Monday, January 31

Blog Roundup

Socialism in an Age of Waiting quotes Bronowski on “... where people were turned into numbers”.

Israpundit coordinates 'blogburst' to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz.

Foreign Dispatches is our most frequently read blog. Just pick any post.

AdamSmithee, a clear headed economic development blog, on how Small-scale irrigation dams in Ethiopia improve yields and food security, but they also increase the burden of disease.

Booker Rising is a great overall source of news and opinion that has a regular Ayaan Hirsi Ali Roundup, sometimes translated from the original Dutch.

Baldilocks looks at the Super Bowl.

Rambling's Journal on a fake car VW ad.

LaShawn Barber has some thoughts on the Roe v Wade annivesary.

Ambra Nykol will be on the radio and in print.

... and the rest of the Conservative Brotherhood

The hardest working man in blogdom, Chrenkoff adds 'Who's who of Iraqi political parties and lists' to his usual 'Good news from Iraq' series.

Venezuela News And Views on why the US media ignored Chavez's insults toward Condi Rice. More here.

The Volokh Conspiracy on the National Academy of Science report on gun control laws.

The Global Growth Blog on corruption and growth in Kenya.

The Head Heeb is paying attention to the Ethio-Eritrean border issue.

Marmot's Hole on North Korean nukes and Pakistan.

One Free Korea
is angry that China has sent a 72 year-old South Korean prisoner of war back to North Korea after he escaped his fifty-year captivity.

Meskel Square has some interesting thoughts on the rubble index of economic growth. He also wants to know where all the Ethiopian bloggers are.

Amber Henshaw tells of a terrifying ordeal and has a thoughtful slice of life blog out of Addis.

Friends of Ethiopia on the New Federal Laws that Lead to the Arrest of an Ethiopian Torture Suspect in the U.S.

Tezeta which means recollections or nostalgia? in Amharic is a historical / literary blog.

Life in Ethiopia takes an occasional look at a missionary and her experiences.

Michelle Malkin finds yet another columnist on the take.

Ambiguous Adventure a blog on Ideas, Culture and Politics in African Affairs is one of our favorites.

GotDesign, usually about Foreign Policy, the Intelligence Community, General Politics, and Miscellaneous Musings, does a great job of defending Harry Potter from a religious point of view.

Ethan Zuckerman on Keywords, folksonomies and Ghanaian barber shop signs.

Chippla on the problem of Nigeria.

Big Pharaoh on scandal in Egypt.

and some non-blogs

The Monty Python pages are about some of the best humor in human experience, seriously. Fawlty Towers, a short running English comedy about a second rate hotel in England and its psychotic / obsessive / passive-aggressive owner played by John Cleese is brilliant.

Rolls Royce journey through a jet engine.

Army and Air Force

Great Novels of alternate history.

The Mongols in World History.

Art Nouveau from Ethiopia.

Wordcount - tracking the way we use language.

The Man Who Told the Truth.

The history of sanitary sewers.

Friday, January 28

Cargo Cult Economics





so ...





















Monday, January 24

Tsehay and a Roundel History

This is the third in a series of posts about the Ethiopian Air Force. The second described the involvement of two African Americans who either commanded the Air Force or served in it during its early days.

The first described the Potez 25 back in 1933 and one of the first Ethiopian pilots who flew that machine. That plane did not have any of the familiar form of national markings but did have an Imperial Lion painted on the side next to the name of a Prince (?) Makonnen.

This Meindl/van Nes A-VII (M7) (image from Insignia Magazine) is depicted as it was at Jan Meda in Addis Ababa in 1936. It has the green, yellow and red of the national colors painted on the rudder and wings. On the side is written the word Tsehay (Sun) which may be there because it is name of a Princess (?) Tsehay, one of Emperor Haile Sellassie's daughters.

This may be the same plane now in Italy whose return is being campaigned for along with other historical treasures. The new terminal at Addis Ababa / Bole Airport is to be its home after it is returned. Only one of the type was delivered, served from 1935 to 1936 and is described as being locally modified with new engines and wing flaps.

