Friday, November 3
Technically At War
From Indonesia to India to Iraq to Israel, radical Islamists are engaged in a bloody struggle to ... well, why not just say it ... they want to take over the world just as much as Hitler, Stalin or Dr. Doom ever did. They are every bit as nasty as the first two mentioned and not at all as entertaining, although certainly as absurd, as the last.
Despite the appearances of group anger, opinion polls and emotional demonstrations - Islamic societies have already quite soundly and roundly rejected the practitioners of Islamism. Utter failure at achieving even the smallest successes at home is what brought them to carry their fight to the rest of the world in search of better luck.
Islamism is the harnessing of one of mankind's great religions to the personal whims of a 'revolutionary vanguard' (sadly familiar to Ethiopians in the guise of the vanguard of Scientific Socialism and Revolutionary Democracy) who feel that their personal will to power and extremism gives them the right to define human reality.
In the end the whole modern range of barbarism from from Fascism to Communism to Islamism is the story of that revolutionary vanguard dedicated to their own personal power. Their justifications only amount to an unacceptable and frankly evil reason why they are chosen by criminal re-writings of history, a curious but silly dialectic or an inhuman supreme being of their own imagination to make every other human be what they demand or have her think and live according to their dictates ... or die.
The next passage is part of what we had to say more than once on the anniversary to September 11 about the foes of human civilization,
Let us run through the litany of the Meles Inc. crimes against Ethiopia once more: Ethiopia is among the poorest, least agriculturally productive, least attractive to foreign investment, slowest growing economically, officially ethnically divided countries on earth because its government is the among the most corrupt and most brutal on earth.
All of the above did not just happen - it was a matter of policy.
The feudal revolutionary nobility and business aristocracy with Meles at its head owns either directly, through party conglomerates or government monopolies and licensing scams owns the entire economy of a country. The same incestous infernal machine also uses its ownership of every square inch of land to control tens of millions and manipulates their engineered misery into hard cash to sustain the designed failure of a state run for the purposes of a few.
For many long years the world pretended that was not the case while any hope for popular Ethiopian decisions on the national fate became a matter of enablement and policy between 'development partners' and the regime. Today all such pretense has been laid bare and in the words of Ana Gomes
The newest partnership in all of this is that between Somalia's Islamist Courts Union and Meles Zenawi. Neither gives a damn for their own people and both want absolute power. They only seem to be in the way of each other. They give eachother the perfect set of mutual excuses for countless crimes against humanity - past, present and future.
Meles sent his forces into Somalia and was delighted that a jihad was declared against Ethiopia. Europeans had become stingy with cash once he massacred a 'deductibles' worth of Ethiopians before the world's eyes. The US in the name of the War on Terror and the World Bank, in the interests of the US directly and Europe once removed, quickly picked up the tab for Meles Inc. with billions in aid never to be accounted for and billions in loans never to be paid back.
There were clouds on the horizon for Meles though. Troublesome Congressmen and Ethiopian-Americans who thought America had, by definition, a commitment to human rights brought a sanctions bill against Meles Inc. to the Senate for his murderous ways. Despite millions invested legally and illegally in the US to change opinions and influence politics - the very possibility of defeat loomed so something had to be done.
Thus the invitation extended to the Somalia Islamists so congenially for a jihad. The US governemtn had little to be disappointed about when Meles showed his murderous true face since no one outside of Congress had ever imagined he had a democratic bone in his body. The War on Terror provided a perfect, realpolitik excuse to defend the Ethiopian regime in Washington in the interest of the War on Terror.
As Ethiopians have known for over thirty years though, Meles is a reliable partner for no decent or civilized company. Part of the 'charm' that has endeared him to successive generations of Western bureaucrats, do-gooders and intellectuals is his capacity to be exactly what they want him to be at any given moment.
Where the one to one act was insufficient, Ethiopia's regime has used constitutionally determined tribal divide and rule to project an image of instability so too much should not be demanded in the form of good governance. Religious divide and rule has always been an element of this public relations effort but it has become more of an issue of late.
Ethiopian history in general and modern history in particular do not show any sort of permanent religious honeymoon but do show an utter absence of the type of religious strife in recent headlines. On several occasions since Meles made the decision to push the potential of a Somali conflict to leverage American behavior, there have been reports of Ethiopian Muslims assaulting Ethiopian Christians and churches.
