Guilt By Association To Association:   Obama refuses to condemn Rev Wright.  Rev Wright refuses to condemn Louis Farrakahan.  Therefore…Rev. Wright Defends Church, Blasts Media - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog 

Peacekeepers without Peace Treaties: Egypt and Ethiopia announced they will commit additional soldiers to the troubled Darfur region in Western Sudan as part of the campaign to bolster the force there. General Martin Agwai, the commander of the United Nations mission in Darfur (UNAMID) said in New York that he expects a large number of troops to arrive in the coming months. "We are expecting 1,200 troops from Egypt in May and another battalion from Ethiopia, in addition to its offer of helicopters and ground transport for the mission," Agwai told reporters in New York.  Source 

When States Control Their Media, They Think All States Control Their Media: "It is hard to ignore the fact that Al-Jazeera broadcasts out of Doha, the capital of Qatar. Qatar is a close ally of Eritrea. It would be totally unrealistic to imagine that any Al-Jazeera programme on Ethiopia could be anything other than seriously biased," the Addis Ababa government said. - AFP 

We Are Shocked, But We Don’t Know Why We Are Shocked: Eritrea has expressed dismay at neighbouring Ethiopia's decision to suspend diplomatic relations with Asmara's ally Qatar over accusations of supporting terrorism in the region. "The measure taken was indeed shocking," the Eritrean foreign ministry said in a statement received by AFP Thursday. The statement argued that Ethiopia's decision had stemmed from the fact that the United States has labelled Eritrea a state sponsor of terrorism, notably as "a conduit of support of Qatar and Libya to Somalia." Source 

It Is Not About Who Votes But Who Counts The Votes:  HARARE (Reuters) - Verification of Zimbabwe's disputed presidential election results is due to start on Tuesday, a month after the vote, now that a partial recount has ended, an election official said on Monday. The wait for the March 29 election result has led to a tense standoff that has raised fears of bloodshed and drawn opposition accusations that President Robert Mugabe is trying to rig the outcome to keep his 28-year hold on power. Source 

It Is Not About What Is Being Counted, But Who Is Doing The Counting, Part 2:  JUBA, Sudan, April 28 (Reuters) - South Sudan has ordered up to 170 census monitors to return to Khartoum, accusing them of interfering with the vital count that will help determine how wealth and power are shared in Africa's largest country. The monitors, part of a team of national and international and observers whose leader was appointed by the presidency in Khartoum, were mostly from the north of Sudan, a senior southern census official told Reuters on Monday.  Source  

Mugabe’s Options:  Mugabe will (1) Concede defeat; (2) demand a recount; (3) arrest the opposition leaders; (4) arrest the electoral commission.   Answer here.

I Was Only Giving Orders: An Ethiopian Court has sentenced to death five top military officers of former Marxist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam, for air raids that killed hundreds in an open market in 1980. The state-run Ethiopian News Agency on Saturday said the five officers were sentenced for the raid at Hawzen, along with five others given life sentences and four given terms of 19 years. All were tried and sentenced in absentia…. The same court in January 2007 sentenced Mengistu to life in prison for killings thousands of people during his 17-year rule which included famine, war and purges including the "Red Terror" slaughter of suspected opponents. Reuters

She Won’t Do It, But Her Sister Will:  Shabait.com is the website of the Eritrean government and shaebia.org is the website of the ruling party, PFDJ (or Shaebia.)  The ruling party, PFDJ, hasn’t had a congress since 1994 but the Switzerland branch of the PFDJ had its first congress in March 2008.  You will find the news that the branch of the party has held a congress not in the party website, shaebia.org, but in the government website. Shabait.com.  Meanwhile, shaebia.org has many reports on Y-PFDJ (the youth PFDJ) but not plain PFDJ, aka, YNot-PFDJ (old school PFDJ.)   Hope it is all clear now.    

Egyptian Intifada:  Prices of cooking oil, rice and other staples have nearly doubled since the beginning of the year and there are widespread shortages of government-subsidized bread throughout the country of 76 million people. Nearly 40 percent of Egyptians live under the internationally defined poverty line of $2 a day. Complaints that the government is not doing enough to help the poor have turned simmering dissatisfaction with repression and lack of economic opportunity into rare open unrest. Thousands of demonstrators torched buildings, looted shops and hurled bricks at police in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla al-Kobra on Sunday.   AP

But What Does Shabait Think About It?  Eritrea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had an opinion about the protests in Tibet.  Maybe it will have something to say about the “violence and vandalism” in Egypt, and show its steadfast solidarity with the Egyptian government.

Loser Demands Recount Without Admitting Loss: Zimbabwe’s ruling party is demanding a recount of the vote, a vote that is officially still not counted.  “You can’t ask for the remarking of an exam whose result is not known by the student,” Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said in a telephone interview. “It shows their mischief and shenanigans in trying to manipulate the poll.” NYT    

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Ballots Closed; Now Come The Bullets: President Robert Mugabe fought to survive the biggest crisis of his rule on Wednesday after losing control of Zimbabwe's parliament for the first time since taking power after independence. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said Mugabe had also been defeated in a presidential election last Saturday and should concede defeat to avoid embarrassment. Mugabe's aides angrily dismissed the MDC claim, hinting the opposition could be punished for publishing its own tallies despite warnings this would be regarded as an attempted coup. Reuters

Ethiopia’s New ‘Kill-lil’:  Members of the Ethiopian armed forces deployed in Somalia reached the town of Bulo Burte, in the central Hiran region, after seven government soldiers were killed in battles with insurgents yesterday.  Garowe

Peace Pact Does Not Mean Peace, Part 1: The Chadian government says insurgents backed by Sudan have launched a fresh offensive in the east of the country. The report comes less than a month after the two countries signed a non-aggression pact. A group of Darfur rebels claimed the Sudanese army was fighting alongside the Chadian opposition - an allegation denied by Khartoum.  BBC

Peace Pact Does Not Mean Peace, Part 2:  Sudan accused Chad on Wednesday of bombing a village in Darfur and said a rocket fired across the international border hit a Sudanese military unit in violation of a peace agreement signed last month. Foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq told AFP that a Chadian military helicopter "bombed a place called Um Tamjoob" at dawn Wednesday, and hours later "a rocket which came from Chadian territory hit a Sudanese military unit inside Sudan". AFP

The Bad News Is The Good News Is Wrong: GDP grows 6%; Population Grows 3%What We Need Is GDP Per Capita Growth; African economies grew by 5.8 percent last year, powered by increasing commodity prices, but the growth is yet to be translated into social development, a report said Wednesday. The Economic Commission on Africa's annual report said poor infrastructural development, high oil prices and political instability would choke the 2008 growth predicted to be 6.2 percent. The previous year's growth was 5.7 percent. Yahoo News

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