between the two countries in terms of trade and investment.
"We feel as the two governments that we have put the correct legal framework in place but at the same time we will work closely to encourage our business community ... as the potential that exists between the countries is numerous and huge," said Mr Mesfin.
The Ethiopian Foreign Minister highlighted that his country's economy, mainly agrarian driven, has been doing very well with GDP growth of 10 percent or more in the last five years.
Also, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma signed a number Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with her counterpart on Industrial and Technical Co-operation.
Ms Dlamini-Zuma said core areas of discussion focussed on a number of areas including trade and investment, agriculture, defence, arts and culture, tourism, human resource development and health.
She highlighted that the Joint Ministerial Committee was created to drive and monitor decisions and agreements taken by the two countries.
South Africa and Ethiopia established official diplomatic relations in 1994, and Ethiopia is the new chair of the New Partnership for Africa's Development. ____________________________
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hGar9pYWM8k1DyG5AxriQRGlYl0Q
Source: AFP
2. Ethiopia claims 3,000 Eritreans crossed border in six months
March 19, 2008
ADDIS ABABA — More than 3,000 Eritreans, about a third of them soldiers, have fled their country for northern Ethiopia in the past six months, officials said Wednesday.
"From September 12 to March 9, 2008, more than 3,000 arrived in Ethiopia. They include 1,300 soldiers, as well as students and civil servants," said Hailesellasie Gebremariam, a government official in charge of refugee affairs.
Hailesellasie said the monthly influx increased dramatically since last year.
"The immigrants have been receiving the necessary treatment in camps in Tigrai and Afar states... and representatives of donor countries visited the camps during the stated period," he added.
The claims could not be immediately confirmed by independent sources, but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 20,000 Eritreans have taken refuge in Ethiopia.
Tensions run high between the two countries with a total of 200,000 troops from both sides facing off on either side of their border, threatening a fresh conflict.
A border war between 1998 and 2000 left at least 70,000 people dead, and the dispute remains unresolved despite a peace agreement and a ruling by a UN-appointed panel.
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http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10881652
Djibouti
St Tropez in the Horn?
Mar 19th 2008
A tiny country makes the best of a bad neighbourhood
IN THE centre of the blazing whiteness, four Afar herdsmen chip away at the salt with pickaxes. The milk-green waters beyond the salt pans look almost glacial, but the burning hot wind, the camels and dizzying mirages dispel the illusion. This is Lake Assal. At 155 metres (509 feet) below sea-level, it is Africa's lowest point—and one of its hottest.
The Afars (sometimes known as the Danakil) gather the salt into sacks. They used to carry the salt on camels west into the Ethiopian highlands but times have changed. These Afars sell it for $7 a sack in Djibouti town, a couple of hours' drive away.
The road there winds across black lava fields and moonscapes, past a hilltop garrison of the French Foreign Legion, down dry river beds to the azure Gulf of Tadjoura. The capital's outskirts look unpromising but as you get closer to Djibouti Ville—the city itself—an unexpected order asserts itself. Even locals admit that, until recently, the tiny country, with a mere 800,000 people, was asleep. Now, against the odds, it is stirring.
Until recently, it relied almost entirely on French largesse. When independence came, in 1977, the founding president, Hassan Gouled, fretted about what would happen if the colonialists left. But Djibouti (formerly called the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas) is still France's largest foreign base, hosting a force 2,600-strong.
It deters the statelet's much bigger, predatory neighbours from even thinking of invading. (Earlier this year, France and the United Arab Emirates signed a deal to let France set up a military base in Abu Dhabi, the largest of the seven emirates.)
After independence, Djibouti's two ethnic groups, the Issas (who are ethnic Somalis) and the Afars drifted into Djibouti city. Most swapped a nomadic life of herding goats and cattle for long heat-haze afternoons chewing qat, a narcotic leaf flown in from Ethiopia. But things began to change when Eritrean independence cut Ethiopia off from the sea.
Since then, almost all Ethiopia's trade has been shipped through Djibouti, some of it on a rickety railway linking it to Addis Ababa. The bullish—some say bullying—thinking of Djibouti's current president, Ismail Guelleh, a protégé and nephew of Mr Gouled first elected in 1999, has also helped pep things up. His slogan on billboards throughout the town is “Nous croyons” (We believe).
In what? Well, in Dubai. He wants Djibouti to follow the example of the booming gulf emirate or perhaps even of Malaysia, a Muslim model where many children of Djibouti's elite head for university. Dubai Ports now runs Djibouti's upgraded port.
The economy may grow by nearly 6% this year, though unemployment is high and the IMF is unhappy with the government's shoddy fiscal management. Businessmen say the port's improvements make it hard to imagine that Eritrea's Massawa, Somaliland's Berbera or Somalia's Bossaso will catch up soon. Some talk of turning the city's scorching seafront into “St Tropez in the Horn”.
There is also a spectacular plan said to have the backing of Tarek bin Laden, a half-brother of Osama bin Laden, to build the world's longest bridge, across the Bab al-Mandib (Gate of Sorrows), the strait between Djibouti and Yemen. Even for ambitious Djibouti, this may be a bridge too far, judging by local scepticism and the developers' evasiveness.
But the country may profit from its new strategic importance. Mr Guelleh let America set up a large military base, from which it conducts anti-terrorist operations across east Africa. Ruthless policing and foreign troops have so far stopped Islamist militants from getting a foothold there, although there are complaints that Mr Guelleh is increasingly undemocratic.
Mr Guelleh's main aim is not to annoy any government in the region. Relations with Ethiopia are tense but practical. Mr Guelleh opposed Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in late 2006 but avoids the topic when meeting Ethiopian officials.
Djibouti's people resent the advertisements along their roads in Amharic, Ethiopia's main language. But grumbling is quickly silenced by Ethiopian threats to cut off qat imports. Djibouti is similarly cautious with Somalia. Mr Guelleh is disappointed by the feebleness of Somalia's transitional government but does not endorse neighbouring Somaliland's bid for independence. In sum, Djibouti is surviving cannily in a tough neighbourhood.
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Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, one of the most prominent economists of the world, in his widely known book, the End of Poverty, published last year, gives us a lengthy assessment how he could deal with Third World's poverty, especially that of Africa. Though I had read the book long ago, I did not have the opportunity to take my pen and give some critical remarks. Some of my countrymen have given their comments about the merits and the demerits of the book.
I thought, however, that it is still worth to give certain critical remarks on my side, which were not raised and discussed by them. Since I have been dealing with development economics for a long time which is a very erroneous and very misguiding field, I dear to say that I could have some illuminating idea that could open new avenue of development for our country which is the victim of poor understanding of human civilization, which has been practiced by Western educated technocrats, neo-colonial economic policy which has been practiced since the last five decades, and global economic order which is setup by Capitalist countries.
Due to his prominent position as a Professor in one of the best universities in the world, and a close adviser of the General Secretary of the United Nations, Mr. Koffi Annan, Prof. Sachs will have great influence on many governments of the Third World countries when he writes such a book.
The End of Poverty is a very lengthy analysis from a classical and neo-classical point of view which encompasses the most known facts, that poor people are poor because they are poor, and lack of saving vis-Ã -vis capital one of the causes of poverty, which are seen by most neo-liberal economists of our day who have great impacts in shaping our mode of thoughts and handlings.
In his approach of finding the real causes of poverty, Prof. Sachs uses as a methodology the differential diagnosis, which he has borrowed from medical science. In his belief this is the only methodological approach to detect and study the real causes of the problem of poverty and give remedy once-for-all to eradicate underdevelopment.
In order to come to a once-for-all panacea of alleviating poverty, he takes as an example the economic situations of Europe during the middle ages, and how Europe had overcome successfully poverty and dieses and developed science and technology which enables her to dominate the world.
For Europe to dominate the world technologically, Prof. Sachs sees that Europe has the ability or the opportunity which enable her to increase production and income and not because Europe or America have exploited the rest of the world.
For the great success of technological revolution in Europe, especially in Great Britain, Prof. Sachs is of the opinion that the openness of the English society and its favorable institutions are the main factors which enabled her to break itself from old norms which have arrested economic development for a long time. With no doubt the more open a society and its institutions are, people could emancipate themselves from old values and become the master of technology which is the basis of further development.
