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Great Reset

The fundamental crisis with the WHO’s new international pandemic agreement

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The WHO’s Managerial Gambit

From the Brownstone Institute

BY Bruce PardyBRUCE PARDY 

The WHO is now proposing a new international pandemic agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations. These proposals will make next time worse. Not because they override sovereignty, but because they will protect domestic authorities from responsibility. States will still have their powers. The WHO plan will shield them from the scrutiny of their own people.

On Friday, Bret Weinstein warned of impending tyranny from the World Health Organization. “We are in the middle of a coup,” the evolutionary biologist and podcaster told Tucker Carlson on X. The WHO’s new pandemic management regime will eliminate sovereignty, Weinstein said, and allow it to override national constitutions.

He’s right about tyranny and coups. But not about sovereignty or constitutions.

Technocrats learned a lot from Covid. Not how to avoid policy mistakes, but how to exercise control. Public authorities discovered that they could tell people what to do. They locked people down, closed their businesses, made them wear masks, and herded them to vaccination clinics. In some countries, people endured the most extreme restrictions on civil liberties in peacetime history.

The WHO is now proposing a new international pandemic agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations. These proposals will make next time worse. Not because they override sovereignty, but because they will protect domestic authorities from responsibility. States will still have their powers. The WHO plan will shield them from the scrutiny of their own people.

Under the proposals, the WHO will become the directing mind and will of global health. It will have authority to declare public health emergencies. National governments will promise to do as the WHO directs. Countries will “undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations.” WHO measures “shall be initiated and completed without delay by all State Parties…[who] shall also take measures to ensure Non-State Actors [private citizens and domestic businesses] operating in their respective territories comply with such measures.” Lockdowns, quarantine, vaccines, surveillance, travel restrictions, and more will be on the table.

That sounds like a loss of sovereignty, but it is not. Sovereign states have exclusive jurisdiction in their own territory. WHO recommendations cannot be directly enforced in American courts. Sovereign nations can agree to follow the authority of international organizations. They can undertake to tie their own hands and to fashion their domestic laws accordingly.

The WHO proposals are a shell game. The scheme will provide cover to domestic public health authorities. Power will be ubiquitous but no one will be accountable. Citizens will lack control over the governance of their countries, as they already do. The danger that confronts us is still our own sprawling discretionary administrative state, soon to be boosted and camouflaged by an unaccountable international bureaucracy.

When countries make treaties, they make promises to each other. International law may regard those promises as “binding.” But they are not binding in the same sense as a domestic contract. International law is a different animal from domestic law. In Anglo-American countries, the two legal systems are distinct.

International courts cannot enforce treaty promises against unwilling parties in the same way that a domestic court can enforce contractual promises. International law is formalized international politics. Countries make promises to each other when it is in their political interests to do so. They keep those promises on the same criteria. When they don’t, political consequences sometimes follow. Formal legal consequences rarely do.

Nevertheless, the idea is to persuade the public that their governments must obey the WHO. Binding recommendations legitimize the heavy hands of domestic governments. Local officials will be able to justify restrictions by citing global duties. They will say that WHO directives leave them no choice. “The WHO has called for lockdowns, so we must order you to stay in your home. Sorry, but it’s not our call.”

During Covid, authorities tried to censor dissenting views. Despite their best efforts, skeptics managed to speak out. They offered alternative explanations in podcasts, videos, declarations, research papers, columns, and tweets. For many people, they were the source of sanity and truth. But next time things may be different. Under the new pandemic regime, countries will commit to censoring “false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation.”

As Weinstein put it, “Something is quietly moving just out of sight, in order that we will not have access to these tools the next time we face a serious emergency. … What [the WHO] wants are the measures that would have allowed them to silence the podcasters, to mandate various things internationally in a way that would prevent the emergence of a control group that would allow us to see harms clearly.”

The WHO documents will not override constitutions in Anglo-American countries. In the United States, the First Amendment will still apply. But the meaning of constitutions is not static. International norms can influence how courts read and apply constitutional provisions. Courts can take account of developing international standards and customary international law. The WHO proposals would not replace or define the meaning of constitutional rights. But they would not be irrelevant either.

The WHO is not undermining democracy. Countries have done that over time by themselves. National governments must approve the new plan, and any can opt out as they wish. Without their agreement, the WHO has no power to impose its dictates. Not all countries may be keen on all the details. The WHO proposals call for massive financial and technical transfers to developing countries. But climate change pacts do too. In the end rich countries embraced them anyway. They were keen to virtue-signal and justify their own climate boondoggles. Most can be expected to sign on to the WHO gambit too.

Countries who do so retain the sovereignty to change their minds. But leaving international regimes can be hellishly difficult. When the UK belonged to the European Union, it agreed to be subject to EU rules on all manner of things. It remained a sovereign country and could decide to get out from under the EU’s thumb. But Brexit threatened to tear the country apart. Having the legal authority to withdraw does not mean that a country is politically able to do so. Or that its elites are willing, even if that’s what its people want.

