August At Last

World Large and Small in the Lazy Days

Île St.-Louis, Paris, August

Here we are in the middle of a canicule, a real heat wave in August testing France’s ability to do without air-conditioning, I’m still banging the keys while the computer whurzles strangely and I’m devoured by thirsty little midges out for my blood. Only cigarette smoke drives them away… You can, should you so desire, dig deep in your pocket to buy me a coffee here. Merci d’avance.

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Ah, August ! At last, a month when nothing happens and everything is permitted. When the city empties and only the true lovers, hardcore or poor to the core, remain, when, almost like clockwork, the Chinese courtesan strolls across the empty boulevard south of Place d’Italie, in full regalia, a listless expression on her face. We meet each other at last. How is it possible that another year has passed but we only see each other on a certain day in August ? Locked inside an exclusive seraglio the rest of the year ? (If so, I haven’t found which one.) My neighborhood, like all real places past and future, has a secret life tourists and even longtimers know nothing about.

Since I’m writing on the 13^th, let’s get in some film anniversaries. Movie theatres: a good place to hide out in the heat.

"For five years, in my opinion, he really was the master of the universe. More than Hitler, more than Napoleon. He had a control of the public that no one else had. . . . Because Hitchcock was a poet. The public was under the control of poetry. And Hitchcock was a poet on a universal level, not like Rilke. He was the only poet maudit to have a huge success.” Jean Luc Godard in the Nineties: An Interview, Argument, and Scrapbook by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Lazy days in mid-August gave birth to many filmmakers: Hitchcock, Wim Wenders, Lina Wertmuller, Sam Fuller.

“Then in Paris I discovered the cinematheque, where you could see a movie for 25 cents a show, and they showed the entire history of world cinema. I saw five to six films every day, from German silents to American classics. I saw in one year more than a thousand movies and became totally addicted, and got a crash course in cinema. From then on, painting was over and I wanted to make movies." — Wim Wenders interviewed by Alex Simon in 2001

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Readership goes in and out with the tide here at Riffs. Things ain’t like they used to be: there’s a lot more competition around the shop, much from those with a political axe to grind. They know a few things and tell you so with absolute assurance. By the way, The Free Press here on Substack just sold to the young heir of some mega-fortune for $250 million. Your eyes do not deceive. Is that possible, two hundred and fifty million for a frigging blog ? Pass the sunscreen before I dive in.

I’d like to think I have some interest in politics, too, although I don’t pretend to know how the story is going to turn out.

Big deal in Alaska this weekend. Will the stalemate resolve ? Why should it ? Russia is slowly tearing the Ukraine to shreds. Trump will have to do his best Nixon impersonation, save face and sell it as the Greatest Deal ever. What else can he do? Americans and Ukrainians may be tired of the war but NATO isn’t and neither are the leaders of Europe, formerly known as the Continent of Culture and Peace. If reports are accurate, Mark Rutte and Ursula von der Leyen are banging the drums of war with Zelenskiy outside the negotiation rooms. No Deal is the New Deal.

But let’s stick to France or at least France-related.

The world continues to percolate, secret services working overtime in August:

France’s sponsored coup attempt foiled in Mali, with 11 coup plotters arrested, including one French spy from France secret service DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité extérieure).

So goes the African headline from two days ago. They run it a little differently back home in the imperial capital, citing ‘increasing discontent’ with Mali’s ‘authoritarian leadership:’

‘Malian authorities have arrested two dozen soldiers accused of plotting to overthrow the ruling junta, which itself came to power in the west African country in a coup. The arrests, include high-ranking General Abass Dembele a former governor of the central Mopti region and a respected military officer… “All are soldiers. Their objective was to overthrow the junta,” the lawmaker said.’ (News services, AFP inclus.)

Why write about Mali ? Because it’s part of Francophone Africa ? Because intrigues between former colonizer and colony continue to this day ? Look at the map. Odd shape for a country, say what! Who threw all those regions together and didn’t give the country even a smidgen of coastline ? More territory than powerhouse Nigeria but even in France you only hear about it when there’s trouble.

Mali is now part of the AES alliance, three countries which have broken out of France’s cozy, ex-colonial African ‘sphere of influence.’ (Niger and tiny Burkina Faso are the other two.) All three grew tired of the ‘democracy game’ in which safe, France-friendly candidates won election after election. (I wrote about Niger in the aftermath of its successful coup: https://continentalriffs.substack.com/p/the-niger-ultimatum.) The FrancAfrique, printed in the Banc de France’s basement on rue Petits Champs in Paris, is still the common currency in the former colonies. Profit out of thin air.

And there’s this: a vast gold mining operation at Loulo-Gounkoto, owned by Barrick Mining Corp., was recently seized by Mali’s revolutionary government, with a number of jihadis killed along the way. Or, as the African Press service notes dryily, ‘Scores of terrorists were eliminated and sent to their maker.’ The French government took notice. Nationalizations set off alarm bells in old ‘mother-countries’ where men pull strings that control the destiny of countries far away.

Beyond that it’s speculation. Hard to tell from here in the French capital who moved against whom in Bamako, Mali’s big city in the country’s south. Is the Frenchman Yann Christian Bernard Vezilier, Chevalier d’Ordre du Merité 2020, really DGSE or someone who wandered into Mali’s explosive internal politics ? Well, what was he doing there ? Were those twenty plus Malian generals plotting, and if so what ? A brief tête-à-tête with General Assimi Goita, who broke ranks with the French after staging repeated coups ? Worth reminding Riffs readers that De Gaulle’s withdrawal from Algeria so incensed French military hierarchy that they launched repeated assassination attempts against him, one time taking pot shots as his vehicle crossed Place du Concorde. Zinneman’s 1973 Day of the Jackal is a fictional version of one of the times they just missed.

Despite massive Chinese investment and the increasing presence of Russia’s Africa Core mercenaries, that rich continent to the south is hardly ever talked about in France. Streets, flophouses, in some cases luxury hotels and many of the jails in Europe are filling with exiles and we don’t even ask where they’re coming from or why. People would rather argue over what Belgium did or didn’t do in 19th century Congo.

(For what it’s worth to anyone, my family crest includes both Marine generals and one Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, whose integrated crew harried the British in South Carolina during the Revolutionary War. Discontented generals you can always replace.)

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A lonely algorithm at Sbstk HQ in SF with nothing better to do in August noticed that readers aren’t coming round Riffs as often. ‘They’ suggested I reprint a few older essays, and dropped a few hints as to which. Articles will make edited reappearances once I get done with my latest move, this time to the outskirts of Paris.