The openness of a given society depends on a variety of factors. Some individuals who see better than others that their society could not live any more by extolling old values and social orders which hamper technological innovation bring new ideas to illuminate the minds of the ruling classes or certain strata of the population. When certain groups who are enlightened enough are challenging old values and determined to introduce new norms and work methods which could serve as engine of social and economic development, the road to progress and social emancipation will be enhanced.
In this case the English society had the privilege to have very good institutions, not only in the late Middle Ages but also during the early feudal ages which helped it to introduce new social norms that could slowly eradicate old values and pave the way for creative activities based on individual freedom.
More than that: to take technological lead the favorable atmosphere of the English society during the 16th century and later on had invited many leading handy craft specialists from Antwerp and Italy and other European countries which enabled Great Britain to diffuse all these ideas which came from other countries.
In addition to this the education system which was solely based on rhetoric, language and philosophy, which was normal during that time in some European countries, opened the minds of the English society which is the basis of intellectual development of various sorts. This combined with the above factors have enabled the English society to break up itself from darkness and march towards technological mastery.
The renaissance of the 14th and the 15th century had also great impacts in raising the cognitive powers of not only the English society but also most European countries which was more expressed in city buildings.
Far trade through which many innovative ideas came and the unequal exchange trade which were later on understood as the main causes of further accumulation had strengthened the economic basis of not only the English society but also many European counties.
As Great Britain understood that extended capital accumulation was only possible when other nations became the sources of raw materials and agricultural products, it developed different devises to undermine development efforts in other countries. Hence the development of the theory of International trade accentuated by liberal ideas is seen as the main engine of economic development in all countries.
Adam Smith, and later on David Ricardo had developed the theory of absolute and comparative advantages successively to cement the English supremacy in technological fields and block innovations in other countries. Especially, Adam Smith fought the idea of mercantilism which until the 17th century enabled many absolutist states in Europe to develop home market by supporting active balance payment policies and through encouraging manufacture activities without which the idea of Europe as we see it today could not be formed and control the world.
The education system could not only open the minds of the English society; the society became also the real breeding ground of empiricist idea which poisoned many intellectuals in Europe and was systematically fought by Leibniz and others who were emerged in the footsteps of Plato and Cusanus, who saw in it the danger of egoism and continuous war.
More than other European countries some English intellectuals, like Hobbes, Locke, and other empiricists had understood to develop their own version of understanding the human mind and how they could manipulate it so that it could become the victim of oligarchic rules. Accordingly, human beings act and direct their behaviors by bringing forth their built-in egoistic motives which is the deriving force of maximizing their wishes or needs.
Hence human needs are unlimited. As Hobbes said individuals who are not guided by the motives of utility maximization behave like animals. On the other hand Leibniz believed that human beings are rational beings and could develop new ideas to shape their own fate.
In order that they could behave and handle rationally, and see themselves as part of a given society they must be taught not by empiricist idea but by real idea which can be investigated by means of dialectics. Starting the 17th century on wards we witness that there is an intense struggle between these schools of thoughts, namely those who uphold the idea of empiricism, first developed by the Greek Sophists, and by philosophers who believed that every human being is endowed by birth with idea, which is the source of true knowledge.
The clear understanding of the differences of these two schools of thought is the basis of any social and economic development. Without understanding these two divergent ideas, one cannot grasp the essence of economic underdevelopment in so many African countries, and the global economic order which is absorbing human and material resources to enrich few nations, and dislocating millions of people from their natural habitats by destroying their long history and culture.
The question why Europe could achieve industrial development and successfully dominate the world technologically cannot be understood in a manner as Adam Smith tries to teach us which Prof. Sachs quotes. The so-called invisible hand and the division of labour of Adam Smith are outcomes of long historical and social processes which are unique in the European social formations. One cannot depict the achievement of Europe in the field of science and technology without tracing Europe's history to that of the Greek and the Egyptian civilization.
In this case Europe is the child of the Egyptian and the Greek civilization without which the concept of Europe as we see it today could not have been successful. As historical investigations prove that the transmission of the Greek knowledge which is borrowed from Egypt and philosophically improved to alleviate the cognitive power of the European mind in order to let it the Master of Science and technology was brought by the Arabs and the Jews to the then backward and impoverished Europe.
Thanks to the great efforts of Arab philosophers that had interpreted the Greek literatures into Latin which became the foundations of European civilization. Various philosophers and Churchmen who came to the political scene after the 5th century A.D had intensively studied the secret of the Greek philosophy and fought in their capacity to change man's attitude towards nature and God.
The appearance of critical minded Churchmen who were opposing the omnipotence of the catholic religion, which until the end of the middle ages had arrested the minds of the European people and made it the victim of disease and darkness, is very crucial indeed in changing the European society.
The revolt from within the church on one side, and the power struggle between the Monarchs and the Popes on the other hand at various times had given air to the development of different attitudes and began eroding the power structure of the clergy.
City buildings starting the 13th century on wards and the concentration of people in certain areas and the rapid growth of hand craft activities and trade which culminated into the division of labour had by itself helped the emergence of new scientific ideas.
Hence the Copernican revolution which was followed by those scientists like Galileo Galilee and others had totally changed the minds of the European society. The 14th and the 15th century of renaissance which came to the scene by opposing darkness and poverty had illuminated the European mind and taught it that man is capable of changing his environment when he is scientifically guided.
The reappearance of the Greek civilization was a new challenge to the then socially rigid European society which gave him new power to be ruled not any more by old norms and values which made him the victim of natural calamities but by reason and rational ideas. The introduction of mathematical idea and the quantification of productive activities and registering them orderly give the European people the power of controlling nature.
Nature is seen the source of everything which could be utilized in the proper way when the human mind nurtured with true knowledge. Hence man cannot be any more the victim of natural disorder but its master when he is equipped with true knowledge. Though we could witness that there were diverse ideas which were opposing diametrically in interpreting the development of idea, the reappearance of the Greek civilization is the clue of the success of European civilization.
Beginning the 16th century, the competition among the different European nations and the birth of the concept of the idea of nation-state gave the European people a unique dynamism which brought them together to live under one rule and law. Absolute states were determined to destroy everything which was barrier to nation-state building.
They broke the old feudal and local administration structures which were obstacles to social movements from one region to the other; paved the way for the free movement of capital and labour.
They had destroyed all forms of internal regulations and taxes which were seen as the main hindrances for the emerging of home market. Only by effectively introducing new administration mechanisms which were supportive of market economic principles the development of the division of labour and it’s strengthening became fastened. Absolute Monarchies of the 16th and 17th centuries were aware of the need of constantly modifying their administration structures which they believed could improve technological development.
As the division of labour became the main engine of technological development, and the necessary of trade became as the main mechanism of fastening the valorization of capital, a new and dynamic class which was highly motivated and culturally advanced became to the political scene which began challenging the old orders. The intermarriage of different classes and the diffusion of ideas gave new dynamism which by itself paved the way to a coherent idea.
On the other side to read the economic development of Europe as a smooth process without social exploitation and peasant upheaval like Adam Smith had tried to teach us could not be compatible to the real social processes which had molded the European society, especially that of the English.
More than other continents of the world, the economic exploitation of the masses in most European economies is well documented; and without the primitive accumulation of the masses which was extended to child labour, capital accumulation which helped economic development could not be understood.
The uniqueness of the European feudal social structure, which is well analyzed by the well known European historians, and which was not found in other social formations was a factor by itself for the disintegration of the system and pave the way for the capitalistic production system. The European serfdom which was known for its very exploitative nature was challenged by the peasant movements in most European countries, and the peasants gained bargaining power which improved their social status.
The introduction of far trade activities and the accumulation of money capital in the hands of the merchants and the debt mechanism which had arrested the feudal and the aristocratic class had loosened the social fabrics of the feudal system in Europe.
The putting-out system which enabled the merchant class to dictate the hand craft activities of the rural population, and the improvement of technologies and hence production activities which enabled better productivity of consumption goods is a unique phenomena which could not be found in Africa or Asia.
