As criticism of the WHO mounts, H/T Sheldon for this Daily Mail article:
Champagne, caviar and salmon carpaccio … and we might talk about Ebola: World Health Organisation spent £1 million on lavish conference hosted by Putin as number of infections passed 10,000
And H/T Smokingscot for this piece in the Express:
‘Broke’ WHO host £1.6 million caviar-fuelled beano
WITH two types of caviar, Champagne and an ocean of salmon, it’s a world away from Ebola ravaged West Africa.
Yet the World Health Organisation has hosted a lavish £1 million conference in Moscow, while complaining about the lack the funds to deal with the killer disease.
Last night one senior Conservative MP told how he would be asking parliament why senior British delegates were sent to the week-long Conference of the Parties (COP) in Moscow when both the US and Canada boycotted it after learning it would be hosted by Vladimir Putin.
And H/T Carol for drawing attention to antismoker Ted Turner, who gave a total of $1 billion to the WHO from about 1998, apparently in violation of the UN Charter, Article 17.2 of which requires the UN expenses “to be borne by the Members”.
This means that huge amounts of money can be – and are being – donated to the WHO by wealthy individuals, and earmarked for particular purposes. And large amounts of money have been been earmarked for antismoking measures (see right, “single largest grant ever made to prevent and discourage international tobacco use).
And with people like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg having followed in Ted Turner’s footsteps, it would seem that many of the WHO’s programmes (e.g. antismoking) are in effect privately funded. And what would appear to have been the product of a consensus of opinion among the WHO’s medical professionals are actually the product of the personal ideologies of a few very wealthy individuals.
Which might be regarded as wholly benign, if the wealthy individuals were solid, stable, dependable citizens. But as described by Nassir Ghaemi in A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness, Ted Turner suffers from manic depression, for which he was prescribed lithium:
In addition, Ted Turner seems to have been “very conservative” until Jane Fonda showed up in his life, according to his son Teddy:
Teddy Turner, son of billionaire media mogul Ted Turner and Republican candidate for Congress, said his father’s marriage to Jane Fonda prompted his major left turn.
“I was raised in a different time at the Turner household … a very conservative household with capitalism and all of that kind of stuff,”…
“He started becoming more and more environmentalist and then Jane helped move things over as well,” Turner told Malzberg. “Then when you start hanging around and everybody you’re hanging around with is liberal, then you tend to move more liberal.’’
Teddy Turner, a 49-year-old high school teacher, said he – not his father – has always been consistent in his political orientation.
“I’m not a liberal,” he said. “People say how did you separate from your dad? I didn’t separate from my dad. My dad separated from me.”
Furthermore, Ted Turner’s father committed suicide (Jane Fonda’s mother committed suicide too). Jane Fonda on suicide:
“I’m a suicide survivor,” she admitted. “Suicide survivors are workaholics, people raging, mourning, grieving. The pain never leaves, but you have to get on with it.”
Jane Fonda on Ted Turner:
“He needs someone to be there one hundred percent of the time. He thinks that’s love. It is not love. It’s babysitting,” Fonda said. “… We went in different directions. I grew up.”
By 1996, Jane had been with Turner for nearly eight years and was painfully thin and frankly exhausted from all the travelling. ‘His nervous energy almost crackles in the air,’ she says. ‘He can’t sit still, because if he does, the demons will catch up with him.’
‘I feel sorry for him — he can’t be alone,’ she says. ‘Sometimes, I take him into my lap and rock him like a baby.’
And that’s just Ted Turner. It wouldn’t be too surprising if both Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg are similarly dysfunctional, afflicted individuals, whose principal shared characteristic is that they have one heck of a lot of money with which to advance their various private agendas.
But it’s a crazy way for the WHO to be funded.
Ted Turner’s UN donations are now almost complete, and his UN Foundation is now looking for new donors.
And if no big donors show up, maybe – just maybe – the WHO Tobacco Control will be de-funded, and fade out of existence almost as rapidly as it first emerged – and we’ll find that all the coughing, spluttering antismokers were only ever driven by the power of money.
Frank Davis 
Hanoi Jane………I always hated that bytch but she was hot in Barberella……………..
Just a quick look at Ted Turner’s “United Nations Foundation” reveals it to be the U.N. in microcosm, i.e. ‘initiatives’ designed to reduce the population via the usual ‘health’, ‘rights’ and ‘sustainability’ routes – using climate change and all the usual excuses.
