Dr Starkey cited Enoch Powell's infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech from 1968, which criticised Commonwealth immigration, and suggested it had been "absolutely right in one sense". He was described as a "racist" and accused of "tribal bigotry" for his provocative comments. Referring to last week's riots, Dr Starkey told BBC2's Newsnight: "But it was not inter-community violence, this is where he (Powell) was completely wrong. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion."

"And black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together, this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that's been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country. It's not skin colour it's cultural." He also commented that by listening to the voice of David Lammy, the black Labour MP for Tottenham, "you would think he was white". The provocative commentator was immediately criticised by MPs.

However, a letter-writer to The Voice newspaper made similar points to Dr Starkey and suggested part of the responsibility for the riots rested with the black community. Khristian Marcus, who described himself as a "black Londoner" in a "normal job", said Afro-Caribbean children suffered a lack of discipline due to large numbers of absent fathers and mothers left unable to cope. He wrote: "What I have seen over the last couple of days and known for a while is we as the black 'community' have major fault lines running through our family structure, and we are now and have been for the longest time, seeing the manifestation of this."

Mr Marcus' letter received significant support from commentators on The Voice's website. Dr Starkey said last night: "What I said was not racist. I said skin colour was absolutely nothing to do with it, but that the glamourisation of gangster culture is monstrous and evil. To be criticised by Piers Morgan, who represents the pits of the trash culture, is a positive compliment."

The shocking eruption of lawless cruelty and callousness in the midst of our great cities is a warning which all thoughtful men and women should heed, especially those with power or influence. For the facts have altered, and when the facts change, the intelligent person changes his mind. Many years ago it was possible to argue that an all-embracing welfare state would lead to peace and contentment.

Now it is clear that it has not done so and will never do so. On the contrary, there is good reason to suspect that too much welfare, too indiscriminately given out, demoralises and weakens a society, and fosters crime and disorder. It is simply not possible for any serious or informed person to argue that these outbreaks were caused by physical poverty.

Plenty of those involved in these events are not remotely poor or oppressed. Truly poor people do not communicate by BlackBerry. Nor do they attack shops full of electronic goods and fashionable footwear. It is worth noting that the group of people in this country who are closest to being genuinely poor are the old, existing on minimal pensions. Yet they are also the most law-abiding, and in the days when they were young and strong they would have been utterly ashamed to behave as the looters did.

We must cease to be afraid of moral disapproval of actions that are plainly wicked. Meanwhile, an urgent review should be launched of the whole structure of family law, encompassing the ease with which divorce is obtainable, the general assault on the status of marriage, the welfare system's anti-family bias, the crucial importance of fathers in the upbringing of boys. The assumptions of the Sixties should be subject to ruthless evidence-based re-examination. We have now had quite long enough to judge their effects.

This is the heart of the matter. We have seen the utopian future dreamed of by liberal reformers in the Fifties, and it does not work. We will never have a better opportunity to admit our past mistakes and put them right. The blazing buildings and howling, thieving mobs of the past few days are a warning of far worse to come if we do not act. Party politics and past allegiances have nothing to do with it. This is a national emergency.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2025816/Weve-50-years-carrot--time-stick.html#ixzz1UzkuBwCd

Tremonti returned to proposals for jointly-issued bonds that would effectively make individual governments' debt a common burden, saying they were the "master solution" to the euro zone debt crisis. "We would not have arrived where we are if we had had the euro bond," he said on Saturday.

However the idea was immediately rejected by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who said such bonds would undermine the basis for the single currency by weakening fiscal discipline among member states. "I rule out euro bonds for as long as member states conduct their own financial policies, and we need differing interest rates so that there are possibilities of incentives and sanctions to force fiscal solidity," he told Der Spiegel weekly. "Without that kind of solidity, there is no foundation for a joint currency," he added, according to extracts of an interview released ahead of publication.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are due to meet in Paris on Tuesday, with what Tremonti called "strong expectations" hanging over the encounter. Underlining the concerns about the spreading euro zone debt crisis which have grown outside the currency bloc, Britain's Finance Minister George Osborne said some kind of fiscal union may now be needed for the 17-member euro area. Asked if the only answer for the euro zone was some form of fiscal union, he told BBC radio: "The short answer is yes."

The agent reduces the growth of bacteria including E. coli, salmonella and listeria and could lead to sandwiches that stay fresh for more than a year, The (London) Sunday Times reported. The discovery also means that opened wine and products such as fresh salad dressing could last much longer - in some cases for as long as several years. It could also lead to a reduction in the amount of food wasted and thrown away each year.

