There were three stories last week that appeared on the same day on the meida about Ethiopia; a BBC story about the looming famine that threatens to be catastrophic, one from Xinhua, about Ethiopia's purchase of new fleet of Migs, SU-27's and helicopter gunships of which 21 have already been delivered at Addis airport and on Ethiopia's use of the Somali port of Berbera to import food aid into Ethiopia (BBC?). While no one has ever accused past and present regimes of Ethiopia of having ever been interested in the develpment and welfare of their subjects, the reports clearly indicate that the weyanes have given up all pretenses of responsibility for the starving Ethiopians.

Their clever scheme to distinguish themselves from their predecessors by merely allowing foreign journalist access to the famine stricken areas is a cruel and inhuman ploy, such as only the twisted collective mind of the weyanes could could fathom, to kill two birds with one stone.

On the one hand, they can avert and evade criticism to the deaths of hundred of thousands, if not millions, of starving Ethiopians by claiming that they have done everything they could to prevent the disaster by publicizing and appealing for emergency food aid.

On the other hand, they are using this publicity to blackmail international governments; in effect, telling the world community, 'Your peace plan be damned! We are going ahead with our policy of war, destruction and mayhem and if we have take food out of the hungry and gaping mouths of the starving children to finance our policy, that's what we'll do. If you don't want to see these starving children dying on your TV screen and face the wrath of your constitutents, then feed them! "

Sadly, the weyanes seem to have succeeded with their cruel scheme of blackmail as the UK, EU US, Norway etc, despite the Security Council's reprimad of the TPLF regime and to feed its own people, have continued to shoulder that responsibility in their stead, as have the UN, through its various aid agencies, and other humanitarian organizations, leaving the weyanes free squander precious resources of the country to purchase weapons in preparation for another attack on Eritrea.

It may sound rather callous and/or contradictory to suggest that the aid donors are cunningly or uncunningly abetting the weyanes. But one must look deeper than the images of humanitarian workers cuddling and feeding starving and dying children on television. First of all, one must realize that the 'humanitarian' organizations' priority, like any other organizations and bureaucracies, is self-preservation and self-perpetuation and are not totally guided by noble deeds of feeding and helping the unfortunate; they need the elements that create disasters, natural events or human tyranny, as much as the starving need them. In Ethiopia, Humanitarians, Inc. have found eden where human tyranny and natural disaster abound. It is, therefore, not surprising to see these 'humanitarians' defending their realm by keeping silent about the 70,000 Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean origin deported under cruel and inhuman conditions, from right outside their offices, and the purchase of weapons by the host country while they feed its people. And no one should expect them to protest, when, as in the past, the emergency food aid is being used to finance the war either.

The most perplexing thing about reports was, that none of those in the media seemed to have seen it fit to observe the irony in the purchase and importation of the these expensive weapons and the shipment of donated food aid either. This failure of the media to inform the public on the relevance of the situation is not only a dereliction of duty, but a disservice to the victims of starvation and donors.