The German car company BMW has threatened its workforce in Britain that “although leaving the EU was a matter for the British voter” actually leaving would affect the company’s “British work base”. The email to staff added: “Tariff barriers would mean higher costs and higher prices and we cannot assume that the UK would be granted free trade with Europe from outside the EU.” Given the enormous German (and EU) trade surplus with the UK there would of course be no threat at all if Britain left since the EU and German car makers in particular would be decimated by any loss of UK trade.
This thinly veiled and disgraceful threat by BMW to its workers and to Britain if we vote to restore our democratic self governance must surely lead to the cancellation by all patriots of any orders for BMW cars.
This arrogance and anti British attitude by BMW is nothing new as the company has for years been dominated by its founding family the Quandts who in the 1930s and 40s were especially close to the Nazi regime, contributing to Hitler’s personal election fund.
The company was at the 1944 Red House meeting in Strasbourg with the SS to plan post war Nazism with the help of German companies. Harald Quandt who with his half brother Herbert founded BMW was the son of Magda Goebbels (Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Chief) by her first marriage to Guenther Quandt. Guenther Quant married Magda in 1931 with Adolf Hitler as best man.
During the war Hitler gave Quandt the title of “Wehrwirtschaftsfuehrer” (Leader in the War Economy) and he certainly lived up to the title supplying ammunition, rifles and using slave labourers from concentration camps.
Magda Goebbels was not just married to Josef Goebbels she was a fanatical Hitler supporter herself and wrote in 1945 (just before she and her husband murdered their children and committed suicide) to her son Harald:
“My dear son! By now we’ve been in the Fuehrerbunker for six days already, Daddy, your six little siblings and I, will give our national socialistic lives the only possible, honourable ending,”
The major shareholders in BMW today are therefore Goebbels’ step grandchildren and the direct descendant of Magda Goebbels, a Nazi so fanatical that she killed her own children by Goebbels (in Hitler’s Bunker) rather than let them grow up in a non Nazi Germany.
(NaturalNews) It is altogether fitting that Monsanto, the world's most evil corporate monster, is now going to be acquired by Bayer, the Nazi-era war crimes chemical company that committed crimes against humanity. The price of this demonic acquisition that will spell doom for humanity? A mere $66 billion.
"German drug and crop chemical maker Bayer clinched a $66 billion takeover of U.S. seeds company Monsanto on Wednesday," reports Reuters. "If the deal closes, it will create a company commanding more than a quarter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides in the fast-consolidating farm supplies industry."
Reuters goes on to explain, "What the newly-formed company would be named is unclear."
Introduced MonSatanFarben
The combined name, of course, should be "MonSatanFarben" because Bayer is an offshoot of Interessengemeinschaft Farben, the Nazi-era chemical company that worked with Adolf Hitler to develop and deploy deadly chemical weapons against humanity.
Via the IG Farben page on Truthwiki:
September of 1939: Germany invades Poland and within two days, France and Britain declare war on Germany. Hitler seized Norway and Denmark for the naval war against British trade supplies from America. Hitler had a war plan like no other in history, and it involved using chemicals against the enemy, even in the war camps. So how did Hitler gain SO MUCH POWER so fast? [By deploying a] cyanide-based pesticide that was invented in the early 1920s in Germany, best known as Zyklon B, and was being used by Nazi Germany to murder over ONE MILLION PEOPLE in gas chambers that Hitler's engineers and architects installed at Auschwitz death camp, the slaughtering headquarter and largest of all the other extermination camps.
In waging World War II, Hitler and the Nazi regime hoped to control the world by force. Today, Monsanto and Bayer have learned that controlling the world by controlling the food supply is far easier in comparison (and relatively few people resist... go figure).
Now, with the Bayer acquisition of Monsanto a near certainty, we can get ready for the obvious next step for humanity's downfall...
Bayer -- MonSatanFarben -- will weaponize control of the food supply to control humanity
The next step in all this is rather obvious. With control over one-quarter of the world's seed supply, MonSatanFarben (Bayer) will very sooner or later exploit its domineering control over the food supply as a means to control entire nations.
Even before that happens, Bayer will be poisoning most of humanity with glyphosate herbicide (RoundUp), which now inundates much of the food supply.
It seems that Bayer's desire to use chemicals to commit crimes against humanity never really ended with the Nazis. Now, with its acquisition of Monsanto, Bayer is revisiting that dark, demonic history and hoping to wield modern agricultural chemical weapons against all those who once escaped the Zyklon B gas chambers of the Nazi era.
Except this time, they're not just coming for the Jews. They're waging indiscriminate depopulation and hoping to cause widespread infertility, cancer and early death across the entire human population.
Bayer's $66bn takeover bid of Monsanto called a 'marriage made in hell'
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders leads outcry over merger, saying deal is ‘a threat to all Americans’ and should be blocked by regulators
Bayer headquarters in Germany
Rupert Neate in New York
@RupertNeate
Wednesday 14 September 2016 21.19
German chemical giant Bayer’s $66bn (£50bn) deal to buy controversial US agrochemical giant Monsanto and create the world’s largest seeds and pesticides company is “a threat to all Americans” and should be blocked, Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday.
Speaking shortly after the deal was announced, the Vermont senator, who ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, said: “The attempted takeover of Monsanto by Bayer is a threat to all Americans.”
“These mergers boost the profits of huge corporations and leave Americans paying even higher prices. Not only should this merger be blocked, but the Department of Justice should reopen its investigation of Monsanto’s monopoly over the seed and chemical market.”
He called for the proposed takeover to be blocked and for a fresh investigation into Monsanto’s current control of the seed market.
The proposed deal, the biggest corporate takeover deal so far this year, follows a wave of consolidation in the seeds and agriculture industry and has raised concerns among politicians, scientists, regulators, farmers and activists who called the deal a “marriage made in hell”.
Bayer raises Monsanto cash takeover offer to $65bn
Read more
Werner Baumann, chief executive of Bayer, which is most famous for developing aspirin, said “the combination of our two great organizations [will] deliver substantial value to shareholders, our customers, employees and society at large”.
But farmers and environmentalists warned the deal could lead to a reduction in seed variety, an increase in genetically modified crops and higher seed costs and therefore crop and food prices.
The proposed takeover is likely to face intense regulatory scrutiny in the US and Europe, particularly as it quickly follows two other mega-deals in the agriculture industry and would leave control of almost two-thirds of the world’s seeds and pesticides in the hands of three firms.
Analysts at Bernstein Research said they thought there was only a 50:50 chance of the deal winning regulatory clearance. “We believe political pushback to this deal, ranging from farmer dissatisfaction with all their suppliers consolidating in the face of low farm net incomes to dissatisfaction with Monsanto leaving the United States, could provide significant delays and complications,” they said in a research note. Because of the difficulties expected in getting the deal through, Bayer has agreed to pay Monsanto $2bn if the tie-up falls apart because of competition concerns.
Friends of the Earth described the takeover, which will see Bayer pay $128 per share – a 44% premium on Monsanto’s share price before the proposed deal was first revealed in May, as a “marriage made in hell”.
— Adrian Bebb (@AdrianBebb)
September 14, 2016
Bayer-Monsanto takeover a 'marriage made in hell'. #glyphosate #GMO #neonics #bees https://t.co/dIb6QIySFm pic.twitter.com/JSe05H0kTw
Adrian Bebb, Friends of the Earth’s food and farming campaigner, said the proposed takeover “threatens to further lock in industrialised agriculture at the expense of nature, farmers and the wider public” and warned that “this mega corporation will be doing its best to force damaging pesticides and GM seeds into our countryside”.
