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Posted
59 minutes ago, sebastien1214 said:

Oh, on the contrary, they are going to have fun with the Eiffel Tower and probably light it up with all the colors possible. I mean, if you want a good example, you can search YouTube for Bastille Day fireworks. We can even imagine that during the night the 100,000 LEDs in the rings, rather than all being lit white, reproduce country flags. (which would be absolutely great for the arrival of the delegations at the Trocadéro, with the flags of the countries on the rings of the Eiffel Tower, but unfortunately it will still be daylight when they arrive at the Trocadéro)

If it's NOT a foggy night.  When I was in Paris on 14 julliet 1988 avec mes parents, we had like a 6:00 pm dinner at the Tour; then walked to the hotel around 8:30 so we could be on the ground to see the fireworks -- it was a flop.  The fog / mist/ haze had come in and obscured the tower and the skies -- so les pyrotechniques just burst like lightning inside the clouds.  I don't know that 1 billion LED lights will matter if the mist rolls in.  Not even Taylor Swiftie can save the night!!  ;)

Posted
1 hour ago, Cyriln said:

I'm not sure Macron would like to see some flags on the Eiffel Tower...

Yeah, it really should be a neutral setting. Especially in this current, very delicate geopolitical climate. Could be seen as favoritism towards certain countries.

Besides, the original colors of the Olympic Rings are suppose to embody the colors of country flags anyway. Since each flag of every country in the world has at least one of the colors on the rings in their respective flags.

Posted
33 minutes ago, FYI said:

Besides, the original colors of the Olympic Rings are suppose to embody the colors of country flags anyway. Since each flag of every country in the world has at least one of the colors on the rings in their respective flags.

Yet the countries still march in behind their national flags, and those flags get flown around every stadium if the games. Plus the rings on Eiffel Tower seem to be lit white, while tower itself gets lit up in national flag colours regularly.

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It may or may not happen, but it would look spectacular indeed if the tower did flash up EACH (of course they couldn’t just confine it to a few “favoured” countries) countries’ flags colours as they marched into the Trocadero.

  • Like 1
Posted

In fact I said that because during Euro 2016, every evening, the Eiffel Tower was in the colors of one of the participating countries (but I don't remember the criteria). For example with England:

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Afterwards yes, if it happens, there should be no favoritism. That's why I mentioned the athletes' parade since all the flags are present; but it will be done during the day so that makes the idea improbable.

Posted

While the Eiffel as the backdrop looks like it has lots of potential (i.e. performances at the tower) the space between Trocadero's stands looks very minimal.

In a way it also reminds me of the IAAF 1997 opening ceremony (that one produced by Vangelis). I wonder if they will do something similar.

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Posted

I hoped that after the European elections, politicians would be able to stop saying bullshit abut anything, especially Olympics, but Macron decided to dissolve the National Assembly. Elections will take place on June 30 and July 7.

Posted

We will therefore have a brand new government before July 26, and there is a good chance that it will be a government led by Marine le Pen (or Jordan Bardella, her heir apparent). Of course, it will still be Macron who will open the Games, but...

We will have to hope that the new government does not touch any of the security plans, and more generally the plans for the Olympics. It would be irresponsible to touch it 2 weeks before the Games. And I'm thinking in particular of the opening ceremony... I know some people who must be panicking.

And for the rest, how irresponsible for Macron to dissolve it now. But I'm not even surprised anymore.

Posted

This is a sad day for Europe. Putin OTOH must be very happy. His biggest fans in Germany and Austria also did very well, and of course Le Pen now doesn't want to remember but she cosied up to him quite a lot over many years already.

Isn't the French election system built in a way that most seats will be distributed in a run-off so that hopefully the Kremlin puppets will not be able to get a majority?

Posted
1 minute ago, StefanMUC said:

Isn't the French election system built in a way that most seats will be distributed in a run-off so that hopefully the Kremlin puppets will not be able to get a majority?

