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RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-10-2019
World Bank “helps” Moldova
Unfortunately Moldova doesn’t get much attention in the state media, but it is a text book example of destroying the economy by the banksters. Moldova is one of the former countries that came into existence when the Soviet Union fell apart.
STEALING 1 BILLION DOLLAR
The story is that the Israeli-born Ilan Shor used 3 banks in Moldova to steal $1 billion; compare this to its Gross Domestic Product of less than $8 billion. The conspirators first took control of the banks and then lent themselves nearly $1 billion, collateral-free.
They transferred the money out of Moldova to banks in Latvia on accounts held by U.K.-based limited partnerships (shell companies); the money then mysteriously disappeared. Shor denied any involvement in the secret takeover and looting of these banks: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/did-this-28-year-old-banker-help-steal-1-billion-from-moldova-
(http://archive.is/ILEBv)
Let’s see if we can understand what happened. Three Moldovan banks created $1 billion worth of “money” out of thin air, that disappeared and now the Moldovan people – the poorest country in Europe – have to repay this “money”. They claim that the “loans” moved through a “complex web of transactions and that the records of many transactions were deleted from the banks’ computers”.
This is impossible. Computers of banks are designed so that nobody can remove transactions (not even the administrators). Furthermore this is impossible without the Moldavian Central Bank helping to arrange this crime (creating $1 billion in loans in a single action?!).
Ilan Shor and Vlad Filat (prime minister from 2009 to 2013) are serving years in prison for their involvement in the theft of National Bank reserves. Vladimir Plahotniuc was/is the leader of the Democratic party of Moldova and was also accused. Plahotniuc fled the country to Geneva (Switzerland). In July, August of this year Mihail Gofman was lobbying in Washington DC.
It looks like these 3 are scapegoats for the bankers: http://archive.is/yHqPo
DESTROYING MOLDAVA BY NATIONAL BANK
According to economic expert Gheorghe Costandachi the National Bank of Moldova (NBM) is intentionally destroying the economy. There are enormous quantities of liquidity in banks, but the NBM majors the mandatory reserve rates which will effectively make loans impossible. Such a strategy is pushing the economy to a grinding halt. The problems become even greater when Moldova also has to repay the disappeared $1 billion.
After the economy crashes the rich (foreign) investors (=bankers) can buy the economy pennies for dollars, while Moldova remains poor. The NBM governor could have stopped the robbery of $1 billion, but didn’t intervene. In Ukraine, the minimum wage is $240 a month, while Moldova lives impoverished at $85 in 2012 American dollars: http://web.archive.org/web/20170125193725/http://jurnal.md/en/economic/2015/6/10/economic-expert-nbm-actions-risk-to-destroy-the-business-environment-of-moldova/
RIOTS IN MOLDOVA
The average yearly salary in Moldova is less than $2000 per year (that’s average, so the median is even lower). There’s inflation so the bills get higher, so people got angry and riots broke out. See this picture of September 2015.
Neighbouring country Romania offered Moldova a $162.5 million loan package in October 2015. After the first $65 million tranche Romania blackmailed Moldova by saying that it will not get the second tranche unless Moldova “undertakes a real fight against corruption, implements reforms targeting the justice sector and signs a draft loan agreement with the IMF”. Basically this means they have to let IMF and World Bank finish Moldova off: http://www.ibtimes.com/moldova-economic-crisis-how-banking-scandal-political-corruption-led-protests-europes-2295822
(http://archive.is/q8FUg)
Nearly 17% of the Moldovan population live below the poverty line. In response to the $1 billion bank fraud (by the Moldavian Central bank), the EU, International Monetary Fund and World Bank have frozen their financial assistance to Moldova. According to the US Embassy in Chișinău, protests highlight the frustration experienced by many Moldovans due to lack of reforms in their country. Yeah sure... these people cannot get food on their plate and they would worry about “reforms”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_protests_in_Moldova
CLINTON AND SOROS CONTROL THE SITUATION
The Democratic party of Moldova have contracted the Podesta group (very close to the Clintons) for lobbying services in June 2016 for 600,000 dollars (of course it isn’t suspicious that this kind of money is paid for “lobbying”): http://www.moldova.org/en/democratic-party-moldova-pay-600k-podesta-group-lobby-services/
It’s none other than the Soros Foundation of Rothschild agent George Soros that is monitoring the Legal system in Moldova: http://www.soros.md/en/event/2010-12-15
That’s the same George Soros that in late 1989 arranged with the Polish Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Rakowski and the leaders of Solidarnosc to bankrupt its industrial and agricultural enterprises, using astronomical interest rates, withholding state credits, and burdening firms with unpayable debts. After the economy of Poland crashed the economy could be bough dirt cheap. An example is the steel facility Huta Warsawa that was bought for $30 million, but was worth at least $3 billion.
In late 1991 Soros arranged a similar plan with the Yeltsin circle for Russia. It was Soros who introduced Jeffery Sachs and shock therapy (draconian cuts in state spending to an economy that totally depended on the state) into Russia. Since January 2, 1992, shock therapy was introduced with chaos and hyperinflation as a result: http://archive.is/OInXC
WORLD BANK TO FINISH THE JOB
The World Bank has been “helping” Moldova since 1999 and claims impressive progress because the poverty rate was reduced from 72% in 1999 to 22% in 2010 (remember: an average year salary of less than 2000 dollar).
An estimated 18,000 pregnant women cannot buy food and need food aid packages because of the increase in food prices in the summer of 2008. The Strengthening the Effectiveness of Social Safety Nets Project is “helping” over 50,000 poor households with “targeted” social assistance. In a country of 3.5 million that’s a very large impoverished percentage.
Apparently much progress has been made by “the use of ICT as a tool for improved public services, greater transparency and efficiency”. An automated social assistance information system has been developed for the Ministry of Labour, Social Protection and Family to maintain records of persons requiring social services. Read what this means: Moldovans cannot buy food to eat and now the World Bank has arranged that they all have computer files (Big Brother is watching them too!).
Where 50,000 are too poor to buy food the World Bank has rehabilitated over 40 primary healthcare centres. So the health care can guarantee the amount of poor people will reduce: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/10/17/world-bank-moldova-20-years
(http://web.archive.org/web/20170125193722/http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/10/17/world-bank-moldova-20-years)
In the 2016 Moldovan presidential election even a former World Bank economist - Maia Sandu – has tried to get elected. But it was Igor Dodon that won with a landslide: http://www.rferl.org/a/moldovana-face-critical-choice-in-presidential-run-off/28112323.html
RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-12-2019
The World Bank and CIA in Latin America
VENEZUELA
Venezuela, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, for many years has been a country that exports more than it imports for (which should have made this country wealthy). In Venezuela there is both a shortage of products in the supermarkets and power cuts: http://www.infowars.com/scenes-from-the-venezuela-apocalypse-countless-wounded-after-5000-loot-supermarket-looking-for-food/
In 1999, Hugo Chávez seized power in Venezuela and then nationalized the oil industry, because it would be unfair if oil was running out of Venezuela without benefit for the population. In May 2007, he closed the door on the IMF and World Bank.
In 2009, Chávez had to beg for a loan from the IMF, which obligated him to devalue the Venezuelan bolivar (causing inflation). Chávez died in March 2013 and was probably killed by the CIA: http://web.archive.org/web/20170705013318/https://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/11-03-2013/124025-hugo_chavez_eath-0/
If Chávez was murdered, he didn´t have cancer, but was poisoned and the Cuban doctors, that gave him radiation, chemotherapy and surgery no less than 4 times, were complicit to murder. Eva Golinger suspects a bodyguard of Chávez, Salazar, who after his death was granted asylum and federal protection in the USA: http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/03/14/murder-chavez-cia-and-dea-cover-their-tracks.html
In 2013 Nicolás Maduro was helped to the presidency. Maduro effectively hampers the industry so that it produces less and less, then sells the imported goods so cheap that these are exported (back) abroad at a profit, so hyperinflation broke out.
Because the underpriced products are exported to other countries, the crisis can spread across South America: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/03/hoarding-causing-venezuela-food-shortages-20143210236836920.html
The next masterful stroke of Maduro: selling oil and gold reserves. I would say that if Venezuela exports oil, it should be as rich as Saudi Arabia. Selling the gold (e.g. to Citibank and Goldman Sachs) means that Venezuela becomes poorer and poorer: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/29/news/economy/venezuela-selling-gold/index.html.
Venezuela was indicted from the Netherlands by oil companies ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips: http://archive.is/FtZEx
ECUADOR, PANAMA – ROLDOS AGUILER AND TORIJOS
Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos Aguiler and Panamanian President Omar Torrijos were also murdered in 1981.
On Aguiler death it’s known that the Panamanian police reported that his plane was brought down by a bomb, near Loja, but then the national government immediately labelled it an “accident”: https://www.cuencahighlife.com/ecuador-investigates-the-death-of-president-jaime-roldos-attorney-general-says-that-it-could-be-tied-to-the-cias-operation-condor/
On Torijos’ murder there’s much more. Col. Roberto Diaz Herrera on 8 June 1987 stated (he was later arrested and wrote a book)
Quote:that Noriega had conspired with Lt. Gen. Wallace Nutting, the chief of the U.S. Army’s Southern Command, based in Panama, “and with the CIA, to plant a bomb aboard the aircraft in which [Noriega's predecessor, and Diaz's cousin] General Torrijos was killed when it crashed in the mountains in 1981″https://www.facebook.com/TheBlackFliles/posts/155203134646312
(archived here: http://archive.is/hs0Vu)
Herrera also implicated Col. Alberto Purcell, who reportedly was paid $250,000 by the CIA. Colonel Manuel Noriega had been involved with the CIA since the late 1950s and was closely connected to George H.W. Bush, and was suddenly called a drug lord and dictator. In 1991 Noriega tried to defend himself in court with evidence that the US government was involved in the murder of Torijos and tried to assassinate Noriega himself: http://web.archive.org/web/20180119001042/http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1991-05-01/news/9101220014_1_frank-rubino-gen-noriega-panama
BRAZIL – PAULO GUEDES
With the support of Steve Bannon: Jair Bolsonaro was elected as Brazil’s next president.
While Jair Bolsonaro ran his election on a platform of making an end to corruption, his Chief economic adviser, banker Paulo Guedes, was caught in a corruption probe.
Guedes was educated in the US at the University where Milton Friedman’s economic theories rules supreme. Paulo Guedes’ strategy is very similar to the strategy that World Bank and IMF use to strangle the economies of “developing” countries.
Paulo Guedes was one of the founders of: Banco Pactual, the Instituto Millenium (Millennium Institute), and Plano Real. Guedes has also directed several investment funds and companies.
I guess that Bolsonaro didn’t promise to raise taxes but Guedes is planning greater tax revenues (or higher taxes)...
Guedes has promised to cancel the fiscal deficit (it will reach 160/180 billion reais in 2018) within a year. By selling Brazil by the pound; his aggressive plan of privatisation could bring about 800 billion reais to the State, leaving the Brazilian population in the claws of the investment bankers.
Guedes will introduce a new contributory system, so the (slave) labourers pay more to the pension funds, while cutting “gold pensions”, which will lead to a lower burden on businesses.
Guedes plans reduced interest rates, which supposedly is a boost for the economy, but of course only the big corporation will profit, and inflation will rise.
Guedes also support the “globalists” by increasing import-export, which will surely support the rich and corrupt - reducing import tariffs and creating international bilateral agreements: https://updatebrazil.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/the-6-key-points-of-the-thought-of-paulo-guedes-superminister-of-the-bolsonaro-economy/
(archived here: http://archive.is/Vxvy2)
For more information on how Steven Bannon, of Goldman Sachs, Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica, has the presidential election in Brazil: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1398#p5455
RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-14-2019
Atlas Network in Latin America
The Atlas Network is affiliated with the powerful Mont Pelerin Society that was co-founded by Knight of Malta, Crown Prince to the non-existent Austrian throne, Otto von Habsburg (who also established the Pan-Europa Union): https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340&start=30#p5573
The Atlas Network works with 450 foundations, NGOs, think tanks and advocacy groups, with an operating budget of $5 million in 2016, coming from charitable and non-profit foundations from the US.
Atlas helped to alter the political landscape in various countries in Latin America and is effectively an extension of Anglo-American foreign policy. The think tanks associated with Atlas are financed by the Koch billionaire brothers, State Department and National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The NED and the State Department funded Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), Freedom House and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), are the major entities who share guidelines and resources for concrete results in the asymmetric war.
15 of the most important organisations financed by Koch are: Americans for Prosperity, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, American Legislative Exchange Council, Mercatus Center, Americans for Tax Reform, Concerned Veterans of America, Leadership Institute, Generation Opportunity, Institute for Justice, Independent Institute, Club for Growth, Donors Trust, Freedom Partners and Judicial Watch.
The Atlas network has 13 affiliates in Brazil; 12 in Argentina, 8 in Chile and Peru; 5 in Mexico and Costa Rica; 4 in Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia and Guatemala; 2 in Dominican Republic, Ecuador and El Salvador: and 1 in Colombia, Panama, Bahamas, Jamaica and Honduras: https://peoplesdispatch.org/2018/08/29/atlas-network-the-right-wing-libertarians/
(archived here: http://archive.is/BvvJF)
The Atlas Network has financed a variety of organisations that influence the public and promote “right wing” propaganda in Latin america.
Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, reveal efforts of US politicians to use Atlas´ think tanks to destabilise Venezuela in support of (?) the Maduro government.
As early as 1998, Cedice Libertad, the flagship of Atlas in Caracas, received regular financial support from the Center for International Private Enterprise.
