November, Saturday 16th., 2019
November 14th 2019. Megatons Dropped at Megatons To MegaBucks Trial For Uranium One
November 14th 2019. Megatons Dropped at Megatons To MegaBucks Trial For Uranium One
66,2 χιλ. συνδρομητές
Bill Taylor on Energy Security In Ukraine
https://www.eurotrib.com/story/2019/1...
Would Bill Taylor Give Away Megatons To Make Megawatts Or Keep The Fuel Rods For Kissinger and Rockefeller To Make Megabucks?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaton...
Bayer: A History of Shame
Corporate mergers and cartels have played a central role in Bayer’s history, beginning in 1904, when it joined with the other German giants BASF and AGFA, the largest chemical and film corporations in the world at the time, to form the first chemical cartel, often referred to as Baby Farben. Then, after Germany’s loss in the First World War, and under the leadership of Bayer’s Carl Duisberg, the nation’s entire chemical industry was merged to become IG Farben. It was instantly the world’s largest cartel at the time and the biggest corporation in Europe. IG Farben was also decidedly conservative and opposed the more liberal policies of the Weimar Republic. Instead, large donations from IG Farben corporations went to national conservative parties, and ultimately, to the Nazis.
At Bayer, and other IG Farben laboratories, research and development was carried out on numerous chemical war gases. The inventor of phosgene gas, Fritz Haber of BASF, successfully advocated for its use in World War I. Similarly, Bayer’s Duisberg was personally involved in the development of mustard gas and pushed successfully for its use in WWI, contrary to international law. Moreover, the inventor of sarin and tabun gasses, Gerhard Schrader, was the head of Bayer’s pesticides department after World War II. Sarin was useed against Syrian Sunni rebels, killing an estimated 1,200. And a subsidiary of IG Farben, BASF, supplied Zyklon B (the “final solution” cyanide gas) that was used in the Nazi gas chambers.
IG Farben was a central player in the conquests of the Third Reich. As countries were conquered, IG Farben followed the troops and took over considerable parts of the occupied nations’ chemical, coal and oil industries. The Bayer/IG Farben leadership had all joined the Nazi Party by 1937, playing leading roles in the orchestration of Nazi atrocities. In the war criminal trials in Nuremberg, the IG Farben cartel was also on trial.
“It is undisputed that criminal experiments were undertaken by SS physicians on concentration camp prisoners,” declares a passage from the Nuremberg findings. “These experiments served the express purpose of testing the products of IG Farben.”
These horrific experiments under Nazi directives were known about and approved by the highest echelons of IG Farben, as is documented by Joseph Borkin’s book, The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben. While many were convicted as war criminals in Nuremberg, none of the IG Farben executives served sentences longer than four years. Fritz ter Meer, for example, convicted of plunder, spoliation, slavery and mass murder, became chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bayer in 1956 and held that position until 1964.
In one investigation by the U.S. Senate in 1945, and reported on by Borkin, the Bayer brass on trial asked for sentencing leniency based on the argument that the Auschwitz victims
Following the Allied victory in the Second World War, Bayer was restricted in the production and marketing of its products in the U.S., France, England and other parts of Allied Europe. Moreover, U.S. regulators were attempting to seize Bayer’s chemical plants in the U.S. But in order to hide from its past and continue its corporate hegemony in the U.S.,
Bayer orchestrated a merger with Monsanto in 1954, giving rise to the Mobay Corporation. While Bayer may have been stripped of its coveted aspirin patent and other sales and marketing opportunities as a result of its Nazi collaboration, its newly reconstituted entity—Mobay—allowed them to remain an economic powerhouse in the U.S.
In 1964, however, the U.S. Justice Department had seen enough of the predatory practices of the Mobay Corporation. It filed an antitrust lawsuit against Mobay, and insisted that it be broken up. In 1967, a federal judge ruled in the government’s favor and ordered Monsanto to sell all of its interest—50 percent—in Mobay back to Bayer.
In the years since the breakup, Bayer and Monsanto have unofficially rebounded and worked together to promote Agent Orange in Viet Nam.
While Bayer tries its best to put a soft-focus on its past, referencing its aspirin breakthrough of 1898, but forgetting about its heroin-based children’s cough syrup released about the same time, it is a history that should never be forgotten. It’s a sordid past made possible largely by the result of mergers and acquisitions, where corporate power became so great that it overwhelmed laws and simple human decency. At the very least, it cannot not be allowed to play the fair-haired child in its latest attempts to merge with the ethically challenged Monsanto.
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