Why do people smash things when their sports team wins?

Can someone please explain to me what burning cars and e-bikes and smashing and looting stores has to do with celebrating a sports victory?

After Paris St-Germain beat Arsenal in soccer's Champions League final this weekend, PSG fans went on a rampage in Paris and clashed with police, 219 fans were injured, eight of them seriously. Bus, train and rail services were severely disrupted, and one person was reported dead after an accident on the Paris ring road.(which may or may not have been connected). Some 6,000 police officers were mobilized this year after similar celebrations turned violent last year, and 57 of those police officers were injured. In all, 780 people were arrested, with over 450 of them still in custody. 

So, this then is what the French do when their team wins? What is the psychology behind that? Or is it just a function of the amount of alcohol imbibed? I could almost understand it if they had lost and they were frustrated, although it still wouldn't be justified.

Well, it turns out that psychology and sociology do have something to say about these violent revellers. 

For one thing, there is something called the "group contagion effect", whereby the anonymity of being part of a large group makes people feel they can get away with something illegal or dangerous, and generally let loose their aggresssive side. After a particularly intense game, people may search for a release from the tension through destructive behaviour. This can quickly spiral out of control in a large crowd of other like-minded people, and soon the usual rules and norms get overridden.

There's also an aspect of crowd behaviour called "excitation transfer", where extreme happiness can turn into extreme aggression as one part of the brain gets over-stimulated and over-excited. A state of high physical excitation (increased heart rate, adrenaline production, etc) can continue even after the initial arousal, and the body's leftover energy can become misattributed or transfered to a different emotional stimulus.

Well, maybe there are perfectly good psychological explanations for this stuff, but it still doesn't make any sense to me!

How Spain became so successful: immigrants

Remember back in the late 2000s/2010s, Spain, along with southern European neighbours Portugal, Italy and Greece were disaparagingly referred to as "PIGS", and mercilessly berated by more successful European countries like Germany and France?

Well, not any longer. Since the 2020 pandemic, Spain's economy has boomed while the likes of Germany, France and the UK have struggled. Disposable income in Spain has risen three times as fast as in France and eight times as fast as in Germany. Unemployment, poverty and inequality have all fallen to their lowest levels in nearly 20 years. The Economist ranked Spain as the No. 1 economy in the world in 2024.

All this has happened under the progressive centre-left government of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, which has now been in power for eight years. It has welcomed record numbers of immigrants, hiked the minimum wage, implemented energy price controls, fast-tracked renewable energy projects, and even implemented a kind of guarantees income system. Just about the only negative arising from all this is a burgeoning housing crisis, which the government will need to address if it wants to retain voter popularity.

When the initial COVID lockdowns started to fade in 2021, and tourists started to flock back to Spain (the country has always been in the top three of global tourist destinations), Spain, with one of the fastest-ageing populations in all of Europe, just didn't have enough workers to keep up. Increased immigration was the obvious solution, but that also had political ramifications, and the country's surging hard-right faction was ever active on that file, as always.

Spain's solution was elegant. It visibly cracked down on the most controversial form of immigration: African migrants entering the country illegally by boats across the Mediterranean. This was actually just a tiny proportion of its overall immigration, but it was the one most often targeted by the populist right wing and by the Spanish public in general. At the same time, they substantially ramped up the least controversial form of immigration: legal Latin Americna migrants. Given that they share a language and certain cultural affinities, Latinos have always been reasonably well-tolerated in Spain, especially if they do the least -popular and poorly-paid manual jobs.

They fast-tracked work authorizations for immigrants willing to work in those sectors with labour shortages, streamlined the foreign work visa process, and encouraged workers to settle in areas where the local workforce had dried up. Government representatives would even recruit individuals from the migrant refugee camps on the US-Mexico border. 

It was a very successful strategy even if it wasn't particularly progressive in some respects. In just two years from 2021-3, Spain added 3 million workers to its 48 million population. They injected new life into Spanish economy, allowed businesses to expand, and some of the more ambitious immigrants even went on to open up new businesses themselves. By some estimates, a quarter of the rise in Spain's GDP over the last few years can be attributed directly to immigrants.

