June 23, 2016 – Brexit: British People Vote to Leave the European Union

Brexit is a portmanteau of “British” and “exit”. In popular usage, it was derived by analogy from Grexit, referring to a hypothetical withdrawal of Greece from the eurozone (and possibly also the European Union, or EU).

In a referendum on June 23, 2016, 51.9% of the participating UK electorate voted to leave the EU; the turnout was 72.2%. England voted for Brexit, by 53.4% to 46.6%. Wales also voted for Brexit, with Leave getting 52.5% of the vote and Remain 47.5%. Scotland and Northern Ireland both backed staying in the EU. Scotland backed Remain by 62% to 38%, while 55.8% in Northern Ireland voted Remain and 44.2% Leave.

Results by region:
Blue: Leave
Gold: Remain

As Sam Knight in “The New Yorker Magazine” observed:

….the E.U., a vast supranational project …. had become a metaphor for a remote and unfair system for organizing people’s lives. But the decision presented a great democratic problem. Staying in the E.U. could mean only one thing, but there were any number of ways to leave. No country has ever left the E.U., and the states on its borders have a spectrum of relationships with the bloc.”

Britain, Europe’s financial center, joined the European Economic Community, as it was then known, in 1973. Since then, Britain imported around nineteen thousand European laws and regulations. Although populists called for the U.K. to “take back control,” the racial card of immigration played a large role.

In addition, a great deal of misinformation and false claims debunked here was disseminated to the electorate prior to the election, including:

1. ‘The money saved from leaving the EU will result in the NHS getting £350m a week’
2. ‘A free-trade deal with the EU will be ‘the easiest thing in human history’
3. ‘Two thirds of British jobs in manufacturing are dependent on demand from Europe’
4. ‘Turkey is going to join the EU and millions of people will flock to the UK’
5. ‘Brexit will lead to Scotland renewing calls for independence’
6. ‘Brexit does not mean the UK will leave the single market ‘

Moreover, a series of allegations regarding Russian influence over the vote were investigated, and some called for a new referendum. The London Observer reported that it reviewed documents suggesting there were multiple meetings between the leaders of the Leave.EU movement and high-ranking Russian officials between November 2015 and 2017, two of which were said to have been held the week that Leave.EU launched its official campaign. In addition, there are suggestions Russian money used as bribes to the Leave.EU leadership was involved.

Gary Barker – Credit: Archant, via The UK New European

An article from Britain by Louise Chunn on the psychology of those who accepted the lies about Brexit notes:

. . . many of those who were convinced to vote to leave EU did so because they want to believe that £350 million would be taken from our payments to that blood-sucking ‘European’ bureaucracy, and returned to feed our own ‘British’ NHS.They were also told that their vote would enable them to ‘Take Back Control’ —- apparently a slogan introduced to the campaign by hypnotist and self-help author Paul McKenna, who uses such techniques when hypnotising clients and in his best-selling books such I Can Make You Thin or I Can Make You Rich. People lapped up the sales pitches.”

David Cameron, the Conservative party Prime Minister who had called the referendum, resigned immediately. Theresa May, also a member of the Conservative Party, became the new Prime Minister twenty days after the British people voted to leave the European Union. Theresa May was against Brexit during the referendum campaign but afterward claimed she supported it because, she says, it was what the British people wanted (or in any event, thought they wanted).

David Cameron and Theresa May

In the U.K. there was chaos. As “The New Yorker” Magazine reported:

As Prime Minister, May immediately established two new government departments: Dexeu, to manage the Brexit process; and the Department of International Trade, to explore economic opportunities outside the E.U. Dexeu was given offices at 9 Downing Street, the former premises of the court of the Privy Council. In their first weeks, civil servants worked in the docks and on the benches of the old courtroom as they grappled with the scale of Brexit. ‘People were saying, ‘How does the U.K. fishing industry work? How does the U.K. automotive industry work?’ the senior official told me. ‘You were getting papers saying, ‘There are lots of fish in English waters.’ Literally, they were at the most basic level.’”

Joseph M. Hassett, author of a book about Yeats and his influence (Yeats Now: Echoing Into Life, 2020), noted that the morning after the UK electorate voted for “Brexit,” the line “The centre cannot hold” from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” “was tweeted or retweeted 499 times….”

Withdrawal from the European Union is governed by Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. Under the Article 50 invocation procedure, a member notifies the European Council, whereupon the EU is required to negotiate and conclude an agreement with [the leaving] State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the [European] Union. The negotiation period is limited to two years unless extended, after which the treaties cease to apply.

The UK Supreme Court ruled in January 2017 that the government needed parliamentary approval to trigger Article 50. Subsequently, the House of Commons overwhelmingly voted, on February 1, 2017, for a government bill authorizing the prime minister to invoke Article 50, and the bill passed into law as the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017. Theresa May then signed a letter invoking Article 50 on 28 March 2017, which was delivered on March 29 to the European Council President. The UK stopped being a member of the European Union (EU) on January 31, 2020.

As Euronews reported:

No sooner had negotiations begun on the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU, than the coronavirus pandemic effectively put a halt to proceedings. . . . Video connections are not seen by critics as a satisfactory substitute for face-to-face meetings, given the detail involved and the dozens of negotiators on each side.

