Would Germany be better off now if it were on the pound rather than the euro?

I don't really feel very qualified to talk about European monetary and macroeconomics, which is why for the most part I've avoided writing about Greece and the Eurozone's crisis, but – and maybe it's just the benzos – I feel like I have something slightly relevant to say.

First of all, Tyler Cowen has a great round-up of recent events and indicators (although I hate his first point) here. Additionally, I hear that even Paul Krugman – someone who, sometime during his transition from serious economist to columnist, turned into a man who never met a bailout he didn't like – thinks Greece is going to be dropped from the euro. (Although later in the article he seems overjoyed at the fact that a Greece back on the drachma would be able to destroy the currency to its heart's content.)

As far as I can gather, the consensus among economists is that debt restructuring (in Krugman's words, "a polite term for partial default") is certain, a more serious default is likely, and Greece leaving the eurozone – an that was seen as very fringe a few weeks ago – is now a distinct possibility. In the end, I think that the quicker Greece leaves the euro, the better. Many in Europe worry about the resultant instability won't be worth the risk – after all, even Greek dogs like to riot. But in the end, Greeks have become too accustomed to capitalism and liberal democracy, and once its leftist protestors no longer have the euro and lack of monetary and fiscal sovereignty to blame, the rioting will stop and the hard reforms will begin. Greek voters are too sophisticated to give into geography and regress to the level of its Balkan neighbors, who despite Greece's problems, they still make it look like Switzerland in comparison.

The big European monetary debate has always been whether the UK and Scandinavia should give up their pounds and crowns in favor of the euro. But it now looks like it would have been better for Germany, the Benelux, and Scandinavia to give up their marks, francs, guilders, and crowns in favor of the pound sterling.

Labour's new manifesto, for the slow ones

Just in case you were under the impression that UK politics were somehow more enlightened than America's, via the Browser:

The Daily Mail's embarrassingly bad drug reporting

The Daily Mail is certainly no stranger to atrociously uninformed and alarmist drug reporting, but this story from about two years ago about a "schoolboy" in England who died after snorting heroin which he thought was cocaine takes the cake. It's too ridiculous for a summary to do it justice, so I'm going to go through it line-by-line.

Francis Clapham, 16, bought the drug for £1 from a teenager in a park, an inquest heard.

Really? £1? Because that sounds like an incredibly tiny amount of heroin – so tiny that I question if anyone would really go to the trouble to make such a transaction. Your average bag of UK heroin costs £11.13 and contains 200 mg of powder that is, being generous, 50% pure, yielding 100 mg of pure heroin. Divide this by 11.13 and you get a little less than 9 mg of pure dope, which is about equivalent to two Percocets or Vicodins here in the States. Definitely not enough to kill anyone who weighs more than 10 pounds. And all these calculations are generous – how much you get for your money is a hugely dependent on how experienced you are, and people buying £1 bags of drugs of uncertain provenance generally get the dregs, if anything at all (I'd suspect that precisely of 100.00% of all "£1 bags of dope" are entirely baking soda. At most, this kid was getting the equivalent of a little less than one weak pain pill.

But after sniffing the heroin with a friend he collapsed and was taken to hospital where he was put on a life-support machine.

The drug caused organ failure resulting in brain damage through oxygen starvation and he died two months later.

Huh? Overdose deaths happen very rapidly – I've never heard of pure heroin killing someone over the span of two months – and fatalies from overdoses are very low if an ambulance is called and naloxone is used, which appears to have been the case.

The inquest heard that Francis, who did not have a history of drug taking or dealing, was drinking vodka with a friend in a park in Nelson, Lancashire, when he decided to buy the drug.

Ah ha, so the truth comes out! He wasn't only doing [incredibly tiny amounts of heroin] – he was drinking too. Mixing alcohol and heroin (or any painkillers or anti-anxiety medications) is incredibly dangerous – the total risk is greater than the sum of the individual risks – and there is established medical literature that questions the use of the term "heroin overdose" to describe what are really caused in equal parts by heroin and other CNS depressants like benzos and alcohol.

