1953 COUP D'ÉTAT

የታኅሣሥ ግርግር - ፲፱፻፶፫  "The December Commotion"

ETHIOPIAN COUP D'ETAT ATTEMPT OF 1953 ETH. CAL. (DECEMBER 1960)

by CHRISTOPHER CLAPHAM

A BRIEF OUTLINE OF EVENTS

On Tuesday, (Tahsas 4, 1953 Ethiopian Cal.) 13 December 1960, Emperor Haile-Selassie was away on a state visit to Brazil. That night the Commander of the Imperial Bodyguard, Brigadier General Mangestu Neway (born 1908 Eth. Cal.), took control of the imperial palace in Addis Ababa; he there detained the Emperor's eldest son, Crown Prince Asfa-Wasan, and leading politicians, including the Ministers of Commerce, Defence, and the Interior. He was aided by his younger brother Germame Neway (born 1916, eight years his junior), a radical sub-provincial governor who was mainly responsible for the planning and political motivation behind the coup, and the two brothers were joined by the Chief of Security, Colonel Warqenah Gabayahu, the Police Commissioner, Brigadier General Tsege Dibu, and a few educated radicals; they were supported by most of the Imperial Bodyguard.

On Wednesday morning, 14 December, the rebels secured control of most of Addis Ababa and drafted a proclamation, broadcast by Asfa-Wasan, who is generally regarded as having acted under duress. This attacked Ethiopia's economic backwardness in relation to other African countries, announced the formation of a new government under Asfa-Wasan, and promised the start of a new era.  It helped to secure the support of the university students, who demonstrated in Addis Ababa in the new government's favour.

But the rebels had failed to neutralize a very important group of opponents, who were headed by an influential nobleman, Dajazmach Asrata Kasa, and by the Chief of Staff, Major General Mared Mangasha. These made for the headquarters of the army, on the opposite side of Addis Ababa from the palace and the headquarters of the Imperial Bodyguard. The army and the Bodyguard were two entirely separate military formations, which Haile-Selassie kept apart in rivalry to one another; when the guard went against him, a countervailing military force was therefore immediately available in his support.

There followed an uneasy 24 hours. During this period Mangestu and the rebels issued an 11-point programme of proposed reforms, and appointed as Prime Minister a liberal old nobleman and cousin of the Emperor, Ras (Prince) Imru, with Major General Mulugeta Buli, who was popular in the army, as Chief of Staff. Asrata, Mared, and the loyalists spent their time more usefully; they secured the support of the tank squadron and the air force, both stationed within reach of Addis Ababa, and made up their initial shortage of troops by airlifting about 1,000 loyal soldiers in from outlying provinces; they also issued leaflets signed by the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Church, condemning the rebels as anti-religious traitors and calling for loyalty to Haile-Selassie. These seem to have had a great effect on waverers and townspeople.

Fighting broke out in the afternoon of Thursday, 15 December. The rebels were heavily outgunned, and were slowly driven back through Addis Ababa on Thursday and Friday. Many ordinary Bodyguard soldiers lost heart on discovering they were fighting against the Emperor, as they had been given to understand that they were fighting for him; the townspeople, once the fighting started, gave fierce support to the loyalists. Before retreating, Germame and others turned machine-guns on the politicians who had been rounded up on the first night and since kept as hostages, killing 15 of them. Later Germame and Warqenah committed suicide; Tsege was killed in action; Mangestu was captured, and was tried, condemned to death, and hanged the following March.

Haile-Selassie flew first to Asmara, which, like all the provincial centres, had remained loyal to him; on Saturday, 17 December, he re-entered Addis Ababa amidst fervent rejoicing, and the attempted coup d'etat was all but over. Official casualty figures, which are likely to be underestimates, indicate at least 300 killed, many of them civilians caught in the street fighting.

The Journal of Modern African Studies, 6, 4 (1968), pp. 495—507

The Ethiopian Coup d'Etat of December 1960 - Cambridge University Press

https://am.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%8B%A8%E1%89%B3%E1%8A%85%E1%88%A3%E1%88%A5_%E1%8C%8D%E1%88%AD%E1%8C%8D%E1%88%AD

https://youtu.be/-xgXj438pro

https://youtu.be/1Z59y5Ock1Y

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun on September 21, 1897. (33+64 = 97)

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

About the Exchange

Francis P. Church’s editorial, “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” was an immediate sensation, and went on to become one of the most famous editorials ever written. It first appeared in the The New York Sun in 1897, almost a hundred years ago, and was reprinted annually until 1949 when the paper went out of business.