There are other NGOs and foundations working for Atlas, like Provea (financed by the Open Society Foundation of George Soros, the Ford Foundation and the British embassy), the Civil Association of Citizen’s Power, and the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict (which is financed by the NED).
In Brazil there are now about 30 “non-profit” institutions acting and collaborating with each other, like the Estudantes Pela Liberdade (Students for Liberty) and the MBL (Free Brazil Movement).
The Millennium Institute: founded in 2006, received funding from Bank of America, Merryll Lynch, Grupo RBS, Gerdau and Am-Cham Brazil. The Millennium Institute was instrumental in organising demonstrations against former President Dilma Rousseff.
The Interdisciplinary Centre of Ethics and Personal Economics of Rio de Janeiro: a think tank of Atlas that develops religious arguments that benefit the major corporations. The centre imitates the US Acton Institute financed by Trump´s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (sister of Erik Prince).
The DeVos family has also funded the Heritage Foundation.
In Argentina the Pensar Foundation of the Atlas Network became the political party PRO that propelled Mauricio Macri to the presidency in 2015.
Leaders of Pensar and Fundación Libertad (Freedom Foundation, also of Atlas) today occupy key positions in the Argentine administration.
In Honduras the Eléutera foundation was founded after the coup in 2009 against elected president Manuel Zelaya. The leader of Eléutera, Guillermo Peña Panting, previously worked at the Atlas think tank in North Carolina the John Locke Foundation and has given numerous seminars for the organization.
The present government of Honduras asked for the political support of Eléutera: https://peoplesdispatch.org/2018/09/03/the-atlas-networks-insidious-impact-on-the-ground/
(archived here: http://archive.is/jaOpa)
The following interesting picture was released by Wikileaks (originally released more than 10 years ago), from a classified Pentagon paper.
It shows that the World Bank, IMF, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) are used as as “U.S. diplomatic-financial venues” to pressure foreign state and nonstate actors and:
Quote:apply unilateral and indirect financial power through persuasive influence to international and domestic financial institutions regarding availability and terms of loans, grants, or other financial assistance to foreign state and nonstate actors.
The picture, text comes from the hundreds of pages document “Field Manual (FM) 3-05.130, Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare” (2008): https://file.wikileaks.org/file/us-fm3-05-130.pdf
RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-16-2019
John Pilger’s documentary “War by other means” (1992) is about the wonderful efforts in the 1970s and 1980s by the World Bank and IMF to keep the world enslaved in debt.
https://youtu.be/79bZ71fUZRU
Contrary to the myth, it’s the poor of the world who finance the rich, not the other way around. And this video explains how.
It’s really the continuing colonial war, blatantly ignored by the media. It’s been called a silent war. Instead of soldiers dying, there’re children dying - according to the UN, more than half a million per year.
The IMF and World Bank were setup at the Bretton Woods conference in the US in 1944. The World Bank claimed it would finance the reconstruction of Europe and then develop the third world. In reality they are only promoting the interest of the elite. That was true in the 1970s and even more so in the 1980s.
In the 1980s, the World Bank, IMF, US government and British government would blackmail “developing” countries by refusing “loans”.
Every World Bank official is immune from prosecution anywhere in the world.
The debtor countries have paid more than $1.3 trillion from 1982-1992, and their debt burden has risen by 60% in that period. If we don’t put a stop to this, this could go on forever with the debtor countries paying 12 billion dollars every single month…
In the year 1990 alone, the poor countries transferred more than 6 billion pounds net to British banks. On top of this, the banks were allowed tax relief; from 1987 to 1990, 1.6 billion pounds. About 10 times what the British donated to the third world.
In the 1990s, Britain effectively became the poorest European country. In 1992, 1 in 5 British children lives in poverty.
The documentary puts the Philippines in the spotlight.
In order to eat and feed their family, Eddie and his wife, must work at least 12 hours a day for a little more than 2 pounds. Almost 30% of the children born on smoky mountain do not live to the age of 5.
About one Philippine child dies every hour because of the debt crisis. The Philippines spends almost half its national budget on paying the interest on debt to foreign banks.
The year the World Bank declared the Philippines a special case for development, it lend Dictator Marcos more than 4 billion dollars.
The Philippines used to have more than enough food, but for reasons known, agriculture was structurally adjusted. An example is the Calabarzon super-project, demanded by the IMF, which grows food specifically for the export. The new factories will produce profits for foreigners, and… more debt for the Philippines.
Many farmers will end up homeless on the streets of Manila.
Here’s a transcript of the video: http://wake-up.acordem.com/blog/26399/
(archived here: http://archive.is/PCucs)
Maybe the most interesting from the video is the nuclear power plant sham. The Philippines had to borrow $2.6 billion from the Export-Import bank to pay the Westinghouse Electric Corporation for the power plant on the Bataan Peninsula, which will never create a single Watt of electricity.
In July 1973, President Ferdinand E. Marcos announced the decision to build a nuclear power plant. In 1974, it was Westinghouse that got the deal by bribing Marcos. According to Filipino lawyers, bankers and Government officials, Dictator Marcos received most of the $80 million in bribes. The payment, first went to Herminio Disini, who laundered the money through Switzerland, and transferred most of it to Marcos.
In 1975, Disini was rewarded for his work, when Marcos issued a secret presidential decree that effectively put Disini's competitor out of business.
The deal was underwritten by the US government through the Export-Import bank and some private banks. The Export-Import bank was founded to help US business overseas, by providing loans.
William Casey, the later director of the CIA, then Director of the Export-Import bank, went to Manila and recommended Congress to give an initial loan so that the other banks would join to provide more loans.
In June 1974, even before Westinghouse had submitted a detailed bid, Secretary of Industry Vincente Paterno described the Westinghouse deal in a memo to Marcos as “one reactor for the price of two”. It was later discovered that Westinghouse sold similar technology to other countries for only a fraction of the price.
Westinghouse got the deal with an estimate of $500 million, then the project was delayed over and over again, until the price was around $2.2 billion. All things considered the final cost for the Philippines is estimated at $2.6 billion. Of course, the Filipinos have to pay…
After Marcos was overthrown in 1986, President Corazon Aquino declared the Bataan Power Station unsafe and it was closed forever. Later a US judge found evidence of bribery, which was then settled out of court. Westinghouse agreed to pay the Philippines $100 million. As part of the deal (?), the Aquino government then gave Westinghouse another $400 million dollars for further “work”, which were again borrowed from the Export-Import bank and has to be repaid by the Filipinos...
Since Aquino was brought to power, the poverty level was raised by another 10%, to 70% of the Philippine population.
In 1986, several Philippine ministers suggested that the Philippines' $26-billion foreign debt must be lowered. At the time, the government owed $1.2 billion on the Bataan plant project. The biggest creditor is the US Export-Import Bank, which advanced $550 million for the project. Other loans came from a syndicate led by Citicorp and from Swiss and Japanese banks.
In May 2011, it was announced that the plant would be turned into a tourist attraction.
Interest costs for the power plant, in 1986, were $210 million a year; 8% of the Philippines' total foreign debt of $26 billion: http://archive.is/ApLT2
(http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/07/world/filipinos-say-marcos-was-given-millions-for-76-nuclear-contract.html?pagewanted=all&mcubz=1)
RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-18-2019
John Pilger – Hidden agendas
In this post a book by the Australian John Pilger. Because this 1998 book describes different situations in a variety of (mostly third world) countries I find it hard to catagorise and summarise the book.
According to Pilger it’s about the “slow news” that never gets much media attention. The news about “unpeople” in underveloped countries being terrorised by dictatorial goverments that are supported with arms from the US and Britain. Brutal dictatorial regimes are even helped to get control over a country.
The wars of Britain and American are against democracy and freedom; and are nothing but genocide.
In 1998, President Clinton is re-arming much of Latin America, and a £22 billion arms bonanza is near with NATO expanding into Eastern Europe.
British arms company Mil-Tac, armed the Hutu militia in former Zaire.
World Bank, IMF, debt and “free” trade
Countries are enslaved by debt and it are only the wealthy that profit from these loans. Multinational corporations take the profit from exploiting the third world.
In 1995, more than 80% of investment ended up in just 12 countries. The 48 least developed countries attracted only 0.5%.
In 1998, a Filipino child died every hour, in a country where more than half the national budget is given over to the World Bank and IMF to repay “loans”.
Almost half the world's “free trade” is conducted as transactions within 180 multinational corporations, mostly from the US and Japan, with the rest British, French, German and Swiss. Annual sales of the largest 8 companies exceed the Gross Domestic Product of 50 countries with over half the world's population.
The world government was hard at work following the collapse of Asia. What was reported in the West as a “bail out” by the International Monetary Fund, in reality the IMF's “rescue packages” represent an audacious takeover of Asian economies, for example in South Korea, where companies are forced to surrender to foreign control and workers' rights are slashed.
Following a plan devised by President Reagan's Treasury Secretary James Baker, indebted countries were offered World Bank and IMF loans in return for “structural adjustment”. This meant that the economic policy of these countries would be dictated from Washinton DC.
To add to the bewildering array of imperial acronyms (TRIMS, TRIPS, NAFTA, SAPs and so on), there is now the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) that gives multinational corporations the right to challenge local laws before an international tribunal, while governments or their citizens have no right to take action against offending corporations.
The industrial military complex
In Britain, almost half of all research and development funds are allocated to “defence”.
More than half of all British “aid” to the developing world goes through the Aid for Trade Provisions (ATP) scam. In 1988, Alan Clark, Thatcher's Trade Minister, set up a little-known fund of £1 billion, from which the Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD) financed Third World regimes to buy British arms. By 1993, more than half of the credit guarantees of the ECGD underwrote arms sales, mostly to Indonesia and Malaysia. In one of those strange coincidences, the highest recipients of British “aide” are among the biggest buyers of British weapons...
In 1995, the Independent reported that the British subsidiary of the now bankrupt British multinational Astra, BMARC, circumvented a British Government embargo by sending arms to Iran via Singapore.
What wasn´t revealed was that in 1990, BMARC also secretly supplied arms and ammunition to the Burmese generals through Singapore and in defiance of another British Government ban.
Reportedly the group surrounding Margaret Thatcher´s son, Mark, received 5% of $4 billion as commission on the arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Diego Garcia is a British colony in the Indian Ocean. Its inhabitants were simply deported to install a US army base there, in violation with Articles 9 and 13 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “no one should be subjected to arbitrary exile” and “everybody has the right to return to his country”.
In the 1960s, 40% of US tax dollars went towards subsidising the “'military industrial complex”.
In 1993, almost two-thirds of American arms export agreements with developing countries were with Saudi Arabia.
The end of the Cold War
Gore Vidal described the Cold War with the Soviet Union as “an American fiction”, with an effective agreement on “spheres of influence”. The United States had no intention to rescue the Hungarians when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest in 1956 or the Czechoslovaks when they were invaded in 1968. The Soviet Union had no desire to help the Vietnamese to expel the American invader, or to fight in Latin America.
Secret British planning documents, dismiss the “Soviet threat” as non-existent, even in the Middle East.
Since the re-invasion of Russia by the forces of globalisation, Russia's economy has halved and its GDP has been reduced to that of the (much smaller) Netherlands.
The free press myth
We have government by the media, and media for the government.
Alfred Hugenberg controlled nearly half the German press by the end of the 1920s. Without Hugenberg “the triumph of the Nazis” wouldn´t have been possible.
In 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor of the Guardian disclosed that some 500 prominent Britons were paid by the CIA through the corrupt Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) in London, including 90 journalists, many in “senior positions”.
The supposed once “high standards” of British journalism were destroyed, mostly by Rupert Murdoch, who has succeeded in evading taxes by shell companies in offshore money laundering paradises. MI5 agent Robert Maxwell looted the pension fund and destroyed the “quality” of the Mirror (where Pilger worked at the time).
![[Image: c773c8636746ea0e35e5276510635a95eb89a659.jpg]](https://archive.is/VuVuC/c773c8636746ea0e35e5276510635a95eb89a659.jpg)
Genocide of Iraq
The Gulf War in 1991 was reported as an event of bloodless science in which there were “miraculously few casualties” – and quite a miracle it was! In reality 70% (!) of the 88,500 tons of bombs dropped on Iraq and Kuwait missed their targets and many fell in populated areas, killing civilians.
Few journalists reported the truth that at least 250.000 Iraqis were slaughtered by the brutal bombing – including cluster bombs. Since then, another at least half a million children died as a result of the economic sanctions. Because of munition made from Depleted Uranium, with a radioactive half-life of 125,000 years, the devastating effects on future generations will be similar to those of “Agent Orange” in Vietnam.
Norman Schwarzkopf boasted that at least 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed, he forgot the civilian deaths.
US Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, who later was appointed Secretary of State, answered the question whether the lives of half a million Iraqi children were too high a price, with: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, is worth it”.
Exploiting the third world
According to the World Health Organization in 1998, one third of the children in the world are malnourished.
Thailand, China and India produce sport shoes and toys for very low wages, including child labour.
In 1993, 2 industrial fires in toy factories in Thailand and China, killed 275 workers, most of them in their early teens. Hundreds were terribly burned.
In Haiti, girls from very poor families produce baseballs for the US.
General Augusto Pinochet was made dictator with the help of the CIA, during his military reign 130,000 Chileans were murdered, tortured and “disappeared”.
The World Bank and IMF proudly boasted on the results: Chile's debt grew to officially a whopping almost half of the GDP but in reality was even higher, with most of Chile's debt concealed in “debt-equity swaps”.
