Interesting write-up at The Daily Beast on how the Macron campaign may have foiled Russia’s attempt to undermine another Western democracy via fascist hack-holster Assange:
As the news broke, suspicion focused on the same “Fancy Bear” Russian hackers who fiddled with the American presidential campaign last year. As The Daily Beast reported 10 days earlier, they have been working hard for the election of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-European Union, anti-euro, anti-NATO, anti-American, Pro-Trump Le Pen.
Literally at the 11th hour, before the blackout would silence it, the Macron campaign issued a statement saying it had been hacked and many of the documents that were dumped on the American 4Chan site and re-posted by Wikileaks were fakes.
The mainstream French media carried the Macron campaign statement, but virtually nothing else. In addition to the normal proscription of campaign “propaganda” on election eve, the government issued a statement saying specifically that anyone disseminating the materials in this dump in France could be liable to prosecution, and calling on the media to shoulder their “responsibility” by steering clear of them.
Meanwhile, Wikileaks jumped on the document dump, but didn’t seem to be familiar with the material in it. Responding to the Macron statement that some of the items were bogus, Wikileaks tweeted, “We have not yet discovered fakes in #MacronLeaks & we are very skeptical that the Macron campaign is faster than us.”
Ah, but there’s the rub. As reported by The Daily Beast, part of the Macron campaign strategy against Fancy Bear (also known as Pawn Storm and Apt28) was to sign on to the phishing pages and plant bogus information.
“You can flood these [phishing] addresses with multiple passwords and log-ins, true ones, false ones, so the people behind them use up a lot of time trying to figure them out,” Mounir Mahjoubi, the head of Macron’s digital team, told The Daily Beast for its earlier article on this subject.
This might be one option for political campaigns that want to participate in elections free of Putin’s influence. In the U.S., it’s clear Republicans aren’t going to do anything to ensure the integrity of our electoral processes, not as long as interference favors them. We’re on our own.
Corner Stone
One option may be to hire competent IT people and pay them.
germy
vive la différence!
Quite a difference between the French MSM and the nyt…
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: Word.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Hack yourself, pack it full of clearly fake or extra stuff so even if there was a smoking gun it would be hard to find and vied skeptically. The next step is to do it claiming to be Wikileaks while during so Assassig sounds like a lunatic.
Villago Delenda Est
Assange needs to be flayed alive.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Where the hell was this Intercept during last year?
Also: Live from Butthurt Bunker
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Corner Stone: Keep in mind this isn’t a group of citizen netacrtivists like Swedish childmolester wants to pretend – it’s a government’s intelligence service that’s had decades of experience in this and who have the resources to buy off someone inside the campaign.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Damn, so the whole point of this is provide fodder for the Alt-Right’s fantasy world.
GregB
A**ange and Nazi-leaks should not be allowed to launch acts of cyber-war from the safety of the Ecuadoran embassy.
It simply must not stand.
Hunter Gathers
This is exactly how you handle the incident. You get ahead of it, you fuck with the perpetrators, and you push the coverage.
Every computer system that has ever been designed is vulnerable. If someone wants your organization’s communications and information, they’re going to get it. You can’t stop it. Anyone who tells you that their network is impenetrable is lying to you.
Or you could get rid of the Human Factor. I don’t see any problems there.
Baud
If Hillary had tried this, they would have simply used it as evidence of her deceitful nature.
Cheryl Rofer
Planting fake information to root out leakers, for example, has been done before. It’s a good tactic. Also, publicizing that the material has leaked and we know who did it is a good countermeasure.
I’ve seen a few news articles in which someone-or-other calls for “retaliation” for what Russia has been doing.
A “war” waged through information, with the internet and others of today’s tools, calls for different strategies than a shooting war. And much of it may not be public. In some ways, what Russia is doing now is not different from what the Soviet Union, and maybe even the Russian Empire, was doing forever. Sow rumors, like that the CIA developed and planted AIDS in Africa. Or that a homosexual conspiracy assassinated John F. Kennedy. In those days, the rumors didn’t travel as quickly. But fragments of those rumors are still with us.
This is yet one more reason why we need an impartial and thorough investigation into Trump’s Russia connections.
[I’ve got links for all of that but want to get out into yard work right now. I’ll check back – if you want links, say so.]
BBA
I’m afraid, guys. Everything’s been coming up far-right lately, and Macron seems like another bland corporatist, the Old Consensus personified, aside from the bit about having an affair with his high-school teacher.
I know the polls were much stronger for Macron than they ever were for Hillary (or against Brexit) but this story, ridiculous as it is, may move enough of the apathetic center into Le Pen’s camp to create a once-in-a-millennium upset.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Our big problem besides the Rs is that the prestige media is in tank for the Rs. I am looking at you Vichy Times and Pure BullShit Newshour.
Another Scott
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yup.
Unless a campaign somehow is willing to lock up all of their workers, volunteers, advisers, suppliers, etc., to prevent them from using any (somehow) guaranteed secure IT system, things like this will keep happening if a hacking group – anywhere on Earth – wants to target them. We’re going to keep people from using Yahoo or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or FreeFileFillableForms or Amazon or WalMart or ….? Really?
