Monday, August 18, 2025

Global Governance vs. Democratic Sovereignty

Global Governance vs. Democratic Sovereignty

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Brownstone Journal
Global Governance vs. Democratic Sovereignty

On 27 May 2022, Carl Bildt, the former prime minister (PM) of Sweden, wrote: ‘The pandemic offers important lessons for managing future challenges, particularly climate change’, which ‘warrants urgent attention.’ In chapter 12 of Our Enemy, the Government, I described ten points that climate change and pandemic management policies have in common on their respective agendas:
  1. The claim to represent The Science™ on the basis of an artificially manufactured scientific consensus;
  2. A mismatch between abstract mathematical and computer models and hard data and evidence;
  3. The deliberate spreading of fear and panic in the population as a means to grab attention and spur drastic political action;
  4. In order to sustain the scientific consensus, the exaggeration of supporting evidence, discrediting of contrary evidence, silencing of sceptical voices, and marginalisation and mockery of dissenters;
  5. The enormous expansion of powers for the nanny state that bosses citizens and businesses because governments know best and can pick winners and losers, yet in practice, a record of overpromising and underdelivering;
  6. Framing the agenda as primarily a moral crusade and dissent and noncompliance as immoral;
  7. Widening inequality between the laptop class ‘everywheres’ and the working class ‘nowheres,’ or the ‘have yachts’ versus the ‘have nots;’
  8. Hypocrisy, meaning the mismatch in the behaviour of the exalted elites who preach to the deplorables the proper etiquette of abstinence to deal with the emergency, and their own insouciant exemption from a restrictive lifestyle;
  9. The disconnect between industrialised and developing countries in responsibility for the crisis and the distribution of costs for addressing it;
  10. The rise of the international technocratic elite in a de facto alliance with national governing, bureaucratic, scientific, and corporate elites.

The World Court Delivers a Weighty Opinion

A recent pronouncement from the World Court adds another link to the chain that connects climate change to pandemic management policies. International organisations are taking over an increasing range of functions from the governments of states, posing a threat both to national sovereignty and to democracy with national bureaucrats working in tandem with international technocrats – the lanyard class – to overrule citizens’ choices. With unelected and unaccountable judges displacing elected governments as the real rulers, judicial overreach is emerging as a threat to the democratic nation-state.

Over the past two decades, climate activists have essentially adopted a smug ‘We’ve won’ tone on a three-part ‘scientific consensus’ on adverse impacts of rising CO2, human activity being primarily responsible for the rise in emissions, and the imminence of climate catastrophe without urgent drastic action. 

All three parts have come under attack in recent times. Many serious scientists have always been sceptical of the ‘Science is settled’ claim on the unique rise in harmful emissions caused by the fossil-fuel driven industrial revolution. More and more have begun to speak out on the growing panic over a climate emergency. Their response to climate catastrophisation can be summarised succinctly as ‘Rubbish!,’ albeit expressed in more polite and scientifically neutral language. The doom merchants have a three-decade long catastrophic record on predictions of catastrophes. The World Climate Declaration issued two years ago has been signed by 2,000 experts from 60 countries.

In the meantime, there’s been public awakening, rising resentment, and firming opposition to the questionable assumptions, significant harms, and outright futility of climate targets encapsulated in the slogan Net Zero – in an age when slogans are mistaken for sound and fully costed policy. Consequently many Western governments have begun to backtrack, none more so than the Trump administration that also recognises the strategic folly of climate policies that have demonstrably failed to end global reliance on fossil fuels, added to energy costs while making supply increasingly less reliable, and transferred wealth and industrial might to China.

Faced with growing expressions of scientific doubt, public backlash, and policy reversals, activists have switched from trying to persuade governments to weaponising the courts to force compliance with their agenda. Article 92 of the United Nations Charter describes the International Court of Justice (ICJ, commonly called the World Court) as the UN’s ‘principal judicial organ’ and all member states are automatically parties to the ICJ. Chapter IV of its Statute, which is annexed to the UN Charter, deals with Advisory Opinions. Article 96 of the Charter stipulates that the General Assembly may request the ICJ ‘to give an advisory opinion on any legal question’ or authorise another UN body to seek one.

