Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/5/2014

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Two-thirds of the 80,000 books and manuscripts at an historic Greek Orthodox library in Lebanon were destroyed when unknown arsonists set fire to the building. The tragic attack occurred after the spread of a rumor that the owner of the library had insulted Islam in an article published on the Internet.

In other news, Marseille, with a Muslim population of about 40%, is now listed as the most dangerous city in Europe.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, JD, JP, Mr. T, Nilk, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Gezi Park and the Class Struggle in Turkey

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The article below presents a Marxist perspective on the demonstrations in Gezi Park and Taksim Square, the Kurdish separatist movement, the Arab Spring, and Turkey’s current perilous financial condition. It appeared in a German-language site that covers Turkish affairs, and was translated by JLH.

The translator includes this introductory note:

This is an interesting survey of the forces at work in the Turkish uprisings from a Marxist point of view.

There are a couple of interesting vocabulary clues to be found here. “Horizontal” turns up a few times as a code word for “classless.”

The resistance is discussed in terms of being: basic democratic, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist, cooperative and ecologically oriented

The advance of feminism in Marxist propaganda: I originally witnessed “multi-genderism” in the double ending where the masculine had sufficed as a collective — e.g. Arbeiter (workers) became Arbeiter(innen) — (men or women workers). This article is the first time that I have seen the parentheses removed, thus making the longer and clumsier feminine the collective noun (e.g. WählerInnen — voters, Activistinnen — activists).

Enthusiastic boosters of American-style capitalism please note: The Marxist proponent is always on the ground where the action is and is concerned to make his battle theirs and theirs his.

The translated article from Infobrief Türkei:

The Commune of Gezi Park and Class Warfare in Turkey and Kurdistan

by Michael Backmund
December 19, 2013

The uprisings in western Turkey and the commune of Gezi Park have radically changed Turkey and visibly improved the conditions for social struggle in Turkey and Kurdistan. They are also closely connected to the developments in Syria and the entire Kurdish area. In the absence of peace, there is the danger of the (Gezi) insurgent movement being smothered by the AKP, which tends towards Islamic repression in a crisis.

On the way back from Tarlabaşı to Erminönö through the jammed streets, after asking if we had just been at Taksim Square, the young taxi driver began to talk — at first softly, then more self-confidently: “I am a çapulcu too! I spent three nights in Gezi Park. These protests will change the country. No one can take away what we young Turks, Alawites, Kurds and many others have experienced together.” However coincidental and fleeting the encounters during these Istanbul nights might have been, it had been a long time since the destiny of Turkey and Kurdistan had been discussed so openly and intensely on the Bosporus, and the necessity of a comprehensive democratization of the entire land spoken of.

Three very concrete aspects of the protests point up the strategic perspective of the communes of Gezi Park and the possibilities of class warfare in Turkey and Kurdistan. The Gezi protests have broken through the interpretive control by the Turkish elite and their mass media. Until now, “the others” and especially “the Kurds” have been the terrorists. Since being characterized by Erdogan and the AKP as “marauders and terrorists” (çapulcu) the slandered demonstrators have given a self-confident reply. “Then we are all marauders and terrorists” they shouted back at authorities. In the large demonstrations at Taksim and in Gezi Park, for the first time Kurdish banners, PKK flags and pictures of Abdullah Öcalan could be seen as a matter of course next to banners of feminists, anarchists and communists. And after the murder of a young Kurd in Lice, there were solidarity demonstrations for the first time in Istanbul and western Turkey under the motto, “Taksim is everywhere, Lice is everywhere — resistance is everywhere.” This solidarity of a broad protest movement in Turkey with the Kurdish freedom movement as an expression of horizontal self-empowerment opens up a prospect for comprehensive social changes with an anti-hegemony and anti-chauvinistic emphasis.

Three theses on the actual situation in Turkey and Kurdistan:

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Fiat Lux — 514-510 Cedar Avenue South, Part I

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Our English correspondent Seneca III has applied his analytical abilities to photographs of the building at 514 Cedar Avenue South, Minneapolis, before it exploded, burned, and was demolished.

