Free Republic

One billion people should stop eating meat in order to save the climate, the chairman of the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe told a panel at the World Economic Forum. Danish businessman and chairman of the German manufacturing giant Siemens, Jim Hagemann Snabe pushed the Great Reset agenda of replacing meat with synthetic proteins at a “Mobilizing for Climate” panel at the annual globalist meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday. “If a billion people stop eating meat, I tell you, it has a big impact. Not only does it have a big impact on the current food system, but...

Russian gas giant Gazprom has announced a 40% reduction in natural gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline, blaming German engineering giant Siemens for failing to return key turbines “on time”. The Nord Stream pipeline running across the Baltic Sea to Germany is the largest remaining route for carrying Russian gas to Europe, as volumes being sent via the Ukraine transit pipeline network have been reduced greatly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. The reduction in Nord Stream flows comes less than a month before operations are scheduled to halt completely on 11 July for the pipeline’s...

Since Hong Kong’s anti-government demonstrations began in June, the pro-democracy movement has been pleading for international support. And the recent confirmation of China’s systematic internment of Muslim Uighurs in the country’s western Xinjiang province has strengthened international calls for action against China’s human rights abuses. Now, human rights advocates and some German politicians are calling for German Chancellor Angela Merkel to take a stronger stance on human rights issues in China. […] However, during six months of unrest in Hong Kong, and the ongoing reports of minority oppression in Xinjiang, Chancellor Merkel has been careful not to explicitly support the...

In one of the sharpest rebukes from a major business leader against the president, the chief executive of Siemens said Donald Trump is turning into the "face of racism and exclusion" following his attacks targeting four congresswomen of color.

In a significant symbolic blow to the Iranian regime, the Volkswagen Group — the world’s biggest selling car manufacturer last year — has reportedly agreed to end almost all of its operations in Iran, in line with the restoration of U.S. sanctions on Tehran. The news was disclosed by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who since taking up his Berlin posting in May — he presented his credentials on the same day President Trump announced the U.S. was exiting the Iran nuclear deal — has been encouraging the host government to isolate Iran and urging German companies to stop...

German industrial group Siemens announced plans Wednesday to invest €1 billion ($1.24 billion) in Brazil over the next five years as Latin America's largest economy strengthens its recovery from a painful recession. The German company said it had signed an accord with APEX, Brazil's Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, committing to a number of projects "to unleash a new cycle of sustainable growth" in the country of 207 million people. Siemens added it would focus on electrification, automation and digitalization projects in the energy, healthcare and transportation sectors.

Bosses of German companies including engineering group Siemens (SIEGn.DE) and carmaker BMW (BMWG.DE) will travel with Chancellor Angela Merkel to meet U.S. President Donald Trump this week, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Faced with Trump's "America First" policy and threats to impose tariffs on imported goods, the captains of industry will stress how many U.S. jobs are tied to "Deutschland AG". Trains-to-turbines group Siemens employs more than 50,000 people in the United States, its single biggest market, where it makes 21 percent of its total revenue, while BMW's South Carolina plant is its largest factory anywhere in the...

U.S. companies are welcome to invest in Iran’s oil and gas industry, the Iranian oil minister said Sunday. State-run Press TV quoted Bijan Namdar Zangeneh as saying that “in general, we have no problem with the presence of American companies in Iran.” He said it is the U.S. government that is “creating restrictions for these companies,” without elaborating. Zangeneh also confirmed that Iran’s state-run oil company has held talks with General Electric. […] The TV report said Zangeneh also asked Siemens executives to invest in Iran’s oil and gas industry. …

The Washington Post inexplicably buried the lede in Thursday night’s story on U.S. contractors starting evacuations from Iraq. One has to read to the ninth paragraph (out of eleven) to read of the report that U.S. security contractors traversing embattled areas are engaging in gun battles as they try to evacuate other civilian contractors: “Contractor evacuations began Wednesday, if not earlier, said Ginger Cruz, CEO of Mantid International LLC, a consulting firm that works with numerous companies in Iraq… “On Thursday, the electronics giant Siemens was working to get about 50 employees out of Baiji, Cruz said. It was not...

