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World Health Organization Is Making a Massive Power Grab — and Biden Is Enabling It
The World Health Organization wants the power to run the world. In three weeks, it will make its bid for global control. The World Health Assembly, the 194-member body governing that organization, convenes in Geneva at the end of May. The main agenda items will be the amendment of the International Health Regulations and the signing of what is now called the “WHO Pandemic Agreement.” Together, the amendments and agreement would give WHO, as the worldwide health body is known, sweeping powers before and during pandemics to dictate the actions of national governments.
The current version of the agreement, dated April 22 of this year, gives WHO emergency powers to take 10% of a country’s “pandemic-related health products” and to force the sale of another 10% of such products at “affordable prices.” The agreement also requires parties to make “annual monetary contributions,” but it does not specify terms, conditions, or amounts.
Moreover, the document contemplates the forced licensing of technology, commits countries to a radical “One Health approach” covering all forms of life, and prohibits “national stockpiles of pandemic-related health products that unnecessarily exceed the quantities anticipated to be needed for domestic pandemic preparedness and response.” And a signatory to the agreement is required to “set aside a portion of its total procurement of relevant diagnostics, therapeutics, or vaccines in a timely manner for use in counties facing challenges in meeting public health needs and demand.”
“The amendments to the regulations and the adoption of the agreement look like the institution of world government, ‘global governance’ as they call it,” Frank Gaffney, cofounder of the Sovereignty Coalition, said to me.
Do we need world government? The international community’s slow response to the COVID-19 pandemic left much to be desired, but the World Health Organization of Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cannot fix the problems. On the contrary, WHO was responsible for helping China turn a one-country epidemic into an almost-every-country pandemic.
Top FBI Official Urges Agents to Use Warrantless Wiretaps on U.S. Soil
A top FBI official is encouraging employees to continue to investigate Americans using a warrantless foreign surveillance program in an effort to justify the bureau’s spy powers, according to an internal email obtained by WIRED.
Known as Section 702, the program is controversial for having been misused by the FBI to target U.S. protesters, journalists, and even a sitting member of Congress. U.S. lawmakers, nevertheless, voted to extend the program in April for an additional two years, while codifying a slew of procedures that the FBI claims is working to stop the abuse.
Obtained by WIRED, an April 20 email authored by FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate to employees states: “To continue to demonstrate why tools like this are essential to our mission, we need to use them, while also holding ourselves accountable for doing so properly and in compliance with legal requirements.”
“The deputy director’s email seems to show that the FBI is actively pushing for more surveillance of Americans, not out of necessity but as a default,” says U.S. representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California. “This directly contradicts earlier assertions from the FBI during the debate over Section 702’s reauthorization.”
Dr. Cory Franklin: Was Sweden’s COVID Approach Superior to That of the U.S.?
COVID-19 cases and deaths internationally have fallen to their lowest levels in four years. The data now permits a comparison between the controversial laissez-faire strategy of Sweden and the more restrictive approach of the United States, which emphasized lockdowns, a strategy also adopted by most of Western Europe.
The Swedish tack relied on personal responsibility and voluntary measures rather than government coercion and restrictions. This attitude, ultimately vindicated, was attacked at the time by health officials and the press in Western Europe and North America.
The most important outcome difference between the U.S. and Sweden was in children’s education. Prolonged U.S. school closures caused educational damage to students not seen in Sweden. Beginning in March 2020, public schools in the U.S. closed, sending 50 million students home. Some private and religious schools, as well as some schools in Florida, opened up in the second half of 2020, but as many as half of all American public school students stayed out of school until the second half of 2021.
Taking into account all aspects of the pandemic — excess deaths, economic health and children’s education — the long view suggests that while not ideal, the Swedish strategy was superior. The coronavirus was so contagious and mutated so quickly that tight lockdowns were unsuccessful in controlling the spread. And the longer the lockdowns, the greater the harm to the populace from factors other than COVID-19.
The most important takeaway from the Swedish COVID-19 experience is not that Sweden controlled COVID-19 better, but that any national strategy must account for the effects on the country’s economic, social, educational and mental health.
Congress Hears Testimony on Russia’s Sonic Attacks on U.S. Officials in Havana
Russia has “targeted and neutralized” dozens of US intelligence agents in recent years in a covert worldwide operation using sonic weapons, a House committee heard on Wednesday as it looked into the mystery phenomenon known as Havana syndrome.
The panel heard from expert witnesses that Russia had “the motive, the means and the opportunity” to enact the attacks on US diplomats and other government employees at embassies and other government outposts that left many with debilitating or career-ending brain injuries and hearing loss.
A comprehensive investigation published last month by a coalition of media outlets said an elite Russian intelligence and assassination unit was probably responsible, contradicting an earlier government assessment that no foreign adversary was involved.
Wednesday’s hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on counterterrorism, law enforcement and intelligence was convened to examine the incidents, with its chairman, the Texas Republican congressman August Pfluger, appearing to question the authorities’ conclusion.
“The totality of the evidence uncovered by our team has proven that Russia has the motive, the means and the opportunity to have developed and used non-lethal acoustic or electromagnetic wave weapons against members of US intelligence and law enforcement community,” he said.
A College Professor Wants to Use Section 230 Against Big Tech
Ethan Zuckerman, a longtime technologist and social media scholar, thought he fully understood Section 230, the 1996 statute that contains the famous “26 words that created the internet.” But three years ago, he was reading its full text aloud to his class at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst when suddenly, in his words, “a lightbulb went off in my head.”
It struck him that the law, widely understood to shield tech companies from being sued for their users’ posts, also protects users. In particular, it protects people who build tools to filter or moderate online content. People like Zuckerman’s friend Louis Barclay, a developer who in 2021 was permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram for developing a tool called “Unfollow Everything” that lets users, well, unfollow everything and restart their feeds fresh.
Three years later, that eureka moment has turned into a lawsuit — one that, if successful, could loosen Big Tech’s grip on how people use social media.
The suit, filed by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute on Zuckerman’s behalf, asks a California court to declare that Meta can’t ban or sue him for building an unfollowing tool inspired by Barclay’s. (You can read it here.) If the suit succeeds, Zuckerman plans to release the tool, called “Unfollow Everything 2.0,” and hopes a wave of other tools to give users more control over their online lives will follow.
UK Tells Tech Firms to ‘Tame Algorithms’ to Protect Children
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok will have to “tame” their algorithms to filter out or downgrade harmful material to help protect children under proposed British measures published on Wednesday.
The plan by regulator Ofcom is one of more than 40 practical steps tech companies will need to implement under Britain’s Online Safety Act, which became law in October. The platforms must also have robust age checks to prevent children from seeing harmful content linked to suicide, self-harm and pornography, the regulator said. Ofcom Chief Executive Melanie Dawes said children’s experiences online had been blighted by harmful content they couldn’t avoid or control.
“They will need to tame aggressive algorithms that push harmful content to children in their personalized feeds and introduce age-checks so children get an experience that’s right for their age,” she said
Social media companies use complex algorithms to prioritize content and keep users engaged. However, the fact that they amplify similar content can lead to children being influenced by increasing amounts of harmful material.
