Content: Opinion

I am not a huge fan of Ethiopian music. There are songs I like, tunes or melodies I may find myself dancing or strutting to, but no one would catch me listening to an Ethiopia album. I do not mean to disparage. We all have our tastes, mine is just generally geared to instruments, like […]

The concept of a country, as an entity composed of several states or cities or regions, is complicated. For that matter, so is the concept of a continent, as a makeup of various countries, or the idea of a planet, as an organisation of continents and islands, or the galaxy, as a combination of several […]

On the day Emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica, a powerful storm broke out. The country, prior to the Emperor’s arrival, had been ravaged by famine and starvation. There had been no rain to water the crops for decades. The first time, in a long time, that it rained was when the Emperor set foot out […]

When Einstein claimed that space and time are similar, though he meant it literally, at least from a theoretical point of view, he did not expect economists to agree with him quicker than did physicists. In fact, economists have been acquainted with the idea for quite some time, but their interpretation of the term was […]

Africa is fast becoming a populous continent with a large economy. More people than ever have disposable incomes – nowhere as much as Africans would like to have, but enough to make history’s Dark Continent blush. And the world as a whole is taking note. People of the world do not see Africa as just […]

The word bootleg used to have a more direct meaning. It used to refer to 19th-century smugglers who hid illegally acquired liquor in their high boots when they had to pass possible checkpoints. They also hid knives, pistols and other hell-raising objects. But the world changed, as did what could be bootlegged. Today, everything is […]

There are three traditionally crucial stages of a person’s life. There is birth. Though it is optional, marriage is another important part of a person’s social life. And, surely, death is inescapable. Nowadays, there are four. In addition to the above three, there is graduation. The importance of this instance in a person’s life is […]

The Middle East is a tough cookie to swallow. Of all the different multi-ethnic regions in the world, the most complicated and unstable territory lies situated between Europe and Asia. No one, since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, has been able to figure out the correct solution to the continuing geopolitical problems of the […]

What we do not do with our mobile phones! We text, we call, e-mail, Google, YouTube, trade and so much more. We are hooked so much so that we wonder how people worked and lived in a time that did not possess these shiny pocket-sized gadgets. Mobile phone free days are not even a generation […]

The days seem to be changing. It is raining when it should not, and warming up faster than it should. Evenings are rarely cold anymore. Dawn has become too hot. It is not just the climate, but also the environment itself. The oceans are rising, swallowing expanses of land at low sea level. The beautiful […]

The Internet, the 20th-century invention that has businesses, states and societies craving for it. It was invented as early as the late 1960s for military purposes. And if those very same technicians were told that the Internet would get this big, they would have laughed their heads off. But the future has a strange and […]

Asked for advice to young struggling filmmakers, the great German master Werner Herzog would reply, “… so long as you are able-bodied head out to where the real world is … work as a bouncer in a sex club or a warden in a lunatic asylum or a machine operator in a slaughterhouse, you would […]

In the recent French presidential election, where Emmanuel Macron was declared the winner, there was much talk of voting being a civic duty. Now, this must, to some of us at least, sound like a stretch. Voting – a duty? A (civil) right, of course, but not a duty. Rights are fun, the kind of […]

Sitting forlornly at the local barber shop, for the occasional trim, I noticed a sign written in Amharic right above one of the numerous mirrors. Roughly translated into English, it reads “We now give services using generators.” Right next to these printed words, a small handwritten notice informs customers that when generators are in use, […]

A North Korean defector was discussing the relationship between China and his country and rightly repeated the historical fact that there is no such thing as eternal friendship or indeed eternal enmity in geopolitics. The Americans and the British may now talk of an alliance, but two centuries ago, they were warring. The French and […]

Ned Ludd is one of those unlucky chaps, like the Marquis de Sade, or Niccolò Machiavelli, who has had his last name nominalized into a noun with very negative connotations. Unlike the others though, historians have never been able to say if Ludd is indeed the individual the noun “Luddite” is derived from. After all, […]

There is an aspect of the program and government policies, dubbed affirmative actions, which I do not agree. They should not be implemented, I believe, to make up for past offences and persecutions. Recompensing the children and grandchildren of victims long ago, in the workplace and collegiate institutes is not a very practical tool for […]

Until very recently, Turkey was a proudly democratic Middle Eastern country, with a large Muslim population, who flaunted free elections, freedom of speech and secularism; especially, in relation to other, or most, Muslim-majority countries. This may have been a result of their proximity to Europe, and the continent’s positive democratic inclinations. In fact, Turkey, in […]

The initial subject for my undergraduate dissertation paper was a weir. A weir is essentially a smaller dam, but used for less biblical purposes, like diverting the flow of rivers or streams, or just regulating them. A weir is a dam, if a dam did not have such high and lofty ideals. But even weirs, […]

The fundamental difference between capitalism and communism is the economy. This fact seems to be lost on a lot of people, partly because governance deals with so many other issues, and partly because governments usually overplay and distort the meaning of these systems. A communist state owns all the industries, everyone is a civil servant […]

It is often very easy to assign blame, even easier to find solutions for incidents long since passed. But then again it is also very important to analyze what really happened, make sure who was responsible and hold all those responsible accountable. This is not done for the fun of it, but to make sure […]

There are some studies which suggest the primary reason for the creation of most religions was the dissemination of the rule of law. In other words, the earliest types of religions might have been created simply to make people abide by certain rules and regulations and adapt a specific way of life. Why not steal, […]

In the 16th Century, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published a controversial scientific theory suggesting the earth revolved around the sun. This was not a smart thing to do given that the age’s two powerful Abrahamic religions – Christianity and Islam – staunchly believed it was the other way around. It took a hundred years and […]

Legend has it, Empress Taitu Betul, the famous wife of Emperor Menelik II, after a relaxing bath at Filwoha hot springs, stepped outside to find a beautiful novel flower completely unfamiliar to her eyes. She did not know what to call it, so she decided to name the entire surrounding area after it – simply […]

A Frenchman could wake up in the morning in the beautiful city of Paris, fly to Brussels for lunch under the Manneken-Pis Fountain, spend the night in the wildly liberal city of Amsterdam, drive to Hamburg for a hamburger, get coffee in Warsaw, marvel at the exquisite churches of the City of a Hundred Spires, […]