The war on western civilization continues: Nantes: Arson suspected in fire at Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul cathedral

Nantes: Arson suspected in fire at Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul cathedral

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Media captionThe blaze destroyed stained glass windows and the grand organ

A fire at the cathedral in the French city of Nantes is believed to have been started deliberately, prosecutors say.

Three fires were started at the site and an investigation into suspected arson is under way, Prosecutor Pierre Sennes said.

The blaze destroyed stained glass windows and the grand organ at the Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul cathedral, which dates from the 15th Century.

It comes a year after the devastating fire at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris.

But the local fire chief said the fire in Nantes had been contained and was "not a Notre-Dame scenario".

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"The damage is concentrated on the organ, which appears to be completely destroyed. The platform it is situated on is very unstable and risks collapsing," Laurent Ferlay told reporters.

The cathedral roof had not been touched by the blaze, he said.

President Emmanuel Macron has reacted, tweeting: "After Notre-Dame, the St Peter and St. Paul Cathedral is in flames. Support to the firemen who are taking all the risks to save the Gothic jewel."

The French fire service tweeted footage of the blaze.

Image Copyright @PompiersFR@POMPIERSFR

Report

The fire began in the early morning, with massive flames visible from outside the building. More than 100 firefighters brought it under control after several hours.

Mr Sennes said the national police would be involved in the investigation and a fire expert was travelling to Nantes

"When we arrive at a place where a fire has taken place, when you see three separate fire outbreaks, it's a question of common sense, you open an investigation," he said.

Newsagent Jean-Yves Burban said he heard a bang at about 07:30 local time (05:30 GMT) and saw flames when he went out to see what was happening.

"I am shook up because I've been here eight years and I see the cathedral every morning and evening. It's our cathedral and I've got tears in my eyes," he told Reuters.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionPeople gathered at the scene

This is not the first fire at the cathedral. It was damaged by Allied bombing in 1944, during World War Two, and then in 1972 its roof was largely destroyed. 

It was rebuilt 13 years later with a concrete structure replacing the wooden roof.

In 2015 a huge fire destroyed part of the 19th Century basilica of Saint-Donatien in Nantes.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionFirefighters urged people to avoid the area

Published by The Smithsonian. It's not white culture! It's an attack western culture. This white culture is the difference between the West and Africa

White radicals lead a black movement? Want to know who enforced Pol Pot's mass killings?

News photographer attacked by protesters ripping down statue of Columbus in Richmond to toss into lake

The group said Columbus was tied to the death of George Floyd 

Photo: SETH HERALD/AFP via Getty Images 

 CARLOS GARCIA

A local news reporter said his photographer was attacked as protesters ripped down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Richmond, Virginia.

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The protesters lugged the 8-foot statue to a nearby lake and tossed it in.
The incident occurred Tuesday at Byrd Park after protesters chanted "take it down," and marched down Arthur Ashe Boulevard.
When they returned, a group of protesters took down the statue. Some videos circulated on social media of the vandalism:
Before the vandalism on the statue, Richmond Indigenous Peoples' Society member Vanessa Bolin spoke to the crowd and connected Columbus to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
"This continent is built on the blood and the bones of our ancestors, but it is built off the backs and the sweat and the tears and the blood and the bones of Africans," Bolin said to the crowd. "We're not here to hijack your movement. We're here to stand in solidarity."

Brent Solomon, a reporter with NBC-12, said on social media that a photographer in his news crew was attacked at the protest.
"Violent protesters rip off Christoper Columbus statue, throw it into the water, attack our photographer," he tweeted, but offered no other details.
The Richmond-Times Dispatch reported no police presence at all during the vandalism and attack.

Here's more on statues coming down in Richmond:

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The Democratic congresswoman said: "We can't reform a system that is rotten."

Never let a crisis go to waste especially if race can be inserted. Xi is a very rich guy!

How coronavirus — a 'rich man's disease' — infected the poor

Shashank Bengali, Kate Linthicum, Victoria Kim

,

LA Times•May 8, 2020

A Kenyan health worker uses a nasal swab to test a man for COVID-19 in the Kawangware slums of the capital, Nairobi. (Luis Tato / AFP/Getty Images)

When it arrived in the unforgiving industrial towns of central Mexico, the sand-swept sprawl of northern Nigeria and the mazes of metal shanties in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, COVID-19 went by another name.

People called it a “rich man’s disease.”

Pandemics throughout history have been associated with the underprivileged, but in many developing countries the coronavirus was a high-class import — carried in by travelers returning from business trips in China, studies in Europe, ski vacations in the Rockies.

As infections initially concentrated in better neighborhoods, many poor and working-class people believed the disease wouldn’t touch them, as if something terrible but rarefied. The misperception was fed by elites, including the governor of Mexico’s Puebla state, Luis Miguel Barbosa, who said in March: “If you’re rich, you’re at risk, but if you’re poor, you’re not. The poor, we’re immune.”

By now it is clear that COVID-19 spares no one and disproportionately harms the hungry, the forgotten, those with preexisting illnesses and substandard health care.

But historians say it may be remembered as the first pandemic that spread, to a significant extent, from the affluent to the lowly — agitating class grievances in some of the world’s most unequal societies and adding a dark twist to a pandemic that has killed more than 270,000 people.

A lineup for charity food distribution in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Tuesday. (Marco Longari / AFP/Getty Images)

“At the very, very early stages it could be considered a rich man’s disease," said Joshua Loomis, an assistant professor of biology at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania and author of a history of epidemics. "But as we know, it didn’t take long to become entrenched among the poor, and that is where most pandemics gravitate.”

