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Out of context: Reply #34392
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Farago was a Hungarian-born journalist who worked for the Associated Press. He had a reputation as a great miser and bluffer. A couple of years earlier he had been sent to Abyssinia on the eve of the Italian invasion, which began in October 1935 and was completed by May 1936. He discovered a country that had never freed itself from the Middle Ages—nor had it wished to do so—ruled by Haile Selassie, its emperor, and a tiny aristocracy which enjoyed total power. Here they had even dispensed with prisons. If a man killed another, the nearest armed guard would execute him on the spot, and there were buffalo-hide whips and branding irons ready in the street to be used on minor criminals. Proven liars were scourged, and debtors chained to their creditors. Slave markets existed in the remoter towns, and Farago described naked slaves of both sexes being exhibited for sale.