Mandela the president for white South Africa
In 1975, IMF funded “Apartheid” South Africa more than the rest of the continent together.
After the lawyer Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa, it were mostly the white elite that profited. Mandela became president on condition that the multinational corporations would be helped as they “opened up” the South African economy.
Black frontmen were selected as the corporate faces for white-controlled companies. Like for example Cyril Ramaphosa, chairman of a number of leading companies, and a close ally of the next President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki.
Since South Africa became a “democracy”, the amount money going to the police and prisons has risen by a quarter in a country with already one of the world's biggest security systems. From 1995 to 1998, deaths in police custody doubled.
Since Mandela became president the wealth gap has grown like never before, up to 100,000 jobs a year were lost and the desperately needed public services were curtailed. Many farm labourers are arbitrarily evicted as if nothing had changed.
But instead black South Africans have received the right to abortions!
From Thatcher and Reagan to Blair and Clinton
While small-time dealers are pursued in Clinton's “war on drugs”, money laundering, much of it related to the international “narco-trade”, flows unimpeded through the Caribbean tax havens to the US.
At the end of Reagan as president, the top 20% of the population got most of the income, while the bottom 60% had record lows. Wages fell below 1973 levels.
In Clinton's “Democracy”, 1% of the population controls 40% of the national wealth; profits are at an all-time high, having risen by 19% in 5 years while wages and welfare benefits have grown with only 1%.
Since the year Lady of the Garter Margaret Thatcher became Elizabeth’s Prime Minister, more than £63 billion in subsidies has been transferred from the poor to the rich. When Margaret Thatcher was PM, the number of poor Britons rose with 60%, to a quarter of the British population by 1998. The UN Human Development Report for 1997 writes that in no other country has poverty “increased as substantially” since the early 1980s.
In Britain, Peter Mandelson solved the problem of the “poverty” by renaming it “Social Exclusion”.
Peter Mandelson, George Robertson, Marjorie Mowlam, Chris Smith, Elizabeth Symons and Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell were members of the British-American Project for the Successor Generation funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia, established by the billionaire J. Howard Pew, chairman of Sun Oil.
Among the right-wing groups supportd by Pew are the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (set up by former head of the CIA William Casey).
In the 1980s, hundreds of miles of waterfront and docks in Britain were handed over to bankers, financiers and speculators.
According to chairman Gordon Waddell “It was odd, that a company with a government shareholder should be buying a privatised port”. This is a striking example of “wealth creation”, using tax pounds.
Liverpool dockers replaced by cheap labour
While in Liverpool the dockers generated greater profit than almost anywhere in Britain, its inhabitants remain very poor.
On 25 September 1995, dockers working for Torside, were ordered to work overtime for a disputed rate. After they protested, they were immediately fired. Three days later, they mounted a picket line and the 329 men employed by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company that refused to cross it, were also summarily dismissed.
They were replaced with cheap, flexible labour, for an hourly rate of £4 for “all hours”, without any guarantee on the amount of hours of work and pay per week. Men were placed “on call” during their days off, so that they could be summoned back to work at any time.
The dockers were represented by Britain's second largest union the Transport and General Workers' Union that did nothing for them “because” the dockers' action was technically against the recently introduced law.
The Liverpool dockers succeeded in arranging strikes in ports all over the globe instead, including in: Newark, Florida and Los Angeles in the US; New Brunswick and Montreal in Canada; Sweden; Denmark; Rotterdam in the Netherlands; Greece; France; Germany; Sydney, Australia; Auckland, Wellington and Lyttleton in New Zealand; South Africa.
Suharto and the Timor genocide
More than 60,000 people were slaughtered in the first 3 months of the invasion. In the 20 years since Indonesia illegally invaded East Timor, at least 200,000 people have died. According to Gabriel Defert, the real figure is closer to 300,000.
On arrival in Indonesia, Robin Cook gave one of the world's most vicious dictatorships a “deal on human rights”. At the time, Suharto’s Indonesia were conducting “Operation Finish Them Off in East Timor”, with British arms whose delivery he refused to stop.
Indonesia's special forces, Kopassus, patrol East Timor in civilian dress in unmarked vehicles, armed with Heckler and Koch automatic weapons from British Aerospace. Their marksmen train on simulators used by the SAS and their death squads train in British equipment. Indonesian military officers and pilots are trained in Britain.
Burmese days – Ne Win
In February 1995, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions reported that in the Burma of dictator General Ne Win a million people had been forced from their homes in Rangoon alone. The following violations were commonplace: “Torture, summary and arbitrary executions, forced labour, abuse of women, politically motivated arrests and detention, forced displacement, important restrictions on the freedoms of expression and association and oppression of ethnic and religious minorities”.
Burma plays an important role in the world production of heroin.
In the south of Burma, the death railway was constructed with slave labour, including children. This is connected to the pipeline of the French oil company Total in a consortium that includes Unocal, the British Premier Oil, Nippon Oil and Texaco.
The German electronics conglomerate Siemens, the Dutch multinational Philips and Ireland's Dragon Oil are major investors in this project.
The US victory in Cambodia and Vietnam
Orchestrating the Cambodia genocide started in 1969, with the brutal secret bombing campaign, launched by President Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (who later was awarded the Nobel Price for bringing peace to the region!). Between 1969 and 1973, American bombers killed some 750.000 Cambodian peasants. To conceal this crime, US pilots' logs were falsified.
In reality, the genocidal Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were promoted by the US and Britain.
In 1992, when the Western powers returned to Cambodia, they came under the United Nations' flag to impose a “peace plan” devised by US Congressman Stephen Solarz.
Not only the Gulf of Tonkin attack was completely fake; the later announced “conclusive proof” of Hanoi's preparations to invade the south - weapons found floating in a North Vietnamese junk off China Beach were a “master illusion'”.
In 1983, former senior CIA specialist Ralph McGehee told Pilger that “The CIA, loaded up the junk with communist weapons, floated it off the coast, then brought in the international press. We got the headlines we wanted, and the marines followed".
According to Pilger, the US didn´t really lose in Vietnam as they took control of all the countries surrounding it.
In the 1990s, Vietnam was told that the price for entry into the “global economy” are cities of sweatshops and a countryside of landlords.
Vietnamese journalist Nhu T. Le wrote that the new foreign banks and private enterprises,
Quote:are meant to create a Hobbesian world of scarce resources inhabited by desperate people willing to do almost anything to feed their families. The marketeers are making an argument about human nature – that fear and greed are the fundamental human motivations. But in Vietnam, three million people in the grave serve as its greatest refutation.
John Pilger – Hidden agendas (1998): https://archive.org/details/fp_Hidden_Agendas-John_Pilger
(http://archive.is/xpNbq)
RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-21-2019
Trump’s trade wars, Brasil, China
White house press secretary Sean Spicer explained that “right now our country’s policy is to tax exports and let imports flow freely in, which is ridiculous". Spicer was talking about a Border Adjustment Tax (BAT).
The GOP proposal allows companies to subtract the cost of labour, land and input goods, from the taxed amount. This could be either a scheme to give preferred suppliers the possibility to evade taxes or a ploy to give the USA the authority to spy on what’s happening in other countries (how else can they uphold this?): http://www.businessinsider.com/problems-with-trumps-20-mexican-border-tax-idea-2017-1?international=true&r=US&IR=T
1 – INFLATION
Import taxes will increase the prices in the USA – this is inflation.
According to Michael Gapen, chief economist at Barclays: "We estimate that a 20% border tax could increase year-over-year rates of core inflation by 0.5-1.0 percentage points and reduce real GDP growth by 1.0-1.5 percentage points”.
As a result of inflation, we – the slaves – have to work harder to make ends meet. A fight we cannot win.
Inflation gives the banksters the right to print additional money (the percentage of the inflation); which keeps the inflation perpetual.
2 – LESS JOBS
According to Donald Trump and his ilk; lower taxes create jobs. That sounds reasonable when we hear this often enough, but this depends (more) on other factors. Now the Trump team tells us that increasing taxes will create jobs. Please don’t ask the president to explain this contradiction, this might be “too complicated”.
According to Michael Gapen a border tax would hamper sales, reduce the GDP (a recession). This means that the import tax would reduce the amount of jobs.
3 - EXPORT SUBSIDY
The effect of a 20% import tax is that countries will look for other markets to sell their products (than the USA). This could decrease the trade deficit for the USA, but we really want the third world to work for us, so we want them to export cheaply.
Following the import tax, come the export subsidies (Europe has been doing this for decades). In this way the prices for the products from the third world go down. This will force the third world to sell to the developed world for lower prices.
This crashes the economy of those poor slobs in the third world.
4 - WORLD BANK & IMF: MISSIONARIES
As a result of these schemes the third world cannot make ends meet, and then they have to beg the World Bank and IMF for help.
The mission of these wonderful banks is to preach helping the poor, when in reality they are finishing off their economy. The third world gets deeper and deeper in problems while they also get indebted by the banksters.
Then the foreign investors (the banksters) step in to buy the economy pennies for dollars, to add to their growing world domination.
5 – MONOPOLY
Higher taxes sound honest: we all have to pay equally for the great “service” of our government. But then comes the kick: all are equal, but some are more equal than others.
The elite use tax exempt NGOs, trust funds and Swiss bank accounts to evade taxes. Corporations can set up mail boxes in the Dutch Antilles or Luxembourg to flee from taxes. As a last resort they can even use their control over politrics to lower their taxes.
Because of the high taxes the small businesses simply disappear, adding to the ever growing monopoly of the elite.
6 – BILATERAL INVESTMENT TREATIES (BIT’S)
For really philanthropic reasons the developed countries suggest the third world to make Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) for lower tax barriers.
This gives multinational to right to sue using Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). This is arbitration where basically the World Bank decides if a corporation is hampered by some law.
As a result democratically elected parliaments can only change the legislation when allowed by the multinationals. This is: power to the... banksters.
To ensure that this is really democratic: the ISDS provisions are made in secret.
Because of the effective monopolies: the big corporations (controlled by a small group of “investors”) decide where we work, what we wear, hear, eat, drink, and what price we have to pay.
Using BITs and the ISDS the investors force countries to privatise their hospitals. So now the elite have become God: they decide everything, including life and death.
Aluminium tarrifs – Icahn in Brasil
Trump’s long-time friend and adviser, the billionaire Carl Icahn, will profit from ending those laws that prevent corporations polluting Brazil by the Bolsonaro government.
On 18 August 2017, Icahn resigned his presidential advisory post after some media claimed that he had profited from his position by pushing regulatory changes that benefited his business interests.
In 2012 Carl Icahn bought a large stake in Ferrous Resources Ltd., which mines iron in Brazil.
In 2015, Appleby’s Isle of Man offices assisted Icahn in his purchase of additional shares of Ferrous Resources to give him majority stake.
Appleby set up a complex offshore structure for Icahn to evade taxes. It utilises holding companies in tax havens — Atlantic Iron in Luxembourg and Mediterranean Iron in Malta — to control Ferrous in Brazil.
The structure of Ferrous Resources means it escapes disclosure requirements under an Obama-era law to prevent offshore tax evasion: http://archive.vn/VDFQV
The rabbit hole runs even deeper...
On 8 March 2018, President Trump signed an order to impose a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminium imports in 15 days.
Gullible fools might think that this will hurt the Brazilian business interests of Carl Icahn (iron is the most important ingredient of steel)...
But then on 30 April, in a “surprising move”, President Donald gave Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, South Korea, and Brazil exemption from the steel and aluminium tariffs.
There are also quotas to reduce the imports of steel and aluminium to the US.
But then in August, President Donald allowed relief from the quotas on aluminum from Argentina and on steel from South Korea, Argentina and Brazil: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-metals/trump-allows-targeted-relief-on-steel-aluminum-quotas-commerce-department-idUSKCN1LF02B
archived here: http://archive.vn/zCmv8)
I had earlier found out that the Freeport McMoRan, reportedly also controlled by Carl Icahn, is massively polluting New Guinea in Indonesia: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1191
China trade war – Erik Prince
Isn’t it strange that with all of the media hysteria on the “trade war” with China, earlier this year the Frontier Services Group of the brother of Donald’s Secretary of education Betsy DeVos, Erik Prince (of Blackwater fame), signed a deal to build a training centre in Xinjiang in China.
According to the United Nations, in Xinjiang up to a million Uighur Muslims are held in extrajudicial mass incarceration camps.
Frontier is doing lots of business in China, and also works for Chinese companies in Africa: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/01/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-to-build-training-camp-in-chinas-xinjiang
RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-23-2019
Arms sales to Indonesia
Firestarter Wrote:More than 60,000 people were slaughtered in the first 3 months of the invasion. In the 20 years since Indonesia illegally invaded East Timor, at least 200,000 people have died. According to Gabriel Defert, the real figure is closer to 300,000.
On arrival in Indonesia, Robin Cook gave one of the world's most vicious dictatorships a “deal on human rights”. At the time, Suharto’s Indonesia were conducting “Operation Finish Them Off in East Timor”, with British arms whose delivery he refused to stop.
Indonesia's special forces, Kopassus, patrol East Timor in civilian dress in unmarked vehicles, armed with Heckler and Koch automatic weapons from British Aerospace. Their marksmen train on simulators used by the SAS and their death squads train in British equipment. Indonesian military officers and pilots are trained in Britain.
(...)
John Pilger – Hidden agendas (1998): https://archive.org/details/fp_Hidden_Agendas-John_Pilger
(http://archive.is/xpNbq)
Two days before the brutal invasion of East Timor President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave the green light for the invasion at a state dinner with President Suharto in Jakarta.
