Synopsis

The video intercuts adverts with newsclips and archival footage of World Bank and IMF meetings. First, we see an advert made by an Indonesian logging company that falsely suggests that it has in fact combatted deforestation which is completely false. A Down to Earth activist reveals that they complained to the ITC and had the advert suspended. In the next clip, we see an ad remade in the same style to highlight the realities of the timber industry which spends $1.2 million on advertising.

The video intercuts an advert for VIM bleach against the speeches leaders of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Association (WTO). The World Trade Organisation was established in 1994 at the Marrakech GATT meeting and it has worked alongside the World Bank and IMF to enforce free trade and open markets. The WTO has continued to have devastating consequences for ‘developing’ countries, establishing a debt imbalance for the interest of the West and the elite. We see footage of various global protests to such expansionist, capitalist policies from the 1989 Structural Adjustment Riots in Venezuela to the Narmada Bank Movement to former World Bank workers who are speaking out. The montage between adverts, major political events, global leaders’ meetings and clips of devastating deforestation suggests that the establishment of the WTO is just like the initial advert we see – a deceptive tool used only to bankrupt the Third World, accelerate industrialisation and the Climate Crisis in order to help the West gain total economic control over natural resources.