And about that lack of "history of drug taking or dealing" – says who? His friends, who are scared that they're gonna get in trouble? And I dunno how it goes in the UK, but in the US, it's almost unheard of for someone to buy cocaine before they tried marijuana, and given the popularity of ecstasy in the UK, I'm guessing coke generally comes after E, as well. And, as I'll later explain, he was clearly very drunk when this incident occurred, and those 16-year-olds who drink heavily have a tendency to do other drugs as well. So I sort of doubt that he had no history of using illegal drugs (leaving aside the fact that alcohol is definitely a drug, and I'll bet this wasn't the first time he drank).

Pathologist Dr Naomi Carter told the inquest the schoolboy contracted MRSA in hospital and had a reaction to antibiotics but would not have recovered from the brain damage he had already suffered.

Uh, okay, so he actually died of a superbug brought on my endemic overuse of antibiotics.

Not only that, but brain damage? Assuming they're implying that the brain damage "already suffered" was a result of the heroin overdose (and if that's not the case, then he manifestly did not die because of heroin), when the hell in the history of heroin use has anyone ever suffered permanent brain damage from an overdose? A search of Google Scholar reveals some cases of long-term heroin users developing brain damage, but a) it's not at all clear why, or if it even has anything to do with the heroin, and b) this 16-year-old kid, so inexperienced that he bought £1 worth of drugs that weren't even what he thought they were, seems unlikely to have been doing heroin for long.

"I only saw him taking a line of it but he might have had some more in his pocket. We had an argument about the drugs and he stormed out."

"I handed the rest of the package to the paramedics." [...]

Mr Morris added: "The drug was bought for £1 to £2 in the park."

So I guess what the title meant when it said "£1 bag of heroin" was maybe £2 worth of heroin, but really nobody knows. Well, the autopsy could tell us, but either none was done, or the Daily Mail reporter was just too lazy to look for it, or (more likely) too ignorant to even know to look for it, and what to look for. And how do they know that £2 was the maximum amount? Because the dealer, who has an obvious incentive to downplay the amount of heroin he sold the kid, told them so? (Later in the article it mentions that the dealer admitted to what he did and, given that he's a 16-year-old, was not sentenced to any "detention.")

Recording a verdict of accidental death, East Lancashire coroner Richard Taylor said: "It was clearly an accident that he took a substance which he had no idea would end in his death."

"It was entirely down to the heroin he died."

Wow, what an ignorant thing to say. First of all, it was already established that he had been drinking vodka, so to say that it was "entirely down to the heroin" is absurd and shows a total lack of knowledge of the established scientific literature. (Not to mention that 16-year-olds drinking hard liquor in a park is definitely illegal in Britain, and yet the story didn't seem too concerned about this illegal activity (but one that's societally acceptable) which contributed to his death. Secondly, should the antibiotic-resistant infection that he acquired in the hospital that ultimately killed him really get none of the blame?

For my money, I'd say that there are a few possibilities for what actually happened (given, of course, that the proximate cause of death was MSRA – or drug-induced brain damage, if you wanna be generous – not overdose):

1. He actually took a lot more heroin than claimed, and died from complications of the interaction between heroin and alcohol (and possibly benzodiazepines, which aren't mentioned). However, I have never heard of patients getting brain damage from overdoses – even alcohol-enhanced ones. Lethal overdoses are common, but given that he survived the immediate aftermath of the overdose, even the polydrug use theory seems suspect.
2. He drank a lot more than implied, and he was pretty close to death from alcohol poisoning anyway. From what I understand, brain damage is a much more likely symptom of alcohol poisoning than a non-lethal heroin overdose.
3. What everyone thought was heroin was actually something else entirely – perhaps something highly toxic. This seems unlikely, though, given that no dealer would have an incentive to use something lethal as an adulterant as opposed to something simple and safe like baking soda or a crushed aspirin.
4. Some incredibly rare reaction to one of the many substances he may have taken that day.

My money's on hypothesis 2 – alcohol poisoning – but still, the story doesn't make much sense, and the only thing we can say for certain is that the Daily Mail is publishing alarmist misinformation that will ultimately obscure the true risks of drug use and drug prohibition.

The murderous Aztec empire

Westerners have a tendency to idolize the pre-history of American civilization, painting the native Americans as a relatively peaceful, if technologically backwards people. An exhibit at the British Museum, however, disputes that interpretation. In an exhibit about the Aztecs just before Cortés' arrival on the continent, the horrors of the Aztec's merciless killing machine are described:

When the recently excavated pyramid whose finds provide the centrepiece of the British Museum show was first inaugurated in 1484, there were prisoners lined up for sacrifice stretching in all directions as far as the eye could see. Some estimate that 20,000 victims were killed over four days.

