Massachusetts church goes up in flames after being struck by lightning, after it was reported they were celebrating pride month.
A historic Massachusetts church went up in flames after being struck by lightning, fire officials said Saturday.
The 160-year-old church in the town of Spencer, about 10 miles west of Worcester, was engulfed and is a total loss, church and fire officials said.
The First Congregational Church had stood on that spot since its predecessor was also consumed by fire in 1862. According to church history, a building of worship has been on that land since 1743.
“We have recently experienced a tragic fire and devastating loss of our building,” First Congregational now headlines its website, with an announcement of where services will be relocated to for the time being.
The dramatic demise of the church was caught on video as fire devoured the structure, sending the steeple toppling into the body of the building and crushing the walls.
There were no injuries. Nonetheless residents watched in horror as nearly 100 firefighters from about 20 departments battled the blaze.
❖ 150-Year-Old Stained-Glass Window Reveals Jesus Christ With Dark Skin, Stirring Questions About Race
2000 Year Old Ethiopian Christianity With The Dark-Skinned Jesus
Ethiopia’s oldest icon (1370-98) made in Byzantium, or Siena
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.”
🛑 Two weeks ago we had powerful Earthquakes in MEXICO Baja CaliFornia + IDNONESIA + TURKEY (MIT – IMF)
🛑 Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston-Cambridge MA interested in the The Biblical Ark of The Covenant? Boston is the cradle of modern America. There is even ‘The Ark of The Covenant Spiritual Baptist Church’ in Boston.
🛑 International Monetary Fund finances the Turkey friendly Antichrist fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia to wage a genocidal Jihad on the Keepers of the powerful biblical Ark of The Covenant in Axum, Ethiopia.
🛑 The leaders of MEXICO, INDONESIA, TURKEY, plus USA attended
the 17th G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia a week ago. ETHIOPIA is Satnael’s goal.
🛑 A few weeks ago President Biden Pardons Two Thanksgiving Turkeys
💭 The agency’s aid into Tigray has been suspended since an internal investigation – due to deliver its findings any day – was launched in May.
The senior leadership of the World Food Programme in Ethiopia has resigned, shortly before the findings of a probe into the misappropriation of food aid in the country are due to be made public, according to several sources who witnessed the resignations.
The exact link between the resignations and the probe weren’t immediately clear, but neither WFP nor its aid partners in Ethiopia responded to several requests for comment in time for publication.
WFP country director Claude Jibidar and his deputy, Jennifer Bitonde, tendered their resignations at an all-staff meeting on 2 June, sources present at Friday’s “emotional” gathering told The New Humanitarian, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information.
The move followed an internal investigation launched last month over reports that significant amounts of food meant for hungry people in Ethiopia’s war-affected northern Tigray region had been sold on the commercial market.
Both WFP and USAID suspended food distributions in Tigray – where millions are dependent on relief – pending the results of the internal inquiry. WFP said it needed to “ensure that vital aid will reach its intended recipients”. Food deliveries, suspended in May, are yet to resume.
WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain, who took the helm of the UN agency in April, said last month that those “found responsible must be held accountable” for food theft.
Both the Ethiopian federal government and the interim regional government in Tigray vowed to cooperate with WFP’s probe.
“We briefed [a US government] delegation on the progress in the investigation into allegations of aid diversion,” Getachew Reda, the head of the interim government in Tigray, tweeted today. “We have shared highlights of findings & reassured them that we will make the findings public & hold those responsible to account very soon.”
An aid worker in Ethiopia, who asked for anonymity so they could speak freely, told The New Humanitarian the pause in food distribution has caused “immense suffering” after two years of war, especially as Tigray enters the lean season ahead of the next harvest.
“There have always been delays in food deliveries, and diversions,” the aid worker said. “Clearly the system is broken.”
Jibidar, only appointed last year, announced his resignation “with immediate effect” at last week’s meeting, multiple WFP sources said. They told The New Humanitarian that numbers in need had allegedly “been inflated”.
The initial findings of the internal probe suggest that food aid diversion goes beyond Tigray and includes the drought-affected Somali region, WFP insiders said. More resignations are expected in the coming weeks as the Ethiopian country team is overhauled, they told The New Humanitarian, again speaking on condition of anonymity.
More than 20 million people in Ethiopia are affected by conflict, violence, and natural disasters, including 13 million people suffering the consequences of severe drought in the south and east of the country.