Campaigners promised further protests, which have already been held around the world since Bayer made its first approach for Monsanto in May.
They are concerned that the deal could lead to Monsanto, which has been described as “the most evil company in the world” for its role in developing deadly herbicide Agent Orange in the 1960s and more recently its role at the forefront of genetically engineered crops, could introduce GMO seeds in Europe.
Hugh Grant, Monsanto’s Scottish chief executive, hit out at environmentalists saying their concern about GM crops “drives me a little bit nuts” and said they should be more worried about how to feed a fast-growing global population while using less water as global temperatures rise.
“You think about two billion new citizens, you think about a warming planet. You think about water. These are appropriate conversations,” he said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday. “The thing that drives me a little bit nuts. The frustrating piece is this is such a polarized debate. And I don’t think it should be because we’re going to need all these kinds of agriculture.”
John Colley, professor of international business at Warwick Business School said: “Bayer’s acquisition of ‘Frankenstein’ crop producer Monsanto could be a horror story for both Bayer and its customers: the farmers.”
“Apart from Monsanto’s shareholders, who have hit the jackpot, this looks like a lose-lose bid. Bayer have been forced into paying too much and face major integration and competition authority risks.
“The farmers will lose out as product ranges are rationalised and attempts are made to increase prices.”
Bayer’s shares were up 1.3% to €105.60 in afternoon trading in Frankfurt, and Monsanto shares were 1.1% higher at $107.20 in New York. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
If you had told someone a few decades ago that by 2016 the company that brought aspirin to the world and the company that brought Agent Orange to Vietnam were going to team up to control a quarter of the world's food supply, chances are you would have been labeled a loony.
Unless your name was Robert B. Shapiro. He was CEO of Monsanto from 1995 to 2000, and in 1999 he told Business Week that the company's goal was to wed "three of the largest industries in the world--agriculture, food and health--that now operate as separate businesses. But there are a set of changes that will lead to their integration."
With this week's announcement that Bayer had finally succeeded in its quest to acquire Monsanto, it is hard to deny that Shapiro's vision has been realized. Too bad for all of us that that vision is a nightmare.
The Bayer-Monsanto merger (as James Evan Pilato and I discussed on this week's New World Next Week) is turning heads, and rightfully so. Clocking in at $66 billion, or $128 per share, it is the largest cash takeover bid in history. It also combines Bayer and Monsanto's shares of the world seed market (3% and 26% respectively) and their share of the agrochemical market (15% and 8% respectively) with Bayer's pharmaceutical division to create the single largest player in Shapiro's quickly-materializing "agriculture/food/health" industry.
But Bayer and Monsanto are not the only ones playing this game. Major competitors DuPont and Dow are in the midst of a merger that is expected to create a $130 billion behemoth when the dust settles. China National Chemical Corp.'s $43 billion takeover bid for seed giant Syngenta AG was approved by US regulators last month. And just like that, the number of companies presiding over the global supply of (increasingly genetically modified) seeds and agrochemicals is about to be cut in half.
But in fact, as I explained in "How Big Oil Conquered the World," even the current agrochemical industry has to be seen in its historical context as a fusion of the petrochemical fertilizer giants (Dupont, Dow, Hercules Powder and other businesses in the Standard Oil orbit) with the “ABCD” seed cartel of Archer Daniels Midand, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus. These previously separate fields were gradually consolidated under the flag of "agribusiness," itself developed at Harvard Business School in the 1950s with the help of research conducted by Wassily Leontief for the Rockefeller Foundation.
Then with the advancement of GMO technology in the 1980s and 1990s (again with considerable help from the Rockefellers and other oiligarchical interests), new opportunities for consolidation presented themselves. Seeds used to be sold by seed companies, and fertilizers and herbicides used to be sold by chemical companies. But then the GMO "revolution" came along and all of these companies spun off "biotech" branches to genetically engineer seeds. That in turn opened up opportunities to create GMO seed strains that are tailored to work with patented herbicides and fertilizers. The combination of GMO seeds and specially tailored agrochemicals has been especially lucrative for the companies at the top of this food chain (pardon the pun), and Monsanto was the first to capitalize on those synergies, winning regulatory approval for its first Roundup Ready soybeans in 1994.
The goal of this latest round of biotech/seed/agrochemical mergers, like the agribusiness consolidation before it, is two-fold: to increase market share, cut overhead, and increase profits; and to put control of the world's food supply in the hands of a very few globalist insiders.
Control of the global food supply is, needless to say, (along with control of money and oil) the pillars upon which the globalist oligarchs perch. Although there is no proof whatsoever that he said it, the dubious quote sometimes attributed to Henry Kissinger is nonetheless quite true: "Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world."
Particularly frightening, then (though hardly surprising), that this latest round of consolidation is being spearheaded by two corporations as thoroughly deplorable as Bayer and Monsanto.
Bayer: One of the pieces of I.G. Farben's grim (and oiligarchical) legacy; supplier of chemicals for the poison gas attacks of WWI; knowing seller of HIV-contaminated vaccines; mass murderer of bees; seller of tainted GMO crops.
And Monsanto: dumper of toxic chemicals; proud seller of carcinogens; suer of farmers; cause of farmer suicides; suppressor of scientific dissent.
Are you feeling safe knowing that a quarter of the world's food supply will soon be in their combined hands?
Well, perhaps there's a ray of hope here. The Wall Street Journal posits that these latest mergers are actually a defensive reaction to negative market pressures, not the fulfillment of the companies' (admitted) long-term plans. According to the Journal:
"[...]farmers are finding it harder to justify the high and often rising prices for modified, or GMO, seed, given the measly returns of the current farm economy. Spending on crop seeds has nearly quadrupled since 1996, when Monsanto Co. became the first of the companies to launch biotech varieties. Yet major crop prices have skidded lower for three years, and this year, many farmers stand to lose money."
The report goes on to suggest that these increasing prices, combined with the emergence of increasingly-resistant weeds, are leading a growing number of farmers back to non-GMO seeds.
Whether this is part of a rising trend of farmers abandoning the GMO monstrosities for their cheaper organic alternatives or not, one thing is clear: Consumers who are concerned about these GMO crops and the consolidation of the food supply itself have their own responsibility in reducing their consumption of these products. While a complete boycott of the nearly-ubiquitous (in the US) GMO soybean and GMO corn would be almost impossible at this point, consumers still can make their presence felt by using the Non-GMO Project or similar resources to buy GMO-free products.
The alternative is that Robert B. Shapiro's dream of a consolidated food-health-agriculture industry comes true and we all live through the nightmare of that much power being put in the hands of the very few.
To learn about these topics and more, subscribe To The International Forecaster
Stay with us for reports twice weekly on current news on economics, politics, metals, and business. Subscribe today _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 11:11 am Post subject:
Trump's real estate holdings front for powerful German economic interests. Advisor Joseph E. Schmitz is close to the Underground Reich.
Dave Emory @SpitfireList
Financed by Deutsche Bank and networked with generations of fascists, Trump marks the emergence of the Underground Reich into plain sight.
Dave Emory @SpitfireList
Bayer has used Dulles law firm Sullivan & Cromwell as legal adviser for its purchases of Monsanto and Merck's consumer care division.
Bayer has used Dulles law firm Sullivan & Cromwell as legal adviser for its purchases of Monsanto and Merck's consumer care division.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2017 11:47 pm Post subject:
Nazi holiday camp built by Hitler before World War 2 becomes luxury resort with apartments on sale for £500k
The original camp was intended to be used by workers in the Third Reich - and was said to be the Nazi leader's idea of a 'dream resort'
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nazi-holiday-camp-built-hitler-11 491742
By Kara O'Neill
11:29, 9 NOV 2017UPDATED14:53, 9 NOV 2017
A Nazi holiday camp built by Adolf Hitler before World War II broke out has been turned into a luxury resort - boasting apartments worth more than £500,000.
