Please bear with me on this one.

Weeks after ‘Raising the Dead,’ my good friend Paul and I were talking about some other serious stuff the other day. 

“I should probably write that down,” I said.

“You!” he roared pointing his finger, “give credit were credit is due!”

Well, there you are Paul.  Credit is being delivered here were credit was overdue.

Ashes to ashes… dust to dust. 

I can’t even remember what we were talking about.  I just hope he is not going to come back and ask for more.

This time however, the debt goes to Hayek… more on that later.

If this ‘vaccine for tyranny’ inoculates one Eritrean citizen against dictatorial influenza, all the better.

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I couldn’t go to sleep the other night.  I had this booklet in my pocket last week.  It was about new ideas – from brain exercise to how to go to sleep in 10 minutes. 

I opened the section on how to go to sleep. 

Do not even think of reading anything, it said.... your brain gets overexcited.  The best way to trick your mind is to do jigsaw puzzle.  It’s a boring game and your mind gets bored with it and… you could have been dreaming by now… over and out.

There was no jigsaw to play with anyway.

I went through the books on my bedside and here they come:

The Calendar
Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt
The Rogue State
ዋዛ ምስ ቁም ነገር ንትንሳአ ሃገር
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
All Together Elsewhere
The Little Prince
The Tao of Physics
a book in dark-blue cover

I don’t why I pulled the one at the bottom of the pile… curiosity perhaps. The title on the spine was in faint red – almost invisible.  It happened to be: The Road to Serfdom.  There was no title on the cover.

First published in 1944… by F. A. Hayek.  George Routledge & Sons LTD.  London

I flipped through the front pages and the All Rights Reserved wasn’t there to be found.  It felt like it was saying, ‘you can read as much as you like... if you could only digest it…’ with one of those opening catch-phrases just below the title inside: It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.  David Hume.

A good book for weight-watchers or sleep-walkers, I thought.

I scanned the preface, contents and the introduction bits… all heavy duty material.

‘The begins the first chapter followed by ‘The Great Utopia.’ 

Which one would you choose?

I imagined another one: The Road to Abandoned Utopia.  We will get there later.

Honestly, if you could go through the heading of every chapter, it would do your head in.

Chapter IV.  The “Inevitability” of Planning
Chapter IX.  Security and Freedom

These surely are not sleep-inducing pages.

Then, there was Chapter X on page 100… Why The Worst Get On Top. 

Yes, I said to myself.  This is my kind of jackpot! 

It took 13 pages and a half or about an hour to sink in.  It is the kind of stuff I love to drown in.

It was this jigsaw puzzle that drove me to madness and eventually into a deep – very deep – sleep.

The day after – don’t remember what time I woke up – I had my ‘morning’ coffee and The Guardian newspaper was on the table.  Someone must have purposely left it there to give me another headache. 

Maybe I am going paranoid here!

Aids Vaccine?  Forget it!

David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate, said the complexity of the disease means scientists are no closer to a vaccine today than when they discovered the link to HIV more than 25 years ago.

When HIV was linked to Aids in the early 1980s scientists were convinced a vaccine would be around the corner. Baltimore said: "We've been working on that vaccine since then and we are no closer to a vaccine now than we were then."

He led a panel of experts in 1986 which concluded that, given the complexity of the problem, an Aids vaccine was at least 10 years away. "I still think an Aids vaccine is 10 years away," he said.

He added: "You are quite within bounds to ask, if it's been 10 years away for 20 years, does that mean it's really never going to happen? There are people saying it will never happen."                                         [The Guardian, Feb. 15]

Promises, promises, promises and false hopes!

What can you say to that?

It woke me up to more pressing issues at hand… to more tentacles of tyranny.

HIV Aids eats into the immunity system and progressively weakens our body’s defence mechanism.  If I am not mistaken, you could be grilled to death by common cold. 

So does tyranny.  It eats into the social fabric and breaks down the self-sustaining capacities of communities.

Here is a question.

How many condoms and HIV-Aids treatment gadgets and support facilities would you be able to provide for the price of just one jet fighter and a million landmines over a period of 20 years? 

You figure that one out.  I don’t have the patience.

You don’t even have to open the Blair files and a Saudi Arabian deal.  They said it was a closed case about two years ago.  Now, it has animated the long forgotten Pandora’s box all over again.

Some western governments, through their export-oriented arms dealers and hiding behind screens, are actually saying, “take our arms and we can help you walk on wooden legs or no legs at all!”

Take your pick!

Lo and behold, they provide both.  One is bought in hard currency and the other is given back in ‘soft’ aid. 

“You can pay the loan later, with interest… and take your time.  OK”?

The real HIV-Aids dinosaur is busking in the Sun and it suits everyone except those who are suffering from lack of attention.

On another front, while absolutely dedicated and probably helping and treating those who are suffering, you have the Catholic Church that is totally against condoms.

Your faith or your life!  It happens to be the official policy. 

