Giessen Demonstration in Video: Fear Has Been Broken..The Tide of Change Is Growing , PFDJ is On The Run – – COMING SOON – For Now Click On the Pictorial Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_Fcc90hTx4&feature=share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_Fcc90hTx4&feature=share
SHAWL MOVEMENT October 4, 2011
Dear Gasha
if you go to see PIA and not even ask about your people, priseners, you right to cast your vote, speek with out fear so on.
you just go there to clap your hans becaouse on zombie ask hours of sleep when the rest of Eritrea youth are with out sleep for 14 years then I dear you to say they are Komaro.
Half megedi October 4, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8ThLSVguPs&feature=player_embedded#!
Just listen between 3.48 – 3.57, what a shame!
Weldit October 5, 2011
The lady in the blue dress is soooo freaking disgusting. I never heard a female utter those kinds of words in my entire life.
Temesgen Medhanie October 5, 2011
Did she say the ‘F’ word?
Weldit October 5, 2011
exactly.
It sounds much more discusting when said in Tigirinya. lol
down iseyas October 5, 2011
ppl are calling time to step down.Just I believed today that it is ppls call when i saw of new york and Germany.
I have sided with my ppl and i am calling iseyas to step down now.
hzbi October 5, 2011
welfasat komaro keman kiwihdekum.beletsegnatat.
Kalu October 5, 2011
Tmesghen, Shawel, Mazzaa,
Guys you sound very intelligent people, can you please explain for me what Comariet or Comaro mean is? Please explain for me what part of the society and what was their contribution in our socio- economic growth? This part of our society should be respected than referring as a degrading name. The way you guys using the common name is insulting to our society. Most comaros were women part of our society engaged in business. They played great role in supporting the society growing economically as small business owners and they were classified as part of the middle class interims of socio economic level. They were advanced in socio- economic knowledge; they grew side by side with teachers, police, correctional officers, private companies and governmental office workers who were most of their clienteles. Being on the side of these clienteles they learned a lot on their life, and became part of the advanced women in our society. They were the core supporters of their family, siblings, their villages, churches. They understood early the benefit of education and send their kids, nephews and nieces to school. There are so many well educated brothers and sisters who are raised by these strong & proud Eritrean citizens. Above all every Eritrean knows as business women with the relationship they had with high rank enemy officials, they were one of the main suppliers secrets of enemy to their national struggle. Please refrain from belittling part of our society
Maazza October 5, 2011
Kalu,
Within the comaro category, there are some most dignified and some less dignified persons like within any other type of group of people. Whatever your activities, the society has an unerring paradigm of holding you in esteem or otherwise. When DIA says kedemti, he is not insulting the whole category of women and even men, scattered all over the middle east and particularly Italy who toilled all their productive lives not only supported their own families but the Struggle as well. I understand DIA means salve-like behavior when he uses it because he would not call adetat who most generously gave their shlmat and a sizeable slice of their income to support Gedli. Unless you take its metaphoric meaning, if you stretch it too much, like you guys are doing with the word comaro, it can be taken to mean all those women and men in that category are slave-like. We all know this is not true! There were all ranges of people in the category, from the most esteemed and to the least, as in any other category.
When Amanuel uses the word, I give it an analogous type explanation. Business people such as comaros, until such time they stash away some income and acquire a certain economic security with which they re-acquire their stature in the society, may at the beginning of their venture and display a very opportunitic behavior in order to attract clients, for example. Personally, I gave it that interpretation, i.e. the crowd at the Center behaved in an opportunistic manner. Otherwise, as somebody in this forum pointed out, in private, most of them would not think twice to bad-mouth Isayas and criticize Hgdef’s grip of our country. More important, Amanuel Eyasu dose not strike me as a person who would denigrate a category just like that. He will not hesitate to denigrate opportunism and undignified behavior. For instance, if the crowd had displayed sobriety and somberness, to pay homage to the youth drawning in the Mediterranean or dying in the Sinai and Sahara, it would have been more befitting. Sceaming and shouting like the teens do for a rock star and applauding even when he says he sleeps for 9 hours, it portrayed them as a comarit at the beginning of her trade, who does not show her true self in order to attract more clients. They were willingly used as stage performers. What does the world think of us when they see some in its Diaspora behaving like that to meet a leader who is being attacked by the world media for gross human rights violations. Frankly, it was angering and in bad taste. This is not a moment in our history for screaming with joy. I am convinced if everything was done in a serious and somber tone, the word comaro wouldn’t have appeared. It was used to denote opportunism or as the jargon has it a sort of ‘political prostitution’. Just like when DIA says kedemti he is not targetting adettat, by saying comaro, Amanuel was not targetting that category but the behavior it implies.
