In a recent article in the Daily Sceptic, Robert Kogon makes in an important challenge to sceptics. Drawing on heated and futile exchanges on X, Kogon argues that there is little evidence that the WHO is ‘owned’ by private interests, and that many of the critics of the WHO’s agenda simply argue using memes rather than evidence. The truth of the WHO’s ownership is complicated, but Kogon’s observation that all that is sceptical is not reason is well made, and sceptics should challenge their own and each other’s thinking more if scepticism is to be more than cynicism and properly challenge the dull and dark orthodoxies that dominate today’s political establishment.
According to Kogon, analysis of the WHO’s funding sources shows that Gates cannot reasonably be said to own the WHO. Though the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is one of the WHO’s largest donors, second only to Germany, there are other donors, who, if the WHO were a company, would have between them a vastly greater controlling stake for their would-be ‘investment’. This is important arithmetic, which helps reveal the structure of the otherwise remote and opaque organisation that has had so much influence over our lives in recent years. It should not be dismissed.
And such arithmetic ought to lead to a more sophisticated and deeper understanding of how intergovernmental agencies and vast philanthropic enterprises have come to set the global political agenda. But unfortunately, many of our ideological allies reject this nuance because it challenges the very linear and monochromatic stories that have been used to explain the pandemic and lockdowns and more. There may well be truth in those stories. But broad brush strokes render them clumsily and unfaithfully, especially where detail is required.
Like Kogon’s targets, I have also argued that Gates has undue influence in the world, achieved by his championing of a new model of philanthropy. Coincident with the unprecedented wealth developed by tech billionaires and hyper-accumulations of capital, the role of intergovernmental agencies, such as the WHO and, of course, NGOs and strange ‘civil society’ organisations, from the WEF to obscure green outfits, have also expanded. The problem, now widely observed, is that nominally democratic governments today seem to be entirely subservient to this new power network. In my Climate Debate U.K. and the Together Association report on air pollution politics, I point out that the BMGF has donated nearly $5 billion to the WHO since 1999, most of which has been given in the last decade.
There are therefore similarities between my argument and the claims about the ‘ownership’ of the WHO, which may seem to contradict Kogon’s. Scientists can be found objecting to Gates’s influence explicitly, arguing that funding relationships of all kinds are distorting the scientific research agenda in favour of grantors’ preferences. This is leading to the possible loss of important research pathways, which can have “implicitly dangerous consequences on the policymaking process in world health”, they argue. Furthermore, a former WHO Director was quite open about the fact that her search for funding required an offer of a quid pro quo. Former WHO Director-General Margaret Chan somewhat let the cat out of the bag, admitting that:
Only 30% of my budget is predictable funds. [For the] other 70% I have to take a hat and go around the world to beg for money. And when they give us the money, they are highly linked to their preferences – what they like.
This new style of ‘philanthropy’ is not ‘no-strings’ charitable giving. It is strategic. And incredibly far-reaching. Gates’ and other philanthropists’ funding supports ‘news’ media organisations, universities and ‘civil society’ agendas that both influence the WHO and are influenced by it. As I argue in the report and elsewhere, a case can be made that philanthropists have bought out ‘civil society’ nearly in its entirety, pushing the public out of politics, and dominate research agendas on which policymakers and intergovernmental agencies rely. BMGF’s grants to the U.K. total over $3.5 billion, including $2 billion to universities.
But Robert Kogon is right to say that the numbers do not make the case by themselves. There is a difference between ownership and influence. Five billion dollars in grants to a global agency will of course cause an army of sycophants to scuttle around after you. The $82 billion that BMGF has granted over the years has brought a great deal of organisations into closer ideological alignment. It has generated immeasurable amounts of favourable news copy at the expense of critical journalism. But the claim that it has made Gates king of the castle is much harder to sustain.
Receipts evidencing illegitimate relationships between the mega-wealthy and intergovernmental agencies and civil society organisations and universities are not always easy to come by. Many protect themselves through various pass-through intermediaries and cloak the nature of their projects in obtuse slogans and buzzwords. But rather than assuming that the evidence of a total central command is simply hidden, it may make more sense to understand the structure of power in the 21st Century as precisely nebulous. There is a reason it is called ‘the Blob’, after all. And though the Blob itself may well be greedy for cash, it cannot be bought in its entirety.
