Opium in Literature and Film

Opium Series

Opium: A Portrait of the Heavenly Demon by Barbara Hodgson, 1999, Excerpts

Novelists and poets elevated opium in all of its incarnations to the status of muse, crediting it for releasing them from the tedium of banal thoughts and words. The spirit of adventure and curiosity that gave the nineteenth-century mind the freedom to experiment with the unknown provoked a reaction that manifested itself in the art and literature.

Film

The Dividend [1916] a young son, upset that his busy father ignores him, visits an opium den and becomes addicted to the drug. Hollywood’s sensationalized portrayal of women in opium dens fuelled the outrage of righteous citizens.

Broken Blossoms [1919] by D.W. Griffith, the film was a great success.

1919 Silent Film

Bits of Life [1921]

Human Wreckage [1924]

The Man Who Came Back [U.S. 1930] about a man who finds his drug addicted friend in Hong Kong starring William Holden.

Charlie Chan in Shanghai [U.S. 1935] about opium smuggling in China.

The Letter [1940] set in Southeast Asia with Bette Davis.

Literature

Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, 1821. English author and philosopher Thomas De Quincey [1785-1859] opened the drug literature floodgates with his Confessions of an English Opium Eater. The book made it the big screen in 1962 as Confessions of an Opium Eater. Set in 1890s San Francisco with Vincent Price starring as De Quincey, this movie had virtually nothing to do with the published work.

Richard Dillon, author of The Hatchet Man, 1864 was, for San Francisco, “The Year of Opium,” marked by the arrival of the first large shipment of opium on the Derby. By 1896 the number of opium dens in San Francisco was estimated to be in the neighborhood of 300. Tours of San Francisco’s opium dens became a must, attracting writers like Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain. Twain took great pleasure in writing that “the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of the juices in the stem would wellnigh turn the stomach of a statue.”

Dicken’s half-finished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood [1870], sensationalized the East End opium dens by depicting sordid scenes. Dickens spares no mercy in his description of the smokers, each of them incoherent and helpless under the effects of the drug.

In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray [1891], Dorian smokes opium as his life crumbles, remarking, “As long as one has this stuff, one doesn’t want friends. I think I have too many friends.”

Black Opium by Claude Farreres, 1904, series of short stories linked thematically by opium.

Limehouse Lights by Thomas Burke, 1917, is a collection of stories that are loaded with atmosphere and revolve around thwarted love, revenge and opium. The Limehouse of legend covered an area of East London that included Limehouse.

The Diary of a Cure by Jean Cocteau, record of his opium withdrawal in 1928-1929 in a Paris clinic

 “I had always wanted to be an opium addict.” Emily Hahn, traveled to Africa in 1930 and then to Asia in 1935 after graduating as the University of Wisconsin’s first female mining engineer. Hahn stayed on in China during the Second World War and wrote a number of articles, many for The New Yorker, including her drug experiences, “The Big Smoke”.

In the twentieth century, drug literature in the United States grew up alongside the criminalization of opium, morphine, heroin and cocaine. The streetwise writings of William Burroughs’s Junkie and Naked Lunch, Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm, William Irish’s Marijuana, David Hulburd’s H is for Heroin, David Dodge’s It Ain’t Hay and Frank Kane’s The Guilt Edged Frame immortalized the language and culture of these drugs more savagely than anything that had been previously written on the subject.

The Ludlow Library

http://www.daileyrarebooks.com/ludlow.htm

Books

Reaping the Whirlwind by Michael Griffin

The Ghost Wars by Steve Coll – reports that the Taliban also received contributions for the trucking mafia, heroin traders, the ISI, and other Arab donors.

Book: Merchant of Death – detailing Victor Bout’s smuggling empire from Africa to Asia.

Capitalism’s Achilles Heel by Raymond Baker

Opium Season by Joel Hafvenstein – memoirs in Helmand Province

Yves Saint Laurent perfume 'drug simulation' ad ban

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12336061

01 Feb 2011

An Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) perfume advert has been banned for appearing to show a woman simulating drug use, the Advertising Standards Authority said. The TV advert for Belle D'Opium showed a woman running her finger along the inside of her forearm and lying on the floor as a voiceover said: "I am your addiction. I am Belle D'Opium."  The ASA ruling stressed that it did not see any problem with the perfume being named after opium, saying it was a well-known designer brand. YSL said its research showed consumers had not interpreted the ad in that way. The company also said it had not intended to use drug imagery.

