As I recounted yesterday, the recent U.S. deal on raising the debt ceiling and supposedly reducing the deficit and debt was a calculated fraud. Instead, the U.S. will increase its borrowing and spending, albeit at a slightly slower rate than projected.

Commenting on the announcement, Republican Senator, Jim DeMint of South Carolina observed very much the same, saying:

The deal Congress just passed over conservative objections has already had its obvious effect, the loss of America’s credibility around the world. The deal was not a serious attempt to solve our spending and debt problem, it was a political solution meant to kick the can down the road. The only real solution to our spending and debt crisis was Cut, Cap & Balance that the president rejected out of hand.

The announcement by Standard & Poor’s was largely expected with the agency having placed the U.S. credit rating under review on the 14th of July. It is therefore unlikely to have much on an immediate impact on the markets. However, the long term implications for the United States and the world economy could be far reaching.

The Chinese, who are currently the biggest single creditor to the United States, were immediately critical of U.S. debt reduction steps (or lack thereof), and called for the creation of a new, stable global reserve currency. The country’s official news agency, Xinhua, said:

The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone.

China has also strongly urged the United States to cut military and social welfare expenditure, warning that further credit downgrades would very likely undermine world economic recovery and trigger a new round of financial turmoil.

Meanwhile, the BBC’s great Europhile, Mark Mardell has been asking whether the separated system of Government in the United States is to blame for the financial crisis, and wondering if ‘the system itself may not be fit for purpose’.

Much like his former colleagues in the EU, Mark is rather adverse to actual opposition. In their world, the ‘dysfunctional’ government he claims the U.S. system produced has led to the prevention (mainly, in his eyes, by the Republicans and the Tea party) of a serious and unified agreement on the future of the dollar and the United States economy. If everyone would only just agree (or be given no choice in the matter) then the country could easily sort out its economic troubles in a flash – just like the EU. Oh no, wait..!

Still, we in Britain do not have the same system of Government as the United States, so I’m sure we have nothing to worry about. Our economy is so safe in fact that our MPs are able to spend time on much more important business…

During his recent column in The Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Booker highlighted how our Government (the EU Commission) has become involved in actively colluding with the Chinese authorities to deny aid relief in Tibet. Booker tells us:

On the country’s northern edge, six months of snow and record low temperatures have created a catastrophe in the Chinese province of Chingai. According to China’s official news agency, 500,000 animals have died and three million people face starvation. When a similar if much smaller crisis 10 years ago hit Ladakh, in northern Kashmir, thousands of lives were saved by the expert intervention of a British charity, ApTibet, working with the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Relief Committee.

It should be noted at this point that we have seen extraordinarily low temperatures across the globe this winter ranging from blizzards in Texas to snow carpeting Jerusalem, Damascus and Amman – all of which Christopher Booker has actually reported on in previous weeks. However, as Booker observed at the time, this has gone ‘virtually unreported in Britain’. This of course strongly and vividly contrasts with reporting from the BBC and many other British news agencies which persist in predicting global warming disaster and catastrophe on an unimaginable scale.

Once again regarding Tibet, one would have thought that right now the charity work carried out by ApTibet would be vital and much appreciated by the international community. Not so in the European Union. Booker continues by informing us that:

Two years ago, after China and Europe became ‘strategic partners’ under an agreement signed by Tony Blair, the EU’s acting president, in December 2005, the Commission suspended ApTibet’s operations because of its link to the Dalai Lama. Since then, it has done all it can to close the charity down…

The whole Booker column is well worth reading, as he describes the way in which the European Union has attempted to bankrupt ApTibet by suspending outstanding contracts with the agency and calling for immediate repayment of funds that it had readily given before the 2005 Blair agreement with China. Booker ends by commenting that:

Doubtless in Beijing, the EU’s ‘strategic partners’ are happy. Meanwhile, its troops are again shooting at Tibetans in the streets of Lhasa, while to the north, three million people are starving, without any hope of assistance from the outside world.

Of little surprise is the fact that you just don’t hear about this on the BBC or indeed from any other British news outlet. Research and analysis would be required to reach these conclusions – something that modern media is none too fond of; that, and it doesn’t fit the ‘official’ narrative of events.

In August, the EU Commission sent a message to the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, strongly urging him to abolish the death penalty in his state and cease all future executions of those on death row.

The Commission’s note stated that, ‘There is no evidence to suggest that the use of the death penalty serves as a deterrent against violent crime and the irreversibility of the punishment means that miscarriages of justice, which are inevitable in all legal systems, cannot be redressed.’

Apart from there being plenty of evidence to suggest that the death sentence acts as a very good deterrent of violent crime and murder, what exactly has the legal process and laws of a self-governing state such as Texas got to do with the European Union? Not much is the answer.

As it happens, Governor Rick Perry put the Commission in their place with a brilliant response saying that, ‘230 years ago our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. Texans long ago decided that the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens. While we respect our friends in Europe, welcome their investment in our state and appreciate their interest in our laws, Texans are doing just fine governing Texas’.

In Texas citizens can elect politicians to abolish the death penalty if they so chose, but in stark contrast, if the subjugated people of Europe wish to elect politicians to reinstate its use, then they are not allowed to do so as it would directly contravene sacred EU law.

Despite their previous unsuccessful foray into external politics, yesterday, EU Commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, called for China to immediately ban tobacco advertising in time for the Shanghai Formula 1 Grand Prix. This is apparently because although European Union laws on tobacco advertising do not apply in China, images of the cigarette logos on F1 cars will be broadcast on TVs back in ‘European’ homes which, as Mr Kyprianou told China’s Vice Health Minister, ‘In a way undermines and limits the effectiveness of our own legislation in protecting citizens, especially young people, from this kind of tobacco marketing.’

As an unelected and unaccountable Commissioner, Markos Kyprianou will probably have felt right at home in undemocratic Communist China – but that is still no reason for his and the EU Commission’s self-righteous interference. If I were the Chinese, I’d just tell Markos and the EU to fuck right off.