Ramin Bahrani makes films about the American Dream as seen through the eyes of those on the margins of the increasingly unrealistic “mainstream” life: immigrants, children, transplants, or those too damaged to participate anymore (like the grizzled old dude played by Red West in “Goodbye Solo“). For the most part, these people still believe in the American Dream. They hope, strive, plan. But the system has failed them. The system is broken, and never more broken than in Bahrani’s latest film, “99 Homes,” starring Michael Shannon, Andrew Garfield and Laura Dern.
“Don’t get emotional about real estate,” warns real estate broker Rick Carver (Shannon) throughout “99 Homes,” as people are forcibly evicted after defaulting on bank payments. Carver’s may be practical advice, considering the economic crash and the housing crisis, but it is also heartless. Real estate to Rick Carver means money and opportunity; real estate to everyone else means “home,” and what is more emotional to human beings than the concept of “home”?
The film opens with a brutal eviction sequence, filmed in one take. Blood spatters the bathroom walls as the resident commits suicide, all as the sheriff’s department swoops through the house, overseen by Rick Carver, a shark-eyed man in an ill-fitting blue suit, smoking a glowing-blue electric cigarette. The story shifts to Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), a single dad living with his mother (Laura Dern) and his little boy Connor (Noah Lomax) in the family home. Mom works a hairdressing business out of the living room. Dennis works construction but jobs are hard to come by. Nobody’s building anymore. Bills pile up. They are in danger of losing their home. Dennis goes to court to fight for more time, he tries to get a lawyer to work pro bono.
One day, the reckoning arrives. The sheriff’s department shows up, led by Rick, to evict them. In a harrowing scene of mounting panic, Dennis and his mother protest as Rick drawls, both easily and with enormous aggression, “This isn’t your house anymore, son.” The fight that ensues is acted and filmed with almost unbearable immediacy (cinematographer Bobby Bukowski does superb work throughout). Given two minutes to vacate, the hyperventilating family pile up whatever possessions they can fit into the back of a pick-up truck, and head to a cheap motel, filled with people in the same situation. “We’ve been here two years now,” says a woman.
Dennis will do what it takes to get his home back, including accepting a job working construction for his nemesis Rick. It’s a deal with the devil, and all that that implies. Dennis gets sucked into Carver’s circle of easy cash, shady deals. Within almost no time, Dennis is on the other side of those evictions, standing in the doorway, waiting for the confused angry residents to vacate. The door-to-door sequences are masterful. These people don’t seem to be professional actors (although they may be), their reactions are so raw and real. The audience is placed in the uncomfortable position of voyeurs, eavesdroppers, on a human being’s lowest moment.
“99 Homes” operates like a thriller (from its stunning opening one-take sequence), with elements of melodrama to heighten the stakes. (Some of the melodramatic elements don’t work as well as the rest, relying, as they do, on coincidence, racing against the clock, etc; the reality is horrifying enough.) Held together with Antony Partos and Matteo Zingales’ portentous original score, thrumming underneath almost every scene, “99 Homes” represents a shift for Bahrani. His other features have been small dramas, filmed accordingly: lots of hand-held camera work and a naturalistic approach. “99 Homes” has a strong look, a bold mood, with attention-getting shots like that opener, as well as a couple of aerial shots showing homes stretched out below. From that vantage point, homes look generic. To those on the ground, of course, it’s a very different story.
Andrew Garfield, as a man who has “failed” in his duty as protector and provider, has an almost constant sense of panic throughout, catching his breath in his throat, his posture tight and alert. Tears threaten to overwhelm him, but Dennis does not have time for self-pity. Nobody does. His one goal is to get his house back, the crevasse of permanent instability opening beneath him and his family. Bahrani keeps that heat turned up in the machinations of the plot, as Carver seduces Dennis with offers of wealth (meaning, in Carver’s world, self-respect). “America doesn’t bail out losers,” Carver tells Nash. “America bails out winners.”
Michael Shannon is both ruthless and strangely tender in his seemingly irredeemable character. Carver explains his background to Dennis, his humble roots, his roofer father, his jobs in construction. Up until the crash, his job was putting people into homes. It’s not his fault that his job has now become throwing people out. Any hard economic time will create a man like Rick Carver, determined to make more money off the slump than the boom. It’s a very honest performance.
Reminiscent of the films of Jafar Panahi (which also focus on those on the margins), Bahrani’s films are a critique of the very concept of “mainstream.” If there is to be a mainstream, then the boundaries must be more inclusive. Bahrani’s films represent an urgent demand that audiences pay attention to the world and the people around them. His films insist: Look. See. Bahrani accomplishes this not by making “message” films, but by focusing on individual characters, whether it be a Pakistani former singer who now pushes a food cart in Manhattan (“Man Push Cart,”) a little Latino boy working in an auto-body shop (“Chop Shop,”) or the optimistic Senegalese-American who drives a cab and dreams of being a flight attendant (“Goodbye Solo.”) Through these characters, Bahrani critiques American life, its economics, its class divides, its assumptions and social strata. Like Panahi, he is a humanist. The dignity of the individual is all.
“99 Homes” is a ferocious excavation of the meaning of home, the desperation attached to real estate, the pride of ownership and the stability of belonging. The pace never lets up. Once a person slips below the mainstream, it is nearly impossible to gain a foothold again. These characters struggle like hell to survive.