Recent months have seen energies on both sides distracted by the pandemic, but very soon decisions will need to be taken on post-Brexit ties.”

You can keep up with Brexit-related news as it unfolds at the UK Telegraph Brexit site, here. Details of Brexit are still being hammered out for every aspect of life, such as revealed in this May 29, 2020 article:

The European Union will reject British demands for stronger legal protection for UK regional products such as Stilton cheese and Scottish whisky after the end of the Brexit transition period in trade negotiations next week.

The UK agreed to keep EU protections for delicacies like champagne and Parma ham in place and in perpetuity in negotiations over the Withdrawal Agreement – but failed to secure the same guarantees for British products in the EU.

While EU product protection is now enshrined in an international legally binding treaty, British products will only be protected under EU law if they remain on the EU’s register of Geographical Indications (GIs).”

You can learn more details about Brexit in a very informative FAQ from the BBC, here. There is also the latest news on Brexit from the New York Times as of May, 2021, here. This article from July 15, 2022 shows more trouble is ahead for Brexit, centering on the Ireland question.

April 23, 1516 – Duke of Bavaria Issues the Reinheitsgebot, or Beer Purity Law

William IV (1493 – 1550) was Duke of Bavaria from 1508 to 1550. The Duke was famous for promoting music and art, and also for regulating beer.

William IV, Duke of Bavaria, looking like he could use a beer, by Hans Wertinger

On this day in 1516 he introduced the “Reinheitsgebot,” or “German Beer Purity Law” for the brewing of Bavarian Beer. This law, the oldest food and beverage law in the world, restricted the ingredients of beer to water, barley, hops and nothing else. The 1516 law also set the price of beer (depending on the time of year and type of beer); limited the profits made by innkeepers; and made confiscation the penalty for making impure beer.

The BBC reports that the Purity Law was passed for three reasons:

. . . . to protect drinkers from high prices; to ban the use of wheat in beer so more bread could be made; and to stop unscrupulous brewers from adding dubious toxic and even hallucinogenic ingredients as preservatives or flavourings.”

It was, however, amended. Yeast was added to the list in 1857 after the French Louis Pasteur discovered the germ theory of fermentation.

Bavaria insisted that the Reinheitsgebot be added to the German Statute Book as a condition of German unification in 1871. This move encountered resistance, however, and an imperial law of 1873 taxed the use of other ingredients (rather than banning them) when used by Northern German brewers. It was not until 1906 that the law was applied consistently across all of Germany, but it contained separate rules for ales and lagers.

In 1952, the basic regulation of the Reinheitsgebot was incorporated into the West German Biersteuergesetz (Beer Taxation Law). Bavarian law remained stricter than that of the rest of the country.

After German reunification in 1990 there were various legal disputes about the right to use the label of “bier” if other ingredients were added.

The Provisional Beer Law of 1993 (Vorläufiges Biergesetz), replaced the earlier regulations. It is a slightly expanded version of the Reinheitsgebot, stipulating that only water, malted barley, hops and yeast be used for any bottom-fermented beer brewed in Germany. It also allows for the use of powdered or ground hops and hops extracts, and some stabilizing agents. Top-fermented beer is subject to the same rules, with the addition that a wider variety of malted grains can be used, as well as pure sugars for flavor and color.

Beers brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot have special status under European Union laws as a protected traditional foodstuff. (Germany was one of the six original members of the EU, founded in 1957.)

The law’s applicability was limited by a court ruling in 2005, which allowed the sale of beer with different ingredients as long as it was not labeled “beer”.

There is a very detailed analysis of The Reinheitsgebot and how it affects both brewers and drinkers at the website allaboutbeer.com, here.

German stamp celebrating 450 years of the Reinheitsgebot

March 22, 1926 – Virginia Passes Public Assemblage Act Requiring Racial Segregation at All Public Events

Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) is a private historically black university in Hampton, Virginia. In 1925, Walter Copeland, the editor of the Newport News Daily Press took his wife there to see a dance recital. As they arrived late, they were seated near a black couple, and Mrs. Copeland became distraught. Her husband later wrote an editorial about the incident accusing Hampton of practicing “social equality between the white and negro races” and warned of “the amalgamation of the races that would eventually lead to the destruction of the Anglo Saxon race.”

Hampton University

Hampton’s (white) president, Dr. James Edward Gregg, denied the school had a policy of encouraging racial intermixing. But Copeland was not satisfied with his response.

Copeland put action behind his words; he joined forces with the white supremacist John Powell to start a Hampton post of the Anglo-Saxon Club on May 2, 1925. Powell had been a founder of the first post of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs, dedicated to maintaining white supremacy, in 1922.

The attacks on Hampton Institute came to the attention of the weekly Norfolk Journal and Guide, Norfolk’s black-owned newspaper. Its editor, P. B. Young, had emerged as a spokesperson for blacks in Virginia and the surrounding states. He pointed out something blacks knew well but whites refused to acknowledge: “White men who are always crying out against amalgamation are solely responsible for all the amalgamation that has taken place.”

Amazing how often whites refused to acknowledge this easily observable fact.

W.E.B Du Bois, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also joined the battle in the June, 1925 issue of Crisis magazine:

He noted that in the fifty- seven years of Hampton’s existence, not once had there been an incident of intermarriage or a mulatto child, yet ‘the result of racial segregation in the state of Virginia was officially reported at 164,171 mulattos in 1920.’”

