💭 SpaceX’s Starlink, the satellite communications service started by billionaire Elon Musk, now has a Department of Defense contract to buy those satellite services for Ukraine, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
“We continue to work with a range of global partners to ensure Ukraine has the resilient satellite and communication capabilities they need. Satellite communications constitute a vital layer in Ukraine’s overall communications network and the department contracts with Starlink for services of this type,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
Starlink has been used by Ukrainian troops for a variety of efforts, including battlefield communications.
SpaceX, through private donations and under a separate contract with a U.S. foreign aid agency, has been providing Ukrainians and the country’s military with Starlink internet service, a fast-growing network of more than 4,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, since the beginning of the war in 2022.
The Pentagon contract is a boon for SpaceX after Musk, the company’s CEO, said in October it could not afford to indefinitely fund Starlink in Ukraine, an effort he said cost $20 million a month to maintain.
Russia has tried to cut off and jam internet services in Ukraine, including attempts to block Starlink in the region, though SpaceX has countered those attacks by hardening the service’s software.
The Pentagon did not disclose the terms of the contract, which Bloomberg reported earlier on Thursday, “for operational security reasons and due to the critical nature of these systems.”
💭 Elon Musk Wears Satanic Costume with Baphomet on it For Halloween
💭 Before and during World War II, Germany’s Nazi Party condemned drug use. But the book, “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich,” claims German soldiers were often high on methamphetamine issued by their commanders to enhance their endurance. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler himself was a substance abuser. Author Norman Ohler joins “CBS This Morning: Saturday” to discuss his book.
In 1944, World War II was dragging on and the Nazi forces seemed to be faltering. Yet, in military briefings, Adolf Hitler’s optimism did not wane. His generals wondered if he had a secret weapon up his sleeve, something that would change the war around in the last second.
Author Norman Ohler tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that Hitler did have a secret, but it wasn’t a weapon. Instead, it was a mix of cocaine and opioids that he had become increasingly dependent upon. “Hitler needed those highs to substitute [for] his natural charisma, which … he had lost in the course of the war,” Ohler says.
Ohler’s new book, Blitzed, which is based in part on the papers of Hitler’s private physician, describes the role of drugs within the Third Reich. He cites three different phases of the Fuhrer’s drug use.
“The first one are the vitamins given in high doses intravenously. The second phase starts in the fall of 1941 with the first opiate, but especially with the first hormone injections,” Ohler says. “Then in ’43 the third phase starts, which is the heavy opiate phase.”
Hitler met a doctor called Theo Morell in 1936. Morell was famous for giving vitamin injections, and Hitler, with his healthy diet, immediately believed in this doctor and got daily vitamin injections.
But then as the war turned difficult for Germany in 1941 against Russia in the fall, Hitler got sick for the first time. He couldn’t go to the military briefing, which was unheard of before, and Morell gave him something different that day. He gave him an opiate that day, and he also gave him a hormone injection.
Hitler, who had suffered from high fever, immediately felt well again and was able to go to the meeting and tell the generals how the war should continue, how the daily operations should continue. And he was really struck by this immediate recovery from this opiate, which was called Dolantin. From that moment on, he asked Morell to give him stronger stuff than just vitamins. We can see from the fall of 1941 to the winter of 1944 Hitler’s drug abuse increases significantly.
👮 Police in Peru Seized Over 50 Bricks of Cocaine That Were Wrapped in Nazi Swastikas
🛑 Anti-drug police in Peru have seized packages of cocaine with a picture of the Nazi flag on the outside and the name Hitler printed in low relief. The discovery was made on Thursday in the port of Paita, on Peru’s northern Pacific coast close to its border with Ecuador. (May 25)
📞 Amid growing concerns of security risks to members of Congress, more than 50 senators have been issued satellite phones for emergency communication, people familiar with the measures told CBS News.
In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee last month, Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson said satellite communication is being deployed “to ensure a redundant and secure means of communication during a disruptive event.”
Gibson said the phones are a security backstop in the case of an emergency that “takes out communications” in part of America. Federal funding will pay for the satellite airtime needed to utilize the phone devices.
