“Intervening in the final hour of the official campaign, this operation is clearly a matter of democratic destabilization, as was seen in the United States during the last presidential campaign,” Mr. Macron’s campaign said in a statement late Friday, minutes before the communications prohibition went into effect.
.. By Saturday, a trail of digital crumbs appeared to tie the attack on Mr. Macron’s campaign to Russian hackers. Forensics specialists found that one of the leaked Excel documents from Mr. Macron’s campaign had been modified on a Russian version of Excel, and edited on Russian-language computers.
One document had last been modified by a Russian user named Roshka Georgiy Petrovich. Mr. Petrovich, 32, an employee of the Moscow-based Eureka CJSC, a Russian technology company, did not immediately return emails requesting comment. Eureka CJSC’s clients include several Russian government agencies
.. A week before the second round of the French election, for instance, online activists, many from the United States and other English-speaking countries, flooded Twitter with coordinated anti-Macron memes — online satirical photos with often biting captions — carrying hashtags like #elysee2017 that were linked to the campaign. That included portraying him as a 21st-century equivalent of Marie Antoinette, the out-of-touch last queen of France, and other memes made allegations of an extramarital affair.
“They tried to bombard French Twitter with memes favorable to Le Pen,”
.. posted what were said to be copies of documents showing that Mr. Macron had supposedly set up a bank account in the Bahamas to avoid paying taxes. He denied the allegations.
Ms. Le Pen referred to such an overseas bank account during the vicious debate, leading to a bitter rebuttal by Mr. Macron’s team and an official investigation into the spread of the rumors.
.. Yet in a sign of how the far right outside the country is trying to foment the discussion, many of the Twitter posts about the hacking have originated in the United States, according to Trendsmap, a data analytics tool. About half of the social media messages around political hashtags linked to the breach have been written in English
.. “Misinformation is increasingly used to achieve political ends,” Mr. Sarts said. “Technology helps to amplify that message through fake news sites and social media.”
A Le Pen-Mélenchon Runoff: Investors’ Nightmare Scenario in France
With the start of the French election just days away, investors are contemplating their nightmare scenario: a choice between far-left and far-right candidates.
In recent days, a surge in opinion polls has placed Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a left-wing firebrand who promises higher wages and fewer working hours, as a potential candidate to move past this Sunday’s first round of voting. That could set up a second-round vote in May 7 with Marine Le Pen, an economic nationalist who wants to pull France out of the euro.
.. A runoff between Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Mélenchon “would be a disaster for France…[and] a disaster for Europe,” said Patrick Zweifel, chief economist at Pictet Asset Management.
Under that scenario, investors would dump the debt of France and of weaker European economies and send the euro sharply lower, analysts say.
.. the cost of insurance against a sharp fall in the euro, as measured by so-called one-month risk reversals, hit levels seen at the height of the continent’s sovereign-debt crisis in 2011.
.. For months, investors prepared for a runoff that pitted Ms. Le Pen against a candidate from the political mainstream, either François Fillon, a center-right former prime minister, or Emmanuel Macron, a former economy minister.
.. Analysts believe that either would beat Ms. Le Pen in a second round, as voters of different political stripes coalesced around a candidate that wasn’t the National Front leader.
.. The prospect of a victory for Ms. Le Pen, however distant, has long spooked markets. Ms. Le Pen’s desire to pull France out of the eurozone has raised concerns that the entire block could unravel.
.. In a runoff between Mr. Mélenchon and Ms. Le Pen, the sort of trading that hit markets during the eurozone’s sovereign-debt crisis, including extreme volatility in the euro and a selloff in the bonds of weaker members, would re-emerge, some analysts predict.
.. Mr. Mélenchon favors granting a sixth week of annual vacation; encouraging a four-day, 32-hour workweek; raising the minimum wage; and reducing the retirement age.
.. “It’s all very well having a mandate in the presidential election, but you need support in the national assembly too,”
A presidential run by Michael Bloomberg could plunge the country into a constitutional crisis
But only the blindest follower of Antonin Scalia — the most adamant constitutional originalist — can fail to recognize that the 12th Amendment, passed during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, can’t cope with the realities of modern politics.
If Bloomberg is a true patriot, he will not allow his personal ambition to throw the United States into a grave constitutional crisis.
India’s Move Against the Poor
The Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act disqualifies from local political office citizens who have been formally charged with serious crimes, citizens who are behind on loan payments to rural cooperative banks, citizens who haven’t paid their electricity bills, citizens who don’t have a functional lavatory at home and citizens who lack certain educational qualifications.
.. The stipulation that men running for local office should have high school diplomas and that women and Dalit candidates should have completed middle school was the most controversial part of the amendment, because it would disqualify about one half of Haryana’s rural voters. For that reason, the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the law, “Rajbala and Others vs. the State of Haryana and Others,” is a landmark in conservative jurisprudence and a dangerous departure from the ideal of a participatory democracy.
.. The second problem is that the law, in effect, punishes the poorer half of Haryana’s population for the failure of both state and national authorities to provide free education to all Indians.
.. Populist in idiom rather than intent, the B.J.P. appears to be using these two states as laboratories in which to test the chances of a broader conservative move to limit the political participation of the poor.