The Prora resort on Rugen, a German island in the Baltic Sea, had been left abandoned for decades after building work was halted in 1939.
It was meant to be the Nazi leader's 'dream resort' but ended up being left as a drab, concrete shell, stretching three miles along the coast.
It never opened its doors to guests and was later taken over by development company Prora Solitaire.
Now, the site has been completely transformed, with plush apartments and huge swimming pools.
All the flats boast their own private balconies, and the area around the hotel has been completely landscaped to leave a beautiful view of the public gardens and white, sandy beach.
The holiday camp never welcomed any guests as development had to be abandoned in 1939 (Image: Daily Mirror)
Hitler inspecting plans and model of his holiday camp (Image: Daily Mirror)
The huge resort stretches three miles along the coast (Image: Getty Images Europe)
Each balcony provides a beautiful outdoor space (Image: Caters)
A sea-view penthouse will set you back more than £500,000 (Image: Caters)
READ MORE
'We were all ready to die': Kamikaze pilot reveals the fear and fanaticism of suicide squads
The apartments have been snapped up quickly by buyers, but a few are still available for £500,000.
In Hitler's vision , eight holidaymakers would have been crammed into each apartment, but now the blocks boast spacious, open-plan rooms with plenty of private outside space.
It was intended to be a respite camp for over 20,000 Third Reich workers who would be able to benefit from a few days in the fresh air.
Sessions in Nazi ideology would also be held to keep holidaymakers entertained - and indoctrinated.
German children were evacuated to the unfinished camp (Image: Daily Mirror)
The hotel also boasts a museum and a youth centre (Image: Caters)
The new resort undergoing development (Image: Getty Images Europe)
Visitors in the lobby of the luxury holiday resort (Image: Getty Images Europe)
Each apartment was originally intended for eight people (Image: Getty Images Europe)
READ MORE
The day it was nearly all over for Kenneth Wolstenholme revealed when his RAF plane was hit by Germans
After the war, most of the building were destroyed under East German communist control while ome were used as Cold War barracks.
Historian Katja Lucke, the manager of a museum on the island, said: "This is a place where 20,000 people were to be groomed to work and wage war."
But it is hoped that, despite the building's past, it will be allowed a fresh start.
A spokesman for Prora said: "The past is the past. Prora may have been built by the Nazis, but it was never used by them or their soldiers.
"Now the place is so lovely, visitors want to get back to nature and enjoy its beauty."
It was left abandoned for decades after World War II (Image: Caters)
Many of the apartments have now been snapped up (Image: Getty Images Europe)
Each apartment comes with its own private balcony (Image: Getty Images Europe)
People hope that the resort won't be plagued by its history (Image: Getty Images Europe)
The final plan for the entrance to the resort (Image: Caters)
READ MORE
CIA told Adolf Hitler 'alive and living under new identity' in Colombia in 1955
Eight apartment blocks are ready to go, with three more planned to complete the sprawling resort.
Prices for the holiday homes have ranged from £297,000 to more than £550,000 if you want to bag yourself a sea-view penthouse.
And because the building is considered historic, German tax payers can claim tax breaks on their purchases.
Long before Dieselgate, there were slave workers, slush funds and sex on expenses. Now the company has been exposed for gassing monkeys. Tony Allen-Mills examines the German giant’s ethical void
Tony Allen-Mills
February 4 2018, 12:01am, The Sunday Times
At about the time that a global sales push by Volkswagen was threatening to dethrone Toyota as the world’s leading car maker in 2014, Jonathan Leake, then the environment correspondent of The Sunday Times, was struggling to solve a puzzle that no one in the industry seemed able to explain.
VW and other German manufacturers had built much of their sales success on the development of “clean” diesel engines that were not only smoother and cheap to run but were supposedly much kinder to the environment than the clunky, foul-smelling diesels of old.
So why was it, Leake wrote to a Brussels-based environmental lobbyist, that air pollution from diesel-fuelled vehicles was getting worse in European cities despite the introduction of rigorous new emission standards? The…
HitlerOpensVW.jpg
Description:
Hitler opens the VW factory in Fallersleben in 1938. Now called Wolfsburg, it is home to VW’s headquarters HUGO JAEGER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpQpgd_EeWY
"The Quandt family is the silent might, behind one of the world's largest and most profitable automakers, BMW. Yet the family has a dark past. Its businesses profited from forced labour during the Third Reich, and the patriarchs, who were intimately involved with the Nazi regime, managed to escape prosecution and keep those profits when the war ended, profits with which they could buy and rescue BMW. This documentary shows the victims, and asks the question, "Why are the Quandts silent?"
[...].--Description by Youtube-user originalrhombus, who added: "Thank you to all those who appreciate just how time-consuming and arduous it was for me to translate and subtitle this documentary".
Nazi propaganda minister’s heirs own nearly 50% of BMW; Study: Quandt family fortune partially built by concentration camp labor.
BY JPOST.COM STAFF AUGUST 27, 2017 16:42
In the spring of 1945, Harald Quandt, a 23-year-old officer in the German Luftwaffe, was being held as a prisoner of war by Allied forces in the Libyan port city of Benghazi when he received a farewell letter from his mother, Magda Goebbels – the wife of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
The hand-written note confirmed the devastating news he had heard weeks earlier: his mother had committed suicide with her husband on May 1, after slipping their six children cyanide capsules in Adolf Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin.
“My dear son! By now we’ve been in the Fuehrerbunker for six days already, Daddy, your six little siblings and I, to give our national socialistic lives the only possible, honorable ending,” she wrote. “Harald, dear son, I want to give you what I learned in life: Be loyal! Loyal to yourself, loyal to the people and loyal to your country!”
Quandt was released from captivity in 1947. Seven years later, he and his half-brother Herbert – Harald was the only remaining child from Magda Goebbels‚ first marriage – would inherit the industrial empire built by their father, Guenther Quandt.
The brothers took the business, which had produced Mauser firearms and anti-aircraft missiles for the Third Reich’s war machine. Their most valuable assets became stakes in car manufacturers Bayerische Motoren Werke AG ( BMW) and Daimler AG.
Lower profile
While the half-brothers passed away decades ago, their legacy has endured. Herbert’s widow, Johanna Quandt, 86, and their children Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, have remained in the public eye as BMW’s dominant shareholders. The billionaire daughters of Harald Quandt – Katarina Geller-Herr, 61, Gabriele Quandt, 60, Anette-Angelika May-Thies, 58, and 51-year-old Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo – have kept a lower profile.
The four sisters inherited about 1.5 billion deutsche marks ($760 million) after the death of their mother, Inge, in 1978, according to the family’s sanctioned biography, Die Quandts. They manage their wealth through the Harald Quandt Holding GmbH, a Bad Homburg, Germany-based family investment company and trust named after their father. Dr. Fritz Becker, the CEO of the family entities, said the siblings realized average annual returns above 7 percent from its founding in 1981 through 1996. Since then, the returns have averaged 7.6%.
“The family wants to stay private and that is an acceptable situation for me,” said Becker in an interview at his Bad Homburg office. “We invest our money globally and if it’s $1b., $500m. or $3b., who cares?”
Wartime profits
Together, the four sisters – and the two children of a deceased sibling – share a fortune worth at least $6b., giving each of them a net worth of $1.2b., according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. They have never appeared individually as billionaires on an international wealth ranking.
