How do you say No NAIS in Japanese?

IG Farben (short for Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG) (and also called I.G. Farbenfabriken) was a German conglomerate of companies formed in 1925 and even earlier during World War I. Farben is German for "paints", "dyes", or "colors", and initially many of these companies produced dyes, but soon began to embrace more and more advanced chemistry. The founding of the IG Farben was a reaction to Germany's defeat in the First World War. IG Farben held a near total monopoly on the chemical production, later during the time of Nazi Germany. It is the German chemical firm that was the financial core of the Hitler regime, and was the main supplier of Zyklon-B to the German government during the extermination phase of the Holocaust. Before the war the dyestuff companies had a near monopoly in the world market which they lost during the conflict. One solution for regaining this position was a large merger.

IG Farben consisted of the following major companies and several smaller ones.

* AGFA
* Casella
* BASF (Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik)
* Bayer
* Hoechst
* Huels
* Kalle

The I.G. Farben Building, headquarters for the conglomerate in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, was completed in 1931.

During the planning of the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland, IG Farben cooperated closely with the Nazi officials and directed which chemical plants should be secured and delivered to IG Farben.

In 1941, investigation exposed a "marriage" between Standard Oil Co. and I.G. Farben. It also brought new evidence concerning complex price and marketing agreements between duPont, a major investor in and producer of leaded gasoline, U.S. Industrial Alcohol Co. and their subsidiary, Cuba Distilling Co. The investigation was eventually dropped, like dozens of others in many different kinds of industries, due to the need to enlist industry support in the war effort. However, the top directors of many oil companies agreed to resign and oil industry stocks in molasses companies were sold off as part of a compromise worked out.

IG Farben built a factory for producing synthetic oil and rubber (from coal) in Auschwitz, which was the beginning of SS activity and camps in this location during the Holocaust. At its peak in 1944, this factory made use of 83,000 slave laborers. The pesticide Zyklon B, for which IG Farben held the patent and which was used in the gas chambers for mass murder, was manufactured by Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung), a company owned equal 42.2 percent in shares by IG Farben and which had IG managers in its Managing Committee.

Of the 24 directors of IG Farben indicted in the so-called IG Farben Trial (1947-1948)c before a U.S. military tribunal at the subsequent Nuremberg Trials, 13 were sentenced to prison terms between 1½ and eight years.

Due to the severity of the war crimes committed by IG Farben during World War II and the extensive involvement of the management in the Nazi atrocities, the company was considered to be too corrupt to be allowed to continue to exist, and the allies considered confiscating all of its assets and putting it out of business. Instead, in 1951, the company was split up into the original constituent companies. The four largest quickly bought the smaller ones, and today only Agfa, BASF, and Bayer remain, while Hoechst merged with the French Rhône-Poulenc Rorer to form Aventis, now based in Strasbourg, France.

After the Holocaust, I.G. Farben joined with Americans to develop chemical warfare agents. Together they founded the "Chemagrow Corporation" in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chemagrow Corporation employed German and American specialists for the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. Dr. Otto Bayer was I.G. Farben's research director. He developed and tested chemical warfare agents with Dr. Gerhard Schrader.

In 1967, Monsanto entered into a joint venture with IG Farben.

Even though the company was officially liquidated in 1952, it continued to be traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange as a trust, holding a few real estate assets until it was finally declared bankrupt on November 10, 2003 by its liquidators, after contributing 500,000 Deutschmarks (160,000 British pounds or 233,000 American dollars) towards a foundation for former slave laborers under the Nazi regime and the remaining property, worth 21 million Deutschmarks (6.7 million British pounds or 10 million American dollars) going to a buyer. During this lengthy period, the holding company had been continually criticized for failing to pay any compensation to the slave laborers, which was the stated reason for its continued existence after 1952. The company, in turn, blamed the ongoing legal disputes with the former slave laborers as being the reason it could not be legally dissolved and the remaining assets distributed as reparations. Each year, the company's annual meeting in Frankfurt was the site of demonstrations by hundreds of protesters.

Monsanto employees and government regulatory agencies employees are the same people!

David W. Beier . . .former head of Government Affairs for Genentech, Inc., . . .now chief domestic policy advisor to Al Gore, Vice President of the United States.

