The peaceful protest movements that swept away dictators in Tunisia and Egypt were broadly peaceful. The despots in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria are bracing themselves to turn the tide. Libya is the only country that has invited western military intervention so far. While there is no doubt that Gaddafi is a bloody dictator that should go, we do know that the identities of protest leaders remain murky. Some of them are former long time collaborationists with the regime. Moreover, I think the western agenda is prevailing over the protest movement due to Libya’s oil, destroying the home grown quality of the youth movement. Sarkozy’s enthusiasm for quick military intervention here is in itself highly interesting. If the western countries misuse the protest movements to install puppet regimes in power, ruthless faces in the newly installed regimes will reappear sooner or later: real socio-economic and political changes will remain illusive. A system of social engineering that takes from the poor and gives to the rich is inducing human suffering on a scale and manner never seen before in the history of humankind. The massive earthquake and the tsunami in Japan are certainly natural disasters but the nuclear power plants are man made mostly in the service of endless greed. A brutal global system based on greed- global capitalism- is ravaging the world. Fascism and soviet communism have failed because of their inherent undemocratic nature, their indiscriminate violence and human manipulation in the interest of the few. But global greed has raised its head above all infecting even the exploited masses of people with its fantasies in unprecedented manner and the lessons of history are ignored.
In a system of global greed that is at work now exploitation and oppression in themselves do not lead automatically to mass rebellion or protest even of peaceful nature. In many cases, the greed within the exploited and oppressed masses of people is systematically used to make them ignore their essential human dignity and natural ethics. The Tunisians and the Egyptians who participated in the protest were in a much better economic conditions compared, for example, to the Oromos of the Ethiopian Empire State, who constitute almost half the population, one of the most exploited and maltreated nations on earth. Yet Tunisians and Egyptians had not lost their dignity as much; they became fearless and stood up as one in defence of their dignity. If our sense of human dignity is battered or precarious and our spiritual integrity and vision are impaired or at their lowest anything goes. No amount of revolutionary rhetoric can move us to change the situation. The change must come first from a radical change in our perception of ourselves from within ourselves. Globally perhaps only another yet bigger and more devastating major environmental disaster can shake most of us from our troubled slumber.
The double standards of the system are endless. For example, the warlords in Mogadishu and their immediate savage friends in Addis Ababa enjoy its protection while it seems to encourage protest movements in some of the Arab countries. Most of the Somali people, however, have different perception of themselves and are determined to fight for their rights against the Abyssinian hegemony, come what may. Can we Oromos emulate them or even do better? I know it is a herculean task to motivate most Oromos to overcome their conspicuous, individualistic, servile, petty thinking and their ingrained Angst and apathy to broaden their narrowed vision beyond the rat race for daily survival. Don’t we see that our masters and torturers in the TPLF do not worry about their daily bread and have no fear of life like us? Far from it, they do determine the tempo of our heart beat. Shame on us! Many of us, under delusion, are turning to false religiosity for consolation and self deception. which can be the worst form of egoism. Can we at least seize upon the present rare historical moment and engage in a peaceful protest and civil disobedience Oromia wide to express our determination to be free and independent in the face of the Abyssinian repressive machine and its Oromo slaves and puppets? That way we will expose, among other things, the double standards of international circles concretely in the eyes of the world.