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The Online Journal of The American Computer Science Association |
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THE ANTI-TRUST
COALITION’s OPINION
Our study
of IBM Corporation: a 10-year long study / opinion with recommendations.
(Summary Draft
White Paper, written by the ACSA. To join this Coalition,
join ACSA here.)
What is “Anti Trust”? Under United States law, any effort to boycott others out of a market, repress competition and/or secure a monopoly over a market by means of deliberate marketing efforts that is not underwritten by law (such as that which governs patents and trademarks) is potentially illegal. Doing so by “combining products” (such as Microsoft ran afoul of when it started bundling office products with it’s operating system, in restraint of competing office systems suppliers marketing efforts) is also illegal, a term is used called “illegal tie in”. Ganging up to repress competition through out and out dirty tactics is also illegal, major companies who do that risk prosecution.
The alleged purpose of the Antitrust laws is to ensure that everyone in America has a fair chance to prosper, and be able to engage in their chosen livelihood. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission maintain Anti-Trust Divisions as do most states in their Attorney General’s offices, the FBI investigates violations for both. The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service also have their own initiatives. Both the NSA and the CIA are careful to observe international behavior in the various “vine like” entanglements of domestic companies, as they become involved in international business. And most State Bureaus of Investigation also monitor such business as it effects various other activities in their states such as the movements of Organized Crime, Casino operations in states with gaming laws, and the transportation of merchandise in circumvention of sales tax laws.
How effective are these laws? A major problem with prosecution followed by “adaptation” has opened doors for most defendants (such as AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Intel and others) to find ways to keep from being prosecuted, rather than curbing their appetites for market share growth. Recent decades have demonstrated that the Legal profession has found ways around most anti-trust laws, called “Bait and Wait”. Their clients bait the Antitrust investigators in order to tie them up on an easy to defend process, and then play the “idiot’s defense” leaving decisions open to reversal on appeal, or simple settlement at a lower price than the gains from having violated the law in the first place. Having done so, the clients are free to pursue changed direction with similar violations, while cloaking them in “strict compliance” behavior that allows the interpretation of Antitrust settlements to be elective. Courses in continuing legal education espouse defenses for corporate defendants that are put in place like anti-takeover provisions. Use of “the shell game” strategy and merger and acquisition policies, and beneficial nominee “cut-outs” has made building Hidden Trusts the new weapon of the Trust building wealth in the USA such as the Rockefeller family, the Dupont family and others.
Is IBM violating Antitrust Law? One company, IBM Corporation, has demonstrated acumen in corporate operations control that few other companies possess. As a result, it’s enormous capital resources have given it the ability to go where few can go, it’s intellectual property is cross licensed to Microsoft, Unisys, Krell, and many, many other companies throughout the industry, and it’s contractual structures, have allowed it to maintain a foothold as the growing-est and most powerful computer manufacturer in existence. Its large-scale computers are #1 throughout Corporate America and the world, used by nearly every corporate entity and government as back office processing and as front office by the majority. PCs are just terminals on those nets.
As a result, IBM has found it’s way into partnerships with the employees of most major clients, a system of equity exists that allows those employees of clients to prosper on a trade basis, as IBM prospers. While the US Government has been busy fighting over Microsoft, Intel and AOL, IBM has quietly eliminated or gotten control of every single large scale computer company in the world, save one: Sun, whom it has pounded into submission by getting behind competing Linux initiatives aimed not at competing with Microsoft, but mainly at competing with Sun using lower cost Intel and AMD computing technology.
However, IBM is careful not to render Sun into oblivion, keeping it, it’s sister companies Unisys and Apple computer as “coral reefs” keeping back the tides of Antitrust prosecution, always able to claim: “we’re not the only choice, you can always go to Unisys, Sun or Apple”. However, over the years IBM has played a growing, hidden role in all three company’s existence, manifestly “keeping them around and on the payroll” while hiding all relationship behind a rock solid wall of “smoke and mirrors”.