Yes, IT security is vitally important, but it’s not enough, and will never be good enough to guarantee that someone unauthorized hasn’t gotten in. (E.g. It’s impossible to prove that an IT system isn’t infected with a virus.)
Yesterday AM I (somehow) got directed to a web page (after clicking on a link at Nature to download a paper) telling me to update Chrome. It was a phishing page, but it looked very convincing…
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Desperation to hang onto some tiny shred of credibility, since they’re deeply involved with Snowjob’s gutting of our national ability to locate and address foreign subversion of American democratic processes in a timely fashion.
Looking at this Guardian article, I could be inspired to do a GoFundMe for a new set of Weathermen, so long as the Mercers were first up for attention….
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@BBA: Well Austria and the Netherlands ended up getting it right.
Corner Stone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: This isn’t a mom and pop shop selling discount furniture or a guy running for Mayor of Paducah. If you’re running a campaign for the President, a PM, a DNC – you better be ready to pay for the best.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The Intercept or Butthurt Bunker? The former has always had about five to eight credible voices at any one time.
Jeffro
I guess if a Dem were president, we might be sanctioning Russia even further and launching some cyber strikes of our own. Sure would make them think twice if we cleaned out the electronic bank accounts of a few of Putin’s oil oligarch buddies ( much less confiscated their real estate holdings here in the United States as the proceeds of an ongoing criminal enterprise )
If only…
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Another Scott:
My vote is that campaigns at a national level need to scale back tech – landline phone conferences, faxes and snail mail.
Tech geniuses like Thiel have pretty much shown the vulnerability of tech to hacks by both remote intrusion and social engineering.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
The Intercept.
LurkerNoLonger
@GregB: what’s the deal with Ecuador? Why are they harboring this is rapist fuck?
schrodingers_cat
@Jeffro: Russia under Putin is a criminal enterprise with powers of the state. As far as I can see besides the white power schtick they don’t even have an animating, overreaching philosophy unlike the Soviet era.
Hal
It seems the point of hacking a campaign is to make it seem like there’s devastating Intel to reveal and then just let social media take over with the conspiracy theories.
What was the worst thing revealed about the HRC campaign? Even the DNC favoring Clinton never struck me as anything but an obvious choice, but the number of social media comments and posts about how Bernie would have won if not for the DNC and the media conspiring had plenty of people convinced they had been robbed of their fair chance. Meanwhile we still haven’t seen any of that hacked rnc data.
bystander
@Jeffro:
Now, doing any of the above would make for some awkward pillow talk.
Jeffro
@bystander: ?
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
I’m not going to argue against competent staff, but it’s foolish to assume that having a good IT department is going to be 100% protection against a nation state’s intelligence agencies. You need to have some defense in depth so you have a fall-back position even if you’re hacked.
germy
@Jeffro: Because they’re in bed together currently.
Xenos
@Jeffro: This already happened – remember Cyprus?
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore:
Exactly. It should be noted that I have never said great IT can keep you 100% from being hacked. It is competent IT staff that detect an intrusion, understand what happened, how to mitigate it, and in some cases a plan to counter.
Corner Stone
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Ahhh, finally! A concrete plan to revive the buggy whip and courier industries!
Another Scott
Krebs:
Vlad has ways to get people to work for him…
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I’m still fuming about that article. The intro is made by the google chair progeny?
We’re going to need a lot more tumbrels.
Patricia Kayden
@germy: Yep. France is a country which actually cares about democracy and the integrity of its elections. America is not. Hence Russian and Wikileaks interference in our election with the help of the MSM.
lollipopguild
@schrodingers_cat: The guiding rule for putin is make lots of money for himself while sowing fear and chaos among his enemies.
Patricia Kayden
@Hal:
That was the entire point. The hacking was done solely to harm Secretary Clinton and ensure a Trump victory. We will never see any of the hacked RNC data unless Russia and Wikileaks turns against the Trump regime.
Jeffro
@Xenos: no – what happened?
@germy: democrats and Russia are in bed together??
Baud
@Hal:
But the clouds, man. The clouds!
Patricia Kayden
@BBA:
According to this link, Macron has a huge lead over Le Pen so I’m not worried.
I suppose by midnight we’ll know if I should have been worried. Le Pen will run again, I’m sure, but I don’t think she’ll be elected this time around.
Hal
I just saw this posted on Tumblr, and given all the shit goings-on, this post made me realize one of my big regrets of the past election season was not being supportive enough to the Clinton campaign. I think this has come up before, but the relevance is acute now given the road this country and world is heading down.
Another Scott
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Fax machines are no protection. CNet from 2002:
With the Internet of Things stuff these days, it’s only going to get worse.
