Many Words and Many Lies

The vertical axis shows the number of words (blue line). The US Constitution is 7583 words

The U.S. Constitution is the shortest on the American continents. All of the people’s states, caudillo juntas and banana republics have constitutions up to ten times as wordy as the U.S. Constitution. People face danger and expense in order to flee those countries and try to enter These United States, not each other’s countries. Is this coincidence? Is the number of words or pages in a country’s Constitution a negative indicator for individual freedom and prosperity?

World Health Organization killers

Remember this argument? “We can’t stop arresting people for plant leaves; the country would lose its membership in the World Health Organization!” Yet when you visit the WHO website, there is no FAQ, paragraph or line in evidence about how wonderful it is for taxation to send men with guns to shoot and arrest teenagers and minority citizens as an example to would-be plant leaf aficionados. Portugal, Uruguay and Mexico–now joined by Canada, have decriminalized plant leaves. Women just recently achieved individual rights in Ireland! Yet there is little mention of these facts in the looter press or soi disant “World” organizations.

But the disinformation is still there in Animal Farm format: plant leaves baaad! The altruistic reader, however, is now expected to independently conclude: therefore weaponized prohibition goood! The conditioning method more closely resembles what Aldous Huxley wrote while living in Fascist Italy than the methods his student Eric Arthur Blair included in Nineteen Eighty-Four.  To induce politicians to order police to “regrettably” shoot our children, these tax-subsidized bureaucrats publish the following propaganda:

Chronic health effects of cannabis use (propaganda alert!)

• selective impairment of cognitive functioning which include the organization and integration of complex information involving various mechanisms of attention and memory processes;
• prolonged use may lead to greater impairment, which may not recover with cessation of use, and which could affect daily life functions;
• development of a cannabis dependence syndrome characterized by a loss of control over cannabis use is likely in chronic users;
• cannabis use can exacerbate schizophrenia in affected individuals;
• epithetial injury of the trachea and major bronchi is caused by long-term cannabis smoking;
• airway injury, lung inflammation, and impaired pulmonary defence against infection from persistent cannabis consumption over prolonged periods;
• heavy cannabis consumption is associated with a higher prevalence of symptoms of chronic bronchitis and a higher incidence of acute bronchitis than in the non-smoking cohort;
• cannabis used during pregnancy is associated with impairment in fetal development leading to a reduction in birth weight;
• cannabis use during pregnancy may lead to postnatal risk of rare forms of cancer although more research is needed in this area.

The health consequences of cannabis use in developing countries are largely unknown beacuse (their spelling) of limited and non-systematic research, but there is no reason a priori to expect that biological effects on individuals in these populations would be substantially different to what has been observed in developed countries. However, other consequences might be different given the cultural and social differences between countries. (end propaganda alert)

Do the brainwashers apologize for the thousands of persons zealously shot to death? for the tens of thousands of man-years of prison sentences imposed? for the economic collapse brought about when prohibitionist asset-forfeiture raids on banks, brokerages, homes and automobiles cause money to flee into hiding, thereby contracting the money supply into liquidity crises? Not a word about that. The formula is the cowardly smear-by-association exemplified in Atlas Shrugged:

She saw at a glance what they (the State Science Institute) had done. She saw the sentences: “It may be possible that after a period of heavy usage, a sudden fissure may appear, though the length of this period cannot be predicted. . . . The possibility of a molecular reaction, at present unknown, cannot be entirely discounted. . . . Although the tensile strength of the metal is obviously demonstrable, certain questions in regard to its behavior under unusual stress are not to be ruled out.

The same sort of superstitious innuendo serves as pretext for the initiation of deadly force against anything suspected of bringing a smile to someone’s face or being of some utility to the living of their own lives. The World Health Organization–like all products of National or International Socialist coercion–is haunted by the fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.

Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian blog…

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In the dark and vulnerable…

Every voter who missed the opportunity to vote libertarian (and make a difference) should read Hillary Clinton’s econazi mein kampf. The thing is a sobbing, altruistic tell-all exposing the utter cluelessness of an ignorant collectivist dupe.**  Hillary made it clear she has never understood the function of the President, to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and … Commission all the Officers of the United States.” Nor has she even read or understood the platform of her own party in its entirety.

