Fire

Tuesday

Sara Wheeler

The history of Moscow was one of extreme violence from the start

From our UK edition

‘Moscow is hard to love,’ Simon Morrison writes at the beginning of this engaging book, ‘but I love it.’ He deliberately sets out unconstrained by academic pieties, despite holding the post of Professor of Music and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. He says he wrote A Kingdom and a Village ‘out of nostalgia for pre-oligarch decrepitude, when the world looked at Moscow with pity’. The Orthodox Church and the security services have been conjoined from the 16th century to the present The book is tripartite. The first part begins in 1147, when a prince named Yuri built a fort on a hill above a river. (When the authorities unveiled a monument to Yuri in 1954, Morrison reveals, a Muscovite yelled: ‘Doesn’t look like him.

Monday

Christian House

The surreal drama of Helsinki’s history

From our UK edition

In 1920, the young Finnish architect Alvar Alto flew over Helsinki for the first time. He was aghast. ‘An aviator can see where the monkeys have been and destroyed so very much,’ he recalled. Alto’s aerial view reflected a story of fragmentation and occupation spanning some five centuries, now surveyed by the historian Henrik Meinander. The capital, explains the author, was bashed about by a series of bad actors – Swedes, Russians and Germans – until Finland stood its ground and became an independent nation in the early 20th century. Helsinki is ‘a city shaped by the sea, a city best seen from the sea’, writes Meinander. ‘Wherever you are in Helsinki’s inner city, you will always be close to the water.

Wednesday

Derek VanBuskirk

‘God willing, we will rebuild the Palisades’: locals survey the devastation

In Los Angeles earlier this month, it wasn’t just the buildings that burned — they were homes, family businesses and places of worship. Yet, the Pacific Palisades community still stands. Sarah Peterson was at home when she got a text about a nearby fire. Fires near the Palisades weren’t uncommon, but when she opened her front door to check, she was only greeted by a wall of smoke. “I’ve been through other fires before, but I could tell this one was really, really close — and too big to ignore,” she said. Her first thought was of family. “You grow up with a feeling of community, and family, and home, So obviously your immediate thought is to make sure that everyone is OK,” she said.

los ángeles

Monday

Charles Lipson

When is a fire an earthquake?

The fire now engulfing whole neighborhoods in Los Angeles will soon engulf the politicians who failed to protect them. The first casualties will be Mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom. They are already “dead politicians walking.” It is important to recognize that Newsom and Bass are not being held responsible for a “natural disaster,” even one of horrific scale. Nor should they be. They should be held responsible for failed leadership, for misplaced priorities, for the misuse of high tax revenues (no one can say Californians are undertaxed), and for policy choices that failed to meet the first responsibility of any government: protecting citizens’ lives and property. Responsibility for those failures is bound to spread well beyond Bass and Newsom.

fire

Friday

Juan P. Villasmil

Man set himself ablaze outside Trump trial courthouse

A man set himself on fire outside of former president Donald Trump’s trial in New York City this afternoon. Nearby media outlets caught the disturbing scene on camera, in which his body was engulfed in flames, with a nearby reporter urging for a fire extinguisher. One person attempted to pat down the fire with his jacket, until another arrived with the fire extinguisher. An eyewitness told PIX11 News they were standing next to the man when he began pouring a flammable liquid on himself. The witness claims that the man made political statements before starting the fire. Newsweek's Katherine Fung reports that the man was apparently holding a sign that included a link to a Substack with a letter entitled: "I have set myself on fire outside the Trump Trial.

fire ablaze

Wednesday

Taki

Greece’s age-old obsession with fire

From our UK edition

Patmos While green Rhodes and greener Corfu burn away, arid Patmos remains fireproof because rock and soil do not a bonfire make. The Almighty granted some islands plenty of water, and other ones no H2O whatsoever. Most of the Cycladic isles lug in drinking water from the mainland, and make do with treated unsalted seawater for planting. The Ionian isles have springs and rivers and also fires, some of them started by firebugs who hope to gain – I have never figured this one out – from the blaze. It’s all very confusing, especially as the temperatures are rising and the energy to party diminishes by the hour. Everything was hunky-dory until my daughter decided to give a party in my house The Greeks have always been obsessed with fire.