The White House keeps insisting that it will not directly involve American soldiers in the war in Ukraine, but it keeps taking steps that will inevitably lead to a large-scale open combat role for the US against Russia. Among the most recent moves to increase the pressure on the Kremlin, Biden revealed at a NATO summit meeting in Madrid on June 29th that the US will establish a permanent headquarters in Poland for the Fifth Army Corps, maintain an additional rotational brigade of thousands of troops in Romania and bolster other deployments in the Baltic states. Also, the number of US troops in Europe, currently approaching 100,000, will be increased. Biden also was pleased to learn that Turkey had been enticed to drop its objection to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
On the way to the NATO summit aboard Air Force One, Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan advised that “By the end of the summit what you will see is a more robust, more effective, more combat credible, more capable and more determined force posture to take account of a more acute and aggravated Russian threat.” Presumably Sullivan was reading from a prepared script, but the objective surely seemed to be to heighten tension with Moscow rather than attempt to reduce it and come to some kind of diplomatic settlement.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also did his bit. In an astonishing display of derriere kissing, he responded that the new US force posture commitments were demonstrative of Biden’s strong leadership. What Stoltenberg did not mention was that Biden has been lying for some time about the presence of US military personnel in Ukraine. He let the cat out of the bag back in March, when he told troops belonging to the 82nd Airborne division in Poland that they would soon be going to Ukraine, observing that “You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see —” It was an admission that US forces are already in place inside Ukraine even though the White House quickly did damage control, asserting that the president continues to be opposed to American soldiers being directly engaged in the fighting. Biden also claimed that the US was working to “keep the massacre [of Ukrainians] from continuing.” Again, the language was hardly designed to make some room for a possible accommodation with Russia to negotiate an end to the fighting.
And now there is a New York Times report entitled “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say: A secretive operation involving US Special Operations forces hints at the scale of the effort to assist Ukraine’s still outgunned military.”
The article describes a more active US role in Ukraine than the Biden Administration has been willing to admit publicly. Back in February, before intervened in Ukraine, the US reportedly withdrew its own 150 military instructors, many of whom were training Ukrainian soldiers on newly acquired American produced weapons. However, some Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary operatives and special ops troops continued their service in the country secretly, directing most of the intelligence flow the US is sharing with Ukrainian forces. In addition to that, special ops soldiers from Washington’s NATO allies have been managing the movement of weapons and equipment into Ukraine and providing some specialized training. It has also been reported that British SAS commandos are actually guarding President Volodymyr Zelensky. The NYT specifies, citing American and other Western officials, that the soldiers and CIA officers are currently not on the front lines with Ukrainian troops. Also according to the Times, even though the US and NATO member states have not acknowledged the presence of their paramilitaries soldiers in operational roles in Ukraine, Russia and other intelligence services around the world are aware of this.
The New York Times report appears to be generally correct, though it does omit some details, some of which I have been hearing from former colleagues in the intelligence services. There has been considerable overt training at the Grafenwoehr German army base as well as at the Ramstein US Air Base to familiarize the Ukrainians with the new weapons arriving. Other NATO countries are also participating in the training. Meanwhile, the cadres of special operations soldiers and intelligence personnel operating primarily in western Ukraine are not in uniform and many of them are working under various contrived cover designations, including sometimes loose affiliations with foreign embassies and NGOs. There are also a conventional CIA Station, a group from the National Security Agency and a Military Attache’s office in the recently reopened US Embassy in Kiev.
All of the above means that Biden and other western leaders have been dissimulating regarding their active participation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Apart from his possible gaffe, Biden will not admit that there are American boots already on the ground, but they are there and are playing a major role in both logistics and intelligence sharing. The potential downside for the president could come when some of these soldiers in mufti get killed or, worse, captured and start to talk about their role.
Retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, observes that deploying plausibly deniable non-uniformed personnel “is completely typical of the initial stages of a US-backed long war, and for long-term political manipulation of the target country. This is the future that neoconservative ‘strategists’ in DC and their British and European allies imagine for Ukraine. Rather than a negotiated conclusion, with a new Ukrainian role as a neutral and productive country, independent of both Russian and US political influences, the US government and CIA see Ukraine as an expendable yet useful satrap in its competition with the Russian Federation.”
Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson sees the activity in stark terms, while also commenting that the CIA has not won a semi-clandestine insurgent war in forty years. He observes that “Ukraine is a proxy; the West is trying to destroy Russia, it’s that simple. It would be one thing if Russia was the most evil, oppressive, authoritarian regime in the world. It’s nowhere even close. Even though the West keeps trying to portray Russia as such. The fact of the matter is, the West wants the resources that Russia has and it wants to control Russia. [But] Russia is not about to be controlled.”
In other words, Washington might be seeking an unending war entangling Russia and limiting its options globally. The Biden Administration has staked its reputation and possible political future on enabling Ukraine to survive without succumbing to Russian territorial demands. It is a risky and even dangerous policy, both in practical terms and politically. The persistence of the Ukrainians in their defense is largely a product of US and Western Europe guarantees that they will do all that is necessary to support Zelensky and his regime, which is already seeking $750 billion in aid for “reconstruction.” If western military casualties begin to surface, the political support for the Ukraine war will begin to fade in Washington and elsewhere and there will be consequences in the upcoming midterm US elections in November.
