Gerald Bull, and a Great Irony of History

One example of great historic irony relates to the brilliant Canadian weapons designer, Gerald Bull. Until the late 1980’s, Gerald Bull’s success depended upon support from the west’s Military Industrial Complex, namely the Canadian government and US Army, and Bull’s influential supporters, such as the Bronfman family. [Ref: Arms and the Man, Lowther]

Back then Canadian government policies differed somewhat from those of today, because Canada had a strict arms embargo versus Israel. (Which no longer applies. see link https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/24/the-canadian-arms-embargo-on-israel-that-was-not ) Then as now, Israel was enabling weapons sales to unsavoury regimes all over the world and specifically to Botha’s South Africa regime.

The 1963 UN weapons embargo on South Africa by UN Security Council resolution 181 https://southafrica.un.org/en/about/about-the-un#:~:text=7%20August%201963%20%E2%80%94%20The%20Security,mandatory%20on%204%20November%201977 prohibited arms shipments to South Africa, but of course that UN prohibition meant nothing to Israel, which has not complied with any UN resolution ever resolved against it.

At the time Gerald Bull designed and provided effective and long range 155mm artillery shells called Extended Range Full Bore (ERFB) that have been an advanced standard for howitzers for many years. See: https://youtu.be/jB5eMVNYvD8 The Botha regime needed these 155mm shells for its war in Angola and support of Jonas Savimbi versus the Cuban and Soviet supported Angolan government.

On Savimbi from Wikipedia:

“In 1985, with the backing of the Reagan administration and through the lobbying efforts of Paul Manafort and his firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, which was paid $600,000 each year from Savimbi beginning in 1985, Jack Abramoff and other U.S. conservatives organized the Democratic International in Savimbi’s base in Jamba, in Cuando Cubango Province in southeastern Angola. Savimbi was strongly supported by the influential, conservative Heritage Foundation. Heritage foreign policy analyst Michael Johns and other conservatives visited regularly with Savimbi in his clandestine camps in Jamba and provided the rebel leader with ongoing political and military guidance in his war against the Angolan government.“

Let’s go back up to the 1970’s, when the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations overtly supported the UN weapons embargo on South Africa’s minority government, while covertly allowing weapons shipments to continue from third-party rogue “states” such as Israel.

The extreme irony is that while the UN security council imposed arms embargo resolutions versus the apartheid state of South Africa, no such arms embargo was ever imposed versus the apartheid ‘state’ of Israel. And Israel has never seen a weapons-for-profit deal it didn’t like — so long as such weapons do not provide support for Palestine and Palestinians — and Israel was quite pleased to support another apartheid regime similar to its own, namely that of P W Botha.

To support Botha’s war versus Angola underwritten by the CIA and Israel, the Botha regime ordered thousands of 155mm artillery shells from Gerald Bull’s private company, the Space Research Corporation (SRC). Bull’s artillery test, development, and manufacturing facility straddled Canadian and US borders. https://clui.org/ludb/site/highwater-test-range

Canada did not allow weapons exports to Israel, but the US had no such embargo. Gerald Bull could truck large numbers of 155mm shells manufactured in Canada across his ‘private border’ (between Canada and the US) without any export certificate, also because the shell casings were considered “inert” and not an operational artillery round by the Canadian government.

Due to US complicity with Israel in weapons dealing, Bull could then ship 155mm shells to Israel and then cross-shipped to South Africa. Bottom line, after 1977, Israel was shipping large numbers of Canadian-made ERFB 155mm advanced artillery shells to South Africa in violation of the UN arms embargoe.

In brief, during the 1970’s -80’s the apartheid regime of South Africa was denounced publicly worldwide for its minority rule, even though Israel and the west continued to supply weapons covertly to that regime. The irony of the foregoing is astounding when compared to today. Now there is very little effective worldwide governmental opposition to the genocide taking place versus Palestinians in Gaza; and many at the highest levels of power support the brutal and murderous apartheid regime presiding in Tel Aviv.

While history may not repeat it certainly rhymes. Where the Reagan regime and Heritage Foundation gave covert support to Botha’s apartheid South Africa, now the Trump regime outright supports the terror and horror taking place in Gaza. And not just via Israeli use of US weapons versus Palestinians, but also by corrupt US evangelical and CIA contractors in Gaza via the US-backed https://www.facebook.com/CBSEveningNews/videos/gaza-aid-group-investigation/1271039941295546/ Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

As for Gerald Bull the irony is astounding too. In the somewhat more moral world of the 1970’s-80’s the Botha regime was proscribed for what it was – a brutal apartheid state in the pocket of the CIA and Israel. When Gerald Bull’s covert supply of 155mm ERFB artillery shells to South Africa was discovered back then, Bull was fined by the Canadian government for international arms dealing. Bull lost his US and Canadian contracts, at a time when the Reagan regime was covertly supplying the very same weapons to South Africa. https://www.damninteresting.com/project-babylon-gerald-bulls-downfall/

Bull, a committed capitalist, lost his US / Canadian contracts because of the South African weapons scandal, so again ironically moved his operation to another central point for illicit weapons dealing: Belgium. A committed anti-communist and believer in the free market, Bull believed that the offer to work for Iraq in weapons development would assist in combating the ‘Soviet menace’ even though the Soviet Union had collapsed by that time.

By finally working for Saddam in Iraq, Gerald Bull met his fate at the hands of the assassination nation of Israel, which knows no loyalty, no friends, and has no allies – only the promise of partners in crime for shekels. Which of course is the rest of the story…

The true irony? Gerald Bull was publicly condemned for supporting a brutal apartheid regime with weaponry; while today the world’s only ‘super power’ does the same — and is praised for it.

Steve Brown