The rich have long erected barriers to insulate themselves — whether walls to hide slums in India or the gated communities and private jets favored among the wealthy in the United States. The well-off have been refining social distancing for years, and when contagion appears, societies’ first instinct has often been to target and sequester the poor.

Story continues

Germany forced to recognize the reality of Hezbollah behavior

Germany bans Hezbollah, raids mosques

Berlin (AFP) - Germany on Thursday completely banned Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement from carrying out activities on its soil, as police raided mosques and venues linked to the group.

Like the European Union, Germany had until now only outlawed Hezbollah's military wing while tolerating its political wing.

But in a shift immediately welcomed by the United States and Israel, the German interior ministry said it now considered the entire movement a "Shiite terrorist organisation".

"Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation deemed responsible for numerous attacks and kidnappings worldwide," Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told Germany's Bild daily.

The interior minister "has banned the operation of the group" in Germany with immediate effect, his spokesman tweeted.

"Even in times of crisis the rule of law is upheld," he wrote.

Raids were taking place in several places across the country, he added.

Dozens of police and special forces stormed mosques and associations linked to Hezbollah in Bremen, Berlin, Dortmund and Muenster in the early hours of the morning, German media reported.

The Al-Irshad mosque in Berlin was sealed off with at least 16 police vans parked outside, an AFP photographer saw. Masked police officers were seen walking in and out of the mosque.

Although Hezbollah has no official presence in Germany, security forces estimate it has roughly a thousand members in the country.

They are thought to use Germany as a safe haven to make plans, recruit sympathisers and raise funds, including through criminal activities.

The group's "criminal activities and plannings for attacks are also taking place on German soil," Seehofer told Bild.

He also recalled that Hezbollah has openly called for "the violent destruction" of the Israeli state.

"It's part of our historic responsibility that we use all means under the rule of law to act against this," he said, in a nod to Germany's responsibility for the Holocaust during World War II.

- 'Significant step' -

The United States and Israel have long designated Hezbollah as a terrorist group and urged allies to follow suit.

US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell welcomed Berlin's change in stance and called on "all European Union member states to take similar action".

In Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz praised what he called "a significant step in the global fight against terrorism." He too urged the European Union "to do the same."

Britain outlawed Hezbollah's political wing last year, making membership of the Shiite movement or inviting support for it a crime.

The decision followed outrage over the display of the Hezbollah flag, which features a Kalashnikov assault rifle, at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London.

The mood began shifting in Germany too with parliament passing a resolution last December that urged the government to ban the group from operating in Germany altogether.

The interior ministry's prohibition order means the group's supporters are no longer allowed to display Hezbollah symbols or hold gatherings, and that funds can be frozen.

Hezbollah sympathisers had in recent years waved their flag at the anti-Israel al-Quds rally that is controversially held in Berlin each year.

Hezbollah, which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's civil war, is seen by Israel as an Iranian proxy, seeking to extend the Islamic republic's military reach to the Jewish state's northern border.

Israeli warplanes have carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria over the past few years against what Israel says are Iranian and Hezbollah targets.

Hezbollah was established in 1982 during Lebanon's civil war.

It is now a major political party in the country, where it holds a majority in parliament along with its allies.

Israel and Hezbollah also fought a 2006 war.

Yale Canceling “Straight, White Male” Art History Course

If you or one of your children are heading off to get a degree from Yale, you’ve missed out on the last chance to enroll in their course called “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present” because this semester is the last time it will be offered. It’s not that the course wasn’t popular. It was always full. Unfortunately, the curriculum was simply too full of the work of straight, white, European men. Katherine Timpf at National Review has the details. 

SEE ALSO: Hillary Clinton can apparently just refuse to accept a lawsuit

According to an article in the Yale Daily News, “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present” was once “touted to be one of Yale College’s quintessential classes.” Now, the college is canceling it over what it calls “student uneasiness over an idealized Western ‘canon’ — a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight European and male cadre of artists.”

Tim Berringer, the chair of the art-history department and the course’s instructor, explained the decision to discontinue the course this way:

“I want all Yale students (and all residents of New Haven who can enter our museums freely) to have access to and to feel confident analyzing and enjoying the core works of the western tradition,” he wrote in an email to the Daily News. “But I don’t mistake a history of European painting for the history of all art in all places.”

Timpf also notes that if you read the entire, original article at the school’s paper, there are no quotes or examples offered to indicate that there was “student uneasiness” over the presumable lack of non-European lesbian artists of color. Also, four hundred students applied for the 300 available seats.

This appears to be nothing more than the left’s latest efforts to “cancel” history because it doesn’t conform to idealized liberal views of the world. But the one glaring fact being ignored here is that the word “history” is right in the title of the course. And while I hate to break the news to you, history really wasn’t all that woke. “Diversity” as a cultural goal or norm is actually a very recent development in human culture. (And it still hasn’t spread across the world. Just go spend some time in Japan or the Koreas.)

The reality of the bygone eras covered for most of that course was that women were afforded far fewer opportunities, and that included being recognized in the arts. It’s equally true that the vast majority of people in power in Europe were white. (Don’t let the fragile people at Yale know, but if you study the early art and culture of China from the same period, nearly everyone is Chinese.) And while it’s either known or suspected that some of the prominent artists featured in such courses may have been gay, they generally didn’t talk about it in public. If they did, it could have ended very badly for them.

Criticize those cultures if you wish, which is clearly easy enough to do when looking at the question through a 21st-century lens. But no amount of censorship will change the reality of those times. Eliminating that course may make the liberal powers that be feel better about themselves, but all of the sculptures, paintings and other classic works will stubbornly remain a part of history whether you like it or not. Only now, the students at Yale won’t be versed in that world and the masterpieces it produced.