Vlad isn’t going to need polonium to get rid of his opponents in a few years; he’ll just plant a bug in their quasi-self-driving car to have them stop not quite quickly enough… :-/
Anything with writeable memory can host a virus. Even the hard-wired memory in computer chips (they can be infected when they are programmed at the factory, or during the design). Back in olden days, if one were really paranoid, one could write their own compiler, linker, etc., etc. These days, nobody can do that any more – systems are too complex and rely on too many pieces that you can’t control (your network hardware and software, etc., etc.). Heck, even your text editor could be infected and there would be almost no way to tell (it could hide the virus from you when you tried to look for it)…
Interesting times, as they say.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@Hal: I defended HRC in person and online vigorously, I have an at best tepid relation with one Berner and I had to break off ties to the other one who went onto vote for JS and now supports many of the T’s initiatives, because both-sides-do-it and Dems are worse. I have no regrets but damn these people make me angry so much so, that I have got lectures from some other regular Juicers that I need a break because I am contentious. No longer the ideal minority, I guess. Well fuck that shit.
Bill Arnold
@MomSense:
Likewise about that Guardian article. Not sure about some of the details (and claims, some of which are, well, stretches – marketing) but there’s plenty there to think about and get angry about.
Oldish news but pithy:
schrodingers_cat
@lollipopguild: Greed is not an ideology at least not an ideology that attracts the idealistic and the naive, like communism did before the ills were known far and wide.
Elizabelle
@Hal: That’s a good post.
At a party with a bunch of intelligent young Europeans last night. They feel the Bern, and it was news to them that Hillary won the popular vote. Explained about the 3 million vote difference and the Electoral College and they said “but that’s crazy, man.”
Agree that the Hillary voters were quiet, even while they were resolute. And I was shocked at some of the crap coming out of Bernie supporters mouths — a well-dressed young woman told me forcefully that Hillary had done NOTHING for women, and she doubted that Hillary ever would; that she even cared. Would love to see that gal again and slap her upside the head but good.
Westyny
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): The Wilmer bots are out in force in the comment thread on the NYT piece.
Xenos
@Jeffro: http://business.time.com/2013/03/25/cyprus-rescue-the-destruction-of-a-tax-haven/
A lot of Russian money has been severely inconvenienced by the EU. I work for a financial firm in Luxembourg – it is very tough to take on Russian clients, as the sanctions are pretty stiff.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: They are as delusional and dare I say, even more stupid than your average T voter. Because their actions undermine what they supposedly stand for.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m not a big Bill Maher fan, but I read that he called out the purity voters recently on his show.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah. And I don’t think suffering fools gladly is of any help.
I think we should be in the faces of anyone who wants to tell us ridiculous shit. Make life miserable for the GOP who voted for TrumpCare and make the Senators worried about even passing some version. Just leave the Affordable Care Act alone.
And we will be watching if they try to undermine the ACA’s funding. We are woke.
opiejeanne
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Didn’t Austria have a second election after they realized they had a problem?
Elizabelle
@Baud: A little damn late. But good to hear.
I think people are waking up.
Baud
@Elizabelle: I hope so. I’m tired and want to go to sleep.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat:
My apologies for unknowingly condescending to you. I can assure you that I won’t express any concern about your state of mind ever again.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Baud: “Even the Wilmer-supporting brodouche William Maher SUPERGENIUS didn’t continuously wallow in butthurt after the primaries…”
Elizabelle
@Baud: Hugs.
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle: It’s a cult with its own articles of faith. There’s a thin line between Wilmerism and Scientology.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: No apologies needed. It wasn’t just you, though. I do appreciate your concern. Thanks!
However, I am not worried about or angry about imaginary things. IRL my husband agrees with you. Yes, I won’t deny that I was a tad pissed, when you said that the third or fourth time.
ETA: And I am trying to channel my anger more productively. What is frustrating though is that we have seen this movie before and we know where it can end.
Baud
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Apparently, a couple of Bros have filed a lawsuit against the DNC for cheating. Talk about relitigating the primary. I hope they are not in front of a wingnut judge.
@Elizabelle: Some things are better in real life rather than cyber. But thank you.
debbie
What was Wiki expecting to happen? They didn’t dump until right before the blackout. I’m no hacker but this seems stupid.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@MomSense:
I have to say, I do enjoy the thought of Thiel being dragged by Agents of Gilead to his noose prior to the Revolution. As they announce his sentence of death for sexual deviance, he can shriek objections and say how much he did to establish Gilead…
germy
@Jeffro: No. The current administration.
The key word was “now”
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@debbie: Presumably that it would be the last bit of news before the blackout, and that the leak alone would prove to be sufficient ratfucking.
germy
@debbie: The nytimes spoiled them.
A Ghost to Most
Orange skidmark on Twitter this am; he must be feeling the heat.
Zach
Macron knew that he’d been hacked and had a response ready when the leak came. I get that the DNC leak blindsided the Clinton campaign (bad security but there’s a first time for every screw up) but they should’ve been ready with a specific response like this for the Podesta leak. I’m guessing if they’d clued Google in about staff with gmail accounts they could have checked for illicit access. The Clinton response was “well maybe some of it was fake” when it should have been “we knew Posesta’s gmail had been compromised so we gave all of it to reporters at X, Y and Z and to the FBI, none of whom found anything even vaguely scandalous — you can ask them yourself.”
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@germy: This is never going to happen, but I’ve half-seriously entertained hopes that Clinton would run for NY’s Governor so that a) she can boot Cuomo’s ass to the motherfucking moon, and b) turn even-the-liberal/Fuck the Fucking New York Times/Butthurt Bunker into a smoldering crater.
