There are two ways to be rich or super rich in Ethiopia: 1) Be a member of the Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne); or 2) Be a Woyanne butt-kisser. There is no other way. The photos below show how one of these super rich individuals, the owner of Sunshine Construction, lives in Addis Ababa. It is to preserve and expand this ill-gotten wealth that Woyanne will fight tooth and nail to stay in power as long as it can no matter the cost to the people of Ethiopia. It is a good thing to be rich, but not through cruel exploitation and subjugation of other people.
The home of Sunshine Construction owner Samuel Tafesse, a business partner and personal friend of Azeb Mesfin, Meles Zenawi’s wife.
Addis Ababa










Woyanne billionaire Al Amoudi visits Samuel’s house
Why don’t the ambassadors also talk about the tens of thousands of political prisoners still in jail?
Addis Ababa (ENA) – Ambassadors to Ethiopia of five countries have commended the Ethiopian government’s Woyanne’s measures to have pardoned 18,000 prisoners.
The ambassadors representing France, Canada, New Zealand, Finland and Spain on Friday attended a graduation ceremony of 40 inmates in Oromia who received technical and vocational training from the training center of the State’s prisons administration. Amenities constructed by the Institution were also inaugurated.
The Ambassadors on the occasion said the measures the Ethiopian government has taken in connection with the new millennium to have pardoned the stated number of prisoners were laudable.
The Adama Model Prison house on the occasion inaugurated lounges, meeting halls, dormitories for women inmates and other amenities it constructed with an outlay of nearly two million Birr.
Meanwhile, Justice for All Prison Fellowship, an NGO, has announced activities it launched with an outlay of 20 million Birr to help improve human rights handling of inmates and enhances good governance.
Ethiopian Human Rights Commissioner Ambassador Kassa Gebrehiwot on the occasion said the Oromia State Government was carrying out promising activities in improving amenities at prison houses to ensure that inmates are handled humanely.
The Oromia Prisons Administration has announced plan to offer computer aided training to 140 more inmates. Similar training had been given to 63 inmates.
——————
ENA is a Woyanne-controlled news agency.
Because Barack Obama failed to dispatch Hillary Clinton Tuesday, some in the traditional media are flipping out with talk about how this throws the nomination up in the air, how things are different, “Democrats in disarray” and plenty of other idiocies. Obama and his camp are surely deeply disappointed they didn’t defeat Hillary Clinton in the Texas or Ohio primaries. Had Obama won one or both, there would have been calls for Clinton to step aside and let Obama focus on beating John McCain. Clinton won’t step aside now, and few if any “party elders” will ask her to between now and the PA primary on April 22nd. However, her path to the nomination isn’t any easier today than it was on Monday. In fact, if you view it like a boxing match, Clinton had been losing round after round on points all through February. Tuesday, in terms of the entire nomination battle, she didn’t win as much as rally for a draw for that round. Pundits and her campaign are touting it as a win, but with a net gain of between 5 and 10 delegates, she made up no real ground. Thus, she lost an opportunity to narrow the gap, and now very little chance of securing the nomination. Furthermore, with the certification of votes in California, there appears to have been a net swing of 8 delegates in favor of Obama, thus wiping out her already modest gains from Tuesday… Read more >>
Hopefully, this will not make Obama supporters complacent.
Hillary’s New Math Problem: Tuesday’s big wins? The delegate calculus just got worse.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Hillary Clinton won big victories Tuesday night in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. But she’s now even further behind in the race for the Democratic nomination. How could that be? Math. It’s relentless.
To beat Barack Obama among pledged delegates, Clinton now needs even bigger margins in the 12 remaining primaries than she needed when I ran the numbers on Monday–an average of 23 points, which is more than double what she received in Ohio.
Superdelegates won’t help Clinton if she cannot erase Obama’s lead among pledged delegates, which now stands at roughly 134. Caucus results from Texas aren’t complete, but Clinton will probably net about 10 delegates out of March 4. That’s 10 down, 134 to go. Good luck.
I’ve asked several prominent uncommitted superdelegates if there’s any chance they would reverse the will of Democratic voters. They all say no. It would shatter young people and destroy the party.
Hillary’s only hope lies in the popular vote-a yardstick on which she now trails Obama by about 600,000 votes. Should she end the primary season in June with a lead in popular votes, she could get a hearing from uncommitted superdelegates for all the other arguments that she would make a stronger nominee. (Wins the big states, etc.). If she loses both the pledged delegate count and the popular vote, no argument will cause the superdelegates to disenfranchise millions of Democratic voters. It will be over.
