COVID-19
States move to oppose WHO’s ‘pandemic treaty,’ assert states’ rights
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From LifeSiteNews
Utah and Florida passed laws intended to prevent the WHO from overriding states’ authority on matters of public health policy, and Louisiana and Oklahoma have legislation set to take effect soon pending final votes.
Two states have passed laws – and two states have bills pending – intended to prevent the World Health Organization (WHO) from overriding states’ authority on matters of public health policy.
Utah and Florida passed laws and Louisiana and Oklahoma have legislation set to take effect soon pending final votes. Several other states are considering similar bills.
The WHO member states will convene next month at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, to vote on two proposals – the so-called “pandemic accord” or “pandemic treaty,” and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) – that would give the WHO sweeping new pandemic powers.
The Biden administration supports the two WHO proposals, but opposition is growing at the state level.
Proponents of the WHO’s proposals say they are vital for preparing humanity against the “next pandemic,” perhaps caused by a yet-unknown “Disease X.”
But the bills passed by state legislatures reflect frequently voiced criticisms that the WHO’s proposals imperil national sovereignty, medical and bodily sovereignty and personal liberties, and may lead to global vaccine mandates.
Critics also argue the WHO proposals may open the door to global digital “health passports” and global censorship targeting alleged “misinformation.”
Such criticisms are behind state legislative initiatives to oppose the WHO, on the basis that states’ rights are protected under the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Under the 10th Amendment, all powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states. Such powers, critics say, include public health policy.
Mary Holland, president of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender:
It is encouraging to see states like Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Utah pass resolutions to clarify that the WHO has no power to determine health policy in their states. Historically, health has been the purview of state and local government, not the U.S. federal government.
There is no legitimate constitutional basis for the federal government to outsource health decision-making on pandemics to an international body. As state legislatures become aware of the WHO’s agenda, they are pushing back to assert their autonomy – and this is welcome.
Internist Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, told The Defender that, contrary to arguments that the drafters of the constitution could not foresee future public health needs, vaccines, doctors, and medicine were all in existence at the time the 10th Amendment was written. They were “deliberately left out,” she said.
READ: Thousands of protesters rally in Tokyo against proposed WHO pandemic treaty
This has implications for the federal government’s efforts in support of the WHO’s proposals, according to Nass. “The government doesn’t have the authority to give the WHO powers for which it lacks authority,” she said.
Tennessee state Rep. Bud Hulsey (R-Sullivan County) told The Epoch Times, “We’re almost to a place in this country that the federal government has trampled on the sovereignty of states for so long that in peoples’ minds, they have no options.”
“It’s like whatever the federal government says is the supreme law of the land, and it’s not. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land,” he added.
Utah, Florida laws passed
On January 31, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) signed Senate Bill 57, the “Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act,” into law. It does not mention the WHO, but prohibits “enforcement of a federal directive within the state by government officers if the Legislature determines the federal directive violates the principles of state sovereignty.”
In May 2023, Florida passed Senate Bill 252 (SB 252), a bill for “Protection from Discrimination Based on Health Care Choices.” Among other clauses, it prohibits businesses and public entities from requiring proof of vaccination or prophylaxis for the purposes of employment, receipt of services, or gaining entry to such entities.
According to Section 3 of SB 252:
A governmental entity as defined… or an educational institution… may not adopt, implement, or enforce an international health organization’s public health policies or guidelines unless authorized to do so under state law, rule, or executive order issued by the Governor.
Nass told The Defender that Florida’s legislation offers a back door through which the state can implement WHO policies because it allows a state law, rule, or executive order by the governor to override the bill. According to Nass, efforts to strengthen the bill have been unsuccessful.
SB 252 was one of four bills Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed in May 2023 in support of medical freedom. The other bills were House Bill 1387, banning gain-of-function research, Senate Bill 1580, protecting physicians’ freedom of speech, and Senate Bill 238, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of people’s medical choices.
Louisiana, Oklahoma also push back against the WHO
The Louisiana Senate on March 26 voted unanimously to pass Senate Law No. 133, barring the WHO, United Nations (U.N.) and World Economic Forum from wielding influence over the state.