Ethiopian Roundels

The first traditional roundel used by the then Imperial Ethiopian Air Force has rings of green, yellow and red around a yellow six pointed star that seems to be a stylized Star of David. One of the Emperor's titles was 'Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah', in addition the Imperial House traces its origins to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba so that origin for the roundel seems likely.

The older roundel was in use from 1946 and can be seen on this F-86F delivered sometime in the early 1960s.

This MiG-21 depicted during the 1980s has the newer five pointed star roundel that came into use after an undetermined period when no star at all was used.

This site has a page dedicated to the history of Ethiopian roundels and has large stand alone images.


All military aircraft have markings on their sides and wings called roundels that provide for national identification - basically, to make sure who to attack or not. It all began during the first days of the First World War when the primitive planes of the day were used only for reconnaisance and occasional artillery spotting. Far above the trenches in France and Belgium, Allied and German flyers would encounter each other in the air and wave and otherwise behave like the 'gentlemen' they imagined themselves to be.

Rather soon, all concerned realized that they would not return home victorious before Christmas and settled in for the long bloody years ahead. In the air they started shooting at one another first with pistols, then rifles and finally with machine guns strapped to the fuselages of the planes or wielded by gunners.

Propellors got in the way and were at first armored so fire could be directed forward through them and aimed easily. Fokker and then the Allies developed interruptor gear that allowed the machine guns to mechanically coordinate firing with the propellor's spin.

After these and other technological advances such as improved engines, aerial warfare and the fighter plane were born and there has never again been anything genteel about it. Bright roundels and other colorful forms of personal and unit identification stayed on in all Air Forces until the 1980s.

It was then realized that modern infra-red guided 'air to air' (AAM) and 'surface to air' (SAM) missiles were sensitive enough to be guided not only by the hot exhaust of engines and friction heated leading edges of wings, but also by the differential heating and cooling of brightly painted markings to find their targets.

The U.S. began to use muted shades of gray for roundels and camouflage on almost all of its planes but other countries have continued to use large and bright national markings. One reason the U.S. no longer needs them is its likely dominance of any potential aerial combat and the low chance of fighting other American made aircraft. Even more important is the perfection from the 1950s of IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) equipment.

Airplanes that come to the attention of fighters or SAM crews by visual, infra-red or radar means can be electronically interrogated. The plane being tracked automatically responds with coded signals that identify which team they are playing on. This is a similiar technology to the transponders that most commerical aircraft use to identify themselves and their flight path to air traffic controllers.

Of course, military planes are far more choosy about who they respond to ... if it all.

Although there have been instances of 'friendly fire' among American forces in the air, they are very rare. This has not been the case for other nations such as the Arabs during the October War of 1973. A little known aspect of that conflict is the number of Arab fighter aircraft that were lost, not only to the Israeli Air Force but also to Arab SAMs.

As a result, Cairo and Damascus seldom used airplanes in support of ground operations or often avoided the immediate battlefield entirely. Many other countries just don't trust IFF*. The realization that anything electronic can be tricked probably determined overall Arab and Soviet doctrine to accept high levels of fratricide or to avoid having their own planes anywhere near their own SAMs for any reason. Most Soviet designed man-portable SAMs don't appear to have IFF equipment at all.

Most aerial combat today will probably happen at beyond visual ranges and even during close up dogfights when the opponent is in sight, a bright roundel may not be seen. Today, logic, communication and planning should prevent most errors of identification in air to air engagements but IFF will always remain essential for SAM crews.

However, error will always be a part of the horror of war. Ultimately roundels have stuck around because the standard issue human eyeball is the most reliable and error free instrument invented.

Roundels of the World has a clickable map with all the world's current national markings.

Air Vectors has detail on the origins of IFF and additional info here, here and here.

*For a while during the Vietnam War, Americans had equipment that could pick up the IFF transmissions from MiGs so they knew where they were and where they were going.

Friday, January 7

The long fetasha

This post from Meskel Square was particularly striking to us for what it questioned that we had long numbly accepted.