Adding to this, allocation of slave labour for road building and city construction, and the flow of ideas among the different European countries had by itself helped raise the cultural activities of the masses. Without well-designed cities and without market halls and places the exchange of goods and services were practically impossible. Without allocating mass labour which is unique in the European history we could not have seen such gigantic cities and cathedrals.
These and the above factors have great impacts in shaping the economic development of Europe and the development of the social division of labour which was highlighted by Adam Smith but not taken as prerequisite for the development of technological and social division of labour. The fact that technological innovations and economic development were seen beyond the scope of time and space are one of the characteristic features in Smith's illustrations of the division of labour.
We could witness from this brief analysis that the unique social formation in the European history, and the intellectual and the social movements which Europe had the privilege to raise itself above other nations, and the development of idea which is emanated from the human mind, and which was well understood by the European intellectuals of the 14th to the 17th century were the main driving factors for the introduction of a science driven technological development in the European society.
The intellectual movement which is unique to the European society and the diffusion of diverse ideas and the scientific arguments forwarded by the different scholars to enhance their views gave a unique impetus to technological development. This is being the case, in areas where feudal social orders were the rule of the system, and social movements were restricted, the introduction of new technology and the break up of feudal administration structures were necessary factors which paved the way for industrialization.
Through the mirror of technological developments in Europe during the last 200 years, Prof. Sachs tries to investigate the causes of poverty in many African countries by applying differential diagnosis as means of detecting economic underdevelopment. According to Prof. Sachs there are eight major factors which are the causes of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa.
If one takes one by one and examines them most of the points are simply neo-liberal repetitions, and are effects and not the causes of poverty and real underdevelopment. The mysterious thing is how poverty becomes the cause of economic stagnation is not clear; though economic stagnation or technological backwardness by itself could be one of the main causes of poverty.
Again, if one applies the methodology of dialectical investigation, there are other factors which could be the causes of economic underdevelopment and poverty. Demographic problems, physical geography and the special climatic conditions which are exceptions of many tropical countries could in some way or the other hamper social developments if they are not tackled systematically and scientifically, and as such could not be the main causes of underdevelopment.
If we look at the history of Europe, especially during the middle and late Middle Ages, most European countries were breeding grounds of mosquitoes. Only drying the breeding grounds of mosquitoes, and plastered the earth with special stones and building well designed cities and market places, mosquitoes could disappear from most European countries. In the 1950s the Chinese did the same thing while they turned down the advices of European governments to spread DDT, which they saw clearly that DDT could not eradicate Malaria.
In this case, special climatic conditions which favored such kinds of Insects, when treated scientifically will be controlled and their total disappearance is a matter of further scientific investigation. From this perspective if we examine the situations in many African counties in the last 50 years, simply spreading DDT could not eradicate mosquitoes. We witness that mosquitoes have the ability to adapt themselves to DDT and could not be simply victimized by such measures.
Since most African governments are indifferent to scientifically based social and economic development and since they do not have any social responsibility they resort every time to old methods to tackle such kinds of Insects which hamper social progress. As Prof. Sachs and others are forwarding that mosquitoes could not be eradicated from the African soil by simply distributing bed nets.
In his analysis, Prof. Sachs tells us that through his new method of differential diagnosis he found the real causes of poverty and at the same time the instruments by which one could systematically eradicate poverty.
Though he tells us here and there that he has gone through development theories, he has completely ignored all the theoretical debates of the 1950s to the 1980s which had great impacts in shaping development models in many Third World countries, and had failed for various reasons.
First of all the transformation of the European feudal society to capitalism, which were well studied and analysed by European and American economic historians are not of great concern for Prof. Sachs, though such kinds of discussions are parts of development economics and should not be rejected or neglected out rightly as if they did not take place.
Secondly, the modernization theory which has focused on the problem of traditional societies and how one could overcome backwardness by means of growth poll which could be trickled down and overwhelms the entire society should had been discussed at length. Thirdly, the answer to this modernization came especially from Third World Economists who have profound knowledge of European economic history. Andre Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, Arghiri Emmanuel, etc. to mention some, and the French structural school, mainly represented by Althuser and Balibar and other highly educated anthropologists with field work experiences, have influenced the development/underdevelopment debate. Prof. Sachs ignores these facts, though they are parts of the economic development theory and obligations to be visited by development theory students.
The above intellectuals have demonstrated well how Europe had exploited Africa, first of all through colonial trade by subjugating African peasants to specialize in certain agricultural products which are designed for European markets.
By building infrastructures to promote export products, the European colonialists have systematically sabotaged the development of the home market in many African countries. Extracting activities had connections to the mother countries, and could not serve as the basis of further capital accumulation from within.
In addition to this the banking activities which were centered in many colonial cities had the purpose of financing trade and not industries and technological development in various African countries.
These factors hampered economic development and disintegrated the African society. Even more, the colonial administrations had destructed the divisions of labour which had existed until the arrival of colonialists, and the labour force was allocated in selected areas which are vital for European capital accumulation. With this the creative activity of the Africans came to a halt, and the exchange of commodities among Africans became very restricted.
To grasp more over the causes of poverty and the underdevelopment of the African economy, I try to analyse seven fundamental aspects which I think are very decisive indeed that have arrested economic and social developments in many African countries.
I. The absence of renaissance as a factor: first and foremost Africa was cut from the intellectual movements of Europe which has been going at least since the beginning of the 15th century. As I have tried to analyse above without studying the secret of the Greek civilization economic and social developments in Europe could not have been conceivable.
After the dark ages, the renaissance movement which was started in Italy could be expanded else where in other European countries and create favourable situations for wider intellectual discussions and social movements. While Greek knowledge moved towards Europe through different mechanisms and routs, Africa did not have the chance to participate in the intellectual discussions of Europe, though Africa was the source of the Greek civilization. As Greek philosophers have persistently taught us that the sources of knowledge and intellectual movement is to engage in scientific dialogs by upholding idea as the true source of knowledge.
II. Slave trade as a factor: slave trade which was started first of all by the Portuguese merchants and overtaken by Spain and other European countries had totally annihilated the social structures of many African countries.
Estimations show that 30 to 90 million Africans were transported to oversee. While old men, women and children remained in their native countries, men with special knowledge who had developed wide range activities until the arrival of slave trade who were the basis of social and economic transformation were uprooted.
The negative consequence of this uprooting is the destruction of the social and the technological division of labour which many African countries had developed until the 15th century. Until today Africa could not be hilled from the wounds of this barbaric uprooting.
III. Colonialism as a factor: colonialism is the logical extension of slavery which had the power of undermining and extinction the remaining social and technological division of labour to hold down Africa permanently as the source of raw materials for capitalist accumulation in Europe.
As colonialism took firm positions in the African soil, Africans were compelled to abandon their long work practices and specializations, and were allocated in plantation activities which were designed for European markets. The colonial administration had the purpose to facilitate this mass exploitation and control the social movements of the African society.
IV. The post colonial structure as a factor: post colonial administration structures and the so called political independent had extended the old division of labour by means of new mechanisms which have deepened Africa's underdevelopment and poverty. After the Second World War, and after the new economic arrangements, dictated by the new emerging Imperial power, the United States of America, Africa was practically cut from participating in the world technological developments which is the basis of true social transformations.
In order to bind Africa into the new emerging international division of labour and trade, the African social transformation become a unique case which can be dealt by means of import-substitution-industrialization which is a part and parcel of the so-called modernization theory. The import-substitution-industrialization which is not based on machine-tool industries is entirely dependent for its reproduction on imported inputs, and as such it is vulnerable for internal and outside shocks. It is not organically linked to the rest of the economic sectors; and has a very limited accumulation effect.
The fact that it is detached from research and development, its capacity to expand and encompass the traditional economic sector, and transforms it to a dynamic economic sector is heavily restricted. In the absence of development and research, and in the absence of machine-tool industries it is practically impossible to produce a coherent economic structure which could operate like a human body. Such an industry must inevitably push those economic forces in areas where the turnover of capital is very quick but the accumulation base and hence the multiplier effect is very limited.