The author draws an analogy between the Aztecs' reign with that of the Nazis – both expanded quickly on the backs of vast killing machines, but were short lived, as the conquest-by-terror method is not sustainable in the long term. According to a book by Hugh Thompson, many tribes conquered by the Aztecs colluded with the Spanish against the Aztec king Moctezuma.

But the most interesting part is the historiography of the noble Aztecs and horrible Spanish. Apparently the trope began as English propaganda against the then-formidable Spanish empire:

So why is he remembered by history as “a gentle prince”? The English had a hand in this: the conquest of the New World by Spain made it the European superpower and helped to finance the Armada. Hardly surprising that English propaganda should seize every opportunity to play up the leyenda negra, “the black legend” of Spanish cruelty in Mexico, and portray Moctezuma (and later Atahualpa in Peru) as hapless victims.

I'm not sure that this is entirely true – the idea of the "noble savage" is universal in modern Western civilization and not at all specific to what was once New Spain. But it's interesting to think about how centuries old imperial rivalries affect the way we think of history today.

William of Orange's gay lover

I was reading William of Orange's Wikipedia page when I stumbled on this excellent (and well-cited, if you click through to the original) paragraph, which is about his suspected gay lovers:

Bentinck's closeness to William aroused jealousies, but some modern historians doubt that there was a homosexual element about their relationship. The same could not be said for Keppel, who was 20 years William's junior and strikingly handsome, and had risen from being a royal page to an earldom with suspicious ease. Portland wrote to William in 1697 that 'the kindness which your Majesty has for a young man, and the way in which you seem to authorise his liberties ... make the world say things I am ashamed to hear'. This, he said, was 'tarnishing a reputation which has never before been subject to such accusations'. William replied, saying, 'It seems to me very extraordinary that it should be impossible to have esteem and regard for a young man without it being criminal'.

The first part I like is that he was doing a page, which just goes to show that Mark Foley wasn't doing anything original (even for the US Congress).

The second is that, when confronted with the allegations, he proves that the phrase "so much fun it should be illegal" dates back to at least 1697.

Blair: Even without WMDs, I would have found a way to invade Iraq

Quoteth the Guardian:

Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.

The former prime minister made the confession during an interview with Fern Britton, to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1, in which he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked. He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".

Significantly, Blair added: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat." He continued: "I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons in charge, but it's incredibly difficult. That's why I sympathise with the people who were against it [the war] for perfectly good reasons and are against it now, but for me, in the end I had to take the decision."

Longtime readers of this blog will recall this post from its very early days, in which I mentioned a Nation article that claimed...well, let's let them do the talking:

Back in March 1988, [Colin] Powell was National Security Adviser to President Reagan. While images of the [Halabja] massacre shocked, albeit briefly, a Western public jaded by reports of slaughter in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the Administration moved quickly to protect its ally Saddam Hussein. Within a week of the attack, US diplomats began publicizing the canard that the Halabjans had died from Iranian chemical weapons, thereafter eliciting a Security Council resolution with no specific condemnation of Iraq that urged both sides to refrain from use of chemical weapons. [...]

The following March, when news of Iraq's revival of poison gas as a weapon finally surfaced in the press, the State Department condemned "the prohibited use of chemical weapons wherever it occurs," while Rumsfeld was sent back to Baghdad to pass the word that the condemnation had been essentially pro forma and that the American desire to improve relations "at a pace of Iraq's choosing remain[s] undiminished." Meanwhile, US diplomats worked to quash discussion of the issue at international forums.