💭 Let’s Connect the dots…the following individuals and bodies had been ‘randomly and coincidentally’ awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee – four years in a row:
☆ 2019 Nobel Peace Prize to evil Abiy Ahmed Ali for a Pact of War vs Orthodox Ethiopia
☆ 2020 Nobel Peace Prize to WFP in anticipation of the following genocidal war (Nov. 2020) against Orthodox Tigray, Ethiopia
☆ 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Dmitry Muratov of Orthodox Russia in anticipation of the coming war (Feb. 2022) between the two orthodox brothers; Russia-Ukraine
☆ 2022 Nobel Peace Prize to Ales Bialiatski from Belarus and the Russian human rights organisation, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties. – in anticipation of the coming nuclear war between the three orthodox brothers; Russia + Ukraine + Belarus
💭 They Promised Not To Expand NATO ONE Inch Eastwards In Exchange For Allowing The Reunification Of Germany
👉 NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard
Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
Slavic Studies Panel Addresses “Who Promised What to Whom on NATO Expansion?”
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.” The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”
President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests; but neither Bush nor Gorbachev at that point (or for that matter, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) expected so soon the collapse of East Germany or the speed of German unification.
The first concrete assurances by Western leaders on NATO began on January 31, 1990, when West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the bidding with a major public speech at Tutzing, in Bavaria, on German unification. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn (see Document 1) informed Washington that Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’” The Bonn cable also noted Genscher’s proposal to leave the East German territory out of NATO military structures even in a unified Germany in NATO.
This latter idea of special status for the GDR territory was codified in the final German unification treaty signed on September 12, 1990, by the Two-Plus-Four foreign ministers (see Document 25). The former idea about “closer to the Soviet borders” is written down not in treaties but in multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and the highest-level Western interlocutors (Genscher, Kohl, Baker, Gates, Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major, Woerner, and others) offering assurances throughout 1990 and into 1991 about protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in new European security structures. The two issues were related but not the same. Subsequent analysis sometimes conflated the two and argued that the discussion did not involve all of Europe. The documents published below show clearly that it did.
The “Tutzing formula” immediately became the center of a flurry of important diplomatic discussions over the next 10 days in 1990, leading to the crucial February 10, 1990, meeting in Moscow between Kohl and Gorbachev when the West German leader achieved Soviet assent in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east. The Soviets would need much more time to work with their domestic opinion (and financial aid from the West Germans) before formally signing the deal in September 1990.
The conversations before Kohl’s assurance involved explicit discussion of NATO expansion, the Central and East European countries, and how to convince the Soviets to accept unification. For example, on February 6, 1990, when Genscher met with British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, the British record showed Genscher saying, “The Russians must have some assurance that if, for example, the Polish Government left the Warsaw Pact one day, they would not join NATO the next.”
Having met with Genscher on his way into discussions with the Soviets, Baker repeated exactly the Genscher formulation in his meeting with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on February 9, 1990; and even more importantly, face to face with Gorbachev.
Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”
Afterwards, Baker wrote to Helmut Kohl who would meet with the Soviet leader on the next day, with much of the very same language. Baker reported: “And then I put the following question to him [Gorbachev]. Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position? He answered that the Soviet leadership was giving real thought to all such options [….] He then added, ‘Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable.’” Baker added in parentheses, for Kohl’s benefit, “By implication, NATO in its current zone might be acceptable.”
Well-briefed by the American secretary of state, the West German chancellor understood a key Soviet bottom line, and assured Gorbachev on February 10, 1990: “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.” (See Document 9) After this meeting, Kohl could hardly contain his excitement at Gorbachev’s agreement in principle for German unification and, as part of the Helsinki formula that states choose their own alliances, so Germany could choose NATO. Kohl described in his memoirs walking all night around Moscow – but still understanding there was a price still to pay.
All the Western foreign ministers were on board with Genscher, Kohl, and Baker. Next came the British foreign minister, Douglas Hurd, on April 11, 1990. At this point, the East Germans had voted overwhelmingly for the deutschmark and for rapid unification, in the March 18 elections in which Kohl had surprised almost all observers with a real victory. Kohl’s analyses (first explained to Bush on December 3, 1989) that the GDR’s collapse would open all possibilities, that he had to run to get to the head of the train, that he needed U.S. backing, that unification could happen faster than anyone thought possible – all turned out to be correct. Monetary union would proceed as early as July and the assurances about security kept coming. Hurd reinforced the Baker-Genscher-Kohl message in his meeting with Gorbachev in Moscow, April 11, 1990, saying that Britain clearly “recognized the importance of doing nothing to prejudice Soviet interests and dignity.”