Bisin was discovered by University of Minnesota microbiologist Dan O'Sullivan. "It [bisin] seems to be much better than anything which has gone before," O'Sullivan said. "It doesn't compromise nutrient quality. We are not adding a chemical - we are adding a natural ingredient." Because bisin is chemically related to nisin, which is used to keep processed cheese sterile and edible for decades, it does not need to be pharmaceutically tested and could be on the market within a year.

Despite the US rating having already been downgraded to AA+ by S&P, Martin W Hennecke, associate director of Tyche Group Ltd, believes it is not enough and states the Asian estimations should be treated more carefully. "Chinese rating agency Dagon Global is far more reliable than the Western ones, and they've already downgraded the US to A with negative outlook," Hennecke said.

However the financial ratings are not the only indicator of the deep crisis in the global economy. Many people may not believe in the reliability of the S&P, Moody's and other agencies. But it is not only the rating agencies that are causing "this mess in Europe and the US," he added.

"Look at the total fiscal gap, the horrible short for the US finances. This number is US$211 trillion. That's not too far from Greece. That's why, I think, the AA+ rating for US is ridiculous, it should be far lower," Hennecke said.

Standard and Poor's credit rating agency knocking US debt to the less privileged AA+ credit rating has shifted the topic of debt burden from bankers' agenda to the government's protocols. This will not gain public approval in the US - and financial journalist Demetri Kofinas explains why to RT.

"The downgrade [by] S&P of the United States, whether it was warranted or not, speaks volumes about the shift of risk from the balance sheet of banks to the balance sheet of sovereign countries, which are effectively the backstops for the welfare state. So when that gets thrown into question, of course you're going to have mounting unrest," says the journalist. The US dollar being the international reserve currency only adds fuel to the fire in the global financial system, continues Kofinas.

"Because the system architecture is such with the banking system and the way sovereign countries have been effective backstops for the banking system, I think you are going to see more unrest, especially in the US, because it is an empire and it is the reserve currency of the world," he adds. "So when the system collapses it is going to be most felt in the US, because the empire sits on a nation state, within which it resides like a giant parasite. So when that crumbles, it is the final piece to go."

"The US investment banks and the rating agencies are now attacking these French banks. They know where the bodies are buried, and they are using the weapons they sold them to attack them," he said. "The rating will be downgraded again. This is part of a new era on Wall Street - they go after sovereign debt. Wall Street and rating agencies are working together to destabilize the sovereign debt of these countries," he added.

With the markets swinging back and forth, it looks like traders are panicking. And as Max Keiser believes, it does not look likely to settle any time soon. "The volatility was the goal; by downgrading the rating you create volatility," he explained. "The derivatives' volume this week is exploding higher than any week in history. That is making many people on Wall Street and in the City of London very rich. So they will continue to downgrade and to milk the system to extract wealth," Keiser stated.

"This is WW III, a new war using financial derivatives. The objective is to preserve the speculative rates given to the Wall Street bankers of zero per cent," he concluded.

The DHS report had followed only by weeks a report from the Missouri Information Analysis Center that linked conservative groups to domestic terrorism. The Missouri report warned law enforcement agencies to watch for suspicious individuals who may have bumper stickers for presidential candidates such as Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. It further warned law enforcement to watch out for individuals with "radical" ideologies based on Christian views, such as opposing illegal immigration, abortion and federal taxes. "This new handout expands the absurdity by now also targeting customers of military surplus stores, and by specifically targeting the purchasing of very common, and very popular, preparedness items such as Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) as 'potential indicators of terrorist activities,'" said a statement from Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.

"Islamic terrorists are not known to hang out in local Army-Navy surplus stores, stocking up on MREs, high capacity magazines and bi-pods for their long range rifles," the statement said. "As Brandon Smith, over at Alt-market.com notes, 'These are very common purchases, not for terrorists, but for Preppers and Survivalists, who are obviously the targets of the FBI profile, not secret al-Qaida agents.' "Spot on," Rhodes wrote. "Obviously, the current crop of FBI 'leadership' considers anyone who wants to be self-sufficient and prepared to be a 'threat' that should be relentlessly tracked and reported."

One-time Colorado congressional candidate Rob McNealy pointed out to WND the irony that the government, through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, specifically advises citizens to collect "ready-to-eat canned meats, fruits and vegetables" as well as "flashlight and extra batteries" and "matches in a waterproof container." Then the FBI asks store managers to report the "suspicious" activity of buying the same items. "It's almost like entrapment," McNealy said.