What about IBM and Microsoft? In the case of Microsoft, a unique relationship exists. At one moment Microsoft is a captive progeny of the IBM Office of the Future initiative from the late 70’s. At the next moment, IBM’s Lotus Smart Suite, OS/2 Warp, Linux and AIX products and Informix and DB2 appear to compete with Microsoft. IBM has found a way to be both the “heir apparent” and the “apparent parent” of Microsoft and it’s markets, while making itself look subservient to contracts and cross patenting that it in fact conceived of FOR Microsoft in advance, a strategy of creative corporate development that would rival filmmakers like Steven Spielberg for it’s dramatic content and clear-cut story line that deliberately leads the viewer to conclude that Bill Gates is independent and the owner of Microsoft. While Mr. Gates has enormous power at Microsoft, he is not it’s exclusive owner, and he has only certain rights in the enormous game of “Microsoft gets it’s groove back” that’s been played over and over during the course of the past 25 years by IBM Corporation.
Is this document an indictment of IBM? This entire document is just our opinion. However, our conclusions we believe to be accurate, nonetheless, still our opinion. Everything in it is our opinion, although our opinion is, in our opinion, backed by the facts. Let us make that perfectly clear. In the interest of responsibility, we want the reader to know that we are experienced computer and business professionals all of whom have experienced working with or for IBM at one time or other, some more than others. And, the reader need understand that we consulted with thousands and thousands of authoritative sources, over the course of 10 years, before drawing our opinion, an opinion about IBM which is not a very flattering one. We even tried providing IBM recommendations on how to improve itself. In more than one case, IBM listened. And yet almost like a tree growing towards the light of the daylight Sun, IBM continued in every situation, in our opinion, to re-seek it’s original course, it's monopolistic bent and, also in our opinion, often donned a carefully cloaked, yet untrustworthy and unreliable course of behavior towards customers and/or partners which it perceived as it’s competition. It seemed almost as if IBM could not behave any other way or be anything other than a monopoly, like plastic reassuming it's original, memorized shape. And, when it came to it's treatment of minorities of a certain type, IBM exhibited a form of Corporate Supremacist Mentality, one that appears so entrenched there that after surmounting any obstacle, it would often take backhanded swipes at those minorities, while covering it's tracks. And once complete, it simply returned to it’s untrustworthy, unreliable and, also in our opinion: completely unsafe behavior, a threat to any company which would do business with IBM, threatening to their existence in every respect.
During the course of our study, a surprisingly revealing book was published by Edwin Black, called: “IBM and the HOLOCAUST”, http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/. It detailed IBM in the 1930's and 40's playing an enormous role in the rise and fall of the Third Reich, mainly as an ardent supporter and provider of technology. IATH confirmed our worst suspicions: that IBM has the ability to collect data in a so-called “Big Brotherish” fashion (referring to the novel by Orwell) and can then sell the most damaging of information to an antagonistic combatant. It clearly did so for Nazi Germany while assisting Germany in defining numerous ways that led to a wholesale slaughter humanity, and IBM did so, apparently, without so much as a moment of conscience. Forgetting the 26 million lives lost to Nazi Germany’s attempted conquest of the world AND forgetting IBM’s historical German lineage (descended from Hollerith Corporation), the fact is we’ve also since ascertained that not a single drop of IBM’s behavior pattern ever completely changed after 1947, it just became far more sophisticated from having enormous money to refine it’s ways into a virtual fine tuned machine. That, in fact, in our opinion, worsened the situation to the point where IBM determined how to engage in “virtual holocaust”, “virtual warfare”, “virtual death camps” and “virtual slavery” to such a degree that the life or death of an individual became not so important to IBM as it’s worth as an asset that IBM could use in whatever manner it could profit from it, without regard for what IBM did to that asset in the course of it all.
And then there was the more recent revelation that IBM played a role in an American “Master Race” Program designed by and for the implementation of Eugenics (the involuntary sterilization of 60,000 or more Americans who represented “inferior breeding stock”) that was fostered by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carneigi Foundation, which program apparently continues on today in forms as of yet not wholly understood or cataloged.
While the entire horrifying story of Master Race Development in America is just now emerging (see: http://www.thewaragainsttheweak.com) we feel that the behavior of these interrelated group of Monopolistic Companies is, aside from being simply criminal, so abominable that affiliation with them after a time will become grounds for repudiation of one’s reputation and that eventually, their leadership in American business will be torn down by enactments of the government and the People, once the full perfidious nature and cruelty of their behavior is fully exposed, a process that's just in it's beginning with Mr. Black's remarkable books... which depict a nightmarish autocracy in the business and philanthropic community that would as easily murder an entire bloodline of Jewish Americans as it would undermine a competitor's product line in favor of it's own.