Following your link to philanthropy.com and I read about malaria nets (as usual). I had thought that DDT was dealing effectively with that disease, despite the concerns. Well, it was. A quick check couldn’t confirm whether the main objection to DDT was its link with problems in humans or environmental damage, although the issue seems to have been raised first in the 60s by biologist Rachel Carson, so I image that the environment (‘sustainability’) comes first with these people.
So, why the need for millions of nets and not DDT?
The DDT ban, which began in the US and other western countries, is now widespread because international development aid and funding has been tied to the prohibition of its use.
Third World countries are told that if they want foreign aid money, they need to stop using the most effective weapon against malaria. They are compelled by necessity to comply with this condition.
As a result, insect-borne diseases have returned to the tropics with a vengeance. By some estimates, the death toll in Africa alone from unnecessary malaria resulting from the restrictions on DDT has exceeded 100 million people.
Some commentators defend the use of DDT in situations like the one in South Africa where a sudden escalation demanded a swift intervention.
From: http://www.eyesonmalaria.org/content/living-dilemma-0
If that figure is accurate, that’s 100 million fewer Africans and their descendants for the UN to deal with via Agenda 21, although I expect that the DDT ban was a precursor.
The “United Nations Foundation” also supports Shot@Life, as mentioned in philanthropy.com. Sticking needles into Africans seems to be the in-thing at the moment. We have Bill and Melinda doing likewise with their “Foundation” (for ‘foundation’ read ‘agenda’). Bill has admitted that vaccinations will help reduce population growth.
This is really why they “care” so much!!
Oh yes, you can have aid for malaria nets sprayed with inferior insecticides as long as you ditch the most effective deterrent of all which has helped to practically wipe out malaria in South Africa – they hope to be free of the disease by 2018 due to DDT.
The only smoking-related issue associated with the “United Nations Foundation” I can see is “cookstove smoke”: one of the world’s deadliest killers (no less!),
Today, nearly half the world’s population – close to 3 billion people – will eat meals cooked over fires that use charcoal, wood, or even animal waste for fuel. A year from now, 1.9 million of those people will be dead. Their death certificates will cite pneumonia, lung cancer or tuberculosis, but the underlying cause is exposure to cooking smoke.
Makes me wonder how many deaths can be attributed to the emissions from the internal combustion engine…
They will be dead from Old Age most likely………………
Unfortunately, 60 is “old age” in the majority of African countries. But you have to wonder where they pluck the figures from.
I believe LC is a major problem for rural Chinese women, many of whom cook over open fires and aren’t smokers.
Well, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that WHO (despite its grand name) is not an independent or an impartial body. We already knew about that pact it made with the IAEA in 1959, since when none of its reports and recommendations about nuclear radiation can be believed. Now we’re finding that’s not the only area in which it’s hobbled. Whatever its original remit, it’s not in a position to fulfil it.
From one of yesterday’s comments, it seems that Jane Fonda was the antismoking influence on Turner.
Jane Fonda was a smoker in her early days and then became a rabid antismoking ex-smoker.
Here’s a bit (earlier this year) from her website in response to a smoker desperately trying to quit:
JOHN, THE EX-SMOKER. BRAVO. ONE DAY AT A TIME. MEDITATION HELPS…THAT HIGHER POWER STUFF IS REAL—NOT RELIGIOUS, JUST BEING HUMBLE AND PRESENT. X
http://www.janefonda.com/exciting-news/
Jane appears to be very terrified of ageing and dying. Longevity is her critical dimension. And there’s the antismoking message in her anti-aging tips together with her neo-eugenics “body workout”.
http://www.chatelaine.com/health/wellness/jane-fondas-best-anti-aging-tips-10-things-i-learned-from-her-book/
Interestingly, Fonda (like Turner) is partial to pot – apparently her real “fountain of youth” is the occasional puff of marijuana:
http://www.celebitchy.com/145198/jane_fonda_was_smoking_pot_with_her_brother_at_the_vanity_fair_oscar_party/
I bet she’s up to date with the “lifestyle epidemiology” trash…. and more.
From one of yesterday’s comments, it seems that Jane Fonda was the antismoking influence on Turner.
Jane Fonda was a smoker in her early days and then became a rabid antismoking ex-smoker.
