Another American Military Intervention? Is the West Calling for Peace or Making Ethiopia the Next Iraq?

Blindness

 

Blindness is not the reason the world goes blind;
But by the adjectives, our mouths bear to glorify enlightenment.

The yearend balance between truth and wishes;
Tipped by the weight and might of words;

Where one  basks in the valor and honor of a hero with fervor,
Other aches at the chilling beauty of a neighbor's Hitler.

'ህገ መንግስት'?

 

'ህገ መንግስት'?

ያኔ 

መሰረት ሲበጃጅ

ላገር እንዳዲስ ቤት፣

ዳቦ ስም ሲወጣ፣

ለዘመን ህልም ማሸት፤

ምን አሰበን ነበር

ያልነው "ተስማምተናል፣"

ነገድነት ይንገስ

ሰውነት በቅቶናል!

 

አይደለም ወይ ቃሉ

የሰነዱ አንድምታ

ሃገር ሰው አልባ ትሁን

ነገድ ብቻ እውነቷ?

 

ዛሬ 

ታድያ  ደርሰን

"አቤት" "ዋይ" ምንለው፣

በነገድ ፍርድ ቤት

ሰው መቼ ደም አለው?

በቋንቋስ ምህዋር ውስጥ፣

እልቂት መች ፍች አለው?  

ነገ 

የሰነዱን ቁመት፤ ወርድና፤ ጥጋጥግ

በልተን፤ሰንጥቀን፤ህመሙን ሳንፈልግ

ሰውነትን ሳንዋጅ፣ ሰውን ሳንደነግግ

እልቂት ብንረግም በደም ብንበረግግ፣

መሆናችህ አይደል በሃሳዊ ብግነት

ላራጅ ለገፋፊ ቢላ ሚያፈላልግ?

....................................................................

=የኢትዮጲያ ህገ መንግስት መስረታዊ ተፋልሶዎች በፈጠሩት  መድልዎ ምክንያት በየግዜው ህይወታችውን ለሚያጡ ዜጎች።  

መተከል

 

መተከል

ልክ እንደ ፍዝ ግጥም፣ ቤት መምቻው ሚደግም፣

የዘመኔ መርገም አንዱ ካንዱ አያርም ፣

ሚደፋ ባንድ ቃል፣ሚመታ ባንድ ቃል፤ 

ጅግጅጋ  መተከል

ድሬ       መተከል

አዳማ     መተከል

ሻሸመኔ   መተከል

ማይካድራ   መተከል

መቀሌ       መተከል

ሁመራ        መተከል

መተከል    መተከል

ኮንሶ         መተከል 

አርሲ       መተከል 

መ

ተ

ከ

ል

.......

በግፍ ለተገደሉ ኢትዮጵያውያን ሁሉ። 

Criminal Impunity: Genesis of the TPLF Initiated Conflict in Tigray

 

November 15, 2020, at 11:55 AM, Senait Mebrahtu  twitted( in Amharic), “From now on, if you don’t cease what you are doing, I will release a video of you being abused in prison and put you to shame forever.” This tweet was directed at the renown and award-winning Ethiopian journalist and human rights activist Reeyot Alemu. Reeyot  was a prisoner of conscience for five years under the TPLF led government of Ethiopia. Senait is an active member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a party that was at the helm of power in Ethiopia for twenty-seven years before it was pushed out by popular revolt in 2018. 

The same day, the spokesperson of TPLF, now the party governing the Tigray region, was on a regional TV station  threatening to fire rockets into neighboring country Eritrea and other targets in Ethiopia hours before attacking two airports in Amhara regional state. 

There are a lot of similarities between the two threats: both were evidence of criminality on the very people who pronounced them no matter how oblivious the people were. The obliviousness however, was deep-seated in the sense of entitlement to the criminal impunity these TPLF members are used to. It is this mindset of criminal-impunity that emboldened a former prison torturer to threaten her victims with releasing videos and a representative of regional administration in a sovereign country to admit to being armed with missiles and threaten to target the whole of Eastern Africa.

Torture as a Thing of Pride  

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Both the tweet and the interview glaringly indicate the all too evident reality that most Ethiopians are aware and that foreigners might not know about TPLF: the sense of considering itself above the law and the romancing with crime with impunity.

