| Media Framing and Public Reaction
By Abel Merawi
 November 15, 2021 (Ezega.com) – Facts are not always factual; they twist and shift with a vantage point. The literary genius, Adam Reta, employs a shift in point of view by narrative a sympathetic tell of reality through one character, which then shifts to another character’s utterly depiction of the same reality. This helps readers, at least me, to know that narrative angles distort reality. Furthermore, the same historical event as narrated from opposing sides speak of the same facts but end up with stark differences. Here, we see the power of narrative frames in distorting and changing facts. As our central focus is the media, le
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| Vice in the name of Virtue
By Abel Merawi
 November 15, 2021 (Ezega.com) – How do you write about something without a name? What do you call something that is yet to be identified, explained, and defined? Amazingly, we fail to recognize an existing phenomenon when a term for its recognition is lacking. I chose to deal with a situation that is designed to escape category – a nuisance of life created by narcissistic humans whose intent is remaining undetected by most, and when detected ignored. The lack of terminology is no reason to withhold a troubling fact, and so I chose to explain its intricate pattern and keep the labeling for the future.
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| Dream of a Reality
By Abel Merawi
 September 24, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- New Year has dawned, and in this time of hopefulness and optimism, I wish to speak of a dream. This dream is not as great as that of Martin Luther King Jr., or of the prophets, or of Dostoyevsky, or of all those noble and gentle creatures who transcended the immediate ill to envisage health and vigor. It is not as great for it is a dream I was able to clearly see through the visionaries. I was able to heed their call because the dream served to awaken a grand truth that resides in all of us. Sadly, we all dream grand dreams of universal bliss but we easily abandon it. We fear it will disturb our hardened hear
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| The Bridge Between Love and Hate
By Abel Merawi
 August 5, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- I wish to begin with a troubling childhood memory, which is a sort of parable on the bridge between love and hate. Life in Ethiopia used to represent a shared rather than isolated existence. The gates and walls did not prevent you from watching the life of neighbors, and vice versa. The lives I saw were dominant expressions of a love bond, but they were accompanied by unintelligible moments of sadism. I am speaking of husbands beating wives out of ‘love’ or of jealous lovers becoming nemeses. This sadistic tendency was typical of authoritative teachers who thrash students – ‘educating&rs
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| Identity Frames and Humane Response to Suffering
By Abel Merawi
 August 5, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- I wish I could write about the past with the intelligence and arrogance the present affords. But almost anyone with possession of historical documents can do so since one would no longer be captivated by the magical spell of an identity frame. For instance, I could write or even mock the false frame of identity that made aristocracy or serfdom possible since these types of identity are outdated and hokum to me. We no longer afford such luxury when faced with imminent horrors in the present, which add folly to future annals of history. Currently, as both victims and agents of parochial identiti
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| The Plurality of Identity
By Abel Merawi
 June 18, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- It is common to witness people stand in defense of identity to the point of sacrificing their lives. Sadly, such sacrifice is made for a single aspect of identity rather than full identity, holistically. For instance, the defense for ethnic identity may jeopardize the inherent values of national or religious identity. This, in every form, is the person losing battle we encounter every time we imagine a singular identity. For this reason, I am critically reluctant to heed the call for defending a particular identity, unable to select one from the plural elements that constitute my identity. I think this diffi
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| Necrophilia – The Affliction in Servants of Death
By Abel Merawi
 June 18, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- Every life form seeks to perpetuate itself. This is evident in the primacy of reproduction in every species. As Tupac Shakur beautifully articulates, a rose bursting out of concrete seeks life. Human beings are no different as the survival instinct equally operates in us. In Greek mythology, this affirmation of life was personified in Eros, the god of love, or by the Roman Cupid. But Eros fails to explain war, torture, suicide, and the legion of evils that destroy life. This perplexed the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who coined it a ‘death instinct’ that operates as an unconscious
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| Public Trust in Social Media
By Abel Merawi
 May 14, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- There seems to be a global shift of information sources; a shift from the mainstream to social media. This shift brought both encouraging and discouraging outcomes, and so it may be hasty to jump to a conclusion and harshly criticize either source. However, a proper diagnosis is necessary in both cases if we are to make an informed prognosis. An understanding of this shift requires closer scrutiny regarding mainstream media, the public, social media personalities, and fact-checking.
Firstly, we must observe the defects of mainstream media that have led to public distrust. Then, this public d
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| Even Monkeys Can Use Smart Techs
By Abel Merawi
 April 15, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- What I am about to say may come across as an insult to our civilization, but I pray that you read the article in light of recent disastrous events which make us lose heart in humanity. I promise to expound on it but the basic argument runs like this. Contemporary human beings remain primitive in morality, spirituality, and rationality while possessing the technology par excellence of a great civilization. To avoid misunderstanding, civilization is used here in the strictest lexical meaning that denotes social development and organization manifested in the excellence of thought, manner, and ta
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| Invisible Citizens
By Abel Merawi
 April 1, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- The daily hustle we all endure ends when dusk closes in, and we retreat to whatever shelter we call home. But amongst us are the unfortunate ones who remain in the unforgiving street for they have nowhere to go and no place to call home. These are the invisible citizens of the street. In the safety of our home, we are oblivious to their existence. After we closed the gates, we also veil our imagination to external reality by dwelling on our endless personal woes. Our apathy is no wonder as our TV and phone screens orchestrate a lullaby of fairyland. Then when the sun rises, we open our gates but our mental gateway
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| Democracy and Democratic Institutions
By Abel Merawi
 February 22, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- Every political system rests on a fictional or concrete foundation of ideologies that enforce their rule. Monarchs stand on the legitimacy of unquestionable divine power, while dictators rest on military force. The same goes with democracy, which lays its foundation on institutionalism or bureaucracy as a way to hear and respond to citizens. It is common knowledge that democracy is the will of the people but it is often forgotten that institutions are the lifeline between leaders and people. They are indispensable channels which in combination form what is known as bureaucracy.
