Notre Dame cathedral in Paris engulfed by devastating fire

**headhunter** · 17-04-2019, 09:10 AM

who's TO BLAME,everyone knows QUASIMODO had a chip on his shoulder.he wont be ringing the bells anymore.

**Maanaam** · 17-04-2019, 10:56 AM

Very sobering when you think of this: "Construction of the cathedral began in 1163, at the dawning of the age of the medieval power of throne and altar. We think of it as a massive sandstone edifice, but the internal structure required no fewer than 13,000 mature trees. Many of them were once saplings in the tenth century."

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/artic...nTRMNWJfCHIJLM

**Klondyke** · 17-04-2019, 01:44 PM

There are many comments on FB, asking whether similar concerns/sympathy were expressed when 20 years ago were burned down many christian churches by Albanian Kosovo terrorists, see e.g.

https://www.facebook.com/malagurski/...56694871080518

https://www.facebook.com/milica.djur...15688705343028

**NamPikToot** · 17-04-2019, 02:07 PM

These Billionaires aren't stupid. They jumped on this straight away, of course 90% or so will be tax deductible so will end up being footed by the French Tax payer ... great spin

**jabir** · 17-04-2019, 04:20 PM

You don't become a billionaire by being stupid.

**Pragmatic** · 17-04-2019, 05:01 PM

Originally Posted by jabir

You don't become a billionaire by being stupid.

Amen. I've said that about Trump.

**Pragmatic** · 17-04-2019, 05:03 PM

Why wasn't the place insured?

**baldrick** · 17-04-2019, 05:15 PM

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Why wasn't the place insured?

the companies doing renovations should have had insurance

**Lostandfound** · 17-04-2019, 05:39 PM

They would have insurance. However the French government is looking desperate to avoid the sort of meaningful forensic analysis of the real cause of this fire that a loss adjuster would seek.

**NamPikToot** · 17-04-2019, 06:14 PM

The idiot midget has promised it completed in 5 years..no assessment, no plan and agreement they are putting it back authentically nothing just a political sound bite to deflect from the mess the country is in.

**Pragmatic** · 17-04-2019, 07:37 PM

Originally Posted by NamPikToot

political sound bite to deflect from the mess the country is in.

France in a mess? I'm surprised they haven't blamed the UK and Brexit.

**NamPikToot** · 17-04-2019, 07:42 PM

Wait...once the 13 year old who's business was renovation and keeping the building safe is found to have caused the mess the French Dwarf will be casting around to try to find an outside influence same as the Thai default to the Burmese - its bound to be Farage

**baldrick** · 17-04-2019, 08:19 PM

Originally Posted by NamPikToot

its bound to be Farage

fcking chitty should be high on the list of suspects - fcukin dodgy renovations r us

**NamPikToot** · 17-04-2019, 09:07 PM

Well he's in Spain or is it the Canaries, so it may be that the Expiatori de la Sagrada Família could mysteriously collapse with a catastrophic defect.. Chit

**Cujo** · 17-04-2019, 10:03 PM

Originally Posted by Lostandfound

They would have insurance. However the French government is looking desperate to avoid the sort of meaningful forensic analysis of the real cause of this fire that a loss adjuster would seek.

Why would that be.?

**David48atTD** · 17-04-2019, 11:50 PM

Originally Posted by Lostandfound

They would have insurance. However the French government is looking desperate to avoid the sort of meaningful forensic analysis of the real cause of this fire that a loss adjuster would seek.

According to Fox News (and they're never wrong

) that the renovating company had public liability insurance but, one assumes nothing more.

Further, the French Government a couple hundred years ago adopted the building as the equivalent of being a National Treasure and France
'self-insures' these type of buildings/monuments.

So, essentially no 'commercial' insurance ... the French people will pay.

**David48atTD** · 18-04-2019, 01:04 AM

Good article here ...

Notre Dame cathedral in Paris engulfed by devastating fire-screenshot_2019-04-18-above-within-see

**fishlocker** · 18-04-2019, 01:08 AM

Sad, it was on the bucket list.

**jabir** · 18-04-2019, 08:52 AM

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

France in a mess? I'm surprised they haven't blamed the UK and Brexit.

Putin's a popular flavour.

**Pragmatic** · 18-04-2019, 09:03 AM

Originally Posted by David48atTD

So, essentially no 'commercial' insurance ... the French people will pay.

But if it's found that the renovation company were the cause of the fire then the company must have a liability cover?

**TizMe** · 18-04-2019, 10:55 AM

“I know a lot of you are really upset about the Notre Dame fire in Paris and I’m really sad, too. To see something so beautiful and so carefully constructed be damaged by forces out of your control is very painful.

As a scientist who studies species that are going extinct right now, this is the feeling I grapple with more often than I’d like.

The irreplaceable work of art that I worship is nature and to watch it senselessly crumble to the ground every day hurts my heart. I highly respect your feelings about what happened today and I hope the parallelI described can help you better understand how many of the people who have devoted their lives to conservation feel quite often.

