Regime Watch: Beijing

Mia Farrow’s advocacy against the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan has been both passionate and relentless.  Here is Mia on You Tube asking Beijing to stop enabling the genocidal regime in Khartoum.

Ever wondered what life is like under a thuggish African regime?

The Independence Institute has a new video up on You Tube featuring Habtamu Dugo, an Ethiopian journalist forced by the Ethiopian regime to flee his own country.

The editors at gadaa.com, a Horn of Africa news site and portal, wonder if Chinese construction companies in the Ethiopian city of Finfinne (or Addis Ababa, as it is also known) are using the same building standards in Finfinne as were apparently used to build schools in China:

Looking back, it is important to note that school buildings were the most affected by the quake. Thousands of children, who were attending classes, were buried alive underneath blocks of crumbling concrete walls. Whereas government buildings located in the same quake zone as the schools did not even get a scratch (so to say) from the earthquake. Over the past week, this fact has raised eyebrows among many engineers and experts of building safety standards. These engineers and experts ask: why would government buildings stand tall and schools crumble down when both structures were equally hit with the same quake?

Great question.

(Thanks to Habtamu Dugo for the link)

What are the implications of China’s growing (and un-democratic) sphere of influence in Africa? Over at the Independence Institute’s podcast website, I have an interview with Ethiopian journalist Habtamu Dugo. We discuss the effects that China’s relationship with Africa has had on its people and policies. Habtamu brings a unique perspective, having personally been the on the receiving end of the brutal Ethiopian government’s treatment of journalists who write what the regime doesn’t like.

Podcast here.

MP3 compatible podcast here.

For a firsthand account of life under an African thugocracy, check out Habtamu’s website, Free Oromia.