Since Suharto was brought into power of Indonesia in 1965, the US has been the biggest arms supplier of Indonesia, particularly after the invasion of East Timor in 1975.
US arms sales to Indonesia more than quadrupled from $12 million in 1974 to $65 million in 1975, while US military aid to Jakarta more than doubled from $17 million in 1974 to $40 million in 1976.
In 1977, Congressional hearings confirmed that major US weapons systems were sold during this period (some used in East Timor), including: 16 Rockwell OV-10 "Bronco" counterinsurgency aircraft, 3 Lockheed C-130 transport aircraft, 36 Cadillac-Gage V-150 "Commando" armoured cars, S-61 helicopters, patrol craft, M-16 rifles, pistols, mortars, machine guns, recoilless rifles, ammunition, and extensive communications equipment.
During the 1977 House International Relations Committee hearing, the State Department's Deputy Legal Advisor George H. Aldrich testified that "roughly 90%" of Indonesia's weapons during the 1975 invasion of East Timor came from the United States.
A high-ranking Indonesian general bluntly pointed out: "Of course there were US weapons used [during the attack on East Timor]. These are the only weapons that we have”.
![[Image: Indonesia-US-arms.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/dQfX2mnL/Indonesia-US-arms.jpg)
During the last 2 years of the Ford Administration US arms sales to Indonesia levelled off at $10 to $12 million annually.
In the 4 years that Jimmy Carter was US president (hypocritically on a platform of human rights), arms sales to Suharto skyrocketed to nearly $60 million per year, of which $112 million in 1978.
In May 1978, Vice President Walter Mondale sold Indonesia 16 A-4 "Skyhawk" attack planes, which is capable of spraying weapons fire and explosives over wide areas. Besides the "Skyhawks also a batch of 16 Bell UH-1H "Huey" helicopters were sold to the ruthless dictatorial regime of Suharto.
The Reagan administration maintained a steady weapons flow to Jakarta, of more than $40 million per year in arms sales during its first 4 years in office. In 1986, the Reagan administration approved a record more than $300 million in weapons sales to Suharto. This was the year that the US sold Indonesia its first batch of 12 F-16 fighter planes.
Arms sales to Indonesia dropped during the Bush Administration, to a still impressive $28 million annually.
The Clinton Administration was pushing Indonesia to buy more F-16’s. The total F-16 package, would be worth roughly $200 million (but I don’t know if the sale went through). If the sale of 9 to 11 F-16s went ahead as planned, the Clinton Administration will have approved roughly $270 million in arms sales to Indonesia in just over 4 years, over $67 million per year. This represents the highest US sales since the second Reagan term or the early Carter period.
In the second term of Bill Clinton as US president, the US has announced steps to “ensure” that sold arms to Indonesia won’t be used for internal repression.
There are several ways in which the US taxpayers have paid for arms sales to Indonesia in the 1990s.
The US Export-Import Bank offered guaranteed loans; including the "dual use" new program, which was intensive lobbied by the Aerospace Industries Association. In late 1995, Indonesia received a $22 million loan guarantee from the ExIm Bank to refurbish 7 of its U.S.-origin C-130 and L-100 transport aircraft.
The Pentagon during the Clinton administration created the $15 billion arms export loan guarantee fund.
Another form of indirect subsidy for arms exports is the practice of providing "offsets": steering business to the purchasing country (Indonesia). In May 1996, Indonesia's state minister of Research and Technology B.J. Habibie told to expect at least a 30% offset for the F-16 sale.
According to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, from 1992 to 1994, Indonesia received 53% of its weapons imports from the United States.
The US, wasn’t the only country supplying the brutal Suharto regime with weapons. Since the mid-1980s, Indonesia has relied almost entirely on the US and Western European countries, particularly the UK, France, Netherlands and Germany for imported armaments (an estimated 91 to 100% of its imported weapons).
![[Image: Indonesia-arms.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/L8tbMdS1/Indonesia-arms.jpg)
In the 1980s and 1990s the Dutch Hollandse Signaal Apparaten (daughter of the French Thompson-CSF) was the biggest arms and military services suppliers to ABRI (armed forces) from the Netherlands. During this period most sales of Dutch arms were to the Indonesian navy. The Netherlands supplied 9 major surface vessels and is pushing to sell more naval equipment.
In the period 1988-92, the Netherlands was the largest arms exporter to Indonesia after the US, according to the SIPRI.
A leaked report showed that in the period 1990-1995, Indonesia was the twelfth largest recipient of Dutch arms outside NATO, with a total value of $17.7 million: http://stopwapenhandel.org/sites/stopwapenhandel.org/files/imported/publicaties/boekenbrochures/Indonesia_0.pdf
(http://web.archive.org/web/20190525140858/http://stopwapenhandel.org/sites/stopwapenhandel.org/files/imported/publicaties/boekenbrochures/Indonesia_0.pdf)
For more on the Pentagon support for Suharto and General Prabowo, and the inevitable Trump link: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1191
RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-25-2019
Enslaving Indonesia
The following October 1999 article gives more information on the support of the Indonesia of the ruthless dictator Suharto since 1965, who was forced to resign on 21 May 1998.
Since then the IMF has expanded its control of Indonesia even more…
The economic interests of the Suharto family in Indonesian society are vast; the Suhartos own an estimated $15 billion (if so, how much do the dictators of Britain, Netherlands and Spain have stashed away?). A World Bank internal document described that since 1967 a third of the loans meant for Indonesian development, $24 billion, were embezzled by Suharto's family members and business cronies.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers reported that $70 million of the IMF's $43 billion “bail-out” package ended up in GOLKAR-linked bank accounts. The report found numerous indicators of fraud, concealment, bribery and corruption.
With the Indonesian occupation of East Timor since 1975 top generals profited as they hijacked the Timorese economy, and the Suharto family controls nearly 40% of East Timor.
In February 1998, General Prabowo (Suharto's son-in-law) was made commander of the Indonesian Army strategic reserve, KOSTRAD.
After Suharto resigned, Dr Habibie was immediately endorsed by General Wiranto (former Commander-in-Chief of KOSTRAD) and the armed forces (ABRI). The electoral system in Indonesia was rigged to guarantee victory to the ruling GOLKAR party. The police, who played a political role in suppressing opposition to Suharto, were under ABRI control.
In July 1998, Habibie appointed General Wiranto as Defence Minister. General Raden Hartano (Army Chief of Staff) became Minister of Information and for new KOSTRAD C.O. General Sugiano (former C.O. of the Presidential Security Unit).
On 27 January 1999, Habibie announced a referendum on East Timor. Up until the referendum, brutal paramilitary operations in East Timor killed hundreds of Timorese and forced 40,000 people to flee their villages. 78.5% of the votes (344,500) favoured independence from Indonesia.
Then Habibie imposed martial law in East Timor, after which even worse violence followed. According to the UN, an estimated 500,000 of the 890,000 population were displaced of which 150,000 were locked up in Indonesian camps in West Timor. Many were killed.
Habibie announced a democratic general election for 7 June 1999, with elections for President in the autumn of 1999.
The process was assisted by “aid” from Australia, Japan and the European Union and $50 million from the UN Development Fund.
General Wiranto was nominated as GOLKAR's Vice-Presidential candidate, but unexpectedly withdrew his candacy on 18 October 1999. Habibie also pulled out of the Presidential election. Abdurrachman Wahid (a.k.a. Gus Dur), leader of the National Awakening Party (PKB), was elected President on 20 October by 373 votes to 313 over Megawati Sukarnoputri, who became Vice-President.
Habibie had pledged to implement the economic reforms demanded by the IMF. In the 1997 elections, Wahid had campaigned with Suharto's daughter and has links to the military elite, including General Wiranto.
Even Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Sukarno who was overthrown by Suharto in 1965, has links to the military and is supported by many retired military officers.
In return for the IMF’s $43 billion “loan” to Indonesia, they demanded economic reforms like cutting food and fuel subsidies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has demanded a veto over Indonesia's economic policy.
At the end of 1998, Indonesia owed Western banks – including UK banks HSBC, Standard Chartered, Schroders, NatWest and Barclays - £30.75 billion. Indonesia also owed the World Bank and IMF £12.75 billion, and £13.5 billion to Western governments.
In May 1997, Julian Robertson and George Soros, with credit from a group of international banks including Citigroup, orchestrated the crash of the Thailand baht and stock market. The same team crashed the economies of the Philippines, Indonesia and South Korea.
From July 1997 to late January 1998, the rupiah lost 85% of its value against the US dollar and the Indonesian stock exchange index lost 50%, with inflation soaring to over 50%. Industrial development was abruptly halted when 80 projects were stopped.
In 1996, some 4.5 million Indonesians were unemployed; by early 1999 an additional ten million had lost their jobs. Food shortages became common especially in rural areas. Absolute poverty at the end of 1998 had risen from 22.5 million before the crisis to 118.5 million Indonesians (from 11.2% to 60.6% of the population in only a couple of years).
In 1978, the UK started selling Hawk jets of British Aerospace (BAe) to Indonesia. The Hawk-209 is a single-seat, radar equipped, lightweight, multi-role combat aircraft, providing comprehensive air defence and ground attack capability.
On 22 November 1996, 16 Hawk-209 aircraft were licensed for export to Indonesia. The UK government assisted the deal by DTI's Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) with a £280 million guarantee (87% of the ECGD support for military exports for Indonesia in 1995-6 and 80% of the purchase price). By February 1998, this sum had risen to £362 million.
In 1996, Indonesia spent $4.7 billion on their military, in 1997 $4.8 billion, but because of the crisis (only) $1.7 billion in 1998. Total Indonesian imports from the UK fell by 50.3% in the first quarter of 1998.
With a moratorium on arms purchases, 5 Indonesian private companies illegally imported firearms, gas and electric shock weapons.
In 1994, Robin Cook stated that Hawk aircrafts were used to bomb East Timor in most years since 1984 but after he became Foreign Secretary he did nothing to stop the arms sales. On 29 August 1998, Cook announced police training in Indonesia, of the cops that were heavily involved in repression.
The Blair government also permitted UK institutions to train Indonesian military officers, sometimes using taxpayers' money. The UK taxpayer was also paying for training Hawk pilots. By July 1998, the RAF had trained 5 instructors and 24 pilots. British Aerospace also provided training for Hawk pilots.
On 11 September 1999, Cook finally announced that existing arms export licences to Indonesia were suspended for (only) 4 months until 16 January 2000. While this sounds almost impressive, in reality Indonesia had no plans to buy more Hawks.
Heckler & Koch is a subsidiary of British Aerospace that manufactures the 9mm MP5 sub-machine gun that can fire 800 rounds per minute. The MP5 is used by special units in Indonesia.
In 1995, more than 500 MSG 90 sniper rifles were delivered to Indonesian Marines and the Indonesian Police Department, manufactured under licence from BAe by Makina ve Kimya Endustrisi Kurumu (MKEK) near Ankara in Turkey.
On 9 December 1996, Ian Lang announced a licence for 50 Alvis Scorpion vehicles with equipment including 90mm guns and 2 machine-guns per vehicle, adaptable to convoy escort, internal security or light tank.
This deal was also covered by the ECGD with £65 million in 1996 and $3.2 million in 1997.
In May 1998, Kaman tried to sell shipborne anti-submarine helicopters to Indonesia.
In May 1998, GKN Westland offered their Super Lynx 300 helicopter to Indonesia.
The UK taxpayer has also paid for military aid from the Defence Military Assistance Fund to Indonesia when Tony Blair was Elizabeth’s PM. This money is mainly used to support UK defence exporters: in 1995-6: £691,880 (of which £583,000 for military exports); 1996-7: £1,675,280 (of which £1,629,080 for military exports); 1997-8: £62,400 (of which £19,700 for military exports)
British colony Australia has also provided diplomatic and military support to Indonesia’s regime. In January 1978, Malcolm Fraser's government recognised to Indonesia's East Timor annexation, after which drilling for oil in Challis and Jabiru in the Timor Gap was allowed.
Between 1986 and 1991, the Australian government gleaned AUS$31 million from the sale of permits to oil companies to exploit natural resources in the region.
Australia sold 20 Nomad maritime patrol aircraft to Indonesians which arrived in January 1997. According to the IISS, Australia provided US$4 million worth of military aid to Indonesia in 1996; in 1997 another $4.5 million and in 1998 $3.5 million.
In May 1997, Australia and Indonesia agreed on a $1 billion military package to protect the Natuna gasfield in the South China Sea, including airborne early-warning systems, maritime patrol aircraft, frigates, SAMs and air-surveillance radar
In October 1998, British colony New Zealand made a deal to refurbish two US TA-4J Skyhawks for the Indonesian Air Force.
The Skyhawk is a ground-attack aircraft.
In 1994, Indonesia ordered 20 Light LG1 105mm cannons from the French Giat, in 1996 another 18 VBL wheeled amphibious scout vehicles, and in 1997 18 ULTRAF reconnaissance vehicles. In the beginning of 1997, the French Thomson-CSF won a $50 million contract to supply mission systems for Indonesian maritime patrol aircraft and helicopters.
France exported roughly double the UK total of £112,490,000 to Indonesia in 1998.
In June 1997, France awarded President Habibie a medal for promoting French-Indonesian relations and industrial development.
France and the Netherlands lobbied the EU to restrict the arms embargo to Indonesia, announced after the events in East Timor, to only 4 months.
In 1997, Germany made a deal for 5 Type 206 second-hand diesel attack submarines to Indonesia.