In 2021, inspired by the youth group Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change, Vanuatu launched a campaign for an advisory opinion. On 29 March 2023, the UN General Assembly requested an advisory opinion from the ICJ on the legal obligations and liability of states on climate change. On 23 July, the court published its Advisory Opinion. Relying primarily on IPCC reports which ‘constitute the best available science on the causes, nature and consequences of climate change’ that calls to mind New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern’s demand that her Department of Health was to be the ‘single source of truth’ on Covid, and on the widespread acknowledgment of the adverse effects of climate change across the UN system (paragraph 74), the court concluded that climate change is ‘an urgent and existential threat’ (73).

Intersection with the WHO’s Pandemic Management Agenda

The ICJ advisory on climate liability intersects with the issue of democratic sovereignty vis-à-vis the WHO on five points. First, falling trust in the competence, integrity, and truthfulness of public institutions and media has had a flow-on effect in a new willingness to question other policy domains, including climate change and net zero. 

In turn this has triggered a growth in support for radical ethnonationalism that is being tapped by populist centre-right parties. ‘Preference falsification’ is a concept that previously was invoked with reference to authoritarian regimes. It denotes the condition where individuals conceal their true preferences in order to conform to official and/or societal pressure. A good example is this anonymous (of course) online comment on the viciously contested issue of trans vs. women’s rights: ‘We live in a period of human history where the thoughtful and the intelligent must stay silent for fear of offending the fragile and the stupid.’ Many everyday folks support the rights of women to have their own spaces without wishing any harm upon trans people quietly living and enjoying their lives, but dare not risk saying so openly for fear of losing their job, expulsion from their friendship group, or social media pile-on.

To ensure that such an outcome aligns with official policy preferences, governments engage in narrative management whereby a false impression is deliberately fostered of scientific consensus, the policy option is said to be based in that agreed science, and imbued with moralism to the point of sacralization. This is the Covid lesson that Bildt was alluding to. For it to succeed and the illusion of consensus and moralism maintained, any scepticism and criticism by scientists and dissenting voices among the commentariat and the public must be suppressed and the dissenters punished. 

They must not be permitted to realise that there is a significant group of others who share their dissenting point of view, let alone that they might even constitute a silent (because they have been silenced by censorship and coercion) majority. But when enough people do realise, a tipping point is reached that generates a preference cascade. 

Once this happened with Covid, people were more receptive to the idea that governments lie to survive and maintain control over people. We now see the dam breaking, for example, on the criminal consequences and other economic and social pathologies of the long eulogised mass immigration in the UK, Europe, and US.

Third, the ICJ justified its conclusion on the reasoning that the ‘adverse effects of climate change’ such as rising sea levels, drought, desertification, and natural disasters, ‘may significantly impair the enjoyment of certain human rights,’ including ‘the right to health’ (379). 

The ‘most significant primary obligation to prevent significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment…applies to all States, including those that are not parties to one or more of the climate change treaties’ (409, emphasis added).

Fourth, the opinion is not binding but will shape climate governance around the world in myriad ways in the years to come in academia, courts, bureaucracies, and civil society. Vanuatu’s special envoy on climate change, Ralph Regenvanu, believes that the ICJ opinion will shift discussions from one of ‘voluntary commitments’ to reduce emissions, to one about binding obligations under international law. It will embolden activist courts and judges around the world who are committed to the climate crusade. The logic underpinning the advisory prepares the ground for individual liability, speech restrictions, and legal intimidation.

This exact same argument applies with respect to the compliance pull of the pandemic accords. In general, legal norms are more effective in regulating state behaviour. But in specific instances, a particular law may be breached while a political norm shapes a decision – on acts of commission or omission – through a calculation of reputational costs. 

On mass atrocity crimes, for example, the 1948 Genocide Convention imposes legal obligations on states to act. By contrast, the 2005 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle is a global political norm that creates a moral responsibility but no legal duty on outside states to prevent and halt atrocities. However, even R2P has to be interpreted and applied in the broader context of binding obligations on states under national, international, humanitarian, and human rights laws.

The pandemic accords’ legal effect will lie in strengthening the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Treaty and One Health as global norms. In combination with the amended International Health Regulations IHR) that come into force next month for most states unless they had opted out in July, and which must and will be read in parallel with the Pandemic Treaty, the political reality is that member states will be enmeshed into the international pandemic management framework led by international technocrats.