Advert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flTdFMWAKNY

Britain’s Tax Haven Structure

Tax Haven Series

Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson, 2011, Excerpts

Accounting for about half the world’s secrecy jurisdictions, the biggest, is a layered hub-and-spoke array of tax havens, centered in the City of London, the center of the most important part of the global offshore system. The City’s offshore network has three main rings. Its inner ring consists of Britain’s three Crown Dependencies: the nearby islands of Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man.

The next intermediate ring involves Britain’s 14 overseas territories, the last surviving outposts of Britain’s formal empire; include some of the world’s top secrecy jurisdictions: the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, and Gibraltar. The Cayman Islands is the world’s fifth largest financial center, hosting eighty thousand registered companies, over three quarters of the world’s hedge funds, and $1.9 trillion on deposit – four times as much as all the banks in New York City. And it has, at the time of this writing, one cinema. A lot of U.S. business is attracted to the Cayman Islands. A large amount of foreign investment into China goes via the British Virgin Islands.

The third, outer ring is havens which are outside Britain’s direct control but nevertheless have strong historical links to the empire and deep links to the City of London. The biggest are Hong Kong, Singapore, the Bahamas, Dubai, and Ireland.



Channel Islands credit ratings downgraded to AA

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-jersey-35565546

12 Feb 2016

The Jersey and Guernsey credit ratings have been downgraded for the first time from AA+ to AA by the US financial services authority Standard and Poor's. The agency blamed rising regulatory complexity and greater focus on low tax regimes by the G10 on the drop. In November Standard and Poor's reversed a decision to downgrade Guernsey's rating after an appeal. The appeal had been made then by Guernsey Treasury and Resources.

'Tax havens' hit back at G8 pressure

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22888306

13 Jun 2013

The Isle of Man and Jersey have hit back at accusations that they facilitate tax evasion and avoidance ahead of next week's G8 summit. G8 leaders will hold their latest summit in Northern Ireland on Monday. Ways of combating aggressive tax avoidance and mass tax evasion are expected to be high on the agenda of leaders including UK Prime Minister David Cameron, US President Barack Obama and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel. Most companies pay no corporation tax in the Isle of Man. The channel island of Jersey also charges zero corporation tax for foreign-owned companies.

Public Opinion Series

Public Relations - Public Opinion, National Will, Group Mind, and Social Purpose

Father of Spin, Edward Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye, 1998, Excerpts

Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernay’s uncle, had revolutionized the way the world thought about individual behavior. He used his uncle’s ideas in the commercial realm to predict, then adjust, the way people believed and behaved, without them realizing it. And just as Freud was rewarded with the title Father of Psychoanalysis, so Bernays became known around the world as the Father of Public Relations.

Bernays was the man who, more than any other, got women to smoke, put bacon and eggs on breakfast tables, Ivory in soap dishes, books in bookshelves and Calvin Coolidge back in the White House, and in 1954, he helped to topple Guatemala’s democratic government. He died in 1995 at age 103. His story is about how public thought is routinely shaped or, some might say, manipulated by singular powers in our culture.

Tobacco and Bernays

Tobacco Targets Women

Tobacco and Women’s Waistlines

Tobacco and the Torches of Freedom Parade – Easter Sunday 1929

Tobacco and the Green Ball

Tobacco and Deniability

Guatemala and Bernays

United Fruit Company in Guatemala

Guatemala Redistributes Land

Guatemala Overthrow Campaign

Bernay’s legendary public relation campaigns literally qualified him to write the book on:

Propaganda by Edward Bernays, 1928, Excerpts

Propaganda

The Group Mind

True Motives

Intelligent Few

Invisible Rulers

Invisible Government

Vote Propaganda

Bernays studied mass psychology from Walter Lippmann, who was the first to coin the term ‘Manufacturing Consent’

Public Opinion by Walter Lippman, 1921, Excerpts

“The skillful propagandist knows that you must start with a plausible analysis and then stoke up energy by brandishing a passport to heaven.”

