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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The story about the German newspaper Bild intrigued me, so I went to see if I could find an english translation of their ‘manifesto’:
1. For everyone living in Germany, Article 1 of the Basic Law applies: “The dignity of man is inviolable.”
2. For us, there are no infidels! Everyone can believe in whatever they want – even Santa Claus.
3. Anyone who considers our constitution and our legal system as a collection of non-binding recommendations should leave Germany as soon as possible.
4. Anyone who wants to live here permanently must learn German. Only when we speak the same language will we understand each other.
5. Everyone can demonstrate peacefully in Germany for their convictions. Free speech does not include threatening people, assaulting them, throwing rocks, burning cars, or celebrating murderers.
6. We don’t wear masks or veils; we look each other in the face (unless it’s Carnival or Corona).
7. Respect and charity sustain our free society.
8. Against the backdrop of the darkest chapter in our history, Israel’s security is a matter of German national interest! This means: Standing up for the security of the Jewish people is non-negotiable. Criticism of Israel’s politics is, of course, allowed.
9. We say please and thank you.
10. We gladly shake hands as a greeting or farewell.
11. We see the police as “friend and helper,” not as a repressive force or an enemy.
12. Many Germans eat pork. Of course, not everyone does. By the way: We have 10 million vegetarians or vegans because freedom also goes through the stomach.
13. The state has a monopoly on violence. Apart from the state-appointed agencies, nobody has the right to use violence against people or things.
14. We accept that our freely elected parliament sets the rules for our coexistence, which can be checked by independent courts.
15. Men are allowed to love men and women women. Whoever has a problem with that is the problem himself. Love and let love!
16. Even if someone feels neither male nor female, they are not persecuted or punished. In our country, citizens are allowed to think freely and live queer.
17. We don’t see social services as employers but as institutions that help people in financial need, people who can’t work. Not people who don’t want to work.
18. We respect the judiciary because it judges without prejudice.
19. Women wear bikinis or bathing suits in the swimming pool. And if someone wants to swim naked in the Baltic Sea – that’s okay too!
20. Women and men are equal in every respect.
21. Equality also in payment for work (we still have to catch up there)!
22. We discuss controversially and passionately, but we don’t insult those with different opinions.
23. We are tolerant with the tolerant.
24. And we have no tolerance for intolerance!
25. We only use fireworks on New Year’s Eve, so when it’s allowed.
26. We don’t burn flags of countries we dislike. That’s a crime!
27. We respect every religion, but we clearly separate religion from state.
28. Women who have affairs are not ostracized, let alone beaten or stoned! In the event of a divorce, joint custody applies to the children. It doesn’t matter who caused the marriage to fail.
29. You don’t have to be a virgin to get married!
30. Those seeking protection from political persecution or war in Germany will find it. Even those who have no claim to it can often stay. We don’t expect gratitude, even if it would be appropriate. But we do demand strict adherence to our laws and respect for our values and way of life.
31. We don’t marry off children. And men can’t have more than one wife.
32. Women decide – like men – for themselves how they dress, who they’re friends with, whom they love, whether they’d rather go to a club or church, whom they vote for, and what profession they choose.
33. Germany is a country of grillers. After a picnic in the park, we take our trash with us.
34. Knives belong in our kitchens, not in our pockets.
35. We pay taxes because we know they are the foundation of the state.
36. When a woman says no to a man, it is final and absolute. Anything else constitutes sexual harassment or rape.
37. We expect everyone who can and is allowed to, to seek employment and provide for themselves – even if social assistance or citizen’s income might initially be higher than the salary.
38. There is compulsory schooling in Germany. We believe in the importance of education and learning.
39. We give up our seats in buses and trains for the elderly and disabled.
40. Cheers, Germany! Beer and wine are part of our culture here. Respect it, and if you don’t want to drink, don’t.
41. How long or short a skirt is, is decided solely by the woman wearing it.
42. Those who cannot tolerate the caricature of politicians, celebrities, gods, or prophets are not in the right place in Germany.
43. The media question politicians, but we generally trust that the elected officials decide truthfully and for the people’s welfare.
44. Honor does not mean the right of the strongest.
45. Respect and appreciation are just as natural in social networks as they are in supermarkets or offices.
46. We try to protect the environment and conserve resources. Sustainability is the future.
47. Germany has a heart for children. They are not beaten but promoted.
48. Catcalling, like whistling or calling out to women, is harassment.
49. Boys and girls can go on school trips together, participate in sports, and swim classes together.
50. We love life, not death.
I suspect most of these would find nods of agreement from a lot of other people around the world. I also suspect that in the UK at least, publishing it, clearly aimed at immigrants, would be considered ‘far right’.
And for the Islamists, it would just be evidence that the country is corrupt and needs to be Islamified ASAP.