This is the case in many African countries where import-substitution-industrialization has been taken as the only viable policy which could modernize the African economy. From this vantage point of view if we see the import-substitution-industrialization and the modernization policies, they are mechanisms of controlling the African economises not to take their natural paths. The consequence of such policies is as we see it today to destroy and to disturb the minds of the Africans by reducing them to the status of that of cattle.
Africans are not created to build well-designed cities; they cannot develop science and technology and must remain as animals without any social order and harmony which governs their handlings and gives them the capacity of creating new ideas. The school systems are special mechanisms which darkens the minds of the African elite not to see the world of science and technology and at the same time the world of aesthetic beyond once own lives.
V. The omnipotent state as a factor: the characteristic feature of the state in various African countries is that it lacks any theoretical and philosophical foundations by which it could organize the society around certain principles.
In order that any society could exit as a society and reproduce itself economically and socially it needs certain philosophical frame works which serve as guidelines that bring the society together so that it could work in unison to build a dynamic and strong society.
From this point of view the state apparatus in all African countries which became independent in the 60s could not play as instrument of capitalist accumulation by creating favourable conditions for those dynamic forces from within. Since the state apparatus was moulded and structured by the colonial masters its mission was to distort internal accumulation and create conditions for the outflow of wealth to the capitalist centre.
The indirect control of the African state structures by foreign forces and the incoherency of the state from within create an atmosphere of fear and suspicion among those forces that control the state apparatus.
Different foreign secret services that operate in various African countries to destabilize Africa use the various elements of the countries concerned to concentrate their work in information gathering rather than fulfil their constitutional duty for which they have sworn. Hence the bureaucratic apparatus must be strengthened to suppress democratic processes which are essential for the free flow of ideas and creative activity.
Foreign forces could fulfill their satanic mission only through the omnipotent state apparatus which they finance and advise. In this manner the state machines in all African countries serve as instrument of suppression rather than building a cultured economy which is based on science and technology.
On the other side if we see the role of the capitalist states starting the 16th century we witness that the state had progressive roles in creating conditions which favored internal accumulation.
Without the intervention of the state capitalist accumulation and hence the development of science and technology could not have been developed as we see it today. After the Second World War all capitalist countries must continue to support internal accumulation by creating new devices, where as African governments are advised not to take any measure which could strengthen the economic base of their society.
The intervention of the state in the economy is seen as sin where as state intervention in all major capitalist countries become the exclusive rights of European governments. Such insane attitudes in many African countries have reduced the role of the state purely as instrument of suppression and internal economic distortion which canalizes wealth to the capitalist countries.
The political situation in Ethiopia is a vivid example why the civilized West sticks to the Meles regime, though the regime of Meles is engaged in mass killings and torture. The country is turned to a play ground of Economic Hit Men which distort economic performance of the country by giving false advises.
The acceptance of the regime the structural adjustment program (SAP) and its materialization, and its full fledged promises to introduce a market economy which is completely detached from science and technology, and the mafia type system which is spread within the circle of the state apparatus, and which is well financed by the World Bank and the IMF and certain Western governments is a clear example how Economic Hit Men are trying everything to hold Ethiopia down as a country which produces and reproduces poverty on a higher scale. The expansion of flower plantation by Western firms and their engagements in those areas where they can make quick profits are examples why they are not ready to allow any democratic changes in Ethiopia.
The EPRDF government is purely a puppet regime of imperialist forces which are waging direct war against the Ethiopian people so that they do not enjoy true freedom by developing science and technology. It is therefore foolish to believe that the West will loose the control it has gained without gaining any guarantee from the opposition forces.
VI. The absence of intellectual discourse as a factor: we know that from the Greek philosophical discourse and dialectical method of conversation one could develop science if a society is engaged in intellectual discourse.
Scientific discourses and hypothesis building are the basis of a science driven technological development. The true understanding of the source of knowledge and the divergent ideas that had been developed by various schools of thought over the last 3000 years are the basis of any society if it could sustain as a society and make history in the true sense of the word. Any society must question itself what is the meaning of life in this world, from where it comes, what it is doing in this world, and where it is heading.
A society that does not pose such kinds of questions, its sustainability as a full functioning society will remain vague, and it does not understand in which direction it is marching. From this perspective the school systems in Africa lack any philosophical foundations. Colonial masters and their successors have deliberately formulated a school system which could arrest the minds of the students.
They have imposed a system which is not self reflective, and block any meaningful scientific discourse. A society which is not self-reflective, and can not questions the meanings of various policies it will be easily manipulated by outside forces. At the end such a society produces and reproduces gangster like politicians that sell their countries for foreign forces. This is what we see and witness in the present day Africa.
VII. Incoherent economic policy as a factor: the different policies followed after the modernization theories are nothing other than cementing the existing international division of labour and confusing the African society.
Whether the basic needs approach strategy, the Green Revolution or the Structural adjustment program that are mainly outlined by the World Bank and the IMF are seen as the real panacea for the African economic crises are nothing other than extending the old system of exploitation by adjusting the African economies to the changing international order which began in the beginning of the 70s and intensified in the 80s. Structural adjustment programs have the sole purpose of absorbing the African resources via debt mechanisms and intensify unequal trade where as Europe and America become richer and richer.
The known austerity program of the IMF, which is simply stated as unscientific by Prof. Sachs but could not be analysed further is another attempt of distorting the monetary mechanisms of the banking sector. According to the philosophy of the IMF, money must be drawn away from those unproductive social forces and allocated to those productive forces which behave like capitalists.
The true purpose of this policy is nothing other than strangulating the economy by cutting it from its monetary base and allocating the meagre resource to the export sector so that the African economies become more and more outward oriented. As we see in the last 20 or more years by applying the bitter medicine of the IMF and the World Bank the African economies become more and more dependent on outside aid, and become strangulated so that Africa rotates within the vicious circles of debt mechanism, dependent on few exportable goods, which are becoming meaningless every year, and chaotic administration structures which become more and more suppressive and submissive to the outside forces.
Prof. Sachs criticizes here and there why politics and bad governance cannot explain the African underdevelopment and poverty. In this case he attacks both the rights and the lefts for their focusing exclusively on politics to explain the causes of the African poverty through the mirror of political discourse. It is amazing how Prof. Sachs understands politics, though starting three thousand years the human social and economic development evolves around politics.
The first Greek state men and philosophers had seen in politics the real mechanism in shaping social affairs. That is why they had studied in depth the meaning of metaphysics and its relation to politics. Accordingly, only those who are guided by philosophical and rational principles have the capacity to give wise leadership and play historical roles in shaping a harmonious and developed society. On the other side those who lack these principles they rely solely on pure power and permanent war which ultimately destroy the society they govern.
Those who control state apparatus and hence shape politics have the ability to determine the movements of the different social forces within their boundaries. According to their social consciousness and understanding of the role of human beings political leaders either destroy the basis of the social reproduction capacities of their society or design them in such a way so that innovation, social reproduction and capital accumulation based on science and technology grow permanently.
Without politics and understanding the role of politics in shaping the social destiny of any given society, a society cannot exist as a social reproduction force where arts, city buildings, technological development and further innovation take place to sustain that particular society. Only politics, as the concentration of social process and an arena of ideological and economic struggle has the capacity in shaping the social well being of a given society or destroying it. In this case politics in many African counties cannot be the exception.
In order to understand the political roles of successive African governments and their leaders, one cannot see their handlings and their methodologies outside the scope of the colonial past, and the education system by which they are brought up, and the social formation in which they grew up. Though Africa had brilliant leaders, these leaders were chased and killed by Western intelligent services and their henchmen from within.
All the attempted murders and coup d` état were nothing but to prevent Africa from technological developments and science and to hold it down as permanent house of producing and reproducing poverty on a higher scale. All wars which have been taking in the last three or more decades on the African soil are wars orchestrated by the Western civilized states to destabilize Africa.
The economic policies of the IMF and the World Bank, and their applications by those Economic Hit Men as put by John Perkins in his well illuminating analysis demonstrates clearly how Africa and the rest of the Third World countries are being destroyed by those satanic forces who enjoy when they see that a part of humanity is permanently languishing under poverty and disease.