Every sane voter is normally inclined to believe whatever the democratic and republican parties say about each other’s politicians. After all, they are all looters, ideologically committed to the initiation of force.  Yet when was the last time you saw a Democrat quote verbatim and contest a plank from God’s Own Prohibitionists’ platform or vice-versa? Only thinking people read the platforms. Clueless folks read tweets about cankles, hairdos and vague allegations of email impropriety.

Most especially, voters in mi Puerto Rico querido. Puerto Rico is dominated entirely by superstitious prohibitionist republican and cynical communist democratic politicians. The Nixon anti-libertarian law shunts tax money into the island’s fake media to advertise these charlatans as “both” alternatives. Voters are aware of only one choice in elections: force women to bear unwanted children AND/OR send men with guns to kick in your door because of plant leaf products. “Both” parties are prohibitionists, but the Dems want to ban energy and God’s Own Prohibitionists want to bring back Prohibition and then some.

Superstition made boricuas susceptible to anti-nuclear propaganda. Econazi propaganda convinced the island voters that bird-killing windmills and useless solar panels can replace a power plant. Altruism caused them to elect looter politicians willing to squander 120 million borrowed dollars. That money bought the DemoGOP enough votes to bully women, kill birds and produce blackouts. Puerto Rico today is in the dark and vulnerable.  Look at the before and after outcome:

 

Slide the Atlas Shrugged divider… Page down, VIEW IMAGE COMPARISON shows before and after view.

La Rebellión de Atlas is available in Spanish translation. There is no excuse for Puerto Rico to live in the Dark Ages anymore. A libertarian governor and economy could soon enable a boricua power company to purchase a natural uranium Canadian CANDU reactor on reasonable terms. This would make our island the searchlight beacon of the Caribbean. Houston’s nuclear reactors were hit directly by the same hurricanes and never felt a thing. Puerto Rico more closely resembles a satrapy of the Spanish Inquisition because of energy prophesies–such as this one from the 2016 Democratic platform:

We are committed to getting 50 percent of our electricity from clean energy sources within a decade, with half a billion solar panels installed within four years and enough renewable energy to power every home in the country.

The Libertarian plank looked like this:

While energy is needed to fuel a modern society, government should not be subsidizing any particular form of energy. We oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production.

The Democratic Party final solution for Puerto Rico looked like this:

So if having electricity is more important than government ownership or making a pregnant girl suffer, consider voting Libertarian next election. If clear text is more important than garble, consider getting a bid from an ATA-certified Portuguese interpreter.

** I did not vote for Trump. I always vote Libertarian.

Find out how Puerto Rico went on strike against prohibition enforcement in 1931. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 shows how superstitious laws wrecked the entire U.S. economy and plunged us into the Great Depression. Live on Amazon Kindle for the price of a pint.

Prohibition and The Crash, on Amazon Kindle in 2 languages

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Republican National Socialism

Truman and Trump stand at opposite ends of the approval spectrum

The most popular president ever at the 100-day mark was Harry Truman, who continued Roosevelt’s policy of keeping beer safe and legal.

Read original article…

Truman also presided the denazification of National Socialist Germany, a State Herbert Hoover had nurtured as Food Czar in 1919, and strengthened militarily with his Moratorium on Brains stopping collection of war reparations in 1931. Truman was sworn in on April 12, 1945. Two years later, while National Socialists were still being tried and hanged in Nuremberg, Ayn Rand wrote the Non-Aggression Principle whereby people should:

“…agree that no man or number of men have the right to initiate the use of force against any human being (and that includes the forcible seizure of his property)”

 But according to Scott Adams over at Dilbert, Trump is under-appreciated. According to Scott, the major accomplishment was:

“Trump erased the “Trump is Hitler” hallucination that the Clinton side spray-painted onto him during the election.”

Is this true? Shortly before anti-dog-eat-dog religious conservative Hoover was drummed out of office, religious conservative Adolf Hitler took office in Germany. Here are some of Adolf Hitler’s 25 National Socialist planks:

7. We demand that the state pledge itself to assure the productivity and livelihood of citizens above all others.  If it is not possible to support the entire population, members of foreign nations (non citizens) are to be expelled.

8. Any further immigration of non-Germans Americans is to be prevented.  We demand that all non-Germans… be forced to leave the Reich immediately.