Elizabelle
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): I would love to see Governor Hillary Clinton. Great idea.
Baud
@Zach:
Unpossible.
mai naem mobile
@LurkerNoLonger: I don’t think they thought it was going to go this far. Ecuador is not some pro Russian country . It’s just an old fashioned third world country run by a leftist who probably thought he was getting back at the big colonialist power. I still think the Brits should come up with some emeergency like a gas leak or whatever of the whole block where the Ecuadorian embassy is and arrest Julian Assange that way or injure him when he does those rare appearances at the window.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Elizabelle: It also comes with the added benefit that in a head-to-head matchup, we know that any pink bunny who defends Cuomo as the True Progressive choice deserves to be shot into the Sun.
T S
@BBA: Don’t imagine to contest with my powers of pessimistic prescience.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Schrödinger’s Smiley:
:-)-:
Baud
@Elizabelle:
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
I assume the current NY AG is going to run for governor after Cuomo. (Are there term limits in NY?)
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Nope. No term limits, and doesn’t require 50%+1 to be elected, either.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Baud: In my defense, I did say Clinton 2018 was a pipe dream.
Elizabelle
@Baud: That would be fine. Like what I’ve heard of Eric Schneiderman.
MarketWatch; original story by the NY Post (!):
Calling a spade a spade. Refreshing.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: Interesting.
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): yes you did. I personally would like her to be a freelance advocate where she doesn’t have to worry about what people think.
burnspbesq
@Elizabelle:
It’s more likely, in my view, that we’ll see her back in the Senate in 2021. It’s not like Cuomo’s going to appoint Zephyr Teachout to fill the vacancy created when Gillibrand is sworn in as our next Preznit.
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: Genius. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@burnspbesq: I thought she said she wasn’t running.
Of course, Chelsea said that too, and everyone knows she’s lying.
germy
@Elizabelle: Schneiderman’s statement:
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Baud: Cuomo is the Jeb! of the Democratic Party. In fact, that’s why I kind of want him to run for 2020 — to flush out/discredit the pink anarchist bunnies and completely embarrass himself in the process.
@burnspbesq: Why so pessimistic?
debbie
@Elizabelle:
He’s the same with the banks. No shit taken. I’d like to see him tag team with Adam Schiff.
Elizabelle
A few observations on the French election, from my perch in Spain. I drafted this comment, but didn’t put it up, just after Macron won the first round:
I am sharing a flat in Barcelona with a wonderful friend, a French writer (formerly a psychologist) who is unnerved by the French elections taking place. Have watched her in her room, smoking and quivering. She’s a committed intellectual and leftist, and terrified of Marine LePen but —
in the wake of Macron’s victory, she was not happy (“he is terrible”) and bleating about “ewww, he is a capitalist” and running him down for being a purported homosexual with a fake marriage and, building to shrill strength wailing: “and there is no difference between him and LePen.”
And I lit into her ferociously on that one, and would not give up. It was hard to get her to focus, but I told her of our experience with Trump, how the left whined about the “no difference” and dampened enough enthusiasm, to a small percentage of the vote, that Trump rode it to victory. She was surprised at me (“you are being so emotional” while she is inchoate with fear and irrationality), but I was a terrier and would not give up because I had been watching her engaging in a clusterfuck with all her French friends and coming up with crap like that. I warned her about not running down the candidate who could actually beat back Marine LePen, that she had no idea what friend might take her words to heart and throw away a vote rather than supporting Macron. About voting pragmatically, and taking a lesson from us.
She was disquieted, but slept on it, apparently came around to the idea, and has been far less insufferable since. First political sentence when brewing her coffee the next day: “But you know I voted for Macron, no?”
But really, that rumor about “the homosexuality and the fake marriage”. I was thinking, “oh, boy, here we go again.” Isn’t that what was thrown at Hillary, and Obama, by their detractors? Casebook, is it not? FWIW, I would not think that would be as much an issue in a European election either …
slight update: Macron does have an unusual marriage in that (1) his wife is 25 years older — which I personally find refreshing but also (2) they met while she was a drama teacher (aged 40) and he a high school student (15) — although not her student, and The Guardian wrote that Macron’s parents moved him away in an attempt to break up their friendship. They married ten years later, after Brigitte divorced her husband.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Baud: She did, but Obama’s Sherman statements in 2004 more definitively ruled out the possibility of running.
The Chelsea pearl-clutching is still transparent bullshit, though.
SFAW
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
I don’t know if it’s that I am (or have been) out of touch, or if I knew this and it’s a memory thing, but: “pink bunny”? It sounds like it’s an Energizer Bunny reference, but I can’t see the logical connection, so maybe it’s something else?
Elizabelle
@debbie: Just no hookers across state lines, please.
I wonder if we will ever find out who dropped the dime on Eliot Spitzer. Damned convenient for Wall Street, even while Spitzer made himself vulnerable to scandal.
Baud
@Elizabelle: Good for you. In the U.S., I tend to view lefty purityism as a function of race. But stories about purity in France make me think there’s another element to it.
I thought the French were pretty blase about sexual matters.