A final comment on the Times piece is in response to the question why it has appeared at all at the present time. The mainstream media has been a cheerleader for aggressive US support of Ukraine and Zelensky, but now it is beginning to step back from that position, as have also the Washington Post and other media outlets. Perhaps they are becoming convinced that the game plan being promoted by Washington and its European allies is unlikely to succeed at great cost to the respective economies. Larry Johnson puts it this way: “I think the purpose of this article coming out now is just to lay the groundwork for why we can’t put or shouldn’t put any more US military personnel or even CIA personnel inside Ukraine because continuing to put US personnel…inside Ukraine to train is becoming too risky because of Russia’s success on the battlefield.” One might also add that it is exceptionally dangerous. A misstep or even a deliberate false flag coming from either side could easily make the war go nuclear.
In 2020, under cover of the ‘virus’/‘vaccine’ narrative, the Global Elite launched its long-planned coup to capture total control of the human population.
Building on a history that dawned with human civilization some 5,000 years ago, and at least 50 years in the final planning, progressive efforts by elites in local, national and now the global context to kill off undesired populations and enslave those left alive are now culminating. See ‘The Final Battle for Humanity: It is “Now or Never” in the Long War Against Homo Sapiens’.
So let me briefly explain, again, exactly what is happening and why the most popular responses – lobbying governments, contesting elections or forming new political parties, legal challenges and protests (in one form or another) – by those concerned cannot succeed. And what we must do, if we wish to defeat this coup.
Under the overall title of the ‘Great Reset’, the World Economic Forum has launched a series of deeply interrelated agendas which will impose substantial changes on 200 areas of human life for those left alive.
These programs include efforts to develop and deploy relevant technologies – including those in relation to 5G (and, soon enough, 6G), military weapons, artificial intelligence [AI], digital identity, big data, nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things [IoT], the Internet of Bodies [IoB], the Internet of Senses [IoS], quantum computing, surveillance and the metaverse – that will subvert human identity, human freedom, human dignity, human volition and/or human privacy. Among other adverse outcomes, these technologies will deprive us of control over our own banking and finances. See ‘Taking Control by Destroying Cash: Beware Cyber Polygon as Part of the Elite Coup’.
To reiterate: The net outcome of these programs will be a substantial human depopulation of Earth and the transhuman enslavement and imprisonment of those left alive, primarily in their ‘smart cities’.
Obviously, this is being done without any consultation with those of us who would identify as ‘ordinary’ people.
Who is Orchestrating This?
The coup has been planned by the Global Elite and its primary agents. It is being implemented through elite control of key international organizations (such as the World Health Organization and United Nations), relevant corporations (including those in the technology, pharmaceutical and media industries) and national governments.
The first point to note is simply this: The Global Elite is too wealthy and powerful to bother participating personally in well-known fora such as the World Economic Forum or even those that are less well-known such as the Council for Inclusive Capitalism. The people who ‘front’ organizations of this nature are elite agents. Wealthy and powerful, at one level, and happy to be publicly identified, but not the masters shaping our destinies, even if they work out many of the details. For one discussion of this, see ‘What Is The “Council For Inclusive Capitalism?” It’s The New World Order’.
So let me briefly explain, yet again, why governments, legal challenges and protests in their various guises cannot save us from what is happening, although the elite is delighted to have us waste our energy on such efforts, as they intend.
Constitutions, Governments and the Delusion of ‘Democracy’
While so-called democratic processes have long been a sham, even the sham elements of democracies – the constitutional separation of powers (the division of the legislative, executive and judicial functions of government supposedly to limit the possibility of arbitrary excesses by government), respect for human rights (including freedom of speech, assembly and movement), obedience of laws and adherence to legal process – have been ignored by virtually all governments (national, provincial and local) around the world as measures decided by the elite and promulgated through its international organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization have simply been implemented by governments despite violating constitutional provisions in various ways and without so much as a public (or, in many cases, even a parliamentary) debate.
To reiterate this point more bluntly: given the eminent roles being played by elite organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization in the past two-and-a-half years, do you have much sense that governments are adhering to national constitutions and making independent decisions? Or are they just following orders?
And despite supposedly having the right to ‘freedom of speech’, even dissenting politicians attempting to present an alternative view in any mainstream forum, and plenty of ‘progressive’ ones besides, leads to one of a range of outcomes such as, at their most benign, censorship – with corporate and major social media leading the way – or howls of accusation such as ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘anti-vaxxer’ to discredit the dissenting voice.
This has happened, of course, because politicians are not beholden to voters, which is why lobbying politicians is a waste of time, unless the issue is of little significance geopolitically, militarily, economically and environmentally. As implied above, the elite controls the political fate of politicians, most of whom are well aware that their political survival has nothing to do with pleasing ordinary voters. Politicians are beholden to the elite that manipulates levers of power such as the corporate media and education systems, employs an army of lobbyists to ensure that elite preference is clearly understood (while using bribes where necessary), and has ready access to removal options such as, at its most basic, withdrawal of preselection endorsement.
And Emanuel Pastreich makes a compelling argument that Shinzo Abe, the powerful immediate-past Prime Minister of Japan, suffered the same fate because of his ongoing resistance to fundamental elements of the Elite agenda. Moreover, there are other key political figures who are probably in this category, not to mention those sidelined rather than assassinated.
