EDO Corp. announced on 18th December that its shareholders had voted in favour of the company's acquisition by manufacturing conglomerate ITT Corp. The deal, worth about $1.4 billion, is expected to be completed today, 20th December.
ITT Corp. have an infamous reputation; colluding with fascist dictatorships from the 1930s onwards, including supplying Hitler with military equipment throughout WWII, and sponsoring the CIA backed coup in Chile led by Pinochet. In 2007 the company pleaded guilty to violating US arms controls over several decades up to the present day.
EDO MBM's Brighton offices have have been the subject of a direct action campaign since 2004. It has cost the company millions of pounds through court cases, blockades, roof top occupations and sabotage. EDO manufactures components for missiles which have been used to bomb civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon.
A direct action campaign will continue against ITT with the aim of persuading them not to continue business at the Brighton site after the takeover. The campaign will continue until the Brighton offices are shutdown.
Comments
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Radical Sentiment and Actions
23.12.2007 14:32
So you protest the manufacturing of components for missiles, but not the governments that deliver the missiles themselves. Sounds like you need to add "get job" to your socialist agenda.
While you're at it, why don't you head over to Vatican City and tell Pope Benedict what an awful job the Catholic Church did between fostering the Inquisition and condoning the German atrocities against the Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals of Europe, Africa, and Asia in the 1930s and 1940s.
Nothing you say in this rag rings with truth. ITT bombs little brown civilians? Really? And the whole thing about supplying Hitler with munitions...where did you get that? That is completely false. Until you can support your pitiful and baseless accusations with facts (the true kind), this rag should get shut down. You are all a bunch of sophomoric amateurs.
I challenge you to print these comments for your viewership.
Dr. Manhattan
ITT in bed with the Nazi's
23.12.2007 15:00
According to Anthony Sampson's book "The Sovereign State of ITT," one of the first American businessmen Hitler received after taking power in 1933 was Sosthenes Behn, then the CEO of ITT and his German representative, Henry Mann. Antony C. Sutton, in his book "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler", makes the claim that ITT subsidiaries made cash payments to S.S. leader Heinrich Himmler.
ITT, through its subsidiary The Lorenz Company, owned 25% of Focke-Wulf, the German aircraft manufacturer, builder of some of the most successful Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. In addition, Sutton’s book uncovers that ITT owned Huth and Company, G.m.b.H. of Berlin, which made radio and radar parts that were used in equipment going to the German Armed Forces.
First we'll take Manhattan, then we'll take Berlin
for Dr manhatten
23.12.2007 17:32
International Telegraph and Telephone (ITT) was founded by Sosthenes Behn, an unabashed supporter of the Führer even as the Luftwaffe was bombing civilians in London. ITT was responsible for creating the Nazi communications system, along with supplying vital parts for German bombs. According to journalist Jonathan Vankin, "Behn allowed his company to cover for Nazi spies in South America, and one of ITT's subsidiaries bought a hefty swath of stock in the airline company that built Nazi bombers."
Behn himself met with Hitler in 1933 (the first American businessman to do
so) and became a double agent of sorts. While reporting on the activities of German companies to the US government, Behn was also contributing money to Heinrich Himmler's Schutzstaffel (SS) and recruiting Nazis onto ITT's board. In 1940, Behn entertained a close friend and high-ranking Nazi, Gerhard Westrick, in the United States to discuss a potential U.S.-German business alliance-precisely as Hitler's blitzkrieg was overrunning most of Europe and Nazi atrocities were becoming known worldwide.
In early 1946, having relied on the Dulles brothers to survive his open flirtation with Nazi Germany, instead of facing prosecution for treason, Behn ended up collecting $27 million from the US government for "war damages inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombing." He was in the perfect position to lobby President Truman concerning the newly formed Central Intelligence Group (CIG). Meeting with the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, in the White House, Behn, as recorded in Leahy's diary, generously offered for consideration "the possibility of utilizing the service of [ITT's] personnel in American intelligence activities."
mickey z
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Hitlers weekly phone in
23.12.2007 18:17
The CEO of International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) reportedly spoke with Adolf Hitler on the phone from New York City every week of the war. According to the book The Sovereign State of ITT, the call was placed from New York to South America, and then used a cable from South America to Berlin. Key companies that maintained the German telephone network were ITT subsidiaries at that time, and communications were obviously of strategic importance for Germany; thus Hitler needed to speak with the CEO every week. ITT never stopped running the German phones during the war and were evidently allowed to continue doing so
pbs
more 4 dr manhattan- I.T.T. in Wartime Germany
23.12.2007 21:35
In 1939 I.T.T. in the United States controlled Standard Elektrizitats in Germany, and in turn Standard Elektrizitats controlled 94 percent of Mix & Genest. On the board of Standard Elektrizitats was Baron Kurt yon Schrader, a Nazi banker at the core of Naziism, and Emil Heinrich Meyer, brother-in-law of Secretary of State Keppler (founder of the Keppler Circle) and a director of German General Electric. Schrader and Meyer were also directors of Mix & Genest and the other I.T.T. subsidiary, C. Lorenz Company; both of these I.T.T. subsidiaries were monetary contributors to Himmler's Circle of Friends — i.e., the Nazi S.S. slush fund. As late as 1944, Mix & Genest contributed 5,000 RM to Himmler and Lorenz contributed 20,000 RM. In short, during World War II International Telephone and Telegraph was making cash payments to S.S. leader Heinrich Himmler.10 These payments enabled I.T.T. to protect its investment in Focke-Wolfe, an aircraft manufacturing firm producing fighter aircraft used against the United States.
