Posts tagged Ethiopians

One of these days those same people that whispered bullshit about others to you will soon whisper bullshit about you and destroy you in the process.

by Teddy Fikre  written:  Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

Alright, it is that time again for me to take my knife to the grind stone and sharpen it up one swipe at a time.  Yeah I know I stated that I would move on and keep it meto gena positive, but there was an occurrence that took place yesterday evening while interviewing Joe Torry that made me smile and angry concurrently.  Thus, this morning I woke up and decided to take pen to pad and bleed out of my spleen this rage that has inflamed my soul and in the process teach a DOPE lesson about whispers and the countless lives it has ravaged.

I was going to start this article by asking a pop quiz, which was going to be:  What is the most powerful weapon that Ethiopians posses?  Had I done so, I am sure some would have guessed our smile; the more militant ones would have stated the hundreds of thousands of AK47s that Meles imports from China instead of feeding the starving children of Ethiopia, and some might have said our collective big foreheads which make for an awesome Testa giver.  Grant it, these answers are perfectly acceptable answers and had this been the SAT, I would have given you partial credit.  But the most powerful weapon that Ethiopian posses are our tongues and our lips.  Habesha tongues are more powerful than tanks; hell they are more powerful than Nuclear bombs—if Iran really wants to have Atomic bombs, they should just import one million Ethiopians from the Diaspora. 

I don’t say this on a passing whim, some of you are going to say “prove it, what research have you done, when was the last time you have been to Ethiopia?”  To that charge I simply state that my research is my life, my studies have been conducted by the countless Ethiopians that have tried unsuccessfully to destroy my reputation and in the process try to make me radio active in my own community.  I won’t lie, they tried this in 2008 when I—along with 2 DOPE friends—organized thousands of Ethiopians under the umbrella of Ethiopians for Obama.  Up until that time, I was not tethered to my community; for 30 years I walked the dessert of America disconnected from my people.  But 2008 gave me the perfect opportunity to reconnect to the Ethiopian community so I took the opportunity to jump head first into the Habesha inner circle.

I thought I would be celebrated as the prodigal son returning to Addis.  I thought that my own people would be standing in line at a virtual airport waiting to welcome me back home while doing eskista and waving palm tree leaves.  I was naïve; I was sure that the Ethiopian Diaspora was a huge family, a collective of dispersed souls who would welcome one of their own and embrace me as their own.  Thus I wrote an article titled “the Power of One” which got published on Ethiopian Review and countless other Ethiopian online publications in the United States as well as back home in Ethiopia.  I thought I had arrived, I became famous and I was ready to bask in the glow.  I was sure I would hear nothing but positive words because the words I wrote were positive.  It encouraged Ethiopians to work together and to organize, to get over our differences and celebrate our common hopes and get a man of Hope and Change elected the first black president of the United States. 

Sure, I am driven by an ego, don’t blame me, I am Gondere eko:: Ego and pride course through my veins more than white blood cells do.  So the next day, after barely sleeping the whole night, I rushed to the computer to see what people thought of my words.  I stared scrolling through various pages to consume the pats on my back and inflate my ego a thousand percent.  It was then I started noticing a certain word which I had no idea what it meant. 

“Teddy Fikre is a Woyane!”

Wait what?! Why are they calling me a wine?  Do they make wine in Ethiopia, what is next; are they going to call me a Tela or Tij?  Was this a compliment? Was this a way of toasting my article—by raising a glass of wine and telling me salute?  I was utterly confused and dumb founded eko:: Thus I took to Google to shed light on this topic.  Here is what I found::

The tigrayan people’s liberation front (tplf), known more commonly; sometimes pejoratively in Ethiopia as woyane or weyane (ge’ez : ሕዝባዊ)

I was still confused, I am Gondere as I stated before but the woyane people are Tigrinya folk.  Regardless, I thought Tigrinya and Gondere, Wollo and Oromo, we are all bound by the concept of Andenet Ethiopia—thus I decided to not get too worked up about it.  I know my blood is not pure, there is no such thing as a pure Amhara, Tigrinya, Oromo etc, we are all intermixed and interwoven into a fabric that is Ethiopia.  This all changed once a good friend broke it down to me, that Woyane were the junta that imprisoned Professor Assrat.  Professor Assrat was the same person who I marched from the Capitol to the White House in 1996 demanding his release from a torturous prison camp.  The Woyane were supporters of the current government of Ethiopia, the same government that rules Ethiopia with an iron fist and a million cocked and loaded AK47s trained to shoot on their own people if they speak out demanding freedom too much.