The Baker conversation with Shevardnadze on May 4, 1990, as Baker described it in his own report to President Bush, most eloquently described what Western leaders were telling Gorbachev exactly at the moment: “I used your speech and our recognition of the need to adapt NATO, politically and militarily, and to develop CSCE to reassure Shevardnadze that the process would not yield winners and losers. Instead, it would produce a new legitimate European structure – one that would be inclusive, not exclusive.”
Baker said it again, directly to Gorbachev on May 18, 1990 in Moscow, giving Gorbachev his “nine points,” which included the transformation of NATO, strengthening European structures, keeping Germany non-nuclear, and taking Soviet security interests into account. Baker started off his remarks, “Before saying a few words about the German issue, I wanted to emphasize that our policies are not aimed at separating Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union. We had that policy before. But today we are interested in building a stable Europe, and doing it together with you.”
😈 Antichrist Turks in Kosovo, Serbia, what could possibly go wrong?! It will be like the year 1389 all over again.
Serbian Orthodox Christians fought for 500 years against the Antichrist Ottoman Turks – now, it seems that “another round” is about to start courtesy of Antichrist NATO.
Just recently Serbia sent Turkey massive help during the earthquake disaster and those people remained there to help Turkey save their civilians while other NATO countries sent help that went away in a few days. Turkey is now being super grateful for Serbia helping them more then their military allies that they now sending “peace Keeping troops” to help Serbia by massacring them in Kosovo so that Muslim Albanians don’t get them. Woe to Antichrist Turkey & NATO!
“Anyone who knows the history of the Balkans knows that Kosovo is Serbia. It was Serbian hands that cleared the fields of Kosovo, built the villages and roads, and created the great Holy Places to the glory of God, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Saints. And it was Serbian blood that defended these treasures against the Turks in 1389 and again in 1912: against the Austrians in 1915; against the Fascist Germans, Italians, and Albanians during WWII.” — Professor Hatchet
👉 Please go and read this very informative article:
It is in light of this dark reality that we desire to write on the tragedy of the Balkans, on the rise of Albanian nationalism. A torrent of blood, the disregard for humanity — these things are what we will be discussing in this present article on the origins and rotten fruit of Albanian nationalism. For years we wrote of Ukrainian nationalism and history before the outbreak of war in 2022; and for years we have been writing on the turbulence in the Balkans, because we believe that — like with Ukraine — a storm of blood awaits the land of former Yugoslavia.
So many horrors occurred in the Balkans and in Kosovo, from massacres, mass kidnappings, and even kidnapping people to tear out their insides for organs trafficking. Let us go into detail on this nightmare. Let us go into detail on the tragedy of Serbia, how this nation was forced to go through a scourge of endless torment at the hands of bloodthirsty wolves. We shall read of the brutalities done to the Serbs by bandits; of the Albanian Golgotha when hundreds of thousands of people had to go through the callous and ruthless terrain of Albania and be incessantly ambushed by murderous and thieving gangs of killers; of the atrocities done by the Austro-Hungarian empire to the Serbian population in World War One; of the cruel massacres that were done by the Albanian fascists who killed for Nazi Germany, and of the crimes done by the Kosovo Liberation Army in the late 1990s. This is the roots of Albanian nationalism and tragedy of the Serbian nation.
From 1875 to 1878, there was a conflict known as the “Eastern Crisis”. On one side you had the Orthodox Alliance — Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece — backed by Russia; and on the other you had the Ottoman Empire who had their most tenacious defenders, the Albanians. On December 13th of 1877, the Serbs and Montenegrins declared war on the Ottoman Empire and were backed by the Russian Army. Albanians (called Shiptars at that time) unleashed a reign of terror against Serbs at this time. Shiptars slaughtered them, raped women and girls, forced them to work on Sundays and during major holidays, robbed Serbian churches and monasteries and committed various other atrocities. On June 23rd, 1880, the League of Prizren (whose origins will be discussed below) sentenced to death and executed fourteen prominent Serbs from Prizren. Anti-Serbian violence was the result of Anti-Serbian propaganda orchestrated by the Great Powers through their operating intelligence centers in the territory of Kosovo and Metohija. This resulted in the mass exodus of 400,000 Serbs from their old country from the Serbian-Turkish War in 1876 till the beginning of the Balkan Wars in 1912. About 1,500 Serbian families left Kosovo and Metohija in the period from 1878 to 1883.
— The Albanian pursuit for autonomy was supported by Western Europeans
— When NATO was bombing Serbia for seventy-eight days, NATO and the KLA acted as allies.