We have absolutely no doubt that all such reports are either lies or the direct and exagerated results of government incitement within communities where people have gotten along together for generations with an absence of such clashes. Since the fake election that he lost, Meles has blamed a succession of supposed terrorist acts and alleged terrorist plans on the 'genocidal' opposition, revanchist imperial forces, dergue remanants, Amhara local imperialists, Oromo narrow nationalists, Eritrean agents or hooligans to name a few.
There is never an explanation or follow up on any charge and aside from a general and carefully cultivated sense of coming anarchy there is no attempt at logic either. The most convenient target of the moment is simply blamed for all acts and plans that month whose existence either sprung whole from the imagination of regime propagandists or from regime bombmakers.
The headlines of the moment and wider tactical political needs to discredit or encourage legitimate opponents or absent minded cash cows determined who was blamed. Now according to Meles
The Islamist Courts Union is a very nasty bunch certainly, but Meles simply invaded Somalia allegedly in support ofthe non-entity of a Somali government in Internal Exile, long before any anti-Ethiopian action was taken by anyone. There are reports now of thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers in Somalia along with who knows how many other forces, arms dealers and financiers of anarchy will crawl out of the woodwork.
It is this kind of thinking that sees invasion and war between peoples as a manageable distraction from reality or a minor political maneuver. That is why Idi Amin invaded Tanzania, Galtieri invaded the Falklands, Musssolini invaded Ethioipia and Mengistu savored every moment of war that gave him an excuse to fail in every policy while committing with justification whatever crimes he desired.
The War on Terror is a just war wherever it is being fought. Ethiopia's own War on Terror is being fought on two fronts:
70 million Ethiopians, both Christian and Muslim are fighting one war along with the rest of humanity's nations and religions against the newest modern incarnation of totalitarianism in the form of Islamism.
Ethiopians are also fighting a War on Terror against their own government and its commitment to older nationally / tribally / class / dialectic based totalitarianism of divide and rule and targeted hatred.
There is no potential fissure or fault line that regime will not exploit and no crime against humanity it will not committ and no lie it will not tell to weaken Ethiopia - like a parasite needing its host just alive enough to provide sustenance while keeping that host to weak to reject it.
Those in Washington who think they are committed to the War on Terror by finding 'a strategic partnership' with Meles Inc. should realize that their partnership is with a vanishingly small and unreliable aristocracy and not with an actual country.
In its own way their attempts at realpolitik are just as much a product of their own wishful thinking and appeasement of dictatorship as the matching set of self doubts, denial and fears that drive others to blame everyone but the Islamists for Islamist terror.
The sophistication and maturity that lobbying for Meles Inc. is imagined to represent in Washington is a surrender to the purposeful engineering of chaos and instability by their supposed ally. Ethiopia is not a setting of any chaos or instability that is endemic or that is independent of her government and its policies.
One tragic part in all of this is the desperate need for ferenji support by the good and the bad. For Ethiopians who have valued and fought for their independence for countless centuries it seems that instead of the temporary weakness of circumstance, that the policies of her government have made Ethiopian a willing victim of foreign whims more than ever before.
All so that Ethiopians themselves could be cut out of their own social contract. The following defines the new Ethiopian social contract: Meles can't keep ruling Ethiopians against their will without that support and Ethiopians can't hope to peacefully get rid of Meles with that suppport intact.
The government wildly spins the news and grabs at straws that indicate foreign support as eagerly as Meles Inc. cashes checks from abroad and sends it right back there into private accounts.
Withough even fitful foreign interest Meles would be doing openly in the streets of Addis and against the imprisoned opposition exactly what he is doing in other cities, hidden prison camps and the countryside right now - proudly committing mass murder instead of pretending to hide it.
Ethiopians aren't just techinically at war with Somalia's self proclaimed rulers - they had actual war declared against them long ago by their own self proclaimed rulers.
Despite the appearances of group anger, opinion polls and emotional demonstrations - Islamic societies have already quite soundly and roundly rejected the practitioners of Islamism. Utter failure at achieving even the smallest successes at home is what brought them to carry their fight to the rest of the world in search of better luck.
Islamism is the harnessing of one of mankind's great religions to the personal whims of a 'revolutionary vanguard' (sadly familiar to Ethiopians in the guise of the vanguard of Scientific Socialism and Revolutionary Democracy) who feel that their personal will to power and extremism gives them the right to define human reality.