The crazy thing is that this little whisper started to gain traction, all the sudden the same person that marched against the Ethiopian government in 1996 was now viewed by those same marchers with some suspicion.  I became a little radioactive, all the work I had done to organize the Ethiopian community, the countless weeks I invested with the Obama campaign to get them to release a thank you letter to the Ethiopian community, all the states I traveled to wearing Ethiopians for Obama t-shirt; all of my screaming for attention to redirect towards the Ethiopian community was being muted by pernicious whispers from depraved trolls on the internet.  This is the power we posses, whispers become louder than loud speakers—and no one pauses to ask “wait is this true, what proof do you have”—before they magnify the whispers from one ear to the next.  This is why Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”  In this case, the whispers about me traveled to Addis and back before I put on my chama.

By the time the campaign finished and we got Obama elected, I was shredded to a bits and pieces.  Me being a people pleaser, it destroyed my soul to hear whispers of lies echo in my ear drums and fester in my synapses.  I became undone, instead of celebrating a historical moment, I found myself isolated from the world, I ran from my own people, the prodigal son became yet again a wonderer in the desert.  When I wrote about the Power of One, what I envisioned was the Power of One person with the audacity to start a movement and in the process infect another with his passion, and in return two becomes four, four becomes 16 until a million Ethiopians realized the essence of Hebret.  Little did I know that the Power of One already existed in our community, except the Power of One resides in the forked tongue of a forked ogre intent on destroying the creations of motivated folks. Bit by bit, one by one, a forked tongue form a weapon against me and after thousands of forked tongues hissed whispers at my soul, they succeeded—they shut me down.  They incinerated my soul with their sinister plot and left me wounded and crying—depressed as shit—in dark lit corners. 

However, in spite for the spite of some Habesha trolls who wished me ill will and darkness, I came back renewed.  I emerged from the shadows of depression and find myself at peace with myself.  I also learned in the process the wicked ways of Habesha whispers.  I learned to have faith in God and learned to put on DOPE armor and fight back with the fierceness of David against any Goliath who dares to utter a sentence of enmity my way.  I read books like the art of war and Machiavelli and realized that if you don’t aggressively confront lies and hatred of others, those lies become true.  A lie in the absence of a counter argument becomes the truth.  So I popped my collars, reentered in the Ethiopian community and this time I was ready for battle—I was ready to apply the MOSSAD theory.  Anyone who dared to throw a brick my way would get savaged by a nuclear bomb on their foreheads and in the process I would teach future trolls who would dare whisper shit my way to keep their forked tongues to themselves or I would cut it off with sharpened machete::

But my MOSSAD ways had a side effect.  You see, my family and friends witnessed me battling ghost and trolls with such ferocity that they started to worry about my stability.  Others—by standards and past supporters—started to flee me by the dozens convinced I had gone bananas.  I don’t blame them, when they see me cursing out Ethiopian people, when they see me savaging Ethiopian and Eritrean sisters, they rightly derive that I have become an “Ibd” and in the process they judged me as a sexist, a traitor, a chauvinist, and insert any other adjectives of hatred.  I don’t blame them, because they were not privy to the full story, they lacked the context of why I responded like a crazy dude on some “hapless” Habeshas.  They were convinced I was an ass because they never saw what began the conflict, they only say my responses.

So let me give you the salvos that hundreds of Habesha trolls have lobbed my way.  They have told me to commit suicide at least 45 times, they have called my mother all kinds of insulting names, they have told me that my father Fikre (RIP) deserved to die, they called me a traitor to Ethiopia and a banda to boot.  Now, these are the words that they directed at me directly.  Many sent me messages in my inbox, many sent me emails, and some would actually post messages like this on my Facebook wall.  So I would respond with the cruelty of a wounded lion and return them to the dark corners they emerged from.  But this was a Sophie’s choice:  A) not respond and let a lie become a truth in the absence of a counter point or B) respond with viciousness to any ass that speaks lies about me.  Both choices had their vices, either I would let a lie stand and define me with it or respond with jarring words and be labeled an “Ibd”.  I chose—and will choose a thousand times over—to always respond to lies and risk being called “Ibd” rather than let the wicked ways of wicked tongues define the essence of who I am.  Some trolls have felt my harsh methods when I wrote an article about them, used their pictures from Facebook and wrote their full names and explained in full context what they said in darkness and exposed them to the world as asshole trolls who try to destroy people and movements. 

These trolls learned a DOPE lesson from me.  You see, the problem with whisperers of lies up to this point is that they did not have to pay for their deeds.  They could sharpen their knives in dark corners, use the anonymity of the internet, and destroy thousands of lives with one pernicious whisper.  But I am inoculated from that shit, first off I no longer care what people think of me.  When you stand at the precipice of a cliff driven by depression, you learn really fast that everyone is battling the same sickness of misery.  Some choose to battle with laughter while other choose to project their self-hatred at others and try to destroy anyone that dares to smile because they hate their own tears.  I know that these people don’t hate me, they hate themselves.  I would be more caring, but I can’t, because they have to be taught that they cannot go around whispering without a payment to be made.  So I have put at least 5 Habesha trolls with forked tongues on first page of Google through www.browncondor.com and they learned real fast not to talk shit about me again.

