Before his deportation.
Hey, @
trtworld, I just had this great idea - instead of asking a foreign analyst, you actually ask an ETHIOPIAN about what's going on in ETHIOPIA.
I know! What a novel concept! Why does this guy's opinion matter more than theirs? Really? You can't find an Ethiopian expert?
Is he a military expert? Hmm.
Has he held public office in the country? Don't think so.
English speaking? Many educated Ethiopians are.
So aside from helping the think tank industry look good to its donors, what info can he offer that you can't get from an ETHIOPIAN expert?
Now - a reasonable argument has been put to me that you might use an expat source, because they'd come under less pressure from the gov't. Okay--
Then why not use expatriate Ethiopian and diaspora academics, analysts, NGO officials who also are following the conflict?
If you want to argue proximity, journalists haven't been allowed near the fighting so your foreign think tank expert in Addis is on par in knowledge with the experts I know in Europe and here in N. America who have contacts in Addis.
So again, why not an Ethiopian source?
It's a really comfortable system. The journos from abroad interview their pals in the think tanks from abroad again and again, and look! You hardly ever have to ask people FROM the country, what they think is going on.
So hey, media, in the damn future, please don't ring up the crisis group talking head because it's easy and he's always available. Don't call up the academic vampire who raided his gov't's public funds. Don't call me either. CALL AN ETHIOPIAN OR ETHIOPIAN DIASPORA expert.
Pro-TPLF, pro-Abiy, Stop the War, whatever the view -- Tegaru, Amhara, Oromo -- please get it from actual people IN the country or diaspora people who know instead of the folks trying to get their next big grant or fat publishing contract or the World Bank to sign their cheques.
This whole scam has to fall. The media and the industry of academic and analysis vampires has to change. We're not in the 1950s anymore, and the peoples of Africa and Asia don't need foreigners to parachute in and "interpret" their events for them.
Why is a senior analyst for such think tanks a foreigner at all? You couldn't hire a well educated local? Oh, you want to claim they'd be biased? There are MILLIONS of mixed race Ethiopians who are more than capable of acting as professionals. Vulnerable to pressure? But if...the office or the media org, by its prestige, protects the foreigner, why shouldn't it serve as reasonably similar if not equal protection for a local hire? Either one can be tossed in a cell, etc. So...Just. What. Is it. For why the think tanks and the major media outlets don't want to hear FROM Africans even while they keep talking ABOUT Africans?
I'd really love to know. And it's really interesting how I keep getting pushback on this...
I am so sick of this crap. A while back, as I said before, I was invited on a foreign TV network to discuss the Rohingya Genocide. I asked the producer,
Well, wouldn't you prefer to get a Rohingya person?
They weren't going to have one...!
I had to go myself to find them one! And I'm one of the freaking guests! Fortunately, I tracked down a young Rohingya activist to speak on the crisis. Otherwise, it would have been 3 white dudes nowhere near Myanmar talking about a country that none of them lived in! So this neo-colonial [deleted] has to end. It's not enough to turn down the invites to public forums, media interviews, etc. and you don't need to turn down them all. But why not give those slots FIRST in the majority of cases to people from the actual country or in their diaspora community?
Jeff Pearce: @jeffpropulsion