Kalu, if you want to take this in bona fide, you are welcome. If, as I suspect, you guys were waiting for months or even years, like crocodiles, to attack Amanuel and believe you now have the chance to put a wedge between him and thousands of the youth who love him, please refrain from doing so. You can not go on underestimating the Eritrean mentality. People are not fools! They know what is Tsbuck and what is Hmack if they are left free to make their own sound judgements.
kozami October 5, 2011
Temesgen
You asked me why I thought PIA is a phenomenal leader… Here comes the answer, it is a bit lengthy, but is an amazing article by some one who used to be a great talent and sadly turned nefsehere…enjoy
The Deliverance: The Leviathan, The Sculptor and The President
‘Creative Essay’ Dedicated: To Eritrean Voters of Election 2001.
By Ghezae Hagos Berhe
Disclaimer First: This is an attempt work of art, a blend of both pure
fiction and real facts. I warn some readers may not share the reflections
and observations of our history, and people presented here.
Prelude:
Nowadays, people speak of guarding their rights with each air they inhale.
There is one right that I jealously guard and I never even remotely imagined
to surrender it at any cost. But hereby I solemnly declare that I waive my
right, the right of non-expression in politics with all its attachments.
Amen!
Lamentations
I am an artist. I care about nothing-but arts. When it is said humans are
made in the image of God, it meant to note the creative power that is within
each of us. It is the best within us. That artistic power makes us equal to
God, only if we can make use of it. In this and every other sense many
adventurous misguided exercises, especially power politics, simply is not a
way to go for humans. It defuses the very reason of human existence-living
up to nature endowed artistic talents. Sadly, I see the waste of talents of
many people. In pursuit of common good, they forgo their very personal
dreams for political serfdom. Their very rationale of coming into this world
is sacrificed at the altar of public good and deliverance by high-priestess
of politics. Alone, I refuse to be bullied or cajoled and I protest against
it loudly. I call for freedom of artistic expression. “Aesthetics over
politics! Personal dreams should prevail over public demand.”
The punch line for today’s sermon is simply lamentable. Condensed, it is
about should be,-could be,-should have been,-could have been,-should never
be,-could never be,-and-, IS-WILL BE.
As a cyber-surfer and fellow Eritrean who have been living among his fellow
country men, I learned a great deal about you, Eritreans. Most of you proved
me beyond reasonable doubt that my every-day-lamentation is not
misplaced-Eritreans waste their talent. I care less if you are frowning! I
will repeat that in new and bold paragraph.
We are the people wasting our natural talents by doing things that are not
up to our style…totally out of our league! Now Look yourselves what you do
and what you dream. I bet they are totally different.
If I were to decide, most of you should not take the uncharacteristic job of
being government critics, nor trouble shooters. Not any political
commentators for that matter. Some of you should be writers, some painters,
some comedians, some actors, some singers and others professionals in the
associated fields of arts. Humans should be servants of arts only and no
more. No one can prove me wrong here, as I know when I am right as in now,
and that happens once in a while!
As much as its politicization, Eritrea is a nation that defies every rule of
conventional politics. And for the sake of doing justice to that word, we
should change it when it comes to Eritrea. I recommend ‘survival’ or ‘life’.
To Eritreans, every flick of politics happening back home is translated as
issue of survival, issue of life or death that warrants their hurried
involvement. Since nobody can live without life, 3.9 million people are
involved there in big and small issues of this life. In fact to Eritrean
psyche, the importance, size, and nature of the issues is totally
immaterial. They are all equal and even one. They are all about ‘Life or
death.’ Thus, every one is involved this way or another. Amazingly, even
those living in faraway lands are as equally engaged. Those living in
Africa, middle east, Europe, Australia, Asia, North America….even those in
these living in the West coast of western hemisphere…why? because they are
Eritreans…. so? So it is their life….
Then the problem surfaces. This so-called ‘life’ is just politics and the
latter traditionally is a work exclusively left to elites and is inherently
territory-bounded. The elites do whatever it takes to exclude others, by
holding multi-party elections, forming constitutional government,
instituting rule of law and showing economic take off…the only time the
masses are involved is when you have revolutions and that happens once or
twice in a century. But here 3.9 million people are involved in war and in
peace. This is against conventional politics. But this is just one example
of the seemingly established wisdom that nothing goes according to
traditional politics in Africa, and Eritrea.
Moreover, normally the farer people are from the noise of home politics, the
inaudible is its echo. But for Eritreans the case is different, if not the
opposite. The farer one is the clearer he claims to hear. More importantly,
his interests and aspirations are effectively blowing up the territory-bound
feature of usual politics. I might be cool about all this, or rather put up
with it, had it not been that it obviates my idea of humans- servants and
keepers of art. No, I can never accept anything that puts arts down.
But, again Eritrea is like that. Drags you to it even if you are not
interested for you have other missions in life. The reason is just because
you are born Eritrean. The solicitude of Eritreans to their country
oversteps rational justifications. Normally, who wants to be a
”Tegaddaly.” I mean a soldier? Unless they pay you well (but you toil and
fight for free) and you have no other thing to do (but you have many other
things to do). But every Eritrean wanted to be a Teggadali…wanted to be a
freedom winner, and lose the very first freedom of life, the freedom to
live. That was the dream of each and every Eritrean. And I answer that goes
against the very trait of politics, making others die for you. But, in
Africa traditional politics doesn’t work.
