Saturday, April 20, 2019

What Really Caused the Notre Dame Cathedral Fire? - Frank Hawkins


by Frank Hawkins

Whatever the actual cause of the Notre Dame blaze, churches are clearly under steady assault across France.

Following the horrifying fire that badly damaged one of the world’s great treasures, the mainstream media is pushing the storyline that the fire that ravaged the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was caused by an “electrical short circuit.” But the story in the Daily Mail lacks any evidence to back up that claim.
A French judicial police official said investigators brought in to work out the cause of the inferno made the claims -- despite them not having been given access to the church yet for safety reasons. The official, who spoke anonymously about the ongoing investigation, said the monument is still being consolidated with wooden planks to support some fragile parts of the walls. Only after it is fully made safe will investigators will be allowed a closer look in order to accurately determine the cause of the fire… .Only after (the Cathedral) is fully made safe will investigators will be allowed a closer look in order to accurately determine the cause of the fire.
Did you get that? “Investigators” brought in to determine the cause of the tragic blaze have not yet been given access to the burned-out cathedral. Nevertheless they are already announcing the results of their investigation. Even as the embers were still glowing on the day of the fire, French prosecutors were ruling out arson. On what evidence were they able to make that judgment?

Consider the Geller Report. What its French investigators have reported so far leads to other very real possibilities. The work teams that were just beginning a major restoration project on the cathedral are among the best in the world. They had recently successfully completed a similar level project of the great cathedral in Reims, France. And a reasonable person can only assume that the French government and the Catholic Church would only select the most competent and experienced teams to undertake such a critical project as the restoration of this medieval monument widely regarded as one of the most important jewels of Western civilization as well as Christianity.

The work teams took extraordinary care to do no harm to the cathedral. On the day of the fire, work in setting up scaffolding had stopped at 6:00 p.m., 50 minutes before the fire apparently began near the scaffolding itself. Geller notes that “No electricity was allowed near the roof, because it was made in wood and as a matter of security, every inflammable thing was banned too. So, to have a fire there, someone needed to bring something.”


In fact the work on the roof had not even begun. Only the work in setting up the elaborate scaffolding was underway. Every possible precaution was taken to avoid any source of heat near the 850-year-old highly flammable timber roof. Julien Le Bras, head of the European Scaffolding Company, was quoted as saying, “All I can say for the time being is that at the moment of the fire, absolutely none of the employees of my company was present on site. All safety procedures on the Notre-Dame de Paris site have been respected.

A French expert familiar with the restoration effort was quoted as saying, “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.”

In other words, one must assume that whatever source of fire there was must have been deliberately taken to the roof area.

Geller offers additional background.
“It’s a very big probability that Jihadists committed this crime, in the middle of the Christian Holy Week. In 2016, two veiled Muslim women tried to detonate a car filled with explosives in front of Notre-Dame.
At the beginning of March, an illegal Muslim immigrant tried to burn down the Saint-Sulpice church.
At mid-March, an illegal Muslim immigrant tried to burn down the organ of the Saint-Denis basilica (another jewel) and destroyed stained glass.
On Twitter, thousands of Muslims are rejoicing and saying that they are happy that Notre-Dame was destroyed!
But there’s a lot more than that contributing to raised suspicion about what happened. On March 20, Breitbart reported:
A dozen Catholic churches have been desecrated across France over the period of one week in an egregious cases of anti-Christian vandalism. The recent spate of church profanations has puzzled both police and ecclesiastical leaders, who have mostly remained silent as the violations have spread up and down France.” The Catholic hierarchy has kept silent about the episodes, limiting themselves to highlighting the anti-Christian threats and expressing hope that politicians and police will get to the bottom of the crimes. Reports indicate that 80 percent of the desecration of places of worship in France concerns Christian churches and in the year 2018 this meant the profanation of an average of two Christian churches per day in France, even though these actions rarely make the headlines. In 2018, the Ministry of the Interior recorded 541 anti-Semitic acts, 100 anti-Muslim acts, and 1063 anti-Christian acts.
Whatever of the actual cause of the Notre Dame blaze, Christian churches are clearly under steady assault of one kind or another across France. Authorities are afraid to speak up about it. It’s likely they are afraid of backlash from the growing Muslim population in France.

Censorship of discussion on the topic is already evident here in the U.S. As the fire was still burning, Sheppard Smith of Fox News cut off Philippe Karsenty, a conservative French politician and broadcaster, for even suggesting that the fire could have been caused by arson. And Neil Cavuto actually hung up on Catholic League President Bill Donohue when he dared to call the fire “suspicious” while mentioning in the same context the number incidents of anti-Christian vandalism in Paris just this year.

At this early stage of the investigation, it’s fair to say no one can declare with certainty how the fire started. French authorities continue to peddle the line that the fire was accidental. At the time same, there is convincing evidence the scaffolding team and the French restoration experts working with them were extraordinarily cautious as they were well aware of the danger of fire in the cathedral. In addition, attacks on French churches and French Christians and Jews continue to grow. There is also a video circulating online of a mysterious figure seen in the cathedral as water was sprayed onto the fire. The video was apparently recorded off of a live French television broadcast of the disaster, adding to speculation about what happened.

With this background, why is not logical to at least consider the obvious possibility that the fire was set?


Frank Hawkins is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Associated Press foreign correspondent, international businessman, senior newspaper company executive, founder and owner of several marketing companies, and published novelist.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/what_really_caused_the_notre_dame_cathedral_fire.html

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

and now on Easter Sunday in Colombo Sri Lanka we have the deliberate horrific bombs exploding in several Churches. Is it coincidental it happening in Paris and Colombo over the Easter period ?

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