SFAW
@debbie:
I just hope he doesn’t get Spitzered. (As in: although some of Spitzer’s fall was his own doing, I’m of the opinion that there was some sort of long-game set-up taking place as well, since the entities Spitzer was going after had more-than-shitloads of money at stake.)
ETA: Looks like Elizabelle is wondering the same sort of things.
germy
@Elizabelle: This article is about one of the culprits:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/ken-langone-home-depot-romney-donations
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@SFAW: This LGM anecdote.
Mike J
@Baud: If Macron had a fake marriage, would it be to his high school teacher? I would think he could find a much blander beard if one were needed.
Kay
It’s just such a mess right now. I had a sort of “open house” a couple of weeks ago the invites for which I based on a list I had. So some new people came and I focused on them but this longer-term Democratic activist was there and she was a little put-out which I didn’t understand at the time but she since has told me she thinks there’s a real division between Lefties and Democrats and it’s exploited by these hackers, or whatever they are. I tend to trust her- she’s smart and she’s been at this a long time so now I’m leaning toward this “sow division” theory she has.
It’s too complicated for me. I don’t know what’s going on. I cant be expected to figure out this international angle :)
germy
@SFAW:
My own theory is that guys like Spitzer and B. Clinton grew up worshipping JFK, and thought they could get away with the stuff he got away with. They didn’t realize until too late this is a different world, with different rules.
debbie
@SFAW:
He’s been vocal long enough that something would have come out by now, but you’re right, that’s a worry.
SFAW
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Thanks. It had also occurred to me that it was a Donnie Darko reference gone horribly worng; glad to see it wasn’t.
germy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/05/07/in-a-city-in-frances-north-many-are-turning-in-blank-protest-votes/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_wv-protestvotes-1237pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.740aff72acce
So the stupidity is international.
SFAW
@debbie:
Spitzer was all over Wall Street for a while, as well.
Baud
@germy:
For Democrats.
@Kay: Trolls in real life. Everyone’s a Ruskie now.
debbie
@Mike J:
He’s supposed to have called her every week while they were separated. I doubt their relationship is a sham.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@SFAW: It’s a term that really needs to be more popular than it currently is.
debbie
@SFAW:
Spitzer was more into the media attention than Schneiderman.
Timurid
@germy:
I was glad that France didn’t have to worry about a Jill Stein on the ballot… but nature finds a way.
SFAW
@debbie:
Any number of reasons for that, not all of them bad.
LurkerNoLonger
@Elizabelle: If Schneiderman ran I’d vote for him.
LurkerNoLonger
@mai naem mobile: Assange’s living arrangements are untenable. Eventually he will either get thrown out on his ass or die mysteriously.
SFAW
@Timurid:
I read that, and ruminating on that possibility, led me to think that she’d do the old Steve Martin routine (“it’s as if they have a different word for everything!”) as a serious statement, thinking it showed how smart she is.
Elizabelle
So: last night, we’ve got a late night tapas and red wine party going, and the guests are primarily in their 20s: young Spaniards, Venezuelans, an Argentine and a Croatian. We know them through this really cool hostel from last summer.
Talk eventually turns to the French election and — there goes the “there is NO difference between Macron and Le Pen” shit again. Except now it’s in stereo.
She’s got a receptive audience. They’re all down with it. I have yet to find anyone who is enthusiastic about Macron. Except us Americans. This would be worrying in an election without a known (bad) quantity like LePen.
I interjected about the “don’t tell me there’s no difference” and they mostly took up for her comment.
Have to say, after the first conversation (after first Macron win), my friend did get me wondering about what’s actually feasible in politics. Because it seems there is a pent up demand for a non-banker/non Masters of the Universe candidate — in our country too — but one takes a real risk there of the conservative putting on “centrist’s” clothing and sneaking into the end zone. With a huge assist by the corporate MSM, at least in our country.
Yes, the French are all over the map and seem to have as many varieties of leftists as cheese, it seems, but what is actually feasible? Are we in the US settling for too little, since the right has moved the goalposts so far?
Back to the dinner party: we talked a bit about the US, and it was news to my young friends that Hillary had won the popular vote. They had no clue. I think they’ve swallowed the swill that Bernie could have won. Just about all of the Europeans I have met are enthused about Bernie; his ideas are familiar to them and they don’t realize how peculiar our American system is with having just two major parties. The Croatian was sniffing about what a bad candidate Hillary was. It’s the Wall Street ties.
But the no enthusiasm for Macron. We live in interesting times.
FWIW, I have no idea what the Spanish media, or French media, is saying because we don’t have TV (yea!) and my Spanish is not good enough to pick up nuance.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
I must say I’m surprised by some of your friend’s attitudes. Sounds more Kansas than France. Good on you for going terrier!
SFAW
@LurkerNoLonger:
The mind is an interesting thing: before I read the rest of that sentence, my braims auto-completed it to be “of a high window.” Wishful thinking.
Elizabelle
@Timurid: One of the French far left candidates is telling his supporters to stay home. Gag. I don’t even think I’ll look up the jerk’s name for you.
germy
Baud
@Elizabelle: @Elizabelle:
A billionaire real estate developer is a non Masters of the Universe candidate? Please….
