07-18-2017, 10:34 PM
*** 19-Jul-17 World View -- Eritrean government laughably uses Christian Patriarch as show prop
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Eritrean government laughably uses Orthodox Christian Patriarch as show prop
****
![[Image: g170718b.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g170718b.jpg)
This Medhane Alem Orthodox Christian Church in Ethiopia is carved directly out of rock
Patriarch Abune Antonios, the 90 year old former head of the Eritrean
Orthodox Christian Church, was trotted out from government prisons on
Sunday to attend a mass for the first time since he was arrested in
2007.
The Eritrean government, which is possibly the most vicious and
repressive government in the world, has been under international
pressure from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the UN
Special Rapporteur on Eritrea, the French government, the United
States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the
European Parliament.
So they let Antonios out of prison for the first time in ten years,
and let him participate in the mass on Sunday. Seeing the patriarch
for the first time in ten years was considered a blessing by the
worshippers, but the whole show was really a farce, and probably a
humiliation to Antonios. They forbade him from saying a word, and
after the mass they bundled him back to prison. These morons in the
Eritrean government think that if the 90-year-old Patriarch Antonios
were allowed to say anything, then it would bring down their
government. What idiots. Christian Post and Independent Catholic News
****
**** Eritrea's Christian crackdown centers on Medhane Alem Orthodox Church
****
In 2004, Eritrea's government decided that it disapproved of the
religious beliefs of the Medhane Alem Orthodox Church, an evangelical
offshoot of Eritrea's Orthodox Christian Church. They arrested three
priests without charges, and sentenced by a secret administrative
procedure to five years each.
At that time, Patriarch Abune Antonios was head of the Eritrean
Orthodox Church. Antonios protested the detention of the three
priests, and in general for the government's interference in church
affairs. The government demanded that Antonios close the Medhane Alem
church, and that he excommunicate its 3,000 members.
In January 2006, Antonios was notified that he had been dismissed from
office, and on May 27, 2007, he was arrested and imprisoned in an
unknown location. The Eritrean government has placed people of their
own choosing in charge of the church.
The Eritrean government has always persecuted Christians, but in
recent months that persecution has become particularly vicious.
Police have been going from house to house, demanding to know the
occupants' religious beliefs, and arresting them if they give the
wrong answer. It's believed that hundreds of Orthodox Christians have
been arrested since May.
So the worshippers were thrilled on Sunday to see Patriarch Antonios
for the first time in ten years, but you really have to laugh at the
Eritrean government bringing out Antonios on Sunday for mass,
apparently thinking that doing so will make up for the vicious,
repressive treatment of huge numbers of Orthodox Christians for no
reason whatsoever.
Eritrea has one of the poorest human rights records in the world.
Anyone can be arrested and tortured at any time on the unsupported
charge of criticizing someone in the government, or for attending the
wrong religious institution.
What is unique about Eritrea is the extent of military repression as
practiced through a strictly-enforced conscription regimen and martial
culture. Eritrea’s army is about 600,000 strong, which is one tenth of
the population of about 6 million. Few countries anywhere, other than
North Korea or the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge, have one tenth of
their population in the army. Some people are forced to serve in the
armed forces until age 50.
Many people are forced to work at government jobs essentially as
slaves. The average monthly salary is $12. If someone escapes to
Europe as a migrant to earn money, the remittances that the migrant
sends back to his family are heavily taxed by the state.
That's why many of the migrants and refugees that are crossing the
Mediterranean to reach Italy are from Eritrea. Christian Solidarity Worldwide and UNHCR (2-Mar-2015)
and PJ Media (8-July) and Missionary Network News
****
**** The violence of generational Awakening eras
****
A generational Awakening era begins about 15-20 years after the end of
the previous generational crisis war, at the time when the first
generation of children with no personal memory of the war come of age
and begin to make themselves heard.
In their foundational work on generational theory in the 1980s and
early 1990s, William Strauss and Neil Howe glorified generational
Awakening eras as times for the birth of new ideas for society
and even new religions. Strauss and Howe's work was limited to
Britain and America since the 1400s, and their characterization
of Awakening eras seems to make sense in those cases.
But as I've worked on Generational Dynamics for 15 years, and
have extended generational theory to apply to all countries and
societies at all times in history, I've found their characterization
of Awakening eras to be wrong most of the time.