Having learned not to confront me directly, it seems these aheyas have taken to another tactic.  It seems that they too have read the Art of War.  I discovered this fact yesterday when a very good friend forwarded an email to me in which one particular asshole was trying to convince him that I was toxic and that he should defriend me.  She went on for four hours recounting all my sins and transgressions and begging him to leave me alone because he has a bright future.  You see, this is the ways of a true Habesha snakes, they reach out to one group and tell them they are special and tell them to disown their own brothers because they are not as worthy or as elite.  They succeed in cleaving one Ethiopian from another by convincing each group that the other is out to get them.  But the funny thing is, this wendem of mine was not having any of it.  He defended me rigorously—he went all Johnny Cochran—and after four hours she decided to call it quits and redirect her dark energy towards another brother of mine. 

When my friend and I discussed this incident, to be honest it made me chuckle.  I am impervious to the impish tactics of Habesha imps.  But I can’t laugh to long because these same bullshit tactics are being deployed on a second by second basis by trolls like Nitro Ethiopians who dedicate their lives to destroying what others build.  Let me give you an example, when Ayana Werku Tegegnedies was going through his trials and we found out that he needed a transplant in order to live, a few kind folks leapt to the moment and initiated a fund raising drive.  They raised thousands upon thousands of dollars for Ayana and hundreds of Ethiopians and Eritreans saw it fit to take part to save one of their own.  However, Ayana—God bless his soul—passed away regardless of our momentary Hebret.  It was heartening to see Ethiopians put aside their suspicions and get vested in investing in Ayana.  He passed away but he left within us a living spirit of Hebret—or so I thought.

A week after his passing, some asshole troll put up a comment and a picture of Ayana (RIP) stating that the folks who took up the collection plate were leba and that they took the money for themselves.  He did this without proof; she of course did this without his/her name associated and no pictures to boot.  This is what fucking Habesha trolls do, they have no courage, and they stand in the shadows waiting for the perfect moment where someone stands up to shoot them between the eyes.  They succeeded in turning a moment of Hebret—inspired by the death of Ayana—into yet another moment of hatred and suspicion.  This is what trolls with whispers do, they live to kill others.  They have no soul so they try to destroy the souls of others—I hate them and their methods, they are the germs of Ethiopia and the virus of Africa.

Like I said, I am inoculated to their bullets, I put on the armor of God and I know that no weapon that Habesha trolls form will make them prosper or proffer me into dark lit corners again.  However—as much as I am not worried about me—I am worried about future Teddys and future Ayanas.  I worry for future revolutionaries who dare stand up to make a difference only to be assassinated by whispers formed at the cusp of forked tongues.  So I write this article not to defend myself, because I will stand whether you stand with me or against me.  However, I ask you—the good folks of Ethiopia and Eritrea—next time an asshole troll whispers words from their forked tongues, just pause once and ask them “do you have proof”.  Please stop taking the words of liars as the truth, counter them with an argument.  Don’t let them echo words of nothingness into the ether, don’t let get away with slaughtering the reputation and lives of your own brothers and sisters without paying a price for it.  Stand up for truth and demand evidence before you too pass on the hatred that emits from the lips of Habesha self-hating trolls.

It is my hope that you do just that.  It is my hope that you speak truth to whisperers and demand justice for those who are tarnished by the hands of asshole Habesha trolls.  It is my hope that this article is the new Power of One, that you will be the second person that will reach out to two others, and then 16, and then a million—all speaking a sweet melody of integrity directly into the mouth of those who utter whispers of odium.  Or you could choose to do the other, you can choose the other camp and utter whispers of odium yourself.  But just know this, one of these days those same people that whispered bullshit about others to you will soon whisper bullshit about you and destroy you in the process.

Beunet that day is going to come; but in the meantime, if you feel the need to utter whispers of enmity my way, know three things: 1) I have a vast network of friends throughout the globe who keep me informed and 2) my megaphone is louder than your forked tongue and 3) if you dare utter my name in whispers, I will soon find your name, I will soon get your picture, and I will write a devastating article that will expose you to the world. So choose wisely, before you whisper about me –or about kind folks like Ayana—just know that I am ready to figuratively cut off your tongue and leave you muted in dark lit corners.  Just ask Nitro Ethiopians, I have his melas in a jar on my book shelf  right next to a picture of my Father Fikre (RIP). Peace.

“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

[click to view Teddy's knife that I use against forked tongues]

[click to see why I always prosper]

RIP Ayana, God bless your Soul ena Spirit

Teddy Fikre in Bole with Father Fikre (RIP)

[click pic to follow us on twitter or follow us @browncondor]

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