In the 15 World Court judges’ unanimous opinion, climate obligations are legal, substantive, and enforceable, not just aspirational. Previously vague obligations have been elevated to binding duties under customary international law to prevent significant environmental harm and cooperate internationally to uphold fundamental human rights in the face of escalating climate risks. Yet, all governments engage in policy trade-offs involving economic goals, development assistance, and energy security that triangulates emissions, affordability, and reliability. Who exactly will enforce the ICJ opinion on the geopolitical heavyweights like China, Russia, and America?

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 Director General ‘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, nothing in the Covid experience inspires confidence about the willingness and capacity of political leaders to resist WHO recommendations in this global institutional milieu. But if by some mistake they should do so, public health activists could seek an advisory opinion from the World Court that the health of no country’s citizens is safe unless that of the citizens of all countries is safe and therefore every state, including non-signatories of the pandemic accords, incurs a legal responsibility of compliance. Failure to do so will leave a country exposed to claims for restitution from those who may have been harmed.

The US as the Counterweight to both Globalist Agendas

The final connecting link between the net-zero and pandemic accords agendas is the critical role of the Trump administration, owing to the US normative weight and geopolitical heft in the design and management of world order, in resisting the effort to impose a tyranny of global governance on democratic nation states. 

On 29 July the US Department of Energy issued a report that rejects the core tenets of climate alarmism, notes that US policies will ‘have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate,’ and insists that the dominant energy systems deserve to be celebrated for their role in ‘the rise of human flourishing over the past two centuries.’ Accordingly, the US is set to revoke many restrictive climate regulations in the push for continued global energy dominance. 

The previously smug climate activists reacted with fury. A New York Times article on 31 July quoted climate scientists who attacked the report for using ‘cherry-picked’ data to support a ‘scattershot collection of oft-debunked skeptic claims’ in ‘a coordinated, full-scale attack on the science.’ To have attracted such flak, the DOE report must be over the target.

On 21 January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the WHO. The US withdrawal from the IHR was announced jointly by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on 18 July. In explaining the decision in a video message, Kennedy said: ‘The first reason is national sovereignty.’ Nations that ‘accept the new regulations are signing over their power in health emergencies,’ or even when confronting nebulous ‘potential public health risks,’ to ‘an unelected international organization that could order lockdowns, travel restrictions, or any other measures it sees fit.’ 

Kennedy acknowledged that the US, given its powerful position in the world, could ‘simply ignore the WHO.’ But few others are in this position of luxury. Consequently: ‘Even though many of these amendments are phrased to be non-binding, as a practical matter, it’s hard for many countries to resist them, especially when they are dependent on the WHO funding and its partnerships.’ The need, therefore, is not to rush into a new global health framework absent ‘a thorough public debate,’ Kennedy said, but to ‘strengthen national and local autonomy to hold global organizations in check and to restore a real balance of power.’

Author

  • Ramesh Thakur

    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.

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Source

https://brownstone.org/articles/global-governance-vs-democratic-sovereignty/

Sunday, August 17, 2025

A researcher’s look at Rigor Mortis: Are motivators and incentives to find a cure hurting scientific research?

A researcher’s look at Rigor Mortis: Are motivators and incentives to find a cure hurting scientific research?

Photo of Jiangwei Yao, PhD, and Charles Rock, PhD

Jiangwei Yao, PhD, and Charles Rock, PhD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s Department of Infectious Diseases. The two scientists write that Richard Harris’ book, Rigor Mortis, raises important issues facing scientific research but offers few solutions.

Science is under siege, and we are all feeling the heat. More paperwork, more justification, more validation, more rules and regulations.

The past five years have seen an explosion in the amount of time and effort spent demonstrating we are actually complying with rather obvious scientific norms. Where is all of this coming from?


The event that triggered much of this change was the publication of the book Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions by Richard Harris. The cover art depicts a toe tag hanging off the ‘I’ in Mortis, with the cause of death labeled “Biomedical Research.”

The book chronicles issues in life science research, including the reproducibility crisis, the often-irrational incentives pitting the career advancement of scientists against producing the best science, and whether science funding is focused on producing societal benefits.