According to the legislation:
No rule, regulation, fee, tax, policy, or mandate of any kind of the World Health Organization, United Nations, and the World Economic Forum shall be enforced or implemented by the state of Louisiana or any agency, department, board, commission, political subdivision, governmental entity of the state, parish, municipality, or any other political entity.
The bill is now pending Louisiana House of Representatives approval and if passed, is set to take effect August 1.
On April 24, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 426 (SB 426), which states, “The World Health Organization, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum shall have no jurisdiction in the State of Oklahoma.”
READ: Lawmakers, conservatives blast WHO plan for ‘global governance’ on future pandemics
According to the bill:
Any mandates, recommendations, instructions, communications or guidance issued by the World Health Organization, the United Nations or the World Economic Forum shall not be used in this state as a basis for action, nor to direct, order or otherwise impose, contrary to the constitution and laws of the State of Oklahoma any requirements whatsoever, including those for masks, vaccines or medical testing, or gather any public or private information about the state’s citizens or residents, and shall have no force or effect in the State of Oklahoma.
According to Door to Freedom, the bill was first introduced last year and unanimously passed the Senate. An amended version will return to the Senate for a new vote, and if passed, the law will take effect June 1.
Legislative push continues in states where bills opposing the WHO failed
Legislative initiatives opposing the WHO in other states have so far been unsuccessful.
In Tennessee, lawmakers proposed three bills opposing the WHO, but “none of them made it over the finish line,” said Bernadette Pajer of the CHD Tennessee Chapter.
“Many Tennessee legislators are concerned about the WHO and three of them filed resolutions to protect our sovereignty,” Pajer said. “Our legislature runs on a biennium, and this was the second year, so those three bills have died. But I do expect new ones will be filed next session.”
The proposed bills were:
- House Joint Resolution 820(HJR 820), passed in the Tennessee House of Representatives. The bill called on the federal government to “end taxpayer funding” of the WHO and reject the WHO’s two proposals.
- House Joint Resolution 1359(HJR 1359) stalled in the Delayed Bills Committee. It proposed that “neither the World Health Organization, United Nations, nor the World Economic Forum shall have any jurisdiction or power within the State of Tennessee.”
- Senate Joint Resolution 1135(SJR 1135) opposed “the United States’ participation in the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Prevention Preparedness and Response Accord (PPPRA) and urges the Biden Administration to withdraw our nation from the PPPRA.”
Amy Miller, a registered lobbyist for Reform Pharma, told The Defender she “supported these resolutions, especially HJR 1359. She said the bill “went to a committee where the sponsor didn’t think it would come out since a unanimous vote was needed and one of the three members was a Democrat.”
Tennessee’s HJR 820 came the closest to being enacted. According to Nass, this bill was “flawed,” as it “did not assert state sovereignty or the 10th Amendment.”
Another Tennessee bill, House Bill 2795 and Senate Bill 2775, “establishes processes by which the general assembly [of the state of Tennessee] may nullify an unconstitutional federal statute, regulation, agency order, or executive order.”
According to The Epoch Times, this would give Tennessee residents “the right to demand that state legislators vote on whether or not to enforce regulations or executive orders that violate citizens’ rights under the federal or state constitutions.” The bill is tabled for “summer study” in the Senate.
In May 2023, Tennessee passed legislation opposing “net zero” proposals and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals – which have been connected to “green” policies and the implementation of digital ID for newborn babies and for which the U.N. has set a target date of 2030 for implementation.
According to The Epoch Times, “Maine state Rep. Heidi Sampson attempted to get a ‘joint order’ passed in support of personal autonomy and against compliance with the WHO agreements, but it garnered little interest in the Democrat supermajority legislature.”
In Alabama, the Senate passed House Joint Resolution 113 opposing the WHO. The bill was reported out of committee but, according to Nass, it stalled.
Other states where similar legislation was proposed in the 2024 session or is pending include Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Wyoming.
Recent Supreme Court ruling may curtail federal government’s powers
While opponents of the WHO’s proposed “pandemic agreement” and IHR amendments point to the states’ rights provision of the 10th Amendment, others argue that a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council allowed federal agencies to assert more authority to make laws.