Or as Du Bois opined in a 1929 speech, “if Nordics believe themselves to be superior, and do not want to mingle their blood with that of other races, who is forcing them? They can keep to themselves if they wish”:

They have been responsible for more intermixture of races than any other people, ancient and modern, and they have inflicted this miscegenation on helpless unwilling slaves by force, fraud and insult; and this is the folk that today has the impudence to turn on the darker races, when they demand a share of civilization, and cry: “You shall not marry our daughters!”

The blunt, crude reply is: Who in Hell asked to marry your daughters?”

William Edward Burghardt “W.E.B.” Du Bois (Feb. 23, 1868 – Aug. 27, 1963)

Tensions flared again in November when an all-white glee club from the University of North Carolina performed at Ogden Hall and no segregated seating was established. A couple weeks later, Virginia’s most virulent white supremacists called on their congressional delegate to propose legislation that would “prohibit the mixing of audiences at public assemblages.” On March 22, 1926, the Public Assemblages Act became law. It required the racial segregation of all public events in Virginia. The act was one of three so-called racial integrity laws passed between 1924 and 1930. You can read the text of the law here.

March 3, 1863 – First Wartime Conscription Act by United States Signed into Law During the Civil War

On March 3, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, the first wartime conscription law was passed by the United States Congress. The Enrollment Act, 12 Stat. 731, required the participation of every male citizen and immigrants who had filed for citizenship between ages of twenty and forty-five by April 1. It also included a controversial clause allowing a person to pay $300 to avoid military service, a feature greatly resented by workingmen. Blacks, who were not considered citizens, were exempt from the draft.

Unfortunately, because Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1 of 1863, many now saw the war as a fight to free Black slaves, a cause for which they were unwilling to risk their lives. Roiling the waters, Democratic politicians and newspapers alleged that emancipation would result in free Black men moving north, who would then take the jobs of whites, and ravish their daughters.

In addition, New York had many pro-South and pro-Slavery proponents. The state had an economy dependent on cotton and slavery. As explained in an article in the online magazine, “The Observer”:

New York banks financed the spread of cotton plantations across the Deep South. New York merchants sold plantation owners their supplies. New York City’s mayor in 1863, George Opdyke, had made a fortune selling them cheap clothing they provided slaves. Cotton accounted for a whopping 40 percent of the shipping in New York harbor. The city’s hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues filled up every summer with Southern visitors.”

(Lincoln readily acknowledged the role of the North in helping to perpetuate slavery, as with his 1864 statement: “If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.”)

New York Democratic Governor Horatio Seymour promised to challenge the draft law in court and goaded on the mobs at a mass meeting on July 4, warning, “the bloody and treasonable and revolutionary doctrine of public necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as well as by government.”

Image from New York Public Library Digital Collections

On July 13, anti-draft violence erupted in New York City, resulting in four days of rioting, looting, and bloodshed, in what is still considered the deadliest rioting in American history. As The Observer reports:

Mobs rampaged through most of the week in an orgy of savage murder, arson and looting. They hung black men from lampposts and dragged their mutilated bodies through the streets. They beat and murdered the pitifully small squads of policemen and soldiers the city initially mustered—and grotesquely defiled their corpses as well. It took federal troops to start restoring order to burning, rubble-strewn Manhattan that Thursday. The published death count was 119, but many New Yorkers believed the actual toll was hundreds more.”

The riot was also notable for the attack by whites on the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue. The four-story orphanage housed over two hundred children. As Leslie M. Harris wrote in the book In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863:

…an infuriated mob, consisting of several thousand men, women and children, armed with clubs, brick bats etc. advanced upon the Institution. The crowd took as much of the bedding, clothing, food, and other transportable articles as they could and set fire to the building. . . . Miraculously, the mob refrained from assaulting the children. . . . The children made their way to the Thirty-Fifth Street Police Station, where they remained for three days and nights before moving to the almshouse on Blackwell’s Island . . ..”

Eventually the orphanage was rebuilt in Harlem.

In all, rioters lynched eleven Black men over the course of five days, and forced hundreds of Blacks to leave the city. By 1865, the city’s Black population was just under 10,000, the lowest it had been since 1820.

February 3, 1846 – Birth of Judson Harmon, Author of the Notorious Theory of Absolute Territorial Sovereignty Regarding U.S. Water Rights

Judson Harmon (February 3, 1846 – February 22, 1927) was a Democratic politician from Ohio. He served as United States Attorney General under President Grover Cleveland and later served as the 45th Governor of Ohio.

Judson Harmon, c. 1912

He is perhaps best known for the formulation of the “Harmon Doctrine” as articulated in an opinion he issued as U.S. Attorney General.

As Stephen C. McCaffrey explains in “The Harmon Doctrine One Hundred Years Later: Buried, Not Praised,” 36 Nat. Resources J. 549 (1996), online here:

A controversy arose in the latter part of the 19th Century over diversions of water from the Rio Grande in the United States. In October, 1894, the Mexican Minister at Washington, Matias Romero, sent a note to American Secretary of State W.Q. Gresham . . . . soliciting ‘an examination and decision of this grave question’ by the State Department.