This is the first of three parts.

Caveat: In view of the circumlocutions, contortions, contradictions and sock-puppetry that have taken place in and around the scene of the explosion and subsequent fire in Minneapolis since the arrival of the DHS, and which has now been followed by what would appear to be an almost total destruction of any remaining physical evidence at a site that was already going to be difficult to forensically analyse, I am of a mind that it may be time for you/we the people to at least have a clinical look at the circumstantial evidence and draw a few, hopefully informed conclusions of our own.

Hence I submit the following contribution to this cauldron of chaos from here over the pond in the hope that it will be of some help to you ‘cousins’, perhaps as a spur, perhaps as an awakening, particularly because you must be in possession of local knowledge and have an understanding of local practices and procedures that I do not. Good hunting! — Seneca III

I. The Building And Its Environs — an Overview
by Seneca III

[Attr: The following illustrations have been extracted from a Google Street View sweep dated June 2011 and have been notated, sharpened and exposure-, noise- and shadow-enhanced using ‘Paint.NET’. No additions, removals or digital alterations of any type were effected. — S III.]

Frame 1: Front view of the building with, ringed from left to right, a standard entrance light, a CCTV camera, a removed/disabled(?) entry system(?), CCTV camera/light, general window illumination, a CCTV camera, an un-numbered door with a peculiar logo on it, a street light, another CCTV camera and, finally, below it, a door to No. 10, the Mosque, above which is a sign advertising rooms for rent.

Some of the above items of interest are enlarged in frames 2-4 below.

Frame 2

Frame 3

Frame 4: The unknown logo. The black dot below the logo may simply be a mark or something else but the definition precludes any firm identification. [Does anybody out there have any ID on the logo?]

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What the Police and the Gas Company Really Said

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Before we get to the important part of this post, here are a few updates on the Cedar Avenue case, all provided by commenters on last night’s post:

  • A third victim injured in the blast, Abdiqani Adan, has died.
  • A video report shows Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) standing behind Fire Chief John Fruetel while the latter talks about a “gas leak”.
  • A commenter at CityPages blog reports that a dozen propane tanks were recently stolen from a hardware store on Franklin Avenue, a few blocks to the south of the destroyed building.
  • An interesting character in the case is apparently being airbrushed out of the picture. The following tidbit was originally published in the Strib, but has since been removed. However, it still exists as a mirror in various places, including this Somali jihad site. Before being cleansed, the Strib article said that Basim Sabri is “a property owner who has served as a liaison between authorities and the mosque adjoining the burned building”. But Mr. Sabri is also a convicted felon who served time in prison for bribery.
  • The property at 514 Cedar Avenue South is owned by Garad Nor and managed by Wadani Properties of Minneapolis. There is no apparent connection between Mr. Sabri and Mr. Nor or Wadani Properties.

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The mainstream media have failed miserably in their duty to ask the hard questions and look more deeply into this case. Parroting what the fire chief said in his press conference does not qualify as “reporting”.

Which leaves the bloggers to do the job. One such blogger is Lee Stranahan, who lives (I think) in Minnesota, and has done some primary-source reporting on the Cedar Avenue explosion.

Mr. Stranahan has discovered some very interesting (and unreported) facts. For instance, Rebecca Virden, the spokeswoman for the gas company, was misquoted (and even had words put in her mouth) by the Strib, which then ignored her requests for corrections.

Also: the police who were on the scene at the time of the explosion were not called there because someone smelled gas or felt an “electric shock”.

I’ve reproduced the entire post below, but please see Lee Stranahan for the audio clips and the graphics. The audio is particularly important, because you can hear exactly what Rebecca Virden and the police have to say:

Untangling The Facts On The Explosion At The Minneapolis Apartment Building

I’ve been covering the story of the explosion and fire that took place in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood on Minneapolis, Minnesota on New Year’s Day. There’s been a fair but of misinformation and confusion. This post is designed to clear up some of that with unfiltered facts from spokespeople for the gas company CenterPoint and the Minneapolis Police Department.

Please listen to the audio clips. There’s a LOT of detail in the clips. If you just read the post and skip the clips, you’ll miss a lot.

