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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An Ethiop Office Rant

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I have avoided all interaction with the man down the hall in the past several years since I joined this east coast outfit. The dour self-righteous pre-Madonna’s world view revolves around stale and unsolicited sloganesque rants against Bush, American racism, and organized religion. With the exception of the occasional silly emoticon-filled group e-mails I get from him, our paths generally don't cross each other. The New Englander, like some white liberals I know, loves his causes but not necessarily the people he purportedly defends: talking to black and Latino male coworkers makes him break into a cold sweat. I overheard his conversation with someone in the hallway not too long ago. I could trace an edge to his nasal timbre. “ He doesn’t have the support of the real African-American community right ?” Shit. Obviously, Barack Obama. “ . . . and minorities (it came out “MNORDYS”) have so much to thank the Clintons, right ?” The woman he was talking to is an Af...
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Consent of the Governed (repost)

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We will return with new postings. We repost an earlier piece, The Consent of the Governed. Our muted puzzlement in December 2005 following the EPRDF’s announcement it would charge the leaders and members of the opposition with the crime of genocide is now turning into a deranged retroactive scream in our heads. Five months in politics is a lifetime. Since December, Berhanu Nega and his fellow political dissenters now rendered criminal defendants have decided not to fight the EPRDF’s charges in court. By filing incendiary charges impossible to fight in a Third World courtroom, the EPRDF seems bent on sending the nation on a historical collision course. Unfortunately for Ethiopia, an entire people’s outcry—in the country and abroad—has not forced a reckoning in the rank and file of the EPRDF. But how does one defend against the charge of genocide? All precedent tells us is that those who commit genocide—the Hitlers, Stalins, Pol Pots, and Milosovics have never been tried, foun...
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