Podcasts about Volstead Act

On this week's remastered episode, we head back to the Prohibition Era! We kick things off with one of the first well known bootleggers after the Volstead Act was passed, George Remus. Through his profession as a pharmacist, he would get legal booze, have it hijacked by his men, and then sell it on the illegal market for millions. It all went downhill after he got busted and sent to prison where his then wife stole all his money and that's where the story gets even more crazy!  Subscribe to our YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@bangdangnetworkBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/outlaws-gunslingers--4737234/support.

It's January 16th. 1920, at midnight (of the 17th) the Volstead Act took hold, bringing prohibition to the United States.Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why this did very little to actually curb alcohol consumption, in those first hours and beyond. Plus, some thoughts on the decline of drinking in our modern age.Sign up for our newsletter! Get your hands on This Day merch!Find out more at thisdaypod.comThis Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories.If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.comGet in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Follow us on social @thisdaypodOur team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This Day in Legal History: Volstead Act SignedOn October 28, 1919, the United States Congress passed the Volstead Act, formally known as the National Prohibition Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Named after Congressman Andrew Volstead, who championed it, the Act provided the legal framework to enforce the 18th Amendment, which had been ratified earlier that year. This amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors, marking the start of the Prohibition era in the United States.The Volstead Act defined "intoxicating liquor" as any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol, which was stricter than many Americans had anticipated. Though the Act aimed to curb alcoholism and reduce crime by eliminating the consumption of alcohol, it had some unintended consequences. A significant black market for alcohol quickly emerged, and illegal establishments known as "speakeasies" flourished in cities nationwide. Organized crime syndicates, most notably those led by figures like Al Capone, capitalized on the demand for alcohol, leading to a rise in criminal enterprises.Law enforcement agencies found it challenging to control the widespread defiance of Prohibition, and corruption among officials became rampant as many officers accepted bribes to look the other way. Public sentiment gradually turned against Prohibition as the social costs, including loss of tax revenue and an overwhelmed criminal justice system, began to outweigh the intended benefits. By 1933, the 21st Amendment was ratified, effectively repealing the 18th Amendment and ending Prohibition. The Volstead Act remains a critical historical example of how complex societal problems cannot always be resolved through restrictive legislation alone, highlighting the challenges of enforcing morality laws on a resistant population.A federal jury in Delaware awarded Apple $250 in damages, ruling that Masimo Corp.'s original smartwatch designs infringed on Apple's patents for the Apple Watch. The verdict reflects a limited win for Apple, as the jury found that only Masimo's discontinued designs—not its current products—infringed Apple's design patents. Apple's minimal damages request was a strategic move to secure a jury trial rather than a bench trial, emphasizing its desire to stop Masimo's alleged copying of Apple Watch features, not to seek financial compensation. Apple's legal team highlighted its innovation in smartwatch design, while Masimo's attorneys argued that Masimo's products were built around its pulse-oximetry technology, unrelated to the design patents at issue.Masimo countered Apple's claims by defending the novelty of its blood-oxygen measurement features and asserting that its designs prioritize functionality over aesthetics, unlike Apple's approach. Masimo attempted to avoid a jury trial by offering Apple a $900 cash payment, which Apple rejected, and the court ruled the case must proceed. The jury ultimately found that Masimo intentionally infringed two Apple design patents related to earlier product models but ruled out any infringement related to Masimo's current items, undermining Apple's case for an injunction.Apple Wins $250, But Little Else, at Trial on Watch Patents (2)Alibaba Group has agreed to pay $433.5 million to settle a securities fraud class action filed by investors in Manhattan federal court. The lawsuit, which began in 2020, accused Alibaba of misleading shareholders about its competitive practices and the failed initial public offering (IPO) of Ant Group, its financial technology affiliate known for the digital payment platform Alipay. Shareholders claimed Alibaba misrepresented its business practices and failed to disclose that it faced a significant $2.8 billion antitrust fine from Chinese regulators for allegedly pressuring merchants to sell exclusively on its platform.Though Judge George B. Daniels previously dismissed the claims related to the Ant IPO, he allowed the antitrust allegations to proceed. The $433.5 million settlement ranks among the largest 50 securities class-action settlements in U.S. history under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Alibaba maintains its denial of wrongdoing, stating it settled to avoid the costs and burdens of prolonged litigation. The settlement requires court approval, with Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP representing the shareholders and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP defending Alibaba.Alibaba to Pay $433 Million to Settle Antitrust Investor SuitAlibaba to pay $433.5 million to settle shareholder lawsuit over monopoly claims | ReutersAs the U.S. presidential election nears, Republicans aligned with Donald Trump have faced multiple legal setbacks in battleground states, hindering their push for tighter election restrictions. Over the past three weeks, courts in Georgia, Virginia, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Michigan have blocked Republican-backed initiatives, such as attempts to purge voter rolls and mandate hand-counting ballots. Notably, a Georgia judge invalidated seven rule changes proposed by Trump's allies, ruling them unlawful and too close to Election Day to implement. Virginia also halted the removal of allegedly non-citizen voters, with the judge citing federal laws against voter roll purges within 90 days of an election.In contrast, Republicans recently succeeded in enforcing stricter mail-in ballot deadlines in Mississippi. Despite setbacks, the party maintains its legal strategy aims to ensure election integrity, though experts suggest these efforts might instead be designed to spread doubts about the election's legitimacy. Analysts speculate that if Trump loses, these legal actions could fuel claims of fraud, casting doubt on the outcome.Republican battleground-state legal blitz falters ahead of election | ReutersA divided 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) overreached by ordering Tesla CEO Elon Musk to delete a 2018 tweet about unionization. The tweet implied Tesla employees could lose stock options if they unionized, which the NLRB previously determined was an unlawful threat. However, the court's 9-8 decision held that Musk's tweet was protected under the First Amendment, as it was “speech on a topic of public concern,” making the NLRB's deletion order excessive.The majority opinion, supported by Republican-appointed judges, did not address whether Musk's tweet itself violated labor law, focusing instead on free speech rights. The ruling also instructed the NLRB to reconsider its mandate that Tesla reinstate a pro-union employee who was terminated. In a dissent, Judge James Dennis, joined by Democratic-appointed judges, criticized the decision as lacking substantial legal and factual grounding.Tesla Wins Challenge to NLRB Decision on Musk Union Tweet (1) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Oregon went 'dry' in 1914, so by the time the Volstead Act passed in 1919, Beaver State bootleggers were already seasoned professionals. So when the rest of the West Coast needed them, Oregon's 'midnight entrepreneurs' were ready to roll. (Statewide; 1910s, 1920s, 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1308a-rumrunners-moonshiners-and-speakeasies.html)

In today's episode of 20th century in depth, we are going to discuss the prohibition movement, the 18th amendment, and the volstead act.

Wally and her new friends attend a party at the Silver Twilight Lodge to celebrate the repeal of the Volstead Act and the end of Prohibition. If you like what you hear please support the show at Patreon to get early access, exclusive content and more Wally Van Der Meer is played by Jenny at GrimHumor Magnus Daintry is played by Scott Dorward from Good Friends of Jackson Elias Norm O'Neill is played by Spencer Game of Keep Off the Borderlands BT Raven is played by Barney from Loco Ludus Keeper - Andy Goodman from Expedition to the Grizzly Peaks

In this episode, we embark on a captivating exploration of F. Scott Fitzgerald's timeless classic, The Great Gatsby. We analyze the novel's prophetic qualities, its commentary on the cyclical nature of history, and its profound insights into the human psyche. Through the lens of Jungian psychology, we examine the anima and animus archetypes embodied by Fitzgerald and his contemporary, Ernest Hemingway, and how their works reflect the eternal struggle between the intuitive and the assertive. We also discuss how The Great Gatsby serves as a powerful warning about the pitfalls of the American Dream and the dangers of becoming trapped in the past. Join us for this illuminating discussion on one of the most influential novels of the 20th century. #TheGreatGatsby #FScottFitzgerald #LiteraryAnalysis #JungianArchetypes #AnimaAnimus #AmericanDream #Modernism #Literature #History #Psychology #Podcast #iTunes #Spotify #Stitcher #GooglePodcasts #Subscribe   The Expansive Decadent Ego of the Animus and the Introspective Bust and Decline of the Anima as Parts of Empire Cultures wax and wane. Empires that seem like part of the cosmos itself fall like gunshot victims into a pool or lines on a bar chart. It is the rare work that can speak to both the sparkle of spectacle and the timeless inevitable real it distracts us from. The Great Gatsby was an immediate success and then forgotten and then rediscovered. It was forgotten because the Jazz age was a, beautiful maybe, but still nearsighted dalliance. Fitzgerald was lumped in with all of the other out of date out of style gaucheness the book was mistaken as a celebration of. It was rediscovered because critics realized the book was like one of those sweetly scented break up notes that is written so beautifully that the dumped sod misreads it as a love letter and puts it with the other love notes unawares. The Great Gatsby was a warning; and you can only hear the warning after the fall. Perhaps half love letter and half kiss off, some part of Fitzgerald knew that his world was ending. The Jazz age was the parodos, or fun act of the ancient Greek tragedy where characters expound humorously against the chorus on the character faults that will undue them against the grinding unwinding of time. Ancient Greece and Rome look the same in the periphery and quite different in focus. Greeks sought to be ideal through archetype where Romans sought reality through realism. Greece, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, dealt in the realm of the anima - the passive, intuitive, and emotional aspects of the psyche. They were comfortable with beauty through vulnerability and had a poetic culture that celebrated poetic introspection. The Greeks were fascinated with the introspective world of the psyche, and their ability to express complex emotions and ideas through symbolic and mythological language. To them archetypes were like platonic forms, or perfect ideals, removed from time. [caption id="attachment_4983" align="aligncenter" width="225"]Ancient Greek Beauty[/caption] Rome, like Fitzgerald's contemporary Ernest Hemingway, was more closely associated with the qualities of the animus - the masculine, assertive, and imperialistic, aspects of the psyche. Roman culture was characterized by its emphasis on law, order, and external appearances of military might. It gave rise to some of the most impressive feats of engineering, architecture, and political organization in the ancient world. The Romans were known for their practicality, their discipline, and their ability to translate ideas into concrete realities. To Rome the aspirational and ideological only mattered in hindsight. [caption id="attachment_4984" align="aligncenter" width="300"]Ancient Roman Beauty[/caption] To a Greek one noticed the archetype or one failed to. To a Roman on created the archetype.  Humans made things real or we didn't. Romans got credit for ideas in a way that Greeks didn't. To a Greek we were glimpsing the inevitable realms of the possible. Time was cyclical. Ideas were external. You didn't have ideas, they had you. For Romans a man came up with the ideas. This is an interesting dichotomy because both ideas are true but paradoxical ways of studying the psyche. All of the early modernists engaged with this dialectic differently. Fitzgerald leaned Greek animistic, Hemingway leaned into the Roman Animus and other contemporaries like Gertrude Stein tried to bridge the divide. There was no way around as literature progressed. Greece and Rome were also deeply interconnected and mutually influential. Greek art, literature, and philosophy had a profound impact on Roman culture, and many Romans saw themselves as the heirs and stewards of the Greek intellectual tradition. At the same time, Roman law, government, and military power provided a framework for the spread and preservation of Greek ideas throughout the Mediterranean world. We need both the anima and animus to be the whole self, effective at wrestling the present and possible together if we are to effectively act on the impending real. The intuition of the anima can let us see the future through dreams of creativity and visions for the possible but the animus is what lets us bring our agency to bear on the present moment. It is easy to hide in either one but miss the both. I read The Great Gatsby in high school and it  was one of the few assigned readings I didn't hate. I wanted to read Michael Crichton and classical mythology primary sources but the curriculum wanted me to slog through things like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Zora Neal Hurston. I enjoyed the points those authors made, criticizing puritanism, and celebrating African American folk culture respectively but I thought the stylism made reading them a slog. The Great Gatsby was simple and I have reflected on it over the course of my life. In high-school I saw Hemingway and Fitzgerald as two halves of the same coin. Fitzgerald was the nostalgic, reflective anima to Hemingway's masculine animus. Hemingway jumped headlong into the morphine promises of modernism. Fitzgerald seemed to reflect on modernity better because he was pulled begrudgingly into it while trying to look further and further back into the past and its inevitabilities of "progress". Most of my friends were manly Hemingway's comfortable in the logos of the accessible real, and I was a navel-gazing Fitzgerald who only felt comfortable cloaked in the mythos of intuitive spaces In Jungian psychology, the concepts of anima and animus are crucial for understanding the inner world of the creative. The anima represents the feminine aspects within the male psyche, while the animus represents the masculine aspects within the female psyche. A healthy integration of these archetypes is essential for wholeness in the personal life behind the creative works. As a therapist I find those and other Jungian concepts usefully to understand why certain people gravitate naturally to things over the course of their life. Fitzgerald's work and life were dominated by his anima, which manifested in his nostalgic yearning for the past, his romantic idealization of women, and his sensitivity to the nuances of emotion and beauty. While these qualities fueled his artistic genius, they also left him vulnerable to depression, addiction, and a sense of alienation from the modern world. It was this alienation from modernism while writing as a modernist that gave Gatsby a timeless predictive quality Hemingway lacks. Ultimately he was able to predict the future as a creative but unable to adapt to it as a man. Hemingway, on the other hand, embodied the over-identified animus - the archetypal masculine energy that values strength, independence, and action above all else. His writing celebrated the virtues of courage, stoicism, and physical prowess, and he cultivated a public image as a rugged adventurer and man of action. However, this one-sided embrace of the animus left Hemingway emotionally stunted, unable to connect deeply with others or to find peace within himself. Hemingway is all bombastic adventure and when the adventure is over there was little left. One of  their other contemporaries, Gertrude Stein seems to have been able to achieve a kind of dynamic balance between her masculine and feminine qualities. This is not to say that she was free from all psychological conflicts or blind spots, but rather that she was able to channel her energies into her work and her relationships in a way that was largely generative, sustainable and life-affirming. Stein's life and work could be seen as an example of the transformative power of integrating the anima and animus within the psyche. Fitzgerald's own insecurities and traumas contributed significantly to his anima-dominated psyche and artistic worldview. Fitzgerald remained haunted throughout his life. Had he lived long enough to encounter Jung's work, Fitzgerald would have likely been profoundly influenced by it. Jay Gatsby seems to be the Jungian archetype of the "puer aeternus" (eternal boy) frozen by an impossible to attain object of desire and a refusal to grow up. A charming, appealing, affecting but ultimately failed visionary chasing red herrings. Fitzgerald himself seemed to go down the same path as other male Jungian's, most notably, James Hillman and Robert Moore, failing to fully "ride the animus" and integrate their assertive energies to manifest changes in their personal lives. All were beautiful artists but not always beautiful men, especially in their end. There seems to be a common thread in these anima over identified men - a childhood trauma that stifles self-expression, which paradoxically fosters a some what  magical, intuitive, visionary ability to see the future. In adulthood, this ability makes one a profound artist, garnering success and a wide audience. However, the external validation and success do not heal the original, still screaming, wound. This disconnect between outer success and the failure of that success to balm the original inner pain that sparked the need for it is something that many artists and depth psychologists of this personality type struggle to reconcile from. In high-school they told me The Great Gatsby was the greatest novel ever written and expected me to believe them. They also told me that getting straight A's meant you were smart, that the hardest working got the highest paid, and that all they really wanted me to do was think for myself. All were clearly lies a sophistic system thought I was better off if I believed. Obviously I had to find out later, pushing 40, that the book was on to something great. Or, maybe you have to see the rise and fall of celebrity and missiles and trends and less obvious lies in your life before you start to get the book as its own second act. Saying The Great Gatsby is a good book is like talking about how the Beatles were a great band or the Grand Canyon is big. It's kind of done to death, and it's even silly to say out loud to someone. Everyone had to read it in high school. To say it is your favorite book instantly makes others wonder if you have read another book that you didn't have to read freshman year. Oh, Hamlet is your other "favorite" book? Thinks the person who knows you have skimmed two books in your life and the test. How do you get the prescience of an extremely simple story at 16? How was anyone supposed to in 1925? The Great Gatsby is, perhaps by accident, not really about what it is about. The Great Gatsby is a worm's eye view of the universe that reminds us that our humanity itself IS a worm's eye view of the universe and that our worms eye view on it and each other is what keeps us sane. Sane and the gears of the spectacle of culture and grinding along out of psychic neccesity. We are a myopic species stuck in our own stories and others' stories, but not on our own terms. We are caught between improv and archetype but never free of either. Both subject to the human inevitable indelible programmed narrative and object of our own make-believe individual freedom from it. The Great Gatsby is a book that you read in high school because you could hand it to almost anyone. It has done numbers historically and currently as a work in translation. It holds up some kind of truth to students in places like Iran who have no experience with prohibition, with alcohol, with American culture as insiders. Yet they still feel something relevant connecting them to the real. It works because the characters are kind of stupid. It works because the moral of the story is, on its face, (and just like high school) kind of wrong. The Great Gatsby did see the future; it just didn't know what it saw. I write about intuition quite a bit on our blog, and the thing that I think makes art interesting is when the work of art sees past the knowledge of the artist making the work. The Great Gatsby gets a lot of credit for being prophetic in that it saw the Great Depression as the end of the Jazz age, but it did so because Fitzgerald was seeing his own end. Fitzgerald was severely alcoholic during prohibition, delaying his own deadlines for the novel that almost didn't get there with excuses to his publishers. What would he become after the Volstead Act was repealed? What would the country become after the economic bender that the upper class threw for itself in front of masses that were starving? The power of the novel is when it knows that empires rise and fall. It's when it knows that the valley of ashes is watching your yellow car speed by with dull sad eyes. It's power is in knowing the feeling that when you get what you want, you don't really deserve it, or maybe it doesn't deserve you. Maybe it implies that time is something that we use, tick by tock, as a proxy for meaning because we fundamentally "fumble with clocks" like Gatsby and can't understand time. We need our history and our idolatry of the past to make meaning, but when the lens for our meaning-making remains fixed, the world becomes a pedestal to dark gods demanding the worship of the past at the expense of the future. As a man or a nation, we are bound to hit someone if  we look in the rearview mirror to long. The green light on the dock is a symbol that we mistake for the real thing and "take the long walk of the short dock". With this dishonest relationship to time, we all become a Gatsby or a Tom. I am not sure which is worse. We either lack all ambition and live to keep up appearances, or we have so much ambition that we become the lie. The "beautiful shirts" are just a glittering, stupid, trendy identity that we nationally put on every couple of years to forget that we're about to sink into another depression. Skinny ties are out and gunmetal is in! makes us never have to look at  the other side of ourselves or our empire. The past gives us meaning and identity even as it slowly destroys us and robs us of those things. We are forced to use it as a reference point even though we know this relationship between us and it is doomed. We cannot stop the need for the next recession in this society any more than we cannot stop the need for the next drawer of trendy clothes. The American Dream is a kind of nightmare, but it is still a dream because it keeps us sleeping through the nightmare we are in. Realization of lost purpose, regret and nostalgia, superficiality, emotional turmoil, or tone deaf foreshadowing are not things you need to look at when movies and wars are inventing such beautiful coverings for our imperial core and rent seeking economy. Why then do we cry? Wake up the organist, we are getting bored. In The Great Gatsby, like in a Dickens novel, the plot is the archetype, and that necessitates a lot of conveniences. That might seem like a point of criticism, but it is also very human. Perhaps these truths become tropes are not faults of the plot or its contrivances but reasons for humanity, namely humans in America, to introspect. As individuals or as a society, we turn our insecurity into some amazing and impossible outcome, and then we, like Gatsby, do that to compensate for what we refuse to accept, what we refuse to change about who we are or where we come from. Jay Gatsby is myopic, but he is too naive to be a narcissist. He is just sort of a dream of himself he forgot he was dreaming. Nothing in Fitzgerald's prose leans into The Great Gatsby being directly interpreted as a dream, but it is one possible interpretation that the novel is a sort of collective dream. There is a Tom Buchanan in all of us also. Someone who would burn the world down just because we can't have the lie that we want others to believe about us anymore. He is a refusal to accept the reasonable limitations that might have prevented the Great depression.  If we can't have the whole world, we will blow the whole world up! That is another tension (still unresolved) that The Great Gatsby saw coming for humanity. The two forces of the lie and the dream are the things that make the boom and bust cycle of recession and surplus that have sustained America, sustain the lie in the individual and the society. but shhhhhhh..... it's a dream not a lie!? Just like highschool the powers that be think that you are better off if you believe it. Greece and Rome are relevant details to this reflection on a novel because neither one would have really mattered to history without the other half. Greece invented the culture and religious structure and Rome became the megaphone to amplify expansion of that culture. We study them as highschool students but we don't want to see those distinctions even now. The predictive element in Fitzgerald made him live in a timeless present. His assumptions were at worst  Platonic archetypes where all characters expressed  endless inevitable cycles. At worst his characters were,Aristotelian ideal of knowledge; where ideas had characters, so  characters could not have ideas. Hemingway lived in a Roman, timeless present. Awareness of cycles of  historical and social forces were not important. Maybe  you identify with his archetypes and maybe not. He could not see through them. America when it needs to do advertising for a new product, movie or war will always side with Hemingway. I guess The Old Man and The Sea always feels important, to the individual, but it lacks relevance to the pathos and later deimos that society needs to really introspect well. God is still a broken-down billboard, and only the stupid or the insane in America can recognize God for what he is. If God is happy with what he sees, we clearly are to distracted to notice Him. If god is unhappy, then he does not approve of my America, so he must not be really be God. This is the double bind that the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, long out of business, put us in. Love me, and you must not be infallible; dislike me, and you must be wrong. Fitzgerald ended his novel, but not his life, on the right note. Listen up creatives. And so we beat on, boats against the current. Ceaselessly borne back into the past. How do you end yours? How do you live it. You read it at 16 but how old are you now? The narrator, Nick Carraway, is a perfect observer because he is hopelessly naive, knowing nothing about human life or experience. He learns all of it in the course of a few days from the terrible follies of the gods of his world - the complete pantheon of all the most powerful forces of the '20s, the real, the now. The traditional historic "blue cover" of The Great Gatsby juxtaposes the face of a '20s flapper with the skyline of a city lit for celebration. The flapper's face is studded with the traditional burlesque Cleopatra makeup that already juxtaposes a beauty mark with a teardrop. In the cover, the rising celebration of a firework becomes a teardrop falling. Is up and down forever really the same direction?, the book asks you before you open it. The Wall Street Journal tells you that same thing today in more words. Fitzgerald never found a way to see past himself, even when he wrote those truths in his fiction.  He ended his career in Hollywood, helping better screenwriters by coasting on his reputation from the book that became a meteoric firework. In the end, he became a cautionary tale, a reminder that even the most gifted among us are not immune to the ravages of trauma and addiction masquerading as intuition and artistry and the weight of unfulfilled dreams. What does Nick do with his when the book ends in the Autumn of 22? Did he make it out of the Autumn Summer cycle of New York? Do we? Summary of Key Points for SEO purposes: The Great Gatsby speaks to both the sparkle of spectacle and the timeless inevitable reality it distracts us from. It was initially successful, then forgotten, and later rediscovered as a prescient warning. The essay compares ancient Greek and Roman cultures to the anima and animus in Jungian psychology. It posits that F. Scott Fitzgerald embodied the anima while Ernest Hemingway embodied the animus. A healthy psyche requires integrating both. Fitzgerald's own traumas and insecurities contributed to his anima-dominated psyche. His life and work, especially the character of Jay Gatsby, seem to align with the Jungian archetype of the "puer aeternus" (eternal boy). The essay argues The Great Gatsby is prophetic in foreseeing the end of the Jazz Age and the coming Great Depression, even if Fitzgerald didn't fully comprehend the implications of his own novel. The novel's enduring appeal lies in its simple yet profound truths about the human condition - our need for meaning from the past, the dangers of living in a dream or lie, the inevitable boom and bust cycles of individuals and societies. The essay suggests The Great Gatsby can be interpreted as a collective dream, with Jay Gatsby representing naive ambition and Tom Buchanan representing entitled destruction. Ultimately, Fitzgerald became a cautionary tale, showing that even the most gifted are not immune to unfulfilled dreams and inner demons. The novel asks if we can break free of the cycles of our pasts. The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg on the billboard are interpreted as a symbol of a broken-down God, whom only the stupid or insane in America can recognize for what he truly is. The essay suggests that if God is happy with what he sees, people are too distracted to notice Him, and if God is unhappy, then He must not approve of America, and therefore cannot really be God. This creates a double bind for the characters and readers, forcing them to either accept a fallible God or reject a disapproving one. The American Dream is portrayed as a nightmare that keeps people asleep, preventing them from confronting the harsh realities of their lives and society. The essay argues that the need for the next economic recession is as inevitable as the need for the next trendy fashion. The essay points out that the plot of The Great Gatsby relies on archetypes and conveniences, which might seem like a flaw but actually reflects the human tendency to seek meaning in familiar patterns and narratives. The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg on the billboard are interpreted as a symbol of a seemingly absent or indifferent God, who either approves of the characters' actions or is powerless to intervene. This creates a double bind for the characters and readers alike. The essay emphasizes the importance of the novel's narrator, Nick Carraway, as a naive observer who learns about the complexities and tragedies of life through his encounters with the other characters. His journey mirrors the reader's own process of disillusionment and realization.  

