French Presidential Elections 2017: Fillon vs Macron vs Le Pen

Re: EMLeaks - macron-camp-documents-leaked

Hopefully, the "behind the headlines" team will be able to have a look at some of contennt of the EMLeak/MacronLeak beforehand ;)
Looking forward to the show.

Regards,

#art.
 
In this tweet from Wikileaks: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/860204537998708736

Obama intervenes in election to tell French to vote for Macron after previously ordering CIA to steal parties' plans

CIA espionage orders for the 2012 French presidential election

[…] All major French political parties were targeted for infiltration by the CIA's human ("HUMINT") and electronic ("SIGINT") spies in the seven months leading up to France's 2012 presidential election. The revelations are contained within three CIA tasking orders published today by WikiLeaks as context for its forth coming CIA Vault 7 series. Named specifically as targets are the French Socialist Party (PS), the National Front (FN) and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) together with current President Francois Hollande, then President Nicolas Sarkozy, current round one presidential front runner Marine Le Pen, and former presidential candidates Martine Aubry and Dominique Strauss-Khan.

Read the whole article here: https://wikileaks.org/cia-france-elections-2012/
 
Document publisher Wikileaks has tweeted that they are aware of the release and are working to verify its contents, which they report has over 9Gb of data in total, with the most recent document dated April 24th, 2017. Wikileaks speculated about who might benefit from the leak, as it comes too late to influence the impending French presidential election, but could be used to boost hostility towards Russia and spending on intelligence capabilities. The leak is described as “significant.” Due to the massive size of the dump, Wikileaks has stated it would be economically unfeasible to fabricate the entirety of the release.

Absolutely, I think Wikileaks speculates correctly. It will be days or even weeks before anything significant can be fished out of the 9Gb of data; way too late to affect the election. Perhaps the immediate effect is more beneficial for Macron, with all the anti-Russian propaganda going on. Later it might be the opposite, but it will be too late by then.

However, my general impression is that this has more to do with getting France on the anti-Russian wagon than with the elections per se (although ultimately that's best for Macron). And sure enough, a quick browse on Twitter already shows the usual 'liberal' suspects pointing fingers at Russia, including the Clinton people.

Rachel Madow twitted the following piece of propaganda from the NYT. Interesting that it's dated April 24th, as the most recent doc in the leak. The leak hadn't even surfaced yet and the Russians were already being blamed! :mad: Priming much? I'd say that the move is sophisticated enough to come from some Western intel agency.

_https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/world/europe/macron-russian-hacking.html?_r=1

Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France’s Macron

By NICOLE PERLROTH - APRIL 24, 2017

The campaign of the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has been targeted by what appear to be the same Russian operatives responsible for hacks of Democratic campaign officials before last year’s American presidential election, a cybersecurity firm warns in a new report.

The report has heightened concerns that Russia may turn its playbook on France in an effort to harm Mr. Macron’s candidacy and bolster that of Mr. Macron’s rival, the National Front leader Marine Le Pen, in the final weeks of the French presidential campaign.

Security researchers at the cybersecurity firm, Trend Micro, said that on March 15 they spotted a hacking group they believe to be a Russian intelligence unit turn its weapons on Mr. Macron’s campaign — sending emails to campaign officials and others with links to fake websites designed to bait them into turning over passwords.

The group began registering several decoy internet addresses last month and as recently as April 15, naming one onedrive-en-marche.fr and another mail-en-marche.fr to mimic the name of Mr. Macron’s political party, En Marche.

Those websites were registered to a block of web addresses that Trend Micro’s researchers say belong to the Russian intelligence unit they refer to as Pawn Storm, but is alternatively known as Fancy Bear, APT 28 or the Sofacy Group. American and European intelligence agencies and American private security researchers determined that the group was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee last year.

On Tuesday, Trend Micro’s researchers plan to release their report detailing cyberattacks in recent weeks against Mr. Macron’s campaign — as well as members of Germany’s Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung, a political foundation linked to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political party — in what appears to be the latest Russian effort to influence political outcomes in the West.