Here’s a bit (earlier this year) from her website in response to a smoker desperately trying to quit:
JOHN, THE EX-SMOKER. BRAVO. ONE DAY AT A TIME. MEDITATION HELPS…THAT HIGHER POWER STUFF IS REAL—NOT RELIGIOUS, JUST BEING HUMBLE AND PRESENT. X
http://www.janefonda.com/exciting-news/
Jane appears to be very terrified of ageing and dying. Longevity is her critical dimension. And there’s the antismoking message in her anti-aging tips together with her neo-eugenics “body workout”.
http://www.chatelaine.com/health/wellness/jane-fondas-best-anti-aging-tips-10-things-i-learned-from-her-book/
Interestingly, Fonda (like Turner) is partial to pot – apparently her real “fountain of youth” is the occasional puff of marijuana:
http://www.celebitchy.com/145198/jane_fonda_was_smoking_pot_with_her_brother_at_the_vanity_fair_oscar_party/
I bet she’s up to date with the “lifestyle epidemiology” trash…. and more.
I’m not exactly sure when Ted Turner banned smoking at CNN, but it seems to have been some time in 1987, and according to this letter, it was “due to the demands of his current girlfriend.” But I’m not sure that Jane Fonda was his girlfriend at that time. He took up with her after she’d split from Tom Hayden, and I don’t know when that was. As best I can make out, his current girlfriend at that time was JJ Ebaugh. He married Jane Fonda in 1991 or so.
It would be a real coup to find that Jane Fonda was the origin of CNN’s smoking ban, and of Ted Turner’s personal war on smokers, but the evidence doesn’t seem to be there right now.
From Modern Organizations and Emerging Conumdrums, Ted Turner’s manichaean vision:
“Everything I do is a war between the forces of good and evil, hatred and stupidity, greed and materialism versus the forces of light,” Turner says.
It rather looks as if Tobacco Control’s War on Smokers, which casts themselves as the “Forces of Light” against satanic Big Tobacco’s “forces of darkness”, is straight out of Ted Turner’s manichaean world view. Or that Ted Turner is a product of Tobacco Control’s manichaean wordlview. Whichever way, it’s the same vision of Absolute Good versus Absolute Evil.
This from Simon Chapman’s “The Lung Goodbye” (1983) [how to do propaganda]:
“Such a list could be added to considerably, but most entries would be characterized by being somehow cast in a mythological good versus evil battle in an arena observed by mass numbers of people. The good (health/clean air/children) versus evil (cancer/uncaring, callous industry) dimension is the ineluctable bottom line in the whole issue and a rich reservoir for spawning a great deal of useful social drama, metaphor, and symbolic politics that is the stuff of ‘news value’ and which is almost always to the detriment of the industry.” p.11 (see Godber Blueprint)
This entire “Us vs them” framework was also contrived by the fanatics decades ago. Having cast themselves in the role of the “mythological good” (natch), the zealots are always right. Anyone who dares disagree with them is always wrong and part of some “evil” tobacco industry “conspiracy”. It’s all for manipulative, “theatrical” effect – although there are some in the antismoking movement that believe they are “god-like” – and has been quite successfully used for the last three decades on an essentially superficial/gullible political class, media, and public. Disagree with the fanatics and you’ll be accused of being an emissary of the “evil” tobacco industry, a promoter of cancer, and a child corrupter/killer. The zealots and their financial partners (government and Pharma) must have regular belly laughs at how all too easy the brainwashing has been.
The same Good-v-Evil line is used in the Global Warming debate, where James Hansen described coal trains as “death trains” and coal-fired power stations as “death factories”.
and
They all do it, the whole time.
Another example:
An Australian climate change lobby group has faced a backlash after creating a billboard advert comparing coal miners to paedophiles. The ad was one of a number of possible images posted onto the Facebook page of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition as part of a competition to choose a poster to be displayed at Brisbane airport next month when world leaders fly in to meet for the G20 Summit, but was pulled from the site after followers branded the advert as “sick”.
Here’s another article making reference to the “influence”:
In 1987, Turner’s then-girlfriend Jane Fonda was quitting smoking cigarettes, and so Turner flamboyantly declared that his TBS network would not hire cigarette smokers. Tobacco giant Philip Morris tried to get a lawsuit going, and in a statement, tobacco smoker and former CNN anchor Gwenn Scott claimed Turner’s ban was hypocritical, because “it is common knowledge that Turner sits in his office and smokes marijuana.”
