Addis Neger

What do Americans diplomats think about Meles Zenawi? This week the American embassy in Addis Ababa briefed government officials about the Wikileaks release(which just came out). According to my sources, these state department documents(a lot of which are classified, secret or nonfor) contain merciless accounts of Meles Zenawi’s behavior and rule and the deteriorating condition of his health. There are at least 1395 cables originating from Addis Ababa in the release. Wikileaks Website is hacked now, but we will get the details of US assessments of Ethiopia when the website is up.

Experts in the manufacturing of ignorance are adept at presenting themselves as serious intellectuals. They learn the language of academic and policy research institutions, write elegantly, feign an interest in discourse and appear in wonkosphere to slug it out with people in the know. With misleading quotations and numbers, they confuse readers. It does not matter if an idea is supported by overwhelming evidence and impeccable logic; these experts have the ability to make it appear as though it were just another idea floating in the galaxy of equally legitimate ideas. How does agnotology play out in the Ethiopian new media ecosystem? I have observed ten methods used by some EPRDF-leaning regular commenters on Addis Neger.

She is unwavering in her commitment to freedom, in her belief in the morality and power of non-violent struggle, in her optimism about the future, in her conviction that the values of the enlightenment are universal. “All the great things are simple,” said Winston Churchill, “and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” Aung San Suu Kyi has been the personification of them all. The great lady studied at St. Huge’s College (Oxford), a few meters from where I live. It seems to me that at least one current member of this esteemed institution is keeping her spirit alive – our own Daniel Bekele.

I have long time ago stopped thinking of the Ethiopian “pro-democracy” movement as a monolithic group or, even more cynically, as a group whose members are mainly pro-democracy. Democracy is just a uniting public slogan. It did not, however, cross my mind that some of them would write publicly(albeit in pseudonyms) and unapologetically about the great things Mao had done. But hey, what do I know about Ethiopian politics?

Mao was a well-read and articulate man. So is Meles Zenawi. It is clear though that they also share a lot more traits including massive, massive, massive incompetence.