Disturbing scenes have filled our TV screens in recent days of mass demonstrations in Sri Lanka, leading to protestors occupying several government buildings – including the presidential palace – and demanding that leaders step down.
Inflation reached a devastating 54.6% in June, while the central bank raised interest rates to 15.5%. The government has failed to honour foreign debt, and the IMF has demanded that it raise taxes and combat corruption as a condition for receiving a bailout loan.
Albania, Argentina & Africa
Meanwhile, other protests in different parts of the world have gained little attention on mainstream media. Last week in Albania, thousands of opposition supporters held a protest in the capital Tirana, demanding that the government resign due to alleged corruption and a massive increase in consumer prices.
Across the Atlantic, thousands of Argentinians brought central Buenos Aires to a standstill in an ongoing series of massive protests against the country's soaring inflation. Interest rates are running at 52% and inflation at 60.7%. Demonstrators urged the government to resign, while rejecting IMF loans that come with ever-tougher conditions for ordinary citizens. Further to the north, protestors in Panama demanded higher wages, lower commodity prices and the removal of supply chain bottlenecks.
Meanwhile, in Africa; the cost of basic foodstuffs has skyrocketed in Kenya and hundreds of protesters marched through Nairobi last Saturday, urging the government to lower food prices. Protesters claimed that the high cost of living was caused by the state’s excessive borrowing and rampant corruption. Similar protests occurred further west, in Ghana, where an IMF bailout was given after inflation reached 27.6% and raising interest rates to 19% did not appear to work.
Meanwhile, other protests in different parts of the world have gained little attention on mainstream media.
Turning eastward, large scale protests are almost unknown in China, but a crowd of protesters estimated at 1,000 gathered last weekend in front of one People’s Bank of China in Henan province, amid outcry over a financial scandal that has exposed the fragility of the country’s banking system.
Dutch farmers
Still almost totally ignored by mainstream media, a massive story has emerged in the Netherlands over the past two weeks, where thousands of Dutch famers are protesting the government’s recent goal to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions by 50% before 2030 in a bid to improve air, land and water quality. The cutback on fertiliser could force some farms to shut down. On one occasion a police officer opened fire on a tractor driven by a 16-year-old – but still failed to make the headlines.
Many claim the crisis is not about fertilizer at all, but about the government wanting to take over the land (85% of the total land mass being currently owned by farmers), in attempt to house new immigrants; and ultimately as part of a globalist agenda. Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte is known to have close connections to World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab. Neil Oliver called it a “blatant land grab – leftist globalist governments (want) to return us to some form of feudalism …. To take people’s independence away … if you control the farmland you control the food, and if you control the food you control the people”.
Neil Oliver called it a “blatant land grab – leftist globalist governments (want) to return us to some form of feudalism”...
Elsewhere in Europe, other demonstrations have occurred in Poland, Macedonia, Belgium and Italy. In the latter country, instability has increased significantly after the government all but collapsed last night (Thurs 14th)
Sri Lanka
Returning to the protests in Sri Lanka; although gaining increasing coverage in the media, what is often (conveniently?) overlooked is that the food crisis began when President Gotabaya Rajapaksa suddenly, and outrageously, implemented a ban on all chemical fertilisers last year. Many farmers’ livelihoods were almost instantly put under threat, harvests dropped, and the government is now unable to afford the food imports the country has since become overdependent on. The island is in a state of total collapse.
But the crisis was effected even earlier, when the President imposed the world’s most repressive 24/7 curfew (not just lockdown) for several months. The body blow to the economy from the virtual outright cessation of all economic activity for almost two months was estimated at over $1 billion. Some say problems go back further still, to a longstanding epidemic of land-grabbing by the government and military across rural Sri Lanka, marginalising the Tamil people.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe (since ousted), reportedly signed an agreement with the WEF in 2015. Addressing this group a year later, he referred to a bailout from the IMF and pledged his allegiance to the globalists under a 'restructured' economy, promising also to allow massive infrastructure projects funded by the Chinese government.
Deeper causes
Whatever the ulterior motives, there is massive unrest across large swathes of the world, the immediate prompting of which is the challenges brought on by soaring inflation and interest rates, but much of which has been the result of draconian lockdowns implemented for months on end across the globe as a result of the coronavirus.
The invasion by Russia of Ukraine has exacerbated this dangerously. Comprising two of the world's largest food exporters, together these countries formerly exported 64% of the world’s sunflower oil, 23% of the world’s wheat, 19% of the world’s barley, and 18% of the world’s maize, not to mention much of the raw materials needed for fertiliser.
The mass popular protests should serve as a wake-up call to governments intent on submitting their populations to any globalist agenda.
The mass popular protests should serve as a wake-up call to governments intent on submitting their populations to any globalist agenda. Sadly, however, they may serve to propel such agenda even further.
Scenes of worldwide unrest have been predicted by Prophecy Today for many years, and they are now becoming a reality before our very eyes. They are likely to worsen further as the economic chaos continues to spread.
Turning to the Lord our Rock
The necessity for us as believers in the midst of all this is the realisation that our hope and trust are not in world leaders, but one hundred percent in the Lord. Only he can bring us security and inner peace while the world around us becomes even more unsettled and forlorn.
These are truly days when we need to be able to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength (Mark 12:30). These are truly days when more than ever, we must trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding (Prov 3:5).
This day, and every day, may we know as reality that the Lord is our rock, our fortress, our deliverer, our stronghold (Ps 18: 1-2) – a very present help in times of need.