Harris originally wanted to title his book “Science Friction,” a much more accurate description of its contents, and maybe the sensationalist title promises more than the book delivers. Despite this, Rigor Mortis is exceptional for highlighting the many challenges and difficulties that scientists must navigate every day. Practicing and aspiring scientists could use Rigor Mortis as a reminder of the public perception of our profession and the need for us to understand how our actions can erode confidence in scientific research.

Five challenges of experimental science After decades of work as a science reporter, Harris wrote Rigor Mortis after reflecting on the many science stories he has written since 1986 suggesting cures were just around the corner, but in fact never materialized. He spent two years talking to hundreds of scientific researchers about why science has faced a reproducibility crisis. It has disappointed public expectations at a time when biomedical research appears to be in a Golden Age of astonishing technological advances and significant financial support.

Rigor Mortis identifies and explores five challenges facing experimental science.

1. Models of disease Animal models do not accurately mimic human biology. Drug research today involves creating an animal (usually mouse) model of disease that mimics the human disease, and then finding a cure for the animal model. However, animals (especially mice) are often poor proxies for human biology for a variety of reasons, and “cures” found in mice are often ineffective in humans.

2. Questionable accuracy of reagents Biological reagents used in life science are often of questionable quality. Cell lines and antibodies, two staples of life-science research, especially suffer from this problem.  Many cell lines, even from national cell banks, are different cell types or come from different sources than advertised. Many antibodies in research are generated by the immune systems of animals, and therefore suffer large variance between batches. They often do not even recognize the protein of interest. Extensive care must be taken to ensure the accuracy and selectivity of these reagents.

3. Need for statistics training Most life-science education programs do not include the advanced training in statistics required in today’s science. Scientists must have increased statistical literacy as “big data” saturates research. As recently as 10 years ago, scientists could only make a few measurements at time. Recent developments in “omics” have allowed scientists to simultaneously measure hundreds to millions of signals in routine experiments. This increased experimental complexity requires increased statistical sophistication to avoid potential pitfalls like batch effects or p-hacking. As experiments become more complex and more specialists become involved, experimental consistency also becomes a challenge.

4. Data sharing and transparency The explosion of experimental complexity and big data also means life science needs better data sharing and experimental method transparency. As the methods and analysis become more complex, methods sections in papers can no longer contain all the details. The increased cost of projects means it is no longer possible for other labs to independently verify the experimental results. However, life science lacks a consistent, centralized system to share the methods and data. This often makes it impossible for other groups to reproduce the published experiments or independently validate the results from original data.

5. Competition Because the number of PhD degrees awarded each year is significantly greater than the demand for those degree holders, science operates in a “publish or perish” culture. This creates incentives against producing the best research. There is a rush to be the first to publish new research, even when the results are not conclusive. The high-pressure environment also increases the chance of confirmation bias in scientists, causing them to see significant results where they aren’t and dismiss data that weakens the hypothesis. There is also a low percentage of outright fraudulent research, which is often difficult to correct in literature.

Sometimes, experiments fail Harris blames outcomes that don’t meet expectations as science not being conducted properly or rigorously, but failures are an inescapable part of experimental science. The most egregious example provided by Harris is the narrative about fialuridine (FIAU).

FIAU worked in animal models with minimal toxicity, but turned out to be highly toxic in a 1993 human safety trial. Harris labels this as a “debacle” and bemoans how animal models misled scientists and wasted money. The story of FIAU should be a reminder to all of us of how hard science is even when everything is done correctly.

Complex challenges and integrity Rigor Mortis is not a book about solutions to the problems it identifies. Harris builds a great case for how deep-seated and complex these challenges are, but then offers a solution that doesn’t work upon deeper reflection.

He highlights how industrial research lacks the problematic incentives faced in academia. But companies also face as many, if not more, incentives to do poor science (such as Sarepta not performing the FDA-required experiments to prove efficacy) or outright cheating (such as Theranos lying to investors about having made large advances in blood-testing technology). Harris decries putting patients through drug trials based on unclear animal model results, but instead insinuates we should do more research directly on humans (i.e. skip animal models). Certainly, taking this path will produce more FIAU results, not fewer.

