Emperor Haile Selassie to the Marrakech Climate Summit

In 1963 at the headquarters of the United Nations, the King of Kings of Ethiopia and leader of Africa, the historical figure who defeated fascism, and successfully ended colonialism by committed African unity, sent an essential message to the peoples and Nations of Earth.
“…There is no guarantee against the sudden and unexpected resumption of nuclear tests in the atmosphere….”
Decades later, after dozens of tests have accumulated, before international conventions eventually banished these catastrophic practices, here we are, on the brink of a climatic precipice, as was lucidly foreseen by His Imperial Majesty.
The scars that the Second World War and the Cold War left on the face of the planet, cannot be removed by cosmetic surgery. They might remain with us for generations to come.
The African Emperor had recruited the American President John F. Kennedy to his cause, of progressive denuclearization, and the ban of atmospheric tests.
Kennedy admired the Emperor, and was also committed to implementing the Civil Rights of black Americans.
Exactly 50 days after the Emperor’s official visit to Washington, the President was assassinated in Dallas…
The climatic tragedy we are currently confronting has many biological ramifications, such as the massive disappearance of living species, but also the appearance of pathogens adapted to the new climatic conditions, against which we have very little immunity. Many articles in the press quoting scientific journals make the link between global warming and the appearance of new infectious epidemics.
But the point had already been made, as was the warning call to the world.
For the majority of Africans, Haile Selassie was a hero of wisdom, humanism, and courage.
Yet for Western powers, he was just another representative of the “Third World”.
The one who rightly predicted and warned the League of Nations in 1936 of the horrors of fascism that would fall on the world, the one who decimated Mussolini’s troops, causing the reversal that lead to the return of democracy to much of the world, had become for these dominating powers a threat, a man to discredit, to fight and dismiss.