The WHO Pandemic Agreement: A Guide By David Bell, Thi Thuy Van Dinh March 22, 2024 Government, Society 30 minute read The World Health Organization (WHO) and its 194 Member States have been engaged for over two years in the development of two ‘instruments’ or agreements with the intent of radically changing the way pandemics and other health emergencies are managed. One, consisting of draft amendments to the existing International health Regulations (IHR), seeks to change the current IHR non-binding recommendations into requirements or binding recommendations, by having countries “undertake” to implement those given by the WHO in future declared health emergencies. It covers all ‘public health emergencies of international concern’ (PHEIC), with a single person, the WHO Director-General (DG) determining what a PHEIC is, where it extends, and when it ends. It specifies mandated vaccines, border closures, and other directives understood as lockdowns among the requirements the DG can impose. It is discussed further elsewhere and still under negotiation in Geneva. A second document, previously known as the (draft) Pandemic Treaty, then Pandemic Accord, and more recently the Pandemic Agreement, seeks to specify governance, supply chains, and various other interventions aimed at preventing, preparing for, and responding to, pandemics (pandemic prevention, preparedness and response – PPPR). It is currently being negotiated by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB). Both texts will be subject to a vote at the May 2024 World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, Switzerland. These votes are intended, by those promoting these projects, to bring governance of future multi-country healthcare emergencies (or threats thereof) under the WHO umbrella. The latest version of the draft Pandemic Agreement (here forth the ‘Agreement’) was released on 7th March 2024. However, it is still being negotiated by various committees comprising representatives of Member States and other interested entities. It has been through multiple iterations over two years, and looks like it. With the teeth of the pandemic response proposals in the IHR, the Agreement looks increasingly irrelevant, or at least unsure of its purpose, picking up bits and pieces in a half-hearted way that the IHR amendments do not, or cannot, include. However, as discussed below, it is far from irrelevant. Historical Perspective These aim to increase the centralization of decision-making within the WHO as the “directing and coordinating authority.” This terminology comes from the WHO’s 1946 Constitution, developed in the aftermath of the Second World War as the world faced the outcomes of European fascism and the similar approaches widely imposed through colonialist regimes. The WHO would support emerging countries, with rapidly expanding and poorly resourced populations struggling under high disease burdens, and coordinate some areas of international support as these sovereign countries requested it. The emphasis of action was on coordinating rather than directing. In the 80 years prior to the WHO’s existence, international public health had grown within a more directive mindset, with a series of meetings by colonial and slave-owning powers from 1851 to manage pandemics, culminating in the inauguration of the Office Internationale d’Hygiene Publique in Paris in 1907, and later the League of Nations Health Office. World powers imposed health dictates on those less powerful, in other parts of the world and increasingly on their own population through the eugenics movement and similar approaches. Public health would direct, for the greater good, as a tool of those who wish to direct the lives of others. The WHO, governed by the WHA, was to be very different. Newly independent States and their former colonial masters were ostensibly on an equal footing within the WHA (one country – one vote), and the WHO’s work overall was to be an example of how human rights could dominate the way society works. The model for international public health, as exemplified in the Declaration of Alma Ata in 1978, was to be horizontal rather than vertical, with communities and countries in the driving seat. With the evolution of the WHO in recent decades from a core funding model (countries give money, the WHO decides under the WHA guidance how to spend it) to a model based on specified funding (funders, both public and increasingly private, instruct the WHO on how to spend it), the WHO has inevitably changed to become a public-private partnership required to serve the interests of funders rather than populations. As most funding comes from a few countries with major Pharma industrial bases, or private investors and corporations in the same industry, the WHO has been required to emphasize the use of pharmaceuticals and downplay evidence and knowledge where these clash (if it wants to keep all its staff funded). It is helpful to view the draft Agreement, and the IHR amendments, in this context. Why May 2024? The WHO, together with the World Bank, G20, and other institutions have been emphasizing the urgency of putting the new pandemic instruments in place earnestly, before the ‘next pandemic.’ This is based on claims that the world was unprepared for Covid-19, and that the economic and health harm would be somehow avoidable if we had these agreements in place. They emphasize, contrary to evidence that Covid-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) origins involve laboratory manipulation, that the main threats we face are natural, and that these are increasing exponentially and present an “existential” threat to humanity. The data on which the WHO, the World Bank, and G20 base these claims demonstrates the contrary, with reported natural outbreaks having increased as detection technologies have developed, but reducing in mortality rate, and in numbers, over the past 10 to 20 years.. A paper cited by the World Bank to justify urgency and quoted as suggesting a 3x increase in risk in the coming decade actually suggests that a Covid-19-like event would occur roughly every 129 years, and a Spanish-flu repetition every 292 to 877 years. Such predictions are unable to take into account the rapidly changing nature of medicine and improved sanitation and nutrition (most deaths from Spanish flu would not have occurred if modern antibiotics had been available), and so may still overestimate risk. Similarly, the WHO’s own priority disease list for new outbreaks only includes two diseases of proven natural origin that have over 1,000 historical deaths attributed to them. It is well demonstrated that the risk and expected burden of pandemics is misrepresented by major international agencies in current discussions. The urgency for May 2024 is clearly therefore inadequately supported, firstly because neither the WHO nor others have demonstrated how the harms accrued through Covid-19 would be reduced through the measures proposed, and secondly because the burden and risk is misrepresented. In this context, the state of the Agreement is clearly not where it should be as a draft international legally binding agreement intended to impose considerable financial and other obligations on States and populations. This is particularly problematic as the proposed expenditure; the proposed budget is over $31 billion per year, with over $10 billion more on other One Health activities. Much of this will have to be diverted from addressing other diseases burdens that impose far greater burden. This trade-off, essential to understand in public health policy development, has not yet been clearly addressed by the WHO. The WHO DG stated recently that the WHO does not want the power to impose vaccine mandates or lockdowns on anyone, and does not want this. This begs the question of why either of the current WHO pandemic instruments is being proposed, both as legally binding documents. The current IHR (2005) already sets out such approaches as recommendations the DG can make, and there is nothing non-mandatory that countries cannot do now without pushing new treaty-like mechanisms through a vote in Geneva. Based on the DG’s claims, they are essentially redundant, and what new non-mandatory clauses they contain, as set out below, are certainly not urgent. Clauses that are mandatory (Member States “shall”) must be considered within national decision-making contexts and appear against the WHO’s stated intent. Common sense would suggest that the Agreement, and the accompanying IHR amendments, be properly thought through before Member States commit. The WHO has already abandoned the legal requirement for a 4-month review time for the IHR amendments (Article 55.2 IHR), which are also still under negotiation just 2 months before the WHA deadline. The Agreement should also have at least such a period for States to properly consider whether to agree – treaties normally take many years to develop and negotiate and no valid arguments have been put forward as to why these should be different. The Covid-19 response resulted in an unprecedented transfer of wealth from those of lower income to the very wealthy few, completely contrary to the way in which the WHO was intended to affect human society. A considerable portion of these pandemic profits went to current sponsors of the WHO, and these same corporate entities and investors are set to further benefit from the new pandemic agreements. As written, the Pandemic Agreement risks entrenching such centralization and profit-taking, and the accompanying unprecedented restrictions on human rights and freedoms, as a public health norm. To continue with a clearly flawed agreement simply because of a previously set deadline, when no clear population benefit is articulated and no true urgency demonstrated, would therefore be a major step backward in international public health. Basic principles of proportionality, human agency, and community empowerment, essential for health and human rights outcomes, are missing or paid lip-service. The WHO clearly wishes to increase its funding and show it is ‘doing something,’ but must first articulate why the voluntary provisions of the current IHR are insufficient. It is hoped that by systematically reviewing some key clauses of the agreement here, it will become clear why a rethink of the whole approach is necessary. The full text is found below. The commentary below concentrates on selected draft provisions of the latest publicly available version of the draft agreement that seem to be unclear or potentially problematic. Much of the remaining text is essentially pointless as it reiterates vague intentions to be found in other documents or activities which countries normally undertake in the course of running health services, and have no place in a focused legally-binding international agreement. REVISED Draft of the negotiating text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement. 7th March, 2024 Preamble Recognizing that the World Health Organization…is the directing and coordinating authority on international health work. This is inconsistent with a recent statement by the WHO DG that the WHO has no interest or intent to direct country health responses. To reiterate it here suggests that the DG is not representing the true position regarding the Agreement. “Directing authority” is however in line with the proposed IHR Amendments (and the WHO’s Constitution), under which countries will “undertake” ahead of time to follow the DG’s recommendations (which thereby become instructions). As the HR amendments make clear, this is intended to apply even to a perceived threat rather than actual harm. Recalling the constitution of the World Health Organization…highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition. This statement recalls fundamental understandings of public health, and is of importance here as it raises the question of why the WHO did not strongly condemn prolonged school closures, workplace closures, and other impoverishing policies during the Covid-19 response. In 2019, WHO made clear that these dangers should prevent actions we now call ‘lockdowns’ from being imposed. Deeply concerned by the gross inequities at national and international levels that hindered timely and equitable access to medical and other Covid-19 pandemic-related products, and the serious shortcomings in pandemic preparedness. In terms of health equity (as distinct from commodity of ‘vaccine’ equity), inequity in the Covid-19 response was not in failing to provide a vaccine against former variants to immune, young people in low-income countries who were at far higher risk from endemic diseases, but in the disproportionate harm to them of uniformly-imposed NPIs that reduced current and future income and basic healthcare, as was noted by the WHO in 2019 Pandemic Influenza recommendations. The failure of the text to recognize this suggests that lessons from Covid-19 have not informed this draft Agreement. The WHO has not yet demonstrated how pandemic ‘preparedness,’ in the terms they use below, would have reduced impact, given that there is poor correlation between strictness or speed of response and eventual outcomes. Reiterating the need to work towards…an equitable approach to mitigate the risk that pandemics exacerbate existing inequities in access to health services, As above – in the past century, the issue of inequity has been most pronounced in pandemic response, rather than the impact of the virus itself (excluding the physiological variation in risk). Most recorded deaths from acute pandemics, since the Spanish flu, were during Covid-19, in which the virus hit mainly sick elderly, but response impacted working-age adults and children heavily and will continue to have effect, due to increased poverty and debt; reduced education and child marriage, in future generations. These have disproportionately affected lower-income people, and particularly women. The lack of recognition of this in this document, though they are recognized by the World Bank and UN agencies elsewhere, must raise real questions on whether this Agreement has been thoroughly thought through, and the process of development been sufficiently inclusive and objective. Chapter I. Introduction Article 1. Use of terms (i) “pathogen with pandemic potential” means any pathogen that has been identified to infect a human and that is: novel (not yet characterized) or known (including a variant of a known pathogen), potentially highly transmissible and/or highly virulent with the potential to cause a public health emergency of international concern. This provides a very wide scope to alter provisions. Any pathogen that can infect humans and is potentially highly transmissible or virulent, though yet uncharacterized means virtually any coronavirus, influenza virus, or a plethora of other relatively common pathogen groups. The IHR Amendments intend that the DG alone can make this call, over the advice of others, as occurred with monkeypox in 2022. (j) “persons in vulnerable situations” means individuals, groups or communities with a disproportionate increased risk of infection, severity, disease or mortality. This is a good definition – in Covid-19 context, would mean the sick elderly, and so is relevant to targeting a response. “Universal health coverage” means that all people have access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship. While the general UHC concept is good, it is time a sensible (rather than patently silly) definition was adopted. Society cannot afford the full range of possible interventions and remedies for all, and clearly there is a scale of cost vs benefit that prioritizes certain ones over others. Sensible definitions make action more likely, and inaction harder to justify. One could argue that none should have the full range until all have good basic care, but clearly the earth will not support ‘the full range’ for 8 billion people. Article 2. Objective This Agreement is specifically for pandemics (a poorly defined term but essentially a pathogen that spreads rapidly across national borders). In contrast, the IHR amendments accompanying it are broader in scope – for any public health emergencies of international concern. Article 3. Principles 2. the sovereign right of States to adopt, legislate and implement legislation The amendments to the IHR require States to undertake to follow WHO instructions ahead of time, before such instruction and context are known. These two documents must be understood, as noted later in the Agreement draft, as complementary. 3. equity as the goal and outcome of pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, ensuring the absence of unfair, avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people. This definition of equity here needs clarification. In the pandemic context, the WHO emphasized commodity (vaccine) equity during the Covid-19 response. Elimination of differences implied equal access to Covid-19 vaccines in countries with large aging, obese highly vulnerable populations (e.g. the USA or Italy), and those with young populations at minimal risk and with far more pressing health priorities (e.g. Niger or Uganda). Alternatively, but equally damaging, equal access to different age groups within a country when the risk-benefit ratio is clearly greatly different. This promotes worse health outcomes by diverting resources from where they are most useful, as it ignores heterogeneity of risk. Again, an adult approach is required in international agreements, rather than feel-good sentences, if they are going to have a positive impact. 