I actually do feel sorry for Dr. Mussie Misghina.   In the past, I�ve had a couple of communications with him and he is a bright man who seems most comfortable discussing ideas and thoughts.  He will explain Dewey; he will elucidate Charles Peirce, Josiah Royce and many other obscure philosophers of pragmatism that you and I have never heard of. (Pragmatism is the religion of PFDJ.  It is an imported ideology that the PFDJ pretends is homegrown.  Why?  Because it is pragmatic to do so.) 

The problem is, for the professor to explain all of this (and much more) to his unruly students, he must adopt their language.  Like an undercover cop infiltrating the mob, he must take in, and pass for, the subculture.  In short, he must regress to the mean: and by �mean� I mean it in both senses: �average� and �positively spiteful.�  He must be willfully ignorant and he must embrace the culture of name-calling and casual violence, and being economical with the truth.

When he referred to Tesfaldet as �wedi shekat fofol,� my guess is that he was merely trying to fit-in the Dehai/Shaebia culture.  When he �apologized� for it, he did it in a way where he could reinforce the Shaebia subculture:  I knew Tesfaldet when I was a kid.  By the way, back then, I used to beat him up.  So, I am no bookish professor; I am just, like you, an average Asmarino who had his fair share of street brawls.  

Months ago, when he was going through the post-G-13 initiation at Dehai, he told his readers that he had heard the Awate Team really hate him (we don�t) and that we are probably the type of folks who are so into legalism that we probably would have wanted to sue good ol� boys like him who used to eat beles and run without paying for it.  Most adults think of things they did as kids (fight, name-calling, petty stealing) with regret, but Dr. Mussie Misghina positively gloats about it.

In his so-called Popular Challenge (hzbawi mekete), he gave his listeners a distored version of the Cold War (a WE moment*) and then told his listeners that there is nothing wrong with name-calling. In a major revision of history, Dr. Mussie Misghina told his listeners that America won the Cold War without firing a bullet.  I think many American Cold Warriors would disagree.  Can America�s involvement in Korea (33,000 killed), Vietnam (57,000 lives it lost), Cambodia, be explained outside the context of the Cold War?  Wasn�t the justification for many of these the fear of the �Domino effect�: that if unchallenged, the USSR and communism would dominate the world?   The scholar Dr. Mussie Misghina would never have said what he said; but the �hzbawi mekete� guy has to say things to motivate and rile up people and appeal to their illusions of grandeur.

(*WE moment is a Warsai Eritrawi moment.  It is an absurd statement uttered by an otherwise intelligent person just to win an argument.  Incident so named after WE told us that Syria�s then new president was elected in a free and fair election and Syrians love their president as evidenced by CNN footage.)

�Man gave names to all the animals, in the beginning, in the beginning,� sang Dylan.    All true. Our forefathers did the same, says, Dr. Mussie Misghina.  A lion is a lion; a hyena is a hyena.  Nothing wrong with applying the right labels.  A traitor is a traitor; a defeatist is a defeatist.  

Oh, yes.  But we have a folk song that marvels at nature, too:

                             Nenbesa do m�HanfeTo nebri

                             Ngebel do m�KelKelo saEri

                             Ny amlaK koynu�mber ny feTari.

In English:

                             Would a tiger claw a lion?

                             Would grass obstruct a snake?

                             Were it not for (the grace) of God, the Creator?

Yes, it is a grace of God, the will of God, which gets the demonstrably inferior to thwart the superior, sang our forefathers.  How true.  People who ran when they had a chance to fight (The Coward); people who deserted the liberation armies (The Deserter) can now call those who fought and bled and got wounded and brought us our identity (The Liberators), �cowards� and "defeatists."  Ny amlak koynu ny feTari.

There is much to criticize about Dr. Mussie Misghina but a bright person like him knows it so it would be redundant. It is punishment enough that he has to have the company he keeps where he has to feed them constant diet of conspiracy theories and top ten lists of enemies.  He knows the absurdity of all he says but it all makes sense to him in this state of war he has created in his mind.   All is fair in love and war. 

More so if he can stake out a moral higher ground, facts notwithstanding.  He writes for a website that not only steals pictures but distorts them using techniques that most people outgrow by age 10 (putting lipsticks, bras, horns, etc on images.)�yet he reserves his moral outrage about privacy violation for Asmarino.  One day, he tells us he never reads Asmarino (he relies on friends to tell him what it says) then again he tells us he reads it at least once a day.  

But even Dr. Mussie Misghina has his limits.  If you will notice his writings, they are all arguments against The Other: pointing out conspiracies, stupidity, evil of others (Weyane, Alliance, Herui, Awate, Asmarino, etc) and never arguments for the government.    Which is why, ultimately, I believe he will come to his natural place: pro-justice (if not pro-democracy.) 

Propaganda: Memory Distortion

Psychologists have repeatedly demonstrated that it is fairly easy to distort people�s memories through the power of suggestion.  Authoritarian governments have taken this study and made it into a science to see when it is most effective. Answer:

(1) the interval between the event and the misinformation campaign must be reasonably long.  (This is why the tortoise works slow; in the meantime, you say, �sQta merSna,� silence is a virtue, etc); and

(2) the misinformation must be presented in a subtle way: do it casually, without warning.   A nice trick is using phrases like "as everybody knows", "it is to be remembered", etc...

