07 February 2010

Letter from Lhasa, number 163. (Vaynerchuk 2009): Crush it!

Letter from Lhasa, number 163. (Vaynerchuk 2009): Crush it!

by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Vaynerchuk, G., Crush it! Why Now Is the Time to Crash In on Your Passion, HarperCollins e-books, 2009.

(Vaynerchuk 2009).

Gary Vaynerchuk

To seem or to live?

“Too many people ignore their DNA, however, to conform to what their families or society expects of them.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 12)

A new era is arisen!

“The Internet makes it possible for anyone to be 100 percent true to themselves and make serious cash by turning what they love most into their personal brand. There no longer has to be a difference between who you are and what you do.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 13)

It is the c.v. or résumé epoch. There is an authentic hyperinflation of c.v.s/résumés and of c.v.s’/résumés’ requests with relative cover letters. “If you want to apply for this job, send us, or personally deliver, your c.v./résumé.” Do you want to know what they do of it and of them? ...It is just a fashion... ...Imitation’s spirit... ...Vain conformism.

“Maybe you think that you have no need to create a personal brand because you like your job or you work for a corporation. What, you think you’re invincible? Even if the economy were soaring, I would be telling you to start using social media tools to share your ideas with the world and make yourself a recognizable brand. What if you’re a trader at an investment firm and suddenly you’re out of work and all you have to show is a bull-crap résumé? Hold it, you might want to reassure me, my résumé is awesome. Tell me this: Is it a pdf of a tidy list of where you’ve worked and for how long, with a couple of strategic bullet points highlighting what you did in each job? Yeah? You’re toast. Keep your pdf so that the HR department has something for their files, but otherwise traditional résumés are going to be irrelevant and soon. Even if they are not yet, that résumé you’re so proud of looks exactly like the ones being waved around by the other three hundred analysts in your city currently hunting for jobs.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 23)

“It’s a fact that hiring decisions are made every day because of personal connections.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 24)

“Any company that clamps down on its best talent and doesn’t allow them to talk to the public is holding that talent back from where the business world is going, and you don’t want to be left behind. Without the freedom to develop a personal brand, you’ll find yourself at a strong disadvantage to the competition that will have been pumping out that content and making a name for themselves.” (Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 27).

If work as a dishwasher, you have not that kind of restrictions... If you work as a part-time dishwasher, you have also a lot of time for working at your talents.

The previous is just a free comment. It is not a critique to the author who is wise and genial. In fact he pertinently continues:

“If you are not happy in your job but you can still build brand equity at work or at home by blogging or creating podcast about what you love, I still want you to plan to leave and launch your own business because life is too short to spend it working in a job you don’t love. I’m not as worried about you, though, as I am about someone who’s happy but not allowed to talk to the public, because as long as you’re creating content and building your brand you’re building future opportunity.

“But if you are not happy at work, and faceless, and have been forbidden to talk about your passion to the world, get the hell out as soon as you can. You’ve got no chance otherwise of creating a personal brand, and without one, you’re professionally dead in the water.

“Look, financial security is important, but if you love sneakers and you know more about them and are more passionate about them than anyone else on the earth, you can make money talking about them. I believe that with every ounce of my soul.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 27-28)

“To monetize your personal brand into a business using social marketing networks, two pillars need to be in place: product and content.

(...)

“Great content is what you’re going to pump into your social media networks to draw eyeballs to your blog. It exists as a result of passion plus expertise, so make sure you can talk about your product like no one else. Do your homework. You should be reading and absorbing every single resource you can find – books, trade journals, newsletters, websites, as well as taking classes and attending lectures and conferences (you’re also going to visit and interact with other people’s blogs on the same subject, but there’s a method to that, which we’ll get to later). You can even make the learning process part of your content.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 29)

“You can monetize your passion, but the level at which you can monetize will be affected by the size of your niche and whether you are able to differentiate yourself enough from the other players in it. There are a lot of pockets out there today, however, that can sustain a nice forty-to-seventy-five-thousand-dollar-a-year-business.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 30-31)

“Today, everybody else can make $40,000 to a million, so long as they can nail the correct combination of their medium and passion. In most of the country, earning midlife figures means you’re living pretty well, often exactly as well as you would were you schlepping into someone else’s office every day. Now though, you’re earning the same money talking about something you are crazy about. It’s a good deal. Take it.

“Know yourself. Choose the right medium, choose the right topic, create awesome content, and you can make a lot of money being happy.

“You’re going to work your content in two ways. The first is as a lure, creating it, posting it, allowing people to come to you as they discover it. The second is to use it as a lasso through comments on other people’s content that relates to yours, inserting yourself into existing conversations and actively creating reasons for your audience to come to you. Of course, you have to give people a place to find your killer content, so let’s go there next.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 31-32)

“So you’ve got a killer product or service and content, now you’re going to deliver your message via a blog. In the online world, you’ve got three formats to choose from, though some people might do a combination: video, audio, or written word.

[...]

