We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
An unlikely coalition
The New Popular Front was an 11th-hour alliance, born out of perceived necessity, bringing together two moderate left-wing parties - the center-left Socialist Party and the Green Party — and two far-left movements — Jean-Luc Mélenchon's France Unbowed and the Communist Party.
The alliance wants to lower the retirement age, which Macron raised last year, and vastly expand government spending on social welfare, environmental protection and health care.
Macron called snap elections last month after his coalition was trounced by National Rally in European parliamentary elections, gambling that the possibility of a far-right government would push French voters to reaffirm his mandate.
While he appeared Sunday to have been correct about how the public would respond to the threat of the country's first far-right government since World War II, he seemingly underestimated the appeal of the left.
In the first round, the New Popular Front came in second with 28 percent of the vote, behind the 33 percent of votes cast for National Rally. Macron's centrist alliance secured only 21 percent.
French elections are decided at the district level, so while National Rally and the New Popular Front had more than 30 candidates each who won more than 50 percent of the vote and were elected to Parliament outright, other districts went to a runoff between the top two or three candidates.
In districts where Le Pen's candidates won a narrow victory, the leftist alliance and Macron's centrist coalition combined efforts, encouraging weaker candidates to drop off the ballot. It was primarily candidates from the left, including Mélenchon's France Unbowed, who renounced their second-round participation, according to France's Le Monde newspaper.
Can the center (left) hold?
While the New Popular Front has come out on top, they are nowhere close to securing a
parliamentary majority. Unless moderate members of the alliance are able to form a government with Macron's centrist allies, France could be headed for political gridlock with just weeks until Paris is set to host the Olympics.
After the first projections Sunday, Mélenchon, the most widely known figure in the alliance, called on Macron to invite the bloc to form a government.
"The president must bow and admit this defeat without trying to circumvent it," Mélenchon said.
"No subterfuge, arrangement or combination would be acceptable" to keep his coalition from power, he added.
IN 2006, RESEARCHER CLEVE BACKSTER — THE MAN WHO INVENTED THE CIA'S LIE DETECTOR PROTOCOLS — PUBLISHED 36 YEARS OF EXPERIMENTS PROVING THAT PLANTS, BACTERIA, AND HUMAN CELLS IN PETRI DISHES RESPOND INSTANTANEOUSLY TO HUMAN THOUGHT AND EMOTION — EVEN AT DISTANCES OF HUNDREDS OF MILES. THE SIGNAL IS FASTER THAN LIGHT. IT DOES NOT DIMINISH WITH DISTANCE. IT IS NOT ELECTROMAGNETIC.
In 1966, Cleve Backster was the world's foremost expert on polygraph technology. He had developed the interrogation techniques used by the CIA, FBI, and U.S. military. He understood galvanic skin response — the electrical conductance of biological tissue — better than anyone alive.
One morning, on a whim, he attached polygraph electrodes to a Dracaena plant in his office. He watered it and watched the tracing. Then he thought: "I wonder what would happen if I threatened this plant." He decided to burn a leaf with a match.
The instant he formed the intention — before he moved, before he lit the match, before any ...
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