Abe was the highest ranking victim so far of the hidden cancer eating away at governance in nation states around the world, an institutional sickness that moves decision making away from national governments to a network of privately-held supercomputer banks, private equity groups, for-hire intelligence firms in Tel Aviv, London and Reston, and the strategic thinkers employed by the billionaires at the World Economic Forum, NATO, the World Bank and other such awesome institutions.
In parallel with the removal or sidelining of non-compliant leaders, elite wealth has long been deployed ‘to create invisible networks for secret global governance, best represented by the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program and the Schwarzman Scholars program. These rising figures in policy infiltrate the governments, the industries, and research institutions of nations to make sure that the globalist agenda goes forth unimpeded.’ See ‘The Assassination of Archduke Shinzo Abe: When the Globalists Crossed the Rubicon’.
As a result of formal political submission to the elite agenda, supposedly basic human rights – such as freedom of speech, assembly and movement – have been eviscerated under the various lockdown, curfew and martial law measures with many people attempting to exercise these rights quickly discovering that they no longer exist except, perhaps, in the very narrowest of circles or in particular contexts.
But perhaps constitutional lawyer John W. Whitehead, in collaboration with Nisha Whitehead, captures the true depth of what has transpired in these two paragraphs about the United States but equally applicable to other countries:
Not only have the federal and state governments unraveled the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that sent the economy into a tailspin and wrought havoc with our liberties, but they have almost persuaded the citizenry to depend on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance.
But ‘Big Brother’ isn’t the government. It is those elite figures who are largely, or completely, hidden from public view and about whom you hear nothing of substance, if you hear anything at all.
Still, this doesn’t stop their agents, such as those in the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, from telling you what they are doing. It’s just that not many people are paying attention.
As noted by Brandon Smith: ‘Members of the CIC, including the head of Bank of America, openly suggest that they don’t actually need governments to cooperate in order to meet their goals. They say corporations can implement most social engineering without political aid. In other words, it is the very definition of “shadow government” – A massive corporate cabal that works in tandem to implement social changes without any oversight.’ See ‘What Is The “Council For Inclusive Capitalism?” It’s The New World Order’.
While ‘the law’ and legal processes are shrouded in a delusion suggesting that they play a role in making societies ‘just’, in fact, it has long been known that elite control of governments ensures that laws are written to consolidate predatory corporate control and that elite control over legal systems ensures that they function to maintain elite power, corporate profit and the personal privilege of that tiny minority that benefits enormously from the global system of violence, exploitation and destruction.
In 1748, Baron de Montesquieu penned The Spirit of Laws in which he noted ‘There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.’ Since that time, a notable and diverse series of authors starting well over 100 years ago, including Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas K. Gandhi, have all written critiques exposing the injustice and violence of legal systems. Despite this, the delusion that the law is a neutral agency that delivers justice still widely prevails.
As a result, enormous time, energy and resources are wasted by fine, well-intentioned people who fail to make the distinction between what they have been led to believe and the truth: The legal system is designed to deliver an occasional win for justice in some relatively minor context in order to maintain the widespread popular delusion that ‘justice prevails’ while functioning to maintain elite social control over the population, oppress exploited constituencies and those who resist, and conceal and defend the vast network of elite and corporate criminality that pervades every facet of planetary life. This delusion is reinforced by films and television programs based on legal settings which often feature the ‘little person’ winning.
And this is why you have never heard the rallying cry ‘Fight for Justice: Abolish Legal Systems’.
If you think the law is really concerned with justice, then ask yourself why poverty and homelessness are not made illegal and those who suffer poverty and homelessness immediately provided with social housing and an adequate income. Of course, this would be easy if military budgets for killing were eliminated (and international conflicts were addressed meaningfully) or the estimated $US32 trillion of illegal wealth hidden in offshore tax havens was made available for the benefit of humanity. See ‘Elite Banking at Your Expense: How Secretive Tax Havens are Used to Steal Your Money’.
The bottom line is simple: The Global Elite operates beyond the rule of law. It will not be contained or held to account, in any way, by legal systems. Ever heard of a Rothschild, a Warburg, a Rockefeller or even a Windsor in court? Or organizations like the World Economic Forum and the United Nations?
Of course, there is no international legal infrastructure that can hold corporations or international organizations accountable in any meaningful way either.
Demonstrations, Blockades, Convoys and other Mass Mobilizations
If we do not thoroughly analyze a conflict, it is impossible to develop a sound strategy, which includes identifying the appropriate strategic foci for action, and then planning tactics that address each focus. This inevitably means that we are essentially guessing what to do, not knowing in advance, as we should, the nature of the strategic impact the action will have.
Moreover, guessing what action to take, usually on the basis of what is familiar or what feels good – perhaps because we get out with a bunch of ‘good people’ – virtually inevitably leads to poor choices like organizing a mass mobilization, in one form or another (whether with people, trucks, tractors…), focused on governments. And elite agents love ignoring these, as the long record demonstrates!
As former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig once noted about a massive anti-war demonstration: ‘Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.’ See Alexander Haig. As a four-star general, Haig, not regarded as the most intelligent Secretary of State in US history, certainly understood the importance of tactical choice. Most activists have no idea.