The scientific community must take steps to improve reproducibility and integrity, but there are no simple solutions to removing all human incentives for bad behavior.

Impact Many parts of the book have an alarmist tone that sounds critically hostile to academic science. This paints an unfortunate picture of the scientific enterprise to the general public. But Harris raises many good points that scientists are turning into policy.

Rigor Mortis has catalyzed new rules on grant applications and guidelines for the performance of research for the National Institutes of Health. In addition, scientific journals have and will continue to increase rigor in performing and interpreting experiments.

For scientists, it’s a reminder of the general perception of our discipline.

About the author

Charles Rock, PhD, was a member of the Department of Infectious Diseases and later the Department of Host-Microbe Interactions at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital until his passing in 2023. Learn about Dr. Rock's research career.

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Source

https://www.stjude.org/research/progress/2017/rigor-mortis-richard-harris-book-review.html

Saturday, August 16, 2025

Revisiting a Book Review: How Economics Shapes Science by Paula Stephan

Revisiting a Book Review: How Economics Shapes Science by Paula Stephan

Editor’s Note: Given the significant impression that keynote speaker Paula Stephan made at this year’s Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting, I wasn’t sure if attendees were aware of this pair of Kent Anderson posts from 2012, a review of Stephan’s book on the economics of scientific research and (re-running tomorrow) an interview with Stephan. Although the posts are now more than five years old, the economic conditions described have only accelerated.

I recently finished a very interesting and useful book entitled, “How Economics Shapes Science,” written by the economist Paula Stephan (Professor of Economics, Georgia State University and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research). Stephan is an economist who accidentally became an expert in science economics, a little vignette that sets a nice tone for the book, which is superb overall — well-written, smartly structured, and well-referenced. In fact, for the serious reader, I’d recommend ordering it in print because the ability to flip back and forth between the nicely designed and very usable notes pages and the main text is vital to enjoying the book.

While the topic is of inherent interest to anyone working in the sciences, Stephan also touches on many points of particular interest to publishers, including why authors publish and related issues.

Stephan’s main point is that while the information emanating from research activities is itself hard to take to market — it is non-rival and non-excludable — the economic units of value to scientists are prestige and priority. These aren’t new ideas at all, but Stephan is able to bring data together to underscore how vital the incentives of prestige and priority are — they determine what happens to scientists, from lab space to letterhead.

There are many interesting themes in the book, from the way university research changed with the 1982 Bayh-Dole Act (which gave universities new control of patents and other IP emanating from federally funded research), to the proliferation of prize-based science, to the growth of the mega-foundations like HHMI and Wellcome, to the sometimes dramatic effects funding decisions can have, both when it grows and when it shrinks.

Perhaps the most interesting story in this story-packed book is the tale of the years 1998-2002, when the NIH budget doubled. This vast influx of funding had many unanticipated and some unproductive outcomes:

  • Success rates for R01 grant applications didn’t rise, and in fact fell significantly by 2009
  • Universities used the funding to justify a building binge, partly to lure prime faculty and partly to create capacity for the anticipated grants
  • Grants grew in size, and absorbed more costs, like graduate student tuitions and other overheads
  • The short-term nature of the doubling, combined with the long-term nature of the resulting grant commitments, created a dearth of money in subsequent years, as funding fell yet remained tied to previous commitments
  • The NIH took monies away from R01 grant-making during the expansion to pursue other, larger initiatives
  • Younger researchers suffered more, as renewing grants did better overall during both the funding boom and the subsequent cuts
  • The number of papers resulting from the doubling of NIH funding remained stubbornly unaffected — as one study put it, “Wherever the funds went, they left no clear scientific record.”

This is the kind of rich, data-driven, and nuanced discussion of science and economics readers can expect throughout Stephan’s excellent book.

Stephan addresses how R&D spending is often driven by politics — either geo-politics (the Cold War) or personal politics (biomedical research), and how jobs in the sciences respond accordingly (and how competitive options for smart people have affected job uptake). She also talks about how difficult science and research spending is to measure from an economic efficiency perspective — essentially, because payback on investments can be quite indirect and take decades, choosing between investment options is fraught with the chance for mistakes. And the emerging trend showing that higher-impact science comes from funding entities that evaluate people instead of projects and provides longer-term funding is also covered.

