The Covid-skeptic world has been claiming the World Health Organization (WHO) plans to become some sort of global autocratic government, removing national sovereignty and replacing it with a totalitarian health state. The near-complete absence of interest by mainstream media would suggest, to the rational observer, that this is yet another ‘conspiracy theory’ from a disaffected fringe. 

The imposition of authoritarian rules on a global scale would normally attract attention. The WHO is fairly transparent in its machinations. It should therefore be straightforward to determine whether this is all misplaced hysteria, or an attempt to implement an existential change in sovereign rights and international relations. We would just need to read the document. Firstly, it is useful to put the amendments in context.

The changing role of WHO

Who’s WHO?

The WHO was set up after the Second World War as the health arm of the United Nations, to support efforts to improve population health globally. Based on the concept that health went beyond the physical (encompassing “physical, mental and social well-being”), its constitution was premised on the concept that all people were equal and born with basic inviolable rights. The world in 1946 was emerging from the brutality of colonialism and international fascism; the results of overly centralized authority and of regarding people to be fundamentally unequal. The WHO constitution was intended to put populations in charge of health.

In recent decades the WHO has evolved as its support base of core funding allocated by countries, based on GDP, evolved to a model where most funding is directed to specified uses, and much is provided by private and corporate interests. The priorities of the WHO have evolved accordingly, moving away from community-centered care to a more vertical, commodity-based approach. This inevitably follows the interests and self-interests of these funders. More detail can be found on this evolution elsewhere; these changes are important to putting the proposed IHR amendments in context.

Of equal importance, the WHO is not alone in the international health sphere. While certain organizations such as UNICEF (originally intended to prioritize child health and welfare), private foundations and non-government organizations have long partnered with the WHO, the past two decades have seen a burgeoning of the global health industry, with multiple organizations, particularly ‘public-private partnerships’ (PPPs) growing in influence; in some respects rivals and in some respects partners of the WHO.

Notable among PPPs are the Gavi – the Vaccine Alliance (focused specifically on vaccines) and CEPI, an organization set up at the World Economic Forum meeting in 2017 specifically to manage pandemics, by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and the Norwegian Government. Gavi and CEPI, along with others such as Unitaid and the Global Fund, include corporate and private interests directly on their boards. The World Bank and G20 have also increased involvement in global health, and especially pandemic preparedness. The WHO has stated that pandemics occurred just once per generation over the past century and killed a fraction of those who died from endemic infectious diseases, but they nonetheless attract much of this corporate and financial interest. 

The WHO is primarily a bureaucracy, not a body of experts. Recruitment is based on various factors, including technical competency but also country and other equity-related quotas. These quotas serve a purpose of reducing the power of specific countries to dominate the organization with their own staff, but in doing so require the recruitment of staff who may have far lower experience or expertise. Recruitment is also heavily influenced by internal WHO personnel, and the usual personal influences that come with working and needing favors within countries. 

Once recruited, the payment structure strongly favors those who stay for long periods, mitigating against rotation to new expertise as roles change. A WHO staffer must work 15 years to receive their full pension, with earlier resignation resulting in removal of all or part of the WHO’s contribution to their pension. Coupled with large rental subsidies, health insurance, generous education subsidies, cost-of-living adjustments and tax-free salaries, this creates a structure within which protecting the institution (and thus one’s benefits) can far outlive initial altruistic intent.

The DG and Regional Directors (RDs – of which there are six) are elected by member states in a process subject to heavy political and diplomatic maneuvering. The current DG is Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian politician with a checkered past during the Ethiopian civil war. The amendments proposed would allow Tedros to independently make all the decisions required within the IHR, consulting a committee at will but not bound by it. Indeed, he can do this now, having declared monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) against his emergency committee’s advice, after just five deaths globally. 

Like many WHO employees, I personally witnessed, and am aware of, examples of seeming corruption within the organization, from Regional Director elections to building renovations and importation of goods. Such practices can occur within any large human organization that has lived a generation or two beyond its founding. This is, of course, why the principle of the separation of powers commonly exists in national governance; those making rules must answer to an independent judiciary according to a system of laws to which all are subject. As this cannot apply to UN agencies, they should automatically be excluded from direct rulemaking over populations. The WHO, like other UN bodies, is essentially a law unto itself.

WHO’s new pandemic preparedness and health emergency instruments. 

The WHO is currently working on two agreements that will expand its powers and role in declared health emergencies and pandemics. These also involve widening the definition of ‘health emergencies’ within which such powers may be used. The first agreement involves proposed amendments to the existing International Health Regulations (IHR), an instrument with force under international law that has been in existence in some form for decades, significantly amended in 2005 after the 2003 SARS outbreak.

The second is a new ‘treaty’ that has similar intent to the IHR amendments. Both are following a path through WHO committees, public hearings and revision meetings, to be put to the World Health Assembly (WHA – the annual meeting of all country members [‘States parties’] of the WHO), probably in 2023 and 2024 respectively.

The discussion here concentrates on the IHR amendments as they are the most advanced. Being amendments of an existing treaty mechanism, they only require approval of 50 percent of countries to come into force (subject to ratification processes specific to each member State). The new ‘treaty’ will require a two-thirds vote of the WHA to be accepted. The WHA’s one country – one vote system gives countries like Niue, with less than two thousand residents, equal voice to countries with hundreds of millions (e.g. India, China, the US), though diplomatic pressure tends to corral countries around their beneficiaries.

The IHR amendments process within the WHO is relatively transparent. There is no conspiracy to be seen. The amendments are ostensibly proposed by national bureaucracies, collated on the WHO website. The WHO has gone to unusual lengths to open hearings to public submissions. The intent of the IHR amendments to change the nature of the relationship between countries and the WHO (i.e. a supra-national body ostensibly controlled by them), and fundamentally change the relationship between people and central supranational authority – is open for all to see.

Major amendments proposed for the IHR

The amendments to the IHR are intended to fundamentally change the relationship between individuals, their country’s governments, and the WHO. They place the WHO as having rights overriding that of individuals, erasing the basic principles developed after World War Two regarding human rights and the sovereignty of States. In doing so, they signal a return to a colonialist and feudalist approach fundamentally different to that to which people in relatively democratic countries have become accustomed. The lack of major pushback by politicians and the lack of concern in the media and consequent ignorance of the general public is therefore both strange and alarming.

Aspects of the amendments involving the largest changes to the workings of society and international relations are discussed below. Following this are annotated extracts from the WHO document (REF). Provided on the WHO website, it is currently under a process of revision to address obvious grammatical errors and improve clarity.

Resetting international human rights to a former, authoritarian model

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, agreed by the UN in the aftermath of World War Two and in the context of much of the world emerging from a colonialist yoke, is predicated on the concept that all humans are born with equal and inalienable rights, gained by the simple fact that they are born. In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was intended to codify these, to prevent a return to inequality and totalitarian rule. The equality of all individuals is expressed in Article 7: 

“All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.” 

This understanding underpins the WHO constitution, and forms a basis for the modern international human rights movement and international human rights law.

The concept of States being representative of their people, and having sovereignty over territory and the laws by which their people were governed, was closely allied with this. As peoples emerged from colonialism, they would assert their authority as independent entities within boundaries that they would control. International agreements, including the existing IHR, reflected this. The WHO and other international agencies would play a supportive role and give advice, not instructions.

The proposed IHR amendments reverse these understandings. The WHO proposes that the term ‘with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons’ be deleted from the text, replacing them with ‘equity, coherence, inclusivity,’ vague terms the applications of which are then specifically differentiated in the text according to levels of social and economic development. The underlying equality of individuals is removed, and rights become subject to a status determined by others based on a set of criteria that they define. This entirely upends the prior understanding of the relationship of all individuals with authority, at least in non-totalitarian states.

It is a totalitarian approach to society, within which individuals may act only on the sufferance of others who wield power outside of legal sanction; specifically a feudal relationship, or one of monarch-subject without an intervening constitution. It is difficult to imagine a greater issue facing society, yet the media that is calling for reparations for past slavery is silent on a proposed international agreement consistent with its reimposition.

Giving WHO authority over member States.

This authority is seen as being above states (i.e. elected or other national governments), with the specific definition of ‘recommendations’ being changed from ‘non-binding’ (by deletion) to ‘binding’ by a specific statement that States will undertake to follow (rather than ‘consider’) recommendations of the WHO. States will accept the WHO as the ‘authority’ in international public health emergencies, elevating it above their own ministries of health. Much hinges on what a Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) is, and who defines it. As explained below, these amendments will widen the PHEIC definition to include any health event that a particular individual in Geneva (the Director General of the WHO) personally deems to be of actual or potential concern.

Powers to be ceded by national governments to the DG include quite specific examples that may require changes within national legal systems. These include detention of individuals, restriction of travel, the forcing of health interventions (testing, inoculation) and requirement to undergo medical examinations.

Unsurprising to observers of the COVID-19 response, these proposed restrictions on individual rights under the DG’s discretion include freedom of speech. The WHO will have power to designate opinions or information as ‘mis-information or disinformation, and require country governments to intervene and stop such expression and dissemination. This will likely run up against some national constitutions (e.g. the US) but will be a boon to many dictators and one-party regimes. It is, of course, incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but these seem no longer to be guiding principles for the WHO.

After self-declaring an emergency, the DG will have power to instruct governments to provide WHO and other countries with resources – funds and commodities. This will include direct intervention in manufacturing, increasing production of certain commodities manufactured within their borders. 

Countries will cede power to the WHO over patent law and intellectual property (IP), including control of manufacturing know-how, of commodities deemed by the DG to be relevant to the potential or actual health problem that he /she has deemed of interest. This IP and manufacturing know-how may be then passed to commercial rivals at the DG’s discretion. These provisions seem to reflect a degree of stupidity, and unlike the basic removal of fundamental human rights, vested interests here may well insist on their removal from the IHR draft. Rights of people should of course be paramount, but with most media absent from the fray, it is difficult to see a level of advocacy being equal.

