Latest shared post by same person:
"Here are the locations of attacks on, and destruction of, churches in France, over the last 4 years.
But the burning of Notre Dame was an accident.
Altogether 1063 attacks and desecrations on Christian churches and symbols took place alone in France in 2018. That makes it 185 attacks more than in 2017.
As a comparison: About 100 synagogues and mosques were attacked in the same time in France."
I called racist bullshit on it. I may have to friend her, alas.
Given that Kobol said that the main reason people shouldn’t think it was terrorism was that nobody had claimed responsibility in the immediate aftermath indicates to me that he was indeed talking about people who still hold those beliefs after the facts had been discovered. I had the same feelings you did when I first heard the news on the radio, they lasted about 15 seconds until the announcer said that it was suspected to have been caused by the renovation.
The thought of terrorism never even entered my mind, and initially I didn’t know the building was under renovations. Buildings burn all the time; that’s why we have fire departments.
Hell, just last week a fire gutted an over century old building here in Ottawa. The cause of the fire? Roof repairs.
You don’t really need a reason to know it was probably an accident. Most fires are accidents. The great majority, actually. Absent any other evidence at all, if you hear there’s a fire, probability dictates it is very likely an accident.
You’re not going to get through to her, unfortunately. I’ve never seen anyone change their mind from mindless crap they’ve posted on Facebook.
However, another simple thought: it doesn’t make any sense to make an act of terrorism look like an accident–that kind of defeats the whole point of terrorism. If terrorists scored something as big as burning down Notre Dame, they sure as hell would be proclaiming it loudly and proudly, I should think.
Yes. And of course my post should have said “unfriend” her.
Your agreement is not being sought-Merely participating in the conversation gives it strength and legitimacy.
Ah yes, that could be it. Recent immigrant waiting staff. See, this is why immigration is such a problem ! They don’t assimilate or respect our core values of sneering at absolutely everyone hailing from outside the Périphérique ! 
(Amusing anecdote: I was teaching tourism to Parisian high school kids earlier this year, talking about world tourism numbers and touristic saturation sometimes leading people in tourism hotspots to feel “not at home” any more - the example in the textbook being Barcelona, a city of 1.5 million people who welcome some 4 to 6 million tourists a year, the problems that causes etc… I then segued into stating the obvious : the city they live in is also a major tourist spot, but the feeling of being “under assault” by tourists is much less felt for reasons X, Y, Z.
At which point a kid in the first row muttered under his breath that tourists could still go fuck themselves and go home, because they bug him. He’s like 12, and the kicker : his parents are from Chechnya and he wasn’t even born in Paris, just lived here much of his life. Needless to say my heart swelled with civic pride.)
The kind of people who latch onto these fallacies and present them as truths are not swayed by logic and facts. They’re only interested in furthering their own hate.
I never considered terrorism a possibility either, figuring it was an accidental fire.
Then I realized it must’ve been set by French waiters holding a grudge over low tipping by parishioners.
Is France a tipping culture?
Not really - service costs are already included in the bill. It’s still customary to leave the change on the table (well, the coins that is), but I can’t remember the last time I personally did - like most people I pay exclusively in plastic these days. I don’t even usually have real money on me any more.
Since Philippe Karsenty was on the scene, let’s begin a rumor that he started the fire.
BTW I’ve found French waiters to be very polite, but I’m from New York so my standards are low.
A source told me that the Pope had someone burn down Notre Dame so he could cash in on the lucrative construction contracts for the rebuild.
It’s a well known fact. Ask your friend if she can disprove this. Bet she can’t. And if she tries, I’ll provide other “facts” that show she’s wrong.
I’m surprised your friend did not know this. People are talking about it. At least they are now.
Fuck, now you tell me.
The bigots believe they’ve covered that with their nonsensical “Muslims did it!” line.
I wonder what “Christian symbols” were “attacked” or “desecrated”? I also wonder what form the attacks/desecrations took.
&
Sadly I get to see more than I want to of the nonsense on FB (the amount I want is zero) because a close relative I cannot unfriend buys into all the nonsense spread about Islam, Muslims, Democrats, foreigners, etc., and especially about the Clintons. I long ago quit responding to his posts with links to Snopes or other debunking sites. The simple fact is people who spread the nonsense are not interested in the truth of it and they certainly will not read the responses. All they care about is that they have been seen to “do something” about their favorite triggers. And how do they measure the effectiveness of their “something done”? Simple, friend, simple. FB’s handy little tally of reposts and likes. And if you call them bigots, hateful, irrational, or any other negative term, well, friend, you are the one being intolerant, because, as they’ll be more than happy to tell you, “It’s not irrational to hate people who blah-blah-blah” even though you’ve already proven to them that the people they’re maligning, in fact, do not “blah-blah-blah”. Their minds, such as they are, have been made up to accept one version of reality as factual and, again as they’ll be more than happy to tell you, “you cannot convince them otherwise”. That, friend, is the very soul of irrationality.
[quote=“susan, post:77, topic:832650”]
Different Disaster, Same Theme: Hoaxes and Misinformation Spread Online after Notre Dame Fire | Snopes.com[/QU
Thank you.
I’m not sure what happened there, but still, thank you.
Some unrelated idiocy, for your amusement:
Or a construction worker tossed a not-fully-extinguished cigarette.