A belated happy New Year to all! IGO Watch hit the ground running in 2019 by hosting the “Nix the Nanny State” panel at LibertyCon 2019, where we talked about IGO Watch and various Nanny state issues that have become more prevalent in the international community and have begun impacting the policies in the United States. The panel was moderated by Tim Andrews from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, and discussing these issues were Marko Horg from IGO Watch, Guy Bentley from the Reason Foundation, and Julie Gunlock from the Independent Women’s Forum. In case you couldn’t make it to our exciting panel, which was televised live across the United States on CSPAN2, you can watch it online here!

Believe it or not, the World Health Organization (WHO) has come under even more criticism in January for flawed science and bad policy – Dr. Kalyana Sundram, the CEO of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, called out a recent the WHO study for being sensationalistic. The WHO cherry picked arguments against palm oil to create a story that simply does not reflect reality. He was especially outraged by the association of studies on palm oil to those of tobacco. Dr Aseem Malhotra, an NHS consultant cardiologist, claimshe was ‘shocked and disturbed’ by the WHO giving incorrect and non-evidence based advice on fat. Asking people to replace butter or lard with industrial seed oils will continue to cause harm to public health, which is why the WHO needs to review and update its guidance “as a matter of urgency”. These critiques come as no surprise, as the WHO spends millions of taxpayer dollars on areas beyond their expertise, like combating climate change by imposing new tax systems, while losing focus on its core tasks which could save millions of lives, as highlighted in a recent Property Rights Alliance report.

As we write this, the WHO is examining two controversial issues during their executive board’s 144th session, which opened on the 24th January. Particularly troubling are proposals to harm innovation by further weakening intellectual property rights.  Other proposals include implementing further nanny state regulations against “non-communicable diseases.. IGO Watch is closely monitoring these proceeding and you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get information firsthand.

Controversial peacekeeping missions, climate change fear-mongering, politically biased condemnations and a desire to act as a global government are just some of the reason we should consider defunding the United Nations. Here are some of the most recent issues with the multi-billion dollar bureaucracy:

– The United Nations Global Compact on Migration will haveserious implications on the right of free speech, forcing the governments to spend even more taxpayer dollars into public education campaigns to shape perception of migration, as exposed by our partner organization the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance.
– The UN Environment Program has become a giant and corrupt system of wasting taxpayers’ money, supporting thousands of freeloading delegates and officials from all over the world.
– One third of U.N. staff and contractors experienced sexual harassment in the past two years, according to an report released by the United Nations. Not at all surprising given the fact that the United Nations have no uniform standard when criminal allegations of sexual abuse are lodged against its personnel.

But the UN and WHO are just one of many IGOs wasting taxpayer dollars and creating bad policy. Disappointed by the setback caused by the flawed tax digital services being temporarily blocked, the EU commission is now trying to change how tax proposals are treated to make it easier for tax hikes to be imposed throughout Europe. With almost no media coverage, the European Commission launched a web questionnaire on the initiative to move to a qualified majority voting on tax issues. This proposal is dangerous as it will give the power to a few large EU countries with similar interests and objectives and must be stopped.

EU regulators are also working on a new Copyright Directive which will give publishers the right to demand money from web platforms when fragments of their articles show up in news search results or are shared by users. As a result, Google is consideringpulling its Google News service from Europe. The new EU laws would force it to choose which publishers it would license, effectively picking winners and losers, with smaller competitors more likely to lose out. Another example of the EU’s bureaucratic overreach was stripping McDonald’s of the BIG MAC trademarkbizarrely claiming McDonald’s could not prove that it sold Big Macs!

Prefer something different? You can view the monthly updates in video format. Check it out on this link!

See Something? Say Something!

We’re always looking for regional coordinators from countries around the world to help us distribute information on social media, write blog posts and op-eds, and provide us with on-the-ground information from their region.
If you have any tips about stories, or would like to become a regional coordinator, please send us an email at this address!

Until next month,

IGO Watch Team

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