As a result, we concluded that working for IBM as a contractor or employee could be viewed as a career destroyer for the average computer Joe, and that consulting to, providing services or equipment to, or even reselling for IBM could have an even worse impact upon the individual, as IBM has, in our opinion, become far worse than the average image of a John D. Rockefeller Vampire impaled upon his own reputation by Ida Tarbell: it has become a covert, hidden enslavement, anti-competing, and trust violating enterprise so widespread in the many tendrils of it’s existence, that it rivals the history of Trust Making to come up with any business that has evolved to IBM’s historic level of covertly breaking trade, trust and domestic law.
As part of the Rockefeller group of companies, we were shocked to learn that IBM and Rockefeller group engaged in eugenics against certain family lines in the United States (http://www.edwinblack.com). In his book “War Against the Weak”, Edwin Black details a campaign of covert sterilization of 60,000 Americans whose bloodlines were “outcast”, to quote Mr. Black:
How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to legislated segregation and sterilization programs. The victims: poor people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the superior genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. The main culprits were the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune, in league with America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The eugenic network worked in tandem with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State Department and numerous state governmental bodies and legislatures throughout the country, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. They were all bent on breeding a eugenically superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn. The plan was to wipe away the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.
According to one source, IBM Corporation maintained and maintains the Eugenics
Database on the United States population for this program, and participated in
monitoring it. Low and behold, some of the bloodlines being branded “inferior”
turned out to harbor superior intellects and athletes, much as occurred during
the holocaust, when those being exterminated turned out to the most brilliant
minds of Germany and Europe.
What is the basis of this opinion? Our opinion of IBM Corporation was derived from and represents a singular amount of effort and thought work. The American Computer Scientists Association commissioned a study of the impact on the computer industry by IBM Corporation in 1993, to last 10 years, to ascertain the benefits and detriments of having one company much outpacing the entirety of the other businesses in the computer industry, and it’s economic impact on the United States, consequential effects upon businesses and individuals with whom IBM elected to compete unfairly, and the potential impact upon United States National Security. We wanted to find out more about who controls it, and whom it controls. We wanted to find out if reputed involvement with gangster-ism and Supremacism was true (we have concluded it was and is) and whether or not IBM was part of an autocratic “government like” structure that was evolved by the Rockefeller family after prosecution for violation of antitrust laws (it is.)
Was the study formal, in formal or an actuality? We took the “actuality” approach so we would experience, first hand, what IBM was capable of doing behind the scenes. We were very surprised at what we discovered. To give you an idea: in 1993, we deployed a modest team of 6 individuals to engage in 18 different business activities, across 200 product areas and 200,000 different product types, involving the Computer Industry, the wholesale Channel, the Asian sourcing industry and the domestic and international resale industry, and for ten years, we sampled and polled the industrious nature of IBM’s efforts to compete with them, interfere with them, undermine them, sign them up as business partners, surveil them with private security, monitor their phones, emails and websites and even engage in frauds designed to trip them up. All in all we recorded dozens of anticompetitive attacks, quite a number of attempted and actual business frauds and a large number of libelous, slanderous defamation attacks on the businesses and individuals we entered this analysis with.
In all but a few cases, these incidents, while traceable back to an IBM business activity of some kind, were clearly designed with cut-outs that eclipsed any lawyers ability to prove IBM was their origin, except that such was ascertainable, yet un-probative outside of the Justice Department’s ability to engage in forensic tracking of the sort required for a criminal prosecution. During the course of it, we discovered that IBM and GE work closely together on many matters, but their relationship goes well beyond that which is considered “ordinary” and that is entirely unknown, as IBM also does with AT&T Microelectronics, Motorola, MCI, Phillips, and many, many other companies who constitute what we have come to call the “Extra-IBM IBM Infrastructure” (EI3). There appears to be an “expectation” of cooperation with IBM being “in control” that surfaces at all of the companies with whom IBM has standing agreements and prearrangements, including also those smaller businesses who sign up with IBM on a Business Partnership of some kind in hardware, software or services resale.
