I know there is a lot of interest in the Jeffrey Epstein story and the new revelations from Tulsi Gabbard about Barack Obama and his team’s efforts to fan the flames of Russiagate. I have been all over the Russiagate matter since 2017. Here is the link to a piece I published on December 18, 2018 with the nifty title, The Trump Coup Is a Threat to Our Republic. I am glad the information is finally coming out, but I knew this seven years ago. What took them so long? While Tulsi’s revelations are legit, I think she is releasing this information now to distract attention away from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Trump is getting killed in the polls — reportedly he is down 40% points on this issue.
For now, I want to focus on the war in Ukraine, i.e., the Special Military Operation (SMO), and clarify Russia’s motivation and objective for ending that conflict. We keep hearing the phrase, root causes. Russia wants the West to address the root causes. Ok, what are those? I think it is pretty simple — read the draft treaty that Vladimir Putin presented to Joe Biden in December 2021 and then you will understand. To spare you reading the entire document (I have linked to it in the next paragraph) I am going to summarize the key points.
The draft “Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees” that Russia presented to Biden in December 2021, outlined a series of far-reaching security demands, reflecting Russia’s intent to reshape the post-Cold War security architecture in Europe. Here are the key points from the published text:
No Further NATO Expansion • The US would commit to preventing further enlargement of NATO, specifically barring Ukraine and other former Soviet republics from joining the alliance. • This also included a ban on NATO military activity in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
No Deployment of US Forces or Weapons in Certain Countries • The treaty would forbid the US from deploying military forces or weaponry in countries that joined NATO after May 1997 (such as Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, and others). • NATO infrastructure would have to be rolled back to pre-1997 locations.
Ban on Intermediate-Range Missiles • Both Russia and the US would be prohibited from deploying ground-launched intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles outside their national territories, as well as in areas of their own territory where such missiles could strike the other’s territory.
Limit Military Maneuvers and Activities • Limits on heavy bombers and surface warship deployments: Both sides would restrict the operation of heavy bombers and warships in areas from which they could strike targets on the other’s territory. (Note: In September 2020, Trump’s DOD authorized a B-52 to fly along the Ukrainian coast in the Black Sea.)
Nuclear Weapons Restrictions • All nuclear weapons would be confined to each country’s own national territory. Neither side could deploy nuclear weapons outside its borders. (Note: US just sent a batch of nukes to England.) • Withdrawal of all US nuclear weapons from Europe and elimination of existing infrastructure for their deployment abroad.
Mutual Security Pledge • Each side would agree not to take any security measures that could undermine the core security interests of the other party.
Establishment of Consultation Mechanisms • Proposals included the renewal or strengthening of direct consultation mechanisms, such as the NATO–Russia Council and the establishment of a crisis hotline.
Indivisibility of Security Principle • Included a reaffirmation that the security of one state cannot come at the expense of the security of another, formalizing Russia’s interpretation of the “indivisible security” concept.
Instead of engaging the Russians in negotiations on these matters, Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, essentially told Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov, that Russia could take the treaty and shove it up its own ass. So much for diplomacy. Had the US agreed to discuss the draft treaty with the Russians, the SMO would not have been launched in February 2022. But that is the critical point… The US had no intention of seeking a peaceful settlement with Russia. For example, the CIA, using DOD cover, had already invested tens of millions of dollars in bio labs scattered throughout Ukraine. According to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, it recovered documents that identified a network of 30 US-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine that were conducting research on dangerous pathogens as part of a bioweapons program. Ukraine was nothing more than a pawn in a Western game of strategic chess, with the ultimate goal of wrecking Russia and taking control of its natural resources. The West was not ready to quit that game.
Until NATO’s threat to Russia is taken off the table, the Russia’s war with the West will continue… It represents an existential threat to the Russian people. The talks in Turkey between Russia and Ukraine do nothing to address or resolve the root causes.
Larry C. Johnson is a former analyst at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. He is the co-owner and CEO of BERG Associates, LLC (Business Exposure Reduction Group).
‘Defining Moment in Human History’: U.S. Rejects WHO’s International Health Regulation Amendments
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said today the U.S. would not agree to sign over authority in health emergencies “to an unelected international organization that could order lockdowns, travel restrictions or any other measures that it sees fit.” The amendments take effect for all signatories July 19.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio today announced that the U.S. is formally rejecting the controversial amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (IHR).
The revisions would allow the WHO “to order global lockdowns, travel restrictions, or any other measures it sees fit to respond to nebulous ‘potential public health risks,’” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a press release.
The amendments — passed at last year’s World Health Assembly and set to take effect July 19 for all signatories — would have been binding in the U.S., even though the U.S. withdrew from the WHO earlier this year.
While the proposals were watered down compared to earlier drafts, they contained provisions that would have given the WHO unprecedented authority.
In a video released today, Kennedy said the amendments were “a step in the wrong direction” that pose a threat to national sovereignty and facilitate the rollout of a global surveillance infrastructure and digital vaccine passports.
Kennedy said:
“The new regulations employ extremely broad language that gives the WHO unprecedented power. They require countries to establish systems of risk communications so that the WHO can implement unified public messaging globally. That opens the door to the kind of narrative management and propaganda and censorship that we saw during the COVID pandemic.”
Sayer Ji, co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom and chair of the Global Wellness Forum, said the rejection of the amendments is “a defining moment in human history” that symbolizes the rejection of a “worldview that reduces human beings to data points and treats constitutional protections as inconvenient obstacles to be circumvented.”
The rejection “sends a clarion call to the world that health freedom and national sovereignty remain non-negotiable principles that cannot be sacrificed on the altar of technocratic expediency,” Ji said.
According to the joint statement, the U.S. notified the WHO of its formal rejection of the amendments today. In his video, Kennedy said the U.S. was rejecting the amendments “not only on behalf of our own citizens, but the whole world.”
Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, agreed. She called today’s move an “important” step to rebut amendments that “clearly were designed as a pathway to global governance.”
According to independent journalist James Roguski, the U.S. is the second country to reject the amendments, after Israel.
Valerie Borek, policy director for Stand for Health Freedom, credited the health freedom movement’s efforts in defeating the amendments in the U.S. Borek said:
“Health freedom saw a big win with the rejection of the most recent IHR amendments by this administration. It’s a return to our Constitution, an acknowledgement that health decisions belong as close to home as possible, and shows the power of the movement.”