Mexico was protesting the diversion of water by the U.S. from the Rio Grande. Mexico referred to Article VII of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo [the peace treaty signed on February 2, 1848 between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican–American War (1846–1848)], according to which both the countries had an obligation not to construct any work without the consent of the other that may impede or interrupt, in whole or in part, the flow of the water in the river. Secretary of State Richard Olney requested that Atty. Gen. Harmon ascertain the legal rights and obligations of the two Governments concerned and the responsibility of either, if any, for the disastrous state of things depicted in the Mexican minister’s letter. He asked specifically whether Article VII of the Treaty was ‘still in force’ and whether Mexico’s claims were supported by principles of international law independent of any treaty obligation. The issue pivoted over ‘the taking of water for irrigation from the Rio Grande above the point where it ceases to be entirely within the United States and becomes the boundary between the United States and Mexico.’ [21 Op. Att’y Gen. 274, 283 (1895)]

The length of the Rio Grande River is about 3,000 km (1864.114 miles) and half of this length forms the boundary between the United States and Mexico. The two countries are both upper and lower riparians on the river.

Nevertheless, Harmon stated in an opinion submitted on December 12, 1895 that “the rules, principles, and precedents of international law impose no liability or obligation upon the United States.” [Harmon, op. cit.] In other words, Albert Utton writes in “International Water Quality Law,” 13 Nat. Resources J. 282, 1973) “the upper riparian is entitled to do as it chooses with waters within its boundaries, without regard to coriparians.”

(You can access a full and very critical analysis of Harmon’s reasoning in Stephen C. McCaffrey, “The Harmon Doctrine One Hundred Years Later: Buried, Not Praised,” 36 Nat. Resources J. 549 (1996), online here.)

This doctrine has become known as the theory of absolute territorial sovereignty. The theory, obviously, is highly attractive to an upper riparian. But the theory has also been almost universally denounced. Indeed, McCaffrey in the article cited above points out the weaknesses in legal reasoning made by Harmon.

The U.S. Department of Justice soon took a complete reversal of position from that stated in Attorney General Harmon’s opinion, with the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the more generous position. McCaffrey notes:

. . . the United States Supreme Court, in holding that the courts could restrain, at the instance of the federal government, any acts in New Mexico by private parties that could diminish the navigability of the navigable portions of the Rio Grande below El Paso, reached a result that was identical to that argued for by Minister Romero in his protest of October, 1895, and rejected at the time by Attorney General Harmon.”

[Utton explains what other options for riparian rights look like]:

The antithesis of the theory of absolute territorial sovereignty is that of absolute territorial integrity. Under this theory, the lower riparian may demand the continuation of the full flow of the river from upstream, unaltered both as to quantity and quality.

The theory of limited territorial sovereignty lies midway between the above two. Under this theory, a state may make use of the waters flowing through its territory insofar as it does not interfere with their reasonable use by coriparians.

Of more recent vintage is the community theory. It holds that the waters of a drainage basin should be developed as a unit, without regard to national boundaries. The coriparians should jointly carry out the development and management of the basin, and the benefits derived from cooperative development would be shared by the coriparians.”

McCaffrey writes that in any event, the United States did not act on Harmon’s advice. Instead, the United States agreed to form a joint fact-finding commission with a view to reaching an equitable resolution of the matter. The Commissioners submitted a joint report in November, 1896. In his letter transmitting the report, the American commissioner stated: “It is certain … that they [Mexico] have been wronged pecuniarily to a very large extent, and the future will continue to entail more in a progressive ratio until the matter is settled.” Specifically, the report stated:

It is the opinion of the joint commission that Mexico has been
wrongfully deprived for many years of a portion of her
equitable rights in the flow of one-half of the waters of the Rio
Grande at the time of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; and if
there were no other evidence of that fact than the records and
measurements above referred to, it is apparent to the eye of any
visitor to the locality, where can be witnessed the dying fruit
trees and vines, the abandoned fields, and dry canals for the
greatest portion that has heretofore been cultivated; and while
we are considering the equitable rights of Mexico, this is also
true of the United States side, where almost the same
abandonment and destruction of former prosperous farms may
& be witnessed.” (McCaffrey, op.cit., 570-571)

The Rio Grande forms the U.S.-Mexico border while winding through the Santa Elena Pass in the Big Bend region in Texas

Paul Stanton Kibel and Gabriel Eckstein explain in “America First and the Harmon Doctrine’s Demise – A History Lesson,” for The NewJurist Law Magazine in March, 2017:

. . . during the course of the 20th century, the U.S. moved away from the Harmon Doctrine and adopted a new approach to the allocation of international watercourses. In contrast to absolute territorial sovereignty, the new approach provided that upstream and downstream nations share international rivers and that upstream and downstream nations have certain obligations to each other. This approach, which would later form the basis for the principle of equitable and reasonable utilization, is reflected in the 1944 Mexico-U.S. Waters Treaty (requiring the U.S. to leave certain quantities of Colorado River water in stream for Mexico, and obligating Mexico to leave certain quantities of Rio Conchos water in stream for the U.S.), and the 1964 Columbia River Treaty (requiring Canada to leave certain quantities of Columbia River water in stream for the U.S.). This movement in American foreign policy towards equitable and reasonable utilization was based on the recognition that the U.S. had more to lose than to gain by adhering to an absolutist principle that responded only to short-term regionally-specific needs.”

They add, with specific reference to Trump:

In terms of implications for the new American president, the history of the Harmon Doctrine suggests that it may not be so much a question of whether an America First principle should guide U.S. foreign policy, but rather a question of how we define what is in America’s best interest. There will be situations where the U.S. is ‘upstream’ (in a position to act unilaterally to achieve its objectives) but circumstances will also arise where the U.S. is ‘downstream’ (in a position where it needs support and engagement from other nations to achieve its objectives). . . . Beyond trans boundary river basins like the Rio Grande, Colorado and Columbia, there are other international challenges such as terrorism, global warming, nuclear weapons proliferation, and ocean governance that the U.S. cannot resolve alone. The reason such challenges cannot be addressed effectively by acting alone has nothing to do with a lack of American strength or resolve, but rather with the intrinsic cross-border aspects of these challenges. With few exceptions, it would be unwise for the U.S. to act unilaterally to achieve its objectives, and then expect other nations to respond favourably to America’s request for multilateralism when the U.S. finds itself in a position that necessitates cooperation.”

January 20, 2011 – European Union Regulation of Coumarin Enters Into Force Putting Cinnamon Bun Consumption in Danger!

October 4 is Cinnamon Bun Day (Kanelbullens Dag) in Sweden. It was established in 1999 when Sweden’s Hembakningsrådet (‘Home Baking Council’) tried to think of ways to celebrate the organization’s 40th anniversary. As “The Local” (news from Sweden in English) reports:

The cinnamon bun is a staple diet of the Swedish ‘fika’ tradition. . . . While the French have their wine and the British their tea, in Sweden people stop what they’re doing to have a ‘fika’ at least once a day, often twice. Pronounced fee-ka, this almost sacred tradition designates a moment to savour a cup of coffee and eat something sweet (usually a cinnamon bun), and it is factored into everyone’s daily schedules whether they are at home, at work or running errands.”

The tradition confronted a legal obstacle, however, on December 16, 2008, when the European Parliament enacted a regulation binding in all member states to come into force on January 20, 2011 regulating certain flavorings and food ingredients. The purpose of the new regulations was to ensure that food was safe and wholesome, and that the processing and ingredients used in that processing were appropriately and truthfully labeled, and without negative (especially toxicological) consequences from consumption.

One of the substances falling under the new regulation was courmarin, which is a component of cinnamon. Most foods in the USA and Western Europe, including sticky buns, breads and other products, use the Cassia cinnamon (dried Cassia bark). (“True” cinnamon, or Ceylon cinnamon, is prohibitively expensive, but it has very little coumarin, unlike Cassia cinnamon.) In high-enough doses, coumarin can cause liver damage in some sensitive individuals.

As a San Francisco newspaper in a health feature reported:

Until 1954, it was legal to use as a food additive in the U.S., but the Food and Drug Administration banned its use after researchers found it caused liver damage in laboratory animals. A 2006 metastudy of the available data published in ‘Food and Chemical Toxicology’ concluded that while a clear link existed between coumarin and liver cancers in lab animals, it remained safe for human use in dietary quantities. But it can be problematic when taken as a supplement.

The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment concluded that you’d need to take about a gram per day — 1,000 milligrams — for six months or longer to be at risk.”

The limit set by the European Union ranges from 5 and 50 mg/kg, depending on the product. “Seasonal” baking, for instance, can have more.

But according to NPR, a survey in 2013 conducted by the Danish Food Administration found almost half of the fine baked goods tested were over the line. Danish food authorities said bakers had to cut back, and bakers were up in arms in what was called “cinnamon-gate”:

In a news release, the head of the Danish Baker’s Association, Hardy Christensen, countered, ‘We must recognize that to get a cinnamon roll … to taste like cinnamon, we have to use more than the very small amounts allowed, or it’s the end of the cinnamon roll as we know it.’”

Traditional Danish cinnamon rolls, via NBC News

The Library of Congress reported that Sweden solved the problem first:

Sweden was quick to act, and the Swedish National Food Agency (Livsmedelsverket) announced that cinnamon buns fell under the “traditional and/or seasonal bakery ware containing a reference to cinnamon in the labelling” exception of the EU Regulation No. 1334/2008. (Art.3(c) in conjunction with annex II.)  Traditional and/or seasonal baked goods are exempt from the 15mg/kg (6.8 mg/lbs.) limit and instead subject to a 50mg/kg (22.7mg/lbs) limit.”

Denmark had initially interpreted the text differently and found that its cinnamon bun equivalents (kanelsnegle, kanelstænger, and kanelgifler) could not rely on the exemption. After the public outcry however, the Danish Food Authority “reinterpreted” the provision and determined that, similar to Sweden, their cinnamon buns also fell under the 50mg/kg exception for traditional baked goods.

In any event, the daily tolerable intake limit of coumarin is roughly equivalent to the amount of cinnamon you’d find in an entire batch of cookies. . . . which is something that may now and then be consumed by a single person over the holidays. But an EU Business Magazine avers the bigger concern is with those who do this year-round (a problem for other reasons as well) or those who use cinnamon as medicine and thus take large doses.

Ikhlas Khan, the assistant director of the National Center for Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi’s School of Pharmacy, explains:

Only certain individuals are even going to be susceptible to liver issues from coumarin . . . That person would have to exceed the maximum recommended daily intake for at least two weeks before liver problems cropped up — and if problems do occur, the toxicity is reversible.”

So feel free to celebrate Cinnamon Bun Day. Just don’t make it a habit!

And by the way, you can also keep this in mind, that a Swedish cinnamon bun is probably “healthier” than an American one:

The Swedish cinnamon bun is much less sticky and sweet than the typical American cinnamon roll. Another essential difference in Swedish cinnamon buns is the cardamom spice in the dough, which adds another dimension of flavour. The buns are baked for just a few minutes in a very hot oven, making them light and fluffy with a golden brown surface. They are then topped with grains of “pearl sugar” as opposed to frosting or glaze.”

Cinnamon bun, American style

December 29, 1675 – King Charles II of England Bans Coffee Houses

According to PBS:

The word “coffee” has roots in several languages. In Yemen it earned the name qahwah, which was originally a romantic term for wine. It later became the Turkish kahveh, then Dutch koffie and finally coffee in English.

Ripe Coffee Berries

The modern version of roasted coffee is said to have originated in Arabia. NPR relates:

. . . tradition says that not a single coffee plant existed outside of Arabia or Africa until the 1600s, when Baba Budan, an Indian pilgrim, left Mecca with fertile beans fastened to a strap across his abdomen. Baba’s beans resulted in a new and competitive European coffee trade.”

It caught on fast.

According to Gail Schumann, author of the book Plant Diseases: Their Biology and Social Impact, it was coffee, not tea, that was the most popular drink in England in the mid-1600s. The Dutch imported the coffee from colonial plantations in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Java, and Sumatra. The French began growing coffee in the Caribbean, followed by the Spanish in Central America and the Portuguese in Brazil. European coffee houses sprang up in Italy and later France, where they reached a new level of popularity.

Pasqua Rosée opened the first coffeehouse in London in 1652. Open Culture has an image of Rosée’s original handbill, in which he “advertised both the therapeutic and prophylactic effects of his wares on digestion, headaches, rheumatism, consumption, cough, dropsy, gout, scurvy, and miscarriages.”

The coffeehouse was so successful that as the National Geographic History magazine reports (March/April 2018), within a year it was selling more than 600 coffees a day. Needless to say, competitors began to appear across the city. Coffee shops were approved of by the puritanical Commonwealth that was established after the beheading of King Charles I. National Geographic reports:

Patrons of London’s coffee shops typically sat at long wooden tables with shared candles, pipes, and newspapers. . . men of different social classes could meet and discuss the issues of the day – including politics.”

All this talking, however, worried King Charlies II when the monarchy was restored in 1660. By that time there were as many as 63 coffeehouses in London. He was particularly concerned with the spread of what we would call today “fake news.”

The earliest known image of a London coffeehouse, from 1674

In 1672, the King asked the judiciary for a written opinion on how lawfully to proceed against the coffeehouses, but reportedly the judges could not come up with an easy solution. The result was the King’s first royal proclamation on the matter, issued on June 12, 1672, to “Restrain the Spreading of False news, and Licentious Talking of Matters of State and, Government.” The proclamation maintained that “bold and Licentious Discourses” had grown to an extent that men “assumed to themselves a liberty, not only in Coffee-houses, but in other Places and Meetings, both publick and private, to censure and defame the proceedings of State, by speaking evil of things they understand not, and endeavouring to create and nourish an universal Jealousie and Dissatisfaction in the minds of all his Majesties good subjects.”

Apparently this proclamation was ineffective, as claimed by an anonymous invective of the time. This 1673 tract complained that in the places that sell “Coffe, Tea and Chocoletta,” people “discourse with all Companies that come in, of State-matters, talking of news, and broaching of lyes, arraigning the judgements and discretions of their Governors, censuring all their Councels, and insinuating into the people a prejudice against them. . . . (Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, vol 1 “ by Markman Ellis)

On May 2, 1674 another Proclamation with the same title promised to punish all ‘Spreaders of false news, or promoters of any Malicious Calumnies against the State’ by considering them to be ‘Seditiously inclined’.”

And on this day in history, the King, still fearing the coffeehouses were hotbeds for sedition and plots, tried again with yet another proclamation.

A number of similar historical signs marking the sites of old coffee houses dot London today

The Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee-Houses declared:

Whereas it is most apparent, that the Multitude of Coffee-Houses of late years set up and kept within this Kingdom . . . have produced very evil and dangerous effects; as well for that many Tradesmen and others, do therein mis-spend much of their time, which might and probably would otherwise be imployed in and about their Lawful Callings and Affairs; but also, for that in such Houses, and by occasion of the meetings of such persons therein, diverse False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majesties Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm; His Majesty hath thought it fit and necessary, That the said Coffee-houses be (for the future) Put down and Suppressed, and doth (with the Advice of His Privy Council) by this His Royal Proclamation, Strictly Charge and Command all manner of persons, That they or any of them do not presume from and after the Tenth Day of January next ensuing, to keep any Publick Coffee-house, or to Utter or sell by retail, in his, her or their house or houses (to be spent or consumed within the same) any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett or Tea, as they will answer the contrary at their utmost perils.”

King Charles II of England

The proclamation was published in full in The London Gazette the next day.

There was a large public outcry, with the matter debated in the coffeehouses, of course. The resistance to the new order was so strong the King backtracked after less than two weeks. It was abolished on January 8, 1676.