We know you get tired of us shouting about species going extinct and we’re sorry for the broken record but we’re surrounded by burning cathedrals built across millennia and no one seems to care.”

~Jonathan Kolby (National Geographic)

**Klondyke** · 18-04-2019, 03:17 PM

Thirteenth Century Palestinian mosque 'converted to nightclub' in Israel

A centuries-old Palestinian mosque in the northern Safed district of Israel has been converted into a bar, al-Quds al-Arabi reported Wednesday.

Al-Ahmar Mosque has been repurposed several times since 1948 - first into a Jewish school, then an election campaigns centre, then a clothing shop and now a bar and events hall.

Khair Tabari, secretary of Safed and Tiberias Islamic Endowment, has been trying to rescue the mosque for years.

He has requested for the mosque to be returned to the endowment and is awaiting a ruling from a Nazareth court.

The mosque - its name changed from al-Ahmar mosque to Khan al-Ahmar, was turned into a bar and wedding hall by a firm affiliated with the Israeli Safed municipality, reported al-Quds al-Arabi.

"I felt dizzy when I noticed the vandalism inside the mosque, as can be seen by the remains of Qu'ranic verses which were removed from the pulpit and replaced by the Ten Commandments in Hebrew," Tabari told al-Quds al-Arabi.

The mosque, built in 1276, has great historical and architectural value, according to historian Dr. Mustafa Abbasi.

"Al-Ahmar Mosque derives its name from its red stones. Today, it is used in various ways but not as a prayer space for Muslims," the Safed native said.

The other historical mosques in Safed have similar stories. The Greek mosque, built in 1319, was transformed into an art gallery in which praying is forbidden

Thousands of Palestinians - including the family of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - were uprooted when they fled Safad in 1948, before Jewish paramilitary forces took control. There is no significant Arab population today.

"I visited Safed before, once," President Abbas told Israeli media. "But I want to see Safed. It's my right to see it, but not to live there."

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/ne...club-in-israel

**jabir** · 19-04-2019, 03:14 PM

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

But if it's found that the renovation company were the cause of the fire then the company must have a liability cover?

"All I can tell you right now is that at the start of the fire, absolutely none of the employees of my company was present on site," said Julien Le Bras, adding that all employees of his company, Europe Echafaudage, participated in the inquiry "without any reservation".

https://www.lejdd.fr/Societe/notre-d...nquete-3893032

An observer on the scene in France, Maxime Lépante, also writes:

One of my friends sent me an email concerning the security on the roof of Notre-Dame. She has a diploma in Art History and studied in the “Ecole du Louvre” (“Louvre School”, where students learn art history and restoration processes): “I visited the framing of Notre Dame with architects of the “Bâtiments de France” (“Buildings of France”, the highest rank for an architect in France), some years ago. This 13th century timber frame was extremely protected. Each intervention is always accompanied by historians, architects, experts; no work is envisaged without extreme caution; no source of heat, no torch, no electrical apparatus is allowed; a high-performance alarm system is in place; and very strict supervision of all people allowed there. I think we will eventually learn that this was arson.

Notre-Dame : « Les travaux n'avaient pas encore débuté, seuls les échafaudages étaient en cours de montage » - Fdesouche

‘The work had not started yet, only the scaffolding was being assembled,'” translated from “Notre-Dame: ‘Les travaux n’avaient pas encore débuté, seuls les échafaudages étaient en cours de montage,'” Fdesouche.com, April 16, 2019

Les églises, victimes d'un inquiétant vandalisme

Central Criminal Intelligence Service (SCRC) of the gendarmerie noted that from 2016 to 2018 there had been thousands of cases of church vandalism, peaking in 2017 with 1,045 cases, Le Figaro reports.

According to the French Ministry of the Interior, when cemeteries and other sites are taken into consideration, the number of acts of vandalism rose to 1,063 in 2018.

Earlier this year, in one week alone France saw twelve churches vandalised, including attackers attempting to set fire to the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris.

In Nimes, an even more heinous attack occurred, with vandals smearing faeces on the wall of the church of Notre-Dame des Enfants and stealing objects from the altar.

-----

Imho the French authorities would love to confirm it was one of the contractor firms, having blamed them from day one with zero evidence. And wouldn't surprise me one bit if they attempt to select or tamper with evidence that would otherwise point to arson.

I go with arson, in lieu of further evidence either way from this most 'thorough' investigation.

**harrybarracuda** · 19-04-2019, 06:22 PM

I think you should be grateful that it's being paid for, otherwise the paedos would be tapping the poor of the Phillippines, Mexico and the other impoverished countries they leech off.

**OhOh** · 25-04-2019, 11:53 AM

Rich give cash for Notre Dame, Yellow Vests demand money to rebuild society. What would Jesus do?

