Congress to investigate WHO treaty

A House standing committee will investigate the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Accord in an official hearing in June.

WHO do they think they are?

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Chair of the House Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations Subcommittee, announced hearings on the WHO Pandemic Treaty in an official statement Monday (May 22). Smith has been raising concerns about this treaty for three years. Last year he raised concerns about American sovereignty after the Biden administration proposed what amounts to surrender of sovereignty. On March 23, at a hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee, Smith demanded answers from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Such answers as Secretary Blinken gave, did not satisfy Rep. Smith.

At that hearing, Smith quoted from a disturbing part of the “zero draft” treaty. That treaty essentially makes signatories’ sovereignty conditional on their good behavior as WHO defines it.

The zero-draft WHO pandemic treaty—that the Biden Administration and others are pushing to put into effect—starts off with a harsh criticism of the United States and the international community by calling it a “catastrophic failure of the international community in showing solidarity and equity in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.’’ Article 4 pays lip service to sovereignty and then has language that says, “provided that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to their peoples and other countries,” which would empower the WHO to step in. Article 10 says that the United States would be obligated to provide 20 percent of our medical supplies—including tests, vaccines, medications and the like—to the WHO. They would say “we want it, you have to give it by treaty obligation.”

He then asked Secretary Blinken to comment – and Blinken denied that the Administration was negotiating a treaty. Instead he said the Administration was “trying to strengthen the global architecture for dealing with pandemics.” How he proposed to do that without a formal treaty, he did not make clear. Nor would he commit to submitting any treaty, convention, or whatever anyone wished to call it, to the Senate.

The Constitution grants the President “the power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties.” Two-thirds of the Senators present must vote Yes to ratify a treaty. Most Senate treaty votes have seen perfect attendance, given the stakes. But the health of two Senators (John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) remains in doubt.

Previous concerns

“This never would have happened under President [Donald J.] Trump’s watch,” said Smith last year. At the time, Smith raised a particular concern about the administration’s plan to strike a key regulation that limits WHO’s authority in America, according to Fox News. That regulation forbids WHO to do anything in this country without consulting the government. Under this accord, such consultation would not be necessary.

Under absolutely no circumstances should the Biden Administration surrender American sovereignty to the World Health Organization and allow the voice of the American people and consent of the governed to be subjugated to dictates of an agenda-driven global administrative bureaucracy.

Contributor Darrell L. Castle raised concerns about the WHO treaty on March 10. In fact he raised exactly the same concerns that Smith did, and more. And he took specific note of the threat to bypass the Senate and “enact” this treaty by Executive Order.

CNAV addressed the treaty directly last April, as readers will recall.

Worth noting is that one of two warring factions in Sudan broke into and took control of the National Public Health Laboratory in Khartoum. Witnesses spoke of failure to “secure the biological materials and samples” in that laboratory.

Yesterday, Becker News raised concerns about another document that WHO published, that defines “misinformation” as a global health threat. In fact it coins a new word, “infodemic,” and describes it thus:

Infodemic is the overabundance of information – accurate or not – which makes it difficult for individuals to adopt behaviors that will protect their health and the health of their families and communities.

The document then specifically recommends “social listening surveillance systems.” Twitter had such a system in place before Elon Musk bought it and, by some accounts, shut that system down.

Herewith one more source for the proposed hearings: