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I've looked into Eritrea quite a bit since there are boatloads of Eritreans arriving here all the time trying to escape slavery* and I see them all over the place walking around. I don't know any though, so can't help you too much on specifics or anything firsthand! Lonely Planet is the only forum I've seen where anyone's been to Eritrea and can tell you much, but even there the forum is a ghost town: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/eritrea/community but it might have useful stuff when you flip through it. Eritrea and Asmara have surprisingly complete Wikitravel entries too. *the government will conscript men and women and force them to work for free from like age 18-50 for "military" service which includes such core military components such as mining copper ore and civilian building construction, i.e. not only does it easily last for 20+ years but it also has nothing to do with the military. I guess the Eritrean leadership figured that the way that pure libertarian capitalism makes wage slaves to fund the elites' lifestyles is too complicated, and they might as well just cut out the "wage" part of it as a shortcut.
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Jun 1, 2017 06:21
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Casimir Radon posted:At one point Reporters Without Borders gave Eritrea a worse press freedom score than North Korea. I've never been able to find out how they managed that one. Maybe North Korea is open to Potemkin village styled reporting, but Eritrea is not open to journalism under any circumstance whatsoever? (No idea about Eritrea, but journalists can go to North Korea, they just have a hell of a time actually finding something to report on.) Thanks for the summary, Capone. Probably somewhere I'll never go.
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Sep 19, 2017 09:05
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Huh, interesting! Maybe someone at Reporters Without Borders just has an axe to grind with Eritrea in order to somehow put it below North Korea and Turkey.
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Sep 19, 2017 22:01
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Chairman Capone posted:When I was there, the official exchange rate was 1 dollar = 15 nakfa. No idea what the unofficial exchange rate was. More like $1 = 50 to 60. OTOH I guess everything was so drat cheap who cares if you paid over the black market rate? The US treasury even keeps a list of the black market exchange rates of currencies that it uses to tax people who live abroad making earnings in those countries (e.g. Venezuela, Algeria, Angola) to make sure they're not royally hosed by the official exchange rate. Wish I had a link handy as it's probably the most definitive source. (i.e. The minimum salary in Venezuela is something like $250,000/yr at the official exchange rate, but the IRS will actually tax you as if you make the $15/month you actually make.)
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Sep 29, 2017 17:10
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