In the last 10-20 years we've seen one example after another where
Awakening eras are a time of violence. In Syria, Zimbabwe, South
Sudan, Burundi, Thailand, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, China,
Cameroon, and so forth, and now Eritrea, the group that wins the civil
war takes power and then uses torture, massacres and genocide during
the Awakening era to keep from giving up power, reneging on promises
of free elections made during the settlement of the civil war. What
makes this violence different from the crisis war is that in the
crisis wars the two populations really want to kill each other, while
in the Awakening eras, the war-weary populations just want peace,
while government leaders perpetrate everything from repression to
jailings, torture and genocidal massacres, depending on the country.
As I described last year in a generational history of Ethiopia and Eritrea,
mostly Christian
Ethiopia and mostly Muslim Eritrea had an extremely bloody
generational crisis war with heavy involvement by the Soviet Union.
The war ended in May 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, Eritrea is in a generational Awakening era, and the government
is close to a state of hysteria over the possibility that Christians
might hold a prayer meeting, so they're using house to house searches,
jailings and torture to combat a threat that exists only in their
fantasies.
In Syria, Bashar al-Assad is conducting a genocidal war against Sunni
Muslims. In Burundi, the president Pierre Nkurunziza, a Christian
Hutu, is conducting torture, sexual violence, arbitrary jailings, targeted assassinations and summary executions
against his political opposition, almost all from the
Christian Tutsi tribe. In Thailand, there's been sporadic violence by
the army, backing the "yellow shirt" market-dominant light-skinned
Thai-Chinese elite minority against the the "red shirt" dark-skinned
Thai-Thai indigenous ethnics. And just today (Tuesday), South Sudan's
president Salva Kiir declared a new three-month state of emergency, as
he pursues tribal violence designed to keep himself in power. The
situations in the other countries listed above is similar. Reuters
Related Articles
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Eritrea, Eritrean Orthodox Christian Church,
Abune Antonios, Medhane Alem Orthodox Church,
Ethiopia, Awakening eras, Syria, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Burundi,
Thailand, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Cameroon
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Eritrean government laughably uses Orthodox Christian Patriarch as show prop
- Eritrea's Christian crackdown centers on Medhane Alem Orthodox Church
- The violence of generational Awakening eras
****
**** Eritrean government laughably uses Orthodox Christian Patriarch as show prop
****
This Medhane Alem Orthodox Christian Church in Ethiopia is carved directly out of rock
Patriarch Abune Antonios, the 90 year old former head of the Eritrean
Orthodox Christian Church, was trotted out from government prisons on
Sunday to attend a mass for the first time since he was arrested in
2007.
The Eritrean government, which is possibly the most vicious and
repressive government in the world, has been under international
pressure from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the UN
Special Rapporteur on Eritrea, the French government, the United
States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the
European Parliament.
So they let Antonios out of prison for the first time in ten years,
and let him participate in the mass on Sunday. Seeing the patriarch
for the first time in ten years was considered a blessing by the
worshippers, but the whole show was really a farce, and probably a
humiliation to Antonios. They forbade him from saying a word, and
after the mass they bundled him back to prison. These morons in the
Eritrean government think that if the 90-year-old Patriarch Antonios
were allowed to say anything, then it would bring down their
government. What idiots. Christian Post and Independent Catholic News
****
**** Eritrea's Christian crackdown centers on Medhane Alem Orthodox Church
****
In 2004, Eritrea's government decided that it disapproved of the
religious beliefs of the Medhane Alem Orthodox Church, an evangelical
offshoot of Eritrea's Orthodox Christian Church. They arrested three
priests without charges, and sentenced by a secret administrative
procedure to five years each.
At that time, Patriarch Abune Antonios was head of the Eritrean
Orthodox Church. Antonios protested the detention of the three
priests, and in general for the government's interference in church
affairs. The government demanded that Antonios close the Medhane Alem
church, and that he excommunicate its 3,000 members.
In January 2006, Antonios was notified that he had been dismissed from
office, and on May 27, 2007, he was arrested and imprisoned in an
unknown location. The Eritrean government has placed people of their
own choosing in charge of the church.
The Eritrean government has always persecuted Christians, but in
recent months that persecution has become particularly vicious.
Police have been going from house to house, demanding to know the
occupants' religious beliefs, and arresting them if they give the
wrong answer. It's believed that hundreds of Orthodox Christians have
been arrested since May.