The Kremlin scoffed at the report. Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, said Monday in Moscow that “this all recalls the accusations that came from Washington and which are still suspended in thin air.” In remarks to Russian news media, he added that Russia had “never interfered” in foreign elections.

But the report’s findings gave some credence to the “strong suspicions” voiced weeks before Sunday’s voting by Mr. Macron’s digital director, Mounir Mahjoubi, that Moscow was the source of what he said had been a barrage of “highly sophisticated” efforts to gain access to the campaign’s email accounts.

Mr. Mahjoubi said in an interview Monday and earlier in April that he had no proof of a Russian role, but that the nature and timing of so-called phishing attacks and web assaults on the Macron campaign had stirred worries that Russia was repeating in France what American intelligence agencies say was a concerted effort to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“The phishing pages we are talking about are very personalized web pages to look like the real address,” Mr. Mahjoubi added. Anyone could easily think he was logging into his own email. “They were pixel perfect,” he said Monday night. “It’s exactly the same page. That means there was talent behind it and time went into it: talent, money, experience, time and will.”

The goal was to obtain the email passwords of campaign staff members so a cyberattacker could lurk unseen inside an email account reading confidential correspondence. “If you are speed reading as you sign on, and everybody speed reads online, it’s something you might not notice,” Mr. Mahjoubi said. “For instance, it uses a hyphen instead of a dot, and if you are speed reading you don’t look at the URL.”

Unlike the attacks aimed at Mrs. Clinton’s staff, those directed at the Macron camp, Mr. Mahjoubi said, failed to gain access to any email accounts used by the candidate or his lieutenants.

This winter, the campaign’s website also came under attack. The attacks coincided with highly slanted articles about Mr. Macron on the French language services of Sputnik and RT, formerly Russia Today. Both are state-funded Russian news media outlets.

The coincidence of the hacking of the Macron campaign website, the phishing attacks and the slanted articles caused Mr. Mahjoubi to consider that there might be Russian involvement. “That was only a supposition,” he said, based on the timing.

Mr. Mahjoubi described the phishing attacks as the “invisible side” of an apparent Russian campaign to hurt Mr. Macron, while the “visible side” took the form of fake news or slanted stories in the French-language Russian media.

Russia, or at least its state-controlled media, clearly favored Ms. Le Pen, who criticized European Union sanctions imposed on Russia after it annexed Crimea in 2014 and voiced support for Moscow’s intervention in Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad.

The success of its cyberattacks in the United States has only bolstered the Russian hacking group’s ambitions, security researchers say.

“This is the new normal,” said Tom Kellermann, a cyberintelligence expert and the chief executive at Strategic Cyber Ventures. “Geopolitical events will now serve as harbingers for these types of attacks.”

Andrew Higgins and Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on April 25, 2017, on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Turn Weapons on French Race.
 
WM said:
Absolutely, I think Wikileaks speculates correctly. It will be days or even weeks before anything significant can be fished out of the 9Gb of data; way too late to affect the election.

Indeed those 9 GB of data will reveal their secrets (if any) too late for the 2nd round that happens tomorrow. However the legislative elections (renewal of the members of the congress) happen in June 11-18. So if the leaks reveal that Macron has a bank account in a tax heaven, which is plausible because of the scan of the account contract published by 4chan and the fact that Macron declared no patrimony whatsoever despite cashing in substantial wages (Rotschild partner, minister of economy) then he might end up without a majority at the national assembly (senate). This might hinder his pursuit of a neoconservative/liberal society, or so I hope!

Adaryn said:
From the point of view of the average Frenchman, she lost.

That's definitely possible. Such a debate gives a huge advantage to the one who lies the most and seems the most self confident. From this perspective Macron is way ahead. I'm not sure those debates have much impact on the ones that have already made their choice: most of Le Pen supporters think she won and most of Macron supporters think he won, however a lot of voters were still unsure about their choice.

This being said Le Pen's anger might not have been as counterproductive as one might think. A lot of Frenchies I meet feel a real anger towards the establishment: its injustice, its lies, its violence. They might have resonated more than we think with Le Pen's anger.

For the first time in decades a real 2nd round debate happened with two candidates having fundamentally different visions of the world and more importantly they both represent the two real classes of our western societies: the people VS the psychopathic elites. For the first time a 2nd round candidate told a lot of truths.

