On four occasions in recent months media producers have told me that they will not interview on matters related to the World Health Organisation (WHO) of which Ireland is a member. One radio station advised that it had its license threatened during lockdown after broadcasting an interview with a health scientist. Three times this year I have had TikToks restricted for mentioning the WHO, each time to be reinstalled after fact check delays. Covert censorship is real and is happening, the big question is why, by whom and for what objective?
On Thursday evening at 7pm, Breaking the Silence, which is a free open public meeting, takes place in the Clayton Silver Springs event centre in Cork. The intention is to make sense of the agenda of changes being foisted upon us. It will, in particular, look at the World Health Organisation working documents, the final versions of which are scheduled to make landfall here in May. These cover intended changes to its existing International Health Regulations (IHR) and the content of its new Pandemic Agreement (PA). Both of these strands are the subject of ongoing redrafts but there is enough in them, even where they are partial documents, to raise substantial concerns about the WHO ambitions. The WHO is in breach of its own rules under Article 55(2) IHR which requires these documents to go to members like Ireland at least four months in advance of the World Health Assembly on May 27th. They were released over last weekend.
These will arrive while we concurrently grapple with the EU ‘Migration Pact’ into which Ireland is expected to jump.
March 8th was peak woke, the high-water mark when the Irish People put a run on the political establishment and the conventional media commentariat after the attempt to redefine the very basic unit of Irish society, failed.
That overwhelming rejection has cascaded into the apparent shelving of the ‘Hate Speech’ Bill whose objective was to send a chill through public discourse, the very seed corn of representative democracy and the manner through which we attempt to discern collective wisdom. It also contributed, I believe, to the abrupt resignation of the Taoiseach. Unhappily these are not isolated events but are interconnected in a manner that will be revealed at Thursday’s public meeting.
The March 7th last ‘Revised Draft of the Negotiating Text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement Article 1(e) described ‘One Health’ as ‘an integrated, unifying approach’ that pertains to the health of ‘people, animals and ecosystems’.
In Article 9 2(c) it stated that members shall promote ‘innovative research and development’ for addressing ‘pathogens with pandemic potential’. This is further referenced in Article 12 requiring members to establish access and benefit sharing for pathogens ‘with pandemic potential’ and to partake in the WHO ‘Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System (PABS) to ensure rapid, systemic and timely access to biological materials of pathogens with pandemic potential and the genetic sequence data (GSD) for such pathogens. Article 12 goes on to describe a global network of WHO-coordinated laboratory networks for PABS.
Article 18 (4) stated that parties shall exchange information and cooperate, in accordance with national law, in preventing misinformation and disinformation and endeavour to develop best practices to increase the accuracy and reliability of crisis communications.
In the IHR Article 12 confirms that it is the Director-General who shall determine, on the basis of information received, from State parties within whose territory an event is occurring, whether an event calls for an early action alert or constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, including where appropriate a pandemic emergency…and that it is the Director-General who shall determine whether a public health emergency of international concern also constitutes a pandemic emergency.
The WHO is also setting itself up, using a certification process, as a global regulator for vaccines and prophylaxis under Annex 6 paragraph 3 IHR. The Director General, taking views from an expert committee that he appoints, retains emphatic authority to declare Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEICs) or Pandemic Emergencies under Article 49 (5) IHR, “The views of the Emergency Committee shall be forwarded to the Director-General for consideration. The Director-General shall make the final determination on these matters”
Member states will be required to report to a centralised platform on a 24 hour cycle the results of surveillance in wastewater usingPCR tests in Annex 1 on Core Capacities page 45 IHR. They are expected to coordinate in regard to pathogen labs where gain-of-function is not excluded in Article 12 of the Pandemic Agreement.
To be clear, the Geneva-based WHO, which is an arm of the UN and which afforded itself immunity from criminal prosecution in its founding charter, is unelected. It is banking on Irish Government enthusiasm. This follows recent high-level visits by senior WHO officials and, last week, by the Irish Tánaiste giving Anthony Fauci a medal on behalf of the Royal Institute of Physicians.
What may be unnerving the WHO is the Irish Supreme Court case Crotty vs An Taoiseach 1987 within which Justice Hederman succinctly summarised that the Irish cabinet are the guardians of and not the disposers of the Irish Constitution and may not fetter what has been given to the Irish People unfettered by our Constitution. Ireland isn’t the only thorn: throughout the world action groups and politicians have been pushing back against the WHO ambitions and this may yet prove crucial in scaling down both the IHR and the Pandemic Agreement before their completion and ratification at 27th World Health Assembly at the end of next month.
The WHO, which abandoned its own policy and long-established science against lockdowns for respiratory viruses in January 2020, is clearly making a move for much greater authority under what I believe to be a pretext that it will not affect local sovereignty.
The term Treaty was scrubbed from previous drafts of the new ‘‘Agreement’ but it is a gambit that has not altered the legal effect of a treaty in my opinion unless substantial changes are made at the last minute. The issue of sovereignty is for lawyers but anyone familiar with the risks from, and occurrence of, leaks from labs conducting pathogen research has cause to be concerned. The WHO wants countries to coordinate around labs like the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where pathogens are biologically enhanced for gain-of-function research.
During Covid, this led to a Lab to Jab product at speed while manufacturers remained free from consequences and indemnified by Governments.
In 2005, I was threatened with an Oireachtas Committee hearing by the then Fianna Fail leader of the Seanad, hotelier Donnie Cassidy after originating, co-writing and presenting Rip Off Republic which broke RTE audience records for factual television. That threat dissipated and the Ahern-led Government desisted in personal attacks only after the public barked and after it learned that 85% of the facts presented across four one-hour stand-ups came from its own Government agencies. All I did was join the dots into the arc of a story that revealed how Ireland really worked and which drew the venom of Anglo Irish Bank Chairman Sean Fitzpatrick at the Irish Times Property Awards and which was published in full in its newspaper.
This week I will join the dots again, without an agenda, with the intention to set a ball of energy in motion among the political herds at this sensitive time and demand our legal endowment from the remarkable Irish farmer and economist Raymond Dominick Crotty.
This is a call for a referendum on the WHO and our continuing membership of it unless substantial changes are made to the IHR and the Pandemic Agreement drafts.
Eddie Hobbs