Becker declined to provide the exact figure the holding manages for the four sisters. The siblings declined to comment for this account, said Ralf-Dieter Brunowsky, a spokesman for the family investment company, in an e-mail. He said the net worth calculation was “too high,” declining to be more specific.
The rise of the Quandt family fortune shares the same trajectory as Germany’s quest for global domination in the 20th century. It began in 1883, when Emil Quandt acquired a textile company owned by his late father-in-law. At the turn of the century, Emil passed the business to his eldest son, Guenther.
The younger Quandt saw an opportunity with the onset of war in 1914. His factories, already one of the biggest clothing manufacturers for the German state, quadrupled their weekly uniform production for the army, according to Die Quandts.
Weapons production
After Germany’s surrender four years later, Quandt put the company’s wartime profits to use. In 1922, he bought a majority stake in Accumulatoren-Fabrik AG, a Hagen-based battery manufacturer. Six years later, he took over Berlin-Karlsruher Industriewerken AG, a Berlin-based manufacturer that made sewing machines and silverware. The factory, once one of Germany’s largest weapon producers, had been forced to retool as part of the country’s disarmament agreement.
“The Quandt’s business grew in the Kaiserreich, it grew during the Weimar Republic, it grew during the Second World War and it grew strongly after the war,” Rudiger Jungbluth, author of Die Quandts, said in an interview at a Bavarian restaurant in Hamburg last November.
Nazi connections
In 1918, Guenther Quandt’s first wife died of the Spanish flu, leaving him a widower with two young sons, Hellmut and Herbert. He remarried Magda Ritschel in 1921, and the couple’s only son, Harald, was born later that year. Hellmut died in 1927, from complications related to appendicitis.
Quandt and Magda divorced in 1929. Two years later, she married Joseph Goebbels, a member of the German parliament who also held a doctorate degree in drama and served as head of propaganda for Germany’s growing Nazi party. After the Nazis took power in 1933, their leader, Adolf Hitler, appointed Goebbels as the Third Reich’s propaganda minister.
Guenther Quandt joined the party that same year. His factories became key suppliers to the German war effort, even though his relationship with Goebbels had become increasingly strained.
“There was constant rivalry,” said Bonn-based history professor Joachim Scholtyseck, author of a family-commissioned study about their involvement with the Third Reich, in a telephone interview. “It didn’t matter that Goebbels didn’t like him. It didn’t have any influence on Quandt’s ability to make money.”
Forced labor
In 1937, he earned the title of Wehrwirtschaftsfuehrer, the name given to members of an elite group of businessmen who were deemed beneficial to the production of war materials for the Third Reich. During the war, Quandt’s AFA manufactured batteries for U-Boat submarines and V-2 rocket launchers. His BKIW – which had been renamed Deutsche Waffen-und Munitionsfabriken AG in 1936 – produced Mauser firearms, ammunition and anti-aircraft missiles.
“He was one of the leading industrialists in the Third Reich and the Second World War,” Scholtyseck said. “He always kept a very low profile.” From 1940 to 1945, the Quandt family factories were staffed with more than 50,000 forced civilian laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp workers, according to Scholtyseck’s 1,183-page study. The report was commissioned by the family in 2007 after German television aired the documentary The Silence of the Quandts, a critical look at their wartime activities.
Released in September 2011, the study also found that Quandt appropriated assets from Jewish company owners and that his son Herbert had planned building an AFA factory in which slave laborers would be deployed.
Army volunteer
“Guenther Quandt didn’t have a Nazi kind of thinking,” said Jungbluth, the family biographer. “He was looking for any opportunity to expand his personal empire.” Quandt’s youngest son, Harald, lived with his mother, Goebbels and six half-siblings. In 1939, he joined the German army after the country’s invasion of Poland, volunteering for the army’s paratrooper unit one year later.
During the war, Harald was deployed in Greece, France and Russia, before being shot and captured in Italy in 1944, and taken to the British Army-run POW camp in Benghazi where he received his mother’s farewell letter.
His stepfather also sent him a goodbye note.
“It’s likely that you’ll be the only one to remain who can continue the tradition of our family,” wrote Goebbels, who served as Chancellor of Germany for one day following Hitler’s suicide on April 30, 1945.
After the war, Guenther Quandt served in an internment camp in Moosburg an der Isar for more than a year, before being judged a “Mitlaeufer” – a Nazi follower who wasn’t formally involved in the regime’s crimes – in denazification hearings in 1948. No repercussions followed.
“He was lucky that he wasn’t as prominent as someone like Flick or Krupp,” said Scholtyseck, referring to the German industrialists Friedrich Flick and Alfried Krupp, who were sentenced to prison terms at the Nuremberg war crimes trials.
Guenther died in 1954 while vacationing in Cairo, leaving his business empire equally in the hands of his two surviving sons, Harald and Herbert. Most notably, the assets included ownership of AFA and Deutsche Waffen-und Munitionsfabriken – renamed Industrie-Werke Karlsruhe AG after the war – and stakes in Daimler-Benz and potash miner Wintershall AG.
Sovereign wealth
Herbert managed the stakes in the battery, car and potash firm, while Harald oversaw the interests in the industrial companies, according to Jungbluth’s biography.
Over the next decade, the brothers increased their stake in Daimler; Herbert saved BMW from collapse in the 1960s after becoming its largest shareholder and backing the development of new models.
Harald died in 1967, at age 45, in an airplane crash outside Turin, Italy. The relationship between his widow, Inge, and Herbert deteriorated after his death. Negotiations to settle the estate by separating assets commenced in 1970.
The most valuable asset that the Harald Quandt heirs received was four-fifths of a 14% stake in Daimler, according to the biography. In 1974, the entire stake was sold to the Kuwait Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, for about 1b. deutsche marks, according to a DaimlerBenz publication from 1986 celebrating its centennial.
Inge Quandt, who suffered from depression, died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1978. Her new husband, Dr. Hans-Hilman von Halem, shot himself in the head on Boxing Day. The five orphaned daughters, two of them teenagers, were left to split the family fortune.
Family meetings
The estate’s trustees had started overseeing the daughters’ money in 1974. An active investment approach commenced with the founding of the family investment company in 1981.
“It’s different if you work for a family than a corporation,” said Becker. “You can really invest instead of fulfilling regulation requirements.” According to Die Quandts, the siblings try to get together a few times a year to discuss their investments. Gabriele Quandt lives in Munich. After earning a master’s degree in business administration at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, she married German publishing heir Florian Langenscheidt, with whom she had two sons. The couple divorced in 2008.
Katarina Geller-Herr owns Gestuet Waeldershausen, an equestrian center in Homberg (Ohm), Germany. She sponsored Lars Nieberg, a twotime Olympic gold medalist in show jumping.
Jewish conversion
Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo is a jewelry designer who runs a studio and showroom in Hamburg. She converted to Judaism in New York at age 24. Her first marriage was to Michael Rosenblat, a German-Jewish businessman, whose father survived a concentration camp. The couple divorced in 1997. She remarried Frode Mo, a Norwegian journalist.
Anette-Angelika May-Thies lives in Hamburg, according to the Harald Quandt Holding shareholders list filed with the German federal trade registry. Her first marriage was to Axel May, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. international adviser for private banking, who managed the family’s investments for about 25 years.
The siblings are also majority owners and investors in five financial services companies, all of which pay dividends, according to Becker. The firms were founded to manage the sisters’ wealth and subsequently opened up to third parties.
Private equity
The six companies combined manage $18b. in assets, according to the family investment company’s website. Becker said the majority of the money controlled by these firms is invested for third parties. One-fifth of the family fortune is managed by trustees for the two children of the youngest Quandt sibling, Patricia Halterman, who died in July 2005, four days before turning 38. Her Upper East Side townhouse sold for $37.5m. in 2008.
Auda International LP serves as the sisters’ New York-based privateequity unit. It manages almost $5b. and was founded as their US office in 1989, said Becker. Real Estate Capital Partners LP started the same year and has invested about $9b. in real estate, according to its website. Both companies are owned through HQFS LP, an offshore entity based in the Cayman Islands.
In Bad Homburg, HQ Trust GmbH serves as a investment management company for about 30 families with fortunes ranging from 50m. euros to 500m. euros. Equita Management GmbH invests in small and mid-cap companies in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. HQ Advisor GmbH provides accounting and controlling services.
Only one sister, Gabriele, carries the family name, and none are active in the day-to-day business of the family office, said Becker.
“Sad truth”
Their uncle, Herbert Quandt, died in 1982. His fortune was divided between six children from three different marriages. BMW, his most valuable asset, was inherited by his third wife Johanna Quandt and their children, Stefan Quandt, 46, and Susanne Klatten, 50. The three billionaires hold 46.7% of the Munichbased car producer, according to the company’s 2011 annual report.
After Scholtyseck’s study was published in 2011, cousins Gabriele and Stefan Quandt acknowledged their family’s ties and involvement with the Third Reich in an interview with Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper.
“Magda killed her six children in the Fuehrerbunker. Our father loved his half-siblings very much. And when, like me, you have something like this in your family history, you think: It can’t be any worse,” Gabriele Quandt said in the interview. “It’s a sad truth that forced laborers died in Quandt companies,” said Stefan.
The acknowledgment didn’t prompt a public distancing from the men that made their family Germany’s richest. The families’ offices in Bad Homburg are named after Guenther and Harald Quandt, and the Herbert Quandt media prize of 50,000 euros is awarded annually to German journalists.
July 16, 2014UncategorizedBillionaires, BMW, Germany, Holocaust, Justice, Quandt, slave labor
By Gail Edmondson October 10, 2007
A shocking documentary aired on German TV exposes the family’s shameful history of Nazi profiteering and use of slave labor
Automaker BMW is Germany’s most admired employer and a pioneer in profit sharing. So it came as a shock Sept. 30 when an investigative television documentary exposed the Nazi-era misdeeds of BMW’s controlling shareholder family, the Quandts. The Silence of the Quandt Family highlighted how patriarch Günther Quandt, grandfather to the generation now controlling BMW (BMWG.DE), built a blood-stained wartime fortune on the back of slave labor and how he sidestepped postwar recrimination.
The reclusive Quandt family responded to the documentary five days later, on Oct. 5, pledging to back a research project into the family’s Nazi past and its role under the Third Reich, opening family archives and documents to an independent historian.
quandt trioThe mysterious and elusive Quandt family
“The accusations that have been raised against our family have moved us,” said the family in a statement. “We recognize that in our history as a German business family, the years 1933 to 1945 have not been sufficiently cleared up.”
BMW, of which the Quandts became major shareholders 15 years after the war, was not implicated in the documentary. In keeping with its normal policy, the automaker made no comment about the Quandts, but noted that it has publically confronted its own wartime history via independent research projects.
The TV program stunned Germany and triggered a raft of newspaper stories with headlines such as “The Quandts’ Bloody Billions” and “A Fortune Stained in Blood.” The hour-long documentary included interviews with former slave laborers who testified to the devastating conditions and atrocities which took place at Günther Quandt’s battery company, Accumulatorenfabrik AG (Afa). Afa produced highly specialized batteries for the Nazi war machine, used in U-boats and V-2 rockets. It also produced munitions. “We were treated terribly and had to drink water from the toilets. We were also whipped,” said Takis Mylopoulos, a forced laborer who worked in Quandt’s Hannover plant.
Based on documents unearthed by the filmmakers, Quandt estimated a “fluctuation of 80 prisoners per month,” in his battery factory—a likely reference to expected deaths per month, the film claims. It also says that Quandt, who joined the Nazi party in 1933, wielded close family ties to the Nazi elite to grow his battery business. Sven Quandt, a grandson of Günther and the only family member to appear in the documentary, says that he and his siblings cannot be held responsible for their grandfather’s activities.
Quandts Rejected Pleas for Reparations
Afa had factories in Hannover, Berlin, and Vienna and was supplied with slave laborers from concentration camps who died by the hundreds, according to the documentary. One former Danish slave laborer testified in the film that he and other survivors, who were deported to a German concentration camp and sent to work at Afa, returned to Germany in 1972 to plead for financial support from the Quandts, since the harsh working conditions at Afa had resulted in lifelong ailments.
The Quandts turned them away, the film says. “It’s for me a step in the right direction that the Quandt family, after so many decades, finally is willing to face its history,” says Carl-Adolf Sörensen, a former Danish resistance fighter who was sent to the Hannover-Stöcken concentration camp in 1943. Sörensen wants the Quandts to admit that Afa relied on slave labor from the camp.
Escaping Justice
The Silence of the Quandt Family was broadcast by Norddeutsche Runkfunk (NDR), an affiliate of the national ARD network, and was based on five years of research by authors Eric Friedler and Barbara Siebert. It premiered at the Hamburg Film Festival on Sept. 30 and was aired without notice on television later that night, at 11:30 p.m., reaching an estimated audience of 1.3 million. Some German commentators surmise the broadcast was not announced in advance for fear of legal interference from the Quandts to block the program. ARD officials denied the speculation and said they decided to air the program only after the Film Festival premiere.
Despite his Nazi membership—and, as it now appears, his use of slave labor—Günther Quandt was deemed after the war to have been more of a “passive follower” than a convinced Nazi. But Benjamin Ferencz, a prosecutor from the Nuremberg Trials interviewed in the documentary, said that the facts revealed today likely would have led to Quandt’s conviction for war crimes—similar to those meted out to members of the Krupp and Flick families.
“Quandt escaped justice,” Ferencz told the filmmakers. Industrialist Friederich Flick, by contrast, received a prison sentence of seven years at the Nuremberg Trials for deploying slave labor and for serving the Nazi war machine, but was freed in 1950.
After the war, Quandt received his company, later renamed Varta (VARGK.F), back from the government and continued to build his industrial wealth—the fortune eventually wielded by his son Herbert in 1959 to buy BMW. Herbert’s heirs, including wife Johanna, daughter Susanna Klatten, and son Stefan, today own a controlling 47% stake in BMW, which has a market capitalization of $42 billion. The Quandts also own a controlling stake in pharmaceutical giant Altana (ALTG.DE). The family’s holdings are worth an estimated $34 billion.
Damage Control
Despite its acknowledgement that the family’s ties to the Nazis have been played down, the Quandt family members insist the details of Günther Quandt’s past are not entirely new. A 2002 biography covered much of the same ground. It’s also been known that Quandt’s wife Magda Ritschel, whom he divorced in 1929, remarried Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in 1931 and that Goebbels adopted Quandt’s son Harald. Adolf Hitler acted as witness at the wedding.
Many German companies including BMW, Volkswagen (VOWG.DE), and Deutsche Bank (DB) already have explored their own wartime collaboration and misdeeds during the Nazi era, publishing books, turning over documentation to experts, and paying millions of dollars into funds distributed to forced-labor survivors. Volkswagen’s book documents its deployment of 20,000 slave laborers during the Third Reich. In 1999, BMW and other German companies founded the “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” foundation, which provides compensation to former forced laborers.
