On human rights - then there’s individual rights vs collective rights
And sovereignty
The concept of human rights is murky as a crocodile infested river.
I once asked Sir Geoffrey Palmer about human rights, at the time when we were struggling with vaccine mandates and personal autonomy.
Sir Geoffrey, remember, was instrumental in drafting and introducing human rights legislation and good governance in New Zealand in the 1990s.
Disappointingly, he couldn't, or wouldn’t, help.
No wonder.
Rights today are not what they were when he was active.
These days you have no human rights if those in power think you should give them up for an ideal or a strategy.
The level of double standards and hypocrisy is stunning:
If you're a Palestinian, you must give up your basic human rights for Greater Israel.
Israel has a right to defend itself but Iran doesn’t.
Israel has the right to nuclear arms but no one else in the area does.
Jacinda Ardern is kind but not to those who disagree with her.
A simple list of basic human rights includes the right to live, to be free, the right to bodily autonomy, the right to freedom of expression, movement and association. Then there’s the right to be heard, the right to redress and the right to information.
Ah! Information! That’s a story all on its own.
Propaganda and misinformation
The right to information is severely compromised all over the world these days.
In the Middle East right now, tools to control information are used to sanction, censor and kill journalists - yes kill - and generally silence dissent.
More widely ‘misinformation’ is an overarching term moulded to fit an agenda.
For example doctors who raised concerns about mRNA vaccines faced persecution and censorship. Their careers were destroyed and reputations damaged for following principles they were taught in medical school.
Information that is offered for public consumption is often less based on fact and more designed to fit government policy, as it was during the era of vaccination mandates.
It’s clear that the New Zealand government worked directly with mainstream media and international partners to spread its pro-vaccine and pro-lockdown messaging. We can expect the same propaganda machine to push digital ID, central bank digital currency and genetic technology.
The New Zealand government’s Behavioural Insights team conducts what are called ‘nudge campaigns’ that involve tactics such as social norming, or creating expectations that guide behaviour for the sake of widespread compliance.
Some people just don’t give up.
This week’s humbug, from former NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, claimed in an interview about her new book that the Wellington protest against vaccine mandates was caused by ‘Russian misinformation’ - a cheap and silly shot in what might have been an attempt to justify her cruel stance.
On a global level, the United Nations reaffirms faith in fundamental human rights. However its agency, the World Health Organisation (WHO), continues to conduct an all-out campaign for more powers, focusing less on individual rights and more on global instruction and control of information.
The WHO has developed a detailed strategy to counteract what it deems to be ‘misinformation’, including:
Infodemic management
Monitoring and analysis, using digital tools to track trends across various platforms
Empowering communities to identify and respond to ‘misinformation’
Partnering with major technology companies to promote its information
Creating tools for users to report ‘misleading content’
Enhancing content moderation to identify and limit the spread of ‘false information’
All this is to ‘amplify trustworthy sources’, the WHO says.
People are not stupid.
New Zealand was actively involved in the development of the WHO’s amended International Health Regulations, but later reserved its position, buying time to conduct a national interest test. The deadline for reservations or rejections is March 2026 and the date of entry into force is September 2026.
So, New Zealand is not bound by the regulations until it completes its domestic treaty-making process, which includes Cabinet approval and a ‘National Interest Analysis’.
Separately, WHO member states approved a Global Pandemic Agreement.
While no countries opposed the treaty, 11 nations abstained. Slovakia plans to challenge the adoption of the agreement, citing concerns over national sovereignty and human rights.
There has been other pushback.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei commented, as his country pulled out of the WHO, “The WHO’s prescriptions do not work because they are not based on science but on political interests and bureaucratic structures that refuse to review their own mistakes.”
The WHO has wound back its original global ambitions and now admits that it does not have any authority to impose any requirements relating to travel bans, vaccination mandates or lockdowns.
That means our politicians are currently in the driving seat but there are concerns that domestic laws could be rewritten to comply with WHO recommendations, bypassing public or parliamentary debate.
Responding to an Official Information Act request, the office of Prime Minister Chris Luxon states: “With regards to the UN, WHO and WEF (World Economic Forum), their policies do not have influence over government policy. The National Party always develops its policies in its consultation with party members and the New Zealand public.”
The present government assures that any agreements New Zealand enters will be in New Zealand's best interests.
Save this promise.
Takeaways?
It is the responsibility of governments to take reasonable public health precautions while adhering to the principle of ‘do no harm’.
We learned that the New Zealand Covid lockdown path, designed by bureaucrats, breached human rights, suppressed free speech and freedom of movement, destroyed businesses and obliterated the principle of informed consent.
This excellent Brownstone Institute piece addresses trade-offs required between public health, economic stability, and individual rights. It recalls the “brutal drowning of all dissenting voices”.
Long ago British philosopher John Locke thought that individuals have natural rights, including life, liberty, and property, and that it is the duty of governments to protect these rights. He said if a government violates these rights, the people have the right to overthrow it.
A fellow 17th Century contemporary Thomas Hobbes went down a different path, in favour of control. His view was that rights are not meaningful without government - people should surrender freedoms for security.
The last word goes to Doc Malik and his thoughtfully composed rant: “I don’t consent to the shit show all around me.”
Food for thought
US Attorney General Bill Barr called the Covid lockdowns “the greatest intrusion on civil liberties” since the end of slavery.
“Almost 50 years after the East German regime pawned its intellectuals, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is championing serfdom — at least for the mass of humanity. The WEF promised young people that by the year 2030, ‘you will own nothing and be happy’. Recent political reforms in many nations have furthered the first promise, ravaging private-property rights and subverting individual independence.” - James Bovard writes
“Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." ~Thomas Paine, Common Sense
“When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know’, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives. - Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein.
Sources
Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly – Daily update: 23 May 2025
Another great article Keri.
Keri writes:
"Jacinda Ardern is kind but not to those who disagree with her."
In fact I reckon she thinks:
I'm so kind, that anyone who doesn't like me has got to be nasty.