Artist Adam Dant’s Map Of The Coffee Houses of 17th and 18th Century London.

Dr Matthew Green, an Oxford historian, writes:

By the dawn of the eighteenth century, contemporaries were counting between 1,000 and 8,000 coffeehouses in the capital even if a street survey conducted in 1734 (which excluded unlicensed premises) counted only 551. Even so, Europe had never seen anything like it. Protestant Amsterdam, a rival hub of international trade, could only muster 32 coffeehouses by 1700 and the cluster of coffeehouses in St Mark’s Square in Venice were forbidden from seating more than five customers (presumably to stifle the coalescence of public opinion) whereas North’s, in Cheapside, could happily seat 90 people.”

So what happened? Why is England today known for tea?

The answer is Coffee Rust Fungus, or Hemileia vastatrix.

Hemileia Vastatrix on Coffee Leaves

As Gail L. Schumann reports:

“When the coffee rust fungus, Hemileia vastatrix, reached Ceylon in 1875, nearly 400,000 acres (160,000 hectares) were covered with coffee trees. No effective chemical fungicides were available to protect the foliage, so the fungus was able to colonize the leaves until nearly all the trees were defoliated.”

The result was pretty much complete devastation of the coffee plants. While in 1870, Ceylon was exporting 100 million pounds of coffee per year, by 1889, production was down to 5 million pounds.

Meanwhile, in 1866, James Taylor, a recently arrived Scot, was selected to be in charge of the first sowing of tea seeds, on 19 acres of land. Between 1873 and 1880, the Ceylon Tea Museum tells us, production rose from just 23 pounds to 81.3 tons, and by 1890, to 22,899.8 tons. [To get an idea of how much tea that is, as many as 375 to 425 cups of tea can be prepared from one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of tea.] Four estates were purchased by the grocer Thomas J. Lipton. He came up with the idea of putting tea in packets instead of selling it loose from the chest. The Museum reports that Lipton’s 300 grocery shops throughout England soon could not keep up with the growing demand for his inexpensive product, and so Lipton teas became available in other stores around Britain.

Thomas J. Lipton enjoying a cup of tea

December 19, 1828 – John C. Calhoun Claimed the Right of a State to Nullify Federal Laws

In 1832 John C. Calhoun of South Carolina resigned the office of Vice President of the United States to lead the fight against the “Tariff of Abominations.” The tariff protected domestic – mostly northern – manufacturers from foreign competition, but also drove up the price of manufactured goods purchased by southerners.

John C. Calhoun

Earlier, Calhoun fought the tariff, passed in 1828, albeit anonymously. The South Carolina Exposition and Protest, also known as Calhoun’s Exposition, was presented to the South Carolina House of Representatives on this date in history, and was widely distributed. Calhoun was not identified as the author but word on this soon leaked out. The legislature took no action on the report at that time.

In the “Exposition,” Calhoun argued that the tariff was unconstitutional because it favored manufacturing over commerce and agriculture. He believed that the people of a state or several states, acting in a democratically elected convention, had the retained power to veto any act of the federal government which violated the Constitution. This veto, the core of the doctrine of nullification, was explained by Calhoun in the Exposition:

If it be conceded, as it must be by every one who is the least conversant with our institutions, that the sovereign powers delegated are divided between the General and State Governments, and that the latter hold their portion by the same tenure as the former, it would seem impossible to deny to the States the right of deciding on the infractions of their powers, and the proper remedy to be applied for their correction. The right of judging, in such cases, is an essential attribute of sovereignty, of which the States cannot be divested without losing their sovereignty itself, and being reduced to a subordinate corporate condition. In fact, to divide power, and to give to one of the parties the exclusive right of judging of the portion allotted to each, is, in reality, not to divide it at all; and to reserve such exclusive right to the General Government (it matters not by what department) to be exercised, is to convert it, in fact, into a great consolidated government, with unlimited powers, and to divest the States, in reality, of all their rights, it is impossible to understand the force of terms, and to deny so plain a conclusion.”

After Calhoun resigned as vice president, he was free to devote his time to the pursuit of tariff nullification. But just before his resignation, President Andrew Jackson signed into law another tariff, the Tariff of 1832. This compromise tariff received the support of most northerners and half of the southerners in Congress. The reductions were too little for South Carolina, however.

President Andrew Jackson

A state convention was held in November, 1832, at which time it passed The Ordinance of Nullification, declaring the Tariff of 1828 and 1832 null and void within the state borders of South Carolina, beginning on February 1, 1833. Thus began the “Nullification Crisis,” leading to a proclamation by President Andrew Jackson on December 10, 1832, which threatened to send government ground troops to enforce the tariffs. In the face of the military threat, and following a Congressional revision of the law which lowered the tariff, South Carolina repealed the ordinance on March 15, 1833.

Review of “Operation Greylord” by Terrence Hake, on the Corruption Bust of Chicago’s Criminal and Traffic Court System in the 1980s

Operation Greylord is the riveting tale of how a few honest lawyers in the United States Attorney’s office in Chicago, with the help of the FBI, uncovered and prosecuted the almost unimaginable corruption in the lower reaches of Chicago’s criminal and traffic court system.  I say almost unimaginable corruption because I was exposed to some of it when I just graduated from law school.  