Providing the WHO DG with unfettered power, and ensuring it will be used.

The WHO has previously developed processes that ensure at least a semblance of consensus and an evidence-base in decision-making. Their process for developing guidelines requires, at least on paper, a range of expertise to be sought and documented, and a range of evidence weighed for reliability. The 2019 guidelines on management of pandemic influenza are an example, laying out recommendations for countries in the event of such a respiratory virus outbreak. Weighing this evidence resulted in the WHO strongly recommending against contact tracing, quarantine of healthy people and border closures, as the evidence had shown that these are expected to cause more overall harm to health in the long term than the benefit gained, if any, from slowing spread of a virus. These guidelines were ignored when an emergency was declared for COVID-19 and authority switched to an individual, the director general.

The IHR amendments further strengthen the ability of the DG to ignore any such evidence-based procedures. Working on several levels, they provide the DG, and those delegated by the DG, with exceptional and arbitrary power, and put in place measures that make the wielding of such power inevitable.

Firstly, the requirement for an actual health emergency, in which people are undergoing measurable harm or risk of harm, is removed. The wording of the amendments specifically removes the requirement of harm to trigger the DG assuming power over countries and people. The need for a demonstrable ‘public health risk’ is removed, and replaced with a ‘potential’ for public health risk.

Secondly, a surveillance mechanism set up in every country under these amendments, and discussed also in the pandemic preparedness documents of the G20 and World bank, will identify new variants of viruses which constantly arise in nature, all of which, in theory, could be presumed to pose a potential risk of outbreak until proven not to. The workforce running this surveillance network, which will be considerable and global, will have no reason for existence except to identify yet more viruses and variants. Much of their funding will originate from private and corporate interests that stand to gain financially from the vaccine-based responses they envision for infectious disease outbreaks.

Thirdly, the DG has sole authority to declare any event rated (or potentially related) to health an ‘emergency.’ (The six WHO Regional Directors (RDs) will also have this power at a Regional level). As seen with the monkeypox outbreak, the DG can already ignore the committee set up to advise on emergencies. The proposed amendments will remove the need for the DG to gain consent from the country in which a potential or perceived threat is identified. In a declared emergency, the DG can vary the FENSA rules on dealing with private (e.g. for-profit) entities, allowing him/her to share a State’s information not only with other States but with private companies.

The surveillance mechanisms being required of countries and expanded within the WHO will ensure that the DG and RDs will have a constant stream of potential public health risks crossing their desks. In each case, they will have power to declare such events a health emergency of international (or Regional) concern, issuing orders supposedly binding under international law to restrict movement, detain, inject on mass scales, yield intellectual property and know-how, and provide resources to the WHO and to other countries the DG deems to require them. Even a DG uninterested in wielding such power will face the reality that they put themselves at risk of being the one who did not ‘try to ‘stop’ the next pandemic, pressured by corporate interests with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, and huge media sway. This is why sane societies never create such situations.

What happens next?

If these amendments are accepted, the people taking control over the lives of others will have no real legal oversight. They have diplomatic immunity (from all national jurisdictions). The salaries of many will be dependent on sponsorship from private individuals and corporations with direct financial interest in the decision they will make. These decisions by unaccountable committees will create mass markets for commodities or provide know-how to commercial rivals. The COVID-19 response illustrated the corporate profits that such decisions will enable. This is a situation obviously unacceptable in any democratic society. 

While the WHA has overall oversight on WHO policy with an executive board comprised of WHA members, these operate in an orchestrated way; many delegates having little depth in the proceedings whilst bureaucrats draft and negotiate. Countries not sharing the values enshrined in the constitutions of more democratic nations have equal vote on policy. Whilst it is right that sovereign States have equal rights, the human rights and freedom of one nation’s citizens cannot be ceded to the governments of others, nor to a non-State entity placing itself above them.

Many nations have developed checks and balances over centuries, based on an understanding of fundamental values, designed specifically to avoid the sort of situation we now see arising, where one group is law unto itself can arbitrarily remove and control the freedom of others. Free media developed as a further safeguard, based around principles of freedom of expression and an equal right to be heard. These values are necessary for democracy and equality to exist, just as it is necessary to remove them in order to introduce totalitarianism and a structure based on inequality. The proposed amendments to the IHR set out explicitly to do this.

The proposed new powers sought by the WHO, and the pandemic preparedness industry being built around it, are not hidden. The only subterfuge is the farcical approach of media and politicians in many nations who seem to pretend they are not proposed, or do not, if implemented, fundamentally change the nature of the relationship between people and centralized non-State powers. The people who will become subject to these powers, and the politicians who are on track to cede them, should start paying attention. We must all decide whether we wish to cede so easily what it has taken centuries to gain, to assuage the greed of others.

Annotated summary of significant clauses in the IHR amendments.

Notes. (Within qualities from the IHR draft, italics are added for emphasis here.

DG: Director General (Of the WHO) 
FENSA: (WHO) Framework for Engagement of Non-State Actors
IHR: International Health Regulations
PHEIC: Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
WHA: World Health Assembly
WHO: World Health Organization
“States Parties’ in UN parlance (i.e. self-governing countries) is simplified below to ‘State(s)’ or ‘country’.

See full document at the WHO IHR portal.

1. Setting the scene: Establishing WHO authority over individuals and national governments in health-related decision-making.

Article 1: Definitions

‘Health technologies and knowhow’;: Includes ‘other health technologies’, [any of these that solve a health problem and improve ‘quality of life’ and includes technologies and knowhow involved in the] ‘development and manufacturing process’, and their ‘application and usage’.

Note relevance to requirement for countries to give these up to other entities on WHO demand. This must be unacceptable to most existing legal systems and corporations.

“standing recommendation’ means non-binding advice issued by WHO

“temporary recommendation” means non-binding advice issued by WHO

‘standing recommendations’ and ‘temporary recommendations:’ The removal of the ‘non-binding’ is consistent with the requirement later for States to consider the ‘recommendations’ of the DG as obligatory.

Article 2: Scope and purpose (of the IHR)

_“The purpose and scope of these Regulations are to prevent, protect against_, prepare**, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of diseases including through health systems readiness and resilience in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risk all risks with a potential to impact public health**, and which …”

Wording changed from “restricted to public health risk” to “restricted to all risks with a potential to impact public health.” Public health is an extremely broad term, and potential risks can be any virus, toxin, human behavioral change, article or other information source that could affect anything in this vast field. This is an open slather that would in operation provide the WHO with a jurisdiction over anything potentially vaguely pertaining to some change in health or well-being, as perceived by the DG or delegated staff. Such broad rights to interfere and take control would not normally be allowed to a government department. In this case, there is no direct oversight from a parliament representing people, and no specific legal jurisdiction to comply with. It allows the WHO director general to insert himself and give recommendations (no longer ‘non-binding’ to almost anything pertaining to societal life (health, in the WHO’s definition, is physical, mental and social well-being).

Article 3: Principles

“The implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities of the States Parties, taking into consideration their social and economic development”

This signals a fundamental change in the human rights approach of the UN, including the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) that all UN countries have signed up to. The concept of broad, fundamental rights (equal in all) is removed, and replaced with vacuous wording ‘equity, inclusivity, coherence.’ Human rights (of the individual) are seen as based on economic and ‘social’ development. This implies that the wealthy and poor have different rights, and there is a hierarchy of ‘development’ that defines one’s rights. This is a return to a feudalist or colonialist view of human rights (in many respects the excuses used to justify slavery), that the post-War WHO and UDHR had sought to move away from.

“shall be guided by the goal of their universal application for the protection of all people of the world from the international spread of disease. When implementing these Regulations, Parties and WHO should exercise precaution, in particular when dealing with unknown pathogens.“

Again, addition of a clause that enables the WHO to override human rights previously stated, including for speculative (unknown) threats.

Article 4: Responsible authorities

Each country is required to appoint an ‘authorized responsible authority’ for WHO to liaise with. Seemingly innocuous, but reflects the mindset change in status within these regulations, with the WHO becoming a body requiring compliance, no longer ‘suggesting’ or ‘supporting.’

2. Establishing the international pandemic preparedness bureaucracy with WHO at the center

Article 5: Surveillance.

These amendments establish /expand a periodic review mechanism, similar to the UN human rights office. This seems in itself innocuous, but is a very large resource drain, especially for smaller countries, and requires (as in the human rights compliance case) a dedicated large international (WHO) bureaucracy and consultant base. WHO will require regular detailed reports, send assessors, and require changes. This raises questions both on (1) sovereignty in health and (2) rational and appropriate use of resources. WHO is not assessing the country’s health needs here, it is assessing one small aspect and dictating the resources spent on it, irrespective of other health burdens. This is a fundamentally poor and dangerous way to manage public health and means resources are unlikely to be spent for maximum benefit overall.

Article 6: Notification.

Countries (States Parties) to make information available to WHO at WHO request, and WHO can make this available to other parties (see later clauses) in a manner yet to be determined by the WHA. This may seem innocuous but in reality, removes State sovereignty over data (which had been significant prior to 2005 IHA amendments). It is unlikely that powerful States will comply, but smaller ones will be left with little choice (China has significantly inhibited information and will likely do so. It can be argued this is appropriate – such information can have significant economic and social implications).

Article 10: Verification

“If the State Party does not accept the offer of collaboration within 48 hours , WHO may shall , when justified by the magnitude of the public health risk, immediately share with other States Parties the information available to it, whilst encouraging the State Party to accept the offer of collaboration by WHO, _taking into account the views of the State Party concerned_.”

The WHO gains power to share information from a State or pertaining to a State with other States, without consent. This is remarkable: It is important to understand who the WHO is (essentially unaccountable beyond the WHA).

Article 11: Exchange of Information (Formerly provision of information by WHO). 