Many of the studies Stephan had to work with are dated, unfortunately, suggesting strongly that we need to do more (and more current) studies of these issues. It’s clear that economics shapes science. This becomes clearest at the end of the book, in a chapter entitled, “Can We Do Better?”. Here, Stephan writes sentences that bristle a bit:

In many ways universities in the United States behave as though they are high-end shopping malls. . . . faculty “pay” for the opportunity of working at the university, receiving no guarantee of income if they fail to bring in a grant. . . . The system that has evolved discourages faculty from pursuing research with uncertain outcomes. . . . The current university research system in the United States also discourages research that could disprove theories.

This book will have a special place on my shelf, as one of a handful of books that demand to be revisited, referenced, and re-read because there is so much clear and important information to be had, and some definite criticisms of the current system policy-makers need to consider.

Kent Anderson is the CEO of RedLink and RedLink Network, a past-President of SSP, and the founder of the Scholarly Kitchen. He has worked as Publisher at AAAS/Science, CEO/Publisher of JBJS, Inc., a publishing executive at the Massachusetts Medical Society, Publishing Director of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Director of Medical Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Opinions on social media or blogs are his own.

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Source

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/06/20/revisiting-book-review-economics-shapes-science-paula-stephan/

Friday, August 15, 2025

Covid Through Our Eyes: important new book explores Australia's misguided response from every angle

Covid Through Our Eyes: important new book explores Australia's misguided response from every angle

Professor Robert Clancy and Dr Melissa McCann elevate the injured, examining the medical and policy failures that cut our heartland down in its prime. It's the reckoning we need to correct course now

“This is the book that was waiting to be written,” said Tom, a former senior judge on the NSW Supreme Court.

He was sitting for dinner at an aged-care facility on Friday, when my Aunty Katie ambushed him with the glossy new title, fresh off the press - an advance copy of Covid Through Our Eyes.

Aunty Katie (left) excitedly takes her advance copy to show the residents. Pic: Bevege

To this day, the frail-aged elderly are often isolated in their rooms if they test positive, even if they have a minor cough for a day, as aged care facilities prioritise caution.

The only people they see for a week are plastic-draped, masked apparitions in bio-hazard face shields who deposit meal trays with plastic-gloved hands before scuttling out to throw the PPE in a bin by the door. For them, 2025 is still 2021, only marginally better: they can get visitors now.

Aunty Katie herself had been out of isolation for just a few days, so the book was a great surprise. Tom was delighted to see it and excited to read it. He urged me to provide a copy for the shared library, which I will do this week when the book becomes available for purchase at the website here.

I urge you to do the same, because this book is the crowbar needed to prize open the blind eyes of the government, so they may unwillingly see the reality of the disaster they have inflicted on our country.

Leading immunologist Robert Clancy, emeritus professor at the University of Newcastle's School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, has teamed up with Queensland GP Dr Melissa McCann, to collect and edit chapters from those who saw the covid panic from every angle.

Words roll like tears down the page

Some chapters are devastating.

In Part Two, people’s encounters with the genetic covid vaccines roll down the page, each one a personal tragedy.

“That is the day my life would change forever,” writes Antonio DeRose.

“Goodbye to the person I was and hello to a whole new life, one full of pain, disablement and dependence.”

He was given transverse myelitis in October 2021.

A beautiful pair of blossoming young women, Caitlin Gotze and Katie Lees, have their stories told for them, by their families.

They cannot speak for themselves now, because they are dead.

Dr McCann (left) and Katie Lees’ father Ian in Hyde Park, Sydney, with Forest of the Fallen stories of the injured, April, 2024. Pics: Bevege

These lives and thousands of others were devastated after Australians trustingly injected a poorly tested and experimental genetic vaccine sold to them as “safe and effective”.

The entities responsible did not want any interference in their vaccine roll-out, or any consequences for themselves after.

In Chapter 7, journalist Maryanne Demasi details exactly how they orchestrated near-total censorship both worldwide and in Australia.

She explains how the ABC paid “fact-checkers” from RMIT University and how tech giants Google, Microsoft and Meta joined the Trusted News Initiative cartel, controlling the news flow.

