The Germans lost the war but the fascists won. -George Carlin
The book IBM and the Holocaust is probably the first book I haven’t read–but have read the most about. And luckily this worst-post ain’t about it. What it is about though is the feeling I got when I read the other day Apple is teaming up with its one-time nemesis IBM. It is doing so with IBM’s “Watson” program together with Apple’s HealthKit. HealthKit is Apple’s Application Programming Interface that enables computers to interact with iOS devices. If that doesn’t make any sense then give this a go. In the near future, when you go to the doctor for a sore throat, instead of showing proof of insurance, i.e. payment capability, you flash your iPhone across a scanner and your entire health history is (can be) transferred to the doctor’s (or hospital’s) computers. The information that is acquired, accumulated, transferred, etc. about you is the real gem of this alliance. We’re not talking about body temperature, heart-rate, blood pressure, although that is important enough information and worth computerising. No. What we’re dealing with here is something above and beyond medical record keeping or statistics. Which is what reminded me of the above mentioned book when I heard about this alliance. The author of the book is Edwin Black who wrote some unsavoury truths regarding one of America’s legendary corporations. ¶A little side note. Even though this is quite beside the point. When I was very young, around nineteen, I had my first real job interview with IBM. For whatever disturbed reason I thought IBM and the people I saw that worked for that company embodied what I wanted in life. But it turns out all I really wanted was to wear a suit. And even that was quickly nipped in the bud once I started to realise what these corpo-automatons are really all about. Nomatter. ¶The truth about IBM is that the company worked hand-in-hand with Adolf Hitler providing all the computing power necessary to collect enough information about its citizenry that would then further the Nazi cause. IBM partook in information gathering disguised as a census whereby allowing Nazis to identify Jews. Let me put that another way. One of the questions many Jews asked as they were being rounded-up in order to be sent to concentration camps was how the authorities knew who they were. Get it? IBM helped the Nazis sort the German population. (Short pause. Breath.) I mean, that sounds really hardcore, doesn’t it? So let me repeat it again: A US company, International Business Machines, partook in data gathering disguised as a census in order to identify who is and who is not Jewish. Wow. (Let’s pause again. Play elevator music.) Of course today IBM denies this accusation and seems to have proven that it doesn’t have any records of what its German division did during the war. And since the fascists have long since won that war and companies like IBM came out of it with flying colours, it probably doesn’t matter anymore anyway. But then again it did make me do a double take when I read that Thomas Watson’s name–the mould for future American CEO’s, the man who helped the Nazis–is now part of a new information gathering system that does more than gather heart-rate information or how much time a person spends sitting on their ass. You know, dear worst-reader, the more and more I read about the crimes of the second world war the more astonished I am about the truths that have never been told. Wow. Good luck suckers. Rant on. -Tommi
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