Image: Adobe Stock / Dr. Rath Health Foundation
In a highly controversial move that the mainstream/legacy media has almost completely ignored, the Biden administration is defending 21 pharmaceutical and medical device companies from the United States and Europe in their battle against a lawsuit accusing them of funding terrorism in Iraq. Filed in 2017 against firms including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Roche, the case seeks damages on behalf of 395 American servicemen and civilians who were wounded or killed in terrorist attacks between 2005 and 2011.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that, in order to secure lucrative contracts, drug and medical device companies paid bribes to Jaysh-al-Mahdi, a Hezbollah-affiliated militia group said to have controlled Iraq’s Ministry of Health. Following the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the militia group was reportedly able to infiltrate the new, U.S.-backed Iraqi government.
The case against the 21 companies was initially dismissed in 2020 by a U.S. federal judge in Washington, D.C. Two years ago, however, a three-judge panel from a federal appeals court unanimously voted to reinstate it. Following an unsuccessful effort to undo that ruling, the companies petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in what is essentially now a final attempt to dismiss the lawsuit. The Biden administration has indicated that it supports them in this and is requesting that the federal appeals court decision is overturned.
The administration’s intervention came following a request from the Supreme Court, which noted that a separate, unrelated case from last year had seemingly weakened the plaintiffs’ Anti-Terrorism Act claims. In that case, the Supreme Court had ruled that social media company Twitter – now renamed X – could only be held liable for aiding and abetting terrorism if it was proven that the company had “consciously and culpably” participated in facilitating a terrorist act.
While both Reuters and MSN are carrying this story on their websites, remarkably few other mainstream/legacy media outlets seem to be making any mention of it. At first sight this seems odd, as one would normally assume that the U.S. government siding with pharmaceutical companies accused of funding terrorism in Iraq is newsworthy.
To understand what may be going on here we need to keep in mind that, during the past four years, Joe Biden has repeatedly portrayed himself as an opponent of high drug prices. He has even claimed to have beaten “Big Pharma” and promised that Medicare, the country’s health insurance program for people over the age of 65 and those with disabilities, will now have the power to lower prescription drug prices. While the veracity of these claims is disputed, with initially only 10 drugs named for price negotiation and the cheaper costs not even scheduled to come in until 2026, in the coming election Biden will undoubtedly want to be seen as the president who fought the pharma industry and lowered drug prices.
Could the lack of reporting on Biden defending drug makers against terrorism charges therefore be an attempt not to damage his re-election prospects? This certainly can’t be ruled out. During the last presidential election there was a deliberate attempt to bury a scandal involving a laptop owned by Biden’s son, Hunter. The New York Post has described how the Washington ruling class, including career intelligence officials, the media and Big Tech, plotted well in advance to suppress and discredit the story, solely for the purpose of influencing the election.
This isn’t the first time that the pharma industry has been accused of inflicting terror on people. In an Open Letter published in the New York Times in September 2004, Dr. Matthias Rath outlined how the strategies and tactics employed by the ‘Business with Disease’ are comparable to those of a militant terror organization. Titled ‘From Pharma Fraud to Pharma Terror’, the letter explained how the ‘War on Terror’ and Iraq war were not primarily about fighting ‘terrorism’ or conquering oil fields. Instead, they were part of a long-term strategy employed by pharmaceutical and petrochemical investment groups to create the necessary psychological state of fear to maintain global control.
As growing numbers of people around the world now recognize, the use of this ‘fear’ strategy continues today – the vaccine mandates and other draconian public health policies enforced during the COVID-19 pandemic being among the most recent examples. One of the key features of this strategy is that we can no longer trust the mainstream/legacy media to tell us the truth. As George Orwell is often reported to have said: “Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” Unfortunately, a great many journalists today seem to have forgotten this.