By E. J. Dionne

WASHINGTON — While the nation’s capital obsesses over who will be the next pick for Barack Obama’s Cabinet, the president-elect’s lieutenants are engaged with what may be a more important long-term issue: What will become of Obama’s vast grass-roots network?

Electoral campaigns, like circus tents, quickly disappear after the show is over. But Obama is our first community-organizer president, and he sees the way he got elected as being almost as crucial as the fact that he won. Because of the emphasis he put on organizing, barackobama.com might fairly be seen as the most successful high-tech startup of the last two years.

Over and over, Obama has spoken of change coming from “the bottom up,” and the organization he built down to the precinct and neighborhood level could be an agent of that change. But how?

The discussion among Obama’s lieutenants focuses on several alternatives. In one view, the Obama apparatus could be integrated into the Democratic Party and be run through the Democratic National Committee. Many of Obama’s top lieutenants, including his campaign manager, David Plouffe, are veterans of traditional Democratic politics.

Turning the Obama network into a vast national party organization could give Democrats durable advantages it has not enjoyed since the New Deal era, when Franklin Roosevelt built an alliance between local political machines and a growing labor movement.

But Plouffe himself has been much affected by the new way of campaigning he oversaw. His regular video reports to the troops turned him into something of a hero to the Obama faithful.

Moreover, Steve Hildebrand, Obama’s deputy campaign manager, has argued that members of the Obama network include many who are averse to traditional party politics: young people with weak party loyalties, independents and even some Republicans. He has been suggesting at Democratic gatherings that the Obama apparatus might instead constitute itself as an independent political organization — friendly and parallel to the Democratic Party, but a separate entity nonetheless. Obama supporters are also discussing how local Obama networks could integrate themselves into their communities through various forms of service work and activism. Obama’s Web site is currently raising money for the victims of recent Southern California fires.

The importance of cultivating the network and keeping it intact was underscored by an online survey that Plouffe sent out to supporters on Tuesday. The survey explicitly asked: “How would you like to see this organization move forward in the months and years ahead?”

Offering a clue as to what Obama insiders are thinking, the survey asked supporters to rank four objectives: helping the new administration “pass legislation through grass-roots efforts”; helping elect state and local candidates “who share the same vision for our country”; training others in the organizing techniques perfected by the campaign; and “working on local issues that impact our communities.”

Notably absent from that list was the word “Democrat.”

Yet there is only so much distance that Obama either can or wants to keep from his party. He is, in important ways, a loyal Chicago organization Democrat. Plouffe is currently using the Obama fundraising network to help the Democratic National Committee erase its deficit.

Obama supporters have been moving into Georgia to help Democrat Jim Martin in his Dec. 2 runoff campaign against incumbent Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss. Yet Obama himself has yet to make clear how forcefully he’ll intervene in a state that he lost. A Martin victory would signal the depth of the nation’s desire for change, but a new president with soaring popularity may not want to subject himself to such an early test on not-entirely-hospitable terrain.

One Democratic strategist said that parts of the Obama organization are still mistrustful of the national committee as a redoubt for Hillary and Bill Clinton loyalists. But this view is waning since Obama, as the party’s undisputed leader, will inevitably take over the party apparatus, and he is making peace with the Clintons, notably by suggesting he may want Sen. Clinton as his secretary of state.

The urgency of the organizational discussion signals that Obama’s lieutenants see the 2008 campaign as having fundamentally altered the contours of American politics.

Democrats believe (and many Republicans fear) that Obama allowed his party and its allies to take an enormous leap forward in both technological sophistication and grass-roots activism. Preserving those gains and building on them is a high priority for a man who sees organizing not only as instrumental, but also as a way of transforming democracy itself.

– The Washington Post

Ethiopia’s superstar musician Teddy Afro continues to languish in jail. His crime is caring for his country. The fascist dictatorship in Ethiopia was threatened by that, so they fabricated false charges and threw him in a dark prison cell.

The tyrannical regime has spared no effort to silence the voices of those who dared to challenge it, and by locking up Teddy Afro, while simultaneously disenfranchising Ethiopians once again, it has clearly demonstrated its contempt for Ethiopia and its people.

The Ethiopian dictator is doing what all dictators do — eliminate those who pose a threat to their grip on power.

– EastAfro.com

EDITOR’S NOTE: ER begs to disagree with Joe’s view below about Aregawi Amare’s predicaments, but let’s see what readers think.