5. …a more equitable and better prepared world to prevent, respond to and recover from pandemics As with ‘3’ above, this raises a fundamental problem: What if health equity demands that some populations divert resources to childhood nutrition and endemic diseases rather than the latest pandemic, as these are likely of far higher burden to many younger but lower-income populations? This would not be equity in the definition implied here, but would clearly lead to better and more equal health outcomes. The WHO must decide whether it is about uniform action, or minimizing poor health, as these are clearly very different. They are the difference between the WHO’s commodity equity, and true health equity. Chapter II. The world together equitably: achieving equity in, for and through pandemic prevention, preparedness and response Equity in health should imply a reasonably equal chance of overcoming or avoiding preventable sickness. The vast majority of sickness and death is due to either non-communicable diseases often related to lifestyle, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus, undernutrition in childhood, and endemic infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. Achieving health equity would primarily mean addressing these. In this chapter of the draft Pandemic Agreement, equity is used to imply equal access to specific health commodities, particularly vaccines, for intermittent health emergencies, although these exert a small fraction of the burden of other diseases. It is, specifically, commodity-equity, and not geared to equalizing overall health burden but to enabling centrally-coordinated homogenous responses to unusual events. Article 4. Pandemic prevention and surveillance 2. The Parties shall undertake to cooperate: (b) in support of…initiatives aimed at preventing pandemics, in particular those that improve surveillance, early warning and risk assessment; .…and identify settings and activities presenting a risk of emergence and re-emergence of pathogens with pandemic potential. (c-h) [Paragraphs on water and sanitation, infection control, strengthening of biosafety, surveillance and prevention of vector-born diseases, and addressing antimicrobial resistance.] The WHO intends the Agreement to have force under international law. Therefore, countries are undertaking to put themselves under force of international law in regards to complying with the agreement’s stipulations. The provisions under this long article mostly cover general health stuff that countries try to do anyway. The difference will be that countries will be assessed on progress. Assessment can be fine if in context, less fine if it consists of entitled ‘experts’ from wealthy countries with little local knowledge or context. Perhaps such compliance is best left to national authorities, who are more in use with local needs and priorities. The justification for the international bureaucracy being built to support this, while fun for those involved, is unclear and will divert resources from actual health work. 6. The Conference of the Parties may adopt, as necessary, guidelines, recommendations and standards, including in relation to pandemic prevention capacities, to support the implementation of this Article. Here and later, the COP is invoked as a vehicle to decide on what will actually be done. The rules are explained later (Articles 21-23). While allowing more time is sensible, it begs the question of why it is not better to wait and discuss what is needed in the current INB process, before committing to a legally-binding agreement. This current article says nothing not already covered by the IHR2005 or other ongoing programs. Article 5. One Health approach to pandemic prevention, preparedness and response Nothing specific or new in this article. It seems redundant (it is advocating a holistic approach mentioned elsewhere) and so presumably is just to get the term ‘One Health’ into the agreement. (One could ask, why bother?) Some mainstream definitions of One Health (e.g. Lancet) consider that it means non-human species are on a par with humans in terms of rights and importance. If this is meant here, clearly most Member States would disagree. So we may assume that it is just words to keep someone happy (a little childish in an international document, but the term ‘One Health’ has been trending, like ‘equity,’ as if the concept of holistic approaches to public health were new). Article 6. Preparedness, health system resilience and recovery 2. Each Party commits…[to] : (a) routine and essential health services during pandemics with a focus on primary health care, routine immunization and mental health care, and with particular attention to persons in vulnerable situations (b) developing, strengthening and maintaining health infrastructure (c) developing post-pandemic health system recovery strategies (d) developing, strengthening and maintaining: health information systems This is good, and (a) seems to require avoidance of lockdowns (which inevitably cause the harms listed). Unfortunately other WHO documents lead one to assume this is not the intent…It does appear therefore that this is simply another list of fairly non-specific feel-good measures that have no useful place in a new legally-binding agreement, and which most countries are already undertaking. (e) promoting the use of social and behavioural sciences, risk communication and community engagement for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. This requires clarification, as the use of behavioral science during the Covid-19 response involved deliberate inducement of fear to promote behaviors that people would not otherwise follow (e.g. Spi-B). It is essential here that the document clarifies how behavioral science should be used ethically in healthcare. Otherwise, this is also a quite meaningless provision. Article 7. Health and care workforce This long Article discusses health workforce, training, retention, non-discrimination, stigma, bias, adequate remuneration, and other standard provisions for workplaces. It is unclear why it is included in a legally binding pandemic agreement, except for: 4. [The Parties]…shall invest in establishing, sustaining, coordinating and mobilizing a skilled and trained multidisciplinary global public health emergency workforce…Parties having established emergency health teams should inform WHO thereof and make best efforts to respond to requests for deployment… Emergency health teams established (within capacity etc.) – are something countries already do, when they have capacity. There is no reason to have this as a legally-binding instrument, and clearly no urgency to do so. Article 8. Preparedness monitoring and functional reviews 1. The Parties shall, building on existing and relevant tools, develop and implement an inclusive, transparent, effective and efficient pandemic prevention, preparedness and response monitoring and evaluation system. 2. Each Party shall assess, every five years, with technical support from the WHO Secretariat upon request, the functioning and readiness of, and gaps in, its pandemic prevention, preparedness and response capacity, based on the relevant tools and guidelines developed by WHO in partnership with relevant organizations at international, regional and sub-regional levels. Note that this is being required of countries that are already struggling to implement monitoring systems for major endemic diseases, including tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, and nutritional deficiencies. They will be legally bound to divert resources to pandemic prevention. While there is some overlap, it will inevitably divert resources from currently underfunded programs for diseases of far higher local burdens, and so (not theoretically, but inevitably) raise mortality. Poor countries are being required to put resources into problems deemed significant by richer countries. Article 9. Research and development Various general provisions about undertaking background research that countries are generally doing anyway, but with an ’emerging disease’ slant. Again, the INB fails to justify why this diversion of resources from researching greater disease burdens should occur in all countries (why not just those with excess resources?). Article 10. Sustainable and geographically diversified production Mostly non-binding but suggested cooperation on making pandemic-related products available, including support for manufacturing in “inter-pandemic times” (a fascinating rendering of ‘normal’), when they would only be viable through subsidies. Much of this is probably unimplementable, as it would not be practical to maintain facilities in most or all countries on stand-by for rare events, at cost of resources otherwise useful for other priorities. The desire to increase production in ‘developing’ countries will face major barriers and costs in terms of maintaining quality of production, particularly as many products will have limited use outside of rare outbreak situations. Article 11. Transfer of technology and know-how This article, always problematic for large pharmaceutical corporations sponsoring much WHO outbreak activities, is now watered down to weak requirements to ‘consider,’ promote,’ provide, within capabilities’ etc. Article 12. Access and benefit sharing This Article is intended to establish the WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System (PABS System). PABS is intended to “ensure rapid, systematic and timely access to biological materials of pathogens with pandemic potential and the genetic sequence data.” This system is of potential high relevance and needs to be interpreted in the context that SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing the recent Covid-19 outbreak, was highly likely to have escaped from a laboratory. PABS is intended to expand the laboratory storage, transport, and handling of such viruses, under the oversight of the WHO, an organization outside of national jurisdiction with no significant direct experience in handling biological materials. 3. When a Party has access to a pathogen [it shall]: (a) share with WHO any pathogen sequence information as soon as it is available to the Party; (b) as soon as biological materials are available to the Party, provide the materials to one or more laboratories and/or biorepositories participating in WHO-coordinated laboratory networks (CLNs), Subsequent clauses state that benefits will be shared, and seek to prevent recipient laboratories from patenting materials received from other countries. This has been a major concern of low-and middle-income countries previously, who perceive that institutions in wealthy countries patent and benefit from materials derived from less-wealthy populations. It remains to be seen whether provisions here will be sufficient to address this. The article then becomes yet more concerning: 6. WHO shall conclude legally binding standard PABS contracts with manufacturers to provide the following, taking into account the size, nature and capacities of the manufacturer: (a) annual monetary contributions to support the PABS System and relevant capacities in countries; the determination of the annual amount, use, and approach for monitoring and accountability, shall be finalized by the Parties; (b) real-time contributions of relevant diagnostics, therapeutics or vaccines produced by the manufacturer, 10% free of charge and 10% at not-for-profit prices during public health emergencies of international concern or pandemics, … It is clearly intended that the WHO becomes directly involved in setting up legally binding manufacturing contracts, despite the WHO being outside of national jurisdictional oversight, within the territories of Member States. The PABS system, and therefore its staff and dependent entities, are also to be supported in part by funds from the manufacturers whom they are supposed to be managing. The income of the organization will be dependent on maintaining positive relationships with these private entities in a similar way in which many national regulatory agencies are dependent upon funds from pharmaceutical companies whom their staff ostensibly regulate. In this case, the regulator will be even further removed from public oversight. The clause on 10% (why 10?) products being free of charge, and similar at cost, while ensuring lower-priced commodities irrespective of actual need (the outbreak may be confined to wealthy countries). The same entity, the WHO, will determine whether the triggering emergency exists, determine the response, and manage the contracts to provide the commodities, without direct jurisdictional oversight regarding the potential for corruption or conflict of interest. It is a remarkable system to suggest, irrespective of political or regulatory environment. 8. The Parties shall cooperate…public financing of research and development, prepurchase agreements, or regulatory procedures, to encourage and facilitate as many manufacturers as possible to enter into standard PABS contracts as early as possible. The article envisions that public funding will be used to build the process, ensuring essentially no-risk private profit. 10. To support operationalization of the PABS System, WHO shall…make such contracts public, while respecting commercial confidentiality. The public may know whom contracts are made with, but not all details of the contracts. There will therefore be no independent oversight of the clauses agreed between the WHO, a body outside of national jurisdiction and dependent of commercial companies for funding some of its work and salaries, and these same companies, on ‘needs’ that the WHO itself will have sole authority, under the proposed amendments to the IHR, to determine. The Article further states that the WHO shall use its own product regulatory system (prequalification) and Emergency Use Listing Procedure to open and stimulate markets for the manufacturers of these products. It is doubtful that any national government could make such an overall agreement, yet in May 2024 they will be voting to provide this to what is essentially a foreign, and partly privately financed, entity. Article 13. Supply chain and logistics The WHO will become convenor of a ‘Global Supply Chain and Logistics Network’ for commercially-produced products, to be supplied under WHO contracts when and where the WHO determines, whilst also having the role of ensuring safety of such products. Having mutual support coordinated between countries is good. Having this run by an organization that is significantly funded directly by those gaining from the sale of these same commodities seems reckless and counterintuitive. Few countries would allow this (or at least plan for it). For this to occur safely, the WHO would logically have to forgo all private investment, and greatly restrict national specified funding contributions. Otherwise, the conflicts of interest involved would destroy confidence in the system. There is no suggestion of such divestment from the WHO, but rather, as in Article 12, private sector dependency, directly tied to contracts, will increase. Article 13bis: National procurement- and distribution-related provisions While suffering the same (perhaps unavoidable) issues regarding commercial confidentiality, this alternate Article 13 seems far more appropriate, keeping commercial issues under national jurisdiction and avoiding the obvious conflict of interests that underpin funding for WHO activities and staffing. Article 14. Regulatory systems strengthening This entire Article reflects initiatives and programs already in place. Nothing here appears likely to add to current effort. Article 15. Liability and compensation management 1. Each Party shall consider developing, as necessary and in accordance with applicable law, national strategies for managing liability in its territory related to pandemic vaccines…no-fault compensation mechanisms… 2. The Parties…shall develop recommendations for the establishment and implementation of national, regional and/or global no-fault compensation mechanisms and strategies for managing liability during pandemic emergencies, including with regard to individuals that are in a humanitarian setting or vulnerable situations. This is quite remarkable, but also reflects some national legislation, in removing any fault or liability specifically from vaccine manufacturers, for harms done in pushing out vaccines to the public. During the Covid-19 response, genetic therapeutics being developed by BioNtech and Moderna were reclassified as vaccines, on the basis that an immune response is stimulated after they have modified intracellular biochemical pathways as a medicine normally does. This enabled specific trials normally required for carcinogenicity and teratogenicity to be bypassed, despite raised fetal abnormality rates in animal trials. It will enable the CEPI 100-day vaccine program, supported with private funding to support private mRNA vaccine manufacturers, to proceed without any risk to the manufacturer should there be subsequent public harm. Together with an earlier provision on public funding of research and manufacturing readiness, and the