This article enables WHO to share information obtained as discussed above, to both UN and non-governmental bodies (allowed recipients changed from (formerly) relevant intergovernmental to (now) relevant international and regional organizations (i.e. now including organizations not related to national governments).

WHO can therefore share State information with ‘relevant international organizations’ – this presumably includes such as CEPI, Gavi, Unitaid – organizations that have private and corporate representation on their boards with direct financial conflicts of interest.

Further:

“Parties referred to in those provisions, shall not make this information generally available to other States Parties, until such time as when: (a) the event is determined to constitute a public health emergency of international concern, a public health emergency of regional concern, or warrants an intermediate public health alert, in accordance with Article 12; or …”

Widens the criteria determining when the WHO can disseminate information from sovereign States, from PHEIC to ‘health alert’ (which in practice the DG or subordinates could apply to almost anything). This could occur, as specified later in the Article, when WHO staff decide a sovereign State does not have ‘capacity’ to handle a problem, or when the WHO staff decide (with unspecified criteria) that it is necessary to share information with others to make ‘timely’ risk assessments. This allows unelected WHO staff, on salaries supported from external conflicted entities, to disseminate information from States directly relevant to those entities, based on their own assessment of risk and response, against undefined criteria.

3. Widening ‘public health emergency’ definition to include any health or pathogen-related event at DG’s discretion, and requiring States compliance.

Article 12: Determination of a public health emergency of international concern public health emergency of regional concern, or intermediate health alert

This Article both reduces the threshold for the DG to declare an emergency (it can just be a concern of a potential outbreak) and greatly increases the power of the WHO (removes requirement for State agreement) to then act.

“If the Director-General considers, based on an assessment under these Regulations, that a potential or actual public health emergency of international concern is occurring ….. determines that the event constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, and the State Party are in agreement regarding this determination, the Director-General shall notify all the States Parties, in accordance with the procedure set forth in Article 49, seek the views of the Committee established under Article 48 (but is not required to follow them)

Removes requirement for State to agree to release of information pertaining to that State. DG can declare a PHEIC against States wishes and instructions. The WHO becomes the dominant party, not the servant of the sovereign State.

Emergency committee review is optional for DG, who can act completely alone in determining PHEIC – a decision that can have vast health, social and economic implications and is allowed above to abrogate basic human rights norms.

_If, following the consultation in paragraph 2 above, the Director-General and the State Party in whose territory the event arises do not come to a consensus within 48 hours on whether the event constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, a determination shall be made in accordance with the procedure set forth in Article 49_.

Removes requirement of DG to seek agreement of State before acting. 

“Regional Director may determine that an event constitutes a public health emergency of regional concern and provide related guidance to States Parties in the region either before or after notification of an event that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern is made to the Director-General, who shall inform all States Parties”

Regional directors appear to be granted similar powers, though full implications are unclear.

“In case of any engagement with non-State actors in WHO’s public health response to PHEIC situation, WHO shall follow the provisions of Framework for Engagement of Non-State Actors (FENSA). Any departure from FENSA provisions shall be consistent with paragraph 73 of FENSA.”

The WHO Framework for Engagement of Non-State Actors (FENSA) allows the DG to “exercise flexibility in the application of the procedures of FENSA” in the case of a health emergency (which here in the IHR is widened, as above, to any concern the FG has of potential harm, irrespective of State agreement.

“Developed State Parties and WHO shall offer assistance to developing State Parties depending on the availability of finance, technology and know how…”.

A line fascinating mainly for its anachronistic (but telling) use of the colonialist-like terms developing and developed in this formerly egalitarian WHO context. 

“The State Party shall accept or reject such an offer of assistance within 48 hours and, in the case of rejection of such an offer, shall provide to WHO its rationale for the rejection, which WHO shall share with other States Parties. Regarding on-site assessments, in compliance with its national law, a State Party shall make reasonable efforts to facilitate short-term access to relevant sites; in the event of a denial, it shall provide its rationale for the denial of access”

WHO set as the dominant partner. The State must comply or provide excuses for not agreeing with WHO’s dictates.

“When requested by WHO, States Parties should shall provide, to the extent possible, support to WHO-coordinated response activities, including supply of health products and technologies, especially diagnostics and other devices, personal protective equipment, therapeutics, and vaccines, for effective response to PHEIC occurring in another State Party’s jurisdiction and/or territory, capacity building for the incident management systems as well as for rapid response teams”.

‘Should’ changed to ‘Shall,’ requiring States to provide resources at the WHO’s request for a PHEIC (e.g. monkeypox of an event the DG considers may pose a potential threat.) This begins a theme of the WHO acquiring the ability to order States to provide resources, and (later) know-how and intellectual property when ordered by the DG to do so.

NEW Article 13A WHO Led International Public Health Response

This new article explicitly lays out the new international public health order, with the WHO in charge at the center, rather than national sovereignty being paramount.

“States Parties recognize WHO as the guidance and coordinating authority of international public health response during public health Emergency of International Concern and undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations in their international public health response.”

This requires States to follow WHO recommendations in a PHEIC – declared by an individual (DG) whose position is determined by non-democratic states and who is open to wide influence by private and corporate money. The criteria for PHEIC are deliberately vague, and at the DG’s discretion. This is an amazing reversal of roles of the WHO versus States, and clearly abrogates sovereignty.

The wild failure of Covid response, and the WHO’s abrogation of its own guidelines, should give pause for thought here. The WHO could mandate abrogation of bodily autonomy on states regarding medication or vaccination, or testing.

“Upon request of WHO, States Parties with the production capacities shall undertake measures to scale up production of health products, including through diversification of production, technology transfer and capacity building especially in the developing countries.”

The WHO can require (tell) countries to scale-up production of certain products – to interfere with markets and commerce, at the WHO’s (DG’s) discretion.

NEW Article 13A WHO Led International Public Health Response

“**States Parties recognize WHO as the guidance and coordinating authority of international public health response during public health Emergency of International Concern and undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations in their international public health response**.”

This requires States to follow WHO recommendations in a PHEIC – declared by an individual (DG) whose position is determined by non-democratic states and who is open to wide influence by private and corporate money. The criteria for PHEIC are deliberately vague, and at the DG’s discretion. This is an amazing reversal of roles of WHO versus States, and clearly abrogates sovereignty. It is requiring sovereign states to submit themselves to an external authority, whenever that authority desires it (as the WHO DG can through previous amendments above, declare a PHEIC on the basis of just perceiving the potential form an infectious disease event).

The Covid response, including the WHO’s abrogation of its own guidelines and policies, should give pause for thought here. The WHO could mandate abrogation of bodily autonomy on states regarding medication or vaccination, or testing. 

“**Upon request of WHO, States Parties with the production capacities shall undertake measures to scale up production of health products, including through diversification of production, technology transfer and capacity building especially in the developing countries.**”

The WHO can require (tell) countries to scale-up production of certain products – to interfere with markets and commerce, at WHO’s (DG’s) discretion.

“ [WHO] shall collaborate with other international organizations, and other stakeholders consistent with the provisions of FENSA, for responding to public health emergency of international concern.**”**

This enables the WHO to collaborate with non-State actors (private individuals, Foundations, private corporations (Pharma, its sponsors etc.). FENSA, which restricts such contacts, can be varied by the DG in a ‘health emergency’ that the DG declares.

4. WHO requiring countries to provide resources, intellectual property and knowhow at WHO’s discretion.

New Article 13A: Access to Health Products, Technologies and Know-How for Public Health Response

“States Parties shall co-operate with each other and WHO to comply with such recommendations pursuant to paragraph 1 and shall take measures to ensure timely availability and affordability of required health products such as diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, and other medical devices required for the effective response to a public health emergency of international concern.”

The WHO determines response within States’ borders, and requires States to provide aid to other countries. At the WHO’s behest.

“**States Parties shall provide, in their intellectual property laws and related laws and regulations, exemptions and limitations to the exclusive rights of intellectual property holders to facilitate the manufacture, export and import of the required health products, including their materials and components**.”

States shall change their intellectual property (IP) laws, to allow sharing of IP on the DG’s determination of a PHEIC, at his/her discretion, to whom they determine. It is difficult to imagine a sane State would do this, but it is clearly required here.

“States Parties shall use or assign to potential manufacturers, especially from developing countries, on a non-exclusive basis, the rights over health product(s) or technology(ies)”

The WHO can require IP to be shared with other States (and thereby IP is passed to private corporations within those States.

“Upon request of a State Party, other States Parties or WHO shall rapidly cooperate and share relevant regulatory dossiers submitted by manufacturers concerning safety and efficacy, and manufacturing and quality control processes, within 30 days”

Requirement to release confidential regulatory dossiers to other States, including to WHO qualification programme, and to sovereign state regulatory agencies.

“[WHO shal]… establish a database of raw materials and their potential suppliers, e) establish a repository for cell-lines to accelerate the production and regulatory of similar biotherapeutics products and vaccines”,

WHO holding such materials is unprecedented. Under whose laws and regulatory requirements would this be done? Who is responsible for damage and harm?

“**States Parties shall take measures to ensure that the activities of non-state actors, especially the manufacturers and those claiming associated intellectual property rights, do not conflict with the right to the highest attainable standard of health and these Regulations and are in compliance with measures taken by the WHO and the States Parties under this provision, which includes:**

a) to comply with WHO recommended measures including allocation mechanism made pursuant to paragraph 1. 

b) to donate a certain percentage of their production at the request of WHO.

c) to publish the pricing policy transparently.

d) to share the technologies, know-how for the diversification of production.

e) to deposit cell-lines or share other details required by WHO repositories or database established pursuant to paragraph 5.

f) to submit regulatory dossiers concerning safety and efficacy, and manufacturing and quality

control processes, when called for by the States Parties or WHO.”

The ‘highest attainable standard of health is beyond what any State has now. This effectively means, as worded, that the WHO can require any state to release almost any confidential product and intellectual property on any product related to the health sector.

