“Our Scumbag in Africa” — The misreporting of the Globe and Mail’s Geoffrey York

Why is it that Geoffrey York can’t even bring himself to do basic research and reporting on victims other than his favorite ethnicity in Ethiopia?

Is it because if he did, his past sins of neglecting their plight and distorting the facts about the TPLF war would finally gain attention?

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For those who don’t know, the Globe and Mail is one of Canada’s oldest and most respected newspapers. Unfortunately, it has Geoffrey York as its Africa Bureau Chief, and he’s decided what Globe readers needs most of all is “olds,” not news. What do I mean by this? Don’t worry, I’ll explain.

Just to be clear, there is no love lost between York and me. He once called me a “notorious propagandist” on Twitter (back when it still was Twitter). But I thought this was hilarious and used that in my profile description for a day.

What’s not funny is that York has worked wonders to mislead Canadians over and over and over as to how the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) conducted its war in Ethiopia. If you read the Globe, you would never learn that the TPLF attacked Ethiopian national services first, massacring thousands and committing sexual assaults on both male and female captured soldiers. You would never know how the TPLF targeted innocent Amhara for attacks and made thousands of them into IDPs; how it invaded Afar, which was minding its own business; how it vandalized and looted hospitals, museums, schools, government offices, hotels in Dessie and Lalibela.

None of this you would learn from Geoffrey York, who showed no concern whatsoever for balance or even basic journalistic ethics of fair coverage. The so-called “humanitarian” Mukesh Kapila — a close ally of World Health Organization director and human toilet brush Tedros Adhanom — once ranted during a video interview about Ethiopians being “horrible people,” but for Geoffrey York, he was an expert worth quoting when he suckered gullible idiots over the war at a subcommittee hearing in Canada’s parliament in 2022.

Some of you who read me regularly know all this. Apologies for dredging through all the old stuff because Geoffrey York would like to dredge through old stuff.

You see, York’s latest Globe feature, “Canada revives military co-operation with Ethiopia despite genocide allegations,” would have genuine news value if it was reported properly — only it’s not.

Right now, Abiy Ahmed’s regime is fighting a brutal war against Fano, units of Amhara militia, and government thugs and their accomplices are regularly targeting Orthodox church goers, journalists, activists, Amhara people, Gurage people, practically anyone they view as a threat. They even make a point of bullying celebrants for Ethiopia’s most important day, the anniversary of the Battle of Adwa. It’s an event that’s sacred to proud Ethiopians and Pan-Africanists yet is inconvenient to those among Abiy’s true believers who would like to rewrite history and make Emperor Menelik II into a villain. (I have explained the genuine history elsewhere.)

The Abiy regime has obliterated the historic Piassa district in Addis Ababa, shamefully making scores of its residents homeless, and its backers support a deranged “master race” ideology known as Oromuma — a perverse distortion of both traditional Oromo values and history that makes sensible Oromo shake their heads.

But you learn virtually nothing about any of this in York’s story, which is an incredibly lazy piece of work. This is all that discover about the situation for the Amhara, and almost all of it all comes via the internal memo passed along “by a senior Canadian diplomat” (which means someone has an agenda and wanted it leaked).

There’s a conflict in the Amhara region, says the memo.

“There were reports of a drone strike in Amhara that killed 16 civilians, including several children,” says the memo.

Oh, and the Globe takes a victory lap in referencing how it had an investigation last December into how Ethiopian forces have “killed and injured civilians in Amhara with indiscriminate fire from artillery guns.” That story wasn’t written by York, but by Zecharias Zelalem.

I don’t know what the Amharic is for No shit, Sherlock, but practically every Ethiopian both in the country and the diaspora centers around the world has known this for about three years.

Even though the situation for Amhara is downright desperate, so much so that I personally get regular emails and sometimes calls from refugees, York has decided that’s enough room on their situation. He makes what can only be considered a perfunctory effort to report on what’s happening to anyone else besides the residents of Tigray.

His article mentions Amhara four times — four.

His article mentions Tigray and Tigrayans 13 times.

In the past couple of years, as Ukraine and Palestine have competed for public attention, there has been a concerted effort among the TPLF’s best buddies in the media like York and Martin Plaut to keep “playing the greatest hits.” So York’s article quotes Allan Rock, a former Canadian politician who contributed to the ridiculous New Lines Institute report pushing the fable of “Tigray Genocide.”

When the report was first put out in June 2024, all the usual suspects tried to play it up, except no one in the Western world really gave a shit anymore. It was old news by then and zzzzzzz.

Worse, some of the top names banging on and wailing about “Genocide!” — like the TPLF’s Getachew Reda — were grinning like fools and each accepting a framed certificate from Abiy Ahmed at a televised ceremony on April 23, 2023 after the signing of the Pretoria Agreement.

If there really had been a genocide, one could reasonably ask, why were TPLF leaders being so chummy with Abiy, the guy they swore to drag into an international criminal court?