removal of former wording requiring intellectual property sharing in Article 11, this ensures vaccine manufacturers and their investors make profit in effective absence of risk. These entities are currently heavily invested in support for WHO, and were strongly aligned with the introduction of newly restrictive outbreak responses that emphasized and sometimes mandated their products during the Covid-19 outbreak. Article 16. International collaboration and cooperation A somewhat pointless article. It suggests that countries cooperate with each other and the WHO to implement the other agreements in the Agreement. Article 17. Whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches A list of essentially motherhood provisions related to planning for a pandemic. However, countries will legally be required to maintain a ‘national coordination multisectoral body’ for PPPR. This will essentially be an added burden on budgets, and inevitably divert further resources from other priorities. Perhaps just strengthening current infectious disease and nutritional programs would be more impactful. (Nowhere in this Agreement is nutrition discussed (essential for resilience to pathogens) and minimal wording is included on sanitation and clean water (other major reasons for reduction in infectious disease mortality over past centuries). However, the ‘community ownership’ wording is interesting (“empower and enable community ownership of, and contribution to, community readiness for and resilience [for PPPR]”), as this directly contradicts much of the rest of the Agreement, including the centralization of control under the Conference of Parties, requirements for countries to allocate resources to pandemic preparedness over other community priorities, and the idea of inspecting and assessing adherence to the centralized requirements of the Agreement. Either much of the rest of the Agreement is redundant, or this wording is purely for appearance and not to be followed (and therefore should be removed). Article 18. Communication and public awareness 1. Each Party shall promote timely access to credible and evidence-based information …with the aim of countering and addressing misinformation or disinformation… 2. The Parties shall, as appropriate, promote and/or conduct research and inform policies on factors that hinder or strengthen adherence to public health and social measures in a pandemic, as well as trust in science and public health institutions and agencies. The key word is as appropriate, given that many agencies, including the WHO, have overseen or aided policies during the Covid-19 response that have greatly increased poverty, child marriage, teenage pregnancy, and education loss. As the WHO has been shown to be significantly misrepresenting pandemic risk in the process of advocating for this Agreement and related instruments, its own communications would also fall outside the provision here related to evidence-based information, and fall within normal understandings of misinformation. It could not therefore be an arbiter of correctness of information here, so the Article is not implementable. Rewritten to recommend accurate evidence-based information being promoted, it would make good sense, but this is not an issue requiring a legally binding international agreement. Article 19. Implementation and support 3. The WHO Secretariat…organize the technical and financial assistance necessary to address such gaps and needs in implementing the commitments agreed upon under the Pandemic Agreement and the International Health Regulations (2005). As the WHO is dependent on donor support, its ability to address gaps in funding within Member States is clearly not something it can guarantee. The purpose of this article is unclear, repeating in paragraphs 1 and 2 the earlier intent for countries to generally support each other. Article 20. Sustainable financing 1. The Parties commit to working together…In this regard, each Party, within the means and resources at its disposal, shall: (a) prioritize and maintain or increase, as necessary, domestic funding for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, without undermining other domestic public health priorities including for: (i) strengthening and sustaining capacities for the prevention, preparedness and response to health emergencies and pandemics, in particular the core capacities of the International Health Regulations (2005);… This is silly wording, as countries obviously have to prioritize within budgets, so that moving funds to one area means removing from another. The essence of public health policy is weighing and making such decisions; this reality seems to be ignored here through wishful thinking. (a) is clearly redundant, as the IHR (2005) already exists and countries have agreed to support it. 3. A Coordinating Financial Mechanism (the “Mechanism”) is hereby established to support the implementation of both the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the International Health Regulations (2005) This will be in parallel to the Pandemic Fund recently commenced by the World Bank – an issue not lost on INB delegates and so likely to change here in the final version. It will also be additive to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, and other health financing mechanisms, and so require another parallel international bureaucracy, presumably based in Geneva. It is intended to have its own capacity to “conduct relevant analyses on needs and gaps, in addition to tracking cooperation efforts,” so it will not be a small undertaking. Chapter III. Institutional and final provisions Article 21. Conference of the Parties 1. A Conference of the Parties is hereby established. 2. The Conference of the Parties shall keep under regular review, every three years, the implementation of the WHO Pandemic Agreement and take the decisions necessary to promote its effective implementation. This sets up the governing body to oversee this Agreement (another body requiring a secretariat and support). It is intended to meet within a year of the Agreement coming into force, and then set its own rules on meeting thereafter. It is likely that many provisions outlined in this draft of the Agreement will be deferred to the COP for further discussion. Articles 22 – 37 These articles cover the functioning of the Conference of Parties (COP) and various administrative issues. Of note, ‘block votes’ will be allowed from regional bodies (e.g. the EU). The WHO will provide the secretariat. Under Article 24 is noted: 3. Nothing in the WHO Pandemic Agreement shall be interpreted as providing the Secretariat of the World Health Organization, including the WHO Director-General, any authority to direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe the domestic laws or policies of any Party, or to mandate or otherwise impose any requirements that Parties take specific actions, such as ban or accept travellers, impose vaccination mandates or therapeutic or diagnostic measures, or implement lockdowns. These provisions are explicitly stated in the proposed amendments to the IHR, to be considered alongside this agreement. Article 26 notes that the IHR is to be interpreted as compatible, thereby confirming that the IHR provisions including border closures and limits on freedom of movement, mandated vaccination, and other lockdown measures are not negated by this statement. As Article 26 states: “The Parties recognize that the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the International Health Regulations should be interpreted so as to be compatible.” Some would consider this subterfuge – The Director-General recently labeled as liars those who claimed the Agreement included these powers, whilst failing to acknowledge the accompanying IHR amendments. The WHO could do better in avoiding misleading messaging, especially when this involves denigration of the public. Article 32 (Withdrawal) requires that, once adopted, Parties cannot withdraw for a total of 3 years (giving notice after a minimum of 2 years). Financial obligations undertaken under the agreement continue beyond that time. Finally, the Agreement will come into force, assuming a two-thirds majority in the WHA is achieved (Article 19, WHO Constitution), 30 days after the fortieth country has ratified it. Further reading: WHO Pandemic Agreement Intergovernmental Negotiating Board website: https://inb.who.int/ International Health Regulations Working Group website: https://apps.who.int/gb/wgihr/index.html On background to the WHO texts: Amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations: An Annotated Guide An Unofficial Q&A on International Health Regulations On urgency and burden of pandemics: https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/download/228/rational-policy-over-panic Disease X and Davos: This is Not the Way to Evaluate and Formulate Public Health Policy Before Preparing for Pandemics, We Need Better Evidence of Risk Revised Draft of the negotiating text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement: Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone Institute Article and Author. Authors David Bell David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA. View all posts Thi Thuy Van Dinh Dr. Thi Thuy Van Dinh (LLM, PhD) worked on international law in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Subsequently, she managed multilateral organization partnerships for Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund and led environmental health technology development efforts for low-resource settings. View all posts Your financial backing of Brownstone Institute goes to support writers, lawyers, scientists, economists, and other people of courage who have been professionally purged and displaced during the upheaval of our times. You can help get the truth out through their ongoing work. https://brownstone.org/articles/the-who-pandemic-agreement-a-guide/ https://www.minds.com/donshafi911/blog/the-who-pandemic-agreement-a-guide-1621719398509187077

Why Does the WHO Make False Claims Regarding Proposals to Seize States’ Sovereignty? By David Bell, Thi Thuy Van Dinh December 11, 2023 Government, Law, Public Health 15 minute read The Director General (DG) of the World Health Organization (WHO) states: No country will cede any sovereignty to WHO, referring to the WHO’s new pandemic agreement and proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), currently being negotiated. His statements are clear and unequivocal, and wholly inconsistent with the texts he is referring to. A rational examination of the texts in question shows that: The documents propose a transfer of decision-making power to the WHO regarding basic aspects of societal function, which countries undertake to enact. The WHO DG will have sole authority to decide when and where they are applied. The proposals are intended to be binding under international law. Continued claims that sovereignty is not lost, echoed by politicians and media, therefore raise important questions concerning motivations, competence, and ethics. The intent of the texts is a transfer of decision-making currently vested in Nations and individuals to the WHO, when its DG decides that there is a threat of a significant disease outbreak or other health emergency likely to cross multiple national borders. It is unusual for Nations to undertake to follow external entities regarding the basic rights and healthcare of their citizens, more so when this has major economic and geopolitical implications. The question of whether sovereignty is indeed being transferred, and the legal status of such an agreement, is therefore of vital importance, particularly to the legislators of democratic States. They have an absolute duty to be sure of their ground. We systematically examine that ground here. The Proposed IHR Amendments and Sovereignty in Health Decision-Making Amending the 2005 IHR may be a straightforward way to quickly deploy and enforce “new normal” health control measures. The current text applies to virtually the entire global population, counting 196 States Parties including all 194 WHO Member States. Approval may or may not require a formal vote of the World Health Assembly (WHA), as the recent 2022 amendment was adopted through consensus. If the same approval mechanism is to be used in May 2024, many countries and the public may remain unaware of the broad scope of the new text and its implications to national and individual sovereignty. The IHR are a set of recommendations under a treaty process that has force under international law. They seek to provide the WHO with some moral authority to coordinate and lead responses when an international health emergency, such as pandemic, occurs. Most are non-binding, and these contain very specific examples of measures that the WHO can recommend, including (Article 18): require medical examinations; review proof of vaccination or other prophylaxis; require vaccination or other prophylaxis; place suspect persons under public health observation; implement quarantine or other health measures for suspect persons; implement isolation and treatment where necessary of affected persons; implement tracing of contacts of suspect or affected persons; refuse entry of suspect and affected persons; refuse entry of unaffected persons to affected areas; and implement exit screening and/or restrictions on persons from affected areas. These measures, when implemented together, are generally referred to since early 2020 as ‘lockdowns’ and ‘mandates.’ ‘Lockdown’ was previously a term reserved for people incarcerated as criminals, as it removes basic universally accepted human rights and such measures were considered by the WHO to be detrimental to public health. However, since 2020 it has become the default standard for public health authorities to manage epidemics, despite its contradictions to multiple stipulations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind including no arbitrary detention (Article 9). No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence (Article 12). Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state, and Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country (Article 13). Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers (Article 19). Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association (Article 20). The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government (Article 21). Everyone has the right to work (Article 23). Everyone has the right to education (Article 26). Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized (Article 28). Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein (Article 30). These UDHR stipulations are the basis of the modern concept of individual sovereignty, and the relationship between authorities and their populations. Considered the highest codification of the rights and freedoms of individuals in the 20th century, they may soon be dismantled behind closed doors in a meeting room in Geneva. The proposed amendments will change the “recommendations” of the current document to requirements through three mechanisms on Removing the term ‘non-binding’ (Article 1), Inserting the phrase that Member States will “undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations” and recognize WHO, not as an organization under the control of countries, but as the “coordinating authority” (New Article 13A). States Parties recognize WHO as the guidance and coordinating authority of international public health response during public health Emergency of International Concern and undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations in their international public health response. As Article 18 makes clear above, these include multiple actions directly restricting individual liberty. If transfer of decision-making power (sovereignty) is not intended here, then the current status of the IHR as ‘recommendations’ could remain and countries would not be undertaking to follow the WHO’s requirements. States Parties undertake to enact what previously were merely recommendations, without delay, including requirements of WHO regarding non-State entities under their jurisdiction (Article 42): Health measures taken pursuant to these Regulations, including the recommendations made under Articles 15 and 16, shall be initiated and completed without delay by all State Parties and applied in a transparent, equitable and non-discriminatory manner. State Parties shall also take measures to ensure Non-State Actors operating in their respective territories comply with such measures. Articles 15 and 16 mentioned here allow the WHO to require a State to provide resources “health products, technologies, and know-how,” and to allow the WHO to deploy personnel into the country (i.e., have control over entry across national borders for those they choose). They also repeat the requirement for the country to require the implementation of medical countermeasures (e.g., testing, vaccines, quarantine) on their population where WHO demands it. Of note, the proposed Article 1 amendment (removing ‘non-binding’) is actually redundant if New Article 13A and/or the changes in Article 42 remain. This can (and likely will) be removed from the final text, giving an appearance of compromise without changing the transfer of sovereignty. All of the public health measures in Article 18, and