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Making Germany Prohibitionist, June-July 1931

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  Both the USA and Germany looked for third parties as alternatives to Prohibition Crashes. Newspapers struggled to ignore the pro-repeal Liberal Party and focused on Fabian Socialist insurgents. German papers tried to ignore the Nazis. But as foreign prohibitionist pressures resumed and economic recession deepened, Hitler's truculence found larger audiences. Here are some highlights: 11JAN1929 : On the day "Narcosan" was shown not to cure opiate addiction, a League Health Committee Secretary General circular letter demanded that any manufacturer that had produced benzoylmorphine--or any other black market ester of morphine--be stripped of its license to operate. This became official in February 1931.  15JAN1929 :  League of Nations Opium Advisory Committee meeting opens in Geneva, mail-order drugs crackdown demanded worldwide by the USA. Before the 1929 Geneva meeting ended, Francisco Ferrari's company was named as a source of some seized cocaine. Ferrari was dead 2 ...

Besieging Germany, June 1931

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  When prohibition laws collapse the global economy, blame tariffs! Frankenstein's monster , like the Pure Drug law of 1906, the Hague Opium convention of 1909--even the UK/China Opium treaty signed August 1911 and the second Hague "Opium" (and much else) convention of 1912 seemed to be innocent, childlike creations. Yet the latter, signed in January 1912 brought war to the opium-producing Balkan states and political and financial turmoil to Andean Nations before the ink had dried... then caused WW1. How did all this come about?  American food and drug cranks  operating within the Anti-Saloon League and Prohibition Party had been galvanized into action after China's 1905 boycott caused the T. Roosevelt administration to take time out from shooting Filipinos to extend patent protection to German heroin patents in China (lest Americans be tempted to compete) . Newspapers and magazines were unstinting in their production of horrifying documendacities, mostly rewrites of ...

German Mystical Altruism

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  Russian-American author Ayn Rand, like Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote about how mystical altruism was killing Europe ( link ) The German newscast , DW.com is my favorite source of European news and I highly recommend it.( link ) Yet soaked into the fibers of their worldview (and the American worldview as well) are assumptions of mystical altruism.  Before the USA made a mission of interfering with Germany’s pharmaceutical industry, nearly all Germans then believed in invisible gods and devils –beliefs reinforced by the Gutenberg Bible at the close of the Hundred Years’ War.  “The spirit of the Lord has descended upon me, because I am Emperor of the Germans! I am the instrument of the Most High. I am His sword, His representative. Woe and death to all those who resist my will! Woe and death to those who do not believe in my mission! ” ( link ) The above quote  from Kaiser Wilhelm was business as usual in 1914, when Americans (and Germany’s competitors), using the Hague ...