“This step in building your business is once again all about working with your DNA. To my mind the most effective content medium is video, and that’s the one I prefer to focus on. It’s just easier to grab people’s attention and draw them in, especially a public who reads less and less. ”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 33)

“(...) Wordpress and Tumblr are the best and most popular blogging platforms currently available. There are others of course – Blogger and Six Apart products are good (and there is smoke at Six Apart, so by the time this book comes out they may be in the game) – but these are two that I have used and liked.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 35)

The book goes on with other information and suggestions. The basic message is always the same. It is not at all banal and easy. You must be or become the best. Authentic and the best.

“If you want to dominate the social media game, all of your effort has to come from the heart; and it can’t come from the heart in the passionate, irrational, wholehearted way it needs to if you’re trying to be anyone but yourself. Authenticity is what will make it possible for you to put in the kind of hustle necessary to crush it.

[...]

“I’ve said over and over that if you live your passion and work the social networking tools to the max, opportunities to monetize will present themselves. I’ve also said that in order to crush it you have to be sure your content is the best in its category. You can still make plenty of good money if you are the best in a category, or ninth nest, but if you really want to dominate the competition and make big bucks, you’ve got to the best. Do that, be that, and none will be able to touch you.

“With one exception. Someone with less passion and talent and poorer content can totally beat you if they’re willing to work longer and harder than you are. Hustle is it. Without it, you should just pack up your toys and go home.

“Now, I’m betting that most people who pick up this book consider themselves hard workers. Many are probably just sick of the killer hours and inflexible schedules and demanding bosses often found in the corporate world and think entrepreneurship will somehow be less taxing. I hate to disappoint, but if you’re looking for an easier time here, you’re barking up the wrong tree. There might be a little more flexibility to your day should you be at liberty to devote yourself full-time to building your personal brand, but otherwise, assuming you’re doing this right, you’ll be bleeding out of your eyeballs at your computer. You might have thought your old boss was bad, but if you want your business to go anywhere, your new boss had better be a slave driver.

“Too many people don’t want to swallow the pill of working every day, every chance they get. If you’re making money through social media, you don’t get to work for three hours and then play Nintendo for the rest of the evening. That’s lip service to hard work. No one makes a million dollars with minimal effort unless they win the lottery.”

(Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 49)

According to the author, to build your personal brand needs time. Consequently, you need patience (Vaynerchuk 2009, p. 50). Naturally, the author founds its evaluations on his experience in the wine sector.

One has to create a community. What may be a complex, not an impossible anyway, matter.

Be adaptive!

If you jump to, or just you reach, page 72, you’ll find “a checklist of all steps you want to take as you build your personal brand.”

Vaynerchuk, G., Crush it! Why Now Is the Time to Crash In on Your Passion, Mc Graw Hill, 2009.

06 February 2010

Letter from Lhasa, number 162. (Stein 2010): Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job

Letter from Lhasa, number 162. (Stein 2010): Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job

by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Stein, M., Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job, Mc Graw Hill, 2010.

(Stein 2010).

Marky Stein

The first step is the résumé. Each advertised job produces hundred of applications. How to get an interview? Psychology...

Résumé psychology is the study and practice of using words in a prescribed document (your résumé) to get a reader to

“1. Feel something

“2. Think something

“3. Do something”

(Stein 2010, p. 17)

“Here is a list of the things that almost every employer either wants to have or wants to avoid. All of these things, at the bottom line, affect his ingrained sense of survival.

“WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR READER?

“• Greater profits

“• Less waste of time, labor, money, and materials

“• A cleaner, better organized, and safer workplace

“• Better employee morale and commitment

“• Improved recruiting, hiring, and employee retention

“• Sturdier and more innovative technologies, machines, and instruments

“• Recording and storing detailed and accurate information

“• Keeping customers and clients happy

“• Greater marketability and sales appeal for her products

“• Better public perception of her company and its services and goods”

(Stein 2010, p. 20-21)

The first sentence captures, or does not, your perspective employer.

Probably, if you follow the advices of this book, your résumé will be too long, so not read. A résumé is not an autobiography.

Anyway, if you are called, there is the interview. Avoid the imposter syndrome, even if it may happen that you be, in part, an imposter. Whatever exaggeration or not truthful claim makes you in some way an imposter. However, if you are too modest, others will get “your” job. Certainly, you must be able to do the job you’ll be hired for. Perhaps, frequently, the ability to get a job combines with the inability to do the job. In certain categories of jobs, it may be that those who appear are preferred to who can do. In other jobs, if you cannot do what you have been hired for, you’ll be immediately fired. To be an imposter may be essential for certain jobs, while absolutely to be avoided for other jobs. So, got the job, it is irrelevant if you are not really able to do it.

At the interview, you have to say what the interviewer would like to listen for the job the company is hiring and you have applied.

Chapter 3, Q Statements: Your Secret Weapons, opens with one of the usual “historical” mottos there are in this book: “Each of us has some unique capability, waiting for realization. – George H. Bender”

“A Q statement is a sentence (or group of sentences) that expresses a numerical measurement of some action or accomplishment you have performed. It is quantitative. A Q statement is not vague; it’s exact. For example, rather than saying you “increased productivity,” using a Q statement, you would say that you “increased productivity by 25 percent.”