In 1997, the German companies STN Atlas Elektronik and Abeking & Rasmussen shipyard were also trying to sell a midget-submarine to Indonesia.
In 1995, the Belgian company SABCA was contracted to upgrade Indonesia's 12 F-5 fighters for $40 million, to give them communality with F-16s and Hawks.
In April 1996 Sweden approved the export of 3 Bofors naval cannon to Indonesia.
In August 1997, Indonesia reportedly decided on buying 12 Su-30K fighters and 8 Mi-17IV helicopters from Russia for $650-1000 million: https://www.caat.org.uk/resources/countries/indonesia/exports
(http://archive.is/OzYJp)
Indonesians have had enough of the austerity program forced on them by the World Bank, IMF and the Indonesian political puppets selected to sell it to the masses…
Indonesia has already suffered since the US-sponsored military coup in 1965.
People are protesting against the changes which president Jokowi announced – curbing labour rights and “opening up” the economy to foreign “investment”. Jokowi is used to implement brutal Thatcherite capitalism.
New legislation will make it illegal to criticise re-elected President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
This administration is even worse than any since Suharto’s dictatorship.
In West Papua already around 500,000 lost their lives since the beginning of occupation.
Jokowi met with the US President Donald Trump asking him “on behalf of millions of the Indonesia people” to come and visit Indonesia: https://journal-neo.org/2019/10/11/the-last-moments-of-indonesia-as-we-know-it/
(http://archive.is/ey9rP)
How did the not very popular Joko Widodo get re-elected in the first place?!?
His rival is the same son-in-law of the late dictator Suharto, General Prabowo Subianto, who is even hated more in Indonesia than Hillary Clinton in America after orchestrating the torture of activists in 1998.
In another strange twist, Widodo has now selected Prabowo for defence minister: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/23/indonesia-joko-widodo-appoints-arch-rival-as-defence-minister-prabowo-subianto
RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-27-2019
William Engdahl - A Century of War
In this post the first part of my summary of a book by William Engdahl that explains a lot of things that have happened from the end of the 19th century till the beginning of the 20th century, including information on the IMF…
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Iran oil, the Ottoman Empire – WW I
In the 1870s, the German Reich stopped playing according to the British model for economic destruction. This made Germany a threat. From 1850 to in 1913, German total domestic output increased fivefold and the per capita output increased by 250%. Between 1871 and 1913, the German population saw a steady increase in its living standard.
After the report by the Koch commission, the Reichstag in June/July 1896 approved legislation that restricted financial speculation.
For most of the 19th century England dominated the seas. The emergence of Germany as a preeminent modern shipping nation, was threatening the British domination of the seas.
In 1882, the black heavy sludge we today know as petroleum “rock oil” had little commercial interest other than as fuel to light the new mineral oil lamps.
Britain’s Admiral Lord Fisher was one of the first to conclude that Britain must convert its naval fleet to the new oil fuel. He argued that oil power would allow Britain to maintain decisive strategic advantage in future control of the seas.
By 1905, British intelligence and the British government had finally realised the strategic importance of oil but had no oil of its own. Fisher was ordered to establish a committee to “consider and make recommendations as to how the British navy shall secure its oil supplies.
In 1889, a group of German industrialists and bankers, led by Deutsche Bank, secured a concession from the Ottoman government to build a railway through Anatolia from the capitol, Constantinople. In 1899, the Ottoman government agreed that the German group could continue with the next stage of the Berlin–Baghdad railway project.
Germany was also becoming a close ally of France, but then the Dreyfus affair was staged to sabotage the relationship between Germany and France.
For information on the Dreyfus affair: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1415
For Britain this was a huge threat to their world dominance. It would also cut Russia off from her western friends, Great Britain and France. It is not surprising to find enormous unrest and wars throughout the Balkans in the decade before 1914, including the Turkish War, the Bulgarian War and continuous unrest in the region.
For information on how the mass murdering “Young Turks” freemasons destroyed the Ottoman Empire: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?511383-The-Genocide-of-Ottoman-Greeks-1914-1923
In 1901, the Shah of Persia (Iran) granted the Australian William Knox d’Arcy by royal decree a monopoly for 60 years, to probe, pierce and drill in the Persian soil for an amount equal to some $20,000 cash and the Shah received a 16% royalty from the sales of the petroleum.
In 1905, British “spy ace” Sidney Reilly persuaded d’Arcy to sign over his exclusive rights to Persian oil with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Scottish financier Lord Strathcona was used as a front man by the British government as the majority shareholder of Anglo-Persian, while the government’s stake was kept secret.
By 1902 it was known that the Mesopotamia region (today Iraq and Kuwait) of the Ottoman Empire contained resources of petroleum.
In 1899, the British government offered “protection” to the Sheikh Mubarak al-Sabah of Kuwait.
By 1912, German industry and government had realised that oil was the fuel of the future. At that time, Standard Oil’s Deutsche Petroleums Verkaufgesellschaft (of Rockefeller) controlled 91% of all German oil sales.
In 1911, the young Winston Churchill succeeded Lord Fisher as First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill used Fisher’s arguments to campaign for an oil-fired navy.
In 1913, the British government secretly bought a majority stake in Anglo-Persian Oil (today British Petroleum).
On 3 August 1914, Germany declared war on France, and German troops entered Belgium en route to attack France; on August 4, Britain declared war against Germany.
When WW I erupted, Britain was effectively bankrupt, according to a letter from Sir George Paish to Lloyd George dated 1 August 1914:
Quote:The credit system upon which the business of this country is formed, has completely broken down, and it is of supreme importance that steps should be taken to repair the mischief without delay; otherwise, we cannot hope to finance a great war if, at its very commencement, our greatest houses are forced into bankruptcy.Britain’s secret weapon was the special relationship with the Wall Street banking house of J.P. Morgan & Co.
By January 1915, 4 months into the Great War, the British government had named J.P. Morgan & Co. as its exclusive purchasing agent for all war supplies from the US. As purchasing agent alone, Morgan took a 2% commission on the net price of all goods shipped. By 1917, the British War Office had placed purchase orders totalling more than $20 billion through the house of Morgan.
It became a giant credit pyramid on top of which sat the house of Morgan. Firms such as DuPont Chemicals grew into multinational giants by their ties to Morgan. Remington and Winchester arms companies were also Morgan “friends”.’
Had President Woodrow Wilson not signed the Federal Reserve Act into law on 23 December 1913, it is questionable whether the US could have committed the resources it did to a war in Europe. In August 1914, the house of Morgan and the City of London shaped the US Federal Reserve System in the months just before outbreak of the Great War.
In August 1917, the Federal Reserve mobilised sales of Liberty Loans and bonds, to finance US government war costs. By 30 June 1919, these Liberty Loans and bonds totalled the breathtaking sum of $21.5 billion.
Morgan & Co. quietly shifted their private British government loans over to the general debt of the US Treasury when the US officially entered the war, making the British debts the burden of the American taxpayers after the war. But, in a great example of justice, Morgan had a major stake in the post-war Versailles reparations financing.
At the time of the Versailles peace conference in 1919, Britain owed the US $4.7 billion in war debts, while its own domestic economy was in a deep post-war depression, its industry in shambles, and domestic price inflation 300% higher after the 4 years of war.
The British national debt had increased more than nine fold, between 1913 and the end of the war in 1918, to the then-enormous sum of £7.4 billion.
During WW I, Sir Mark Sykes made a deal with French negotiator Georges Picot (the Sykes–Picot accord), under which Britain would get control over “Area B”, from what today is Jordan, east to most of Iraq and Kuwait, the ports of Haifa and Acre, and the rights to build a railway from Haifa through the French zone to Baghdad.
France got control over “Area A”: Greater Syria (Syria and Lebanon), including Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, the oil-rich Mosul to the northeast, including the oil concessions then held by Deutsche Bank in the Turkish Petroleum Gesellschaft.
After 1918, Britain maintained almost a million soldiers stationed in the Middle East. By 1919, the Persian Gulf had become a “British Lake”.
In 1920, Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont noted with satisfaction that, as a result of WW I, “the national debts of the world have increased by $210,000,000,000 or about 475 per cent in the last six years, and as a natural consequence, the variety of government bonds and the number of investors in them have been greatly multiplied”.
WW I was planned and succeeded in reallocating the raw materials and physical wealth of the entire world, especially the areas of the Ottoman Empire with significant petroleum reserves. In 1912, Britain commanded only 12% of world oil production through British companies. By 1925, she controlled the major part of the world’s future supplies of petroleum.
The newly carved Middle East boundaries were dominated by British government interests through Britain’s covert ownership of Royal Dutch Shell and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
Engdahl systematically claims that the Anglo-Dutch Shell is controlled by Britain. I have read that Queen Wilhelmina was “the richest woman in the world” at that time and the majority shareholder in Shell and Shell chairman Deterding was a Dutchman - I’m not convinced by Engdahl on this...
The Round Table, RIIA, CFR
The Round Table, founded in 1910, was anti-German and pro-Empire. Instead of the costly military occupation of the colonies of the British Empire, they argued for a repressive tolerance, calling for the creation of a British “Commonwealth of Nations”. Member nations were given the illusion of independence, enabling Britain to reduce the high costs of far-flung armies.
The Round Table included such notables as Foreign Secretary Albert Lord Grey, British secret agent Arnold Toynbee, and H.G. Wells.
The Round Table’s think tank, which was formed by Lionel Curtis in Versailles in May 1919, became the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House). The RIIA received an initial endowment of £2,000 from Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan.
The same circle at Versailles also decided to establish an American branch of the London Institute, to be named the New York Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); initially composed almost entirely of Morgan men and financed by Morgan.
Treaty of Versailles – 1920s
Wall Street lawyer John Foster Dulles had authored the infamous German “war guilt” clause Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty.
John Foster Dulles calculated that Britain and the other Allied powers owed the US $12.5 billion at 5% interest. Britain, France, and the other Entente countries, in turn, were owed by Germany, according to the Versailles demands, the sum of $33 billion!
The figures were beyond the scale of imagination at that time. The sum, 132 billion gold marks, was finally decided in May 1921.
Since Versailles, the Reichsbank printed money to cover the state deficits, inflation was rising and Versailles had stripped Germany of her most vital economic resources. All her valuable colonies, her entire merchant fleet, a fifth of her river transport fleet, a quarter of her fishing fleet, 5,000 locomotives, 150,000 railroad cars and 5,000 motor trucks were taken by the Allied powers (most of it by Britain).
The French were given the 25% share of the Deutsche Bank in the old Turkish Petroleum Gesellschaft by Versailles.
The remaining 75% of the huge Mesopotamian oil concession was directly in the hands of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and Royal Dutch Shell.
Henri Deterding’s Royal Dutch Shell had an iron grip on the oil concessions of the Dutch East Indies, Persia, Mesopotamia (Iraq) and most of the Middle East.
The Sinclair Refining Company, with son of the former president Theodore Roosevelt Jr. on its board and his brother, Archibald Roosevelt, aas vice president of Sinclair Oil, secured the prised Baku oil concession (from under the nose of Royal Dutch Shell). William Boyce Thompson, director of Rockefeller’s Chase Bank in New York, was also on Sinclair’s board.
But then suddenly in April 1922, the Teapot Dome scandal erupted, implicating Sinclair, Fall, and even President Harding. Within a year Harding himself had died under strange circumstances. The Coolidge presidency dropped Sinclair and the Baku project, and plans to recognise the Soviet Union.
In 1922, Walther Rathenau was making a deal with the communist Soviet Union that in return for leniency on the war reparations claims on Germany, Germany would sell industrial technology to the Soviet Union.
Within 2 days of its formal announcement, on 18 April at Genoa, the German delegation was presented with an Allied note of protest that Germany had negotiated the Russian accord “behind the backs” of the Reparations Committee.
On 22 June 1922 (something numeric 6/22/’22?), Walther Rathenau was assassinated. Following the murder of Rathenau, the gold mark rate by July 1922 plunged to 493 Marks per US dollar, by December, the Mark had fallen to 7,592 to the dollar.
Then, in January 1923, the Reparations Committee voted 3 to 1 that Germany was in default of her reparations payments. On January 11, Poincaré ordered the military forces of France, with participation from Belgium and Italy, to occupy German industrial Ruhr by force. It took until the end of 1923 for French troops and engineers to bring production in the Ruhr to even a third of the former level of 1922.
In a smart move Britain had formally opposed France, Belgium and even the newly installed Mussolini government of Italy (!). Germany ceased all reparation payments to France, Belgium and Italy for the duration of the occupation, but maintained its payments and deliveries to Britain.
Directly after the Ruhr occupation, in January, the Mark dropped to 18,000 to the dollar; by July, the Mark had collapsed to 353,000 per dollar; in August, 1 Mark was worth $4.6 million; on 15 November 1922, the Mark was at 4.2 trillion per dollar. The savings of the entire population were destroyed.
In October 1923, US secretary of state Charles Evans Hughes, former chief counsel to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, recommended a new scheme to President Calvin Coolidge to continue the reparations pyramid of debt collection which had been shaken since the April 1922 Rapallo shock. On 1 September 1924, the Dawes reparations plan formally began.
Under the Dawes Plan, Germany paid reparations for 5 years, until 1929. At the end of 1929, she owed more than at the beginning.
With their risk thus all but nil, the London and New York banks began a vastly profitable lending to Germany, money which was recycled back to the banks of New York and London in the form of reparations with commission and interest. It was a vast international credit pyramid at the top of which sat New York and ultimately the City of London.