Senait Mebrahtu is not only a card-carrying member of TPLF but also- just three years ago- was one of the torturers in the many prisons and torture dungeons throughout Ethiopia that TPLF's administration used to cripple, emasculate and shame its opponents. According to the firsthand experience of torture survivors, Senait was one of the most sadistic torturers. The heinous catalog of torture used in the dungeons included sodomizing, amputation, pulling fingernails, putting and urinating on victims. Most survivors say, “pulling genitals with pliers and flogging while being tied to poles was daily occurrences in prison.” Survivors of the torture describe Senait as using sadistic sexual acts to humiliate her victims. Her victims recounted that she insulted, urinated on them while in chains.

It is this sadistic torturer who not only lives free in Tigray and dares to threaten her former victims like journalist Reeyot with releasing videos that her other colleagues have recorded while torturing prisoners to buy their silence today.

 This act might sound unbelievable for foreigners to understand why and how a criminal like Senait dares to come to the public to threaten her victims through her tool of torture and still walk free. It is to this absurdity that the conflict in Tigray boils down to. For the past two years, attempts to bring these criminals to justice was considered as an attack on their ethnicity.  

Criminals Playing Ethnic card to Escape Justice 

The past two years in Ethiopia can be characterized as continuous push and pull between the forces that want the country to go forward and those who are nostalgic about their time of unchecked power over the hundred million people of the country. 

In other countries, such criminals could have been subjected to public uproar and thrown to jail. These former criminals and torturers however mocked the gesture of a gracious nation that forgave their crimes and gave them a second chance. But in Tigray, where many of these criminals are hiding, rather than opening a way to a new beginning, a new form of political freedom, they  refashioned themselves as 'untouchable and holy,' and thus critiquing or opposing them amounted to  offending ethnic pride.  

Two years ago, when the nation's top police issued arrest warrants for a few of these criminals now hiding in Mekelle, the regional police arrested the federal police who went there to serve the warrant. TPLF even considered this act of the Federal Government seeking justice for the thousands of victims in the torture dungeons as an attack on the Tigray ethnicity. This bizarre claim is like Nazi generals wanted for the Nuremberg Trials claiming that they were being attacked because they were German. These criminals who used power for their own self-interest forgetting Tigray, now try to hide under ethnic garbs when justice is eminent. Today the former Ethiopia Intelligence chief a member of the TPLF central committee, who was overseeing most of the extrajudicial killings and atrocities like the ones Senait is bragging about, is supposed to be worthy of defending  because of his ethnicity. 

Torturers as Heroes 

In other countries, such criminals would either be in prison or try to hide from being noticed but in Ethiopia, criminals hide behind their ethnicity which absolves themselves of justice and even from admitting their crimes. The version of ethnic politics, which I call ethnic-apartheid, in the country, allows criminals to hide from justice in broad daylight and even engage in brazen acts of threatening their former victims with videos they recorded while torturing them. It is like assuming Nazi officers threatening Auschwitz survivors by releasing the video of their torture to silence them. Any Nazi would never dare brag about their crimes because the eyes of justice would hunt them down. But in Ethiopia, the torturers of three years ago walk free and even threaten their victims while being celebrated as heroes. An example of lionizing criminals was the ‘We are Getachew Assefa’ campaign by TPLF youth defending the former head of intelligence wanted by the federal government for crimes against humanity. Soaked in the pool of criminal impunity, these former leadership of TPLF today threaten the country with missiles and rocket attacks adding salt to the wounds of the country. 

At the core of the conflict in Tigray, today is defending the criminal impunity of people (the likes of Senait and Getachew Reda.) People who assume themselves not only above the law of the land but who expect that the world should forget the criminal, torturous, and repressive system they used to represent just three years ago. People who consider their fight for power to grant them a seat in the central government which is but seeking justice. 

Romancing Terrorism with a call for Negotiations 

What the world knows from news headlines about the conflict in Tigray could just be that a renegade regional administration had ambushed the Northerner Command of the country, stole armaments, threatened to hit the capital and neighboring countries with missiles, and did. They might find it bizarre to understand how a political party could ambush a national army and threaten to wreak havoc by hitting the capital with missiles unless it is allowed back into the helm of power from which it was pushed with popular revolt. But all Ethiopians know all to well this criminal impunity of TPLF for 27 years.