RFK Jr.: Amendments lay ‘groundwork for global medical surveillance’
The IHR provides “an overarching legal framework that defines countries’ rights and obligations in handling public health events and emergencies that have the potential to cross borders,” according to the WHO.
The existing IHR allows the WHO director-general to declare a public health emergency in any country without the consent of that country’s government, though it requires both sides to first attempt to reach an agreement.
HHS said the World Health Assembly passed the IHR amendments “through a rushed process lacking sufficient debate and public input.”
Kennedy highlighted several reasons for rejecting the amendments:
“Nations that accept the new regulations are signing over their power in health emergencies to an unelected international organization that could order lockdowns, travel restrictions or any other measures that it sees fit.
“In fact, it doesn’t even need to declare an emergency. Potential public health risks are enough for it to initiate action. If we’re going to give the WHO that much power, we should at least invite a thorough public debate.”
Kennedy said the amendments contain provisions relating to vaccine passports and the development of centralized medical databases.
“It lays the groundwork for global medical surveillance of every human being,” he said.
Kennedy also said the WHO’s response to COVID-19 showed that it shouldn’t be trusted with more power.
“During COVID, the WHO failed to enforce the International Health Regulations that were already in place for generations. China withheld critical information about the outbreak for at least a month, and faced no real consequences or criticism from WHO.
“These and other atrocities make one thing clear. We must strengthen national and local autonomy to hold global organizations in check and to restore a real balance of power underneath all the bureaucratic language.”
Dr. David Bell, a public health physician, biotech consultant and senior scholar at the Brownstone Institute, said Kennedy’s statement was “very rational and a refreshing change from the usual jargon-filled drivel that has been the main basis of support for the amendments.”
Bell said the main problem with the amendments is the “expansion of surveillance,” as they would be used to “fuel unfounded fear of pandemics and thereby become a lever for lockdowns and border closures and then mandated vaccination with mRNA vaccines.”
Nass said the amendments, even if weakened, still posed a threat to the global public. “They still strongly encourage nations to survey and censor their populations, and they provide a framework for more insidious global control in the future.”
Rubio said the amendments contained “vague and broad language,” which focuses on “political issues like solidarity, rather than rapid and effective actions.”
Rejection by U.S. ‘provides moral courage’ for other nations
However, according to the HHS-State Department joint statement, “These amendments were set to become binding on the United States regardless of our withdrawal from the WHO.” This is because the IHR is considered a binding international treaty to which the U.S. is a signatory and which is listed in the State Department’s list of “Treaties in Force.”
“Membership of the IHR is separate from WHO. The U.S. is still a signatory to the IHR, just rejecting the new amendments,” Bell said.
In his video, Kennedy said that because the IHR is a legally binding treaty, it “bypasses the U.S. Senate, which plays a key role in ensuring major international commitments receive proper democratic oversight.”
According to Nass, other countries, including Argentina, may reject the IHR by the July 19 deadline. She said the WHO doesn’t announce which countries reject the amendments.
In February, Argentine President Javier Milei announced Argentina would follow the U.S. in withdrawing from the WHO. However, it is not clear whether Argentina will also reject the IHR amendments.
In 2023, the WHO’s World Health Assembly passed a separate, smaller set of amendments that last year were rejected by some countries, including New Zealand and Iran. It’s unclear if these countries will reject the new amendments.
Ji said that the U.S. rejection of the amendments “provides moral courage and political cover for other nations to reclaim their own sovereignty” and “undermines both the legitimacy and enforceability of the WHO’s attempted consolidation of power.”
Bell said more countries should consider rejecting the amendments:
“If other countries follow this, they lose nothing, just keep more control over their own resources when a single person, the WHO director general, decides a theoretical risk from a new viral variant is worth declaring an emergency.”
RFK Jr.: ‘What’s at stake here is a vision for our future’
The amendments are separate from the WHO’s “Pandemic Agreement,” which the World Health Assembly passed in May. Eleven countries, including Israel, Italy, Poland, Russia, Iran and Slovakia, did not accept the agreement.
The Pandemic Agreement, widely referred to as the “pandemic treaty,” calls for “equitable and timely access to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.” Members are required to provide 20% of their supplies of these products to the WHO during a pandemic for distribution to poorer countries.
Before the Pandemic Agreement goes into effect, WHO member states must finalize an annex for the establishment of a Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system — a process that may take up to two years. The agreement must then be ratified by 60 countries.
Speaking to the World Health Assembly by video in May, before the passage of the Pandemic Agreement, Kennedy said the WHO “has become mired in bureaucratic bloat.”
“We need to reboot the whole system,” he said.
In his video today, Kennedy said, “What’s at stake here is a vision for our future.” He said:
“Are we going to be subjects to a technocratic control system that uses health risks and pandemic preparedness as a Trojan horse to curtail basic democratic freedoms? Do we want a future where every person, every movement, every transaction and every human body is under surveillance at all times?”
Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters are much like the evangelical supporters of Israel. (In fact, a large percentage of these two groups are one and the same.) Evangelicals defiantly refuse to believe that Cyrus Scofield (and their Dispensationalist pastors) lied to them; and MAGA supporters defiantly refuse to believe that Trump lied to them. But the peace and prosperity of America just might depend on MAGA facing the reality that Donald Trump has indeed lied to them.
Six months into Trump’s term in office have proven that the similarities between Donald Trump and Joe Biden are much more than the differences between them.
Ukraine
We all clearly remember Trump’s repeated campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” after taking office. Few people believed he could literally end the war in one day, but we all knew that the President of the United States had the power to end that conflict in a very brief period of time: a couple of weeks or less.
All Trump needed to do was terminate the U.S. munitions pipeline to Ukraine and withdraw ALL U.S. personnel—including and especially the CIA—from Ukraine. Had Trump done what he promised to do, the mass murderer and corrupt politician Volodymyr Zelensky would have been forced to cease his “stupid” (Trump’s word) proxy war with Russia, and the war would have ended posthaste—and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians would still be alive.
But what has Trump done? He has continued and is now expanding Ukraine’s (meaning America’s) stupid war.
US President Donald Trump will for the first time use his authority to send weapons drawn from Pentagon stockpiles directly to Ukraine, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing two people familiar with the decision.
While the Trump administration has so far only delivered weapons approved under his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) allows Trump to supply arms to Ukraine in an emergency.