The Quandts, by contrast, have remained silent about their past, perhaps fearing a global public backlash against the BMW brand. Until now, the family has refused historians access to its Nazi-era historical archives and papers—and it still has not acknowledged that Afa factories made use of slave labor from concentration camps.
by Alan Macleod May 08th, 2020 By Alan Macleod 15 Comments
May 8 marks the 75th anniversary of the Allied armies’ victory in Europe, the day when they accepted the formal surrender of Nazi Germany after a bitter, six-year-long struggle that saw tens of millions killed in fighting, famines or exterminated in death camps. While many novel socially-distanced celebrations across the world are going on, some large corporations are laying low in the knowledge that they actively collaborated with and helped Hitler’s war machine.
Standard Oil, a huge monolith now split up into a myriad of smaller ones, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, and Marathon, was crucial to both prolonging and intensifying the bloodiest conflict in human history. In the 1930s and 1940s, only the United States and Venezuela produced large quantities of oil. Starved of the substance, Germany was almost completely dependent on imports from the Western hemisphere, which Standard Oil dominated. Even after the United States declared war on Germany, it continued to use a great array of tricks to fuel Germany’s war effort, quietly filling up German tankers in the Spanish Canary Islands who would then transport the crucial liquid to German ports. Indeed, one historian quipped that “Without the explicit help of Standard Oil, the Nazi air force would never have gotten off the ground in the first place.”
The American business community was deeply impressed by Hitler. Wall Street executive Prescott Bush (the father and grandfather of two presidents) aided Hitler’s rise and even organized a failed coup to overthrow President Roosevelt and install German-style fascism in the United States. Chase Bank performed a number of key duties for the Nazis, including accepting, laundering and converting their money into foreign currency. In 1945, they were placed on trial in a federal court for violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act. And if there is one thing Henry Ford is known for besides his cars, it is his antisemitism. Ford himself received a medal from Hitler in 1938 and profiteered from both sides during the war, manufacturing vehicles for both the Allies and the Nazis. The company is also widely accused of knowingly using slave labor in its German plants. In 2000, Food giant Nestle paid out over $14 million to survivors for the same practice.
Nazi Coca-Cola
German Fanta ads circa the 1940s
Despite being an iconic American brand, Coca-Cola was also intimately intertwined with fascism, conducting years-long publicity campaigns associating itself with Nazism and the Hitler Youth. As a result, between 1933 and 1939, the company’s sales in Germany rocketed 4,400 percent. As Coke syrup shipments dried up during the war, the company created a new drink for the German market that still exists to this day: Fanta.
Perhaps New York-based tech company IBM has the most infamous connection to the Nazis, however. Through their subsidiary, Dehomag, the company supplied Hitler with new technology to identify undesirable classes of people and to facilitate their transport to extermination camps. IBM made huge profits designing and manufacturing a system of punch cards that allowed officials to search through databases to identify individuals for extermination, expanding their business as the Holocaust accelerated.
While many corporations are keen for the day to be over, other groups want the public to remember their particular version of events. The U.K. Foreign Office, for example, released a video where Russia’s role in bringing about the end of the war was barely to be seen. NATO’s Joint Force Commander in Naples, Admiral James Foggo, also described the brave Allied forces engaged in combat in North Africa, Normandy and Italy, but appeared to make a point of not mentioning any of the far larger battles that raged on the Eastern Front, between Soviet and Axis forces. Meanwhile, NATO-linked think tank the Atlantic Council used the occasion to accuse Putin of hijacking V-E Day to push Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union comprised 80 percent of German casualties, with the current Russian government estimating their own total losses at 26.6 million people. In contrast, the U.S. did not enter the European area in any serious numbers until well after the tide had been turned, the Soviets driving Axis forces back hundreds of miles out of Russia and Ukraine by 1944. However, decades of propaganda have got people to forget these inconvenient facts; by 2015, only 11 percent of Americans and 15 percent of Britons answered the U.S.S.R. when asked which country contributed most to the defeat of Hitler.
Lest we forget, remembrance is always political. There are some who would prefer we remember certain particular aspects of events. There are others who would prefer we forgot altogether.
Feature photo | A damaged Nazi swastika flag hangs among other flags decorating Market Street in San Francisco, Calif., in anticipation of the Golden Gate Bridge Fiesta, May 27, 1937. Richard J. Fry | AP
Vaccine politics could end up nudging countries in the region even deeper into China’s orbit. As vaccines fail to materialise in many countries, doctors turn to cheap, widely available off-patent drugs such as Ivermectin.
It is a time-honoured custom of business that manufacturers provide certain basic guarantees to prospective buyers about their product’s quality and safety. But U.S. pharma giant Pfizer wants to turn this on its head as it sells its experimental mRNA vaccine to desperate governments around the world. For Pfizer, it’s the buyer — not the seller — that should provide all of the guarantees. And that includes countries putting up sovereign assets, such as federal bank reserves, embassy buildings and military bases, as insurance against the cost of any future legal cases involving Pfizer BioNTech’s vaccine, reports the Bureau of International Journalism (TBIJ):
In the case of one country, demands made by the pharmaceutical giant led to a three-month delay in a vaccine deal being agreed. For Argentina and Brazil, no national deals were agreed at all. Any hold-up in countries receiving vaccines means more people contracting Covid-19 and potentially dying.
Officials from Argentina and the other Latin American country, which cannot be named as it has signed a confidentiality agreement with Pfizer, said the company’s negotiators demanded additional indemnity against any civil claims citizens might file if they experienced adverse effects after being inoculated. In Argentina and Brazil, Pfizer asked for sovereign assets to be put up as collateral for any future legal costs.
One official who was present in the unnamed country’s negotiations described Pfizer’s demands as “high-level bullying” and said the government felt like it was being “held to ransom” in order to access life-saving vaccines.
Campaigners are already warning of a “vaccine apartheid” in which rich Western countries may be inoculated years before poorer regions. Now, legal experts have raised concerns that Pfizer’s demands amount to an abuse of power.
“Pharmaceutical companies shouldn’t be using their power to limit life-saving vaccines in low- and middle-income countries,” said Professor Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “[This] seems to be exactly what they’re doing.”
Protection against liability shouldn’t be used as “the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of desperate countries with a desperate population,” he added.
Zero Responsibility
Nine Latin American countries have so far agreed to buy vaccines from Pfizer: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and the Dominican Republic. The terms of these deals are unknown since all of the deals included a confidentiality clause. In the case of Argentina, the government acceded to almost all of Pfizer’s demands. But it insisted that Pfizer pay out in the event of negligence. Even that was a bridge too far for the drug maker.
It’s not unusual for governments to exempt companies of some degree of liability for the vaccines they manufacture. Since manufacturers develop the vaccines quickly and on a massive scale, governments often agree to cover some or all of the cost of compensation.
If a citizen suffers serious side effects after being vaccinated, they can file a claim against the manufacturer. If successful, it’s the government — not the company — that ends up paying the compensation. Getting paid is often easier said than done, however. Attorneys in the U.S. say that less than 6% of the claims filed in the past decade resulted in payouts.
But what Pfizer is after — and is presumably securing from many of the countries that sign on the dotted line — is additional indemnity from civil cases, says Gostin:
“[T]he company would not be held liable for rare adverse effects or for its own acts of negligence, fraud or malice. This includes those linked to company practices – say, if Pfizer sent the wrong vaccine or made errors during manufacturing.
“Some liability protection is warranted, but certainly not for fraud, gross negligence, mismanagement, failure to follow good manufacturing practices. Companies have no right to ask for indemnity for these things.”
Some may argue, in Pfizer’s defence, that it did not participate in the U.S. government’s “Warp Speed” vaccine initiative. Therefore it did not receive up-front federal funding for its research. As a private company, it is well within its rights to set whatever terms it wants in its negotiations with national governments.