This is a problem for people whose thinking exhibits 19th Century and early models of power, such as feudalism or Communist tyranny. But even such regimes had within them factions and sects that as often as not led to a downfall or revolution. And even tyrants’ survival ultimately depended on popular will, even if it had to be coerced through terror.
Moreover, ownership is in itself a somewhat outmoded concept. For example, a number of philanthropic foundations which make grants to organisations supporting the routine array of woke causes are not in themselves necessarily owned by a single interest. They may be attached to massive hedge funds or financial institutions, such as the $10 trillion monster, BlackRock, which manages the wealth of countless individuals. In much the same way, giant corporations have very many shareholders. They can be coerced and outvoted. But not even Gates can outbid them.
This is not an age of kings and princes, nor of revolutions and revolutionaries. Not in the West, at least. Power is constituted entirely differently, not in an absolute monarch, nor in a ‘people’ represented by a dictator, nor even in democracy – as we have seen. Yet reactions to observations such as Kogon’s hark back to such eras, if not sheer fantasy. The idea of power without an executive is confusing. Everything must therefore be explained by UN Agenda 21, or the WEF, or merely Gates. But an alternative hypothesis might be that green, woke and other authoritarian ideologies take on a power of their own, for precisely the reason of there not being an executive, sweeping even billionaires, corporations and hyper-accumulations of capital into the chaos – nobody is in control.
Don’t misunderstand me. The point here is not that the likes of Gates have no power. One of the problems besetting genuinely independent researchers is that, whereas we can find even nominally Right-of-centre, ‘libertarian’ think tanks routinely being funded to produce support for pro-green policies to the tune of £50,000-plus per report by the likes of Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg or Christoher Hohn-controlled grant-making bodies, independent researchers have practically zero resources and work for effectively zero or close to it. I am only too aware of the power of money and the problem of not having it. But even money is constrained by ideology just as much as the rest of us.
Kogon is right. Sceptics of power and trendy ideological causes do need to be more thorough and more discriminating. This should mean being sceptical about the idea of masterplans. It is right to say that a new form of politics is developing, and there are particular ideological aspects to this development and its expression. But we must be careful about creating a counsel of despair, or sense of fait accompli in response. Many of the players are just chancers, winging it to service their vanity and portfolios and the ideologies they attach themselves to are merely instruments. We see alignment where there may just be fickle marriages of convenience. And there are, within the blobs, significant tensions. Blobs within blobs.
And we need to do better than merely trade memes. Research is hard work, takes years and often leads to dead ends rather than rabbit holes. We should be cautious about claims of historical continuity. It is right to mock greens as Stalinist authoritarians. But it is wrong to say that green ideologues are the direct successors to Marxism and Communist dictators. Too many princes and too many billionaires are now best mates with Greta to sustain that notion. If we want to focus our limited resources and persuade others, we need to be accurate about how the current situation developed and make such arguments cautiously, without the grand, sweeping narrative arches that cannot be sustained by the facts at our disposal. In other words, we should be sceptical of our own scepticism, not to negate it, but to improve it, and allow it to improve.
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I don’t think you need to believe in a “masterplan” to see that there are many powerful institutions, nationally and globally, that do not have our best interests at heart, are not open about their true objectives, and are not democratically accountable. ‘Twas ever thus.
Totally. Also, there’s lots of reasons the globalists might wanna hire someone to take a hit on the outspoken and very brave Slovakian PM, but I’m not buying the BS line about it being because the hitman was upset that Fico was going to do away with his fave TV channel. ( <1min )
https://x.com/teameffujoe/status/1791210617895890984
”Following the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico, the ruling government is pinning the blame for the heinous and anti-democratic attempted murder on the opposition and dominant left-wing media.
“You have made us all targets,” said Ľuboš Blaha, the deputy speaker of the Slovak parliament, and a member of Fico’s Smér party, during a heated press conference. “You have spread a haunting hatred for years. You hated that people elected us so much that you went after us like wild animals. These are the fruits of your labor. The prime minister is fighting for his life because of you.”