Which illustrates why demonstrations are notoriously ineffective, as world history’s largest demonstration on 15 February 2003 – involving demonstrations in more than 600 cities around the world, involving up to 30,000,000 people, against the imminent US-led war on Iraq – see ‘The World Says No to War: Demonstrations against the War on Iraq’ – illustrated yet again.
The point is simple: Single actions and numbers are not determinative; strategy is determinative. Obviously, large gatherings, in whatever form they take, could be effective, if they were strategically focused – never on governments though. See ‘Why Activists Fail’.
In essence, if any gathering is to have any strategic value whatsoever, it must be used to raise awareness of strategic means of resistance.
So if we want to take action that will be strategically effective, we must identity an appropriate strategic goal for the context and then plan an action that will achieve that goal. Anything else is guesswork. See ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’.
Resisting the Elite Agenda Effectively
If you have the thoughtful courage to strategically resist the ‘Great Reset’ and its related agendas, you are welcome to participate in the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.
In addition and more simply, you can download a one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 17 languages (Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish & Slovak) with several more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here: ‘The 7 Days Campaign to Resist the Great Reset’.
If strategically resisting the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group (with a link accessible from the website).
And if you want to organize a mass mobilization in some form, at least make sure that one or more of any team of organizers and/or speakers is responsible for inviting people to participate in this campaign and that some people at the event are designated to hand out the one-page flyer about the campaign.
If you like, you can also watch, share and/or organize to show, a short video about the campaign here: ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ video.
Finally, while the timeframe for this to make any difference is now in doubt, if you want to raise children who are powerfully able to investigate, analyze and act, you are welcome to make ‘My Promise to Children’.
Conclusion
As the elite is well aware, critiques of what it is doing and advice regarding effective strategy to defeat it are not sought by those who aren’t interested in analysis, understanding and strategic impact. And this information is easily suppressed so that few of those who might be interested ever hear of it.
Hence, a primary challenge is getting relevant information to those keen to resist in ways that make a difference.
At the moment, virtually all effort being spent by those opposed to the various mandates and restrictions on our freedom and other rights is, strategically-speaking, wasted.
And the time to resist effectively is running out fast.
So I gently encourage all of you resisting to spend some time evaluating what you are doing and consider participating in the alternative offered just above.
If human beings are to have a future worth living, we must take on the Global Elite directly and undermine their power to impose their agenda upon us. No one else can save us.
Biodata:Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com
Watch the new video for “We Are Human We Are Free“:
The poorest country in the Caribbean has a problem according to Western governments and its global institutions. That problem is with Haiti, a country that does not trust anything that comes out of the West including media propaganda and its experimental injections or what is known as the “Covid-19 vaccines.” Haitians do not accept the West as a savior when it comes to their health or security, they don’t even trust their own government especially since most of them take orders from Washington and Paris. The last president that the Haitian people supported overwhelmingly was ousted by a US-backed coup in 2004 and he was Jean Bertrand Aristide. However, there is some positive news coming out of Haiti regarding Covid-19 and its experimental injections according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) own words:
In Haiti, from 3 January 2020 to 5:16pm CEST, 13 July 2022, there have been 31,980 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 837 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 8 July 2022, a total of 348,769 vaccine doses have been administered
It should not be a surprise that Haiti, a country with a population of more than 11 million people has a low vaccination rate since most Haitians do not want the experimental injections to begin with. An article from a liberal website called Coda which you can find online under http://www.codastory.com published a propaganda piece from August 13th, 2021, titled ‘The origins of Haiti’s vaccine hesitancy’ by Erica Hellerstein on why the Haitian population refuse to get the Covid-19 vaccination shots which according to their logic, Haiti is listening to disinformation or conspiracy theories from Russia:
Facebook unearthed a vast Russia-based anti-vaccine disinformation campaign this week. On Tuesday, the social media giant announced that it had removed 65 Facebook and 243 Instagram accounts amplifying anti-vaccine content. Investigators from the company linked the network to British marketing firm Fazze and operated from Russia. The campaign — dubbed a “disinformation laundromat” by Facebook — primarily targeted users in Latin America, India, and the U.S. through fake articles and petitions circulated on Medium, Reddit and Change.org, and then spread on social media via fake Facebook and Instagram accounts. One of the conspiracies, often accompanied in this campaign by images from the “Planet of the Apes” movies, is the claim that the AstraZeneca jab would turn people into chimpanzees – an old favorite of Russian state propaganda
Codastory.com is owned by Coda Media which is managed by a group of people who originally worked for the US mainstream-media such as Natalia Antelava, a former BBC correspondent who is the head of the organization and Ilan Greenberg who was a former staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal is the publisher and editorial director of the news outlet which already shows you the bias reporting they hold against Russia. Hellerstein mentioned Jean-Claude Louis who was speaking to an acquaintance working in the medical field about the Covid-19 vaccine, according to Hellerstein, the acquaintance told Louis, “I will never get the vaccine,” she continued “You don’t know what you’re getting.” Jean-Claude Louis is a coordinator for the Panos Institute which is described as “a Haitian nonprofit that trains journalists and youth on media literacy and identifying disinformation,” The Panos Institute is a non-profit organization that was originally based in the UK is now operating worldwide. Louis has obviously fallen for Western propaganda on the efficacy and safety of the Covid-19 experimental injections:
