Interesting IG Farben stuff from CBGnetwork

[Toby G Levy]

If you'd like to know about the history of Bayer as IG Farben - the
German
company half owned by the Rockefeller family that built and operated 40
slave labor concentration camps including Auschwitz - check out this list
of
links - there are thousands of sites related to Bayer-IG Farben.

"Farben was Hitler and Hitler was Farben."
(Senator Homer T. Bone to Senate Committee on Military Affairs, June 4,
1943.)

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue6/nl6_bayer_hazzard.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~x288files/I.G.intro.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~alto/nazi.html
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_02.htm
http://www.healthwatcher.net/Bayer/bayercrimes.html
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/igfintro.html

Here's something from Bayer's own website:
http://www.bayer.com/en/unternehmen/historie/
"In 1912 the company's headquarters were transferred to Leverkusen.
Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co. merged with other companies to
form
I.G. Farben industrie AG in 1925.
Leverkusen became the main production center of the I.G.'s Lower Rhine
operating consortium. Following the Second World War, the Allies seized
and
later broke up I.G. Farben.
Bayer was re-established as Farbenfabriken Bayer AG in 1951 and changed
its
name to Bayer AG in 1972. The push for expansion as an international
health
care and chemicals group began."

ABC NEWS Auschwitz Survivor Says Pharmaceutical Giant Aided Nazis
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/2020_990611bayer.html

------------------------------------------
Bayer Trades On N.Y. Stock Exchange
By JUDY LIN Associated Press Writer
1/24/2002

PITTSBURGH - Bayer Corp. may have been peddling drug remedies since the
end of the Civil War, but only Thursday will the pharmaceutical
company's stock begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Pittsburgh-based subsidiary of German drug maker Bayer AG will be
listed under the ticker symbol BAY. The U.S. subsidiary was founded in
1865 and 34 years later developed Bayer Aspirin, a product as American
and recognizable as Coca-Cola.

Company officials want to take advantage of U.S. financial markets and
attract more investors and plan to use the stock to make future
acquisitions and launch stock programs for U.S. employees.

"Our stock belongs here," declared chief executive Manfred Schneider
during the listing announcement in New York.
Company spokesman David Reeder described the company's stock debut on
Wall Street as a vehicle to ensure Bayer's long-term growth. Bayer,
which employs 23,000 people in the United States and 2,000 in the
Pittsburgh area, is already traded on exchanges in Europe and Asia.
"We think it's a well-known brand with a lot of recognition, and people
now have the opportunity to invest where they didn't before," said
Reeder.

The listing may come as a surprise to many people, especially because
the German pharmaceutical has been investing in the United States for
137 years.

The company had $10 billion in U.S. sales in 2000, or 29 percent of
Bayer AG's worldwide sales of $28.9 billion. Last year's annual
statements are not expected until March.

"The United States is a very important patient population for any
pharmaceutical," said Mary Anne Rhyne, a spokeswoman for competitor
GlaxoSmithKline. "It's a key place to have a presence. The bulk of our
sales is in the U.S."

The two companies are working together to market Vardenafil, an erectile
dysfunction drug awaiting FDA approval.
Bayer had delayed listing its stock in the United States for a long time
because U.S. accountants follow guidelines different from international
accounting standards, Reeder said. That means the company will have to
track earnings and other financial data separately for the U.S. market.

"We were hoping that the two would align but that turned out not to be
the case," he said. "So we decided to go forward with our offer."

The New York listing was set for September but was postponed after Bayer
shares plunged on news that the company was withdrawing its
anti-cholesterol drug Baycol, which was linked to an estimated 100
deaths.

Bayer voluntarily pulled the drug in August but continues to face
lawsuits in the United States and Europe from patients seeking damages.

The company rebounded when the federal government spent $95 million on
100 million tablets of Cipro, the powerful antibiotic stockpiled after
anthrax reports surfaced in Florida, New York and Washington, D.C.

Bayer's other major U.S. household products include Aleve pain reliever,
Flintstones and One-A-Day vitamins, and Alka-Seltzer antacid.
-----------
USA: PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY SPONSORS REPUBLICAN ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN
German Corporation Bayer donated $120,000 to Bush

"There is a direct link between the enormous profits of the
pharmaceutical
industry and the fact that Americans pay the highest prices in the world
for
medicines. I believe that Congress should protect the Americans who are
being exploited instead of the sales of the pharmaceutical corporations".
More and more US politicians are starting to share the view of Vermont
Congressman Bernhard Sanders. The Federal State of Maine has already
authorized its officials to negotiate lower prices for medicines and
takes
companies adding exorbitant mark-ups to court for profiteering. With Al
Gore
as President the golden age in which the drug producers enjoyed not only
high profit-margins but also tax breaks, accelerated drug approval
procedures and stiffening of pharmaceutical patent law could come to an
end.

This is why Ronald Docksai, deputy head of Bayer Corporation´s lobby
office
in Washington, freely admits, "Everybody knows that we as a corporation
would be much happier with a President Bush than a President Gore". To
push
things in the desired direction, the chemical giant donated $120,000 to
Bush
in the summer. The Democrats received $40,000 so that if the election
results turned out unfavorably for the corporation, it would still be
able
to carry on in a fair way of business. In the last five years Bayer has
handed out more than $600,000 to US politicians - the only German
companies
more generous in untying their purse strings were Daimler-Chrysler and
Heidelberger Zement.

The lobbying activities of Ronald Docksai and his colleagues from Pfizer,
Glaxo-Wellcome, Merck & Co put those of other industries in the shade.
Except for the insurance groups, which, having a clear interest in low
drug
prices, put up a stiff and eloquent resistance to the pharmaceutical
corporations. Thus, behind the scenes of the highly public TV duel
between
the two candidates Gore and Bush, a struggle between commercial
competitors - drug multis versus the insurance industry - is being fought
out: in 1999 the joint ventureof the 15 largest pharmaceutical
corporations
spent around $60 million towards its target of free fixing of prices and
profits. Its campaign message to US consumers was that lower profits lead
inevitably to less money for R & D projects and consequently more
unnecessary suffering through illness. The transparently shaky Pied
Piper-type slogan used was, "Don´t interrupt our work saving lives". As
usual the managers dressed up as Good Samaritans were willing to use any
kind of dirty trick to attain their goals. They presented expert reports
specially prepared by friendly academics for the occasion taking the
line,
"Scientists have discovered that...." and set up pressure groups
disguised
as patient organizations. One of these, the "Citizens for Better
Medicare",
wielded a well-stocked $50 million advertising budget in its fight
against
fixed drug prices.

Compared with the election of 96, the total amount donated by industry
doubled to reach a figure of $737 million, roughly equally shared between
the two parties. Whichever way the result goes, neither Democrats nor
Republicans will frame policies against the interests of businesses which
have donated money to their electoral funds. And if President Gore - by
contrast with Clinton, whose health reform was a lamentable failure -
should
really succeed in piloting his "minor reform" through, there is no doubt
that the measures will have been approved by the Bayer Corporation and
its
associates.

=====================================================
If you send us a message, you will receive our newsletter regularly by
email. Reprint of this newsletter or certain parts of it is allowed. We
collect any information about BAYER. So anyone who has noteworthy
information - please let us know. Anyone who needs photos or information
concerning the company BAYER is invited to contact us:
CBG, Postfach 15 04 18, 40081 Duesseldorf, Germany
E-mail: CBGnetwork at aol.com
Fax: +49 211 333 940 Tel: +49 211 333 911
________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today!  For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.