We see immediately that tough nativist deportation policies are a big draw for both the NSDAP and GOP. The Dems and GOP also declared War on Drugs that cannot surrender, and have thrice wrecked the economy via prohibitionist asset forfeiture policies:

12. … personal enrichment because of war has to be seen as a crime against the people.  We therefore demand complete confiscation of all war profits.

And the current Republican president swears that eminent domain coercion is necessary and good for our country. Compare:

17. We demand land reform suited to our national needs, creation of a law providing for expropriation without compensation of land for common purposes, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation.

Trump’s Attorney-General, like Republican president Bush and Republican Newt Gingrich, called for the death sentence for marijuana dealers.** Germany outlawed marijuana in 1929, when Hoover was president and the NSDAP was a rising political force “over there.” Compare:

18. We demand a ruthless fight against those whose activities harm the common good.  Traitors, usurers, profiteers, and so forth, are to be punished with death, regardless of church and race.

Republicans, like National Socialists, worry about fake news…

23. We demand legal measures against the conscious political lie and its propagation through the press.

And the Republican Party is outraged at things at which many religious extremists take umbrage, favors a coercive Christian Nation, and, like the NSDAP, endorses altruism writ large. Check this out:

24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations within the state as long as they do not endanger the state or violate the ethical and moral feelings of the Germanic race.
The party as such subscribes to a positive Christianity without binding itself to a specific denomination. It opposes the Jewish materialistic spirit within and around us and is convinced that a lasting recovery can only come about from within based on the principle: THE COMMON GOOD BEFORE THE INDIVIDUAL GOOD.

All of these things, basically a nazification of These United States, are being pushed by Republican members of the House and Senate. The president is simply pushing the unpopular GOP platform he was elected to push. Republicans were elected by default because of the Democratic Party’s platform plank aimed at crippling the US economy for econazi carbon-tax pseudoscience. The plank banning reliable power generation was the only deliverable difference among the 71,000 words the two major parties published as their nearly indistinguishable platforms. Americans simply voted to keep electricity safe and legal. The oppression of fertile women, anti-semitic religious warfare entanglements, and jailing and shooting of youths over plant cultivars were package deals added to the GOP platform by mystical bigots.

Four million voters, equal to the voting population of Virginia, voted libertarian, causing the Republican candidate to lose in the popular vote count. The Libertarian platform offered to finish the work of repeal begun by the Democrats in 1932, and release millions of victims of victimless crime enactments–and keep electricity safe and legal.

If you understood this interpretation, it might be because I interpret for engineers, courts and attorneys.

** Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams in April 2019 declared in favor of the death sentence for plant-product kingpins and queenpins on Periscope.

Don’t miss the explanation of how Herbert Hoover’s Moratorium on Brains helped Hitler’s party rise to power in Prohibition and The Crash: live on Amazon Kindle for the cost of a craft pint.

Prohibition and The Crash, on Amazon Kindle in 2 languages

NEW! Foreign language blog…

 

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Climate Change & Nonaggression Pact

Original article…

National Socialist–Soviet Socialist Pact, (August 23, 1939)–Paris “Agreement” November 4, 2016… a comparison

The National Socialist–Soviet Socialist pact is also called the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Nazi–Soviet Pact and the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact and Russo-German Pact.** In much the way Global Cooling morphed into Anthropomorphic Global Warming, then (to cover all bases) Climate Change (which was everywhere long before mankind).  All of this is old hat. Externally, the socialist “non-aggression” treaty was short and flowery, with phrases like:

“In any event both Governments will resolve this (Poland) question by means of a friendly agreement.”

and

“Should disputes or conflicts arise between the High Contracting Parties over problems of one kind or another, both parties shall settle these disputes or conflicts exclusively through friendly exchange of opinion or, if necessary, through the establishment of arbitration commissions.”

The treaty closed with a nondisclosure agreement that masked the existence of additional deals, but the thing was outwardly cute and fuzzy, as one might expect from neighboring altruistic People’s States. The fact remained that the preceding war had been largely a dispute over heroin markets in which to sell Papaver somniferum products grown in the Balkan States. Those markets and competition still existed in 1939.  The secret additional deals amounted to a divvying-up of the opium-producing Balkan States.

When the Democratic Party gained power after the George Waffen Bush asset-forfeiture crash and depression, it preserved existing domestic prohibition, high-taxes, asset forfeiture looting and other victimless “crime” legislation. However, stung by the Y2K election results in which the Green Party weighed in with enough spoiler votes to block Democrats from jobs, boodle and pelf, the Democratic platform committee hewed as close to the Republican line as possible–except for the part about trying to ban reliable power generation.