The globalization of the world economy which has been going since the last 15 years is worsening the economic and social situation of many African countries, and cannot be enlightened as Prof. Sachs makes us believe since by it self is the causes of permanent economic crises and destabilization. After all, how can such a system have the mission of enlightenment when its ideological tenet is neo-liberalism which is the antithesis of a science driven technological development.
After he has studied the causes of poverty through the mirror of his differential diagnosis Prof. Sachs came to the conclusion that poverty can be eliminated from the African soil if Western governments see it as their own problem and make efforts to help Africa. The millennium 2015 is a part of this global attempt to reduce and eradicate poverty from the African soil. Only through the blessing attempts of donor countries is the hope and aspirations of millions of Africans lies. According to the belief of Prof. Sachs to think that Africa could come out of poverty by itself is not imaginable.
Though one cannot doubt the good intention of Prof. Sachs, to think that Western governments and their sophisticated institutions could solve the African economic crises is silly wise indeed, and at the same time an insult to the millions of Africans who become the victim of the global economic disorder instituted after the Second World War.
When Western capitalist countries are the problem of economic disequilibrium on the global scale and the causes of mass exodus by appropriating the African wealth how could they eradicate poverty from the African soil? Since Prof. Sachs tries to analyze the economic crises of Africa from a false paradigm he must reach such kind of a conclusion which cannot be materialized. Even if part of it sees the light of the day this leads to more dependency and economic colonization. The policies which he had forwarded to Poland in the beginning of the 90s, to Bolivia to end hyperinflation and which it h
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, one of the most prominent economists of the world, in his widely known book, the End of Poverty, published last year, gives us a lengthy assessment how he could deal with Third World's poverty, especially that of Africa. Though I had read the book long ago, I did not have the opportunity to take my pen and give some critical remarks. Some of my countrymen have given their comments about the merits and the demerits of the book.
I thought, however, that it is still worth to give certain critical remarks on my side, which were not raised and discussed by them. Since I have been dealing with development economics for a long time which is a very erroneous and very misguiding field, I dear to say that I could have some illuminating idea that could open new avenue of development for our country which is the victim of poor understanding of human civilization, which has been practiced by Western educated technocrats, neo-colonial economic policy which has been practiced since the last five decades, and global economic order which is setup by Capitalist countries.
Due to his prominent position as a Professor in one of the best universities in the world, and a close adviser of the General Secretary of the United Nations, Mr. Koffi Annan, Prof. Sachs will have great influence on many governments of the Third World countries when he writes such a book.
The End of Poverty is a very lengthy analysis from a classical and neo-classical point of view which encompasses the most known facts, that poor people are poor because they are poor, and lack of saving vis-Ã -vis capital one of the causes of poverty, which are seen by most neo-liberal economists of our day who have great impacts in shaping our mode of thoughts and handlings.
In his approach of finding the real causes of poverty, Prof. Sachs uses as a methodology the differential diagnosis, which he has borrowed from medical science. In his belief this is the only methodological approach to detect and study the real causes of the problem of poverty and give remedy once-for-all to eradicate underdevelopment. In order to come to a once-for-all panacea of alleviating poverty, he takes as an example the economic situations of Europe during the middle ages, and how Europe had overcome successfully poverty and dieses and developed science and technology which enables her to dominate the world.
For Europe to dominate the world technologically, Prof. Sachs sees that Europe has the ability or the opportunity which enable her to increase production and income and not because Europe or America have exploited the rest of the world. For the great success of technological revolution in Europe, especially in Great Britain, Prof. Sachs is of the opinion that the openness of the English society and its favorable institutions are the main factors which enabled her to break itself from old norms which have arrested economic development for a long time. With no doubt the more open a society and its institutions are, people could emancipate themselves from old values and become the master of technology which is the basis of further development.
The openness of a given society depends on a variety of factors. Some individuals who see better than others that their society could not live any more by extolling old values and social orders which hamper technological innovation bring new ideas to illuminate the minds of the ruling classes or certain strata of the population. When certain groups who are enlightened enough are challenging old values and determined to introduce new norms and work methods which could serve as engine of social and economic development, the road to progress and social emancipation will be enhanced.
In this case the English society had the privilege to have very good institutions, not only in the late Middle Ages but also during the early feudal ages which helped it to introduce new social norms that could slowly eradicate old values and pave the way for creative activities based on individual freedom. More than that: to take technological lead the favorable atmosphere of the English society during the 16th century and later on had invited many leading handy craft specialists from Antwerp and Italy and other European countries which enabled Great Britain to diffuse all these ideas which came from other countries.
In addition to this the education system which was solely based on rhetoric, language and philosophy, which was normal during that time in some European countries, opened the minds of the English society which is the basis of intellectual development of various sorts. This combined with the above factors have enabled the English society to break up itself from darkness and march towards technological mastery.
The renaissance of the 14th and the 15th century had also great impacts in raising the cognitive powers of not only the English society but also most European countries which was more expressed in city buildings.
Far trade through which many innovative ideas came and the unequal exchange trade which were later on understood as the main causes of further accumulation had strengthened the economic basis of not only the English society but also many European counties. As Great Britain understood that extended capital accumulation was only possible when other nations became the sources of raw materials and agricultural products, it developed different devises to undermine development efforts in other countries.
Hence the development of the theory of International trade accentuated by liberal ideas is seen as the main engine of economic development in all countries. Adam Smith, and later on David Ricardo had developed the theory of absolute and comparative advantages successively to cement the English supremacy in technological fields and block innovations in other countries.
Especially, Adam Smith fought the idea of mercantilism which until the 17th century enabled many absolutist states in Europe to develop home market by supporting active balance payment policies and through encouraging manufacture activities without which the idea of Europe as we see it today could not be formed and control the world.
The education system could not only open the minds of the English society; the society became also the real breeding ground of empiricist idea which poisoned many intellectuals in Europe and was systematically fought by Leibniz and others who were emerged in the footsteps of Plato and Cusanus, who saw in it the danger of egoism and continuous war.
More than other European countries some English intellectuals, like Hobbes, Locke, and other empiricists had understood to develop their own version of understanding the human mind and how they could manipulate it so that it could become the victim of oligarchic rules. Accordingly, human beings act and direct their behaviors by bringing forth their built-in egoistic motives which is the deriving force of maximizing their wishes or needs.
Hence human needs are unlimited. As Hobbes said individuals who are not guided by the motives of utility maximization behave like animals. On the other hand Leibniz believed that human beings are rational beings and could develop new ideas to shape their own fate. In order that they could behave and handle rationally, and see themselves as part of a given society they must be taught not by empiricist idea but by real idea which can be investigated by means of dialectics.
Starting the 17th century on wards we witness that there is an intense struggle between these schools of thoughts, namely those who uphold the idea of empiricism, first developed by the Greek Sophists, and by philosophers who believed that every human being is endowed by birth with idea, which is the source of true knowledge. The clear understanding of the differences of these two schools of thought is the basis of any social and economic development.
Without understanding these two divergent ideas, one cannot grasp the essence of economic underdevelopment in so many African countries, and the global economic order which is absorbing human and material resources to enrich few nations, and dislocating millions of people from their natural habitats by destroying their long history and culture.
The question why Europe could achieve industrial development and successfully dominate the world technologically cannot be understood in a manner as Adam Smith tries to teach us which Prof. Sachs quotes.
The so-called invisible hand and the division of labour of Adam Smith are outcomes of long historical and social processes which are unique in the European social formations. One cannot depict the achievement of Europe in the field of science and technology without tracing Europe's history to that of the Greek and the Egyptian civilization.
In this case Europe is the child of the Egyptian and the Greek civilization without which the concept of Europe as we see it today could not have been successful. As historical investigations prove that the transmission of the Greek knowledge which is borrowed from Egypt and philosophically improved to alleviate the cognitive power of the European mind in order to let it the Master of Science and technology was brought by the Arabs and the Jews to the then backward and impoverished Europe. Thanks to the great efforts of Arab philosophers that had interpreted the Greek literatures into Latin which became the foundations of European civilization.