2000 Year Old Ethiopian Christianity With The Dark-Skinned Jesus
Ethiopia’s oldest icon (1370-98) made in Byzantium, or Siena
👉 Courtesy: Associated Press
Harvard art historian claims 150-year-old stained glass window in Rhode Island church depicts Jesus as a person of color
A 150-year-old stained glass window that appears to show Jesus as a person of color has been uncovered in a Rhode Island church
The image is made using brown glass and was first spotted by Harvard art historian Hadley Arnold
Arnold has invited art historians and experts to view the window which is thought to be the first to ever depict Jesus as a person of color
Scholars think the window, commissioned in 1877, could be the first of its kind. ‘It should stand as a landmark in American culture,’ says art historian Virginia Raguin
A nearly 150-year-old stained-glass church window that depicts a dark-skinned Jesus Christ interacting with women in New Testament scenes has stirred up questions about race, Rhode Island’s role in the slave trade and the place of women in 19th century New England society.
The window installed at the long-closed St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Warren in 1878 is the oldest known public example of stained glass on which Christ is depicted as a person of color that one expert has seen.
“This window is unique and highly unusual,” said Virginia Raguin, a professor of humanities emerita at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and an expert on the history of stained-glass art. “I have never seen this iconography for that time.”
The 12-foot tall, 5-foot wide window depicts two biblical passages in which women, also painted with dark skin, appear as equals to Christ. One shows Christ in conversation with Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, from the Gospel of Luke. The other shows Christ speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well from the Gospel of John.
The window made by the Henry E. Sharp studio in New York had largely been forgotten until a few years ago when Hadley Arnold and her family bought the 4,000-square-foot (371-square-meter) Greek Revival church building, which opened in 1830 and closed in 2010, to convert into their home.
When four stained-glass windows were removed in 2020 to be replaced with clear glass, Arnold took a closer look. It was a cold winter’s day with the sunlight shining at just the right angle and she was stunned by what she saw in one of them: The human figures had dark skin.
“The skin tones were nothing like the white Christ you usually see,” said Arnold, who teaches architectural design in California after growing up in Rhode Island and earning an art history degree from Harvard University.
The window has now been scrutinized by scholars, historians and experts trying to determine the motivations of the artist, the church and the woman who commissioned the window in memory of her two aunts, both of whom married into families that had been involved in the slave trade.
“Is this repudiation? Is this congratulations? Is this a secret sign?” said Arnold.
Raguin and other experts confirmed that the skin tones — in black and brown paint on milky white glass that was fired in an oven to set the image — were original and deliberate. The piece shows some signs of aging but remains in very good condition, she said.
But does it depict a Black Jesus? Arnold doesn’t feel comfortable using that term, preferring to say it depicts Christ as a person of color, probably Middle Eastern, which she says would make sense, given where the Galilean Jewish preacher was from.
Others think it’s open to interpretation.
The 12-foot tall, 5-foot wide window depicts two biblical passages in which women, also painted with dark skin, appear as equals to Christ.
“To me, being of African American and Native American heritage, I think that it could represent both people,” said Linda A’Vant-Deishinni, the former executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. She now runs the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence’s St. Martin de Porres Center, which provides services to older residents.
“The first time I saw it, it just kind of just blew me away,” A’Vant-Deishinni said.
Victoria Johnson, a retired educator who was the first Black woman named principal of a Rhode Island high school, thinks the figures in the glass are most certainly Black.
“When I see it, I see Black,” she said. “It was created in an era when at a white church in the North, the only people of color they knew were Black.”
Warren’s economy had been based on the building and outfitting of ships, some used in the slave trade, according to the town history. And although there are records of enslaved people in town before the Civil War, the racial makeup of St. Mark’s was likely mostly if not all white.
The window was commissioned by a Mary P. Carr in honor of two women, apparently her late aunts, whose names appear on the glass, Arnold said. Mrs. H. Gibbs and Mrs. R. B. DeWolf were sisters, and both married into families involved in the slave trade. The DeWolf family made a fortune as one of the nation’s leading slave-trading families; Gibbs married a sea captain who worked for the DeWolfs.
Both women had been listed as donors to the American Colonization Society, founded to support the migration of freed slaves to Liberia in Africa. The controversial effort was overwhelmingly rejected by Black people in America, leading many former supporters to become abolitionists instead. DeWolf also left money in her will to found another church in accord with egalitarian principles, according to the research.
Another clue is the timing, Arnold said. The window was commissioned at a critical juncture of U.S. history when supporters of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and their Southern Democrat opponents agreed to settle the 1876 presidential election with what is known as the Compromise of 1877, which essentially ended Reconstruction-era efforts to grant and protect the legal rights of formerly enslaved Black people.
What was Carr trying to say about Gibbs’ and DeWolf’s links to slavery?
“We don’t know, but it would appear that she is honoring people of conscience however imperfect their actions or their effectiveness may have been,” Arnold said. “I don’t think it would be there otherwise.”
