Category Archive: HISTORY
Prohibition Ends
The Twenty-first Amendment was adopted on December 5, 1933 and became became officially effective on December 15. The (1920) 18th Amendment (that “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited”) was thereby repealed and such activities (albeit subject to regulation) became legalised. This wowser-inspired law conclusively demonstrated that when you wish to ban a well-established vice, be careful what you wish for… Repeal was enough to justify reaching for the nearest bottle of really good…
Continue Reading →Red Sails in the Sunset
(photo by Marcelo Montecino)
Fidel Castro (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) Like his father, Angel Castro (who was certainly not angelic), Fidel was never particularly faithful. A communist from his student days at Havana University, he and his followers were generally wealthy scions, the kind of folks that formed the vanguard of the French Revolution. They were not Communists; they were ‘Marxist-Leninists’. So on taking power in 1959, Castro and his cohort set about doing to Cuba what Marxist-Leninists do best: economic liquidation by the trashing of large scale private enterprise, ‘agrarian reform’ through the forced appropriation and division of land into meagre allotments, monopoly control…
Continue Reading →Mourning in America
As the dust settles from the US election, the clearing horizon fills, not with limousines heading towards the Canadian border, but with enemies of democracy, carrying torches (on a sunny day). Democracy isn’t easy and supporters of the losing side will generally feel there’s been a mistake. But short of a kind of existentialist dictatorship – each of us having plenary power for a short burst, akin to Swiss round-robin rule – it is the only way. Churchill recognised this, although he suggested that brief time spent with the average voter would put anyone off democracy, and to paraphrase Tom Paine, even…
Continue Reading →Time Off for Bad Behaviour
François Villon (born in Paris 1431; sentenced to be ‘hanged and strangled’ 1462 – commuted to exile, 1463; vanished 1463) was quite a villain. A killer, a thief, a common brawler, he happened to also be a poetic genius. The moral is that sometimes we need The Bad Guys. Awarded a Master of Arts at 21. He killed a priest at the age of 24 (possibly self-defence). After a year on the lam, he returned to Paris and celebrated Christmas Eve, 1456, by (sacrilegiously) robbing the College of Navarre. Four more years on the lam led to his (first) death sentence at Orleans in…
Continue Reading →“Cool as the Desert Night”
(Painting by Jules Larcher)
Champagne Quotes “Champagne for our real friends and real pain for our sham friends!” (Toast by Francis Bacon) “Always keep a bottle of Champagne in the fridge for special occasions. Sometimes, the special occasion is that you’ve got a bottle of Champagne in the fridge.” (Hester Browne) “Remember gentlemen, it’s not just France we are fighting for, it’s Champagne!” (Winston Churchill) “‘And for wine, mademoiselle? What do you say to champagne?’ Miss Monro said nothing – or everything.” (Agatha Christie, The Big Four) “Pleasure without Champagne is purely artificial.” (Oscar Wilde) “Champagne! In victory one…
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