Linda J. Fisher . . .former Assistant Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, . . .now

Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto Corporation.

Michael A. Friedman, M.D. . . former acting commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Department of Health and Human Services . . .now senior vice-president for clinical affairs at G. D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceutical division of Monsanto Corporation.

L. Val Giddings . . . former biotechnology regulator and (biosafety) negotiator at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA/APHIS), . . .now Vice President for Food & Agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

Marcia Hale . . . former assistant to the President of the United States and director for intergovernmental affairs, . .

.now Director of International Government Affairs for Monsanto Corporation.

Michael (Mickey) Kantor. . . former Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce and former Trade Representative of the United States, . . .now member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.

Josh King . . . former director of production for White House events, . . . now director of global communication in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.

Terry Medley . . . former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice-chair of the United States Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council, former member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food advisory committee, . . . and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation's Agricultural Enterprise.

Margaret Miller . . . former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto, . . .now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).*

Michael Phillips . . . recently with the National Academy of Science Board on Agriculture . . . now head of regulatory affairs for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

William D. Ruckelshaus . . . former chief administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), . . .now (and for the past 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.

Michael Taylor . . . former legal advisor to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods, later executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA, . . . still later a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding where he supervised a nine-lawyer group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company, .

. . still later Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the United States Food and Drug Administration, . . . and later with the law firm of King & Spaulding. . . . now head of the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.*

Lidia Watrud . . . former microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, . . .now with the United States Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division.

Jack Watson. . .former chief of staff to the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, . . .now a staff lawyer with Monsanto Corporation in Washington, D.C.

Clayton K. Yeutter . . . former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, former U.S. Trade Representative (who led the U.S. team in negotiating the U.S. Canada Free Trade Agreement and helped launch the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations), now a member of the board of directors of Mycogen Corporation, whose majority owner is Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company.

Larry Zeph . . . former biologist in the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, . . . now Regulatory Science Manager at Pioneer Hi-Bred International.

*Margaret Miller, Michael Taylor, and Suzanne Sechen (an FDA "primary reviewer for all rbST and other dairy drug production applications" ) were the subjects of a U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation in 1994 for their role in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of Posilac, Monsanto Corporation's formulation of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbST or rBGH). The GAO Office found "no conflicting financial interests with respect to the drug's approval" and only "one minor deviation from now superseded FDA regulations". (Quotations are from the 1994 GAO report).

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1578988/posts
Whatever Happened to Iraqgate?

Agricultural Loans

The special relationship between BNL and Iraq started in 1985 with loans to buy U.S. agricultural goods. Between 1985 and 1989, BNL loaned over $2 billion to Iraq's state-owned Rafidain and Rasheed banks for agricultural products. About $900 million of these loans were guaranteed by U.S. Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation.

In 1988, near the end of the war between Iraq and Iran, Iraq asked BNL in Atlanta to help with the reconstruction of its industries, which Iraq presented as being only civilian in nature. BNL signed four medium-term loan agreements with the Central Bank of Iraq between February 1988 and April 1989 for a total of $2.16 billion. These loans had relatively low interest rates and generous repayment terms. BNL could borrow such large amounts of money, because it was owned by the Italian government and had a stellar credit ranking.

Officials from the Central Bank of Iraq and the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization (MIMI) signed these loans on behalf of Iraq. MIMI had been recently formed under the leadership of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's powerful son-in-law. This new ministry brought together a wide variety of state-owned civilian and military industries, including weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.

Two Atlanta BNL officials signed the first three agreements. In violation of BNL policy, only one official signed the last agreement for $1.155 billion. When the FBI and the Federal Reserve in Atlanta raided BNL in August 1989, all but $600 million of these loans had been dispersed to pay for Iraqi purchases on non-agricultural goods.

BNL dispersed the funds in several ways. The most straightforward involved direct payments to exporters totaling $800 million in the form of letters of credit. In total, BNL established about 2,500 letters of credit. The letter of credit would typically contain conditions that had to be fulfilled before BNL could pay an exporter. These conditions varied but could include the provision of shipping documents or letter confirming the origin of the goods and their delivery. Click here for examples of correspondence associated with letters of credit.