additional ones such as limiting freedom of speech to reduce public exposure to alternative viewpoints (Annex 1, New 5 (e); “…counter misinformation and disinformation”) clash directly with the UDHR. Although freedom of speech is currently the exclusive purview of national authorities and its restriction is generally seen as negative and abusive, United Nations institutions, including the WHO, have been advocating for censoring unofficial views in order to protect what they call “information integrity.” It seems outrageous from a human rights perspective that the amendments will enable the WHO to dictate countries to require individual medical examinations and vaccinations whenever it declares a pandemic. While the Nuremberg Code and Declaration of Helsinki refer specifically to human experimentation (e.g. clinical trials of vaccines) and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights also to the provider-patient relationship, they can reasonably be extended to public health measures that impose restrictions or changes to human behavior, and specifically to any measures requiring injection, medication, or medical examination which involve a direct provider-person interaction. If vaccines or drugs are still under trial or not fully tested, then the issue of being the subject of an experiment is also real. There is a clear intent to employ the CEPI ‘100 day’ vaccine program, which by definition cannot complete meaningful safety or efficacy trials within that time span. Forced examination or medication, outside of a situation where the recipient is clearly not mentally competent to comply or reject when provided with information, is unethical. Requiring compliance in order to access what are considered basic human rights under the UDHR would constitute coercion. If this does not fit the WHO’s definition of infringement on individual sovereignty, and on national sovereignty, then the DG and his supporters need to publicly explain what definition they are using. The Proposed WHO Pandemic Agreement as a Tool to Manage Transfer of Sovereignty The proposed pandemic agreement will set humanity in a new era strangely organized around pandemics: pre-pandemic, pandemic, and inter-pandemic. A new governance structure under WHO auspices will oversee the IHR amendments and related initiatives. It will rely on new funding requirements, including the WHO’s ability to demand additional funding and materials from countries and to run a supply network to support its work in health emergencies (Article 12): In the event of a pandemic, real-time access by WHO to a minimum of 20% (10% as a donation and 10% at affordable prices to WHO) of the production of safe, efficacious and effective pandemic-related products for distribution based on public health risks and needs, with the understanding that each Party that has manufacturing facilities that produce pandemic-related products in its jurisdiction shall take all necessary steps to facilitate the export of such pandemic-related products, in accordance with timetables to be agreed between WHO and manufacturers. And Article 20 (1): …provide support and assistance to other Parties, upon request, to facilitate the containment of spill-over at the source. The entire structure will be financed by a new funding stream separate from current WHO funding – an additional requirement on taxpayers over current national commitments (Article 20 (2)). The funding will also include an endowment of voluntary contributions of “all relevant sectors that benefit from international work to strengthen pandemic preparation, preparedness and response” and donations from philanthropic organizations (Article 20 (2)b). Currently, countries decide on foreign aid on the basis of national priorities, apart from limited funding that they have agreed to allocate to organizations such as WHO under existing obligations or treaties. The proposed agreement is remarkable not just in greatly increasing the amount countries must give as treaty requirements, but in setting up a parallel funding structure disconnected from other disease priorities (quite the opposite of previous ideas on integration in health financing). It also gives power to an external group, not directly accountable, to demand or acquire further resources whenever it deems necessary. In a further encroachment into what is normally within the legal jurisdiction of Nation States, the agreement will require countries to establish (Article 15) “…, no-fault vaccine injury compensation mechanism(s),…”, consecrating effective immunity for pharmaceutical companies for harm to citizens resulting from use of products that the WHO recommends under an emergency use authorization, or indeed requires countries to mandate onto their citizens. As is becoming increasingly acceptable for those in power, ratifying countries will agree to limit the right of their public to voice opposition to the WHO’s measures and claims regarding such an emergency (Article 18): …and combat false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation, including through effective international collaboration and cooperation… As we have seen during the Covid-19 response, the definition of misleading information can be dependent on political or commercial expediency, including factual information on vaccine efficacy and safety and orthodox immunology that could impair the sale of health commodities. This is why open democracies put such emphasis on defending free speech, even at the risk of sometimes being misleading. In signing on to this agreement, governments will be agreeing to abrogate that principle regarding their own citizens when instructed by the WHO. The scope of this proposed agreement (and the IHR amendments) is broader than pandemics, greatly expanding the scope under which a transfer of decision-making powers can be demanded. Other environmental threats to health, such as changes in climate, can be declared emergencies at the DG’s discretion, if broad definitions of ‘One Health’ are adopted as recommended. It is difficult to think of another international instrument where such powers over national resources are passed to an unelected external organization, and it is even more challenging to envision how this is seen as anything other than a loss of sovereignty. The only justification for this claim would appear to be if the draft agreement is to be signed on the basis of deceit – that there is no intention to treat it other than as an irrelevant piece of paper or something that should only apply to less powerful States (i.e. a colonialist tool). Will the IHR Amendments and the Proposed Pandemic Agreement be Legally Binding? Both texts are intended to be legally binding. The IHR already has such status, so the impact of the proposed changes on the need for new acceptance by countries are complicated national jurisdictional issues. There is a current mechanism for rejection of new amendments. However, unless a high number of countries will actively voice their oppositions and rejections, the adoption of the current published version dated February 2023 will likely lead to a future shadowed by the permanent risks of the WHO’s lockdown and lockstep dictates. The proposed pandemic agreement is also clearly intended to be legally binding. WHO discusses this issue on the website of the International Negotiating Body (INB) that is working on the text. The same legally binding intent is specifically stated by the G20 Bali Leaders Declaration in 2022: We support the work of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) that will draft and negotiate a legally binding instrument that should contain both legally binding and non-legally binding elements to strengthen pandemic PPR…, repeated in the 2023 G20 New Delhi Leaders Declaration: …an ambitious, legally binding WHO convention, agreement or other international instruments on pandemic PPR (WHO CA+) by May 2024, and by the Council of the European Union: A convention, agreement or other international instrument is legally binding under international Law. An agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response adopted under the World Health Organization (WHO) would enable countries around the globe to strengthen national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics. The IHR already has standing under international law. While seeking such status, WHO officials who previously described the proposed agreement as a ‘treaty” are now insisting neither instrument impacts sovereignty. The implication that it is States’ representatives at the WHA that will agree to the transfer, rather than the WHO, is a nuance irrelevant to its claims regarding their subsequent effect. The WHO’s position raises a real question of whether its leadership is truly ignorant of what is proposed, or is actively seeking to mislead countries and the public in order to increase the probability of acceptance. The latest version dated 30 October 2023 requires 40 ratifications for the future agreement to enter into force, after a two-thirds vote in favor within the WHA. Opposition by a considerable number of countries will therefore be needed to derail this project. As it is backed by powerful governments and institutions, financial mechanisms including IMF and World Bank instruments and bilateral aids are likely to make opposition from lower-income countries difficult to sustain. The Implications of Ignoring the Issue of Sovereignty The relevant question regarding these two WHO instruments should really be not whether sovereignty is threatened, but why any sovereignty would be forfeited by democratic States to an organization that is (i) significantly privately funded and bound to obey the dictates of corporations and self-proclaimed philanthropists and (ii) jointly governed by Member States, half of which don’t even claim to be open representative democracies. If it is indeed true that sovereignty is being knowingly forfeited by governments without the knowledge and consent of their peoples, and based on false claims from governments and the WHO, then the implications are extremely serious. It would imply that leaders were working directly against their peoples’ or national interest, and in support of external interests. Most countries have specific fundamental laws dealing with such practice. So, it is really important for those defending these projects to either explain their definitions of sovereignty and democratic process, or explicitly seek informed public consent. The other question to be asked is why public health authorities and media are repeating the WHO’s assurances of the benign nature of the pandemic instruments. It asserts that claims of reduced sovereignty are ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation,’ which they assert elsewhere are major killers of humankind. While such claims are somewhat ludicrous and appear intended to denigrate dissenters, the WHO is clearly guilty of that which it claims is such a crime. If its leadership cannot demonstrate how its claims regarding these pandemic instruments are not deliberately misleading, its leadership would appear ethically compelled to resign. The Need for Clarification The WHO lists three major pandemics in the past century – influenza outbreaks in the late 1950s and 1960s, and the Covid-19 pandemic. The first two killed less than die each year today from tuberculosis, whilst the reported deaths from Covid-19 never reached the level of cancer or cardiovascular disease and remained almost irrelevant in low-income countries compared to endemic infectious diseases including tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDs. No other non-influenza outbreak recorded by the WHO that fits the definition of a pandemic (e.g., rapid spread across international borders for a limited time of a pathogen not normally causing significant harm) has caused greater mortality in total than a few days of tuberculosis (about 4,000/day) or more life-years lost than a few days of malaria (about 1,500 children under 5 years old every day). So, if it is indeed the case that our authorities and their supporters within the public health community consider that powers currently vested within national jurisdictions should be given over to external bodies on the basis of this level of recorded harm, it would be best to have a public conversation as to whether this is sufficient basis for abandoning democratic ideals in favor of a more fascist or otherwise authoritarian approach. We are, after all, talking about restricting basic human rights essential for a democracy to function. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone Institute Article and Author. Authors David Bell David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA. View all posts Thi Thuy Van Dinh Dr. Thi Thuy Van Dinh (LLM, PhD) worked on international law in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Subsequently, she managed multilateral organization partnerships for Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund and led environmental health technology development efforts for low-resource settings. View all posts Your financial backing of Brownstone Institute goes to support writers, lawyers, scientists, economists, and other people of courage who have been professionally purged and displaced during the upheaval of our times. You can help get the truth out through their ongoing work. https://brownstone.org/articles/why-does-the-who-make-false-claims-regarding-proposals-to-seize-states-sovereignty/

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BIDEN ADMIN DEPLOYED AIR FORCE TEAM TO ISRAEL TO ASSIST WITH TARGETS, DOCUMENT SUGGESTS Biden Admin Deployed Air Force Team to Israel to Assist With Targets, Document Suggests Ken Klippenstein, Matthew Petti January 11 2024, 3:33 p.m. A picture taken from Rafah shows smoke billowing over Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip during Israeli bombardment on January 11, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images) Targeting intelligence — the information used to conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons — has played a central role in Israel’s siege of Gaza. A document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act suggests that the U.S. Air Force sent officers specializing in this exact form of intelligence to Israel in late November. Since the start of Israel’s bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’s strike on October 7, Israel has dropped more than 29,000 bombs on the tiny Gaza Strip, according to a U.S. intelligence report last month. And for the first time in U.S. history, the Biden administration has been flying surveillance drone missions over Gaza since at least early November, ostensibly for hostage recovery by special forces. At the time the drones were revealed, U.S. Gen. Pat Ryder insisted that the special operations forces deployed to Israel to advise on hostage rescue were “not participating in [Israel Defense Forces] target development.” “I’ve directed my team to share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise the Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts,” said President Joe Biden three days after the Hamas attack. But several weeks later, on November 21, the U.S. Air Force issued deployment guidelines for officers, including intelligence engagement officers, headed to Israel. Experts say that a team of targeting officers like this would be used to provide satellite intelligence to the Israelis for the purpose of offensive targeting. “They’re probably targeting people, targeting officers,” Lawrence Cline, who served as an intelligence engagement officer in Iraq before retirement, told The Intercept. Targeting intelligence refers to the identification and characterization of enemy activities including missile and artillery launches, location of leadership and command and control centers, and key facilities. “What I can see is we’ve got a lot of global assets in terms of satellites and the like and the Israelis have a lot in terms of more localized radar coverage.” The deployment guidelines were issued by the Pentagon’s Air Force component command for the Middle East, Air Forces Central, on November 21. The document provides deployment instructions to air personnel sent to the country, including an “Air Defense Liaison Team” as well as “airmen assigned as the Intelligence Engagement Officer (IEO).” Intelligence engagement officers, Cline explained, coordinate intelligence between the U.S. and partner militaries. When deployed in Iraq, Cline, who now works as an instructor for the Defense Department Counterterrorism Fellowship Program, recalled that he and other IEOs comprised a small team who spent “probably three quarters of our time working with the Iraqis, the other quarter checking in with headquarters,” adding that “it was sort of half and half a liaison and advising.” Asked about the airmen’s mission, the Defense Intelligence Agency referred questions to the Air Forces Central, which did not respond to a request for comment. Neither the Office of the Secretary of Defense nor Central Command responded to requests for comment. Most Read The intelligence engagement process provides a low-profile mechanism through which the U.S. can coordinate with the Israeli military, a valuable tool amid the political sensitivity of the conflict. A U.S. Army primer defines intelligence engagement as a “powerful” tool that is useful “especially when U.S. policy might restrict our interaction,” as it “often does not require large budgets or footprints.” Experts say that may be the case here. Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare, a website specializing in national security law, said that there seems to be an “Israel exception” to the U.S. rules around military assistance. Past presidents have issued several executive orders banning the U.S. government from carrying out or sponsoring assassinations abroad. This ban has been interpreted to include wartime targeting of civilians, according to a recent Foreign Affairs article by Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser for the State Department who now works for Crisis Group. And the so-called Leahy law, a set of budget amendments named for Sen. Patrick Leahy, requires the U.S. government to vet foreign military units for “gross violations of human rights” when providing training or aid to those units. Several progressive members of Congress have raised concerns that U.S. aid to Israel — both before and during the present war — violates that requirement. “For air advisory missions, which I imagine involve intelligence sharing and training, specific domestic legal restrictions such as the Leahy law and the assassination ban would likely come into play,” McBrien said. But the Leahy vetting process is “reversed” for Israel; rather than vetting Israeli military units beforehand, the U.S. State Department sends aid and then waits for reports of violations, according to a recent article by Josh Paul, who resigned from his post as a State Department political-military officer over his concerns with U.S. support for Israel. “As a general matter, U.S. officials who are providing support to another country during armed conflict would want to make sure they are not aiding and abetting war crimes,” Finucane told The Intercept. He emphasized that the same principle applies to weapons transfers and intelligence sharing. The Israeli military intentionally strikes Palestinian civilian infrastructure, known as “power targets,” in order to “create a shock,” according to an investigation by the Israeli news website +972 Magazine. Targets are generated using an artificial intelligence system known as “Habsora,” Hebrew for “gospel.” “Nothing happens by accident,” an Israeli military intelligence source told +972 Magazine. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.” The Biden administration has gone to great lengths to conceal the nature of its support for the Israeli military. The Pentagon quietly tapped a so-called Tiger Team to facilitate weapons assistance to Israel, as The Intercept has previously reported. The administration has also declined to reveal which weapons systems it’s providing Israel and at which quantities, insisting that the secrecy is necessary for security reasons. “We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters during a press briefing in October. This contrasts with its support for Ukraine, about which it has been far more transparent. The administration has provided an itemized list of its weapons assistance to Ukraine, a country facing at least as much of a threat amid the invasion of Russia. The White House has never addressed the incongruity. Past administrations have also provided detailed public information about U.S. targeting support for the Saudi and Emirati military campaigns in Yemen, which U.S. officials claim was meant to reduce civilian casualties. The secrecy “may reflect the fact that the U.S. has interests that are in tension, the Biden administration has interests that are in tension,” Finucane said. “On the one hand, they want to publicly embrace Israel and support Israel, providing what seems to be unconditional support. On the other hand, they don’t want to be perceived as taking the country into another war in the Middle East.” https://theintercept.com/2024/01/11/israel-air-force-targeting-intelligence/

Lab grown meat might be technically halal but will erode wealth from Muslim communities Murray Hunter Disrupting the Plate: Cultured Meat Technology | California Management Review Share Cultivated or lab grown meat has been touted as one of the solutions to global warming. Cultivated meat is now being produced in Singapore, with a Malaysian company preparing another start-up in Penang this year. This brings up questions for Muslim communities as to the halal and ethical aspects of this new food source. Cultivated meat is produced by from cell taken from animal embryos or cells from tissue fibre from living animals. These cells are placed in bioreactors and feed a broth of nutrients, under atmospheric and temperature-controlled environments to produce a product resembling natural meat in texture and taste. This process takes only a few years compared to months or even a year for live animal production. On February 2, the Mufti of Singapore Dr Nazirudin Mohd Nasir announced that lab grown meat is permissible in Islam. Thus, lab grown meat can be labelled as halal as long as the initial cells are derived from permissible animals, through methods compliant with Islamic standards. This means that alcohol or spilled blood should not be part of any processes. The ethics of cultivated meat for the Ummah Although cultivated meats are technically halal, there are questions about whether the introduction of cultivated meat fits into the objectives of an Islamic society. There is an ethical issue for the Ummah to consider. Cultivated meat is technically halal, but goes against the concept of Mu’amalat. Mu’amalat is the relationship between persons on this earth. Thus, the production of cultivated meat by corporations destroys Al-iktinaz, where reciprocal assistance and cooperation among members of society is espoused in Islam. The herding, slaughter and cutting of meat has for centuries been an integral part of Islamic society. This created a circular economy which kept many families out of poverty and linked them socially. The Islamic traditions around these activities are replicated around the world in Mesjids and suraus during Ahli Adha each year. Herding brought both wealth and consumption to communities. This can be still seen in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Muslim Thailand. Put simply, the growth of the cultivated meat industry will be a direct transfer of wealth from communities to corporations. Over time, this could destroy the very fabric of Muslim communities, which live and exist on meagre incomes. A man walks a herd of ten cows along Highway No. 1 near Nha Trang | NCpedia Traditional way of life threatened with cultivated meat This is an issue the Ummah must deeply consider, as cultivated meat could present a direct challenge to the viability of many Muslim communities. South Africa: Halal Butchers not Transparent - HalalFocus.net - Daily Halal Market News Will traditional halal butchers become a trade of the past? Finally, one of the major justifications for the rise of cultivated meat was that animal herding played a role in climate change due to methane discharge. However, the lab production of meat also creates a carbon footprint from using fossil-fuel produced electricity. In addition, the yeasts and enzymes used in cultivated meat production also emit CO2. There are also pollution issues with the disposal of the waste. To date, there have been no convincing scientific studies on comparative carbon footprints from herding and lab cultivation. Muslims must apply social wisdom on the above issue, if local Islamic circular economies are to be kept, particularly in marginal income rural communities. Subscribe Below: https://open.substack.com/pub/murrayhunter/p/lab-grown-meat-might-be-technically https://telegra.ph/Lab-grown-meat-might-be-technically-halal-but-will-erode-wealth-from-Muslim-communities-02-25

NATO 'scrambles jets', Kremlin claims, as Putin sends two nuclear-capable missile carriers over Norwegian Sea ➡️The Kremlin launched two missile carriers to fly over the Norwegian Sea ➡️NATO scrambled jets in response, Russia has claimed ➡️Tensions between Russia and the bloc have been steadily rising NATO has scrambled warplanes to confront a pair of nuclear-capable missile carriers that were seen patrolling the Norwegian Sea today, Russia has claimed. The Kremlin once again taunted the bloc by launching two TU-95MS planes to patrol the Norwegian Sea, which were escorted by a group of Su35S aircraft. READ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13074167/NATO-scrambles-jets-Kremlin-claims-Putin-sends-two-nuclear-capable-missile-carriers-Norwegian-Sea.html NATO 'scrambles jets', Kremlin claims, as Putin sends two nuclear-capable missile carriers over Norwegian Sea By Will Stewart and Perkin Amalaraj 13:58 GMT 12 Feb 2024 , updated 14:58 GMT 12 Feb 2024 The Kremlin launched two missile carriers to fly over the Norwegian Sea NATO scrambled jets in response, Russia has claimed Tensions between Russia and the bloc have been steadily rising NATO has scrambled warplanes to confront a pair of nuclear-capable missile carriers that were seen patrolling the Norwegian Sea today, Russia has claimed. Advertisement Advertisement The Kremlin once again taunted the bloc by launching two TU-95MS planes to patrol the Norwegian Sea, which were escorted by a group of Su35S aircraft. The five-hour flight also saw 'fighters from foreign countries' accompany the unit, though Moscow did not specify which Wester air forces were deployed. An MoD source told MailOnline that the RAF have not launched any planes in response to the fly-over. The Norwegian Sea is bordered to the south by Britain - the north of Shetland, to the east by Norway, and to the west by Iceland. 'The flight was carried out in strict accordance with international rules for the use of airspace,' said Lieutenant-General Sergei Kobylash, commander of Russian long-range aviation. NATO scrambles jets as Russia sends two nuclear missiles over sea Russian Tu-95MS nuclear-capable strategic missile carriers flew over the Norwegian Sea Russian Tu-95MS nuclear-capable strategic missile carriers flew over the Norwegian Sea The flights come amid warnings from Western politicians and military commanders about the threat of Russia triggering a Third World War The flights come amid warnings from Western politicians and military commanders about the threat of Russia triggering a Third World War 'Long-range aviation pilots regularly fly over the neutral waters of the Arctic, North Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Black and Baltic Seas.' READ MORE: Elon Musk is hailed in Russia as 'Colonel Muskov' after it's claimed Putin's forces are using his Starlink system to aid Ukrainian invasion The flights come amid warnings from Western politicians and military commanders about the threat of Russia triggering a Third World War in the coming years. But the UK's overstretched armed forces may be unable to effectively fight in a potential world war, as chronic shortages of troops and equipment are being covered up in a 'veil of secrecy', MPs have warned. In a damning report released last week, the Defence Select Committee concluded the Army is the UK's 'weakest service' due to 'significant capability deficiencies' – which included drastic shortages of vehicles, tanks and even ammunition. After facing a wall of silence while compiling their Ready For War report, the MPs urged military top brass and Ministers to be more transparent about the shortcomings so they can be addressed urgently. The report further highlights war-readiness issues with the Royal Navy's £3.5billion aircraft carriers, too. Ukrainian servicemen light a fire with gun powder to get warm near the city of Bakhmut Ukrainian servicemen light a fire with gun powder to get warm near the city of Bakhmut Ukrainian serviceman of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army stands at a fortified position, at an undisclosed location next to the Vuhledar frontline Ukrainian serviceman of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army stands at a fortified position, at an undisclosed location next to the Vuhledar frontline Firefighters try to extinguish the fire broke out on a destroyed building after Russian shelling Firefighters try to extinguish the fire broke out on a destroyed building after Russian shelling Despite spending about £50billion a year on defence, 'sustained ongoing investment' is needed for the UK to fight a 'high-intensity war', the report concludes. READ MORE: Russia mocks the West's fury over Trump after he said he'd encourage Putin to attack NATO nations who fail to pay bills - 'Do they seriously think we will bomb defaulters once a quarter?' Witnesses told the inquiry that the Armed Forces would struggle in a major conflict, claiming the British Army does not have enough new infantry fighting vehicles, Challenger tanks or adequate missile defence capabilities. Advertisement Advertisement The Royal Navy is suffering from delays to a new frigate programme and an 'over-tasked' aircraft fleet, while the RAF has a shortfall of combat aircraft, delays to new Chinook helicopters and too few pilots. The heads of the Forces also raised concerns about stockpiles used by Ukraine reducing the amount available to the UK. The report warned of 'capacity shortfalls', with the MoD admitting to only recruiting five service personnel for every eight who leave. Earlier this week, Putin told Tucker Carlson that a Russian defeat in the war he unleashed by invading Ukraine is 'impossible' and 'will never happen'. There is also acute concern in eastern Europe over the prospect of a re-elected Donald Trump downscaling NATO. Putin told Carlson 'we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else- why would we? 'We simply have no interest..... It is absolutely out of the question.' However, he earlier made similar claims about using force to grab Crimea and other areas of Ukraine. MailOnline has contacted NATO and the UK's Ministry of Defence for comment. https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/02/nato-scrambles-jets-kremlin-claims-as.html

Falk: Israel used Oct 7 attack as a pretext for its plan to expel Palestinians [email protected] January 26, 2024 greater israel, hamas, Nakba, settler colonialism, zionism Falk: Israel used Oct 7 attack as a pretext for its plan to expel Palestinians Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestine, discusses Gaza, the most transparent genocide in human history (photo) All indications are that Israel used the October 7 attack as a pretext for the preexisting master plan to get rid of the Palestinians whose presence blocks the establishment of Greater Israel with sovereign control over the West Bank and at least portions of Gaza Hamas had publicly and by back channels pushed for a 50-year cease-fire with Israel Ray McGovern: In my view, the war in Gaza is going so badly for Israel that its Great White Hope is to get the US directly involved militarily. The best way to do that is to involve Iran… Reposted from Ray McGovern’s website, January 18, 2024, excerpts from In Gaza, the West Is Enabling the Most Transparent Genocide in Human History, by Richard Falk Hamas and a Second Nakba While I [Richard Falk] was special rapporteur for the U.N. on Israeli violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, I had the opportunity to meet and talk in detail with several of the Hamas leaders who are living either in Doha or Cairo and also in Gaza. In the period between 2010 and 2014, Hamas was publicly and by back channels pushing for a 50-year cease-fire with Israel. It was conditioned on Israel carrying out the unanimous 1967 Security Council mandate in SC Res 242 to withdraw its forces to the pre-war boundaries of “the green line.” Hamas had also sought a long-range cease-fire with Israel after its 2006 electoral victory for up to 50 years. Neither Israel nor the U.S. would respond to those diplomatic initiatives. Hamas, Machel particularly who was perhaps the most intellectual of the Hamas leaders, told me that he warned Washington of the tragic consequences for both peoples if the conflict was allowed to go on without a cease-fire, which was confirmed by independent sources. Where can Palestinians go as the population suffers from famine and continued bombing? What is Israel’s goal? All indications are that Israel used the October 7 attack as a pretext for the preexisting master plan to get rid of the Palestinians whose presence blocks the establishment of Greater Israel with sovereign control over the West Bank and at least portions of Gaza. I see the so-called commitment to thinning the Palestinian presence in Gaza and to a functional second Nakba. This is a criminal policy. I don’t know that it has to have a formal name. It is not a policy designed to achieve anything but the decapitation of the Palestinian population. Israel seeks to move Gazans to the Egyptian Sinai, and the Egyptians have already indicated that they don’t welcome this. This is not a policy. This is some kind of a threat of elimination. The Israeli campaign after October 7 was not directed toward Hamas’ terrorism nearly as much as it was directed toward the forced evacuation of the Palestinians from Gaza and for the related dispossession of Palestine in the West Bank. If Israel really wanted to deal with its security in an