Of course, by ‘true economic governance’, our kind European masters really mean a drive towards fiscal union and European taxation. The proponents of ‘ever closer union’ never fail to exploit a crisis for their benefit and further their goals.

However, this attempt was inevitable. You cannot have a currency covering such a wide geographic area, with a single interest rate set by a central bank and just hope that it will work. The collapse of Ireland, Greece, Spain and Italy were predictable, given the cheap rates of credit they were able to obtain in contrast to the state of their national economies and levels of demand.

Yet, while the Eurocrats will always argue that a crisis is caused by a lack of integration (rather than ‘ever closer union’ itself being the actual problem), their road to full fiscal consolidation will be long and contentious – and they are very quickly running out of time and money, with events increasingly playing out beyond their control. At the end of the day, they will be swept along by the markets and events, just like the rest of us. That is European equality for you.

Our boneheaded intervention in Libya, which we were told was to prevent violence and killing, was doomed to failure before it began. The enthusiastic approval of military intervention by our gullible MPs now appears even more ridiculous given our own inability to keep order on the streets of London, and prevent the deaths of innocent people across our country and Libya.

We try to throw our weight around on the international stage so our Prime Minister can pretend to be an ‘International Statesman’, and so we can continue to deceive ourselves into believing we remain a world power, and not face up to mounting economic and social problems at home.

But these foreign misadventures are not in our national interest or increasingly in our capability, as we dismantle what is left of our armed forces. Britain long ago ceased to be a major player on the world stage – militarily, economically and morally.

Our sovereignty and hard won freedoms have slowly been ceded by our politicians to the faceless bureaucrats of benevolent European integration. We are no longer a free nation, but a subservient state to a foreign and anti-democratic Empire.

Our economy lies in tatters, labouring under the weight of a bloated welfare state, crippled by government debt and sending millions of young adults to acquire meritless degrees at Universities in subjects that nobody wants.

Our society has been corrupted and atomised, with each passing generation having little in common with the next, and little sense of genuine community or belonging. Respect for others, property and authority have disintegrated after decades of state ‘entitlements’, weak justice and assuring youth that rights come without responsibility.

As we have receded from the public sphere and genuine democratic participation, the state has expanded to fill the gap, making it’s assault on our ancient liberties even easier than before. Thus, our liberties are no longer freedoms, but ‘rights’ given to us by the state – rights which can be amended or taken away should the state so please.

And the process continues. While deeply disturbing, the manner in which our Prime Minister and puppet Parliament righteously clamoured for the blocking of social and media websites during violent outbreaks was almost entirely predictable. Five months previously the same Prime Minister and same Parliament had condemned Gaddafi for doing much the same when attempting to quash the rebellion against his rule.

This is the automatic reaction of politicians who find it so much easier to invent new laws or increase the power of the state. Water cannons and rubber bullets won’t fix generations of neglect. The rot at the heart of British society won’t be undone with a few new laws, and the further encroachment of the state.

If we really want to solve the crisis then, then it will take decades to repair – as long, if not longer, than it took to undermine. But we won’t. Instead, we shall call for the seemingly quick solution, for the heads of the violent thugs rather than those that bred them in the first place. We shall call for the army (what’s left of it) to take to the streets, give the police greater powers and ultimately strengthen the state’s role and weaken ours.

An anti-mob shall arise, as unthinking and destructive as the street mobs they oppose, calling for the reduction of our liberties in order to ensure our safety. It is the rule of the mob, but of a different kind.

This is how liberty dies. Not through violence itself, but in the pursuit of ‘security’.

Presuming this to be truth, we now have evidence that a man has been shot dead by police without, in hindsight, justification. It has happened before, and will do again.

Only yesterday I highlighted the link between the rise in gun crime in Britain and the abolition of the death penalty in the 1950s. Yet, suggest forms of capital punishment should be reinstated, and some commentators such as Peter North (son of Dr Richard North) claim that they are ‘not comfortable giving government the power to kill people for any reason’.

‘Uncomfortable’ they might be; but by removing the death penalty, we have not somehow done away with state sanctioned killings, but simply exchanged one type of death for another. Clearly Mr Duggan was not entirely innocent. Though the exact details of events that led to his death are yet to become clear, he was found holding an illegal firearm. Yet, did he deserve to be killed for this crime?