Stardate 20021005.2128 (On Screen): As I think many of my readers know, I used to work for Qualcomm designing cell phones. Qualcomm is the company which invented CDMA, and made it practical, and made it into a market success, and it now dominates the American market, where Verizon and Sprint both use it. There are two other nationwide cellular systems: AT&T currently uses IS-136 TDMA, which is obsolete and has no upgrade path. Cingular uses GSM, a more sophisticated form of TDMA from Europe. And right now I'm basking in the evil glow of a major case of schadenfreude. The...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued an alert warning that hackers could exploit code in Siemens-owned technology to attack power plants and other national critical infrastructure. Security researcher Justin Clarke exposed the flaw at a Los Angeles conference last week, claiming he discovered a way of spying on encrypted traffic in hardware owned by a Siemens subsidiary, RuggedCom. The DHS advisory noted: "An attacker may use the key to create malicious communication to a RuggedCom network device." DHS added that the government department was in contact with RuggedCom and the researcher in order to identify the flaw and...

Article regarding alarming major Ruggedcom (Siemens) controller BACKDOOR vulnerability. These controllers are used widely in the electric grid, military, and transportation systems!

Federal law authorises state and local governments to divest from companies whose interests in Iran's energy sector directly or indirectly support its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The New York state legislature has passed a bill prohibiting companies doing business with Iran's energy industry from entering into contracts with the state. The bill called the 'Iran Divestment Act' was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos. It would prohibit companies that provide goods, services or credit worth USD 20 million or more to Iran's energy industry from entering into or renewing state and local government contracts. "The Senate's swift action shows...

German industrial giant Siemens has hired the American general fired for criticizing US President Barack Obama in public—to head up its attempt to get more US government contracts. General Stanley McChrystal was in charge of US troops in Afghanistan when comments he made saying the army was unprepared for the war there, were published in Rolling Stone magazine, after which he was sacked. Now he has been appointed as chairman of the board for the newly-created Siemens Government Technologies in Washington, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. The move is part of Siemens’ strategy to try to double its $1 billion a...

In a shocking representation of just how bad things are in Europe, the FT reports that major European industrial concern Siemens, pulled €500 million form a large French bank, which is not BNP and leaves just [SocGen|Credit Agricole] and deposited the money straight to the ECB. The implications of this are quite stunning, as it means that even European companies now refuse to work directly with their own banks, and somehow the ECB has become a direct lender/cash holder of only resort to private non-financial institutions!

Here's Whats Going On With The Report About Siemens Withdrawing €500 Million From SocGen And Depositing It With The ECB Mamta Badkar Sep. 20, 2011, 9:29 AM There's been a lot of confusion about Siemens fund deposit with the European Central Bank (ECB). The Financial Times reported that Siemens withdrew more than €500 million from a large French bank two weeks ago and deposited it with the European Central Bank (ECB). Siemens has since denied the claim and claimed the report was 'factually incorrect'. Instead Siemens is said to have moved an unspecified amount from Societe Generale in mid-July, before...

PARIS — In an effort to prepare for competition on cross-Channel rail traffic, Eurostar said Thursday that it had awarded a hotly sought contract to upgrade its aging fleet of fast trains to a Germany company, Siemens. The announcement did not sit well in Paris, which had been backing a French champion, and officials sharply criticized the decision. The £700 million, or $1.1 billion, contract will provide Eurostar — which is majority owned by the French state through its ownership of the national railway S.N.C.F. — with 10 of Siemens’ sleek new Velaro e320 trains. Siemens beat out the A.G.V....

Stuxnet is a Windows-specific computer worm first discovered in June 2010 by VirusBlokAda, a security firm based in Belarus. It is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems. It was specifically written to attack Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems of the type used to control and monitor industrial processes.

Industrial control systems made by German company Siemens, which are widely used in Iran, were the targets of the worm, indicating that its creators had advanced knowledge of these types of systems far beyond the scope of a most information technology experts. The code is so specialized that it targets only two models of Siemens programmable logic controllers, the S7 300 and S7 400, and will execute only if it finds very specific parameters within the machine. These controllers are usually associated with the management of oil pipeline systems, electrical power grids, and nuclear power plants

>While the boors and bores of the mainstream media continue to focus on the “crucial matters” of our time such as Stephen Colbert’s tedious appearance before Congress and whether a Delaware senatorial candidate spent two days as a witch in high school, news of real importance is breaking all around us. I am not just referring to the cataclysmic testimony by Chris Coates in front of the Civil Rights Commission on Friday, but to a yet bigger story with a potentially huge implications for geo-politics — the recent (and possibly ongoing) cyber attack on Iranian computers that may have temporarily...