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Le Pen Concedes Defeat To Macron In France's Post-Hack Election (reuters.com)

"France has voted for continuity," candidate Marine Le Pen said in the wake of her defeat in France's presidential election, conceding that Emmanuel Macron had a decisive lead. Reuters has ongoing coverage of Le Pen's concession phone call and reactions from world leaders. "France Rejects Far Right," read a headline at CNN, touting their own live updates and early results showing Macron with a 65.9% to 34.1% lead, "on course for a decisive win." Macron is schedule to speak at the Louvre museum (where the grounds were "briefly evacuated" this morning after discovery of a suspicious bag.) Quartz is calling 39-year-old Macron "the second Generation X president of a major world power" (after Canada's Justin Trudeau).

The election was closely watched after a 9-gigabyte trove of emails from Macron's campaign were leaked online. CNBC reports that "One of the most talked about emails makes reference to binge-watching Dr. Who and masturbating to the sound of running water. It sounds generally incoherent. It could be false, or maybe the person wrote it after a few too many." The New Yorker traces the leak to a right-leaning Canadian site, whose editor says he found the documents on 4chan. But Reuters is crediting WikiLeaks with providing "the largest boost of attention" to the leaked documents, according to an analysis pubished by the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, a D.C.-based think tank on international affairs. WikiLeaks tweeted about the leak 15 times, bragging to Reuters that "we were hours ahead of all other major outlets." On Friday WikiLeaks also disputed the Macron campaign's claim that the leak mixed real documents with fake ones. "We have not yet discovered fakes in #MacronLeaks & we are very skeptical that the Macron campaign is faster than us."

Saturday WikiLeaks noted that several of the Office files "have Cyrillic meta data. Unclear if by design, incompetence, or Slavic employee." And Saturday afternoon they added "name of employee for Russian govt security contractor Evrika appears 9 times in metadata for 'xls_cendric.rar' leak archive."

Meanwhile, on the International Space Station, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet voted from space. Feel free to discuss the election's results in the comments.

32 of 671 comments (clear)

  1. Good on France by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For rejecting fascism.

    1. Re:Good on France by Lisandro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I guess you didn't visit Europe much?

    2. Re:Good on France by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      They rejected nationalism, not fascism. Not that you understand the difference. But they did vote to keep themselves part of the EU, for open borders, and the eventual dissolution of French culture at the hands of migrants who don't care about the history of Western Europe.

      Perhaps one day something will change. But for now Europe is on the road to cultural destruction. Demographics and political correctness have determined that.

      The future belongs to those who care and whose descendants show up for it.

    3. Re:Good on France by Lisandro · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As much as drive-by shootings are the national past time in the US.

      Wait, sorry. I said something really stupid.

    4. Re:Good on France by penandpaper · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Only in Chicago and other cities with the strongest of gun laws.

    5. Re:Good on France by fred6666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Europe has even stronger gun laws and almost no murders compared to the US.

    6. Re:Good on France by admin7087 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I'm pretty sure AC understands the difference. Front National is a fascist party, not 'democratic far-right' or if that category was even possible, or any other of these convenient euphemisms.

      Perhaps one day something will change. But for now Europe is on the road to cultural destruction.

      That's patently absurd and just by parroting and repeating these kinds of slogans they don't become any more convincing. Luckily the number of people like you is constantly declining, just look at how people vote across Europe and you'll see a constant trend towards the center left in generations The future belongs to those who care and whose descendants show up for it.

      Future generations grow up with the Internet, they know that the world is just one large community, and they travel and live all across Europe. They know way better than you. Populist and far-right voters are older, in their forties and above, and generally misinformed. They will fade away. The world was never better than now, Europe is the best place on earth to live right now, and it's going to become even better in the future.

    7. Re:Good on France by ChromeAeonium · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Europe also has better access to healthcare (including mental healthcare), better social welfare, less class inequality, less gang activity, and generally ranks better on all the other things that lead to violent crime. I'm not sure how you can compare the two situations and blame the guns. Even between areas in the US, gun crime tends to happen more toward urban areas with lots of social problems, and not so much in the backwoods rural areas were everyone and their grandmother is carrying a gun.

    8. Re:Good on France by Sassinak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And how is tucking tail, closing boarders, and turning allies into enemies going to make it any better.. all it means is you now fear outsiders AND your own citizens..

      Terrorism thrives best with disinformation, mistrust, and fear and all Le Pen was pushing for was basically playing into those fears. You may be SURVIVE that way.. but survival and thriving/growing are completely different things.

      --
      God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
    9. Re:Good on France by ooloorie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Now explain Trump's victory.