Some may attempt to argue that police were in a difficult situation, and that accidents like this can happen in tense situations. They are right – but surely if that is true, and they are so concerned that the death penalty may result in the death of an innocent person, surely they would be equally concerned – if not more so – that an innocent person may be accidentally killed by the police?

The shooting of the innocent, or killing without intention become an inevitable part of policing once firearms have been issued. It sadly happened with Jean Charles de Menezes, and now it has happened with Mark Duggan. This is not to say that the cases of law-abiding de Menezes and apparently criminal Duggan are equivalent, or to condone the latter’s actions, but that neither deserved their fate.

Accidents are in our nature. We are imperfect beings, regardless of whether we are highly trained members of the police or seemingly ordinary blue collar workers. But we try to restrict our mistakes by ensuring proper procedures and practices are followed, so that they occur as infrequently as we can possibly manage.

This is why the death penalty is the preferable option to the arming of the police, which is, as I have already said, the real consequence of abolishing capital punishment. Mark Duggan was, to all intents and purposes, executed by the police last week – but crucially he was killed without trial, a judge, a jury, a right to defence or repeal.

Duggan’s trial (as we could call it) occurred in the minds of one or perhaps more officers, who weighed up the situation and evidence before them, acting presumably under pressure and forced to make a split second decision over life and death. By comparison, this is a world away from the far more precise, measured and reasonable process of the courts and judicial system.

In a court, Mr Duggan (or a person accused of murder) would have had the benefit of being innocent until proven guilty. He would have been tried by a Judge and heard by a Jury under strict rules of law and procedures. There would have been prosecution and defence, the right of repeal and the fairness of an open hearing. And if after proper judicial examination a man were found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt by a jury of his peers, and sentenced to death for his crime, this would be a much fairer and more just system of punishment than being shot by an armed police officer.

Unfortunately though, the rapid demise of Europe’s anti democratic Union has been predicted on many an occasion and, so far at least, failed to materialise. Therefore one now tends to make such predictions with some level of care.

Consequently, I shall, for the time being, pass over the continuing Euro zone crisis and instead briefly comment on the current violence in London – a city that long ago ceased to be English or British.

The death of Mark Duggan in Tottenham on Thursday, who was shot by police during what the BBC describes as ‘an apparent exchange of fire’, is another unpleasant reminder of the failure of our criminal justice system and our increasingly destructive political class.

As our police force have evolved into another department of social services, and its officers have receded from their once prominent position on the streets of our town and cities, the criminal elements in society have become increasingly emboldened.

On the orders of wise politicians, the police have become a reactive service rather than remain a preventative force – and they ceased long ago to be citizens in uniform, instead seeing each other as an elite group, draped in paramilitary equipment and riding around in expensive metal boxes, all utterly removed from the events outside and the people they are tasked with defending.

Far from deterring crime, they appear – if at all – only once the offence has taken place, sometimes to record the transgression, but usually to provide counselling and lecture the public against ‘taking the law into their own hands’. Yet attempt to engage in a political demonstration and suddenly the riot shields come out in force.

But most worrying of all is how the police have slowly been armed over the course of four decades, with the inevitable outcome being violence and bloodshed. It was the abolition of the death penalty in the 1950s to 60s which created the present situation. The fear and deterrent of the noose quickly gave way, and as the figures starkly prove, gun crime has rapidly risen in the years since.

Areas of London and other major British cities have become no-go zones, ruled by armed gangs who kill without mercy or so much as a thought for the consequences. While the police have retreated to the safety of their police stations and squad cars, when the two gun toting groups eventually cross paths and lock horns, the deaths of innocent bystanders are the inevitable outcome.

This really is only the beginning. Unless we restore the deterrent of the death penalty, gun crime will continue to rise without check, as will unintentional death at the trigger finger of the police. Either it is criminals who live in fear of the law and justice, or we who live in fear of criminals. Which is it to be?

However, far from being a grand new feather in the cap of democracy or signalling a bright new era in participation, the initiative represents another abject failure of our political system.

So removed have our political classes become from reality and the daily requirements of the population they seek to govern, that they feel it necessary to spend hundreds of thousands of our money on white elephants designed to cover up their ineptitude.