(Stein 2010, p. 191)

You have to show some astonishing, quantifiable, result. If you were and are so good, why are you looking for a job? Ah, and you have to show that you are dependable (Stein 2010, p. 202-203).

The next chapter tells that you have to discover what kind of company you are applying for and, consequently, to target your skills to the company’s needs. The book evidently supposes that you are applying for a big organisation.

...Usual banalities... ...Everything very conventional... :

“There are three sources of information a prospective employer can use to judge the character of a job applicant:

“1. What the applicant says himself or herself, either in the résumé or the interview

“2. What others say about the applicant in letters of recommendation and references

“3. The applicant’s own actions, which is an area an employer will know the least about until an applicant is actually hired

“Naturally, the employer wants to know as much information as possible about you before making an investment in hiring you. A new hire, no matter how adept he or she is, usually means an initial loss of money for an employer while the person is being trained and getting “up to speed.” It’s usually months before the new employer starts to make his or her return on the investment in hiring someone.”

(Stein 2010, p. 222)

If you are applying for a janitorial job or if you are a genius hired as a genius and for being immediately productive, perhaps they will [the company] want you immediately productive and they will fire you if you are not such. Big companies, making “long term investments” in a new employee, more than geniuses want people of average stupidity and conformism, eventually with some specific technical skill, if indispensable for the specific job. Geniuses are not liked from big companies, as well as from small or medium ones. They would destabilise the current going on of the company life.

When you apply for a job and have to present yourself, to create a specific you, you may seem underqualified but you may also seem overqualified. If you seem overqualified, you’ll not be hired because you’ll be perceived as a destabilising factor or as somebody will rapidly leave. Even for an irrelevant job, the boss wants to control your life and not feel as he/she were at the mercy of your eventual caprices.

...suggestions for a fearless interview.

60% of the interviewers are not qualified for their job, so you have to put your interviewer at ease. (Stein 2010, p. 232)

And if your interviewer is qualified? If he/she is not, how he/she is? ...You may not really know...

...Anyway, your life is yours... If you have some “monopolistic” skill you can play better than if you have to invent something in the image world. To build an image is easier, if there is some substance to build over.

However, this would be useless according to who theorises that only the average idiot can have good jobs. In such a case, you have to show you are the best average idiot.

Stein, M., Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job, Mc Graw Hill, 2010.

05 February 2010

Letter from Lhasa, number 161. (Burton 2006): Building Confidence

Letter from Lhasa, number 161. (Burton 2006): Building Confidence

by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Burton, K., and B. Platts, Building Confidence for Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK, 2006.

(Burton 2006).

Kate Burton,

Brinley Platts

This kind of books is less banal, or perhaps more banal, than one may suppose. The first obvious question, although one may suppose be useless, is why one should be confident. It may be, somebody will write, or somebody have already written, a work on the advantages of being unconfident.

The authors give, in the first lines, a utilitarian answer: “Confidence is one of those odd things in life that turn out to be surprisingly difficult to tie down (beauty and quality belong to this strange group too). You may think you know what it is, and you may feel certain that you can recognise it when you see it, but you may struggle to define exactly what ‘it’ is. Confidence is an everyday experience, something you have quite often, except on those all important occasions when it seems to leave you and you could really use more of it – whatever ‘it’ is.” (Burton 2006, p. 001)

They tell that you must have it when you need it, although frequently you have not it ...precisely when you should have it. This is why some people write this kind of books and other people, evidently, read, or anyway buy, such works.

The formal definition of confidence is: “At its heart, confidence is the ability to take appropriate and effective action in any situation, however challenging it appears to you or others.” (Burton 2006, p. 010)

...usual lists of “advices” reassuring the readers in their unconfidence...

Self-confidence needs resilience. Resilience needs that one know who and what one is. The need of recognition, for example, is for non-confident people.

Clearly, who writes and sells this kind of books needs to fill some hundred pages of good advices. If they are too may, they are practically useless. Here, they are too many.

Perhaps, an unconfident person should simply work out at the annihilation, or at least at the neutralization, of one’s own personality. Perhaps, only later, one could try building something else. How and how? One should find one’s own way of destruction and one’s own way of new construction. Not of re-construction. Simply, of a new, different, construction of oneself.

Does it worth? ...Who can know? Sometimes, the best thing to do is to do nothing. Other times, the best thing to do is to do something or everything.

Burton, K., and B. Platts, Building Confidence for Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK, 2006.

Letter from Lhasa, number 160. (Black 2001): IBM and the Holocaust

Letter from Lhasa, number 160. (Black 2001): IBM and the Holocaust

by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Black, E., IBM and the Holocaust. The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, Three Rivers Press, New York, NY, U.S.A., 2001.

(Black 2001).

Edwin Black

An historical research. Nothing astonishing. Companies are created for doing businesses and profits. In peace and in war. If one sells machines, one does not worry about their ethical or unethical use. It is the same if one produces or sells food. A body is fed. That body may be used for ethical or unethical purposes.

You sell food. One buys and eats it, and later commits crimes. You sell machines. One buys and uses them, and later commits crimes.

One sells on a certain market, one sells to the “x regime”. One sells merchandises, one is accomplice of a certain “regime” crimes, according to this book.