Michter's 20: The 20-Year Bourbon expression reflects the exceptional results of uncompromising craftsmanship and Kentucky's unrivaled climate for aging outstanding whiskey. Often much older than the age statement on the label, only a select few barrels age with the elegance required for inclusion in this highly 114.2 proof limited release. Old Forester 1920: The Volstead Act of 1920 which initiated Prohibition in the USA granted permits to six distillers in Kentucky to continue to bottle bourbon for medicinal purposes. Through one of these permits, Old Forester continued to be produced as medicinal whiskey on Louisville's famed Whiskey Row. It is the only bourbon continuously sold by the same company that has been available for sale before, during and after Prohibition. During this time, all whiskies had to be bottled at 100 Proof. With a barrel entry proof of 100, the “angel's share” would have created a 115 proof whiskey after maturation. To pay homage to this era, Old Forester presents 1920 Prohibition Style Bourbon at 115 proof to represent the rich flavor profile this bourbon had nearly 100 years ago.

Welcome back to another episode, this one is a great time. let me know if you like the new intros Badmotivatorbarrels.com/shop/?aff=3 https://www.instagram.com/zsmithwhiskeyandmixology?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw== Patreon.com/the_whiskeyshaman Whiskeyshamanpodcast@gmail.com When you hear “Texas” and “whiskey” together, what comes to mind? Do the words conjure an image of John Wayne sauntering into a West Texas frontier saloon? Or maybe you think of one of the many country songs about whiskey recorded by Texans, like Kris Kristofferson's “Whiskey, Whiskey” or Willie Nelson's “Whiskey River.” Given how closely tied whiskey and Texas are in the public imagination, it might surprise you to know that twenty years ago, there were no whiskey distilleries at all in the Lone Star State. The history of whiskey in Texas is one of long gaps, pervasive struggles, and underground bootleggers. During the 19th century, there were a number of distilleries in Texas, some legal and others . . . less so. But that all changed with Prohibition, when the state's distilling traditions were almost stamped out for good. Distilling became legal in Texas again in 1935, but the state's whiskey distilleries quite simply never recovered from the Volstead Act. Not until recently, that is. It's remarkable how things can change in a couple of decades. When Texas decides to do something, there are no half-measures—and whiskey distilling is no exception. Since the founding of Texas's first two distilleries in Central Texas in the late aughts, Texas bourbons, ryes and single malts have exploded onto the world stage. As a matter of fact, it took only a handful of years after those first distilleries were founded before Texas distilleries began to win major awards alongside stalwarts from Kentucky and Scotland and Ireland—and these days the Lone Star State is now being spoken of as a major world center for top-shelf craft whiskey. In 2012, a Balcones Single Malt won first prize at London's prestigious “Best in Glass” competition, beating out rivals from storied Scottish houses like The Macallan and Glenmorangie. In the years since that historic upset, Texas distilleries have continued their string of upsets. In 2020, Ironroot Republic's Harbinger Bourbon Whiskey was named the “World's Best Bourbon,” and in 2022, Acre Distilling's Longhair Jim Bourbon took home gold at the US Open Whiskey and Spirits Competition. Am I just grumpy, or is it something else? The stereotype of the grumpy old man could have its roots in a condition known as irritable male syndrome. It's clinically referred to as andropause, or male menopause. Like female menopause, andropause includes physical and emotional changes that also seem dependent on changes in hormone levels. Irritable male syndrome can have a big impact on your relationships. To know whether you're experiencing irritable male syndrome, and how you might treat it and improve your relationships, it's important to recognize some of the more obvious symptoms.

In this episode, featuring myself and Australian lawyer Tony Taouk, we discuss the life and times of George Remus who was famously dubbed, "The King of the Bootleggers" in the 1920's. George Remus, born in 1878, was a German-born American lawyer who was probably most famously well-known as a bootlegger during the early days of Prohibition, and who later became even more infamous for the murder his wife Imogene, for which he was acquitted. In popular culture, many believed that George Remus served as the inspiration for The Great Gatsby, and he was even famously portrayed on the HBO series, Boardwalk Empire. In this episode, we discuss: Remus birth in Landsberg, Germany in the 1870's and his arrival in the United States in the 1880's The Remus family's beginnings in Chicago, Illinois Remus' early experience working at his uncle's pharmacy, as well as his attendance of the Chicago College of Pharmacy, where he became a certified pharmacist George Remus' collegiate attendance of the Illinois College of Law in which he gained admittance to the Illinois Bar, specializing as a defense attorney Remus' involvement in the 1914 murder trial of William Cheny Ellis, and the first successful use of the "transitory insanity" defense in the history of the United States Remus' beginnings as a bootlegger after he was able to exploit a loophole in the Volstead Act, allowing him to grow his bootlegging business on a technicality Remus' move from Chicago, Illinois to Cincinnati, Ohio and the growth of his bootlegging empire in the 1920's, run from his sprawling property on the west side of Cincinnati, dubbed "Death Valley" Remus' divorce from his first wife, and marriage to socialite Imogene Holmes (later Remus), as well as the extravagant mansion, "The Marble Palace" The eventual arrest of Remus for violations of the Volstead Act and his prison sentence The collapse of Remus' marriage to Imogene after a cheating scandal with a Bureau of Investigation agent, Franklin Dodge The murder of his wife Imogene in October of 1927, the subsequent trial in which Remus again pleaded "temporary insanity," and his acquittal after just 19 minutes of jury deliberations The remainder of Remus' life and his ultimate legacy in the annals of the underworld The truth of Remus' peculiar tendency to talk about himself in the third-person Remus' death in 1952 of natural causes in Covington, Kentucky

Découvrez l'abonnement "Au Coeur de l'Histoire +" et accédez à des heures de programmes, des archives inédites, des épisodes en avant-première et une sélection d'épisodes sur des grandes thématiques. Profitez de cette offre sur Apple Podcasts dès aujourd'hui ! Al Capone est le plus célèbre mafieux des États-Unis. Ce n'est pas le fruit du hasard : il a été le premier gangster à jouer de sa popularité dans les tabloïds. Plongez dans les Roaring Twenties aux côtés du parrain de l'Outfit de Chicago grâce à Virginie Girod dans un récit inédit en deux parties. L'histoire d'Al Capone commence un peu avant sa naissance, lorsque ses parents décident de quitter l'Italie en pleine unification pour les États-Unis. Le couple Capone emménage à Brooklyn, un quartier très pauvre de New York. C'est là que naît Alphonse Gabriel en 1899. Son école, c'est d'abord la rue et sa loi, celle du plus fort. Les gangsters recrutent très tôt parmi les jeunes garçons et c'est ainsi que le jeune Al Capone intègre le Five Points Gang, la terreur de New York. Alors qu'il travaille comme videur, il a une violente altercation avec un gros bonnet de la mafia, Frank Galluccio. Ce dernier lui laisse une impressionnante cicatrice sur la joue qui donnera son surnom : Scarface ! En 1919, Al Capone est envoyé à Chicago pour appuyer un autre boss de la pègre, Johnny Torrio. Au sortir de la Première Guerre mondiale, les États-Unis entrent de plain-pied dans les Roaring Twenties, les années rugissantes, une période de croissance et d'insouciance. Les cabarets prospèrent et l'alcool coule à flot ! Pour juguler le fléau de l'alcoolisme qui se répand comme une maladie sociale, les États-Unis votent le Volstead Act en 1919. Désormais, il est interdit de produire, de distribuer et de vendre de l'alcool partout dans le pays. Dans les faits, le marché de l'alcool, devenu illégal, passe entre les mains de la mafia, qui s'enrichit considérablement. Al Capone devient le bras droit de Torrio puis, lorsque ce dernier se retire, il prend le contrôle de tout l'Outfit de Chicago, l'un des l'un plus gros gangs de la région. Jusque-là, les parrains étaient plutôt discrets. Mais Capone adore la lumière. Thèmes abordés : Prohibition, mafia, Etats-Unis, gangster "Au Coeur de l'Histoire" est un podcast Europe 1 Studio- Présentation : Virginie Girod - Production : Caroline Garnier - Réalisation : Clément Ibrahim- Composition de la musique originale : Julien Tharaud et Sébastien Guidis- Rédaction et Diffusion : Nathan Laporte- Communication : Marie Corpet- Visuel : Sidonie Mangin Bibliographie : Jonhatan Eig, Get Capone, The Secret Plot that captured America Most Wante, Simon and Schuster, 2010. Ressources en ligne : https://www.geo.fr/histoire/prohibition-pourquoi-les-etats-unis-ont-ils-tente-dinterdire-lalcool-201489 https://themobmuseum.org/notable_names/al-capone/ https://www.retronews.fr/justice/long-format/2018/06/11/al-capone-star-des-medias

On January 17, 1920, the United States embarked on a bold and unprecedented social experiment with the enactment of Prohibition via the Volstead Act. This act, named after Congressman Andrew Volstead, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who managed the legislation, was designed to enforce the 18th Amendment, effectively outlawing the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors. Prohibition was not merely a legislative act but a national movement, born out of a growing temperance campaign that had gained considerable momentum in the early 20th century. It marked a significant shift in American social policy, reflecting deep societal divisions and sparking debates around morality, individual rights, and the role of government. The Volstead Act was a cornerstone in this transformative era, heralding a decade that would be marked by drastic changes in the American way of life, law enforcement, and the rise of illicit activities that challenged its very purpose. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/plausibly-live/message

January 17th, 1920 was the day the United States was suppose to get sober. Prohibition and the Volstead Act were officially official, and things were going to change. Prior to Prohibition things weren't great. Drunken crimes were hitting too close to home, and some thought drying out the country was the answer. What they didn't count on was the crime that came with the pursuit of supplying bootleg liqour to the masses who still wanted to wet their beak. Join us as we get Historically High on Prohibition!

Prohibition began in 1920, banning all sales of alcoholic beverages, as defined by the Volstead Act. The quiet Northwood's of Wisconsin became a haven for big city black market liquor production and smuggling.

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536. We chat with Johnette Downing and her husband, Scott Billington. "Musician and author Johnette Downing and three-time Grammy® winner Scott Billington are the foremost children's music performers from New Orleans. Their Swamp Romp program is a Louisiana dance party that brings the sounds of Cajun music, zydeco, traditional jazz, Isleño culture, swamp pop and New Orleans rhythm and blues to life for young ears. It is a toe-tapping, interactive, and authentic roots music experience that both children and parents will enjoy and long remember. Johnette's gift for communicating with children is matched with smart musicianship and songs that make this tour of Louisiana's rich cultural landscape fun for all in attendance" (Johnette and Scott). This week in Louisiana history. August 18, 1769. O'Reilly arrives in N.O. with 24 ships and 2,600 Spanish troops to take possession of Louisiana for Spain. This week in New Orleans history. Elizebeth Smith Friedman, born on  August 26, 1892, "America's first female cryptanalyst" [code breaker].  Her testimony in cases in Galveston, Houston, and New Orleans in 1933 resulted in convictions against thirty-five bootlegging ringleaders who were found to have violated the Volstead Act. Ringleaders were directly linked with suspected shipping vessels as a result of the information arising out of her analysis. She died on October 31, 1980. This week in Louisiana. Jean Lafitte Scenic Byway 178 miles — Take 2 days to fully experience the roadway. Website This byway crisscrosses through the heart of central Acadiana and has so many points of interest that you could easily spend a week on it and not see everything there is to see. So, your best bet is to cover the trail in segments over a period of time, possibly on a two- or three-day trip. Postcards from Louisiana. Single Malt Please with Maude Caillat at the BMC Bar on Decatur St. in New Orleans. Listen on Google Play. Listen on Google Podcasts. Listen on Spotify. Listen on Stitcher. Listen on TuneIn. The Louisiana Anthology Home Page. Like us on Facebook. 