effective way, much more efficient and effective methods would have been relied upon. There was no reason to treat the entire civilian population of Gaza as if it were implicated in the Hamas attack, and there was certainly no justification for the genocidal response. The Israeli motivations seem more related to completing the Zionist Project than to restoring territorial security. For a proper perspective we should remember that before October 7, the Netanyahu coalition government that took power at the start of 2023 was known as the most extreme government ever to govern the country since its establishment in 1948. The new Netanyahu government in Israel immediately gave a green light to settler violence in the Occupied West Bank and appointed overtly racist religious leaders to administer the parts of Palestine still occupied. This was part of the end game of the whole Zionist project of claiming territorial sovereignty over the whole of the so-called promised land, enabling Greater Israel to come into existence. The Need for a Different Context We need to establish a different context than the one that exists now. That means a different outlook on the part of the Western supporters of Israel. And a different internal Israeli sense of their own interests, their own future. And it’s only when substantive pressure is brought to bear on an elite that has gone to these lengths that it can shake commitments to this orientation. The lengths that the Israeli government has gone to are characteristic of settler colonial states. All of them, including the U.S. and Canada, have acted violently to neutralize or exterminate the resident Indigenous people. That is what this genocidal interlude is all about. It is an effort to realize the goals of maximal versions of Zionism, which can only succeed by eliminating the Palestinians as rightful claimants. It should not be forgotten that in the weeks before the Hamas attack, including at the U.N., Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was waving a map of “the new Middle East” that had erased the existence of Palestine. Undoubtedly, one of Hamas’ motivations was to negate the view that Palestine had given up its right to self-determination, and that Palestine could be erased. Recall the old delusional pre-Balfour Zionist slogan: “A people without land for a land without people.” Such utterances of this early Zionist utopian phase literally erased the Palestinians who for generations lived in Palestine as an entitled Indigenous population. With the Balfour Declaration of 1917, this settler colonial vision became a political project with the blessings of the leading European colonial power. … This may turn out to be a moment of clarity with respect not only to Gaza, but to the overall prospects for sustainable peace and justice between these two embattled peoples. (The above are excerpts from: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/west-enabling-genocide-gaza January 17, 2024 [Emphasis added]) Ray Comment: In my view, the war in Gaza is going so badly for Israel that its Great White Hope is to get the US directly involved militarily. The best way to do that is to involve Iran. So far, the Iranians have been clever not to rise to the bait. So … watch for an Israeli FALSE FLAG attack on US troops or simply on US “interests” blamed on Iran. Brace yourself. Remember: Iran is still the main Israeli-cum-neocon target. Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestine and is currently co-convener of SHAPE (Save Humanity and Planet Earth). Ray McGovern is was an Army intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s five most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985. RELATED READING – RICHARD FALK: Falk & Tilley: Open Letter to UN Ambassador Nikki Haley on Our Report on Apartheid in Israel Experts: Israeli System Constitutes Apartheid, Crime against Humanity The Politics of Hunger Strikes CURRENT SITUATION: 12 Essential Facts for Understanding the Current Israel-Gaza Violence The West’s complete contempt for the lives of Palestinians will not be forgotten Israel’s Assault on Gaza Is Unlike Any War in Recent Memory US poised to give Israel $18 billion in aid this year Essential facts and stats about the Hamas-Gaza-Israel war VIDEOS: Facts about the Israel Gaza War essential for Americans to know – Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh What was happening in Gaza BEFORE the Hamas attack that the media didn’t tell you? Professor Richard Falk speech at the First Global Conference on Israeli Apartheid https://israelpalestinenews.org/falk-israel-used-oct-7-attack-as-a-pretext-for-its-plan-to-expel-palestinians/

Does any Sane Person Believe Israel Complies with International Law? | VT Foreign Policy January 27, 2024 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. On 24 January Parliament produced a rare treat where an MP held a Government minister to account over support for Israel’s appalling behaviour in Gaza and the Government’s attempts to cover up their own collusion. David Rutley MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) was being quizzed by Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab). The verbatim report in Hansard speaks for itself so I’ll simply let it run. Zarah Sultana: I would like to talk about the Government’s response to Israel’s violations of international law in Gaza and about revelations that I believe should be a major news story…. They relate to recently released court documents that reveal that, from very early on in the war, the Foreign Office had major doubts about Israel’s compliance with international law — a fact the Government have hidden. The documents show that, on 10 November, just a month into the war, the Foreign Office had made an internal assessment of Israel’s compliance with international law and judged that “the volume of strikes, total death toll as a proportion of those who are children, raise serious concerns.” It went on to say that His Majesty’s Government’s “inability to come to a clear assessment on Israel’s record of compliance with IHL poses significant policy risks.” However, those serious concerns were kept secret from Parliament and the public. Instead, Ministers continued to give reassurances about Israel’s commitment to international law. For example, just four days after that assessment was made, I asked the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield [Andrew Mitchell], in the main Chamber whether Israel had used British-made weapons for war crimes in Gaza. He replied that “the President of Israel…has made it clear that his country will abide by international humanitarian law”. —[Official Report, 14 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 523.] That was despite the fact that, as shown by these documents, his Department doubted the Israeli President’s words. The documents reveal that another assessment was made by the Foreign Office on 8 December, expressing “concerns regarding” Israel’s “commitment to comply with the obligation not to arbitrarily deny access to humanitarian assistance” and saying that it was “possible Israel’s actions” in relation to the provision of humanitarian relief “were a breach of International Humanitarian Law”. Those damning judgments were, again, not made public. Instead, Government Ministers continued to reassure the public about Israel’s commitment to international law, and they continue to do that. The documents show that, a few days after that assessment, the Foreign Secretary “decided he was satisfied there was good evidence to support a judgment that Israel is committed to comply with International Humanitarian Law”. On that basis, he continued allowing arms sales to Israel, despite the fact that, according to our Government’s policy and international law, arms export licences should not be granted if there is a clear risk that they could be used in violation of international law. That recommendation was accepted by the Business Secretary on 18 December, and arms sales to Israel were allowed to continue. When questioned about these matters at the Foreign Affairs Committee this month, the Foreign Secretary failed to disclose the fact that his Department had carried out a formal review of Israel’s compliance with international law, and he denied that he had made a ministerial decision about allowing arms sales to continue. Members will be unsurprised to learn that the Chair of that Committee is writing to the Foreign Secretary to ask him to clarify his comments. What does this tell us? First, it tells us that, early on in the war, the Foreign Office had serious concerns about Israel’s breaches of international law. Secondly, it tells us that Ministers hid that fact, pretending in Parliament and in the media that they had confidence in Israel’s commitment to international law. Thirdly, it tells us that we should have absolutely no confidence in the Government’s arms export licensing regime, which Ministers boast consists of “the toughest regulations anywhere in the world” [Official Report, 27 November 2023; Vol. 741, c. 565.] but which are clearly grossly inadequate. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden attends a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he visits Israel amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 18, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo To finish, I would like to ask some questions of the Minister. ⦁ Why did Foreign Office Ministers not reveal that their Department had serious concerns about Israel’s behaviour from as early as 10 November? Was that because they wanted to give Israel the green light for its bombardment of Gaza and they thought that revealing this assessment would simply make that too hard? ⦁ Why did the Foreign Secretary recommend continuing with arms sales to Israel even though his Department had those concerns? Was it because this Government are too cowardly to stand up for international law, or is it because they do not care about international law when it does not suit them? ⦁ Finally, will the Government comply with their own rules and with international law and the basic humanity at the heart of it and stop arming Israeli war crimes? David Rutley: The hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) raised important points. What I can say at this point — she will probably not be happy with the answer — is that Ministers review the advice they receive carefully and act consistently with that advice. We work hard and continue to call for international humanitarian law to be respected and for civilians to be protected. As the Foreign Secretary outlined, we assess that Israel has the capability and commitment to comply with international humanitarian law, but we are also deeply concerned about the impact on the civilian population in Gaza. Too many civilians have been killed. Zarah Sultana: If there are concerns in the Foreign Office, as per the internal assessment, why did the Foreign Secretary recommend continuing to allow arms sales to Israel? That goes against our current policy, which is that where there is a risk that human rights violations will take place, we should not continue selling arms licences to countries. David Rutley: The Foreign Secretary outlined on 8 January that he has not received advice that Israel has breached international humanitarian law. On export licences, the UK supports Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself and take action against terrorism, provided that it is within the bounds of international humanitarian law. All our export licences are kept under careful and continual review, and we can amend, suspend or revoke extant licences or refuse new licence applications where they are inconsistent with the UK’s strategic export licensing criteria. It is important to note that, as I think hon. Members are aware, the regime is among the most rigorous and transparent in the world. On the topic of Israel and Gaza, a number of people talked about South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice. The Government believe that this development is not helpful, and we do not support it. As previously stated, we recognise that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas, and we do not believe that calling that genocide is the right approach. Ultimately, it is for the courts, not states, to decide on matters of genocide, and of course we will respect the role and independence of the ICJ. This encounter tells us at least four things. Saying that “Israel is committed to comply with International Humanitarian Law” is laughable given the apartheid state’s 75-year record of not complying. The Government still desperately clings to the belief that Israel has a right to defend itself against legitimate Palestinian armed resistance even after being told by the UN that “Israel cannot claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies”. If, after 3 months of hideous slaughter and devastation, the Foreign Secretary hadn’t detected brazen violations of international and humanitarian law by Israel he ought to be sent on a crash course on the subject – along with the rest of his ignorant colleagues. The British Government should hang their heads in shame for not supporting South Africa in bringing their case to the ICJ about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. After hearing the Court’s verdict they look like a very sad bunch of ‘Friends of Genocidists’. Stuart Littlewood 27 January 2024 Stuart Littlewood After working on jet fighters in the RAF Stuart became an industrial marketing specialist with manufacturing companies and consultancy firms. He also “indulged himself” as a newspaper columnist. In politics, he served as a Cambridgeshire county councilor and member of the Police Authority. Now retired he campaigns on various issues and contributes to several online news & opinion sites. An Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, he has produced two photo-documentary books – Paperturn-view.com. Also, check out Stuart’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper. It tells the plight of the Palestinians under brutal occupation and explains to me why the Zionists who control Israel should be brought before the International Criminal Court. Stuart’s Very Latest Articles: 2023 – Present – Archived Articles: 2010-2015 – 2016-2022 ATTENTION READERS We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion. About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT. https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/01/does-any-sane-person-believe-israel-complies-with-international-law/

It's Time To YELL At The U.S. Government Tell the Office for Global Affairs exactly what you really think of the proposed "Pandemic Agreement." Submit your written comments by Monday, January 22, 2024. GET IT OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM! James Roguski Share Leave a comment WORLDWIDE PUBLIC COMMENTS REGARDING THE PROPOSED “PANDEMIC AGREEMENT” HAVE BEEN REQUESTED BY THE UNITED STATES OFFICE FOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW… OFFICIAL DETAILS ARE AVAILABLE HERE EVERYONE ON EARTH is invited to submit your written comments via email to [email protected] before 5pm Eastern time on Monday, January 22, 2024 with the subject line: “Written Comment Re: Implications of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) Commitments/Regimes and Other Proposed Commitments in the WHO Pandemic Agreement” The most recent Negotiating Text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement (Negotiating Text) can be found here: https://apps.who.int/​gb/​inb/​pdf_​files/​inb7/​A_​INB7_​3-en.pdf Please take the time to copy the comment that you submit and post it in the comment section below… Leave a comment You can take the easy way out, and CLICK HERE to send a pre-written email, but I strongly encourage you to really put in the effort to let the Office for Global Affairs know what you really think! I encourage you to record a video (LIKE THESE) and include a link to your video in your email. FALSE ASSUMPTION #1: The Office for Global Affairs (OGA) wants us to answer a series of questions that assume that we want a “Pandemic Agreement” to be negotiated. They assume that we want “rapid creation and equitable deployment of safe and effective vaccines, diagnostic tests, and treatments.” FALSE ASSUMPTION #2: The proposed negotiating text of the “Pandemic Agreement” that was published on October 30, 2023 is already out of date. A new version is being written as we speak and is due to be available in February 2024. The Office for Global Affairs (OGA) wants us to comment on what is already an old version of the proposed agreement. THESE ARE FALSE ASSUMPTIONS THAT MUST BE CHALLENGED FEEL FREE TO COPY MY LETTER AND DECLARATION AND EDIT IT TO MAKE IT YOUR OWN: My letter to the Office of Global Affairs: My thoughts are best summarized in this video: https://www.bitchute.com/video/68noiys4ufyP/ and this website: http://ThePeoplesDeclaration.com The Office for Global Affairs MUST HEED the 33,884 comments that were submitted to the World Health Organization in April 2022: https://inb.who.int/home/public-hearings/first-round https://inb.who.int/docs/librariesprovider13/default-document-library/inb-first-round-public-hearings-written-contributions.xlsx?sfvrsn=275459d6_7 The Office for Global Affairs MUST ALSO HEED the