The window also is remarkable because it shows Christ interacting with woman as equals, Raguin said: “Both stories were selected to profile equality.”
For now, the window remains propped upright in a wooden frame where pews once stood. College classes have come to see it, and on one recent spring afternoon there was a visit from a diverse group of eighth graders from The Nativity School in Worcester, a Jesuit boys’ school.
The boys learned about the window’s history and significance from Raguin.
“When I first brought this up to them in religion class, it was the first time the kids had ever heard of something like this and they were genuinely curious as to what that was all about, why it mattered, why it existed,” religion teacher Bryan Montenegro said. “I thought that it would be very valuable to come and see it, and be so close to it, and really feel the diversity and inclusion that was so different for that time.”
– NBD. There is a famous mountain top cathedral near Avellino, Italy, with a portrait of a black Virgin Mary. The large painting has been there for centuries. It didn’t stop the Italians from doing their annual pilgrimage for the first communion of girls to womanhood. People need to get over themselves as if the world never existed before they got here.
– Who cares what color Jesus was when he was on earth? What matters is that we believe his message. He said the he is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to God but by him.
– Well he went to the cross for our sins… the ultimate sacrifice. So, His color is irrelevant. Plus it wouldn’t surprise me considering many Mediterranean Jews were/are of dark complexion.
– Of course Jesus was dark skinned. Everyone around that region was dark skinned 2000 years ago. Is this a real question?
– Every event that took place in the Bible took place in Ethiopia and Egypt (Africa). Which reflects the complexion of the Jesus displayed on the stain glass window. The first image depicting Jesus as non-African was by Leonardo da Vinci, which used a friend by the name of Cesare Borgia.(commision by King Louis XII of France). Do your own research I would start first by visiting the Vatican online and see for yourself all the biblical figures portrayed as white in America are in fact of dark skin complexion. At the end history is only factual when you do the research. If you don’t then, it’s whatever you believe it’s being told to you will be your historical fact but it will be wrong. Enjoy the rest of the year. Truth Serum.
P.S. Egypt is in Africa.
Eden/Africa is Ethiopia
Isreal and Palestine before “divided” are part of Africa.
The land of Canaan is in North Eastern Africa.
Facts are facts. There’s no rewriting history. It’s logical common sense period.
[Isaiah 53:2]
„For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.”
😲 She has become a target for criticism/mockery – including from Jimmy Fallon.
Scottish Ultra-Marathon Runner Blames Injury And Jetlag For Using Car In Race
Joasia Zakrzewski disqualified after 50-mile race
‘I made a massive error accepting the trophy’
A top Scottish ultra-marathon runner who was disqualified for using a car during a race has blamed an injury and jetlag for her decision to break the rules and then accept a trophy for third place.
Joasia Zakrzewski is facing calls for a life ban after being disqualified from the 2023 GB Ultras Manchester to Liverpool 50-mile race on 7 April, after it was later discovered she had travelled by car for about 2.5 miles.
However the 47-year-old from Dumfries told BBC Scotland that her behaviour had not been malicious – and that she had only got in a friend’s car because she had been limping and wanted to tell marshals that she was withdrawing. GPS data later showed the car covered one of those miles in one minute and 40 seconds.
“When I got to the checkpoint I told them I was pulling out and that I had been in the car, and they said ‘you will hate yourself if you stop’,” Dr Zakrzewski said. “I agreed to carry on in a non-competitive way. I made sure I didn’t overtake the runner in front when I saw her as I didn’t want to interfere with her race.”
Zakrzewski, who finished 14th in the 2014 Commonwealth Games marathon and has set records in the UK over 100 and 200 miles, admitted she was wrong to pose for pictures and to accept a wooden trophy and medal when she crossed the line.
However she claimed that arriving from Australia the night before had left her jetlagged and unable to think straight. “I made a massive error accepting the trophy and should have handed it back,” she said. “I was tired and jetlagged and felt sick. I hold my hands up, I should have handed them back and not had pictures done but I was feeling unwell and spaced out and not thinking clearly.”
Wayne Drinkwater, the director of the GB Ultras race, confirmed that Zakrzewski had been disqualified “having taken vehicle transport during part of the route”.
“The matter is now with the Trail Running Association and, in turn, UK Athletics as the regulatory bodies,” he added.
Yet despite widespread anger in the ultrarunning community, the Guardian has learned that Zakrzewski may yet escape further sanction as UK Athletics and Scottish Athletics are yet to agree on who has jurisdiction over her disciplinary case given she is no longer an elite funded athlete.