Numerous critics have made the same allegations as Weinstein, that the WHO’s regime will eliminate sovereignty and override constitutions. Brownstone writers have done so, for example, here and here. These allegations are easy to dismiss. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the WHO, has repeatedly said that no country will cede sovereignty to the WHO. Reutersthe Associated Press, and other mainstream news outlets have done “fact checks” to debunk the claim. Saying that the WHO will steal sovereignty allows critics to be discredited as conspiracy theorists. It distracts from the game that is afoot.

The WHO proposals will protect power from accountability. National governments will be in on the plan. The people are the problem they seek to manage. The new regime will not override sovereignty but that is small comfort. Sovereignty provides no protection from your own authoritarian state.

Author

  • Bruce Pardy

    Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.

Business

EU Tightens Social Media Censorship Screw With Upcoming Mandatory “Disinformation” Rules

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From Reclaim The Net

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This refers not only to spreading “fact-checking” across the EU member-countries but also to making VLOPs finance these groups. This, is despite the fact many of the most prominent “fact-checkers” have been consistently accused of fostering censorship instead of checking content for accuracy in an unbiased manner.

What started out as the EU’s “voluntary code of practice” concerning “disinformation” – affecting tech/social media companies – is now set to turn into a mandatory code of conduct for the most influential and widely-used ones.

The news was revealed by the Irish media regulator, specifically an official of its digital services, Paul Gordon, who spoke to journalists in Brussels. The EU Commission has yet to confirm that January will be the date when the current code will be “formalized” in this way.

The legislation that would enable the “transition” is the controversial Digital Services Act (DSA), which critics often refer to as the “EU online censorship law,” the enforcement of which started in February of this year.

The “voluntary” code is at this time signed by 44 tech companies, and should it become mandatory in January 2025, it will apply to those the EU defines as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) (with at least 45 million monthly active users in the 27-nation bloc).

Currently, the number of such platforms is said to be 25.

In its present form, the DSA’s provisions obligate online platforms to carry out “disinformation”-related risk assessments and reveal what measures they are taking to mitigate any risks revealed by these assessments.

But when the code switches from “voluntary” to mandatory, these obligations will also include other requirements: demonetizing the dissemination of “disinformation”; platforms, civil society groups, and fact-checkers “effectively cooperating” during elections, once again to address “disinformation” – and, “empowering” fact-checkers.

This refers not only to spreading “fact-checking” across the EU member-countries but also to making VLOPs finance these groups. This, is despite the fact many of the most prominent “fact-checkers” have been consistently accused of fostering censorship instead of checking content for accuracy in an unbiased manner.

The code was first introduced (in its “voluntary” form) in 2022, with Google, Meta, and TikTok among the prominent signatories – while these rules originate from a “strengthened” EU Code of Practice on Disinformation based on the Commission’s Guidance issued in May 2021.

“It is for the signatories to decide which commitments they sign up to and it is their responsibility to ensure the effectiveness of their commitments’ implementation,” the EU said at the time – that would have been the “voluntary” element, while the Commission said the time it had not “endorsed” the code.

It appears the EC is now about to “endorse” the code, and then some – there are active preparations to make it mandatory.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Joe Rogan Responds To YouTube Censorship of Trump Interview

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From Reclaim The Net

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Joe Rogan has accused YouTube of making it difficult for users to find his recent interview with former President Donald Trump, saying that the platform initially only displayed short clips from mainstream media instead of the full episode. Rogan sarcastically remarked on YouTube’s actions, saying, “I’m sure it was a mistake at YouTube where you couldn’t search for it. Yeah. I’m sure it was a mistake. It’s just a mistake.”

In episode 2200, Rogan explained that even though his team contacted YouTube multiple times, the episode remained difficult to find. X CEO Elon Musk intervened, contacting Spotify CEO Daniel Ek about the issue. (Spotify exclusively licenses The Joe Rogan Experience but allows the show on third-party platforms like YouTube.)

Watch the video clip here.

Rogan noted the explosive viewership once the content was available, with the episode racking up “six and a half million views on mine and eight plus million on his.”

Emphasizing the episode’s broad reach, Rogan expressed frustration with the initial suppression, stating, “You can’t suppress shit. It doesn’t work. This is the internet. This is 2024. People are going to realize what you’re doing.” He pointed to the significance of this episode’s reach, asking, “If one show has 36 million downloads in two days, like that’s not trending? Like what’s trending for you? Mr. Beast?”

Describing the power of YouTube’s algorithmic influence, Rogan claimed the algorithm worked against the interview’s visibility, only showing clips instead of the full conversation. According to him, when YouTube initially fixed the issue, users had to enter highly specific keywords, like “Joe Rogan Trump interview,” to find the episode.

Rogan argued that YouTube’s gatekeeping reflected an ideological stance, remarking, “They hate it because ideologically they’re opposed to the idea of him being more popular.” He suggested that major tech platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook, which hold significant influence, often push agendas that favor specific narratives, stating, “They didn’t like that this one was slipping away. And so they did something.”

In a telling moment, Rogan noted the impact of the initial suppression, explaining how “the interactions…dropped off a cliff because people couldn’t find it.” He claimed that this caused viewers either to give up or settle for short clips, leading to a dip in views before the episode gained traction on Spotify and X.

 

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