The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has launched an investigation into possible human rights abuses of Britain’s disabled people. Hungarian Physicist Professor Gabor Gombos a former member of CRPD and now its adviser said the CRPD should “mandate an Inquiry Procedure (IP)”.
This is a national report on a country which should have “a very high threshold, the violations should be really grave and systemic and not based on gossip.” Gamos adds, “An IP against a country…should be highly confidential until the outcome,” but paradoxically finishes by saying “It has started its IP against the UK.”
This is despite the fact that the UK spent £13 billion and 2.4 percent of GDP in 2012 on the disabled, which is amongst the highest in the world. The people who seem to be behind this are left of centre politically motivated groups who object to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms. Just Fair published a report mimicking the CRPD’s opinions. One of Just Fair’s members includes Disabled People Against Cuts and Inclusion London who said that the UK had become a “systematic violator of… rights”.
This is not the first time that the UN has attacked the Conservative welfare reforms. You may remember in 2013 the “Brazilian Nut” Raquel Rolnik doing the rounds in the UK complaining about the Spare Bedroom Subsidy or Tax depending on your view. She is the Special Rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Committee on Adequate Housing. Brought up as a Marxist, she seems have amnesia regarding the favelas or that festoon urban areas of her own country. Also on her own blog, she complains about an area in Rio Di Janeiro called Restinga being bulldozed in 2010 to make way for the Olympics.
The UN’s health offshoot, the World Health Organization (WHO), is also angering electronic cigarette users (known as “vapers”). The WHO claims that six million people die a year from tobacco smoking. There is no denying that e-cigs have made a substantial contribution to reducing smoking worldwide. In the UK, it is estimated that there are 1.3 million vapers.
The WHO in October will hold its sixth Conference of the Parties (COP6) where they discuss all matters regarding smoking. In preparation the WHO has been tweeting propaganda, claiming “e-cigarette use poses threats to adolescents and foetuses of pregnant mothers” and “Nicotine in e-cigarettes may contribute to cardiovascular disease and promote cancer tumours.”
One reaction to the WHO will surely be to shout “liar, liar, pants on fire.” More highbrow reaction came from Dr. Konstantinos Faralinos of the e-cigarette Research Advocate Group when he wrote, “The messages were a collection of fear mongering, scientifically unsound, confusing and misleading claims.” He went on to offer, “This propaganda is ethically unacceptable. It is sad to see a prestigious organization paying illiterate, ignorant people to tweet.”
Further condemnation was offered by Professor Gerry Stimson Emeritus Professor at Imperial College, London. The “WHO’s mission is to save lives and prevent disease but once again it is exaggerating the risks of e-cigarettes, while downplaying the huge potential of these non-combustible low risk nicotine products to end the epidemic of tobacco related disease. WHO claims e-cigarettes are a threat to public health, but this statement has no evidence to support it, and ignores the large number of people who are using them to cut down or quit smoking completely.”The WHO recommendations will do more harm than good, ironically protect cigarette sales, and do little to decrease the avoidable burden of non-communicable diseases.”
This is not the first time the WHO has been severely criticised. During the H1N1 swine flu “pandemic” in 2008/9, world governments paid $3.3 billion for the H1N1 vaccine. The key scientists advising the governments were usually were paid or expensed by pharmaceutical companies who provide the vaccine, a massive conflict of interests.
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) were understandably infuriated, and Dr. Deborah Cohen, Features Editor of the BMJ and Philip Carter, a journalist with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, said: “Key scientists advising the World Health Organization on planning for an influenza pandemic had done paid work for pharmaceutical firms that stood to gain from the guidance they were preparing. These conflicts of interest have never been publicly disclosed by WHO.”
They concluded: “The number of victims of H1N1 fell far short of even the more conservative predictions by the WHO…But our investigation has revealed damaging issues. If these are not addressed, H1N1 may yet claim its biggest victim–the credibility of the WHO and the trust in the global public health system.”
The UN and the WHO are not elected and we adhere to their edicts as part of an international treaty signed by the Foreign Office. The UK has no real recourse to oppose world government by edict.
Indeed, some may ask what their purpose really is.
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