♰ Rescue efforts are ongoing on Lake Tana in Ethiopia after a boat carrying Orthodox Christian pilgrims sank, following a possible collision with another vessel.
The passengers were travelling to attend the annual feast at the St. Kristos Semra when the accident occurred.
Witnesses say strong winds may have played a role in the collision, which led to water entering one of the boats and causing it to sink.
The incident comes years after a similar accident on the same lake claimed multiple lives during the same religious pilgrimage period.
♰ May the Souls of the faithfully departed, Rest in Peace. ♰
😇 The Life of Kristos Samra (ክርስቶስ ሠምራ)
“Gädlä Krəstos Śämra (The Life-Struggles of Krəstos Śämra [Christ
Delights in Her]), written in an Ethiopian monastery sometime between 1450 and 1508, is about a saintly woman who lived in the fifteenth century (no exact dates of her birth or death appear in her hagiography). The text gives a short overview of Krəstos Śämra’s life in the third person, but then proceeds in the first person as Krəstos Śämra describes a series of her religious visions, including one in which she attempts to reconcile Christ and Satan.
Although the text contains a few biographical details about her, it is more of an intellectual autobiography, the narrative of one woman’s philosophy and her belief in the possibilities for healing a broken world. As such, this text expands our understanding of the global female visionary tradition, which tends to be oriented more toward reconciliation than damnation.
Today, Krəstos Śämra is Ethiopia’s most popular female saint. Thousands attend her annual festival at the wealthy monastery she founded, at Gʷangʷət,on southeastern Lake Ṭana, in the Ethiopian highlands. Her festival day
is August 30; many online videos record the pilgrimages, hymns, and celebrations in her honor. Churches and monasteries in Ethiopia are named after her and devoted to her. She holds a special place in women’s hearts as
the saint most likely to help women conceive, give birth to a healthy child, and survive childbirth.
Krəstos Śämra’s name is also spelled in Latin letters as Christos Samra, Kirstos Semra, Krestos Samra,Kristos Samra, and Kristos Semra, all attempts to transcribe her proper name as it appears in the characters (called fidäl) of the ancient language of Gəˁəz: ክርስቶስ ሠምራ.
“Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?„
☆ Monday, May 18, 2026, Elon Musk from
Sodom and Gomorrah (Tel Aviv)
👹 Playing God and Blaspheming
Speaking at an international summit in Tel Aviv, tech billionaire Elon Musk made a striking claim about one of his most ambitious, and perhaps controversial, ventures. He described the work of his brain-chip company as approaching what he called “Jesus-level” technology.
The remarks, delivered at the Samson International Smart Mobility Summit, immediately drew global attention. Musk was referring to Neuralink, his company developing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). The technology aims to connect the human brain directly to digital systems.
☆ Thursday, March 19, 2026, Benjamin Netanyahu
from Sodom and Egypt (Jerusalem)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced significant backlash for stating that "Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan" during an English-language press conference regarding the ongoing war with Iran.
🥴 Note! Pope Leo XIV visited four African countries (Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon) including Muslim Algeria three weeks ago for eleven days.
On the other hand, there is a very surprising fact; that is; no Roman Catholic Pope has ever visited Ethiopia, the oldest Christian country in the world. Besides the Vatican Pope, no Russian Orthodox Patriarch, no Russian or Soviet leader, and no Tsar has ever visited Ethiopia, which is connected to the Russian people through Alexander Pushkin. The United States sent its first and last president in 2015. Like the jihadist New York City Mayor Mamdani, the East African Muslim Barack Hussein Obama. What is the secret?
👹 Genocidal Abiy Ahmed Ali: “I am a Muslim! Allah
Snackbar”
Ninety years
after its invasion of Ethiopia, Italy continues to honour the
perpetrators of crimes it should instead confront.
Ninety years ago, on 3 October 1935, Italian troops invaded Ethiopia,
opening one of the darkest chapters in modern history. Ethiopia,
uniquely independent when the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 started
the European ‘Scramble for Africa’, suddenly faced an assault by
a state determined to complete the colonial map.
The campaign was not a sideshow. It was the last large-scale European
colonial conquest in Africa — a deliberate war of aggression that
defied the League of Nations and shocked contemporaries. Italian
planes dropped mustard gas on soldiers and civilians alike. Entire
villages were bombed and burned; survivors were deported to camps.
Tens of thousands died.
Yet for decades, this invasion has remained at the margins of public
memory. Italians tend to recall the fall of fascism or the
devastation of the Second World War, while the Ethiopian war – and
earlier aggressions in Libya, Somalia and Eritrea – are still
dismissed as an embarrassing footnote. This year’s 90th anniversary
is unlikely to be treated differently.
The myth of
the ‘good Italian’
A central reason lies in the enduring myth of ‘italiani brava
gente’ — the belief that Italians were somehow ‘better’
colonisers. As the historian Angelo Del Boca has shown, this
narrative was cultivated from the very start of Italy’s expansion
in 1885. Governments and cultural institutions promoted the idea that
they brought roads, railways and architecture rather than chains and
massacres. For decades, textbooks framed Italy’s presence in Africa
as a civilising mission, while popular culture romanticised the
colonies as lands of adventure. Echoes of this narrative still
linger.
But the
story collapses under the weight of evidence.
The conquest of Ethiopia was meant to be Mussolini’s crowning
achievement: proof that a ‘new Roman Empire’ could be built in
the 20th century. Yet Italy’s imperial ambitions pre-dated fascism.
Liberal governments, with full backing from the monarchy, had seized
Eritrea and Somalia in the 1880s and 1890s; attempted and failed to
conquer Ethiopia in 1896 at Adwa; and in 1911 invaded Ottoman Libya,
carrying out mass deportations and pioneering aerial bombing of
civilians. These campaigns foreshadowed the brutality of the 1935
assault.
