September 9, 2004 01:15 AM

So maybe you've heard before about IBM and the Nazis?

In case you haven't, here's the run-down . . .

Before computers, IBM made punch card sorting and counting machines. These machines were the cutting edge of information technology in the late 1800's. They acted much like the database software of today. By punching certain holes in a card, the card becomes an individual information record. By running a bunch of cards through the machines, you can sort and tabulate the records in just a tiny fraction of the time that it would take a group of human beings to accomplish the same task.

The first major use of this technology (before IBM owned it) was for the 1890 US Census. Each card represented a person. The card captured information about an individual's gender, age, religion, ethnicity, job, etc. The machines worked their magic, and the census statistics were available to the public in an amazingly short amount of time.

In 1911, a company called CTR bought the technology. CTR became IBM.

The punch-card technology was licensed to a German company, which went belly-up (along with the entire German economy) in 1922. IBM bought the remains of the German company for cheap, and established direct control of the punch card industry in Germany.

See where this is going?

If you want to commit systematic genocide, you've got to know where your targeted victims are. In 1939, IBM designed customized census punch cards for Hitler's government. They even designed a special "supplemental card" to capture the racial ancestry of every German household. And in a miraculously short time, the machines were able to tabulate these punch cards, and the result was a directory which listed the address of every Jew in Germany.

The role of the punch cards in the Nazi machine was ongoing and crucial. Once the government knew where everyone was, the punchcards were used for law enforcement and relocation purposes. If you were supposed to be wearing a yellow star, or surrendering assets, or moving to a ghetto, or getting on a train for a death camp, there was no chance of slipping through the cracks, passing unnoticed, going into hiding in the hope of being forgotten and passed over. Like some kind of evil Tarot deck, the punch cards allowed the "authorities" to know all. Like Santa from Hell, the machines made a list, and the German police checked it twice, to ensure that every Jewish boy and girl got what was coming to them.

The punchcards ensured that once policy decisions were made regarding the fate of the Jews, those decisions would be carried out quickly and comprehensively, with little or no human error . . . and little or no human compassion. No "Aryan" German had to dirty his hands marking individual Jews for death. The government condemned an abstract category of people. Then the machines issued the individual death warrants. The regular people then "just followed orders."

The punchcards were also used to run the German rail system, and to coordinate the logistics of the German armed forces. Throughout the war, Germany was a major consumer of punchcards. And every punchcard they used was manufactured by IBM.

IBM, as a critical part of the German infrastructure, had a remarkable amount of power at that point in history, a power that few probably realized. Had IBM refused to provide punchcards, to train machine operators, to service machines . . . both the genocide and the German war effort would have been crippled. Hitler would have probably found other methods for pursuing his goals, but they would have been slower, less inhumanly thorough. And there would have been a huge window of opportunity - in the moment when IBM pulled the rug out - for many things to happen. Jews could have escaped the system. Allied forces could have pressed forward sooner. Hope might have taken root on German soil.

But IBM didn't so this. IBM serviced Hitler. And IBM got paid a whore's wages. IBM made a tidy profit off of the war.

I bring this up because - it may surprise you to hear - there are companies today that are using the money of American investors to help build the infrastructure of countries that support terrorism and genocide.

The scary thing is that YOUR city, county, or state may be investing money in these companies. Yes, believe it or not, the tax dollars you pay your local government may be travelling through the proverbial "six degrees of separation" and landing in the pocket of a terrorist.

For example . . . BNP Paribas is a French bank. They provide banking services for Iran. When Iran needs to take out a loan to fund anything from new roads to nuclear research, they work with BNP Paribas to get the money. This bank is Iran's money pipeline.

I've never heard of this bank before. But it turns out that the City of San Francisco, through its employee retirement fund, has $18 million dollars invested in BNP Paribas. Los Angeles and San Diego have an additional $20 million invested. So if you live in one of those cities, some of your tax dollars are being invested in a company that makes terrorism possible.

And that's just one company. San Francisco has a total of $1 billion invested in 120 different companies that do business with terrorist-supporting states (Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria . . .) If you add up all the major city and state retirement plans in California, they have about $38 billion invested in such companies.

And no one realizes it. I love a good conspiracy theory, but this one is too true to be fun. Your tax dollars are being sent overseas to build terrorist infrastructures. That's the miracle of capitalism in the global marketplace.

Fortunately, there's something you can do about it. Corporations - like IBM during World War II - are whores and mercenaries. They follow the dollar. And the dollar comes from you. The good folks at DivestTerror.org have compiled a lot of information about who these companies are, who is investing in them, and what you can do to stop this whole sad fiasco.

Forced to make a choice, companies would rather look good in the eyes of American investors than cater to terrorist-supporting regimes. But it's up to the American investors - including every member of the American public whose tax dollars are being invested by their governments - to force these companies to make that choice.

It has worked before. In the 80's, Americans put the thumb screws to companies doing business with the apartheid-based government of South Africa. Companies pulled out, South Africa was left high-and-dry, and apartheid fell . . . with a minimum of violence.

It's interesting to note that the only US public retirement funds that have specifically adjusted their investment strategies to avoid sending money to terrorist-supporting states are the New York City Police and Firefighter funds. They've seen, closer than anyone, the consequence of terrorists with money. Let's take their advice and follow their example. Let's not wait to have our own first-hand experiences on this issue.

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