Do You Know O. Henry

William Sydney Porter or O Henry was an American short stories writer. He was born and raised in North Carolina in 11 September 1862. He contributed lots of short stories in the American literature.  His father was known as the best doctor in the district and his mother was died for tuberculosis when he was at the age of twelve. William and his brother Shirley were raised by their aunt Lina who was an elementary schoolteacher who inspired William to read more books.

            Unfortunately, O Henry left school at the age of fifteen and worked as a pharmacist his uncle’s drugstore. Four years of working in his uncle’s drugstore O Henry moved to Texas in which he thought he would encounter a nicer and comfortable life. He got a new job with a fair amount of money. Later, his friends found a job for him. He worked at a Bank.  However, He was accused that he stole money and he lost his job. He married Athol Estes but after their first son was died about several hours after his birth. Nine years later his wife was died and left with him his daughter Margret.

            In 1894 he started publishing lots of exciting articles about German Community in Texas. After a year he found another job which was to write for Houston Post. He moved to New Orleans in Louisiana and then Honduras to start a new life.  It did not work out and he came back to Austin to take care of his sick wife. He stayed with his wife in several months. He spent his time writing stories. After couple months he went to trial.

            Even though O Henry was an innocent man the jury convicted him, and he was sentenced five years in Prison. The Jail was called Ohio State Penitentiary and they let him work in prison at nights as a pharmacist which gave him plenty of time to write stories but he lost his wife, job, home and his name. He passed his collection of stories to his friends in Louisiana. He was finally got out from the jail. He stayed with Athol’s family in Pennsylvania with his eleven year old daughter.

              O Henry was the man of his time. I enjoy reading his humorous stories. At a young age he lost his parents and later friends but he never gave up and became one of the best American writers.  There are different opinions where he got his name and what the O stands for. Some people say he got it from a pharmacist who was called Etienne Ossian Henry whereas a chairman of the Ohio Penitentiary said that Orrin Henry was a captain in the prison. Nevertheless, he had a wonderful life and one of the most successful writers. In ten years he collected over a hundred fifty stories.

SOURCE: The 19^th Century

There Is A Reason!

I lived more than half of his life in Hargeisa; I witnessed a lot of things that changed my views towards politics. Unlike other African countries, In Somaliland the elections are more fair and transparent.  Ethiopia had elections in 2005, and the former prime minister won over 9o percent of the votes. When I hear that kind of news, I assume that there is something wrong with those elections.  The National Electoral Commission is an independent and works with other international election commissions. In 2010, the president won 49 percent of the votes where as former president won about 33 percent and the other candidate won 18 percent. This numbers make sense, therefore there is no reason I couldn’t trust the NEC. I will argue that there is democracy in Somaliland because of the peacefully gradual and exclusive elections.

I voted in 2010 and I voted ones and most of my family members did the same. Through my career I did not witness any cheating. Even though I did know about these recent elections but I talked lots of different people. Some of them are saying the counting was going really well and numbers are very convenient while others are saying people where voting more than ones. I did not vote so it is hard to prove, but some of our students told me they saw a bit of corruption even though the security was tight. There were also international observers who were carefully welcomed the process of voting.

It was a huge debate whether it was democratic elections or not.  However, I did not vote, because I did not know the candidates nor did I listen to their speeches. On this Thursday, it was excitement for some parts in Hargeisa whereas it was disappointment in the other parts.  Earlier this week, there was a party who said, “The Election committee is messing up the results.”  The election Committee asked them if they could prove it.

There were a number of NGOs and other European organizations who reported different perspectives on these elections. Dr. Steve Kibble, the head of International Election Observers in Somaliland said that most of the people were overwhelmed how the elections were going  on and that there some problems in the voting process and sometimes people were running out of ballot papers. The other problem was that people were showing their ID cards and putting down their names on the list and not a lot of people had their IDs. An officer of the NEC was asked about these issues and he responded, “We are doing what we can.” He continued and said, “They’re obviously a bit overwhelmed by the pressure themselves and…there’s not that many of them to respond to these situations.” [1]The international observers met earlier this week, even though some of the team will remain in Somaliland to give out full report about the elections.

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[1]  DeCapua Jeo. “Election Observers Readying Report on Somaliland”, www.voanews.com. 29/11/12

If Do So We Will End Up Fahrenheit 451

Internet censorship is the idea of censoring peoples’ communication throughout the internet. Everybody has the rights to exercise their freedom of speech. It is their fundamental right to go against whatever they disagree with. However, there must be limitations. Sometimes media tell people something that they are not sure about. For example, last year, one the most popular newspapers in Hargeisa wrote that there were rebel groups somewhere in Somaliland and when they were taken into the court they failed to prove where they got the source from. People must tell and discuss in public the ideas that they do not agree with but in return they should be very careful.

