Ethiopia

#1

Ethiopia has been in the news recently, as civil war has re-erupted in that country.

I have always had only a vague idea of what’s been happening in that place over the last few decades. Ethiopia has always seemed to be a different category than sub-Saharan Africa proper, and recently, it seemed like it was finally on the path to becoming a modern, democratic country, despite the handicap of being diverse. But I have to admit to being largely ignorant of the place, except for knowing that they were practicing Christianity when most of our ancestors were worshipping trees.

I have just read a short ‘Diary’ entry by an Ethiopian woman living in the US, who grew up there, and lived there, for several decades. It’s short, but gives you a really good view of the place and its problems. (Ethiopia was a pawn of the Big Powers in the Cold War, first of one side, then of the other – I forget who got it first. It didn’t do them much good. And if the US is involved there now in some sort of military capacity, surely it should get out. Whichever side we would be supporting, we’d be supporting mass killers.)

Here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n03/maaza-mengiste/diary

If you get interested in this fascinating country, here’s a universally-acclaimed novel about the period when the Emperor still ruled, just before his overthrow by a really murderous (what else is new?) Leftwing cabal, the ‘Derg’:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_for_Stone
(Warning: it’s highly ‘medical’, so not for the squeamish. But you do get a good view of the human personalities there, even though the main protagonists are not Ethiopian.)

And when the Professional Victims begin whining about white racist America,direct them to Ethiopia [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia ] for a contrast. Even at its post-Civil War worst, life for Black people in the US, including in the most backward parts of it, was nothing like life in Ethiopia at the same time. And this is in one of the most advanced parts of Africa.

And speaking of immigration, it’s just the sort of country that we could probably take a few tens of thousands from and be the better off for it. (Some of them are Muslims, but I don’t think they’re of the beheading-suicide-bombing tendency.)

#2

Derrrp

#3

I disagree. Ethiopia has always been a country that’s on the boil. Someone on a news deck was bored and then decided, “Hey, look at this!” and it got your attention.

To be fair. Neither the US or Australia (which takes its note from the US) have updated travel warnings for Ethiopia for years. That you know about it now is *NOT * the same as saying this is a new thing.

1 Like
#4

Well, it’s just a semantic disagreement. Ethiopia has always been ‘hot’, I suppose, but under the Communist Derg it was really boiling … then most recently, under their new President, who released political prisoners and looked like he wanted to drag the country into the 19th Century, things were looking up. And now this.

I have a friend whose remarkable daugher, a mechanical engineer, used to run travel tours in Ethiopia. She drove a big bus, an ex-school bus I think, and when the rough roads caused mechanical problems, she would crawl under it and fix them. But she finally left … to take up residence in Uganda, another country blessed with diversity. If I were religious I would pray for her every night.

What a lot of people don’t know – including me, until recently – is that Ethiopia is very very blessed with lots of diversity. Different tribes, different languages … a veritable paradise of diversity. I also didn’t know that they have a serious Muslim minority. Even better! I mean, how much more diverse can you get?

And the resulting strength this diversity brings Ethiopia, since as we are continually told in the US (in Oz as well?), “diversity is strength”. (Which is why your idiot Left, with its “Invasion Day”, selflessly wants to remain on the land their ancestors brutally stole from the peaceful happy natives – if they did the logical thing and went back to England and Ireland, they would reduce your diversity!)

Probably everyone knows that Ethiopia used to have self-proclaimed Jews, who selfishly decided not to contribute any longer to the wonderful diversity there and who all left for Israel, to help make it more diverse. (Causing some interesting reactions in that country, but that’s another story.)

(It’s actually a fascinating history, for anyone who wants a brief diversion from the ongoing tragedy in America:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Israel )

#5

What tragedy?

#6

Here’s a tiny sample: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/california-ethnic-studies-curriculum

But wait! What the Leftist loons are doing in destroying our best public schools is interesting, but you promised to comment on the Afro-American Baseline Essays I mentioned earlier … you remember … the ones where Leftist school boards taught truth to white children about their origins … no Adam and Eve stuff … but lies to Black children … that they are descendants of Egyptians who had psionic powers.

You have probably not had enough time to write something about that, but we’re all waiting for your response.

#7

Uh, what time scale we talking about? Pre-COVID Ethiopia was experiencing a moderate mode of prosperity, shifting into a celebrated “African Lion” Economy right next to Botswana and Rwanda.

The recent flair up in hostilities is due to the elections in the Northern province ( Tigray) in September of last year, itself a lingering consequence of the majority local party there refusing to join the ruling coalition that holds power over the Federal Government. The Northerners held their own elections, while the central government dismissed it as illegal, citing COVID as a reason to postpone them.

Ergo, I see Ethopia as a country that was on the road to civil recovery (like Rwanda), until COVID made everything a zero-sum game again.

#8

COVID is to blame, huh? Usually when African tribes start slaughtering each other, it’s Climate Change, plus, of course white racism.

But it’s true that they were making progress. In fact, almost all of Africa was slowly emerging from the stone age, despite the periodic famines and massacres and corruption. I read HumanProgress.org periodically too, for cheering-up therapy.

But the deep tribal divisions in these countries make it very difficult. Diversity is not strength.

Now, to be fair, the little European peninsula of Asia (it’s not a continent!) once had tribal divisions, and the diverse tribes were eventually … err… ‘assimilated’, usually by a dominant tribe, and not via ‘dominant tribe awareness’ programs either. But this doesn’t seem to be happening in Africa.

To be fair, some of the problem can be legitimately blamed on Whitey, because he cut the continent up into separate administrateve units according to geography, or at least not according to tribal boundaries. So when the colonialists left, they left behind ‘nations’ made up of diverse (!) tribes … and therefore, according to the Idiot Left, very strong nations, ha ha. [Go to YouTube and put in ‘Kenya’ and ‘machete’. They’re not harvesting sugar cane.]

In an ideal world, what needs to happen, according to me, is: break up all the multi-tribal nations into, as close as can be gotten, one-tribe one-nation nations. Associate these nations in an African Union, like the present one but with more power: African nations don’t need armies, but the African Union could have a multi-tribal one, armed, trained and financed by the UN.

Of course we can see a dozen objections to this, rational ones: for example, the Biafra problem: who gets the oil-bearing areas, etc. And it won’t happen in any case, even if there were no rational objections. States love to cover as much territory as they can, and not for reasons of diversity.

So, we just have to hope that not many more people are slaughtered in this round of killings in Ethiopia, caused, of course by COVID. And hope that the Chinese hurry up in their campaign to buy the continent up, and that they can impose some form of order on their drawers of water and hewers of wood there. [Ref. the Romans and law-and-order in Palestine, in What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us? – see it before YouTube bans it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ozEZxOsanY ]