Prohibition in the United States led to the decade most associated with flowing alcohol and crime. The Eighteenth Amendment, on the heels of the Volstead Act, put into place a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol in 1920. Local law enforcement agencies were not prepared. Helen Geltemeyer of Waco recalls a relative concocting whiskey during Prohibition: "But I have an aunt—his sister in Austin—made it. They made it in their bathtub. And the reason why they did there because if they found out the cops were coming, they'd just let it go down the drain." Ann and William Walko of Windber, Pennsylvania, explain how Prohibition affected the moonshine trade: A. Walko: "My grandmother, they said she was in jail almost every weekend. They take her to jail; my mother have to find somebody to go bail her out, you know. But that was survival. They had—they needed money, so they would make the moonshine. And these bachelors were all living with people. You know, they worked in the mine. And they would—she'd sell them bottles, you know, and they'd pick my grandmother up, and away she'd go (laughs) off to jail. But she wasn't the only one. There was a lot of women around this area." W. Walko: "I remember my mom and that, they used to make—my grandma used to make that moonshine down in the cellar. And I notice they'd put it in a little spoon, and they'd light it, see if it'd burn. (laughs)" A. Walko: "If it was strong enough." Interviewer: "And you knew it was good." W. Walko: "If strong enough." A. Walko: "Yeah, you knew it was good then." W. Walko: "I didn't know what they were doing then. But then, this one time when they heard the cops coming around, boy, they got rid of that, (laughter) stuffed in their cars and everything else." Folklorist and educator Martha Emmons of Mansfield describes her and her father's impressions of Prohibition: "I remember a lot of people that thought it was so cute to break the law. And I know my father used to say—now he was pretty well on the idea of strict construction of the constitution of states' rights. He was brought up in that, don't you see. And he used to be in favor of local option because he said he was in favor of prohibition on the state scale if anybody could enforce it, but he said, ‘You just watch it. It will not be enforced on a—the bigger your scale, the less the enforcement will be.' And he did think it was a degrading thing to have laws on the statute books that were not enforced and not obeyed. And now a lot of people said that when they say, I'm for local option, that that was just a cop-out, that we want statewide prohibition. "But I know it was often discussed around that supper table at home, and I heard so much of my father's sentiments. Now, he wasn't above taking a drink. As I tell you, we grew up on whiskey. And the doctors told us, though, that in prohibition there would be something else. I used to think, What in the world will we do if we get sick? Because whiskey was available to everybody, and that was a common remedy that we all had." Throughout the twenties, Prohibition grew steadily more unpopular, and enforcement proved impossible. In the spring of 1933, President Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act, and in December Utah's ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment officially repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, bringing an end to Prohibition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

REDIFF - C'est en 1919 qu'est voté le Volstead Act, qui interdit la distribution et la vente de tout alcool de plus de 0,5 degré, en dehors de quelques rares exceptions comme le vin de messe. L'interdiction a donné une certaine séduction à l'alcool, surtout dans les années folles de 1920. Désir de liberté, de faire bouger la société. Hors-série Lenglet & Co", un podcast hebdomadaire présenté par François Lenglet et Sylvain Zimmermann, qui vous donne les clés pour tout comprendre des évolutions et des mutations économiques, en Europe et dans le monde.

In the middle of the 1920s, when Prohibition was at its peak, leaders and law enforcement could go one of two ways: they could crack down on Volstead Act violators… or they could look the other way. Today, we'll meet the first two women governors in the nation's history–and a couple of lawmen–and learn how they handled their duties during Prohibition. Hosted by: Sharon McMahonExecutive Producer: Heather JacksonAudio Producer: Jenny SnyderWritten and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol within the U.S., might be the best example of unintended consequences. Prohibition helped start women's liberation, propelled the Jazz Age, and essentially created Organized Crime in the U.S. 

This is the weekly newspaper column.Wente Clone made California chardonnay 5-10-2023If you enjoy California chardonnay, you likely have Charles Wente and his children to thank for it.Wente came to America in the 19th century. Upon arrival, he learned how to make wine from famed vintner Charles Krug. In 1883, he established a 47-acre estate and winery in the Livermore Valley, 45 miles east of San Francisco.In 1908, Wente planted the first chardonnay vines in the valley. In 1912, Charles's son, Ernest, a UC–Davis student, convinced his father to import chardonnay cuttings from a well-known vine nursery in France. Ernest picked vines that showed the best health and the best flavors, grafted them together, then continued to propagate and improve them.Very early Wente photoErnest propagated vines differently than others. While many selected for yields—the higher the better—Ernest focused on vines with very concentrated flavor and abundantly fruity berries. Flavor took precedence over yield.Historical Wente photoThe decision paid off. Ultimately, Wente developed the “Wente Clone” variety of chardonnay vines. Chardonnay makes up more than half of white wine acres in California, and more than 75% of all California chardonnay comes from the Wente Clone.Today, Wente Vineyards, is the oldest continuously-operated, family-owned winery in the country. Wente enjoys the honor of being continuously-operated because they produced sacramental wines during Prohibition. After repeal of the Volstead Act, Ernest and his brother, Herman, released the nation's first varietally-labeled chardonnay in 1936.Others have built on the Wente foundation, but all acknowledge the Wente Clone is the basis of California-style chardonnay. Bold. Full-flavored. Fruit-driven. The concentrated juice also is well-suited for the use of new oak, a technique often used. California chards now come oaked and unoaked, and with and without malolactic fermentation. Doesn't matter. Almost all the chardonnay grapes used to make the wine trace their lineage back to Charles Wente and his son Ernest.Tasting notes• Wente Vineyards Riva Ranch Chardonnay, Arroyo Seco, Monterey 2021: Smooth, rich. Excellent ripe, delicious fruit. $17-21 Link to my review• Stags' Leap Winery Chardonnay Napa Valley 2020: Impressive complexity, depth in oak-and-butter genre of Cali chards. Done with elegance and style. Very smooth, rich, fresh, clean. $20-28 Link to my review• Textbook Chardonnay Napa Valley The Pey Family 2021: Pey family set out to make Napa wines that were “textbook Napa wines;” And this fits that definition. $22-27 Link to my review• Gary Farrell Russian River Selection Chardonnay 2018: Fresh, tasty, silky-creamy, smooth, graceful. Nice equilibrium of superb fruit, acidity, oak nuances. Made with Wente Clone. $30-35 Link to my reviewLast round: What do you call a duck that breaks into people's houses? A robber ducky. Quak—wine time.This is a reader-supported publication. Upgrade to a paid subscription ($5/month) for access to bonus material and complete archives. Opt out at any time.Thank you for reading Gus Clemens on Wine. This post is public so feel free to share it.Email: wine@cwadv.comNewsletter: gusclemens.substack.comWebsite:  gusclemensonwine.comFacebook:  facebook.com/GusClemensOnWine/posts/Twitter: @gusclemensLinks worth exploringDiary of a Serial Hostess Ins and outs of entertaining; witty anecdotes of life in the stylish lane.As We Eat Multi-platform storytelling explores how food connects, defines, inspires.Balanced Diet Original recipes, curated links about food systems, recipe reviews. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gusclemens.substack.com/subscribe

We're back BABY! In this episode of the podcast we are drinking a cocktail called the south side, a crisp gimlet adjacent drink that may become your new fav! This refreshingly herbal gin concoction is simple to make and easy to drink; its popularity ties into the era of TUX's scandal.

Welcome to Granite Falls, Minnesota! It's "More Than You Imagine!"  The town is located near the South Dakota border on the banks of the Minnesota River and is the seat of Yellow Medicine County.  In 1872 Henry Hill, founder of Granite Falls, built a grist mill, flour mill, and saw mill and gave free lots to draw settlers to the town.  Granite Falls began to thrive and a bridge was built 1876 to replace the ferry to cross the river.  The town currently has a population of 2,737.  Granite Falls is the hometown of Tanner Aus, a champion ProRodeo bareback rider.  Aus is currently ranked 16th in the world and is a major attraction in the town's upcoming Western Fest PRCA Stampede Rodeo to be held in June.  The town has been called home by a few other notables including Andrew Volstead, namesake of the Volstead Act of 1920 also known as the Prohibition Act.  We hope you enjoy our trip to Granite Falls!

C'est en 1919 qu'est voté le Volstead Act, qui interdit la distribution et la vente de tout alcool de plus de 0,5 degré, en dehors de quelques rares exceptions comme le vin de messe. L'interdiction a donné une certaine séduction à l'alcool, surtout dans les années folles de 1920. Désir de liberté, de faire bouger la société. Hors-série Lenglet & Co", un podcast hebdomadaire présenté par François Lenglet et Sylvain Zimmermann, qui vous donne les clés pour tout comprendre des évolutions et des mutations économiques, en Europe et dans le monde.

January 17, 1920. Prohibition officially goes into effect in the United States, after the passage of the Volstead Act.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The hosts discuss monetized feminism and then dig into the story of Prohibition and the woman who helped overturn it. Pauline Morton Sabin was a wealthy woman who switched political parties and became the voice and face of the movement to end Prohibition.

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In this week's episode we wrap our Prohibition series by taking a look at the fallout of the Volstead Act. We know that it created organized crime, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. The alcohol business was the 5th largest industry in the US at the time, so thousands of jobs were lost. Businesses were forced to close because alcohol was their number 1 seller, billions in lost tax revenue and much more devastating intentional--and unintentional side effects from the most failed experiment in American history. We close the episode with a quick conversation about what to expect from Outlaws & Gunslingers moving forward. Any questions or suggestions on future episodes? Email us at bangdangpodcast@gmail.com and let us know!