The US administration has made clear in a number of cases that it is concerned about conservatives as a potential danger and even has argued in court that it wants the authority to track American citizens in order to develop "probable cause" needed for search warrants. That argument is being made before the US Supreme Court in a dispute over whether police investigators and other authorities should be allowed to track American citizens who have not done anything that would have ordinarily prompted a judge to issue a search warrant.

The question resonated Saturday in San Francisco and beyond as details emerged of Bay Area Rapid Transit officials' decision to cut off underground cellphone service for a few hours at several stations Thursday. Commuters at stations from downtown to near the city's main airport were affected as BART officials sought to tactically thwart a planned protest over the recent fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man by transit police.

Two days later, the move had civil rights and legal experts questioning the agency's move, and drew backlash from one transit board member who was taken aback by the decision. "I'm just shocked that they didn't think about the implications of this. We really don't have the right to be this type of censor," said Lynette Sweet, who serves on BART's board of directors. "In my opinion, we've let the actions of a few people affect everybody. And that's not fair."

Similar questions of censorship have arisen in recent days as Britain's government put the idea of curbing social media services on the table in response to several nights of widespread looting and violence in London and other English cities. Police claim that young criminals used Twitter and Blackberry instant messages to coordinate looting sprees in riots.

University of Michigan law professor Len Niehoff, specializes in First Amendment and media law issues, said that the government does have the right to break up a demonstration if it forms in an area where protests are prohibited and poses a risk to public safety, Niehoff said. But it should not prohibit free speech to prevent the possibility of a protest happening. "The idea that we're going to keep people from talking about what they might or might not do, based on the idea that they might all agree to violate the law, is positively Orwellian," he said.

But the OECD's lagging indicator takes no account of the latest crisis, in which sovereign debt worries and fears that Europe and the US are headed back into recession sparked a rout in the markets. If things were bad before, brace yourself for even worse, seems to be the message in the financial markets. "What we need is a really strong steer from policymakers that they have got a strategy," said Karen Ward, senior global economist at HSBC bank.

"But there is a feeling that none of our policymakers seem to have control of the situation," she said. HSBC has yet to produce its next quarterly report on global growth, but there are plenty of signs of what it could contain. "It is pretty obvious that there is more pessimism around this quarter than there was last quarter. Data on the global economy is poor," she said.

Writing in the Financial Times, the economist Professor Nouriel Roubini, said: "There is a rising risk - approaching 50% now - of a double-dip recession in the US and most advanced economies." So what can be done? Pumping more money into economies through quantitative easing (QE) is increasingly being talked about as essential in both Europe and the US. It would certainly be a "small price to pay" to avoid the collapse of the euro or plunge in recession, says HSBC's chief economist Stephen King

The markets are telling policymakers "they want to see a more decisive move towards fiscal integration", said Jonathan Loynes, chief economist at Capital Economics. "The indebted economies are not returning to growth. They are not getting a grip on their finances." The markets are rapidly "losing faith" in policies that just "muddle through", he said.

Societe Generale has been the worst affected by the volatility, being forced on Wednesday to deny that its financial stability was at risk. In short-selling, traders profit from bets on the fall in a share price. The practice has been blamed for increasing recent market instability.

Short-sellers usually borrow shares or bonds, sell them, then buy them back when the stock falls - pocketing the difference. "Naked" short-selling is when a trader sells financial instruments he has not yet borrowed. All forms of short-selling are included in the ban. The announcement was made both by the European Union's markets supervisor, ESMA, and the four national markets authorities.

France's agency, the AMF, said it was banning short-selling on 11 banking and insurance stocks for 15 days, including France's three largest banks, Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole. Spanish banks included in the ban are Santander, BBVA, Sabadell, Bankinter, Banco Popular, and Banca Civica. Greece banned short-selling on Monday.

Robert Peston, Business editor, BBC News noted:- "Precedent suggests a short-selling ban does not change the fundamentals"

Their wrath was matched by politicians, police and the public who made it clear that the anarchy and mindless criminality would not be tolerated. In Manchester, ransacked by a mob on Tuesday night, judge Alan Berg spoke for millions of law-abiding people when two looters were brought before him.

He said: 'You have all the benefits in this country which individuals in other countries would pray for, and you bring shame and disgrace upon this country as a whole, and upon yourselves and your families. You do nothing constructive. Everything you do is destructive. This was intolerable lawlessness and no civilised society should be expected to put up with it.'