This is an amazing list. The DG (WHO) on their own criteria can declare an event, then require a State to contribute resources and give up sole rights to intellectual property of its citizens, and share information to allow others to manufacture their citizen’s products in direct competition. The WHO also requires States to donate products to the WHO /other States on DG’s demand.

To understand the scope of the intellectual property rights to be forfeited to the DG, the definitions (Article 1) describe them as:

“health technologies and know-how” includes organized set or combination of knowledge, skills, health products, procedures, databases and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of life, including those relating to development or manufacture of health products or their combination, its application or usage …”.

5. WHO claiming control of individuals and their rights within States

Article 18 Recommendations with respect to persons, baggage, cargo, containers, conveyances, goods and postal parcels.

“Recommendations issued by WHO to States Parties with respect to persons may include the following advice:…..

–      review proof of medical examination and any laboratory analysis;

• require medical examinations;
• review proof of vaccination or other prophylaxis;
• require vaccination or other prophylaxis;
• place suspect persons under public health observation;
• implement quarantine or other health measures for suspect persons;
• implement isolation and treatment where necessary of affected persons;
• implement tracing of contacts of suspect or affected persons;
• refuse entry of suspect and affected persons;
• refuse entry of unaffected persons to affected areas; and
• implement exit screening and/or restrictions on persons from affected areas.”

This (article 18) was already in existence. New Article 13A, however, now requires States to follow WHO recommendations. The WHO will thus now be able to, based on the sole determination of an individual (DG) under influence of non-democratic states and private entities, order states to incarcerate their citizens, inject them, require identification of medical status, medically examine, isolate and restrict travel.

This is clearly insane.

“[Recommendations issued by WHO shall]…ensure mechanisms to develop and apply a traveller’s health declaration in international public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) to provide better information about travel itinerary, possible symptoms that could be manifested or any prevention measures that have been complied with such as facilitation of contact tracing, if necessary.”

The WHO can require the availability of private travel (itinerary) information, and require the provision of medical travel documents. This is requiring the disclosure of private medical information to the WHO.

Article 23 Health measures on arrival and departure

“Documents containing information concerning traveller’s destination (hereinafter Passenger Locator Forms, PLFs) should preferably be produced in digital form, with paper form as a residual option. Such information should not duplicate the information the traveller already submitted in relation to the same journey, provided the competence authority can have access to it for the purpose of contact tracing.”

Text (which clearly needs further work) aimed at future requirements for vaccine passports for travel.

6. WHO setting the scene for digital health passports

Article 35 General rule

“**Digital health documents must incorporate means to verify their authenticity via retrieval from an official web site, such as a QR code.**”

Further presaging digital IDs containing health information, that must be available to enable travel (i.e. not at individual’s discretion).

Article 36 Certificates of vaccination or other prophylaxis

“Such proofs may include test certificates and recovery certificates. These certificates may be designed and approved by the Health Assembly according to the provisions set out for digital vaccination or prophylaxis certificates, and should be deemed as substitutes for, or be complementary to, the digital or paper certificates of vaccination or prophylaxis.”

As above. Setting up the WHO/WHA to set international travel requirements (the UDHR says there is a basic right to travel). While not new here, this is expanded by the expansion of PHEIC provisions, and focused more on the DG’s determination. It is moving from national sovereignty to a transnational travel control beyond national sovereignty – not directly answerable to populations, but heavily funded and influenced by private interests.

“Health measures taken pursuant to these Regulations, including the recommendations made under Article 15 and 16, shall be initiated and completed without delay by all State Parties”

Requirement for all countries to comply with these recommendations (they only take 50 percent of the WHA to implement).

“State Parties shall also take measures to ensure Non-State Actors operating in their respective territories comply with such measures**.”**

Also requires private entities and citizens within the state to comply (which likely requires changes of many national laws, and the relationship between government and people).

This requires a totalitarian approach from the State, subject to a totalitarian approach from a supra-state (but clearly not meritocratic) entity. Following these IHR revisions, the DG of WHO, at his discretion, has the capacity to order private entities and citizens in any country to comply with his/her directives.

7. WHO being empowered to order changes within States, including restrictions on freedom of speech.

Article 43 Additional health measures

“[Measures implemented by States shall not be more restrictive than.]… would achieve attain the appropriate highest achievable level of health protection.”

These changes are very significant. Appropriate’ meant taking into account the costs and balancing these against potential gains. It is a sensible approach that takes the whole of society and population needs into account (good public health).

‘highest achievable level of protection’ means elevating this problem (an infectious disease or potential disease) above all other health and human/societal concerns. This is stupid, and probably reflects lack of thought and poor understanding of public health.

“WHO may request that shall make recommendations to the State Party concerned reconsider to modify or rescind the application of the additional health measures …”

On removing health interventions, the WHO DG now can require such actions (States have agreed to ‘recommendations’ being binding above). As elsewhere, the WHO is not the instructing party, not the suggesting party. The WHO takes sovereignty over formerly State matters. The following paragraph requires a response in 2 weeks rather than formerly 3 months.

Article 44 Collaboration and assistance

“States Parties shall undertake to collaborate with and assist each other, in particular developing countries States Parties, upon request, _to the extent possible_, in:…”

Changes move the relationship from the WHO suggesting/requesting, to the WHO requiring.

“in countering the dissemination of false and unreliable information about public health events, preventive and anti-epidemic measures and activities in the media, social networks and other ways of disseminating such information.”

States undertake to work with the WHO to control information and limit free speech.

“the formulation of proposed laws and other legal and administrative provisions for the implementation of these Regulations.”

States agree to pass laws to implement restrictions on free speech and sharing of information.

“countering the dissemination of false and unreliable information about public health events, preventive and anti-epidemic measures and activities in the media, social networks and other ways of disseminating such information;…”

The WHO shall work with countries to control free speech and flow of information (based on their own criteria of what is right and wrong).

8. Nuts and Bolts of the verification bureaucracy to ensure countries follow WHO requirements.

NEW Chapter IV (Article 53 bis-quater): The Compliance Committee 

53 bis Terms of reference and composition

“The State Parties shall establish a Compliance Committee that shall be responsible for:

(a) Considering information submitted to it by WHO and States Parties relating to compliance with obligations under these Regulations;

(b) Monitoring, advising on, and/or facilitating assistance on matters relating to compliance with a view to assisting States Parties to comply with obligations under these Regulations;

(c) Promoting compliance by addressing concerns raised by States Parties regarding implementation of, and compliance with, obligations under these Regulations; and

(d) Submitting an annual report to each Health Assembly describing:

(i) The work of the Compliance Committee during the reporting period;

(ii) The concerns regarding non-compliance during the reporting period; and (iii) Any conclusions and recommendations of the Committee.

2. The Compliance Committee shall be authorized to:

(a) Request further information on matters under its consideration;

(b) Undertake, with the consent of any State Party concerned, information gathering in the territory of that State Party; (c) Consider any relevant information submitted to it; (d) Seek the services of experts and advisers, including representatives of NGOs or members of the public, as appropriate; and (e) Make recommendations to a State Party concerned and/or WHO regarding how the State Sarty may improve compliance and any recommended technical assistance and financial support.”

This sets up the permanent review mechanism to monitor the compliance of States with the WHO’s dictates on public health. This is a huge new bureaucracy, both centrally (WHO) and with a significant resource drain on each State. It reflects the review mechanism of the UN human rights office.

9. More on WHO requiring states to provide taxpayer money to WHO’s work, and restricting freedom of populations to question this work.

ANNEX 1 

A. CORE CAPACITY REQUIREMENTS FOR DISEASE DETECTION, SURVEILLANCE 

AND HEALTH EMERGENCY RESPONSE

“**Developed Countries States parties shall provide financial and technological assistance to the Developing Countries States Parties in order to ensure state-of-the-art facilities in developing countries States Parties, including through international financial mechanism…”**

States shall provide (i.e. divert from other priorities) aid funding to help other States develop capacity. This has a clear opportunity cost in other disease/societal programs where funding must accordingly be reduced. However, this will no longer be in the budgetary control of States, but required by an external entity (WHO).

“**At a global level, WHO shall… Counter misinformation and disinformation”.**

As above, the WHO takes the role of policing / countering free speech and exchange of information (funded by the taxes of those whose speech they are suppressing).

Useful links

The WHO documents regarding the IHR amendments
A summary of the amendments and their implications

WGIHR_Compilation-Annotated-1

Author

David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.

[](https://brownstone.org/author/david-bell/)

In commenting on the many absurdities of the Corona regime, and asking what their purpose could possibly be, I’m often told that “it’s about power” or “it’s about control.”

I confess that I don’t find these explanations convincing. I think they’re grounded in a mistaken view of how western states exercise power and the constraints they face in this. The idea seems to be, that states accumulate the potential to act, which potential is however constrained by the law or popular opinion; and that they are forever striving to escape these artificial constraints through subterfuge and deception, in order to transmute more of their accumulated potential into real-world prerogatives.

I see it otherwise. As far as I can tell, neither laws nor popular opinion limit the action of modern states in any serious way. There are constraints, but these lie elsewhere, mostly in the area of coordination. As I’ve written several times now, our governments have become profoundly demobilised. Political power has accumulated at ever lower levels, with the press, academia and in the bureaucratic institutions. This process represents a kind of political decay, and yet it has distinct advantages for the senescent elite: It ensures broad consensus across all major corporate, government and media factions, shielding them precisely from things like popular opinion and judicial review.

The monstrous institutional apparatus can only act effectively if enough of its widely distributed nodes are activated and aligned behind the same agenda. This requires some kind of (in most cases external) stimulus. Corona has revealed how powerful modern states can be, if only they can get enough of their decentralised distributed substance to back a given programme. Laws become totally meaningless in the face of such coordination; the ensuing propaganda campaign overcomes popular resistance easily.