CenterPoint Is Definitive: No Gas Leak With Their System

Because of the conflicting statements, I contacted CenterPoint and spoke with Rebecca Virden. I’m glad I did because as you’ll see in a moment, there’s some very bad reporting going on with this story.

Our distribution system after we checked it — which runs up to the meter, which is the distribution system’s responsibility, to the meter — has no leak on it at all. We tested that system and it holds its test. We even took it apart and tested it to make sure because it had no leakage. It’s fully sound.

As for our system, we had no leakage, no leak history, no leak calls into our call centers prior to the incident before, during or after.

Here’s audio of the interview, which is longer than what I quoted. It seems very definitive. Listen to it.

Police Officer Was On Scene

CenterPoint says nobody reported smelling gas and significantly, the spokeswoman for CenterPoint says that they were told a police office was in the building just minutes prior to the explosion.

I followed up with the Minneapolis police, who confirmed an office was outside when the explosion happened. The officer was been called to the address on a robbery call.

Explosion “Isolated To One Unit”

Apparently, the explosion came from one unit on the second floor.

Fire Chief Still Blames “Gas Problem”

Despite all of this — the firm denial from CenterPoint, the police officer on scene minutes before, the fact that the explosion came from one unit — the fire chief is still sticking to the gas story.

As the Star-Tribune reports:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/4/2014

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Fourteen suspects — thirteen Palestinians and one Israeli Bedouin — have been arrested for the bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv on December 22. An alert passenger spotted the bomb, and the bus was evacuated before the blast, so that no one was injured.

In other news, the first two articles of the new Tunisian constitution designate Islam as the county’s official religion, but specifically prohibit sharia as the source of law.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, Kitman, MC, Nilk, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Applying Occam’s Razor

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Official malfeasance.

Dereliction of duty.

Obstruction of justice.

Misprision of multiple felonies.

Destruction of evidence.

Those are just a few of the juridical phrases that come to mind when contemplating the “investigation” of the New Year’s Day explosion and fire at 514 Cedar Avenue South in Minneapolis.

Before we begin any analysis and speculation, let’s stand back and consider what has been learned over the past few days about what happened on that fiery New Year’s dawn in “Little Mogadishu”.

The fire chief warned the public that the cause of the explosion and fire would not be know for weeks, if it is ever known at all. He said it would take a long time for investigators to analyze the evidence.

Yet the bulk of the evidence was backhoed into a heap of rubble within 72 hours after the explosion occurred.

The fire chief also told us that the evidence (where? who saw it?) points to a natural gas leak as the most likely cause of the explosion. He said that “witnesses” had reported a smell of natural gas before the building went up.

There are only two witnesses from the scene who have been quoted on the record about the smell of gas. According to the Strib, both of them state that there was no gas smell:

Neither [Hersi] Hassan nor [Abdi] Qobey smelled gas that morning, nor did they hear any fire alarms.

This contradicts the words of the fire chief, who repeatedly emphasized a natural gas leak as the likely cause — but not before the Department of Homeland Security arrived at the scene of the fire on Thursday morning.

According to WCCO-TV:

Fire Chief John Fruetel said Thursday that investigators are focusing on a gas explosion as a possible cause due to the nature of the debris field and because some witnesses spoke of an odor. However, he added the exact cause may never be determined.

Yet the gas utility, CenterPoint Energy, is still insisting that there was no natural gas leak:

Becca Virden, a spokeswoman for CenterPoint Energy, said there were no natural gas leaks in the system and that the utility received no reports of a suspicious odor before the blast.

Which backs off slightly from her earlier statement:

“We had no natural gas in the area,” said Rebecca Virden, basing her information on CenterPoint’s own investigation and testing in the area.

The FBI has arrived on the scene, at pains to reassure the public that no terrorism was involved:

Greg Boosalis, supervisory special agent with the FBI in Minneapolis, said the investigation is continuing, but at this juncture there is no evidence of terrorist activity. Boosalis said the FBI has been assisting Minneapolis officials in a “support role.”

