League Opium Committee under U.S. management, JAN1929

 

This agreement, like the Anglo-Chinese deal of 1907 is concealed. Another version, 8 days later, attracted 27 additional signatures. Of the first seven, four produced morphine, two cocaine, and all but Siam, opium. Additional producers appeared at the second "séance". 

The first meeting of the Opium Advisory Committee's 12th Session opened 17JAN1929. Early plans to open and search personal letters and packages made it clear "higher-ups" and kingpins were not a concern. The other item concerned the Permanent Central (Opium) Board invented by Americans at the 1925 Geneva Convention to infiltrate and keep tabs on the Opium Advisory Committee--staffed by a Dutch coke trader, an agent of Serbia, producer of the world's strongest opium, an excitable Chinese gentleman nervous over the 1/8 of China's opium that is imported. The other 7/8 of opium, actually grown in China, not as troubling. France, Germany, Great Britain and India had their experienced deal makers present. Italy was represented by a fanatical orator. Japan, Siam, Switzerland, Portugal and colonies sent more level heads. By far the largest delegation was made up of "observers" of, by or for the USA. 

No surprise there. Critics, including Hearst journalist Ellen LaMotte, had long criticized these meetings as cartel play-acting. Americans, frustrated by negotiator refusals to include spurious prohibitions to please deluded quacks, had twice spurned the League in a huff--yet came crawling back. Three weeks before the meeting. U.S. Newspapers reported: NARCOTICS ELUDED CUSTOMS OFFICIALS—Reported $4,000,000 Lay For Several Days In A Warehouse In Philadelphia—Phila. Dec 24 1928—Narcotics valued at more than $20,000,000 shipped here aboard a French freighter from Europe lay unwatched in a waterfront warehouse here for several days, The Daily News revealed today.(link)
28DEC1928: FEDERAL AGENT DIES A DRUG WAR MARTYR‑‑James R Kerrigan, Who Played Big Role in $2M Seizure Here, Succumbs in Hospital‑‑HURT IN A NEWARK RAID‑‑Injuries in Fall Blamed f/ Death‑‑Officials Praise Him as Clever Investigator...
As in 1914, countries targeted by US altruism erupted in violence. The British legation at Kabul, Afghanistan was shelled by artillery, and war was coming to Bolivia and Paraguay. Yugoslavia (yes, Serbia) fell under a dictatorship. Pittsburgh reported: HUNGARY FOILS BLOODY PLOTS… Kemal Nips Plot Laid By Royalists... German Admiral Dies from Poison… Prohibition Agents Arrest 15… FASCISM GAINS ADDED STRENGTH… Krupp Von Bohlen Urges French Hate…Persian War causes Poisoning of Wells… An Italian banker named Frank Ferrari seemed to have disappeared, leaving the New York City Trust Bank adrift with call money at 9%. Bond issues totaling $22M for Copper mining in Chile, government bond issues for Peru, Cuba, Belgium and São Paulo Brazil were all called early.

The USA was NOT a member of the League of Nations but had been financing League activities for several years. Caldwell was the U.S. Opium Section grey man, Lyall, an Englishman working as Rotterdam drug agent, was another. A former NYC Police Commissioner was named but not seen and the capable Dame Crowdy acted as Secretary. Discussions included mail snooping, insider trading to exploit economic repercussions. Japan's representative called attention to the Crane Scheme for limitation of manufactured products, delicately pretending to believe the thing really was a Dutch idea that just happened to be handed over by one of the Americans. Crane was himself American, retired, and had recently moved back from Britain. His limitation idea was the Chinese opium cultivation limitation plan of 1906 recently dusted off against morphine, derivatives, cooked opium, coca paste and cocaine--reiterated and hotly debated in 1923 meetings. 

Reconvening after lunch, discussion steered toward scolding countries which had not sent in statistical confession forms, Soviet inattention and telegraphic communications snooping contrary to international convention, and reservations. Sweden had some qualms over the officiousness of the collective undertakings and Bolivia made it clear no gendarmes would be sent to threaten or shoot its peasants in misguided efforts to ban plant leaves. Another 24 meetings would ensue, with lively and informative debate, pleading, scolding, intimidation, preaching, hysterical outbursts and ominous economic outcomes precipitating the onset of the Stock Market Crash by the first week of September. Unlike prohibitionist propaganda, which drops all context, operating in a vacuum, this examination takes notice of contemporary events in the real world outside of Geneva. 

Good Reading: THE LAND OF THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR, by Gordon H Panmure. On sale at Amazon was this collection of essays on Benjamin Harrison's America by a genteel but competent English sybarite of somewhat Orwellian background vacationing in the USA. The thing is all images, like a djvu scan, so some Kindle features don't work, but it's a delight and not clumsy as one would expect. In a chapter on Democrats and Republicans the author relays a GOP plea full of exhortations to fiscal responsibility, the vulnerability of capital and compound interest to dissolute depredation. Not a word was included about Sunday saloon closings and baseball bans, dry laws, drug prohibition or officious meddling in entertainment. His evenhanded quote of the other half was a Dem philippic against the wholesale and retail purchase of votes by the opposition--that and rampant election fraud. The aside resembled a breakdown of the Georgia Senate race in which the looter machines spent 200x as much as the Libertarian candidate who covered the gap and knocked one of them out. Chapters cover sea travel, hotels and transportation, NY high society, restaurants, economic and political observations. The observer comments on race relations, inventors, Chicago features and industry, plans for the World's Fair and horse breeding. It's almost like a cheap trip in a time machine as reported by an admiring alien. 

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Get the big picture in Prohibition and The Crash on Amazon Kindle in two languages. After this you’ll be able to explain to economists exactly how fanaticism and loss of freedom wrecked the U.S. economy.

Prohibition and The Crash, on Amazon Kindle (link)

ASYLUM APPLICATION FORM i589 INSTRUCTIONS IN PORTUGUESE: INSTRUÇÕES PARA O FORMULÁRIO DE ASILO i589. What we did was make the Political Asylum instructions accessible to and understandable by people accustomed to thinking in Portuguese. This costs one dollar ($1) and you can read it on a cellphone with the Kindle app.(link)

Comment at Libertariantranslator or LIBtranslator, my political economy blog at https://libertrans.blogspot.com/

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the adventures of a Rio de Janeiro man-about-town and the beautiful daughter of an elderly scientist–touting alcohol prohibition, eugenics and racial collectivism. Go to Amazon.com and look inside America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, cover art by Rene Bueno, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

I also produce books and articles in Portuguese, using Brazilian historical sources at http://www.expatriotas.blogspot.com or www.amigra.us and in English at http://Libertariantranslator.wordpress.com (link)

My financial history blog, http://www.Libertrans.us, in Portuguese is Expatriotas for Brazilians, readable at www.expatriotas.blogspot.com (link)

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