It didn’t help that much like a dumb high schooler cramming with Wikipedia entries, the think tank’s report simply relied on old stories by Cara Anna, Nima Elbagir and others whose work can be individually debunked over and over (I know this because I’ve done it myself in The Hyena War, and Rasmus Sonderriss’ early version of his online book also shredded their nonsense before Rasmus went off the rails and became a shameless apologist for Abiy’s war against Fano and its atrocities against the Amhara people).

What is truly amazing is that the great thinkers of the New Lines think tank never thought to actually verify the claims of journalists, such as the outrageous whopper by Cara Anna of Associated Press in which she suggested that removing ethnicity from ID cards somehow “targeted” Tigrayans. None of these big brains bothered to ask how this would work since ethnicity was removed from all new ID cards, not just those of Tigrayans. Nor did they

Naturally, the Aksum Massacre is recounted in the report — despite video evidence on YouTube and even TPLF leader Debretsion’s Gebremichael’s own text messages to media contacts that prove the TPLF’s original version of the story is a stack of lies.

But no, of course Geoffrey York gives no room to dissenting perspectives. Nor does he bother to delve into how New Lines Institute itself is a rather creepy outfit, with a sinister origin and which finally admitted in 2023 that it was “directly funded by the U.S. government.” How cozy.

And as it turns out, New Lines “has spent years investigating alternative media, promoting a narrative that opposition to U.S. foreign policy equals being in the pay of official enemy countries.”

York would know this if he ever bothered to do… you know, journalism.

Instead, York does what he does best for an article. Like any good newsroom hack, he finds the right mouthpieces to fit the shape of a predetermined narrative. He quotes Kyle Matthews, who was once with the UN and has hopped from “institute” to “institute,” but whom I suspect knows as much about Ethiopia’s history as I do about Peruvian ceramics.

York also quotes a human rights lawyer who once advised a Canadian Tigray association” and who claims uselessly that “recent reports show that Ethiopia’s military is continuing to commit human-rights abuses and international crimes in Tigray and elsewhere.”

Again, no shit. And where is this “elsewhere?”

Gee, could it be in Amhara region? Could it be in Oromia? Careful, York, you wouldn’t want to give any substantial coverage to other victims.

The tragedy is that Abiy Ahmed fooled a lot of people. I know smart people who lost their heads and were over the moon about Abiy when he first came to power. I know very smart people who met Abiy who fell for his charisma shtick. They bitterly regret their old enthusiasm now. It pissed me off plenty when my articles were mischaracterized by some — with obvious intent to mislead — as “pro-government.” Only they weren’t. I had nothing against Abiy at the time, but neither was I ready to jump on his fans’ bandwagon.

Because those of us who believed in Ethiopia didn’t need to believe in him or ally ourselves with one political party, and that was never what the war was about.

It was about a terrorism organization, the TPLF, conning the world into thinking it was a victim and then going on a slaughter-fest as it killed and raped, and it ravaged the infrastructure of an innocent country.

And its advocates and fellow travelers can’t help themselves from still lying. On Ethiopia Insight, a Mulugeta Gebregziabher wrote the following, which made me laugh out loud. The Pretoria Agreement, he informs us, “came after Ethiopian forces — despite approaching Tigray’s capital, Mekelle — faced heavy losses against [sic] the Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) and with mounting diplomatic pressure from Western governments and the Tigrayan diaspora.”

Ah, yes! We all remember how peace came after the Allies — despite approaching Germany’s capital, Berlin — faced heavy losses against the old men and boys ordered to rush out and defend the crumbling Reich… oh, and with mounting diplomatic pressure from Oktoberfest fans in Pittsburgh.

But I’ll write it again: yes, there is legitimate news value in uncovering how the Canadian government should not be working with the Abiy regime. If nothing else, it’s another reminder that Ottawa’s ambassador to Ethiopia, Joshua Tabah, could easily be replaced by an orange traffic cone, and no one would tell the difference.

There is far more that could have been uncovered and explored, but York has perfected the art of lying by omission, carefully leaving out pertinent facts that would completely alter a reader’s perspective on events.

And when a reporter does this, it’s no longer for the benefit of the readers his paper is supposed to serve, but clearly for that journalist’s political agenda or on behalf of someone else’s agenda. Which makes that reporter a real scumbag.

Why is it that Geoffrey York can’t even bring himself to do basic research and reporting on victims other than his favorite ethnicity?

Is it because if he did, his past sins of neglecting their plight and distorting the facts about the TPLF war would finally gain attention?

Such journalistic malpractice hurts the credibility of news as a whole. We already live in an age when Donald Trump and his minions attack any news outlet that dares hold them accountable.

What is also unbelievably hypocritical are those news outlets that play the Trump game and claim that anyone who doesn’t back their narrative must be “attacking” journalism or a conspiracy theorist. New Lines made the perfect partner for them.

