[Firestarter]

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/...ll&mcubz=1)