Various philosophers and Churchmen who came to the political scene after the 5th century A.D had intensively studied the secret of the Greek philosophy and fought in their capacity to change man's attitude towards nature and God. The appearance of critical minded Churchmen who were opposing the omnipotence of the catholic religion, which until the end of the middle ages had arrested the minds of the European people and made it the victim of disease and darkness, is very crucial indeed in changing the European society.
The revolt from within the church on one side, and the power struggle between the Monarchs and the Popes on the other hand at various times had given air to the development of different attitudes and began eroding the power structure of the clergy. City buildings starting the 13th century on wards and the concentration of people in certain areas and the rapid growth of hand craft activities and trade which culminated into the division of labour had by itself helped the emergence of new scientific ideas.
Hence the Copernican revolution which was followed by those scientists like Galileo Galilee and others had totally changed the minds of the European society. The 14th and the 15th century of renaissance which came to the scene by opposing darkness and poverty had illuminated the European mind and taught it that man is capable of changing his environment when he is scientifically guided. The reappearance of the Greek civilization was a new challenge to the then socially rigid European society which gave him new power to be ruled not any more by old norms and values which made him the victim of natural calamities but by reason and rational ideas.
The introduction of mathematical idea and the quantification of productive activities and registering them orderly give the European people the power of controlling nature. Nature is seen the source of everything which could be utilized in the proper way when the human mind nurtured with true knowledge. Hence man cannot be any more the victim of natural disorder but its master when he is equipped with true knowledge.
Though we could witness that there were diverse ideas which were opposing diametrically in interpreting the development of idea, the reappearance of the Greek civilization is the clue of the success of European civilization.
Beginning the 16th century, the competition among the different European nations and the birth of the concept of the idea of nation-state gave the European people a unique dynamism which brought them together to live under one rule and law. Absolute states were determined to destroy everything which was barrier to nation-state building.
They broke the old feudal and local administration structures which were obstacles to social movements from one region to the other; paved the way for the free movement of capital and labour. They had destroyed all forms of internal regulations and taxes which were seen as the main hindrances for the emerging of home market. Only by effectively introducing new administration mechanisms which were supportive of market economic principles the development of the division of labour and it’s strengthening became fastened.
Absolute Monarchies of the 16th and 17th centuries were aware of the need of constantly modifying their administration structures which they believed could improve technological development.
As the division of labour became the main engine of technological development, and the necessary of trade became as the main mechanism of fastening the valorization of capital, a new and dynamic class which was highly motivated and culturally advanced became to the political scene which began challenging the old orders. The intermarriage of different classes and the diffusion of ideas gave new dynamism which by itself paved the way to a coherent idea.
On the other side to read the economic development of Europe as a smooth process without social exploitation and peasant upheaval like Adam Smith had tried to teach us could not be compatible to the real social processes which had molded the European society, especially that of the English.
More than other continents of the world, the economic exploitation of the masses in most European economies is well documented; and without the primitive accumulation of the masses which was extended to child labour, capital accumulation which helped economic development could not be understood. The uniqueness of the European feudal social structure, which is well analyzed by the well known European historians, and which was not found in other social formations was a factor by itself for the disintegration of the system and pave the way for the capitalistic production system.
The European serfdom which was known for its very exploitative nature was challenged by the peasant movements in most European countries, and the peasants gained bargaining power which improved their social status. The introduction of far trade activities and the accumulation of money capital in the hands of the merchants and the debt mechanism which had arrested the feudal and the aristocratic class had loosened the social fabrics of the feudal system in Europe.
The putting-out system which enabled the merchant class to dictate the hand craft activities of the rural population, and the improvement of technologies and hence production activities which enabled better productivity of consumption goods is a unique phenomena which could not be found in Africa or Asia.
Adding to this, allocation of slave labour for road building and city construction, and the flow of ideas among the different European countries had by itself helped raise the cultural activities of the masses. Without well-designed cities and without market halls and places the exchange of goods and services were practically impossible.
Without allocating mass labour which is unique in the European history we could not have seen such gigantic cities and cathedrals. These and the above factors have great impacts in shaping the economic development of Europe and the development of the social division of labour which was highlighted by Adam Smith but not taken as prerequisite for the development of technological and social division of labour. The fact that technological innovations and economic development were seen beyond the scope of time and space are one of the characteristic features in Smith's illustrations of the division of labour.
We could witness from this brief analysis that the unique social formation in the European history, and the intellectual and the social movements which Europe had the privilege to raise itself above other nations, and the development of idea which is emanated from the human mind, and which was well understood by the European intellectuals of the 14th to the 17th century were the main driving factors for the introduction of a science driven technological development in the European society.
The intellectual movement which is unique to the European society and the diffusion of diverse ideas and the scientific arguments forwarded by the different scholars to enhance their views gave a unique impetus to technological development. This is being the case, in areas where feudal social orders were the rule of the system, and social movements were restricted, the introduction of new technology and the break up of feudal administration structures were necessary factors which paved the way for industrialization.
Through the mirror of technological developments in Europe during the last 200 years, Prof. Sachs tries to investigate the causes of poverty in many African countries by applying differential diagnosis as means of detecting economic underdevelopment. According to Prof. Sachs there are eight major factors which are the causes of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa. If one takes one by one and examines them most of the points are simply neo-liberal repetitions, and are effects and not the causes of poverty and real underdevelopment.
The mysterious thing is how poverty becomes the cause of economic stagnation is not clear; though economic stagnation or technological backwardness by itself could be one of the main causes of poverty. Again, if one applies the methodology of dialectical investigation, there are other factors which could be the causes of economic underdevelopment and poverty. Demographic problems, physical geography and the special climatic conditions which are exceptions of many tropical countries could in some way or the other hamper social developments if they are not tackled systematically and scientifically, and as such could not be the main causes of underdevelopment.
If we look at the history of Europe, especially during the middle and late Middle Ages, most European countries were breeding grounds of mosquitoes. Only drying the breeding grounds of mosquitoes, and plastered the earth with special stones and building well designed cities and market places, mosquitoes could disappear from most European countries. In the 1950s the Chinese did the same thing while they turned down the advices of European governments to spread DDT, which they saw clearly that DDT could not eradicate Malaria.
In this case, special climatic conditions which favored such kinds of Insects, when treated scientifically will be controlled and their total disappearance is a matter of further scientific investigation. From this perspective if we examine the situations in many African counties in the last 50 years, simply spreading DDT could not eradicate mosquitoes. We witness that mosquitoes have the ability to adapt themselves to DDT and could not be simply victimized by such measures. Since most African governments are indifferent to scientifically based social and economic development, and since they do not have any social responsibility they resort every time to old methods to tackle such kinds of Insects which hamper social progress. As Prof. Sachs and others are forwarding that mosquitoes could not be eradicated from the African soil by simply distributing bed nets.
In his analysis, Prof. Sachs tells us that through his new method of differential diagnosis he found the real causes of poverty and at the same time the instruments by which one could systematically eradicate poverty. Though he tells us here and there that he has gone through development theories, he has completely ignored all the theoretical debates of the 1950s to the 1980s which had great impacts in shaping development models in many Third World countries, and had failed for various reasons.
First of all the transformation of the European feudal society to capitalism, which were well studied and analysed by European and American economic historians are not of great concern for Prof. Sachs, though such kinds of discussions are parts of development economics and should not be rejected or neglected out rightly as if they did not take place. Secondly, the modernization theory which has focused on the problem of traditional societies and how one could overcome backwardness by means of growth poll which could be trickled down and overwhelms the entire society should had been discussed at length. Thirdly, the answer to this modernization came especially from Third World Economists who have profound knowledge of European economic history. Andre Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, Arghiri Emmanuel, etc. to mention some, and the French structural school, mainly represented by Althuser and Balibar and other highly educated anthropologists with field work experiences, have influenced the development/underdevelopment debate.
Prof. Sachs ignores these facts, though they are parts of the economic development theory and obligations to be visited by development theory students. The above intellectuals have demonstrated well how Europe had exploited Africa, first of all through colonial trade by subjugating African peasants to specialize in certain agricultural products which are designed for European markets.
