Twenty years…

Twenty years ago, I married the love of my life

Since then we have made a life together and we have two teenage children.

We spend a lot of time with work committments, ferrying the kids to activities, and their jobs etc, and just life in general.

We have always put our kids first, and ourselves second,  which is how it came to pass that we suddenly realised with 4 days to go that our twentieth wedding anniversary was nearly here.

What to Do!!
We have always brought presents to give each other according to tradition (see below), but with it been an anniversary with china, and such short notice, we thought it was a bit impractical..

So we agreed to buy ourselves some practical stuff that we will need in the future, like a chainsaw and a fireplace.

BREAKING INCREDIBLE NEWS….W.H.O. IHR PROPOSED AMENDMENTS CHANGED…

In May nearly 200 countries from around the world will vote on whether or not to ratify the World Health Organisation International Health Amendments. As they stood, they were a potential recipe for disaster, with sweeping powers handed to WHO, which gave them effective authority to override national sovereignty in times of “pandemic”.

BREAKING NEWS… Massive climb-down from the WHO Working Group on almost ALL substantive concerns that we and others have raised over the past 18 months.

*The WHO’s recommendations remain non-binding. Article 13A.1 which would have required Member States to follow directives of the WHO as the guiding and coordinating authority for international public health has been dropped entirely.

*An egregious proposal which would have erased reference to the primacy of “dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms” has been dropped. This proposal marked a particularly low water-mark, and should never have been suggested.

*Provisions that would have allowed the WHO to intervene on the basis of a mere ‘potential’ health emergency have been dropped: a pandemic must now either be happening or likely to happen, but with the safeguard that to activate its IHR powers the WHO must demonstrate that coordinated international action is necessary.

*Proposals to construct a global censorship and ‘information control’ operation led by the WHO have been dropped.

*A material dampening of the expansionist ambitions of the WHO: provisions which had proposed to expand the scope of the IHRs to include “all risks with a potential to impact public health” (e.g. climate change, food supply) have been deleted. The scope now remains essentially unchanged, focussed on the spread of disease.

*Explicit recognition that Member States not the WHO are responsible for implementing these regulations, and bold plans for the WHO to police compliance with all aspects of the IHRs have been materially watered down.

*Many other provisions have been diluted, including: surveillance mechanisms that would have given the WHO a mandate to find thousands of potential new pandemic signals; provisions which would have encouraged and favoured digital health passports; provisions requiring forced technology transfers and diversion of national resources.

The published document is only an interim draft, to be put before the IHR Working Group during this week’s final negotiations, so it could yet change.

That said, on the basis of this draft, this is a victory for people power over unaccountable technocracy.

(graphic attached shows some of the proposed amendments that have been REMOVED from the proposal)

https://apps.who.int/gb/wgihr/pdf_files/wgihr8/WGIHR8_Proposed_Bureau_text-en.pdf

Is the title for Chris Trotter’s post today, and it’s not hyperbole: On Friday, March 15 2019, an estimated 170,000 New Zealand secondary school students took to the nation’s streets. RNZ still ranks that turnout as the “second largest” protest in New Zealand history…On Friday morning (5/4/24) RNZ was carrying the SS4C protest organisers’ predictions […]

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