Bans on reliable power generation have been enacted in the People’s State of Australia (which replaced voluntary democracy with mandatory voting), and the Democratic People’s Republic of Germany. In both cases, utility bills skyrocketed and rolling blackouts and brownouts became familiar features of the environment. These provide pretexts for additional regulatory meddling. The result of curtailment of power generation anywhere is a net increase in the mortality rate in those places–in other words, a health hazard.

This latest Paris pact aimed at lowering life expectancy is couched in the most florid prose imaginable:

(c) Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development

Translation: (c) Robbing taxpayers and monopoly victims to subsidize unreliable energy experiments

Propaganda expert George Orwell commented on totalitarian persuasion:

It is important to notice that the cult of power tends to be mixed up with a love of cruelty and wickedness FOR THEIR OWN SAKES. A tyrant is all the more admired if he happens to be a bloodstained crook as well, and ‘the end justifies the means’ often becomes, in effect, ‘the means justify themselves provided they are dirty enough’. This idea colours the outlook of all sympathizers with totalitarianism, and accounts, for instance, for the positive delight with which many English intellectuals greeted the Nazi-Soviet pact. (George Orwell)

Russo-German Pact of 1939. [Note 1, below] And when news of the Pact broke, the most wildly divergent explanations were of it were given, and predictions were made which were falsified almost immediately, being based in nearly every case not on a study of probabilities but on a desire to make the U.S.S.R. seem good or bad, strong or weak. (Orwell)

-issues like Poland, the Spanish civil war, the Russo-German pact, and so forth, are debarred from serious discussion, and that if you possess information that conflicts with the prevailing orthodoxy you are expected to either distort it or keep quiet about it–(Orwell)

If this sounds like 2017, welcome to the world of alternative facts.

** [Note 1: An example is the Russo-German Pact, which is being effaced as quickly as possible from public memory. A Russian correspondent informs me that mention of the Pact is already being omitted from Russian year-books which table recent political events. (George Orwell)]

There is a genuine non-aggression principle that socialists struggle to evade:

“I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals.”

This is the pledge required to join or donate to the Libertarian Party.

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1929 Stock Market Crash One

Chapter 46

The First Stock Market Crash

Chicago Tribune 27MAR1929

On March 26, 1929, Al Capone was still sequestered for the federal grand jury as ordered by Judge Wilkerson, and the U.S. Attorney had sent a federal raiding party to the Lexington and Metropole hotels to seize Capone’s records. Although ostensibly over fallout from the Chicago Heights raids, Assistant United States District Attorney Daniel Anderson nonetheless asked the famous entrepreneur point-blank: “What is your business?”

“I must stand on my constitutional rights and refuse to answer anything particular about that,” was Capone’s answer. Al was charged with contempt and a warrant issued the following day. Health problems as a pretext for avoiding the courtroom had been successfully invoked by Jew-baiting magnate Henry Ford just two years earlier, but the court extended no such privilege to young Al Capone.^[1] The market crashed with a record turnover of over 8 million shares on March 26, 1929.^[2] Wall Street sources reported that Chicago banks withdrew substantial sums from Wall Street to meet credit exigencies in the “Middle West.” This announcement would be repeated in even stranger circumstances by Herbert Hoover before the year was out.^[3]

Wall Street Journal headlines on March 27 glumly described severe declines on the “largest volume of dealings ever known.” Time Magazine chimed right in, announcing “the biggest stock market crash in Coolidge-Hoover history.” Some of the cash movement had to do with income tax payments—which back then were due March 1—and some with quarterly government financing. Indeed, call money bounced back up to 14% at the close of March. News came in of increased opium trade in China precisely coinciding with a new wave of suppression there.^[4]

Judge Winslow’s impeachment was gathering steam, with attorney Isidore Kresel scheduled to conduct an investigation beginning Monday. City Trust, Lancia motors and the late F.M. Ferrari were also back in the news over a disputed note, and George McManus—Rothstein murder “suspect”—was released on bail for want of a speedy trial.^[5]

Again the Journal reported that there had been a “drastic movement of funds to Chicago to replace funds called in that City by local banks.”^[6] This pattern would repeat itself time and time again before 1933, yet remain a mystery to economists and financiers for the next seventy years. Just how much of the March panic was due the various forms of prohibition we may never know. We do know, however, that this record-volume stock market crash occurred well before the tariff debate had even begun and after no interest rate increases by the Fed.