Many of us were used to being subject to constant physical searches every time we left home. In more distant memory for some, entire neighborhoods were surrounded by armed thugs and subject to systematic home invasions and searches by revolutionary cadres and soldiers.

We always figured they must have been looking for something ... but not necessarily. The actual and most effective purpose of such continual assaults on human privacy and dignity was not simply to reinforce fear of the government's already absolute power but also to create a sense of paranoia and impotence within the self.

In addition, dictatorships carefully maintain concentric networks of broken, opportunistic informers and liars among friends, neighbors and even relatives. The culture of absent morality, insecurity and corruption thus fostered, dehumanizes all, demeans traditional culture and tears apart all loyalties but those to the state.

Every breath drawn to speak about anything could be among one's last in freedom or in life. 'Revolutionary measures' - meaning death - were common results of bad luck or even hints of incorrect opinions.

Eventually, this combined assault on the minds of millions of victims gave the oppressive state a constant offensive presence in individual minds. Dictators like that kind of thing, it makes them sleep better at night but seldom lasts as long as they would like.

In Ethiopia, 1984 really was "1984" ... and 2005 is still far away.

Thanks to Andrew Heavens for letting us post his entire piece below.

The long fetasha

One of the few downsides to life in Addis Ababa is the number of times you are searched and frisked going about your daily business. You are searched going into the bank, searched before queuing up to pay your telephone bill, searched going into the city's main shopping mall the Dembel Centre, searched going into the compound of Addis Ababa University.

You are searched on the way into the National Museum - but, oddly, not on the way out. You are searched every time you walk into the main post office to engage in the highly sensitive business of buying a stamp. (The post office guards make a particular point of confiscating all cameras.) Every time you visit the Ministry of Information - the headquarters of Ethiopia's state TV company ETV - your bag is stripped of all information-gathering equipment including microphones and tape recorders. Your bags are x-rayed every time you go into the Hilton for a swim or a quick drink - although if you are reasonably well-dressed the guards just nod you through even if your bag sets all the alarm bells ringing.

If you ever ask why you are bring searched, no-one seems to know. Up until recently, it was all a mystery. That was until my wife, Amber, came across the following passage in Ryszard Kapuscinski's book The Emperor about the reign of Haile Selassie. The passage describes the regime imposed on the streets of Addis immediately after the Emperor's downfall in the 1970s.

To get things under control, to disarm the opposition, the authorities order a complete fetasha [amharic for search], covering everyone. We are searched incessantly. On the street, in the car, in front of the house, in the house, in the street, in front of the post office, in front of an office building, going into the editor's office, the movie theatre, the church, in front of the bank, in front of the restaurant, in the market place, in the park. Anyone can search us because we don't know who has the right and who hasn't, and asking only makes thing worse. It's better to give in. Somebody's always searching us. Guys in rags with sticks, who don't say anything, but only stop us and hold out their arms, which is the signal for us to do the same: get ready to be searched. They take everything out of our briefcases and pockets, look at it, act surprised, screw up their faces, nod their heads, whisper advice to each other. They frisk us: back, stomach, legs, shoes. And then what? Nothing, we can go on, until the next spreading of arms, until the next fetasha. The next one might be only a few steps on, and the whole thing starts all over again. The searchers never give you an acquittal, a general clearance, absolution. Every few minutes, every few steps, we have to clear ourselves again.

So there you have it. Thirty years have passed and the fetasha lives on.

Wednesday, January 5

Malthus, Hobbes and the Red Queen

Malthus Yiwdum!
Hobbes Yiwdum!
Kuy Nigistwa Tiwdum!
Capitalism Yikdem!

(updated Amharic revolutionary slogans of the 1970s ...
'Down with Malthus, Hobbes and the Red Queen!
Capitalism First! (or victory to Capitalism!) '








straight out of addis ...

















Monday, January 3

Ethnicity , Poverty and War


The authors define the problem ...






so what does ethnicity have to do with this?

The authors conclude that







the potential for conflict













