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EU takes on Eritrea by the horn

The Eritrean regime is as famous for its appalling democratic and human rights abuses as it is for its sardonic provocations. While these infringements are a topic for an extensive discussion at an EU-US led conference in Brussels next week (November 9 - 10), Eritrea has refused to participate claiming it is the “most stable and peaceful” among its African neighbors. The gathering is organized by Europe External Policy Advisors (EEPA) and an Eritrean Reference Group

The Eritrean leadership was not expected to embrace an international gathering devoted to exposing and denouncing its roguish and violent policies. This impoverished state maintains over 350-thousand strong-army ready to provoke or attack any neighboring country for the flimsiest possible reason without the permission of the people. The regime is also believed to be training, arming, harboring and financing foreign opposition groups, insurgents and terrorists with the aim of destabilizing and stirring up bloodshed in neighboring countries.

Song Of The Nightingale

Song of the Nightingale is the true story of Helen Berhane, held captive for over two years in appalling conditions in her native Eritrea. Her crime? Sharing her faith in Jesus, and refusing, even though horrendously tortured, to deny him.

A sobering, painful, heart-rending account of true faith in the face of evil, this book makes for uncomfortable and yet inspirational reading. Helen says, ‘I want to give a message to those of you who are Christians and live in the free world: You must not take your freedom for granted. … If I could sing in prison, imagine what you can do for God’s glory with your freedom.’ A real challenge for the church in the West in 2009.

When we were C.I.A spies …… Memories of a dreadful time

Almost all the independent news papers were labeled as spies and agents of foreign governments and intelligence organizations outright. I was lucky to get the honorary title of a CIA agent. “Setit” news paper of Aarom Berhane was labled as a Danish agent and “NAY DENMARK” ( can you believe Denmark spying on Eritrea????). Admas news paper of Khaled Abdu and company was marked as a Libyan agent. Khaled used to print large photos of the Libyan Leader in his paper and tried to interview the Libyan ambassador at one time and this was enough evidence to get the title of a Libyan agent (Eritrea’s AL megrahi!). Yusuf Mohammed Ali and his Tsigenay newspaper were Saudi stooges. They used to have a column in their paper during the holy month of Ramadan, a kind of religious question and answer. This plus the editors name were enough to bestow the designation of a Saudi agent! In a land of special courts and scary Gulags, where one can be sentenced at a whim of a military judge and where one can languish indefinitely in prison, in a law less system where there is no recourse of appeal or justice, titles and honorific designation were plenty and some have no choice except to believe in whatever they were told.

Sealing off Eritrea: Domestic Terrorism

Totalitarian leaders are like scientists in that they are always in search of the perfect controlled laboratory environment, devoid of any interfering variables. And they are unlike scientists in that they never accept the results of their experimentation, given the fact that those results never match the ones they have already made up in their minds. All the horrors that take place in a totalitarian society are the result of endless attempts to close this impossible gap between attained and preferred results. At every such failed attempt, the experimental setting has to be drastically overhauled to meet impossible conditions, always at a horrendous price to the masses – as the Eritrean case amply testifies.

The first thing that a totalitarian leader does to make a perfect laboratory out of his nation (and perfect guinea pigs out of his subjects) is to seal off the nation from the outside world, not only to prevent outside variables that might compromise his experimentation from coming in but also to prevent inside variables essential for the success of his experimentation from escaping out. It is not surprising then that the most crucial question that a totalitarian leader or party asks is: how do I keep out those variables that potentially infringe on my independence to experiment as I simultaneously keep in those variables essential to the success of my experiment? The “independence” mentioned here is that of the leader’s (or the party’s) unfettered independence to do whatever he wants to do within the confines of his laboratory (the nation) to bring about the kind of results he wants to achieve – often, a utopian society made in his or the party’s own image. But since no such satisfactory result is ever achieved, the experimentation ends up being all about weeding out “interfering variables”, a process that ends only with the demise of the totalitarian system itself.

Meb Keflezighi becomes first American man to win New York City Marathon since 1982

As he approached the finish line, Keflezighi pointed to the letters U.S.A. on his chest and the crowd, already cheering, roared.

"The USA gave me all the opportunities there is in education, sports and lifestyle," he said. "To be able to represent the USA is a big thing for me."

Keflezighi, 34, who scored a silver at the 2004 Olympics, was born in Eritrea in Africa but he fled war and became a U.S. citizen in 1998.

His triumph was one of persistance after hardships two years ago that would have sidelined a lesser man: During New York's 2007 Olympic Men's Marathon Trials, he came in eight after suffering calf cramps and a fracture his right hip during the race.

How Many Colors Does A Rainbow Have?

This brings us to the main topic of this article. How many colors does a rainbow have? A rainbow is believed to be made up of seven colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet by the casual observer. Scientifically, however, the rainbow is a whole continuum of colors from red to violet and even beyond the colors that the eye can see. I am not a mind reader but from what I read, Ahmed Raj seems to see only two colors in a rainbow. The rest of the colors he leaves for sheer speculation. Since his vision seems to be limited to seeing only two colors in a rainbow he also is in the habit of first making his preconceived conclusions and then working down from there to find data to validate them. And what an assortment of tainted and "convenient" data he has!!!!

More from Eritrea seek life of peace in Maryland

At first, the police only beat her.

They had come to the two-room stone house where Abeba Hagos Enday lived with her four children to conscript her husband into the Eritrean army. When she told them - truthfully, she says - that she didn't know where he was, they gave her an ultimatum: Find him before we come back, or we will kill you. 

"I had to leave," Enday says through an interpreter.

Enday, 39, is one of about four dozen Eritreans who have arrived in Baltimore since July, the first members of a group that resettlement officials expect to rival the current big three - Iraqis, Bhutanese and Burmese - in admissions during the next year.

"This population is coming," says Robert Warwick, director of the Baltimore office of the International Rescue Committee, which is resettling the Eritreans locally. "For years, resettlement was stagnant, but now the U.S. government has identified numbers, and they're being processed."

The Language Question Revisited

Second, some claim that they use Arabic in their religious schools and religious institution thus Arabic should qualify as one of the working languages of Eritrea. Similarly, the Tewahdos use Geez in their religious schools and churches. They use Geez in such important occasions as religious holidays, prayers, baptism, marriage ceremonies, funereal services and all the attendant ceremonies that follow. Here, I do not see that much difference in the way the Tewahdos use Geez from that our Muslim compatriots use Arabic during comparable occasions. I can attest to the fact that the Tewahdo masses have no clue of the Geez language. I conjecture that may be the case with the Eritrean Muslim masses regarding Arabic. Still no matter how one cuts it, a language does not become a working language of a nation just because a religious institution uses it. To examine this issue in more detail, it becomes important to examine how non Arab Muslims handle the Arabic language. The question is do Muslim nations who are not Arabs accept Arabic as one of their official languages?