By building infrastructures to promote export products, the European colonialists have systematically sabotaged the development of the home market in many African countries. Extracting activities had connections to the mother countries, and could not serve as the basis of further capital accumulation from within. In addition to this the banking activities which were centered in many colonial cities had the purpose of financing trade and not industries and technological development in various African countries. These factors hampered economic development and disintegrated the African society.
Even more, the colonial administrations had destructed the divisions of labour which had existed until the arrival of colonialists, and the labour force was allocated in selected areas which are vital for European capital accumulation. With this the creative activity of the Africans came to a halt, and the exchange of commodities among Africans became very restricted.
To grasp more over the causes of poverty and the underdevelopment of the African economy, I try to analyse seven fundamental aspects which I think are very decisive indeed that have arrested economic and social developments in many African countries.
I. The absence of renaissance as a factor: first and foremost Africa was cut from the intellectual movements of Europe which has been going at least since the beginning of the 15th century. As I have tried to analyse above without studying the secret of the Greek civilization economic and social developments in Europe could not have been conceivable.
After the dark ages, the renaissance movement which was started in Italy could be expanded else where in other European countries and create favourable situations for wider intellectual discussions and social movements. While Greek knowledge moved towards Europe through different mechanisms and routs, Africa did not have the chance to participate in the intellectual discussions of Europe, though Africa was the source of the Greek civilization. As Greek philosophers have persistently taught us that the sources of knowledge and intellectual movement is to engage in scientific dialogs by upholding idea as the true source of knowledge.
II. Slave trade as a factor: slave trade which was started first of all by the Portuguese merchants and overtaken by Spain and other European countries had totally annihilated the social structures of many African countries. Estimations show that 30 to 90 million Africans were transported to oversee. While old men, women and children remained in their native countries, men with special knowledge who had developed wide range activities until the arrival of slave trade who were the basis of social and economic transformation were uprooted.
The negative consequence of this uprooting is the destruction of the social and the technological division of labour which many African countries had developed until the 15th century. Until today Africa could not be hilled from the wounds of this barbaric uprooting.
III. Colonialism as a factor: colonialism is the logical extension of slavery which had the power of undermining and extinction the remaining social and technological division of labour to hold down Africa permanently as the source of raw materials for capitalist accumulation in Europe.
As colonialism took firm positions in the African soil, Africans were compelled to abandon their long work practices and specializations, and were allocated in plantation activities which were designed for European markets. The colonial administration had the purpose to facilitate this mass exploitation and control the social movements of the African society
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IV. The post colonial structure as a factor: post colonial administration structures and the so called political independent had extended the old division of labour by means of new mechanisms which have deepened Africa's underdevelopment and poverty. After the Second World War, and after the new economic arrangements, dictated by the new emerging Imperial power, the United States of America, Africa was practically cut from participating in the world technological developments which is the basis of true social transformations. In order to bind Africa into the new emerging international division of labour and trade, the African social transformation become a unique case which can be dealt by means of import-substitution-industrialization which is a part and parcel of the so-called modernization theory.
The import-substitution-industrialization which is not based on machine-tool industries is entirely dependent for its reproduction on imported inputs, and as such it is vulnerable for internal and outside shocks. It is not organically linked to the rest of the economic sectors; and has a very limited accumulation effect. The fact that it is detached from research and development, its capacity to expand and encompass the traditional economic sector, and transforms it to a dynamic economic sector is heavily restricted. In the absence of development and research, and in the absence of machine-tool industries it is practically impossible to produce a coherent economic structure which could operate like a human body.
Such an industry must inevitably push those economic forces in areas where the turnover of capital is very quick but the accumulation base and hence the multiplier effect is very limited. This is the case in many African countries where import-substitution-industrialization has been taken as the only viable policy which could modernize the African economy.
From this vantage point of view if we see the import-substitution-industrialization and the modernization policies, they are mechanisms of controlling the African economises not to take their natural paths.
The consequence of such policies is as we see it today to destroy and to disturb the minds of the Africans by reducing them to the status of that of cattle. Africans are not created to build well-designed cities; they cannot develop science and technology and must remain as animals without any social order and harmony which governs their handlings and gives them the capacity of creating new ideas.
The school systems are special mechanisms which darkens the minds of the African elite not to see the world of science and technology and at the same time the world of aesthetic beyond once own lives.
V. The omnipotent state as a factor: the characteristic feature of the state in various African countries is that it lacks any theoretical and philosophical foundations by which it could organize the society around certain principles. In order that any society could exit as a society and reproduce itself economically and socially it needs certain philosophical frame works which serve as guidelines that bring the society together so that it could work in unison to build a dynamic and strong society.
From this point of view the state apparatus in all African countries which became independent in the 60s could not play as instrument of capitalist accumulation by creating favourable conditions for those dynamic forces from within. Since the state apparatus was moulded and structured by the colonial masters its mission was to distort internal accumulation and create conditions for the outflow of wealth to the capitalist centre.
The indirect control of the African state structures by foreign forces and the incoherency of the state from within create an atmosphere of fear and suspicion among those forces that control the state apparatus.
Different foreign secret services that operate in various African countries to destabilize Africa use the various elements of the countries concerned to concentrate their work in information gathering rather than fulfil their constitutional duty for which they have sworn. Hence the bureaucratic apparatus must be strengthened to suppress democratic processes which are essential for the free flow of ideas and creative activity.
Foreign forces could fulfill their satanic mission only through the omnipotent state apparatus which they finance and advise. In this manner the state machines in all African countries serve as instrument of suppression rather than building a cultured economy which is based on science and technology.
On the other side if we see the role of the capitalist states starting the 16th century we witness that the state had progressive roles in creating conditions which favored internal accumulation. Without the intervention of the state capitalist accumulation and hence the development of science and technology could not have been developed as we see it today.
After the Second World War all capitalist countries must continue to support internal accumulation by creating new devices, where as African governments are advised not to take any measure which could strengthen the economic base of their society. The intervention of the state in the economy is seen as sin where as state intervention in all major capitalist countries become the exclusive rights of European governments. Such insane attitudes in many African countries have reduced the role of the state purely as instrument of suppression and internal economic distortion which canalizes wealth to the capitalist countries.
The political situation in Ethiopia is a vivid example why the civilized West sticks to the Meles regime, though the regime of Meles is engaged in mass killings and torture.
The country is turned to a play ground of Economic Hit Men which distort economic performance of the country by giving false advises. The acceptance of the regime the structural adjustment program (SAP) and its materialization, and its full fledged promises to introduce a market economy which is completely detached from science and technology, and the mafia type system which is spread within the circle of the state apparatus, and which is well financed by the World Bank and the IMF and certain Western governments is a clear example how Economic Hit Men are trying everything to hold Ethiopia down as a country which produces and reproduces poverty on a higher scale.
The expansion of flower plantation by Western firms and their engagements in those areas where they can make quick profits are examples why they are not ready to allow any democratic changes in Ethiopia. The EPRDF government is purely a puppet regime of imperialist forces which are waging direct war against the Ethiopian people so that they do not enjoy true freedom by developing science and technology. It is therefore foolish to believe that the West will loose the control it has gained without gaining any guarantee from the opposition forces.
VI. The absence of intellectual discourse as a factor: we know that from the Greek philosophical discourse and dialectical method of conversation one could develop science if a society is engaged in intellectual discourse. Scientific discourses and hypothesis building are the basis of a science driven technological development.
The true understanding of the source of knowledge and the divergent ideas that had been developed by various schools of thought over the last 3000 years are the basis of any society if it could sustain as a society and make history in the true sense of the word. Any society must question itself what is the meaning of life in this world, from where it comes, what it is doing in this world, and where it is heading.
A society that does not pose such kinds of questions, its sustainability as a full functioning society will remain vague, and it does not understand in which direction it is marching. From this perspective the school systems in Africa lack any philosophical foundations. Colonial masters and their successors have deliberately formulated a school system which could arrest the minds of the students.
