ELUSIVE PEACE

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BLOGGING in the VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH

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Let’s start with the numbers : In a country of 73 million only 113,000 or (0.2%) of Ethiopians have access to the internet ( 2005 figures ). Compare this number with another African country with an almost identical population—Egypt: population—72 million, internet users—5,000,000 (21.1%). Other African countries with pathetic Ethiopia-like numbers include the Democratic Republic of Congo (58 million; 50,000 users (0.2%), Tanzania (38M, 333,000 users (1.5%); Eritrea, well, you can check the numbers at the Internet World Stats site. The company provides interesting and at times surprising breakdowns of internet users in every country in the world. Meles Zenawi apparently experiences digital dreams . As recently as August 2005 cyber cracker Zenawi sounded like Bill Gates: I want to see ICT [information communications technology] pervade all our activities as a government, not just in the urban areas. We want to connect all our villages in two to three years. All education services, l...
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Bealu Girma: Now, at this Moment

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He came to class reeking of the brothel where he had spent the night and of the Katikala that still sloshed in his body. He was a drunk fool, my history teacher, a man small both in stature and in mind and prone to hurling insults at his students in the cruelest words he could conjure in the Amharic language. He was unashamed to discharge audible bodily vapors so putrid those of us condemned to his class learned to hate our own language. But then there were those rare moments of sobriety that more than made up for the daily gaseous inferno. A lucid clear-eyed man would bounce from the door to his desk in his heavy platform shoes and bark a perky " endimin aderachuh !" to a room of adolescents who never figured how to deal with the malevolent moods of an alcoholic teacher. A torturous gilmiCHa -filled roll-call later, the tiny man would ceremoniously reach for a crumpled paperback from a crumpled overworn jacket. He would then launch into a dramatic reading from Oro...
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The Republic of Fear

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It's easy to get lost in the numbers—no less than two million Iraqis died under Saddam Hussien’s watch. Images of Kurdish children lying prostrate, dead on the spot they breathed Saddam’s deadly mustard gas—the same biological weapon used by fascist Italy against Ethiopian villagers in 1935—show one of the most horrific acts of brutality known to mankind. The Butcher of Bagdad’s 1986-88 chemical and biological weapon attacks on thousands of innocent Iraqis in Halabja and al-Anfal are only a few examples of his systematic campaign to exterminate opposition to his brutal twenty-five year rule. In various postings, we have stated our support for the war on terror. We are convinced that the dictator’s quarter-century rule needed to come to an end. In the long run, his removal from power will allow Iraqis the opportunity to build a nation based on tolerance and respect for the rule of law. We are further convinced that despite the US-led coalition’s failure to secure t...
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