He noted that “liberal media” had whipped up hatred of Fico related to his commitment to nationalist politics and his desire to end the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire.
The country’s interior minister, Matúš Šutaj Eštok, further noted that the constant media and opposition attacks on Fico helped fuel the climate that led to his attempted assassination, including the use of dehumanizing language.
Fico was shot by a 61-year-old assailant in Handlová, central Slovakia, with the alleged far-left political activist and writer immediately arrested by the police. Slovak media reports that several gunshots hit Fico, who was operated on for a total of seven hours following life-threatening gunshot wounds.
The suspect, Juraj C., has been said to be a pro-Western liberal angered that Fico was shuttering one of his favorite television channels.”
https://rmx.news/article/you-have-made-us-all-targets-slovak-government-blames-assassination-of-robert-fico-on-opposition-parties-and-liberal-mass-media/
Sorry, what the f**know are we debating.
The head of the WHO tells everyone openly what is obvious in so many many ways anyway.
Why are we even giving explanations or justifications for our claims that the WHO is bought and paid for by special interests?
Maybe harping on about something so spectacularly obviois is a way to cope with the depressing reality that none of us can do anything about it.
But how about a bit of f**king dignity? We.don’t have a democracy really. Ok. We are actually governed by oligarchs. Ok. They’re going to do what the hell they want whether we like it or not. Ok. But please no grovelling. None of this: I think it’s fair to ask questions about whether you’re sh*tting on me, isn’t it? Can I please complain about it without having to apologise? FFS
I find it equally chilling that governments are majot donors. These governments are no longer representing their people (look what top donor Germany is doing to AFD). They are in the main grifters and linking with the great and the WHO is just one of the rungs on the ladder to riches and power.
Look also at the fuss being made by the West about the move of the Georgian government to make funding of political movements transparent. Note that it does not ban contribution, as being alluded to by a lot of the Western press.
The elites, oligarchs, technocrats, call them what you will, meet regularly at events at the WEF, WHO and Bilderberg etc. As they say it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. Billy boy is one of its longest “serving” members, indeed his father was a member. While prime ministers and presidents come and go, Gates, Soros and the Rockefellers are omnipresent at the top table.
Gates is the WHO’s largest private donor by a margin, bigger than the vast majority of countries. Anyone who does not think that buys enormous influence is a simpleton. The argument has never been that Gates literally owns the WHO, it is that he, and his club control it, and it is clear to anyone who takes an interest that that control is exercised for the benefit of that club and not for the ordinary people. To say that Gates owns the WHO is just a figure of speech, but one that well fits the reality of how the WHO operates.
Before I finish reading, after just listening to Maajid Nawas Substack audio, he reminded me of the interview with Domonic Cummins where he referred to Bill Gates, where Gates told him “the whole process of dealing with the “pandemic” must change, think Manhattan Project….Even if you have spent billions and don’t know the outcome, you still can’t lose”.
“Many protect themselves through various pass-through intermediaries and cloak the nature of their projects in obtuse slogans and buzzwords”
Build Back Better. By their actions they have shown their hand!
Here’s a great example of what Ben Pile is talking about: Two people with their hearts in the right place, former Brexit Party candidate, Jim Ferguson, and ’UK Businessman’, John O’Looney (living up to his name!), letting their imaginations run wild: A wonderful conspiracy theory, very imaginative, but not a shred of evidence for any of it, and totally ludicrous when you think about – though I won’t be surprised if some people here in the DS comments – with similar lack of scepticism when it comes to conspiracy theories – may be willing to believe this nonsense:
‘Exclusive Breaking: The Mass Numbers of Illegal Migrants that are pouring into our respective countries are in fact UN soldiers.
“these are UN Soldiers and they will be deployed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) when they announce the next Pandemic Lockdown”
The Black Watch a Scottish Infantry regiment based in Perth Scotland has been instructed to train illegal migrants to carry out crowd control and other measures to force compliance within the British population in the event of a civil uprising of the population against the government.
There are bird flu Avian influenza H5N1 vaccines being flown into the UK right now ready to be used on the British Public!
UK Businessman John O’ Looney raises the alarm and says he has conclusive evidence that these UN soldiers are being trained by British forces who are being ordered to do so by globalist’s infesting the British Government.