They have imposed a system which is not self reflective, and block any meaningful scientific discourse. A society which is not self-reflective, and can not questions the meanings of various policies it will be easily manipulated by outside forces. At the end such a society produces and reproduces gangster like politicians that sell their countries for foreign forces. This is what we see and witness in the present day Africa.
VII. Incoherent economic policy as a factor: the different policies followed after the modernization theories are nothing other than cementing the existing international division of labour and confusing the African society.
Whether the basic needs approach strategy, the Green Revolution or the Structural adjustment program that are mainly outlined by the World Bank and the IMF are seen as the real panacea for the African economic crises are nothing other than extending the old system of exploitation by adjusting the African economies to the changing international order which began in the beginning of the 70s and intensified in the 80s. Structural adjustment programs have the sole purpose of absorbing the African resources via debt mechanisms and intensify unequal trade where as Europe and America become richer and richer.
The known austerity program of the IMF, which is simply stated as unscientific by Prof. Sachs but could not be analysed further is another attempt of distorting the monetary mechanisms of the banking sector. According to the philosophy of the IMF, money must be drawn away from those unproductive social forces and allocated to those productive forces which behave like capitalists.
The true purpose of this policy is nothing other than strangulating the economy by cutting it from its monetary base and allocating the meagre resource to the export sector so that the African economies become more and more outward oriented. As we see in the last 20 or more years by applying the bitter medicine of the IMF and the World Bank the African economies become more and more dependent on outside aid, and become strangulated so that Africa rotates within the vicious circles of debt mechanism, dependent on few exportable goods, which are becoming meaningless every year, and chaotic administration structures which become more and more suppressive and submissive to the outside forces.
Prof. Sachs criticizes here and there why politics and bad governance cannot explain the African underdevelopment and poverty. In this case he attacks both the rights and the lefts for their focusing exclusively on politics to explain the causes of the African poverty through the mirror of political discourse. It is amazing how Prof. Sachs understands politics, though starting three thousand years the human social and economic development evolves around politics. The first Greek state men and philosophers had seen in politics the real mechanism in shaping social affairs.
That is why they had studied in depth the meaning of metaphysics and its relation to politics. Accordingly, only those who are guided by philosophical and rational principles have the capacity to give wise leadership and play historical roles in shaping a harmonious and developed society. On the other side those who lack these principles they rely solely on pure power and permanent war which ultimately destroy the society they govern. Those who control state apparatus and hence shape politics have the ability to determine the movements of the different social forces within their boundaries.
According to their social consciousness and understanding of the role of human beings political leaders either destroy the basis of the social reproduction capacities of their society or design them in such a way so that innovation, social reproduction and capital accumulation based on science and technology grow permanently.
Without politics and understanding the role of politics in shaping the social destiny of any given society, a society cannot exist as a social reproduction force where arts, city buildings, technological development and further innovation take place to sustain that particular society. Only politics, as the concentration of social process and an arena of ideological and economic struggle has the capacity in shaping the social well being of a given society or destroying it. In this case politics in many African counties cannot be the exception.
In order to understand the political roles of successive African governments and their leaders, one cannot see their handlings and their methodologies outside the scope of the colonial past, and the education system by which they are brought up, and the social formation in which they grew up. Though Africa had brilliant leaders, these leaders were chased and killed by Western intelligent services and their henchmen from within.
All the attempted murders and coup d` état were nothing but to prevent Africa from technological developments and science and to hold it down as permanent house of producing and reproducing poverty on a higher scale.
All wars which have been taking in the last three or more decades on the African soil are wars orchestrated by the Western civilized states to destabilize Africa. The economic policies of the IMF and the World Bank, and their applications by those Economic Hit Men as put by John Perkins in his well illuminating analysis demonstrates clearly how Africa and the rest of the Third World countries are being destroyed by those satanic forces who enjoy when they see that a part of humanity is permanently languishing under poverty and disease.
The globalization of the world economy which has been going since the last 15 years is worsening the economic and social situation of many African countries, and cannot be enlightened as Prof. Sachs makes us believe since by it self is the causes of permanent economic crises and destabilization. After all, how can such a system have the mission of enlightenment when its ideological tenet is neo-liberalism which is the antithesis of a science driven technological development.
After he has studied the causes of poverty through the mirror of his differential diagnosis Prof. Sachs came to the conclusion that poverty can be eliminated from the African soil if Western governments see it as their own problem and make efforts to help Africa. The millennium 2015 is a part of this global attempt to reduce and eradicate poverty from the African soil. Only through the blessing attempts of donor countries is the hope and aspirations of millions of Africans lies. According to the belief of Prof. Sachs to think that Africa could come out of poverty by itself is not imaginable.
Though one cannot doubt the good intention of Prof. Sachs, to think that Western governments and their sophisticated institutions could solve the African economic crises is silly wise indeed, and at the same time an insult to the millions of Africans who become the victim of the global economic disorder instituted after the Second World War.
When Western capitalist countries are the problem of economic disequilibrium on the global scale and the causes of mass exodus by appropriating the African wealth how could they eradicate poverty from the African soil? Since Prof. Sachs tries to analyze the economic crises of Africa from a false paradigm he must reach such kind of a conclusion which cannot be materialized. Even if part of it sees the light of the day this leads to more dependency and economic colonization.
The policies which he had forwarded to Poland in the beginning of the 90s, to Bolivia to end hyperinflation and which it has failed, and the privatization policy he had worked out for Russia are clear examples that his approaches are more conceptualized from a neo-liberal point of view which cannot solve the problem of economic crises once-for-all but postpone it and deepening the economic crises of those countries. Likewise his methodology and solution to end poverty from the African soil is another attempt to prolong the African misery, and thereby pave the way for the decolonization of Africa.
In order to end poverty from the African soil we must see the problem through the mirror of physical economic principles which is the only viable scientific instrument that brings real economic development in many African countries. Since almost all African countries have never attempted to dissociate themselves from the destructive policies of the IMF and the World Bank, only the destruction of the ideological basis of this policy will have the power of redeeming the African people and use their natural creative power to develop a harmonious and well functioning society.
The eradication of poverty is possible when African governments are guided by this principle, and see poverty as a part of an over whole economic and social underdevelopment. To see the problem of poverty outside the scope of technological, cultural, social and a generalized economic development is an erroneous thing which must be rejected from the outset.
Fekadu Bekele, PhD
March 20, 2006
Fekadu Bekele can be reached at bosenanegussie@alice-dsl.de
Asrat Tilahun
Public Relation Associate
UNDP Ethiopia
Tel. 251-11-544-4275; 251-11-551-5177; 251-91-120-2726
Fax.251-11-551-4599,551-5147
E-mail:asrat.tilahun@undp.org
Addis Ababa,Ethiopia
as failed, and the privatization policy he had worked out for Russia are clear examples that his approaches are more conceptualized from a neo-liberal point of view which cannot solve the problem of economic crises once-for-all but postpone it and deepening the economic crises of those countries.
Likewise his methodology and solution to end poverty from the African soil is another attempt to prolong the African misery, and thereby pave the way for the decolonization of Africa.
In order to end poverty from the African soil we must see the problem through the mirror of physical economic principles which is the only viable scientific instrument that brings real economic development in many African countries.
Since almost all African countries have never attempted to dissociate themselves from the destructive policies of the IMF and the World Bank, only the destruction of the ideological basis of this policy will have the power of redeeming the African people and use their natural creative power to develop a harmonious and well functioning society. The eradication of poverty is possible when African governments are guided by this principle, and see poverty as a part of an over whole economic and social underdevelopment.
To see the problem of poverty outside the scope of technological, cultural, social and a generalized economic development is an erroneous thing which must be rejected from the outset.
Fekadu Bekele, PhD
March 20, 2006
Fekadu Bekele can be reached at bosenanegussie@alice-dsl.de
Asrat Tilahun
Public Relation Associate
UNDP Ethiopia
Tel. 251-11-544-4275; 251-11-551-5177; 251-91-120-2726
Fax.251-11-551-4599,551-5147
E-mail:asrat.tilahun@undp.org
Addis Ababa,Ethiopia
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