Kamloops residential school burials investigation is proceeding, just very slowly

Can you believe that it's been 5 years since the announcement in May 2021 of the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous residential school students - some as young as three years old, we were told - at an apple orchard near Kamloops, British Columbia, once the site of a notorious residential school for First Nations kids.

The news marked a watershed moment in Indigenous relations for Canada. Huge sums of money were allocated by the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau towards further investigations. There was an unprecedented period of national mourning and heart-searching. National flags were maintained at half-mast for nearly five months. A National Day For Truth and Reconciliation was established, and people held vigils and tied orange ribbons to poles and fence-posts. Pope Francis made an official apology on behalf of the Catholic Church for its role in Canada's residential school system as a direct response to the discovery.

The hundreds of "anomalies" identified by ground-penetrating radar were initially described as "the remains of 215 children" in a "mass grave". The press repeated this description avidly and unquestioningly, e.g. "Remains of 215 children found buried at former BC residential school", "Canada mourns as remains of 215 children found at Indigenous school", etc. 

Gradually, as cooler heads prevailed, they were reframed as "probable burials" or just "anomalies", and they were said to be "consistent with" the size, depth and layout of human burials. The number of suspected graves was reduced to around 200. But it was still a shocking and humbling discovery that merited further investigation, and it set off a frantic search in many other parts of Canada for more evidence of hidden burial sites and residential school atrocities.

Five years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, though, and there is still no hard evidence of what actually lies beneath the apple orchard. The Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc leadership are still resisting actually digging up the "probable" dead, and some people are starting to become suspicious that something is being hidden. Chief Rosanne Casimir has equivocated with unsatisfactory statement like, "While the investigation has been more complex than we initially thought, we are making progress and will continue adapting our methodologies.snd information as it advances". 

Interpreting ground-penetrating radar readings is an imprecise science, to put it mildly. Rocks, water and roots can appear as indistinct radar blips requiring interpretation. A ground-penetrating radar investigation of a potential mass grave in the US some years ago ultimately turned up nothing more than construction debris, artifacts and dirt, but no bodies. Other confimatory technologies exist - human remains detection dogs, LiDAR (a remote sensing method using laser pulses), and soil spectroscopy - and it seems that some of these are being used in BC.

Nevertheless, five years is a long time, and it's not clear what "advances" have been made. The ongoing uncertainty has given rise to skeptics and even denialists. One theory, based on historical blueprints of the residential school, is that the "anomalies" are actually part of a defunct septic system. Some denialists (or were they skeptics) have tried to break into the orchard in the middle of the night with shovels. Some have gone so far as to call it a big hoax, and one ex-MLA called it "the greatest lie in Canadian history". There are hashtags and slogans in some corners of the Internet like #StopTheGrift, "Every Hoax Matters" and "Dig Up or Shut Up". Some critics have called for the millions of dollars of taxpayers' money to be returned to Ottawa with interest.

These are the words of a small minority of mavericks and outliers, of course, but the media blackout and the cult of silence around Indigenous investigations are not helping their case from a PR perspective. One poll found that 63% of Canadians won't accept that children are buried at the Tk'emlúps site until excavation provides further evidence. Some Indigenous leaders believe that there is a risk that the secretive, closed-door policy might lead to further divide between Canadians and Indigenous people.

In fact, it does seem that investigations are proceeding, under federal guidance and according to a detailed plan to dig the site by 2027 (pending consent from around 120 First Nations communities throughout Western Canada that sent children to the school). DNA samples from First Nations are being collected to help with potential identification. Iron-clad legal protections against misuse are required. So the work is proceeding This is a mammoth undertaking of great complexity, but the Tk'emlúps leadership is playing it very close to their chest, and the precise timeline remains very uncertain.

And if the area is eventually excavated, and no children's bodies are found? Well, we'll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.

Israel denies allegations of sexual violence in conflict zones

The UN has accused both Israel and Russia of engaging in "patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence" in conflict zones, and added them to a blacklist of countries suspected of such proscribed tactics.