In every single case, IBM was always the dominant, superior party. In studies of certain government situations, we stumbled upon the very real surprise that Krell Computer was, in fact, a semi-fictitious company created and manifested by some unknown element of IBM Business Development outfitting said company to sell technology and transfer royalties equal to what IBM would have made (and then some), had Krell been part of IBM’s PC Company, suggesting that Krell was nothing more than a business front for IBM that divided any history and paper trail keeping it away from IBM and keeping any historical agreements between IBM and the US Government non-impacting upon Krell itself.
Is IBM acting alone? No. Obviously, IBM is allied with or a part of a fold that spans Rockefeller and Morgan business interests that have evolved since the death of JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. We stumbled upon similar such footings, however less tightly inscribed, with Intel and with Microsoft, historically IBM had played a roll in both providing R&D and cross licensing hardware and software with both companies, and while it is indistinct to us where the control between IBM and these firms is located, there clearly exists one which, among other things, defines behavior at Intel and Microsoft that for all the world tries to make it look like they are entirely independent of IBM. Yet that is not the case: the two companies are just acting on that pretense.
The leadership of each company in it’s own way continues to attempt to attain independence, thwarted by the very nature of the shadowy group of corporate relationships imposed upon it by it’s interbred relationship to IBM. The succinct pretense appears to manifest repeatedly in the “superior vs. inferior” relationship IBM prefers to establish, whether it be a very hidden agreement as we suspect exists between IBM and the above-mentioned companies, or the very public ones that exist in the vaunted IBM Business Partnership arrangements. We were very surprised to discover that the Justice Department is aware of these arrangements, but that Law has had difficulty justifying a challenge upon the hidden nature due to lack of being able to prosecute that for which no evidence is maintained in the public or private sector.
And so, by creating “virtual control” over these companies, reflecting a phenomenon that is uniquely IBM, but may have evolved out of it’s origins in the Standard Oil, Chase Manhattan, JP Morgan financial cliques during the great Trust Busting era in the first half of the last century, we would suggest that on general principal, the US Government should have take steps to segregate IBM PC Company from IBM proper, and to bar IBM from being involved in any aspect of control over Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Motorola or any other third party software of semiconductor business.
It also appears likely that the IBM Lotus merger should not have been approved, and that IBM should have been fined for it’s continuing to own Lexmark Corporation through board control and royalties, while Lexmark continues to advertise it’s public stature to it’s shareholders. A similar such situation appears to involve Acer International, and a number of other companies in the computer industry. We are confining our comments to the computer industry. But, because of it’s affiliation with NAZI Germany business interests, after WWII IBM was able to buy into the rich harvest of defeated German businesses, and others in Europe and Japan, leaving behind it a trail of international business interests that spans many industries who use computing, not just one industry: computing itself.
Doesn’t ACSA have an AXE to grind with IBM? No. As a matter of conscience, it must be stated here that we approve of the innovations that have been brought to the market by IBM in the very curious, “Trust Buster” defeating manner it has evolved. However, it is also interesting to note that IBM is not really the original author of most of the technological conceptions in it’s products – things like Virtual Memory, the 360 architecture, the PC, Windowing, even the vaunted IBM disk drives actually were originally authored by others, and IBM has simply been very good at recognizing value, absorbing same into it’s product lines, while going about making the rest of the world unaware of where it originally came from. This has caused us to adopt the term “Techno-absorption” and “Techno-slavery”, terms which derive from the historical events of the era of Thomas Edison, where Mr. Edison got the credit, while people working for him, among them most notably, Nikola Tesla, did the brain work.
Tesla not only invented alternating current, when Edison was promoting the profitless approach of using direct current, he invented Radio Wave transmission and many other things. While we live in world where things like Television, Radar, and Electrical Power were made possible by Tesla, Edison managed to incubate these ideas into industries with the help of JP Morgan and the supply side managed by the Fuel supplier’s money, resulting in General Electric and the Con Edison companies, while he repressed Tesla, driving him to drink and to near extraction. As a result, many of what might have been Tesla’s best years of contribution, were spent trying to find a way to fight the power of the power companies leveraging his work (for which they paid him very little) by coming up with a “Free Energy” solution, when he could have been doing even more research.