Yet as the crash occurred, vigilantes closed in on Chicago racketeers, Al Capone fidgeted before Judge Wilkerson in a Federal courtroom interested in his income tax records, banks were caught financing bootleggers, League of Nations narcotics statistics reports were falling due, corporate magnates were tried without publicity or fanfare in a Buffalo star chamber and the Chicago-bound trunkful of drugs case slowly expanded into a conspiracy involving failed banks and other corporations. A pattern was taking shape.

The New York World scrupulously ignored the Illinois Alcohol trial, 73 subpoenas and all—yet covered the news of the following day’s “brief but violent tumble in stock prices.”

Same day Chicago Tribune cartoon

Walter Strong, Publisher of the Chicago Daily News had visited President Hoover on March 19. Strong—together with Judge Frank Loesch of the Chicago Crime Commission—had given “chapter and verse for their statement that Chicago was in the hands of gangsters, that the police and magistrates were completely under their control, that the governor of the state was futile, that the Federal government was the only force by which the city’s ability to govern itself could be restored.” Thus spoke President Hoover, who at once gave orders that “all the Federal agencies at once concentrate upon Mr. Capone and his allies.” This was to be accomplished at once, without publicity and regardless of expense. Having thus ordered such Treasury agents as Eliot Ness and Elmer Irey unleashed upon Chicago’s shadow government, the President again turned his attention to the special session he’d been planning for Congress.^[7]

If you had never heard of the March 1929 stock market crash, perhaps you have also never heard of court or financial interpreters for the Portuguese language.

^[1] (Bergreen 1994 326) (Pasley 1930 73) (Lacey 1986 216-217)

^[2] (Time Capsule 4/1/29 212)

^[3] (WSJ 2/26/29; 3/27/29 1; 5/18/29 7)

^[4] (NYT 3/31/29 III-6:2; 7/21/29 III-8:8)

^[5] (NYT 2/26/29 24; 14) (NY World Almanac 1930 103)

^[6] (WSJ 5/18/29 7)

^[7] (Hoover Memoirs Vol. 2 277) (Myers & Newton 1936 376)

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The Valentine’s Day Massacre

Chapter 40

The Valentine’s Day Massacre

The electoral college had barely confirmed the election of the Hoover-Curtis dry fanaticism slate voted in 1928. There were still over two weeks to go until inauguration day which, back then, was on March 4th.

            Radio newscasters shocked the nation with the story of the Chicago Saint Valentine’s Day massacre in which five gangsters an optician and a mechanic were machine-gunned against a brick wall. The drys fell upon this with whoops of joy and redoubled their lobbying efforts for passage of a draconian enforcement bill introduced a year before by Congressman Gale Hamilton Stalker and Senator Wesley Livsey Jones.^[1] What disturbed Chicagoans was the economic reaction; corn dropped 1 & 1/8 cents, and bank stocks likewise fell. All 7,000 saloons, speakeasies and beer flats in the city were immediately shut down, which effectively dried up a major source of income for that convention city. The dry autocracy sprang into action and Congress was besieged with heated demands that something be done immediately to enforce prohibition. Senator Glass, as always, resumed his railing against stock market gambling.^[2]

Ferrari’s City Trust depositors, by now sick and tired of obfuscation, organized to demand what New York State feared most: answers.

Investigation of narcotics trial Judge Winslow now went to a House committee, and ailing Hollywood star Alma Rubens was humiliatingly exposed as a morphine addict. As icing on the cake, one John Sergi was arrested for the 14th time and charged with running a mail-order business in heroin.^[3] All these stories broke Thursday, February 17, but none were as important as the other white powder connection.