Furthermore, such petitions act as another distraction to the public, keeping them from the knowledge that the Parliament they look to for salvation is now largely defunct; knowledge that generations of our uncaring politicians have willingly frittered away our right to self rule; knowledge that we no longer run our country; and knowledge that Parliament is largely incapable of legislating on many matters highlighted by petitions, even if eventually debated by MPs.

In much the same way that a crime recorded by police is a failure of the police or policies to prevent it, the creation of a new democratic initiative is a front for the unwillingness of most politicians to reflect public opinion. Thus, the e-petitions ruse, much like its predecessor, represents not only the failure of politicians and political parties to understand and listen to public opinion (rather than, as they would have you believe, a new found desire to actually engage), but their active and contemptuous dismissal of our views and beliefs too.

The sad truth is that the political classes have more in common with each other than they do with the voting electorate. Government and party policy is increasingly formulated by small, closely knit teams of liberal, metropolitan graduates whose views, values and ideas are unrepresentative of the population as a whole. Frustratingly, these parasites remain insulated from reality by the Westminster bubble and from the economic mess they have wrought by the disgusting generosity of the public payroll. In short, the e-petitions will change none of this, nor were they ever meant to.

Likewise, our continued membership of the great European club has led to our politicians abdicating their responsibility and the power of decision-making, in return for future comfort, wealth and delusions of international grandeur. Even if we as a nation wished to redeploy the death penalty, we could not due to the binding agreement in the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, which forbids that any person ‘shall be condemned to the death penalty, or executed’.

In a representative parliamentary democracy, those we elect to hold office should represent our views, but they are not our proxy. As such, referendums and e-petitions are a symptom of a failure of Government to accurately understand or reflect the wishes of the populace, and are themselves an abdication of responsibility and decision making. This sentiment was neatly summed up by Edmund Burke in his speech of 1774 to electors in Bristol:

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

As we know all too well, the system is failing us. But the breakdown between MP and constituent is as much our fault as it is theirs. Our own failing was in the falsely shared belief that once freedom and democratic rule have been acquired, they are ours forever. Yet, one must always fight to maintain democracy and freedom, since these are but artificial creations and not natural states for mankind. It is all too easy, as we have regularly seen, for democratic ideals to fall back into authoritarianism and repression.

As someone once accurately observed, democracy is not a spectator sport. Equally, one cannot truly be free unless one can govern their own heart and stay their desires. In this, as a nation, we have been found sorely lacking. As numbers receding from the public sphere and political participation (beyond voting in elections) have grown, the grip of the elite on candidate selection and the apparatus of power has strengthened. We have greatly erred in our selection of parliamentary representatives, and now we are paying a high price.

No longer do the representatives we elect hold our views with ‘great weight’ as Edmund Burke suggested they should; no longer is there the ‘strictest union’ or ‘the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication’ between the public and our Members of Parliament. Instead, while MPs have abdicated their responsibilities, we have also largely abdicated our own – and subsequently we are getting the Governments we deserve.

If we really wish to make a difference to the political debate, we can do little better than ignore e-petitions and other manifestations of political contempt. We must seek to rebuild Parliament as the check against the power of Government rather than its accomplice in our repression. In doing so we must not vote for any of the three main political parties. They do not represent our interests and opinions, nor do they intend to in the foreseeable future. Therefore, we must withhold giving legitimacy through the ballot box to a system which has been fundamentally corrupted. It is only once we destroy the old parties and build them afresh that we shall have a renewal.

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…

The U.S. debt ceiling was raised by the machinery of Government. The GOP and Democrats struck a deal which, while a compromise, planned to lower state expenditure and reign in the debt and public deficit. Crisis averted, right?

Wrong. In much the same vein as the supposed cuts our Chancellor of the Exchequer, good old little George Osborne has (generally not) implemented, the U.S. deal raised the debt ceiling, increased U.S. debt and did not make actual cuts in U.S. expenditure.

The ‘cuts’ made in the deal were reductions in the increase of U.S. public expenditure – not an actual cut, just a decrease in the increase – or in other words United States state expenditure will increase, though at an ever so slightly slower rate. An historic deal!

