Kenya represents how ‘global frameworks’ can reduce nations to ruins
‘We cannot continue to be ruled like this; by sick people. By mad people. Liars and thieves and criminals. These are the people who are in power in Kenya.’
Photo: Brian Inganga/AP
Kenyan cities are being roiled by violent protests. What began as a June 18 grassroots protest against harsh “Eco-Austerity” taxes imposed by the government later morphed into calls for the resignation of President William Ruto and his cabinet. At the time of writing, at least 39 protestors were killed and hundreds injured as a result of police brutality. The taxes were intended to fulfil new IMF loan preconditions.
Harbinger for ‘Emerging Economies’
The catalyst behind these protests was a bill passed by lawmakers last month which advocated a tax hike on daily essentials like cooking oil, diapers and bread, amongst others. The bill was part of a scatterbrained scheme to curb waste management and become more eco-friendly. Kenyan lawmakers were undeterred by the fact that the vast majority of their countrymen, particularly the young, were reeling from rising inflation and unemployment rates. As the International Labor Organization (ILO) noted in a 2019 report: Nearly 4 out of every 10 working age Kenyans are unemployed. It has worsened since the onset of the “pandemic”.
The stringent eco-levy was designed to punish those who imported plastics into Kenya. As Zero Hedge reported on the salient features of the bill:
The following lines concerning the Kenya crisis seem like a scenario taken straight out of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man... "The stringent Eco Levy aims to enhance existing weaker and less effective waste and pollution control mechanisms, such as the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations that Kenya embraced two years ago. The EPR is a comprehensive global framework designed to hold manufacturers accountable for the entire lifecycle of their plastic and electronic products." (Emphasis added)
If these taxes were part of a comprehensive global framework, then why are there little to no penalties imposed within major economies which generate these ever-mounting wastes in the first place? Why are plastic wastes being dumped in Africa? But we live in a world where national leaders are more accountable to the transnational capitalist class (TCC) and the institutions representing them (i.e. WEF, World Bank, IMF etc.) rather than their own citizens.
President Ruto finally caved in to the protestors demands by declaring that he would not sign the unpopular bill. But the damage was already done.
All across the world, there are smouldering fires of discontent mirroring the anger and hopelessness felt by ordinary Kenyans. The poor are being increasingly taxed while the rich are rewarded for their relentless rapacity. Elections are now mere shadow plays designed to get politicians selected by an international cabal of financiers. Ruto, for instance, was once charged by the International Criminal Court for inciting ethnic violence following highly- disputed elections in 2007. More than 1,200 people died as a result. In a saner world, such politicians would never be allowed to hold office again. But we do not live in a sane world anymore.
Will Kenyan protestors finally succeed in forcing their politicians to listen to the masses and prioritise pressing national issues rather than obey “comprehensive global frameworks” dictated by venal foreign interests? I think not. The current Kenyan backlash appears like an encore of a similar uprising in Sri Lanka in 2022. Instead of deep reforms, the corrupt presidency of Mahindra Rajapakse was replaced by the WEF puppet Ranil Wickremesinghe. Guess whose WEF-dictated policies had led to Sri Lanka’s bankruptcy in the first place? The following montage is a stark reminder of the contrast between globalist “pie-in-the-sky” promises and the actual outcome.
Make no mistake. This real-life meme will soon be repeated in your nation! Yet, our blackmailed and incentivised “visionary” politicians are hellbent on hurling their nations beyond the precipices of disaster. Once this is accomplished, the ESG agenda will likely be ditched. This appears to be the real gameplan behind the Great Reset.
Watch the original X clip.
Burgeoning Socioeconomic Woes
The Kenyan government is mired in domestic and external debts amounting to $80 billion, equivalent to 68 percent of its GDP. This is far from being a catastrophic figure as sound policies can foster growth and employment in the mid-to-long terms. However, this will not happen in Kenya as nearly 25% of government revenue goes to interest payments on accumulated debts.
According to Binaifer Nowrojee, president of the Open Society Foundations, Kenya’s troubles typify the effects of crushing debts facing many Third World nations. “More than 3 billion people across the world live in countries that are spending more on servicing their debt than public spending on education or health.”
Of course, the Open Society, much like the IMF, is ever ready to conduct high-brow forensic analyses over the very fires they had commissioned in the first place — much like arsonists who turn up as heroic firefighters after the deed is done.
Compounding Kenya’s economic woes are rampant corruption, cronyism, financial mismanagement and a feudal social structure inherited from its erstwhile British colonial masters. According to a 2022 Oxfam report:
The gap between the richest and poorest has reached extreme levels in Kenya. Less than 0.1% of the population (8,300 people) own more wealth than the bottom 99.9% (more than 44 million people). The richest 10% of people in Kenya earned on average 23 times more than the poorest 10%.
The number of super-rich in Kenya is one of the fastest growing in the world. It is predicted that the number of millionaires will grow by 80% over the next 10 years, with 7,500 new millionaires set to be created.
