Tag Archive for: fire

‘A Very Special Day For All’: Trump Returns To World Stage, Joins Reopening Celebrations At Notre Dame Cathedral

President-elect Donald Trump embarked on his first foreign trip since his November 2024 electoral victory, joining Saturday’s reopening ceremonies for Paris’s famous Notre Dame Cathedral.

The weekend’s celebration, which drew an estimated 50 world leaders and high security, kicks off an octave of events marking the restoration of the famous twelfth-century Gothic church to its place in Catholic liturgical life and French tourism following a devastating April 15, 2019 fire. Firefighters stood helpless as the blaze — believed to have been accidentally ignited by an electrical failure or a lit cigarette — consumed the roof and spire of the UNESCO World Heritage SiteThwarting their efforts to douse the flames with water was a centuries’ old waterproofing technique involving covering the roof with a lead sheet.

Nearly $1 billion in pledges from 150 countries was raised within days of the devastation to launch the ambitious five-year rebuilding effort, itself a point of national pride. Approximately $148 million of the funds remained unspent as of November 2024, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron at Élysée Palace prior to departing for the events at Notre Dame.

The reopening service was presided over by the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, and observed by French government officials, world leaders, donors and representatives of Parisian clergy and laity, according to Notre Dame’s announcement of the ceremonies. During the rite of the opening of the cathedral’s doors, the archbishop struck the closed door with his liturgical staff — the crosier — crafted from charred remains of the roof, prompting attendees to respond with the thrice singing of Psalm 121:

How joyful it was when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’
Now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!
Jerusalem, built as a city, that is bound firmly together.

After the doors’ opening and before an address by Macron, those who responded to the 2019 fire and assisted with the restoration were honored. The archbishop then blessed the 8,000-pipe Great Organ of Notre Dame to symbolically end the silence imposed upon the cathedral. In addition to the singing of hymns, a series of prayers was offered for the world and in thanksgiving to God for the successful rebuilding effort. A star-studded concert was also scheduled for Saturday evening.

Following the events at Notre Dame, Trump met with William, the Prince of Wales, at the British ambassador’s residence in Paris.

The inaugural Mass will occur Sunday with the consecration of the cathedral’s high altar. A “fraternal buffet” will then be offered “to welcome the most disadvantaged and those who support them daily.” Notre Dame expects to welcome 15 million visitors annually following the reopening, three million more than before the disaster, according to AP.

Trump announced his intention to join Notre Dame’s reopening celebration in a Truth Social post Monday.

“It is an honor to announce that I will be traveling to Paris, France, on Saturday to attend the re-opening of the Magnificent and Historic Notre Dame Cathedral, which has been fully restored after a devastating fire five years ago,” the president-elect wrote. “President Emmanuel Macron has done a wonderful job ensuring that Notre Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so. It will be a very special day for all!”

President Macron, whose government collapsed Wednesday, extended the invitation to attend to Trump, sources told Fox News. First lady Jill Biden, joined by her daughter, Ashley, attended as part of her final solo foreign trip which included stops in Italy, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. President Joe Biden was also invited but did not attend due to a “scheduling conflict,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday.

Trump spoke with Macron as well as Pope Francis in the aftermath of the “horrible and destructive fire” and “offered the help of our great experts on renovation and construction,” according to a pair of April 17, 2019 social media posts. He suggested the utilization of “water tankers” to stop the fire from above, a method a French civil agency which deals with disasters dismissed.

Macron was the first U.S. ally to congratulate Trump on his successful bid to return to the White House, according to Politico.

Pope Francis, who suffered a facial injury Friday morning, did not attend Saturday’s service — attributed to a scheduling conflict — but sent a message acknowledging the occasion.

In the weeks following an assassination attempt at a July 13, 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump posted to social media at least three references to significant Catholic figures: one honoring Mary, the mother of Jesus, and another for martyred Polish priest Jerzy Popiełuszko; a famous prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, as well as an image honoring the Nov. 1 Solemnity of All Saints. Catholics subsequently expressed delight and speculated as to the motivation of the posts.