The tide may be turning, however. According to The Epoch Times, “The current Supreme Court has taken some steps to rein in the administrative state, including the landmark decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, ruling that federal agencies can’t assume powers that Congress didn’t explicitly give them.”
Nass said that even in states where lawmakers have not yet proposed bills to oppose the WHO, citizens can take action, by contacting the office of their state governor, who can issue an executive order, or their attorney general, who can issue a legal opinion.
Door to Freedom has also developed a model resolution that state legislative bodies can use as the basis for their own legislation.
“It’s important for people to realize that if the federal government imposes something on the people, the people can go through their state’s powers to overturn it,” Nass said.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Alberta
Crown recommends 9 years in prison for Freedom Convoy-inspired border blockade protesters
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From LifeSiteNews
Originally charged with conspiracy to commit murder, Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert were convicted of mischief and weapons offences during the Coutts blockade in 2022. They’ve already spent more than two years in prison awaiting their trial.
The Crown recommended nine years in prison for two men linked to the 2022 Freedom Convoy-inspired border blockade protest in Coutts, Alberta.
On August 29th, Crown prosecutor Steven Johnston declared that Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert, who were convicted of mischief and weapons offences at the 2022 Freedom Convoy, should receive nine years in jail despite already spending more than two years in prison awaiting their trial.
“Mr. Carbert and Mr. Olienick believed they were at war. They were prepared to die for their cause. The very real risk is that a firefight would have occurred,” Johnston claimed.
Olienick and Carbert have already spent more than two years in prison after they were charged with conspiracy to commit murder during 2022 Freedom Convoy-inspired border blockade protest in Coutts that protested COVID mandates.
Earlier in August, they were finally acquitted of that charge and instead found guilty of the lesser charges of unlawful possession of a firearm for a dangerous purpose and mischief over $5,000. Olienick was also found guilty of unlawful possession of an explosive device.
Olienick and Carbert have been jailed since 2022 when, at the same time the Freedom Convoy descended on Ottawa to protest COVID restrictions, they joined an anti-COVID mandate blockade protest at the Alberta-Montana border crossing near Coutts. The men were denied bail and kept in solitary confinement before their trial.
At the time, police said they had discovered firearms, 36,000 rounds of ammunition, and industrial explosives at Olienick’s home. However, the guns were legally obtained and the ammunition was typical of those used by rural Albertans. Similarly, Olienick explained that the explosives were used for mining gravel.
Now, they are being recommended to spend nine more years in prison despite their lawyer pointing out that they have already spent 929 days in jail, which equates to nearly four years given the accepted valuation of granting extra credit for time served while awaiting trial.
Justice David Labrenz is set to give his decision on September 9th.
The men were arrested alongside Christopher Lysak and Jerry Morin, and all four were charged with conspiracy to murder. At the time, the “Coutts Four” were painted as dangerous terrorists and their arrest was used as justification for the Emergencies Act, which allowed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to use draconian measures to end both the Coutts blockade and the much larger Freedom Convoy occurring thousands of kilometers away in Ottawa.
Under the EA, the Trudeau government froze the bank accounts of Canadians who donated to the protest. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23 after the protesters had been cleared out. At the time, seven of Canada’s 10 provinces opposed Trudeau’s use of the EA.
Recently, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Trudeau was “not justified” in invoking the Emergencies Act.
Many are pointing out that the two were being unjustly held as political prisoners similar to those in communist countries.
It’s unclear why the two Alberta men are denied bail while dangerous criminals are allowed to roam free thanks to Trudeau’s catch and release policy.
Indeed, this policy has put many Canadians in danger, as was the case last month when a Brampton man charged with sexually assaulting a 3-year-old was reportedly out on bail for an October 2022 incident in which he was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a dangerous weapon.
COVID-19
Australian Senate report ignores obvious: excess deaths began after COVID jab rollout
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From LifeSiteNews
By David James
It is considerably more likely that the sudden jump in excess deaths was caused by the vaccines rather than the virus. The same pattern is being repeated across heavily vaccinated countries.
When the Australian Federal Senate announced an inquiry into excess mortality in Australia, there was little hope the participants would undertake a dispassionate examination of the possible effects of vaccines on the population. The report has now been released and it did not disappoint; or, rather, it did disappoint.
