Individuals can declare themselves bankrupt but it's not so easy for nations. Argentina defaulted in 2001 and she is still suffering the consequences. The UK national debt currently stands at £1.8 trillion, which is almost as much as our GDP. The annual cost of this debt is £48 billion.
Few modern states earn more than they spend. The exceptions are oil-rich states with small populations, like Norway or Qatar. Most states spend more than they earn, particularly on fighting wars. They cover the deficit by borrowing from the banks and by selling bonds. This is known as the National Debt. Hilaire Belloc explained it in 'Economics for Helen':
"When these national loans began the Government honestly intended to pay back what they had borrowed. But the method was so fatally easy that as time went on, and the debt piled up and up until there could be no question of repaying it all: all the State could do was to pay the interest out of taxation. It remained indebted to private rich men for the principle, that is the whole original sum, and meanwhile, through further wars, this hold of the rich men upon all the rest of the community perpetually increased."
Countries with vast natural resources and reserves of gold and foreign currencies, like the United States, can function with massive debts because the banks and bondholders trust them. But countries with no collateral can only borrow more money, for as long as they can.
When countries run out of credit they are reduced to starvation, unless some help is extended. Germany's national debt was partly written off at the Lausanne Conference in 1932 and again at the London Conference in 1953. The Allies decided that it made more sense to get Germany back on her feet. At least, that way they would get some of their money back. It worked, and Germany cleared her debts as her economy recovered.
In 2000 a Canadian proposal for a debt moratorium was rejected by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but eventually, all national debts will have to be rescheduled, reduced or abolished. Creditors, including private bondholders, insurance companies and pension fund managers, will cling to the present system because they want their money back, but ultimately it's unsustainable.
The Memories of a Blackshirt Supporter
http://siegrunen.blogspot.com
My parents came from widely diverse backgrounds, for my Father was a motor car tester, and my Mother was Governess to the children of a very senior army officer, I was born in the summer of 1924, and had a very reasonable education, initially at a state school, and then at ten years of age, to a well respected Grammar School in the Home Counties. At the age of 14, when I was on my way home from School, I came across a poorly dressed old man wheeling a pram on which he had fixed a wind-up gramophone and was playing a recording of a speech by Sir Oswald Mosley, who was addressing his audience as "my Blackshirt brothers". I listened intently until the record was finished, and then thanked the old man, giving him a penny from my pocket,
Arriving home, I explained to my Father what I had heard, and he told me how on one occasion he had gone up to London to make trouble at a Mosley meeting, but he had been so impressed that he had finished up cheering his support. I remember that.
Before I was old enough to follow my Father's example, the war was upon us. I was at University, and Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley were in prison under law 18B, together with scores of his senior officers. In fact, I never wore a black shirt myself.
After the war, they were all discharged from prison without being charged, and 'Union Movement' was formed. The new party had headquarters at an address in London and produced a newspaper called 'Action' with the front emblazoned with the Blackshirt emblem, a circle crossed by one flash, not two as in SS.
By this time I was making regular visits to London on business and would call into the London Office, and chat at length with Mr Raven Thomson, who was Editor of the newspaper. I used to make a contribution now and then to 'Action' and kept in touch.
We had a group called 'Friends of Union Movement', and every now and again would attend a dinner in London, with 'OM' as speaker. He always spoke well, and his following was intensely loyal.
Of course, prompted by the Jewish lobby, things were made very difficult. We were obliged to drop 'The European Salute', and then the blackshirt emblem. The Home Office declared that the wearing of a black shirt constituted a uniform, and in spite of the fact that OM insisted that wearing the black shirt was merely to identify Party members during a commotion it was banned.
Raven Thomson died from the long-term effects of his brutal treatment during his stay in prison, and OM went to live in Orsay, France.
All these people have left their mark, and although several splinter movements have started up to maintain the creed, none have really been able to rally the public as OM was able to do.
This is not necessarily to do with their inadequacies, but the result of well organised, and Jewish funded publicity blocks that have prevented both reporting and any publicity leaking out, however small.
