Now this is really interesting. The Grauniad talks to some drug dealers about how they use bookies’ video roulette machines to launder their earnings. The main reason to do this is that they issue receipts, which permit you to explain to the police (and also the Revenue) why you’re carrying so much cash. It’s also…
Read More A case study in cluster spillover from the financial services sector(Or, imagine you had to make a Homo economicus. Other than money, what chemicals would you immediately look up in Angewandte Chemie?) So Dave from PR’s constituency chairman was found dead in a portaloo at Glastonbury. Who now remembers William Hague in Notting Hill? This made me think of something. There used to be a…
Read More a theory of some people’s moral sentimentsWell, this is grim. Intelligent comment is to be found here, in Jamie Kenny’s interview with David Wilson. Would you say that serial killers are a kind of negative indicator of the health of society in the sense that the fewer victims there are, the better society functions? Serial killers function best within fractured communities,…
Read More some memories of west BradfordJust to finish off this gruelling series, I wanted to flag Kilcullen’s take on Afghanistan and opium. In short, his argument is that counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics in Afghanistan are identical; the poppy mostly grows where the Taliban are, it provides something up to 50% of the movement’s income, and it is anyway impossible to do…
Read More Accidental Guerrilla, Part 4: Kilcullen on DrugsI’m increasingly annoyed by official-media consensus that young people will suffer more than anyone else from the recession. Not that I especially doubt this; I doubt the reasoning, which appears to be that they’ve all gone soft and they’re not like we were in my day. As a general principle, I believe this is usually…
Read More you can’t blame the youth of todayDer Spiegel has an interesting story regarding the Colombian drug smugglers’ homemade submarines. These have so far been considered a curiosity, but apparently they are becoming more and more common, and the technology is developing fast. The biggest vessel captured so far displaced 46 tonnes, presumably surfaced, with a payload of 10 tonnes. Apparently the…
Read More dive! dive! dive!Back in 2004, this blog went to the European Social Forum – we weren’t that impressed, but we did call it “the Caesar’s Palace of Ranting”. I’m not sure what the equivalent for the UKUUG’s OpenTech 2008 would be; there was plenty of ranting, but a sight less committee wank, more practicality, even if no-one…
Read More OpenTech 2008: It’s like the ESF, with code…Much more is filtering out about the Bangkok Bout Bust; it seems fairly certain that his arrest was the result of a sting operation in which the DEA posed as buyers from the FARC. Bout booked a meeting room in the Bangkok Sofitel; he, and several others, were waiting for their guests to arrive when…
Read More Smulian In the Bag With Viktor BoutDavid Axe reports on various American officials moaning that the Dutch Army in Afghanistan is not sufficiently keen on burning the peasants’ crops, specifically the poppy crop. Now, Dave is currently engaged in something like the Four Days’ Fight of the Anglo-Dutch War, when the Royal Navy and Martin Tromp’s fleets got locked into a…
Read More Burn this filth