Goons Selling Guns, CMAS, Troll Theater Money?
All things you can read about on the internet...
Howdy, and welcome to the second edition of the Footnotes Newsletter, where I check in with you every Friday to rundown my news (news I’m following, news I’m running away from, news about me) and point you in the direction of some worthy reads.
This week — more on the arms trafficking ring that was broken up in France, trouble within Imam Mahmoud Dicko’s CMAS in transition Mali, and the lumpenbourgeoisie take over Wall Street (or how a bunch of trolls made bank off posting). Plus, I try to learn Gimp?
Let’s get started.
Some-sing Aw-fool?
One of the men under investigation for the arms trafficking ring we discussed in the last issue was previously investigated in another case of arms trafficking. He is a Master Corporal in the French Army. He was accused of being part of a ring that trafficked weapons in Seine-Saint-Denis by an investigation opened by the judicial tribunal in Bobigny after a cache of weapons was discovered in Bondy, a town to the Northeast of Paris.
Investigators found that those who were most involved in that ring were trying to establish a militia called “SA.” The SA were the armed paramilitary wing of the Nazi party who battled communists and aided Hitler’s rise to power. Investigators found a dagger adorned with Swastikas in the Meuse man’s house, as well as vinyl discs of Hitler’s speeches.
Reporting from Le Point revealed more details about the men involved in the current investigation. The investigation began in June 2020 and concerned three men, one in Meuse in the Northeast of France, one in Moselle in the East, and the last in Sète, a port city in the Southeast. Hundreds of guns and hundreds of kilos of ammunition were found in not just the houses of these men, but also their neighbors. The link to the Paris suburbs like Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-d’Oise where the guns are being used in the drug trade, was a military man who had just been transferred to the Ministry of Defense.
Mali
Issa Kaou Djime, the powerful Imam Mahmoud Dicko’s right hand man, is on the outs with the Coordination des mouvements, associations et sympathisants (CMAS), Dicko’s influential anti-corruption organization.
As recently as last summer, Djime was speaking for Dicko in international media. Now, they’re supposedly cold with each other, and 6 local members of the organization in Bamako, Mali’s capitol, released a letter denouncing Djime.
Some context: Mahmoud Dicko is a powerful religious and political figure in Mali today. Though he claims he has no intentions of seeking political power, it was his CMAS, alongside the Mouvement du 5 Juin – Rassemblement des forces patriotiques (M5-RFP), that helped force the resignation of the former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta on August 18th last year.
Dicko has a long history of political activism in Mali. In 2009 he led a movement against increasing equality between men and women in inheritance law. "Women inheriting the same as men is contrary to our values," he said.
Despite late being integral in forcing IBK, he remained close enough to the government to dissuade Mali’s minister of justice to retire a law against clitoral mutilation in 2017.
And at the end of 2018 he Dicko led a successful charge against a sexual education textbook (released in partnership with the Dutch ambassador) which discussed homosexuality.
Djime is accused in the letter of launching a new platform to the detriment of Dicko’s own, of “indifference” to the “inexorable decline” of CMAS, and his “lack of courtesy vis-a-vis his comrades and his pretension of erected himself as the absolute master of the structure.”
Lumpenbourgeosie Shut Down The Fun
Enough pixels have probably been spilled about the Stock Market madness and I don’t have much to add. The great Contention News has the best analysis:
The disease beneath GameStop’s symptom: a series of interlocking contradictions fueling a rapid change in how capital gets allocated in this economy. This change in turn aggravates the biggest contradiction of all: the tension between how individual wealth seekers make their money in the short term and the system’s ability to reproduce itself for the long term. Releasing that tension could mean big disruptions to our way of life.
WSB and friends have run these stocks up through a short squeeze. They have enough action that by focusing on thinly traded (before this week) stocks, they can bid up their prices, forcing the short sellers who bet on the stock going down to “cover” fast to avoid losing huge sums. This mass buying bids the price up even further, forcing more shorts to cover, raising prices again and creating a feedback loop that sends prices vertical.
And check out Teyve’s Stockpile for an explanation and in-depth chronology:
The bull thesis proposed in March 2019 was relatively short term: GME wasn't overburdened by debt or short term liabilities, and they had a big enough cash pile to make it to the next console cycle. That's all that needed to happen to raise the share to $18 (~200% gain at the time). These launches cyclically propelled their revenue, profit, and shares to highs, and original Reddit posters made it clear that was their endgame. The first value thesis did not even mention short interest.
Here’s a quote from Marx to add some context of the trading services shutting down the rallies to protect their own turf:
The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society.
Part of the fun of the event is the worst people in the world are crying about it, and it feels like it came out of nowhere. But could the Pentagon already have wargamed out such a scenario? In 2018 a Pentagon war game, called the 2018 Joint Land, Air and Sea Strategic Special Program talked darkly about a Zbellion:
"During face-to-face recruitment, would-be members of Zbellion are given instructions for going to sites on the dark web that allow them to access sophisticated malware to siphon funds from corporations, financial institutions, and nonprofits that support “the establishment.” The gains are then converted to Bitcoin and distributed to “worthy recipients” including fellow Zbellion members who claim financial need. Zbellion leadership, says the scenario, assures its members that their Robin Hood-esque wealth redistribution is not only untraceable by law enforcement but “ultimately justifiable,” as targets are selected based on “secure polling” of “network delegates.” Although its origins are American, by the latter 2020s, Zbellion activities are also occurring across Europe and cities throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, including Nairobi, Kenya; Hanoi, Vietnam; and Amman, Jordan."
Emphasis mine!
Footnotes
A new second-round poll for the 2022 French election poll puts Marine Le Pen within four percentage points of President Emmanuel Macron.
Is Macron still the “safe” choice? Left wingers who voted for Macron have largely lost confidence in him as he’s continued governing further and further to the right since being elected in 2017. As a result votes for his party cratered in last Spring’s municipal elections, winning no significant races. At the same time, the traditional right has continued radicalizing to the point that the average right wing voter is closer to Le Pen’s vision than ever before.
Could Jean-Luc Mélenchon be a safer alternative for French voters skittish about Le Pen’s Vichy roots? Even he’s worried, aware of the “heavy handicap” that the lack of the possibility occasioned by Covid-19 of the large crowd-based campaigning that drove his 2017 run. He’s acknowledged by everyone in the country as a talented orator, and electrifying in person (having seen it first-hand I can attest to it). Losing the opportunity to practice it in person would be a knock against his chances.
The French Senate has raised the non-negotiable age of consent to 13. Now, sex by an adult with anyone under that age is automatically classified as statutory rape. That’s an improvement from the age of 15, where there’s still a legal necessity to prove that coercion was involved, but still a low age ripe for exploitation.
France Télévisions, the publicly owned broadcaster, has apparently added an incentive for its editors-in-chief to broadcast news about Europe (i.e. the European Union).
I’m working through a big long video playlist on how to use GIMP. It’s pretty boring but I’ve never been able to edit images with anything more powerful than MS Paint so it’s worth the time. Expect to see a Footnotes logo at some point!
Check out John Ganz’ new substack Unpopular Front. He’s worked up the tweet thread I linked to in the last edition into a blog post, and more interesting stuff about historical fascism (heavy on the French right now) is on the way. I’ve been interested in what he has to say on this subject since I read his excellent piece ‘The Year the Clock Broke’ on Buchanan in The Baffler.
Ryan is allegedly still not smoking.
“To Get Rich Is Glorious” - Deng Xiaoping, apocryphal
"God bless rioters and ambitious day-traders." - a Trusted Troll
Until next week, share or get shorted.