This “Tesla Techno-Absorption Business Model” became the standard at JP Morgan trusts during the 20th Century, and it has not just been IBM who adopted the model. Other Rockefeller interests managed by Morgan, paid out from $35 to 150 for inventions by employees it kept on very modest salaries, working in prestigious institutions like Sarnoff Research. The inventors of the rotating TV Tuner and the Mercury Micro-switch, for instance, were paid $125 apiece to transfer their inventions to RCA Corp (a GE business), and never saw the billions that their innovations returned to their employer.
Being a Morgan/Rockefeller creation, we were not surprised to see the “Tesla Business Model” of Techno-absorption and Techno-slavery at use wholeheartedly at IBM. However, we do believe that the United States business community has progressed sufficiently to realize that by luring people into such a position by dangling the appearances of a Bill Gates before their eyes, then swooping down and seizing their ideas and enslaving them at small salaries, should be brought to an end. This is a primary recommendation of this study.
The “Farnsworth Anticompetition and Patent Model” also became a standard among JP Morgan trusts (like IBM) during the last half of the 20th century, where it was fashionable to simply repress and outwait the competition. Filo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of Television, was unable to produce his product during WWII, and when his patents were about to expire and he was broke, was out waited and beaten into submission by IBM’s oft partner, General Electric, who through it’s hidden subsidiary, RCA and RCA’s famous research company, Sarnoff (and General David Sarnoff himself) finally fought Farnsworth to a halt, took his patent rights off him for small dollars, and forced him into bankruptcy, to work on non-competitive products, while the world at large was made to believe that RCA and GE and NBC had invented Television.
The “Farnsworth Model” is also a standard for IBM, they have accelerated it into such a pace, that they monitor any intellect in the US or abroad, attempt to control it, repress it, and interfere with any competition from realizing it’s worth, using libel, false criminal prosecution and anticompetition, at a level demonstrating it’s potential value to IBM or to a competitor, and then outwits any effort by the victim to fight back. In the course of it, IBM files patents on ideas it did not originally author, modified for safety reasons, and then interferes with the potential intellect so that it will not gain any visible publicity that might cause a competitor to seek same out for the purposes of competition. IBM will go to ANY lengths to block competitive use of an intellect, and we mean any. Rumors of false imprisonment and even, possibly, murder have arisen during the course of our study.
This consolidated report represents the work of many individuals studying IBM from all aspects, interacting with it, creating test cases and establishing a definitive understanding of it’s methods. Our conclusions are presented here first, with narrative defining how we drew those conclusions. In the interest of privacy, many names of individual employees of IBM have been omitted and customers are not explicitly named unless permission was granted.
In the final analysis, IBM is clearly an un-policed and menacing entity in the business community, with so much power and so much influence, that it has managed to escape further policing of it’s nature by the Department of Justice, by agreeing to a Consent Agreement, and then going about business in a circumlocutious, convoluted and ambiguous manner designed by it’s able attorneys to appear to adhere to the agreement and the Law, but which by in-progress subterfuges, clever tricks, specific language adherence and implementation of IBM policies that superceded public law and safety, to manipulate sales to it’s advantage and economics to such an advantage that it has the ability to entirely circumvent the effect of Anti Trust law, Federal Trade statutes and International technological restrictions, if it chooses to.
Nonetheless, through its various cross patent, cross license, board relations and supplier/client relations (some of which are called Business Partners) IBM has developed the most powerful of all monopolies that restrain trade unilaterally throughout the US Business Community and abroad, anti-compete in every business sector, repressing competition and promoting allies (to a point), and has successfully defeated all efforts to date by the Justice Department to restrain it’s illegal monopolistic, anticompetitive and labor racketeering nature, in all respects.
CONCLUSIONS.
a)
IBM outwardly maintains the appearances of propriety, reliability,
advanced technology, good customer relations, esprit décor, management
competence, and financial solidity/stability. However, inwardly, IBM is not
committed to good customer relations so much as it is in dominating customer
relations, it’s products are no more reliable, and in many ways, are less
reliable than it’s competitors, it’s technology more often borrows from foreign
origins obtained by IBM’s prowess at analyzing it’s competitors objectives and
progress technologically, it’s esprit décor is marred by a near paralyzing fear
of the company by it’s own employees, and beyond appearances, has established
grass roots relationships with street level support communities in the US and
elsewhere that are populated by individuals willing to do IBM’s bidding in any
manner.