What the world knows from news headlines could be that the core TPLF leadership had no remorse about the atrocities they have orchestrated for the 27 years they were in power and want to come back to power by labeling the government as illegitimate and holding sham regional elections. But all Ethiopians know that TPLF mafia leaders, like Senait, are not bothered by how bad they had treated the country in the past up until three years ago but the fact that they should be allowed a seat in the center with criminal impunity. 

What the world knows from news headlines could be that the core TPLF had organized a killing squad called Samri and slaughtered, bludgeoned, hanged, burned, hatched, and beheaded more than 600 ethnic Amharas and what they called ‘Welkaite’ in MaiKadra. However, Ethiopians know TPLF had been sponsoring more killings, ethnic cleansing for the sake of threatening its way back to central power in Ethiopia. 

What the world knows from news headlines could be the distorted reality of the truth through the TPLF digital cadres and paid agents around the world. However, Ethiopians know what a treasonous terrorist group Mafia group TPLF is.  

What the world knows from news headlines could be the call for negotiation as if the two sides were equal. However, all Ethiopians know that negotiation with terrorists who did not  honor the very forgiving hand of the country would amount to stealing peace from the future of East Africa.

Freedom to Tigray from the TPLF mafia rule!

 By Tariku Abas Etenesh

 

 

 

 

We are Avatars Gaming Politics of Stereotypes

“Like all art that arises from culture, games are deeply political,” writes Alfie Down in her Guardian article entitled Video Games are Political. And according to American Psychology Association magazine, 91 % of children in the United States between the age of 2 and 17 play video games and nationally 99% of teenagers play these games. That is why, according to Erika Schickel, who in her article Grand Theft Mommy recounts her love of virtual games, video gaming” is currently framing the argument for the need to tighten restriction on content and rating video games to protect America’s youth from its immoral influences.”

However, the puritan impulses of the society toward sanctifying the field of gaming seems doomed from the start. It appeared not only destined to fail but also headed towards propagating the problem even more. Part of the problem seems to be the fact that “America’s youth” are not a homogeneous group that could be served with “one fits all” protective ruling. This is a challenge mainly because the games are informed by a culture which also lays on the foundations marked according to Sarkisian by favoritism in terms specific gender, color, and class. This makes the “protection of America’s youth” a contested proposition at best. This is to say that the psychology of game designing that relies on narratives of race, culture, and religion can’t be wholly divorced from the implicit and overt biases of the dominant culture.

Although political is not the first thing that comes to mind for the child or the adult player any video games nor are the expressed intentions of the producers, the tacit purposes behind the psychology that informs the designing, the marketing, the promotion and the messaging of games is political in their general sense. Schickel doesn’t subscribe to the ideas that gaming is immoral as she has shown in her story but only that the trapping of gaming is seductive for both adults and the young. Part of it this seduction is attributed to the sense of freedom that the gaming world promises for the child who lives under family sanctions of "dos and don’ts." Through the games introduced to the child wrapped as birthday or holiday gifts, the child draws a ticket for freedom. Because in the gaming world Schickel writes “everyone acts on their impulses, nobody watches their language; nobody has to bring a snack.” This freedom makes gaming perfect escape from the family of rules. Moreover, such relationships of the child playing with the world of the game and the promises of the act of gaming make gaming very complex political tool.

As a result, In the gaming world, the player is not only being political through identification with the already designated characters the storyline, the challenges or opportunities but also personally aggressed or acted upon as an avatar of cultural, religious, economic and political hegemonic voices the game’s politics perpetuates. Like any political tool, games serve the double purpose of offering a pleasurable respite for the player while unconsciously making the player the vessel of the messages the politics would want to impose. This is true for only on adults who feel they have a sense of distinguishing what to take or not but also on the children who are impressionable. Schickel writes, “What is interesting about the games is it forces you to behave in a socially unacceptable manner.” “The unacceptable” behavior, however, doesn’t present itself as such during the game. Because while gaming the individual is transformed. In the process of playing an avatar, the player itself become the avatar for the trapping of the psychology that I find the game designing.

Indeed, there are advantages that gaming brings to the child as Schickel implies in sharpening the child’s mind regarding problem-solving, insistence to complete task and sense of loyalty to peers. In spite of these advantages, Sarkeersian argues that associations made in the games to color, gender, and cultural codes, if they continue to promote the dominant "white good others bad myth," they remain dangerous. Further arguing the politics of games Alfie states games are “often biased – even when their designers intend them to be impartial – towards conservative, patriarchal and imperialist values such as empire, dominion and conquering by force.” For every side one takes, for every solution one searches, for every kill one scores and for every people one is forced to identify as a problem a political decision was made and the player by agreeing to go along with the “rules of the game” is made to condone them. Coercing the player into lending political consent to the popular culture.