Louis has been paying close attention to the vaccine myths circulating online and in-person. And he is worried about how much of it is spreading inside Haiti’s medical community. “The problem is there are so many false rumors about vaccines,” he added. “People are very hesitant about getting the vaccines”
Hellerstein said that “I approached Louis after coming across a dataset laying out vaccination rates for the Americas. Topping the list was Uruguay, where nearly 75% of the population has gotten at least one vaccine dose. All the way at the bottom was Haiti, with just 0.14% of the population inoculated against Covid-19.” She also mentioned that Haiti was the last country in Latin America and the Caribbean to receive Covid-19 vaccines from the US and the United Nations (UN) through the COVAX program:
Haiti was one of the last countries in the world –and the last in Latin America and the Caribbean –to begin distributing the shot. In fact, it hadn’t gotten any at all until last month. Then, on July 14, a shipment of 500,000 doses from the United States via the United Nations-backed COVAX program arrived in the country. The delivery came a week after Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was brazenly assassinated in his home, plunging the country into political crisis
According to Hellerstein’s assessment, Haiti’s distribution of the vaccine was a “Bright spot” during the country’s political upheavals, but there was a statistic that was troubling to her:
The vaccine rollout was hailed as a “bright spot” during an otherwise tumultuous moment in Haiti. But another statistic caught my eye: according to a June survey by UNICEF and the University of Haiti, just 22% of adults said they were interested in getting the shot. Compare that with this February survey of global vaccination attitudes, where 88% of Brazilian adults, 85% of Chinese and Mexican adults, and 80% of Spanish and Italian adults said they intended to get the Covid-19 jab. Even in Russia, where vaccine acceptance was the lowest of all countries polled, 42% of adults said they would get a shot if made available — nearly double Haiti’s openness rate
There was an ounce of truth exposed by the article when UN peacekeepers brought cholera to Haiti where close to 10,000 people died from the outbreak:
Haitians have good reasons to distrust international institutions; after all, experts have determined that United Nations peacekeepers brought cholera to Haiti, where at least 10,000 people died of the disease, despite years of vehement denial from U.N. officials
Distrust of the UN and its Western backers is a major issue for the Haitian people:
The incident has left many Haitians deeply distrustful of the very institutions leading the global vaccination drive through the COVAX program. As Brian Concannon, founder of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, a coalition of Haitian and U.S. human rights advocates, told me: “Basically the international community burned all its credibility on public health messaging by lying about cholera.”He added: “They don’t trust the U.N., they don’t trust the government. The messenger is the problem”
On April 7th, 2021, Haiti has refused a donation of more than 756, 000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the WHO also through the COVAX program as reported by Spain’s EFE from a reliable source:
According to this source the Haitian Government refused to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, manufactured under license by “Serum Institute of India” because of “the global unrest surrounding this vaccine”, considering that the population of Haiti “would not accept it”
In an interesting turn of events “The Haitian authorities have asked the WHO to send vaccines from other laboratories to Haiti, including the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson laboratories which requires only one injection and which can be stored at temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.” However, WHO officials are pushing back against Haiti’s demands since the Johnson & Johnson vaccine takes only one shot. However, the J&J vaccine can be just as dangerous as Pfizer and Moderna’s experimental injections, but the idea is maybe that one shot is more convincing to the public than having multiple shots for the long-term, perhaps they just wanted to avoid pushing “forever boosters” on their population who are already skeptical on any vaccine produced by the West to fight Covid-19 or any other disease.
Whatever people say about Haiti and their reaction to Covid-19 in the West and elsewhere may be negative, but one thing is certain, anything to do with Western governments and their institutions such as the WHO or the CDC concerning Covid-19 or any other new disease whether they are promoting vaccines or facemasks have resulted in more deaths and injuries.
Haiti’s example should be proof that whatever the “health authorities” such as the Anthony Fauci’s of the world and their institutions are suggesting have no credibility and whatever they are promoting should be taken with a grain of salt.
Although this news video is typical US mainstream media propaganda, you can watch this video to get a different perspective on the attitude towards Covid-19 in Haiti:
Let’s start by stipulating the obvious: no one knows the future, and most of the guesses–oops, I mean forecasts–will be wrong. Arguing about the forecasts now won’t make any difference as to which ones are correct and which ones are wrong. Time alone will tell.
That said, here’s a scenario that fits the dynamics I see as most consequential: Core-Periphery and the demise of the waste is growth / financialization / globalization model as the reigning model of how the global economy should work.
Core-periphery dynamics are pretty simple: unraveling starts on the periphery and seeps toward the core. The core actually strengthens in the process as capital and talent seek havens where they’re treated well, and the core became the core by treating capital and talent well.
The periphery responds to the unraveling of financialization / globalization by tightening its grip on whatever capital and talent is still available, incentivizing the flight of capital and talent to the core.
A great many people think there are many core economies. In my analysis, there is only one, due to the qualifying requirements: 1) issues a reserve currency, i.e. not pegged to another currency 2) liquid global markets for securities, debt, commodities, etc., i.e. anyone anywhere can trade in size in the core markets 3) transparent market and governance mechanisms, i.e. no overnight devaluations, expropriations, capital restrictions, etc. 4) diverse economy not dependent on exports or imports for its well-being and 5) ease of flow: capital, talent, enterprises and employees all have essentially unlimited freedom of movement within the core.
