Bloody foreigners #782

Migrant crime wave a myth - police study

A wide-ranging police study has concluded that the surge in immigrants from eastern Europe to Britain has not fuelled a rise in crime, the Guardian has learned. The findings will be presented to the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, tomorrow when she meets chief constables to discuss the issue. Several of them had complained that they needed more money to deal with increases in migrant populations in their areas. However, the study prepared for the Association of Chief Police Officers challenges claims that up to 1 million people from EU accession countries have caused a rise in criminality. The report finds that, despite newspaper headlines linking new migrants to crime, offending rates among mainly Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian communities are in line with the rate of offending in the general population.

Update: On the other hand:

How the gullible liberal media swallowed the spin on migrant crime

AND The facts behind crime and migration

AND Immigrants Bring more Crime

Berlusconi. The Entertainer

The clownish politician EU countries deserve

How, ask non-Italians, could anyone vote for such a clown? Silvio Berlusconi is comfortably ahead in the polls, yet his capers would disqualify him in most countries. He compares himself to Jesus, says that Rightists get more sex, and is building himself a Caligulan mausoleum, in which he will eventually be laid to rest surrounded by his retainers and clients.

He once told a German MEP that he would be perfect for the role of a concentration camp capo. Now, he delights audiences by describing how he hides under the bed when his wife is in a strop. But here's the thing. In Italy, as in every other EU state, democracy has been vitiated. The key decisions are made, not by parliamentarians or councillors, but by judges, civil servants and Eurocrats. Brussels passes 80 per cent of legislation in Italy, as in every EU member country. National elections have become a folkloric activity: an enjoyable ritual without meaningful consequence.

Get planting that allotment

Biggest grain exporters halt foreign sales

The global food crisis intensified on Tuesday as Kazakhstan, one of the world’s biggest wheat exporters halted foreign sales and rice prices shot to a record high after Indonesia stopped its farmers from selling the grain abroad.

In another sign of turmoil, a big food company in Japan, Nihon Shokuhin Kako, said high corn prices had forced it to buy cheaper genetically modified corn for the first time, breaking a social, though not legal, taboo and signalling that opposition to GM foods could weaken in the face of record food prices.

Meanwhile, fresh wheat export curbs in Kazakhstan, the world’s fifth largest exporter, and the rice bans in Indonesia, threaten to trigger bans in other food exporting countries, which will now face much higher demand from importing countries.

And get yourself a shotgun!

After the Ride

The Myth of Ronald Reagan Lured the Working Class Into Economic Destruction: Obama Gets It, But the Jilted Middle Class Doesn't

I can't save workers from voting against their own economic interests when they vote to defend values that no one is going to take away from them. And I understand that Clinton and McCain are playing on the pride of such displaced members of the middle class. No one wants to be told that they have been duped for nearly 30 years by the wealthy backers of the Republicrats. Rural and small town Pennsylvanians want to feel proud about America and themselves -- and the uproar from the McCain and Clinton camps once again presses the hot button of dignity, while privately believing in (whatever Clinton is saying on the campaign trail today) policies that will continue to erode the earnings and standard of living of the very people that they claim to be championing.

They don't do torture

Daily Kos:   An Iraqi man who died hanging by his cuffed wrists from a door frame, gagged, and beaten to death by his US interrogators.

This 47-year-old White male, [redacted], died of blunt force injuries and asphyxia. The autopsy disclosed multiple blunt force injuries,including deep contusions of the chest wall, numerous displaced rib fractures, lung contusions, and hemorrhage into the mesentery of the small and large intestine. An examination of the neck structures revealed hemorrhage into the strap muscles and fractures of the thyroid cartilage and hyoid bone. According to the investigative report provided by U.S. Army CID, the decedent was shackled to the top of a doorframe with a gag in his mouth at the time he lost consciousness and became pulseless. The severe blunt force injuries, the hanging position, and the obstruction of the oral cavity with a gag contributed to this individual's death. The manner of death is homicide.

Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet

Michael Klare, Oil Rules!

The oil-exporting countries collected an estimated $970 billion from the importing countries in 2006, and the take for 2007, when finally calculated, is expected to be far higher. A substantial fraction of these dollars, yen, and euros have been deposited in "sovereign-wealth funds" (SWFs), giant investment accounts owned by the oil states and deployed for the acquisition of valuable assets around the world. In recent months, the Persian Gulf SWFs have been taking advantage of the financial crisis in the United States to purchase large stakes in strategic sectors of its economy. In November 2007, for example, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) acquired a $7.5 billion stake in Citigroup, America's largest bank holding company; in January, Citigroup sold an even larger share, worth $12.5 billion, to the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) and several other Middle Eastern investors, including Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. The managers of ADIA and KIA insist that they do not intend to use their newly-acquired stakes in Citigroup and other U.S. banks and corporations to influence U.S. economic or foreign policy, but it is hard to imagine that a financial shift of this magnitude, which can only gain momentum in the decades ahead, will not translate into some form of political leverage.