The new shipment could reportedly be worth around $300 million and may include Patriot surface-to-air missiles as well as medium-range rockets.
The president confirmed earlier this week that he would send additional arms to Ukraine.
During his election campaign, Trump criticized Biden’s unconditional aid to Kiev and called Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “the greatest salesman on Earth” for persuading Democrats to keep weapons flowing.
Trump justifies this betrayal of the American people who voted for him in typical Trump fashion by turning his betrayal into a business deal. “The European Union is paying for them [America’s Patriot missiles]. We are not paying anything for them… This will be a business for us,” Trump spouted.
So, money for the war profiteers justifies the escalation of the Ukraine war. The military/industrial complex (and its allies in Congress) will continue to rake in huge financial profits off the blood of the Ukrainian people.
In an open letter to President Trump, Mark Dankof writes:
You have lied to the American public on the Russian-Ukrainian war. Instead of acknowledging that the United States had no business engaging in a coup d’etat in Kiev in February of 2014 and continuing the illegitimate policy of expanding NATO to encircle Russia, your latest decision to arm Zelensky further has now made Mr. Biden’s War, Mr. Trump’s War. Apparently no one has informed you that Mr. Putin and the Russians have already won this conflict and have decided after the Minsk and Istanbul negotiation frauds, the Nord Stream pipeline bombing, and the Dugina Assassination among others, that acquiescence to your game playing is not going to happen. The only question remaining is whether or not the entirety of Ukraine is going to be destroyed and annexed by Russia with remaining Ukrainians confined to residence in a blue-and-yellow flag cemetery not of their choice. Your policy pivots only prolong the possibility of direct American military involvement in a war the United States cannot win for reasons not related at all to the national security of this country.
MAGA: Donald Trump lied to you!
Wars For Israel
Israel’s genocidal slaughter of innocent Palestinians in Gaza continues unabated with 100 children being murdered or wounded every day, as Donald Trump continues providing the murderous madman Benjamin Netanyahu with a perpetual supply of billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. munitions, with at least two C-130 cargo planes arriving in Israel each week.
Many of the Palestinian victims are being massacred as they arrive at Israeli ambush points (aka food distribution centers). Added to the ugliness of America’s involvement in Israel’s war lust is that many American mercenaries (soldiers of fortune) are in Israel working as snipers to pick off the Palestinian people one by one.
Furthermore, Trump is collaborating with Netanyahu on the plan to force Gazans into concentration camps and proceed with Trump’s goal of turning Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East.
Instead of ending Israel’s wars in the Middle East, Trump not only has continued the genocide in Gaza, but he has also expanded the war to include the U.S. bombing of Yemen and Iran and an expanded Israeli assault against the West Bank and Lebanon—not to mention Trump’s support for the ISIS/al Qaeda terrorist takeover of Syria, which was done to create a second war front against Iran.
And speaking of Syria, please read (watch) this report. This is what the terrorist Jihadists—that Donald Trump helped put in control of Syria, lifted sanctions for, removed “terrorist” designation from and had his picture taken shaking hands with—are doing with Trump’s new found favor.
I mean REALLY read and watch the report. Then try to convince yourself that Donald Trump is a well-intentioned man who truly loves people and wants what’s best for the Middle East, for Christians and for America. Keep telling yourself that as you bury your soul and harden your heart to continue following a monster.
The result? On top of your commissioned assassination of General Soleimani and American withdrawal from JCPOA in your first term, this second term military assault has resulted in Iranian withdrawal from the NPT, the booting of an Israeli-friendly IAEA out of Iran, and an understandable resolve on the part of the Iranians to avoid any further dialogue with the United States.
Former Army Intelligence Officer and CIA Case Officer Philip Giraldi summarizes Trump’s betrayal of his peace promises this way:
And so it goes, so much lying and dissimulation that one has to wonder what surprises will be on the table next week. The fog of war may have lifted for now and the phony ceasefire between Israel and Iran has paused the immediate bloodshed, but don’t be fooled. The respite is to allow an exhausted Israel to rearm with US provided weapons so the neoconservatives and the Israel Firsters aren’t done. The war drums are still beating, and Trump’s America First movement is starting to fracture under the strain, with a growing divide inside MAGA over America’s pointless wars for Israel. One group wants to stay out of foreign conflicts while the other is ready to back Israel completely, no matter the cost. Trump is either consciously or inadvertently playing his usual role of spewing contradictions and sowing confusion and instability every time he speaks or acts. Israel cannot retreat, it can only continue on its path of blood and slaughter, and Iran will not surrender. This might create in the near and long run the potential for a major false flag operation by Israel to draw the US in and trigger a full-blown war against Iran.
MAGA: Donald Trump lied to you!
Epstein Files
One of Trump’s first stated items of business after taking office was to release the Epstein files. But only a few days ago, we all saw Trump’s angry determination to maintain the Epstein coverup.
In Johnson’s report, he shows the first page of Epstein’s client list, which was compiled by historian/researcher Ryan Dawson. Johnson writes:
Although Donald Trump and Pam Bondi insist that there is no Epstein Client List… there is a list and it is reproduced above with the permission of its author, Ryan Dawson. Ryan compiled the list the old-fashioned way… he combed through court transcripts and charging documents. He only put names on the list if the victims of Epstein’s pedophilia enterprise identified or named a particular individual. As you peruse the list you will notice that there are some very wealthy, powerful individuals named. Not one of them has brought a libel or slander legal action against Ryan. If he was posting false material, he would have been a certain target of lawsuits.
Of course, we all saw the defiant Donald Trump when he was asked at a press conference about the Epstein files. By his brutish reaction, it is obvious that Trump has no intention of releasing the Epstein files. Why not?
In his report, Larry Johnson opines:
So why has Donald Trump broken his promise to publish the list? I think there are two reasons — neither mutually exclusive. First, Donald Trump probably paid no attention to Ryan’s work and was never familiar with the list. Once he signed the executive order to publish the Epstein file, he was then briefed on the actual names and realized that many of them are major donors to his campaign, e.g., Jamie Dimon, Robert Kraft. While there are several names on that list who are confirmed anti-Trumpers, there are others who are friends.