The Leviathan
Of all nations of the world, African nations are states that should never
be. Not on the basis of classical political theory of society organization
and power allocation, the state, as we know it. No they shouldn’t have come
as such. Pity, Accidental History, via colonialism, artificially created
them and now people who never had a problem of basic sustenance in recorded
history are begging from Trans-oceans. Nation-state is the everyday curse
and non-starter of Africa. The vicious colonial seed, nation-state, is the
very first requirement of African countries and the very main root of all
the problems. The Leviathan, state power, renders the political equation a
zero-sum- affair. The pith here and everywhere in Africa is the very weak
Leviathan. Weak state is the greatest curse of this continent that’s making
all other ventures,(multipatism, ethnic cohesion, constitutionalism,
economic initiatives, public empowerment, democracy) a sure failed attempts.
Politics of multicultural identities, and ethnicity constitute an
insuperable bottleneck to African democratization and economic development
because they are not well tamed by the Leviathan. The Leviathan in Africa
routinely plays cruel games with the lives and welfare of the people. The
continent is forced to deal with this monster with tiny weapons of
procedural democracy, i.e., the hollow and ineffective tool of Multipartism,
which is alien and imposed as aid and loan conditionality by IMF and World
Bank. According to political economists, the only way to get around it is to
make the Leviathan strong as it is made so thorough centuries of
achievements in the West. State has to be strong and independent. The first
way to go is to show it you are up to its prowess whatever it takes. People
should be determined to abandon their dreams for its sake, and a system of
governance based on common history of people and common goal based on
popular participation should be entrenched. But where the hell in Africa
does a common torturous history of people who are willing to give all they
have for the common end exist that can be employed as a bedrock for safe and
durable nation state-Leviathan?
Of all African nations, Eritrea is a nation that should never be…or else a
nation that could only be…
Should never be why: A 3.9 million people, with a terrifying emotional
feats, are invited to get their way through a history of epic proportions,
never experienced by anyone before, and a land that is disproportionate with
its few residents and enormously important strategic location. And the
emotional energy of the people-you can’t tell if they will back you or break
you.
Here, my lamentations go way far back: why did we leave south Arabia… why
should we live in East Africa…or at least why should Italians come and go,
leaving us alone to deal with the Southern Federators (I know of Southern
Confederates, but a southern federators…Nah). They must be black
colonialists waking up when white colonialism was eclipsing. Funny thing
they envied us… rulers jealous of the ruled! But that is there..…nothing
goes according to traditional politics in there.
Enter Welwel and Ibrahim Sultan…one who could well be an Evangelical
Pastor, another a Sharia Qadi. They spoke for all of us and told us about
freedom and how wonderful Eritrea will be just if we…just if we die for
it…Awate said “I can do it!” A nation that could be.…. the only nation
that could be!
If Christianity was nobly called true and viable, just because one man,
Jesus Christ, died for it (Oscar Wilde)……then how much Eritrea could be
nobly called true and viable! From the first martyr (Abdu Fayd, I guess) to
the one that is dying for Eritrea right this sec, thousands died for
Eritrea…That is the essence of that nation. The Leviathan met for the first
time people who are willing to risk not just whatever they have, but what
they are to equal it. When national independence is about gracious grant or
political possession to other African countries, it is more than becoming
and even it is more than being to Eritrea. Nation-state, the nemesis
undisputed king of Africa, succumbed to Eritrea and subdued before its
blood…Those who are determined to risk everything they have are those who
are mostly to succeed. So Eritreans won over the ancient enemy. And that
exactly makes Eritrea the only nation that could be…because people who could
have led other lives have chosen to die for the cause of independence,
living their personal dreams unfulfilled.
Thirty years of dying and.…plus another 3 years re-dying that followed
subsequently. A person who was supposed to be a driver died. Another who was
supposed to dye his hair, curled it and died….Another who was supposed to
be a diver died…A man who might as well be a con artist died. A woman who
should be married twice and have 14 kids, died virgin. A person who was
supposed to be a philosopher, not just a professor of philosophy, died. A
teen who could later have been a pilot died. A teacher who should later die
of car accident died of artillery shrapnel. A woman who could have been a
minister died. Another who should be an actress and would give her life for
the noble idea of love- a ”Juliet”-in a movie died in real life. And
another who should be a standup comedian, died before telling no jokes, but
saying Awet N’hafash….And many survived. And of all, this most important
person who had keen interest in sculptor and arts, lived not just to tell
the story, but more: to lead his history.
The sculptor
The name of that extraordinary person is Issayas Afeworki. If there was one
person that could be called the most influential man in the past century of
Eritrean history then arguably Issayas Afeworki would be the most probable
candidate. His sheer impact on the most decisive historical epochs is
undeniable. Many say he is a great patriot, and a born politician. I prefer
to say Eritreans are patriots by birth, politicians by mistake…And you can
put up with that ’cause everybody makes mistakes! But I am in this
agony…what about the personal artistic dreams?
Let me switch gear in the trajectory to recount Tales from the House of Arts
in yet undiscovered planet ‘Dreamworld’, where I and few know about. Let
me start with myself. It bears repeating to say I despise politics and I
love only arts. Political missions are not my interests. My interest is that
of the personal artistic character of any object. I dwell on it. And I care
no more. In this world where the only way to make sense of things is to get
confused, I stand tall to exact one personal wish. That is to know what a
person wishes and then to depict him in that line. What he does doesn’t
interest me. What he dreams does. Even if no one knows, in virtual chorus, I
join him in the House of Arts in planet Dreamworld. I am there for him when
he finds the solicitude too menacing to be borne alone. I hold out to reach
him. I wipe his tears. I share his laughter. I understand him or try to with
sincerity. I love as a mother, care as a friend, admire as a visitor. All
these and all the rest I do when I know what a person dreams. Both of us
know that it means everything even if we don’t see the actual
materialization of the dreams. If George Bernard Shaw said “those who can,
do but those who can’t, dream”, we feel honestly sorry for him. We look to
each other and say with out words, “he didn’t get it, did he ?”And then we
don’t care.
Issayas Afeworki said as a person ( KeM Seb), he had real interest in and
proclivity to visual arts, especially sculpting. I knew that he had that
artistic gene long ago. People said that if he were to be believed he said
it would be better “to rule in Arts than serve in politics.” Read his
interesting revelation in HiwYet magazine printed some years ago. For me
that interview just confirmed my foreknowledge.
I immediately set out to planet ‘Dreamworld’ to do my job. Be there for him
where no one is there for the artist. I found him and found out he had been
into it for some time. When I first saw him he was wearing old clothes
punctuated with paints of different colors. His face looked haggard but was
shining with contagious and unspeakable confidence. The fire of excitement
that his eyes transpire is sure is that of the consummate artist, blissful,
but unyielding. He eyed me for a fleeting moment that I could never forget.
In a split of a second, I knew with all my faculties that he is a real
artist, living up to the expectations of his purpose, creative art. He
instantly seemed to know who I was and why I came. I guessed my arrival was
preceded by Heralding Angel of the Arts. Though you can tell he is usually
reticent and impassive, he seemed to say gaily “welcome to my world, the
world of arts.”
In measurements, beyond space, time and conditions, we continued to meet and
pay homage to artistic deities. Dream the undeliverable, and caring for
nothing worldly. That is as much as I could divulge. Now, I would be content
picturing him, remodeling “Endasellasie”, Trinity Church of Edagahamus .
Make a Sistine Chapel of “Endamariam” that might dwarf MichaelAngelo
Bounarotti’s Vatican. Carve huge sculptors of Welwel, Ibrahim Sultan,
Wedi-Amir, Bereket Mengesteab and Yemane Baria. Many would follow.
The President
In a real world, in planet earth where facts dare to render dreams
ludicrous, I must express that I feel great sorrow for my friend, the
sculptor, Issayas Afeworki. A sculptor that will never be in real world, and
that is just because he is an Eritrean, and an Eritrean wastes his talents
and trade them with the betterment of his country.
I think ceaselessly and helplessly…. Issayas Afeworki?…what is he doing?
On a commanding heights that gives him not only the mandate to shepherd a
3.9 million people but also a bonus to give his say on the destiny of a
region of more than 100,million….”Is he up to the job?” I ask myself…and I
remember the job that should be, but never be.
But what job? you mean the sculpting….of course, he said so and I can
testify bringing evidences, works of arts and paints, clays, marbles… that
may be invisible to people because they never visited the ‘The House of
Arts’ in planet ‘Dreamworld.’ Those who are after hard evidences, and real
proof seekers may deduct something from the solitary hours he devotes to
look into each and every work of art exhibited in Odeon and Expo. I hope
they can say it is more than a mere decorum for the artist. Must be there
more than it meets our eyes. Some people believe so. Ok….at least there is
one person that believes so…and that is me. I choose to believe so. And I
care no more.