Newfoundland, mumming, cross-dressing, and Shakespeare

Via Reason, a particularly odd article on the old European roots of "mumming and disguising" – something that will sound familiar to Philadelphians, who hold the Mummers Day Parade in early January. It's about some holiday rituals practiced by Newfoundlanders fishermen as late as the 1960s, who were supposedly so isolated that they persisted in these odd practices longer than any Europeans. It's a long article, but here are some excerpts:

A party of mummers would gather in someone house, gear up, and set off for whatever house was closest that they figured would let them in. Once in, the group would entertain their uncomfortable hosts by singing, telling stories and dancing, in other words, each member doing some routine, speaking and singing in a peculiar but traditional manner that disguised their voices. As soon as the hosts recognized one of them, off would come the mask and the gloves and the monster would metamorphose into a relative or neighbor. As soon as everyone’s identity was guessed, on went the disguises again and they were off to the next house. This was through piles of snow, of course, so far north, so they were bundled up against the cold as well. Needless to say, a great deal of alcohol was consumed in the process, along with various homemade holidays treats.

That men generally dressed as women and vice versa probably says something about the emotional satisfactions of the tradition as a factor apart from the need for total disguise. It may also suggest that the gender-bending in Shakespeare’s holiday plays have a broader basis in tradition than modern critics, fond of ascribing it to various psycho-sexual factors, are willing to acknowledge.

Apparently the revelers had an idea that what they were doing was a bit odd:

The anthropologists said that it was very difficult to get the people to talk about their holiday practises. They were shy about talking to strangers about anything, and particularly shy about this tradition. The scientists got the feeling that they weren’t being told everything. This for at least two reasons. First, such holiday practises were dangerous. Shameful things could happen during this period when everything was turned upside down. It was not only a time of making merry, it was potentially a time of reprisal, of setting things straight, of settling old scores. There was a lot of drinking. Things could get rough.

And then here's the sociological money shot:

Several things came clear from this that were not discussed by any of the researchers. First, it is clear to me that these people who lived so close to each other year in, year out, whose families all knew each other intimately, and knew everything there was to know about each other’s family histories, some of it no doubt shameful or embarrassing, needed a break from being themselves. They desperately needed a few hours of being with people without the burden of their ordinary identities.

This is not something that would be immediately understood today. If anything, people today, city-dwellers in particular, tend to suffer from the opposite problem, from being too unknown, too anonymous. Today, if we should feel the need to shuffle off our identities for a time, we can go downtown or to the mall or take a drive to another town or city. If we live in the country, we can go to the city, or we can fly off to some distant beach resort. But for people living in small, isolated, unchanging communities for their entire lives, the ritual may have been a psychological necessity.

There's tons more, including a bunch of links to Shakespeare and other bits of Elizabethan culture.

Remittances up in these hard times

Two remittances-related blog posts popped up on my feed reader today. The first, from International Political Economy Zone, is about how, despite economists' expectations, remittances in the Philippines are still increasing. This post, from the World Bank's Private Sector Development blog, discusses how the World Bank and the Economist believe that immigrants are engaging in currency speculation on the margin – the strengthening of first-world currencies compared to developing countries' currencies is causing immigrants to send more money home, since they know their families will get more local currency for their dollars/euros/pounds.

The overall remittance picture according to a World Bank report (.pdf) is that remittances to Latin America (presumably mostly from the US and Spain) are mostly down, whereas they are still growing in countries in South and Southeast Asia, albeit at slower rates. That is, with the exception of Pakistan, whose growth rate in remittances is actually up so far for 2009. The Philippines' growth rate in remittances slowed from 14% from 2007-08 to 3% so far in 2009 – obviously lower because of the economic slowdown in the US, with its 4 million Filipino immigrants, but perhaps mitigated due to the fact that demand for healthcare, where many Filipinos in America work, has been more robust than the demand for construction, where many Mexicans work[ed]. The growth in the rate of growth of remittances to Pakistan baffles me though – I'd suspect that most overseas Pakistanis worked in the Gulf and the UK, which haven't exactly been thriving as of late. Perhaps the growth is driven by Pakistanis in India? Is there even significant immigration from Pakistan to India?

Brits have no love for liberal ex-KGB Russian oligarch

I'm a firm believer in the idea that the neo-KGB and the Russian state have extended their tentacles farther than most people realize (*cough*al-Qaeda*cough*), but the recent outrage in Britain over the Russian oligarch Aleksandr Lebedev's purchase of the Evening Standard is pretty ridiculous in light of his history with media companies. Along with Gorbachev, Lebedev owns 49% of the dissident Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the last bastion of oppositional print media in an increasingly authoritarian Russia. His company has been a vociferous critic of the Putin administration – at least four of its journalists have been assassinated for their work, and the rest are fearful.

