Then he should lose big tomorrow:
"Macron campaign alleges ‘massive’ hacking" by Aurelien Breedenand Sewell Chan New York Times May 05, 2017
Someone must have hacked the Globe and replaced my print with that!
"Macron's team hit by hack, Le Pen claims 'ideological victory' in bitter French campaign
France election" by Elaine Ganley and Nadine Achoui-Lesage, Associated Press || May 6 2017
Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said Friday she believes she can pull off a surprise victory in France's high-stakes runoff Sunday, while independent front-runner Emmanuel Macron suffered a document leak that his team called a bid to throw the vote.
Macron's political movement said late Friday night it has been the victim of a "massive and coordinated" hacking attack that led to the leak of campaign emails and financial documents.
In a statement, the En Marche movement said it was hacked a few weeks ago, and that the leaked documents have been mixed with false documents to "seed doubt and disinformation" and destabilize Sunday's presidential runoff. Hillary Clinton's U.S. presidential campaign suffered similar leaks, and also said that authentic documents were mixed with false documents.
Fears of hacking, fake news manipulation and Russian meddling clouded the French campaign but had largely gone unrealized — until Friday's admission by Macron's campaign that it had suffered an online pirate attack.
At that point I couldn't take it anymore.
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FLASHBACK:
"Cyberattack on French presidential front-runner bears Russian ‘fingerprints’" by Rick Noack The Washington Post News Service April 25, 2017
PARIS — A security firm claimed Tuesday that a new cyberattack against the campaign offices of the front-runner in France’s presidential race carried similar digital ‘‘fingerprints’’ to the suspected Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and others.
Yeah, who left those "fingerprints" again (notice how the Globe wiped 'em clean)?
See: WikiLeaks Reveals "Marble": Proof CIA Disguises Their Hacks As Russian, Chinese, Arabic...
And anyone else they want to frame (like North Korea?)
The report, released by the Trend Micro research group, did not disclose what possible fallout the infiltration had on the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, a centrist who is in a two-person runoff with far-right rival Marine Le Pen in the May 7 election.
But if a Russian connection was proved, the hacking would add to mounting allegations of Moscow-backed attempts to influence Western elections in favor of candidates with policies potentially more favorable to the Kremlin. Le Pen has voiced opposition to the powers of the European Union and has called for better ties with Russia, echoing the campaign rhetoric of Donald Trump.
IF?
Related:
"White House suggests Putin was directly involved in US hacking, but no proof was offered for any of the accusations and U.S. officials have not contended that Trump would have been defeated by Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8, nor has there has been any indication of tampering with the vote-counting."
Say again?
Tokyo-based Trend Micro said Macron’s campaign was targeted in March and April by a cyberspy group called Pawn Storm. It is the same group that has allegedly used phishing and malware to infiltrate other political organizations, such as Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party in Germany and the Democratic National Committee.
Someone is being used as a pawn!
‘‘We found similarities in the IP addresses and malware used in the attacks,’’ said Rik Ferguson, the vice president of the company’s security research program. ‘‘The group behind the attacks certainly appears to pursue Russian interests,’’ he added....
Yup, uh-huh, right. What he said means nothing.
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If Le pen wins, the Russians stole it. If globalist puke Macron wins, all legit even though fixed. That's the narrative they are constructing to be shoved down your throat.
Related: Wikileaks Exposes CIA Involvement In French 2012 Presidential Election
But they won't/didn't do it this time!
And look who is trying to influence the British vote!
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FLASHPRESENT:
In an interview with The Associated Press in the final hours of a hostile, topsy-turvy campaign, Le Pen said that win or lose, "we changed everything." She claimed an "ideological victory" for her populist, anti-immigrant worldview in an election that could change Europe's direction.
Macron acknowledged that the French are exasperated by the government's ineffectiveness, but he dismissed Le Pen's vision of an infuriated country. She "speaks for no one. ... Madame Le Pen exploits anger and hatred," Macron told RTL radio.