The seven sisters oil cartel
In 1927/1928, a peace agreement was signed between the major Anglo-American oil corporations at the Scottish castle of Shell’s Henri Deterding - the “As Is” or Achnacarry agreement. John Cadman for the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. and Walter Teagle president of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil were also present.
British and American oil majors agreed to accept the existing market divisions, end destructive competition, and to set a secret world cartel price.
By 1932, all 7 major Anglo-American companies “The Seven Sisters” had joined the Achnacarry cartel — Esso; Mobil; Gulf Oil; Texaco; Standard of California; Royal Dutch Shell; and Anglo-Persian Oil Co.
Wall Street crash, Montagu Norman, Creditanstalt – WW II
In 1929, governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman asked the governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, George Harrison, to raise U.S. interest rate levels. This later caused the Wall Street stock market crash in October 1929.
In 1931, France ordered its banks to cut short-term credit lines to Creditanstalt, following rumours of a run on the deposits of Creditanstalt (owned by the Rothschild family) broke in the Vienna press, in May 1931, this toppled the fragile Creditanstalt and a credit crisis shook all of Europe.
The man who controlled US monetary policy at the time, former Morgan banker Benjamin Strong, an intimate personal friend of Britain’s Montagu Norman, met with Volpi and the Bank of Italy governor, Bonaldo Stringher, to dictate the Italian “stabilisation” program. The ensuing banking crisis, economic depression and the tragic developments in Austria and Germany were dictated virtually to the letter by Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, the governor of the New York Federal Reserve, George Harrison, and the house of Morgan and friends in Wall Street.
Capital began to flow out of Germany in ever greater amounts. On the demand of Montagu Norman and George Harrison, the new Reichsbank President Hans Luther imposed rigorous credit austerity and tightening in the German capital markets to let the collapse of the large German banks continue.
By July 1931, some 2 months after the collapse of the Vienna Creditanstalt, the Basle Nationalzeitung reported that the Danat-Bank was “in difficulties”, which caused a full panic run so it also collapsed.
After their first meeting in 1924 until Norman’s death in 1945, Hjalmar Schacht and governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman were close friends.
In 1931, the German Alfred Rosenberg travelled to Britain to meet the editor in chief of the influential London Times, Geoffrey Dawson, that gave Hitler invaluable positive publicity. More important were his meetings with Montagu Norman and Henri Deterding. The introduction to Norman came from Hjalmar Schacht.
The final London visit of Alfred Rosenberg was in May 1933, he went directly to the country home in Ascot of chairman of Shell “Sir” Henri Deterding, arguably the world’s most influential businessman. Royal Dutch Shell secretly had intimate contact with, and provided support to the German Nazis.
In early 1933, Montagu Norman quickly strengthened the Hitler government with vital Bank of England credit. Norman also visited to Berlin in May 1934 to arrange further secret financial stabilisation for the Nazi regime. Hitler made Norman’s friend Schacht both his minister of economics and president of the Reichsbank.
For more on who brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1340
Iran 1941-1954 - Mossadegh and the Shah
Britain, through its Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, retained a stranglehold on Iran throughout the first half of the 20th century.
During the Second World War, Stalin’s Soviet Union assisted Britain to invade Iran. A month after British and Russian forces occupied Iran in August 1941, the Shah abdicated in favour of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, who was disposed to accommodate the Anglo-Russian occupation.
Tens of thousands of Iranians died of hunger while 100,000 Russian and 70,000 British and Indian troops were given priority in supplies.
General M. Norman Schwarzkopf (father of the commander of the US forces in the 1990–91 Desert Storm) trained Iranian national police force during a six-year period, until 1948.
Russia was granted an exclusive oil concession in the northern part of Iran bordering Azerbaijan, while Royal Dutch Shell got another concession. In the midst of selling Iran to the oil vultures, in December 1944 the Iranian leader, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, introduced a bill in the Iranian parliament which would prohibit oil negotiations with foreign countries.
The resolution passed, but it didn’t decide on the concession of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in southern Iran, from all the way back in 1901.
In 1947, the government of Iran suggested that the original concession must be changed according to the principles of justice and fairness, so that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. would increase the share paid to the government of Iran that was only 8%. Britain flatly refused to meet Iran even half way.
In April 1951, Mossadegh became prime minister and his nationalisation plan was finally approved by the Majlis on 28 April 1951. Britain promptly threatened retaliation and within days British naval forces arrived near Abadan. In September 1951, Britain declared full economic sanctions against Iran, including an embargo against Iranian oil shipments as well as a freeze of Iranian assets in British banks. The British embargo was joined by all the major Anglo-American oil companies. Prospective buyers of nationalised Iranian oil were warned that they would face legal action on the grounds that a compensation agreement had not yet been signed with Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
Iran oil revenues, plummeted from $400 million in 1950 to less than $2 million between July 1951 and the fall of Mossadegh in August 1953. Britain brought the case be brought before the World Court for arbitration, but Mossadegh, himself a lawyer, argued his case successfully, and on 22 July 1952 the Court denied Britain jurisdiction.
In May 1953, US President Dwight Eisenhower, turned down Mossadegh’s request for economic aid, on advice of his secretary of state John Foster Dulles and CIA director Allen Dulles. On August 10, Allen Dulles met with the US ambassador to Tehran, Loy Henderson, and the Shah’s sister in Switzerland.
In 1953, after a five-year absence, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. arrived in Tehran to see “old friends”. He promised army generals he had earlier trained power after a successful coup against Mossadegh. Under code name Operation AJAX, the CIA with British SIS overthrew of Mohammed Mossadegh in August 1953.
The young Reza Shah Pahlevi returned to power, and economic sanctions were lifted.
In April 1954, the Anglo-American companies, joined by France’s state-owned CFP, started negotiations with the government of Iran to secure a 25-year agreement for exploitation of oil on 100,000 square miles of Iranian territory.
British Petroleum (previously named Anglo-Iranian Oil) was given 40% of the old d’Arcy concession; Royal Dutch Shell got 14%; the major US oil companies divided 40% of the oil between them; and France’s CFP got 6%.
Enrico Mattei - ENI
One European company expressed interest in purchasing oil from Mossadegh’s nationalized oil supply. It was Italy’s Ente Natzionale Idrocarburi (ENI) of Enrico Mattei that was founded in February 1953.
In 1955, Mattei successful negotiated a share of the oil of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula with Egypt’s new leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, which by 1961 had grown into a considerable 2.5 million tons per year of crude oil.
In August 1957, Mattei made a deal with the Shah - he offered an unprecedented 75% of total profits to the National Iranian Oil Company, with ENI (only) 25%. The new joint venture Société Irano-Italienne des Pétroles (SIRIP), got the 25-year exclusive right to explore and develop some 8,800 square miles of promising petroleum prospects in non-allocated regions in Iran.
By 1958, total proceeds from ENI’s Italian natural gas sales alone topped $75 million per year. Instead of spending precious Italian dollar reserves on imported oil and coal.
Between 1959 and 1961, gasoline prices in Italy dropped 25%, which significantly aided Italy’s post-war economic revival.
On 27 October 1962, under suspicious circumstances a private airplane crashed after taking off from Sicily en route to Milan killing Enrico Mattei, who was on his way to make deals with Iran, Egypt and the Soviet Union for oil supply.
He had already signed agreements with Morocco, Sudan, Tanzania, Ghana, India and Argentina. At the time of his death, Mattei had been preparing a trip to meet with the president John F. Kennedy, who was then pressing the US oil companies to reach an agreement with Mattei.
From Bretton Woods to 1968 - Gold fixed dollar
The US came out as the “world leader” from WW II.
A little known fact of the 1944 Bretton Woods deal was the creation of a gold exchange system. Under this system, each member country’s national currency was connected to the US dollar. The dollar rate was permanently fixed at $35 per ounce of gold.
From 1947 on, the Marshall plan was used by Western Europe to buy oil, supplied primarily by US oil companies, more than 10% of all Marshall aid. Between 1945 and 1948, they more than doubled the price of oil from $1.05 per barrel to $2.22 per barrel.
There were huge differences in the prices, at the time Greece paid $8.30 per ton for fuel oil, Britain paid only $3.95 per ton.
In late 1957, the US underwent the first deep post-war economic recession, which lasted into the mid 1960s.
While Europe was forced to pay excessively high interest rates to attract US dollars, as the dollar price was fixed, the US lowered its interest rates. Investors grabbed up “cheap” industrial companies in Western Europe, South America or Asia for higher profits abroad, as dollars flowed out of the US.
From 1957 to 1965, US annual net capital export into Western Europe mushroomed from less than $25 billion to more than $47 billion. Between 1962 and 1965, US corporations earned 12 to 14% on their investments in Western Europe.
JFK proposed a new bill to impose a tax of up to 15% on American capital invested abroad. When it finally passed in September 1964, they had made a seemingly innocent amendment, which exempted one country — British colony Canada! Montreal and Toronto thereby became the centres for an enormous loophole which ensured that the US dollar outflow continued, through London-controlled financial institutions.
Bank loans made by foreign branches of US banks to foreign residents were also exempt from the new US tax. So US banks quickly established branches in London and other major cities across the globe.
The City of London attracted the world’s financial flows with highest interest rates of any major industrial nation throughout the mid 1960s.
In 1961, the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and Japan agreed to pool reserves in a special fund, the gold pool, to be administered in London by the Bank of England. The US Federal Reserve contributed only half the costs of continuing to maintain the world price of gold at the artificially low $35 per ounce price of 1934.
Financial speculators by the second half of 1967 were selling pounds and buying dollars to buy commercial gold in all possible markets from Frankfurt to Pretoria, sparking a steep rise in the market price of gold, in contrast to the $35 per ounce official US dollar price.
It appeared that even 80 tons of sold gold on the London market wasn’t enough to keep the fixed dollar price of Bretton Woods intact. On 18 November 1967, Britain announced a 14% devaluation of the pound from $2.80 to $2.40, the first devaluation since 1949. Once the pound had been devalued, speculative pressures immediately turned to the US dollar. International holders of dollars went to the gold discount window at the New York Federal Reserve and demanded their rightful gold in exchange.
The market price of gold rose even further. By the end 1967, Washington’s gold stock had declined another $1 billion to only $12 billion.
In January 1967, French president De Gaulle’s principal economic adviser, Jacques Rueff, came to London to propose raising the official price of gold. The US and Britain refused to hear such arguments, which would have meant a de facto devaluation of their currencies. The US and British press, led by the London Economist, attacked the French policy.
On 31 January 1967, a new law came into effect in France which allowed unlimited convertibility for the French franc.
Then France withdrew from the Group of Ten gold pool. France immediately became the target of riots, first by leftist students in Strasbourg, soon followed by students all over France. In coordination with the political unrest, US and British investment houses started a panic run on the French franc, cashing in francs for gold, draining the French gold reserves by almost 30% by the end of 1968.
Within a year, De Gaulle was out of office and France wasn’t a threat anymore.
In April 1968, a special meeting of the Group of Ten was convened in Stockholm where US officials unveiled the new “paper gold” substitute plan through the IMF, the so-called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).
The oil inflation of 1973 – creating the petrodollar
In 1969, the US economy was again in a recession. In 1970, US interest rates were sharply lowered. As a consequence, speculative “hot money” sought higher short-term profits in Europe and elsewhere. As interest rates continued to drop, these outflows reached huge dimensions, totalling $20 billion.
In May 1971, the US recorded its first monthly trade deficit, triggering a virtually international panic sell-off of the US dollar.
On 15 August 1971, President Nixon formally suspended dollar convertibility into gold, effectively putting the world fully onto a dollar standard with no backing. The US also formally devalued the dollar a mere 8% to $38 per fine ounce gold.
The real architects of the Nixon strategy were the influential City of London merchant banksters, including: Edmond de Rothschild, Sir Siegmund Warburg, and Jocelyn Hambro, who saw a “golden” opportunity in Nixon’s dissolution of the Bretton Woods gold standard.
In 1972, the massive capital outflows of dollars to Japan and Europe continued. In 12 February 1973, Nixon announced a second devaluation of the dollar, of another 10% to $42.22 per ounce (where it remains to this day).
Between February and March 1973, the value of the US dollar against the German Deutschmark dropped another 40%.
In May 1973, the Bilderberg Group met at Saltsjöbaden, Sweden, the secluded island resort of the Swedish Wallenberg banking family. At his meeting of 84 high ranking members of international crime, Walter Levy outlined a ‘scenario’ for a drastic increase in OPEC petroleum revenues. He projected an OPEC Middle East oil revenue rise.
See 2 excerpts from the confidential protocol of the 1973 meeting of the Bilderberg group in Sweden. There was discussion about the danger that “inadequate control of the financial resources of the oil producing countries could completely disorganize and undermine the world monetary system”.
The second excerpt speaks of “huge increases of imports from the Middle East. The cost of these imports would rise tremendously”.
![[Image: bilderberg-1973-2.png]](https://truththeory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/bilderberg-1973-2.png)
The purpose was not to prevent the oil price shock, but plan it in a process that US Secretary of State Kissinger later called “recycling the petrodollar flows”. Since 1945, world oil had been priced in dollars. A sudden sharp increase in the price of oil, therefore meant an equal increase in world demand for US dollars to pay for that necessary oil.
Bilderberg policy used a global oil embargo, to create a 400% increase in world oil prices. On 6 October 1973, Egypt and Syria invaded Israel, igniting the Yom Kippur War.
The events surrounding the outbreak of the October War were secretly orchestrated by Washington and London, using the powerful secret diplomatic channels developed by Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. US intelligence reports, including intercepted communications from Arab officials confirming the build-up for war, were suppressed by Kissinger.