Unfortunately for all of them, events in Ethiopia have outpaced their lies.

Even Martin Plaut has had to occasionally do a 180 degree maneuver. He recently reprinted on his website an article from Borkena on the Afar people. Martin, in case you’ve forgotten, did not give a damn about the Afar during the war and neglected to point out that there was no provocation for when the TPLF invaded their region. But then Martin never mentioned (as far as I can find) that the TPLF while in power exploited the Afar region for years, sucking out its salt wealth and clawing back any income from tourism, something I reported on for Arts TV back in 2021.

One brief meeting in person with Martin Plaut will confirm that he is infinitely more intelligent and cunning than Geoffrey York. Plaut knows better than to keep pretending that the Amhara victims can be minimized. Instead, like Zecharias Zelalem, he has changed gears and now pretends he’s always been above the fray. And just like Zecharias, Martin seems to hope that every reader or viewer will suffer some weird current affairs Alzheimer’s. Only we haven’t. We know the bullshit Zecharias put out and how he was online besties once with TPLF propagandist, Lucy Kassa. We know how Martin Plaut tried to bully Bronwyn Bruton on Twitter (and failed) and tried to bully Tiffany Haddish on Twitter (and spectacularly failed!).

And he thinks if he pivots again, no one will notice.

What is interesting is that a new, seemingly coordinated effort is trying to provoke something, of which York’s article must be one piece of the jigsaw. A new flurry of insistent tweets and stories all shrilly yelling, Tigray, Tigray, Tigray!

There’s Lauren Blanchard, an African Affairs Specialist for the Congressional Research Service who never seems to actually do anything but spends all her work hours on X (and gawd, as much as I loathe Musk, I hope he learns about her and gets her fired). Since the final days just before the Pretoria Agreement, the Hive Mind helping the TPLF pivoted and made Eritrea its main Bond villain, so Blanchard obligingly writes a thread shilling for a Foreign Policy article published March 12.

Cue Fred Harter — the reporter who doesn’t know to check a library on Ethiopian slavery — plugging the article as well.

Oh, look! A Tufts University alumnus makes sure to plug an article this same week about Tigray on the website of the World Peace Foundation. It so happens that both Tufts and the foundation are the backyards of Alex de Waal, the academic crank who lies about famine and wanted Ethiopians to “repent.”

And of course, there’s Martin, pushing the Foreign Policy piece as well.

What exquisite timing. And the Foreign Policy article — written by one of Biden’s old Africa gang, Payton Knopf — is yet another boilerplate call for virtual intervention: “A direct and threatening show of high-level interest by a coalition of Western and Middle Eastern states in concert with the African Union, which midwifed the Pretoria Agreement, might freeze the protagonists and their backers, allowing time for serious and pragmatic diplomacy.”

Funny how he can’t spare a mention of the Amhara people either.

But Knopf and the others are all stuck with the same problem that diaspora activists have in seeking attention over Amhara ethnic cleansing. The Trump White House does not give a shit about Africa.

The Republicans hold the majority in both houses of Congress, and believe it or not, as much as some Republicans are complete whack-a-doodles on vaccines and climate change, some have brief, genuine moments of sanity on the Horn of Africa. And even if they bought the same ol’ gruel from the likes of Blanchard and Plaut, the revived spirit of isolationism in America mixed with Ayn Rand dickishness and downright cruelty towards people of color should deter any interventionist moves.

Which brings us back to Geoffrey York. Because he writes for a Canadian paper, he’ll keep pushing the TPLF agenda, presumably in the hope that it’ll influence the next Canadian government. Given the stupidity and ignorance of MPs showcased in that subcommittee hearing long ago, I wouldn’t bet against it. But Canada has bigger problems now than a few soldiers foolishly deployed to Ethiopia. Our very survival as a sovereign nation is at stake.

York and I are contemporaries, roughly the same age, and I recognize a fossil when I see one. He once worked in my old hometown of Winnipeg, and he’s the product of that ridiculous tradition in journalism that just because you did a reasonable job covering Parliament Hill, you should be rewarded by going off to report on other countries. Don’t speak the language? No problem. Fixers will help with that. You’re a white man who knows nothing about an African country? No problem. Fixers can help with that. It’s almost like covering Beijing, right?

Oh, and you can comprehensively cover an entire continent just from Johannesburg, right?

Oh, there are plenty of problems. York is a disgrace to Canadian journalism. He is a walking, bloviating example of the kind of outdated journalism that doesn’t respect the people who live in Ethiopia or Kenya or Somalia, only the geopolitical interests of a privileged few in Ottawa, Washington and London. He deserves to be fired. But I won’t hold my breath for the Globe to do the right thing any time soon.

The only silver lining is another fine tradition of hacks: basically writing the same story over and over with only slight variations. Pity that his editors have yet to pick up on it.