The report was an exercise in misdirection and concealment by bureaucrats, industry bodies, and political parties. It did, though, settle the question of whether what the Australian authorities did was due to incompetence or darker motives. Based on the non-arguments proffered it is clear that there has been a sustained and organized exercise in lying.
The Senate committee, according to the state broadcaster, the ABC, found that “COVID-19 was the main cause of excess deaths in 2021, 2022, and up to August 2023”. It is a message that has been repeated across the mainstream media, providing an apparent reason to forget about the whole COVID problem.
Bindi Kinderman, general manager of the People and Place Division of the ABS, told the inquiry COVID-associated deaths were behind the unusual rise in death cases between 2021 and August 2023, adding that “in 2020, COVID-19 ranked as the 38th leading cause of death in Australia. In 2021, it moved up to the 34th position.”
Apart from the obvious problem that the 34th leading cause of death is hardly likely to be responsible for extreme changes to death levels, the ABS found in its own reporting that in 2021 the mortality rate in Australia from respiratory diseases was the second lowest on record (after 2020). There were 1,122 deaths attributable to COVID-19, less than a third of the number who died from influenza in 2019.
That suggests that any attempt to blame Covid-19 for the excess mortality had to begin at 2022 – after the mass vaccination.
References to 2021 were only made to create the false impression that the excess deaths started earlier than they actually did. The reason? Because there was a desire to avoid comparisons of what happened before the mass inoculation with what happened after.
The deception becomes especially obvious after looking at the ABS’s own data on excess deaths. In 2020, when Australians were being warned that a deadly disease was ravaging the country, excess mortality was actually negative: minus 3.1 per cent. In 2021 it was a comparatively modest 1.6 per cent above average. But in 2022, after the mandating of jabs, it soared to 11.7 per cent before falling to 6.1 per cent in 2023.
Additionally, in 2022 the number of deaths from Covid increased more than nine times from the 2021 level, invalidating the claim that the “vaccines” provided protection.
READ: Supreme Court of Canada refuses to hear high-profile cases against COVID mandates
It is routinely pointed out that “correlation is not causation”; that just because two things coincide does not necessarily mean one causes the other. That also works in reverse. Without some kind of correlation there is no reason to look for causation. There is no correlation between COVID infections, which the ABS said started in March 2020, and excess mortality. So why would the virus suddenly have started causing excess deaths in 2022, when by that time it had mutated and become less deadly? The timeline does not add up.
A study entitled Too Many Dead by the Australian Medical Professional’s Society (AMPS) makes this point. “Why did the official death rates attributable to COVID-19 disease only become notable after the vast majority of Australians had received allegedly ‘safe and effective’ vaccines for the infection? Furthermore, why did the much milder Omicron variant take such a toll on a heavily vaccinated population, if indeed the much-repeated therapeutic claim of protection from severe illness and death was in effect?”
It is considerably more likely that the sudden jump in excess deaths was caused by the vaccines rather than the virus. The same pattern is being repeated across heavily vaccinated countries. According to the OECD, excess mortality is still high, at levels comparable with what happens during war time. In Australia excess mortality is still running about 10 per cent above average, according to the OECD. A study in the European Society of Medicine into the effect of vaccine boosters in Australia has found there is a “strong correlation” with the excess mortality.
A dissenting report by Senator Ralph Babet, who instigated the inquiry, makes the most interesting reading. Babet notes that there was a lot of suppression of submissions, which is unusual in such an inquiry. Only half were uploaded for public viewing.
“The submissions that the committee chose to suppress by taking as ‘unpublished correspondence’ include those from professors, doctors, medical specialists, academics, actuarial and subject matter experts, as well as concerned Australian citizens,” Babet wrote. He pointed to delays and road blocks, unreliable or unavailable data, and limited investigation of vaccine-related deaths.
It is no surprise that almost no-one will come forward to take responsibility for what appears to be the greatest man-made medical catastrophe in Australian history. It is no surprise that politicians, bureaucrats, health bodies and industry groups lack collective conscience and honesty. They are only interested in lying to protect themselves.
The question that remains unanswered is: “What kind of government and health system is left once it has lost its integrity and credibility?”
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