Month: January 2025

Image by Jorge Franganillo at Unsplash

“Setting the record straight” About WHO Misinformation

loremipsumdolor

A new campaign to persuade the world the WHO would never lie “could not be more wrong”.

As mentioned in the last post at Copwatch, the World Health Organization launched a new initiative on X (formerly known as Twitter) on January 8th to counter “misinformation”. 

To say this is breathtaking for its chutzpah would be an understatement. Described as “Busting myths and setting the record straight about WHO”, it is designed to let the world know that the WHO is very misunderstood by those who believe its plans for a pandemic treaty are sinister. After all, the WHO would never lie, oh no! It is merely an honest broker of information and only a conspiracy theorist could think otherwise. 

That would be all very well if the WHO had not been caught by X’s Community Notes system lying the big one on at least sixteen different occasions about vaping.

In fact, Dr. Michael Siegel of the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine, who has published nearly 70 papers related to tobacco after more than three decades of his career in tobacco control, picked out a WHO tweet as the “most egregious statement about electronic cigarettes in 2024.”

The WHO tweet claimed that “Q: What looks cute, smells good, but is designed to kill?

A: A vape!”. Dr Siegel chose this tweet “because it is the exact opposite of the truth. It could not be more wrong.” 

We know this because the person who invented e-cigarettes is on record saying as much. Hon Lik described at Reuters in 2015 how he planned to help himself quit smoking – and therefore not die – by inventing the vapes we know today. Just before his father died from lung cancer in 2004, he had created a device which could deliver nicotine without killing the user. “I believed that if I could use vapor to simulate cigarette smoke, this could help me,” he explained. 

The WHO incorrectly claimed that vapes are “designed to kill” despite knowing very well that this was the ultimate in misinformation. If the WHO truly wanted to “[set] the record straight about the WHO” it would have to concede that it deliberately lies to achieve its aims. If it truly wanted to “bust myths” about the WHO it would be telling the world that its word can never be trusted based on how it conducts its corrupt tobacco control treaty.

Because this is what the evidence clearly shows us, and the WHO shows no sign of changing course. 

People are often judged – and should be – by their actions rather than what they say. Perhaps the WHO would be more believed by those who are suspicious of its motives for a pandemic treaty if it weren’t deliberately lying in many areas of policy. As things stand, the world would trust the wolf in the fable of the Three Little Pigs before it believes in a World Health Organization which is content to blatantly lie to get its own way.

Pakistan Kicks Out Bloomberg for Corruption

loremipsumdolor

No comment, again, from his great friend and ally, the WHO. 

It may be a brand new year, but it seems to be the same dodgy business as usual for Michael Bloomberg-funded outfits. 

News has crossed the desks at Copwatch of Pakistan’s anger with the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids (CTFK) and Vital Strategies (VS), both bankrolled by the World Health Organization’s great friend, Michael Bloomberg. 

Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior has banned the operations of both NGOs, frozen their bank accounts, and heavily criticised Bloomberg’s malign influence in the affairs of other countries.

A CTFK Manager has been accused of embezzlement and misappropriation of funds, while both CTFK and VS were caught “operating without proper registration or government approval, violating Pakistani laws.” This flagrant flouting of the rules put Pakistan at risk of contravening its obligations “to counter money laundering and terrorist financing.” We are sure that the WHO’s Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, often accused of being supportive of terrorist groups himself, would be quick to condemn this activity, but he has yet to comment. 

It is further alleged that the Bloomberg-funded organisations engaged in “media bribery” and supported “illicit mafias.” Indeed, Pakistan is outraged that Bloomberg’s influence on their country obstructed efforts to curb illegality by “complicating efforts to shut down the illegal trade, potentially for their own financial and political gains.”

Quite a rap sheet, we think you’d agree. Although not that surprising considering Bloomberg-funded organisations have been a great friend to the illicit trade by encouraging the closure of legal harm reduction companies throughout the world.

Pakistan should hardly be surprised as their neighbour, India, similarly sanctioned Bloomberg NGOs for “acting against India’s national interests” using foreign funding. The WHO, as a supposed global authority committed to the rule of law amongst its member states, should condemn these activities but how can they criticise the man who funds many of their reports? 

The WHO was very quiet, too, when the Philippines Food and Drug Administration received funding from The Union and Bloomberg Initiative in 2021 which breached several Philippine laws as well as the country’s constitution and United States laws on charities. The result was that the Philippines kicked Bloomberg-funded groups out of the country, abandoned the assault on safer nicotine products, and legally regulated vaping instead. 

We are sure that the Global Alliance of Tobacco Control awarding the Philippines a Dirty Ashtray Award – awards which show “blatant disregard for the sovereignty of governments, shaming countries, belittling the independence of their policy-making procedures” – at the latest WHO conference of the Parties was purely coincidental.  

In fact, the WHO has seemed very comfortable with the Bloomberg business model of using bribery as a tool to influence national sovereignty. 

This is all rather inconvenient for the WHO which, this week, began a campaign on X (formerly Twitter) intended to counter misinformation, which included a denial that WHO intends to “take over our country’s sovereignty” and claimed that to say otherwise is “f***ing false.” 

Maybe the WHO could also start a campaign to tell Bloomberg and his corrupt organisations to stop trying to buy governments around the world, and to advise them that using bribery and ignoring local laws to influence the sovereignty of countries such as Pakistan, India and the Philippines doesn’t really fit with the WHO’s claims to respect the decisions of national governments.