Mereja Forum

[QB]

[Zmeselo]

Friend of Eritrea?

[Zmeselo]

[Zmeselo]

Plaut on the late midget: "a towering intellect!" There was no pun intended with that, I suppose.

Why is Plaut obsessed with demonizing Eritrea?

To answer this question, one has to know who Plaut's close friend (Patrick Gilkes) is. https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-gilkes-81b5815a Gilkes, who is a British citizen and a former freelance journalist, was infamous for spreading disinformation and slanderous news about Eritrea in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In fact, Gilkes did such a good job at defaming Eritrea in the media that the Ethiopian regime hired him as a strategic planning advisor for the Ethiopian Foreign Minister in 2004.

According to UK citizen Patrick Gilkes, in the summer 2008 TPLF party Congress, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi did not receive the most votes for party Chairmanship. Allegedly, former Mayor of Addis Ababa and currently the State Minister for Works and Urban Development Arkebe Equbay, long a TPLF Politbureau member, received more votes than both Meles and Seyoum Mesfin, the Foreign Minister and TPLF Vice Chairman. Gilkes argues that, recognizing the center of gravity surrounding Meles, Arkebe declined the party Chairmanship and Vice Chairmanship. Gilkes reported that the vote of dissent stemmed largely from lingering frustrations among the party over the still-unresolved territorial dispute with Eritrea over Badme (which the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission awarded to Eritrea in 2002, but Ethiopia continues to claim and occupy) as well as over the economic down turn which has taken a huge toll on the Tigray region. - Source: U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, via Wikileaks http://cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id ... %20patrick

In addition to being close friends, both Plaut and Gilkes have written dozens of articles and a few books about Eritrea and Ethiopia; and not surprisingly, all were biased in favor of Ethiopia. So from a business point of view, it pays to demonize Eritrea and praise Ethiopia.

What separates Plaut from journalists in the region is his constant loathe of Eritrea. Despite Plaut writing about the Horn of Africa for over a decade, he has yet to say one positive thing about the country or its leadership.