Two bodies have been found. One of them has been identified as Ahmed Farah Ali. Since the latest reports say that all persons in the building at the time of the explosion have now been accounted for, the other corpse is most likely that of Mrimri Farah, the roommate of Mr. Ali and the only remaining person who has been reported missing.

The mosque next to the demolished building is unusable, due to fire and water damage, and worshippers are holding prayers at a nearby community center. The surviving residents of the building are either in the hospital, or have been temporarily relocated by the local authorities or charitable agencies.

Those are the facts. Now it’s time for analysis and speculation.

The smelliest things in this case are as follows:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/3/2014

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According to the latest reports, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un executed his uncle last month by having him thrown naked into a pen with a pack of starving wild dogs, along with five of his associates. The ravenous dogs ate the men alive, while 300 senior officials were compelled to watch.

In other news, Zimbabwe is reportedly importing 150,000 tons of corn from South Africa to stave off starvation among its population. The country requires 2.2 million tons of corn per year, but only produced 800,000 tons last year, and needs to make up the shortfall.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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A Funny Smell in Minneapolis

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As I reported yesterday, after the Department of Homeland Security arrived at the site of the Cedar Avenue explosion in Minneapolis, the push for a “natural gas leak” began in earnest, despite the gas company’s insistence that they “had no natural gas in the area”.

It wasn’t long before media stories referred to an alleged smell of natural gas detected by witnesses before the fire. An earlier report from the Strib told us:

Fire Chief John Fruetel said Thursday afternoon that witness accounts of a natural gas smell and the explosion strongly suggest that gas was involved.

And yesterday KSTP-TV said:

In a news conference Thursday Minneapolis Fire Chief John Fruetel said the investigation is focusing on a potential gas type scenario due to witness statements. Witnesses reported smelling natural gas.

Today KMSP-TV reported:

“People who had left the building had made an indication that they may have smelled some natural gas,” Minneapolis Fire Chief John Fruetel said.

I combed through every news story I could find that mentioned the smell of gas, and none of them named or quoted from a witness who said they smelled it. All the reports simply referred back to the fire chief’s press conference yesterday.

The sole account that actually named a witness who talked about a smell (also from KMSP-TV) flatly contradicted the fire chief:

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Body #2 Found at Cedar Avenue

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Thanks once again to an anonymous commenter for a tip on the latest from the Strib about Wednesday morning’s explosion and fire in a Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis:

A second body has been found in the wreckage of a Minneapolis apartment building that exploded and burned on New Year’s Day, fire officials confirmed Friday morning.

The discovery came Friday morning as crews resumed work removing debris from the site.

At least 14 people were injured, six of them critically.

The body of the first victim was discovered Thursday afternoon as excavating equipment began knocking down walls of the gutted three-story building shared by a grocery and 10 apartments.

Family members identified the two people not accounted for as Mrimri Farah, said to be about 60 years old, and Ahmad Ali, 57, who shared an apartment. Ali’s ex-wife Hawo Daqare said they divorced in 2006 but continued to share parenting of their son.

“I feel very bad, but I cannot do anything. Imagine if you lost someone,” she said.

She said Ali lived in Apartment No. 6 on the second floor.

Farah previously served in the U.S. Army and at one point was stationed in Iraq, said Shareef Hassan, a friend. Farah had gone to live in Somalia and came back to live in Minneapolis a couple of months ago. [emphasis added]

Consider this: there were almost no Somali immigrants to the United States before the “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Mogadishu in 1993. That means that any Somali-American who joined the U.S. Army did so sometime after that.

Mrimri Farah is said to have been sixty years old. That means he was at least forty when he joined up, maybe older.

The war in Iraq began in 2003. That means he was at least fifty when he served in Iraq.

Something is decidedly fishy here.

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As a result of the fire, worshippers at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque have been forced to meet elsewhere. Fortunately for them, a community center and a synagogue have pitched in to donate space for Friday prayers:

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Avoiding the Unpleasant Questions

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Below is an interview with the Dutch author Leon de Winter from the Swiss German-language newspaper Tagesanzeiger. Many thanks to JLH for the translation.