      Easy: Hillary was corrupt, incompetent, dishonest, war-mongering, and a party-hack. Bozo the Clown would have been a better choice than Hillary.

      Macron doesn't strike me as the brightest bulb, but if the Democrats had put up anybody like him, they would likely have won in the US as well.

    10. Re:Good on France by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      What are you talking about? America rejected fascism: we didn't vote for Hillary or the Democrats.

    11. Re:Good on France by toonces33 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nearly every word you use to describe Hillary can be easily applied to Trump.

    12. Re:Good on France by MightyMartian · · Score: 1, Insightful

      : Translation: Those rotten Frenchmen prevented the righteous Kremlinistas from undermining their election.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    13. Re:Good on France by quonset · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Easy: Hillary was corrupt, incompetent, dishonest, war-mongering, and a party-hack. Bozo the Clown would have been a better choice than Hillary.

      As opposed to Trump who is corrupt (hiring illegal workers and not paying them as well as colluding with a foreign government during the election), has repeatedly shown his incompetence (I thought it would be easier), has lied since day one (Hillary's not in jail, Obamneycare wasn't repealed on day one, Mexico isn't paying for the wall, the swamp is filled almost to capacity and he's gone golfing more times in three months than Obama went in an entire year), has gotten several service members killed already because of his penchant to use the military without thought, and a hack of the highest order as shown by the chaos of his administration where one hand literally does not know what the other is doing.

      So yeah, big difference between the two.

    14. Re:Good on France by hey! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It always bothers me how easy it is to oversimplify something like this.

      Nearly everyone would like to see some things change, and it's a certainty some of the people who voted for Macron would like to see a lot of things changed.

      LePen characterizing this as a vote for "continuity" is a self-serving lie. "Continuity" and "Change" were not on the ballot. The only thing you can conclude is that French voters rejected the particular changes LePen represents.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    15. Re: Good on France by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Singular events that are utterly irrelevant to a nation as a whole if all too many people tried to profit from it or are easily scared.
      Did you know that every year 130 000 (or 73 000 if you prefer wikipedia over my local newspaper) people die from measles?
      Something that would be VASTLY easier to be done with once and forever (smallpox is the prove it can be done, and at reasonable effort) than terrorism and would save a lot, lot, LOT, LOT more lives.
      This bwaah! "islamists", "terrorists" scare and resources spent on it is an insult to all those many, many people who die from the actual threats we have in our world and simply ignore. Everyone who continues to feed it should be most deeply ashamed.

    16. Re:Good on France by Tranzistors · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not when you consider all of Europe. Russia has a murder rate about twice that of America.[...] When you look at the entire continent, Europe "wins".

      If you want to compare Europe vs. America, please include Central America and South America. That you make your comparison more valid.

    17. Re:Good on France by Barsteward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      because the gun carriers still think they are cowboys of a bygone era. virtually all the US cop dramas are rehashed cowboy scenarios where guns are always drawn

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    18. Re: Good on France by skam240 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But yet everything you quote there is correct. Castro did indeed create an amazing medical system for a third world nation and their education system isnt so bad. He was also a very skilled orator. I have zero love of communism and little love for Castro (I do admire his medical system) but Trudeau did not utter a single falsehood there.

      Maybe you should examine your own intellect if you're questing Trudeau on that point.

      --
      I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
  2. Re:At least, Putin is no sexist by Sique · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the U.S., he actually bet against the female candidate.

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    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  3. Because open borders have worked so well for them. by DaRyuujin · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'm amazed with all the issues the french people are facing due to their open borders that people were willing to just keep the status quo going.

  4. Glad to see a little sanity by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Though to be fair Macron was orders of magnitude better than Hillary. Maybe not as a public servant but at least at campaigning. Hopefullyâ post Trump the rest of the world will take the far right and the working class problems they play to seriously.

    --
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    1. Re:Glad to see a little sanity by Lisandro · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This had to be said: how Macron will perform as a president is a giant question mark. This is the first public office the guy will hold.

      What makes his win refreshing is that the alternative was Marine fucking Le Pen. In that sense this campaign was reminiscent to the Clinton-Trump election, i.e., a decision between a mediocre candidate and an unfathomable one. Guess the French were wiser this time around.

    2. Re:Glad to see a little sanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, if a Clinton and Trump supporters both don't like macron... that can only be good :P

    3. Re:Glad to see a little sanity by Cochonou · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The main difference between the elections in France and the elections in the US, is that there was a choice between 11 candidates on the first turn, four of which have had a score above 19% .

    4. Re:Glad to see a little sanity by Kjella · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Though to be fair Macron was orders of magnitude better than Hillary. Maybe not as a public servant but at least at campaigning. Hopefullyà post Trump the rest of the world will take the far right and the working class problems they play to seriously.

