We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that's what's happening. Too many people there. They can't support themselves - and it's not an inhuman thing to say. It's the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it's going to get worse and worse.
I went to Ethiopia, and it dawned on me that you can tell a starving, malnourished person because they've got a bloated belly and a bald head. And I realized that if you come through any American airport and see businessmen running through with bloated bellies and bald heads, that's malnutrition, too.
I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.
My parents never referenced Ethiopia that much, largely because of the circumstances under which we left. We left during a time of political upheaval, and there was a lot of loss that came with that, so my parents were reluctant to talk about those things. So I had, by and large, an American childhood.
I wrote my first book without being to Ethiopia since I was two years old.
Nineteen-seventy-nine had been a year of American setbacks around the globe. Before the year began, Cuban troops were already roaming Angola, and a pro-Communist regime ruled Ethiopia.
I've never conspired to overthrow the government; all I did was report on the Arab Spring and suggest that something similar might happen in Ethiopia if the authoritarian regime didn't reform.
I was arrested in September 2011 and detained for nine months before I was found guilty in June 2012 under Ethiopia's overly broad Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, which ostensibly covers the 'planning, preparation, conspiracy, incitement and attempt' of terrorist acts.
As Ethiopia goes, so goes the whole Horn of Africa - a region where instability can have major security and humanitarian implications for the United States and Europe.
Aggregate aid is to the Ethiopian economy what Obama's fiscal stimulus was to the American economy: minus these injections, both economies would suffer catastrophically. The theatrical blustering of the Ethiopian government notwithstanding, donor countries have a make-or-break power over the Ethiopia's prosperity.