It is true, but it is false. If you sell shoes, should you enquire whether the customer will use those shoes for or while committing a crime or an unethical action?

Historical research mixes with ideology, here. One sells merchandises, one become allies with a “regime”, here.

IBM just sold machines and technology to whoever wanted to be its customer as whatever other enterprises did and does. If one wanted discuss about ethics by this odd methodology, others would be accomplices of genocides too.

IBM sold machines. One of its customers was Germany. IBM machines were used also in the persecution and genocide, or partial genocide, of Jews. Other companies did the same. The bombers, and the “governments”/States managed them, which carefully avoided the extermination machine, while devastating the whole Europe (but not the extermination machine) were decidedly more active accomplices of the Jews’ extermination. Allied governments were informed of what was happening. They did nothing. Zionist military cooperated with such governments. They fought against Germany while letting German freely exterminating, in many areas irreversibly, the European Jewry. Somebody in charge evidently thought, and many others agreed, that the irreversible extermination of the Jews’ settlements was the precondition for the creation of Israel as centre of the world Jewry. Diaspora Judaism and their language, Yiddish, were destroyed and let to be destroyed.

IBM, as whoever else, simply sold merchandises to whoever bought them.

IBM was created from personages currently using typical Anglophone mafia methods. However, this was absolutely common in American businesses.

IBM technology and machines were so deeply involved in various aspects of the German military and civilian life, included the racial classification of the German population, and even inside concentration-extermination camps, that it is evident that the U.S. government was carefully and timely informed on all the aspects of racial persecutions and extermination in Germany. Consequently, the U.S. government was fully responsible not only for the cover-up of the racial exterminations but even for the same “Nazi” [German and Austrian] racial exterminations.

The U.S. government, as well as the U.K. government, was fully informed and fully accomplice. It may have even been a co-promoter. Without the destruction of Central- and East-European Jewry, it would have been more complicate to create Israel. Actually, no justification was necessary for reaching Palestine and creating Jewish settlements. However, States and entities wanting to be States have generally paranoid visions of reality. Perhaps, somebody thought that a “Nazi” mega-massacre, with connected demolition of the Jewish settlements in Central- and East-Europe, would have been indispensable for creating Israel. Even with the “Nazi” mega-massacre and the demolition of the Jewish settlements in Europe, the large majority of European Jews preferred NOT to emigrate to Israel. Human beings are adaptive. It was easier and more comfortable to reach the already developed world, also because the British fought any illegal immigration in Palestine.

First step was the 16 June 1933 census, with U.S. technology for rapidly collecting and processing the collected information.

“Boycott and protest movements were ardently trying to crush Hitlerism by stopping Germany’s exports. Although a network of Jewish and non-sectarian anti-Nazi leagues and bodies struggled to organize comprehensive lists of companies doing business with Germany, from importers of German toys and shoes to sellers of German porcelain and pharmaceuticals, yet IBM and Watson were not identified. Neither the company nor its president even appeared in any of thousand of hectic phone book entries or handwritten index card files of the leading national and regional boycott bodies. Anti-Nazi agitators just did not understand the dynamic of corporate multi-nationalism.

“Moreover, IBM was not importing German merchandises, it was exporting machinery. In fact, even exports dwindled as soon as the new plant in Berlin was erected, leaving less of a paper trail. So a measure of invisibility was assured in 1933.”

(Black 2001, p. 69)

The justifications and the apparent naïveté of the authors are risible. The U.S. Secret Police bureaux, and its “Zionist” allies, which had the control of such “boycott” movements, did not want to disrupt the persecution and liquidation of European Jewry. They were helping Nazism also in that. Boycott movements were a classical warmongers’ operation. They had the function to hysterize the U.S. population for militarist purposes, not to stop Nazi crimes. So they had had to protect and save real businesses with Germany. Since IBM was cooperating with German crimes, it would have been sufficient a U.S. government intervention for stopping it, what did not happen, although the U.S. government was perfectly informed of everything.

IBM was in full harmony with the U.S. government: “Watson donated large sums to the Roosevelt campaign. Roosevelt’s election over Hoover was a landslide. Watson now had entrée to the White House itself.” (Black 2001, p. 71). IBM policies were not in harmony with the US government, even with its supposed progressive side? They were.

“Soon, Roosevelt came to rely on Watson for advice. White House staffers would occasionally ask for Watson’s schedule in case the President needed to contact him quickly. Watson visited Hyde Park for tea several times and even stayed overnight at the White House. Eventually, Roosevelt offered to appoint Watson Secretary of Commerce or Ambassador to England. But Watson declined to leave IBM.”

(Black 2001, p. 71)

“When Germany wanted to identify the Jews by name, IBM showed them how. When Germany wanted to use that information to launch programs of social expulsion and expropriation, IBM provided the technologic wherewithal. When the trains needed to run on time, from city to city or between concentration camps, IBM offered that solution as well. Ultimately, there was no solution IBM would not devise for a Reich willing to pay for service rendered. One solution led to another. No solution was out of the question.”

(Black 2001, p. 73-74)

Anyway, classification techniques are practiced everywhere and their outcomes may be of whatever kind. The author seem to have suddenly discovered classification techniques, that they are the foundation of whatever mass and organized discrimination, and that they me be used also for whatever crime.