By Joe Michael

The authoritarian Ethiopian ruling party, Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) loyalists have turned their backs on The Reporter newspaper editor and their one time close partner Amare Aregawi. While the editor’s recent stories about the Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi monopoly and unproductive investment in Ethiopia was stated as a reason for the conflict, the editor’s unusual stories and their negative effects on EPRDF loyalists’ benefits is the main reason for the clash between the partners.

Mr. Amare Aregawi, who is the owner and chief editor of The Reporter Amharic and English newspaper, was a prominent member of EPRDF [a front organization for the Tigrean People Liberation Front] who earned respect by his comrades. He served EPRDF in different positions ever since they have taken over the country. He was very loyal and close friend with many high-ranking officials including EPRDF business partners. Mr. Amare knows about EPRDF and its partners more than any other journalists do because he was entitled to unlimited access to classified information.

Thus, what made EPRDF loyalists angry was not because they lost their loyal friend, but because their former loyal friend knows a lot of secrets.

The Reporter editor has begun unfolding attention-grabbing stories about EPRDF and its business partners, which apparently damage the interests of the EPRDF family. The loyalists know that if this bean is left alone for tomorrow, it will never be chewed. Thus, they are digging a deep hole to bury their one time friend. They are looking for tactics to make Mr. Amare the next Teddy Afro.

The Reporter editor, the one time beloved son of EPRDF [Woyanne] is indeed in a grave danger for telling the truth. In fact, he was incarcerated a couple of month ago for reporting about abuse of employees in one of the EPRDF affiliated companies. Recently, he was viciously beaten up by a group of people who had a hidden mission. EPRDF loyalists from all corners are furiously pointing their nasty fingers at him. Some called him crazy. Some even recorded a personal message on their websites and warned him to stop telling the truth.

The EPRDF’s ruthless dogma; “If you are not with me you are my enemy” is chasing its former comrade to possibly end his best days.

(The writer can be reached at [email protected])

By Jason Horowitz | The New York Observer

Why, if you’re Barack Obama, would you choose Hillary Clinton to be your secretary of state?

Yes, since it was first reported last week that the two had met to discuss the possibility, there has been no shortage of theories in the press: He wants her out of the Senate and into a pliant administration post; he’s paying her back for conceding graciously and then campaigning for him; he wants to score points with women voters.

But if you ask some of the most prominent members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, the consensus about her appeal as a potential secretary of state is much simpler: She’ll deliver.

“She is tough,” said Will Marshall, president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic think tank that advocates a muscular foreign policy. “Lingering doubts about Democratic resolve on national security questions are put to rest with Hillary in the job. She has a demonstrable quotient of backbone.”

More dovish experts are also excited about the prospect of Secretary Clinton, albeit for slightly different reasons.

“Her top, top, top advisers told me, ‘Steve, she will animate things in the Middle East—she will deliver a Palestinian state. Gold-plated,’” said Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington. Mr. Clemons also noted the irony that Mrs. Clinton potentially would be tasked with preparing the road for the direct negotiations with antagonistic foreign leaders that she excoriated Mr. Obama over during the primary. “She criticized him so much for going to meet foreign leaders without preconditions; now she is the one who is going to have to go and get all the preconditions sorted out.”

The idea, essentially, is that Mrs. Clinton, by virtue of her worldview and independent public profile, would be able to expand the purview of the office and become an unusually powerful surrogate for Mr. Obama’s foreign policy ideas.

“He’s got to concentrate the first couple of years on the economy, and he needs a very high-profile secretary of state to handle the stuff abroad,” said Les Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

If her rhetoric on the campaign trail this year was anything to go by, her strong views about the rest of the world would almost certainly precede her. (Obviously exaggerated claims about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia and bringing peace to Northern Ireland notwithstanding.)

On the Middle East, for example, she criticized the Bush administration for allowing peace negotiations to falter. On Iran, though, she excoriated Mr. Obama as “naïve” for declaring that he would meet unconditionally with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And on the administration’s dealings with Russia, she said, “This is the president that looked in the soul of Putin, and I could have told him, he was a K.G.B. agent. By definition, he doesn’t have a soul.”

“I think she combines new security and old security, by which I mean she is not afraid of the use of force, and she understands great-power politics and will be plenty prepared to be tough where necessary, either on nonstate issues or on states like Russia if need be,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and an often-mentioned candidate for secretary of state during the primaries. “But at the same time, she really gets the transnational issues. I think she is much less about democracy per se than she is about human rights. In that sense she was influenced by the Clinton Global Initiative.