Since 1983, France was politically controlled by two parties ( roughly republicans VS democrats) who maintained the illusion of bipartisanism but applied the very same destructive policies. This time seems to be gone and that might a good news for the French society.

In any case, Le Pen's winning chances are slim (lost debate, elections that are probably rigged, pro Macron support from the MSM and too much emphasis on the immigration topic in the strategy of the FN) but at the current pace I don't see who will stop her in 2022, if Macron hasn't provoked a revolution before this date!
 
As the saying says, truth comes from the children's mouth. My daugther said that the great majority of the children at school said their parents will vote for Le Pen. If she doesn't win, I'll suspect a fraud.
 
Alana said:
I know a few good, well-meaning people in France with whom I spoke a bit about the elections, and they dread the possibility of a Le Pen win, or of any candidate that seems to like Putin. So yes, it is like everywhere, a lot of well-meaning and good hearted people with huge blind spots regarding history and politics are going to be voting this Sunday.

But in the end, what difference would it make, even if by some chance Le Pen or even Asselineau wins? The Greeks voted Syriza in the elections and No in the referendum, and what happened? Or what about the people voting for Trump in the US? Deep Sate(s) run deep everywhere, and I think they have the power and means to make whoever is elected start singing to their tune, whoever that person/party is and what their true intentions/convinctions are.

Very true :(
 
nature said:
As the saying says, truth comes from the children's mouth. My daugther said that the great majority of the children at school said their parents will vote for Le Pen. If she doesn't win, I'll suspect a fraud.

That is most interesting... and I happen to agree.
 
One can already suspects a fraud that Macron winned the first round. If I look around me, I know absolutely noone that was for him. Noone. I know people that was for Melenchon, Fillon, Hamon, Le Pen, Asselineau, but Macron ?! Nobody. Wrong milieu maybe...
 
Maat said:
One can already suspects a fraud that Macron winned the first round. If I look around me, I know absolutely noone that was for him. Noone. I know people that was for Melenchon, Fillon, Hamon, Le Pen, Asselineau, but Macron ?! Nobody. Wrong milieu maybe...
I know many people who vote Macron, in my family, in my friends, and in my clientele. However, I am in Paris, and the way of thinking of the Parisians seems different. But I also know people who voted for Asselineau and the others. It is very difficult to know the real percentage of voting intentions. It is possible that there was a fraud in the first round, and perhaps in the second round, but I think we should not underestimate the blindness and arrogance of many French people. But the third round will be in June for the legislative, with the revelations of wikileaks, it will be very interesting.
 
Those elections are becoming a total joke. Now, Le Monde (largest newspaper in France) is stating that it won't disclose any information about the Macronleak because of ethics (election interferences), although the Macron team clearly declared that their server has been hacked, and therefore those data definitely contain some legit documents.

Of course, the gag order emitted by the French authorities is not aimed at Le Monde and the other MSM, who are too happy to fully censor the leaks and keep on supporting their candidate, but at the alternative media.

Remember that these are the very same MSM who have kept bashing Fillon and Le Pen every day for months about their alleged financial misconducts although they've not been tried and even less sentenced.

The MSM and the ones who pull their strings are playing a dangerous game. The lies, the inequity, the double standards are becoming so obvious that a growing share of the population might see their real nature.
 
Here is another post by Thierry Meyssan in which there is a video where Macron goes unhinged. Quite disturbing to watch actually, as one almost feels transported to another country back in the 1930'ies. Here is the whole article:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article196260.html

The return of propaganda in Europe : «Not that!»
by Thierry Meyssan
The French Presidential campaign has strayed from the democratic path. We are now witnessing a conditioning of the electorate such as Europe has not known since the Second World War. The example we analyes here is irrefutable. It concerns a work of propaganda - in the dictatorial sense of the term - which should lead to the election of Emmanuel Macron.

The current French Presidential campaign is unlike any other European electoral campaign since the Second World War – for the first time, a team experienced in war propaganda is working in the shadows for one candidate.