Despite Lebedev's sponsorship of Russia's last remaining major print source of critical news and analysis, Britain's xenophones will not be convinced. Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, prominent media figure at the Sunday Telegraph, can't be bothered to look past Lebedev's KGB pedigree, and thinks "it's one more example that we are no more a serious nation that we allow a serious paper to be taken over in our capital by a Russian oligarch."

Fortunately, not all in the British press have an instinctual repulsion to Lebedev – Luke Harding of the Guardian wrote fondly about Lebedev's sophistication and distinct lack of the typical oligarchical pretensions, as well as less superficial things like his anti-authoritarian streak. But I think that such things border on hagiography, as they ignore an obvious point of contention: the source of Lebedev's wealth. I don't know much specifically about Lebedev, but given what I do know (he was a KGB agent who became very rich in the Great Russian Plunder of the 1990s), it's likely that he's done some things that we in the West would consider outright theft – there was simply no other way to earn the money that he did otherwise.

But it's easy for us to sit hear and judge, when the entire Soviet state was for the taking, and ultimately I think he's probably one of the more honest and liberal of the oligarchs. He hasn't made peace with Putin, risking the fate of fellow politically-motivated über-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and has continued to bankroll the leading voice of Russia's liberal opposition. It's just sad to see that even in Britain, with its open press and history of being the setting of Russian political dramas, people are ignorant enough about the place to insinuate that Aleksandr Lebedev might still be sympathetic to Russia. On the other hand, it's important not to downplay the oligarchs' crimes, while always keeping in mind the institutional incentives that allowed the oligarchs to rise and led to the backlash that has resulted in the creeping re-nationalization of the Russian state.

Crying wolf

One of the things that irritates me the most about libertarians in the West is when they compare their country to the Soviet Union. Here's an example from the Adam Smith Institute's blog, in the UK, which is apparently a pretty influential free market think tank:

According to new research for The Sunday Times by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, state spending as a percentage of GDP has now reached 49% for the UK as a whole.

That's bad enough as it is – the government now controls practically half of the UK economy – but when you look at the regional figures the picture is even worse.

In the Northeast, state spending is 66.4% of GDP. In Wales, it's 71.6%. And in Northern Ireland, it's a whopping 77.6%.

I don't think the Soviet Republics ever managed to achieve quite that degree of state dominance.

Seriously?! You think that Wales is more socialist than the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic was? And this is leaving aside the obvious ridiculousness of trying to quantify how statist an economy is, considering that often times regulations that don't show up on the budget are far more consequential and disruptive than actual expenditures.

Oldest marijuana in the world found in northwestern China

Via Slashdot, the Toronto Star has a fact-filled article about the discovery of the oldest known cultivation of cannabis clearly for psychoactive purposes. The stash was found in Xinjiang province in northwestern China, and dated back to about 700 BC. They found 789 grams of smoking-grade weed stored with a "light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian" male shaman mummy for his journey in the afterlife – about 1.75 pounds, which would be worth at least $5000 on the streets today in the US.

Contrary to the government line (especially popular in Britain, where supposedly ultra-potent "skunk" is the new reefer madness), today's pot is no more potent than in years past, as "the marijuana was found to have a relatively high content of THC," though the sample was too old to get a more accurate reading. And contrary to the latest round of American anti-pot commercials, the tomb where the drugs were found had indications that the man that was buried in it was of "high social standing."

Also, at the end of the article they mention that Xinjiang – where this weed was found – "is considered an original source of many cannabis strains worldwide," though there's no attribution.

Brit: leave an "acceptable dictator" in Afghanistan

Someone leaked a "coded" diplomatic cable to the French satirical/investigative (??) newspaper Le Canard enchaîné (whose website proudly informs would-be readers that the Canard deals only "avec du papier journal et de l'encre"), in which the British ambassador to Afghanistan says that essentially, the war is lost. He says not only do foreign troops only prolong the inevitable chaos before order emerges, but that increased military presence will have the "perverse effect" of creating more violence. In the cable, which was written by the deputy French ambassador and is a summary of what the British ambassador told him, British ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles says the western forces should leave "an 'acceptable dictator' in charge of the country within five to 10 years," whatever that means.