What about the job of politics and administration…”Is he the one?” I am not
the one to answer that question as my relationship with him is “not in the
kingdom of this world.” I don’t care to know. But I can’t help but over
hear people say this. “To the extent that one believes, act of politics is
seriously compromised in Africa, one brings factual testimonies that augur
well for Issayas Presidency. In a continent where pessimism is the order of
the day, where people were way better off 30 years ago and much way better
of 300 years ago, where the next step is a gigantic leap to abyss, Eritrea’s
Issayas is cut out to be a blessed one. He is perfectly imperfect. But the
baggage that the political person of himself carries positions him in a
unique level. The baggage that is filled with Eritrean traits, inherent or
acquired that Eritreans are proud of possessing and want see them reflected
in their leaders. There you find the inherent traits of emotional feat,
veracity and honesty bordering foolhardiness, determination, audaciousness,
and a trenchant mindset of caring the substance over the image or form
mingled with lemon-made-lemonade-experiences of the life long struggle for
independence. That unique level is augmented by the greatest asset of that
enigmatic person. An ability that makes him safely navigate through
turbulent waters of early stage of nation building. He has welded a
reciprocating trust with his people. And that very quality, immaterial
whether he deserves it or given to him with exaggerated generosity from his
people elevates him from his peers. The alternating ‘love and hate’
relationship with his people is exceeded by far by the relationship of
trust. Trust of him and his government makes all the difference between
Eritrean and African future”. Even at personal evaluation, his unrelenting
critics who wouldn’t lose a chance to denounce him every step of the way
couldn’t help but concede. PIA could be defined… “in terms of his personal
attributes, such as self-confidence, political shrewdness, uncompromising
austerity, ideological proficiency, public oratory, administrative style,
party leadership…..” (Dawit Mesfin)
I am not sure if any of this is true. I am not also sure if he himself
believes it is true. I never asked him about his life as Head of State. I am
perfectly aware that he doesn’t enjoy it. I know he is there just because
history has burdened him. He is there just because he is an Eritrean who
would gloss over his artistic needs for altruist politics. He is under
serfdom of politics, relegating his real artistic flair to realm of oblivion
and decay. For the sake of public good and deliverance of generation old
promises, and finding and making the Leviathan strong in his country, he
long treaded that fateful path of politics.
The hugely mighty job of constructing the ideal Leviathan, an independent
and strong one that could take in politics of multiparism, elections,
ethnicity and identity politics without being disfigured or overwhelmed is
the everyday challenge of President Issayas as head of state. A nation that
was meant to be by the sacrifices of single lives of thousands of people has
to show that it will also be a state that could be by the bloodless
participation of its every citizenry. Eritrea is a nation, that identity
politics is not a major problem, but the greatest task of every Eritrean is:
Will Eritrea be a state in the classical meaning of it where the Leviathan
is strong enough to accommodate different interests of its people through
institutional leverages with its own interests remain intact? The deeply and
dearly missed though indispensable Leviathan of Africa is so greatly desired
in Eritrea. The popular quest of discovering the strong Leviathan through
the unchatered territory is spearheaded by President Issayas Afeworki.
Keen onlookers know his policies of substantive comprehensive democracy with
de-emphasis on the formal, hollow and misplaced instrument of multipartism,
his project of creating a developmental state in Africa, his legendary
organizational effectiveness to implement state policies to acceptable
degree, and his ever-successful record of mobilizing state subjects will
make him able to lead the quest of discovering the Eritrean Leviathan,
albeit so difficult, a dream possible that in turn will make him as one of
the best and able leaders of his generation.
Again to me, I am dumb to the rhetoric of noisy politics. My lamentations is
still in its place consuming me each and every second…the waste of Issayas’s
sculpting and painting talents, the freedom of non-expression. The only
artistic freedom he has is this freedom non-expression. And I hate that to
my bone. I loudly protest against it.
As much as sometimes I feel like asking him to take drastic action, I decide
to let him off the hook. I know his unwavering dedication to his people.
With my ached soul, I, painstakingly suffer the knowledge that he is wasting
his God-given artistic talent. “I hate politics”, he came out in that
magazine. “I know you do,” I concurred, without words but with sighs.
But politics is his temporal job. And the upcoming election is now his
current concern. Now every Eritrean is listening the ticking of the clock of
election. People bring different issues to be tickets for the election.
Others don’t see the wisdom…”The people will go to polls anyway and vote
massively for the PFDJ candidates….not because they wanted or
otherwise….just because they have not elected in national politics for
almost 50 years…and it will be the first time for the greater majority of
the people. The last time was 1956, may be….For many it will be first time
experience. Now it is like a teen dating for the first time…he doesn’t see
much, but is just excited about his first date. They predict there will be a
huge turn out of voters. May be 80% or more.”
But again, in my eccentricities, I found that anomalous. The ideal of
electoral politics as recorded in the West is significant voter-apathy, 50%.
65% is record breaker!
Will he be elected?
Political analysts of the region say he will be so elected because of his
popularity….”no one would dream of describing the government as unpopular.
No analyst believes Isaias will fail to emerge triumphant from eventual
elections.” (Michela Wrong) The George Washington of Eritrea, Issayas
Afeworki, will sworn the first Eritrean President of the first
constitutional government of Eritrea in Jan 2002.
But me, No, I am not going to be pleased with that. I will be lamenting on
the loss of artistic talents, and the unrealized artistic dream. The more he
stays there and the more he finds enough reason to stay in there, like
getting elected, the more will I lament. The longer the time is dragged, the
more my hope will be dragged. I will be counting to the day he will leave
that terrible office and finds his real self. I will be waiting, even if it
takes forever, till he is done with serving his beloved country. I can’t
wait to see the day he retires from the job after more than 40 years of
public service, and to hear people will start referring him, “Honorable, Mr.
ex-president.”
Living amidst people who possess politics in their biological makeup, who
have the highest political stakes ever, who have been forced by their
history to jumble politics with life and more so being their leader in the
taxing and thorny paths of armed struggle, and early stages of state
building, President Issayas Afeworki will be a surefire of controversial
legacy.