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2606.html
But that hardly constitutes “evidence”.
Here’s a newspaper article from 1990:
Turner Broadcasting System has refused to hire smokers since November 1986, in part for health reasons, in part because Ted Turner hates smoke, employees say. There have been recent reports of firings, but a spokeswoman insists “nobody has been hired and then fired as a result of smoking.“
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-07-16/business/9002280175_1_smoking-policy-institute-total-smoking-bans-non-smoker
This from 2006:
The idea has been around for a while. Ted Turner did precisely this over 20 years ago when he owned the US television network CNN. Every worker signing up for employment was automatically registered for a mandatory company medical package that was only available to non-smokers.
So if you smoked you couldn’t work for CNN. It was as simple as that. Such was Turner’s aversion to smoking that he employed company spies to infiltrate parties. Employees enjoying a sneaky fag found themselves sacked on the following Monday morning.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/2929741/Viewpoint.html
If Fonda did influence Turner, it would have been very easy. It seems he was already a misocapnist – a pot-smoking anti-[tobacco]smoker.
I think Turner did (funding WHO antismoking) what some of the mega-wealthy have been doing from early last century, e.g., Rockefeller (who knows how many other “mega-wealthy” contributed to his fund?). They abuse “philanthropy” to affect policy in their favor, whether it be for ideological, preference, or financial reasons. They have no qualms about imposing their view on everyone. “Healthy living” (including antismoking)…. aligning with medical “authorities”…. is a long-time favorite of the American mega-wealthy. The “new money” (e.g., Turner, gates, Bloomberg) simply fit in with the “established order”.
An interesting book (2009). Appears to be the influence/method of “philanthropy”. I started reading at p.137.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=s3f8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=%22ted+turner%22+anti-smoking&source=bl&ots=6pZHkZIIYb&sig=rLkneeBzQeyM7MVPcP-eDwdBlHA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P0BOVLiGIsbemAWG3YG4BA&ved=0CFcQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=%22ted%20turner%22%20anti-smoking&f=false
Breitbart
THE GREEN BLOB UNVEILED: HOW UK ENERGY POLICY IS BOUGHT WITH AMERICAN BILLIONAIRES’ CASH
In July, a US Senate Committee report named the Hewlett foundation as a key part of a “billionaires club” which controlled the green movement by pumping more than half a billion dollars into the environmental industry each year. The report claimed that “wealthy liberals fully exploit the benefits of a generous tax code meant to promote genuine philanthropy and charitable acts,” and were diverting money to “activists” to “promote shared political goals”.
Daily Mail
EXPOSED: How a shadowy network funded by foreign millions is making our household energy bills soar – for a low-carbon Britain
Shadowy pro-green lobbyists working at every level of the Establishment
Organisations are channelling tens of millions of pounds into green policies
Elite lobby group linked to Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the WWF
Current energy policies shaped by the Green Blob will cost up to £400billion
If continued, there will be further eye-watering energy bill rises for Britons
Breitbart
Beyond the human tragedy of the Ebola epidemic unfolding in west Africa, the crisis is claiming a collateral victim: trust in the medical order.
The biggest casualty is the reputation of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), which analysts fault for foot-dragging and misjudgements.
Also under assault are Big Pharma, the West’s aid policies in Africa and public faith in the rich world’s lavishly funded health systems.
“Failures in leadership have allowed a preventable disease to spin out of control, with vast harms to social order and human dignity,” a commentary carried by The Lancet said on October 7.
Lancet
I am surprised that the “Express” and the “Daily Mail” published the articles!
Sure, the WHO mumbled something about “delayed response” and immediately pointed the finger to the world to blame for the WHO’s utter failure. It did not mention the SECRET ‘conference’ about exiling with the smokers also the vapers indoors and outdoors.
Even before this ‘conference’ ended it was decided to ban smoking/vaping in parks and public open spaces, such as the Trafalgar Square in London.
The WHO members were confident that they could brush the organisations on the grounds in e.g. Liberia aside and get away with it.
It is good to see that others, too, pick up on this COP6 ‘conference’, held in secrecy.
http://www.thehealthsite.com/news/who-spends-1-million-pound-on-anti-tobacco-conference-in-moscow/
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is reported to host an extravagant conference costing one million pounds. This conference held in Moscow aimed at discussing tobacco control policies. The amount spent came across unreasonable after WHO complained about having a cash crunch to tackle the fatal Ebola in West Africa.