Finance across the pond(s)

The British government "shocked" the finance industry over there tonight when they announced a three month moratorium on short selling. Short sells are financial instruments that allow someone to bet against a stock by borrowing the stock (for a fee) for a price ostensibly based on its current price, selling the stock, and buying it back after it falls (hopefully), returning the stock to the lender and pocketing the difference. It's risky, but it allows stock prices to fall faster, and for a correction to happen, the market has to bottom out. It's just speeding up the inevitable, minimizing the amount of time that the markets fall before they start to rise again. Temporarily banning short selling has been discussed in America, too, though it hasn't happened yet.

The Guardian article also includes these disturbing bits, about the British government's plans to lean on lenders to give more mortgages to first-time buyers (i.e., less credit-worthy people):

Short-selling has inspired government action because ministers are relying on Lloyds TSB's purchase of HBOS to revive the housing market and has agreed to override competition laws in return for a pledge by the newly created megabank to offer more home loans to first-time buyers. [...]

When asked how the bank would counter abuse of its market dominance, particularly in mortgages, he said "new lending" by the combined bank for households and small businesses would "continue at least at current levels" and the bank would increase the range of products aimed at first-time buyers.

So basically, the government is going to ensure that risky loans continue to be made by state-controlled lenders (the same thing exacerbated/caused the subprime collapse over here, meanwhile ensuring that banks cannot contract their lending practices as is normal during a recession. Do they never learn?

Edit: On the other side of the Anglosphere, Australian politicians are also looking to further control their mortgage market, with the creation of an "Aussie Mac." Stephen Kirchner has an analysis of the plan, and finds that it has many of the problems that American mortgage GSEs have had. He admits it's an appealing idea, since the corporation (whether public or private) requires no federal expenditure, as it derives its superior market position from the government's credit rating, which allows it to borrow at lower rates than private banks could. But the savings are not reliably passed on to consumers – the corporation already has an inherently superior market position, so there's a lot of room to make profit without any competition). And even when the savings are passed on to consumers in the form of lower interest rates on home loans, the American real estate bubble that preceded and enabled the subprime meltdown shows that easier lending – and thereby higher housing prices – is not always such a good thing. And then there's the fact that in the end, if the government has to bail out the corporation (as the Feds just did), the costless way to raise homeownership rates ends up not being so costless.

British anti-drug director for legalization

Sorry for the slew of drug-related posts, but this one was just too good to ignore. From the Guardian:

A former senior civil servant who was responsible for coordinating the government's anti-drugs policy now believes that legalisation would be less harmful than the current strategy. Julian Critchley, the former director of the Cabinet Office's anti-drugs unit, also said that his views were shared by the "overwhelming majority" of professionals in the field, including police officers, health workers and members of the government.

He also claimed that New Labour's policy on drugs was based on what was thought would play well with the Daily Mail readership [ed. note: like Fox News in the US], regardless of evidence of what worked. Downing Street policy advisers were said to have suggested stunts such as sending boats down the Thames to catch smugglers to coincide with policy announcements. [...]

He said that his views were widely held in the government but rarely expressed in public. "I think what was truly depressing about my time in UKADCU was that the overwhelming majority of professionals I met, including those from the police, the health service, the government and voluntary sectors held the same view: the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves. Yet publicly, all those intelligent, knowledgeable people were forced to repeat the nonsensical mantra that the government would be 'tough on drugs', even though they all knew the government's policy was actually causing harm."

BBC: Russia 'backed Litvinenko murder'

As if it needed to be said:

The murder of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was carried out with the backing of the Russian state, Whitehall sources have told the BBC.

A senior security official told Newsnight there were "very strong indications it was a state action". [...]

The BBC has been told that Russia's internal security organisation, the FSB, operated under Mr Putin with far more autonomy than the organisations usually entrusted with foreign espionage operations.

Our source said: "We very strongly believe the Litvinenko case to have had some state involvement."

Newsnight has also learned that officers at MI5 believe they thwarted an attempt last summer to kill another Russian dissident, Boris Berezovsky.

The BBC's source said the Berezovsky incident showed "continued FSB willingness to consider operations against people in the West". [...]

In November, head of MI5 Jonathan Evans expressed concern that there had been "no decrease" in the number of Russian covert intelligence officers operating in the UK since the end of the Cold War.