Israel, predictably enough, back-accused the UN, and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in particular, of downright lies and slander, and severed all ties with Guterres (although what "ties" they really have is hard to know). Israel's UN ambassador pulled no punches in his public response: "Given that Antonio Guterres has chosen to violate every standard of honesty, integrity and professionalism, Israel has decided to sever all ties with the Secretary-General's Office and will wait until a new UN Secretary-General is appointed". Well!

Of course, no such thing has happened. Mr. Guterres was merely articulating the results of a detailed report by the United Nations in which multiple specific instances of conflict-related sexual violence on Israel's part are well documented, covering the years 2023, 2024 and 2025. It had put the two countries "on notice" last year that they were likely to be added to the blacklist; this was not, then, unexpected. (Hamas, by the way, was already on the list.)

So, the UN was just doing its job, as was Mr Guterres. The violation of honesty, integrity and professionalism seems to be all on the side of Israel.

Russia, for its part, does not seem to have commented on the allegations, and presumably just doesn't care.

What's in a name? Where laws are concerned , quite a lot, it seems

Some of Vladimir Putin's most outspoken opponents are engaging in a full court press in Canada. And what they are campaigning for might surprise you.

The two activists are: Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian activist who has survived two poisoning attempts and a stint in a Russian jail; and Bill Browder, an American financier, who has led a high-profile (and dangerous) global campaign for targeted human rights sanctions, ever since his Russian tax advisor Sergei Magnitsky was beaten and killed in captivity for uncovering a massive fraud scheme administered by Putin officials.

The two men are currently campaigning in Canada, and their main demand is merely to rename one of Canada's laws. The Special Economic Measures Act (SEMA) has been Canada's main economic sanctions tool since it was first brought in back in 1992. Kara-Murza and Browder are arguing that the law should be renamed to include the name Magnitsky. They argue that the name is now globally synonymous with holding governments to account for human rights abuses, and that including the Magnitsky name would add "clarity" and give the law "a statement of moral purpose". 

There is currently a private member's bill, C-219, going through Parliament to exactly that effect, as well as to expand the current law to include transnational repression (where foreign states harass or harm vocal critics in order to silence or stifle their activism).

Now, I don't have a major problem with the proposed legislation, except that we already have a Sergei Magnitsky Law on the statutes, also known as the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, and things could get confusing.

But mainly, I was surprised at just how important these two world-renowned activists consider the name of the law to be, that they would contemplate travelling here to specifically campaign for it.

Correlation between education and voting in the USA

Here's an interesting little rabbit hole to go down. Based on US census data, the best-educated American states are:

1. Massachusetts
2. Colorado
3. Vermont 
4. Marylamd
5. New Jersey 
6. Virginia
7. Connecticut
8. New Hampshire
9. New York
10. Washington

The least-educated states are;

1. West Virginia
2. Mississippi
3. Arkansas
4. Louisiana
5. Kentucky
6. Nevada
7. Oklahoma
8. Alabama
9. Indiana
10. New Mexico

Well, maybe you could have guessed most of those. But what's interesting is the correlation of these results with election results.

ALL of the top ten educated states vote Democrat. And ALL of the top ten least educated states voted Republican.

Of course, it could just be coincidence.

China's immovable smoking addiction

By all accounts, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave up an atrocious smoking habit some fifteen years ago. His country, though, is making zero - or rather negative - progress on his attempts to reduce China's awful addiction to smoking.

Over the last twenty years, smoking in the rest of the world has fallen by a respectable 26%; in China, over that period, it increased by 39%. China now accounts for nearly half of the global total of cigarettes smoked, some 2.4 trillion every year. While the percentage of smokers in China has fallen a bit, as fewer young people take up the habit, overall cigarette sales have continued an inexorable rise.

Part of the problem is that cigarettes are ridiculously cheap in China - at around $3 a pack on average, they are about a third of the price of smokes in the USA and Canada. China ratified WHO's tobacco control treaty in 2005, but has never really implemented its strictest provisions. Unlike the graphic health warnings on North American and European cigarettes, Chinese cigarettes have a simple, unobtrusive text warning, all but lost among the patriotic symbols that adorn the cigarette packs produced by the China National Tobacco Corp (CNTC), a vast state-owned monopoly and the world's largest producer of cigarettes. 