Thursday

Jane Stannus

Climate change didn’t cause Canada’s wildfires

Is the hazy stuff out there smoke billowing down from Québec, or hot air emitted from smoggy-brained politicians and journalists? Chuck Schumer told the Senate on Wednesday that the smoke drifting over the Eastern Seaboard was caused by climate change. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez said it showed the urgency of going greener faster. Proof of carbon pollution, lectured the Canadian minister of the environment. A stark reminder of climate change, intoned Biden. Every news organization and weather app out there suddenly became experts on a new hazard — not smoke or fire, well-known phenomenons that have been extensively documented throughout history — but a new threat, both more nebulous and more ominous: “air quality.

climate canada wildfires

Tuesday

Ben Domenech

Meet the man taking on the anti-free-speech left

For the anti-free-speech left, the most dangerous man in America today is Greg Lukianoff. The president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education for the past 16 years, the free-speech attorney has now decided to guide the organization, previously focused on free-speech battles within academia, into the broader territory of free-speech battles across the nation. FIRE has been rebranded as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and Lukianoff intends to take it into space once occupied by free-speech stalwarts like the ACLU. He has a massive new investment from supporters to the tune of $75 million.

Tuesday

James Snell

Where will the war in Ukraine go next?

Almost every night in Russia, it seems, a government building bursts into an unexplained fire. Fuel depots, office buildings, infrastructure hubs — and once a bridge. No doubt people have their theories. Insinuation abounds. "Karma is a cruel thing," one Ukrainian official has said on Telegram. But in the main, both the Russian government and Ukraine maintain an eloquent silence. The metaphor is apt. The fires are an unexpected consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine, an eventuality, no doubt, that no one in the Kremlin inner circle anticipated, or planned for. And yet they burn merrily nonetheless.

Sunday

Peter Wood

The meaning of trees aflame

One of my favorite trees collapsed the other day. It was a tall balsam fir that stood almost cylindrical on the steep hillside behind my house in Vermont, keeping post beside an old hemlock. The branches of the hemlock turn and twist in the breeze with joyous abandon. The fir tree, however, faced the harshest gale with stoic reserve, barely swaying. But last week it suddenly uprooted itself and fell like a wounded comrade into the embrace of its brother. Arborcide, of course, has been in the news lately. On December 8, a man set fire to and destroyed the fifty-foot artificial tree outside News Corp headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Forty-nine-year old Craig Tamanaha was arrested on the spot and was naturally released without bail shortly afterwards.

tree

Sunday

David Shoup

‘Collective’ shines a light on Romania’s deadly corruption problem

From our UK edition

A gripping Romanian documentary has made history as the country's first film ever to be nominated for an Oscar in the international category. But 'Collective', which is also shortlisted for best documentary feature at tonight's ceremony, isn't a source of national pride. In fact, far from it: the movie shines a spotlight on the country’s rotten healthcare system. It follows a team of investigative journalists as they uncover deep-seated corruption in the aftermath of a deadly nightclub fire in Bucharest in 2015, that killed 65 people. While 27 died on the night of the fire, many more died in the months afterwards.

Wednesday

Peter Apps

The ‘cladding tax’ could end up being a disastrous mistake

From our UK edition

Since the first buildings with dangerous cladding were discovered in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, one question has hung continuously over all efforts to make them safe: who is going to pay? Now, after three and a half years of stilted progress, the government appears to be on the verge of answering that question. The answer it is reaching for could prove to be the most controversial and politically damaging mistake since the building safety saga began. The government’s current proposal began when Michael Wade, an insurance guru, was drafted by the Cabinet Office to help find a solution to the cladding problem.

Monday

Cockburn

Donald Trump’s Notre-Dame fire solution would ‘destroy’ the building, says French fireman

Times of crisis call for great leadership. Tragedy struck today in Paris when the 856-year-old Notre-Dame Cathedral caught fire. As Cockburn writes, the spire has just fallen. The premiers of France’s allies have been quick to offer words of condolence. ‘My thoughts are with the people of France tonight and with the emergency services who are fighting the terrible blaze at Notre-Dame cathedral,’ tweeted British Prime Minister Theresa May. ‘Shocking pictures from Paris. A landmark, World Heritage site and one of the most beautiful buildings in French history, Notre-Dame is on fire. We hope no one is hurt. Our thoughts are in Paris,’ wrote Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

notre-dame