We can argue about which nations qualify as core but it won’t change the outcome. Capital and talent will make their own decisions about risk, safety, exposure to devaluation and expropriation and where the odds of being treated fairly are highest. It’s a good exercise to put yourself in the shoes of a manager of a $10 billion fund and go through the decision tree of where to put this $10 billion to preserve its purchasing power first and foremost, and secondarily generate a return.
Would you really gamble $10 billion on a 15% return on the bonds of Timbukthree, whose currency has fallen 20% against the U.S. dollar this year? Or Timbukfour, which is dependent on exports of commodities in a shrinking global economy? Or Timbukfive, which is dependent on imports of commodities and exports of consumer goods in a shrinking global economy?? If you answer “yes,” you’re not actually playing like you are responsible for $10 billion.
As the periphery unravels financially, it also unravels politically and socially. Bordering states are at risk of destabilizing, and any entity with large exposure to the unraveling debt or markets starts unraveling, too. The destabilization spreads to second-tier nations whose exposure to the dynamics of unraveling are structural.
As all these dominoes fall, eventually those closest to the core also crumble, and then core itself is finally destabilized.
Humans have an interesting talent for adjusting to new circumstances, i.e. habituating to new conditions. Those households consuming 14,000 gallons of fresh water a month may well scream that they can’t possibly get by on 12,000 gallons, but then if circumstances change and all the water we have is what we can carry in buckets a kilometer over rough terrain, we find that we can live on the few gallons we can carry a kilometer.
The amount of waste in developed economies is beyond easy measure. It’s estimated 40% of all food in the U.S. is wasted. Energy, food and fresh water have been treated as if low cost and abundance were birthrights rather than brief explosions of excess. While we’re screaming about energy costs, empty buildings are brightly lit, water taps are left running and one individual per idling vehicle in a traffic jam frets about rising costs.
When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake closed the Bay Bridge across San Francisco Bay, the main artery between San Francisco and the East Bay, economic doom was predictably predicted. Yet people quickly managed via extra BART (subway) trains that rain beneath the Bay and carpools with four people per vehicle rather than one occupant.
Is it possible that all the predictable predictions of economic doom are somewhat exaggerated by the thrill of sensationalism and projections of past trends, as if people can’t possibly make consequential adjustments to their behaviors and consumption?
Systems have constraints, and so there are limits on what adjustments can be made without altering the structure, but in many cases, we’re far from reaching limits on basic conservation work-arounds.
Is it possible that things will prove less dire than currently expected? It seems little credence is being given to the potential to adjust to new conditions.
Is it beyond conception that the core actually strengthens for a length of time before the unraveling reaches it? In my crystal ball, it seems not just possible but likely. This will be the calm before The Tempest, when the unraveling reaches the core and structural changes are finally required.
The western capitalist axis of domination is responsible for most of the world’s crises. The crisis of legitimacy extends from the UK to Japan, and U.S. imperialism is involved in every new catastrophe.
To say that the West, currently led by the dictates of U.S. imperialism, is in trouble would be an understatement. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned on July 7th amid an escalating political crisis of legitimacy . Three weeks before Johnson announced his departure, Emmanuel Macron’s so-called centrist alliance lost its parliamentary majority in France. U.S. President Joe Biden continues to face his own crisis of legitimacy in the form of declining favorability ratings and public humiliation from Democratic loyalists such as Debra Messing . For the West, political crisis is undergirded by an unprecedented level of system chaos which has given the vast majority of workers and oppressed people little confidence in the future.
That chaos was compounded by the murder of Japan’s former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe on July 7th. Abe was an imperialist, a neoliberal, and the highest expression of what it means to be a puppet of the American Empire . Abe’s so-called Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was a literal creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Other detestable qualities of Abe include his worship of Japan’s fascist war criminals, his membership in the fascist cult Nippon Kaigi, and his unapologetic defense of Japan’s history of brutalizing and super exploiting “comfort women” from its colonies. Most important to the United States, however, was Abe’s unquestionable loyalty to the New Cold War and the military encirclement of China.
Abe’s murder and the attendant political crises in the West are a clear demonstration that U.S.-led imperialism is the world’s leading purveyor of chaos in the world. At the economic base, the U.S. and the E.U. continue to prolong their proxy war with Russia through massive arms transfers and sanctions that have boomeranged back to spur shortages and inflation. Inflation has come with political costs. Already unpopular capitalist regimes in the West are finding themselves increasingly exposed as incapable of addressing the rising cost of living. It doesn’t help matters that the so-called military superiority of the United States and its imperialist partners is also being challenged by Russia’s successful special military operation in Ukraine.
Thanks to the U.S. obsession with NATO expansion, the future is bleak for Ukraine’s U.S.-backed coup government established in 2014. Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine has made immense progress in the Donbass region. An already fragile and privatized vassal Ukrainian economy can only look forward to more pain once the U.S. and its junior partners in NATO come looking for repayment on its exorbitant aid packages. And Ukraine is just the beginning. The recent admission of Sweden and Finland into NATO is yet another declaration of war with Russia which opens the door to future conflicts even more destructive than the ongoing U.S. proxy war in Ukraine.