In the end the whole modern range of barbarism from from Fascism to Communism to Islamism is the story of that revolutionary vanguard dedicated to their own personal power. Their justifications only amount to an unacceptable and frankly evil reason why they are chosen by criminal re-writings of history, a curious but silly dialectic or an inhuman supreme being of their own imagination to make every other human be what they demand or have her think and live according to their dictates ... or die.
The next passage is part of what we had to say more than once on the anniversary to September 11 about the foes of human civilization,
The enemies were first engaged with (often simultaneous) policies based upon wishful thinking and frank appeasement that were nurtured by civilization's own self doubts, denial and fears. Peace only came when enough people had the final bitter realization that like it or not there was a war going on that was worth winning.Unfortunately, such an ill defined war in comparison to wars of the past is particularly subject to abuse by competing forms of totalitarianism. For example, the loathsome odor of mendacity is to Ethiopia's government what the smell of rot is to carrion ... which is to say that government is so shady it gives even the righteous concept of fighting terror a bad name.
Let us run through the litany of the Meles Inc. crimes against Ethiopia once more: Ethiopia is among the poorest, least agriculturally productive, least attractive to foreign investment, slowest growing economically, officially ethnically divided countries on earth because its government is the among the most corrupt and most brutal on earth.
All of the above did not just happen - it was a matter of policy.
The feudal revolutionary nobility and business aristocracy with Meles at its head owns either directly, through party conglomerates or government monopolies and licensing scams owns the entire economy of a country. The same incestous infernal machine also uses its ownership of every square inch of land to control tens of millions and manipulates their engineered misery into hard cash to sustain the designed failure of a state run for the purposes of a few.
For many long years the world pretended that was not the case while any hope for popular Ethiopian decisions on the national fate became a matter of enablement and policy between 'development partners' and the regime. Today all such pretense has been laid bare and in the words of Ana Gomes
We must stop pretending that Ethiopia is run by a respectable government when in fact it has a murderous and oppressive regimeAside from the ever more obvious rejection by all Ethiopians of their government, little has practically changed between the real players in Ethiopian politics: Western donors with money and low expectations and Meles Inc. with a readiness to kill and an absolute commitment to rule.
The newest partnership in all of this is that between Somalia's Islamist Courts Union and Meles Zenawi. Neither gives a damn for their own people and both want absolute power. They only seem to be in the way of each other. They give eachother the perfect set of mutual excuses for countless crimes against humanity - past, present and future.
Meles sent his forces into Somalia and was delighted that a jihad was declared against Ethiopia. Europeans had become stingy with cash once he massacred a 'deductibles' worth of Ethiopians before the world's eyes. The US in the name of the War on Terror and the World Bank, in the interests of the US directly and Europe once removed, quickly picked up the tab for Meles Inc. with billions in aid never to be accounted for and billions in loans never to be paid back.
There were clouds on the horizon for Meles though. Troublesome Congressmen and Ethiopian-Americans who thought America had, by definition, a commitment to human rights brought a sanctions bill against Meles Inc. to the Senate for his murderous ways. Despite millions invested legally and illegally in the US to change opinions and influence politics - the very possibility of defeat loomed so something had to be done.
Thus the invitation extended to the Somalia Islamists so congenially for a jihad. The US governemtn had little to be disappointed about when Meles showed his murderous true face since no one outside of Congress had ever imagined he had a democratic bone in his body. The War on Terror provided a perfect, realpolitik excuse to defend the Ethiopian regime in Washington in the interest of the War on Terror.
As Ethiopians have known for over thirty years though, Meles is a reliable partner for no decent or civilized company. Part of the 'charm' that has endeared him to successive generations of Western bureaucrats, do-gooders and intellectuals is his capacity to be exactly what they want him to be at any given moment.
Where the one to one act was insufficient, Ethiopia's regime has used constitutionally determined tribal divide and rule to project an image of instability so too much should not be demanded in the form of good governance. Religious divide and rule has always been an element of this public relations effort but it has become more of an issue of late.
Ethiopian history in general and modern history in particular do not show any sort of permanent religious honeymoon but do show an utter absence of the type of religious strife in recent headlines. On several occasions since Meles made the decision to push the potential of a Somali conflict to leverage American behavior, there have been reports of Ethiopian Muslims assaulting Ethiopian Christians and churches.