Internet helps us in many ways and it makes the whole world like a family. If we need to search something a decade ago it would take our whole life investigating it but it would take us a very short period of time to fully understand what we are looking for if we use the internet. Internet helps us to communicate with each other and to revolt against dictatorship governments. Last year, the countries in the Middle East and North Africa used social media to take over their regimes. It was successful in some countries whereas in other countries like Syria took eighteen months and still continuous.

The question that we are going to answer is; should we let governments to control the internet or should we make the internet universal and a host that people should share their ideas. Some governments do not tolerate when people say true facts about them. In 2007, an editor of the Azerbaijan Daily was thrown to jail when he criticized how the government treated his father after they kidnapped him. The Azerbaijan government hunts down journalist and bloggers.[1] If we let this type of government to look after the internet they would not let people to express their ideas by using internet.

Next month the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is having a meeting in Dubai and there are a lot of activist organizations who are against it. ITU wants to come up more regulations in the internet. There are number of websites who are posting, “Free and Open world depends on Free and Open internet.” This might look a biased statement but it deals with what is happening around the globe. If the people in North Korea are not allowed to use social media and also the journalist are oppressed and the only TV station is the government media how are we going to know the reality in N Korea.   Unfortunately, there are a lot of governments who supporting the idea of “controlling the Internet.”Some countries already made their own social media such as Russia. Russia wants to come up more regulations and restrictive laws in this “international” meeting. We shouldn’t be letting one organization that has the name of many countries to manipulate our freedom of communicating.[2]

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[1]  Brown Ian. “Azerbaijan is the wrong place to hold a forum on internet freedom”, www.theguardian.co.uk/  13/11/2012.

[2]  Naughton John. “Would you trust Vladimir Putin with the keys to the web”, www.theobserver.com /25/11/2012.

The Forgotten Country

                              

              Somaliland is a self-declared state that has not been recognized internationally. It took its independence from the UK in the 1960s but in a week joined Somalia which was ruled by Italians. People view on differently why Somaliland joined Somalia and one of the main reasons is that they wanted a great Somalia that unites Somalis who lived in the northern, eastern, and southern Somalia, furthermore, those who lived in Djibouti, Eastern Ethiopia, and Northern Kenya. However, it did not work out, and Somalilanders (northerners) wanted to re-establish their own state in the 1990s. They were not fully represented in the government in Mogadishu and experienced lots of mistreatment.  

               They call the idea of uniting Somalia and Somaliland “Failure Dream.” The question that we will mainly discuss throughout the essay will be, even though Somaliland fulfilled most of the procedures of being an independent state and deserved recognition why it is not recognized as a country.

              There are many perspectives in which people view on this issue. The African Union doesn’t want to recognize Somaliland, if they do recognize it, they think it will lead more to instability in Somalia and it will encourage many other territories to claim their own states.  According to the Somaliland Press, “The African Union refuses to recognize Somaliland based on fears that doing so would lead to a serous of claims of secession by other territories in Africa.”                                                                                                                                                                  [1]

             The AU wants to respect the borders that colonizers left behind in order to prevent tribal disputes among Somalis. It took nearly twenty five years in Eretria to get its independence from Ethiopia. If the international community didn’t pay close attention to the recognition of Southern Sudan, it would probably take longer.  It is not an easy decision for the AU to decide whether or not to recognize states.

             Somaliland is a democratic country, where people elect their leaders free and fairly. Regardless of its government and the legitimacy of its people, Somaliland does not have a lot of resource which could have attracted the developed countries and foreign investors to invest the country. Yet, Somaliland has an important role in east African politics, and recently instead of sending the Somali Pirates to outside of Somalia the UN allowed Somaliland to imprison them[2].

             There have been some European countries that opened offices in Hargeisa and it is a sign of recognition. There are number of countries that accepted the Somaliland passport.  However, according to BBC, it has been a huge debate earlier in October this year that Saudi Arabia rejected the nation’s passport which forced Somalilanders to get a Somali passport to go to the Pilgrimage. There are many countries who would like Somaliland to be apart, but they do not want to be the first ones who declare it. “We had been struggling to get recognition and it took us nearly twenty years to be a country and it will take us fifty more to get recognized,” is a common sentiment from Somalilanders. Finally, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” it will take time so we have to be patient to reach our goal.

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[1] www.somalilandpress.com

[2] www.bbcsomali.com

                           My Trip to Saturday Test

I know I was going to a country that my grandfather grew up, so it was not surprised. I also did not experience any culture shock. Even though, Ethiopia is totally different than here. There are less Europeans and Americans than Chinese. Ethiopian food is spicy, I was super careful the food I was eating. Of course I was not going there as a tourist but to take a test but I was very excited the fact that I saw new things. On Friday prayer, I prayed with over a thousand Muslims, by far the most populous mosque I have ever been to. They told me Ethiopia was a democratic country but I have seen a sign that shows it is. The pictures of Meles Zanawi, the former prime minister were everywhere around the city. I hope my second trip would be an exciting one because I am going to conduct an Anthropological research.