American Oligarchs and appeasement

[Frances_iom]

just to point out the world has been here before - IBM played a significant role in enabling the Holocaust in the mid 1930s - it would seem that 90years later we are yet again entered into the same depths of unthinking desire for technological dominance - punch cards in the 30's online social media in the current 20's

[Ein Heldenleben]

just to point out the world has been here before - IBM played a significant role in enabling the Holocaust in the mid 1930s - it would seem that 90years later we are yet again entered into the same depths of unthinking desire for technological dominance - punch cards in the 30's online social media in the current 20's

At one point Siemens ran an important part of BBC technology - with a huge 2 billion pound contract .They were much more implicated in the Third Reich than IBM who were suppliers rather than integral. That really stuck in my craw. Just been reading a superb book The Maniac (about Von Neumann one of the pioneers of AI and indeed the H bomb ) . Tech is going to kill off humanity . Something he realised.

[vinteuil]

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... I'm happy to own and drive volkswagen - but I wd never contemplate clothing by boss, suppliers to the reich

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[Ein Heldenleben]

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... I'm happy to own and drive volkswagen - but I wd never contemplate clothing by boss, suppliers to the reich

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Is it a myth that post war the Uk was offered Volkswagen but turned it down ?

[Roger Webb]

Is it a myth that post war the Uk was offered Volkswagen but turned it down ?

Sir William Rootes turned it down as he thought it 'too ugly, and noisy'!

[Frances_iom]

.....They were much more implicated in the Third Reich than IBM who were suppliers rather than integral.....

I think you will find that IBM was much more deeply involved - see the book by Edwin Black "IBM and the Holocaust" published in 2001 - and like von Neumann the German branch managed to survive with many deeply embedded in the Nazi party. There is something about engineers - they seem too ready to be attracted to the technical solution whatever the cost to humanity.

[Ian Thumwood]

I read an interesting comment on a football chatroom which mooted that we are in a post Capitalist age where political control is in the hands of the likes of Gates , Musk, Bezos , etc. It is an interesting thought and struck a chord with me as I am concerned about Musk. It was nice to see the sales of Tesla are in decline in Europe. Just hope that Europe does everything in its power to thwart Musk.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I think you will find that IBM was much more deeply involved - see the book by Edwin Black "IBM and the Holocaust" published in 2001 - and like von Neumann the German branch managed to survive with many deeply embedded in the Nazi party. There is something about engineers - they seem too ready to be attracted to the technical solution whatever the cost to humanity.

Are are thinking of Von Braun who was very much embedded in the Nazi regime? John Von Neumann was one of the greatest mathematicians in history, a Hungarian Jewish refugee who fled the Nazis. In WW2 he worked in the Manhattan project and amongst other things worked out the exact height at which to explode the atom bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also helped develop the H Bomb , Game Theory and was an early AI pioneer.

[Serial_Apologist]

I read an interesting comment on a football chatroom which mooted that we are in a post Capitalist age where political control is in the hands of the likes of Gates , Musk, Bezos , etc. It is an interesting thought and struck a chord with me as I am concerned about Musk. It was nice to see the sales of Tesla are in decline in Europe. Just hope that Europe does everything in its power to thwart Musk.

Whoever thinks that doesn't know a thing about it - what we now have back is the Real Deal - capitalism raw in tooth and claw - no more of your namby-pamby mixed economy levelling up environmentally safeguarding nonsense.

[richardfinegold]

I think you will find that IBM was much more deeply involved - see the book by Edwin Black "IBM and the Holocaust" published in 2001 - and like von Neumann the German branch managed to survive with many deeply embedded in the Nazi party. There is something about engineers - they seem too ready to be attracted to the technical solution whatever the cost to humanity.

Huh? Are you trying to say Werner von Braun? And the origin of the word appeasement I believe are with a certain UK PM who carried an umbrella and cheerfully handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler because he couldn’t be bothered about people from a faraway place of whom he knew nothing, or something to that effect.

[Frances_iom]

yes - senior moment - however my point was that IBM was very keen on the money flowing in from Germany where the tabulating system made by IBM had been pushed by their local distributor which being owned by a senior figure in Nazi party saw a major use in locating Jews by cross tabulating census records + church records to find those who has converted

However recent comments by Trump suggest that either Putin has some financial or other hold over him or that he too is now having significant 'senior moments'

[Petrushka]

However recent comments by Trump suggest that either Putin has some financial or other hold over him or that he too is now having significant 'senior moments'

Both? I've been saying for some time that Trump has dementia/Alzheimers, which i believe runs in his family, and having lost my mother to this dreadful disease, the signs are fairly easy to spot. I wonder how far down the line this will go before the 25th Amendment kicks in. In my view, it should have already done so.

[Maclintick]

However recent comments by Trump suggest that either Putin has some financial or other hold over him or that he too is now having significant 'senior moments'

The multi-award-winning journalist John Sweeney, author of the recently-published Murder in the Gulag -- an account of Putin's murder of Alexei Navalny in Siberia and others here in the UK and elsewhere, including 283 passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH 17 -- thinks it more than plausible that Putin possesses kompromat (= compromising material) on the orange-tinted White House occupant, derived from his stayover in Moscow in Nov 2013, revealed by ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele.

[burning dog]

. There is something about engineers - they seem too ready to be attracted to the technical solution whatever the cost to humanity.

"Something" even more about Doctors, who were very keen to "purify the race" from the early days of Nazism. Nearly half joined the Nazi Party, more of them than any other profession. 45% were party members, compared with 20% of teachers.

[burning dog]

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... I'm happy to own and drive volkswagen - but I wd never contemplate clothing by boss, suppliers to the reich

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They are still behaving badly

https://www.tramatm.com/blog/category/fashion/hugo-boss-trade-mark-challenge-turned-into-pr-nightmare