www.patreon.com/accidentaldads for bonus content and to support the show AND The Save The Music Foundation!   Top police stings   A sting operation is a deceitful operation used by law enforcement to apprehend criminals in the act of trying to commit a crime. In order to obtain proof of a suspect's misconduct, a typical sting involves an undercover law enforcement officer, investigator, or cooperative member of the public acting as a criminal partner or prospective victim and cooperating with a suspect's activities. Journalists for the mass media occasionally use sting operations to film and disseminate footage of illegal conduct.   Sting procedures are prevalent in many nations, including the United States, but are prohibited in others, like Sweden and France. Certain sting operations are prohibited, such as those carried out in the Philippines where it is against the law for police enforcement to act as drug traffickers in order to catch purchasers of illegal substances.   Examples   Offering free sports or airline tickets to lure fugitives out of hiding. Deploying a bait car (also called a honey trap) to catch a car thief Setting up a seemingly vulnerable honeypot computer to lure and gain information about hackers Arranging for someone under the legal drinking age to ask an adult to buy an alcoholic beverage or tobacco products for them Passing off weapons or explosives (whether fake or real), to a would-be terrorist Posing as: someone who is seeking illegal drugs, contraband, or child pornography, to catch a supplier (or as a supplier to catch a customer) a child in a chat room to identify a potential online child predator a potential customer of illegal prostitution, or as a prostitute to catch a would-be customer a hitman to catch customers and solicitors of murder-for-hire; or as a customer to catch a hitman a spectator of an illegal dogfighting ring a documentary film crew to lure a pirate to the country where a crime was committed.   Whether sting operations constitute entrapment raises ethical questions. Law enforcement might have to be careful not to incite someone who wouldn't have otherwise committed a crime to do so. Additionally, while conducting such operations, the police frequently commit the same crimes, like purchasing or selling narcotics, enticing prostitutes, etc. The defendant may raise the entrapment defense in common law jurisdictions.   Contrary to common belief, however, laws against entrapment do not forbid undercover police personnel from pretending to be criminals or deny that they are police officers. Entrapment is normally only a defense when suspects are coerced into confessing to a crime they probably would not have otherwise committed. However, the legal meaning of this coercion differs widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Entrapment might be used as a defense, for instance, if undercover agents forced a possible suspect to manufacture illicit narcotics in order to sell them. Entrapment has often not taken place if a suspect is already producing narcotics and authorities pretend as purchasers to apprehend them.   Operation Entebbe The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commandos successfully carried out Operation Entebbe or Operation Thunderbolt, a counterterrorism hostage-rescue mission, at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on July 4, 1976. A week earlier, on June 27, two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - External Operations (PFLP-EO) (who had previously split from the PFLP of George Habash) and two members of the German Revolutionary Cells hijacked an Air France Airbus A300 jet airliner carrying 248 passengers. The declared goal of the hijackers was to trade the hostages for the release of 13 detainees in four other countries and the release of 40 Palestinian terrorists and related prisoners who were detained in Israel. The flight, which had left Tel Aviv for Paris, was rerouted after a stopover in Athens through Benghazi to Entebbe, the country of Uganda's principal airport. The ruler Idi Amin, who had been made aware of the hijacking from the start[10], encouraged the hijackers and personally greeted them. The hijackers confined all Israelis and a few non-Israeli Jews into a separate room after transferring all captives from the plane to a deserted airport facility.  148 captives who were not Israelis were freed and taken to Paris over the course of the next two days. Ninety-four passengers—mostly Israelis—and the 12-person Air France crew were held captive and threatened with execution.  Based on information from the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, the IDF took action. If the demands for the release of the prisoners were not granted, the hijackers threatened to murder the hostages. The preparation of the rescue effort was prompted by this threat. These strategies included getting ready for armed opposition from the Uganda Army. It was a nighttime operation. For the rescue mission, Israeli transport planes flew 100 commandos to Uganda over a distance of 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles). The operation took 90 minutes to complete after a week of planning. Out of the 106 captives still held, 102 were freed, and three were murdered. In a hospital, the second captive was later slain. Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, the unit leader, was one of the five injured Israeli commandos. Netanyahu was Benjamin Netanyahu's elder sibling and the future Israeli prime minister. Eleven Soviet-built MiG-17s and MiG-21s of the Ugandan air force were destroyed, and all five hijackers and forty-five Ugandan troops were killed. Idi Amin gave the command to attack and kill Kenyans living in Uganda after the operation because Kenyan sources supported Israel. 245 Kenyans in Uganda were killed as a consequence, and 3,000 left the nation. In honor of Yonatan Netanyahu, the commander of the force, Operation Entebbe, which had the military codename Operation Thunderbolt, is occasionally referred to retroactively as Operation Jonathan.   Operation Valkyrie Senior Nazi military officers and Adolf Hitler convened in the Wolf's Lair in Rastenburg, Eastern Prussia, on July 20, 1944. Hitler's body was discovered scattered across the table as the Nazi military chiefs sat down to plan troop deployments on the Eastern Front when an explosion burst through the steamy meeting room. With the Führer's death, the Nazi threat to Europe could have been lifted. or so it seems at first.   Claus von Stauffenberg and his accomplices believed they had turned the course of World War II and maybe saved thousands of extra lives for a brief period of time in history. The July Plot, also known as Operation Valkyrie, was the most famous attempt to have Hitler killed, although it was ultimately unsuccessful for a variety of reasons, some of which are still unknown to this day. The July Plot Is Hatched Many Germans, including some of the country's top military figures, had begun to lose faith in Germany's ability to win the war by the summer of 1944. Hitler was widely held responsible for ruining Germany. The Wolfsschanze was one of Hitler's military headquarters. A number of prominent politicians and senior military figures devised a plan to murder the Führer by detonating a bomb at a conference there in order to spark political unification and a coup. Operation Valkyrie was the name of the strategy. The plan was that after Hitler's death, the military would assert that the murder was the result of a Nazi Party coup attempt, and the Reserve Army would take significant buildings in Berlin and detain senior Nazi figures. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler would become Germany's new chancellor, and Ludwig Beck would become its first president. The new administration wanted to negotiate a peaceful conclusion to the war, ideally with benefits for Germany. The main conspirators' motives varied, according to Philipp Freiherr Von Boeselager, one of the last remaining participants in the July Plot. Many of them only saw it as a means of avoiding military defeat, while others hoped to at least partially restore some of the nation's morals. They chose Claus von Stauffenberg, a young colonel in the German army, to carry out the assassination. Despite not being a member of the Nazi party in the traditional sense, Stauffenberg was a devoted German patriot. In the end, he came to think that if Germany was to be saved, it was his patriotic duty to expel Adolf Hitler. Hitler, though, had experienced assassination attempts before. Assassination attempts against Hitler had been more frequent since his spectacular ascent to the top of Germany's political scene in the late 1930s. Hitler, who was becoming more and more paranoid, frequently altered his plans without warning and at the last minute. What Went Wrong Stauffenberg entered the bunker at Wolfsschanze on July 20, 1944. The conference was planned to take place in a concrete, windowless subterranean bunker that was closed off by a large steel door. By making sure it happened within one of these facilities, the detonation would be confined and anyone nearby the explosive device would die quickly from the shrapnel. The conference was moved to an above-ground wooden bunker with better air circulation on July 20 due to the oppressively hot weather, according to Pierre Galante's Operation Valkyrie: The German Generals' Plot Against Hitler. Numerous windows, a wooden table, and other beautiful furniture were all present in the area, which meant that the potential explosion would be much diminished since the energy of the blast would be absorbed and diffused. Stauffenberg was aware that this was the case, but he nonetheless proceeded, assuming that two explosives would be sufficient to destroy the room and kill everyone within. Stauffenberg excused himself when he arrived, saying that he needed to change his clothing, and went to a private room. The two explosives needed to be armed and primed. However, he only had time to arm one of the two devices due to an unexpected phone call and a quick knock at his door. Thus, the possibility of a greater blast was cut in half. Stauffenberg realized that in order to cause any kind of harm, the explosive device needed to be placed as near to Hitler as possible. He was able to get a seat as near to Hitler as possible with only one other person between them by claiming that his hearing was impaired due to his wounds. Placing the bag as near to Hitler as possible, Stauffenberg then left the room pretending to take a personal call. The briefcase was accidentally shifted to the opposite side of a large wooden leg that was supporting the meeting room table as another official was taking a seat. The Aftermath Panic broke out after the device exploded at precisely 12:42 pm. Twenty individuals were hurt, including three cops who subsequently died from their injuries, and a stenographer was instantaneously murdered. Stauffenberg and his assistant Werner von Haeften leapt into a staff car and bluffed their way past three different military checkpoints to flee the mayhem at the Wolfsschanze complex because they believed that Hitler was indeed dead. Hitler, however, along with everyone else who was protected by the large wooden table leg, only suffered a few minor cuts and an eardrum perforation. He had fully torn-up pants, and the Nazi leadership would subsequently utilize pictures of them in a propaganda effort. Ian Kershaw, a historian, claims that during the explosion, contradictory news concerning Hitler's fate came. In spite of the disarray, the Reserve Army started detaining senior Nazi officials in Berlin. The entire scheme, however, was eventually thwarted by delays, unclear communication, and the announcement that Hitler was still alive. The conspirators were all given the death penalty in a hastily called court martial the same evening by General Friedrich Fromm. In the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, a makeshift firing squad murdered Stauffenberg, von Haeften, Olbricht, and another officer, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, while Ludwig Beck committed himself. At Berlin's Plötzensee jail, Berthold Stauffenberg was gently strangled while the incident was being recorded for Hitler to see. Hitler's life was ultimately saved that day by a number of interrelated reasons, but the conspirators were right that Germany was headed for disaster. Less than a year later, the Nazi leader and his closest advisers committed suicide. Operation Iceman Ever wonder what its like working undercover with an alleged murderer? Well, let's just say it's not hard to get a stuffy nose around this case… In fact, serial killer Richard Kuklinski's preferred method of murder involved using a nasal spray bottle to spritz cyanide into the faces of his victims. As a result, undercover agent Dominick Polifrone was never more on guard than during the 18 months he spent building a case against the so-called Iceman. “No matter where I went with him, I wore this leather jacket with a pocket sewn inside containing a small-caliber weapon,” recalls Polifrone, who gained his target's confidence and taped dozens of their conversations. “I knew that I was somewhere on his hit list. If he'd pulled out that nasal spray, I'd have to protect myself.” The streetwise New Jersey officer acquired enough proof before Kuklinski had suspicions, preventing that situation from occurring. Finally, the enormous 6-foot-4 gangland killer was apprehended thanks to his evidence. “I've met hundreds of bad guys, but Kuklinski was a totally different type of individual,” he tells The Post. “He was coldhearted — ice-cold like the devil. He had no remorse about anything.”  Kuklinski was captured by Polifrone in a combined operation between the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the office of the New Jersey attorney general. The criminal, who was a leading suspect in the murder of a mobster whose body was found two years after his disappearance, was posing as a respectable businessman residing in suburban Dumont, New Jersey. The reason the medical examiners discovered ice in the muscle tissue was because Kuklinski, who earned his notoriety for frequently freezing the bodies of his victims and then defrosting them, erred that time. Police made an indirect connection between the deceased man and Kuklinski, who was charged with a number of previous homicides.  “We had to get something nobody knew,” recalls Polifrone. The sting only appears briefly on screen in the film. In order to gain Kuklinski's trust, Polifrone, a resident of Hackensack, New Jersey, pretended to be a "bad person" for a whole year and a half. They met in parks and rest areas along highways and discussed the horrific killings Kuklinski had carried out, including a Mafia hit in Detroit for which he was paid $65,000. Additionally, there were "statement killings." To put a dead canary in the mouth of a victim as a warning to other victims, one mafia leader paid him extra. Another occasion, Kuklinski made light of the fact that he saw a gang member consume an entire cheeseburger laced with cyanide before passing away while joking with Polifrone. Recalls the cop: “He told me that cyanide normally works real quick and easy, but that ‘this guy has the constitution of a God damn ox, and is just eating and eating.  “He said he almost ate the whole burger and then, bam, he's down!” Polifrone knew exactly how to play his role. “I laughed, of course,” he shrugs. “That's what bad guys do.”  Paradoxically, Kuklinski was a committed family man. He led a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence.  “He never socialized, gambled or messed around with other women,” adds Polifrone. “He lived for his wife and kids.” One minute he'd be repairing his daughters' toys, the next, dismembering a body with a chain saw and stuffing it into an oil drum. “He would come home and completely shut off this murderous component and seek security and love from his family,” says “Iceman” director Vromen. “He fulfilled the need to provide for them by killing.” Polifrone finally nailed Kuklinski after tricking him into buying what he thought was pure cyanide. A team of feds and ATF officers arrested him in December 1986. Twenty-eight years later, he reflects on the man who died, apparently of natural causes, in Trenton Prison in 2006 at age 70. Eyebrows were raised because he was due to appear as a witness at the trial of a Gambino family underboss. “I hope he died a slow death because of what he did to families and individuals,” concludes Polifrone. “He had no mercy. And if it was foul play, that's OK with me.” So let's talk about some controversial sting operations you may or may not have heard of.   ACORN Sting   Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is known as ACORN. ACORN was a group of neighborhood-based organizations in the US that supported low- and middle-income families. They also offered details on affordable housing and voter registration. James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, two young conservative activists, published recordings that had been edited with care in 2009. The two pretended to be a pimp and a prostitute before using a hidden camera to get unflattering answers from ACORN workers that seemed to give them advice on how to hide their prostitution business and avoid paying taxes.The plea for assistance in obtaining funding for a brothel didn't appear to deter the ACORN employees either. This sparked a national debate and led to a reduction in financing from public and private sources. ACORN declared on March 22, 2010, that it was disbanding and shutting all of its connected state chapters as a result of declining funding. Interesting fact: On January 25, 2010, James O'Keefe and three other people were detained on felony charges for allegedly tampering with the phones at Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu's office in New Orleans. O'Keefe stated that he was looking into claims that Landrieu's staff had dismissed constituent phone calls over the health care issue. O'Keefe recorded the action as they pretended to be telephone repairmen.In the end, they were accused with breaking into a government building under false pretenses, a misdemeanor. Following his admission of guilt, O'Keefe received a three-year probationary period, 100 hours of community service, and a $1,500 fine.   Operation West End The largest undercover news story in Indian journalism has been described like this. In order to expose the alleged culture of bribery inside the Indian Ministry of Defense, a well-known newspaper from India by the name of Tehelka—which translates as "sensation" in Hindi—started its first significant undercover operation, "Operation West End" in 2001. Two reporters from the publication pretended to be London-based armaments dealers from a fake firm. In the undercover film, numerous politicians and defense officials are shown discussing and accepting bribes in exchange for assisting them in obtaining government contracts, including Bangaru Laxman, secretary of the ruling BJP party. Laxman and Military Minister George Fernandes (shown above) resigned following the release of the tapes, and a number of other defense ministry employees were placed on administrative leave.   Interesting Fact: Instead of initially acting on the evidence from the sting operation, the Indian government accused the newspaper of fabricating the allegations. The main financial backers of Tehelka were made targets of investigations, and the newspaper company was almost ruined. In 2003, Tehelka was re-launched as a weekly newspaper, and was funded by faithful subscribers and other well-wishers. In 2007, Tehelka shifted to a regular magazine format.   Senator Larry Craig On June 11, 2007, an undercover police officer conducting a sting operation targeting males cruising for sex at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport detained Idaho Senator Larry Craig. Sgt. Dave Karsnia, the arresting officer, claimed that just after noon, the suspect entered a restroom and shut the door. Craig then moved into the stall next to him and propped his suitcase up against the stall door's front. By obscuring the front view, this is frequently done in an effort to hide sexual activity. Several minutes later, the officer claimed to have noticed Craig looking into his stall through a gap, tapping his right foot repeatedly, then moving it till it brushed Karsnia's. Craig then passed his hand under the stall divider into Karsnia's stall with his palm up and guided it along the divider toward the front of the stall three times. Karsnia then waved his badge back, to which the senator responded, “No!” The senator pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and paid a fine, but changed his mind after word of his arrest later became public. Craig claimed he just had a “wide stance”, and he only pleaded guilty to avoid a spectacle.An appeals court rejected his request to change his mind about entering a guilty plea. Craig completed his time in the Senate but was unable to have his case dismissed by the Senate Ethics Committee. Craig departed office on January 3, 2009, having not to run for reelection in 2008. Fascinating Fact: Soon after Craig was arrested, the men's room started to resemble a tourist destination, with people coming to seek directions and take photographs. Even restroom tissue may be purchased on eBay. Listen to the conversation between Senator Craig and Sgt. Karsnia immediately following the arrest here.   7 Sarah Ferguson was victimized by Mazher Mahmood, a reporter for the tabloid daily "News of the World," in May 2010. In order to set up a meeting with Ferguson, Mahmood pretended to be a wealthy international businessman. The Duchess, who was discreetly recorded throughout the encounter, offered to connect the "tycoon" with Prince Andrew's influential inner circle. "500,000 pounds when you can, to me, open doors," Sarah Ferguson is heard saying on the video. She may also be seen removing a briefcase that is holding $40,000 in cash. After the event was reported, Ferguson's spokesman claimed she was both "devastated" and "regretful." She said that she had been drinking before asking for the money and was "in the gutter at that point" in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Mazher Mahmood, the guy who pretended to be the tycoon, is referred to as the "Fake Sheikh" and has conned several famous people. No one is certain if that is his true name or what his real history is since he likes to make things as mysterious as possible. The journalist denies ever allowing his face to appear in any of his pieces and claims to have received several death threats. He also avoids public appearances.   Bait Cars The Minneapolis Police Department employed the first bait cars in the 1990s. The largest bait car fleet in North America is now situated in Surrey, British Columbia, which is widely regarded as the continent's "auto theft capital." The cars are carefully modified, equipped with GPS tracking equipment, audio/video surveillance, and an engine-disabling remote control. It has helped to lower car theft by 47% when it was introduced in Surrey, British Columbia, in 2004. In one of the more contentious bait vehicle stings, a lady was murdered nearly instantaneously after a robber driving a bait car drove into her in Dallas, Texas, in 2008. To resolve the litigation, $245,000 was given to the victim's family. Fact: The key to determining whether police are utilizing a bait car improperly and would result in entrapment is if they left it in a way that would tempt someone who would not ordinarily commit a crime. Here, you can view one of the more eye-catching (to put it mildly) bait vehicle stings. Many others will undoubtedly have the same thoughts as I had. “Where the heck was the kill switch?”   Marion Barry A well-known politician and former mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry. Police were going to conduct an undercover narcotics transaction with former Virgin Islands official Charles Lewis on December 22, 1988, but they were turned back when they discovered Mayor Marion Barry was in Lewis's hotel room. This prompted a grand jury inquiry into potential mayor meddling in the narcotics probe. Barry testified for three hours in front of the grand jury before telling reporters he had done nothing wrong. Then, on January 18, 1990, Barry was arrested in a Washington, D.C. hotel after using crack cocaine in a room with his former girlfriend, who had turned informant for the FBI. This was the result of a sting operation put up by the FBI and D.C. Police. Barry said the now-famous phrase, "Bitch set me up," which has come to be linked with him. Following his arrest and subsequent trial, Barry made the decision not to run for mayor again. He was charged with 14 charges by a grand jury, including suspected grand jury perjury. The mayor could have spent 26 years in prison if found guilty on all 14 counts. Barry was only given a six-month prison term after the jury found him guilty of using cocaine. Barry campaigned for municipal council after being let out of prison. He garnered 70% of the vote due to his widespread popularity and the perception held by many that Marion Barry was the target of a political witch hunt by the government. Then, in 1995, Barry won a fourth term as mayor of Washington, D.C. Barry is currently back in his position on the D.C. city council. Regardless of your opinion on Marion Barry, you have to respect his perseverance and drive to help the people of Washington, D.C. The aforementioned occurrence is only a small portion of his remarkable life. A documentary titled "The Nine Lives of Marion Barry" was produced by HBO.    Joran Van der Sloot Dutch national Joran Van der Sloot is a key suspect in the case of Natalee Holloway, who vanished on May 30, 2005, while traveling to Aruba to celebrate her high school graduation. On March 29, 2010, Van der Sloot got in touch with Beth Twitty Holloway's mother's attorney John Q. Kelly, reviving the case. Van der Sloot promised to provide details about Holloway's demise and the whereabouts of her remains in exchange for a total of $250,000 with a $25,000 down payment. After Kelly and Twitty made contact with Alabama law enforcement, the FBI launched a sting operation. On May 10, Van der Sloot accepted a wire transfer of $15,000 to his Dutch bank account along with an additional cash payment of $10,000. He drove Kelly to the location of Holloway's remains in exchange for the cash. He indicated a home, saying that his father had assisted in burying the body in the foundation. The home had not yet been constructed when Holloway vanished, therefore this turned out to be untrue. Later, Van der Sloot informed Kelly through email that the entire incident was a fraud. At this point, police might have detained Van der Sloot for wire fraud and extortion, but they chose to wait while they worked to establish a case of murder against him. Van der Sloot was not only let free, he was also given permission to depart Aruba and travel to Bogotá, Colombia, and then Lima, Peru, with the money he had made from the operation. He met Stephany Flores Ramirez, a 21-year-old University of Lima business student, in a casino hotel in the city. Ramirez and Van der Sloot are seen entering a hotel room together on security footage, but only Van der Sloot is seen exiting. On June 2, Ramirez was discovered dead in the hotel room that Van der Sloot had booked, her neck broken and she had been battered to death. On May 30, 2010, precisely five years after Natalee Holloway vanished, Ramirez passed away. A person arrested Van der Sloot He admitted to the murder on June 3 and June 7. Fascinating fact: Van der Sloot is presently detained at Peru's Miguel Castro jail, where murder charges have been brought. He apparently now claims that if he is permitted to move to a jail in Aruba, he would tell the whereabouts of Natalee Holloway's remains.   Perverted Justice Stings Perverted-Justice is a group that uses volunteers to masquerade as juveniles online, often between the ages of 10-15, and wait for an adult to message or email the decoy back. If the topic becomes sexual, they won't actively reject it or support it. Then, in order to set up a meeting, they will attempt to identify the males by acquiring their phone numbers and other information. The group then provides law enforcement with the information. Additionally, Perverted-Justice has worked with the American reality show "To Catch a Predator." In Murphy, Texas, one of the more contentious instances took place in 2006. Louis Conradt (seen above), a district attorney in Texas, pretended to be a 19-year-old college student and had sexually explicit internet conversations with a person he thought was a 13-year-old kid. They hired an actress to portray the youngster on the phone when Conradt demanded images of the boy's genitalia. Conradt stopped returning phone calls and instant messages, so police and the reality program decided to conduct a search warrant operation at his residence. A gunshot was heard as the police entered the scene to make an arrest. Conradt was inside with a self-inflicted wound when they arrived, and he eventually passed away at a hospital. 23 people were taken into custody for online solicitation of minors as a consequence of the sting operation in Murphy, Texas. Due to inadequate evidence, none of the 23 instances were prosecuted as of June 2007. Conradt's family launched a $105 million lawsuit against Dateline's To Catch a Predator series. The dispute was ultimately resolved outside of court. All next episodes' development was halted by the network in 2008. Rachel Hoffman On February 22, 2007, a traffic stop in Tallahassee, Florida, resulted in Rachel Hoffman being found in possession of 25 grams of marijuana. Then, on April 17, 2008, police searched her flat and found 4 ecstasy tablets and 151.7 grams of marijuana. Police allegedly threatened to put her in jail unless she worked as an undercover informant for them, according to her account. She was then dispatched untrained to an undercover gathering to purchase a weapon and a significant quantity of narcotics from two alleged drug traffickers. The suspects relocated the drug purchase while she was there. When she departed the buy place in the car with the two suspects, the police officers who were keeping an eye on the sting lost sight of her. The identical gun she was intended to purchase was used to kill her by the two suspects while they were in motion. Two days later, her corpse was discovered close to Perry, Florida. One of the murder suspects was convicted of first-degree murder and given a life sentence without the possibility of parole on December 17, 2009, which would have been Rachel Hoffman's 25th birthday. Trial for the second murder suspect is set for October 2010. Interesting Fact: On May 7, 2009, a law called “Rachel's Law” was passed by the Florida State Senate. Rachel's Law requires law enforcement agencies to (a) provide special training for officers who recruit confidential informants, (b) instruct informants that reduced sentences may not be provided in exchange for their work, and (c) permit informants to request a lawyer if they want one.    Mr. Big The Royal Canadian Mounted Police created Mr. Big, sometimes known as "the Canadian method," in the early 1990s in response to unsolved killings. It is employed in Canada and Australia, but many other nations, like the United States and England, view it as entrapment. The technique works something like this: An undercover police unit poses as members of a fictitious gang, into which the suspect is inducted. The suspect is invited to participate in a series of criminal activities (all faked by the police). In addition, the “gang members” build a personal relationship with the suspect, by drinking together and other social activities. After some time, the gang boss, Mr. Big, is presented to him. The police have a fresh interest in the first crime, and the suspect is instructed to provide the gang with further information. They clarify that Mr. Big might be able to affect the course of the police investigation, but only if he confesses to the full extent of the crime. He is also warned that if he conceals any other previous offenses, the gang could decide against working with him in the future since he would be a burden. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are shown in the picture above carrying the hats of the four officers who were killed in Edmonton, Canada, in 2005 at a memorial service. Two of the men serving prison sentences for the murders made confessions to Mr. Big operatives.Interesting Fact: In British Columbia, the technique has been used over 180 times, and, in 80% of the cases, it resulted in either a confession or the elimination of the suspect from suspicion. However, cases of false confessions and wrongful convictions have recently come to the public's attention, and many are starting to question the controversial technique. In 2007, a documentary was made, called Mr. Big, that was very critical of the procedure.   You can't talk about undercover operations without talking about the mob. Here are five badasses who infiltrated the mob.   In law enforcement, working as an undercover officer carries the high risk of discovery by criminal suspects, leading to violence, torture and death. But the rewards can be huge, with wire recordings and eyewitness testimony that can result in arrests and convictions. A trained officer knows how to strategize, win the confidence of their targets and get them to reveal what's needed to build a case to take to trial. It requires an unusual kind of person, able to work under stress, stay focused, pull off the character he or she is playing and be prepared to tell many lies. What follows here is a list of five remarkable individuals whose undercover operations, despite real dangers, resulted in the convictions of leaders and associates of organized crime, over almost a century. This list leaves out many other famous undercover officers, whom we would like to recognize in the future. Perhaps because of the gravity of the investigations, and the financial resources required, all of these undercover officers worked for agencies of the U.S. government. MICHAEL MALONE Mike Malone worked undercover for the Treasury Department's Intelligence Unit. In the late 1920s, he infiltrated Al Capone's Chicago Outfit and helped convict the crime boss of tax evasion. Michael Malone had all the makings of an undercover agent who would successfully infiltrate Al Capone's Chicago gang for nearly two years. Malone, whose parents came over from Ireland, grew up in New Jersey and meshed well with its European immigrants, eventually learning to speak Gaelic, Italian, Yiddish and Greek. With his “black Irish” dark hair and skin, he resembled someone from southern Europe. After finessing his way into Capone's inner circle in 1929, Malone proved invaluable to his superiors in the Treasury Department pursuing a tax evasion case against the Chicago crime boss. Despite the danger, Malone kept an iron will. Blowing his cover would have proved fatal. But given his skills, it didn't happen. While Malone kept up the charade, he delivered information that proved incriminating not only for Capone, but for his top enforcer, Frank Nitti (aka Nitto). Malone remained disguised within Capone's bootlegging band even for a time after the feds filed tax charges against Capone, Nitti and Capone's brother, Ralph, in 1931. When Capone's jury trial commenced, and the Treasury Department removed Malone from his undercover job, the agent gained a bit of respect from the embarrassed gang chief himself. In the Chicago courthouse, Malone happened to enter an elevator where Capone stood with his defense lawyers. “The only thing that fooled me was your looks,” Capone is said as to have remarked to Malone. “You look like a Wop. You took your chances, and I took mine. I lost.” From 1929 to 1931, Malone fed intelligence about Capone that would culminate in the historic conviction of the nation's most notorious Mob boss. His fascinating story began after his service in World War I. With law enforcement his career goal, Malone joined the Treasury Department's Intelligence Unit later known as the “T-Men.” Early on, in the 1920s, Malone appreciated how donning disguises brought him closer to the suspects. He posed in everyman roles such as garbage man and shoe shiner. Elmer Irey, chief of the Intelligence Unit, had worked with undercover agent Malone on Prohibition cases. Once, Irey enlisted Malone to smash a West Coast version of “Rum Row,” rumrunners selling contraband Canadian liquor from ships off the coast of San Francisco. Malone posed as gangster from Chicago in hiding, with money to invest in illegal booze. He devised a nighttime sting operation. Agents posing as bootleggers drove speedboats out to the booze-laden mother ship and, after money changed hands, Malone fired off a flare, signaling the U.S. Coast Guard, which boarded the mother ship and arrested the astonished bootleggers. President Herbert Hoover entered office in March 1929, a few weeks following the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, where seven men associated with Capone's bitter rival in bootlegging, George “Bugs” Moran, died in gunfire. Hoover conferred with Irey and urged him to compile a team of special agents to “get Capone” on tax charges. Meanwhile, another team of Prohibition Unit agents in Chicago, headed by Eliot Ness, would attack Capone on violations of federal liquor laws under the Volstead Act. Irey appointed Special Agent Frank Wilson, Malone and several others to the get Capone team. Meanwhile, a group of wealthy business executives in Chicago, called the Secret Six, donated large sums of money for expenses to assist the feds in getting Capone. Malone used their largess to purchase some expensive clothing to look the part of a well-heeled hoodlum that Capone would envy. Malone set about infiltrating Capone's underworld at its core – the Lexington Hotel, where the boss and his men lived. Wearing a fancy suit, purple shirt and white hat, Malone sat in the lobby, reading newspapers for days on end. He spoke in an Italian accent, introduced himself as “Mike Lepito,” met Capone men playing craps and played the part of a mobster. He mailed letters to friends in Philadelphia, who wrote back. Capone's guys broke into his room, noted his pricey checkered suits and silk underwear. They opened his mail from Philadelphia, read the letters written, impressively, in underworld lingo they understood. They informed Capone. Finally, Capone sent a cohort down to the lobby to ask “Lepito” about his business in town. “Keeping quiet,” Malone replied in his Italian inflection. In the coming days, over drinks, Malone told the guy he was on the lam for burglary in Philadelphia. That got Malone invitations to play poker and trade gossip with the gang, then dinner at their hangout, the New Florence, and then to attend the birthday party Capone planned for Frank Nitti at the Lexington. Malone met Capone at Nitti's party. The secret agent's new acquaintances included big-shot hoods Nitti, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, Paul “The Waiter” Ricca, Murray “The Camel” Humphreys and Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt. Malone was in. He discreetly phoned Wilson about what he'd overheard within the gang. Wilson and his aides traced signatures on bank checks while pursuing tax evasion cases against Nitti and Guzik. A federal court in Chicago convicted Guzik, who got a five-year sentence. But Nitti skipped town. Malone, assigned to find him, followed Nitti's wife to an apartment building in Berwyn, Illinois. There, the cops nabbed Nitti, later sentenced to 18 months in prison for tax evasion. Then the police pinched Al himself following his 1931 indictment on tax charges. “Mike Lepito” was there at the Lexington when Al Capone arrived back, triumphant about his release on $50,000 bail. Malone listened and reported to Wilson about Capone's scheme to bribe and fix the jury in his favor. The feds moved quickly and a judge created a new list of jurors. Malone then reported Capone's plot to hire five gunman from New York to kill four federal officials in Chicago – including Wilson. With safety measures in place, Capone ordered the gunmen to leave town. Capone's trial, after a judge refused to plea bargain with the Mob boss, started in October 1931. Four days afterward, Malone finally gave up the act. The news spread fast to Capone and his men. Malone had heard that Phil D'Andrea, Capone's bodyguard, planned to bring a concealed gun into the courthouse. Malone and another agent frisked and disarmed D'Andrea, and had him arrested. A jury Capone could not fix found the boss guilty on 22 criminal counts. The judge gave him 11 years in the federal pen and a $50,000 fine, plus court costs. Months later, in early 1932, the Intelligence Unit had Malone, Irey, Wilson and Special Agent A. P. Madden probe the kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh's son. The team's persistence paid off within two years, with the capture (and conviction) of suspect Bruno Hauptman, who still had some of the marked currency the agents convinced Lindbergh to use as ransom money. Malone had other notable cases. In 1933, Irey assigned him to find fugitive New York gangster Waxey Gordon, wanted for tax evasion. Malone located Gordon in a remote cottage in the Catskill Mountains. Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey took the case, and the court put Waxey away for 10 years. A year later, Malone infiltrated Louisiana Governor Huey “Kingfish” Long's crooked crew. After Long's assassination, the IRS won a tax fraud conviction against Malone's target, Long's close aide, Seymour Weiss. In his last undercover operation before his death, the Intelligence Unit gave Malone a large amount of cash and a Cadillac to use in Miami Beach, disguised as a rich syndicate man. He found and reported what the agency wanted – details of a coast-to-coast illegal abortion ring. After Malone's death in 1960, Wilson described him to a news reporter as “the best undercover agent we ever had.” JOSEPH PISTONE Joe Pistone is one of the FBI's most celebrated undercover agents. Using the name Donnie Brasco, he infiltrated the New York Mafia and helped produce 200 indictments. Courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In New York City during the mid-1970s, the FBI investigated a rash of truck hijackings happening each day. The agency assigned agent Joseph “Joe” Pistone to go undercover for six months to find out where the Mob-connected thieves took the stolen cargo. His adopted name was “Donnie Brasco.” He was so effective as a wiseguy that the FBI let him keep it up. No one knew how far the investigation would lead, or what it would mean for Pistone, who started as an agent in 1969. His experience would eventually prompt the mobsters in New York to put out a $500,000 contract for his murder, but it never happened. In the end, the evidence and trial testimony he provided in the 1980s produced 200 indictments of Mob associates and more than 100 convictions. His work decimated the Bonannos, one of New York's five major crime families. Pistone's journey while undercover, impersonating a mobbed-up jewel thief, would last an incredible five years, from 1976 to 1981, during which he penetrated the upper levels of the Bonnano organization. No FBI agent had made it inside the Mob like that. The agency beforehand had to rely on informants. Pistone took a class to learn about jewelry to make his affectation believable. In Brooklyn and Manhattan, he roamed bars and restaurants frequented by Mob types. He communicated using the street smarts he absorbed growing up as a working-class Italian-American kid in Paterson, New Jersey, where he went to Italian social clubs and encountered local hoods. Years in, he had the Bonanno circle so convinced that it moved to have him a “made” man shortly before the FBI ended his assignment. At first he befriended low-level mobsters. He wore a wire to record conversations, and committed to memory names and license plates since taking notes would obviously raise red flags. By 1976, he'd won the trust of important Bonnano members, notably family soldier Benjamin “Lefty Guns” Ruggiero, said to have killed 26 people, and capo Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano. Ruggerio recommended him so that he could join the clan. Pistone's Mob activities centered in New York and Florida, taking him away from his wife and young daughters for extended times. Pistone even had to vacation with his demanding cohorts. He moved his family members out of state for their protection. As “Donnie Brasco,” Pistone helped Ruggerio transfer stolen goods and sell guns. He engaged in loansharking, extortion and illegal gambling. Once, while pretending to be an expert in burglar alarms, angry Mob associates intent on committing burglaries demanded he reveal the name of a mobster who would vouch for him. The FBI used an informant to quell their suspicions. In the 1997 film Donnie Brasco, undercover agent Joe Pistone is played by Johnny Depp, left. Al Pacino, right, plays Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggiero. In 1981, the situation intensified again when the crime family commanded him to kill an adversary. The FBI pulled him out of the sting. It was time to start making cases, and for him to testify in open court as himself. Starting in 1982, Pistone's testimony over the next several years in racketeering cases sent more than 100 mobsters to long prison terms. Prosecutors considered him crucial to convicting 21 defendants in the “Pizza Connection” case of pizzerias used to traffic in heroin and launder money for the Sicilian Mafia. Pistone went into hiding and later retired from the FBI, unscathed, in 1986. In the 1990s, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, former underboss for the Gambino family who turned FBI informant, said the embarrassment from the “Brasco” case drove bosses in New York's crime families to suspend the Bonanno group from its board of directors. But Pistone couldn't stay retired. In 1992, at age 53, he requested reinstatement with the FBI, which agreed only if he would enter the agency's strict training class, lasting 16 weeks at its base in Quantico, Virginia. Pistone endured the rigorous course alongside recruits in their 20s. He passed and the FBI rehired him, at least until the mandatory retirement age of 57. Pistone's 1988 book on his undercover experiences, Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia, was a bestseller. Based on the book, actor Johnny Depp portrayed Pistone in the 1997 feature film Donnie Brasco, with Al Pacino as Ruggerio. JACK GARCIA Jack Garcia was an FBI undercover agent of Cuban descent who convinced members of the Italian-American Mafia that he was Italian. He took part in more than 100 undercover investigations over a 26-year career. Before he succeeded in infiltrating New York's Gambino crime family, FBI agent Joaquin “Jack” Garcia had to go school. That is, the FBI's “mob school,” where he received an education in how to hit the ground running with veteran mobsters. His teacher was special agent Nat Parisi. First off, Parisi said, do not carry a wallet – wiseguys carry wads of currency, often bound by the kind of rubber band grocery stores use to keep broccoli together. Also, correctly pronouncing Italian food matters – as Tony Soprano might say, those long pasta shells are not “manicotti,” but “manicote.” Another valuable lesson he learned is that his Mob brethren loved compliments – his favorite one: “Where did you get those nice threads? You look like a million dollars.” In his 26-year career as an FBI agent, Garcia took part in more than 100 undercover investigations, from Miami to New York, Atlantic City and Los Angeles, targeting mobsters, drug traffickers and corrupt politicians and cops. He participated in the highest number of undercover cases in FBI history. In many of his capers, he impersonated a mobster, using the name “Jack Falcone” (in honor of the Italian judge Giovanni Falcone, killed by the Sicilian Mafia in the 1990s). As a backstory, he told his Mob marks about having a Sicilian pedigree (actually he's a native of Havana and grew up in the Bronx) with an expertise in stealing and fencing stolen goods, with jewelry as his specialty. Sometimes, he had to run several undercover roles at once. He took advantage of his fluency in Spanish and Italian, being careful not to mix things up when the phone rang. In the early 2000s, the FBI chose Garcia for what would be the most fruitful infiltration of an organized crime family since Joe Pistone's in the 1970s. While undercover as “Jack Falcone” with the Gambino's family's chapter in Westchester County, New York, for two years, he flashed cash, Rolex watches, diamond rings, flat-screen TVs and other supposed stolen property (items seized in other FBI cases). Much of the cash he held went to pay for expensive dinners – mobsters, he said, are notoriously cheap when the check comes. He gained 80 pounds over the two years. One mobster in particular who liked his money and goods, and would become his almost daily companion, was Gambino capo Gregory DePalma. An “old school” hood who in 2003 finished serving 70 months for racketeering, DePalma right away threatened violence and extorted owners of Westchester-area construction firms, strip joints, restaurants and other businesses. Garcia said he witnessed DePalma commit a crime almost every day. The FBI had Garcia pose as a wiseguy seeking to invest in a topless bar in the Bronx. Garcia's inquiries led him to meet DePalma in 2003. By providing stolen property for DePalma to sell for cash, Garcia convinced him that “Jack Falcone” was an experienced jewelry thief and fencer from Miami. When Garcia hung out with DePalma over the two-year period, he wore a body wire, and the FBI planted bugging devices at DePalma's hangouts. Garcia gave DePalma a cell phone that the talkative mob capo used prodigiously, not knowing the FBI had bugged it. The operation yielded 5,000 hours of recorded conversations used to implicate DePalma and other Gambino men in racketeering. In 2005, DePalma planned to honor “Falcone” by rendering him “made” within the Gambino family. In a recorded conversation, Garcia as “Falcone” replied to DePalma, “I'm honored for that,” he said, in the tape later used in court. “I will never let you down either.” But it wasn't to be. After Garcia witnessed a Gambino soldier beat another member with a crystal candlestick, the FBI shut down the undercover operation. (Garcia and Pistone are the only law enforcement officers ever nominated to be “made.”) Garcia's efforts inside the Gambino crew paid off big time. The evidence he delivered for the FBI resulted in the arrest of 32 Gambino members and associates, including DePalma, Gambino boss Arnold “Zeke” Squitieri and underboss Anthony “The Genius” Megale. DePalma went to trial in 2006. Garcia, who retired from the FBI two months before the trial started, agreed to testify in federal court in Manhattan. The jury found DePalma guilty on 27 counts, and the judge gave the 74-year-old a 12-year prison term. Like Pistone, Garcia's undercover career is chronicled in a memoir, Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family. KIKI CAMARENA Kiki Camarena was an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Mexico. After contributing information that led to major drug busts, he was tortured and murdered by drug cartel bosses in 1985. Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, the late Drug Enforcement Administration agent assigned to investigate drug trafficking in Guadalajara, Mexico, in the 1980s, is famous as one of the most heroic DEA agents ever. But he is more well-known in death than in life. His torture-murder in Mexico in 1985 took place at the hands of drug cartel bosses with the complicity of high-level Mexican government officials, law enforcement and, allegedly, the CIA. At the time, the Reagan administration was secretly training and supplying Central American guerilla fighters, known as the “Contras,” against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The U.S. government allegedly granted the cartel bosses free rein to traffic drugs – to the point of using CIA-recruited American pilots to fly cocaine into the United States to sell for cash so the cartel could make donations to buy more weaponry for the Contras. Camarena, born in Mexicali, Mexico, in 1947, moved with his impoverished family to Calexico, California. He served as a firefighter in Calexico, and with a strong desire for police work, joined the Imperial County Sheriff's Department, moving up to its narcotics task force. The experience led to his career in the DEA starting in 1975. Assigned to the DEA office in the “narco paradise” of Guadalajara in 1980, Camarena was a convincing undercover officer with his appearance and ability to speak Spanish and barrio “street” language to fit in with the drug underworld. His target was the powerful Guadalajara drug cartel (which later evolved into the Sinaloa cartel). In the early 1980s, in what he called “Operation Padrino,” Camarena arranged for U.S. agents to seize international bank accounts held by wealthy cartel drug lords. He developed evidence of major marijuana plantations in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, based on informants and overflights in a plane flown by his DEA pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar. In November 1984, from his background work, Mexican federal police and the DEA raided enormous pot-growing operations on a ranch in Zacatecas that employed thousands of field hands. The task force confiscated 20 tons of marijuana, burned the crop and made 177 arrests. The bust cost cartel figure Rafael Caro Quintero about $50 million. Caro Quintero believed his operation had the protection of the Mexican army, and the CIA, since he owned a farm used to train the U.S.-backed Contras. He vowed revenge against Camarena. Meanwhile, a DEA force organized by Camarena seized a large cache of cocaine shipped by cartel boss Miguel Felix Gallardo's operation to New Mexico and Texas. Gallardo also believed he had CIA and Mexican official protection. During the fall of 1984, Quintero held meetings with top cartel traffickers Gallardo, Ernesto “Don Neto” Fonseco Carrillo and Ruben Zuno Arce. Also present, thanks to rampant corruption bought by the Guadalajara cartel, were Mexico's minister of domestic affairs and DFA chief Manuel Bartlett Diaz, plus Mexico's defense minister, the head of Mexico's Interpol office and the governor of the state of Jalisco. The agenda was to kidnap Camarena and get him to reveal his informants and other information. Zuno Arce gave the order. Fonseca only intended to scare and release him, but Quintero wanted to kill the DEA man. On February 7, 1985, Quintero and Gallardo directed their henchmen to kidnap Camarena off a street in Guadalajara. As the agent walked from the U.S. consulate to meet his wife for lunch, they forced him at gunpoint into a car and drove him to a residence used for cartel rendezvous. They bound and blindfolded him, turned on a tape recorder and questioned him, during which he was severely beaten and tortured. The lead interrogator was the crooked head of the secret police in Guadalajara, Sergio Espino Verdin. The cartel men wanted to know what Camarena knew about them, their dealings with Mexican officials and the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking. The gangsters also brought in and beat up Zavala, Camarena's pilot. Both men died about two days later, angering Fonseco, who told Quintero not to kill Camarena. Camarena's wife reported him missing and Washington launched what would be the largest manhunt in the history of the DEA. The cartel had the two men's bodies buried, then dug up and relocated to a farm in another state, where Mexican police found them in early March. During his funeral a week later, Camarena's family interred his ashes in Calexico. His slaying triggered an international incident. U.S. officials ordered all cars from Mexico at the border searched, effectively closing it. The investigation revealed the CIA connection, leading to bitter clashes between CIA and DEA agents. A federal court in Los Angeles charged 22 defendants in the murders of Camarena and Zavala. Under pressure, Mexican authorities acted, arresting 13 men. Mexican courts convicted Fonseco, Quintero and Espino, and sentenced each to 40 years, although Quintero won early release on a technicality in 2013. U.S. officials are still seeking Quintero to face federal charges. Mexican police arrested Gallardo in 1989, and he received 40 years. A court in Los Angeles found Zuno Arce guilty in the murders in 1990, sentenced him to two life terms in prison, where he died in 2012. In Camarena's honor, in 1985 the National Family Partnership started the National Red Ribbon Campaign, a volunteer anti-drug use and education effort that urges youths to recite a pledge to refrain from drugs, and celebrates “Red Ribbon Week” on drug awareness each October. Camarena's is featured as a character, played by actor Michael Pena, in a chapter of the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico, about on his actions with the DEA. JAY DOBYNS Jay Dobyns went undercover with the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle gang for 20 months in Arizona on behalf of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. His work led to 16 arrests. For Jay Dobyns, fitting in with the infamous biker gang the Hells Angels for almost two years meant adhering to his undercover alter ego, Jay “Bird” Davis, to the point of obsession. To maintain his cover, he had to divert his mind away from his wife and kids. And it all would be worth it – at least that's what he thought at the time. Dobyns had hit on his best clandestine ruse yet while in Arizona in 2001, after 15 years of service as an undercover special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. While working undercover cases in the late 1980s for the ATF, he'd been injured twice – from a gunshot wound to the back from a suspect in Tucson and when gunrunners hit him with a car during an attempted getaway in Chicago. He took part in investigations of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Other undercover roles of his ended in the arrests of a Mexican drug boss and members of the Aryan Brotherhood gang. Altogether, he served in more than 500 undercover operations disguised as a hitman and Mob debt collector. He infiltrated organized crime groups and gangs engaged in drug and arms smuggling. In 2001, to gather intelligence as “Davis” for the ATF in northern Arizona, Dobyns worked in the Bullhead City area, posing as a gun seller and an enforcer for a nonexistent collections agency. But his operation was interrupted in 2002 with the now-famous riot and shootout among members of the Angels and a competing biker gang, the Mongols, at the Harrah's casino in nearby Laughlin, Nevada, during the annual River Run motorcycle rally. Two Angels and one Mongol died and dozens of people were injured. The ATF brass soon redirected him to penetrate the dangerous Hells Angels club. Dobyns certainly had the physical part down with his beard and six-foot, one-inch frame he used as an all-conference football player for the University of Arizona. Later, an Angels member would apply tattoos covering his upper arms. Dobyns teamed with another ATF agent, two other undercover officers and a pair of paid informants. The idea was to create a fake biker gang with the aid of one of the informants who once served in a motorcycle gang based in Tijuana, Mexico. The gangster informant and Dobyns would run the gang, called the Solo Angeles, promote it as a pro-Hells Angels crew and request to join the Angels as a “nomad” chapter. The ATF named the setup “Operation Black Biscuit.” As a convincer, Dobyns and his fellow agent feigned an execution of a Mongol member, tying up an agent, placing cow's brains and bloody Mongol clothing on him and taking a photo. Based on the picture, the Angels took the bait and let them hang out and ride with them. They trusted him so much they offered to make him a member of the Angels' Skull Valley Chapter. He was the first law enforcement officer to infiltrate the Angels. His undercover penetration of the Angels lasted more than 20 months, one of the longest ever for the ATF. His work ended with 16 arrests from the Angels gang. But the criminal case, amid problems between the ATF and Justice Department lawyers, fell through in federal court. Federal prosecutors blamed the ATF, saying the agency did not reveal evidence from informants. In 2006, the feds dropped racketeering enterprise charges – the most serious — against all but four of 42 Angels charged in the Laughlin riot. Dobyns' battle with his own employer, the ATF, soon began. He filed suit in federal court against the agency alleging it did not protect him while he was on duty. He won a $373,000 settlement in 2007. The next year, Dobyns's wife and two kids barely escaped after someone firebombed the family home in Tucson. The ATF investigated Dobyns himself as a suspect in the arson. Investigators cleared him. In 2014, the year he retired after 27 years with the ATF, he filed another suit, for $17.2 million, saying the ATF failed to safeguard his family amid death threats. A judge awarded him $173,000. During an appeal, the judge voided the monetary judgment, but recommended discipline for ATF personnel and barred seven Justice Department attorneys from the case. He ordered a special master to investigate government actions in the case, and possible misconduct by the feds in the arson investigation. But the judge died of cancer. The special master in a report said that the first case was fair enough and required no further probe into the federal government. A new judge accepted the recommendation. Dobyns has authored two books, one on his undercover experiences, another on his travails with the ATF. These days, he delivers lectures on his life to audiences at universities and law enforcement associations nationwide. And now some of our infamous quick hitters:   Donald Duck decoy   Police in Fort Lee, New Jersey used a Donald Duck costume as a decoy to catch drivers who failed to yield to pedestrians. Drivers who didn't stop for the cartoon duck were ticketed. One woman, Karen Haigh, fought her $230 ticket.   "They told me that I was getting a ticket for not stopping for a duck," she told Eyewitness News. "But it scared me. I'm a woman. This huge duck scared me."  Coco the Clown   These old clips from the show COPS show a strange undercover police sting, and proves the adage that clowns are usually scary or just creepy. One cop dressed up as Coco the Clown, an outfit that kind of resembles John Wayne Gacy, to catch women working as sex workers. Spoiler: he pretty much sprays all of them with silly string and the whole thing is sad to watch. Amish woman   At least one cop from the Pulaski Township Police Department in Pennsylvania dressed up as an Amish woman in an attempt to catch a sexual predator. Sgt. Chad Adams of the Pulaski Township Police Department wandered the streets for two months in 2014 after police were tipped off that a predator was masturbating in front of children, according to the Associated Press. He posted on the department's Facebook page, “Hey friends, sometimes being a police officer means going undercover and doing what you have to do to catch the bad guy. Now that our investigation is complete I'll share with you this photo! Back in January we had an individual preying on Amish children walking home from school. The male individual was pulling up to the children and getting out of his car and masturbating in front of them. Although we did not apprehend the individual we believe he was caught in another county. I wanted to share with you that we will use all means available to try and protect our children. That includes dressing up as an Amish woman to attempt to apprehend a pervert! Thanks goes out to the Neshannock police and New Wilmington police in assistance with the investigation! Sincerely, Sergeant Chad Adams.”   Sadly, the sting didn't work, but police believe it is because the culprit moved into another county.   DVD Prize sting   Police in Phoenix, Arizona set up a sting to catch people with outstanding warrants, mostly DUIs, in 2002. The people were told they won a DVD player. People thought they were showing up to pick up their prize. Instead, they walked right into their own arrest. Watch as these suspects went from excited to shocked to sad. Panhandling trick   In 2015, undercover cops in California posed as panhandlers to ticket distracted drivers. They stood on the side of the road, posed as panhandlers and holding signs that identified them as police officers. The pieces of cardboard they were holding also stated that they were looking for seatbelt and cellphone violations. For those drivers who weren't paying attention