Trump, speaking with “The World Over” host and Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo following the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York on Oct. 17, denied he was “telling voters something about [his] spiritual journey.”

“No, I don’t think so, it’s just beautiful to me,” Trump said. “I look at the whole thing: the words and the pictures — the pictures are so beautiful. Yeah, I put up some stuff … it’s really that I think it’s really beautiful.”

Catholics, an estimated 22% of the 2024 electorate, broke for Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris 58%-40%, according to a CNN exit poll. Among Latino Catholics, Trump secured a seven-point lead, 53%-46%. He performed better among white Catholics, whose support he drew 61%-35%, a 26-point lead.

The reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, which translates to “Our Lady of Paris,” coincides with the Dec. 8 Catholic feast of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception which honors Mary, the mother of Jesus and serves as the patronal feast day for the United States. While Notre Dame honors Mary’s role in the Christian religion, Catholics do not worship her.

France was estimated to have a self-identifying Catholic population of 37.9 million, or 60% of the 2010 national population, 65 million, according to Pew Research. While that figure has significantly decreased with the rise in both secularism and Islam, the country seemingly retains some of its identity as “the eldest daughter of the Church.”

The Daily Caller reached out to Notre-Dame de Paris, the Archdiocese of Paris, the Apostolic Nunciature in the United States, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Embassy of France in the United States, and the Office of Melania Trump for comment but received no response before publication.

Editor’s note: This report has been updated with additional details surrounding the reopening of Notre Dame.

AUTHOR

Thomas Wong

Associate weekend editor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Why the Feds (Still) Own so Much of the Country by Steve H. Hanke

The recent “occupation” of government-owned lands in Eastern Oregon by disgruntled ranchers’ motivated Quoctrung Bui and Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times to produce an edifying essay on January 6th. It was aptly titled “Why the Government Owns So Much Land in the West.” Curiously, the NYT essay fails to mention one of the most significant, recent, and contentious attempts to “dispose” of federal public lands.

When Ronald Reagan was elected president for his first term in 1980, he received strong support from the so-called Sagebrush Rebels. The Rebels wanted lands owned by the federal government to be transferred to state governments. Their champion was James Watt, a self-proclaimed Sagebrush Rebel who became the Secretary of the Interior.

When I was operating as one of President Reagan’s economic advisers, an early assignment was to analyze the federal government’s landholdings and make recommendations about what to do with them. This was a big job. These lands are vast, covering an area six times that of France.

These public lands represent a huge socialist anomaly in America’s capitalist system. As is the case with all socialist enterprises, they are mismanaged by politicians and bureaucrats dancing to the tunes of narrow interest groups. Indeed, the U.S. nationalized lands represent assets that are worth trillions of dollars, yet they generate negative net cash flows for the government.

I first presented my findings and recommendations publically at the annual Public Lands Council meeting of September 1981 in Reno, Nevada. The title of my speech was “Privatize Those Lands” — privatize being a word Mrs. Hanke, a Parisian, had imported from France.

My Reno speech caused a stir. James Watt, the Secretary of the Interior, was furious because he wanted to hand over the lands to the state governments — exchanging one form of socialism for another. Needless to say, I thought I was in deep trouble. Hoping to avoid political immolation, I rapidly sent my analysis to the President.

Reagan instantly responded, taking my side. Better yet, he swiftly made my proposals the Administration’s policy. The president endorsed privatizing federal lands in his budget message for the 1983 fiscal year:

Some of this property is not in use and would be of greater value to society if transferred to the private sector. In the next three years we would save $9 billion by shedding these unnecessary properties while fully protecting and preserving our national parks, forests, wilderness and scenic areas.

reagan in his own hand book coverIt turned out that Reagan had already thought about this issue. The book Reagan, In His Own Hand (2001) makes that clear. This volume contains 259 essays Reagan wrote in his own hand, mainly scripts for his five minute, five-day-a-week syndicated radio broadcasts in the late 1970s. Reagan, In His Own Hand contains several essays on the subject that clearly foreshadowed his policy statement on privatizing public lands. His 1970s musings on public lands echo the writings of Adam Smith. While Reagan never cited Smith, he employed similar reasoning.