But these arguments are largely spurious. Pfizer did have an advance purchase agreement with the U.S. government worth $1.95 billion, which will have covered most, if not all, of the research costs. On top of that, Pfizer’s vaccine partner, BioNTech, received €375 million in subsidies from Germany’s Ministry of Health. Perhaps most important of all, Pfizer’s total abdication of responsibility for its own acts of negligence, fraud, mismanagement or failure to deliver does not inspire confidence. And given Latin America is one of the regions worst hit by Covid, the optics could not be worse.
A Big Boon for Other Vaccine Manufacturers
Some nations in the region are looking elsewhere for supplies, in particular to Russian, Chinese and British-Swedish manufacturers.
In December, Brazil’s Senate approved the purchase of 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which are set to arrive in the first half of 2021. National health regulator Anvisa has also approved a second request for emergency use of Chinese firm Sinovac’s shot, to be produced locally.
Argentina has agreed to purchase 22 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine. Most of them will be produced domestically. An Argentinean lab is churning out 18 million doses a month of the vaccine, reports El País. But they cannot be used yet due to lack of basic supplies, such as filters, sterile bags and vials, at the Mexican laboratory responsible for finishing the product. Argentina is also hoping to purchase 10 million doses of the Russian-produced Sputnik V vaccine.
Mexico has struggled to secure an adequate supply of vaccines. The flow slowed to a trickle in early February 2021, largely due to a slowdown in shipments of supplies. Pfizer has so far delivered none of the 34 million doses Mexico has reserved. Mexico is also awaiting the arrival of 24 million doses of Sputnik V, 35 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine and is also hoping to finally begin production of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the coming weeks. To date the country has approved five vaccines — Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, CanSino, and SinoVac — but as of February 8 had only administered 718,000 doses.
Five LatAm countries — Uruguay, Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Cuba — still hadn’t received a single vaccine from overseas as of last week, according to the BBC. Cuba has produced its own vaccine, dubbed Soberana 02, which is currently waiting for domestic approval.
At least 10 Latin American countries have signed contracts with AstraZeneca. The Russian Direct Investment Fund has also reached agreements with at least six Latin American countries to supply more than 60 million doses of Sputnik V. Other countries have said they are considering both Sputnik V and the Sinovac vaccine, not just because they are cheaper and easier to store but also due to the less onerous contractual terms.
As such, vaccine politics could end up nudging countries in the region even deeper into China’s orbit. China is already the most important trade partner for four South American economies: Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay. For the British-Swedish firm Astra Zeneca Pfizer’s scandalous sales practices could also represent a much-needed fillip after its own recent trials and tribulations trying to sell its product in the EU as well as the trouble it’s been having at its factory in India.
Alternative Treatments
In the meantime, as Latin America waits for the vaccines to materialise, doctors in the region have turned to cheap, widely available drugs that have shown promising results in the treatment of Covid. They include Ivermectin, a “well-studied, well tolerated,” (in the words of an FT article from 2013) off-patent anti-parasitical. According to a meta-analytical breakdown of 18 studies, the drug could cut the number of deaths from Covid-19 by as much as 75%.
But the jury is still out. Many front-line doctors want to prescribe it but healthcare bureaucrats are dragging their feet. But in Latin America there are always ways of getting around things.
In Argentina Ivermectin has been widely used in some provinces despite still awaiting national approval. In January, the Secretariat of Health of Mexico City and Mexico’s Institute of Socal Security (IMSS) allowed Ivermectin to be prescribed to outpatients with Covid. Ivermectin, the Secretariat said, had significantly reduced patients’ viral load, with very few adverse effects. A day later, an official group of health experts condemned the decision, arguing that there’s no scientific evidence that the drug is effective, and called for its immediate repeal.
To their credit, both the Secretariat and IMSS have stuck to their guns. With virtually no vaccines currently available, what alternatives are there anyway?
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This entry was posted in China, ECONNED, Guest Post and tagged China, Latin America, Pfizer, Vaccines on March 2, 2021 by Nick Corbishley.
SUBSCRIBE TO POST COMMENTS25 COMMENTS
vlade
March 2, 2021 at 7:14 am
Re Sputnik.
The problem with it is that Russia does not have enough capacity (I know it’s actively seeking partners for manufacturing, but that takes time).
At the moment, less than 30m of Sputnik doses were delivered outside of Russia, and only 5m Russians were vaccinated*), so say 35m doses total.
*) Which is less than Sputnik doses Mexico got, and makes you think whether a) Russians don’t want to be vaccinated or b) Russia prefers using Sputnik as a geopolitical tool over securing health of its citizens.
PlutoniumKun
March 2, 2021 at 8:18 am
Yes, there is something a little odd going on with Sputnik so far as I can see – Russia seems way behind on vaccinations despite having had such a head start. I’d wondered if the Russians had believed some of their own propaganda about not having a serious potential problem with Covid.
I wonder how well or otherwise its going down with elderly Russians when they see millions of shots been delivered abroad if they can’t get one.
WinterM
March 2, 2021 at 8:36 am
Based on my conversations, at least in big cities in Russia one can get vaccinated within a day on an appointment with no age/conditions limits.
Erelis
March 3, 2021 at 8:31 pm
The Russians have made it clear that they cannot provide out of their own domestic production the total needs of other countries. But are willing to give all pertinent technical information for others to make Sputnik V. As of now, India has signed up to produced something like 300 million doses and Argentina has signed up to produce Sputnik V.
A fairly good bet is that Biden admin and EU will try to sanction the Russians over their vaccine. EU officials are claiming they never received the paperwork for EU approval on use of Sputnik V. Russians claim they submitted proper paperwork. This was after the Lancet articling showing 90+ percent effectiveness of Sputnik V. US and Eu probably use the excuse of bio-weapons for sanctions to protect 2nd and 3rd world profits of American vaccines.
From what I have seen, the American and British vaccine makers are having enough manufacturing issues just providing their first world customers. Does not take much imagination to see in the third wave of the virus a sickened and locked down first world, and a healthy 2nd and 3rd world emerge at the end of the current year.
madarka
March 2, 2021 at 8:15 am
The scant info made available on the Dominican Republic’s contract with Pfizer states that the delivery schedule is in no way binding, that the company bears no liability if it isn’t fulfilled and the country can’t cancel the order. The schedule is also subject to a confidentiality agreement. All responsability for adverse effects and such, as stated in this article, falls on the Ministry of Public Health; and it must ensure this to Pfizer’s satisfaction. The contract is under NY law and any contrversy regarding it will fall under the Internationnal Commerce Chamber’s arbitrage rules.
DR bought 8 million doses, and is supposed to start receiving some in april. Another 10 million from Astra Zeneca was purchased, and only 90,000 were received from India’s Serum Institute; 60,000 of those were a donation. So now the Government has purchased nearly 3 million from Sinovac, and has received around 800,000 doses so far, enough to start vaccinating medical staff and people over 70. The rest will arrive in staggered deliveries during this month.
It’s a funny ol’ world: from the US we got crickets, even after slavishly following the US line regarding chinese investment in the country. But China is delivering and people are queueing up to get vaccinated.
vlade
March 2, 2021 at 8:27 am
This is the reason why the small EU countries are glad for the EU contract. If they were on their own, it could easily be as bad as this. Never mind that the EU as the only one actually secured some product liability.
It doesn’t mean they could not negotiate a better contract (for example trading faster deliveres for a slightly higher price, or set the price to a timetable – the earlier you deliver, the more money you get), but at least it’s a contract that actively helps the small EU states.