Oregon went 'dry' in 1914, so by the time the Volstead Act passed in 1919, Beaver State bootleggers were already seasoned professionals. So when the rest of the West Coast needed them, Oregon's 'midnight entrepreneurs' were ready to roll. (Statewide; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1308a-rumrunners-moonshiners-and-speakeasies.html)

En 1919, le 18e amendement établit la prohibition aux États-Unis. Partout dans le pays, des hommes et des femmes se lancent dans la contrebande d'alcool. C'est le cas de George Cassiday. Ses clients ? Des membres du Congrès. Ceux-là même qui ont voté le Volstead Act. Dans un petit carnet noir, Cassiday établit la liste des hommes politiques qu'il fournit en alcool…

“Prohibition”, the 2011 documentary miniseries, gives a pretty extensive look at America's experiment with the prohibition of alcohol, and James Keys and Tunde Ogunlana discuss what stood out most in this Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary as well as the lessons we can and should take away from America's failed prohibition experiment.Prohibition: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (PBS)Prohibition: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (Amazon Prime Video)

It's Kristen's birthday month!!! So that means it's time to talk about ... Alcohol... her disdain for the United States government... and how the two collide when the government decides to poison our supply. CONTENT WARNING: This episode involves death and may make you hate the government. Be sure to follow us at: Twitter: @rarwpodcast Instagram: @rarwpodcast Contact us at: E-mail: redrumandredwinepodcast@gmail.com All music written and produced by: Savasas Resources: 4, Jerome London “Paraquat Pot: The True Story of How the US Government Tried to Kill Weed Smokers with a Toxic Chemical in the 1980s.” Thought Catalog, 4 Feb. 2021, https://thoughtcatalog.com/jeremy-london/2018/08/paraquat-pot/#:~:text=But%20due%20to%20US%20government%20policies%20that%20started,with%20a%20chemical%20that%20can%20actually%20kill%20you. “Alcohol as Medicine and Poison Scroll to Read More.” Prohibition, https://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/the-prohibition-underworld/alcohol-as-medicine-and-poison/. Blum, Deborah. “The Little-Told Story of How the U.S. Government Poisoned Alcohol during Prohibition.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 19 Feb. 2010, https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/the-little-told-story-of-how-the-u-s-government-poisoned-alcohol-during-prohibition.html. “Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Feb. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution. Ethanol Metabolism: Alcohol Breakdown in the Body - Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCBW-Nidevk. “History of Alcohol Prohibition*.” History of Alcohol Prohibition, https://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/nc/nc2a.htm. “Volstead Act.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Apr. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volstead_Act.

Well well, we get to our 50th episode and this may be one of our personal favorites.  We discuss Prohibition, and this one hits home. our great uncle was the owner of two speakeasies in Brooklyn back in the day. We get to immortalize our Great Uncle Rocco (Robert) "Nap" LaSalle, who passed at the age of 99 back in 1992.  We cover the Volstead Act and how it came to pass, we discover how prohibition ended, we interview Travis from the Prohibition Museum in Savannah, GA, and more.   There is always more to learn. Thank you for listening and tell your friends about us.  Check out Sweatsedo.com and get yourself a cozy velour tracksuit, and be certain to check out JImmy LaSalle's books on Amazon - Immortals Revelations, The Naughty List, or for the business person, Unified Marketing Strategy.  

The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide prohibition on alcohol. The Twenty-first Amendment was proposed by the 72nd Congress on February 20, 1933, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on December 5, 1933. It is unique among the 27 amendments of the U.S. Constitution for being the only one to repeal a prior amendment, as well as being the only amendment to have been ratified by state ratifying conventions. The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, the result of years of advocacy by the temperance movement. The subsequent enactment of the Volstead Act established federal enforcement of the nationwide prohibition on alcohol. As many Americans continued to drink despite the amendment, Prohibition gave rise to a profitable black market for alcohol, fueling the rise of organized crime. Throughout the 1920s, Americans increasingly came to see Prohibition as unenforceable, and a movement to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment grew until the Twenty-first Amendment was ratified in 1933. Section 1 of the Twenty-first Amendment expressly repeals the Eighteenth Amendment. Section 2 bans the importation of alcohol into states and territories that have laws prohibiting the importation or consumption of alcohol. Several states continued to be "dry states'' in the years after the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, but in 1966 the last dry state (Mississippi) legalized the consumption of alcohol. Nonetheless, several states continue to closely regulate the distribution of alcohol. Many states delegate their power to ban the importation of alcohol to counties and municipalities, and there are numerous dry communities throughout the United States. Section 2 has occasionally arisen as an issue in Supreme Court cases that touch on the Commerce Clause. Text. Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

It's 1920 and George Remus, a Chicago attorney, stands before the bench in a Federal courtroom. He watches in horror as the Judge finds his client, a local booze bootlegger, guilty of violating the recently passed Volstead Act. The man's punishment? A $10,000 fine, the equivalent of roughly over $160,000 in today's money. Remus is horrified by the obscene punishment but notices that his client could care less. The bootlegger casually removes a wad of cash from his pocket so thick it can barely fold and tosses it to Remus to drop it off for him as he exits. Staring down at the money, Remus has a plan: To become the biggest bootlegger of illegal booze the world has ever seen. This is a tale of betrayal, duplicity, and cold-hearted murder.    Special Thanks To Our Sponsors:    BLINKIST Right now Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience. Go to Blinkist.com/SCOUNDREL to start your free 7 day trial and get 25% off of a Blinkist Premium membership.   THE JORDAN HARBINGER SHOW We really enjoy this show and we think you will as well! There's just SO much here. Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations, OR search for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.    GREENCHEF Go to GreenChef.com/scoundrel130 and use code scoundrel130 to get $130 off, plus free shipping!     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Volstead Act. This act was conceived and introduced by Wayne Wheeler, a leader of the Anti-Saloon League, a group which found alcohol responsible for almost all of society's problems and which also ran many campaigns against the sale of alcohol. The law was also heavily supported by then-Judiciary Chairman Andrew Volstead from Minnesota, and was named in his honor. The act in its written form laid the groundwork of prohibition, defining the procedures for banning the distribution of alcohol including their production and distribution. Volstead had once before introduced an early version of the law to Congress. It was first brought to the floor on May 27, 1919, where it met heavy resistance from Democratic senators. Instead, the so-called "wet law" was introduced, an attempt to end the wartime prohibition laws put into effect much earlier. The debate over prohibition would rage for that entire session, as the House was divided among what would become known as the "bone-drys" and the "wets". Because Republicans held the majority of the House of Representatives, the Volstead Act finally passed on July 22, 1919, with 287 in favor and 100 opposed. However, the act was largely a failure, proving unable to prevent mass distribution of alcoholic beverages and also inadvertently causing a massive increase in organized crime. The act would go on to define the terms and enforcement methods of prohibition, until the passing of the 21st amendment in 1933 effectively repealed it. Controversies. The proposed amendment was the first to contain a provision setting a deadline for its ratification. That clause of the amendment was challenged, with the case reaching the US Supreme Court. It upheld the constitutionality of such a deadline in Dillon v Gloss (1921). The Supreme Court also upheld the ratification by the Ohio legislature in Hawke v Smith (1920), despite a petition requiring that the matter go to ballot.

The Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution established the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917 and was ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933. It is the only amendment to be repealed. The Eighteenth Amendment was the product of decades of efforts by the temperance movement, which held that a ban on the sale of alcohol would ameliorate poverty and other societal issues. The Eighteenth Amendment declared the production, transport, and sale of intoxicating liquors illegal, though it did not outlaw the actual consumption of alcohol. Shortly after the amendment was ratified, Congress passed the Volstead Act to provide for the federal enforcement of Prohibition. The Volstead Act declared that liquor, wine, and beer all qualified as intoxicating liquors and were therefore prohibited. Under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition began on January 17, 1920, one year after the amendment was ratified. Although the Eighteenth Amendment led to a decline in alcohol consumption in the United States, nationwide enforcement of Prohibition proved difficult, particularly in cities. Rum-running (bootlegging) and speakeasies became popular in many areas. Public sentiment began to turn against Prohibition during the 1920s, and 1932 Democratic presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt called for its repeal. The Twenty-first Amendment finally did repeal the Eighteenth in 1933, making the Eighteenth Amendment the only one so far to be repealed in its entirety. Text. Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

In this week's episode of the Craft Parenting Podcast, we go back in time to the dark ages when drinking alcohol was considered illegal. The Volstead Act, which established prohibition in the United States had a devastating impact on the City of Cincinnati and destroyed an entire industry. This conversation was guided by a book called "Cincinnati Beer" by Michael D. Morgan, specifically, Chapter 14 which is titled "Dark Beers Make a Comeback and the Sheriff Gets into the Beer Business".  This is part two of our discussion on Cincinnati's rich beer history. Listen to part one here. What We Are DrinkingCaroline:Biere De Nöel - Belgium style dark spiced aleWest Side Brewing - Westwood, OhioABV: 10.4%IBUs: 30"A special treat for the holidays, this Belgium-style Winter ale is a deep ruby color with a tan head. Fruity esters from the Belgian yeast bring to mind aromas of plums and bubblegum while playing nicely with the spices used in the brew kettle. Full-bodied and finishing on the sweeter side, this big ale is definitely a fireside-sipper."Joe: PorterWest Side Brewing - Westwood, OhioABV: 5.8%IBUs: 45"Deep-brown, bordering on black, this porter boasts a malty aroma filled with chocolate notes and a hint of roast. Malt sweetness pairs with flavors of baker's chocolate and lightly piney hops for a smooth, full-bodied drink with just enough bitterness to keep it balanced."***Thank you so much for listening! If you like what you hear, please consider leaving us a rating and review. Also, help us spread the word about the podcast so we can grow! You can send us feedback, comments, and questions at craftparentingpodcast@gmail.com.Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our new monthly newsletter to get our content delivered straight to your inbox. Visit our website at https://www.craftparentingpodcast.com.Finally, if you would like to send us anything here's our PO Box address:  Craft Parenting PodcastP.O. Box 112294Cincinnati, Ohio 45211Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcatcher and if you like what you hear, share the show with your friends and leave us a rating and review.   We are available on:Apple PodcastsSpotify Overcast Podcast AddictStitcherYouTubeand all major platforms!

During the dark cloud of prohibition and the Volstead Act, the humble wine brick singlehandedly saved the American wine industry from disintegrating!   Hosted by Katie Charlwood New episodes every Thursday   Donate at:  https://patreon.com/whodidwhatnow  https://ko-fi.com/caitcatch Revolut: WhatKatieDid https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/whodidwhatnowpod Wishlist https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/2LAB2ZP4U9USX?ref_=wl_share MERCH!! https://spreadshirt.ie/user/whodidwhatnowpod https://beacons.page/whodidwhatnowpod   Follow me on... https://twitter.com/whodidwhatnowpd https://instagram.com/whodidwhatnowpod https://tiktok.com/@whodidwhatnowpod https://facebook.com/whodidwhatnowpodcast   Business Enquiries: whodidwhatnowpod@gmail.com Fan Mail:   Who Did What Now Podcast Willow Tree Farm Donegal Ireland F94KX64

In this episode, Pettengill finalizes the discussion concerning the temperance movement. Activists like Wayne Wheeler were ultimately triumphant and, in 1920, the Volstead Act went into effect. But compliance with Prohibition was sporadic at best. As Pettengill notes, there were plenty of Americans who were more than happy to flout the new law. And given that legitimate producers were unable to provide the commodity, Prohibition served as a launching pad for criminals who would become some of the most central figures within the history of organized crime.

In this week's episode we wrap our Prohibition series by taking a look at the fallout of the Volstead Act. We know that it created organized crime, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. The alcohol business was the 5th largest industry in the US at the time, so thousands of jobs were lost. Businesses were forced to close because alcohol was their number 1 seller, billions in lost tax revenue and much more devastating intentional--and unintentional side effects from the most failed experiment in American history. We close the episode with a quick conversation about what to expect from Outlaws & Gunslingers moving forward. Any questions or suggestions on future episodes? Email us at bangdangpodcast@gmail.com and let us know!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/show/outlaws-gunslingers/support.