It is an undeniable fact that chaos follows U.S. imperialism wherever it goes. In Latin America, stability exists only where leftist governments have secured sufficient sovereignty . In Africa, the spread of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has led to widespread destabilization and political insecurity in the aftermath of the U.S.-NATO-AFRICOM invasion of Libya in 2011. In Asia, U.S. militarism has facilitated war in the West and attempted to organize a coalition of vassal states against China in the East. U.S. meddling in Taiwan has created a dumping ground for defense contractors and prompted Joe Biden to articulate on three occasions that the U.S. is willing to militarily intervene to “defend” the island , a guaranteed nuclear exchange scenario.
U.S. militarism is the principal barrier to political stability around the world which is a prerequisite to addressing global challenges such as climate change and poverty. U.S. and E.U. sanctions murder thousands of people in poorer, non-white countries. U.S.-sponsored color revolutions and “soft power” maneuvers are preludes to regime change. So-called U.S. “soft power” strengthens the most reactionary forces in the world. The far right and fascistic Contras in Latin and Central America , ISIS in West Asia, and the Azov Regiment in Ukraine are all outgrowths of U.S. interference disguised as “soft power.”
A dialectical relationship exists between the U.S.’s domestic and foreign policy. U.S. imperialism is an advanced stage in the system of capitalism predicated upon slavery, colonialism, and racism. Jayland Walker’s brutal murder at the hands of Akron police is a near daily occurrence in the United States. Black Americans and Indigenous peoples have been subject to the cruelest forms of racist violence for centuries. The U.S.’s endless wars are an expression of this violence turned toward imperialist ends.
The chickens of chaos have come home to roost. The Euro-American imperialist world order is suffering from terminal contradictions. Political instability reigns supreme. Another economic crisis is said to be looming but is more than likely already here. Imperialist wars no longer hold any prospect for any real “victory” without serious consequences for the war-maker.
While material conditions are pregnant with possibilities, there is no organized and independent left challenge to the supremacy of U.S. capital and its armed guards of the state. That is the task ahead of the people’s movement residing in the belly of the imperialist beast. In the face of the unprecedented chaos produced by its leading purveyor, the United States, this is no doubt the most difficult one that the working class and oppressed in the long and storied history of resistance. But such a task is not a choice. It is forced upon us by the weight of imperialism bearing down on our necks.
We must not rest until we get the boot off by any means necessary.
Danny Haiphong’s work can be followed on Twitter @SpiritofHo and Telegram at The Haiphong Press. You can support Danny on Patreon by clicking this link.You can contact him at haiphongpress@protonmail.com.
Minds that work three dimensionally cannot solve the problems of the world. They can only make them worse.
Those who see themselves as being ‘in charge’ of world events are not able to understand the actual nature of the problems they are supposed to deal with, so obviously they can’t change them for the better.
For example, those trained in banking have a two dimensional thinking process. They can see only ledgers, numbers and material gain.
Those heading leading corporations see only what their corporations can profit from. How to make them ever more profitable. Those who go into politics accept the three dimensional prison that politics is. Anyone thinking outside this box won’t last long in politics. The list goes on – interminably.
But suffice it to say that the great majority of ‘leaders’ of this world come from the above categories. Plus a smattering of billionaires, royals and a handful or two of psychopaths and megalomaniacs.
None of these, quite obviously, come anywhere near fulfilling the need for wisdom or the pursuit of truth and justice. Such values don’t even enter the picture. They are seen as the preserve of those lost in a world of illusion.
So long as this status quo prevails, no change for the better can happen – on the global stage. That place where all attention is focussed, therefore from which all actions emanate. Two/three dimensional actions bereft of insight, wisdom, truth or courage.
Those who believe and follow the edicts of these incapacitated directors of society, live in a prison of their own construction. It’s a dark place of delusional slavery to whatever they hear on ‘The News’. The State uses them to keep its two/three dimensional plans on-track.
In the world we want to become manifest, none of the two/three dimensional thinkers has any part. As we know, if we care to stop and reflect on it, only those with genuine breadth of vision, qualities of humane leadership and a deep devotion to the manifestation of truth, can fulfil the necessary qualities to direct our planet in the way – deep down – we all want and long for.
It’s a surprisingly simple message I am articulating: joining together in refusing to cooperate with those who we know have no qualities capable of improving the health and welfare of humanity and of our planetary ecology – is the only strategy which can end their sterile destructive reign.
We know that only those capable of a deep grasp of life’s challenges and how to set-about confronting them, can put us on the road we all want to be on. Make us feel moved to support the path of liberation from our slave driving oppressors – and from our own weakness – that leads over and over again into submission to their toxic demands.
The path to victory demands dedication. Dedication to listening to our hearts, not our minds. Only to our minds when they are first informed by our hearts and by a sound sense of morality.
We are becoming aware that this is the channel through which victory will be achieved. The only channel. It is the opposite dimension from the destroyers we are up against. They fear it, because they don’t understand it. It is outside their two/three dimensional prison. Yet it is our greatest asset; our wealth as true sentient humans. Our power as spiritual warriors.
It is time to ditch all distractions from this path. Only that which supports our great awakening must be put at the top of our ‘must do’ list from now on. And the further items down that list must all be in support of this great affirmation, this passion for truth.
There is nothing else ‘to do’.
If we fail to listen and act on the voice of our deepest hearts and intuitions, we can never be free. That message, determinedly put into practice in the outside world, will unlock the gates of all barricades erected to disempower us – and will set us free.
After the Crash 