Good afternoon...

...but to me, at 12:07pm, it's good morning.

I couldn't sleep last night. Two nights in two weeks, an average of once a week. I slept at 5:45 am. This is after I wrote my blog on IMAN, checked email and wrote a response to the editor for The Economist. I could post it here but, ok, let me post it here:

SIR- Your last issue (France's Failure, Nov. 12-18) noted lack of employment and inclusion for racialized people in France as the reason for the riots. Ironically just three weeks before the riots, I heard Francis Fukuyama speak on "Identity, Immigration and Liberalism" at the University of Toronto; his focus was this very issue. This era of transnationalism, as he put it, (following his previous thesis on the "End of History"), facilitates violence because recognition - of identities, cultures, religions- is the problem now to be faced in so-called democracies in the West. Deterritorialization and migration of culture has created much resentment and resistance in European countries that neglect migrants' rights to proper citizenship, including the rights to labour, health, education and shelter. And we see now that each country deserves the citizens it gets. Other policy analysts have said the same thing for years about France, Netherlands, Italy. For some reason I didn't expect such an astute analysis from The Economist. I stopped reading this paper while an undergraduate student in 2001 due to a headline on Africa's 'Political Geography' as the reason for the continent's perceived misery. But I think I'll pick The Economist back up. Your report on Ethiopia as a puppet of the Western governments, particularly when it comes to international aid, was also very apt. As an Eritrean, I am sick and tired of the diplomatic apathy that has met the government of Eritrea and, consequently, its people, following repeated requests through various channels for assurance that Ethiopia complies with the border ruling of December 2000. Nothing has been done. In both cases I've mentioned- the lack of employment and respect for immigrants in Europe, and the lack of enforcement on international legal rulings in Ethiopia/Eritrea- serve to show that the world is not yet ready to be proactive. When will we learn that ignoring problems only makes them blow up? No pun intended.

Helen Tewolde Toronto, ON

I'm posting this here because I feel it is too long to get published. And if they DO publish it, then it will be edited to the point of no return. So here is the full integrity of my letter.

Ciao.