When I was growing up one of the many cultural stereotypes floating around was that of the Chinese of a certain era wearing long pigtails and funny shoes laying around in opium dens stoned out of their gourds and smoking long thin funny looking pipes. (Excepting, of course, Fu Manchu, who was above all that.) To the extent that there was any basis for that, this is how it came about.

The Second Opium War was something of a follow-up to the first, so let's start there. Britain, in the guise of The British East India Company was running a trade deficit with China, buying up silks, tea, china and other commodities with hard currency, silver. They decided to ameliorate this by seriously ramping up thir opium production in India and shipping it off to China or thereabouts, where they would sell it to smugglers who would smuggle it into China. This was done because opium was illegal in China, but, face it, that was Chinese law, and hence of no import to the mighty British East India Company. Besides, there was money to be made, and money always trumps legal niceties, does it not. In 1834 China cracked down and started to seize and destroy all the opium onshore, including that which was foreign owned and a small skirmish between British and Chinese ships occurred followed by the arrival of a serious British naval force in 1840. The treaty of Nanking in 1842 saw China Cede Hong Kong and other territory, agree to pay reparations for the destroyed Opium and establish some treaty ports open to western traders.

BUT, opium was still illegal in China, even though the opium trade resumed and expanded. In 1853 Ye Mingchen was appointed China's Imperial Commissioner, a man who was determined to end the opium trade. In 1856 he seized a British ship, the British governor of Hong Kong (now British, remember) contacted the Local British Fleet and it was on. On this date in 1857 the UK and France declared war on China, and the US and Russia eventually got in on the action. In 1858, the Treaty of Tientsin, among other things, legalized opium in China. This was the beginning of China's Century of Humiliation, and the super civilized Drug Lords of the west all got rich.

In 1620 some settler colonists, later called Pilgrims, landed in the future U.S.A.. They were Puritans who were separatists. Later, in 1630 large numbers of outright Puritans traveled to the future U.S.A. As a young child educated in said U.S.A. I heard a lot about these Puritans, but not of their cultural kinship to, or really the existence of, the evil rat bastard Cromwell and his Roundheads. Ah well. It was a while before I fully understood and appreciated that they gave us such words and concepts as puritanical. They and those of like minds had an enormous influence of the eventual U.S.A., starting from earliest colonial times right up through today. At all levels of government from towns and townships to the Federal Government itself, there has been a vast amount of effort and energy put into passing or trying to pass Blue Laws and subsequently trying to defend them as they were challenged on Constitutional grounds. Many have been tossed out or have fallen by the wayside but a great many are still with us. One such was the Comstock Law, passed in 1873 which made it illegal to send "obscene literature and articles of immoral use" through the mail, by common carrier, or over the internet.

The overwhelming drive of certain groups and persons to regulate the so-called "morals" of others, generally by forcing an adoption by all citizens and residents of various strictures and behaviors that they believe are somehow mandated by their god. The laws trying to bring this about really violate the freedom of religion clause of the first amendment because there are no rational non-religious bases for their imposition. Be that as it may, the courts too often give them a pass if no specific god or sect is named. In addition, many specifically target speech and hence violate the freedom of speech clause of the first amendment. Though the Constitution clearly says "Congress shall pass no law...", the courts consistently read that as saying Congress shall only pass such laws as we approve of..., making it impossible to rely upon the literal wording of the Constitution as amended. The courts have gone so far as to arbitrarily and capriciously bifurcte speech into Protected Speech and Unprotected Speech and have then classified Obscenity as Unprotected Speech. In so doing, they have not only wandered far afield of the plain language of the Constitution as amended but have violated another underpinning of the rule of law, intelligibility, even though said doctrine is at least in part of their own making.

What the hell is obscenity. We have putatively come a long way from Potter Stewart's "I know it when I see it", but in reality, not so much, only as far as "some folks know it when they see it". That is not an improvement. Under U.S. law a law is unconstitutionally vague if a person cannot tell from reading it whether a specific contemplated act or action is permitted or forbidden. This is not some sbstruse legalism, even Wikipedia knows this:

The following pronouncement of the void for vagueness doctrine was made by Justice Sutherland in Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926):

[T]he terms of a penal statute [...] must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine]

The current definition of obscenity again cribbed from da wiki, comes from Miller v California and is:

Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[4] specifically defined by applicable state law,
Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value-

In short, this is all subjective and beyond that, relies on local community standards. One cannot know in advance what community's standards might be applied nor what in the hell they might be. In all likelihood, they will vary from jury to jury even within any so-called local community. This is simply putting lipstick on Potter Stewart's Pig. The simple fact is that there is no such thing as obscenity and we should not try to outlaw it any more than we should outlaw mowing your lawn on Sunday, failing to attend church or "swearing", whatever the hell that may be.

On this day in history:

1857 – France and the United Kingdom declared war on China., starting the Second Opium War.

1859 – The two-day Great Slave Auction, the largest such auction in United States history, concluded.

1861 - Alexander II of Russia freed the serfs

1873 - The US enacted the Comstock Law making it illegal to send any "obscene literature and articles of immoral use" through the mail, today including crime-inciting matter, or certain abortion-related matter.

1875 - Bizet's opera Carmen was first performed

1891 - The Shoshone National Forest was established, the first such forest in the world

1918 - Russia signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, quitting WW I and ceding BElarus and Ukraine to Germany

1938 - Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia

1980 - The USS Nautilus was decommissioned

1986 - Australia became fully independent ot the UK

2005 - The first solo non-stop flight around the world without refueling

2005 - New Zealand became the first nation to have all of its highest offices filled by women

Some people who were born on this day:

To do what is forbidden always has its charms, because we have an indistinct apprehension of something arbitrary and tyrannical in the prohibition.

~~ William Godwin

1756 - William Godwin, journalist and author, utilitarian and anarchist
1945 - Georg Cantor, mathematician and philosopher, did seminal work on set theory and infinities
1847 - Alexander Graham Bell, engineer, invented the telephone
1873 - William Green, union leader
1882 - Charles Ponzi, businessman, financier, investment advisor
1893 - Beatrice Wood, artist, potter, dadaist, magazine founder and editor
1913 - Margaret Bonds, pianist and composer

1916 - Paul Halmos, mathematician and logician
1917 – Sameera Moussa, atomic physicist
1918 – Arthur Kornberg, American biochemist
1923 - Doc Watson, singer, songwriter, and musician

1934 - Jimmy Garrison, Bassist

1941 - Mike Pender, singer, songwriter, and guitarist, searcher

1947 – Jennifer Warnes, singer, songwriter, and producer

1948 - Snowy White, guitarist

1948 - Steve Wilhite, computer scientist, invented the GIF format

Some people who died on this day:

"I get all 'het up' over living forever in a 'man's world'"

~~ Katharine Wright Haskell

1929 - Katharine Wright Haskell, educator and suffragist who also worked closely with her brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright and was one of the first women to fly in an airplane. Who knew?
1949 – Katherine Sleeper Walden, journalist,conservationist,and environmental activist
1983 – Hergé, author and illustrator, created tintin
1990 – Charlotte Moore Sitterly, astronomer
1993 - Carlos Montoya, guitarist and composer

2008 - Norman Smith, drummer, producer, and engineer

2012 - Ronnie Montrose, guitarist, songwriter, and producer

2013 - Bobby Rogers, singer and songwriter, one of the miracles

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

World Wildlife Day
Canadian Bacon Day
Casimir Pulaski Day
National Mulled Wine Day (That's just so wrong, season wise)
Today Might or might not be Shrove Monday

Today's Tunes

Opium Wars

Comstock Law

New Zealand 03/03/05

Margaret Bonds

Doc Watson

Jimmy Garrison

Mike Pender

Jennifer Warnes:

Snowy White

Carlos Montoya

Norman Smith

Ronnie Montrose

Bobby Rogers

Bonus guitars:

tientos gitanos

farruca:

bulieras

malagueña

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

open thread, opium wars, Comstock Law, Doc Watson, Carlos Montoya