Manufacturing Consent

Crystallizing Public Opinion

Public Opinion Perceptions

Tools to Shape Public Opinion

Stereotypes

Symbols

Visual Aids

Public Opinion Shapers

The Government

The Organization

The Socially Superior

Media Control by Noam Chomsky, 2002, Excerpts

The Bewildered Herd

Managing the Bewildered Herd

Manufacturing Consent by Herman and Chomsky, 1988, Excerpts

Propaganda Model

Concentrated Media Ownership

News Experts

Media Flak

Anti-Communism Anti-Terrorism

Creel Commission and War Public Relations

Edward Bernays started his public relations career on The Creel Commission which was created to influence U.S. public opinion regarding American participation in World War I.

Documentary: The Century Of The Self - Freud, Bernays, Mass Mind Control

Other catchy monikers for Edward Bernays

The Baron of Ballyhoo

Sire of the Big Sell

Master of Mass Psychology

High Priest of Press Agents

Pontiff of Publicity

Pope of Propaganda

Prince of Propaganda

Prince of Puff

King Saul’s Bride-Price

Circumcision Series

Queenmaker by India Edghill, 2012, Fictional History, Excerpts

Future King David wants to wed King Saul's daughter, Michal. King Saul sets the bride-price:
 

My bride-price was to be one hundred foreskins taken from the Philistines. So my father said to David before the priests and judges in the open court. David and Jonathan came to me with the news, to tell me before others could. It was the first time I heard Jonathan call our father mad. “But Jonathan—” I was so shocked that I could think of nothing to say. How could anyone pay such a price? One hundred Philistines! David was a great warrior, but even David could not hope to kill one hundred men before I was too old to care whether I married or not. I would not even think that the Philistines might kill David instead. 

“He means that his youngest daughter is of great worth in his eyes,” David said, and hugged me again. “And I am but a poor man’s son—what else could he ask of me? Gold and spices? I am a simple warrior, so he set a warrior’s price. I mean to do this, and I will come back to pay Saul what he asks and claim his daughter as I have said.” 

Six months later.... 

David stepped back and spread his arms wide. “Look, King Saul—you set a price for your daughter’s marriage of one hundred Philistine foreskins. I have brought two hundred. They were circumcised by the prophet Samuel himself." Now his voice was raised to shout a triumph. “A great victory for Yahweh.” My father grudged nothing for my wedding-day—not the bride-clothes, nor the fatted lambs and calves for the feast, nor the honors for my bridegroom. The wedding festival was to last for seven days and seven nights. A king’s daughter did not wed a hero every day, Saul said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gold Rush in the Americas

Native American Series

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, 1995, Excerpts

After 1500, Portugal, France, Holland, and Britain joined in conquering the Americas. Columbus’s gold finds on Haiti were soon dwarfed by discoveries of gold and silver in Mexico and the Andes. European religious and political leaders quickly amassed so much gold that they applied gold leaf to the ceilings of their churches and palaces, erected golden statues in the corners, and strung vines of golden grapes between them.

Gold and silver from America replaced land as the basis for wealth and status, increasing the power of the new merchant class that would soon dominate the world. Where Muslim nations had once rivaled Europe, the new wealth undermined Islamic power. American gold and silver fueled a 400 percent inflation that eroded the economies of most non-European countries and helped Europe to develop a global market system. Africa suffered: the trans-Saharan trade collapsed, because the Americas supplied more gold and silver than the Gold Coast ever could. African traders now had only one commodity that Europe wanted: slaves.

Columbus and the Slave Trade

Native American Series

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, 1995, Excerpts

To replace the dying Haitians, this led to the massive slave trade from Africa. This trade began in Haiti, initiated by Columbus’s son in 1505. Columbus not only sent the first slaves across the Atlantic, he probably sent more slaves – about five thousand – than any other individual.

A particularly repellent aspect of the slave trade was sexual. As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spanish enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, “There are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.”

Haiti became the site of the first large-scale slave revolt, when blacks and Indians banded together in 1519. The uprising lasted more than a decade and was finally brought to an end by the Spanish in the 1530s.

Columbus died well off and left his heirs well endowed, even with the title, “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” now carried by his eighteenth-generation descendant. Some historians believe he may have been a Genoese Jew, a converse, or convert to Christianity, probably from Spain. Spain was pressuring its Jews to convert to Christianity or leave the country.