In addition, another $800 million was loaned to Iraq in a way that concealed that BNL was the source of the funds. These "off-book" transactions required Atlanta officials to falsify a large number of records and hide its activities from BNL headquarters, the Federal Reserve Bank, and state banking officials. Senior officials in Atlanta also received substantial "kickbacks" and other unauthorized compensation using funds from these off-book transactions.

Atlanta officials placed these funds directly into Iraqi accounts in the United States, from which Iraq could transfer the funds elsewhere as needed. The exporters did not always know the source of the funding. In these loans, BNL received only minimal or no paperwork about the actual exports. An example of this type of transaction could involve just a fax from an official at the Iraqi-owned Technology and Development Group (TDG) in London to Drogoul in Atlanta with a list of companies and the amount they are owed. Click here to see an example of this type of correspondence.

Iraqi Purchases

BNL loans financed thousands of Iraqi purchases in Europe and the United States. Many of these purchases were for civilian goods. However, other purchases were for Iraq's armaments, ballistic missile, and nuclear weapons programs.

Officials at Iraqi-controlled companies were aware of the importance of the special credit arrangement offered by BNL. In a May 1989 internal memo, a senior official at Matrix Churchill Corporation (MCC) in the United States said that if the letter of credit is not issued by BNL, MCC would have great difficulty in securing financing for a proposed multi-million dollar project. He had contacted two major U.S. banks that balked at offering conditions similar to those provided by BNL.

After the bank was raided in the summer of 1989, BNL stopped honoring a large number of the letters of credit it had already issued to Iraqi suppliers. BNL officials said they had found discrepancies in the letters of credit that rendered them invalid.

The Iraqi government immediately asserted that its agreements with BNL were "correct and legal" and "purely for civil use," and threatened to stop making interest payments if BNL stopped dispersing the $600 million credit remaining.3 After several months of secret negotiations, BNL and Iraq signed an agreement in January 1990 that allowed Iraq to use its remaining credit.4 BNL was worried about the impact of the scandal on its own profitability, and the Italian government feared that the scandal could undermine its other commercial arrangements with Iraq.

In parallel, companies in the Matrix Churchill group filed lawsuits against BNL seeking payment under the existing letters of credit. MCC, which was managing the construction of a glass fiber production plant for the Iraqi entity TECHCORP, was liable for BNL's nonpayment to vendors and subcontractors. This glass fiber project was declared as a civilian project, although TECHCORP was linked to Iraq's ballistic missile program.

The letter of credit in dispute was from November 1988, when BNL had advised MCC of the issuance of a $14.3 million irrevocable LC by the Central Bank of Iraq to pay for the Glass Fiber project.5 Under this LC, BNL was bound to pay all drafts presented by MCC in conformity with the terms of the LC that included submitting commercial invoices and shipping documents. In 1989, BNL paid MCC $3.575 million under this LC.

Starting in early September 1989, BNL stopped paying MCC under this letter of credit. As a result, Glass Inc., the most important subcontractor of the glass fiber project, stopped shipping equipment to the construction site in Iraq, threatening the entire project. In January 1990, MCC filed a lawsuit against BNL seeking payment for items already provided to Iraq and future payments under the letter of credit.

In February, following the settlement between BNL and Iraq, MCC was able to settle its dispute with BNL. The exact conditions of the settlement are not available. However, a secret letter from TECHCORP to its superiors at the Military Industrialization Corps of MIMI outlined several of these conditions and recommended that its superiors approve the proposed settlement, which they quickly did. This letter also shows that TECHCORP was secretly part of a military program, and MCC was aware of this connection.

Under the settlement, the Central Bank of Iraq, TECHCORP, and MCC agreed to cancel the letter of credit with BNL. TECHCORP agreed to pay MCC directly the money it was owed. Funds to pay MCC were allocated from the Military Industrialization Corps. These funds would also be used by MCC to repay a $600,000 loan to BNL but without having to pay interest. The settlement also established a new letter of credit by the Central Bank of Iraq for the remainder of the funds necessary to finish the glass fiber project.