We have absolutely no doubt that all such reports are either lies or the direct and exagerated results of government incitement within communities where people have gotten along together for generations with an absence of such clashes. Since the fake election that he lost, Meles has blamed a succession of supposed terrorist acts and alleged terrorist plans on the 'genocidal' opposition, revanchist imperial forces, dergue remanants, Amhara local imperialists, Oromo narrow nationalists, Eritrean agents or hooligans to name a few.
There is never an explanation or follow up on any charge and aside from a general and carefully cultivated sense of coming anarchy there is no attempt at logic either. The most convenient target of the moment is simply blamed for all acts and plans that month whose existence either sprung whole from the imagination of regime propagandists or from regime bombmakers.
The headlines of the moment and wider tactical political needs to discredit or encourage legitimate opponents or absent minded cash cows determined who was blamed. Now according to Meles
We believe they've [Islamist Courts] been preparing terrorist outrages. They're very close to our border. The indications are not that encouraging. But we've been patient so far and we'll continue to be patient.How convenient ... especially when the truth is that Meles has been already been at war with 70 million Ethiopians for the past fifteen years. Lies and bloodletting have always worked for Meles. Now when even manipulating the stability of the Horn of Africa was not working any more, the Islamist Courts Union appeared on the table like a welcome Joker in a deck of cards allowing him once more to be seen as indespensible to and exactly what some jaded or gullible ferenjis wanted him to be.
...
The jihadist elements within the Islamic Court movement are spoiling for a fight. They've been declaring jihad against Ethiopia almost every other week
...
Technically we are at war.
The Islamist Courts Union is a very nasty bunch certainly, but Meles simply invaded Somalia allegedly in support ofthe non-entity of a Somali government in Internal Exile, long before any anti-Ethiopian action was taken by anyone. There are reports now of thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers in Somalia along with who knows how many other forces, arms dealers and financiers of anarchy will crawl out of the woodwork.
It is this kind of thinking that sees invasion and war between peoples as a manageable distraction from reality or a minor political maneuver. That is why Idi Amin invaded Tanzania, Galtieri invaded the Falklands, Musssolini invaded Ethioipia and Mengistu savored every moment of war that gave him an excuse to fail in every policy while committing with justification whatever crimes he desired.
The War on Terror is a just war wherever it is being fought. Ethiopia's own War on Terror is being fought on two fronts:
70 million Ethiopians, both Christian and Muslim are fighting one war along with the rest of humanity's nations and religions against the newest modern incarnation of totalitarianism in the form of Islamism.
Ethiopians are also fighting a War on Terror against their own government and its commitment to older nationally / tribally / class / dialectic based totalitarianism of divide and rule and targeted hatred.
There is no potential fissure or fault line that regime will not exploit and no crime against humanity it will not committ and no lie it will not tell to weaken Ethiopia - like a parasite needing its host just alive enough to provide sustenance while keeping that host to weak to reject it.
Those in Washington who think they are committed to the War on Terror by finding 'a strategic partnership' with Meles Inc. should realize that their partnership is with a vanishingly small and unreliable aristocracy and not with an actual country.
In its own way their attempts at realpolitik are just as much a product of their own wishful thinking and appeasement of dictatorship as the matching set of self doubts, denial and fears that drive others to blame everyone but the Islamists for Islamist terror.
The sophistication and maturity that lobbying for Meles Inc. is imagined to represent in Washington is a surrender to the purposeful engineering of chaos and instability by their supposed ally. Ethiopia is not a setting of any chaos or instability that is endemic or that is independent of her government and its policies.
One tragic part in all of this is the desperate need for ferenji support by the good and the bad. For Ethiopians who have valued and fought for their independence for countless centuries it seems that instead of the temporary weakness of circumstance, that the policies of her government have made Ethiopian a willing victim of foreign whims more than ever before.
All so that Ethiopians themselves could be cut out of their own social contract. The following defines the new Ethiopian social contract: Meles can't keep ruling Ethiopians against their will without that support and Ethiopians can't hope to peacefully get rid of Meles with that suppport intact.
The government wildly spins the news and grabs at straws that indicate foreign support as eagerly as Meles Inc. cashes checks from abroad and sends it right back there into private accounts.
Withough even fitful foreign interest Meles would be doing openly in the streets of Addis and against the imprisoned opposition exactly what he is doing in other cities, hidden prison camps and the countryside right now - proudly committing mass murder instead of pretending to hide it.
Ethiopians aren't just techinically at war with Somalia's self proclaimed rulers - they had actual war declared against them long ago by their own self proclaimed rulers.
# posted by ethiopundit : 11/03/2006