We’re not settling. We are losing. Precisely because we have too many people who think we are settling.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Elizabelle: Melenchon?
Baud
@Elizabelle: Maybe we just need to recognize that a lot of young people across the globe are attracted to fascism, maybe because it’s new to them.
Cacti
@Baud:
I’m not either, but his statement to the Wilmer-ites to “go fuck yourself with a locally grown, organic cucumber” was pure gold.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Authoritarian government is easy. Left or right. Democracy is hard work.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you are one of the authoritarians in control…
Elizabelle
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Yes. I believe that would be le weasel.
Ladyraxterinok
@Westyny: At democraticunderground, Bernie supporters are once again refighting the primary and HRC’s ‘poorly run campaign’ and her ‘poor personality.’
Elizabelle
@Baud: And I think a lot of young people are idealistic and don’t realize the forces for the status quo that limit how much even idealistic and well-meaning democratic politicians can do.
And now, the sea of misinformation and disinformation, and one side sowing cynicism — anything to keep people from realizing their vote IS powerful and can make a difference.
Gives rise to the “there’s no difference” shit.
piratedan
@Cheryl Rofer: links yes (and I can’t believe no one else asked)… if we’re in a new conflict, I’d just as soon be familiar with the tools and weapons used in this engagement so I can stop from spouting off rash things like bullets in the back of the heads for the offenders, since that’s so film noir-ee.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Hell, so many on the left thought Obama could just will things and they would happen. Since he didn’t, it was obvious that he did not want the them and was a Nixon era Republican – whatever that means.
Goku
@Baud: I don’t know if its necessarily that. Too many are just tuned out and their lives are too cushy. I find that many people, particularly middle to upper class young people are a combination of privledge and being self-absorbed.
I have lots of friends on the book of faces. If I post something non-political then I get plenty of likes/comments. If I post something political: nearly crickets. Its maddening, especially nowadays
Goku
@Ladyraxterinok: I fear they will only stop when all of them are dead
/from lack of affordable healthcare
Baud
@Elizabelle: But young people have always been idealistic. It seems a good many of them are now politically self-destructive.
@Omnes Omnibus: He didn’t even try, man.
Elizabelle
@Baud:
Hey dude. You’re the one who never shows up in ANY city meetup. Got me wondering if you’re in the Caymans, on a sailboat with a good server and router ….
Barbara
@Baud: Maybe they are blase mostly about things that conform to patriarchal stereotypes, like DSK going to sex parties that throw pretty young women at aging men, or Giscard-d’Estaing’s extramarital children. Even tolerance shows a marked patriarchal hierarchy.
Baud
@Goku: Yeah, I would like to see a poll showing the socioeconomic demographics of lefty non-Hillary voters.
Chet Murthy
@Corner Stone:
Elsewhere (and here) it’s been noted how -difficult- it is to get “civilians” to follow appropriate I/T procedures. I’m a systems jock, been using the Internet professionally my entire adult life, was part of making it happen at my (rather large) former employer. Two anecdotes:
(1) even in a giant I/T vendor’s internal network (ostensibly firewalled to the dickens) with people who are ostensibly trained and educated, different geographic parts of the network (e.g., austin, boulder, etc) were firewalled away from other parts, requiring entering auth to enable TCP connection access. Why? B/c so many computers -inside- the network were compromised, and this was an attempt to constrain the virulent network connections computers were making with each other all over.
(2) I once cleaned up a mess at a -major-, -major- bank. In the process, we discovered that their internet-connected online checking system was vulnerable to being attacked (quite simply) by anybody with access to any router. So, any employee of any ISP. When we brought it up to the people at the bank, the security folks assured us that the system was working precisely as designed, and that it was safe. We had to -demonstrate- the vulnerability before they fixed it.
(Bonus 3) How many people do you know who use Windows? <6mos ago, when I closed my Tmobile acocunt, their entire kiosk/store base was on Windows. It's a fundamentally insecure platform. And yet, everybody uses it.
With headwinds like these, it's pretty much impossible. Think of it this way: if ebola were spread like gonorrhea, we'd all be -dead-. -Dead-.
ThresherK
@Elizabelle: “I think they’ve swallowed the swill that Wilmer could have won.”
What percentage of Wilmer supporters exist between thirteen (in maturity) and thirty (in actuality)? I haven’t done exhaustive research, but I’m having a difficult time finding those who thinks “Wilmer could have won” whose next commandment isn’t “Russia didn’t do nothing”l, “NPR and the NYT whored for Hillz” and “Examining Comey is for whiners”.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
I wish. That’s my dream.
??Goku?
Testing new nym
Baud
@Barbara: Maybe so. I really don’t know.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Chet Murthy: It can be spread like gonorrhea, actually. If it (or to up the “your ass is grass” potential, rabies) were spread like influenza, however…
Baud
@ThresherK: I think the “Wilmer could have won” contingent is probably bigger than the people who believe that other stuff.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@ThresherK: There are quite a few Wilmer supporters on LGM (conservative estimate about 40% of the commenters) who don’t fit that description. Basically, what Baud said.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus:
Last spring when the Dems in our LD were picking candidates to support, we had a guy who decided to run against our sitting Dem congressman. Told us he was fired up and felt he had to run because of what a disappointment Obama had been.