Thirty-six years after her letter was printed, Virginia O’Hanlon recalled the events that prompted her letter:

“Quite naturally I believed in Santa Claus, for he had never disappointed me. But when less fortunate little boys and girls said there wasn’t any Santa Claus, I was filled with doubts. I asked my father, and he was a little evasive on the subject.

“It was a habit in our family that whenever any doubts came up as to how to pronounce a word or some question of historical fact was in doubt, we wrote to the Question and Answer column in The Sun. Father would always say, ‘If you see it in the The Sun, it’s so,’ and that settled the matter.

“ ‘Well, I’m just going to write The Sun and find out the real truth,’ I said to father.

“He said, ‘Go ahead, Virginia. I’m sure The Sun will give you the right answer, as it always does.’ ”

And so Virginia sat down and wrote her parents’ favorite newspaper.

Her letter found its way into the hands of a veteran editor, Francis P. Church. Son of a Baptist minister, Church had covered the Civil War for The New York Times and had worked on the The New York Sun for 20 years, more recently as an anonymous editorial writer. Church, a sardonic man, had for his personal motto, “Endeavour to clear your mind of cant.” When controversial subjects had to be tackled on the editorial page, especially those dealing with theology, the assignments were usually given to Church.

Now, he had in his hands a little girl’s letter on a most controversial matter, and he was burdened with the responsibility of answering it.

“Is there a Santa Claus?” the childish scrawl in the letter asked. At once, Church knew that there was no avoiding the question. He must answer, and he must answer truthfully. And so he turned to his desk, and he began his reply which was to become one of the most memorable editorials in newspaper history.

https://beebo.org/smackerels/yes-virginia.html

the internet

 Francois Flückiger

"... But it was not that easy! The communication protocols war raged in Europe from 1983 to 1992. Most governments opposed internet technology, ...

I had the honour of convening in Geneva the very first meeting of the Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Network (CCIRN) in May 1988. ...

The second meeting took place in October 1988 at a summer resort in Western Virginia, sad and grey this particular autumn. The Americans turned up in force. ...

Towards the end of the meeting the Americans, led by Vint Cerf, became insistent... 

On my return from West Virginia, Olivier Martin and I called a meeting at CERN ... to promote the idea of a structure to coordinate IP networks in Europe, ... Time was pressing.

This founding meeting took place at CERN in December 1988, in a small office of building 600."

Francois Flückiger convened in November 1988 the founding meeting that led to the creation of Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE).

https://home.cern/news/opinion/computing/how-internet-came-cern

Is there no Superior Spirit?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward.

www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart

PROTOEVANGELIUM

"And I will put enmity between thee and the Woman, and between thy seed and Her Seed; He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." (Genesis 3:15)

Protoevangelium is a compound word of two Greek words, protos meaning "first" and evangelion meaning "good news" or "gospel". Thus the protevanglium in Genesis 3:15 is commonly referred to as the first mention of the good news of salvation in the Bible.

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The Orthodox Church expresses reverence toward the Blessed Virgin by the many feast days commemorating the various events in Her life. In prayers the Virgin Mary is called Theotokos, which in Greek means the Mother of God, since the One Who was born from Her was at the time of conception and always will be the true God.

Several prophecies of the Old Testament foretold of the incarnation of the Son of God and of the blessed Woman who would become a tool for the salvation of mankind. The very first promise concerning the Redeemer, heard by our fallen ancestors Adam and Eve, contained a prophecy about a special Woman. God said to the devil: “I shall put enmity between thee and the Woman, and between thy seed and Her Seed” (Genesis 3:15). It should be noted that during the time of the Old Testament the progeny were always called the seed or descendent of a male parent. Only here is the Redeemer-to-Come referred to as the Seed of the Woman, and this was the first indication that He would have no human father. 

Many centuries afterward the prophet Isaiah added important details to this first prophecy of Genesis. He said that the Woman, Who will give birth to the Messiah-Emmanuel, will be a virgin. “God Himself shall give you a sign,” explained the prophet Isaiah to the disbelieving descendants of King David, — “the Virgin shall accept into her womb and bear a Son, and shall name Him Emmanuel, which means: God is with us” (Isaiah 7:14). Another important message in the prophecy of Isaiah about the coming Messiah is that He will be God Himself. Hence the title Theotokos — “birth-giver of God” — given to the Virgin Mary by the ancient Church.

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In the ultimate sense, Christ did crush the serpent’s head and was struck Himself by the serpent, both aspects of His death on the Cross. However, there is another sense in which Our Lady the Blessed Virgin Mary crushed the serpent’s head and in which She was struck at by the serpent. She didn’t do these things directly, but indirectly, through Her Son and through Her cooperation with Her Son’s mission.

It was She, not someone else, who was the person that agreed to become the human channel through which Christ would enter the world in order to crush the serpent’s head (cf. Luke 1:38). And She was wounded when the serpent struck Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Simeon had prophesied to Her that “a sword will pierce through your own soul also,” a prophecy that was fulfilled when Our Lady Virgin Mary saw Her Son hanging from the cross (John 19:25–27). Thus Our Lord and God Jesus directly crushed the serpent and was directly struck by the serpent, while Our Lady Virgin Mary indirectly crushed it and was indirectly struck by it due to Her cooperation in becoming the mother of Christ. 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protevangelium

stmaryoc.org/patronsaint

catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-woman-the-seed-the-serpent

https://youtu.be/n7uNGW-Y-70?si=zCcXdSekjXIjb_Zr

The 21

 'The 21': The story of the Coptic Christian martyrs

'I found that seeing real martyrs is much more important than what any pope or bishop or theologian may quote or say in everyday media,' he says. 'It was a return for me to the real important thing.'

Reflecting on the young girl who said she was ready to die for her faith, he suggests Coptic Christians may have a different concept of 'truth'. 'In the Western world we have had a particular problem in the last 200 years with the word "truth". It's something embarrassing. We are sceptical, we doubt and we think there are so many kinds of truth, and what is for one person the truth is for the next a lie, or meaningless, or that every age has its own truth. But Jesus said, He is the truth. The words of Jesus are big rocks on the way of our thinking. You cannot diminish them.'

The Coptic Church – with its 1,400-year history unruptured by Reformations and schisms – has preserved this notion of truth unsullied. Even its liturgy is mainly musical and visual: it has no place for the argumentative and intellectual sermon that characterises Western devotion. Consequently, says Mosebach, Coptic Christianity is a spiritual time capsule, which has preserved for the Western church an image of the early church. The martyrdoms under the Emperor Diocletian and the martyrdoms on that beach in Libya are not different in kind: Copts know how to die, because they remember. As Mosebach says in his book: 'In their isolation, the Copts of Upper Egypt experience the events of the early church as if they had only happened yesterday, and this helps them preserve the simple core of the Christian message.'

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On Feb. 21, 2015 a week after their death the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria canonized the 21 Coptic Martyrs as Saints, their feast day would be celebrated on Feb. 15 of the Gregorian calendar. The commemoration falls on the feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple which is Amshir 8 of the Coptic calendar.

Isaiah 19

19 In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border. 

21 Then the Lord will be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day, and will make sacrifice and offering; yes, they will make a vow to the Lord and perform it.

25 ... the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”

https://www.lacopts.org/press-release/a-statement-on-the-martyrdom-of-21-coptic-christians-in-libya/

christiantoday.com/article/the-21-the-story-of-the-coptic-christian-martyrs/131772.htm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_kidnapping_and_beheading_of_Copts_in_Libya

https://youtu.be/PnuTL3FYJE4?si=3ZqAzBaYWR_19zY1

The Retribution of a Christian

 The story related that a Hungarian knight, who had been taken prisoner by a Turkish pasha, was most cruelly treated by him. He caused him to be yoked with his oxen to the plough, and driven with blows from the whip till the blood flowed, and he almost sunk with exhaustion and pain. The faithful wife of the knight at home gave up all her jewels, mortgaged her castle and land, and his friends raised large sums to make up the ransom demanded for his release, which was most enormously high. It was collected at last, and the knight released from slavery and misery. Sick and exhausted, he reached home.

Ere long came another summons to a struggle with the foes of Christianity. The still living knight heard the sound; he could endure no more, he had neither peace nor rest. He caused himself to be lifted on his war-horse; the color came into his cheeks, and his strength returned to him again as he went forth to battle and to victory. The very same pasha who had yoked him to the plough, became his prisoner, and was dragged to a dungeon in the castle. But an hour had scarcely passed, when the knight stood before the captive pasha, and inquired, “What do you suppose awaiteth thee?”

“I know,” replied the pasha; “retribution.”

“Yes, the retribution of a Christian,” replied the knight. “The teaching of Christ, the Teacher, commands us to forgive our enemies, to love our neighbors; for God is love. Depart in peace: return to thy home. I give thee back to thy loved ones. But in future be mild and humane to all who are in trouble.”

Then the prisoner burst into tears, and exclaimed, “Oh how could I imagine such mercy and forgiveness! I expected pain and torment. It seemed to me so sure that I took poison, which I secretly carried about me; and in a few hours its effects will destroy me. I must die! Nothing can save me! But before I die, explain to me the teaching which is so full of love and mercy, so great and God-like. Oh, that I may hear his teaching, and die a Christian!” And his prayer was granted.

Hans Christian Andersen, 1856,

The Jewish Maiden