Once the administration was changed in Germany after the war, OM adopted a slogan "Europe a Nation", which was his frequent cry. Were he to be here in 2016, he would have been aghast to note that the Jewish lobby is once again running things over there.
When OM retired into France he went there on the basis that eventually he would be called. He never was of course, which is a tragedy, for he would have been a brilliant statesman.
Nevertheless, he always kept his ear to the ground and clearly read the UK papers. This is made clear when some reporter named Peterborough reported on a rowdy meeting in Oxford, that the stewards had dealt with the rowdies as savagely as OM had done at his Olympia meeting. His reply is appended below.
"Sir, a note by Peterborough (May 14th) appears to compare the actions of stewards in defending my meeting at Olympia from attack, with the action of those recently attacking someone else's meeting at Oxford. The difference is surely clear to any impartial mind.
Facts regarding Olympia are also on public record in contemporary Press reports and are now worth recalling. The attack on a perfectly legal meeting was openly organised and publicised for three weeks in advance, without any intervention of authority to prevent a flagrant breach of the law.
The assault of armed roughs was defeated by our young men who were accused of using their fists too vigorously. Soon after the occasion (the largest public meeting ever held in Britain) at Earls Court Exhibition Hall, was conducted in perfect order. Previously free speech had been systematically denied to anyone unpopular with Communism or the anarchic left. e.g. Sir Winston Churchill's election meeting in Dundee when he was just out of hospital, reported in the Times under the heading "Mr Churchill shouted down."
Authority was supine during a period when free speech ceased to exist. This was the origin of the Blackshirt movement, which opponents described as my "private army". The means to defend ourselves were subsequently removed by special act of Parliament.
It then became more than ever, the duty of Government itself to maintain order, and in this duty, then and now, it conspicuously fails. In agreeing that no man should be allowed a private army, I suggest that Britain needs a Government with the will to maintain order which includes free speech for all. " Oswald Mosley, Orsay, France.
Xenophobia
We are told by the Brexiteers that the EU is a Marxist dictatorship controlled by the 'Liberal Elite', that's robbing us of our sovereignty, and flooding us with immigrants. Anybody who doubts these 'facts' is dismissed as a traitor and an enemy agent.
But their arguments are unfounded. The EU is a customs union of 28 nation states. It's governed by Commissioners appointed by national governments and by elected Members of the European Parliament. Most of our immigrants come from outside the EU, mainly from the Commonwealth.
The real reason why the Brexiteers want us out of Europe is that they suffer from xenophobia - a morbid fear of foreigners. This dates back to the days when raiding parties from hostile tribes came to steal our cattle and women. They also carried unfamiliar pathogens which brought disease into the camp. Today, we have progressed beyond tribalism and we heed the words of Dr Samuel Johnson who warned us that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
These self-appointed 'patriots' wrap themselves in the national flag and turn every argument into a crusade. To them hating foreigners is a sign of patriotism and not hating them is tantamount to treason.
History is littered with charlatans who exploited patriotism to their own advantage. Some of them, like Winston Churchill, earned themselves a lavish lifestyle and a state funeral, but others, like Horatio Bottomley, ended their days in disgrace and poverty.
The Triple Alliance (1864-1870) of Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil killed 70% of the adult male population of Paraguay and completely destroyed the country. This insane war was led by the great Paraguayan patriot and military strategist Francisco Solano Lopez (pictured), who was obsessed with 'independence' and bitterly hostile to his neighbours. He was so fanatical that he encouraged his troops to shoot their own officers if they even mentioned surrender. He died fighting and shouting his defiance but he is remembered as a madman, not as a national hero.
Francisco Solano Lopez is dead but his twisted ideas live on. He never learned to love his neighbours and his modern counterparts are no different. Their arguments about sovereignty and identity are bogus, what really motivates them is an irrational fear of foreigners.
American Foreign Policy
The United States has been involved in nearly 200 military incursions since 1945. A foreign policy that was described by the great historian Charles A Beard as "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace." Before Donald Trump was elected president he promised to stop interfering in foreign quarrels, instead, he has increased his military presence in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and imposed sanctions on; China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Venezuela.