As a result, IBM is able to engage in about any activity it needs to, to
suppress, oppress or repress it’s competitors, or any allies who in it’s
opinion, are exceeding a certain prominence. In the case of one such ally,
Microsoft, IBM has been known to kill any effort to strategically promote
Microsoft before IBM, in any manner, including withholding product, elevating
pricing, falsifying documentation, lying to formal authority, lying to
customers, and fraudulent web marketing practices, using language that misleads
by allowing customers and allies to draw the wrong conclusion. In one such
case, we noted an “IBM-ish” phenom, where purchasing or registering in something
that was to ship or take place in the future, was cancelable if noticed more
than 7 days prior to delivery OR if cancelled before 3 days AFTER CONFIRMATION
of involvement in the purchase, where definition of “AFTER CONFIRMATION” was not
provided. This “IBM phenom” appears to govern all IBM agreements; IBM’s ability
to at it’s sole discretion, dictate the outcome of any arrangement, any
relationship and any situation, to the extent possible.
As a result, it is able to pick or choose candidates for any form of repression,
manipulation or control them in any manner needed, by relying on this principal
IBM phenom. As a result, IBM has tainted every customer relationship it has
with the specter of being able to control said customer’s relationship with IBM
at it’s roots and has successfully positioned itself to be as opportunistic,
abusive, unresponsive, ridiculous or deliberately bullying with respect to said
customer as may be needed to effect control of said customer as needs be. By
definition, whether customers realize it or not, IBM has placed them in a
position where if it wee it’s want, it could absorb them, their assets and
works, and things, without paying them so much as a penny, if it chose to
proceed down that line. This appears to be the governing principal, or “100%
Club” phenom at IBM, where it has all the options and the only thing levering
IBM may be either it’s fear of prosecution for Anti Trust, or it’s fear of
public exposure in Media that it’s close in partners such as GE, CBS and ABC,
AOL, Universal and other outlets don’t have control over, resulting in declining
interest or lower revenues.
b)
IBM maintains “proactive” marketing programs which lever third party
businesses as it’s so-called “Business Partners” who actively market it’s lower
cost products such as PCs, Laptops, Netfinity and basic software shrink-wrap.
Few, if any, Business Partners appear to derive major profit from the programs
themselves, it appears that any costs in complying with IBM’s marketing program
tend to make IBM’s products more expensive to the BP than purchasing them
retail, and are often asked to completely boycott certain IBM product lines so
that IBM Direct Sales can sell what appear to be the more desirable, higher
ticket, profitable lines such as IBM’s xServers, Power RS 6000 and S390. IBM
appears reluctant to allow third parties to derive a profit from their sales,
charges them for unconfirmed business referrals by the lead count, and provides
system configuration tools that are deliberately designed to force the reseller
to place themselves at a disadvantage, by omission, misrepresentation and
failure to disclose. As a result, it’s Business Partners would have been far
better off in the first place, to have purchased retail (but IBM often prevents
technology companies from doing so, in order to force them into a so-called ‘IBM
BUSINESS PARTNER” position, in order to dominate them in terms and
conditions).
c)
IBM also has a practice, during sales, of consulting with the reseller or
customer, and asking them for an SKU number or configuration option that only
IBM could actually supply, so as to obtain misinformation for which IBM is
responsible, so as to alleviate themselves of any responsibility for identifying
the proper product for a particular sale later on if the system they configure
does not live up to expectations, giving themselves the option of accusing the
customer of ordering the wrong thing, when in reality they did not (and IBM
wishes to thwart them) or in reality were misguided by IBM’s ill advice. In all
respects, IBM protects itself by placing the blame on the victim, IBM is
entirely self serving by nature, behavior, effect and results, and in doing so,
very much operates in violation of laws governing the integrity, disclosure and
fulfillment of sales by web, phone, in person or mail, under US FTC statutes and
various state General Business Law. Clearly, under surveillance during it’s
Consent Agreement period, IBM learned how to train it’s people to be very, very
careful in exactly what was said, and to place ambiguous documents in front of
customers at all times, allowing them to be misinterpreted by customers, and
used later, in oral situations, to IBM’s maximum legal advantage.