The favourite for the election, François Fillon, was eliminated immediately from the first round on the basis of accusations of nepotism and corruption which led to his being faced with legal charges. But none of these accusations has so far been verified.

The French electorate is now preparing to vote en masse in the second round for a person against whom they demonstrated just as massively two years ago, Emmanuel Macron. They are doing so in order to protect themselves from a danger which is even more deadly in their eyes - Marine Le Pen.

And yet, when you ask these electors what specific danger this candidate represents, they can find nothing pertinent for which to blame her, and shelter behind their criticisms of her father.

Every one of the regional and national daily newspapers, without exception, denounce the danger of Le Pen and call for votes for Macron in order to block her accession to power.

When we asked the French people what they thought of Macron’s accusation against Marine Le Pen - that she may have supported the Prussian invasion in 1870 and the German aggression in 1914, they all laughed at us. Madame Le Pen was born in 1968.

The video we are going to show you has been very widely broadcast by the TV channels and on the Internet. When we showed it to our French interlocutors, they all agreed that they had seen it before, and had thought that Monsieur Macron was talking rubbish. When we showed it to them again, they were astounded to rediscover the accusations that they had laughed at before.

It is therefore possible, apparently, to proclaim such stupidities without anyone reacting at the time. Here’s the video :


Waving the commemorative medal of the necropolis of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, cemetery for 45,000 combatants from the First World War, Emmanuel Macron declared that the war had been started by leaders who believed - « We are in better condition than our neighbours, so let’s go and destroy them ». Then he accused Marine Le Pen and her friends, who were « hiding in the Château de Montretout », of sharing the same ideology as the aggressor, and wanting to push France into an identical war. Vehemently, he shouted - « Not that! Not that! Not that! »

The Château de Montretout, where Marine Le Pen was brought up as a girl, was taken by the Prussians during the siege of Paris, in… 1870. The expression « hiding in the Château de Montretout » therefore suggests a link between Marine Le Pen as a child, and the King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany Wilhelm I.

The heros of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette fell on the field of honour in… 1914-18, and the aim of Emperor Wilhelm II was certainly not the destruction of France.

This is the first time that anyone has invented a causal link between the war of 1870, the First World War, and the Front National.

We are obliged to admit that the way in which these absurdities were presented has prevented the electors from consciously understanding the meaning of Emmanuel Macron’s declaration, but it did allow them to understand his words unconsciously.

They are therefore absolutely right to elect a personality whom they hate, but who will protect them from a woman who pretends to be the incarnation of the Nation, when in the past, she betrayed France and is responsible for the millions of dead from the wars of 1870 and the First World War.

According to sociologist Jean-Claude Pays, the vulgarity of these accusations, supported by every one of the daily newspapers without a single exception, has provoked an effect of stupefaction in the French public. Numbed, they march towards the ballot box to vote as they have been ordered to do.

The cruder it is, the better it works.

Thierry Meyssan
Translation
Pete Kimberley
 
The polls give Macron winner at 60 against 40 %. Yes, go on, go on to diffuse that and maybe those who intended to vote for him with the tips of their fingers will abstain with a sigh or relief and those who intended to abstain will have a nerved jerk and finally will do which everybody tell them not to do.
 
Pierre said:
Of course, the gag order emitted by the French authorities is not aimed at Le Monde and the other MSM, who are too happy to fully censor the leaks and keep on supporting their candidate, but at the alternative media.

Remember that these are the very same MSM who have kept bashing Fillon and Le Pen every day for months about their alleged financial misconducts although they've not been tried and even less sentenced.

The MSM and the ones who pull their strings are playing a dangerous game. The lies, the inequity, the double standards are becoming so obvious that a growing share of the population might see their real nature.

Here are some tweets that I found spot-on:

So no one can report on Macron leaked documents/leaked during blackout but they can report that Russia is trying to help Le Pen. mmm ok.
I am 100% certain the media would have the same self-imposed blackout on leaked documents about Le Pen
The French media is more upset that Macron's emails leaked than what Macron and his backers were up to. Let that sink in.
If Macron had a clear conscience and a clean record, then the #MacronLeaks wouldn't pose any threat, right? #justsaying

Hopefully, if the MSM keep pushing their nonsense even further, more people will see it for what it is.