In this episode we discuss Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities by Eric Kaufmann. Next time we will discuss True Names by Vernor Vinge. Some highlights from Whiteshift: Many people desire roots, value tradition and wish to maintain continuity with ancestors who have occupied a historic territory. This means we're more likely to experience what I term Whiteshift, a process by which white majorities absorb an admixture of different peoples through intermarriage, but remain oriented around existing myths of descent, symbols and traditions No one who has honestly analysed survey data on individuals – the gold standard for public opinion research – can deny that white majority concern over immigration is the main cause of the rise of the populist right in the West. This is primarily explained by concern over identity, not economic threat. We are entering a period of cultural instability in the West attendant on our passage between two relatively stable equilibria. The first is based on white ethnic homogeneity, the second on what the prescient centrist writer Michael Lind calls ‘beige' ethnicity, i.e. a racially mixed majority group. In the middle lies a turbulent multicultural interregnum. We in the West are becoming less like homogeneous Iceland and more like homogeneous mixed-race Turkmenistan. But to get there we'll be passing through a phase where we'll move closer to multicultural Guyana or Mauritius. The challenge is to enable conservative whites to see a future for themselves in Whiteshift – the mixture of many non-whites into the white group through voluntary assimilation. Anyone who wants to explain what's happening in the West needs to answer two simple questions. First, why are right-wing populists doing better than left-wing ones? Second, why did the migration crisis boost populist-right numbers sharply while the economic crisis had no overall effect? If we stick to data, the answer is crystal clear. Demography and culture, not economic and political developments, hold the key to understanding the populist moment. Because Western nations were generally formed by a dominant white ethnic group, whose myths and symbols – such as the proper name ‘Norway' – became the nation's, the two concepts overlap in the minds of many. White majorities possess an ‘ethnic' module, an extra string to their national identity which minorities lack. Ethnic majorities thereby express their ethnic identity as nationalism. I contend that today's white majorities are likely to successfully absorb minority populations while their core myths and boundary symbols endure. This will involve a change in the physical appearance of the median Westerner, hence Whiteshift, though linguistic and religious markers are less likely to be affected. Getting from where we are now, where most Westerners share the racial and religious features of their ethnic archetype, to the situation in a century or two, when most will be what we now term ‘mixed-race', is vital to understanding our present condition. In our more peaceful, post-ideological, demographically turbulent world, migration-led ethnic change is altering the basis of politics from class to ethnicity. On one side is a conservative coalition of whites who are attached to their heritage joined by minorities who value the white tradition; on the other side a progressive alliance of minorities who identify with their ethnic identity combined with whites who are agnostic or hostile towards theirs. Among whites, ethno-demographic change polarizes people between ‘tribal' ethnics who value their particularity and ‘religious' post-ethnics who prioritize universalist creeds such as John McWhorter's ‘religion of anti-racism'. Whites can fight ethnic change by voting for right-wing populists or committing terrorist acts. They may repress anxieties in the name of ‘politically correct' anti-racism, but cracks in this moral edifice are appearing. Many opt to flee by avoiding diverse neighbourhoods, schools and social networks. And other whites may choose to join the newcomers, first in friendship, subsequently in marriage. Intermarriage promises to erode the rising diversity which underlies our current malaise. Religion evolved to permit cooperation in larger units.31 Our predisposition towards religion, morality and reputation – all of which can transcend the tribe – reflects our adaptation to larger social units. Be that as it may, humans have lived in large groups only in the very recent past, so it is reasonable to assume tribalism is a more powerful aspect of our evolutionary psychology than our willingness to abide by a moral code. Today what we increasingly see in the West is a battle between the ‘tribal' populist right and the ‘religious' anti-racist left. Much of this book is concerned with the clash between a rising white tribalism and an ideology I term ‘left-modernism'. A sociologist member of the ‘New York Intellectuals' group of writers and literary critics, Daniel Bell, used the term modernism to describe the spirit of anti-traditionalism which emerged in Western high culture between 1880 and 1930. With the murderous excesses of communism and fascism, many Western intellectuals embraced a fusion of modernist anti-traditionalism and cultural egalitarianism, distinguishing the new ideology from both socialism and traditional liberalism. Cosmopolitanism was its guiding ethos. Unlike socialism or fascism, this left-wing modernism meshed nicely with capitalism and globalization. The left-modernist sensibility spread from a small elite to a much wider section of middle-class society in the 1960s with the rise of television and growth of universities, taking over as the dominant sensibility of the high culture. As it gained ground, it turned moralistic and imperialistic, seeking not merely to persuade but to institutionalize itself in law and policy, altering the basis of liberalism from tolerating to mandating diversity. This is a subtle but critical shift. Meanwhile the economic egalitarianism of socialism gave way to a trinity of sacred values around race, gender and sexual orientation. Immigration restriction became a plank of the Progressive movement which advocated improved working conditions, women's suffrage and social reform. This combination of left-wing economics and ethno-nationalism confounds modern notions of left and right but Progressive vs. free market liberal was how the world was divided in the late nineteenth century. A prominent plank in the Progressive platform was temperance, realized in the Volstead Act of 1920 prohibiting the sale of alcohol. The Prohibition vote pitted immigrant-origin Catholics and upper-class urban WASPs such as the anti-Prohibition leader and New York socialite Pauline Morton Sabin on the ‘wet' side against ‘dry' working-class, rural and religious Protestants. For Joseph Gusfield, Prohibition was principally a symbolic crusade targeted at urban Catholic immigrants who congregated in saloons and their ‘smart set' upper-class allies. This was a Protestant assertion of identity in an increasingly urban nation in which Catholics and Jews formed around a fifth of the population. Those of WASP background had declined to half the total from two thirds in the 1820s. What's interesting is that Anglo representatives did not make their case in ethno-communal terms, nor did they invoke the country's historic ethnic composition. Rather they couched their ethnic motives as state interests. Instead of coming clean about their lament over cultural loss, they felt obliged to fabricate economic and security rationales for restriction. Much the same is true today in the penchant for talking about immigrants putting pressure on services, taking jobs, increasing crime, undermining the welfare state or increasing the risk of terrorism. In my view it would be far healthier to permit the airing of ethno-cultural concerns rather than suppressing these, which leads to often spurious claims about immigrants. Likewise, immigrants' normal desires to defend their interests are decried as ‘identity politics'. [Randolph] Bourne, on the other hand, infused Kallen's structure with WASP self-loathing. As a rebel against his own group, Bourne combined the Liberal Progressives' desire to transcend ‘New Englandism' and Protestantism with Kallen's call for minority groups to maintain their ethnic boundaries. The end product was what I term asymmetrical multiculturalism, whereby minorities identify with their groups while Anglo-Protestants morph into cosmopolites. Thus Bourne at once congratulates the Jew ‘who sticks proudly to the faith of his fathers and boasts of that venerable culture of his', while encouraging his fellow Anglo-Saxons to: Breathe a larger air … [for] in his [young Anglo-Saxon's] new enthusiasms for continental literature, for unplumbed Russian depths, for French clarity of thought, for Teuton philosophies of power, he feels himself a citizen of a larger world. He may be absurdly superficial, his outward-reaching wonder may ignore all the stiller and homelier virtues of his Anglo-Saxon home, but he has at least found the clue to that international mind which will be essential to all men and women of good-will if they are ever to save this Western world of ours from suicide. [1916] Bourne, not Kallen, is the founding father of today's multiculturalist left because he combines rebellion against his own culture and Liberal Progressive cosmopolitanism with an endorsement – for minorities only – of Kallen's ethnic conservatism. In other words, ethnic minorities should preserve themselves while the majority should dissolve itself. Cosmopolitanism must manage the contradiction between its ethos of transcending ethnicity and its need for cultural diversity, which requires ethnic attachment. Bourne resolved this by splitting the world into two moral planes, one for a ‘parental' majority who would be asked to shed their ethnicity and oppose their own culture, and the other for childlike minorities, who would be urged to embrace their heritage in the strongest terms. This crystallized a dualistic habit of mind, entrenched in the anti-WASP ethos of 1920s authors like Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken and the bohemian ‘Lost Generation' of American intellectuals such as F. Scott Fitzgerald. All associated the Anglo-Protestant majority with Prohibition, deemed WASP culture to be of no value, and accused the ethnic majority of suppressing more interesting and expressive ethnic groups. The Lost Generation's anti-majority ethos pervaded the writing of 1950s ‘Beat Generation' left-modernist writers like Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac – who contrasted lively black jazz or Mexican culture with the ‘square' puritanical whiteness of Middle America. As white ethnics assimilated, the despised majority shifted from WASPs to all whites. The multiculturalism of the 1960s fused the Liberal Progressive pluralist movement with the anti-white ethos of the Beat counterculture. The situation by 1924 was a far cry from the pre-1890 dispensation, when a liberal-assimilationist Anglo-Americanism spanned both universalist and ethno-nationalist shades of opinion. Prior to 1890, most Anglo-Protestant thinkers held the view that their ethnic group could assimilate all comers. During moments of euphoria, they talked up the country as a universal cosmopolitan civilization; in their reflective moods, they remarked on its Anglo-Saxon Protestant character. By 1910, this Emersonian ‘double-consciousness' was gone, each side of its contradiction a separate and consistent ideology. Most WASP intellectuals were, like New England patrician Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, ethno-nationalists who backed restriction, or, like Bourne and Dewey, cosmopolitans calling for diversity and open borders. Few ethno-nationalists favoured open immigration. No pluralists endorsed restriction. Herein lie the roots of our contemporary polarized condition. Critical race theorists contend that white ethnics only ‘became white' when they became useful to the WASP majority. Even Bill Clinton, a southern Protestant whose Irish heritage is undocumented, latched on to the idea that his Irish forebears ‘became' white. Irish Catholics in the north, some claim, were important allies of southern whites in the struggle against Yankee republicanism, so southerners embraced the Irish.60 I'm less convinced. The Irish, Jews and Italians may not have been part of a narrower WASP ‘us', but they were perceived as racially white, thus part of a pan-ethnic ‘us'. This entitled them to opportunities not available to African- or Asian Americans. Post-1960s intermarriage led to an extension of American majority ethnic boundaries from WASP to white but the foundations for expansion were already in place. From the 1960s on, the religious marker of dominant ethnicity came to be redefined from Protestant to ‘Judaeo-Christian'. This chapter underscores several aspects of American ethnic history that are relevant today. First, that the US, like most European nations, has had an ethnic majority since Independence. Second, that the Anglo-Protestant majority underwent a Whiteshift in the mid-twentieth century which permitted it to absorb Catholics and Jews, members of groups once viewed as outsiders. Finally, certain ethnic groups – notably Anglo-Protestants and African-Americans – have become symbolically intertwined with American nationhood. Two thirds of Americans are not members of these groups, yet many recognize them as ethno-traditional: part of what makes the nation distinct. On the right, an ethno-traditional nationalism focused on protecting the white Anglo heritage is emerging as an important force in American politics. Culture is not ethnicity and the two have too often been conflated. Even if white culture remains the default mode, ethno-cultural decline may proceed apace. There are two separate ethno-cultural dynamics, white ethnic decline and the attenuation of the white tradition in American national identity. Only whites will be concerned with the former, but conservative-minded minorities may be attached to white ethno-traditions of nationhood. That is, they will wish to slow changes to the America ‘they know'. Where conservatives seek to preserve the status quo, which might be multiracial, authoritarians always prefer less diversity and dissent. Conservatives are not the same as authoritarians. For instance, authoritarians dislike inequality – a form of economic diversity – thus may find themselves on the left Electoral maps based on aggregate county results matched to census data offered the first snapshot of the social drivers of Trump, and it was apparent that education, not income, best predicted Trump success. Still, at first glance, maps reinforce stereotypes like the urban–rural divide. As with Brexit, income is correlated with education, but there are many wealthy people – think successful plumber – with few qualifications. Similarly, many resemble struggling artists, possessing degrees but little money. When you control for education, income has no effect on whether a white person voted for, or supports, Trump. Being less well-off produces an effect on Trump voting only when authoritarian and conservative values are held constant – and even then has a much smaller impact than values. Education is the best census indicator because it reflects people's subjective worldview, not just their material circumstances. Researchers find that teenagers with more open and exploratory psychological orientations self-select into university. This, much more than what people learn at university, makes them more liberal. Median education level offers a window onto the cultural values of a voting district, which is why it correlates best with Trump's vote share. In American exit polls, Trump won whites without college degrees 67–28, compared to 49–45 for whites with degrees. The changing racial demographics of America could permit the Democrats to consistently win first the presidential, then congressional, elections. Alternatively, the Republican establishment may be able to install a pro-immigration primary candidate. But is this a solution? With no federal outlet for white identity concerns or ethno-traditional nationalism, and with a return to policies of multiculturalism and high immigration which are viewed as a threat to these identities, it's possible the culturally conservative section of the US population could start viewing the government as an enemy. This is an old trope in American history and could pose a security problem. It is also how violent ethnic conflict sometimes ignites. For instance, the British-Protestant majority in Northern Ireland, where parties run on ethnic lines, meant Irish Catholics lost every election in the province between 1922 and the abolition of the Northern Ireland provincial government in 1972. This lack of political representation produced alienation which helped foment the civil war in 1969. What happens if rural and red-state America is permanently frozen out of power when it considers itself the repository of authentic Americanism? [EUROPE:] Liberals fought against the ‘normalization' of the far right, but with rising populist-right totals and coalition arithmetic pulling towards partnership it was only a question of time before the consensus gave way. The anti-racist norm against voting for the far right began to erode and centrist parties started adopting their policies. Elite obstruction may actually have contributed to an angrier anti-elite mood, recruiting yet more voters to the far-right banner. The anti-racist taboo against them has weakened but remains: more voters express strong anti-immigration views than are willing to vote far right.4 Yet, as I explain in chapter 9, the higher the populist right's vote share, the more the taboo erodes. This eases their path to a higher total when conditions permit, setting in motion a self-fulfilling spiral. Economic rationales frequently disguise underlying psychological drivers. For instance, in small opt-in samples on Prolific Academic, one group of white Republican voters scored the problem of ‘unchecked urban sprawl' a 51 out of 100, but another group of white Republicans who saw the question as ‘unchecked urban sprawl caused by immigration' scored it 74/100 (italics added for emphasis). Likewise, among a sample of white British Brexit voters, the problem of ‘pressure on council housing' scored a 47/100 but ‘immigrants putting pressure on council housing' was rated 68/100. In both cases, it logically cannot be the case that the immigration-driven portion of the problem of urban sprawl or pressure on council housing is more important than the problem itself. Thus what's driving opposition to immigration must be something prior to these material concerns. Likewise, the large-sample, representative British Election Study shows that concerns over the cultural and economic effects of immigration are tightly correlated. This suggests opposition to immigration comes first (Jonathan Haidt's unconscious ‘elephant' moves us to act) and various rationalizations like pressure on public services follow (Haidt's conscious ‘rider' telling us a story about why we acted as we did).17 But rationales matter. If a morally acceptable rationale is not there, this inhibits a party's ability to articulate its underlying anti-immigration grievances. This is why restrictionists tend to don the cloak of economic rationalization. The idea that the country has a traditional ethnic composition which people are attached to – what I term ethno-traditional nationalism – and which should not change too quickly, is viewed as beyond the limits of acceptable debate. This is a pity, because the ‘legitimate' arguments stigmatize minorities and are often racist in a way the ‘illegitimate' arguments about wanting to slow cultural loss are not. Only when the latter is taken to the extreme of wanting to bar certain groups or repatriate immigrants do they become racist. Rising diversity polarizes people by psychological outlook and reorients party platforms. As countries ethnically change, green parties move to capture cosmopolitan liberals and the populist right targets conservatives and authoritarians.88 While attitude liberalization did throw up cultural debates over religion, gay marriage and traditional values, these are on their way to becoming marginal in Europe as liberal attitudes attain mass acceptance. The legalization of drugs and the question of how best to address crime are live social issues, but neither promises the same radical transformation of society as ethnic change. Therefore it is ethno-demographic shifts which are rotating European societies away from a dominant left–right economic orientation to a globalist–nationalist cultural axis. The West is becoming less like homogeneous South Korea, where foreign policy and economic divisions dominate, and more like South Africa, where ethnicity is the main political division.89 When a regalizing order fails to make a charge of deviance stick, the norm begins to unwind, leading to a period of intense cultural contestation. Competing groups police norm boundaries and marginalize deviants who are seen to have violated their community's sacred values. I maintain we are currently in such a period, in which hegemonic liberal norms known as ‘political correctness' are being challenged by both populists and centrists, some of whom are trying to install new social norms, notably those defining Muslims and cosmopolitans as deviant. Fascism and socialism lost out after the Second World War, but what of the victor, liberalism? The Allies' victory did enlarge and protect the scope of negative liberty. But alongside this success a positive liberalism was smuggled in which advocated individuality and cosmopolitanism over community. Most, myself included, value individual autonomy, but one has to recognize that not all share this aim. Someone who prefers to wear a veil or dedicate their lives to religion is making a communitarian choice which negative liberalism respects but positive liberalism (whether of the modernist left or burqa-banning right) does not. Expressive individualism advocates that we channel our authentic inner nature, or what H. G. Wells or Henri Bergson termed our life force, unconstrained by tradition or reason. Aesthetically, it tended towards what the influential American sociologist Daniel Bell terms modernism, rejecting Christian or national traditions while spurning established techniques and motifs.22 Not only were traditions overturned but esteem was accorded to those whose innovations shocked sensibilities and subverted historic narratives and symbols the most. Clearly something happened between the nation-evoking historical and landscape painting of a Delacroix or Constable in the early nineteenth century and Marcel Duchamp's urinal of 1917. This ‘something' was the rise, after 1880, of what Bell terms modernism and Anthony Giddens calls de-traditionalization. For Bell, modernism is the antinomian rejection of all cultural authority. For Giddens, the shift is from a past- to a future-orientation and involves a decline in existential security.23 For Bell, modernism replaces contemplation of external reality and tradition with sensation and immediacy.26 The desire to seek out new and different experiences elevates novelty and diversity into cardinal virtues of the new positive liberalism. To favour tradition over the new, homogeneity over diversity, is to be reactionary. Left-modernism continually throws up new movements such as Surrealism or Postmodernism in its quest for novelty and difference. The shock of the new is accompanied by a cosmopolitan pastiche of borrowings from non-Western cultures, as with the Primitivism of Paul Gauguin. Yet there is a tension between the expressive-individualist and egalitarian strands of left-modernism. Gauguin, for example, who considered himself a cosmopolite defending Tahitian sexual freedom against the buttoned-down West, stands accused by the New Left of cultural appropriation, colonialism, orientalism and patriarchy. The social penetration of left-modernist ideas would take a great leap forward only in the 1960s as television and university education soared. In America, the share of 18- to 24-year-olds in College increased from 15 per cent in 1950 to a third in 1970. Given the large postwar ‘baby-boom' generation, this translated into a phenomenal expansion of universities. The growth of television was even more dramatic: from 9 per cent penetration in American homes in 1950 to 93 per cent by 1965.41 The New York, Hollywood and campus-based nodes in this network allowed liberal sensibilities to spread from a small coterie of aficionados to a wider public. Rising affluence may also have played a part in creating a social atmosphere more conducive to liberalism. All told, these ingredients facilitated a marked liberal shift across a wide range of attitudes measured in social surveys from the mid-1960s: gender roles, racial equality, sexual mores and religion – with the effects most apparent in the postwar Baby Boom generation.42 Since so much of the debate around the boundaries of the permissible revolves around racism, we need a rigorous – rather than political – definition of the concept. It's very important to specify clearly, using analytic political theory and precise terminology, why certain utterances or actions are racist. Only in this manner can we defend a racist taboo. I define racism as (a) antipathy to racial or pan-ethnic outgroups, defined as communities of birth; (b) the quest for race purity; or (c) racial discrimination which results in a violation of citizens' right to equal treatment before the law. The problem is that left-modernism has established racial inequality as an outrage rather than one dimension – and not generally the most important – of the problem of inequality. If racial inequality is one facet of inequality, it should be considered alongside other aspects such as income, health, weight or age. To focus the lion's share of attention on race and gender disparities entrenches ‘inequality privilege', wherein those who suffer from low-visibility disadvantages are treated less fairly than those who fit totemic left-modernist categories. A white male who is short, disabled, poor and unattractive will understandably resent the fact his disadvantage is downplayed while he is pilloried for his privilege. In effect, the 2010s represent a renewed period of left-modernist innovation, incubated by near-universal left–liberal hegemony among non-STEM faculty and administrators. Most academics are moderate liberals rather than radical leftists, but in the absence of conservative or libertarian voices willing to stand against left-modernist excess, liberal saturation reduced resistance to the japes of extremist students and professors. Social media and progressive online news acted as a vector, carrying the new left-modernist awakening off-campus much more effectively than was true during the first wave of political correctness of the late 1980s and 1990s. Angela Nagle finds that leftist radicalism emerged first, attracting a far-right response. One of the first to trace the emergence of this polarizing dynamic, she shows how, in left-modernist online chat groups, those who stake outlandish claims about white male oppression win moral and social plaudits. These in turn are lampooned by the alt-right, who leverage left-modernist excesses to legitimate blatant racism and sexism. This begins a cycle of polarizing rhetorical confrontation. Alt-right message boards adopt a playful countercultural style, emphasizing their rebellion against a stifling, puritanical-left establishment.11 Whereas bohemians like the Young Intellectuals of the 1910s and 1920s lauded African-American jazz and immigrant conviviality as a riposte to an uptight Prohibitionist Anglo-Protestant culture, the alt-right champions white maleness as a liberation from the strictures of the puritanical left. Hamid argues that being attached to an ethnic group and looking out for its interests is qualitatively different from hating or fearing outgroups. This is a distinction social psychologists recognize, between love for one's group and hatred of the other. As Marilyn Brewer writes in one of the most highly cited articles on prejudice: The prevailing approach to the study of ethnocentrism, ingroup bias, and prejudice presumes that ingroup love and outgroup hate are reciprocally related. Findings from both cross-cultural research and laboratory experiments support the alternative view that ingroup identification is independent of negative attitudes toward outgroups.54 If politics in the West is ever to return to normal rather than becoming even more polarized, white interests will need to be discussed. I realize this is very controversial for left-modernists. Yet not only is white group self-interest legitimate, but I maintain that in an era of unprecedented white demographic decline it is absolutely vital for it to have a democratic outlet. Marginalizing race puritanism is important, but muzzling relaxed versions of white identity sublimates it in a host of negative ways. For example, when whites are concerned about their decline but can't express it, they may mask their concern as worry about the nation-state. It's more politically correct to worry about Islam's challenge to liberalism and East European ‘cheap labour' in Britain than it is to say you are attached to being a white Brit and fear cultural loss. This means left-modernism has placed us in a situation where expressing racism is more acceptable than articulating racial self-interest. David Willetts, Minister of Education in David Cameron's Conservative government: The basis on which you can extract large sums of money in tax and pay it out in benefits is that most people think the recipients are people like themselves, facing difficulties which they themselves could face. If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask, ‘Why should I pay for them when they are doing things I wouldn't do?' This is America versus Sweden. You can have a Swedish welfare state provided that you are a homogeneous society with intensely shared values. In the US you have a very diverse, individualistic society where people feel fewer obligations to fellow citizens. Progressives want diversity but they thereby undermine part of the moral consensus on which a large welfare state rests.62 trying to reconstruct our racial categories from above through politics may be as difficult as trying to get people to unlearn the primary colours. This doesn't mean categories can't evolve, but it suggests the process is complex, evolutionary and bottom-up. As the median racial type changes, the boundaries of whiteness may expand because people judge categories based on the average type they encounter. Hispanics, like the Italians before them, may become part of the ethnic majority in the not-too-distant future. Many white Americans currently view those with Spanish surnames or Hispanic features as outsiders. A majority of Hispanics see themselves as white, but only 6 per cent of Hispanics who identify as white say they are accepted as such by American society. Even among those with just one Latino grandparent, 58 per cent identify as Hispanic.43 Yet this may change with increased intermarriage, cultural assimilation and the arrival of more culturally distant groups. Already, lighter-skinned Hispanics are more likely to vote Republican or live in the same neighbourhoods as whites.44 As group lines are blurred by intermarriage, ethnic boundaries may shift: Ramirez may be considered an Anglo-American on a par with De Niro. Hispanic surnames are unlikely to be ‘counter-entropic' barriers to assimilation. This assimilation process is a major reason why the centre-left writer John Judis revised his thesis that America's changing demographics will automatically produce Democratic victories in the future.45 When the criteria for defining who is in or out of the majority change, whole chunks of the population who are not of mixed origin – like the fully Irish John F. Kennedy – suddenly become part of the ethnic majority. The analogy would be if fully Hispanic or Asian Americans came to be viewed as white. I deem this unlikely, given the proximity to Mexico and the established nature of the racial categories noted by Richard Dawkins. What seems more likely is that the high rate of intermarriage between Latinos and whites, as well as the rising share of native English-speakers, Protestants or seculars among them, may expand the boundaries of whiteness to include those of mixed parentage. That is, those with some European background who are culturally assimilated and have Anglo first names – but who have Spanish surnames or a Hispanic appearance – may be accepted as white.