Where is your wife?
The candidates stopped campaigning at midnight Friday to give voters a day of reflection before the election. It's a stark choice: Le Pen's anti-immigration, anti-European Union platform, or Macron's progressive, pro-EU stance.
And Zionist interests prevail in any event.
Tensions marred the race right to the end.
France's presidential voting watchdog called on the Interior Ministry late Friday to look into claims by the Le Pen campaign that ballot papers are being tampered with nationwide to benefit Macron. The Le Pen campaign said electoral administrators in several regions who receive ballot papers for both candidates have found the Le Pen ballot "systematically torn up."
Earlier in the day, anti-Le Pen crowds disrupted her visit to a renowned cathedral in Reims.
The presidential campaign has been unusually bitter, with voters hurling eggs and flour, protesters clashing with police and candidates insulting each other on national television — a reflection of the widespread public disaffection with politics as usual.
Le Pen, 48, has brought her far-right National Front party, once a pariah for its racism and anti-Semitism, closer than ever to the French presidency, seizing on working-class voters' growing frustration with globalization and immigration. Even if she loses, she is likely to be a powerful opposition figure in French politics in the upcoming parliamentary election campaign.
The 39-year-old Macron, too, played a key role in upending France's traditional political structure with his wild-card campaign.
He was the wild card? More like Melenchon; a wild card in the sense that he is the e$tabli$hment choice and nothing but a facade.
Voters liked the idea, and chose Macron and Le Pen in the first-round vote, dumping the traditional left and right parties that have governed modern France.
Many voters, however, don't like either Le Pen or Macron. They fear her party's racist past, while worrying that his platform would demolish worker job protections or be too much like his mentor, the deeply unpopular outgoing President Francois Hollande.
Students protested both presidential candidates Friday by blocking high schools and marching through Paris.
Le Pen, who was pelted with eggs Thursday in Brittany, was met by hecklers Friday at the Reims cathedral. She left via an unmarked door, putting her arms over her head as if to protect herself and diving into a black car.
Leftist thuggery bodes badly for Macron. Desperation tactics amidst popular support.
Violent protests erupted in Paris earlier this week against both candidates, with several police officers injured. And critics decried the bitter tone of Wednesday night's presidential debate.
About 100 students pulled garbage bins in front of the entrance to the Lycee Colbert in northeastern Paris, with cardboard signs saying, "Neither Le Pen nor Macron, neither the fatherland nor the boss," — a reference to Le Pen's nationalist views and Macron's pro-business ties.
Students at another school, Lycee Buffon, wrote an open letter calling on the French to exercise their vote and recalling the fate of five students shot in 1943 for fighting the Nazis. Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie, has minimized the Holocaust.
U.S. far-right circles were abuzz with the news that Macron's campaign had been hit by a massive disclosure, but the news comes soon after a crude forgery was circulated on an online message board popular with pranksters and extremists. Wikileaks sounded a skeptical note, saying the Macron leaks might be misinformation....
A psyop set-up?
--more--"
I think it's a rigged vote that will show Macron squeaking through.
Speaking of misinformation and mentors:
"North Korea accuses South and US of plotting to kill Kim Jong Un" by Choe Sang-Hun New York Times May 05, 2017
SEOUL — In a region already tense over nuclear threats, North Korea accused the South Korean and US intelligence agencies on Friday of plotting to assassinate its leader, Kim Jong Un, and it warned of an unspecified counterattack.
Yeah, it's not like the CIA ever tried to assassinate foreign leaders or change regimes.
North Korea recently uncovered a “hideous terrorists’ group” that the National Intelligence Service of South Korea, working with the CIA, had sent into the North on a secret mission to kill Kim with biochemical agents, said a spokesman for the North’s Ministry of State Security.
In a statement carried by the North’s official news agency, KCNA, the unidentified spokesman said the National Intelligence Service had hired a North Korean logger working in Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, in 2014 to prepare for “state-sponsored terrorism.”