According to Daily Express, delegates from 175 countries attended the conference in Moscow as part of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The body, funded by the WHO, met to discuss tobacco control policies and the role of e-cigarettes.
The global health watchdog that has been facing criticism for its handling of the Ebola crisis reportedly wasted 40,000 pounds just to provide Wi-Fi to journalists, who were banned from the event at the last minute. Some five luxury hotels were assigned to delegates attending the conference. […]
[…] The report also revealed that delegates were served Salmon carpaccio with cucumber tartar, Salmon as the main course, Vitello Tonnato beef with tuna fish sauce, Red caviar, Scallop with white wine sauce, a fish late of smoked halibut, smoked sturgeon, eel mix; Smoked eel, and Salmon under white syrup with flying fish caviar at the gala feast that was held last Monday.
The guests at the event were also offered official excursions, including a visit to the Kremlin’s armory chamber. Laurie Garrett, a leading Ebola expert with the Washington DC-based Council on Foreign Relations last year said that WHO had to plead for the 60million pounds required to launch a plan to contain the outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone due to lack of funds.
The secrecy of this ‘conference’ did not go down too well with the public, either:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/14/johnson-whos-secret-tobacco-tax/?page=all
A security thug representing the convention secretariat said the decision to prohibit the press was made overnight by the delegates and the secretariat. That same secretariat pockets $403,000 a year courtesy of world taxpayers for the task of overseeing a convention that meets every two years.
As I was escorted away from the convention area by two guards, I passed a German reporter being physically restrained from entering the room while being yelled at by WHO officials.
The zeal with which the delegates to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control oppose operating in the open, in front of media and the public, is a troubling indication that they have something to hide.
But what?
It’s likely the delegates don’t want citizens of their home countries to know what outrageous, ill-conceived and downright dopey policies they are discussing — and passing.
The global tobacco tax will cause the price of a pack of cigarettes in Norway to skyrocket from $16.30 to $51.61. In Germany, a pack of smokes will now jump from $7.50 to $14.48. Smokers in poorer countries will be impacted even more dramatically.
Worse, revenue generated from the taxes must be spent to fund particular government services that the WHO dictates. Countries have lost their ability to budget as they see fit.
The global tax scheme on tobacco opens up the possibility that the WHO will expand its reach into other products it deems harmful. Worldwide taxes on soft drinks, fast food, alcohol and snacks are already dancing in the thoughts of some of the battier convention attendees.
Delegates must have felt that kicking out the public and the press was the only way they could get away with passing a policy as foolish and appalling as a global tobacco tax without being pelted with rotten eggs when they stepped foot off the plane back home.
The exclusion of the public at the COP6 ‘conference’ was also critisised in Germany:
http://de.nachrichten.yahoo.com/gesundheitsbeh%C3%B6rden-setzen-hinter-verschlossenen-t%C3%BCren-beim-gipfel-moskau-000000568.html
Während der Abstimmung am 15. Oktober über Artikel 6 der FCTC wurden Öffentlichkeit und Medien einmal mehr von den Verhandlungen ausgeschlossen. Dieses Verhalten, zusammen mit der Entscheidung in letzter Minute, die Pressekonferenz abzusagen, ist ein weiteres Zeugnis mangelnder Transparenz, Verantwortung und Integrität der WHO.
[During the vote on October 15 on Article 6 of the FCTC public and media were once again excluded from the negotiations. This behavior, together with the decision to cancel at the last minute the press conference, is further evidence of the lack of transparency, accountability and integrity of the WHO.]
That the WHO was well informed about the spread of the Ebola virus in Liberia is obvious when reading:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/22-august-2014/en/
Why the Ebola outbreak has been underestimated
Situation assessment – 22 August 2014
The magnitude of the Ebola outbreak, especially in Liberia and Sierra Leone, has been underestimated for a number of reasons.
Nevertheless, the lavish COP6 ‘conference’ in Moscow went ahead as planned from 13.10.2014 – 18.10.2014, following the prospect of cashing in on a ridiculously increased tobacco tax.
Pingback: Framework Convention on Cake Control | Frank Davis
Pingback: In What Year? | Frank Davis