He jailed a man for six months who was caught heading for the scene of the riots carrying a balaclava and an empty bin bag. Jordan Kelly, 20, said he went to 'gather' trainers and other goods lying in the street the day after shops were looted.

Yesterday Judge Berg told him: 'Decent members of society are sick and tired of people taking advantage of a situation like there has been in Manchester over the last days. I need to make an example of you.' The judge told Daniel Bell, who was caught leaving a looted electrical store with a Macmillan Cancer charity box containing £50: 'Your crime is probably the most despicable and contemptible I have had to deal with all day. It is breathtakingly wicked.'

In Nottingham another district judge, Tim Devas, asked one criminal who obstructed police from making arrests: 'Don't you feel ashamed that you are now counted among the hundreds of yobbos arrested and now considered as scum by the public?' On breakfast television yesterday morning, a senior Metropolitan Police officer, deputy assistant commissioner Stephen Kavanagh, said officers were worried that some rioters were getting soft sentences.

But as the day went on, a string of cases revealed how judges and magistrates were giving short shrift to the excuses of looters. Dental nurse Shereece Ashley, 20, who left her baby at home when she went to loot a Tesco store, was jailed for three months at Camberwell Green magistrates' court. Engineering student Nicolas Robinson, 23, who stole six bottles of water worth £3.50, was sentenced to six months. Across the country around 1,400 people have been arrested over the riots.

But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week's dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them. I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the "north-south divide", which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.

Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How To Spend It is a bible. I'd guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.

Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates. The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.

This is the song of the "gold bugs" - the fervent fans of the precious metal who have clung to its investment value for three generations and now glow in the reflected luster of a record price approaching $2,000 for just one ounce. Monday will mark the 40th anniversary of the United States' abandonment of the gold standard. But gold bugs kept the faith - even when prices stayed under $500 for nearly 25 years after their 1981 peak.

Their passion derided, dismissed as hopelessly out dated doomsayers, their love for the metal seemed irrational. Fast forward and the financial crisis of 2008 has made gold the darling of investors from hedge funds to taxi drivers, and sparked a near-doubling of prices.

"Gold has been rising against all national currencies, and that's significant," James Turk, founder of bullion dealer Goldmoney, said. "When there are problems with a national currency... people begin to worry about the value of their money, whether they're going to lose purchasing power because of inflation or other problems. As a consequence, they look for safe havens." He was speaking as a true gold bug - not in the dark days after Lehman Brothers' demise in 2008, nor in the depths of last year's euro zone debt crisis, nor after Standard & Poor's recent downgrade of the United States' top-notch credit rating.

Turk's view came in a BusinessWeek interview he gave in 2005, well in advance of the current financial crisis. "My long-standing forecast, made in a Barron's interview in October 2003, is that $8,000 per ounce will be reached sometime between 2013-2015," he told Reuters this week. "I've stayed with that forecast over the years and see no reason to change it."

The world's current financial woes are only going to get worse if current policies continue, he believes, meaning the rally in gold prices is unlikely to stop here. "Politicians and central bankers are making decisions that debase national currencies, and the resulting bad monetary policies they are following are causing the gold price to rise," he said.

The announcement came as financial markets were again in turmoil on concerns that the US and eurozone debt crisis may spark a new recession and after rumours of a France credit rating downgrade and fears over Greek debt exposure. Markets are wondering whether France and Germany - the eurozone's two biggest economies - can continue to underwrite other states' debts without losing their top credit ratings and falling victim to the crisis themselves.

The crisis started in Greece and is now fuelled by fears that Spain or Italy might default on their debt and possibly spark a break-up of the currency shared by 17 countries. Italy promised Thursday to meet many of the demands made by European Central Bank for major economic reforms in return for help in shielding the country from the debt crisis.

"We need to have very strong austerity measures in 2012 and 2013," Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti told lawmakers, who had been called back from summer holidays to debate the moves. Italy must speed up austerity measures - with the aim of achieving budget balance by 2013 instead of 2014 as previously planned - "because of the intensification of the crisis and indications from Europe," Tremonti said.

EU leaders are trying to implement a July agreement aimed at beefing up the euro's defences. But many of the measures need national parliamentary approval and that process could drag on to the end of the year in some cases. Leaders agreed at the summit on the conditions of a second bailout for Greece as well as an increase in the eurozone's rescue fund, the 440 billion euro ($625-billion) European Financial Stability Facility.