When it comes to health issues of such magnitude, wouldn’t it be wiser to opt for prevention than investing in a socially demanding and disabling, expensive, painful and degrading death.  With all the ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ religious doctrine, one expects that some sense of wisdom would prevail to override ‘faith’ and avoid a rigid and dogmatic adherence.

Over the years and along similar lines, sovereignty and national security have developed to assume sacred status in most African countries.  One could be imprisoned or killed for raising issues that question the validity upon which they stand.

We have seen some of the well-funded and polished mirrors reflecting their power but unwilling to show their faces. 

You can multiply but you may have to die doing it.  Abstain or die.
Some western governments are on a guilty trip and in the jet stream.  Poor baby!
Most African governments are holding the baby and begging.  Your money or your soul!

You can call it the Bermuda phenomena where much of whatever is pledged or delivered seldom reaches the poor… a three-in-one ransom.  Even if it does reach them, it’s has no sustainable features.

It is true that there is no soul without compassion and there is no hope without life. They all go together.  What is missing is reason. 

This could as well be our edge of reason – no spelling mistake there.  We can still grow up and come of age.

The Chinese government fares much better – what you see is what you get.  They say they are not that concerned about human rights and that is exactly what they do.  No wonder most African governments are more at ease making deals with the east. 

Should the 2016 Olympics be staged in Eritrea for Steven Spielberg to find out were Eritrea is and cry foul?  He would probably say I didn’t know there was a country by that name. 

“How far is it from Darfur”?  He would probably ask.

“Well,…”

“I mean, how severe”?  He would ask again.

“This is not a Stephen King movie, Sir… and doesn’t Misery come to mind”?

We might as well talk about the breakdown of coral reefs along the Red Sea coast of Eritrea.  That might attract some attention.

Don’t you think?

Concerned Eritreans are now raising issues on the total breakdown of cultural traditions, abject poverty, malnutrition, lack of medical care, closure of private media since 2001, imprisonments and disappearances, the closure of the one and only university in the capital Asmara, economic meltdown, unacceptable levels of unemployment and a military budget that is probably swallowing a significant chunk of the national budget – if there is such a thing called an audited budget in Eritrea. 

What is the impact of HIV Aids coupled with grinding tyranny on the well-being of the individual and society or on cultures that have managed to survive severe and adverse conditions for centuries?

Tyranny is not new to Eritrea or any other nation.  Like virus in nature, it is inbuilt in human cultures.  It was always there in different forms – from family units, villages and towns, school yards to rebel movements and governments.  What maps the current tyranny in Eritrea beyond the margins of tolerance is the extent of the damage it has inflicted so far and its distinct home-made quality.  It has gone   grotesque within 8 years and after a 30-year armed struggle for the independence of a nation.    

What kind of struggle would you call that … for whose freedom and from what?    

How is it possible to have a dictator who is at liberty to do whatever he pleases and you have the ‘masses’ with no liberty and virtually nothing to eat?

No totalitarian is capable of achieving such disastrous outcomes by themselves.  It must have had an implicit endorsement with all kinds of support from all corners and over a long period of gestation. 

That is Hayek’s argument and it makes sense. 

Some surviving fighters and those who want to milk the ‘masses’ behind closed curtains are still shouting Victory to the Masses – in capital letters, mind you - and in the name of those who gave their lives for liberty.

This attitude was encouraged to flourish right in front of our own very eyes: benefit of the doubt, it [the government] is our own, at last we can relax, give them time, they have given their precious lives and we can wait till kingdom come.  These are just a few of the excuses people had or are still encouraged to entertain.

There are also the ones who still insist that all is well or keep on saying, “I don’t want to know!”

No! No! No!

Amy Winehouse comes to mind.  Back in the ‘90s, maybe Eritrea should have gone to rehabilitation before going for reconstruction. 

Well, ‘kingdom come’ is here!  Now you know.  We are back to black. ካልኣይ ቀብሪ!

Or should we wait for kingdom II? 

Ignatius, another good friend, asks me now and again why I can’t find the time to write the history of Eritrea.  He knows I have all the time in the world. 

I wish I could but I don’t have the facts, I say.  I could do a psycho-genetic profiling, whatever that means, to identify the culprit. 

It could be you – I mean the culprit?  He jokes.

I couldn’t agree more!

Paul should be laughing by now.

Where was I?

Yeah!  It was Hayek who started it all.

He says history doesn’t quite repeat itself.  If we had the fortune to come back, would we fare better?  He asks. 

He knows that if the former can’t happen, the latter won’t matter. 

But we can always try to learn so as not to repeat the same bloody mistake over and over again.  He’s pretty strong on that.

It gets really boring and mechanical – this repetitive stuff, doesn’t it?

I don’t want to spoil Hayek’s Chapter X anymore. If anyone is interested in doing ‘Eritrean History: 1991 -2007,’ they will probably find the chapter fit for a blue-print upon which one could, after ploughing and dispersing the seeds or reliable facts, harvest some history.  It really is worth reading. 

Here is the link: http://jim.com/hayek.htm

Well, here comes the last sentence of his book.  If you don’t want to be vaccinated, look away now.

The guiding principle, that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy, remains as true-today as it was in....