Personally, I simply don’t care. All of us have some waiting to do, but for
different reasons. Many are anticipating the end of transition period and
beginning of his elected years, and I am waiting for the end of his term(s)
and beginning of his artistic years. Up until that time, I will always join
him in the ‘House of Arts’ in planet ‘Dreamworld.’ As far as this real world
is concerned, I can’t help but I will keep on looking sadly at
“Endasellasie” church of “Gezawtey EdagaHamus”, and lament helplessly
touching its fading murals that should have been repainted or remodeled by
the man right now is in the highest office of the land.
May God/Allah bless and protect Eritrea, its people and its leader.
Amen/Insha-allah!
Ghezae Hagos Berhe
Monreal, Qc., Canada.
Maazza October 5, 2011
Kozami,
And you said I was bizzare, frustrated and not having a level head, among other things.
kozami October 5, 2011
Maaza
The whole purpose of the above three ‘cut n paste’ articles was to give Temesgen ‘behind the sene’ gimps of the duplicity of character in the person organizing the photo op event that he shared with us. My comments to you refer to ideas contained in your comment and not your person per-Se. Apart to the diametrically opposed views we hold about the issues discussed in this comment sections, I am otherwise inclined to think you are a fine person indeed. The same apply to Temesgen and Belezet. The very fact that you read and respond on timely fashion leads me to think so, that is at the very least.
solomon araya berhe October 5, 2011
The fear is broken…I was one of the protesters in Gissen German …..i have never seen such demonstration against PFDJ in my life…i was really happy . and i m sure we r going to push forward …we never kneel down and we win
Maazza October 5, 2011
Dear solomon araya berhe,
Elelelelelelelelelelelel! I can’t ululate enough!! N’kulatna abzelenayo n’Acka yemslena. Agena’E zhawey jigna. Your post is full of TRUTH. Breaking the FEAR is our most daunting challenge, in and outside the country, because we have witnessed how ruthless hgdef can be with its own people. Real power belongs to the people. We must all do what you just did in the Diaspora so that our people at home can follow suit! We must deprive this oppressive system from doing more harm at this promising juncture.
Power to you Solomon Araya Berhe!!!!!
Haftcka
kozami October 5, 2011
Belezet
You question regarding which media outlet is reputed in my view can be best addressed by the following article that you might care to glance over…time allowing….
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!
Proverbs 12:19 (KJV) The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment.
MOCKINGBIRD: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
“You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.” – CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. “Katherine The Great,” by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)
Tales from the Crypt
The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD
by Alex Constantine
Who Controls the Media?
Soulless corporations do, of course. Corporations with grinning, double-breasted executives, interlocking directorates, labor squabbles and flying capital. Dow. General Electric. Coca-Cola. Disney. Newspapers should have mastheads that mirror the world: The Westinghouse Evening Scimitar, The Atlantic-Richfield Intelligentser . It is beginning to dawn on a growing number of armchair ombudsmen that the public print reports news from a parallel universe – one that has never heard of politically-motivated assassinations, CIA-Mafia banking thefts, mind control, death squads or even federal agencies with secret budgets fattened by cocaine sales – a place overrun by lone gunmen, where the CIA and Mafia are usually on their best behavior. In this idyllic land, the most serious infraction an official can commit __is a the employment of a domestic servant with (shudder) no residency status.
This unlikely land of enchantment is the creation of MOCKINGBIRD.
It was conceived in the late 1940s, the most frigid period of the cold war, when the CIA began a systematic infiltration of the corporate media, a process that often included direct takeover of major news outlets.
In this period, the American intelligence services competed with communist activists abroad to influence European labor unions. With or without the cooperation of local governments, Frank Wisner, an undercover State Department official assigned to the Foreign Service, rounded up students abroad to enter the cold war underground of covert operations on behalf of his Office of Policy Coordination. Philip Graham, __a graduate of the Army Intelligence School in Harrisburg, PA, then publisher of the Washington Post., was taken under Wisner’s wing to direct the program code-named Operation MOCKINGBIRD.
“By the early 1950s,” writes formerVillage Voice reporter Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great, “Wisner ‘owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA analyst.” The network was overseen by Allen Dulles, a templar for German and American corporations who wanted their points of view represented in the public print. Early MOCKINGBIRD influenced 25 newspapers and wire agencies consenting to act as organs of CIA propaganda. Many of these were already run by men with reactionary views, among them William Paley (CBS), C.D. Jackson (Fortune), Henry Luce (Time) and Arthur Hays Sulzberger (N.Y. Times).
Activists curious about the workings of MOCKINGBIRD have since been appalled to f__ind in FOIA documents that agents boasting in CIA office memos of their pride in having placed “important assets” inside every major news publication in the country. It was not until 1982 that the Agency openly admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents in the field.