Grandson of Diamond Jim Moran was a restauranteur in New Orleans in 40's & 50”s tells us what comes to mind when hears the word food, & his jobs as a child working in families many restaurants. Bobby has served in the US Marines, Army National Guard and Air National Guard. Talks about being a lead mechanic & what that position entails. Why did he write the book? “Food for Kings”?How come Diamond Jim was forced to shine shoes & why he changed his last name from Brocato to Moran. A story about getting a tip from a connected guy to stop an assassination on politician Huey Long. Diamond Jim's sentencing for breaking the Volstead Act at the Ming Toy Night Club raid in 1930. Jim had big names as friends such as…listen to show to find out! What was all included in his diamond collection & what is its worth? Being called before the Senator Kefauver's Crime Investigating Committee for slot machine business which was ran by Frank Costello. A story behind the horse race named: Booby Brocato who was the grandson of Man O' War.  How the tradition of placing diamond rings in meatballs at Diamond Jim's restaurants began & how long it went for. Listen for size of diamonds placed in the meatballs. We go thru the list of restaurants that were in the Brocato family and what each one was about. We close the show by learning how Bobby Jr became interested in his grandfather's life and why. Links:Get copy of Food for Kings: (Ebay-Cheaper than Amazon): https://www.ebay.com/itm/DIAMOND-JIM-STORIES-PHOTOS-RECIPES-OF-LA-LOUISIANE-IN-NEW-ORLEANS-1920-1980s/184411678402?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160727114228%26meid%3Dc8741d413278443398f7f62cfaf490ad%26pid%3D100290%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D2%26sd%3D184449686621%26itm%3D184411678402%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2060778&_trksid=p2060778.c100290.m3507Kindle Version: https://www.amazon.com/Food-Kings-New-Orleans-Legend/dp/1795013354/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=food+for+kings&qid=1601330615&sprefix=food+forVideo Trailer of Diamond Jim's Life: https://drive.google.com/file/d/118UKbmtm083Pqf9jcAh7wcOk_b2kl_ds/view?ts=5f626813Picture of DJ with his grille: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/#label/Guest+Photos/FMfcgxwJXxwXKxkQDNXFKnZPbvrLCMpn?projector=1Picture of DJ and Rocky Marciano: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/#all/FMfcgxwJXxwXKxkrVqfzzbQjBbWNmnnB?projector=1Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beforethelightspodcast/Support show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beforethelightsExtra 5:How much time Bobby has spent in Sicily studying his families historyWhat he learned about his families heritageWhere those from Contessa Entellina migrated to in US?Learn about Creole Gumbo & Diamond Jim's Chocolate CheesecakeSupport the show (https://www.beforethelightspod.com/member-areas)

By 1914, the temperance movement had achieved significant gains in its goal to outlaw the sale of alcohol in the United States. But every push for nationwide prohibition had failed. Would the war--and the accompanying anti-German hysteria--give the Anti-Saloon League enough power to cross the finish line? Was a golden age of sobriety waiting on the other side? The Temperance Movement began in the 1840s and gained significant momentum through the rest of the century. Women were major leaders in the movement, with many pledging to never let the lips that touch liquor touch theirs. Unfortunately, this seemed to have little effect. In the second half of the 19th century, an influx of immigrants from beer-loving countries, including Germany and Ireland, dramatically increased the consumption of beer in the United States. German brewers arrived to meet the demand. The most successful among these brewers was Adolphus Busch. As owner of Anheuser-Busch, he built a massive, vertically integrated operation that controlled every aspect of beer production and distribution, from mining the coal that fueled the brewery to building the refrigerated railcars to deliver the beer to Anheuser-Busch owned saloons. Saloons were more than watering holes. They were hubs for the entire community and played important roles in the lives of patrons, especially when those patrons were recent immigrants. Pictured here is a saloon in Wisconsin. Notice the little boy sitting at the table with his own beer glass. Boys often accompanied their fathers to saloons. Women and girls, however, were not welcome, and a woman who stepped in a saloon ruined her reputation. Here's another saloon, this one from Michigan. In a saloon, men could meet friends, participate in local politics, eat a free lunch, take a bath, find a job, get his mail and pawn his watch. By 1900, most saloons were "tied houses." That is, they were tied to, if not actually owned by, breweries. In exchange for agreeing to sell only one brand of beer, a barkeeper would receive cash for his licensing fees, an inventory of glassware, and the furnishings for the saloon, including the pool tables and the mirrors on the walls. This photo shows a Miller bar in Chicago. Temperance activists believed saloons were evil through and through. This cartoon, probably from the mid- to late-19th century, shows children desperately calling for the father, who stands in his natty coat and top hat at the bar. The bartender is a grinning skull, and another skull atop crossed bottles decorates in the bar. In the background, a brawl has broken out. Clearly, nothing good happens at a saloon! Women's rights activists in particular believed that alcohol was the cause of domestic violence. In this illustration, a drunken man takes a swing at his wife as his children cling to his legs. Many woman suffragists believed that prohibition would stop violence in the home. The Anti-Saloon League became a force to be reckoned with by organizing all of the anti-alcohol groups. The League was led by Wayne Wheeler, a genial midwesterner that author Daniel Okrent noted resembled Ned Flanders. In fact, Wheeler was a passionate, focused organizer with a backbone of steel who could make or break political careers. Breweries tried reframe beer as a health-giving, nourishing beverage. The Saskatoon Brewing Company tried to sell their beer as "liquid bread." Knickerbocker Beer ran ads declaring "Beer is Food" and claiming that beer was not only "a wonderful aid to digestion" and a "valuable source of energy" but also "a mainstay of practical temperance." An Anti-Prohibition coalition produced this ad, showing a fat and happy baby drinking a stein of beer. No one was convinced by any of these campaigns. Once the United States entered World War I, a new argument began to be made against the alcohol industry: it wasted food and fuel. Americans were called upon to save food for the military, as well as for the British, French and Belgians. The Anti-Saloon League argued that the alcohol industry wasted tons of food and fuel. In this cartoon, Uncle Sam puts up posters calling to save food and fuel while the saloon tosses out barrels not only of goods but also of "wasted manhood." "Non-essential" was an insult during the war--anything non-essential to winning the war was useless and to be despised. Here a woman clad in an American flag hurls the word at a fat man identified as "Booze." In late 1917, riding the wave of anti-alcohol sentiment, the Dry alliance pushed the 18th Amendment through Congress. It went to the states for ratification. The Anti-Saloon League coordinated the ratification fight with an attack on the United States Brewers Association and an immigrant association it had long backed, the German American Alliance. The League convinced the Senate, and the American people, that the Alliance and the Brewers were under the control of the Kaiser and enemies of America. A Senate sub-committee investigated the charges and seemed to prove all sorts of underhanded dealings. It's true that the Brewers had played dirty by bribing politicians and and paying off newspapers, but their aim had been to stop Prohibition, not lost the war to Germany. No charges ever came out of the subcommittee, but it didn't matter. Americans had found the Alliance and the Brewers guilty in the court of public opinion. In this heady atmosphere, the 18th Amendment was rapidly ratified by all but two states on January 17, 1919. In one year, the amendment would go into effect. The most important job for Congress was to pass legislation defining the terms of the 18th Amendment (what constituted an "intoxicating beverage"?) and creating enforcement mechanisms. The man responsible for the bill was Andrew John Volstead, a man so strait-laced he did yardwork in a coat and tie. Volstead's bill passed in October, but then Wilson vetoed it. Americans were shocked. Wilson had never even committed on Prohibition. Congress, fed up with the president after the long and ugly League of Nations fight, overturned the veto two hours later. The Volstead Act called for the creation of a new Prohibition Unit to stamp out illegal alcohol. But the agents were to be paid measly salaries and the majority lacked any law enforcement training or experience. They were, inevitably, corrupt. Criminals also spent 1919 getting ready for Prohibition. Arnold Rothstein, who providing the funds to throw the 1919 World Series, organized a comprehensive smuggling operation to bring liquor from Europe to the United States. He was only one of many crooks and bootleggers getting their ducks in a row for the following year. Brewers had to find a way to make do. Anheuser-Busch sold malt extract, brewer's yeast, and Bevo, a soft drink. It was not a success. Companies also found creative ways to exploit loopholes in the Volstead Act. It was perfectly legal, for example, for wineries to condense grape juice down to semi-solid block known as a "grape brick." These bricks were sold along with careful instructions on how not to mix the juice with water to make wine. You wouldn't want people to accidentally break the law, now would you? Homebrew kits came with similar instructions. Moonshine operations sprang up across the country, with different regions developing their own recipes and reputations for quality or lack thereof. Pictured here are stills seized from moonshiners in Colorado. The metal was sold for scrap. It's likely by the time this photo was taken, the moonshiners had already begun their next batch. As the clock wound down to January 17, liquor stores began selling out their inventory. People stockpiled as much as they could afford--since, as far as they knew, alcohol would be illegal forever in the United States. Here a line extends out of the store as men line up to buy a last few bottles. It was going to be a long, dry time. Music from this Episode "The Lips that Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSmfpm_y39Y)" by Sam Booth and George T. Evans, sung by the Women's Choir at Concordia College on February 2016 as part of the exhibit "Wet and Dry" at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County. "Under the Anheuser-Busch," (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOxrFGXQrzY), music by Harry von Tilzer, words by Andrew B. Serling, sung by Billy Murray. Charted at #2 in 1904. "Close Up the Booze Shop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awHPcvRN-XA)," music by Charles H. Gabriel, words by Harry Edwards, sung by the Rose Ensemble on their 2014 album "A Toast to Prohibition: All-American Songs of Temperance & Temptation. "Molly and the Baby, Don't You Know, (https://archive.org/details/78_molly-and-the-baby-dont-you-know_homer-rodeheaver-h-s-taylor-j-b-herbert_gbia0028028a)" by H.S. Taylor and J.B. Herbert, sung by Homer Rodeheaver. Recorded in 1916. "Alcoholic Blue (https://archive.org/details/78_alcoholic-blues_billy-murray-edward-laska-albert-von-tilzer_gbia0095847a)s," by Edward Laska and Albert von Tilzer, sung by Billy Murray. Recorded in 1919. "How Are You Goin' to Wet Your Whistle? (When the Whole Darn World Goes Dry) (https://archive.org/details/78_how-are-you-goin-to-wet-your-whistle-when-the-whole-darn-world-goes-dry_billy-m_gbia0015508b)" by Francis Byrne, Frank McIntyre and Percy Wenrich, sung by Billy Murray. Recorded in 1919. "You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XchfsEPqr-w)," music by Irving Berlin, words by Irving Berlin and Rennold Wolf. Sung by Ann Wilson with piano by Frederick Hodges at the Annual West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, California, 2008. "I'll See You in C-U-B-A, (https://archive.org/details/78_ill-see-you-in-c-u-b-a_jack-kaufman-berlin_gbia0002852b)" by Irving Berlin, sung by Jack Kaufman. Recorded in 1920. "A Toast to Prohibition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiU72oJsNhc&app=desktop)," by Irving Berlin, sung by the Rose Ensemble on their 2014 album "A Toast to Prohibition: All-American Songs of Temperance & Temptation.

Con il termine proibizionismo s'intende per antonomasia il periodo fra il 1919 e il 1933 in cui negli Stati Uniti d'America, tramite il XVIII emendamento e il Volstead Act, venne sancito il bando sulla fabbricazione, vendita, importazione e trasporto di alcool[1]; il proibizionismo in questo senso è conosciuto anche come The Noble Experiment --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/claudia-diletta-milioni-guerriero8/support

While more famous for being the heartland of country music, Tennessee actually has a thriving wine industry. The Volunteer State is home to one of the largest wine industries in the American Southeast, with just shy of 50 vineyards and tasting rooms. Our wine focus for the state is the White Zinthiana Blush from Amber Falls Winery, located in Hampshire, Tennessee. This wine is made from 100% Zinthiana, which is a cross between the Cynthiana clone of Norton, and Zinfandel, recently released from UC Davis. This wine, as you may also have guessed from the name, is a Southeastern take on the whole "White Zinfandel" phenomenon of semi-sweet pink wines known as blushes. (A general rule of thumb: pink wines with under 1% residual sugar are labeled as rosé; anything over that tends to get labeled as a blush). Zinthiana is a varietal that I had never even heard of, and it is always fun to meet a new grape; I'm kind of boggled at how to classify it, because while it is technically a hybrid cross, it's not quite like some of the other hybrid varietals we've looked at over the course of this podcast, like those in our previous Iowa episode for example. The state of Tennessee was home to a reportedly vibrant wine industry in the 19th century that was greatly impacted when that old bugaboo and nemesis, the Volstead Act, was introduced in the early 20th century. However, unlike in much of the Southeast, amateur winemaking and grape growing continued to thrive in the region, which allowed for a renaissance to begin starting in 1980 with both Highland Manor Winery and Tiegs Winery opening in that year. In 1985, the state legislature passed the Tennessee Viticultural Policy act, which greatly assured the stable development of the industry; perhaps this state support is why Tennessee has so many more wineries than most of its neighbors. Like elsewhere in the American South, humidity and associated grapevine diseases are the major challenges associated with viticulture in the region, so many of the varietals grown here are growing French hybrid and native grape varietals, but the state does have some Vinifera varietals grown in higher elevations. So far the only AVA in Tennessee is the small portion of the Mississippi Delta AVA that extends into the southwestern part of the state. I acquired this bottle from the winery website, myself, for this podcast.  We actually acquired two bottles: one for Gary and one for me.  If you like this podcast, Gary and I would greatly appreciate it if you rated us on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use, and please do remember that we have a Patreon which can be found at https://www.patreon.com/TheMakeAmericaGrapeAgainPodcast. (I know that I haven't been terribly good at putting things on Patreon, but I promise I will try harder for season two. Speaking of, while we have indeed completed fifty states, there are still three more episodes coming to wrap up season one, so we are not done yet!)

Hello, and welcome to another splendid episode of the Make America Grape Again Podcast, centered around the Magnolia State: Mississippi. In this episode, we drink the 2018 Delta Dry mead from Queen's Reward Meadery, located in Tupelo, Mississippi. Now, there's a fair bit of argument in the drinking community on whether or not mead truly counts as a style of wine, but I'm going to err on the side of the TTB on this one, which defines mead and honey wine as being the same thing. And even if you are a purist, and feel mead should truly be its own entity, the fact of the matter is that the 2018 Delta Dry is technically what is known as a pyment; a mead (or if you want to be super pedantic, a melomel) made from honey and grapes. In this case, the Riesling in the Delta Dry was sourced from Oregon, while the honey was local wildflower honey sourced from just down the road.  The grapes and honey were fermented together to produce this beverage. So... what do these terms all mean, anyway?  Before we cover the history of the industry in Mississippi, let's clear some mead terminology up. Mead, which etymologically comes from the Old English meodu, is an alcoholic beverage created by fermenting honey with water, often with the additions of various fruits, spices, grains, or even hops.  The key defining characteristic of mead is that the majority of the beverage's fermentable sugar is derived from honey.  That all being said, there are different styles of mead under that umbrella. Cyser, for example, is a mead made with honey and apples or pears. A mead that uses spices or herbs (or both) is often referred to as a metheglin. As mentioned above, meads made with fruits other than apples and pears can be referred to as a melomel, and a mead specifically made with grapes can often be known as a pyment. As if that wasn't enough, Wikipedia has an even bigger list... suffice to say, Mead is rather more complicated than it seems at first glance.  Anyway, I digress: onto history. At one point in time, Mississippi ranked rather high in terms of American viticultural production. Muscadine grapes were grown in many locations throughout the state, but the dramatic loss of life from the Civil War, combined with a statute enacted in 1907 which banned the manufacture and sale of Mississippi Wine, meant that the industry went into a nosedive. Due to the long-lasting effect prohibition created in the deep south, Mississippi was the last state to repeal the Volstead Act in 1966, and many counties in the state remain dry through present day.  This means the wine industry in Mississippi still has yet to recover. Along with Queen's Reward Meadery, the state has only three other wineries: Almarla Vineyards, Gulf Coast Winery, and Old South Winery. The State does have one AVA: The Mississippi Delta AVA, formed in 1984, is shared with Mississippi's border states of Tennessee and Louisiana. However, this AVA has not attracted any large-scale viticultural endeavors as of yet. This is due to an additional factor along with the long history of Prohibition in the region: climate. Mississippi's location, between 30 degrees N and 35 degrees N in latitude, produces a sub-tropical climate with long, humid summers and short, mild winters. This means that Fungal diseases like mildew and Pierce disease are often widespread. In addition, unpredictable weather patterns stemming from the proximity of the state to the Gulf of Mexico also present a large risk for growers. The unpredictable Mississippi climate makes it difficult to grow most varieties of grapes, other than those within the Muscadine family--which are often not associated with "fine" wine production. I acquired this bottle online through the meadery's website, specifically for this podcast.  In addition, we were lucky enough to catch Geoff Carter, the mead-maker and co-owner on the phone for this episode, to answer a few of our questions.

Detroit entered Prohibition on a war footing, however, it wasn't to last too long. Major changes are afoot, as business minded gangsters find a shaky, but peaceful footing. Plus we explore the biggest non-American liquor supplier that was to last throughout the entire experiment, that was handled by the Volstead Act.

The Volstead Act was repealed 85 years ago, allowing Americans from Seattle to Key West to imbibe legally. Idaho Matters looks at the impact of Prohibition in the Gem State and the revelry that followed its repeal.