PlutoniumKun
March 2, 2021 at 8:43 am
Yes – in all the criticisms of the EU performance, this has been forgotten. The alternative would be a nightmare, with individual countries trying to outbid each other. The only defence against corporate marauding of this type is monopsony buying power, and thats one thing the EU is good at.
flora
March 2, 2021 at 11:43 am
Global (near) monopolies are not reliable partners? Who knew? /s
The Rev Kev
March 2, 2021 at 8:44 am
Vaccine delivery is a real mess. A reporter just asked Psaki about the US sharing vaccines with Mexico and she said “The administration’s focus is on ensuring that every American is vaccinated. And once we accomplish that objective we’re happy to discuss further steps’ so Mexico is all out of luck there. This would have been a rely to the Mexican president asking Biden for help with vaccines. And I have my doubts about the EU contracts that have been arranged. ‘Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has announced plans to break away from the EU’s joint vaccine procurement program to create a second-generation Covid-19 vaccine and explore treatment options for the virus.’ That does not sound like a vote of confidence to me in the EU. Also Czech PM Andrej Babis has said that local approval would be enough to go ahead with using the Sputnik V vaccine without waiting for approval from the EU which may or may never come. Last I heard, the Czech Republic is really being hammered hard by the pandemic so are looking for all options-
vlade
March 2, 2021 at 9:14 am
In the CZ the problem is not the lack of the vaccine, but the lack of the ability to deliver the vaccination. There’s probably over 200k, possibly as many as 300k doses sitting there, not used. That is in a situation where there’s something over 400k total first doses delivered, and about 200k second doses.
The Sputnik in this context is purely a political play, as CZ can’t effectively even use what it has (and it’s unlikely it’d be able to receive Sputnik in any numbers that would make a difference). For example the fact that Israel sent 5k vaccines, France is giving CZ 100k vaccines, Germany as well (didn’t put a number out yet, but likely similar or even larger), and offering hospital beds is not nearly as politically attractive as “Czechs receive Sputnik”.
Slovakia yesterday received 200k doses of Sputink – but I very much doubt it receives that much more (because Russia just doesn’t have it). Slovakia delivered 300k first doses and 140k second doses (so population-wise is doing much better than twice-as-large CZ, but still not great).
Austria vaccinated similar no of people as CZ, but I don’t have data on how many doses vere delivered by the EU there, so can’t compare. That said, population wise Austria is just short of Czech Republic, so would expect similar no of doses, which would imply the no of vaccines is not the bottleneck.
As an imprortant note, the individual EU states CAN approve Sputnik (or whatever else medications they want) w/o approval from the EU authorities on an emergency basis. And the EU could not approve Sputnik even on an emergency basis for wide use w/o phase 3 trial data, which was made available only recently.
I’d also point out that at least CZ and Slovakia (but I think Austria to an extent to, cf Germany closing the border with Austria) had a bad situation made worse by massively incompetent governments that over the last six months lost trust of the populace, and now are trying to find scapegoats.
The Rev Kev
March 2, 2021 at 9:43 am
I had really thought last year that CZ would be one of those countries that would be one of those able to avoid the worse of the pandemic. I still remember their “My mask protects you, your mask protects me” campaign and it seemed to be working. But over the past few months I have seen all sorts of stories out of the CZ so I guess that it all fell apart unfortunately.
Alena Shahadat
March 14, 2021 at 6:11 am
Czechs had succesfully avoided the first wave after a prompt lockdown and closing their borders after discovering only a couple of cases. In the autumn last year, the numbers of cases started raising with the brittanic variant but the politicians weren’t ready to bog down their popularity by strict measures for the coming regional elections. Result: 18 000 deaths between november and now against only 2 000 between february and november last year. After we were “brothers” for 50 years with Russians, I thought we knew them better than to run after their vaccine.
Lucky for us, our Pfizer vaccine is coming from Belgium. Still how to win friends and influence people. especially your two land neighbours and largest trading partners.
flora
March 2, 2021 at 11:34 am
US govt’s blind worship of neo-liberal economics – private companies are (suppposedly) better than govt programs in achieving even govt ends, and US private companies must not be restricted in any way from the pursuit of profits – is undoing 70-80 years of US soft power in Europe, Asia, and South America. my 2 cents.
Bob
March 2, 2021 at 8:44 am
Yes, China is delivering not only vaccine. China also is able to deliver commerce via the Belt and Road initiative, to deliver investment in raw material extraction for everything from coal, cotton, timber, metal ores.
Mean while the US putzes along insuring that one giant global corporation after another waxes fat.
It appears that China has a clear long range plan while the US simply supports the biggest corporate donor of the day.
Altandmain
March 2, 2021 at 8:48 am
This was linked by Naked Capitalism before, but for many nations, if the Western vaccines are unaffordable due to the overwhelming intellectual property laws, China might be the winner as the NC article hints.
Altandmain
March 2, 2021 at 8:57 am
Also related to the article – nobody truly knows if there are going to be side effects.
If the Pfizer vaccine does turn out to have problems (or any of the vaccines), that means that national governments are basically on the hook and already hurt by the virus financially may fall into ruin.
tegnost
March 2, 2021 at 10:48 am
Re: goodwill…
I think it matters less the number of vaccines offered by china and russia than their willingness to help, while the US says the same thing it always does. We want everything. Period. You get nothing. Send your kids to work in the us if you want anything, we’ll pay them less than minimum wage and foreign workers should be happy because they are helping the elite take everything from americans.
Fireship commented yesterday that americans are horrible. There was push back, it’s our leaders etc…, but when the rest of the world gets sick of us, and it will happen, the blame will be on all of us.
Bill
March 2, 2021 at 6:25 pm
Astra zenica vaccine is been sold at cost during the pandemic. This was the condition that oxford university negotiating for their participation. Some countries get a discount because of involvement in its development, ie european countries.
If Astrazenica are selling at above cost price, they are breaking their contract with oxford. But since all these contracts are secret, we dont know. Why all the secrecy?
Arizona Slim
March 2, 2021 at 10:25 am
If Mexico is allowing Ivermectin to be prescribed to outpatients with COVID, I expect that it will soon be available at border pharmacies that do a brisk business in selling to Americans.
tegnost
March 2, 2021 at 10:30 am
the other Latin American country, which cannot be named as it has signed a confidentiality agreement with Pfizer
corporation vs country. You know who the IMF wants to win…
I think it’s a bad thing.
Taurus
March 2, 2021 at 12:58 pm
I notice that when the [anglo] Western press writes about vaccine, they often do not mention Sputnik or the SinoPharma vaccines. It is as if they do not exist or are simply not worth mentioning. The irony is that the Russians actually helped Astra Zeneca when they were struggling with formulating the second shot for optimal efficacy.
This
Goes against “Evil Putin” meme though.
Sunny Roads
March 2, 2021 at 1:47 pm
Cuba is actually working on four different versions of a Covid-19 vaccine.
Among other things, the Cuban vaccines will have the advantage that they can be kept at a temperature of 2 to 8 degrees (Celsius).
I am translating a bit from the article linked below, from the Spanish newspaper El Pais:
“Two of the Cuban vaccines, ‘Soberana 02’ (Sovereign 02) and ‘Abdala’ are in their final trial phase. Mexico and Iran will probably take part on this final trial phase of the Cuban vaccine. According to Peruvian Jose Moya, who is PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) representative in Havana: ‘This is no miracle: there is an outstanding scientific development in Cuba and they have 30 years of experience making vaccines.’ He pointed out that the island was the first country in developing a vaccine against meningococcal disease, and in the early 90s Cuba produced a vaccine against Hepatitis B that has been widely used in Latin America and Africa.”
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