“World War III has begun,” Henry’s Luce’s Life declared in March, 1947. “It is in the opening skirmish stage already.” The issue featured an excerpt of a book by James Burnham, who called for the creation of an “American Empire,” “world-dominating in political power, set up at least in part through coercion (probably including war, but certainly the threat of war) and in which one group of people … would hold more than its equal share of power.”
George Seldes, the famed anti-fascist media critic, drew down on Luce in 1947, explaining tha__t “although avoiding typical Hitlerian phrases, the same doctrine of a superior people taking over the world and ruling it, began to appear in the press, whereas the organs of Wall Street were much more honest in favoring a doctrine inevitably leading to war if it brought greater commercial markets under the American flag.”
On the domestic front, an abiding relationship was struck between the CIA and William Paley, a wartime colonel and the founder of CBS. A firm believer in “all forms of propaganda” to foster loyalty to the Pentagon, Paley hired CIA agents to work undercover at the behest of his close friend, the busy grey eminence of the nation’s media, Allen Dulles. Paley’s designated go-between in his dealings with the CIA was Sig Mickelson, president of CBS News from 1954 to 1961.
The CIA’s assimilation of old guard fascists was overseen by the Operations Coordination Board, directed by C.D. Jackson, formerly an executive of Time magazine and Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for Cold War Strategy. In 1954 he was succeeded by Nelson Rockefeller, who quit a year later, disgusted at the administration’s political infighting. Vice President Nixon succeeded Rockefeller as the key cold war strategist.
“Nixon,” writes John Loftus, a former attorney for the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, took “a small boy’s delight in the arcane tools of the intelligence craft – the hidden microphones, the ‘black’ propaganda.” Nixon especially enjoyed his visit to a Virginia training camp to observe Nazis in the “special forces” drilling at covert operations.
One of the fugitives recruited by the American intelligence underground was heroin smuggler Hubert von Bl�cher, the son of A German ambassador. Hubert often bragged that that he was trained by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence division, while still a civilian in his twenties. He served in a recon unit of the German Army until forced out for medical reasons in 1944, according to his wartime records. He worked briefly as an assistant director for Berlin-Film on a movie entitled One Day …, and finished out the war flying with the Luftwaffe, but not to engage the enemy – his mission was the smuggling of Nazi loot out of the country. His exploits were, in part, the subject of Sayer and Botting’s Nazi Gold, an account of the knockover of the Reichsbank at the end of the war.
In 1948 he flew the coop to Argentina. Posing as a photographer named Huberto von Bleucher Corell, he immediately paid court to Eva Peron, presenting her with an invaluable Gobelin tapestry (a selection from the wealth of artifacts confiscated by the SS from Europe’s Jews?). Hubert then met with Martin Bormann at the Hotel Plaza to deliver German marks worth $80 million. The loot financed the birth of the National Socialist Party in Argentina, among other forms of Nazi revival.
In 1951, Hubert migrated northward and took a job at the Color Corporation of America in Hollywood. He eked out a living writing scripts for the booming movie industry. His voice can be heard on a film set in the Amazon, produced by Walt Disney. Nine years later he returned to Buenos Aires, then D�sseldorf, West Germany, and established a firm that developed not movie scripts, but anti-chemical warfare agents for the government. At the Industrie Club in D�sseldorf in 1982, von Bl�cher boasted to journalists, “I am chief shareholder of Pan American Airways. I am the best friend of Howard Hughes. The Beach Hotel in Las Vegas is 45 percent financed by me. I am thus the biggest financier ever to appear in the Arabian Nights tales dreamed up by these people over their second bottle of brandy.”
Not really. Two the biggest financiers to stumble from the drunken dreams of world-moving affluence were, in their time, Moses Annenberg, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and his son Walter , the CIA/mob-anchored publisher of the TV Guide. Like most American high-rollers, Annenberg lived a double life. Moses, his father, was a scion of the Capone mob. Both Moses and Walter were indicted in 1939 for tax evasions totalling many millions of dollars – the biggest case in the history of the Justice Department. Moses pled guilty and agreed to pay the government $8 million and settle $9 million in assorted tax claims, penalties and interest debts. Moses received a three-year sentence. He died in Lewisburg Penitentiary.
Walter Annenbeg, the TV Guide magnate, was a lofty Republican. On the campaign trail in April, 1988, George Bush flew into Los Angeles to woo Reagan’s kitchen cabinet. “This is the topping on the cake,” Bush’s regional campaign director told the Los Angeles Times. The Bush team met at Annenberg’s plush Rancho Mirage estate at Sunnylands, California. It was at the Annenberg mansion that Nixon’s cabinet was chosen, and the state’s social and contributor registers built over a quarter-century of state political dominance by Ronald Reagan, whose acting career was launched by Operation MOCKINGBIRD.
The commercialization of television, coinciding with Reagan’s recruitment by the Crusade for Freedom, a CIA front, presented the intelligence world with unprecedented potential for sowing propaganda and even prying in the age of Big Brother. George Orwell glimpsed the possibilities when he installed omniscient video surveillance technology in 1948, a novel rechristened 1984 for the first edition published in the U.S. by Harcourt, Brace. Operation Octopus, according to federal files, was in full swing by 1948, a surveillance program that turned any television set with tubes into a broadcast transmitter. Agents of Octopus could pick up audio and visual images with the equipment as far as 25 miles away.