Today I started an experiment to reduce the stupidity level in my twitter feed. I muted the rose emoji.
Chet Murthy
@Roger Moore: There’s another phrase I’ve heard from computer security folks I’ve worked with. All compute rsecurity amounts to “security thru exhaustion”. If the hacker wants to get in, eventually he -will- get in. The goal of security is, thru sufficient number and diversity of sequenced defenses, to make it sufficiently tiresome, that he gives up and finds a softer target. But if you’re the DNC, he doesn’t want a softer target — he wants -you-. So that doesn’t really work.
Goku
Hey. Trying to use emojis in nym. Does anyone know how long it takes to get out of moderation?
Baud
@Goku: I think a front pager has to release you, then you can post using the new nym all you want.
Jack the Second
@Elizabelle: Honestly the “state lines” part was what galled me.
You’re telling me Spitzer couldn’t find a $5000 hooker in New York, supported the local economy?
Caravelle
@Elizabelle: I had a similar conversation with my little brother, who was relaying “what people he knows say on Facebook” (I should specify I have no doubt he would vote for Macron, but the arguments against it clearly spoke to him). He wasn’t so much claiming that there was no difference, but there was a lot of arguing that Marine Le Pen was obviously the worst and mustn’t win, but still on economic/class issues or as far as being on the side of rich people goes Macron was worse. I tried to argue against that; I don’t know much about Le Pen’s specific history or economic policies but going from the pattern with other nationalist authoritarians (Trump, Hitler), there’s a lot of talk against economic elites while still being in bed with them. He referred to what her program said (in France everyone receives an envelope with flyers from each of the candidates arguing their case, that’s what he was looking at) but seems receptive when I argued that a more reliable indication of what Le Pen and the FN believed in was looking at their voting patterns and what they’d actually done where and when they held office.
Macron is absolutely terrible, as far as I can tell he’s the incarnation of the Serious People Krugman rails against (and it blows my mind that he’s running as the candidate for change when it seems to me (from my not-following-my-own-country’s-politics perch) that he’s the cause of a lot of if not most of what was wrong with Hollande’s presidency) and as such he’s likely to make the world worse and possibly pave the way for the far-right in a future election since their rise is ongoing, but at least I imagine he has a leftist sensibility on issues like gay marriage and such (your “economic conservative, social liberal” type) so it could be worse. In the short term at least.
@Patricia Kayden: The difference with what happened in the USA (and Brexit) is that Trump was an extreme candidate running in a mainstream party that’s been moving towards extremism, and Le Pen is the candidate of an extreme party who’s been trying to brand herself as mainstream. Trump had all of the system inertia pushing him along, while Le Pen has been fighting this inertia her whole life and still has to in this election. Americans hear “Republican” and think “legitimate politician who could run the country”; French people hear “FN” and think “Neonazis” (whether as “they’re not neonazis tho” or whatever FN voters tell themselves, or as “this can’t be allowed to happen again”, the impetus for the demonstrations against them).
The worrying thing is how successful she’s been in mainstreaming her party; when you compare this election with her father’s in 2002 it’s obvious. Back then it was utterly shocking that the FN made it to the second round; this time it was expected (speaking of: one thing that made my brother stop and think was asking if he’d have voted for Chirac in 2002. That put things in perspective because if you think Macron is too capitalist…). She’ll get a much larger share of the vote than he did too.
It seems that she isn’t still at the point where the FN can win the presidential election, and so she won’t. The worrying thing is how consistently it’s been moving in that direction.
Speaking of 2002 I’m listening to the radio, having heard things like “we’ll soon find out who is the President[male case]/President[female case]” and I’m wondering how things were framed at the time.
Chet Murthy
@Baud: Also, politics ain’t beanbag. Want pure-as-driven-snow pols? You’ll get pols that never win. B/c all pols (yes virginny, even rethuglicans) do unfair, unethical, even illegal things. Unilateral disclosure is just unilateral disarmament.
Mnemosyne
@Chet Murthy:
The Giant Evil Corporation I work for has a prominent internet security program that includes reminders and ads for staff and a bi-annual required training, and yet some people still got caught by the recent Google Docs phishing attempt. It’s just hard for a lot of non-IT people to wrap their heads around a new attack.
Baud
@Chet Murthy: Sometimes I wonder how much they really want to win, for just that reason.
@Mnemosyne: I’m fairly techy for a layman, and it’s complicated to keep up with all the guidance.
Mnemosyne
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
But as we keep trying to point out here, there’s a difference between people who preferred Wilmer in the primary but voted for Hillary and the Butthurt Brigade that insists that Wilmer got cheated and totally would have won the primary and the election if not for Crooked Hillary and the Corrupt DNC (what a band name!)
What worries me is that even some of the Wilmer supporters who voted for Hillary in the general election seem to believe on some level that he got cheated even though he lost by 3 million votes. That level of denial of reality doesn’t seem healthy.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
If the phishers had bothered to use a more plausible name for the document being used in the attempt, I could well have gotten caught by it, too, because they used the name of someone who would plausibly have been sending a Google Doc to everyone.
fatefullightning
Sounds like it’s official. Vive Macron
JPL
@fatefullightning: The margin was pretty big also. whew! It’s nice to see Europe rejecting the far right.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Mnemosyne: Correct (I actually stopped being Wilmer-curious fairly early on and voted Clinton in the primary).
