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Master Thesis:
Ethiopians in Diaspora Poll * Ethiopians in USA * Please vote!
If you are willing to partcipate in a phone interview (20 min. max.) "Ethiopians and Rastafarians," please email Esther Sellassie Antohin with the phone number and time to call. Thanks.
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view * Sellassie Family Web * sign 
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Summer 2000 will be the second anniversary of the Sellassie websites and some assessment of the feedback is needed.Even before we made our first pages, I knew that there are people who love and who hate Haile Sellassie. The one who love HIM come from many racial, national and ethnic grounds. The ones who hate are the Ethiopians.
They call themselves Eritreans, Oromo, socialists -- and they are not in Ethiopia. We haven't got a single negative letter from Ethiopia. Are they Ethiopians or ex-Ethiopians?
To lose your country is a tragedy. The only way to keep it in your heart, is not to lose yourself...
So, what are the points of this anti-Sellassie mail?
He was an emperor.
Yes, he was. Ethiopia wasn't a democracy and she still is not a democratic country. But unlike many other monarchs, Haile Sellassie I was a statesman. There are very few elected presidents in this century who can match his diplomatic skills.
He didn't develop Ethiopia enough...
One man, even in position of leader can develop a country, only people can. You can hear it from the American president -- "we develop millions of jobs for Americans"... Not really, the millions of Americans developed those millions of jobs.
To the critics of the House of Sellassie...
Last year (1999) I removed all chatroom features from Sellassie's websites; we have time only for real time conference calls with the project managers. We do not answer ALL emails, only thed messages from people who want to work with us. (I hope by the end of this year after we'll upgrade our system, we can do video broadcasting -- if you use RealPlayer, you understand the limitations).
There is no paid staff at the House of Sellassie, all is done by the volunteers. I am a department head at the University of Alaska, Esther is a manager with the McDonald's Corporation in Fairbanks; our salaries is the only source of our income. We are not running for US or any other office, but our income tax returns are no secret, we send it year after year and those are the records of the US government.
There are people who understand what we are; people who do not understand, but want to know, and people who do not want to know. Our life is an open book (sometimes I think that some of our friends suggest, it's too open, including the directions how to get to our house).
I and my family accepted that the voices from the dark is a part and price to pay for doing what has to be done. I have an email account hate@sellassie.ourfamily.com and this is for hate-mail. Our websites are about to have 1000 visitors/day and I know that some hate the very mentioning the name of the first African leader of the century and the millennium -- HIM Haile Sellassie U.
In my view his vision of Ethiopia is not fullfilled yet. He wanted Ethiopia to be introduced to the world history again, as it was in the times of Antiquity. And he did it -- if you don't like it or think that you can do better, please do it your way. Do it yourself. I advance this cause, his vision of Ethiopia, although I have my own interpreations of it.