From
conquest to oppression
In 1935, Italian forces advanced from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland,
deploying tanks, aircraft and chemical weapons in violation of the
1925 Geneva Protocol. On 5 May 1936, Marshal Pietro Badoglio entered
Addis Ababa at the head of his victorious troops and proclaimed the
end of hostilities — yet the war was far from over. Less than a
quarter of Ethiopia’s territory had been occupied, and at least 100
000 soldiers loyal to Emperor Haile Selassie remained at arms. What
followed was a hidden war of resistance, largely suppressed by
censorship, that lasted until February 1937. The war is estimated to
have claimed the lives of around 70 000 Ethiopian soldiers and
between 120 000 and 200 000 civilians.
Italian control lasted until 1941, when Ethiopian resistance, British
intervention and the Second World War brought down Italian East
Africa.
Even as clashes continued, Mussolini declared the creation of Italian
East Africa, merging Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia into a single
colony, and crowned King Vittorio Emanuele III as Emperor of
Ethiopia.
Occupation was marked by systematic violence. The most infamous
episode was ‘Yekatit 12’, when reprisals after an assassination
attempt on viceroy Rodolfo Graziani left more than 30 000 civilians
dead. Villages were razed to the ground, populations deported and
forced into labour on infrastructure projects under brutal
conditions. Resistance was met with executions, mass imprisonment and
concentration camps where thousands died from disease and starvation.
Italian authorities dismantled traditional governance, imposing
language and culture in a bid to eliminate Ethiopian self-rule.
Italian control lasted until 1941, when Ethiopian resistance, British
intervention and the Second World War brought down Italian East
Africa. Haile Selassie was restored to the throne, but the scars of
occupation – physical, social and political – remained.
Silence and
denial
After 1945, Italians struggled to confront fascism’s crimes abroad.
Successive governments found it easier to stress Italy’s victimhood
under Nazism than its role as a colonial aggressor. Unlike Germany,
Italy never underwent a systematic reckoning with its imperial past.
This amnesia also reflects a deeper issue rooted in the post-war
period, when the Resistance was elevated to a founding myth of the
new Republic. The heroism of some 200 000 partisans and their
supporters allowed the country to reimagine fascism not as a national
project, but as a tragic aberration inflicted on Italians. In this
version of history, Italians emerged as victims, absolved from the
complicities that sustained two decades of dictatorship — a far cry
from the antifascist intellectual Piero Gobetti’s indictment of
fascism as ‘the autobiography of the nation’. This narrative,
however, left no room to acknowledge responsibilities for the crimes
committed during the occupation of Ethiopia and the other colonies.
The result is striking: public commemorations of the Ethiopian
invasion are minimal. When the subject surfaces, it is often
accompanied by nostalgia for roads, bridges or Art Deco buildings.
Public figures have even celebrated the modernist legacy of ‘our
architecture’, reflecting an aestheticised memory that sidelines
violence. The return of the Axum obelisk from Rome to Ethiopia in
2005, after decades of dispute, remains one of the few symbolic acts
of acknowledgement. When it was re-erected in 2008, critics, such as
then-minister Vittorio Sgarbi, opposed the restitution and, years
later, even encouraged attempts to ‘get it back’ on grounds of
alleged neglect, implying Italians would be better at preserving the
monument. Apart from Italian-Libyan diplomatic reparations in 2008 –
when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi apologised ‘for the suffering
inflicted during the colonial period’ and signed a treaty worth $5
billion in investments and compensation – Italy has never publicly
reconciled with its colonial violence through state apologies or
reparations. Debates exist in academia and among activists, but not
at the level of official national policy.
In a political climate where PM Meloni defends nationalist narratives
that echo fascist talking points, Italy continues to honour the
perpetrators of crimes it should instead confront.
However, remembering the Ethiopian war is not just an academic
exercise. It speaks directly to questions of historical
responsibility and the politics of memory in Europe. While statues of
imperial figures spark fierce debate across much of the Western
world, Italy’s colonial record is largely absent. Even the Black
Lives Matter wave had limited traction beyond 2020’s mass rallies.
Perhaps the most visible flashpoint was the statue of Indro
Montanelli in Milan – defaced in 2020 over his admitted ‘marriage’
to a 12-year-old Eritrean girl during the colonial war – which
triggered a culture-war backlash rather than a sustained reckoning;
the mayor refused to remove the monument.
Acknowledging this past would also give depth to Italy’s
contemporary relationship with Africa. Migration, trade and
development policy are all shaped by historical ties, whether
recognised or not. Pretending colonial ventures were benign does
nothing to build mutual respect. Ninety years after the invasion,
Italy does not need rituals of guilt, but it does need clarity. In a
political climate where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni defends
nationalist narratives that echo fascist talking points, Italy
continues to honour the perpetrators of crimes it should instead
confront. In 2012, the town of Affile inaugurated a monument to
Rodolfo Graziani, the viceroy who ordered the 1937 Addis Ababa
massacre, while nearby Filettino – home to the Graziani family –
still hosts a public park bearing his name, renovated with regional
funds as recently as 2017. Confronting the full reality of Italy’s
colonial past, and the violence it inflicted on others, is more
urgent than ever.
🔥Italians
Committed Terrible Crimes, Then Forgot Them: Addis Ababa Fascist
Massacre & Poison Gas 19 Feb 1937
M & Ms: Modi, Macron, Mohammad, Meloni all
travel to Addis Ababa to congratulate the genocidal PM of the
fascist Galla-Oromo Islamic Regime of Ethiopia, Black Mussolini
aka Abiy Ahmed, for massacring 2 million
Orthodox Christians.