hundreds of video comments submitted to the World Health Organization by INDIVIDUALS in September 2022: https://inb.who.int/docs/librariesprovider13/default-document-library/inb-public-hearings---video-list-(final).pdf?sfvrsn=242677f2_3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glXnQDeIOf8 The United States government should develop the software for a GLOBALLY AND PUBLICLY AVAILABLE interactive forum/database for ALL types of health care practitioners to share their clinical experiences and observations IN REAL TIME WITHOUT CENSORSHIP OF ANY KIND regarding all diseases so that everyone on earth can access the wisdom of absolutely all the health professionals in the world for free. The tens of billions of dollars that might potentially be spent on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response would be much better spent ensuring that safe, potable drinking water and sanitary removal of waste water be provided for everyone on earth. ***** STOP THESE NEGOTIATIONS These negotiations are in regards to what is essentially a trade dispute masquerading as a health issue that is beyond the competency of the World Health Organization. Health care is NOT an enumerated authority of the federal government. You have zero lawful authority regarding health. Health care is an issue that must be controlled by the 50 states as directed by the people of each state. These negotiations MUST be terminated immediately. Before any international agreement is to even be considered, a full reckoning of mistakes made, and crimes committed over the past five years MUST occur. No treaty, agreement, framework convention, amendments to the existing International Health Regulations or any other international instrument is needed, nor is one desired. Any agreement in the form of an open-ended "Framework Convention" MUST BE REJECTED. I DO NOT SUPPORT AND I ACTIVELY OPPOSE FURTHER INVESTMENT IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL, HOSPITAL, EMERGENCY, INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (PHEIC). The search for "pathogens with pandemic potential" and the plan to build a global laboratory network to facilitate genetic sequencing is a thinly veiled disguise for bioweapons research. The use of Midazolam, ventilators, Run-Death-Is-Near, Paxlovid, Molnupiravir, and most other pharmaceutical interventions has been an absolute health and financial disaster for everyone except the pharmaceutical industry. Any discussion of, or any attempt to control or even monitor our unalienable right to free speech must be opposed and destroyed in its entirety. The WHO, the FDA and the CDC are the true source of the “infodemic” and they are the greatest providers of mis, dis and mal information. The mRNA platform and the coercion used to implement it has been such an absolute disaster that those who promoted and implemented it are guilty of crimes against humanity. STOP THE SHOTS! STOP THESE NEGOTIATIONS EXIT THE WHO The People's Declaration The People's Declaration Share this link: ThePeoplesDeclaration.com Read full story Additional information: https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/explainer-whos-pandemic-agreement-threatens-national-sovereignty-free-speech-and-life FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: Question: If I submitted an email, but then I thought of something else that I wanted to say, can I submit another email? Answer: YES. Question: If I missed the deadline, can I still submit an email after the deadline has passed? Answer: Yes. Here is what the Office for Global Affairs said: “Comments received after that date will be considered to the extent practicable.” Federal Register Notice: The United States has expressed support for the development of an international instrument to protect the world from pandemic health threats now and in the future, and in a more rapid and equitable manner. The United States is seeking the following key outcomes in the negotiations: Enhance the capacity of countries around the world to prevent, prepare for, and respond to pandemic emergencies and provide clear, credible, consistent information to their citizens. Ensure that all countries share data and laboratory samples from emerging outbreaks quickly, safely, and transparently to facilitate response efforts and inform public health decision making regarding effective disease control measures, including the rapid creation of safe and effective vaccines, diagnostic tests, and treatments. Support more equitable and timely access to, and delivery of, vaccines, diagnostic tests, treatments, and other mitigation measures to quickly contain outbreaks, reduce illness and death, and minimize impacts on the economic and national security of people around the world. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of State are charged with co-leading the U.S. delegation to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) to draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. This Request for Comments procedure is designed to seek input from stakeholders and subject matter experts to help inform the U.S. government negotiating position, including new approaches, proposals, or concerns with the current version of the negotiating text. Stakeholders are invited to provide comments on any and all issues raised by the negotiating text. For foreign-based entities, please specify country/ies in which the institution or organization is headquartered; if your institution or organization is a potential provider of pandemic-related products or services, please specify the types of products or services with which you are commonly associated or seeking to develop. All personal identifying information (for example, name and address) voluntarily submitted by the commenter may be publicly accessible. To the extent commenters choose to comment on specific provisions of the negotiating text, it is helpful to reference any articles or sub-articles being addressed. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Susan Kim, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office for Global Affairs, Office of the Secretary, HHS, Room (639H) Hubert H. Humphrey Building, 200 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20201, (202) 235–3537. Notice And Request For Comments 237KB ∙ PDF file Download https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2023-12-22/pdf/2023-28341.pdf https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/12/22/2023-28341/notice-and-request-for-comments-on-the-implications-of-access-and-benefit-sharing-abs LEARN MORE… Informed-Dissent.com StopTheGlobalAgenda.com ThePeoplesDeclaration.com ExitTheWHO.org ExitTheWHO.com RejectTheAmendments.com StopTheAmendments.com StopTheWHO.com ScrewTheWHO.com PreventGenocide2030.org MaskCharade.com Under Development… DemandHealthFreedom.com DemandHealthFreedom.org HealthFreedomBillOfRights.com James Roguski The old system is crumbling, and we must build its replacement quickly. If you are fed up with the government, hospital, medical, pharmaceutical, media, industrial complex and would like to help build a holistic alternative to the WHO, then feel free to contact me directly anytime. 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Look what they did to Reiner Fuellmich! He’s a political prisoner in Nazi Germany! Update: Reiner Füellmich Speaks Out. His Personal Statement & Press Release From The Defence. Update: Reiner Füellmich Speaks Out. His Personal Statement & Press Release From The Defence. Patricia HarrityDecember 27, 2023 Dr Reiner Füellmich has been imprisoned for almost 11 weeks now. He has written his own personal account, part one of which was read aloud on Bittel TV and translated. He had said “It isn’t over.” The corona pandemic was only the test run to find out what people will go along with when we put them into panic through psycho-terror. We must look behind the panic propaganda, so we can see the truth.” He added “Without justice there is no peace and no returning to a humane world. That also holds for my case.” The English translation of part one can be found here. The official translation for parts 2 and 3 from the Reiner Füellmich team were received by Elsa Scheider from the Truth Summit last week and have been republished below for our readers who have shown a concern and interest in Reiner’s situation Source . This is followed by the press release from the defense team published on 23rd December. “The Truth” – Personal Statement by Dr. Reiner Füellmich’ Part 2: The beginning of the Corona Committee Dear friends, activists, and fellow human beings interested in the truth. This is the 2nd part of my “Personal Statement” to make the events of the last weeks, months and years transparent for all of you. How did it come about that serious allegations of embezzlement were made against me publicly and in a criminal complaint by four former comrades-in-arms in the Corona Committee? Who were the people I trusted when I worked with the Corona Committee? How did it come about that I am now sitting in a high-security prison in Germany – and completely innocent? Above all, I have to reproach myself, because my professional gut feeling clearly betrayed me (or I didn’t listen closely enough), and I simply didn’t attend enough to details in the daily TO-DOs, otherwise I would have noticed the planned coup much earlier. But first things first: My wife Inka and I lived with our dogs on our ranch in Northern California until the beginning of June 2020 and I did my legal work mainly from there. When the plandemic started in 2020, we were both immediately convinced – that something was amiss here. I quickly packed my bags, because I wanted to help shed light on the plandemic in Germany. After all, I had 30 years of experience as a litigator and spent many years studying medical and pharmaceutical law at the University of Göttingen. In addition, I had many contacts from my work in medical law. Dr. WW, whom I trusted at the time, put me in touch with Ms. VF. At the first face-to-face meeting in Berlin, I was bothered by some of her behavior, but I decided to take off my critical glasses, ignore my gut feeling and trust a friend. We agreed to establish the Corona Committee because it was clear in June 2020 that the German Bundestag, which was actually responsible for this, would not start its own investigation, for reasons that were not yet apparent to me at the time. The Corona Committee was to clarify these key questions immediately: 1. How dangerous is the supposedly novel corona virus really? 2. How reliable and suitable is the PCR test for detecting corona infections? 3. How harmful are the Corona measures, i.e. the lockdowns, the mask requirement, social distancing and the threat of so-called vaccinations? Scientists, doctors, economists, lawyers, politicians, etc. should help support us in clarifying the questions. Two German scientists, a professor of finance and an expert in immunology and vaccinations were already part of our circle. Unfortunately, they did not agree with the contracts of VF drawn up by her notary and therefore they left us. I recall that one of them also distrusted VF from the start. We needed replacements quickly. Two years earlier, while working for the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International, I had met law professor Martin Schwab and had been friends with him ever since. He, in turn, had introduced me to two lawyers from Hamburg whom he had promoted. Trusting in Prof. Schwab’s expertise, I asked the two of them if they wanted to move up as a replacement for the scientists in the Corona Committee. Today I know that this was the beginning of the end. Both quickly showed that money meant more to them than clarification and enlightenment. The Corona Committee quickly met with completely unexpected success. Since we conducted the expert surveys in German and English via video-stream, our Friday broadcasts quickly became popular worldwide. Many people had been convinced that we would later use the findings from these interviews as evidence in international damages proceedings such as in class action. We were in the right place at the right time with our work. I was and still am convinced of that. Internally, unfortunately, things looked different. I quickly noticed that VF and the others showed little interest in our work in contrast to myself, who concentrated almost completely on this work. In addition to the interviews in the committee, I gave five international interviews at that time, and thereby, endeavored to provide information about our work worldwide and not just in Germany. After I had learned from critical experts that a PCR test could under no circumstances detect an infection, and it had been deliberately abused here, I published a 50-minute video in German and English in September 2020. There I explained that the Corona measures, which had already led to more and more victims and damage at that time, could be qualified as crimes against humanity, and that it would be best to clarify them legally with the means of Anglo-American law. To my surprise, the video was viewed millions of times before it was suddenly deleted by YouTube/Google. On the basis of this video, the American colleague Robert F. Kennedy jr., whom I first met in Berlin in August 2020, founded the “PCR Test working group” on his platform CHD, with the help of its president Mary Holland. I also belong to this group. Since October 2020, respected scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc. have been meeting there every week to discuss all aspects related to the plandemic. At the same time, I regularly summarized our long interviews at the Corona Committee on Sundays on Roger Bittel’s platform “Bittel.TV”. The enormous popularity of the Corona Committee led to a large number of inquiries as early as August 2020. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises wanted to know how they could get compensation for the damage suffered as a result of the lockdowns. And fellow lawyers from all over the world wanted to be connected with the experts. At that time, many lawyers still believed that a judicial hearing of evidence with our PCR test experts would quickly bring down the entire panic, based on deception and manipulation. This led to the collection of funds (700 € per person) for a possible class action. The funds are all there, but have been fraudulently diverted to another account. I will report on this in detail elsewhere. Due to my almost 30 years of litigation experience, I was rather sceptical that a solid legal approach would quickly succeed in Germany and also in the rest of the world. Therefore, I advised to conduct damages litigation in an Anglo-American country, where there is the possibility of class actions and a real right of evidence and punitive damages for intentional damages. My international colleagues are working flat out on this. The issue of class action lawsuits is as present as ever and we are convinced that it will ultimately bring success. Part 3 – The end of the Corona Committee – Unfortunate circumstances or a long-planned coup? Dear friends, activists and fellow human beings interested in the truth, in the 3rd part of my personal statement, it will quickly become apparent to you that I was more and more a lone fighter in matters of the Corona Committee and that my co-partners pulled a common string to get rid of me and also to ruin me privately. I share responsibility here. As a human being, but even more so as a lawyer, I should have seen the events coming and prevented them. Back to my account. So, while I was on my way, also with international lawyers, for the CA and putting all my energy into it, strangely enough, the other members didn’t seem to be so aware of the importance of the Corona Committee‘s work. None of them attended the strategy meetings. None of them made any effort to publicize the work of the Committee, especially beyond the borders of Germany. From the end of 2020 onwards, JH and AF in particular were only interested in how they could earn as much money as possible with Corona mandates with their newly founded office community. When, at the end of 2021 / beginning of 2022, together with the group of international lawyers, I conducted the Model Grand Jury investigations with the help of our experts to show that, and how, a legal clarification of the plandemic could work, these lawyers no longer played a role at all. However, the Model Grand Jury Investigation became a success that attracted worldwide attention. The work of the Corona Committee was now so popular that by the end of 2020 we had already received a lot of donations. However, we only needed part of this to pay for our technology, IT, translators and expenses for my office, etc. There was a large amount of money in our donation account. This money was not safe from our point of view. A blocking or seizure of the accounts would have rendered us immediately incapacitated. Therefore, VF and I decided to leave only the amounts directly required for the work of the Corona Committee in the donation account and to keep the funds that were not needed at first safe from possible access. The State Office for Criminal Investigation in Lower Saxony, as I know today, had asked the public prosecutor’s office to investigate VF, RF, AF and JH and a colleague who had temporarily managed the donation account because of