The campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron says it has been the target of a ‘massive hacking attack’ after a trove of documents was released online.
The campaign said that genuine files were mixed up with fake ones in order to confuse people. …
It compared it to the leak of Democratic Party emails in last year’s US presidential election that was blamed on Russian hackers.
(BBC, May 5, 2017)
It is not enough to merely compare this hack and leak with the infamous hack and leak that upended last year’s US presidential election. It is imperative to name and shame Russia’s Machiavellian president, Vladimir Putin, for ordering this political hit job.
Further, we must point out that Putin’s aim is not just to “destabilize Western countries by undermining democratic elections.” For it’s decidedly to help the candidate he thinks he can manipulate (now Marine Le Pen, back then Donald J. Trump) and hurt the one he fears he cannot (now Emmanuel Macron, back then Hillary Clinton).
But fool democracies once, shame on Putin; fool them twice, shame on us. Not this time, Pootie.
He fancies himself the most powerful man in the world. But Putin is just North Korea’s Kim Jong-un with lots more nuclear weapons and oil money, which actually makes him the most reviled of all pariahs.
Trust me, it galls him no end that he has to stoop to hacking democratic elections and bribing useful idiots to finagle the illusion of global respectability, especially given that former President Barack Obama always enjoyed that respectability in spades.
In any event, Macron is expected to easily win the French presidential election against Le Pen tomorrow. I know, I know, Hillary was expected to easily win the US presidential election against Trump last November. But the French are too sophisticated to fall for this neo-fascist tramp, especially after seeing the way Putin trumped the Americans.
Not to mention that the unprecedented fecklessness of the Trump administration has crested the wave of nationalist populism Le Pen and other Trump wannabes, like Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, were hoping to ride to power.
Meanwhile, it’s hard to imagine a politician more obnoxious and odious than Trump, particularly a female one. But that’s Marine Le Pen.
This stupid woman actually thinks there’s virtue in declaring that she only took millions from Putin to fund her campaign because every bank and every corporation in France refused to sully its reputation by associating with her.
Incidentally, Obama took the extraordinary step of publicly endorsing Macron. This says all you need to know about his politics, just as Putin publicly endorsing Le Pen says all you need to know about hers.
No doubt Obama is still smarting from the public humiliation he suffered when Putin’s Trump upset his Hillary. Therefore, Obama probably couldn’t resist this opportunity for an equally high-profile, high-stakes rematch.
Vive la France!
NOTE: America’s ingenious system of checks and balances has so circumscribed Trump’s Putinesque impulses that all Putin has to show for his hacking and leaking is Russia suffering even worse economic sanctions and irreparable reputational damage. This pyrrhic effect is clearly not what Putin meddled for. Yet I suspect that, even in failing to get Le Pen elected, his meddling will cause Russia to suffer even more in both respects — to the extent that’s possible at this point.
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