OF THE
TIMES
Macron was set to hold a large press conference at the Elysee Palace on Monday. The president was expected to unveil a set of measures for the country in response to the Yellow Vest protests, which have been rocking the country for the past few months.Could there be anything more symbolic than the burning down of one of France's oldest icons?
The said measures are believed to be based on the results of the "great national debate," held by the government in an attempt to funnel protest from the streets into a discussion instead. "We have decided to transform anger into solutions," Macron wrote on Twitter, announcing the press conference. "For months, we listened. Tomorrow, I will answer."
The grand unveiling of the government's measures, however, was marred by the massive fire at the iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, which caught fire shortly before the president's address. Citing the "terrible fire," Macron scrapped the event.
Macron is expected to arrive at the scene shortly, according to Elysee officials. Meanwhile, the cathedral's spire and roof have partially collapsed.
The mammoth fire that destroyed the spire of Notre Dame Cathedral has spread to one of the church's landmark rectangular towers.This thing is in the MIDDLE of the RIVER SEINE. There should be dozens of streams of water from fire engines and tugboats aimed at the inferno...
An Associated Press reporter at the scene of Monday's fire in Paris watched the flames blazing behind an oblong stained-glass window in the tower.
Paris police say fighters are inside the cathedral working to put the flames out while others work from the exterior. Red smoke is pouring out of the cathedral.
A Notre Dame spokesman said earlier that the church's entire wooden interior was in flames.
Joe Cannataci, a UN special rapporteur on the right to privacy, was scheduled to meet Assange on April 25, along with special rapporteur on torture, Prof Nils Melzer, to investigate the treatment of the whistleblower.President Trump, who owes Wikileaks, big time, has apparently told reporters today that: "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing." That probably means he's distancing himself from the arrest because he doesn't want any heat from it, but it could also mean that he's saying he had nothing to do with pushing for Assange's arrest, which means it came from the One Worlders upstairs...
In a statement sent to RT.com in the aftermath of Assange's arrest, Cannataci said that the arrest of the 47-year-old will not stop his efforts to assess Assange's claims that his privacy has been violated.
"All it means is that, instead of visiting Mr Assange and speaking to him at the Embassy of the Republic of Ecuador in London, I intend to visit him and speak to him wherever he may be detained," he said. [...]
"Wherever he may be held, or may be located, my mandate will follow," Cannataci said. "The work of the mandate of the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to privacy in the case of Mr Assange will continue uninterrupted until we shall be in a position to report on our findings, whatever they may be."
"'We're all puppets,' the suspect [Sirhan Sirhan] replied, with more truth than he could have understood at that moment."When Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968, the American public fell into an hypnotic trance in which they have remained ever since. The overwhelming majority accepted what was presented by government authorities as an open and shut case that a young Palestinian American, Sirhan Sirhan, had murdered RFK because of his support for Israel, a false accusation whose ramifications echo down the years. That this was patently untrue and was contradicted by overwhelming evidence made no difference.
~ Lisa Pease, quoting from the LAPD questioning of Sirhan Sirhan
Comment: Not to put too fine a point on it, but - and this is aside from the question of a deliberate campaign to destroy Christian sites - maybe God/the Universe/Objective Reality is nudging France (and whoever can still see and hear) back from the precipice of fully embracing nihilistic postmodernist 'values'?