      In 2002 dad Le Pen got 18% of the vote, now daughter Le Pen got 35% of the vote. France has been in a continuous state of emergency since November 2015. There's been both targeted attacks (Charlie Hebdo) and untargeted attacks (Paris, Nice). And the rest of the establishment is so busy trying to prove they're not islamophobes they'll continue to refuse to acknowledge there's a problem. Here in Norway it's election in September and it looks like we'll vote in a more pro-immigration government than today, despite the fact that third world immigration is an economic disaster, integration is not working and we're inviting back in medieval attitudes to separation of church and state, democracy, freedom of speech, equality of the sexes, LBGT rights and so on.

      The saddest thing is that we're backing out of almost every conflict out of religious tolerance. We'd never allow people to wear ski masks to schools and banks and whatnot, but if you want to wear a Niqab that's okay in the name of religious tolerance. We've become afraid of christmas, pork, alcohol and everything that might possibly offend some uptight Muslim to a degree we'd never considering for an abstinent vegan of any other religious conviction. We constantly have apologists that say it's better for girls to have separate swimming lessons in burkinis than to not have them show up for swimming lessons at all. And Trump didn't help, he's got a microscopic problem compared to Europe and turned a molehill into a mountain. That only silenced those who should be protesting.

      It's very telling that most of the world's Islamic nations don't want the refugees, they're being routed into Europe and we let them come by the millions. There's never been a problem with Jews, Buddhists, Hindus or any other foreign religion or other denominations of Christianity like Catholics, Baptists, Orthodox it's always the same religion that doesn't integrate. They don't get along with Christians in Europe, they don't get along with Hindus in India, not anywhere with anyone. Saudi Arabia is at the center of it all and the most backwards wealthy country in the world where women can't even drive a car, why do we want more of that religion? I really, really don't understand why we're such a glutton for punishment.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    5. Re:Glad to see a little sanity by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This. Instant runoff voting systems have mathematically been proven to yield better ("fairer") results in elections. The plurality wins system the U.S. uses (and especially the plurality by state + electoral college method) is one of the worst, and is what results in the system gravitating towards two parties who represent the extremes, rather than the mean.

    6. Re:Glad to see a little sanity by dcollins · · Score: 3, Insightful

      LOL "There's never been a problem with Jews".

      No, Europe has never had a problem with Jews. No one's ever accused them of being separatist, not sufficiently Christian, "doesn't integrate". No one's every been able to whip up a crowd into heinous hateful action against the Jews.

      This right-wing agitprop is just racism du jour. Discouragingly, apparently it will never end. A boot stomping a human face forever.

      --
      We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
  5. Re:Because open borders have worked so well for th by admin7087 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Well, I hate to say so, but it just looks as if the French people are smarter than you.

  6. Re:Sad day for Europe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Kebabs are pretty tasty. Lots of people like Kebabs. You would also if you tasted one, but its hard to taste food when your head is up your ass.

    You can whine all you want about SJWs or political correctness, but there is nothing sensible about fascism. There is nothing sensible about ISIS either. Not all muslims are extremists and not all extremists are muslim. Those are very simple truths that you choose to refute.

    One extremist begets another. And so on. At least the French are more aware of this than Americans.

    Egalité, fraternité, liberté. Vive la France!

  7. Re:not surprising by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Did you ever stop to think that's because maybe, no matter how much you may wish to moan about everything, this is as good as it gets?

    I know, I know, you want to listen to the fascist who tells you she can solve all the worlds ills if we just blame it on those guys.

    Yeah, Europe tried that, didn't work well, turns out it was actually much worse than what everyone is sticking to instead. Rather than assume everyone is an ignorant drone and you're the only enlightened person on the planet, maybe you should consider that in fact there's a good reason that people vote for the status quo that's made them the 5th richest nation in the world despite having a fraction of the world's population and resources to achieve that success?

    Yes, I know, it's all terrible, everything's awful with the liberal West, it's terrible, sure, great, only it's just less terrible than all the alternatives. Even in the modern era you only have to look at Putin's Russia to see how awful the autocratic miserable hate filled blame gaming alternative is. I don't know about you but I'd much rather be at the bottom of the wealth ladder in somewhere like France, than at the bottom of the wealth ladder in Russia. That's why people rejected Le Pen, because no matter how bad things may appear to be in somewhere like France, no matter how much you may wish to whine about, no matter where on the wealth ladder you sit, you're still better off, and more free, than you would be under the alternative that was on offer.

  8. Re:Wow by argStyopa · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You DO understand that sometimes people might simply disagree with your personal political preferences, and that doesn't automatically make them Russian bots, right?

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    -Styopa