So the worshippers were thrilled on Sunday to see Patriarch Antonios
for the first time in ten years, but you really have to laugh at the
Eritrean government bringing out Antonios on Sunday for mass,
apparently thinking that doing so will make up for the vicious,
repressive treatment of huge numbers of Orthodox Christians for no
reason whatsoever.
Eritrea has one of the poorest human rights records in the world.
Anyone can be arrested and tortured at any time on the unsupported
charge of criticizing someone in the government, or for attending the
wrong religious institution.
What is unique about Eritrea is the extent of military repression as
practiced through a strictly-enforced conscription regimen and martial
culture. Eritrea’s army is about 600,000 strong, which is one tenth of
the population of about 6 million. Few countries anywhere, other than
North Korea or the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge, have one tenth of
their population in the army. Some people are forced to serve in the
armed forces until age 50.
Many people are forced to work at government jobs essentially as
slaves. The average monthly salary is $12. If someone escapes to
Europe as a migrant to earn money, the remittances that the migrant
sends back to his family are heavily taxed by the state.
That's why many of the migrants and refugees that are crossing the
Mediterranean to reach Italy are from Eritrea. Christian Solidarity Worldwide and UNHCR (2-Mar-2015)
and PJ Media (8-July) and Missionary Network News
****
**** The violence of generational Awakening eras
****
A generational Awakening era begins about 15-20 years after the end of
the previous generational crisis war, at the time when the first
generation of children with no personal memory of the war come of age
and begin to make themselves heard.
In their foundational work on generational theory in the 1980s and
early 1990s, William Strauss and Neil Howe glorified generational
Awakening eras as times for the birth of new ideas for society
and even new religions. Strauss and Howe's work was limited to
Britain and America since the 1400s, and their characterization
of Awakening eras seems to make sense in those cases.
But as I've worked on Generational Dynamics for 15 years, and
have extended generational theory to apply to all countries and
societies at all times in history, I've found their characterization
of Awakening eras to be wrong most of the time.
In the last 10-20 years we've seen one example after another where
Awakening eras are a time of violence. In Syria, Zimbabwe, South
Sudan, Burundi, Thailand, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, China,
Cameroon, and so forth, and now Eritrea, the group that wins the civil
war takes power and then uses torture, massacres and genocide during
the Awakening era to keep from giving up power, reneging on promises
of free elections made during the settlement of the civil war. What
makes this violence different from the crisis war is that in the
crisis wars the two populations really want to kill each other, while
in the Awakening eras, the war-weary populations just want peace,
while government leaders perpetrate everything from repression to
jailings, torture and genocidal massacres, depending on the country.
As I described last year in a generational history of Ethiopia and Eritrea,
mostly Christian
Ethiopia and mostly Muslim Eritrea had an extremely bloody
generational crisis war with heavy involvement by the Soviet Union.
The war ended in May 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, Eritrea is in a generational Awakening era, and the government
is close to a state of hysteria over the possibility that Christians
might hold a prayer meeting, so they're using house to house searches,
jailings and torture to combat a threat that exists only in their
fantasies.
In Syria, Bashar al-Assad is conducting a genocidal war against Sunni
Muslims. In Burundi, the president Pierre Nkurunziza, a Christian
Hutu, is conducting torture, sexual violence, arbitrary jailings, targeted assassinations and summary executions
against his political opposition, almost all from the
Christian Tutsi tribe. In Thailand, there's been sporadic violence by
the army, backing the "yellow shirt" market-dominant light-skinned
Thai-Chinese elite minority against the the "red shirt" dark-skinned
Thai-Thai indigenous ethnics. And just today (Tuesday), South Sudan's
president Salva Kiir declared a new three-month state of emergency, as
he pursues tribal violence designed to keep himself in power. The
situations in the other countries listed above is similar. Reuters
Related Articles
- Heavy fighting along Eritrea-Ethiopia border raises fears of war (14-Jun-2016)
- Ethiopia declares extraordinary six-month state of emergency (10-Oct-2016)
- South Sudan increasingly parallels Syria in genocidal violence (24-Dec-2016)
- The Gambia's leader, refusing to step down, declares state of emergency (18-Jan-2017)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Eritrea, Eritrean Orthodox Christian Church,
Abune Antonios, Medhane Alem Orthodox Church,
Ethiopia, Awakening eras, Syria, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Burundi,
Thailand, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Cameroon
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