(The problem of coordination is also why I think the lockdowners and the vaccinators had a much harder time in the United States than in Europe. American [unlike German] federalism is a real force, which fragments the various parties to power still further. Coordination for the American government is thus much harder than it is in Europe, or New Zealand.)

Even in a condition of high coordination, though, the exercise of power or control by the state represents exertion. It’s like running, or lifting a weight. Modern states, with their multitude of international adventures and national initiatives, are fully committed here. The more the various arms of the state have been stirred to action, the more power it has to act in the moment; for a time, the stimulation of SARS-2 provided enough surplus energy to bring vaccine mandates within the realm of possibility. With Omicron, though, the enthusiasm and with it the coordination faded, and the exertion was no longer worth it. They could have still done it, but it would have meant redirecting resources from someplace else and not doing some other thing.

Anyway, that’s my basic model of how state power functions. It’s like the Eye of Sauron: It can’t look everywhere at once, it can’t do everything. And when it’s looking at you, the purpose isn’t just to control your life for the thrill of it. If that’s all the state wanted, it could look anywhere.

States act with purpose, towards specific goals. Their constituent pieces function like a distributed intelligence, which is always striving for something, and – especially when policies become bizarre, clearly unattainable, or circular – it’s worth trying to figure out what that something might be. It might not always be obvious; we shouldn’t assume that states will have goals or aims that make all that much sense to humans.

In fact, while they’re made up of people, western states often behave towards bizarre and alien ends, like an extraterrestrial or a sentient machine: They insist on human uniformity, they’re indifferent to children, they’re hostile to traditional cultures, they hate pathogens, they’re wary of real-life social interaction, they’re mildly wary of the natural world, they like buildings made of glass, steel and concrete, they abhor death, they like to count things, they dislike the rural environment, they prefer the highest possible degree of networking and interconnection.

Back in 2003, the United States federal government launched "Ready", a national public service campaign designed to "...educate and empower the American people to prepare for, respond to and mitigate emergencies, including natural and man-made disasters. The goal of the campaign is to promote preparedness through public involvement.

In a [recent posting](http:// https://www.ready.gov/nuclear-explosion) on the Ready website, we find some rather interesting information given that the world has taken a relatively significant step forward toward a nuclear exchange over the past few days. Here it is:

For my baby boomer-aged readers, you might remember this instructional video from the Cold War Part 1:

There is no doubt that coats, a student's desk and "ducking and covering" would provide students with complete protection from a nuclear blast and the accompanying radiation.

Now, let's look at at the advice being offered to Americans trying to survive a nuclear explosion during the Cold War Part 2 with my highlights throughout:

GET INSIDE

Get inside the nearest building to avoid radiation. Brick or concrete are best.

Remove contaminated clothing and wipe off or wash unprotected skin if you were outside after the fallout arrived. Hand sanitizer does not protect against fall out. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if possible. Do not use disinfectant wipes on your skin.

Go to the basement or middle of the building. Stay away from the outer walls and roof. Try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household. If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who are not a part of your household. Children under two years old, people who have trouble breathing, and those who are unable to remove masks on their own should not wear them.

Notice that, even though you and your family have the potential to be killed or seriously injured by a nuclear explosion, one of your priorities is to make sure that you are masked and maintain the six foot physical distancing that we've all been brainwashed to believe will prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Here's more advice:

STAY INSIDE

Stay inside for 24 hours unless local authorities provide other instructions. Continue to practice social distancing by wearing a mask and by keeping a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who not part of your household.

Family should stay where they are inside. Reunite later to avoid exposure to dangerous radiation.

Keep your pets inside.

Yet again, keep wearing that face diaper and stay at least six feet away from people who are not part of your household even though that six foot distance may mean that the building in which you are taking shelter cannot accommodate as many potential victims of a nuclear explosion.

Now, let's look at the recommendations for a scenario where you are warned of an imminent attack (i.e. the nuclear weapons have been activated, launched and are on their way):

If warned of an imminent attack, immediately get inside the nearest building and move away from windows. This will help provide protection from the blast, heat, and radiation of the detonation.

When you have reached a safe place, try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household. If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who are not a part of your household. Children under two years old, people who have trouble breathing, and those who are unable to remove masks on their own should not wear them.

If you didn't get the message the first two times, the third time should be a charm. You are to wear your mask and maintain at least a six foot physical distance from those sharing your fallout shelter that are not part of your household.

And, here's one last bit of advice on how to survive a nuclear explosion in the time of COVID-19:

If you have evacuated, do not return until you are told it is safe to do so by local officials.

"Make plans to stay with friends or family in case of evacuation. Keep in mind that public shelter locations may have changed due to COVID-19. Check with local authorities to determine which public shelters are open.

If you are told by authorities to evacuate to a public shelter, try to bring items that can help protect yourself and your family from COVID-19, such as hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol, cleaning materials, and two masks per person. Children under two years old, people who have trouble breathing, and people who cannot remove masks on their own should not wear them."

This gives you some sense of just how stupid and single-minded the government has become. You're about to face potential annihilation thanks to a nuclear explosion and the end of civilization as we know it but yet, the government expects that you're going to bring your own hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol, two masks for everyone in your household and other cleaning/sanitizing materials. Oh yes, and maintain at least a six foot distance between you and anyone who is not in your household.

A question - what happens in a scenario where you don't have hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol? Will you be shunned by the other people taking refuge with you? What the government isn't telling you is that, if there is a nuclear explosion, you'd be smartest to bend over and kiss your butt goodbye.

Every time that I think that we've reached peak stupid I'm disappointed to find out that we're not there yet.

Vaccinated vs. unvaccinated case rates in the United Kingdom, from the latest UK Health Security Agency vaccine surveillance report:

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Yet again I had to draw this graph myself, and yet again, the UK Health Security Agency wants you to know that these rates are extremely, totally, absolutely unadjusted. They just don’t know precisely why or how.

As I noted on Twitter, it’s emerged that UKHSA inserted all of their ill-advised disclaimers after coming under fire from the Office of Statistics Regulation, a regulatory body which periodically complains about statistics published by the British government.

OSR director Ed Humpherson met with UKHSA hours before they published their Week 43 report, demanding they do something about these awkward graphs. They responded by ditching the graphs altogether and calling every last number unadjusted. This failed to satisfy him, so in the days afterwards he issued this unbelievable open letter.

Dear Jenny,

COVID-19 vaccine surveillance statistics

Thank you for the constructive meeting on Thursday 28 October to discuss the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) COVID-19 vaccine surveillance statistics. We focused on the risk that the data presented on rates of positive cases for those who are vaccinated and those who are unvaccinated have the potential to mislead – and indeed we noted that these data have been used to argue that vaccines are ineffective.

We welcome the changes you have made to the Week 43 surveillance report, published on 28 October. It is also very good that you are working closely with my team and with the relevant teams in the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The UK has backed itself into publishing some less-than-useful numbers. Now the office responsible for this publishing will have to work closely with a gaggle of political commissars, responsible for cleansing official discourse of anything that might be “used to argue that vaccines are ineffective.”

Because he appears to be a genuinely stupid man, Humpherson spells this point out explicitly:

It remains the case that the surveillance report includes rates per 100,000 which can be used to argue that vaccines are not effective. I know that this is not the intention of the surveillance report, but the potential for misuse remains. In publishing these data, you need to address more comprehensively the risk that it misleads people into thinking that it says something about vaccine effectiveness.

Emphasis mine. The next time somebody tells you that UKHSA reports show substantial protection against severe outcomes, draw their attention to Ed Humpherson’s letter. He thinks these numbers don’t tell you anything about anything. This is the first step towards not publishing them at all.

This is not just about the choice of denominator. It is about recognising that the comparison of case rates for vaccinated and unvaccinated groups is comparing datasets with known differences – including, potentially, the greater propensity of people who are vaccinated to come forward for tests. So the data reflect a behavioural phenomenon, not just a feature of how well vaccines work. I do not think your surveillance report goes far enough in explaining this crucial point.

Emphasis mine again. Humpherson has no idea what behavioural factors might be at issue. He is just throwing random ideas at the wall, here. And notice how he slithers from what is “potentially” true to totally unqualified and unsupported assertions about is true (“the data reflect a behavioural phenomenon”). Maybe the higher unvaccinated death rates also “reflect a behavioural phenomenon“ and are “not just a feature of how well vaccines work.” As long as we are allowed to speculate baselessly, let’s do it in both directions.

He goes on to voice the old and tired complaint about the NIMS data. He wants UKHSA to use ONS population estimates instead. While the former might well understate the case rate among the unvaccinated, the latter is sure to overstate it, but Humpherson doesn’t care.

One possibility would be to only publish rates in the vaccinated population, which are known accurately, but I recognise your concern that you are already publishing rates for both groups.

Confirmation yet again of the obvious: They are only publishing these numbers because they locked themselves into doing so early on, when they looked good.

The alternative would be to use the ONS population estimates, which are used in the main coronavirus dashboard but which may be flawed for some age groups, as you have pointed out. … In the meantime, you should consider setting out these uncertainties more clearly, including by publishing the rates per 100,000 using both denominators, and making clear in the table, perhaps through formatting, that the column showing case rates in unvaccinated people is of particular concern.

That column is of particular concern because Humpherson doesn’t like the numbers in that column. He doesn’t care about the other columns because those numbers are neutral or pleasing to him.

And he closes with this:

I recognise that you want to maintain transparency and consistency, but these qualities should not be at the expense of informing the public appropriately.

Remember, always, that all Corona statistics are propaganda.

The UKHSA have issued a separate set of disclaimers on their website. Every line is fairly hilarious. And the Office of Statistical Regulation provides their own wall of text, where they show that if you understate the unvaccinated population with ONS numbers, indeed you can get the unvaccinated case rate to go up. Humpherson and his crack team of statistics regulators just love the ONS numbers, but UKHSA don’t like them so much. This is because UKHSA actually have to compile minimally plausible tables and for this they are unworkable. From p. 15 of the Week 44 report:

When using ONS, vaccine coverage exceeds 100% of the population in some age groups, which would in turn lead to a negative denominator when calculating the size of the unvaccinated population.

