The Two-Year Anniversary
This New Year’s Day rings in the two-year anniversary of Mistakes Were NOT Made: An Anthem for Justice, the poem that continues to be referenced daily in our collective efforts to hold the perpetrators of crimes against humanity accountable.
It was Dr. Tess Lawrie’s evocative reading that launched the video series on March 16, 2023, igniting its global viralization by the millions.
I celebrated the one-year anniversary by publishing Dr. Mike Yeadon’s blazing reading last New Year’s Day, appropriate given it was an exchange with Mike that inspired me to write the poem.
Today, I feel privileged to present Vera Sharav’s sobering reading of my poem, which I originally shared as part of her We Can’t Forget speech.
After publishing that speech, I broke out Vera’s reading to produce the standalone video I am sharing today. I scored it with one of my precious Michael’s compositions, “Reverence for Your Own Life,” and exported the video on July 12, 2024—nine days before he died instantly of a heart attack.
I’d used a draft of a composition from several years prior, and Michael wanted to replace the orchestral samples with a newer library and add humanizing articulations, but he never got the opportunity, so I am releasing it in its as-is state.
Vera was one of the first people to express her empathy to me after I lost Michael, telling me in a later phone call, “We’re sisters now.”
The day I published I’ve Lost Half of Me, Vera emailed:
I am so very sorry for your devastating loss... I do truly feel your pain as I have experienced several tragedies and somehow managed to survive. I understand your shock since everything happened so fast.
In my case both with my son, and then my husband -- both had years of debilitating illnesses. And I had to bear witness to the cruel unrelenting slow demise of both mind and body......
Who is to say, which painful loss is worse?
You will survive. Your talent, imagination, and moral determination to make a difference in this world will give you the strength to endure and overcome.
My heart goes out to you
Love,
Vera
I replied:
Your words poured into my heart like gold lacquer into the crevices of a kintsugi vase.
Thank you for your compassionate wisdom, Vera. I know you understand all too agonizingly well what this feels like.
After I published the podcast of Lines to a Future Torturer, she asked if we could have a conversation.
I was grateful for the offer, and we spoke immediately after that. We discussed our respective losses, the grieving process, and the resilience required to survive losing the loves of our lives.
We are both driven by an indomitable mission to defend humanity from propaganda, censorship, tyranny, and democide.
Vera told me that once she found out her name means “truth,” she realized it was her purpose in life to seek out and reveal the truth.
“Truth is what matters,” she told me, “nothing else.”
In her quest for truth, she has discovered some painful realities she is currently writing about in her forthcoming book. While she did not reveal the details of what she has uncovered, I got the sense that it is highly controversial.
“Sometimes you have to be all alone to have people catch up with you,” she said.
“If you go with the truth, you’re not going to be lying, and lies are all over the place,” she told me. “All people, all groups … each one has their angels and their devils, and until you deal with the devils and really, really wipe them out, you’re in danger.”
History has been charred by successive waves of totalitarianism in one permutation or another, and those are the trials that reveal our true character.
“The individuals who maintained their humanity are the most important,” Vera said. “While everything else is going down the drain—those are the ones we have to honor.”
Vera is one of those very individuals, and it is because of her historic stature that she was the first person I envisioned reading Mistakes Were NOT Made when I conceived of the video series shortly after its publication.
Finding a professional filmmaker to meet the high bar established by Mark Lawrie in Tess’s and Mike’s videos proved challenging, but what mattered to me was Vera’s voice, her passionate presence, so when she emailed to let me know she would be recording her reading as part of a speech to be delivered at an event, I felt my original vision was finally coming to fruition.
While sharing her speech, I took the opportunity to write a Profile in Courage on Vera.
For someone with such legendary accomplishments, Vera is surprisingly humble. The following exchanges show the degree to which she was moved not only by my profile but also by your touching responses in the comments and everywhere it was shared.
Select Correspondence
July 9, 2024
VS:
Dear, dear MAA ;)
I won’t forget the time and effort that you took to the “Profile in Courage” ...
Sometimes, you get quick accolades for things that your do... but sometimes you think you are hitting your head against the wall... However, as I do believe you understand, the message is too threatening to acknowledge...
That’s when you know you are on the right target.
If only people would understand that by taking back their God-given right to freedom, we will no longer be threatened !!
I’ll get off my “soap box” before they kick me off
;)
Thank you, dear Margaret Anna
Vera
MAA:
Dearest Vera,
There are a tiny number of people throughout history who have persistently resisted tyranny, defying the propaganda juggernaut, conformity bias, herd mentality, and the cowardly disposition of obedience inculcated into the masses by the public opinion engineers and consent manufacturers.
As I discussed in Letter to a Colluder nearly three years ago, Christopher Browning documented in Ordinary Men how only 12 men out of a battalion of 500 summoned the courage to excuse themselves from committing the Józefów massacre when given the opportunity. These are what Diane Perlman calls Veridos, whom she estimates to be 5 percent of the population.
You are one of those Veridos, and your example of defiant disobedience sparks others to overcome their programming to speak out, to expose corruption, to call out tyranny, and to throw wrenches in the gears of the democidal freight train.
Please don’t ever get off your soapbox—I know you will kick back with all your ferocious might if they do try to kick you off ;-)
Warmest hugs to you,
MAA
July 10, 2024
VS:
Subject: Is this response to your post usual??
Dear Margaret Anna,
I have no idea -- from your perspective and experience -- this adulatory post has had...