First, a bio of the interview subject:

Leon de Winter, a bestselling author, grew up as the son of Orthodox Jews in Holland. He studied at film schools in Munich and Amsterdam, but became known as a novelist. His latest work, “A Good Heart,” was published by Diogenes in 2013. He takes part regularly in political debate and has often dealt critically with Islam. He lives near Amsterdam.

The interview:

Tagesanzeiger Series: What will 2014 bring?

Interview with Leon de Winter

Corine Mauch and Simon Amman

Mr. de Winter, Switzerland will be voting in February on whether to take the direction of immigration into its own hands again and institute quotas. It would be de facto the end of the free movement of people with the EU. What do you think of that?

I have never liked the idea of limiting the autonomy of nations. We have not yet reached that point. After many centuries of bloody conflict, we are still getting used to each other. Borders are not superfluous. They have a function. If you travel from Switzerland to France, Holland to Belgium or Germany to Poland, you notice right away that you are entering another world. The houses look different. The people shop differently Believing that these differences could be encompassed in a bureaucratic framework is an illusion.

Just three years ago, you wrote: “Europe is much too heterogeneous for a union.” Does that mean that Europe is also too heterogeneous for free travel of persons?

Yes, because there is no European unity. Perhaps we are on the way to it. But we are not there yet. And unity cannot be commanded. Europe need far more time for getting used to one another. The union could have been developed slowly and organically. But the time was not allowed.

The next referendum on this subject may follow as early as this Fall — on whether free movement of persons should be extended to include the new EU member, Croatia. The EU would take a No as a provocation. As a citizen of an EU state, what would you advise? Is it wise to tangle with the EU?

In the short term, of course, it is easier to go along and not be contentious. On the other hand, imagine if the EU disciplined Switzerland out of consideration for Croatia. That would be stupid. And on top of that, if the bureaucrats of the EU took a good look, they would see the problems that free travel of persons causes. Holland is one of the preferred immigration countries for Romanians. What I am saying is naturally not politically correct, but it is the reality. There is more criminality; there are more beggars. There is one of them playing an accordion on every street corner in Amsterdam. He learns one tune by heart and plays it all day long. Is this European progress? Naturally we should support the Romanians. But I do not believe we are integrating them into Western European society by allowing them to play the accordion in Amsterdam.

For a long time, criticism of immigration was the playing field of the political Right. But now this subject has moved into the political and social Middle. What has happened?

Reality has happened. And that is always a problem for politicians. There are such things as ordinary facts. And these are not invisible to the people. Many generations have worked very hard to build the basis of our present state. The welfare state is a lovely model, but it is not compatible with the model of an immigration state. The immigration state that wants to simultaneously be a welfare state will have problems. We have them in West Europe, because we have been making mistakes since the 1960s. We thought we could combine the two models. Naturally we needed workers — people who waded right in. But we don’t like to talk about the results — that these workers then made demands on the welfare state.

It is understandable that immigrants who work by our side want to profit from our social accomplishments.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/2/2014

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A Russian ship that went to the Antarctic to research global warming has been trapped in the ice under blizzard conditions since Christmas Eve. Now all the crew and passengers have been rescued, thanks to a Chinese helicopter which flew them from their ship to an Australian icebreaker.

In other news, North Korean Christians were able to celebrate Christmas this year, but only by gathering in underground tunnels in twos or threes, where the authorities could not find them.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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The Gas Company Says: “No Way!”

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Thanks to an anonymous commenter for pointing out that the Strib article has been updated again.

According to the latest news on the explosion and fire in Minneapolis — now attributed to a — “gas leak”, one body has been recovered from the rubble at 516 Cedar Avenue South:

A body was recovered Thursday afternoon from the wreckage of the three-story Minneapolis apartment building destroyed by a New Year’s Day explosion, fire officials confirmed.

“At approximately 1:55 p.m. Minneapolis Fire Department officials confirmed that one body was discovered in the structure at 516 Cedar Ave. S.,” said a statement by Assistant Fire Chief Chérie A. Penn.

Penn said the victim has been turned over to the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office. She said crews will continue to remove debris until dark and will resume their work Friday morning.