There still seems to be a core of die-hard MSM believers who dismiss everything critical about their world view as conspiracy theories and alt-right nonsense, but I think it requires more and more energy to keep that narrative going as the MSM and politicians act more and more erratically and spread lies that are becoming more and more obvious. I wouldn't be surprised if 70% of the French are fed up with the nonsense and support Le Pen, and the remaining 30% are mostly the die-hard liberals in the cities and rich mainstream lefties in their big houses at the French coasts...
 
Pierre said:
Those elections are becoming a total joke. Now, Le Monde (largest newspaper in France) is stating that it won't disclose any information about the Macronleak because of ethics (election interferences), although the Macron team clearly declared that their server has been hacked, and therefore those data definitely contain some legit documents.

Of course, the gag order emitted by the French authorities is not aimed at Le Monde and the other MSM, who are too happy to fully censor the leaks and keep on supporting their candidate, but at the alternative media.
[...]
The development is indeed troubling. They have set Macron up so be is too big to fail, just like some of the big multinational banks a few years ago. Essentially, they aren't too big to fail, but the situations are used to justify and secure more control with the population.

One can't help but wonder if the rings from this 2017 French revolution of control and manipulation will spread to other areas of Europe, as did the uprising for more freedom in 1848 _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 _http://military.wikia.com and /wiki/French_Revolution_of_1848 and to a lesser extent in 1830 _https://www.britannica.com/event/Revolutions-of-1830 ?
 
A look at it from another angle, which is from a key French investor:
_http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-06/why-charles-gave-expects-total-mayhem-france-even-if-macron-elected

Why Charles Gave Expects "Total Mayhem" In France Even If Macron Is Elected

by Tyler Durden
May 6, 2017 8:33 PM

Venerable French investor Charles Gave has been managing money and researching markets for over 40 years; as such France’s elder statesman of asset allocation perhaps best captures the mood ahead of the most crucial Presidential election in a generation. In conversation with Dr. Pippa Malmgren, Charles breaks down national politics to understand why voters have rejected the establishment and the market impact of both outcomes, and what to expect from tomorrow's election.

First, Gave, who says "I'm not so sure that Macron will win", is asked by Malmgren to walk RealVision viewers through what Macron's agenda would look like in case of a victory. Gave is unable to do so for several simple reasons:

Well, first, nobody knows. Because during the whole campaign, all these talks were on one hand, on the other. I'm in favor of apple pie, and motherhood, you see. Basically he has, to my knowledge, very little program. So he's running. That is what Hollande said. That he was going to make some fundamental changes without hurting people. And so Macron is a big, empty suit. That's what he is. You did the right curriculum vitae, he went to the right schools. And you have the feeling that the guy never had an original idea in his life. He was always a good student.

And moreover, there is a strong suspicion that he's a kind of golem created by Hollande and all these guys. So since they knew they were going to lose the election, they created a guy in a hologram that would run for them and prevent them from losing power. So to a certain extent, the French political system has been captured by what you can call the Technocratic class. And whether from the left or the right, it didn't make any difference. And this Technocratic class is presenting Macron as a brand new fellow. He is nothing brand new. These guys have been in power for 50 years for God's sakes. So this is basically nothing.
Gave is then asked for his take on the market's reaction, first to the outcome which now appears to be fully priced in, i.e., a Macron victory. The French investor's response should be concerning to those who believe France is in for a period of calm and stability.

If Macron is elected, as I already said, I'm not sure it's not going to be a triumphant election. So I'm not sure they will have that much legitimacy at first. And second thing is that just after, we have the election for the French Parliament. And then it's going to be a total mayhem. Because you have four main different currents in France. The extreme left, the Macron left, you see? You have the Fillon right, and you have Le Pen's right. So you have four. The way it's done before is that you had only three. Extreme left and the left were joined. And you had the election, you had three guys, and if anyone from the Front National had any chance of being elected, then the worst position of the other two retired. Right away. And said, you must vote for my usual enemy, but we don't want to. It’s what’s called the Front Republic.