“Germany insisted on a very rapid breakup of Yugoslavia without any preparation” wrote Noam Chomsky on the conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s. “In fact, Germany insisted that it was going to go through it alone if necessary, which means Europe had to go along.” The Germans would back the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which was led by the sons and grandsons of those very SS Skanderberg officers who committed the horrors in Serbia and Montenegro. The apple did not fall far from the tree, neither for the Germans nor the Albanians. The mission of the KLA was the same as their nazi predecessor: “Greater Albania.” The strategy of the KLA was simple: “assassination of Muslims who do not cooperate, assassination of Serbian police, and a reign of terror against Orthodox Christians.”
❖ What Did Serbian Tennis Superstar Novax Djokovic Say About The Kosovo Protests?
❖ Orthodox Christian Serbia & NATO-Muslim Kosovo on The Verge of War
💭 Tell Me Who Your Friends Are And I Will Tell You Who You Are!
☆ Roman Catholics and Muslims were Allies since the First Crusade. (No wonder ‘The Second Vatican Council’)
The conquest of the Byzantine metropolis Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in May 1453. When Ottoman Sultan Mehmet conquered Constantinople in 1453, his first destination was Haghia Sophia, the towering seat of Orthodox Christianity. In front of what was then the largest church in the world, he knelt, sprinkled soil on his turban as a sign of humility and recited the Muslim prayer of faith, turning the church into a mosque: “There is no Allah-god but Allah-god, and Mohammed is his prophet.”. The new Antichrist Sultan Erdogan did the same to Hagia Sophia two years ago.
When the Orthodox Church broke away from Rome over the issue of papal authority in 1054, Constantinople became the undisputed political and religious center of the Greek-speaking world.
The city was sacked in 1204 by Western Catholic crusaders, cementing the split between Catholic west and Orthodox east.
In 2004, the late Pope John Paul expressed “disgust and pain” for the sacking of the city by the Fourth Crusade.
☆ Protestantism and ☪ Islam were allies during the early-16th century when the Ottoman Empire, expanding in the Balkans, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. The Turks and Protestants imported the Galla-Oromo tribe from Madagascar to the Horn of Africa to use them in their Jihad on Orthodox Christians of Ethiopia. Aḥmad Grāñ and The 16th Century Jihad In Ethiopia is repeated today in the exact same manner.
Ethiopia: The ‘revenge Jihad’ was sought and pre-planned a 126 years ago – after the defeat of Italian Romans at the battle of Adwa, Tigray, Ethiopia on March 1, 1896 .
Almost two years ago, with the meticulous knowledge of the C.I.A and State department, Anti-christian Jihadist nations and organizations strategically displaced millions of Orthodox Christians from Western Tigray – so that they could be gathered together in such a concentration camp like here in Shire. Now they are attempting to massacre them. All pre-planned by The UN + USA + Europe + UAE + Israel + Egypt + Oromos + Amharas + TPLF — and God forbid, could be finished within short time like Hitler’s Auschwitz and Dachau concentration and extermination camps.
UN + America & Europe allow their proxies; the Islamo-Protestant Perpetrators (Fascist Oromo Regimes of Ethiopia and Eritrea) to commit crimes against Ancient Orthodox Christians of Ethiopia.
💭 In 1999 the US + Europe (NATO) did the same thing directly against Orthodox Christian Serbia to help Albanian and Turkish Muslims – ‘to avenge’ the death of 45 Albanian Muslim terrorists.
💭 Senator Joe Biden, in 1999, bragged “I suggested bombing of Belgrade. I suggested that American pilots go there and destroy all bridges on the Drina”.
The 78 days of air strikes lasted from 24 March 1999 to 10 June 1999. The bombs kept falling even on Serbia’s Easter – called Pascha – which is the holiest day of the Orthodox Christian year. NATO bombed innocent Serbians with Depleted Uranium because they killed 45 Albanian terrorists?! Mind boggling!
In this archived clip, for example, Joe Biden said in a fiery speech, “I will continue with every fiber in my being to keep America involved with troops that can shoot and kill….”
❖ On May 28, we commemorate Saint Elesbaan (Kaleb), King of Ethiopia.
The sixth-century King Kāleb is one of a few African historical characters that have left a visible trace in European art and literature. Venerated by the Catholic Church as Saint Elesbaan, he is frequently present in pre-modern and modern literature and iconography.
👑 King Kaleb of Ethiopia’s Axum — St. Elesbaan(አፄ ካሌብ) : The Black Saint Who Embodied Christianity for the African Masses
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 