Neo-Nazi Gangs, French Pedophiles, Vim?
All things you can read about on the internet...
Howdy, and welcome to the first 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 — A massive arms trafficking ring is broken up in France, I talk about modeling agent and Epstein procurer Jean-Luc Brunel on the TrueAnon podcast, and we look at Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s 2022 presidential campaign. Plus, I try to learn Linux?
Let’s get started.
Paris Banditry Repression Brigade
A roundup of Neo Nazi activity written by the WSWS put me onto the trail of a massive ring of arms traffickers in France. “Two soldiers figured among the suspects,” reported LCI, who broke the story, on the 13th of January.
A raid using nearly the full force of the Brigade de répression du banditisme (BRB) parisienne captured over 200 firearms and scooped up 8 other suspects in Ile-de-France (the region containing Paris and its suburbs), from a military base in the East of the country, and in the South of the country.
The ring is suspected of selling arms to drug-dealers in Saint-Denis ( part of the Parisian suburbs), as well as to members of the extreme-right. At least one of the suspects was on a state watch-list for ties to fascists, reported Le Monde. In the stockpile that was recovered there were pistols, revolvers, assault rifles, submachine guns, and powder and munitions.
The suspects include men aged 29, 30, and 52, a 31 year old military man (from the base in the East), and a 44 year old retired military man. Le Figaro reported on the 16th that five additional suspects came before the courts for initial proceedings. A 31 year old functionary at the Ministry of Defense and a 57 year old man were placed in provisional detention. A retired 31 year old member of the military, and a 30 year old man asked for delays to prepare their defenses, and a 25 year old man was placed under judicial control.
The arrests stem from an investigation opened on the 25th of June, 2020, according to Le Figaro’s judicial source, and the case is being handled by the Paris based “juridictions interrégionales spécialisées” or JIR. JIRs handle cases that take place across regional jurisdictions, so they’re often tasked with handling organized crime. Watch this space — I’ll be following this case through the courts with interest.
Jean-Luc Brunel - ‘The Phantom’
Jean-Luc Brunel was arrested at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris before Christmas, allegedly on his way to Dakar for the New Year. The 75 year old modeling agent is being held as part of an investigation into his long-alleged rape and sexual abuse of women, which was launched over a year ago as part of looking into his role as a procurer for the American billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
I talk about Brunel on the latest TrueAnon subscriber podcast episode which came out on the 18th. I haven’t listened to the episode yet but know that I left out a bunch of stuff — I found it difficult to condense and speak extemporaneously about a subject I’ve done a lot of research on. I think the result was not great, though I do talk about some interesting things — I’d like to get better at presenting in that type of format. I forgot to mention now former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s Brunel connection as the contact man on the documents forming Brunel’s agency Next Model Management. Nor did I get as much as I’d like into the question of how the fall of the Soviet bloc provoked an explosion in human trafficking. 100,000 women a year are trafficked in Russia alone. And the modeling world took advantage of this situation. “Prime victims for trafficking,” said a former top model I talked with in the summer. “They were young and couldn’t speak English.”
Mélenchon 2022
It’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s third time running for president and I’m a firm supporter.
The last two elections, which are held every five years in France, he was supported by the French Communist Party. But this time around he won’t be because the PCF, under the leadership of a new national secretary, Fabien Roussel, say they need to maintain a national profile. That’s a more complicated story you’ll hear more about in coming issues.
In a country where to be on the first round ballot you need the signature of 500 national or local elected officials from at least 30 different departments, this causes a little bit of trouble for Mélenchon.
Because of this, when he launched his candidature at the beginning of November he asked for an investiture from the people of a minimum of 150,000 supporters. He quickly exceeded that and has over 200,000 enrolled supporters on his new website, along with a snappy new slogan, ‘Nous Sommes Pour,’ or ‘We Are For.’ A popular investiture to replace the old system is part of his program ‘l’Avenir en Commun,’ or ‘Common Future.’
There’s an interview with Mélenchon in Sud-Ouest today about his presidential campaign. There are some good observations from Mélenchon about how it’s important to run his own candidature without seeking unity with the probable Green or Socialist candidates.
“Today, union is confusion,” he says. “What price do we pay to renounce everything to get along with others? If we don’t talk about Europe, about planning, about the VIth Republic, about national defense, we’re not talking about anything.”
Footnotes
CD ~ Country Roads: I’m trying to learn system administration stuff for Linux. I’m working through Ryan’s Linux Tutorial now and getting pretty good at mv-ing and touch-ing. Any suggestions for resources after I work my way from wildcards to bash scripting would be appreciated.
French President Emmanuel Macron said there’ll be “no repentance nor apologies” for France’s colonial atrocities in Algeria, ahead of a report released on Wednesday that examining France’s role and crimes during both colonizations and the war. Lockstep with Le Pen ahead of the 2022 presidential election.
Friend of the newsletter J.G. Michael has a piece on “the mythopoetics of the far-right” over at The Barricade.
A look back at Thomas Meaney’s excellent piece in the February 2020 issue of Harper’s on the National Conservatism conference dominated by the new wave of reaction. On Tucker Carlson:
He did daily battle with the enemy. And not only battle; Tucker even extracted what he liked from the Jacobin-magazine left, twisted it around, and sold it at a discount to his followers. He hated liberals, but he resented the left for leaving his hypocrisy flagrantly exposed. And so he seesawed between this hatred and this resentment. In the resentment there was a kind of respect; in the hatred there was mirthful righteousness.
Tucker has played a very interesting role in conning the alt media into thinking Trump had some latent desire to do anything remotely anti-establishment, like the recent false perception that he was going to pardon Snowden or Julian Assange. More on that story from within the White House communications team in future issues.
Check out this fascinating thread about the reaction to the February 6th, 1934 anti-parliamentary riots led by the ultra-right in France. A quote from the 3,000 page parliamentary inquiry report into that day: "Those who have sought to distort the free play of our democratic institutions...have put our Republic in danger." Sound familiar?
My friend Ryan is one month nicotine-free. He’s so good at quitting smoking that he’s done it tons of times! Wish him luck.
Until next week, share or get arrested.