Far from solving the United States’ dire economic problems, they have been put off for another dark day. Mr Smith continued:

The debt decision and the above mentioned dire indicators leave us with two inevitable consequences: One, our credit rating WILL be downgraded, by S&P certainly, followed by Fitch and Moody’s later on. Two, we are, without a doubt, soon to see an announcement from the Fed of a third QE. Both of these items WILL lead to the final abandonment of U.S. treasuries and the dollar by the East, and likely by OPEC, ending in stagflation. That is, if they don’t commit to a dump beforehand. What we are looking at is the turning point of the final phase of total structural debasement of the U.S. economy. This is it, folks. This is where illusions are lifted, lies are revealed, assumptions are squashed, and things start to get really ugly.

Meanwhile, as the problems stack up across the Atlantic, the Euro zone countries are lurching into the latest phase of the Euro crisis. News of Spain and Italy readying for likely default has sent the markets spiralling downwards, and the European Commission are flapping as the Euro begins to come undone.

It is likely the Eurocrats have another bailout up their sleeves, but, like the last, it will only put off the inevitable. There is only so long you can put off paying your debts – and for the United States, the EU and probably the United Kingdom too, that day is coming – and coming very soon.

This question cannot be answered because, in truth, we have never fought such a battle. If only we had. Instead, we have been sold a myth – a lie if you will – about a supposedly dogged pursuit of drugs, their users and suppliers by the various arms of the state. The reality is sadly rather different.

In response to my above assertion of there never having been a war on drugs, Joshua Lachovic wrote on his blog:

And you haven’t noticed the war on drugs? You haven’t noticed that the global prohibition kills thousands each year? You haven’t heard practically every politician of the past thirty years refer in some way to the ‘war on the drugs’? You haven’t heard any policeman who refers to the war on drugs? You haven’t noticed the £1.5bn that the UK spends yearly on the war? Nor have you noticed the time spent by every police force in the country trying to fight this war on drugs?

All the while, there are still drug users (as there will forever be), people still die because of drugs and people’s lives are still ruined because of drugs. Relaxing the enforcement and governing of banned substances? I suppose you hadn’t noticed mephedrone be criminalised because of media hysteria last year. I suppose you hadn’t noticed magic mushrooms be criminalised earlier this decade. Nor had you noticed that with a police force such as the one in Sussex, over the past decade crime has fallen, while drug crime has increased. To imply that we aren’t fighting a war on drugs is frankly naive, to say the very least.

Unfortunately for poor Joshua, he makes a number of glaring errors in his argument. To begin with, what he calls the ‘global prohibition’ of drugs (which doesn’t exist, because it is not prohibition) does not kill thousands each year. Drugs kill people; ‘prohibition’ does not.

Even if certain politicians, sections within the media and parts of the police ‘service’ refer to a ‘war on drugs’, this does not mean we are actually fighting one. Repeating a lie or a mistruth enough times still does not make it the truth.

If we were really fighting a ‘war on drugs’ then we would be locking up drugs users for long periods of time, or fining them heavily, or raiding University campuses. But we are not. Instead, most drugs users, if they are even bothered by an unlikely visit from the police, are given a caution (which essentially means being let off) or at most a suspended sentence (again, being let off). So very rare is it that a person is sent to prison for using drugs, even with multiple previous convictions. Does that sound like a ‘war on drugs’?

As for the magic mushrooms and mephedrone Joshua mentions, what of them? Adding extra drugs to a list of banned substances means very little when the ban remains largely unenforced. As it is, we’ve seen a less than half-hearted attempt to pay even lip service to the existing laws, and a law is only as good as its enforcement.

The pro-legalisation rabble within the media and political class find it incredibly convenient to pretend we are having a real ‘war on drugs’. This allows them, coupled with the continual undermining and weakening of the law and its enforcement, to claim said ‘war’ to be lost, with the consequence as the pursuit of legalisation.

However, where Joshua is correct is when he says there will always be drug users. Most laws are not one hundred percent effective, but the purpose of enforcing a real ban on certain substances is to discourage as many people as possible from their use. Let us not forget, these are extremely harmful substances, whose effects on brain chemistry, behaviour and the human body are still not fully understood. They cannot be taken safely or indeed more safely as the harm reduction lobby would have us believe.