Hale Boggs was investigating Operation Octopus at the time of his disappearance in the midst of the Watergate probe.
In 1952, at MCA, Actors’ Guild president Ronald Reagan – a screen idol recruited by MOCKINGBIRD’s Crusade for Freedom to raise funds for the resettlement of Nazis in the U.S., according to Loftus – signed a secret waiver of the conflict-of-interest rule with the mob-controlled studio, in effect granting it a labor monopoly on early television programming. In exchange, MCA made Reagan a part owner. Furthermore, historian C. Vann Woodward, writing in the New York Times, in 1987, reported that Reagan had “fed the names of suspect people in his organization to the FBI secretly and regularly enough to be assigned ‘an informer’s code number, T-10.’ His FBI file indicates intense collaboration with producers to ‘purge’ the industry of subversives.”
No one ever turned a suspicious eye on Walter Cronkite, a former intelligence officer and in the immediate postwar period UPI’s Moscow correspondent. Cronkite was lured to CBS by Operation MOCKINGBIRD’s Phil Graham, according to Deborah Davis.
Another television conglomerate, Cap Cities, rose like a horror-film simian from CIA and Mafia heroin operations. Among other organized-crime Republicans, Thomas Dewey and his neighbor Lowell Thomas threw in to launch the infamous Resorts International, the corporate front for Lansky’s branch of the federally-sponsored mob family and the corporate precursor to Cap Cities. Another of the investors was James Crosby, a Cap Cities executive who donated $100,000 to Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. This was the year that Resorts bought into Atlantic City casino interests. Police in New jersey attempted, with no success, to spike the issuance of a gambling license to the company, citing Mafia ties.
In 1954, this same circle of investors, all Catholics, founded the broadcasting company notorious for overt propagandizing and general spookiness. The company’s chief counsel was OSS veteran William Casey, who clung to his shares by concealing them in a blind trust even after he was appointed CIA director by Ronald Reagan in 1981.
“Black radio” was the phrase CIA critic David Wise coined in The Invisible Government to describe the agency’s intertwining interests in the emergence of the transistor radio with the entrepreneurs who took to the airwaves. “Daily, East and West beam hundreds of propaganda broadcasts at each other in an unrelenting babble of competition for the minds of their listeners. The low-price transistor has given the hidden war a new importance,” enthused one foreign correspondent.
A Hydra of private foundations sprang up to finance the propaganda push. One of them, Operations and Policy Research, Inc. (OPR), received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CIA through private foundations and trusts. OPR research was the basis of a television series that aired in New York and Washington, D.C. in 1964, Of People and Politics, a “study” of the American political system in 21 weekly installments.
In Hollywood, the visual cortex of The Beast, the same CIA/Mafia combination that formed Cap Cities sank its claws into the film studios and labor unions. Johnny Rosselli was pulled out of the Army during the war by a criminal investigation of Chicago mobsters in the film industry. Rosselli, a CIA asset probably assassinated by the CIA, played sidekick to Harry Cohn, the Columbia Pictures mogul who visited Italy’s Benito Mussolini in 1933, and upon his return to Hollywood remodeled his office after the dictator’s. The only honest job Rosselli ever had was assistant purchasing agent (and a secret investor) at Eagle Lion productions, run by Bryan Foy, a former producer for 20th Century Fox. Rosselli, Capone’s representative on the West Coast, passed a small fortune in mafia investments to Cohn. Bugsy Seigel pooled gambling investments with Billy Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter.
In the 1950s, outlays for global propaganda climbed to a full third of the CIA’s covert operations budget. Some 3, 000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts. The cost of disinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year by 1978, a budget larger than the combined expenditures of Reuters, UPI and the AP news syndicates.
In 1977, the Copely News Service admitted that it worked closely with the intelligence services – in fact, 23 employees were full-time employees of the Agency.
Most consumers of the corporate media were – and are – unaware of the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs. A network anchorman in time of national crisis is an instrument of psychological warfare in the MOCKINGBIRD media. He is a creature from the national security sector’s chamber of horrors. For this reason consumers of the corporate press have reason to examine their basic beliefs about government and life in the parallel universe of these United States.
Maazza October 5, 2011
Attention Everyone:
Our poor Kozami has gone stark mad!!!!!!!!!! Who can read the masses and masses of cut and paste he is wasting his time on. I had sometimes suspected that he might be an ambassador or a consul but of his ‘bearing’, but now I don’t know what to make of him. Is this normal?
Weldit October 6, 2011
He is a restless militant. lol.
Maazza October 5, 2011
Attention Everyone:
Our poor Kozami has gone stark mad!!!!!!!!!! Who can read the masses and masses of cut and paste he is wasting his time on. I had sometimes suspected that he might be an ambassador or a consul because of his ‘bearing’, but now I don’t know what to make of him. Is this normal?