Second, and in my opinion a more important consideration, is that the full Epstein file would expose a foreign intelligence blackmail operation that implicates the Mossad and the CIA. Alexander Acosta, the former Secretary of Labor for Donald Trump, said he was told that Jeffrey Epstein had ties to intelligence. During the controversy surrounding his handling of Epstein’s 2008 plea deal as a US attorney, Acosta reportedly told Trump administration officials that he had been informed Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” and that this was a reason for the unusually lenient plea agreement. It would not surprise me that Bibi Netanyahu asked Trump to pull the plug on releasing the material. Did Trump get something in return from Bibi?
Paul Craig Roberts seconds Johnson’s speculated Epstein-Mossad connection:
As Epstein was murdered to keep him quiet, it was obvious no files would be released. AG Bondi said she had the files and videos and was going through them. But then the men in black paid a visit, and suddenly there were no files. Moreover, the authorities concluded that Epstein committed suicide in his prison cell. So we are left with the puzzle, there is no evidence that Epstein did anything wrong, so he committed suicide for no reason. If Epstein had no client list, to whom was he trafficking the minors?
This is not a “who is the most MAGA, Bondi or Bongino, situation.” It is the ruling elite preventing the whistle from being blown on them, backed up by Netanyahu making sure Trump understands that Epstein’s connection to Mossad does not come up. Indeed, that and not Iran could be the real reason for Netanyahu’s visit. If Iran was the reason, how come we have not heard anything about the discussion or decision?
The situation seems clear enough. So many important people are ensnared in videos engaged in sex with underaged persons that it must be hushed up. Otherwise, Americans will lose confidence in their leadership class. So folks there is nothing there. The Clintons and the princes and all the others were flown to Epstein’s island where there were underaged sexual attractions just to see the island and to have tea with Epstein, a math teacher who somehow overnight became super rich.
The probable Epstein story is that Israel, knowing of the sexual perversion rife among the American leadership class, set up Epstein to ensnare those who could be blackmailed to conform American policies with Israel’s interest. How else do we explain the US spending the 21st century fighting wars for Israel, protecting and enabling Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, passing laws that protect Israel from protests and boycotts and preventing Americans from stating the truth about Israel?
America has been the instrument of Israeli aggression. Israel has so much blackmail power over the American ruling class that the United States of America is locked into its role as Israel’s agent.
MAGA: Donald Trump lied to you!
At the beginning of this column I wrote, “the peace and prosperity of America just might depend on MAGA facing the reality that Donald Trump has indeed lied to them.” I strongly believe that this statement is a factual reality.
Trump’s inability to seriously study and concentrate, his inability to reason and negotiate, his inability to realize that he really doesn’t know everything about everything and his inability to recognize the very clear and present danger in which he is putting America threaten America’s very existence.
Donald Trump is a reckless, feckless egomaniac. We will be extremely fortunate if America is not engulfed in a major financial collapse and embroiled in a major nuclear conflict before the midterm elections next year.
The only hope is that Trump’s MAGA base will awaken to his delirious deceptions in such force and with such fury as to convince Donald Trump to return to his campaign promises. MAGA is the only entity that can accomplish this feat. As long as MAGA covers for Trump, he will continue his Helter-Skelter subordination to the Neocon/Zionist/Uniparty agenda that could very easily (and very probably) lead to catastrophe.
Why the News Promotes Ignorance and Mental Illness
“News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, easily digestible and extremely damaging.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Most people think that consuming the news makes one an informed citizen who is equipped to form intelligent opinions on social and political issues. In this video, drawing from the Swiss author Rolf Dobelli’s book Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life, we argue that the opposite is true: news consumption fosters ignorance, intolerance, passivity, and chronic stress.
“News organisations want you to believe they’re giving you a competitive advantage. Plenty of people fall for this. In fact, consuming the news is far from a competitive advantage; it actively disadvantages you…There’s no question that the dross we’re spoon-fed every day is not only completely worthless but actively damaging.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
To understand one of the problems with news consumption, we can turn to a well-known set of experiments conducted by psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier in the 1960s. In these studies, rats were subjected to electric shocks. One group could stop the shocks by turning a wheel; the other group had no means of escape. The first group of rats did not display any adverse effects to the shocks, but the rats that were powerless to stop the shocks developed what Seligman and Maier called learned helplessness — which is a condition marked by passivity, reduced motivation, and anhedonia – the inability to feel pleasure.
In many ways, the news functions like these electric shocks. We are continually bombarded with distressing reports that provoke stress, anxiety, fear, and a sense of hopelessness. Yet instead of turning off the news or taking meaningful action on the issues that concern us, we continue – day after day, year after year – to expose ourselves to this steady stream of negativity. In doing so, we place ourselves in a similar position to the helpless rats and we gradually develop a learned helplessness that insidiously seeps into our personal life. Or as Dobelli writes:
“…learned helplessness doesn’t just make us passive about what’s on the news…Learned helplessness spills over into every area of our lives. Once the news has made us passive, we tend to behave passively towards our family and our jobs as well – precisely where we do have room for manoeuvre. British media researcher Jodie Jackson takes a similar view: ‘When we tune into the news, we are constantly confronted with unresolved problems and the narrative does not inspire much hope that they will ever be solved.’ It’s no surprise, then, that we feel depressed when we consume the news, which confronts us with problems that are mostly impossible to solve.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Another major problem with news consumption is that it promotes ignorance. Thomas Jefferson recognized this in 1807 when he wrote that:
“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.”