This is why the kiddie website is so bad at misinformation: they don�t know the meaning of subtle.  With their mandatory typos--another prove (sic), blunter (sic), jab (sic)--their blinking gaudy eye-sore graphics, there is no chance in delivering a subtle message. Then, they are forever warning you that some imaginary thing is �coming soon,� and it isn't, well, back to the drawing board, kids. 

Here�s a perfect example of misinformation PFDJ style that the kiddies can learn from. Haile Derue Weldensaie admitted that he asked President Isaias to resign.  �We all know that,� is the subtle statement.   �That is common knowledge.� Or they will say, �AFTER Haile admitted�.�  Like all government propaganda, the claim that the former foreign minister conceded that he asked President Isaias to resign is a blatant lie.    In fact, even if all the facilitators were to swear on a stack of holy books that it never happened, it is now a PFDJ Fact:  it happened. 

The so-called admission by Haile is an interview with one of Eritrea�s private papers on June 20, 2001.  A statement without the right context is useless so here�s the context:  (1) Haile DeruE had a reputation for talking and philosophizing about hypothetical scenarios (one of his nicknames used to be Papas.)  (2) he didn�t bring the subject of "Gemal Abdel Nasser" out of thin air: at the time of the interview, the president�s men had already been circulating the rumor through their flunkies for six months (Read T.M. Negassi of April, May, June 2001.)   This is what Haile said in the interview:

After our experience in Badme, and after the initiation of confidence-building campaigns, to see the sudden developments of the Third Offensive, was not only un-anticipated by the people, even senior cadres and authorities who did not have sufficient information were saddened and distressed.   Given the developments, if, at the time, someone were to say: 'just like Gemal Abdel Nasser offered his people to resign at the conclusion of the 1967 war when Egypt was having military problems, the President and the Government ought to submit its resignation to the people....' is there anything wrong in saying this? 

Of course not, Haile.  In fact, that is the norm with any government that has a semblance of any honor or dignity: but an administration whose best explanation for the turn of events is �handebetnet,� will not offer to resign.  Now to the second question: was Haile Derue talking about something theoretical or actual? Was he saying, "Yeah, I said it, so what is wrong with that?"  Or, was he saying, "This is the rumor; what if the rumor were right?" 

This question is answered most emphatically by the G-15:

�Not a single individual from the 15 accused said anything like the above [asking President Isaias to resign.]  If there is anyone who has evidence that states otherwise, we call on them to present their evidence.� 

And that�s the last time we heard from the G-15 before they were arrested.   Far, far, from admission, wouldn�t you say? But in PFDJ land, repeated accusations add up to confirmation and evidence. 

My Own Anchiwa and Mogogo

If Isaias Afwerki is so bad, why did you allow him to be such a tyrant?  Ask this question of the G-15 and you always got the Anchiwa/mogogo analogy.   For the benefit of the Diaspora Eritreans, �anchiwa� is a mouse and �mogogo� is a clay-made oven, with a shiny, smooth black surface.   There are no Eritrean pet mice: in any Eritrean household, an anchiwa tiptoes around with a death penalty hanging on its head: a living anchiwa is a dead anchiwa walking.   The only time you would spare its life is if it is near a mogogo because you don�t want the effort of killing the mouse to accidentally destroy the precious mogogo.  Thus, the saying:  for the sake of the oven, let the mouse pass�

In the words of an imaginary song�

Nenchiwa do medHano megogo

Ny amlaK koynu�mber ny abajigo�

We, says the G-15, had such an important mission�liberation of Eritrea�that we weren�t going to pay too much attention to the disturbing behavior patterns of Isaias.  We, says the ELF-RC, have such an important mission�salvation of Eritrea�that we will suspend judgment on the values of the organizations that make up the Alliance.   We, says the GoE, had such an important task�development of Eritrea�that we weren�t going to point out the abuses of Weyane between 1994-97.   Anchiwa, mogogo.  Anchiwa, mogogo.

At long last, I have found my own Anchiwa and Mogogo: the ELF-RC/ Alliance feud of 2002, a classic case of Men Behaving Badly.   While fully cognizant of the absurdity of my statement, I am hereby withholding my opinion because I think by doing so I can help achieve some higher goal.  Hope springs eternal.

Letters & Acknowledgements

Some of these responses are embarrassingly old and I hope readers don�t mind a collective response�

Yes, EHRAG is around.  Haven�t updated the WebPages lately because, altogether now, I�ve been quite busy.  No excuse, just an explanation�Thanks Australia and New York for the chapters�.I am in receipt of all your correspondence regarding missing relatives, abused friends, etc.   It is not posted but it has gone to sympathetic friends�

Thanks, Milkias, but no, I am no Lech Walessa.  I know nothing of electricity or shipyards.  Seriously, in the words of Father Joseph, I have zero, sfr, zilch, abeden,�interest in political power.  I have an appreciation for the power of politics (because that is how change comes) but I have no interest in acquiring political power (because that is how corruption comes.)

Thanks, Adel, for pointing out that in Tigre "Cherot" is the same as "Serot" (purity), and, despite my embarassing theorizing, when Wed-Sheikh sings "Cherot abeit...", (in his song, "ynthamel"), "cherot" does NOT mean (and cannot possibly mean) "chifra."  Confused?  Not to worry.  A year from now, here's how to spin this paragraph into misinformation:

"As Saleh admitted to his friend Adel, he is a member of Chifra Woyane which is why we shouldn't, in the words of Wed-Sheikh, 'ynthamel...' 

Bring on the blinking pictures...

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