“The promise of her being secretary of state,” added Ms. Slaughter, “would be to unite those two worlds.”

Or as Representative Pete King, a Republican hawk, admiringly put it: “She is from the very realistic wing of the Democratic Party. I don’t think she is going to have any delusions about trusting her enemies.”

The question now is whether it will actually happen and, if a firm offer was made, whether Mrs. Clinton would give up her unassailable hold on a U.S. Senate seat to take the post.

Certainly, to the extent that she still aspires to the presidency, secretary of state hasn’t exactly been a good way to get there for a while. (The last secretary of state to be elected president was James Buchanan.)

At press time, things were still in the air.

A source familiar with Mrs. Clinton’s thinking said that Mr. Obama did indeed offer the job to her and that she was weighing the decision with her husband, who returned home on Nov. 17 from a speaking engagement in Kuwait. But, the source said, reports that she had decided to accept the position were premature and wrong. (The Obama transition would not comment as to whether any position was or was not offered. Mrs. Clinton’s referred questions, once again, to the Obama transition team.)

According to the Democratic source with knowledge of the Clinton’s thinking, the Obama transition team and Clinton team were, as of the afternoon of Nov. 18, still “working through” the parameters of Bill Clinton’s charitable activities to check for real or perceived conflicts of interest, and that the process was going “smoothly.”

“She is still weighing it,” said another source, a close associate of Hillary Clinton, who added that the sticking point of the negotiations was not Mr. Clinton’s willingness to be vetted, which the source said had been overblown in importance, but rather “a question of whether she wants to give up her Senate seat.”

The associate said that at this point, there was some concern among Clinton’s supporters that all the talk about the job has forced her hand, because declining it would create suspicion about her husband’s finances. But “that is no reason to take the job,” the associate said.

One Obama foreign policy adviser on the transition team, who is not involved in the negotiations, said on background: “Obviously, she has tremendous skills and it would be up to Senator Obama to make that decision in the end on how he feels comfortable with integrating her in. I’m totally confident that he is going to be able to manage his team to get done what he thinks needs to be accomplished.”

Ms. Slaughter said that if Mrs. Clinton did end up becoming secretary of state, it would be only natural that Mr. Clinton give up some of his activities.

“He’s going to operate within more constraints,” she said. “They will find a solution, but there is no question he will be less free to do the kinds of things ex-presidents can do in terms of boards and speeches and businesses deals. It’s a fair exchange.”

For Mr. King, who, though a Republican, is fond of telling people about his good personal relationship with the Clintons, it would make sense for the former first lady to move back into the executive branch.

“From where is she is sitting right now, it looks like Obama is going to be there for at least the next four years, maybe the next eight,” he said. “He is going to be the dominant force in the political scene for the next eight years. She in the Senate is not the chair of any committee or any major subcommittee. She will be less of a political force in a day-to-day sense, but she will be much more of a national force in an international sense. I think she is making the decision to go for history. Also waking up in the morning as secretary of state in the world in which we live is more exciting than being the junior senator from New York.”

Ms. Slaughter said that plucking a secretary of state from among the ranks of elected officials was a tradition that went back almost to the founding of the republic.

“But honestly,” said Ms. Slaughter, “if ever there were a time to do it, that time is now.”

– The New York Observer

See more photos of Gondar at Ethiopian Multimedia Gallery (click here)

Gondar or Gonder (Ge’ez: ጎንደር Gōnder, older ጐንደር Gʷandar, modern pronunciation Gʷender) is a city in northern Ethiopia, which was once the old imperial capital and capital of the historic Begemder province. As a result, the old province of Begemder is sometimes referred to as Gondar. Located in the Semien Gondar Zone of the Amhara Region, Gondar is north of Lake Tana on the Lesser Angereb River and southwest of the Simien Mountains. The city has a latitude and longitude of 12°36′N 37°28′E / 12.6, 37.467 with an elevation of 2133 meters above sea level.

Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Gondar has an estimated total population of 194,773 of whom 97,625 were males and 97,148 were females. The woreda has an estimated area of 40.27 square kilometers, which gives Gondar a density of 4,836.70 people per square kilometer.^[1] The 1994 census reported this city had a total population of 112,249 of whom 51,366 were males and 60,883 were females. – Wikipedia.org

(Please add your own favorite photo of the city of Gondar or any other Ethiopian city by clicking here)