Joanna Sharp

I had not planned to travel abroad this year, especially after the UK government’s announcement in early 2021 that foreign holidays were forbidden. Even heading towards the airport with an intent to go on a foreign holiday could result in a £5000 fine or imprisonment! Surreal.

Where we live in London under a flight path to Heathrow, we notice that although there are fewer flights, they have not ceased completely. So how do people travel? It’s not something I have thought about.

One day at the end of April I receive a message that my elderly father’s condition is critical. Within an hour I am looking at flights back home in Eastern Europe and checking the UK government travel ‘advice’ webpages.

I say ‘advice’ but that word belongs to the past. Today, ‘command’ might be more appropriate. According to the government, only “essential” international travel is permitted for named valid reasons; ‘medical and compassionate’ is the category which applies to me.

I wonder whose compassion this is a reference to: mine, for wanting to be with my sick father, or the government’s for including this as a possibility. Reassured that I can go, it is now a question of buying the plane tickets, checking in and packing, right? Not quite.

Wading through the red tape

Since holiday travel has effectively been banned, the government created intricate webpages full of information on what is and what is not allowed, where citizens cannot travel, and if they must, what documents they need to prepare. So complicated travel advice alone has become that the webpage now includes a step by step flowchart with endless links within each step to be followed.

Getting through this information would take at least a day. It’s like a cross between a maze and a vortex. I soon understand that I cannot buy my tickets until I have uploaded the right Covid related paperwork onto the airline website!

First, I need to fill a Declaration for International Travel (since the 17th May it is no longer required) which asks for personal details including my date of birth, passport number, home address and destination.

The key question is the reason for international travel – and in the actual online questions, the phrase is: ‘What is your excuse for travel?’ My excuse? What kind of language is that? Am I asking a teacher to let me leave the classroom? Am I asked to explain why I haven’t done my homework?

That really shocks me, although I have already noticed my own reaction to the very idea that I need permission to leave the country, as if I was back in Eastern Europe before 1989…I read the following declaration and tick the right box out of the given options.

I hereby declare that my reason for being outside my home to travel internationally is for:

– Work
– Volunteering
– Education
– Medical or compassionate reasons
– Funeral
– Ending a temporary visit (non-UK resident)
– Allowing access to parents with children who do not live in the same country
– Other reasonable excuse – please specify

Next, I am required to sign to ‘certify that the information I have provided is true. I understand that if I provide false or misleading information, I may be issued with a fixed penalty notice and/or a direction to return home or be arrested’.

So, by signing this, and I have no choice not to if I want to get my ticket, I have given the UK authorities permission to arrest or fine me should my excuse to travel turn out to be incorrect. What if my father is not that ill, then what?

But of course, that is not enough. I now need to provide evidence of my father’s illness. How do you do that when the whole of the world is still in lockdown; imagine having to get a doctor’s note on demand. I am still just trying to get a ticket.

I want to travel tomorrow morning, my sister-in-law tells me, Dad is given a couple of days. I ask my brother to send me an email confirming the family crisis, he does that within an hour. He is also trying to copy the notes from my father’s last doctor’s visit and the most recent diagnosis.

Then, still before I buy a return ticket, I need to get a kit of two Covid tests which I will need to take upon return to UK. Another link takes me on to a list of government-approved Covid test providers. A whole list of them, each can be accessed via a separate link. I try a few. They average around £200 each. The cheapest ones are £99 but are sold out.

Why can’t I see any free NHS ones? The ones given out like sweets in schools and local pharmacies? Why are these not available? Why could I not just pick a free one at the airport?

But of course, there is no to answer these questions, I am desperate to leave so agree to this, too. No test, no flight. So, I order one of these almost £200 test kits, get an email confirming the order, upload all the documents and finally I can complete the purchase of my tickets which, as usual, turn out not so low cost after all.

I check in. My boarding card (lucky I had just bought a printer the previous week) says at the top of the page ‘Covid Documentation Uploaded’. So, now I have the boarding card and a pile of printed pages which presumably I will need to show at UK border control in order to prove my excuse for leaving the country is legitimate.

Finally, I download and fill in the compulsory Passenger Locator Form for the destination country that will enable the system to track and trace me. It is nearly bedtime and I now need to pack.

On the go

My husband drives me to Stansted in the middle of the night. An early morning flight, no public transport available but at least it’s quiet and there is no traffic. The airport is still closed; a group of families with young children are waiting for the door to open.

These are not holidaymakers breaking the law to get some forbidden fun. No idea where they are travelling but they look like they are going home somewhere south, southeast perhaps? Turkey, Bulgaria or Ukraine? No idea but they do look like part of the globalised chain of workforce escaping poverty and perhaps the lockdown has pushed them to return. Better to be jobless and poor in your own village. The weather tends to be better and the environment less hostile.

Finally, the doors open. I push the scarf up over my face, my hand clutching a plastic folder with a wad of documents allowing me to leave. It is quiet, no waiting. I go through security, passport control seems non-existent, shops still closed so nothing to stop for. I wonder at which point someone will ask me to see the papers. Ask me what my excuse for leaving is. Strangely, that never happens. I am almost disappointed. I spent about four hours sorting out all that paperwork the night before and now this is not even checked!

Immediately I catch myself: why am I disappointed? Because no one will give me the all-clear? Have I been conditioned to want to be waved through the green light already?

Perhaps that is how normalising oppression works. But of course, there is no need to check, the documents been uploaded and recorded somewhere and someone now knows everything about me, my plans, my reason (“excuse”) for leaving the country. Or perhaps the intimate details of my family crisis; my father’s terminal illness and my attempt to get to him before it’s too late have now just been converted into big data slushing around the corpo-government’s control AI machine, and turned into useful predictions.

I guess this type of authoritarianism does not even need stern looks from border control officials, no need to divulge private dramas in public. Hours of stress of getting the documents turned into a discreet but vital small print on my boarding card; the only visible proof that my travel is acceptable to the corpo-state. It is all so neat, tidy, hi-tech and invisible that we can just pretend that all is just normal.

After all, the airport trimmings look all the same; with adverts, duty-free shopping, same old queues at departure gates and same safety drills on the plane, down to the irritating Ryanair voice thanking us for choosing to fly with them (no one chooses to fly with Ryanair, just like no one chooses to go to the dentist, you do it because you have to and you hope it won’t be too unpleasant).

We can pretend nothing has changed. Except the masks on faces, of course. Slow drinking and eating is my solution. During the flight many noses protrude against the regulations, of course. People do need to breathe.

We land on time. I send a message to my father, anxious, hoping he is still there. He is not responding. I am worried. From the tarmac I can see the arrivals hall is full. There is no way of entering so the crowd from my plane stops outside and waits in the drizzle. I wonder why that is. Is that Brexit or is it that people’s papers are now checked after all?

The queue moves very slowly, twenty minutes after landing I send my father another message saying that I’m still waiting for border control. I have no idea why this is so slow; each person seems to spend a good few minutes at the control desk. Finally, an hour and a half after landing I get into the taxi. As the driver pulls away, I notice a long queue of passengers outside the arrivals hall waiting to get a Covid test. I arrive home and find my father hanging on.

My father’s illness

There is a twist to this story. My father has been treated for cancer but has been still doing quite well and has been planning to spend the summer away from his flat, in the countryside. His sudden deterioration it unexpected to me but I have not had time to think of reasons. I only learnt of this yesterday. But now I am in the flat, taking my shoes off when my brother drops the bombshell: ‘you know, Dad took the vaccine’.

I am shocked. He told me he was not going to, because he found the registration process too difficult, so he decided to stop trying. I was relieved; I had been persuading him that he should not, that being immunocompromised, his system might not cope. I told him what I knew and what I worried about. My brother tells me another family member helped organize his jab and took him there. Jesus. But I am to pretend I don’t know about it; Dad asked my brother not to tell me.

So, I learn that the day after the Pfizer jab he started to feel weak, and within ten days he was prescribed blood thinning injections, a daily drip and he became bedbound. My brother has hired a hospital-style bed and an oxygen machine, set them up in father’s bedroom and organized a private nurse for daily visits. Dad had not wanted to go to hospital: he believed that hospitals were overrun by contagious Covid patients and that going to hospital would mean certain death under a ventilator.

Luckily (I never thought I would say this), unlike the UK, this ex-communist country never managed to build up its own national health service to a level able to deliver comprehensive care, so a secondary private sector filling the gaps exists and is not beyond the means of many people. So here he is, in his own bedroom and getting care at home.

He is happy to see me but asks me not to touch him. I feel sad, guessing he might worry I am bringing contagion. That hurts. I pretend I know nothing about the jab. Later, much later, I remember this moment and think that, he might have wanted to protect me. He knew the jab made him ill and he worried he was fighting vaccine induced-Covid and did not want to give it to me.

He never told me about the vaccine, I never told him I knew.

Sunset in quarantine

Quarantine One: The App

The day after arriving I receive a text message telling me I am now under statute of law obliged to download a particular app and use it during my 10-day home quarantine. I start the download but can’t complete it. Something is stuck and I have no idea how to fix it. I try for a while and then abandon it. I spend most of the time caring for my father who now slips in and out of consciousness.

The next morning I get a phone call but it stops ringing before I have time to answer it. The following day the same happens. I realise this is the local track and trace. They ring but don’t wait for me to answer. Their call is logged, the box gets ticked but the robot or a human cannot be bothered to do the job properly. Actually, it must be a human as a robot would not give up. Good. The tyranny will fail due to human error or sheer laziness.