 

^[1] (NYT 3/24/29 27)

^[2] (CT 2/17/29 1, III-8; 15) (WSJ 2/16/29 1) (NYT 2/17/29 1)

^[3] (NYT 2/17/29 24; 2; 23)

 

 

Prohibition and The Crash, 1929

Chapter 39

The City Trust Mystery

            The Steinhardt affair dominated New York headlines, even though the accompanying news stories contained no intelligible information whatsoever. On February 1, 1929, Frank M. Ferrari, president of the City Trust Co., died in New York City as the stock market was making broad advances. The Times quietly tucked the story away on page 27 and few took notice. Then came the embarrassing League of Nations revelations regarding European drug manufacturers, which drew attention to other narcotics-related disclosures and generated more news stories.^[1] Behind the scenes Mabel Willebrandt wrote Attorney General Mitchell blaming “disorganization” in the office of the United States Attorney for the Eastern Division of New York, on one William A. DeGroot.^[2]

The Federal Reserve Board had meanwhile produced the broker’s loan figures and—in the wake of an increase in the Bank of England’s interest rate—issued another warning against “speculation.”^[3] At the same time a settlement was reached in the 1922 Big Four case in which the wealthy bootlegging Savannah gentlemen—already in prison for income tax evasion—were finally assessed $140,000.^[4] Bearing hard on the issue of tax evasion was a United States Court of Claims ruling that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue had absolute authority to determine what inventories businesses could and could not use in filing tax returns. Judge Nicholas Sinnott wrote the opinion, which was not at all reassuring for preparers of corporate income tax returns.^[5] The Federal Reserve Board soon issued another scolding, hinting at danger to the nation’s gold reserves.^[6]

On top of this came the Harris amendment calling for another $25 million in prohibition enforcement appropriations. From January 12 to February 8, when it was deadlocked between House and Senate, the proposal had been the focus of constant and acrimonious debate.^[1] By February 13, the commotion reached the floor of the House in the form of a pre-impeachment resolution denouncing Federal Judge Winslow, and across the border into Canada in the form of a massive manhunt for fugitive lawyer Steinhardt.^[2] These publicized events at home and in Geneva were attended by flurries of stock liquidations which sent prices tumbling. The New York Stock Exchange, Curb Market and Philadelphia Exchange all announced they would be closed Saturday, February 9. In discussing the market nosedive newspapers avoided touching on the Naarden case, prohibition funding, or the backstage struggles in enforcement offices, pointing instead to recent scoldings by the Federal Reserve Board and to England’s interest rate hike. Even the closure was downplayed as due to an outbreak of the flu among brokers.^[3]

Yet there had been signs of uncertainty surrounding the City Trust Company since before January 8, when vice-president Frederico Ferrari signed a report denying the bank had excessive loans. Unbeknownst to newspapers and the public, New York Bank Examiner Frank L. Warder had, on January 15, received a $20,000 payoff to overlook the insolvency of the City Trust Company and forego shutting it down.^[4] The market break occurred one week after City Trust president Francesco Ferrari’s death and four days before the closing of the bank’s five locations by the State Department of Banking. The International Radiotelegraph Convention proclaimed January 1 contained the signature of one Frn. Ferrari binding the Republic of San Marino to the treaty. San Marino—barely two miles wide—lay wholly inside Italy nor far from the Ferrari automobile plant. Folks began to wonder just how important this Ferrari fellow had been.^[1] The investigation would continue to yield unsavory surprises for another three years. No mention was made of the Bank of United States money which National City Bank placed on deposit at the Petrograd branch of City Trust.^[2]

Rioting was rampant in Bombay, with another 28 deaths reported February 11. New outbreaks of political turmoil in Afghanistan already had Great Britain in a stir. And policy recommendations from the League Opium Advisory Committee were extremely unpopular among ruling officials yet popular with the native masses in British India. Ordinary citizens there, as in China, felt themselves exploited by the British opium and salt revenue monopolies. For years now “holy” pictures of Mahatma Gandhi had sold briskly at every market and bazaar in India. People everywhere wore Gandhi caps and picketed and boycotted liquor stores to starve the government of revenue.