Punch cards were only precursors of contemporary files or database entries in computers, or, perhaps more properly, of barcodes. They permitted to store information is a limited space, in a standardized way and so processable from machines.

This is, again, the same Watson, IBM’s boss, and supporter of Roosevelt and supported from him: “Speaking at both IBM and ICC events, Watson regularly pleaded for “an equitable redistribution of natural resources,” and expressed his support for a rearmed Germany. He voiced his oft-quoted opinions at a time when the Reich was daily violating the Versailles Treaty by rebuilding its war machine, and threatening to invade neighboring regions to acquire the very natural resources it felt it deserved.” (Black 2001, p. 128-129)

Obviously, this Roosevelt friend was not only in good relation with Germany: “IBM had been cultivating a thriving business in Japan, helping that nation develop its air force and aircraft carriers.” (Black 2001, p. 132)

“(...) In 1937, the Reich ordered another nationwide census that would prepare the country for military mobilization, and for the Jews would be finally and decisive identification step. Dehomag eagerly agree to organize the project.

“The racial portion of the census was designed to pinpoint ancestral Jews as defined by the Nuremberg Laws, ensuring no escape from the Reich’s anti-Semitic campaign. In addition to the usual census questions, a special card asked whether any of the individual’s grandparents was Jewish. When completely filled out, the card would be isolated in a separate envelope for processing by both the census authorities and security offices.

“The project, originally scheduled for May 1938, would be an enormous undertaking for IBM, requiring a huge expansion of manpower, machinery and processing space. Seventy sorters, some sixty tabulators, seventy-six multipliers, and 90 million punch cards would be needed for the RM 3.5 million contract. IBM supervisors in Geneva, Stockholm, and New York understood how difficult the challenge would be.”

(Black 2001, p. 139)

The book refers of that actually IBM had already done the same job in the not yet annexed Austria. In fact, “With stunning precision, the Nazis knew exactly who in Austria was Jewish.” (Black 2001, p. 141)

Actually, when, during WWII, American citizens were put in concentration camps because of enemy races, the crime [against humanity] should have had IBM cooperation. ...If it sold technology usable also for such purposes... Whatever technology may be used for good and bad goals at the same time.

After Kristallnacht the Watson and IBM attitude changed, for what concerns their public image. Businesses are businesses. They continued. Contracts are contracts. Only government/State interventions may stop and break, or even only suspend, them.

“On May 17, 1939, Germany was swept by 750,000 census takers, mainly volunteers. They missed virtually no one in the Greater Reich’s 22 million households, 3.5 million farmhouses, 5.5 million shops and factories. Teams of five to eight census takers fanned out through the big cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Vienna. Towns and villages were divided into districts of thirty homes with one census taker assigned to each. Some 80 million citizens in the Greater Reich, including Germany, Austria, the Sudetenland, and the Saar, would be classed according to their ancestry.”

(Black 2001, p. 169)

“IBM” filing extended to whatever field, in Germany, actually also in Germany. Clearly, the German’s expansion, and later the war with further expansion and administrative duties, extended the IT needs also in Germany as elsewhere.

Not all the work was deployed using IT. Jewish elites were actively involved in the eradication of the Central- and East-European Jewry. In Poland, for example, “First, as instructed by Heydrich, Nazi forces created Judenräte, that is, Jewish Councils, across the country.” (Black 2001, p. 187). These collaborationist entities, first, as in Warsaw, had the duty of “Statistics, registration, and census” of all the Jews under their area of jurisdiction.

IBM was doing businesses, with the agreement of the U.S. government. Here, there was an active cooperation of Jewish elites, and other Jews (there were also Jewish [collaborationist] police etc), to the self-massacre. C’est la vie! It happened and it happens...

At the end of page 199 there is a wrong assertion. The Italian government did not participate to the Jews’ extermination.

See: Steinberg, K. W., All or Nothing. The Axis and the Holocaust 1941-43, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

Jews were legally discriminated in Italy. However, there was an absolute aversion of the same Mussolini to cooperate with Germany in any assassination or deportation of Jews. Areas under Italian jurisdiction were safe areas for Jews. Mussolini always refused to cooperate with Germany on this matter. This is valid until 8 September 1943. Later, Italy was in part occupied from the Allied and in part from Germany. The RSI, the “Mussolini”’s Republic, was tightly dependent from Germany, so Germany could do what it wanted also relatively to Jews and also with cooperation of Italians of the RSI. After 8 September 1943, Germans were the real government, not the RSI government.

(Steinberg 2002) invents a “generals’ and diplomats’ conspiracy” for a case in which Mussolini formally agreed to very insistent German requests to have delivered a group of Jews in Croatia for extermination. What actually happened was easier. In the sole case Mussolini formally agreed to deliver a group a Jew, he agreed only in front of Germans. Written the order to deliver that group of Jews, Mussolini called the general responsible of delivering or not delivering that Jews and ordered him not to comply with his formal order to deliver such Jews. A more than reluctant Mussolini finally signed that order and called the general for informally ordering him to invent excuses for never delivering that group of Jews. There was no “generals’ and diplomats’ conspiracy”. Italians are not less barbaric, conformist, idiotic, racist, coward and anti-Semitic than Germans, Anglophones, Russians or others. Simply, there was NOT the “government”-Mussolini agreement with the extermination of Jews. Psychotics and criminals need to feel covered. Relatively to the Jews’ extermination, they were not covered from the Italian-“government”.