d)
IBM has an illegal internal policy of control of certain product lines
such that if that policy is in any way violated (e.g.- equipment is to be
relocated outside of the selling area, involves revenues that might have been
secured by IBM) irrespective if the policy is illegal, they will repress the
venturer who violated that policy. Such policies include a “no competitive
value exceeding X” policy, which evaluates sales, and if the reseller is
profiting at too high a level, they are repressed, includes “no competitive
innovation not under our control” policy, which evaluates technological
contributors and, if they exceed X value to potentially competing allies or
competing antagonists, are immediately suppressed by a wide variety of methods,
and so forth.
e)
IBM has cross patenting and cross licensing arrangements throughout the
computer industry which it uses as control mechanisms to control other companies
(usually enhanced by board level or stockholder situations, as well as by
controlling supply lines or R&D availability to said companies), deriving
revenues from various allies and competitors in a carefully guarded patenting
and copyright / trademark practice which it uses to control it’s allies,
partners and competitors. As a result, it can not only dictate to various
arrangements the terms under which it operates, but can hold the opposing or
allied party responsible for it’s own discretionary elections in a situation.
For example, an individual buying a preloaded computer was ordered by IBM to
order it in parts and assemble it himself. He did so, whereupon IBM refused to
ship him the operating system because he did not order the system preassembled.
This, and it’s agreements with Microsoft in cross patenting Windows and it’s
unique monopoly over the Windows system for that model of computer, resulted in
IBM attributing the cause to “our agreements with Microsoft, certain terms and
conditions have been imposed upon us”, when the unspoken reality was that IBM
simply intended to thwart the buyer from successfully purchasing and installing
a working computer for the task at hand, harming them irreparably, removing a
competitor in the large scale server software business, even one who used IBM
hardware. The key was, the buyer was developing applications for use with
Windows, and Windows runs no only on IBM hardware, but on Krells and Compaqs and
HPs and Acers and white boxes, and so, IBM perceived that individual as a
competitor’s agency, despite the fact that it was a one time purchase and
software exercise. This is an example of how IBM expresses its ability to
repress competition, on an economic valuation basis. If it’s something IBM can
derive the majority of market share from, and does not reflect upon IBM giving
up control, it’s ok. If it is something otherwise, IBM suppresses it by
whatever tactical means.
f)
IBM demonstrates enormous tactical jealousy at any possible successor in
any product development cycle, and guards judiciously against any potential
competitor from every surfacing. To do so, IBM has financially influenced
everything from self help groups to educational institutions to be it’s eyes and
ears. That includes financial influence over such strange groups as Landmark
Education and Scientology, which use their self help programs to gain access to
the private information of people whom IBM steers into their programs, during
various qualifying seminars and outward bound like programs.
IBM insures steady funding of their activities through consulting agreements,
ostensibly for maintaining the appearances of consultative co-market
relationships. In reality, however, these and other groups help IBM in a
disconnected sense; manipulate labor issues, stock issues, startup company
issues and public offering issues and stock promotion. In every respect, this
behavior violates SEC and anti-racketeering statutes, yet it is so vacuous in
it’s appearance, looking little more than like “self help groups”, or “weight
loss programs”, that it is almost an amazing phenomena in and of it’s self. We
call this IBM phenom, the “Self Help Privacy Invasion Model”.
g)
IBM management maintains a near aristocracy of corporate governance
internally, one where the penalties of boat rocking can be career or even life
threatening. In one case we studied, a daughter of an IBM President of World
Trade (there have been many such Presidents) was threatening to file legal
charges against her father, and the father sought the help of IBM security in
having the daughter committed “to protect the company from the flashback of
personal circumstances.”
h)
Our studies have found that IBM Security maintains, in Northern NY State,
a master database of individual dossiers on US and foreign nationals, that would
awe inspire the United States Department of Justice, National Security Agency
and CIA in terms of it’s breadth, depth and detail. Each competitor, individual
technological contributor and potential financial decision maker, business and
professional has been carefully categorized, recorded, data gathered,
investigated, surveilled and even recorded on the phone, web-mail and chat
lines, for future reference, crossing millions and millions of individuals and
businesses at a level that not only violates every US privacy statute, but is
outside of the rules of propriety for even the US Government or any entity on
our planet.