Gandhi was imprisoned for “sedition” in 1922 but released in 1924 after an appendectomy out of fear he might die in prison. The Indian Congress had recently resolved in favor of independence if Dominion status were not granted India by the end of 1929. Britain’s very sovereignty had thus been called into question, and the clock set ticking for a showdown over the Empire’s hegemony in British India. British newspapers were still having a field day with the Naarden drug conspiracy case, doubtless overjoyed to have Europeans share some blame. Yet such publicity could only worsen matters in India—where the body count from the latest riots stood at 113—and make a poor impression on the incoming Hoover Administration.^[1]

In Williamson county, Illinois, three city officials—a district attorney, coroner, and chief of police—were on trial for liquor conspiracy with the Mayor of Herrin. Chicago Alderman Titus Haffa was also on trial as a kingpin in a liquor conspiracy implicating three prohibition agents.^[2] Nor was the situation very comfortable in New York, where officials were busy making sure no “startling evidence” involving public figures with Arnold Rothstein’s drug ring saw daylight. With the grand jury closing in on Judge Winslow, whose narcotics cases included the Unger trial and involved agent Kerrigan’s death, this was no small task. In Miami, Dade County Solicitor Robert Taylor questioned Al Capone, who indignantly declared: “I never was a bootlegger in my life.”^[3]

Em português no meu outro blog. Compre o livro em português formato Amazon Kindle

 

Next: The Valentine’s Day Massacre

^[1] (NYT 1/19/29 3) (Taylor 1969 204-5) (Van Tyne 1923 111, 120)

^[2] (Pasley 1930 206) (CT 2/16/29 5; 2/17/29 25) (NYT 2/16/29 5:5) (Irey and Slocum 1948 22)

^[3] (NYT 2/14/29 1) (CT 2/15/29 3) (Schoenberg 1992 216-217)

^[1] (Treaties, Etc. 1938/1968 5031; 5095)

^[2] (NY World Almanac 1930 98, 99) (NYT 5/15/28 36)

^[1] (NYT 1/12/29 1:2; 1/13 1:7; 1/14 4:4… 2/8 1:4)

^[2] (NYT 2/13/29 1, 2)

^[3] (WSJ 2/8/29 1)

^[4] (NYT 7/3/29 25) (CT 9/7/29 4)

^[1] (Taylor 1969 231)

^[2] (Hoover 1929 1974 131-2)

^[3] (WSJ 2/8/29 1) (Lawrence 1929 437)

^[4] (Brown 1984 62, 274)

^[5] (CT 2/6/29 1 Commerce)

^[6] (Lawrence 1929 437)

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Letter to Democrat voters

Howdy Dem Buckaroos, Thanks for reading my material on how–a month after the Libertarian Party managed to acquire a single electoral spoiler vote–the Republican Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in favor of individual rights. In November your prohibitionist Luddite puppet lost by 77 votes. God’s Own Prohibitionists’ puppet got enough excess electoral votes to beat your half of  The Kleptocracy 77 times. Your candidates lost because of this anti-rights platform:

As we continue working to reduce carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gas emissions, we must ensure federal actions do not “significantly exacerbate” global warming.
…carbon pollution and rapidly driving down emissions of potent greenhouse gases like hydrofluorocarbons. We will support developing countries in their efforts to mitigate carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases, deploy more clean energy, and invest in climate resilience and adaptation.
…bold steps to slash carbon pollution and protect clean air at home, lead the fight against climate change around the world
To build on the success of the lifesaving Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, we will expand and strengthen background checks and close dangerous loopholes in our current laws…

True, the Democratic platform did stand up for the individual rights of women threatened by the coercive zealotry of mystical fanatics. But clearly the higher priorities of the Democratic party were leaving These States without electricity, and  disarming citizens like Kristallnacht National Socialists in violation of the Second Amendment. You also supported continuing the prohibitionist asset-forfeiture looting George Bush used to completely wreck the economy in 2007. And you wanted to lecture others about Alexander Hamilton to panhandle electoral votes?

I suppose it never occurred to you the panhandling idea might have originated in the Republican camp? The GO-Pee and its faith-based fanatics bore the brunt of the 1972 Libertarian Electoral vote. We had the pro-choice woman candidate  (Toni Nathan) and the economic freedom platform that terrified Nixon’s Party and its Suprema Corte into legalizing individual rights. Did they learn from this? You betcha! By loudly tricking your dupes into trying to transfer electoral votes to the other looters, they goaded the Christianofascists into circling their wagons and chambering a round. They also tricked your own totalitarian sympathizers into likewise refraining from transferring electoral votes from the sinking ship Altruria to the ONLY party left standing up for the individual rights of pregnant women. Thanks for telegraphing where your loyalties lie. We’ll remember that.

