During the summer months television frequently offers a number of re-runs, programs that were first shown during the previous fall and winter season. So it was that I caught a re-run of the CBS program '60 minutes' (1) in which a segment dealt with the surprising discovery that US corporations are deeply involved in operations in so-called 'rogue states'. According to US law, doing business with these countries, which include Iran, Syria and Sudan among others is illegal. Correspondent Lesley Stahl of the 60 minutes program argues that such actions by corporations provide funds to rogue regimes which in turn are used to support terrorists that attack Americans. Thus, says Stahl, Americans are being attacked and killed by their own money.

Roger Robinson, who runs a research firm in Washington that monitors companies working in rogue countries has identified almost 400 companies that do business in terrorist-sponsering states. Stahl focussed primarily on three large companies, General Electric, Conoco-Phillips and Haliburton, all of whom exploited a loophole in the law that allows foreign or offshore subsidiaries to do business in rogue nations solong as these are not run by Americans. Of course this is a rule just asking to be violated. Halliburton for instance set up a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands that does business with Iran. When CBS attempted to visit and investigate this facility it turned out to be an office in name only without any employees and any mails directed to this address are forwarded to Haliburton's headquarters in Houston, Texas. So much for abiding by the law and goodbye to the independence of subsidiaries!

The fact that American corporations are violating the laws of their own country should not come as much of a surprise however, even if that means American lives are lost as the result of such actions. The business US corporations did with Hitler Germany before, during and after World War 2 has been well documented and bears remembering in light of the '60-minutes' program revelations. An interesting overview of this is provided on the internet in the Elkhorn Manifesto, part II (2) where a number of prominent individuals and corporations and their actions in the 30's and 40's are identified. The manifesto states "we will review which prominent Americans and corporations were involved, what aid and comfort they gave our nation"s enemies - treasonable offenses during time of war, and investigations into these matters which produced evidence of a US/Nazi corporate conspiracy to bring a fascist state to America, and eliminate competition in the industrial raw materials market in order to force world-wide dependance on oil-based petrochemicals".

Among the individuals and corporations listed are William Randolph Hearst of the Hearst Press empire, who struck a deal with Hitler, signed by Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels that completely changed the editorial policy of Hearst's 19 daily papers and instructed Hearst press correspondents in Germany "to report happenings in Germany in a friendly manner". Hearst was the lord of all the press lords in the United States. The millions who read the Hearst newspapers and magazines and saw Hearst newsreels in the nation's moviehouses had their minds poisoned by Hitler propaganda.

Next on the list are Andrew Mellon and the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA), which by its cartel agreement with I.G. Farben, a company controlled by Hitler, sabotaged the aluminum program of the U.S. air force which had already cost the U.S. "10,000 fighters or 1,665 bombers, according to Congressman Pierce of Oregon speaking in May 1941.

The Elkhorn Manifesto next refers to a book by Charles Higham 'Trading with the Enemy' in which Dupont and General Motors are identified. Du Pont's anti-Semitism "matched that of Hitler" and, in 1933, the Du Ponts "began financing native fascist groups in America . . ." one of which Higham identifies as the American Liberty League: "a Nazi organization whipping up hatred of blacks and Jews," and the "love of Hitler".
As for G.M., in a heavily documented study presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly in February 1974, Bradford C. Snell, an assistant subcommittee counsel, wrote:
"GM's participation in Germany's preparation for war began in 1935. That year its Opel subsidiary cooperated with the Reich in locating a new heavy truck facility at Brandenburg, which military officials advised would be less vulnerable to enemy air attacks. During the succeeding years, GM supplied the Wehrmact with Opel "Blitz" trucks from the Brandenburg complex. For these and other contributions to [the Nazis] wartime preparations, GM's chief executive for overseas operations [James Mooney] was awarded the Order of the German Eagle (first class) by Adolf Hitler".

Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon) was also a collaborator with nazi Germany. Between the 26th and the 28th of March, 1942, Thurman Arnold, Chief of the US Antitrust Division, "produced documents showing that Standard and Farben in Germany had literally carved up the world markets, with oil and chemical monopolies all over the map," according to Higham. Rather than face a criminal trial, Exxon and the indicted executives entered no-contest pleas - the legal equivalent of guilty pleas - and were fined the minor sum of a few thousand dollars which were the maximum(!!) amounts permitted by law.

Henry Ford, writes Higham, "admired Hitler from the beginning, when the future Fuhrer was a struggling and obscure fanatic. He shared with Hitler a fanatical hatred of Jews." As late as 1940, Ford Motor Company "refused to build aircraft engines for England and instead built supplies of the 5-ton military trucks that were the backbone of German army transportation."

Even after Pearl Harbor,International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) was working for the Nazis, reports Higham: "... the German army, navy, and air force contracted with ITT for the manufacture of switchboards, telephones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment, and thirty thousand fuses per month for artillery shells used to kill British and American troops."
ITT also "supplied ingredients for the rocket bombs that fell on London," and other devices as well, without which "it would have been impossible for the German air force to kill American and British troops, for the German army to fight the Allies in Africa, Italy, France, and Germany, for England to have been bombed, or for Allied ships to have been attacked at sea."

Yet another American company identified as an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler Germany is IBM, whose technology
helped make the holocaust possible. And on it goes.
As written on c0balt dot com (3): " For these corporations and individuals this was not simply a matter of having an investment in a German subsidiary. Some of these corporate heads met repeatedly with Hitler and his closest advisors, contributed millions of dollars to help establish the Nazi party and in some cases - such as the Bush and Rockefeller families - continued to channel money and advanced technology to the Nazis even after the US entered WWII".

The foregoing makes it quite obvious that, whatever the laws of America may say with respect to trade relations with enemy nations, corporations will use whatever loopholes are left in these laws (accidentally or purposely) to further their own interests, regardless of whether these interests are in direct conflict with those of the people and indeed the nation. In America today, corporations are in complete collusion with the government and, for all intents and purposes ARE the government. The behaviour of America's corporations during WW II and their admiration for Hitler, coupled with todays' business dealings with terrorist-sponsoring states serves as a dire warning to Americans to take back power in Washington where the government is supposed to be 'of, by and for the people'.

1) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/22/60minutes/main595214.shtml
2) http://www.wealth4freedom.com/Elkhorn2.html
3) http://forum.c0balt.com/viewtopic.php?t=17