An historical curiosity: elements of a post-8 September 1943 Italian “nazi-fascist” [actually they were nationalist who refused the monarchic betrayal of Germany] military, specifically, the X MAS [not specifically of the RSI because they, the X MAS, had a direct “contract” with the German military (signed in La Spezia, in the same days of the 8 September 1943 monarchist betrayal), although they were, later, in same way also inside the legal frame of the RSI], trained commandos of the Israeli military navy, so they helped the consolidation of the just created Israeli State. Other historical casual event, the same La Spezia will become, in 1946, the “door to Zion”. It was not the only one, probably. However, it was called in that way in Zionist milieus.

“In November 1939, the New York Times published reports from Paris declaring that 1.5 million Jews trapped in Poland were in danger of starving to death. On January 21, 1940, World Jewish Congress Chairman Nahum Goldman warned a Chicago crowd of 1,000 as well as wire service reporters, that if the war continued for another year 1 million Polish Jews would die of calculated starvation or outright murder.”

(Black 2001, p. 200)

Naturally, IBM worked for whatever side, not only and not overall for Germany. IBM worked for everybody, for whatever government/State needed its services and nearly everybody needed its services and if there was not the opposition of the U.S. government. At page 203, the book quotes an ever-escalating volume of punched card equipment’s orders, since summer 1939, from the War Ministries of Yugoslavia, Rumania, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Holland and France.

A U.S. company, in the IT sector, also other ones, with worldwide extension is a complex and complete networks perfect for being used from intelligence_services-secret_police_services. IBM was certainly used, for this kind of purposes, from the U.S. ones. A network used in one direction may be used also in other ones. A business network is one of the best covers for espionage. The USA, also the British, used it against their enemies. Their enemies used or tried to use it against them.

Governments/States are always in communication, in touch, even during wars and even when they declare that they are fighting only until the complete destruction of their enemy or enemies. They communicate through frank lands, as Switzerland or other ones, as well as they communicate through businessmen and businesswomen appreciated from the various sides and who may freely travel even during wars. Who spies knows that is spied. Who spies does not worry being spied. Other ones play the game of fighting against spies. It is everything a game, a paranoid game, where the only really fucked are the common people paying the costs of wars, fighting, “politics” and other deliria. “Politicians” and “Statesmen” play and, occasionally, they are assassinated from somebody more perverted than them.

“At the end of May 1940, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover became interested in IBM’s Nazi connections. Suspecting the company of hosting a hotbed of Nazi agitation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in late May, launched wide-ranging investigations on at least four German nationals employed by IBM and suspected of espionage or other subversive conduct. Although no charges were ever brought, more probes would follow and they would continue for years. Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle became the State Department’s point man for espionage concerns at IBM. Berle and Hoover began to regularly trade information on the suspected spies at IBM. In short order, federal agents and local police intelligence officers were dispatched to IBM offices in Manhattan, Endicott, Albany, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee asking probative questions.”

(Black 2001, p. 214-215)

If “no charges were ever brought”, that means that they were operations for recruiting informers and spies and, evidently, all the contacted people accepted to be recruited.

On 6 June 1940, “Watson returned the medal Hitler had personally granted – and he chose to return it publicly via the media.” (Black 2001, p. 217)

“Watson’s monopoly could be replaced – but it would take years. Even if the Reich confiscated every IBM printing plant in Nazi-dominated Europe, and seized every machine, within months the cards and spare parts would run out. The whole data system would quickly grind to a halt. As it stood in summer 1941, the IBM enterprise in Nazi Germany was hardly a stand-alone operation; it depended upon the global financial, technical, and material support of IBM NY and its seventy worldwide subsidiaries. Watson controlled all of it.

“Without punch card technology, Nazi Germany would be completely incapable of even a fraction of the automation it had taken for granted. Returning to manual methods was unthinkable.”

(Black 2001, p. 224-225)

“Of course, IBM was not alone in its lucrative dealings with the Third Reich. Many American companies in the armament, financial, and service arena refused to walk away from the extraordinary profits obtainable from trading with a pariah state such as Nazi Germany.”

(Black 2001, p. 232)

“Watson understood that unless he came to an accommodation with Germany, Dehomag was only the beginning. IBM operated profitable Dehomag-dominated subsidiaries in Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Romania, France, Sweden, and indeed almost everywhere in Europe. All of them could be targeted. ”

(Black 2001, p. 233)

“(...) During any war, Germany expected its commercial enterprises in America to be safeguarded, managed properly by a trustee, and then returned intact when the conflict ended. In the same spirit, the Third Reich would in turn safeguard, manage diligently, and return American enterprises. Germany’s well developed alien custody laws were still in effect. So while Nazi Germany was voraciously plundering and pillaging the width and breadth of Europe, a profound different set of rules would apply to IBM and other “enemy property” seized in any of those occupied countries.”