suspicious money laundering reports from the banks, which had repeatedly terminated our donation account. These investigations were later discontinued. To make sure that we would not be vulnerable because of the securing of the money, we concluded loan agreements, which were also openly shown in the annual financial statements. Of course, there would have been no point in transferring the loans from one disclosed account to another open account. So we decided to invest them in my German property (as an equivalent value) and in gold as a safe store of value. The house had a value of €1,345,000. We wanted to sell it anyway and look for a new place to live in Germany. Therefore, the money I took out on a loan basis was safe, as I believed at the time. But things turned out differently. I will report on that. In addition, I invested 1.1 million EUR in donations in gold. This was also openly disclosed in the annual financial statements. VF also entered into a contract with Corona Committee to obtain a loan. This withdrawal also served to secure our money. The loan went over € 100,000 which is also reported in the annual financial statements. In July / August 2021, JH and AF suddenly contacted us again to get information about the donations. I suspected that their legal efforts had been unsuccessful. In the meantime, I had learned that they had no structure in their office and, in particular, had not even been able to hire at least one secretary. I hadn’t checked this at the beginning of our collaboration, a mistake on my part in hindsight. Since JH and AF had effectively left the work of the Corona Committee and also because they had recently been working closely with a person who, as I know today, infiltrated the political party “dieBasis” together with a Freemason, we initially refused to provide this information. But in order not to waste energy on avoidable arguments, we finally handed in an overview of income and expenditures. It quickly became clear that they wanted to “hijack” the Corona Committee and at least eliminate me from it. When the attempt failed, JH proposed in a written settlement that he and AF would leave the company if we pay them half of the donations to an account of their mentor, Prof. Dr. Martin Schwab. Of course, VF and I rejected this and asked JH and AF not to show up in the committee anymore. We didn’t hear from them for about a year. At the end of 2021, with my consent and with the help of their notary, VF created a new company for the operation of the Corona Committee. VF and I held a 50 percent stake in this company. This new Corona Committee has its own account, so it no longer has to rely on lawyers’ escrow accounts. All the rights of the old company were also transferred to this new company. I agreed to the contracts submitted to me by VF. At the beginning of 2022, working with VF had become increasingly difficult. That’s why I accepted the offer to participate in the Crimes Against Humanity Tour in the US. This meant that I would spend almost three and a half months traveling through nine U.S. cities and giving lectures with two well-known U.S. scientists, Dr. Judy Mikovits and the economist and expert on technology and transhumanism, Patrick Wood. However, from there I continued all the activities related to the Corona Committee: I continued the interviews via Zoom, gave an average of five interviews per week, participated in the conferences of the PCR Test Working Group and summarised the meetings of the Committee every weekend on Bittel.TV. In addition, I worked with international colleagues to initiate legal proceedings with the aim of large-scale damages lawsuits. At the time, I was on the verge of burnout… After my return from the U.S., I realized that VF’s chaotic incompetence and indifference to our guests, which I had grudgingly accepted until then, had increased even more. That’s why I confronted her in July 2022. I informed her that I would be going back to our ranch in California with my wife and dogs, also to be closer to the relevant legal action, but that I would continue the committee work as usual. Also, I desperately wanted more input from her! Immediately afterwards, as I know today, VF got in touch with JH and AF again, as well as their law firm colleague MT. In August 2022, there was a meeting and a discussion. Following this meeting, the joint public defamation campaign against me started on 9-2-.2022 and criminal charges were filed against me on the same day. I didn’t know anything about that at the time. Due to the coincidence of the date of the “dismissal” and the criminal complaint, it is clear to me today that “the other side” was never interested in resolving the disputes. A week before 9-2-.2022, VF had informed me that there would be no Corona committee broadcast on that day because our TV manager’s wife was going to have her second child. A lie, as I later realized. But I believed that lie and did not appear, VF and WW had – as VF puts it – “a clear shot“ at me. VF appeared in front of the Corona Committee’s camera dramatically dressed in black. She declared, without informing me as her partner, that I was no longer allowed to appear at the Corona Committee. So she decided unilaterally and completely arbitrarily that I was no longer allowed to be present in the Corona Committee that I had shaped until then, in whose company I owned 50 percent then as now! In order to justify her illegal and unlawful actions, she and WW, also in front of the camera, stated that I was to be accused of financial irregularities and that I was otherwise “a loudmouth”. WW was particularly fond of this label. I didn’t want to unnecessarily burden the Corona Committee and its worldwide reputation with internal problems. A vain hope. A short time later, VF, WW, JH, AF and VF’s partner at the time appeared in front of the camera for an hour-long Reiner Fuellmich tribunal. This campaign eventually culminated in several increasingly insane videos from VF claiming that “the children of the committee staff must be starving“ because of me. Apparently completely unhinged, she finally called for a “hunt for me” and crowned this call with a “Halali”, a German hunting call that signals the end of a hunt. Not only I, but also the viewers were shocked, as could be seen from the comments in the chat. The content of the 30-page criminal complaint, which JH also filed on behalf of AF and MT, reads even crazier. JH, AF and MT knew in 2020 that € 700,000 had been secured by me by loan agreement and secured with my property. They also knew that the sale of my house has been planned for a long time and was imminent. Our property was sold on 03/10/2022 for € 1,345,000.00 in our absence through a notary. As mentioned, we have never seen any of this money to this day! How this coup took place, I will explain in the next part. And it gets even worse: After receiving the criminal complaint, I should have been heard, in accordance with the principle audiatur et altera pars. But I was denied this. Today I know the reasons: JH claimed to the prosecution that I was threatening him “with a Winchester”. And because that didn’t seem dangerous enough, he went on to claim that I, as a member of the party “dieBasis”, would radicalize other members and call for violence against him. In addition, I was an anti-Semite and he would feel threatened because of his ethnic origin. Because of these completely fictitious threat scenarios, my wife and I were denied the right to a fair clarification of the situation by the authorities for more than a year. Apparently, the public prosecutor’s office felt pressured by these threat scenarios. JH even told the authorities that the other two plaintiffs would withdraw the criminal complaint if the prosecution granted me a fair hearing. Literally, he writes: “… if Fuellmich or any of the other defendants were given the opportunity to comment before criminal proceedings were initiated, the witnesses (i.e. VF, JH, AF and MT) would refrain from filing the criminal complaint for fear of threats, violence and defamation.” Subsequently, my wife’s private account was seized. When our lawyers asked for my wife to be heard, they were told that they would not receive any information because she was also under investigation. A European arrest warrant was then issued for me on 3-15-2023, of course without me being granted the right to be heard. In the meantime, my wife and I had left for a trip to Peru regarding the class action lawsuit. On the way back we wanted to visit friends in Mexico and fly back to Germany from there. There, we received information from our hometown that the authorities were allegedly looking for me. Unfortunately, the colleagues from my law firm did not receive any information from the authorities about the situation. So we couldn’t really assess the new scenario back home, so we stayed in Mexico for the time being. As a counterpart to the Corona Committee, I now had my own label “ICIC”, with which, as before in the Committee, I interviewed international experts on global crimes against humanity. A small working group from the former Corona Committee had followed me and so we were able to quickly get back to work. Nevertheless, in October 2023, everything plunged into complete chaos again. It ended with the execution of the above-mentioned European arrest warrant against me in Frankfurt, after I had previously been deported from a non-European country (Mexico) under police protection. – A thriller that, as I know today, was anything but a coincidence. I’ll tell you about that in the next episode. As a result, I’ve been sitting in prison for weeks now. The real perpetrators are still free. They also possess the class action lawsuit money and the money from my private home. I can prove that. All documents are safely stored with my legal team. How the “agitators” brought all this to a “successful” conclusion for them, I will report on in the next episode. Source Reiner Füellmich: Press Release From The Defence. Originally published by Elsa at Truth Summit on 23rd December 2023. One could say that the truth is boring – meaning, Reiner said basically the same thing a few days after VF spoke against him as he is saying now, and as is stated in the press release from the defense. There are a couple of further details. They add a tiny bit, but nothing is changed. So here is the press release. On November 17, 2023 the Göttingen public prosecutor’s office brought charges against Dr. Reiner Füellmich on the basis of a criminal complaint filed by former shareholders without the defense having prior access to all volumes of the investigation file or the opportunity to comment. An interrogation of the accused pursuant to Section 163a of the German Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO) was also not conducted before the indictment was filed. Likewise, the witnesses named predominantly in the indictment were not questioned. On the one hand, the sum of €700,000 is at issue, which is already the subject of the arrest warrant. However, the basis for the payment of the €700,000 were two loan agreements also signed by Viviane Fischer (one dated November 6, 2020 for €200,000 and one dated May 14, 2021 for €500,000). The public prosecutor’s office incorrectly assumed at the time of the indictment that both loan agreements involved inadmissible self-dealing. However, according to the complete founding minutes of July 9, 2020 all four shareholders were appointed as managing directors with sole power of representation, so that Viviane Fischer was able to effectively represent the Corona-Committee-Entrepreneurial-company-in-formation alone in both loan agreements. At the time, rumors were circulating about the seizure of accounts at MWGFD; in fact, accounts were seized from the prominent member Prof. Dr. Hockertz, as well as subsequently from other doctors who were prosecuted under criminal law on the subject of the corona measures, and finally, as the most prominent example, from Michael Ballweg, who was also remanded in custody for 9 months. The donations should therefore be invested in sustainable stores of value, such as gold or real estate. The Corona Committee bought around 1 million worth of gold, which is still stored securely at Degussa. Reiner Füellmich’s property was intended as the equivalent value for the loan amount of € 700,000. At the time of the sale on October 3, 2022, the property was unencumbered and the € 700,000 was to be repaid to the Corona Committee from the purchase price of € 1,345,000. However, this was prevented until today by the entry of a land charge on November 18, 2022, i.e. one and a half months later – in our opinion unlawful – and the payment of an amount of € 1,158,250 in favor of the complainant Marcel Templin. This matter must be clarified, also by the public prosecutor’s office. It is irrelevant whether amounts were spent on redesigning the garden of the property, as this directly benefited the increase in value and thus the achievement of a higher purchase price. The indictment also alleges payments made by the Corona Committee to Reiner Füellmich’s law firm in the amount of €25,000 per month plus VAT in the period from January 1, 2021 to July 31, 2022. According to the indictment, these funds were used up for wage and salary payments and social security contributions for the employees of his law firm. The public prosecutor’s office fails to recognize that the employees of Füellmich’s law firm provided a service in return for these monthly payments to the Corona Committee. For two years, they were almost exclusively occupied with answering inquiries to the Corona Committee. Over 300,000 emails were answered, hundreds to thousands of telephone calls were made and thousands of letters were answered. Due to the sheer volume of emails, a new IT system also had to be purchased. This work, which was absolutely essential for the Committee’s continued existence, was not carried out at the Committee’s headquarters in Berlin. Communication with the supporters of the Corona Committee included initial legal advice for those seeking help, the acquisition of interview partners, the selection of scientists and other experts, who ultimately had their say at the weekly meetings. If this communication had not taken place, the Corona Committee could have ceased its work shortly after it was set up. The services provided by the employees of the Füellmich law firm were therefore part of the committee’s corporate purpose. The witnesses named by the public prosecutor in the indictment for this set of crimes were not heard before the indictment was filed, which is unusual. Source Truth Summit Elsa from the Truth Summit adds – PS. To donate for legal and other expenses, here is the link: https://www.givesendgo.com/GBBX2 https://expose-news.com/2023/12/27/update-reiner-fuellmich-speaks-out-his-personal-statement-press-release-from-the-defence/

PPIM calls on MoH to revise Health White Paper; be transparent on vaccine statistics [NSTTV] https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2023/12/995116/ppim-calls-moh-revise-health-white-paper-be-transparent-vaccine

BREAKING: Consumers Association of Malaysia (PPIM) Demands Immediate Withdrawal of mRNA Vaccines Following Alarming Safety Concerns Highlights from Press Conference Dec from 28, 2023 -------------------------------------- Dr Kenny Yong: "I am a doctor who sells these vaccines. I am indeed a doctor who sells vaccines...Indeed, patients call me saying, 'Doc, you injected me with 3 doses, and now I've got COVID for the 4th time.’ This feedback isn't just from any doctor speaking casually or someone purposely anti-vaccine. This product, after four years of feedback and product reviews, genuinely has a bad track record; there are various side effects and issues.” "This product isn't just a bad product, but indeed must be called back, or withdrawn, for evaluation or feedback or a total review or withdrawal." We know that these vaccines bring significant harm, after knowing that, the politicians don't see, do they? Yeah, call on the politician. Yes, didn't they see what is happening around their neighbors, maybe their families? You don't notice, do you? And yet you still want to promote that illegal, toxic, experimental liquid into your population? And now the world has come to know that this vaccine is not safe, vaccines are not safe; they should be stopped immediately and are being used under emergency situations, which means they are still being studied. I am Prof. Dr. Aziz Al-Safi from Kota Bharu, Kelantan. I was a speaker at a university, a school, in Kelantan, now I am retired, I have my own treatment center in Kota Bharu, in Kota Damansara, in CyberJaya, and also in Setapa so gentlemen and ladies this morning I want to give an opinion as an independent observer, impartial to any side and I actually represent as the President of MCH Malaysian Council of Health, especially regarding the issue of vaccines the first thing we need to understand is that there are many reports from before until now, if it's from the government they call it non-transparent what we need to see are the views from the scientific so why do I actually want to show how the effect of this vaccine is very dangerous ... ------------------------------------------ https://x.com/_aussie17/status/1740553758306869570?s=46

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