Shipments from suppliers, particularly Glass Inc., accelerated after the settlement was finalized. They were continuing right up to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Internal MCC documents support the view that TECHCORP endorsed the settlement to ensure that the project would be finished in December 1990. This rush to finish the plant at a time when Iraq was suffering financially adds additional support to the conclusion that the glass project had a military purpose.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, however, the U.S. embargo prevented important equipment from entering Iraq. Once again, MCC and Glass Inc. were unable to collect their payments.

BNL Convictions

All the charged BNL Atlanta officials eventually plead guilty to a portion of the charges and were sentenced according to the level of cooperation they provided the prosecutor and their own personal situations.

The court concluded that these arrangements with Iraq went undetected because BNL officials in Atlanta were willing to take extraordinary steps to hide their activities. Some officials derived financial benefits from their illegal activity, which likely encouraged further illegal activity.

But the court also found extenuating circumstances that justified reducing the severity of the sentences. The judge said that these illegalities also resulted from widespread mismanagement at BNL in Rome. BNL was suffering serious organizational problems throughout its organization that resulted in poor accounting and audits of its overseas branches. The court concluded that BNL headquarters knew, should have known, or could have known about the illegal activities at its Atlanta branch by exercising minimal diligence.

The court also said that U.S. and Italian policies toward Iraq were partly to blame for the actions of the accused. Both countries encouraged trade with Iraq, viewing it as an important counterweight to Iran in the region and an important business opportunity. Although U.S. policy forbid exports of military equipment to Iraq, it allowed the export of most dual-use items.

Notes

1Andrew Collier, "U.S. Tool Firms May Have Lost Sales to Iraq," Metalworking News, September 5, 1988. [back to the text]

2This section is based on a document from the House Banking Committee, U.S. Congress, titled "Background on BNL Loans to Iraq," 1991 and documents seized by the U.S. government in the fall of 1990 at the Matrix Churchill Corporation in Ohio. See also John Hogan, "BNL Task Force-Final Report," Report to the Attorney General, October 21, 1994 and Alan Friedman, Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the While House Illegally Armed Iraq (New York: Bantam Books, 1993). [back to the text]

3Laura Colby, "Iraq Voices 'Surprise' in BNL Scandal, Says Export Credit Pacts Date to 1982," Wall Street Journal, September 12, 1989. Iraq was paying only interest, because principal payments were not due for another year or two. [back to the text]

4John Wyles, "BNL to Expand Iraqi Business After Accord on Atlanta Credits," Financial Times, January 26, 1990. [back to the text]

5BNL Advice No. 11753 and Central Bank of Iraq Advice No. 88/3/3544

http://www.davidicke.net/medicalarchives/badmed/cohenmilk.html
whole article here

2) Congress passed a law in 1958 called the Delaney Amendment to the Food and Drug Act which said that if a food additive caused cancer it was not to be approved. When MONSANTO realized that their rbST caused cancer they had their new attorney (from KING & SPALDING), Michael Taylor, write a paper: "A Deminimus Interpretation of the Delaney Amendment". Lawyers usually get published in law review journals. This paper was published in the Journal of the American College of Toxicology.

3) Michael Taylor, Esq. left his high paying job at KING & SPALDING and was hired by...are you ready for this? The FDA! He became the second most powerful man at FDA and wrote the food labeling laws that governed rbST and all genetically engineered products to come.

4) At the same time that Taylor left Monsanto for FDA the scientists left MONSANTO too. MONSANTO's top dairy scientist, Margaret Miller, left the pharmaceutical giant and went to work for...are you ready for this? FDA! Her job was to review her own research. I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for her actual job application and found out that she developed a test for detecting rbST, even though FDA later relieved MONSANTO of that responsibility.

5) Congress had a committee that studied the labeling issues. There were four members of the DAIRY, LIVESTOCK AND POULTRY Committee. These men had a bill that would have required that dairy products containing rbST be labeled as such. These 12 men stalled the bill for six months and NEVER voted upon it. The bill did not make it to the floor of Congress for a vote. When the 1994 session of Congress expired, the bill DIED. I investigated these men and learned that they accepted donations (PAC $$$) from companies with agriculture interests totalling $711,000. Four of the Congressmen accepted money directly from Monsanto while they stalled that bill. They included Volkmer ($2,000), Dooley ($1,000), Gunderson ($1,000) and Pombo ($500).