Once the Islamists are an effective majority in any European state, most of these 50 principles will be ended. They are not what Islam teaches so the ways of life and behaviour which is prevalent in Muslim dominated countries will come to pass oin Germany and in the UK.
If the premise behind each of the 50 statements was true and correct I am sure most people in Britain and in Gemany would support it. Unfortunately we no longer believe, for instance, that “we generally trust that the elected officials decide truthfully and for the people’s welfare”.
This one made me laugh:
we generally trust that the elected officials decide truthfully and for the people’s welfare.
Sinister Plan To Cut Birth Rates
latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
“Nigel Farage’s plan for power”
As voter it does seem to me that the alternatives to the main stream parties are either unattractive or going nowhere. The Heritage Party seems to be the ‘nice’ voice of alternative politics but it is hard to see it making much progress? Britain First has clear unequivocal policies and is quite dynamic but comes with some very unattractive baggage and history. I find Richard Tice and Nigel Farage unappealing as major political leaders. Much as these parties see themselves as very different they are to an extent chasing the same potential voters.
This hotch-potch of alternative parties seems to leave us in the hands of the current lab/con uni-party. Will some charismatic leader emerge from the alternatives who will be able to set up and lead a genuine appealing alternative? I see little sign of it at the moment.
It would need to be someone who is incorruptible, honest, humble, authentic who truly wants the best for the citizens of this land and is a good orator with a track record of holding to his or her word. Such people do exist but unfortunately nowhere near Westminster. Yes, Andrew Bridgen has stood up for the vaccine injured and has suffered the indifference and ridicule of his peers but I don’t think it’s him. The whole question of politics has had me doing a deep dive into why someone would want to be a politician in the first place. Watching local politics here in Dorset, you can see the types who wish to make the transition from town to county councils and use that as a springboard to Westminster. So far, I have not been impressed. I see low level corruption and the ability to talk without really saying anything while looking on with gimlet eyes for the main chance – the type who is always looking around a room for someone more important to talk to. It has led me to believe that we need to vet the people who go to Westminster, maybe even do a psychological assessment because we certainly don’t need more sociopathic self-interested spivs pretending they care.
A cynic might observe that “the ability to talk without really saying anything while looking on with gimlet eyes for the main chance…” is a key skill for any MP, given the way Parliament works!
Your reference to “hotch-potch” suggests you do not like a wide variety of choices. I wonder if that extends to your daily choices in supermarkets and other shops. I have heard the criticism of new, smaller parties for three decades which goes along a number of lines and we are hearing it again:
1
You cannot win and form a government so why vote for your candidates. That would suggest no one votes other than for the Labout Party this time.
2
You know you cannot win so a vote for you just lets in one of the branches of Uniparty the speaker does not like. That is an arguement for a single party state.
3
I don’t like your leader, one of your candidates or a former leader or member so I won’t vote for you. Political choises do need to take account of the character of individuals but the policies they are likely to enact are the point of elections. Do you also consider the leader or all of the leadership or even the candidate standing for Uniparty when you vote. Do you even know anything about the candidate. Do you know what the leader(ship) is really like or just what the MSM has told you about them.
We have an oligopoly market in UK politics where the Westminster parties act just like soap powder/fluid manufacturers, differentiating only on marketing and packaging. The contents are substantially the same and newcomers to the market are crushed by their joint action. Unfortunately interest in market competition is at a decades long low in political policy making, no where more so than at election time.
2) is also an argument for proportional representation, compared with first past the post – but unlikely to adopted by Westminster, any time soon.
PR here in ireland just means more of the same 3 parties that take turns keeping the accepted faddy agenda going!
Micheal Martin, Leo Varadkar and Eamon Ryan just swap heads every few years, policy stays the same.. or worse!
No way is truly better
for better or worse, I’d sooner risk Farage!
Best of a bad bunch, you know full well what you’ll get with the uni party!
Not just politicians: Neil Ferguson, Catherine Calderwood and plenty more – though of course these might be considered politicians-lite.
“MPs will be helped to spot conspiracy theories”
Careful. Will they also be helped to spot when a conspiracy theory becomes fact and they can start lying again?
Tinfoil for me but not for thee. Business as usual for think-tanks and government manufacturing fear scenarios to justify policy.
And exactly who gets to say what is or isn’t a conspiracy theory? We’re back to this who to believe – someone in a suit with a tie and a vested interest in a certain outcome or someone with no suit and everything to lose but says it anyway. Hmmm.
“The problem with climate protesting clergy”
What the protestors – and, from the article itself, even its author – seem not to have considered is that the evensong service is not, primarily, for the benefit of the congregation, and still less the oil-money compromised (!) Chichester diocese, but to glorify God.
