Fires on French railway tracks have delayed journeys for 800,000 travelers in what the transport minister described as “coordinated attacks of malicious intent.”
A co-ordinated arson attack on the French rail system is turning the first weekend of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris into a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of travelers.
French rail company SNCF announced on Friday its high-speed train system had been hit by “deliberate arson attacks to damage [its] facilities” causing delays and cancellations which are expected to last all weekend.
The disruptions are affecting trains heading East, North and West of Paris, and travelers have been asked to postpone their plans.
Maybe after this all the various Russian teams will finally be banned completely. Country is full of cheaters anyway.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_Russia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Neutral_Athletes_at_the_2024_Summer_Olympics
Icarus is a great documentary about doping in general, but especially russia.
In another story, Belgium making arrests for terrorism related to France: https://apnews.com/article/terrorism-belgium-suspects-olympics-966191331732ea4d1e663a65d96a9e49
I wonder if these are related.
I know this is terrible of me, but… I was originally not planning on watching the opening ceremonies. Now I’m going to scare-watch them.
The timing snuck up on me and I haven’t figured out how to get viewing access to them (whether broadcast, subscription, or 🏴☠️). Any suggestions?
For the last Olympics, I connected my VPN to Canada because it was on the CBC for free. Hooray for public-funded media! And if I could send some money to the CBC’s way and not have to do that, I would. Same with the UK TV license.
That said, none of my UK VPN addresses are working for UK TV anymore. I’m hoping the Canadian ones still work.
Edit: Seems to be working but it’s not live streaming for another 1:45. Here’s the link for the CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6443205
I use Private Internet Access as my VPN if that helps.
See? This is why it pisses me off so much when they talk about defunding CBC.
Proton VPN’s streaming servers should work
RTS and SRF also free with swiss VPN
Or TF1 with french VPN
Or ORF with austrian vpn
How does this help their cause?
To weaken France’s image, to sow chaos, to get security forces focused on other things while they try to get specific targets.
There have been reports about both Russia and Iran being potentially involved.
So far I’ve seen an article about a Russian getting arrested 2 days ago.
French newspapers don’t mention any of those for now, the only mention is that the methodology is similar to previous far-left activism (source: https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/live/2024/07/26/en-direct-attaque-massive-contre-la-sncf-reprise-progressive-du-trafic-un-tiers-des-trains-circuleront-vendredi-apres-midi_6258634_3224.html), which could be a disguise of course. As to why the far-left would do that, there are radical-ecologists that argue it is an unacceptable waste simply for entertainment, considering the climate crisis, for example. It could also be both, local activists helped by foreign influence, willingly or not.
there are radical-ecologists that
…are way too small in number and connections and frankly energy to pull off a covert stunt like that. This isn’t like getting a bunch of people to live in treetops to make it complicated for the forest to give way to a chemical plant.
Sure there’s folks with ideas like that but as all other urban guerillas it’s doomed to fail. Embarrassingly so. The type of people willing to do these kinds of things aren’t the kind of people who’d agree with anyone on anything much less trust another affinity group to not be moles. The higher the stakes you insist on the more isolated you are the less you can coordinate.
If this was a chain of attacks over a longer time-span, sure, then one group could have inspired another, but everything coordinated? Forget it.
From what I’ve seen, French newspapers have only mentioned the Russian for now.
Russian spy arrested in Paris after alleged plan to ‘destabilize’ Olympic Games (Le Monde, English)
Lmao you absolute muppet. This is just Paris doing Paris things. The Olympics generally bring a lot of annoying and negative side effects to a city and region, in addition to (and often, because of) the increased tourism. Parisians and the French in general are famously unapologetic about engaging in direct action when they think their government is being a bunch of dumbasses, or they wish to express staunch displeasure with a policy or event that they strongly disagree with. This is just that.
If you think a bunch of trains running late for a day causes terror, you don’t know the French rail system.
If you mean Russia, and if it was Russia, the cause is to sow chaos.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/gerasimov-doctrine-russia-foreign-policy-215538/
The LAPD didn’t stop it from happening?