Here’s a little something to make you and your Chinese environazi handlers feel a little better. It’s a salve from the political party whose fascist agenda YOU helped to further! You wanted the cops to keep shooting kids and confiscating assets? YOU GOT IT! You wanted huge pseudoscience bureaucracies to rob us at gunpoint? YOU GOT IT! That’s the prohibitionism your party and the GO-Pee both supported, and YOU GOT IT!  You wanted to force idiotic legislation on the rest of the world?  YOU GOT IT! You wanted high taxes to support genocidal policies? YOU GOT THEM!

Congratulations, Democratic, Green and Communist Party USA! My schadenfreude goes out to you: both barrels!

Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian blog…

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Pascal’s Climate Wager

The reaction to recent elections displayed by most of those I observe–in Brazil and in the USA–resembles nothing so much as the Two Minutes Hate described by George Orwell. Orwell was the journalist Her Majesty’s Government sent to Germany in May or June of 1945 to reconnoiter and report on what there was to observe amid the vanquished NSDAP. Orwell observed miserable socialists staving amid ruins, dressed in ersatz paper clothing disintegrating into rags. Those memories came to life in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.  

Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party–an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, he was crying hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed…

Immanuel Goldstein: the original Global Warming Skeptic!

Now it is 2016, and the energy totalitarians infiltrating the Democratic party have caused that party’s womens’ rights agenda to be crushed by equally fanatical anti-choice totalitarians infiltrating the Republican party. So the Dilbert hypnotist-cartoonist who predicted this election outcome is working on a different filter for Radioactive Poisoning, Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, The Coming Ice Age, Misanthropomorphic Global Warming, um… Climate Change?? Politicians and doomcriers have trotted out so many lame hobgoblins to frighten the ignorant that it is sometimes difficult to remember which are still fashionable and which “discredited,” old-fashioned, or out-of-date.

I dislike Scott Adams’ assumptions and find fault with his methods of inference. But his prediction that The Don would win the election, 4 to 1 odds against at Paddypower be damned, impressed me. Science is in the business of forming testable hypotheses and learning from how well they perform. All the antinuclear Millerites’ predictions failed—especially the surrender of the entire planet and its incorporation into Soviet Socialism. Theirs was a sort of Pascal’s Wager on the assumption that only the surrenderists were right, since only they had access to the inside scoop. Unfortunately, the unfalsifiable inside scoop, like Pascal’s Wager, made for predictions that were wrong. Global Warming prophets likewise relied on fear and assumptions rather than measurement and testing of hypotheses. The election result predictors–pollsters, prophets and bookies alike–also failed, to my immense surprise.

In Pascal’s day—specifically when he was eleven years old—the Holy Roman Apostolic Church burned one of its own priests at the stake for thoughtcrime everybody agreed had taken place at a nunnery. But Grandier had never so much as set foot inside of the nunnery. Young Pascal observed that facts did not matter in questions of his life and death. What mattered was consensus.

So it is not surprising that Pascal’s Wager comes across as a restatement of the supposition that the mob will burn you alive unless you parrot whatever the mob was duped into believing. Disguising the rationalization by papering it over with doublethink instead of admitting it is superstition is simply treacle on the pill. Any two superstitious mobs are all the pretext that is needed for Crusades, Jihads and thermonuclear combat over some trifling inanity way off to the right of the decimal place. I am indebted to Aldous Huxley, Eric Blair’s schoolmaster at Eton, for his presentation of the intellectual results of French catholicism in “The Devils of Loudon.” The book is out in English and Portuguese and there is even a really bad movie it spawned in the seventies. The silliness of Pascal’s wager, like the Emperor’s New Clothes wardrobe, becomes more transparent the closer you examine it.

I am mainly worried about the side effects of pseudoscience and superstition. That Mohammedans open boiled eggs at the skinny end and Christians at the fat end is of no consequence to me, nor will I take up cudgels for breaking eggs in the middle. It is the bloodlust—like the dog going batty when the other dogs all bark in unison at the Invasion of the Trash Collectors—that causes me just enough concern to pick up a pen and point out how foolish the whole show looks. I do this mainly so that I can enjoy electrical power and other harmless freedom (when it’s religiously fanatical Luddites barking). Nobel laureate physicist Ivar Giaever speaks for me on the absolutely unfounded assertions and moronic claims of this latest batch of looter ex-scientists, their flawed models and their WRONG predictions.

(Disclosure) I vote the straight Libertarian Party ticket, and I’m proud of it!