The legislative election system is usually not favorable for far-right: typically, all other parties unite against them for the run-off. But it didn't prevent them to have a lot of deputies two years ago, and it should be even higher next month.

Posted
4 minutes ago, StefanMUC said:

Isn't the French election system built in a way that most seats will be distributed in a run-off so that hopefully the Kremlin puppets will not be able to get a majority?

To summarize the French political system: in the first round we choose, in the second round we eliminate.

Until then, it put aside the extremes. Because even when they were strong in the first round, and qualified almost everywhere in the legislative elections for the second round (we do not have proportional representation but 577 constituencies), what we call the "republican front" meant that almost systematically everyone voted for the person who was opposite the RN.

This is why in 2017, Le Pen was certainly in the second round of the presidential election, but in the legislative elections her party had less than 10 seats.

All this blew up in 2022, where Le Pen obtained 89 deputies. There have been a few polls since to ask "if tomorrow there are legislative elections", the latest polls gave more than 200 deputies to the RN (absolute majority: 277). So unfortunately, Le Pen may have power in less than a month.

  • Sad 1
Posted

Note that even if she doesn't have an absolute majority but her party is still the one with the most seats, she still may be Prime Minister if other parties doesn't unite at the National Assembly (and right now in French politics, everybody HATES everybody).

Posted
11 minutes ago, StefanMUC said:

Thanks @Cyriln and @sebastien1214

I just hope then whoever will form the government, the transition will not harm the Olympics preparations, especially the security.

 

If the current government doesn't win the election (which looks really probable), there's going to have a completely new Minister of the Interior (the one person managing the police and everything about security in France) 15 days before the Opening Ceremony...

Posted
15 minutes ago, StefanMUC said:

Thanks @Cyriln and @sebastien1214

I just hope then whoever will form the government, the transition will not harm the Olympics preparations, especially the security.

 

You will have to watch the opening ceremony carefully. Two weeks before July 26, would a new government take the risk of moving to plan B, with only two weeks to put it in place? Or would he take the risk of taking on plan A, knowing that if from a security point of view it goes badly, it will be a bad start for the new government?

As for other issues related to the Olympics, Russians must be happy. They who are launched in a major campaign of destabilization throughout Europe, there is no doubt that they will jump at the opportunity to concentrate all their efforts on France.

  • Like 1
Posted

Just, to be a little more precise on the polls I was talking about regarding possible early legislative elections. Here is this survey that the Ipsos institute carried out a few months ago in the hypothesis of a dissolution of the National Assembly.

This is a bit off-topic, but as the question was asked. I'll let you see...

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Posted
25 minutes ago, sebastien1214 said:

You will have to watch the opening ceremony carefully. Two weeks before July 26, would a new government take the risk of moving to plan B, with only two weeks to put it in place? Or would he take the risk of taking on plan A, knowing that if from a security point of view it goes badly, it will be a bad start for the new government?

 

WIth a new governement in place less than two weeks prior to opening, I don't think it will change a thing: it would be judged irresponsible to change anything major with less than two weeks to go (and if, god forbid, something was to go wrong, the new government will blame the previous one).

Posted
3 minutes ago, cfm Jeremie said:

WIth a new governement in place less than two weeks prior to opening, I don't think it will change a thing: it would be judged irresponsible to change anything major with less than two weeks to go (and if, god forbid, something was to go wrong, the new government will blame the previous one).

This is the rational position. That's what I think too. But I tell myself that French political life is so broken at the moment that we can expect anything...

Posted

F******* hell, at least it wasn't a impeachment but what the actual hell, is this going to be Rio 2016 pre-olympic government chaos redux? Hope Macron plan to ward off the extreme right-wing crazies works, i guess?

Posted

What the heck is going on?! I log in to check the daily going-on's on GB's to see this (even the national evening news here didn't mention a peep about it. Guess I'll have to go online or some of the cable news channels to see more). I'm not that well-versed in European politics, but are today's elections there comparable to the Mid-terms here in the U.S.? 

