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 did hear this little bit of propaganda broadcast by BBC World Service around 05:00 today. Hats off to those who worked their way round the system, but then, why support it? Taking one’s trade away from it would seem wise to some.
The BBC would really be happier in a much more totalitarian regime, it loves nothing better than beating down the oppressed plebs whom it despises so much.
This censorship has really gone full Orwellian
Privatising the BBC is not enough. It needs to be split into tiny pieces or destroyed completely. It’s irretrievably captured by political campaigners.
This makes it eerily similar to the completely private mass media organizations in the USA, to the entirely private Big Tech companies (also in the USA) and to the reprivatized British banks. The neoliberal slogan Privatize! Privatize! Privatize! is not a solution to anything. It just leads to plundering of public assets by ‘private’ plundering entrepreneurs. One could even argue that the complete failure of neoliberalism led us into the current mess as it caused a resurgence of the people who believe the state ought to control everything down to how its citizens must dress in public and when and for which reasons they’re allowed to leave their homes and have contact with other people.
BTW, that’s the reason why I’m entirely unimpressed by this Canadian with the impossible hat. Weren’t it for the complete failure of him and his chaps to end the cycle of boom and bust, someone like Trudeau would never have stood a chance to become an influential politician. That the supposed cure ended up being even worse then the disease doesn’t mean we want the disease back.
Good point. Trust busting of mega media organisations is essential.
Time and time again I read these stories and can’t help but see the BBC, the Twatter blob, the pRedditors etc as petulant, effeminate, spoiled little children. They scream and shout when anything doesn’t go their way, boast about their censorship of others yet cry when anyone counters their stories with facts. I am not drawn to violence, but I really would enjoy seeing these people taking their lumps.
Bit of a rant.
Well deserved
I genuinely do not understand the people jumping on the ‘mis-/disinformation’ bandwagon. I don’t mean the politicians and ‘$cientists’ who have much to hide, I mean the dimwits who just follow suit and assume everyone not following the narrative must be trying to spread disinformation.
Is every death within a certain time frame directly related to the vaxx? No, probably not, and I say this as someone who genuinely believes the covid vaxxes are poison and responsible for a significant number of serious injuries and deaths. That doesn’t mean I am incapable of understanding that in some cases something else was the cause.
But it would never occur to me to have the breathtaking audacity to tell someone who is suffering either personally or following the death of a loved one, that they are lying or making things up. How utterly heartless and shameless. I would want to help them find out the truth.
And if they really want to deal with ‘disinformation’, do not silence people, show us the proof! Yesterday there was a parliamentary committee meeting in NL, with MPs and the head of the public health authority. One MP (truly a thorn in the arse of the cabinet :-)) asked the very sensible question that as there appeared to be a connection between the vaxx and the months-long elevated/excess deaths, would it therefore not be a good idea to pause the stabbing campaign to start on Monday 19 September until there was further clarity?
How can that be a problem? There is long-term elevated/excess mortality, the health authority claims not to know what it is due to, thus the vaxx cannot be excluded, why does the infamous ‘abundance of caution’ not apply now, particularly as NL will, contrary to Denmark, be stabbing people 12 and over. The chairwoman of the meeting told the MP he could ask that question 2 weeks from now (after stabbing has begun and harm may already have been done) and told the public health official he didn’t have to answer. The whole job of our MPs is precisely to ask such questions, the whole job of the public health authorities is to provide an answer, not collude with the government to obfuscate. There was a time the BBC knew that and would have reported accordingly, now they simply join the collusion against the people.
Exactly how I feel! I cannot comprehend how people don’t even want to follow this up, it’s like some black hole that they don’t want to look into. Is it because they’re worried about what they’ll find? Are they worried about discovering how they’ve messed up? Complete cognitive dissonance.
Well, governments and public health authorities and pharma companies don’t want to follow it up because they know and have known for some time – naturally they want to keep this covered up until the end of time.
I supposed a lot of people who were vaxxed don’t want to know because the prospect is frightening, I should think doubly so for parents.
But journalists (real ones), scientists (real ones) and health care professionals (real ones) should absolutely want to figure out what is going on. The reputation of governments and public health authorities will not recover until this is dealt with properly and health care workers who genuinely care about the health of their patients must want to get to the bottom of this, no matter where it leads. This needs to be fixed, we have seen that they will simply roll out the same slip-shod ‘testing’ and ‘trials’ to other products going forward.