Washington didn’t permit Germany to remain neutral in the Middle East conflict, but hypocritical Britain clearly stated its neutrality, so avoided the Arab oil embargo.
On October 16, the Arab OPEC declared an embargo on all oil sales to the US and the Netherlands for its support for Israel and raised the oil price from $3.01 to $5.11 per barrel (+70%). Following a meeting in Teheran on 1 January 1974, a second price increase of more than 100% brought OPEC benchmark oil prices to $11.65. Henry Kissinger secretly put up to the Shah of Iran to arrange this.
President Nixon was kept busy with the “Watergate affair”, leaving Henry Kissinger as de facto president. When in 1974 the Nixon White House sent a senior official to the US Treasury in order to devise a strategy to force OPEC into lowering the oil price, he was bluntly turned away.
In August 1971, Nixon had established a secret accord with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) that was finalised in February 1975. Under the terms of the agreement, a sizeable part of the huge rise in Saudi oil revenue would be invested in financing the US government deficits.
In 1974, 70% of the additional OPEC oil revenue, $57 billion, at least 60% went directly to financial institutions in the US and Britain.
The most severe impact of the oil crisis in the US was felt in New York City. New York was forced to slash spending for roadways, bridges, hospitals and schools in order to service their bank debt, and to lay off tens of thousands of city workers.
Bankruptcies and unemployment across Europe rose to alarming levels. As Germany’s imported oil costs increased by 17 billion Deutschmarks in 1974. By June 1974 the oil crisis had resulted in the collapse of Germany’s Herstatt-Bank and a crisis in the Deutschmark as a result. It resulted in a million unemployed Germans.
In May 1974, Willy Brandt offered his resignation to Federal President Heinemann, who then appointed Helmut Schmidt as chancellor.
In 1973, India had a positive balance of trade. But in 1974, India had total foreign exchange reserves of $629 million which couldn’t pay for the annual oil import bill of 1,241 million.
In 1974, Sudan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and most countries in Africa and Latin America faced gaping deficits in their balance of payments.
In 1974, developing countries had a total trade deficit of $35 billion, 4 times as large as in 1973 (precisely in proportion to the oil price increase). In the early 1970s, the account deficit of all developing countries was (only) some $6 billion per year.
The major New York and London banks, and the Seven Sisters oil multinationals benefitted. In 1974, Exxon overtook General Motors as the largest US corporation in gross revenues. Her “sisters”, including Mobil, Texaco, Chevron and Gulf, were not far behind.
Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Manufacturers Hanover, Bank of America, Barclays, Lloyds, Midland Bank all enjoyed the windfall profits of the oil crisis.
In a strange twist, the American David Mulford became director and principal investment adviser of the SAMA, the largest OPEC oil producer.
Basically the post-war Bretton Woods gold exchange system was replaced by the highly unstable petroleum-based dollar exchange system, the “petrodollar standard”.
The year 1975 witnessed the first major decline in world trade since the end of the war in 1945, a drop of 6%.
While industrial countries had experienced a slow recovery from the initial oil shock, the developing economies deteriorated even further in 1975. In 1976, the account deficit of all developing countries rose to $42 billion. Private US and European banks were glad to lend to these countries.
Foreign debts of the developing countries expanded some five-fold, from $130 billion in 1973, before the first oil shock, to some $550 billion by 1981, and to over $612 billion by 1982, according to the IMF.
In August 1976, the 85 non-aligned “developing” states countries tried after the Colombo meeting to fight for “A fair and just economic development”. The UN was chosen as the arena where the “developing” countries explained their demands.
Share prices for US banks began to fall, especially those most involved in Eurodollar lending to the developing countries: Citicorp, Morgan Guaranty, Bankers Trust and Chase Manhattan. The Federal Reserve Bank was forced to intervene to support the falling dollar.
One by one, the advocates of Third World development were removed from the seats of domestic power. In February 1977, PM Indira Gandhi of India was forced into elections and was ousted by March. Sri Lanka paralyzed by a wave of strikes in early January 1977. By May 1977, Bandaranaike’s ruling Freedom Party was gone from power. In 1977, Bhutto was overthrown in a military coup led by General Zia ul-Haq. Before his death by hanging, Bhutto accused US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of being behind his overthrow. On 14 February 1978, in Guyana, Frederick Willswas forced to resign.
William Engdahl – A Century of War; Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (first published in 1992, but updated since): http://www.takeoverworld.info/pdf/Engdahl__Century_of_War_book.pdf
(http://web.archive.org/web/20190615120930/http://www.takeoverworld.info/pdf/Engdahl__Century_of_War_book.pdf)
Continued
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RE: A history of banking – Slavery by debt, laws and treaties - Firestarter - 10-29-2019
William Engdahl - A Century of War Part II
In this post I’ll finish my summary of Engdahl’s book on some of the wonderful work by Anglo-American warmongers and the IMF from 1970s to the 1990s....
Ayatollah Khomeini – Thatcher economics, the IMF in the 1980s
In 1975, the CFR, under the direction of New York attorney Cyrus Vance, drafted a series of policy blueprints for the 1980s. The CFR called “A degree of “controlled disintegration” in the world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980’s”.
In 1978, the Shah’s government of Iran and British Petroleum were “negotiating” on the renewal of the 25-year oil extraction agreement. In October 1978, the talks had collapsed over the British “offer” that demanded exclusive rights to Iran’s future oil output.
In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group’s George Ball, a member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council’s Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead “case officers” in the new CIA-led coup against the Shah that they had placed into power in 1953. US security advisers to the Shah’s Savak secret police implemented a policy of ever more brutal repression, to maximize antipathy against the Shah. At the same time, the Carter administration began protesting abuses of “human rights” under the Shah.
The BBC’s Persian-language broadcasts, drummed up hysteria against the regime in exaggerated reporting of incidents of protest against the Shah and gave Ayatollah Khomeini a full propaganda platform inside Iran.
The Shah fled in January 1979, and by February Khomeini had been flown into Tehran to proclaim the establishment of his theocratic state.
For more on the support for Ayatollah Khomeini from the UK and US: https://forums.richieallen.co.uk/showthread.php?tid=1340
Iran’s oil exports to the world were suddenly cut off, some 3 million barrels per day. Curiously, Saudi Arabian production in January 1979 also cut some 2 million barrels per day.
Unusually low reserves of oil held by the “Seven Sisters” oil multinationals contributed to the oil price shock, with prices for crude oil soaring from a level of some $14 per barrel in 1978 towards $40 per barrel for some grades of crude on the spot market. The ensuing energy crisis in the US was a major factor in bringing about Carter’s defeat in the presidential election a year later.
Despite the fact that an oil price of $40 per barrel represented a dramatic increase in dollar terms, the media hysteria over the “incompetent” Carter administration, led to a further weakening of the dollar.
Since early 1978, the dollar had already dropped more than 15% against the German mark and other major currencies. In September 1978, the dollar fell in a near panic collapse when it was reported that Saudi’s central bank SAMA had begun liquidating billions of dollars of US treasury bonds.
The oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979, which had raised the price of the world’s basic energy by 1,300% in 6 years, had understandably caused inflation.
British PM Margaret Thatcher, insisted that the 18% inflation in Britain had been caused by government deficit spending, carefully ignoring the 140% increase in the price of oil since the fall of Iran’s Shah. In June 1979, a month Thatcher had become PM, the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe, began raising base rates for the banking system a staggering five percentage points, from 12% to 17%in only 12 weeks. The Bank of England simultaneously began to cut the money supply, to ensure that interest rates remained high.
Director of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker followed Britain’s example to “fix” this inflation by cutting credit to banks, consumers and the economy. US interest rates on the Eurodollar market soared from 10% to 16% and 20% in a matter of weeks. Government spending was savagely cut in order to reduce “monetary inflation”.
In March 1980, President Carter had signed into law the “Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act” that empowered Volcker’s Federal Reserve to impose reserve requirements on banks, ensuring that his credit choke succeeded.
Businesses went bankrupt, families were unable to buy new homes, long-term investment in power plants, subways, railroads and other infrastructure came to a grinding a halt. Unemployment in Britain doubled, from 1.5 million to 3 million in Thatcher’s first 18 months as Prime Minister.
Inflation was indeed being “squeezed” as the world economy was plunged into the deepest depression since the 1930s – this was labelled the “Thatcher revolution”. And the dollar began an extraordinary 5-year ascent.
The international financial interests of the City of London and the powerful oil companies, chiefly Shell and British Petroleum, were the intended beneficiaries. British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell exploited the astronomical price of $36 or more per barrel for their North Sea oil.
Also exchange controls on the big City banks were removed, so that instead of capital being invested in rebuilding Britain’s rotten industry base, funds flowed out to real estate in Hong Kong or lucrative loans to Latin America
The radical monetarism of Thatcher and Volcker spread like a cancer. With interest rates of 17-20% any “normal” investment was simply not profitable.
Six months after Thatcher took office, Ronald Reagan was elected president of the US, with Vice President George H.W. Bush in control.
Reagan had been tutored while governor of California by the guru of monetarism, Milton Friedman. Reagan kept Milton Friedman as an unofficial adviser on economic policy. His administration was filled with disciples of Friedman’s radical monetarism, following the same radical measures earlier imposed by Friedman to destroy the economy of Chile under Pinochet’s military dictatorship.
As the average cost of their petroleum imports, rose some 140% in US dollars, developing countries this time around were faced with the situation that the dollar itself was also rising rapidly, because of both the high US interest rates and the higher oil price.
All Eurodollar loans to these countries were fixed at a specified premium over and above the given London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR). This LIBOR rate was a “floating” rate, which rose from an average of 7% in early 1978 to almost 20% in early 1980.
The creditor banks, following a closed-door meeting in England’s Ditchley Park that fall, created a creditors’ cartel of leading banks, headed by the New York and London banks, later called the Institute for International Finance or the Ditchley Group. The private banks “socialised” their lending risks to the taxpaying public, but kept the profits for themselves.
This was an almost exact copy of what the New York bankers did after 1919 against Germany and the rest of Europe under the Dawes Plan.
Out of $270 billion loaned by Latin America between 1976 and 1981, only 8.4% actually arrived in the countries. In 1979, a net sum of $40 billion flowed from the “rich” North to the “poor” South. In 1983, this flow had reversed with $6 billion from the “developing” countries to the industrialised countries, since then the amount has risen steadily, to approximately $30 billion a year.
In August 1982, large Third World debtor nations refused to pay, but the IMF simply pressured them to sign “debt work-outs” with the leading private banks, often led by Citicorp or Chase Manhattan of New York. The IMF “medicine” was invariably the same: the victim debtor country was told to slash domestic imports to the bone, cut the national budget, quit state subsidies for food and other necessities, and devalue the national currency in order to make its exports “attractive”.
Between 1980 and 1986, a group of 109 debtor countries, paid to creditors in interest on foreign debts alone $326 billion; repayment of principal on the same debts totalled another $332 billion. They were paying $658 billion on what originally had been a debt of $430 billion and on top of that these 109 countries still owed the creditors $882 billion in 1986!
Total foreign debt of the developing countries, rose from just over $839 billion in 1982 to almost $1,300 billion by 1987. Virtually all this increase was due to the added burden of “refinancing” the unpayable old debt.
During the 1980s, the “developing“ nations transferred a total of $400 billion into the US alone. Capital flight from Third World countries into the “safe haven” of the US and other industrialised countries amounted to at least another $123 billion in the decade up to 1985. Large banks, like Citicorp, Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty and Bank of America, were bringing in flight capital assets of some $100–120 billion. The annual return for the New York and London banks on their Latin American flight capital business, was 70% on average. The very same “developing” countries were forced into brutal domestic austerity to “stabilise” the currency.
These profits allowed the Reagan administration to finance the largest “peacetime” deficits in world history, while falsely claiming “the world’s longest peacetime recovery”. As exports to Latin America came to a grinding halt, there was a devastating loss of US jobs and exports.
President Ronald Reagan in August 1981 signed the largest tax reduction bill in post-war history. In the summer 1982, Paul Volcker decreased interest rate levels. This was followed by a speculative bonanza in real estate, stocks, oil wells in Texas or Colorado. As the Federal Reserve’s interest rates went lower, the fever grew hotter. “Cheap” debt was the new fashion. Within 5 years, the US transformed from the world’s largest creditor to becoming a debtor nation, for the first time since 1914.
While this turned young stock brokers into multimillionaires, the real living standard for “normal” Americans steadily decreased, while that of a minority rose as never before. Families went into record levels of debt for buying houses, cars, video recorders. Government went into debt to finance the huge loss of tax revenue and the expanded Reagan defence build-up.
By 1983, annual government deficits began to climb to an unheard-of level of $200 billion. The national debt expanded, along with the deficits, and paying Wall Street bond dealers and their clients record sums in interest income. Interest payments on the total debt by the U.S. government almost tripled in 6 years, from $52 billion in 1980, to more than $142 billion by 1986 (equal to one-fifth of all government revenue).
Money kept flowing in from Germany, from Britain, from Holland, from Japan, to take advantage of the high dollar and the speculative gains in real estate and stocks on the US markets.
Billions of dollars flowed out of the London-based Eurodollar banks to the accounts of developing country borrowers without a “lender of last resort” but the banks didn’t take any risk as the IMF enforced payment of the usurious debts through the most draconian austerity in history. The IMF was firmly controlled by the Anglo-American voting power.
Nationally controlled oil resources could have been the means for modernising Mexico.
In February 1982, the IMF dictated a series of Mexican peso devaluations to “spur exports”. By the first 30% devaluation, the private Mexican industry, which had borrowed dollars to finance investment, led by the once-powerful Alfa Group of Monterrey, was made bankrupt overnight.