This abuse of power and dominance is so unforgivable as to suggest that IBM
could give up any person at any place to anyone who wanted to do that person
harm, in order to cause an outcome in a given person, place, thing, event or
business effecting matter. This “Central Security Dossier Database” needs to be
destroyed and IBM’s furtherance of it, eliminated. It is not only a threat to
national security, as it was when the European version was provided the Nazi
German Military during World War II by IBM leadership under Thomas J. Watson: in
the wrong hands, it could be used by anyone to gain access to about anything,
and thereby demonstrates in inappropriateness about which IBM centers that
exceeded our wildest suspicions.
i)
One thing that became clear, the controlling interests over IBM (it’s
management, that of GE, Citicorp, the JP Morgan / Chase enterprises and the
Rockefeller family and their oil companies, ultimately) use IBM as a tool, use
this database as a resource, and expect IBM to aggressively pursue unit record
based surveillance of all of humanity on a level not undertaken in total by the
combined intelligence and law enforcement authorities of all the governments of
the earth. This is the most alarming single finding: that IBM not only does
this as a combination of internal and externally for hire services, but that one
authority uses it to it’s advantage selectively: the Rockefeller / JP Morgan
group of businesses spanning many industries and banking enterprises globally.
It has been said that he who controls information controls the planet. IBM
controls information that it’s “family” uses throughout their television, media,
publishing, business, oil and banking enterprises, and it is IBM who serves as
the automation control point for the operation of those enterprises, the most
powerful on planet earth, bar none.
This tells us that not only does IBM require “weeding” of such as this database,
it requires “disconnecting” so it may be a company that is committed to serving
public need, not so-called “Standard Oil Trust” needs, from whence it sprang.
This is probably our most scathing and principal recommendation. IBM must not
only be broken up and disconnected among it’s parts, not only must it’s highly
illegal privacy intrusions and database of humanity be destroyed, IBM itself
must be detached permanently from the JP Morgan / Chase, Rockefeller Oil / GE,
Citibank/AT&T consortium like conglomerate monopoly to which it is attached, by
law, by financial intervention and by other activities as needed, and these
enterprises and their family ownership permanently stopped from creating any
future such enterprises here or abroad. Furthermore, any partners they have in
oil, power, energy, chemistry, biology, technology, science or other business
should receive the very same “intervention” if only for the good of this country
and humanity: they must be prevented from creating another IBM on their own or
or one for the interests of the Morgan / Rockefeller trust from whence IBM
sprang.
j)
In spite of it’s having been created by the Morgan / Rockefeller trust
creating businesses, IBM has gained significant autonomy within it’s
relationships by constructing pretenses of adhering to the rules of what were,
originally, it’s superiors. However, even those enormously wealthy families and
businesses, we have determined, have been somewhat outsmarted (at least to an
impasse) by IBM’s management determination to be the most powerful kid on the
block, the biggest stick and the most dangerous corporate enterprise: by virtue
of interlocking with and creating a dependency upon it for technology,
information management and various logistical aspirations, IBM has nullified
almost 50% of the control over it, that was exercised by those businesses and
business families that created it.
As a result, it can be seen as their partner, an illegal enterprise in which
they float many intrigues and engage in power administration over others, AND it
can be seen as their equal in many respects, despite it’s subordination. Hence
our belief that financial punishment of it’s partnerships with power that give
it the unique power base it stands upon, is not enough, the partners and IBM
need to be fined for each and every even insignificant violation of trust,
violation of security and violation of trade statutes that IBM appears to
regularly commit, until it ceases doing so, and that it be legally repressed
from ever again forming trust relationships that have the ability to circumvent
the law, while continuing to harm competition, repress or boycott market access
altogether and so forth.
k) By inspecting from several vantage points, IBM.com and it’s related domains, we were forced to conclude that IBM, by design, engages in Internet Fraud in a manner that suggests it is almost entirely immune from prosecution for it. The very sheer breadth of it’s product lineage, numbering schemes, database of products, interrelations of products, intertwining matrix of agreements, terms and conditions, shrink-wrap licenses, purchase agreements and many, many other such schemes, renders the customer, the business partner, and the general public in a position of constant inclarity, constantly modifiable circumstances (but modifiable only by IBM consent), misconception, and misunderstanding. This is accomplished by very succinctly omitting the “IBM Discretion” and “IBM Policy” and “Third Party Arrangements” which IBM quotes as cause, when at it’s sole discretion, thwarting that which it anti-competes with, wishes to halt or wants to prevent, or cause.
Authorship declaration: #1 - R. Copolla, #2 - J. Corsen & S. Nelson
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