Projecting popular votes precisely is impossible because there’s no way to calculate turnout. But Clinton would likely need do-overs in Michigan and Florida (whose January primaries didn’t count because they broke Democratic Party rules). But even this probably wouldn’t give her the necessary popular vote margins.
Remember, Obama’s name wasn’t even on the Michigan ballot when voters there went to the polls. Even if he’s trounced there (and Michigan, won by Jesse Jackson in 1988, has a large African-American vote in its primary), Obama would still win hundreds of thousands of popular votes. This is also an argument for why Obama may end up preferring a primary to a caucus in Michigan. (Obama has done better in caucuses).
Florida, with its heavy population of elderly and Jewish voters, might be a better place for Hillary to close the popular vote gap. But even if you assume she does five points better than her double-digit win there in the meaningless February primary (where no one campaigned), she would still fall short.
I’m no good at math, but with the help of “Slate’s Delegate Calculator” I’ve once again scoped out the rest of the primaries. In order to show how deep a hole she’s in, I’ve given her the benefit of the doubt every week. That’s 12 victories in a row, bigger in total than Obama’s run of 11 straight. And this time I’ve assigned her even larger margins than I did before in Wyoming, North Carolina, Indiana and Kentucky.
So here we go again:
Let’s assume that on Saturday in Wyoming, Hillary’s March 4 momentum gives her an Ohio-style 10-point win, confounding every expectation. Next Tuesday in Mississippi, where African-Americans play a big role in the Democratic primary, she shocks the political world by again winning 55-45.
Then on April 22, the big one-Pennsylvania-and it’s a Hillary blow-out: 60-40, with Clinton picking up a whopping 32 delegates. She wins both of Guam’s two delegates on May 3 and Indiana’s proximity to Illinois does Obama no good on May 6. The Hoosiers go for Hillary 55-45 and the same day brings another huge upset in a heavily African-American state. Enough blacks desert Obama to give North Carolina to Hillary in another big win, 55-45, netting her seven more delegates.
May 13 in West Virginia is no kinder to Obama, and he loses by double digits, netting Clinton two delegates. Another 60-40 landslide on May 20 in Kentucky nets her 11 more. The same day brings Oregon, a classic Obama state. Ooops! He loses there 52-48. Hillary wins by 10 in Montana and South Dakota on June 3 and the scheduled primary season ends on June 7 in Puerto Rico with another big Viva Clinton! Hillary pulls off a 60-40 landslide, giving her another 11 delegates.
Given that I’ve put not a thumb but my whole fist on the scale, this fanciful calculation gives Hillary the lead, right? Actually, it makes the score 1,625 to 1,584 for Obama. A margin of 39 pledged delegates may not seem like much, but remember, the chances of Obama losing state after state by 20-point margins are slim to none.
So no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. What happens then? Will Democrats come together before the Denver Convention opens in late August?
We know that Hillary is unlikely to quit. This will leave it up to the superdelegates to figure out how to settle on a nominee. With 205 already committed to Obama, he would need another 200 uncommitted superdelegates to get to the magic number of 2025 delegates needed to nominate. But that’s only under my crazy pro-Hillary projections. More likely, Obama would need about 50-100 of the approximately 500 uncommitted superdelegates, which shouldn’t be too difficult.
But let’s say all the weeks of negative feeling have taken a toll. Let’s say that Clinton supporters are feeling embittered and inclined to sit on their hands. It’s not too hard to imagine prominent superdelegates asking Obama to consider putting Hillary on the ticket.
This might be the wrong move for him. A national security choice like Sen. Jim Webb, former Sen. Sam Nunn or retired Gen. Anthony Zinni could make more sense. But if Obama did ask Clinton, don’t assume she would say no just because she has, well, already served as de facto vice president for eight years under her husband. (Sorry, Al).
In fact, she would probably say yes. When there’s a good chance to win, almost no one has ever said no. (Colin Powell is the exception). In 1960, when the vice-presidency was worth a lot less, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson gave up his powerful position to run with John F. Kennedy.
How about Clinton-Obama? Nope. The Clintonites can spin to their heart’s content about how big March 4 was for them. How close the race is. How they’ve got the Big Mo now.
Tell it to Slate’s Delegate Calculator. Again.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/119010