This book has the intellectual ballast to challenge the Government’s basic assumptions about the pandemic, which it never once questioned despite multiple inquiries and committees and reviews, and the strenuous efforts of a handful of good senators and legislators.

The official reports all end the same way: recommending more of what damaged us, delivered faster, and more efficiently.

None of them ask the basic question: were we even running in the right direction?

This book answers that question.

Introducing… the professionals

An avalanche of 19 perspectives comprise Part One. Some of them become technical in parts, but they provide the necessary intellectual foundation to span the sweeping curve of this disaster, so is not repeated.

They include:

  • Professor Robert Clancy, pioneering expert in mucosal immunology, details the exact mechanisms by which the genetic vaccines cause damage in Chapter 9.

  • Regulatory expert Phillip Altman devotes chapter 16 to detailing how Australia’s drug safety system failed to investigate any of the red-flags raised.

  • Statistician Andrew Madry details the modelling data in Chapter 12, that shows continuing excess mortality in Australia, at least half of which is not caused by covid.

  • Lawyer and law lecturer Alex Hatzikalimnios surveys important legal cases brought during the covid panic in Chapter 17, including some positive decisions made since the mandates and public health orders concluded.

  • St George’s, University of London Professor of Oncology Angus Dalgleish tells of the rise of turbo cancer in Chapter 11, and how the mRNA vaccinations create a pro-cancer milieu in the body including chronic inflammation.

  • Dr McCann writes in Chapter 5 about her shock as the ethical framework underpinning Australia’s previous pandemic plans was thrown out the window. She warned Australia’s health authorities of the mounting number of post-vaccination injuries only to have her concerns dismissed with the glib excuse: “lots of young people die suddenly each year, it’s all coincidental”.

Dr McCann is now spearheading the Covid Vaccine Class Action seeking redress from the Federal Government for the vaccine injured, most of whom were never compensated and have significant injury costs. The case is still ongoing and is still open for injured people to join. It runs on donations - donate here.

And now for the confession: yours truly, I myself, wrote Chapter 3. I could improve on it - I should have put more emphasis on the US Military as a large funder and driver of Moderna, however this chapter has its place because people need to know that Australia’s university and medical research system is being tied up by mRNA funding. It’s the shiny new bauble and they are all running after patents and research collaborations - in every state and territory. It’s not because it’s efficient to incentivise this way, it’s to induce conformity and political pressure. It’s vaccine colonialism. Every state and territory has a university or research elite tied in to the industry, pressuring politicians to support it, and together they suppress criticism and misdirect funding Australia-wide.

So many voices are raised here in harmony, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

It is best expressed by the clear and compassionate Dr John Campbell:

“Perhaps this book is important, because people are important.”

People are important.

Please do consider buying this book and sharing it everywhere - your local library, your relatives, your workplace or hobby group, or sports club or university or school - so that our country can change course and begin to heal. I will not receive any proceeds from this book’s sale, I donated my time, and I’d do it again.

BUY IT AT THE WEBSITE HERE

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UPDATE 12 August - The wonderful Dr John Campbell and Professor Robert Clancy have introduced the book on YouTube in an excellent interview, and I blush to add, they said some very kind words about yours truly. See below.

The whole book is great, a magnificent effort by Professor Clancy and Dr McCann to pull together so please do get a copy, and give it to your doctor!

UPDATE: Note - all net proceeds after the publishing costs are covered will go to the Covid Vaccine Class Action to fight for the vaccine injured.

12/08 - ADDS: Dr John Campbell and Professor Robert Clancy interview video.

Note - There’s a Substack glitch saying ‘paid subscribers comment only’ - I don’t have any paid subscribers, all my Substacks are free and in the public interest. It’s just because I turned comments off.

Correction: Alex's descriptor is lawyer (not solicitor as not practising at the moment)

Please share this book link CovidThroughOurEyes.com.au on X (Twitter), WhatsApp, or email to support the vaccine injury class action!


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By Alison Bevege · Launched 4 years ago
Independent journalism from the Pacific coast, often focused on free speech and the gene-vaccine scandal

Global Governance vs. Democratic Sovereignty

Global Governance vs. Democratic Sovereignty August 14, 2025     Government ,  Law     11 minute read Brownstone Journal Global Governance v...