(Black 2001, p. 234)

“For IBM, war would ironically be more advantageous than existing peace.

“Under the current state of affairs, IBM’s assets were blocked in Germany until the conflict was over. Under an enemy custodian, those same marks would still be blocked – again until any war was over.”

(Black 2001, p. 235)

At the same time, the IBM or para-IBM companies of the Nazis area would have been indirectly supported from the central IBM.

“The corporate haze would last for decades. With all the European intermediaries, ownerships nominees, corporate intrigues, belligerent German managers, and Nazi custodians, it would be impossible to reliably point a finger at the New York office.”

(Black 2001, p. )

“(...) Incriminating dealings with Nazis did surface from time to time as frustrated war-besieged subsidiary managers would invariably become too specific in the cables to New York. These communications were discarded, however, and if necessary disowned by IBM NY. By placing itself in the dark, IBM could truly forever truthfully declare it made millions during the war without knowing the specifics. .”

(Black 2001, p. 237)

September 1941:

“As America advanced toward the moment it would enter the war, the Roosevelt Administration had recently espoused General Ruling 11, an emergency regulation forbidding any financial transaction with Nazi Germany without a special Treasury Department license involving written justifications. Even certain corporate instructions of a financial nature were subject to the rule. This was something completely new to contend with in IBM’s Nazi alliance. IBM would now be required to seek a complicated, bureaucratic approval for each financial instruction it ordered for its overseas subsidiaries under Nazi control. General ruling 11 would not affect subsidiaries in neutral countries, such as Sweden or Switzerland. Even still, it would severely hamper all communications with Dehomag itself, and open a government window into many of IBM’s complex transactions.”

(Black 2001, p. 284)

Naturally, IBM acted in defence of its interests, in the German case, then, by some financial engineering.

“Four days later, Pearl Harbour was bombed. The U.S. finally joined the war against Germany. Dehomag and all Watson subsidiaries under Reich control would now be managed by Nazi-appointed trustees. IBM Europe was saved.”

(Black 2001, p. 291)

Where technology was used as in Holland, the identification of racial Jews proceeded efficiently. Where is could not be used, or rapidly used, as in France, human stupidity helped Germans.

May 1941.

“With Carmille’s tabulations not yet ready, the Germans, in essence, relied on the Jews to turn themselves in. The results yielded only half what the Nazis had hoped for. On the appointed day, May 14, 1941, an estimated 3,400 to 3,700 Jews, mainly of Polish origin, did report as requested. They were immediately sent to camps.”

(Black 2001, p. 324-324)

Chaotic raids permitted to arrest other Jews in France, but the system was not very efficient, neither efficacious. Collaborationism helped Germans, while first rank Gaullist agents sabotaged the identification of Jews. Actually, as usually in history, the best collaborationists were the same Judaic official organisations, de facto the Jewish aristocracy, Rabbis and their ruffians.

“German officials began turning to the French Jewish Council for names. The Union Générale des Israélites en France, the so-called UGIF, became a prime source for the Gestapo. The UGIF was vested with the sole authority for all Jewish welfare and any other communication between the Jews in Occupied France and the German authorities. Therefore, Jews invariably came to the UGIF offices to sign up for welfare services and submit inquires about interned loved ones. French Jews even paid special communal assessments to the UGIF. The Germans granted the UGIF unprecedented access to all Vichy census lists and allowed the organization to manually update them. There were then turned over to the Nazis by the UGIF. In fact, the UGIF maintained a whole department for providing lists to the authorities. They called it Service 14.”

[...]

“(...) The UGIF’s efforts to comply with German demands for continually updated names could only be described as relentless.”

(Black 2001, p. 326)

The UGIF tried to identify and localise displaced Jewish children for passing the information to the Nazis charged of the anti-Jewish ethnic cleansing. It even imposed a special tax for making the Jews paying for their same liquidation.

“Later, when the UGIF tried to impose a special head tax to finance a new UGIF census, the underground press condemned it in no uncertain words.”

(Black 2001, p. 326)

“NOTICE FROM THE JEWISH UNDERGROUND

“(...)

“Boycott the new census! Do not give a penny to the UGIF!

“Not a penny to the Germans!”

(Black 2001, p. 326)

René Carmille was comptroller general of the French Army. He had been working for the French counter-intelligence since 1911. Under German occupation he had centralised in his hands also the card files of Jews. The lists of Jews in his hand were never tabulated and never given to Germans. He was finally arrested on 3 February 1944. On 25 January 1945, he died in Dachau.

“The documents also support Robert Carmille’s chronology that his father’s service took pains not to extend the professional census to the occupied zone, thereby denying the Reich information it needed to complete its plan to organize slave labor in France. This instruction was reversed once the elder Carmille was discovered and taken to Dachau. But by then it was too late to materially undo Carmille’s sabotage.”

(Black 2001, p. 433-434)

At page 331, one may find another confirmation that British agents sent detailed reports also about the deportation of Jews to “death camps”. (Black 2001, p. 331)

“Holland had Lentz. France had Carmille. Holland had a well-entrenched Hollerith infrastructure. France’s punch card infrastructure was in complete disarray.