@fatefullightning: AWWWWW YEEAAAAAAAAH
Another Scott
@Caravelle: Anyone who has paid any attention at all to what Putin has done over the last 20 years with Gazprom, his assassinations of opponents (journalists and otherwise), his invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, the shooting down of MH-17, the brutal war in Chechnya that radicalized masses of fighters that scattered all over the world, his support and propping up of Assad, etc., etc., should have their spidey-sense tingling about LePen’s funding from Russian banks tied to Putin over the years.
All that’s before thinking about how Putin interfered with the US election process with all the disinformation, attacks on HRC and Democratic House candidates, and overt support of Trump and his minions.
LePen is a fascist monster who is also a stalking horse for Putin to further weaken the EU and NATO. How someone could think that she is somehow better than Macron shows that they cannot think critically any more.
This isn’t some difficult “OMG both sides” choice.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
Human beings are human beings everywhere. Sex, love, food, don’t bother me, I’ve got a life to live, religion. Get in the way of any of those and you began to have trouble. All of the things that liberals like, fully available medical care, unfettered voting, freedom for/from religion, as little government encroachment into our lives as possible for societies needs, retirement security, personal rights, whatever I missed, all of these are very recent as human history goes. That there is pushback is understandable if not truly believable. But people are for the most part, of themselves, history is personal, past that most people don’t care or want it to fit their preconceived notions, history is to most people theoretical, it didn’t happen to them, they can’t relate until it does. The very recent rise of social media both helps change this and helps close the door on changing, for better or worse. Most people can only absorb so much at a time and they form opinions based on what they can absorb. Those opinions can remain in place in spite of any evidence to the contrary. Go back before Cole woke up and smelled the liberal coffee and read the blog. This place read like every other conservative blog of even today. (OK not the nutters) It took a defining act to get him to look around and see what he sees today. Others around the world are no different. Your European friends haven’t seen what you’ve seen or heard. Even if it’s in front of them it takes some event or awakening if you will to make it sink in. Look at the massive resistance we are seeing in this country. Those conservative asses in congress have been there for a while, just like we’ve had some very conservative presidents over the last 40 yrs but it took drumpf to show a rather large portion of the country how vile they really are and that the opposition to them is not “all the same.” And people are still arguing that they are. How’d that go in Men in Black, persons are smart, people are dumb? We are herd animals.
Caravelle
@JPL: The margin SHOULD have been big. The FN isn’t like the Republican Party, a mainstream governing party that routinely gets around 50% of votes in national elections. Its scores have been steadily going up since it was founded in the 70s and have historically been in the 10-20% ranges:
http://www.france-politique.fr/elections-fn.htm
With 35% Le Pen doubled her father’s score from 2002; it looks offhand like the highest score the FN’s ever had on a national level, and the most votes it’s ever received (11 million or so to 2012’s 6.4 million and the first round’s 7.6 million). At this point I’m mostly happy that she wasn’t the leading candidate in the first round because she very well could have been and talk about *that* symbol. Yes, I know in this post-Brexit, post-Trump world we can’t take things for granted so it’s really, really good that she didn’t win or come any closer than she did but that margin still is a step in the wrong direction. An expected step in a direction we’ve been going in for awhile now, but still bad.
Elizabelle
@Caravelle:
@Ruckus:
Thank you both for your really good answers. Will come back to them.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
@Baud:
You both make the point that I want to make. There is no thing in the world that everyone agrees on or understands. What looks like a computer invasion to one, may look totally reasonable to the person next to them. I find the only way to not get caught regularly is to be suspicious of everything, trust nothing. But even then it takes constant checking and investigating. And those bugs that don’t have to ask you to do anything? That takes a good system and not being a target in the first place.
Mems, how was the trip?
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Trip was fun but, more importantly, I have about three-quarters of a pretty solid outline now. I’m probably going to wander off to the Huntington in about an hour and hunker down in the Chinese garden with my headphones to see if I can get the rest done.
My Amtrak review: the Pacific Surfliners seem to be running fairly consistently late right now because of the track work being done in Orange County, so we got to SLO a little later than I wanted.
Business Class on the Surfliner wasn’t really worth it — there was free coffee, but I don’t drink coffee. Business Class on the Coast Starlight was much better — comfier seats, better tray tables, and there were, like, 6 of us in the entire car, so it was nice and quiet. I also got a $6 credit for dinner in the dining car, so I had a pretty good flatiron steak with a potato and vegetables for $19.
And Ruemara’s advice to bring Gin-Gins ginger lozenges was solid — I got the “traveler’s candy” super-strength ones with 30 percent ginger and didn’t get too queasy even though I got on board with a slight headache. So, a successful trip all around!
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Sounds (and is!) better than the inland train route that I took last year to see my friend up north. It was cheap though, about a third of the cost of a plane, with about the same amount of, but different hassles. And my friends moved from the east bay (So Richmond was a good stop to get off) to north of the bay.