Thomas Jefferson, Memoirs, Correspondence, Private Letters
One of the reasons the news leaves us less informed is because it radically oversimplifies what it reports on. The world is a complex system, and social, political, and environmental issues are not linear phenomena with one or two clear causes. They are chaotic, non-linear processes shaped by hundreds, if not thousands, of interwoven factors – far beyond the capacity of the human mind to fully comprehend. Yet instead of acknowledging this complexity with intellectual humility and grappling with it through in-depth reporting, the news reduces events to simplistic narratives, sound bites, and catchphrases – which it presents as the truth. In doing so, the news distorts the reality of what it claims to explain. Or as Dobelli writes:
“Any journalist who writes ‘The market fell because of X’ or ‘The company went bankrupt because of Y’ is either an idiot or trying to pull the wool over their readers’ eyes. True, X and Y may well have had a causal impact, but this is far from proven – and other influences may well have been much more significant…News has to be extremely short even as it tells a story. This can only be done through a brutal process of simplification…Since the news is so telescoped, it’s necessarily a bullshit explanation…In this way consumers are given the illusion that the world is simpler and more explicable than it actually is, and the quality of their decision-making suffers.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
To make matters worse, these simplified explanations of social and political events are far from unbiased. Rather, they are filtered through the news outlet’s political agenda and shaped by the interests of government agencies and corporate advertisers. The media entrepreneur Clay Johnson admitted that: “For every reporter in the United States, there are more than four public relations specialists working hard to get them to write what their bosses want them to say.” (Clay Johnson, The Information Diet) The 20th century American writer Upton Sinclair asked: “When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda?”(Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check) Or as Dobelli echoes:
“These days it’s much harder to distinguish between truthful, unbiased news items and those with an ulterior motive. There’s a vast industry of lobbying and leverage at work behind the scenes.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
By concealing its political biases, ulterior motives, and manipulative intentions behind reductive narratives and simplistic explanations that make the world seem far more comprehensible than it is, the news cultivates an intellectual hubris in its consumers. Today, many people hold strong opinions on virtually every issue amplified by the media, and with each new trending news topic, public discourse and social media are flooded with self-assured commentary. In effect, the news is cultivating a population of true believers; that is, individuals who are so convinced they know the truth that they are intolerant and even hateful toward those who hold opposing views. Hence, news consumption deepens societal polarization, erodes the possibility of civic discourse, and turns neighbors who might otherwise be friends into ideological enemies.
In an age when, thanks in large part to the news, the average citizen is highly opinionated, profoundly ignorant, and increasingly intolerant, the following wisdom of Marcus Aurelius is sorely needed:
‘You are at liberty not to form opinions about all and sundry, thereby sparing your soul unrest.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Or as Dobelli echoes:
“…it’s a serious mistake to think we need to form an opinion about everything. Ninety per cent of our opinions are superfluous. Yet the news is constantly urging us to form opinions. This robs us of concentration and inner peace…if you unleash a whirlwind of news on the population, it polarises the public…News and comments about the news bring out the worst in humanity…You only have to read the comments underneath any online article. The hatred you find there is alarming…”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Consuming the news also erodes our ability to think deeply and sustain focus. In the past, the amount of news one could consume was limited by the distribution of newspapers or the production of an evening news broadcast. Today, twenty-four-hour news channels, websites, and social media feeds bombard us with a never-ending stream of news headlines that keep our minds in a state of perpetual distraction. According to the Pew Research Center, the average person consumes about 60 news items a day, or 20,000 a year. And as researchers at the University of Tokyo have observed, the greater number of news items one consumes the fewer neurons they have in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain critical for attention, impulse control, and moral reasoning. And as Dobelli writes:
“If you watch a news junkie, you’ll see this in action: their concentration span shrinks and they have trouble controlling their emotions…I always notice that the most passionate consumers of the news – even if they were once also passionate bookworms – no longer have the ability to read longer articles or books. After four or five pages they get tired, their attention dissipates, and they get restless. It’s not because they’re getting older or busier. Rather, the physical structure of their brain has changed.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
The news also feeds the undercurrents of stress and anxiety that plague modern life. Producers of the news exploit our negativity bias, or our predisposition to react more strongly to negative information than positive, with reports of wars, heinous crimes, riots, political gossip and turmoil, economic instability, potential pandemics and climate catastrophes. Graham Davey, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Sussex University and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, has demonstrated through his research that the more one consumes news the more stress and anxiety one suffers in daily life. And given that stress inhibits the functioning of our immune system and is implicated in a wide range of disease, we can safely say the news is making us sick. Or as Dobelli writes:
“…consuming the news reduces your quality of life. You will be more stressed, more on edge, more susceptible to disease, and you’ll die earlier. That’s an especially sad piece of news – but one that does, at least, deserve your attention.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Because the news is so damaging to individual and societal well-being, Dobelli advocates for radical abstinence – cutting the news out of our lives entirely. For those skeptical about giving it up for good, Dobelli suggests we experiment with abstaining from the news for 30 days. During this period, the psychological and emotional benefits of news abstention become apparent and as Dobelli notes, very few who try this experiment will choose to go back. Or as he writes:
“During the initial stage of abstinence…you’ll have to literally force yourself not to consume any news…So – what should you do if you relapse? The same thing an alcoholic would: simply start again, reinstituting a zero-tolerance policy…For ten years I’ve consistently practised what I preach. The impact on my quality of life and decision-making has been remarkable. Try it. You’ve got nothing to lose. You have so much to gain.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
Abstaining from the news does not mean we have to stick our head in the sand and remain ignorant about important social, political, and world events. For we have access to a wide range of informational sources that can help us stay informed without falling prey to the pitfalls of news consumption. Long-form content, such as books, well-researched articles, podcasts, documentaries, textbooks, online courses, and academic journals, offer the depth and nuance needed to do greater justice to the complexity of world events, in a way that the news – with its short-form, oversimplified, biased reporting – cannot.
“Read books and long articles that do justice to the complexity of the world…After a few months, you’ll be rewarded with a clearer understanding of the world…Long-form pieces are the opposite of the news…Much of their content is valuable, providing new insights and background information. But be careful: these formats are far from a guarantee of relevance.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
With a clearer understanding of the world, we are better equipped to act as a genuine force for good in society. Dobelli notes that when he raises the idea of abstaining from the news, many respond with the following concern: If we stop following the news, who will hold the powerful accountable and drive social change? Yet given that the news manipulates public opinion — frequently to the advantage of those in power — and fosters learned helplessness rather than action, it should come as no surprise that “the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, [and] the fall of the Soviet Union… did not need current affairs programmes, news websites or feeds.” (Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News)The most influential figures of these movements informed themselves – and inspired others – through books, pamphlets, public gatherings, speeches, debates, and meaningful conversation. For example, during the American Revolution Thomas Paine’s 47-page pamphlet Common Sense was profoundly influential in sparking revolutionary sentiment in America.
“How did people stay informed? They thought, and they debated…Is political discourse even possible without the news? This question suggests that one can only form a well-founded opinion via the news media. Yet that isn’t true.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
While abstaining from the news can reduce our ignorance and make us more aware of social issues, it also gives us the opportunity to redirect our attention toward what truly matters and what we can influence — our mental and physical health, our relationships, and our work. Two thousand years ago, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus opened his Enchiridion with the timeless insight: “Some things are in our control and others are not.” He went on to teach that peace of mind and a flourishing life depend on investing our time and energy on what lies within our power. And as Dobelli continues:
“Nintey-nine point nine per cent of all world events are outside your control…Devote your energies to things you can influence. There are more than enough of those – but an earthquake on the other side of the planet isn’t one of them.”
Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News
According to the Pew Research Center, the average American spends between 58 and 96 minutes a day consuming news. Over the course of a year, this amounts to nearly an entire month of news consumption. But given the many harms we have explored, news consumption is more than just an enormous waste of time – it is a kind of mental poison. In choosing to abstain from the news, we cleanse and detoxify our mind and improve our psychological health.
“Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Or as Dobelli concludes:
“The news is mental pollution. Keep your brain clean. It’s your most important organ…Still worried about missing ‘something important’? In my experience, when something truly important happens, you hear about it even if you’re living in a protected news-cocoon…Big news will inevitably leak out and find you…And if somehow you don’t hear about the bus attack, it doesn’t matter. On the contrary, you should be pleased. Worse things may be happening on other planets, and we are comfortable remaining in the dark.”
The phenomenon of failing upward is only too familiar among the ranks of Australian politicians. People from other countries also come readily to mind as examples, including former US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and European Union President Ursula von der Leyen. Lately we’ve also witnessed this with an international organisation.
The World Health Assembly is the governing body of the World Health Organisation (WHO). It’s been meeting in Geneva this week (19–27 May) to adopt a new pandemic treaty that will reward the WHO for its gross mismanagement of the Covid pandemic by strengthening the framework for global health cooperation under WHO auspices. The accord’s focus is on building a global surveillance system to detect emerging pathogens and respond swiftly with coordinated measures, including the development and equitable distribution of medical countermeasures.
Yet, the premise of the accords is an inflated account of pandemic risk that is simply not supported by historical evidence. As a result, its effect will be to badly distort health priorities away from the real health needs and other social and economic goals of many countries. Only 11 countries abstained with 124 countries voting in support of adopting the new accords. The treaty will enter into force when 60 countries have ratified it.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to give any bureaucracy and its head the power to declare a pandemic emergency that will expand its reach, authority, budget, and personnel and shift the balance of decision-making away from states to an unelected globalist bureaucrat? Or to adopt a One Health approach when the empirical reality is of sharply differentiated health vulnerabilities and disease burdens between regions? We need devolution, not more centralisation, with the principle of subsidiarity linking the distribution of authority and resources at the different levels.
Before empowering the WHO to cause even more harm, we should first investigate its Covid failings and decide if major reform can overcome the accumulated vested interests or if we need a new international health organisation. Any organisation that has been around for 80 years has either succeeded in its core mission, in which case it should be wound down out of existence. Or else it has failed, in which case it should be abolished and replaced by a new one that is more fit for purpose in today’s world.
WHO’s Failures to Speak Truth to Power and Profit
Speaking at a media briefing in Geneva on 3 March 2020, WHO Director-General (DG) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Covid’s case fatality rate (CFR) was 3.4 percent, against the seasonal flu’s CFR of below 1 percent. Addressing an internal meeting of the body negotiating a new pandemic agreement on 7 April 2025, he said: ‘Officially 7 million people were killed [by Covid], but we estimate the true toll to be 20 million.’
It’s hard to see why both statements, delivered five years apart as bookends to the Covid pandemic, do not constitute examples of misinformation. They are tantamount to catastrophisation and fear-mongering that spread alarm around the world at a rapid pace to begin with and then underpinned WHO efforts to commandeer even more powers and resources for future pandemic emergencies to be declared at the sole judgment of the WHO DG (Article 12 of the IHR). Yet in earlier drafts of the new pandemic accord, anyone who questioned the two sets of statistics would be guilty of spreading misinformation and could be sanctioned. For, like New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, the WHO must be revered as the single source of pandemic truth for the whole world.
On the total Covid mortality toll, forget the 20 million estimate. Almost all the alarmist calculations at the upper end of Covid-related deaths are derived from GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) computer modelling, not hard data. Even the seven million total does not discount the number of people in that age bracket (remember, the average age of Covid death is higher than life expectancy) who would have died of old age in the five-year period anyway. Nor those who died because early detection of treatable conditions were cancelled as part of lockdown measures; those who were admitted to hospitals with unrelated ailments but contracted Covid there; those who died with Covid after being injected with a Covid vaccine once, twice, or multiple times; or those who might have died from vaccine injuries.
As for the CFR, many experts immediately expressed scepticism that it was as high as 3.4 percent. Some cautioned against generalising from the distinctive Chinese experience. Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Edinburgh University, said as early as 4 March 2020 that the 3.4 percent CFR estimate could be up to ‘ten times too high,’ bringing it into line with some strains of influenza.
Firstly, the CFR is extremely challenging to estimate during an epidemic and in particular in its early days: it takes time for reliable data and trends to emerge, collate, and identify. The best estimates of CFR can only come when an epidemic is over. Deaths are confirmed as and when they occur but many early cases are missed or not reported. The true CFR and infection fatality rates (IFR) cannot be estimated until population seroprevalence (antibody) surveys are undertaken to establish the proportion of individuals who were infected, including those who did not manifest symptoms.
Yet, infamously, when Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya [now the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)] and colleagues became the first to publish the results of a seroprevalence survey in Santa Clara County, California in early April 2020 which showed up a significantly higher infected population implying a correspondingly lower fatality rates, he was ferociously vilified and even investigated (but cleared) by his university. The results did not fit the catastrophist narrative. Yet another study by a different team in Orange County, California in February 2021 confirmed that the seroprevalence rate was seven times higher than the official county statistics. Other survey results from Germany and the Netherlands were also consistent with a higher infection rate.
Early data – from China, Italy, Spain, the Diamond Princess cruise ship – told us in February–March 2020 already that the most vulnerable were elderly people with existing serious health conditions. An early study from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention also confirmed the steep age gradient of Covid-related mortality: 0.2-0.4 percent for under-50s rising to 14.8 percent for those 80 and above. As early as 7 May 2020, a mainstream outlet like the BBC published a chart showing the risk of dying with Covid closely tracking the ‘normal’ distribution of age-stratified death rates.
In an October 2022 study that looked at 31 pre-vaccination national seroprevalence covering 29 countries to estimate the IFR stratified by age, John Ioannidis and his team found that the average IFR was 0.0003 percent at 0-19 years, 0.002 percent at 20-29 years, 0.011 percent at 30-39 years, and 0.035 percent at 40-49 years. The median for 0-59 year-olds was just 0.034 percent. These are well within and often lower than the seasonal flu range for the under-60s. The under-70s make up 94 percent of the world’s population or about 7.3 billion people. The age-stratified survival rate of healthy under-70s who were infected by Covid-19 before vaccines became available was a staggering 99.905 percent. For children and adolescents under 20, the survival rate is 99.9997 percent.
Experts from Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence Based Medicine used subsequent actual data to back-calculate a survival rate of 99.9992 percent for healthy under-20s in Britain. Official data from the UK Office for National Statistics for 1990–2020 show that the age-standardised mortality rate (deaths per 100,000 people) in England and Wales in 2020 was lower in 19 of the previous 30 years. Remember, this is before vaccines.
The doomsday model from Imperial College London’s Neil Ferguson on 16 March 2020 that precipitated lockdowns estimated the survival rate to be twenty times lower. There is a long track record of abysmally wrong catastrophist predictions on infectious diseases from this Pied Piper of Pandemic Porn: mad cow disease in 2002, avian flu in 2005, swine flu in 2009. Given his past record, why did anyone in authority give him a platform to propagate ‘The sky is falling’ yet again? He remains with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling at Imperial College London. This in itself is a sad and sorry indictment of the WHO.
The Disease Burden Spread by Income Level of Countries
According to Our World in Data, in the five years from 4 January 2020 to 4 January 2025, 7.08 million people were officially confirmed as having died with Covid-19 around the world. According to the same source, 14 percent of the world’s 55 million deaths in 2019 were due to infectious diseases, including pneumonia and other lower respiratory diseases 4.4 percent, 2.7 percent diarrheal, and 2 percent tuberculosis. Another 74 percent were caused by noncommunicable diseases: 33 percent from heart diseases, 18 percent from cancers, and 7 percent from chronic respiratory diseases as the three leading causes of deaths in the year before Covid.
If we do a simple linear extrapolation, that means that in the same five-year period since January 2020, around 203.5 million people would have died from noncommunicable diseases and another 38.5 million from non-Covid infectious diseases (Table 1).
The sum of mortality and morbidity is called the ‘burden of disease.’ This is measured by a metric called ‘Disability Adjusted Life Years’ (DALYs). These are standardised units to measure years of lost health that help to compare the burden of different diseases in different countries, populations, and times. Conceptually, one DALY represents one lost year of healthy life – it is the equivalent of losing one year in good health because of either premature death or disease or disability.
Our World in Data breaks the disease burden down into three categories of disability or disease: noncommunicable diseases; communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases; and injuries. Figure 1 illustrates the importance of disaggregating the disease burden, as measured by DALYs, between the low- and high-income countries instead of lumping them into one catch-all category that loses conceptual coherence. The total DALYs in the former in 2021 were 331.3 million and in the latter, 401.2 million.
In the low-income countries, the percentage share of DALYs due to communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases was 55.8 percent, while that due to noncommunicable diseases was 34.7 percent. But in the high-income countries, they were 10.5 and 81.1 percent. That is why Covid-19 was a relatively far more serious threat to the rich countries compared to the poor countries. But even for them, this was true only during the brief period of the pandemic, which reduces to a mere blip in the long view.
The relative disease burden of pandemics is even less salient when we recall that in the period during which the WHO has been in existence, the only other pandemics to have occurred were the Asian and Hong Kong flu pandemics in 1957–58 and 1968–69, in each of which around two million people died (the WHO gives the death estimates as 1.1 and 1 million respectively – thanks David Bell); and the swine flu pandemic in 2009–10, in which between 0.1 and 1.9 million people died (the WHO estimates the range as 123,000-203,000). The Russian flu pandemic of 1977 was even milder. The historical timeline of pandemics shows how improvements in sanitation, hygiene, potable water, antibiotics, and other forms of expanding access to good healthcare have massively reduced the morbidity and mortality of pandemics since the Spanish flu (1918–20) in which 50-100 million people are estimated to have died.
Pandemics Require Policy Trade-Offs
In responding to an epidemic or pandemic, there is a trade-off between public health, economic stability, and individual well-being. It is the duty of health professionals to focus solely on the first. It is the responsibility of governments to strike the optimum balance and intuit the social fulcrum: the sweet spot at the intersection of dangerous complacency, alarmist panic, and reasonable precautions. The injunction to first do no harm implies that governments should be wary of prolonged economic lockdowns: the cure might indeed be worse than the disease. In earlier flu epidemics, the numbers infected and killed were sufficient to produce a severe impact on society. But governments didn’t shut down their country, destroy the economy nor jeopardise their way of life. People suffered but endured.
In the case of Covid-19, almost all the mistakes and damage can be traced back to two mutually contradictory assumptions, neither of which was ever revised back to the mean. First, assume the absolute worst about the pandemic on infectivity, speed of progression in the infected, rate of cross-infection, lethality, and lack of treatment options. Second, assume the very best about the effectiveness of all policy interventions, regardless of the existing science and lack of any real world data (some rules like universal masking and two-metre physical separation were based on rushed but flawed research and guesswork), the cries of caution from a wide range of well-credentialled and well-meaning specialists with no private agenda and financial conflicts of interest, and the need for careful analyses of the risk profiles of population cohorts for the virus and the harms-benefits equation of interventions. The two sets of extreme assumptions were then used to embark on radical new interventions that had never before been tried at global and universal scale.
WHO’s Sins of Commission and Omission
The WHO should have stepped in immediately as the international institutional firewall against this. It did not. The top leadership of the WHO joined national health-bureaucracy counterparts in the world’s most powerful and influential countries in the belief that they knew best and colluded in the brutal drowning of all dissenting voices. The consequences were catastrophic and have caused lasting damage to public health. Dr Jay Bhattacharya, the new NIH director, was interviewed by Politico recently. He identified both his own NIH and the WHO as among the leading examples of institutions of this dual pathology. They:
… convinced governments around the world that the only way to save lives was to follow the lockdown path and that they needed extraordinary, almost dictatorial powers, suppressing free speech, suppressing freedom of movement, suppressing the principle of informed consent in medical decision-making, controlling nearly every single aspect of society, designating who’s essential and who’s not essential, closing churches, closing businesses.