I don’t know what possessed me but somehow, I manage to complete installing the Quarantine App. The system springs into action. I get a message from the app that I must take a selfie within the next 30 minutes and submit it. I take a selfie from the app which gives me as many times as I like to choose the best shot. I choose the worst shot.

Of course, there is a way to cheat: after doing my selfie I could leave the phone at home and go out for a walk. Trouble is, the selfie demand comes at a different time each day, usually towards the end of the day. But I have no reason to go anywhere, really, I have come here to be with him, and his condition continues to be critical. And at some point, during this journey I decided that I would do everything by the book, just to see what the new normal travel feels and looks like, and what exactly they want us to experience.

Well, here I am, in a 10-day quarantine in a flat with my dying father. We are lucky. I have my brother to get the shopping in and kind neighbours ready to help. We are lucky my father is at home. What would be the point of coming here all this way, only to be stuck in quarantine if he was in a hospital with no visitors allowed? So, all in all, we are lucky.

Difficult days

Days go by, my father’s condition improves a little, I am his nurse, and of course I touch him – he stopped protesting as soon as he needed a glass of water; I continue to take my selfies. We talk, I read to him, feed him, then he sleeps. He dies two days after my quarantine ends. That is good timing.

There is a lot to do now, and I will not be breaking the law trying to organize the funeral…I remember my favourite literature lesson at school when we debated who was right: Creon or Antigone. Even then, I was in team Antigone.

A doctor arrives to certify death. She is nice and takes her time. Talks a little. Does not look like a corporate bot. She is sitting at a coffee table doing the paperwork. For the cause of death, she writes ‘Thrombosis’. I ponder for a bit and then hesitatingly say: ‘Did you know he was vaccinated?’.

Her face changes and she asks: ‘No, when?’ We tell her, ‘Four weeks ago, exactly’.

‘I am not allowed to say anything,’ she says, ‘but I can tell you I have seen a lot lately. A lot!’ We try to encourage her to talk more but she is cautious. I just ask her: ‘Why would a person on cancer treatment be given a vaccine? Surely that had not been done before?’ She looks at me and says: ‘Because they want to vaccinate us all.’ So, she knows.

This kind of conversation would have been typical in the days of strict communist authoritarianism before 1989. You never knew whom you could trust so you just dropped hints and checked for people’s response. In those days careless talk was dangerous, and I am too young to remember the worst times: the Stalinist years when children were encouraged to denounce their parents; many were imprisoned, tortured and killed.

Now the threat is only a loss of income and public humiliation and yet the new order based on lies, fraud and corrupt science is already in place. Everyone is just doing their job. A perfect example of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil in which those, following orders in this elaborate house of cards, often do not even know their active contribution to harm inflicted on others. They do not realise because they refuse to look and to know. They stopped taking responsibility for their individual part in the whole.

There is a small group of doctors in the country who are challenging the official narrative, attempt to offer treatment for Covid patients and warn against the untested ‘vaccines’, particularly now that governments want to jab children. Their voices are censored, the people get smeared, ridiculed and shamed by the professional licensing medical body. The modern-day governance in Western democracies!

Travelling home

As the funeral preparations get underway, I need to organise my return travel. I check the UK government website again. Travelling from an ‘amber’ coded country, I must test negative for Covid within 72 hours prior to departure. Tricky when the flight is on Monday afternoon.

I start to search for UK government-approved tests available in the city. Only a handful provide the specified UK approved antigen test with results in English. They are also open only in the mornings so if I test on Friday morning, I might be testing a few hours too early to fit within the 72 hours.

After hours of online searching, I find one that looks almost right. I pay the equivalent of £35 online and am told to come on the day, without an appointment. The laboratory website provides useful advice, how to prepare for the test. I learn that I should not brush my teeth or use mouthwash on the morning of test. So now I know what to do.

I arrive at the testing centre early, having heard that queues can be quite long. It is, and it is in the street. The lab’s waiting room only allows three people at a time so the rest stand outside. After about an hour it is my turn. I am allowed inside the surgery.

On the right, by the door, a masked man sitting at a desk behind a glass screen is checking my name and the type of test I have purchased. Then, a young tall, man in full white hazmat suit, his face covered, and in protective glasses ushers me to sit on a chair and tip my head backwards.

This is my first Covid test ever and I am terrified. I have rehearsed telling them how sensitive my face feels and asking not to go deep but there is no eye contact, no talk trying to help me feel comfortable, no attempt to put me at ease. He just tells me to tip my head back far.

I just manage to ask him to go into the left nostril as my right one is not straight. He happily obliges and shoves the long stick into my nostril. As soon as the tip enters my nose I feel shock, a feeling of something unnatural, wrong and threatening happening. The area he just touched is too soft, sensitive and the sensation so unfamiliar I involuntarily, and to my own shock, find myself pushing the man’s arm away. He moves back and looks at me, his body language (there is no face available) disapproves of my behaviour.

I say, please don’t go that deep, you already have some but he insists, tells me not to defend myself and does it again. And again, that feeling that a part of me which is vulnerable and should not be touched, gets scraped. He gets his sample and nods for me to go. I am frozen in that chair, unable to move for what seems like a while. I have tears in my eyes, and I am alone with two hazmat wearing robots. No word is uttered as I leave.

I get my negative result within hours. I recover with an old friend. By then I have a splitting headache and my left nostril is moist with a slight leak. The headache lasts for a couple of days but the leak persists for at least ten.

I arrive at the airport early because I have difficulties completing the UK Passenger Locator Form which UK needs from all passengers. I pass through a manned gate with an automatic wrist temperature check. The airport is unusually quiet, and the staff help me identify the problem which stops me from completing the form. The reference number for the double Covid test needed for the Passenger Locator Form is wrong. I ring home and ask my husband to read the reference number off the Covid test kit. Surely it has arrived now. It hasn’t. It looks like the Day 2 and 8 Test I ordered has not been paid for.

I am told I need to buy a new kit if I want to get this flight. I do as I’m told. No form, no flight. I stand next to the luggage drop off counter feeling sweats, and with my hands shaking I battle the website on my phone. Again, all the ‘cheap’ ones are sold out and somehow, at the last minute I manage to make a purchase for £180, get an email, a reference number, complete the form and have my luggage accepted.

I hurry to my gate and make it just in time as passengers are starting to board. I slow down to join the Ryanair herd waiting on the tarmac for the aircraft to be processed before we are told we can travel.

The pavement is marked with lines at 2-meter intervals. Two men behind me are joking loudly that we must stand on the lines correctly, otherwise the virus will jump on us. I turn and smile (no mask, we are still outside) and make eye contact with the fellow humans.

Quarantine Two: Track and Trace

Back home in London, the following day I get my first out of ten phone calls from Track and Trace. Each time a different voice reads the same script.

I am contacting you on behalf of the NHS Test and Trace as you have recently travelled into the UK from abroad. Are you happy to continue in English?”

No idea what would happen if I said ‘no’.

Before we proceed, I need to make you aware that this call will be recorded for training and quality improvement purposes and should just take a few minutes of your time. I can confirm I have completed the necessary data security training and all information you provide today will be stored securely. NHS Test and Trace may need to share your details with other organisations including the Home Office, and further information on data security and privacy can be found on www.gov.uk/coronavirus. Sharing information in the call today means you consent for it to be stored in the ways I have described. Are you happy to proceed with the call?”

I wish I could say, no, I am not. Once or twice I ask how long the data is going to be stored. The caller is not sure and advises me to find this out from the government website. The call proceeds with them checking my year of birth. Then they ask if I have opted into a ‘test to release’ – I frankly don’t even know it is my option, so I say ‘no’.

I later learn that the Test to Release scheme does not replace the compulsory Day 2 and 8 test. The ten-day quarantine can be shortened to 5 days by ‘opting into’ Test to Release for an additional £99. I realise they ask this question to advertise another product!

Can you confirm that you are quarantining at the address you provided on the passenger locator form and will continue to do so for ten days starting on the day after you arrive in the UK.”

So, again, I confirm, yes. What would happen if I said no?

As part of the Covid 19 response you are legally required to take the test on Day 2 and Day 8 and a failure to do so may result in prosecution.”

That answers my previous question…

Has your test arrived? And have you taken or do you intend to take your test?”

Yes.

Then I am asked if I got my test from the NHS or from a private provider. I am confused as I had no option to get an NHS test and I tell the caller. They seem happy with my answer and continue:

If your Day 2 test is positive confirming Covid 19, you do not need to take another test on Day 8.”

I think, on one occasion, I ask how I am expected to post the test if I am not allowed to leave the house. Of course, the assumption is there is someone else in the house, and if I still have difficulties, again, the go-to place is another NHS number. Amazing what they can do these days; they can even pick up your mail for you!

The call continues:

If you develop any of the three coronavirus symptoms which are: a new continuous cough, a high temperature, or a loss or change to your sense of taste or smell, please visit www.gov.uk/coronavirus for further advice. You should not go to the GP, hospital or a pharmacy. If you require medical advice, please ring the NHS on 111 or in an emergency dial 999”.

So here we have the admission of medical malpractice: if I fall ill, I must not seek help from NHS, not even by going to my local pharmacy. I must stay home without help, except of course, if I qualify for 999 ie, a ventilator…

The call continues:

I must advise you that if you test positive for coronavirus or are identified as a close contact of someone who has coronavirus you will be notified by NHS Test and Trace and may be contacted again. Is there anything you would like me to repeat?”

Of course, if someone I sat next to on the (half-empty) plane gets a positive result, my quarantine will stretch to a fortnight or longer! Each time, the call ends with a friendly, youthful, ‘have a great day’. All those who have called me are young voices, all kinds of accents, probably desperate for any job in the current climate. They are trained to stick to the script and any departure from it by my questions seems to trip them up.

And most of them probably think they are doing something socially useful and valuable.

The quarantine DIY tests

The one I have purchased in haste at the airport is a kit with two PCR tests to be administered at home on Day 2 and Day 8. The instructions tell me that the test is run at less than a 30-cycle value threshold.