Corporate tax dodging is undermining Kenya’s tax base. Kenya is losing $1.1bn a year to tax exemptions and incentives – almost twice what the government spends on its entire health budget in 2015/16, in a country where mothers face a 1 in 40 chance of dying in childbirth. (Emphasis added).
The underlying problem in Kenya is extreme and widening wealth inequality combined with runaway tax dodging. But it is the poor who have to pay the price through crushing taxes. Sounds familiar? (I have written countless commentaries and a few peer-reviewed papers on this phenomenon and its ramifications. See samples below).
When your nation is organised around a crude pyramidal socioeconomic hierarchy without any expectations of citizen merits, expect not just public backlash but comedy bordering on the surreal. Kenya had dispatched a peacekeeping force to Haiti as part of its “international obligations” even as the nation was burning from within.
The ‘Coronapsychosis’ Effect
Perhaps Kenya should have followed the example of its immediate neighbour Tanzania in dealing with the global coronapsychosis. At least as long as the latter’s president John Magufuli was in power. This move would have created a more dynamic regional buffer against fallouts linked to needless lockdowns and a variety of economically-crippling pandemic mandates.
Countries without deep financial reserves were particularly vulnerable to ballooning debt deficits as well as rising unemployment and inflation during the “pandemic” years.
Kenya, like many other corrupt Third World nations, dutifully rushed in to impose dawn to dusk curfews, restrictions on public gatherings, school closures, and social distancing measures. Movements in and out of its capital Nairobi were severely restricted. As a result, small businesses, which form the backbone of the Kenyan economy, began to fold in droves.
Rather predictably, vaccines were foisted as a potential new growth industry for the nation. Presumably, these come with tax exemption clauses. According to Elizabeth Wasunna, general manager of AAR Healthcare Kenya Ltd, the nation’s relatively high child mortality rate was the result of inadequate vaccination. Here are some snippets from her recent op-ed:
Inadequate vaccination coverage poses a severe economic threat, potentially pushing 24 million Africans into poverty due to the overwhelming financial burden of medical treatments.
The 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) reveals that 20 per cent of the country's children remain unvaccinated, with only 38 per cent of children aged 24–35 months fully vaccinated, according to the national schedule2.
There was no mention of poor sanitation, malnutrition, pollutants and the lack of healthcare facilities contributing to these deaths. They can all be magically fixed by vaccines, vaccines and more vaccines! Wassuna’s article was packed with cherry-picked references to the WHO, Unicef and other globalist institutions to provide a verisimilitude of The ScienceTM. Is there a vaccine for unemployment, despair and hunger?
Here is another puff piece from Business Daily Africa which extolled the economic Golconda which Kenya could mine via vaccines:
Local vaccine production can earn Kenya billions of shillings each year in additional investments, savings and revenue, the Lancet medical journal says…The journal has ranked Kenya a top candidate for vaccine manufacturing globally ahead of India and South Africa citing its strategic advantages in traditional research capacity and as well as distribution logistics…In Kenya, each dollar invested by the government would return $2.51.
The Lancet study was “backed” by Duke University and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Based on this “study”, the government of Kenya appears to have alienated funds for the long-term completion of this multibillion-dollar pipedream. Somehow, Bill Gates had to feature somewhere in the ongoing Kenyan tragedy. Gates is like the biblical pale horse; death and mayhem follow him wherever he goes.
Finally, here is the irony. Kenya actually has a growing and vibrant plastic recycling industry. It is best exemplified by the clip below.
Something tells me that the disastrous “Eco-Austerity” measures proposed by Kenyan lawmakers were deliberately designed to neuter native sustainable and eco-friendly bottom-up industries.
The elites who control the world via political proxies and intellectual eunuchs are not interested in real solutions, despite their incessant clarion calls to protect the environment and promote sustainability. Instead, their ESG policies are deliberately designed to bankrupt nations. It is a precondition for Great Reset!
Africans should also ask themselves who foremost represent the “useless eaters” cited by top WEF ideologue Yuval Noah Harari. Now, that is admittedly a loaded and uncomfortable question…
Sample Peer-Review Papers
Maavak, M (2012). Class Warfare, Anarchy and the Future Society. Journal of Futures Studies, December 2012, 17(2): 15-36
Maavak, M (2021). Horizon 2030: Will Emerging Risks Unravel Our Global Systems? Salus 9(1):2021
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Nice post, Matthew. Julian Assange explained the three phases of how globohomo rules countries around the world, transitioning from one stage to the next depending on a country's development. Your analysis of Kenya matches up with this structure. These stages are:
1. Install strongman. Develop friendly client regimes in order to crush domestic nationalism and to build a national security apparatus or spook state.
2. Stability. Encourage regimes to develop an industrial base that can sustain stable political authority without creating an opening for populist movements.
3. Market liberalization. A transition to “market oriented” economies based on “democracy” that can be controlled through neoliberal debt mechanisms; in practical terms the assets of the country are stripped and sold to international buyers.
Interesting to note that it’s usually the ex-Anglo colonies that are first groomed, then raped..Ireland is another example.