The North Koreans would know about that -- back when wars were wars, right?
Officers at the National Intelligence Service were said to have trained the man, providing him with $20,000 and a satellite transmitter-receiver. They then infiltrated the “human scum” into North Korea, giving him instructions last year on how to assassinate Kim, the spokesman said.
The idea was to launch a bombing attack at a military parade attended by Kim, the North Korean statement said.
Kind of Hitleresque in scope if true.
The spy agency later provided the man with additional cash to hire co-conspirators, the statement said.
“Korean-style anti-terrorist attack will be commenced from this moment to sweep away the intelligence and plot-breeding organizations of the US imperialists and the puppet clique, the most mean and brutal hideous terrorist group in the world,” the statement added.
Sadly, that is true and not because it comes from Kim.
The National Intelligence Service dismissed the accusations as groundless.
Maybe. Maybe not.
North Korea stands accused of assassinating Kim Jong Nam, Kim’s estranged half brother, with a banned chemical weapon at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in February.
Malaysian police have arrested two women, one from Indonesia and the other from Vietnam, and charged them with murder, accusing them of smearing VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam’s face at the instruction of North Korean officers. The North suggested that the victim, whose body was released to North Korea, had died of a heart attack.
What if he is just a figurehead and the real power lies with the generals?
North Korea’s claim Friday came amid a growing movement in the US Congress to have the country returned to the State Department’s list of designated state sponsors of terrorism.
Oh, that's what is this.
Related: Tillerson says US won’t insist nations adopt US values, rights
At least the mask is finally off.
It was removed in 2008 as part of an effort to get the North to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. North Korea has since continued to test nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, escalating tensions in the region, and it has vowed not to be dissuaded.
In recent years, North Korea has arrested a few South Korean citizens on charges of spying for the National Intelligence Service. It is also holding at least three Americans on charges of “hostile acts,” including a Korean-American named Kim Dong-chul, whom it accused of spying for the South.
It remains impossible to verify these claims. The National Intelligence Service dismisses them as propaganda.
You take it on faith when you grab one off the news rack.
North Korea also makes an improbable claim that more than 30,000 North Korean defectors who fled to South Korea in the last two decades had been kidnapped by the South.
When it accused the South Korean spy agency in these cases, it usually named the CIA as a co-conspirator or the mastermind. In North Korean propaganda, South Korea remains a “puppet” of the United States.
Still, it is highly unusual for the North to assert that the South’s spy agency plotted to assassinate Kim.
In recent months, as tensions intensified on the Korean Peninsula, the North has reacted stridently to news reports out of South Korea that United States and South Korean commando units were training to “decapitate” the North Korean leadership in case of war.
The North’s totalitarian leadership is especially sensitive to any hint of criticism of or threat to its top leader.
Of course, the U.S. security apparatus takes such things very cavalierly.
It is widely believed to have mounted a hacking attack of Sony Pictures in 2014 as a retaliation against “The Interview,” a comedy based on a fictional plot to assassinate Kim.
I was told the fingerprint actually led back to disgruntled Sony employees but that didn't stop the pre$$ and administration from jumping on it.
When North Korea executed Kim’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek, it accused him of plotting to overthrow Kim’s government.
Over the decades, there have been occasional unconfirmed reports of quickly suppressed armed rebellions or assassination attempts in the North. But longtime North Korea observers say that organized subversion is highly unlikely in the North’s police state, where huge numbers of soldiers and security agents are dedicated to the sole task of protecting Kim.
When Kim and his father, the dictator Kim Jong Il, before him were scheduled to appear in public, agents removed residents from apartments near the location of an appearance and even searched roadside ditches as a precaution, according to defectors from the North who had served in its security agencies.
Soldiers who were designated to shake hands with Kim had to wash their hands first, the defectors said.
--more--"
At least we know who will not be running South Korea after May 9.
Is there a road map to peace?