John has stated that he has surveillance and video evidence of what is going on along with detailed vehicle and registration numbers of the vehicles that are in use.
The details that are emerging suggest that British Forces will be sent abroad to fight Russia in Ukraine that will effectively leave no patriotic soldiers within Britain to protect the British population and that Illegal migrants will be issued Uniforms and given powers by the Globalists to Police, control and order the British people to stay at home and will have the powers to get physical and arrest anyone who does not comply.
This explains why Canada, The United States, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe are all facing the same plan by the Globalists.
These Illegal migrants have no loyalty to the host countries and will gleefully follow orders from the globalists to subjugate and control the people in our respective countries.
This is a betrayal of biblical proportions.
Its time to get prepared and its time to resist.
Join our freedom movement https://freedomtraininternational.org to stay informed and up to date with whats about to happen.
You need to know what happens next.
Join us.’
https://x.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1789317957488685195
There are enough things to worry about which are real without worrying about things which are not real.
Another example is Matt Le Tissier, whom I greatly admired for being courageously outspoken about the Covid vaccines, then ruined any credibility he had by tweeting this last month:
“This years weather so far has been horrific, wasn’t it lucky for the government that 4 years ago when they locked us down we had wall to wall sunshine for weeks on end. It’s almost like they planned it that way.“
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/matt-le-tissier-covid-tweet-twitter-government-controlling-weather-rant-b1150341.html
It was a good bit of luck though in April 2020. Well at least for those who have nice gardens to enjoy. Just like the initial Battle of the Bulge; favourable weather.
I must say Nigel Farage is starting to question all of this but at the time he was merely luke warm. Most of his resistance was when the chattering classes complained that he took one to many walks in his semi rural location.
Didn’t he at the time of introduction of the toxic jab suggest that Blair was the only one talking sense thus should be put in charge of the program?
Yes he did. I was astounded at this statement. I still cannot any longer be 100% in favour of Farage. Big question marks.
Is it really more far-fetched than “The Greatest Plague Since the Black Death”, scotch eggs, toxic “vaccines” and all?
It’s far fetched because it’s patent nonsense, regardless of anything else.
I guess time will tell. I wouldn’t put it past these control freaks to use migrants that have no loyalty to UK citizens to be used to enforce whatever diktat that comes from the WHO etc.
Agreed.
You sound like a disinformation agent, desperately trying to dissemble to hide the truth.
Yes, that’s what I am. I’ve been rumbled. Don’t tell anyone.
Patent nonsense according to you, not to others. Some theories seem more plausible to me than others but unless I have direct knowledge I try to keep an open mind.
Some people think that “covid” was a deadly plague and that governments tried to keep us safe – and those people think that anyone who thinks differently is a mad conspiracy theorist.
Some people believe the theory that the virus leaked from a lab, and some people believe the theory that there was never any virus. They can’t both be right. Which do you believe?
Take first the plank from thine own eye.
It’s not valid to compare the Gates Foundation’s relative support of the WHO to a shareholding in a company. Shareholders get proportional votes, and can’t just “drop” their shares – they have to sell them, and somebody else takes their place. And what influence they have on the company affects their share value. Donors on the other hand could simply stop donating at any time – the income they provide would just disappear and the donation “spot” doesn’t have to be bought by anyone else. So they can yield disproportionate influence just by threatening to withdraw.
btw I enjoyed Kogon’s article; #justsayin your argument is flawed..
Given that in 21/22 the Gates Foundation donations to the WHO almost exactly matched those of the United States of America I’d say Gates owns a pretty sizeable chunk of the WHO. According to publicly available figures, over a number of years the Gates Foundation matched or exceeded payments made by the USA.
Gates has only one master plan and that is to make money make money and stick his entitled nose into everyone’s business. It’s just how he is.
Somewhere in his head some of his algorithms are faulty – and we know he’s an expert at that! He’s dangerous because he thinks you can always fix mistakes with a patch.
Psychopath?
Great post. 👍
I guess for the sake of OSTENSIBLE Fairness ( thought you might actually believe this ) You have to publish articles like this to avoid being accused of being Fully Conspiratorial!? We have had decades of this now to comes to light so , Thank you but no thank you