I began my practice of law as a litigator with a large firm in Chicago.  As a junior partner, I did not try cases, but appeared in pre-trial procedures in both state and federal court.  State and federal courts operated under different formal “Rules of Civil Procedure.”  They also operated under substantially different “informal” rules.  As far as I could tell, on the surface at any rate, the federal courts were totally honest and, for the most part, quite competent.  

In the state courts, however, competence among the judges and litigators varied tremendously.  For example, in one case in which I appeared, the opposing counsel was from one of Chicago’s most prestigious and capable firms.  In an informal discussion, the opposing lawyer told me he was delighted that we had drawn a particular judge [whose ironic nickname among experienced counsel was “Brains”] because the lawyer’s case was somewhat weak but the judge was almost sure not to understand the issues.    

I also noticed that experienced state court litigators sometimes (albeit rarely) included small bribes tucked into their filings so that the court clerks would call their cases first.  Petty corruption was more prevalent in the County Recorder’s office, where extra money would assure you that your deeds or lien claims would be promptly and correctly filed.

After reading Operation Greylord, I learned that the petty venality I observed was nothing like what was going on in low level criminal courts and traffic courts.  There, dozens of judges were on the take from dozens of sleazy lawyers.  Bribes of several hundred dollars, depending on the seriousness of the alleged offenses, were routinely passed from lawyer to clerk, who took his percentage before passing the bulk of the payment on to the judge.  

Terry Hake, the author, began as a naive 1977 graduate of Loyola College of Law and a new prosecutor in the State’s attorney’s Office. In 1980, he was recruited by the FBI to work in a major “sting” operation that would achieve national prominence as Operation Greylord. Hake reports:

“No one knew at the time how massive Operation Greylord would become, leading to an overhaul of the entire system, as well as three suicides and more than seventy indictments.”

He also allows:

“I think only someone as hopelessly naive and optimistic as I had been would have volunteered to put himself in such danger, and, in effect, give up his law career. I found myself a sheep wandering in a wilderness of wolves.”

Hake describes the difficult process by which he insinuated himself among some of the lower ranking shysters who participated in the rampant dishonesty in the criminal courts and gradually worked his way through the “system” ultimately to implicate more prominent lawyers and even judges while wearing a “wire.”  He writes that his cooperation with the Justice Department and the FBI earned him the obloquy of other lawyers, even honest ones.  Nevertheless, he persisted and finally prevailed, assisting in the conviction of numerous judges, clerks, and lawyers.  

The people of Chicago owe a debt of gratitude to Hake and the others who risked their careers, and even their lives (some of the corrupt lawyers and judges had mob connections) to rid the legal system of corruption.   Hake’s book is an easy read and well worth the effort. 

Rating: 3.5/5

Published by the American Bar Association, 2015

October 15, 1914 – Clayton Antitrust Act is Signed Into Law

The end of the nineteenth century was a period when the general public decided that economic power had become too consolidated in the hands of a few “trusts” in key industries, like oil, steel, and tobacco. Smaller companies argued that the large trusts or “monopolies” had an unfair competitive advantage over them. Congress soon began to hear demands for antitrust legislation.

Congress passed the first antitrust law, the Sherman Act, in 1890. It outlawed “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade.” The Sherman Act also made it a crime “to combine or conspire . . . to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several states.”

As the Constitutional Rights Foundation points out,

In the decade following passage of the Sherman Act, the generally pro-business presidents did little to enforce it. In fact, during this period, more mergers occurred and more trusts were formed than ever before.”

Thus, in 1914, Congress passed two additional antitrust laws: the Federal Trade Commission Act, which created the FTC, and the Clayton Act. With some revisions, these are the three core federal antitrust laws still in effect today.

Henry De Lamar Clayton of Alabama introduced the Clayton Antitrust Bill to regulate massive corporations. The bill passed the House of Representatives with a vast majority on June 5, 1914, and it was signed by President Woodrow Wilson on this day in history.

The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 (Pub.L. 63–212, 38 Stat. 730), codified at 15 U.S.C. §§ 12–27, 29 U.S.C. §§ 52–53), was intended to add further substance to U.S. antitrust law.

As the FTC site on antitrust laws explains:

The Clayton Act addresses specific practices that the Sherman Act does not clearly prohibit, such as mergers and interlocking directorates (that is, the same person making business decisions for competing companies). Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers and acquisitions where the effect “may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.” As amended by the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, the Clayton Act also bans certain discriminatory prices, services, and allowances in dealings between merchants. The Clayton Act was amended again in 1976 by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act to require companies planning large mergers or acquisitions to notify the government of their plans in advance. The Clayton Act also authorizes private parties to sue for triple damages when they have been harmed by conduct that violates either the Sherman or Clayton Act and to obtain a court order prohibiting the anticompetitive practice in the future.”

An important difference between the Clayton Act and its predecessor, the Sherman Act, is that the Clayton Act contained safe harbors for union activities. Section 6 of the Act (codified at 15 U.S.C. § 17) exempts labor unions and agricultural organizations, saying “that the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce, and permit[ting] labor organizations to carry out their legitimate objective.” Therefore, boycotts, peaceful strikes, peaceful picketing, and collective bargaining are not regulated by this statute. Injunctions could be used to settle labor disputes only when property damage was threatened.