The interrogation of Kurt von Schröder on November 19, 1945 points up the deliberate nature of the close and profitable relationship between Colonel Sosthenes Behn of I.T.T., Westrick, Schröder, and the Nazi war machine during World War II, and that this was a deliberate and knowledgeable relationship:
Q. You have [told] us in your earlier testimony, a number of companies in Germany in which the International Telephone and Telegraph Company or the Standard Electric Company had a participation. Did either International Telephone and Telegraph Company or the Standard Electric Company have a participation in any other company in Germany?
A. Yes. The Lorenz Company, shortly before the war, took a participation of about 25 percent in Focke-Wolfe A.G. in Bremen. Focke-Wolfe was making airplanes for the German Air Ministry. I believe that later as Focke-Wolfe expanded and took in more capital that the interest of Lorenz Company dropped a little below this 25 percent.
Q. So this participation in Focke-Wolfe by Lorenz Company began after Lorenz Company was nearly 100-percent owned and controlled by Colonel Behn through the International Telephone and Telegraph Company?
A. Yes.
Q. Did Colonel Behen [sic] approve of this investment by the Lorenz Company in Focke-Wolfe?
A. I am confident that Colonel Behn approved before his representatives who were in close touch with him formally approved the transaction.
Q. What year was it that the Lorenz Company made the investment which gave it this 25 percent participation in Foeke-Wolfe?
A. I remember it was shortly before the outbreak of war, that is, shortly before the invasion of Poland. [Ed: 1939]
Q Would Westrick know all about the details of the participations of Lorenz Company in Foeke-Wolfe, A.G. of Bremen?
A. Yes. Better than I would.
Q. What was the size of the investment that Lorenz Company made in the Focke-Wolfe A.G., of Bremen, which gave them the initial 25 percent participation?
A. 250,000 thousand RM initially, and this was substantially increased, but I don't recall the extent of the additional investments that Lorenz Company made to this Focke-Wolfe A.G. of Bremen.
Q. From 1055, until the outbreak of the European War, was Colonel Behn in a position to transfer the profits from investments of his companies in Germany to his companies in the United States?
A. Yes. While it would have required that his companies take a little less than the full dividends because of the difficulty of securing foreign exchange, the great bulk of the profits could have been transferred to the company of Colonel Behn in the United States. However, Colonel Behn did not elect to do this and at no time did he ask me if I could accomplish this for him. Instead, he appeared to be perfectly content to have all the profits of the companies in Germany, which he and his interests controlled, reinvesting these profits in new buildings and machinery and any other enterprises engaged in producing armaments.
Another one of these enterprises, Huth and Company, G.m.b.H., of Berlin, which made radio and radar parts, many of which were used in equipment going to the German Armed Forces. The Lorenz Company as I recall it [had] a 50-percent participation in Huth and Company. The Lorenz Company also had a small subsidiary which acted as a sales agency for the Lorenz Company to private customers.
Q. You were a member of the board of Lorenz Company's board of director, from about 1935 up to the present time. During this time, Lorenz Company and some of the other companies, such as Foeke-Wolfe with which it had large participations, were engaged in the manufacture of equipment for armaments and war production. Did you know or did you hear of any protest made by Colonel Behn or his representatives against these companies engaged in these activities preparing Germany for war?
A. No.
Q. Are you positive that there was no other occasion in which you were asked by either Westrick, Mann [sic], Colonel Behn or any other person connected with the International Telephone and Telegraphic Company interests in Germany, to intervene on behalf of the company with the German authorities.
A. Yes. I don't remember any request for my intervention in any matter of importance to the Lorenz Company or any other International Telephone and Telegraph interests in Germany.
I have read the record of this interrogation and I swear that the answers I have given to the question of Messrs. Adams and Pajus are true to the best of knowledge and belief. s/Kurt yon Schröder
It was this story of I.T.T.-Nazi cooperation during World War II and I.T.T. association with Nazi Kurt von Schröder that I.T.T. wanted to conceal — and almost was successful in concealing. James Stewart Martin recounts how during the planning meetings of the Finance Division of the Control Commission he was assigned to work with Captain Norbert A. Bogdan, who out of uniform was vice president of the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation of New York. Martin relates that "Captain Bogdan had argued vigorously against investigation of the Stein Bank on the grounds that it was 'small potatoes.'"11 Shortly after blocking this maneuver, two permanent members of Bogdan's staff applied for permission to investigate the Stein Bank — although Cologne had not yet fallen to U.S. forces. Martin recalls that "The Intelligence Division blocked that one," and so some information on the Stein-Schröder Bank-I.T.T. operation survived.
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