The article scarcely mentions the Lord at the centre of worship, from whom attention was diverted to man’s supposed disruption of his creation… though the Christian belief is that the risen Christ governs all things in heaven and earth, not man.
Any comparison with Jesus’s cleansing of the temple is nonsense – he did not disrupt the worship of the temple, but the commerce in its precincts. Disrupt the synod if you must, but not divine service.
“Britain will lead push to triple nuclear power with 22 signatories”
Well, well. Seems they’ve realised that by reducing us all to stoneage levels of energy production, they won’t have enough leccy to run all those server farms for the masses of surveillance information they want to hold on us…
Slightly off on a tangent but on Friday when my brother and I were driving back to Dorset along the A272 from Petersfield to Winchester, we passed these Numberplate recognition cameras every few hundred yards. They were situated on quite high yellow and beige poles with cameras looking both ways. Why? It’s part of the digital control grid, isn’t it. Put a few in here, a few there…slowly boil the frogs and hey presto introduce curbs on driving. Because it’s done so gradually, people don’t make a fuss. It’s time we started doing something more affirmative about this. Bladerunners where are you?
Hmm. What organisation runs them? The local County Council? There do not appear to be any “National Highways” traffic cameras along the A272 (https://www.trafficengland.com/ ).
On further research, they’re apparently average speed cameras according to the police. They might well be but I think if they can recognise your numberplate, they can be used for many different reasons. Put simply, I don’t believe or trust them.
Inside all of us, hopefully waiting to be pushed enough to come out!
It has little or nothing to do with any other country whether the UK decides to expand nuclear power production. Why did anyone waste time considering, drafting, negotiating and presenting this proposal to 21 other nations. It is a fatuous waste of time.
I would be more impressed to learn HMG had made small nukes a national priority (years ago!) and announced orders for one a month minimum for ten years.
Perhaps they are promoting this firms products: https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/novel-nuclear.aspx#space-micro-reactor After all, if the military market declines (unlikely at present), they would have an alternative market.
A look at a selection of individuals, including Geert Wilders, who have to wear bulletproof vests, live in bulletproof homes and have constant security, all because of threats to their lives from deranged adherents of a death cult;
”What about the president of the French National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, and the television host Arthur, two Frenchmen who in recent days have been placed under guard because they are Jews?
A third of all personalities under guard in France are because of Islam.
In this strange Europe, even the youngest bishop in the history of the Church of England, the friend of Benedict XVI, son of a Muslim who converted to Christianity, Michael Nazir-Ali, was assigned a police escort after the Islamists attacked him. He has received death threats for reporting the existence of “no go areas” for non-Muslims in the UK.
There is only one newspaper in Europe whose address is a state secret: Charlie Hebdo, which has more security guards than journalists. Its former director Philippe Val lives in a house with bulletproof windows, police officers and a “safe room”. 85 police officers to protect a single editorial team of journalists and cartoonists. Today Charlie’s headquarters has six armored doors, an X-ray system and a “panic room”, which they have to enter if they hear suspicious noises.
There is only one academic in the West with a bulletproof vest, the Egyptian Hamed Abdel Samad (“one day an officer of the Berlin Criminal Police gave me a bulletproof vest and told me that from now on I would have to wear it during my lectures ”). Because Samad wrote a book with a title that, like Wilders, is not subtle: “Islamic Fascism”.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/381214
The civil service are clearly an unelected fifth column clandestinely running the country
I have not checked but I always understood that clandestine implied secrecy. Their control has not been secret for many years.
“Fox’s tweet would not ‘lead anyone to think he’s racist’, trial hears” – A libel trial has heard that nothing in Laurence Fox’s tweet criticising Sainsbury’s celebrating Black History Month would lead anyone to the honest opinion that he was racist, says the Mail.
I’m really pissed off. Can the courts please just stop hearing cases about playground name-calling?
It would appear that the little girl who was attacked in Dublin is actually clinically dead, so says this same chap in this update ( 2mins ). The doctors and nurses are banned from speaking out, as are the family ( Ukrainian immigrants apparently ) and just the whole radio silence on the case would imply that all is not well, hence the total media blackout.
I’ve even seen videos of police in Dublin removing peaceful protesters’ signs which state, ”Leo out now!” and ”Irish freedom movement” and warning them, yet look at what the hate marchers are permitted to carry on the regular. When are they actually going to publicly announce this poor girl is dead? Once the final hate speech laws have gone through?
https://twitter.com/RadioGenoa/status/1731226675222892992
Up until 2019, our governments were just incompetent and unaware, since then and through the plandemic, something has changed! They are now ruthless, thinking and insidious towards us! and I hate them! Hiding behind their bland complacent, “it wasn’t me gov” lying faces
Just wandered, why do westerners not risk life and limb to get away from western countries!