Moving On-- Always The Wrong Thing To Do With Criminal Elites

Lately there's been another stir about prosecuting Bush Regime war criminals, particularly Cheney, Tenet, Rumsfeld and Bush himself.

A US human rights group has called on foreign governments to prosecute George W Bush and some of his senior officials for war crimes if the Obama administration fails to investigate a growing body of evidence against the former president over the use of torture.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Tuesday that the US authorities were legally obliged to investigate the top echelons of the Bush administration over crimes such as torture, abduction and other mistreatment of prisoners. It says that the former administration's legal team was part of the conspiracy in preparing opinions authorising abuses that they knew to have no standing in US or international law.

It could happen... but it would require a revolution here in America first-- and not the kind of fascist one more likely than the necessary democratic one. Yesterday we saw how-- in the midst of one outrageous revelation after another regarding Rupert Murdoch's fascistic and criminal empire, one of his handmaidens, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, urged Congress to get over it and move along. The same day, writing about the systemic criminality of Murdoch's enterprises, David Carr touched on why it's so important to not just move along in these kinds of cases where the rich, powerful and privileged go astray of the law, usually with impunity (and a knowledge of immunity, should it ever be needed).

In 2006 the state of Minnesota accused News America of engaging in unfair trade practices, and the company settled by agreeing to pay costs and not to falsely disparage its competitors.

In 2009, a federal case in New Jersey brought by a company called Floorgraphics went to trial, accusing News America of, wait for it, hacking its way into Floorgraphics’s password protected computer system.

The complaint summed up the ethos of News America nicely, saying it had “illegally accessed plaintiff’s computer system and obtained proprietary information” and “disseminated false, misleading and malicious information about the plaintiff.”

The complaint stated that the breach was traced to an I.P. address registered to News America and that after the break-in, Floorgraphics lost contracts from Safeway, Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly.

Much of the lawsuit was based on the testimony of Robert Emmel, a former News America executive who had become a whistle-blower. After a few days of testimony, the News Corporation had heard enough. It settled with Floorgraphics for $29.5 million and then, days later, bought it, even though it reportedly had sales of less than $1 million.

But the problems continued, and keeping a lid on News America turned out to be a busy and expensive exercise. At the beginning of this year, it paid out $125 million to Insignia Systems to settle allegations of anticompetitive behavior and violations of antitrust laws. And in the most costly payout, it spent half a billion dollars in 2010 on another settlement, just days before the case was scheduled to go to trial. The plaintiff, Valassis Communications, had already won a $300 million verdict in Michigan, but dropped the lawsuit in exchange for $500 million and an agreement to cooperate on certain ventures going forward.

The News Corporation is a very large, well-capitalized company, but that single payout to Valassis represented one-fifth of the company’s net income in 2010 and matched the earnings of the entire newspaper and information division that News America was a part of.

Because consumers (and journalists) don’t much care who owns the coupon machine in the snack aisle, the cases have not received much attention. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t a useful window into the broader culture at the News Corporation.

News America was led by Paul V. Carlucci, who, according to Forbes, used to show the sales staff the scene in “The Untouchables” in which Al Capone beats a man to death with a baseball bat. Mr. Emmel testified that Mr. Carlucci was clear about the guiding corporate philosophy.

According to Mr. Emmel’s testimony, Mr. Carlucci said that if there were employees uncomfortable with the company’s philosophy-- “bed-wetting liberals in particular was the description he used” Mr. Emmelt testified-- then he could arrange to have those employees “outplaced from the company.”

Clearly, given the size of the payouts, along with the evidence and testimony in the lawsuits, the News Corporation must have known it had another rogue on its hands, one who needed to be dealt with. After all, Mr. Carlucci, who became chairman and chief executive of News America in 1997, had overseen a division that had drawn the scrutiny of government investigators and set off lawsuits that chipped away at the bottom line.

Over the last several months, we've been looking at how letting prominent American fascists who aided the Germans-- families like the DuPonts, Fords, Rockefellers and Bushs, to name just four-- escape without charges, has led to a sense that their crimes were not crimes at all and that their treachery and treason could be repeated. Last night I was reading in The Nazi Hydra In America about how Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Argentina helped dispose of tons of gold looted by the Nazis from their victims, including from the dental work of Jews who were killed in concentration camps. I came across a familiar name, Degussa, a company that was smelting dental gold and that was never punished and has gone on to a career of crimes that is simply breathtaking.

Degussa was a large German firm engaged in metal refining and production of chemicals, including Zyklon-B cyanide tablets used in the gas chambers. The Zyklon-B tablets were produced by Degesch, which was owned by Degussa and IG Farben, a chemical concern that was dissolved after the war. Degussa was also the firm that supplied the uranium for the Nazis' atomic bomb project. Recently, Degussa spoke persons have acknowledged ties between Degussa and I.G. Farben during the war. Much of the information surfacing recently about Degussa comes from a lawsuit filed in New Jersey. Degussa held an exclusive contract with the Nazis for re-smelting items taken from the Jews in the concentration camps, including dental gold. There was so much gold being taken from the victims at Auschwitz that Degussa built a smelter there. According to Oberstrumbannfuhrer Rudoff Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz, the daily yield of gold at the camp was 24 pounds.

More recently, Degussa’s role in nuclear proliferation has been brought to light in the film documentary Stealing the Fire. The filmmakers document the trial of Karl-Heinz Schaab, who was tried for treason in Munich. Schaab is the first person in the world convicted of atomic espionage in an open trial in the last fifty years. He sold top secret documents stolen from Germany to Saddam Hussein, and traveled to Baghdad numerous times to help Iraq build an atomic bomb. Schaab was linked to Degussa and Leybold, a Degussa subsidiary. He received an extremely light sentence upon conviction. He was fined only 100,000 deutsche-marks fine and sentenced to 5 years of probation.

However, there is more than meets the eye to the light sentence handed out to Schaab. After the war, Gernot Zippe, known as the "father of the centrifuge" and an employee of Degussa was of great interest to the militaries of several industrialized nations. Zippe was captured by the Russians, and helped them build their atomic bomb. He was returned to the west in 1956. On his return, the CIA immediately snapped him up to work on US centrifuge technology, which is critical in separating isotopes of uranium. Through a convoluted path, a variant of Zippe’s centrifuge technology was discovered in Iraq in 1996. Due to the murky underworld of arms dealing, Degussa was spared charges of treason, largely due to its connections with American defense contractors, such as Du Pont. Schaab was a convenient fall guy. Iraq’s Scud-b missile technology can be described as 90% German and its atomic technology as 60% German.

Additionally, in 1990 Degussa was fined $800,000 for illegally re-exporting nuclear weapons-related material to North Korea. The firm was also implicated in exporting poisonous gas to Libya. Degussa was also a large contributor to the election campaign of George W. Bush. As early as June 1999, Degussa had contributed $1,950.67 It should be noted that Degussa is a German company contributing to an American election campaign. Today Degussa is a worldwide conglomerate reporting sales of 11.8 trillion Euro dollars. Once again, a corporation associated with the Nazis has advanced unencumbered, since the end of the war. Degussa also represents a corporation that has been so thoroughly corrupted with its past dealings with the Nazis that it is beyond reform. It should be broken up before its dealings can provoke another war. With the rise of fascism globally, the best chance of the fascist, regaining control still lies in provoking another war.