Word: emperor
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...EMPEROR...
...still seated on our rear ends," observed Montaigne in the 16th century. Just how ludicrous are the presumptions of temporal power was illustrated in 1974 by the dethronement of the King of Kings, Elect of God, Lion of Judah, His Most Puissant Majesty and Distinguished Highness the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. Few 20th century rulers have reigned with more imperial assurance and panache. A charmer, a demagogue and a despot with an implacable will to power, Haile Selassie had contrived for 44 years to present himself to the world as an enlightened monarch and a forward-looking statesman while...
...Emperor offers a trenchant portrait of a 1963 conference of African leaders in the Ethiopian capital. During a gargantuan banquet for more than 3,000 guests in the Emperor's palace, Kapuściński ventures outdoors to an area where dishwashers are throwing out leftovers from the banquet tables. A strange sound issues from the far side of the garbage dump. "I noticed that something was moving, shifting, murmuring, squishing, sighing, and smacking its lips . . . In the thick night, a crowd of barefoot beggars stood huddled together . . . I watched the crowd devour the scraps, bones, and fish...
...decade later, after a military coup had toppled Haile Selassie, Kapuściński made the last of his many trips to Addis Ababa. With the help of a former official, he set out on a series of surreptitious expeditions to uncover the deposed Emperor's courtiers and persuade them to tell him about Haile Selassie's way of life and mode of rule. They confided tales of unbounded slavishness, greed, corruption and palace intrigue...
Reminded of the horrors of the 1973 drought, which helped to bring down Emperor Haile Selassie, the Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam has succeeded in keeping casualties down by activating a relief commission that has already resettled some 10,000 victims and reforested remote, soil-eroded areas. But such efforts can create new problems: for example, after being uprooted, people without an inborn immunity to malaria often prove more vulnerable to the disease. Meanwhile, international relief agencies charge that supplies are falling into the hands of government troops instead of beleaguered civilians. The rains that finally began last month...