Indeed, Smith concluded in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that “no two characters seem more inconsistent than those of the trader and the sovereign,” as people are more prodigal with the wealth of others than with their own. In that vein, Smith estimated that lands owned by the state were only about 25% as productive as comparable private holdings. Smith believed Europe’s great tracts of crown lands to be “a mere waste and loss of country in respect both of produce and population.”

Unfortunately, political opposition — largely from ill-informed environmentalists and some Sagebrush Rebels, too — stopped Reagan from privatizing. U.S. nationalized lands remain ill-used and a constant source of dispute.

This post fist appeared at Cato.org.

Steve H. Hanke

VIDEO: Terrorist Attack in Dubai?

New Year’s revelers were sent running for their lives after a fire engulfed a five-star hotel just 500 yards from where Dubai’s spectacular fireworks display was due to begin.

The Address Downtown caught fire at about 9.30 p.m. Dubai time, with the flames appearing to reach from the ground floor up another 40-or-so stories of the 63 floor building.

Those who escaped described how people climbed over each other in their rush to escape the burning building.

One Briton was forced to carry his disabled mother on his back.

Read more.

Devout Muslim charged with setting fire to his own mosque

At the time the fire was set, it garnered much attention as a “hate crime”: “The Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on authorities to investigate a possible bias motive in the case, citing what it called a ‘recent spike in hate incidents targeting mosques nationwide.’”

But it turns out to have been yet another fake hate crime. Islamic supremacist groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) want and need hate crimes against Muslims, because they’re the currency they use to buy power and influence in our victimhood-oriented society, and to deflect attention away from jihad terror and onto Muslims as putative victims.

Hamas-linked CAIR, designated a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates, and other Muslims have on many occasions not hesitated to stoop even to fabricating “hate crimes,” including attacks on mosques. Most notably, in February, a New Jersey Muslim was found guilty of murder that he tried to portray as an “Islamophobic” attack, and in 2014 in California, a Muslim was found guilty of killing his wife, after first blaming her murder on “Islamophobia.”

Gary Nathaniel Moore

“Man charged with setting Houston mosque fire was a devout attendee,” by Carol Christian and Leah Binkowitz, Houston Chronicle, December 30, 2015 (thanks to Steve):

A Houston man has been arrested in connection with a suspected arson at a mosque on Christmas Day.

A spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed that the man was arrested early Wednesday, sometime after midnight, and appeared in court 7 a.m. Wednesday.

The suspect, Gary Nathaniel Moore, 37, of Houston, appeared in court at 7 a.m., spokeswoman Nicole Strong said.

According to a charging instrument released by the Harris County District Clerk, Moore told investigators at the scene that he has attended the mosque for five years, coming five times per day to pray seven days per week.

Moore told investigators he had been at the mosque earlier on Dec. 25 to pray, and had left at about 2 p.m. to go home. Moore told investigators he was the last person to leave the mosque and saw no smoke or other signs of fire when he left. He had returned to the scene after hearing about the fire from a friend.

Though the suspect said he was a regular at the mosque, MJ Khan, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, which operates the mosque, said he was unfamiliar with Moore.

Of course. No doubt MJ Khan is shocked! Shocked!

“We are just looking into it ourselves,” he said Wednesday morning after learning of the arrest.

“We are really very surprised and saddened by this whole thing,” said Khan.

Using surveillance video from multiple businesses nearby, investigators were able to identify Moore, according to records. A search warrant of his home was conducted, in which investigators recovered a backpack and clothing that seemingly matched that which was seen in surveillance footage, as well as one half of a two-pack of charcoal lighter fluid bottles that seemed to match another lighter fluid bottle found inside the mosque….

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