Notre Dame cathedral in Paris engulfed by devastating fire-5cc05ab6fc7e937e128b4597-jpg

Notre Dame cathedral in Paris engulfed by devastating fire-5cc05ab6fc7e937e128b4597-jpg

"The Notre Dame fire in Paris has triggered an exercise in moral cleansing by people who know the price of everything and value of nothing. The fire destroyed a significant section of the late 12th century religious and cultural landmark, and in its wake has thrown up questions surrounding the role of religion and the value placed on cultural heritage in societies riven by class privilege and class oppression.

To put it another way, billionaires and corporate CEOs discovering their inner Jesus Christ is one of the more unedifying sights you will see, yet this is the sight we have been treated to over the sad plight to befall this internationally renowned landmark.

From the Washington Post, for example, we learn that “Even before the smoke had cleared, luxury goods magnate Francois-Henri Pinault announced his family would donate 100 million euros ($112 million) to the effort [to rebuild Notre Dame]. Not to remain on the sidelines, his rival Bernard Arnault — the chief executive of LVMH and the richest man in Europe — pledged twice that amount on Tuesday morning. The Bettencourt Meyers family, which controls L’Oreal, quickly matched that pledge. And Patrick Pouyanne, chief of executive of French oil giant Total, offered another $112 million.”

Hurling an inconvenient truth into the midst of this gushing outpouring of billionaire and corporate largesse is Philippe Martinez, head of the France’s CGT trade union. Martinez makes the point that “If they can give tens of millions to rebuild Notre Dame, then they should stop telling us there is no money to help with the social emergency.”

The social emergency he’s referring to concerns the plight of France’s economically disadvantaged – the poor, unemployed, low waged – who have been left behind at a time when President Macron, pejoratively disdained as ‘president of the rich’ by the tens of thousands of men and women who make up the Yellow Vests mass movement, continues to parade around the European and world stage. A leader so out of touch with his own people that his every word and gesture only succeeds in adding more fuel to the fire of popular discontent.

Cultural heritage is important and so is its preservation. This includes buildings of religious importance, such as Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Because whether our growing band of militant atheists care to acknowledge the fact or not, religion runs like an unbroken thread through human history. Even for non-believers, such as this writer, it nourishes our understanding of where we’ve been as a species, informing a sense of continuity and stability, both of which are non-negotiable factors in harnessing a semblance of social cohesion.

However, this being said, billionaires and global corporations are to the preservation of cultural heritage today what Attila the Hun was to tourism in his time. In other words, they stand as the very antithesis to such efforts. They are not and can never be part of the solution in a world in which crippling inequality and economic and social injustice has become normalised.

When we learn, for example, that half of England is owned by less than one percent of its population it is time, surely, to press reset.

When we have a situation in which more than a billion dollars is made readily available to rebuild a cathedral but nothing to rebuild broken countries, such as Syria, where countless churches and places of worship, located in some of the oldest Christian communities anywhere on the planet, were destroyed and desecrated by Salafi-jihadi hordes, it is time not only to press reset but to level a rage-filled j’accuse at Western governments, such as the French government, for their role in perpetuating the conflict with political and material support for various ‘rebel’ groups?

By the way, Jesus, changing tack for a moment, was a revolutionary – indeed a communist before the word was invented. Here, as proof, is one of the most well-known passages of the New Testament, lifted from the Gospel According to Luke:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.

Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.

But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger.

Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

This is not the message of peace and love with which Christianity is universally identified, but instead class anger of a kind you would associate with Marx’s Communist Manifesto. It demystifies poverty as a natural phenomenon or divinely ordained condition of human existence, placing it squarely on the terrain of the exploitation of one class by another in the name not of freedom but profit.

When fire swept through Grenfell Tower high-rise block of flats in London in 2017, killing 72 people, the rich and corporations were nowhere to be seen. There were no fundraising telethons on behalf of the survivors and no pledging of millions within days to ensure that they were properly and suitably rehoused.
Now, what does the Notre Dame Cathedral fire in Paris have to do with the Grenfell fire in London, I hear you ask?

Well, nothing, if you believe that rich and poor connotes a judgment of moral character in favour of the former and at the expense of the latter. And nothing, too, if you do not believe that the rich in all lands speak the same language of capital accumulation and profit, regardless of the human, social or environmental cost.

Jesus, were he alive today, would be more concerned at the plight of the victims and survivors of Grenfell than the fate of a cathedral in Paris; this on the basis of prioritising the living over the dead. In France, he would be adorned in a Yellow Vest, leading the Gilets Jaunes and being gassed and showered in rubber bullets by Macron’s riot police for his trouble.

Ultimately, the controversy over the response of the rich to the Notre Dame fire highlights the difference between shadow and substance; or if you prefer, form and content. The cathedral’s status as an invaluable part of France and Christianity’s cultural heritage cannot be gainsaid. In the wake of the fire it has also proved a potent symbol of the country’s lack of social cohesion and unity.

God, in his wisdom, works in mysterious ways."

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/457425-notr...-yellow-vests/

The money changers were once "thrown out of the temples" are they seeking a return?

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