And they made this decision for the whole world…
The WHO failed the peoples of the world by becoming a cheerleader for panicked responses instead of holding the line on existing science, knowledge, and experience. This was summarised in its own report of 19 September 2019 that advised against lockdowns, other than for very short periods, border closures, masks in general community settings, etc. The WHO proved too credulous of early Chinese data on the risk of human-human transmission, no Wuhan lab origin, lethality, and effectiveness of tough containment measures. The first WHO panel to investigate the origins of Covid was riddled with conflicts of interest of key panel members and again gave China a free pass. A follow-up investigation was thwarted by active non-cooperation from China, for which it failed to be held to account.
Other WHO sins of commission included exaggerations of Covid lethality by presenting highly inflated case fatality rates; obfuscation on the age-stratified risk profile of severe illness and mortality from Covid; unscientific recommendations on mask mandates and later vaccine passports, or at least failure to combat them; and complicity in the human rights abuses committed in pursuit of the fool’s gold of Covid eradication. For example, the SARS-CoV-2 virus was never a good candidate for vaccination owing to its low virulence, high transmissibility, and rapid mutation characteristics. Nor did it take long for data to confirm the highly unfavourable risk-benefit equation of Covid-19 vaccines.
Sins of omission included downplaying the predictable and predicted short and long-term health, mental health, educational, economic, social, and human rights harms of the drastic interventions like school closures; the escalation of avoidable non-Covid deaths through disrupted food production and distribution, disrupted childhood immunisation programs in low income countries and deferred and cancelled early detection programs and treatment of cancers, etc in industrialised countries; the deaths of despair of elderly people cut off from the emotional support crutches of loved family; the inflationary spirals that are yet to subside from government support schemes to compensate for loss of incomes owing to economic shutdowns; and the substantial erosion of trust in public institutions in general and public health institutions in particular.
WHO advice on Covid management also seemed to prioritise the high disease burden of industrialised over developing countries and the interests of the major global pharmaceutical companies over patients, for example in the way that the promising potential of some repurposed drugs with well-established safety profiles were discounted and even mocked and ridiculed instead of being impartially investigated. Yet, there have been no admissions of culpability, no apologies for the extensive and lasting damage inflicted, and no accountability for those responsible for unleashing and cheerleading the public policy insanity.
Trump’s America Exits the WHO
Of course, WHO recommendations are not legally binding obligations on treaty signatories. The treaty explicitly states that nothing in it gives the WHO or the DG ‘any authority to direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe’ any policy; or to mandate or…impose any requirements’ that states parties ‘take specific actions’ like travel bans, vaccination mandates, or lockdowns (Article 22.2). However, the very first function of the WHO is described in its constitution as ‘to act as the directing and coordinating authority on international health work’ (Article 2.a). The Pandemic Treaty’s preamble recognises that the WHO ‘is the directing and coordinating authority on international health work, including on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.’
In combination with the amended International Health Regulations (IHR) that come into force this September and which must and will be read in parallel, the political reality is that member states will be enmeshed into the international pandemic management framework led by international technocrats who lack the legitimacy of democratically elected political leaders, are not in practice accountable, and who have been given this enhanced directive role without meaningful parliamentary scrutiny or public debate by citizens.
Nothing in the Covid experience inspires confidence about the willingness and capacity of political leaders to resist WHO recommendations in this global institutional milieu. Rather, a de facto realignment of chairs at the decision-making table will see the experts take up positions at the head of the table instead of merely being present at the table to aid and advise. This is why the pandemic accords are the latest waystations on the journey to an international administrative state that consolidates what Garrett Brown, David Bell, and Blagovesta Tacheva call the globe-spanning ‘new pandemic industry.’
The Trump administration, at least, is trying to resist the march to the collectivist destination. On 21 January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the WHO. The WHO confronts a $2.5 billion shortfall between 2025 and 2027. Its financial situation is not helped by Trump’s decision to pull the US out. On 20 May, as the 78th meeting of the World Health Assembly got underway in Geneva to vote on the new pandemic treaty, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr explained why. Addressing his counterparts from other countries in a brief video message on X, he said the US withdrawal should serve as ‘a wake-up call’ to other countries that, ‘like many legacy institutions,’ the WHO has been corrupted by political and corporate interests and ‘is mired in bureaucratic bloat.’
Since inception, the WHO has accomplished important work, including the eradication of smallpox. More recently, however, its ‘priorities have increasingly reflected the biases and interests of corporate medicine.’ ‘Too often it has allowed political agendas, like pushing harmful gender ideology, to hijack its core mission.’ In an echo of my earlier lament above, Kennedy said that ‘The WHO has not even come to terms with its failures during Covid, let alone made significant reforms.’ Instead it has doubled down with the pandemic agreement ‘which will lock in all of the dysfunctions of the WHO pandemic response.’
‘Global cooperation on health is still critically important,’ but ‘not working very well under the WHO,’ Kennedy said. Countries like China have been allowed to exert a malign influence on WHO operations in pursuit of their own interests rather than in service of the people of the world. When it comes to democratic countries, actions of the WHO suggest a failure to acknowledge that its members are and must remain accountable to their citizens and neither to transnational nor to corporate interests. ‘We want to free international health cooperation from the straitjacket of political interference by corrupting influences of the pharmaceutical companies, of adversarial nations, and their NGO proxies.’
‘We need to reboot the whole system,’ he concluded, and shift our focus to the prevalence of chronic diseases that are sickening peoples and bankrupting health systems. This will better serve the needs of people instead of maximising industry profit. ‘Let’s create new institutions or revisit existing institutions that are lean, efficient, transparent, and accountable. Whether it’s an emergency outbreak of an infectious disease or the pervasive rot of chronic conditions,’ the US is ready to work with others.
That is a clear and compelling rationale put forward by Kennedy for the US withdrawal from the WHO. The international elite will circle the wagons to defend the expansion of the international administrative state. The political leaders in thrall to the expert class will genuflect to their advice. Those seduced by the idealism of international solidarity and others corrupted by the lucre of pharmaceutical lobbyists will not be persuaded by Kennedy. Competent leaders of self-confident countries, however, should take up his offer to nest the ethic of global health cooperation in a new specialised international organisation that better respects the health sovereignty of member states and the health needs of people.
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Author
Ramesh Thakur, a Brownstone Institute Senior Scholar, is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, and emeritus professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
