Insult to Injury: Why We Must Oppose the WHO Global Tax Proposals
Source: Corbett Report – James Corbett
Fresh on the heels of a Dutch investigation into the conflicts of interest of their chief influenza advisor and the bombshell announcement that the Council of Europe will be probing their role in creating and sustaining panic over the recent H1N1 outbreak in order to sell vaccines for Big Pharma, the World Health Organization is now conisdering “innovative” proposals for raising additional revenues, including levying a global tax on internet activity.
The startling revelation comes in a report submitted by an Expert Working Group ahead of the biannual meeting of the WHO’s Executive Board. Tasked with finding a financial mechanism for funding the WHO’s mandate of transfering health technologies to the developing world, the team of bureaucrats and medical researchers have spent the past 14 months developing a variety of suggestions, including:
-A digital tax: “Internet traffic is huge and likely to increase rapidly; this tax could yield tens of billions of US dollars from a broad base of users.”
-A financial transaction tax: “Brazil’s financial transaction tax”[...]set at 0.38% levied on paying bills online and major withdrawals, it was raising an estimate [sic] US$ 20 billion per year and funding some 87% of the Government’s key social protection programme, Bolsa Familia, before it was voted down.”
-An arms trade tax: “a 10% tax on the arms trade market, which might net about US$ 5 billion per annum.”
The funds raised from such schemes—ranging into the tens of billions of dollars depending on which plans are enacted—would be ostensibly used to aid in the transfer of medical technologies to the developing world so that local research, development and production of medicines can be ramped up. It is argued that this is needed to fill the gap left by pharmaceutical companies who have no motivation to produce medicines for areas of the world that can’t afford to pay for them. Additionally, local research and development would allow for the incorporation of local ingredients and traditional medicines in different parts of the globe.
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