The first thing to say about the swab is that it is long. It looks like a cotton bud used for everyday use, but on closer inspection it is different. The stick itself is about 12 cm long, that’s 6”, and designed to break off after the sample is collected and put into a small tube provided. The tip itself is 2 cm long, quite thin and covered in almost translucent spiky bristles protruding outwards. It looks a bit like a miniature harsh brush designed to scratch the delicate tissue inside the mouth and nose.

I am told to swab the back of the throat for 3-5 seconds over the posterior pharynx and tonsillar areas but to avoid tongue, teeth and the sides of the mouth. Then I am told to insert the same swab to each nostril about 2 cm deep and to rotate it for 3-5 seconds each time.

The form which I have to complete for each test is yet another mandated opportunity for the corpo-government to harvest my personal data, to store it for as long as it sees fit, yet, as is often the case in abusive relationships I have to (I repeat:) I have to give my consent for all this to happen, and even consent for my possible positive test result which may include my personal details: name, date of birth, gender, home address, telephone number, occupation, place of work, ethnicity and the fact that I have tested positive for Covid 19 to be communicated to Public Health England. Luckily, both of my test results are negative.

Eleven days after arrival in the UK my quarantine is officially over. It takes me a couple of days before I venture outside, I detect a bit of agoraphobia. In the last six weeks I spent twenty days in house arrest. They say it takes six weeks to develop a new habit.

Postscriptum

I doubt very much I will travel internationally any time soon. Not planning to take the experimental Covid jab and so will not be enjoying the privilege of freedom promised to those with the vaccine passport. At the time of writing, it is no longer illegal to leave England but the elaborate hoops and the red tape remain and the government website reminds us that “to protect public health in the UK and the vaccine rollout, you should not travel to countries or territories on the red or amber lists”.

The ‘red and amber’ lists cover most countries of the world and returning from an amber list country will involve three or four tests which could come to £240-£340 per person plus the time spent completing all the online forms.

As to the red list countries; even a short spell there ends in an expensive £1750 per person prison-like stay at an airport hotel, as can be seen here.

So whilst not forbidden, even essential travel has been made into a series of expensive, degrading and time-consuming obstacles. Vaccine passports are being rolled out precisely to convince people they will magically bring freedom back to their lives. Do they not realise, that once they have their passports, the vaccine will need regular boosters?

Those still asleep; trusting the governments and the mainstream media think that easy travel is only temporarily put on hold but once the pandemic is ‘under control’, things will get back to the way they used to be. They do not realise the plan is to make travel an exclusive and rare event beyond reach of ordinary people.

This is done to us not just by the predatory elite class. Disappointingly, the pro-lockdown left continues to cheer these restrictions on and dismiss people’s desire and need to travel, as undeserved indulgence or middle-class privilege (interestingly, unrestricted travel around Europe was, until so recently, one of the main reasons for their fierce anti-Brexit position. What happened to their cherished principle of freedom of movement?). They could not be further from the truth.

They forget that, according to official migration data for the end of 2019, the UK is home to 6.2 million people – that is 9% of the total population – who have the nationality of a different country! And that data does not even include naturalised UK citizens like me, first-generation settled migrants who have close relatives all over the world and that unrestricted travel is an essential means to family life, something which is protected by Human Rights Act 1998.

The irony for those like myself, who grew up in communist Eastern Europe, is that freedom of movement, so taken for granted in the West, the right to travel and to have your own passport at home at all times is what we did not have then. The state set limits on where ‘citizens’, treated like its property, could travel.

For many who experienced those times, even as children, a return to state-mandated travel restrictions will feel like going back into tyranny.

As for my own journey: I will never forgive those responsible and all those lockdown fanatics for stealing my Dad’s, and so many other elderly people’s, last year by locking them up in the prison of fear and isolation, and then for pushing them to take the dangerous experimental jab which – for so many – was the last straw in their already weakened bodies.

Joanna Sharp is an academic living in London.

“Bureaucrats Versus Artists…”
By W. Patrick Lang

“Were we right or were we wrong?” This was Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet’s central question in his 2004 talk to the faculty and students of his alma mater, Georgetown University. What he was talking about, of course, was the critical political issue of whether or not the Intelligence Community (IC) of which he was the titular head “got it right” in telling the American people and their government that Iraq was a clear danger to the United States, as opposed to being a threat to regional states, and if that danger was substantial enough to serve as a justifiable basis for war, invasion and occupation. In Tenet’s address there was much of self-protection and an implicit warning that neither he nor the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) would accept to be “scapegoated” in a search for the roots of misadventure in Iraq. His words establish a claim to blamelessness for the CIA and the larger Intelligence Community in the decisions leading up to the Iraq campaign and a related claim to have done as well as could fairly have been expected. In other words, he wished to be thought innocent in this matter. Is that reasonable? Is it fair to expect American citizens and officials to believe that the Intelligence Community did its work well in helping the government of the United States to make sound decisions about Iraq? This is an important question, because if they did not, then why were their judgments so flawed in spite of the incredible amounts of taxpayer money lavished on the agencies of the IC? Why should so much money have been lavished on these agencies if they could do no better?

In spite of the importance of this question, impatience with the performance of the intelligence people ought to be somewhat dependent on the outcome of a national debate as to what should be expected of the process labeled “intelligence.” Reporters sometimes ask rhetorically if decisions should really be made on the basis of intelligence. At first hearing questions like this seem to be both naïve and nonsensical since it is obvious that information is the stuff that decisions must be founded on. Nevertheless, decipherment of these statements leads to an understanding that those who say things like this think that “intelligence” is a form of thinking both esoteric and obscure, a dark art, separate and distinct from the normal way of knowing things and subject to acceptance or rejection by special rules of perception. In other words, they think that it is something like astrology, to be judged by its own “rules.” In fact, “Intelligence” is simply another word for “information” and in ages gone by the term was used in that way by authorities like Clausewitz or Jomini. There is nothing mystical or mysterious about the process by which information or “intelligence” is collected, collated, analyzed and disseminated. “Intelligence” is scholarship conducted in the service of the state. The great bulk of the information used as data in this scholarship comes out of the huge archival files of the major agencies supplemented by daily “feedings” of; diplomatic chit-chat, aerial and satellite reconnaissance, intercepts of communications and hopefully the products of espionage (clandestine HUMINT). Like any labor of scholarship involving the study of human beings by human beings, the work is nearly always conducted with incomplete and ambiguous information as a basis for the analysis. This natural phenomenon is aggravated by the desire of the studied group to hide something, usually, that which is under study. When George Tenet said before his Georgetown audience that “We never get things altogether right in the Intelligence business, nor altogether wrong,” he was correct but his statement was irrelevant to a discussion of the utility of the intelligence process since the quality of the analytic product depends on many variables, among them; good information and the quality of the minds brought to bear on the imperfect information. It is both trite and a truism that “intelligence is an art and not a science.” What this means is that human beings may succeed or they may fail in making judgments based on less than complete data and that the skill, intelligence and experience of those involved is the most important factor in determining the outcome. To say that “Intelligence” is a flawed process is simply meaningless in a discussion of the effectiveness of the state in making decisions. If the “Intelligence Community” as it now exists were abolished, some other group would have to assume the burden of performing the same functions for the benefit of the state. What would they be called? Perhaps it might be, “The Agency for Special Planning?”

The issue of the effectiveness and efficiency of the existing Intelligence Community is a separate but linked question from that of knowing whether or not the elected or appointed officials of the Bush Administration may have intruded themselves inappropriately into the deliberations of the Intelligence Community in a way that led to distortions in the estimates of Iraq’s significance that were presented to the president and the Congress. It is widely believed now that this occurred but that is not the subject of this essay.

The question under examination here is simple. Premise: “The Intelligence Community produced poor quality intelligence on Iraq.” Therefore, one asks - Are there imbedded structural defects in the present United States Intelligence Community that contributed either directly or indirectly to the production of estimates that were unsound and which failed the nation? And, moreover, are there characteristics in the present intelligence community of the United States which now prevent and will prevent it from “reforming” itself? It is clear that the inability of the Intelligence Community to forecast or estimate Iraq’s true condition was a major failure. Why did this happen, and how can the defects in the “community” be repaired? What “limits” are there in the psychology and structure of the government that may prevent “repair” of the system?

The author’s conclusion after a working lifetime of studying the flaws in the system from within the community and from the evidence of continuing contacts with old colleagues and new friends in the intelligence agencies is that there are a multitude of problems in the intelligence forces of the United states and that most of them have grown up over a very long time, are now “built into” the system and are unlikely to be resolved without outside intervention by the Congress of the United States. It is impossible to consider them all but a few of the most important are so intractable as to be worth discussing here:

...

Can the “Intelligence Community” change itself to eliminate the problems discussed above?

No.

It cannot.

The United States “Intelligence Community” is a “mature bureaucracy,” a group of institutions that have reached a stable equilibrium in their internal politics and in their relationships with the other parts of the government. The leaders of these intelligence agencies are bureaucrats and politicians identical in character and mentality to those of all the other departments and agencies of the U.S. government. Typically, they are focused on group and individual survival and advancement, not on the quality of the informational product so desperately needed by their country. For the majority of these senior leaders, the most important work related event in their lives is the annual justification of the agency budget to the Congress rather than the opportunity to lead “their people” to new heights of achievement in the “art” of intelligence. There are few “virtuoso performers” among the senior leaders (military or civilian) of the “artists” who must be relied on to protect the United States in the unending intelligence wars that never end around the world.

If the Congress really wants better intelligence so as to avoid future disasters, it will have to “grasp the nettle” itself and dictate re-organization and a new beginning which seeks to protect the artists from the bureaucrats. If this does not happen, then superficial changes may occur but nothing of significance will be produced from within “the community,” and we will all just wait for “the next time.”