Indeed, the CNTC is the main problem. Generating annual profits of $244 billion last year, the CNTC alone contributes an eye-popping 7% of China's tax income each year, about the same as what it spends on defence. (Roughly half of the sales revenue of each cigarette flows into government coffers.) The company has also been called on to help out with specific strategic priorities, like financially shoring up one of China's biggest banks, funding national semi-conductor investment, etc. In short, it has made itself economically indispensable, and accumulated a lot of political influence in the process. 

It's also alarmingly corrupt: seven former top administrators of the CNTC have been arrested on corruption charges in the last seven years. It has successfully blocked a concerted national push for an indoor smoking ban, and even official studies have concluded that the state monopoly has actively interfered in national and local attempts to rein in smoking. It's influence is, obviously, even more marked in tobacco-growing regions like Kunming and Changde, where tobacco taxes can account for more than half of the city's budget. 

There are local "tobacco bureaus" that actively work to water down even modest anti-smoking initiatives. In one city, the local health commission proposed a system of smoke-free public areas, but the local tobacco bureau managed to ensure it did not apply to restaurants and bars, and even tried to limit the smoke-free designation in schools to elementary and middle schools only.

We think of President Xi as ruling China with a rod of iron, but even his attempts to reduce the country's smoking addiction have met with the immovable object of the powerful smoking lobby.

Is Mark Carney's extended honeymoon period starting to sour?

Mark Carney has been granted a generous, even unprecedented, honeymoon period as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and as Prime Minister of the country. This is partly - mainly - due to the singular circumstances he has inherited (basically, Donald Trump and the chaos that inevitably follows him around). But, either way, Carney is currently basking in an enviable 67% approval rate, something most other world leaders can only dream of right now, and a comfortable +8% approval of the direction he is taking the country in. After a year in government, Mr. Carney is more popular than when he was elected, and his party now has a small majority, rather than the large minority it was elected with.

This all sounds exceptional, and certainly, compared to the likes of Donald Trump and Keir Starmer, it is. But, in fact, it's not dissimilar to Justin Trudeau's popularity rating a year into his tenure a decade ago, and look how he turned out! The big test of leaders often comes after about 15 months, sometimes referred to as the "15 Month Itch".

After the events of the last few weeks, you have to wonder whether that itch is starting to be felt. At the end of April, fourteen (unspecified) members of the Liberal caucus published a letter bemoaning the government's anti-environmental trajectory. Because it's undeniable the Carney has indeed presided over a wholesale roll-back and deliberate weakening of the environmental initiatives of his predecessor. Among other things, he has repealed the consumer carbon tax, eliminated the EV sales mandate, ended the oil and gas emissions cap, and called a halt to plans to end fossil fuel subsidies. Improbably, Carney maintains he is still an ardent environmentalist and climate change leader, and that he is just being practical and pragmatic, but his actions belie that. To call it a "pivot" hardly does it justice.

Then, just this week, after Mr. Carney followed though on his disastrous pipeline agreement with Alberta, the prominent MP, environmentalist and Liberal Quebec "lieutenant" Steven Guilbeault tendered his resignation, first from his position in the Cabinet and then as a Member of Parliament, on the grounds that he cannot in good conscience watch the Liberal Party abandon its environmental stance. As environment minister, Mr. Guilbeault was the architect of many of the Trudeau-era environmental policies, which he has watched being comprehensively dismantled by Carney. As a man of conscience and principle, it is all he can do to walk away.

Now, not everyone is as principled as Steven Guilbeault. Most of the 67% that still support Mark Carney (including a good proportion of Conservatives) clearly believe, as Carney himself does, that, at this particular moment in time, economic imperatives outweigh the nice-to-have option of environmental initiatives. Even though the consequences of climate change and other environmental deteriorations may be much more important in the long run, it's hard for people to see past the short-term challenges of inflation, job losses, housing shortages, etc. In times of economic fragility, it's always "the economy, stupid", and I get that.

But I wonder whether the growing schism in the Liberal Party between what you might call the "Economy First" and the "Environment First" factions is an important one? 14 out of 174 Liberal MPs is not a huge number, after all, but I do wonder if it might be the start of a fissure, the start of a 15 Month Itch. My guess, though, is not: pragmatism will win out over principle. Stupid.