Howeve
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| Democracy and Democratic People
By Abel Merawi
 February 16, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- Democracy is an elusive concept as its preceding and competing notions such as authoritarianism or socialism. This is because the elements that encompass democracy place requirements on not just the government but also on the people and the institutions serving as outlets. Even in the case of authoritarian governments, dictators attempt to persuade the people because if they don’t accept the propaganda of living under dictatorship and institutions of force, it could not survive with sheer force.
The same applies to socialism, which can only survive with the direct or indirect acceptance of the people and
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| Paideia or Deep Education
By Abel Merawi
 February 4, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- There are moments of a collision between the classroom and the outside reality. The brutal, irrational, and unjust murder of the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was such an event. It was almost impossible for a teacher to educate benign children about the fiction behind centuries of slavery and segregation or Jim Crow, which had shown its monstrosity in the murder of a man of peace, love, and justice. To begin with, how on earth can you explain racism between the same race – Homo Sapiens? The perfect and protective classroom world hasn’t been designed to deal with the cruel ways of the world. We
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| Educational Purpose: Good Citizenry Vs Rational Autonomy
By Abel Merawi
 January 26, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- Before diving into a discussion on the purpose of education, I venture into the age-old legend of the hero. Leaving aside the divine touch in the protagonist, which was indispensable in the classics, I portray the purely human protagonist. The hero begins life by participating in the ordinary social routine until maturity brings an insatiable thirst for more. This perpetually grows until the hero is unable to endure the immediate reality. Then the arduous journey into the wilderness becomes the only solution to the hero’s disquietude. Embarking on this journey is breaking socia
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| Crowd Leaders as National Enemies of Ethiopia
By Abel Merawi
 January 11, 2021 (Ezega.com) -- For years, we have witnessed crowd leaders striving to segregate the people of Ethiopia, which ultimately threatened our sovereignty. We have seen them conniving, in a grand chess-player style, to sacrifice the people as pawns with the aim of crowning themselves. The crowd leaders of Ethiopia appear different only from distance. You see their glaring similarities once you take a closer look. It reminds me of James Baldwin in ‘The Fire Next Time’ when he remarked how the chief of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell, contributed to Malcolm X because they both work to have a separate nation
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| Ethiopia Under the Threat of Crowd Mentality
By Abel Merawi
 December 31, 2020 (Ezega.com) -- Nations are built by the autonomous and unified strivings of citizens. Contrariwise, nations are destroyed by crowds who operate blindly to fulfill petty and irrational goals. Crowds may originate from various elements. In Ethiopia, they emanate from the catastrophic element of race and ethnicity. Currently, we are witnessing crimes against humanity in various parts of our country, and they all point towards crowd leaders and their hypnotized followers. The effort of the government to put a halt to these atrocities become futile when citizens abandon national identity and form ethnic factio
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| Conformist Realism in Ethnic Federalism
By Abel Merawi
 December 20, 2020 (Ezega.com) -- The following article revolves around a single vital question: Why are Ethiopians focusing on how ethnic federalism operates while failing to question why ethnic federalism is even necessary? Following the germination of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia, people in almost every realm of life have posited notions that attack or favor the workings of ethnic national identity. Many are the scholars who showed how one ethnic group has triumphed at the expense of others. Countless are the songs that championed ethnic rather than national identity. Numerous are historians, with both good and evil intentions,
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| Alternatives to National Identity
By Abel Merawi
 December 10, 2020 (Ezega.com) -- When we think of a nation, various assumptions come to mind. Some consider how a group of elites gather and create a grand plan to form a nation. This cannot be any further from the truth. And whenever such attempts were made, the results were catastrophic. Recalling the Holocaust and the Gulags is enough to make us shudder. The other assumption is that nations are the result of various fortunate and unfortunate events that brought people together or separated them. In order to find out the alternatives to establishing a nation, merely defining it will not suffice without ample e
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| Fighting in Tigray Region Has Ended: Ethiopian Army Chief
By Staff Reporter
 November 28, 2020 (Ezega.com) -- The Ethiopian army has captured Mekele City, the last stronghold of the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) force marking the end of the 25-day fighting, the country’s army chief has said.
Chief of Staff of the Ethiopian Defence Force Berhanu Jula Saturday in a briefing declared the end of the fighting between federal and TPLF forces. “The march toward controlling the Mekele, capital of Tigray, was so smooth,” he said.
The chief of the Army congratulated all Ethiopians over the victory and the People of Tigray in particular for being liberated from the oppression of the
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| Ethiopia in Conflict - Part II: A National Stand for Unity
By Abel Merawi
 November 24, 2020 (Ezega.com) -- A friend once told me a modern day parable that I labeled ‘Do the chickens know!?’ There once lived a schizophrenic man who believe that he was a chicken. To make matters worse, he refused to leave his house, assuming that other chickens conspired to peck him to death. With relentless intervention from family, friends and psychologists, he was finally convinced that he is a man; not a chicken. However, he still refused to leave his house and his loved ones inquired the reason. He replied, “I’m not crazy! I know that I am a man. But, do the chickens know? If they don’t, they can st
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