Notice that it wasn’t until after DHS arrived on the scene that the fire chief started to talk about a gas leak:

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. At a news conference Thursday afternoon, the Minneapolis fire chief said the fire in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood was most likely caused by a natural gas leak.

Fire Chief John Fruetel said Thursday afternoon that witness accounts of a natural gas smell and the explosion strongly suggest that gas was involved.

Fruetel added that the fire began either on the second floor or third floor.

But Fruetel also said that investigators are not certain what caused the fire and they may never be certain. He said four or five investigators have been on the site around the clock, looking for evidence such as debris patterns.

So the authorities are pushing the natural gas leak story, all the while covering their posteriors by saying “we may never know”. But the gas utility, CenterPoint Energy, is not sticking to the script. They seem unwilling to take the fall for what happened on Cedar Avenue yesterday.

Interestingly enough, the spokeswoman for CenterPoint both contradicted the fire chief, and agreed with me about what a natural gas explosion would look like:

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The Court Historian Has No Clothes

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As mentioned here on Tuesday, The New Criterion has published a symposium on Diana West’s book American Betrayal. One of the letters featured was written by the historian Conrad Black, who has repeatedly denounced Ms. West over her analysis of the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

A commenter named Brett Woods — a self-identified soldier in the “Kook Army” — took exception to what Mr. Black said in this well-sourced response:

“The slightest dalliance with the notion that the U.S. government was at any time or in any way motivated by anything but the national interest plausibly interpreted and pursued by those at the head of the administrations attacked by Ms. West is unrigorous and outrageous.”

— Conrad Black

The court historian of the glorious FDR has spoken. Don’t look any further — if you do, you will “split the American Right, render it ineffective” and deliver the governance of the US into the hands of progressives in all eternity. That seems to be the gist of it.

If it wasn’t for the fact that this view so obviously is being imposed upon conservatives by powerful forces, it would actually make for a good laugh. But things being as they are, it seems all the more necessary to try and add some accuracy concerning FDR’s performance especially during WWII and up to the crucial Yalta conference 1945.

Yalta was after all FDR’s chance to really show what he was made of, once again representing the free world, eyeball to eyeball with the most repressive genocidal maniac of the world, the “man of steel”, Joseph Stalin.

The first round in Teheran 1943 clearly went to Stalin as FDR had to be taken to his quarters after he famously fainted, “turned green and great drops of sweat began to bead off his face.”[1]

But how did Yalta go? Was it the shining hour of the glorious FDR, as the court historians claim, or the epic fail of a demented cripple?

To answer these questions it is helpful to look at some of the eye-witness reports concerning FDR’s overall fitness and mental capacity at the time before Yalta.

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Enter DHS — It Was a Gas Leak

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Here’s an update on yesterday’s explosion and fire in a Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis:

Investigators from the Department of Homeland Security are on the scene. Fire crews have begun to clear debris from the ruined building at 514 Cedar Avenue South.

Meanwhile, although the gas company had previously stated that there were no gas leaks in the area, investigators are said to consider a gas leak to be the most likely cause.

Earlier today, from the Strib:

On the investigatory front, officials were hoping to enter the building Thursday. The shell of a structure has yet to be cleared by inspectors as safe enough to enter. The chief said it could be days or weeks before a cause is determined.

[…]

Ahmed Muse, one of five owners of the Otonga grocery store, said he arrived at the store at 8 a.m. Wednesday. There was what he called “an electrical shock” in the building, and police were called. When he went outside to talk to the officers, an explosion erupted on the second floor, blowing out the windows and scattering glass on the street below.

The grocery served halal meats and was popular among the neighborhood’s many Somali-American residents. Muse said that it had been there since 1998 and that the building was in good shape and had been remodeled last year.

Concerning gas leaks, this is what KSTP-TV reported last night:

Officials said it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the fire. CenterPoint Energy spokeswoman Becca Virden said there were no natural gas leaks in the area. Fire officials tells KSTP reporter Jay Kolls the FBI and ATF are investigating.

But after DHS arrived and the investigators began to clear the rubble, the story changed. According to an updated version of the Strib report:

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