6) Somebody had to have gotten Monsanto's scientist and attorney hired by FDA. I interviewed ex-FDA commissioners and ex-bosses of these employees and all deny doing the actual hiring. I can only imagine a phone call, calling in a favor here and there. I have no proof who did the hiring, only proof that the DECK was stacked in the review process. I include enormous documentation in my book which would take me a week of EMAILS to document. I will not do that on EMAIL but my book is available, for those so interested.

7) MONSANTO hired the very respected C. EVERETT KOOP to attack critics of rbST. KOOP said the BST-treated milk was indistinguishable from wholesome untreated milk. This was not true. LEVELS OF IGF-I ALWAYS INCREASE IN bst-TREATED MILK.

8) MONSANTO hired the outgoing FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes. He went to work for their public relations firm. There was a revolving door policy at FDA. In addition, Michael Taylor left FDA and became an UNDERSECRETARY at UDSA when Espy resigned. He was there to see that genetic engineering reached its potential without regulatory interference. He became the author of the regulations. Taylor is now back at KING & SPALDING represent his CLIENT.

9)Margaret Miller, MONSANTO'S scientist-turned-FDA regulator, was aware that cows were getting mastitis in clinical trials. She ARBITRARILY changed the antibiotic protocol and increased the amounts of permissible antibiotic residues in milk. Before she got to FDA, the standard allowed one part per hundred million. After Miller's change, it was increased by 100 times to one part per million. CONSUMERS UNION tested milk in the New York area and found the presence of 52 different antibiotics in milk sample. The Wall Street Journal did their own tests and confirmed CONSUMERS results.

10) When Bob Dole ran for president his Chief of Staff was Donald Rumsfeld, ex-president of SEARLE, a company acquired by MONSANTO. To place things in perspective...the 1989 smoking gun study was performed by SEARLE scientists for MONSANTO. For all practical purposes, those firms were and are one and the same.

11) When Clinton praised MONSANTO in his State-of-the-Union address two years ago how many people noticed? I sure did. Michale Taylor, the MONSANTO attorney turned FDA and USDA employee is a first cousin to Al Gore's wife, Tipper. Look for President Gore's cabinet to include Mr. Taylor...just a prediction on my part.

12) I have saved the best for last. My favorite. In order to prove rbST safe MONSANTO did a study in Guelph, Canada that led to approval. FDA cited the study in their SCIENCE paper but incorrectly cited the reference. They gave credit to Jerome Moore. When I pulled Moore's paper there was no mention of this reference. I pulled dozens of other papers and found the SMOKING GUN. Had I written a paper like this for high school biology I would have failed. Here was a paper in the most important journal in the world on the most controversial study in FDA history and they made this mistake (and many other errors documented in Chapter 3 of my book).

HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED:

The Canadian scientist (still an undergrad working with three MONSANTO scientists) pasteruized milk at the normal temperature and time to prove that it destroyed the BST. It did not. He then pasteurized milk for thirty minutes at 162 degrees Fahrenheit, a temp. reserved for 15 seconds. That only destroyed nineteen percent of the BST. WHEN THAT DID NOT WORK, he sprinkled powdered BST into the milk and pasteruized that. This time the EXPERIMENT worked. They destroyed 90 percent of the "SPIKED MILK." That was THEIR word, SPIKED! Read the study and you will be astounded.

FDA concluded that milk was safe to drink because pasteurization destroyed the BST. When FDA wrote the SCIENCE paper they included 75 references. Number 75 was Suzanne Sechen, another Monsanto scientist who was hired by FDA to review her own research. Number one reference is usually reserved as an honorary place for a key scientist. Reference number one was given to DALE BAUMAN who is a Cornell researcher and professor. Dale Bauman's papers continue to repeat the MYTH that pasteurization destroyed the BST. Bauman refuses to debate me but he continues to teach this MYTH to his students.

As a result of the MYTH FDA did three things.

I. MONSANTO was relieved of doing any further toxicology studies

II. MONSANTO was relieved of the responsibility of developing a TEST to detect the presence of BST in milk.

III. A "ZERO DAY WITHDRAWAL" was determined which was an FDA designation meaning that a substance was perfectly safe for human consumption.

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