And yes, it's very disturbing the destabilization campaign that's being made towards Europe by a certain country just to the east. And unfortunately, it's not just Europe where that campaign is targeting to destabilize.

8 minutes ago, Guilga said:

Hope Macron plan to ward off the extreme right-wing crazies works, i guess?

And apparently, Le Pen was "delighted to accept the challenge".

Posted
34 minutes ago, Guilga said:

F******* hell, at least it wasn't a impeachment but what the actual hell, is this going to be Rio 2016 pre-olympic government chaos redux? Hope Macron plan to ward off the extreme right-wing crazies works, i guess?

Oh, but Macron's plan should on the contrary worry you: he is betting on a victory for the RN. This way, he says to himself that if in 2027, the French are unhappy with the action of the RN government (which will have been elected in a month), his party can win the presidential elections again.

He knows full well that he will lose the legislative elections in a month given how the French hate him.

8 minutes ago, FYI said:

What the heck is going on?! I log in to check the daily going-on's on GB's to see this (even the national evening news here didn't mention a peep about it. Guess I'll have to go online or some of the cable news channels to see more). I'm not that well-versed in European politics, but are today's elections there comparable to the Mid-terms here in the U.S.? 

And yes, it's very disturbing the destabilization campaign that's being made towards Europe by a certain country just to the east. And unfortunately, it's not just Europe where that campaign is targeting to destabilize.

And apparently, Le Pen was "delighted to accept the challenge".

Today there were the European elections, which generally consist of electing the parliament of the European Union every year.

But this election is also increasingly becoming a sort of "mid-terms", at least in France. That is to say an intermediate election where we sanction the government in place.

Posted
1 minute ago, sebastien1214 said:

He knows full well that he will lose the legislative elections in a month given how the French hate him.

I see that mentioned from time-to-time. But why is that? The French after all, voted for him twice. What specifically do the French "hate him" for? And is that an over-reach TBW?

It's like when certain Americans say that "the 'people' are tired of Biden", when in actuality, that's not really the case. It's only a certain sub-set of people that really like to say that.

6 minutes ago, sebastien1214 said:

Today there were the European elections, which generally consist of electing the parliament of the European Union every year.

But this election is also increasingly becoming a sort of "mid-terms", at least in France. That is to say an intermediate election where we sanction the government in place.

Okay, thanks. But this still seems a bit confusing, since I'd never really considered the EU having that much political influence/power within it's member states. 

Posted
7 minutes ago, FYI said:

I see that mentioned from time-to-time. But why is that? The French after all, voted for him twice. What specifically do the French "hate him" for? And is that an over-reach TBW?

It's like when certain Americans say that "the 'people' are tired of Biden", when in actuality, that's not really the case. It's only a certain sub-set of people that really like to say that.

Okay, thanks. But this still seems a bit confusing, since I'd never really considered the EU having that much political influence/power within it's member states. 

Biden's popularity rating in the USA is around 45-50% (is that right?). For Macron, in France, we are around 25-30%, which is almost half as much.

And yes, indeed, he won the elections in 2017 & 2022. But don't forget that in France, in the first round we choose, and in the second round we eliminate. He had 58.55% in the second round in 2022, but that does not mean that 58.55% of French people supported his project, on the contrary. A large number of people (including me) did it so as not to see Le Pen as president.

As for the hatred: in 2018, Macron was so afraid that he had planned a helicopter to escape in case the demonstrators managed to storm the Elysée.

Then, for the influence of the EU, about half of the laws/decrees in France are "dictated" by decisions taken within the European Union. (I'm summarizing a lot, it's not completely accurate but it's so that you understand the importance of the EU for the member states; I don't really want to go too far off-topic, even if what happened this evening will have obvious repercussions for the Olympics, so it's hard not to talk about that)

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