“The final numbers:

“Of the estimated 140,000 Dutch Jews, more than 107,000 were deported, and of those 102,000 were murdered – a death ratio of approximately 73 percent.

“Of an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 Jews living in France, both zones, about 85,000 were deported – of these barely 3,000 survived. The death ratio in France was approximately 25 percent.”

(Black 2001, p. 332)

Here, the author forgets that the Jews in the Italian-controlled area of France were safe until 8 September 1943. After 8 September 1943, the German armies were not so strong than at the times of the initial occupation of France, so they could deploy less energy also to the identification and deportation of French Jews.

Anyway, IBM cooperated with racial discrimination programs everywhere in the world included inside the USA. During WWII, the U.S. government put in concentration camps the Americans of Japanese origins. (Black 2001) refers, in same way, about that.

“Germany had forced Jews to help to organize their own annihilation by establishing Judenräte, that is, Jewish councils. These councils were generally comprised not of communal leaders, but of arbitrary elected Jewish personalities, frequently engineers.”

(Black 2001, p. 372)

They could successfully go on in their destructive para-Nazi work because they had the support of the communal ruling classes.

“Quickly it became apparent to the men of the Judenräte that they were not conducing census and other statistical duties for the purpose of survival under a brutish occupation, or evacuation to less crowded settlements – but for organized extermination. In essence, these men were metering their own deaths in cadence to the overall Nazi timetable.”

(Black 2001, p. 373)

(Black 2001) tries to minimise the Jewish aristocracy’s and rabbis’ involvement in the anti-Jewish ethnic cleansing and extermination during WWII. Their cooperation with oppressive powers, at expense of the Jews’ mass, is usual in history. Only when their same lives were irreversibly threatened, they simulated “resistance”. First they fucked the Jews’ mass for saving themselves. When themselves were on the way of extermination, they reacted hysterically and suicidally. Jewish aristocracies and rabbis in the Anglophone world, while collaborating with Allies, did not pretend they really acted against the extermination of the European Jewry.

Allies, while perfectly informed, minimised what was happening in Germanic Europe.

End 1942:

“A New York Times article had headlined “Allies Describe Outrages on Jews,” and sub-headlined “Extermination Is Feared.” It led: “What is happening to the 5,000,000 Jews of German-held Europe, all of whom face extermination.” The Allied report emphasized calculated starvation, group gassing, mass shooting, ghetto street scenes “beyond imagination,” and intense deportation campaigns by railroad.”

(Black 2001, p. 377)

Extermination was going on. The Allies were evidently happy.

“Watson himself set the stage for IBM Europe’s wartime conduct. In October 1941, he circulated instructions to all subsidiaries: “In view of world conditions we cannot participate in the affairs of our companies in various countries as we did in normal times. Therefore you are advised that you will have to make your own decisions and not call on us for any advice or assistance until further notice.” That instruction never asked IBM executives to stop trading with the Hitler regime, or place a halt on sales to the camps, the war machine, or any German occupying authority. Watson only asked his companies to stop informing the New York office about their activities.

“Despite the illusion of non-involvement, IBM NY continued to play a central role in the day-to-day operations of its subsidiaries. Company subsidiaries regularly traded with Axis-linked blacklisted companies in neutral countries, and even directly with Germany and Italy. It was business as usual throughout the war.

“As a Swiss national, Lier freely travelled to and from Germany, occupied territories, and neutral countries micro-managing company affairs for Watson.”

(Black 2001, p. 394-395)

The same technology had served ethnic cleansing, extermination and German occupation, served Allied occupation too.

“As early as December 1943, the United States government concluded that Hitler’s Holleriths were strategic machines to save, not destroy. Dehomag’s equipment held the keys to a smooth military occupation of Germany and the other Axis territories.”

(Black 2001, p. 398)

“British intelligence was also keen to maintain German Holleriths intact to facilitate the occupation.”

(Black 2001, p. 399)

In practice, bombardments affected what Allies wanted to destroy but avoided what they wanted to preserve. That is naturally normal and it evidences what Allies wanted to destroy and wanted to preserve. Not only the “final solution” had to be preserved. Also the part of IBM working for “the enemy” had to be preserved.

“German forces were just as eager to safeguard their IBM equipment, albeit for their own reasons.”

(Black 2001, p. 399)

The U.S.-Allied connections with Nazi-Germany were really tight.

“(..) The Heidingers also insisted my book conservatively understated Watson’s true sympathies for Hitler and his true knowledge of the events n Germany.” (Black 2001, p. 432)

States/“governments” happy cooperate in their crimes. Wars are just formal interruptions of this cooperation (actually during war, de facto, the criminal cooperation among “government” is even more intensive although with asynchronies since the war status), with relative construction of partisan truths against the defeated side, partisan truths which become “the history”. Winners are saints. The defeated are demons. Actually, all were and are demons, just louses ready to be launched in whatever pogrom and extermination when they receive the order and they fell covered.

Black, E., IBM and the Holocaust. The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, Three Rivers Press, New York, NY, U.S.A., 2001.