The truth is capable of standing by itself. It doesn’t need protecting.
If you are still paying your license fee, you are funding state propaganda. If you are still paying your license fee, you are funding the maiming and death of children. If you are still paying your license fee, you are part of the problem.
Good to see the downvotes – proof we have either a) people on here that don’t really understand what’s going on b) foxes in the henhouse. Either way, you people don’t belong here.
Does this mean that a news organisation that spreads disinformation by falsely claiming that illegal immigrants are refugees can also be banned?
Excellent point.
Surely the BBC is acting ultra views.
I presume you meant ultra vires, but having said that ultra views fits quite well also.
I admit I am impressed with the BBC’s tenacity in sticking to its lies. You know what it’s like when you have told a real whoppa (e.g. covid jabs are safe and effective) and then find you’ve boxed yourself into a corner. Then you have two options: (1) face a humiliating climb down by admitting the truth, or (2) pull out all the stops to maintain the lie. The BBC went for the latter option. They are going to end up with so much egg on their face.
If you still pay the licence fee but don’t like the BBC then ask yourself how long you are prepared to continue funding a state propaganda machine that has so much contempt for you it will urge you to take a deadly injection while demanding money from you for the privilege of letting them brainwash you about how good it is.
Just had a letter of apology from TV Licencing, because they continued to harrass me even after an enforcement officer visited me and was happy I didn’t need a licence, I’ve told them that’s not enough and I want compensation for the needless harrassment. I’ll give em 3 weeks then issue a small claim.
I’d like to know how that goes. I don’t own a TV, haven’t watched any TV at home since about 1995, have also entirely stopped watching new movies and don’t ever plan to change this. But that’s not an option with the BBC, it’s not even possible to tell them about such unthinkable heresy as it’s not part of the set of possible answers and freestyle answers can’t be given. Hence, whenever they bother me again, I (again) have to make the wrong claim that I’m only watching prerecorded movies. And that’s something which really annoys me because what I’d really want to tell them is Your whole industry doesn’t produce anything of value to me and now go pester somebody else!
Nice. It appears we have people in our midst that say all the right things, but don’t actually even have the courage to stop funding state propaganda that is warping minds and killing children. Like RW said, it’d be interesting to know how it goes for you. I stopped paying these criminals a few of years ago – one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
All my regular TV non payment letters over the last twelve years go straight in the bin and If the TV licensing rep calls (once in five years) asking if I am the householder, I politely say no, close the door and that’s it.
That’s not really good enough. It should be possible to tell these people honestly that their services aren’t being called for and also why.
Eppur si muove, indeed…
We don’t have mandated BBC telescreens yet, but unless we resist, it is only a matter of time. A certain massive event is about to be televised, with everyone “expected” to watch it. This has not been explicitly stated, but the implication is very much there, just like the expectation to clap for the NHS, with villification for dissenters: make the most of the option not to have it broadcast into your home. However, this time I don’t suggest posting a picture of your switched-off TV on social media (I did this for Covid briefings), lest you get cancelled.
In Australia we have similar issues with the ABC.
Their modus operandi is censorship of all opposing views.
Many Australians, including most extended family and “friends”, plug their brains in to the ABC for all their news and current affairs.
None have heard of the WEF, farmers and trucker’s protests, and are oblivious to the fact that the “vaccines” are anything other than “safe and effective”.
The ABC is funded from general revenue, no no way to prevent my taxes supporting it.
Great piece, Will.
But what makes you think that BBC & Facebook aren’t fully aware of the reality of vaccine damage – but rejoice in it?
I fully recommend cancelling your stealth license as I did 3 years ago. Now I thoroughly advise Sceptic readers to watch GBNews, where Toby Young is a regular contributor.
That’s the spirit!
I note that Eddie Butler, BBC rugby commentator par excellence, has died suddenly in his sleep while on a charity expedition in Peru. Was he ‘fully vaxxed’, I wonder?
How proud the BBC must be to be the 21st Century flag bearer for Joseph Goebbels:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State”
I loathe the BBC. Stopped watching it during the Brexit shenanigans. Tempted to stop paying the license fee and see what happens.
If anyone on here still has a TV licence, have a strong word with yourselves, phone their customer services, ask them if this call is being recorded, give them both barrels in the face and cancel it. It’s good therapy.