Comment: The courtyard or the roof? A courtyard on the roof?

This small fire wouldn't be newsworthy, but for its extraordinary timing...

Comment: The US persecution of Huawei is purely political and economic. And Trump's strong-arm tactics do not appear to be working.

See also:

• Huawei, Tech War and Geopolitics
• Why Washington wants to ban Huawei: US wants to spy and China won't cooperate
• Huawei exec trolls US, NSA at tech trade fair in Spain: "Ask Snowden"
• US has been using FISA warrant to spy on Huawei & keep evidence secret
• Trump sends cyber-security envoy to Germany to keep up the heat on Huawei
• How's that blockade working Trump? Not a single European country has banned Huawei

Comment: Curiously, the Valaam monastery in Russia also caught fire on Easter Sunday, 2016.

The British Daily Mail came up with a conspiracy theory: Catholics around the world conspired to torch these churches because they're upset at the Orthodox Church for blocking the canonization of a Croatian Cardinal suspected of collaborating with the Nazis.

With no evidence provided, this rather sounds like someone was 'blowing smoke'. There could, however, be more to this cluster of events than symbolic connection...

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'?

Comment: For more on Amazon's 'fairness and responsibility', see:

• Amazon continues to leave employees suffering after workplace injuries
• Slave labor: Amazon workers in UK treated like 'animals' in exhausting working conditions
• Intolerable working conditions at Amazon's newest warehouse

Comment: France's Macron canceled his planned address to the nation due to 'terrible fire' at Notre Dame cathedral:

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.

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.

Could there be anything more symbolic than the burning down of one of France's oldest icons?

UPDATES 20:45 CET

The spire and entire roof have collapsed. Everything but the stone shell has probably been lost forever.


It's the worst damage to the cathedral in all its 9 centuries. It was partially destroyed by fire (deliberately) during the 1789 revolution, though not this badly. Still, it took about 100 years to restore it...

Comments on French social media indicate that people - besides being distraught about this - are highly suspicious of foul play.

12 French churches were vandalized in one week in mid-March. And that's not including the fire at ANOTHER iconic church in Paris - the Saint-Sulpice - just one month ago. Back in February, another four churches in France were vandalized, including the Notre Dame Church in Dijon. The whole thing has a 'systematic' flavor...

Who will be blamed? Russians? Muslims?

UPDATE 21:15 CET

The fire has spread to the stone towers. From an AP reporter on the scene:

The mammoth fire that destroyed the spire of Notre Dame Cathedral has spread to one of the church's landmark rectangular towers.

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.

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...

UPDATE 22:00 CET

'Blame Muslims' is definitely in the cards: 3 days ago, a man named Ines Madani, an Islamist activist, was sentenced for plotting a terror attack at Notre Dame Cathedral in 2016.

Now French fire services are reporting that they are "not sure" if the Notre Dame fire can be stopped...


UPDATE 23:00 CET

The fire is dying down. The Interior Ministry reports that the stone structure of the cathedral (including the towers) remains standing. Notre Dame can yet be rebuilt...

UPDATE 16/4/9:

Firemen have finally entered the main area of the church


The main structure of Notre Dame, as well as its rectangular bell towers, has been saved, according to the Paris fire brigade chief. Macron asked the country to commit to rebuilding Notre Dame together, announcing an international fundraising campaign to raise money for the repairs. A site taking online donations has been launched.

Comment: George Galloway brings it: 'If Assange is criminalized & incarcerated, you'll never be free again'

Galloway and a crowd of WikiLeaks supporters staged a protest in support of the arrested co-founder of the whistleblowing site on Sunday outside Belmarsh Prison, where Assange is being held, a top security jail in southeast London known as 'Britain's Guantanamo Bay'.

Assange was dragged out of Ecuador's London embassy on Thursday after spending almost seven years in de-facto confinement, with his visitor rights limited and internet cut off during the last months of his exile.

Galloway, a film-maker, writer and former Labour MP, who calls himself a friend of Assange, said that his case affects all who cherish their right to know the truth about shady government dealings.

"You don't have to like him, you don't have to like everything he's ever written or published, but if you like the fact that we have the right to speak and know the uncomfortable truths our rulers don't want us to know, then you should be here in person, or, at least, in spirit," Galloway said.

He said this is exactly the type of situation in which one must take sides, and either stand with the "executioners" or oppose them.

"If Julian Assange is criminalized and incarcerated for revealing the truth about what our rulers are doing, have done, then you might as well deliver yourself behind those walls, you might as well volunteer for a prison cell yourself, because you'll no longer be free, and you'll never be free again," the former lawmaker said.

"The British police had to arrest Julian Assange and they had to put him in an ambulance, not in a police wagon because the man, after seven years in a single room in the Ecuadorian embassy, is obviously not a well man."

Speaking on the prospects of the US extradition request, Galloway told RT he hopes the British court rejects it. He argued that his trial in the US might go against the principle of double jeopardy since Manning already served time for the same offense.

"There may have been a theft of information involved," but it was justified, Galloway believes: it was "a right of all the people of the world to know about what Chelsea Manning released." And while publishing stolen materials in the public interest is nothing new, Assange's case threatens to put a full stop to it.

"If every publisher who publishes material that was stolen from its owners was put on trial and extradited and sent behind bars, there would be no publishing."

Hear George Galloway's thoughts in full below: