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These evil Reds... But of course US-backed emperor Selassie had nothing to do with the disastrous economy despite ruling as an absolute monarch for 60 years. An

by m0skit0 12y ago

These evil Reds... But of course US-backed emperor Selassie had nothing to do with the disastrous economy despite ruling as an absolute monarch for 60 years. And the Ogaden War where US-backed Somalia attacked Ethopia also had nothing to do. And no talk about the White Terror either. It's so easy to simplify to justify one's political positions, isn't it?

sdenton4 12y ago
Ethiopia and Iran are both great examples of the West propping up pretty terrible dictators, who were subsequently replaced by something much worse. That foreign involvement certainly doesn't release the Derg from blame for their predilection for torture and mass-murder though... It's important to be a bit cognizant of the political situations, though. The willful ignorance of Ethiopia's political reality when Live Aid happened led to piles of charity dollars essentially going straight to the Derg, and thus into arms deals to continue the war with Eritrea.
panglott 12y ago
I'm more pointing out that there is a history of political violence that undermined the country's economic conditions. Famine doesn't come only from a drought or a land use change, but most disastrously occurs with more basic political and economic breakdown. This is something that it easy to forget or ignore from a privileged position in the US. The US has been at war in Somalia just as part of the GWOT for basically a decade, yet with so little press and attention in the US press that the cost and benefit to regional stability is never discussed, for example. It's the article's use of the mid-1980s famines as a hook for discussing economic development as a technical land-use issue that makes the omission more glaring. And it would be a more interesting article, to consider the history of efforts to abolish feudal land tenure, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Ethiopia I'm curious about the use of compulsory collective agricultural labor that has made this possible, though ;)

by m0skit0 12y ago

sdenton4 12y ago

Ethiopia and Iran are both great examples of the West propping up pretty terrible dictators, who were subsequently replaced by something much worse. That foreign involvement certainly doesn't release the Derg from blame for their predilection for torture and mass-murder though... It's important to be a bit cognizant of the political situations, though. The willful ignorance of Ethiopia's political reality when Live Aid happened led to piles of charity dollars essentially going straight to the Derg, and thus into arms deals to continue the war with Eritrea.

panglott 12y ago

I'm more pointing out that there is a history of political violence that undermined the country's economic conditions. Famine doesn't come only from a drought or a land use change, but most disastrously occurs with more basic political and economic breakdown. This is something that it easy to forget or ignore from a privileged position in the US. The US has been at war in Somalia just as part of the GWOT for basically a decade, yet with so little press and attention in the US press that the cost and benefit to regional stability is never discussed, for example. It's the article's use of the mid-1980s famines as a hook for discussing economic development as a technical land-use issue that makes the omission more glaring. And it would be a more interesting article, to consider the history of efforts to abolish feudal land tenure, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Ethiopia I'm curious about the use of compulsory collective agricultural labor that has made this possible, though ;)