The service believes there are around 30 operating from Russian diplomatic missions here.

My personal opinion on why they killed Litvinenko was that it had something to do with what he knew about 9/11 and related Russian sponsorship of Islamic terrorism. Because it sure doesn't seem worth it to kill him over something like this, when no one outside of Russia seemed to care much. You can find a full archive of Russia-related posts here.

Toothless measures

What's the point in seizing something that a person can legally buy in any supermarket or kitchen supply store?

The kitchen knife is the most common weapon used in teenage stabbings, Sir Ian Blair said today, as he revealed that close to 200 weapons have been seized since officers stepped up stop and search measures in response to a spate of recent knife crime.

Militarization of British schools

From what I can tell, the Labour PM in Britain wants all secondary school pupils to "receive basic military training as a means of developing greater affiliation with the armed forces." Translated into American, it seems to mean that he wants all high school students to undergo some light version of the ROTC. The focus of the plan appears to be poorer schools, and the aim is clearly to instill discipline in a youth culture that many Britons are appalled at (big surprise – when hasn't one generation disapproved of the next?). Mark Brady at the Liberty & Power blog has a great quote from George Orwell on the traditional resentment of most Britons towards militarism and the armed forces...hopefully this plan will be received in Britain as I would imagine it would be in the US, that is, with shock and disapproval.

Immigration in Arizona and Slough

From the Guardian and the LA Times are two very different stories about immigration: in the Times, Arizona is seeing success in keeping out illegal immigrants and the native-born population hasn't seemed to be suffering much from it; in the Guardian, the town of Slough has been booming amidst high levels of immigration. The places are in some ways similar – Arizona is along the border and sees many migrants from Mexico, and Slough is the most diverse borough in the UK outside of London.

But the similarities end there – in Arizona, the immigration that's causing concern is illegal and the immigrants are relatively low-skilled. In Slough, however, the immigrants have largely been legal ("Asians" [British for Pakistanis and Indians] and Poles after World War II, and more recently immigrants from Africa and newly-EUified Poland), and the government must provide all healthcare service for the immigrants. So while in America people go on and on about emergency rooms being filled up, in Britain, an influx of human beings clogs the entire medical system. And yet, the furor over illegal immigration is more often played out in stories about crime, whereas in the US it's about immigrants stealing jobs and clogging up schools and hospitals. According to the articles, both the economies of Slough and of Arizona are booming at the moment, but the initiatives in Arizona limiting immigration have just recently been put into effect, and the future will tell what impact they had on Arizona. Of course, if the economy goes south, it could just be part of a broader trend.

Westminster on weed

In more news from across the pond, where some supposedly ultra-potent form of marijuana called skunk* is all the rage, the Tory candidate for Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, admits to having smoked marijuana and done cocaine when he was younger. At the end of the Guardian's article comes this bit:

Last year, virtually the entire cabinet admitted they had smoked cannabis after the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, revealed that she had experimented with it as a youngster.

Everyone from Hilary Benn to Lords leader Lady Ashton confessed to having dabbled with the drug.

The only minister who refused to comment at the time was the then-culture secretary, James Purnell.

* In actuality, high-grade marijuana has been around for a long time. Similarly to how different drinks have differing alcohol content, some marijuana is stronger than others. However, like with alcohol, users are well able to titrate their use and smoke more of the weaker stuff and less of the stronger stuff. Strong marijuana would seem to be a benefit, because you'd have to smoke less plant matter (not that it would matter) to get the same high.

"The only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows."

In Britain the trial has begun for the men accused of trying to blow up transatlantic airliners over the summer (the reason that it's such a pain in the ass to take liquids with you on airplanes). It appears likely that they intended to commit acts of terrorism, though I'll reserve judgment on how likely they were to succeed/how advanced they were till after everything comes out. Anyway, here's a paragraph from the Telegraph's coverage, in which one of the would-be terrorists gives his rationale for perpetrating the attacks:

They said the deaths of “so-called innocents” were justified because British taxpayers, who funded the Army, did not care about the fate of Muslims, as they were more interested in drinking, watching EastEnders and “complaining about the World Cup”.

The implication seems to me to be that he holds Britons responsible not because of what their government did, but because of their reaction to it. That is, if you want to take him at his word.