The Fire That Keeps Burning: Hong Kong, Grenfell, Guatemala, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Truth
By Sylvie Shene
There is a fire burning across humanity — a fire far more dangerous than the flames that consume buildings.
It is the fire of lies, illusions, and the violent punishment of anyone who dares to speak the truth.
This week, Hong Kong’s deadliest high-rise inferno in years killed at least 94 people and left hundreds more missing.
The fire spread across seven towers — a horror that should never have been possible in a modern city.
But it was possible for the same reason the Grenfell Tower burned in 2017.
For the same reason, Guatemala was shattered by a CIA-sponsored coup in 1954.
For the same reason, I was targeted and psychologically attacked at my job of nine and a half years after publishing A Dance to Freedom.
For the same reason, Elon Musk now uses his massive megaphone to distort truth, sow chaos, and manipulate public perception.
The pattern is universal:
1. Profit over life
2. Image over truth
3. Punish anyone who exposes the illusion
Hong Kong and the Price of Denial
The Hong Kong blaze turned entire apartment towers into vertical prisons.
Flammable cladding, blocked escape routes, locked rooftops, construction debris — the same criminal negligence we saw at Grenfell.
Because when corporations cut corners, governments look away, and the public is kept quiet, the human cost becomes unbearable.
But this is what happens in societies trained from childhood to obey illusions instead of confronting truth.
Grenfell: A Warning Ignored
Grenfell Tower showed the world what happens when truth-tellers are silenced.
Residents who questioned fire safety were threatened, bullied, and branded “troublemakers.”
Two women who raised alarms — Nadia and Mariem — were even threatened with legal action for daring to question the system that later burned their neighbors alive.
The rescuers who entered the building described finding 42 bodies in a single room.
Why?
Because the people in power preferred the appearance of “revitalization” to the reality of safety.
Just like the wealthy prefer to preserve their illusions rather than face their childhood wounds.
The CIA’s Coup in Guatemala: The Machinery of Psychological Warfare
On June 27, 1954, the U.S. government — with the CIA’s full force — overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz. They replaced a democracy with decades of terror, torture, and genocide.
All to protect American corporate profits.
This is the same machinery of psychological warfare used today — not just abroad, but inside the homeland, in workplaces, on social media platforms, and in the news cycles that manipulate public perception.
I Saw This Machinery Up Close — at a Gatehouse
One of the sociopaths who orchestrated the mob attack on me at my job was a former CIA operative.
He was well-trained in psychological warfare.
He truly believed he could break me — the “little woman” in the gatehouse.
But a mind that has freed itself once cannot be enslaved again.
In 2015, I wrote about seeing him while cat-sitting:
“He, too, was confident that they could get me to self-destruct with their mind games. I looked at him, and I waved. He looked, went pale, put his hand up, and drove away — deeply uncomfortable because he knew what they did to me was evil.”
When the truth stands calmly in front of someone who tried to destroy it, the illusion collapses.
They can’t hide from their own cruelty anymore.
Elon Musk: A Megaphone for Half-Truths and Manufactured Confusion
And now we see the same pattern with Elon Musk.
With one repost, he spreads half-truths and distortions about asylum vetting and Afghanistan’s chaotic withdrawal — conveniently omitting facts that don’t serve his narrative.
He knows exactly what he’s doing:
Manipulate perception.
Stoke division.
Confuse the public.
Trigger emotional reactions instead of conscious reflection.
Here are the facts Musk avoids:
George W. Bush started the war in Afghanistan
Donald Trump set the withdrawal deadline
The shooter was vetted and granted asylum during the Trump administration
The chaos of the exit was built on 20 years of lies, not on a single administration’s decisions
Why can’t a man as intelligent as Elon connect these dots?
Because he doesn’t want to.
Chaos benefits him.
Division benefits him.
Confusion benefits him.
A traumatized society is easier to manipulate.
And deep inside, like all emotionally repressed men with immense power, he is reenacting his childhood drama — trying to control the world the way he was once controlled.
This is not about politics.
It is about psychology.
The Same Fire, Again and Again
Hong Kong’s towers.
Grenfell Tower.
Guatemala.
My workplace.
America’s foreign wars.
Elon’s propaganda.
It is all the same fire spreading through different buildings.
A fire started in childhood — whenever a child learns that telling the truth gets them punished, and participating in illusions gets them rewarded.
Those children grow up to become:
politicians who lie
executives who cut corners
media figures who distort
billionaires who manipulate
neighbors who stay silent
coworkers who participate in mobbing
engineers who ignore safety warnings
governments who choose power over life
This is why humanity keeps burning.
The Only Fireproof Material Is Truth
Every society that silences truth-tellers eventually pays the price.
And the price is always human lives.
Whether in a burning tower, a collapsed democracy, a destabilized country, or a workplace that devours its own employees — repression always comes home to roost.
Illusions can’t save us.
Only truth can.