But you see, it's kind of easy to organize if the organization of the parties are very strong and can force people to retire and to stop running. But if you have four, the organization of the parties having lost all credibility, then nobody is going to retire. Until we are going to have elections. And you could have a majority of MP's from the Front National The majority of MP's from Melenchen. Anything is possible. So the fact that Macron is elected doesn't reduce at all. Not at all. The political risk in France. It may reappear at the election time, big time. So anybody who buys on the idea that the problem is solved in France, let’s move to the next one will have to wait till the middle of June.
Alternatively, what if Le Pen wins:

If Le Pen wins, it's pretty simple. The bond market in France, Italy, Spain cannot open on Monday morning. And I suppose the euro is dead in the following week. And then you have to buy Europe like crazy. Southern Europe.
Why Southern Europe? Because it is Germany's markets that would bear the brunt of the selloff, as the dissolution of the euro and European Union would effectively bring about the end of Germany's economic hegemony (while at the same time benefitting France).

The Germans have made a colossal mistake, which is that they have all the production in Germany. So they're extremely efficient, well-organized, and they have developed massive current account surpluses. Half of that surplus is in cars. The margin on cars is around 4%. Imagine that the euro breaks down. The deutschmark comes back. The deutschmark goes up 15, 20%. And the whole German industry, all the production base in Germany, becomes bankrupt in no time at all. Compare that to France. France we have magnificent big companies that have been intelligent enough to produce everywhere in the world, to operate from everywhere in the world, and be totally independent from what's happening in France. What they have in France is their headquarters. And that's about it. So if Europe breaks, you should be long France on the stock market, and short Germany. Big time.
Would a Le Pen victory also mean the end of the EU? Gave answers:

I wrote a book in 2002, sometime around then, called "Lions Led by Donkeys in France." It was kind of a bestseller. And I made the point in the book that the euro is going to destroy Europe, the European institutions. And I said, we must get rid of the euro to save Europe. So name of the game, if we have some kind of a crisis like that, is to basically close the market for three weeks and organize an orderly dismembering of the euro. But to maintain what has been good so far, which is the kind of common market. And it's a difficult call because the movement towards the euro was also a movement to create a European nation.

And so the institutions today are basically federal in nature. But nobody in Europe has ever voted for them. So to a certain extent, the guys with power in Brussels have not been elected by anybody, and you cannot fire them. So it's totally Technocratic. So we have a hell of a problem. We should not only destroy the euro, but should move back to what Europe was in 1988 or 1987 before they put all these Federalist legislations in. That is going to be a tall order. But if the euro disappears and Europe has a problem, then the negotiating between the UK and Europe is going to be amusing. Because UK is going to say, look, who are we going to negotiate with?
Finally, on his big picture thoughts ahead of tomorrow's decisive election:"it's going to be a close call, a lot closer than people think. And then we have the elections afterwards, which are going to be a total gamble." Gave adds that in a sense Le Pen has already won because the "worst case scenario" for her, the 2022 elections, is still achievable. As for the parliamentary elections, "Le Pen could have anywhere between 40 to 100 MP's (she currently has two).... which would be a total disaster for the ruling class."

In other words, even if Macron triumphs on Sunday, "the National Front isn't going anywhere." Furthermore, Le Pen's niece Marion Le Pen is poised to inherit the mantle of party leadership in time for the next presidential election in 2022. The younger Le Pen, already a French MP, would have a distinct advantage over her astringent aunt:

Marion, she's very young. She's 27, 28. She's an MP in the French Parliament. She's extremely pretty. And she represents what's probably very good in the French Catholic Right. She's very much a Christian person. Very much so. So a lot of people have problems voting for Mrs. Le Pen today. A lot of the Fillon's elector would have absolutely no problem voting for Marion, you see what I mean? So she has a big appeal on the Classical French Right. Big one. Big one.
His parting words:"be careful. If she wins, you will have a disaster in the lot of the European bond market. Doesn't mean a total disaster for the good quality companies. But the risk is not on the stock market. The risk is on the bond market. So be careful. Don't overstay on the bonds in Europe."

While these are the core excerpts from the interview with Charles Gave, there is much more in the full 40 minute version found on RealVision TV.
 
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