In spring 2021, King County Metro supervisor Daniel Fisseha asked his colleague, Berhanemeskal Gebreselassie, to print something for him from his computer. He made the request in Amharic; both men are originally from Ethiopia.
On May 5 that year, their boss, Riceda Stewart, called the two longtime employees into her office. She told them that she and her superior, Dennis Lock, had received a complaint from an operator, who reported feeling uncomfortable with their use of their native language. Stewart told them they were not “presenting and acting like a professional,” according to an investigation conducted by Metro’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity. Going forward, if they wanted to speak Amharic, they should do so only in a private room, they were told.
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That act was hostile and discriminatory, the EEO investigation concluded, creating “an atmosphere of inferiority, isolation and intimidation.” By implementing such a rule specifically targeted to two Amharic speakers, Metro was sending an “overt” message “that their national origin identities made people uncomfortable and were not appropriate in the workplace, statements that are subjectively and objectively offensive and discriminatory.”
The men, the report concluded, had grounds to sue.
With the damning EEO report in hand, the two men filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court last month, asking for damages and attorney’s fees determined in court, and that Metro adopt policies against language discrimination. The case was recently reassigned to federal court, in the Western District of Washington.
“Our native language is in our DNA,” said Gebreselassie. “That’s our blood. That’s our culture.”
The basic arc of events is largely undisputed. Lawyers with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office acknowledge that Fisseha and Gebreselassie were told they should “be more discreet and use a separate room when speaking in Amharic to each other” in response to a complaint.
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Defendant Stewart and Lock also acknowledged to EEO investigators that they’d received the complaint and had told Fisseha and Gebreselassie to use a private room when speaking Amharic, although they disagree on who came up with the plan. Their focus, they said, was on making the operator feel more comfortable.
But in making that their goal, the two bosses failed to consider how it would make Fisseha and Gebreselassie feel.
“Mr. Lock and Ms. Stewart may very well have been thinking about [the complainant’s] comfort when they agreed to this course of action, but the comfort they wanted to provide was discriminatory against employees who speak a language other than English,” the EEO report concluded.
In a statement, Metro spokesperson Jeff Switzer said the agency works to build a healthy environment free from harassment or discrimination.
“It is not, nor has it ever been, Metro’s policy, practice or culture to require people to speak only English,” Switzer said. “We see this as a single, regrettable incident, rather than a rule, and we took swift steps to correct the behavior with the supervisors, including requiring appropriate King County training.”
Fisseha and Gebreselassie immigrated to the Seattle area from Ethiopia in the early 2000s, becoming American citizens several years later. Both started working for Metro as bus operators in 2008 before becoming supervisors — training and scheduling drivers — roughly 10 years after that.
Getting to that level is a source of pride, particularly for Gebreselassie. As an immigrant, he said he has a chip on his shoulder.
“We have to prove ourselves every day,” he said.
After the meeting, the two men requested that the policy be put into writing, which they never received. Shortly after, they filed a complaint with the EEO office.
Fisseha and Gebreselassie allege they were retaliated against for complaining — spurring them to take leaves of absence and later move to different departments with less desirable shifts, including overnight. In its response to the complaint in federal court, Metro denies any retaliation occurred and said the choice to move departments was the two men’s, pointing out that Fisseha returned to work under Stewart again in 2022.
Regardless, Fisseha and Gebreselassie said they were racked with anxiety following the interaction. Rumor spread among Metro’s diverse staff, giving workers pause whenever they slipped into their native languages.
“Sometimes you start talking and you have that feeling of, ‘Well now I have to always watch where I’m at’,” said Gebreselassie.
Ethiopians have lived in the Seattle region since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when about two dozen university students and their spouses came to the United States to earn college degrees with the intention of returning home. That changed with the deposition of the country’s emperor in 1974, sparking the Ethiopian Civil War and leaving Ethiopian students and urban professionals abroad stranded and fearful of returning.
With the passage of The Refugee Act of 1980, thousands of Ethiopians and Eritreans would ultimately settle in the Seattle metropolitan area as immigrants and refugees fleeing war, political persecution, widespread drought and famine.
Today, about 22,000 people of Ethiopian ancestry live in the Seattle area, according to 2021 Census Bureau estimates. Census Bureau data published in 2015 puts the number of people here who speak Amharic at home at about 14,575, with about 46% reporting they speak English less than “very well.”
With such a large population in Seattle, and presence within Metro, being treated like a “cigarette smoker” for using Amharic, was demeaning, the men said.
“I don’t think they respect East Africans,” said Fisseha. “We work hard like everybody else, but at the end of the day, we don’t get respect.”
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 