Sanctions are really economic warfare. They prevent nations from trading and cause shortages of food, fuel and medicines that result in starvation and death. They brought down the Ian Smith government in Rhodesia, and, eventually, the apartheid regime in South Africa. The sanctions applied to Iraq after the first Gulf War destroyed Saddam Hussein's economy and military capacity. Far from possessing 'weapons of mass destruction' he was practically defenceless by the time of the second Gulf war.
Donald Trump's 'America First' policy is enforced by economic warfare and the threat of military action. The vicious campaign against Russia is entirely political. Russia's repossession of the Crimean peninsula was entirely justified and there's no proof that they were behind the Novichok poisonings in Wiltshire.
President Trump's campaigns against Iran and North Korea are equally bogus. Those states have as much right to their nuclear programs as Israel. America's enemies are not necessarily our enemies but our 'special relationship' means that we are helping to cripple them with sanctions.
The White Rhodesians were mostly of British stock and many of them fought for the British Empire in two world wars. But a craven British government used the Royal Navy to blockade the port of Beira to enforce 'regime change' and replace Ian Smith (pictured), a highly-decorated RAF fighter pilot, with the bloody terrorists Robert Mugabe. As a result, the Whites were driven out of the country as it descended into poverty and starvation. All in the name of 'democracy'.
Those right-wingers who campaign for 'British independence', like Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, are happy to obey American foreign policy. Successive American governments tried to placate their discontented Blacks by destroying the White regimes in Southern Africa. It didn't work but it won't stop them from trying similar tricks in the future.
Their current enemy is Iran, practically the only state in the Middle East still opposed to Israel. The powerful Zionist lobby is clearly directing American foreign policy. They have already wrecked the Iranian economy with sanctions and Donald Trump has vowed to carry on until they abandon their nuclear program. He has even threatened British and European companies who do business with Iran. This kind of economic warfare is a threat to all of us.
From the Archives - Dying For Democracy - an article from Nation Revisited posted on the National Front website April 2010
(Britain's involvement in the Afghan War 2006-2014 was a complete waste of lives and money. 456 servicemen were killed,1,922 were wounded, and we spent £37 billion trying to defend Helmand Province against the Taliban. The government has recently announced plans for a new intervention, and if we are not careful we will be dragged into a war with Iran).
Politicians of all parties support the Afghan War and accept the slaughter of British and allied soldiers. As each young man is killed they chant the hypocritical mantra of government propaganda: "He died doing the job he loved," and "He was helping to make Afghanistan a better place." But the warmongers cannot convince us that there is any point in this aggression.
Britain's new top general, Sir David Richards, has predicted that we will be in Afghanistan for thirty or forty years. And NATO's Lieutenant General, Stanley McChrystal, has called for more men.
The general praised the UK's 8,000 plus force and said more would be welcome. He told the BBC: "I don't know a general who would not like to see more forces, particularly forces as good as the British." (Daily Mirror 13-06-09)
We can, therefore, expect to sustain heavy losses in a war that we will eventually quit; just as we did in Iraq. But before we pull out we will kill thousands of Afghans and risk bloody retaliation on the streets of our major cities. Far from ensuring domestic security, we are endangering ourselves by declaring war on Muslims after letting millions of them into our country.
Once again, a blinkered government has gone to war without a plan. They imported cheap labour and created alien ghettos without thinking of the consequences. Their foreign policy consists of blindly following America and their economic policy is tied to 'free markets' and 'open borders'.
City minister Lord Myners and London Mayor Boris Johnson have attacked EU plans to outlaw hedge funds (Guardian 21-07-09), and Home Secretary Alan Johnson says that he doesn't lay awake at night worrying about the population hitting 70 million (Daily Mail 15-07-09).
We are fighting to impose our failed system on a country that has never done us any harm. The 9/11 terrorists were not Afghans, they were Arabs who trained and plotted in the United States. We are waging war to prop up Hamid Karzai's corrupt regime of misogynists, warlords, and drug dealers who are no better than the Taliban. This war is as pointless as the Iraq catastrophe and will end in the same humiliating withdrawal.
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All articles are by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. This blog is protected by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: "We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share ideas with other people."