In early 1982, the peso stood at 12 pesos for a dollar. By 1986, 862 Mexican pesos were needed to buy 1 dollar, and by 1989 the sum had climbed to 2,300 pesos. But Mexico’s total foreign debt, grew from some $82 billion to just under $100 billion by the end of 1985.
British and US multinationals set up child-labour sweatshops along the Mexican border with the US. These “maquiladores” employed Mexican children aged 14 or 15 for wages of 50 cents an hour, to produce goods for General Motors or Ford Motor Company or various US electrical companies. Of course the IMF agreed with this child labour!
The same process was repeated in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, most of black Africa, including Zambia, Zaire and Egypt, and large parts of Asia.
Until the 1980s, black Africa remained 90% dependent on raw materials export for financing its development. In the early 1980s, the world dollar price of these raw materials came tumbling down. By 1987, raw materials prices had fallen to the lowest levels since the Second World War, about the level of 1932 (when there was also a deep world economic depression).
In 1982, these African countries owed creditor banks in the US, Europe and Japan some $73 billion. By the end of the 1980s, through debt “rescheduling” and various IMF interventions, this had more than doubled, to $160 billion. This was about the sum these countries would have earned at a stable export price level.
The incredible high inflation rates during the early part of the 1980s, typically 12–17%, dictated the conditions of investment returns. A fast and huge gain was needed.
In 1985, the US economic situation threatened the future presidential ambitions of Vice President George H.W. Bush. This was reason for a “rescue” mission.
This time Saudi Arabia was used to run a “reverse oil shock” and flood the world oil market with “cheap” oil. The price of OPEC oil dropped from an average of nearly $26 to below $10 per barrel in only a couple of months in the spring of 1986. Wall Street economists proclaimed the final “victory”, while George Bush Sr. made a quiet trip to Riyadh in March 1986 to tell King Fahd that the oil price had gone down enough. Saudi Oil Minister Sheikh Zaki Yamani was fired for a scapegoat and oil prices stabilized at the “low” level of around $14–16 per barrel.
Speculation in real estate in the US continued at a record pace, while the stock market began a renewed climb to record highs. This 1986 oil-price collapse unleashed what was comparable to the 1927–29 phase in the US speculative bubble. Interest rates dropped even more dramatically, as money flowed in to make a “killing” on the New York stock markets.
A new financial perversion became fashionable on Wall Street, the ”leveraged buyout”. Boone Pickens with borrowed money - “junk bonds” - bought controlling stock in companies, like Union Oil of California, or Gulf Oil, that were many times more worth than he had. If he succeeded in taking over a huge company with “borrowed money”, his debt could be repaid, while making a handsome profit. If the company became bankrupt, his bonds were just “junk” paper.
During the last half of the 1980s, such actions consumed Wall Street and pushed the Dow upwards, driving corporations into the highest levels of debt since the 1930s depression. But this debt was not undertaken to invest in modern technology or new plant and equipment.
After President Reagan signed the new Garn–St. Germain Act into law, he enthusiastically told an audience of invited S&L bankers, “I think we’ve hit the jackpot”. The new law opened the doors of the S&Ls to financial abuses and speculative risks as never before. It also made S&L banks an ideal vehicle for “organised crime” to launder billions of dollars from the booming narcotics business.
Few noticed that it was the former firm of Reagan’s Treasury secretary Donald Regan, Merrill Lynch, whose Lugano office was implicated in laundering billions of dollars of heroin profits in the so-called “pizza connection”.
Life insurance companies, began to speculate in real estate during the 1980s. By 1989, insurance companies were holding an estimated $260 billion of real estate on their books, in 1980 this had been $100 billion. Then in late 1980, real estate collapsed, forcing failures of insurance companies for the first time in post-war history.
On 19 October 1987, the bubble burst. On that day the Dow Jones Index collapsed more than in any single day in history, by 508 points. Nakasone pressed the Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance to assist. Japanese interest rates fell lower, and lower, making US stocks, bonds and real estate appear “cheap” by comparison. Billions of dollars flowed out of Tokyo into the United States. During 1988, the dollar remained strong and Bush was able to secure his election as president. The plan of the new Bush administration was to direct pressures onto US allies for “burden sharing” of the huge US debt.
The Thornburgh Doctrine had stipulated that the FBI and Justice Department had authority to act on foreign territory. President Bush quickly showed himself to be a “tough guy”, by invading the tiny Panama, in his first year as President, December 1989.
From 1979, when Paul Volcker had begun his monetary shock, to 1988 the government recorded Americans below the poverty level went from 24 million to 32 million Americans (an increase of more than 30%). Costs of American health care, rose to the highest levels ever, and as a share of GNP, to double that of the UK.
In the 1980s, the vital public infrastructure of the US collapsed: highways cracked; bridges became structurally unsound and even collapsed; in areas like Pittsburgh, water systems became contaminated; hospitals in major cities fell into disrepair; housing stock for the less wealthy decayed dramatically.
Total private and public debt of the US in the 1980s went from $3,873 billion to $10 trillion by the end of the decade.
Thatcher’s eleven-year as PM of Britain was equally disastrous. Real estate speculation and the financial services of the City of London increased enormously, while Thatcher’s economic policy had severely restricted industrial investment, and modernisation of the nation’s deteriorating public infrastructure.
Destroying Asia’s tigers
The G-7 meeting in September 1985 at the Plaza Hotel was designed to bring the overvalued dollar down to manageable levels. The Bank of Japan, at the request of Washington, cut interest rates down to 2.5% in 1987, where it remained until May 1989. At first, instead of more Japanese purchases of US goods, investors won big on the rising Nikkei stock market, creating a colossal bubble, also of real estate prices. Stock prices rose at least 40% annually, while real-estate prices in and around Tokyo ballooned with an increase of around 90%.
After the yen rose from 250 to only 149 yen to a dollar, Japanese capital flowed into US real estate, US government bonds and US stocks, thereby aiding the presidential election of George H.W. Bush.
In 1988, the world’s greatest stock and real-estate bubble had been created with the Nikkei index rising 300% in only 3 years since the Plaza accord. The nominal value of all stocks listed on the Nikkei stock exchange accounted for more than 42% of the world stock value!
The major Wall Street investment banks, led by Morgan Stanley and Salomon Bros., used exotic new derivatives and financial instruments to turn the decline of the Tokyo market into a near panic sell-off, as the Wall Street bankers made a killing by put options in Nikkei stocks. By March 1990, the Nikkei had lost 23%, more than $1 trillion from its peak, within months, Japanese stocks had declined nearly $5 trillion.
East Asia had been built up during the 1970s and especially the 1980s by Japanese state development aid, large private investments and MITI support. In east Asia during the 1980s, a high worker productivity and economic growth rates of 7–8% per year were normal, leading to an overall rise in the standard of living in Asia.
In January 1990, Japan’s Prime Minister Kaifu travelled to West Europe, Poland and Hungary, to discuss the economic development of the former communist countries of East Europe. In early 1990, President Bush Sr sent defense secretary Dick Cheney to Tokyo to “discuss” drastic US troop reductions in a thinly disguised form of blackmail.
Now the countries in East Asia were told to open their markets to foreign capital flows and short-term foreign lending. Between 1994 and May 1997, bubbles in luxury real estate, stock values and other assets were made by a sudden flood of foreign dollars.
Rothschild agent George Soros, head of Quantum Fund, acting in secrecy, was armed with an undisclosed credit line from a group of international banks including Citigroup. They gambled that Thailand would be forced to devalue the baht and break from its peg to the dollar. In May 1997, Soros, Julian Robertson (head of the Tiger Fund and reportedly also of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund, whose management included former Federal Reserve deputy David Mullins), unleashed a huge speculative attack on the Thai currency and stocks. By June, Thailand was forced to float the baht and was ask the IMF for “help”. Swiftly the same hedge funds and banks crashed the Philippines, Indonesia and finally South Korea, making billions in the process.
The populations sank into chaos and poverty. While the east Asian countries had a combined account deficit of $33 billion in 1996 speculative money flowed in. In 1998–1999, it rose to $87 billion. By 2002, it peaked at $200 billion. Most of that money returned to the US in the form of Asian central bank purchases of US Treasury debt, effectively financing Washington policies.
Destroying Yugoslavia
Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington and the IMF were working “shock therapy” in Yugoslavia. In 1989, the IMF demanded that prime minister Ante Markovic would structurally reform the economy.
In 1990, the Yugoslavian GDP sank with 7.5%, and another 15% in 1991. The IMF ordered wages to be frozen at 1989 levels, while inflation rose dramatically, leading to a fall in real earnings of 41% by the first half of 1990. By 1991, prices had risen with more than 140%.
To make matters worse, the IMF ordered full convertibility of the dinar and “freeing” interest rates.
The living standard of Serbs, Kosovans, Bosnians, Croats and others declined dramatically. The IMF explicitly prevented the Yugoslav government from obtaining credit from its own central bank, crippling the ability of the central government to finance social and other programs.
This led to the formal declaration of independence by Croatia and Slovenia in June 1991. In 1992, Washington imposed a total embargo on Yugoslavia, freezing all trade and plunging the economy into chaos, with hyperinflation and 70% unemployment as the result.
In a June 1990 EU summit, Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers proposed a European energy community, to bind the countries of the “European Economic Community with the USSR and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe”. In 1995, the EU had initiated the Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to Europe (INOGATE) program, “to promote the security of energy supplies”.
In February 1999, just before the Clinton administration began bombing Serbia, EU commissioner Hans van der Brock stated as the goal of INOGATE: “to help free the huge gas and oil reserves of the Caspian Basin by overcoming … bottlenecks which have impeded access to local and European markets”.
A pipeline route, Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Pipeline Corp. (AMBO), backed by the US government and First Boston Bank, had been on hold for several years. Before it could move ahead, Washington decided it had to get rid of the Milosevic regime obstacle. Thousands of tons of bombs later, and after an estimated $40 billion of destruction to the economy and infrastructure, the Pentagon began construction of one of the largest US military bases in the world - Camp Bond Steel near Gnjilane in southeast Kosovo, for 3,000 soldiers. By 2001, Washington was in control of the Balkans.
In June 1999, when the bombing of Serbia was finished, the US government announced it was funding a feasibility study for the AMBO pipeline. The AMBO feasibility study was done by Halliburton Corporation’s Brown & Root, when Dick Cheney was chairman. The US ambassador to the UK from 2001 to 2004, William Farish, a trusted friend of the Bush family and heir to the Standard Oil fortune, admitted that the oil riches of the Caspian area was a major reason for American interest in the Balkans.
For more information on the destruction of Yugoslavia: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1359
Destroying Eastern Europe – IMF
Mikhail Gorbachev privately met with the Honecker communist leadership in East Germany, and more or less ordered them to give way to the popular movement for “freedom” sweeping East Germany. Within weeks, the old order in the DDR was swept aside in a popular revolution.
On 29 November 1989, days after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Deutsche Bank head Alfred Herrhausen was blown up in his armoured car. Herrhausen was a key adviser to the Kohl government, who had told of his plans to turn East Germany into Europe’s most modern economic region in 10 years.
In July 1990, at a meeting of the G-7 industrial nations in Houston, Texas, US Secretary of State James Baker said:
Quote:We have agreed to ask the IMF … to undertake a detailed study of the Soviet economy … to make recommendations for its reform.Harvard economists, like Jeffrey Sachs, were flown to Moscow to assist in the destruction of the old central state apparatus. In 1992, the IMF demanded a free float of the Russian ruble. Within a year, consumer prices had increased with 9,900%, while real wages fell with 84%. Industrial production fell to half its earlier level as inflation passed levels of 200%. Average life expectancy for men dropped to 57 years by 1994, the level of Bangladesh or Egypt.
IMF shock therapy was intended to create weak economies all around Russia, so that they had to depend on Western capital.
In 1996, the IMF provided Russia a $6 billion loan only if Anatoly Chubais was made minister for privatisation.
In 1997, George Washington University Professor Peter Reddaway wrote that Chubais had been accused in Russia of “censoring the media, undermining democracy, engaging in dubious personal dealings, taking orders from Washington and building a criminalized form of capitalism”. This was reason enough for deputy Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers to back him.
Ukranian agriculture was deregulated on IMF and World Bank demands.
In the late 1990s, the world oil prices had increased to more than $30 per barrel.
As a result of the IMF demands, the people were forced to buy local goods at dollar prices.The price of bread shot up by 300%, electricity with 600%, and public transportation with 900%. With sky-high electricity costs and no bank credit, state industries were forced into bankruptcy. Foreign speculators could pick up the economy at dirt-cheap prices.
Best of all, the oil and gas riches of the former Soviet Union could be scooped up by the US and British oil multinationals. In 1998, the IMF estimated that 17 Russian oil and gas companies, with a market value of at least $17 billion, had been sold by Chubais for $1.4 billion. Companies like Lukoil, Yukos, Sibneft and Sidanko were created.
The state gas monopoly Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, was worth about $119 billion; 60% of Gazprom was sold to private Russian groups for some $20 million.
Understandably there are important events missing from the book (with “only” 270 pages). I’ve also deleted information, and even with these omissions my summary is “too” long...
William Engdahl – A Century of War; Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (first published in 1992, but updated since): http://www.takeoverworld.info/pdf/Engdahl__Century_of_War_book.pdf
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Following is a more recent interview with William Engdahl (44:33): https://soundcloud.com/21wire/featured-f-william-engdahl-discusses-financial-warfare