As Schickel writes when playing the game, the player is no more partial or objective but subjective avatars acting like “Big Brother trying to mitigate the selfish drive that this game demands.” Everyone becomes a player in the politic of video games. There are works to be done to rid the world of video games of exoticization of women in general and colored women in particular on the one hand and the total misrepresentation or non-representation of diversity on the other.

Gaze as a Grammar of ‘Homo-reflectus’

Homo-sapiens can be redefined as homo-reflectus i.e. beings living by and for refined reflections of the self. And the 'reflections element' of the species is inherent in what each person ultimately accepts as being human. Examination of this inherent and common reality that one can't avoid living by and can’t imagine life without leads us to the inevitability of transaction of reflection through the currency of given, received, refuted or accepted gazes. An examination into the language we speak, the religion we follow, the philosophies we cherish, the dresses we wear, the lifestyle we follow, the things we feel free to see and the eyes we allow to be seen by, the cinema we prefer to watch, the way we prefer to be seen in the cinema, everything that made us who we are homo-reflectus is a manifested gaze.

As bell hooks in the Oppositional Gaze, puts it,” there is power in looking” because, she quotes Fanon, “This “look’ from - so to speak - the place of the other - fixes us, not only in its violence, hostility, and aggression but in the ambivalence of its desire.” Thus, an act of viewing a film is not just an act of participation in the gaze but also a participation in the power relation, a participation in the manifestation of how one is gazed at and thus defined, aggrieved, glorified and or fixed in the accepted grammar of the community. The gaze becomes as Fanon said more “oppressing “and “fixing” when it is compounded by the vocabulary of race introduced into it. The masculine, patriarchal gaze that sanctions a defined rendition for what 'the woman image' should be and this image is one that takes the woman as reflections of the wishes of the man. The oppression becomes more when the woman factor is coupled with color and racism.

Before cinema or other forms of projected images exercised the power of 'sanctioned looking’, language is the first mirror that the homo-reflectus is introduced into the exercise of the privileges of gaze. Each member of the community of language is offered preordained sets of eyes and perspectives with the grammar as spectacles into the self and into the world and into others. And all languages are statements of the power relations in a community. Language is a power relation manifest in the binaries between the strong and the weak, the privileged and the dispossessed, the man and the women and the master and the slave. It is thus evident to notice that the language of a patriarchal mode of thinking and sanctions a patriarchal mirror as the way of viewing the world in spite of the gender differences of its members.

As a result of the grammar of patriarchy, a woman for millennia, 'should teach' herself to see herself in terms of the secondary station she is given. She is an extension of a man a wo-man, she is the secondary, almost accidental being in the thought of the gods who happen to create her out of the man and for the man. In the patriarchy, religion is the first technology that gave the technical definition for the woman. And every subsequent technology both in ideas and in 'forms' have perpetuated the male gaze as 'the gaze,' the defining gaze that coffers on one the right of acceptance and conformity to be recognized as sane. A catalog of laws and rights that women were not part of the beneficiaries are numerous and are still many. The male universal gaze is the most common mirror awaiting any homo-reflectus as truth if it chose to comply, bow down and rhythm with the system. This is how the gaze works in cinema.

What is true for the man-woman binary is also true for the black-white binary. It is compounded when the double layered identification of black and woman come together into the gaze scene dominated by the patriarchal eyes. In the complex and yet fully unresolved racial scene of motion pictures in the west, where the black body in general and black women’s bodies, in particular, were subject of the centuries of defined set of conjugation in the grammar of the white-male-racist, gaze, the cinema not only projects the same but insists to impose it too. Hooks to this end writes that “Critical interrogating black looks were mainly concerned with issues of race and racism, the way racial domination of blacks by white overdetermined representation.”

That anything produced by the patriarchal grammar being a way to perpetuate its gaze is one thing while adding gender, race, and class makes the gazing dynamics even more complex. That is why a simple act of being at a movie theatre is enough an exercise of projected, accepted, resisted gazes in play both by self and others attesting to our tendency to seek refined reflections of self.