In the case of Russia, which has risen from the ashes of the Soviet Union as the world's first energy superpower, it already has. Russia is now the world's leading supplier of natural gas, the second largest supplier of oil, and a major producer of coal and uranium. Though many of these assets were briefly privatized during the reign of Boris Yeltsin, President Vladimir Putin has brought most of them back under state control -- in some cases, by exceedingly questionable legal means. He then used these assets in campaigns to bribe or coerce former Soviet republics on Russia's periphery reliant on it for the bulk of their oil and gas supplies. European Union countries have sometimes expressed dismay at Putin's tactics, but they, too, are dependent on Russian energy supplies, and so have learned to mute their protests to accommodate growing Russian power in Eurasia. Consider Russia a model for the new energy world order.

Michael Klare is the author of: Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy

Margaret's musical hodgepodge

Frank Ferudi: The truth about music

For Hodge, and other supporters of the politicisation of culture, the value of classical music is called into question by the fact that apparently the ‘wrong’ people listen to it. ‘The main problem with classical music is its audience’, wrote Sean O’Hagan in the Observer. That’s another way of saying that because its audience is predominantly middle class, classical music is an unreliable instrument for promoting social cohesion and community regeneration.

Unlike the icons of ‘common culture’ favoured by Hodge, such music is looked upon as elitist. ‘Anyone who still thinks classical music is not elitist should take a look around them when they next take their seat at a live performance’, says O’Hagan. Sadly, once the composition of the audience is seen as being more important than the performance itself, then the content of music is devalued. From this viewpoint, there is little place for truth in music.

Dying to blog?

The Joy of Tech comic... laughter is the best tech support.

The true cost of Bush's tax breaks for the rich

Happy Tax Day to The Richest One Percent!

To put the tax cuts offered to the richest one percent in some perspective, the report compares them to the annual budget allocations for various federal agencies: The cost of the Bush tax cuts going to just the richest one percent in 2008 (about $79.5 billion) is more than the entire budget for the Department of Education this year ($68 billion), almost twice as much as the entire budget for the Department of Homeland Security this year ($42.3 billion) and over ten times as much as the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency ($7.5 billion).

I wouldn't trust Boris to operate a mop

I don't care what Ken Livingstone does - I'll still vote for him if it stops Boris Johnson becoming mayor- Charlie Brooker

I'm genetically predisposed to hate the Tories. It's my default, hard-wired position. If Boris wins, their simpering pudge-faced smuggery is going to be unbearable. Picture the expression Piers Morgan makes when he's especially pleased with himself, then multiply it by 10 million, and imagine it looming overhead like a Death Star. That's what it's going be like. Therefore I don't care who wins provided Johnson loses, and loses hard, preferably in close-up, on the telly.

Via Justin @ Twitter

Prison cuts

Rates of self harm in jails soar

Rates of self-harm in jail have rocketed in the last four years...The Howard League for Penal Reform said the number of prisoners deliberately injuring themselves had risen at four times the rate of the jail population increase. In 2003 there were 16,393 incidents of self harm in prisons in England and Wales, but last year the number had risen to 22,459 incidents. It amounted to a 37 per cent increase - almost four times the rise in the prison population for the same period, the Howard League added. The Ministry of Justice said the rise was due to new systems being put in place, which meant incidents were more accurately recorded.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "The significant increase in the number of prisoner self-harm incidents can be attributed to the introduction of a much more thorough and robust reporting system. "This led establishments to become more effective at reporting, leading to a marked increase in self-harm incidents between then and the present.

So the present figures indicate a rise to a shockingly high figure for self-harm in prisons (Howard League) or that they have, in fact, always been shockingly high (Ministry of Justice).

Either way, it's a fucking disgrace.

Poo to Prudence

FT: UK voters lose confidence in Brown

Gordon Brown is less trusted to steer his country through the global financial crisis than any other major western European leader, according to an FT opinion poll, in a blow to his reputation for economic competence...a Financial Times/Harris poll suggests Britons no longer trust his government on the economy – 68 per cent of respondents said they were “not confident at all” in its ability to deal with the economic crisis.