I do know that you put your heart in it... and I will never forget that!
Much love, hugs and I think we should meet someday over the rainbow.....
Your friend in the battle to preserve humanity,
Vera
MAA:
Dear Vera,
You are very special, Vera, and my readers know it and appreciate you 💓
…
Much love and hugs back, Vera, and I do look forward to meeting someday over the rainbow, and hopefully sooner via Zoom perhaps …
Warmest gratitude and friendship,
MAA
July 13, 2024
VS:
Subject: Love to you
My dear Margaret Anna,
I don’t know how your truly work of love measures up to what you expected from your heartfelt post.
Yes, heart felt. No one else would have taken the trouble to do the leg work that you did.
I will always be grateful for the interest you are arousing in the issue of Totalitarian blind obedience....
Hugs and gratitude,
Vera
July 14, 2024
MAA:
Dearest Vera,
Your beautiful words and profound gratitude are the very definition of *heartfelt*, Vera. I cherish them; your precious friendship; and your intrepid disobedience in the face of corruption, tyranny, and democide.
Learning more about you and your heroic life was a privilege and inspiration, and I know your example will help galvanize others to join us in the fight to defend freedom, truth, and our very lives from the psychopathic totalitarians.
Sending my warmest love, hugs, and gratitude back to you 🤗
MAA
To Truth & Justice 🥂
I hope you, dear readers, will treasure Vera’s rendering of my anthem as much as I do.
Please use her unflinching reading to continue spreading the message that Mistakes Were NOT Made.
Together, let us shine the light of truth so brightly even the dozing can no longer shut their eyes to it.
As Vera told me a few months ago, “You never know who you reach.”
During a more recent phone call, she said, “This is a point in history where you either stand up or you don’t.”
Thank you for standing up and joining in our battle to preserve humanity 🙌
Bepa
On September 8, 2024, the haunting composition Bepa premiered at the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Written by French composer Luc Le Provost to honor Vera, “Bepa” is the Cyrillic for “Vera.” He composed it specifically to be played on the St. Petersburg carillon, and Olesya Rostovskaya performed the composition at its premiere.
This feels like an appropriately epic way to ring in the new year while celebrating Vera’s courageous example and somber reading of Mistakes Were NOT Made.
Postscript
After I sent a draft of this post to Vera for review, she texted:
Of course you have my permission to publish what I consider the Star Spangled Banner
And I am honored that you asked me to read it❤️❤️
Later, she emailed:
Dear dear Margaret Anna Alice
It occurs to me that your having three names is most appropriate
Inasmuch as you express far more depth and awareness about people and the nature and multi-layers of reality …
Your awareness brings to the forefront important aspects of life.
I am so happy to have you as a dear sensitive friend
Much love
Vera/ Bepa💕
My heart feels so full as I write this on the eve of 2025. Vera is one of the tiny handful of people I admire most in this world. She is more than a friend to me—she is an ally on the frontlines of freedom, she is a fearless advocate for human rights, she is an exemplar of integrity, and she is a beacon of truth. Most of all, she is family to me, and it is one of the great honors of my life to have collaborated with her on this project.
Mistakes Were NOT Made:
An Anthem for Justice
by Margaret Anna Alice
The Armenian Genocide was not a mistake.
Holodomor was not a mistake.
The Final Solution was not a mistake.
The Great Leap Forward was not a mistake.
The Killing Fields were not a mistake.
Name your genocide—it was not a mistake.
That includes the Great Democide of the 2020s.
To imply otherwise is to give Them the out they are seeking.
It was not botched.
It was not bungled.
It was not a blunder.
It was not incompetence.
It was not lack of knowledge.
It was not spontaneous mass hysteria.
The planning occurred in plain sight.
The planning is still occurring in plain sight.
The philanthropaths bought The $cience™.
The modelers projected the lies.
The testers concocted the crisis.
The NGOs leased the academics.
The $cientists fabricated the findings.
The mouthpieces spewed the talking points.
The organizations declared the emergency.
The governments erected the walls.
The departments rewrote the rules.
The governors quashed the rights.
The politicians passed the laws.
The bankers installed the control grid.
The stooges laundered the money.
The DoD placed the orders.
The corporations fulfilled the contracts.
The regulators approved the solution.
The laws shielded the contractors.
The agencies ignored the signals.
The behemoths consolidated the media.
The psychologists crafted the messaging.
The propagandists chanted the slogans.
The fact-chokers smeared the dissidents.
The censors silenced the questioners.
The jackboots stomped the dissenters.
The tyrants summoned.
The puppeteers jerked.
The puppets danced.
The colluders implemented.
The doctors ordered.
The hospitals administered.
The menticiders scripted.
The bamboozled bleated.
The totalitarianized bullied.
The Covidians tattled.
The parents surrendered.
The good citizens believed … and forgot.
This was calculated.
This was formulated.
This was focus-grouped.
This was articulated.
This was manufactured.
This was falsified.
This was coerced.
This was inflicted.
This was denied.
We were terrorized.
We were isolated.
We were gaslit.
We were dehumanized.
We were wounded.
We* were killed.
Don’t let Them get away with it.
Don’t let Them get away with it.
Don’t let Them get away with it.
*Vera read this as “Some of us.”
Video Platforms & Social Media
You will find this video on the following platforms for easy sharing.
YouTube • Rumble • Odysee
Here is my tweet for you to share as we continue to raise awareness that Mistakes Were NOT Made:
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