Lis­ten: One Seg­ment

1. More infor­ma­tion in a long-running inquiry, this pro­gram focuses pri­mar­ily on the music indus­try. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of the impo­si­tion of a fee by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment against Hewlett-Packard’s CD burn­ers. (“Ger­man Fee on CD Burn­ers Hits HP” by Hans Greimel [AP]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 11/25/2000; pp.1-12C.)

2. The ratio­nale for impos­ing this fee was the fact that the tech­nol­ogy could be used to “pirate” music off the web. (Idem.) (Nap­ster recently con­cluded a deal with Ger­man media giant Ber­tels­mann. That firm is the focal point of much of the rest of the program.)

3. The pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from Busi­ness Week’s issue of 11/13/2000, orig­i­nally pre­sented in FTR 261. (“A New Net Pow­er­house?” by Jack Ewing; Busi­ness Week; 11/13/2000; pp. 46–52.)

4. Bertelsmann’s deal with the web music firm is envi­sioned as being fol­lowed by a broad­ened use of the P2P tech­nol­ogy that was pio­neered by Nap­ster. (“The Man Behind Project Thun­der­ball” by Jack Ewing; Busi­ness Week; 11/13/2000; pp. 50–51.)

5. Ber­tels­mann CEO Thomas Midel­hoff envi­sions Nap­ster as a plat­form to be used for the sale of other Ber­tels­mann prod­ucts. (Ibid.; p. 51.)

6. Ber­tels­mann also pro­poses to per­mit cor­po­rate rivals to use Nap­ster as a plat­form for down­load­ing their prod­uct. (“A New Net Pow­er­house?” by Jack Ewing; Busi­ness Week; 11/13/2000; p. 49.) This would greatly facil­i­tate the col­lec­tion of an unimag­in­ably great amount of intel­li­gence con­cern­ing the sorts of medi­ated infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment that peo­ple are con­sum­ing. Con­sid­er­ing the con­text of the ongo­ing dis­cus­sion, that is a daunt­ing prospect indeed.

7. The pro­gram high­lights the fact that Ber­tels­mann chief Mid­del­hoff is on the board of direc­tors of Vivendi, the French Com­pany that pur­chased Uni­ver­sal Music, the world’s largest music com­pany. (Idem.)

8. Vivendi is chaired by a close friend of Middelhoff’s. (Idem.)

9. Much of the rest of the pro­gram focuses on merger talks that would fold EMI into a Bertelsmann-controlled firm. Nego­ti­a­tions about doing that are under­way in New York. (“Ber­tels­mann and EMI in NY Talks” by Bertrand Benoit and James Hard­ing; Finan­cial Times; 11/14/2000; p. 20.)

10. Reg­u­la­tory hur­dles fac­ing such a deal will be con­sid­er­ably less than those that blocked Ber­tels­mann rival Time-Warner from buy­ing EMI. (“EMI-Bertelsmann Deal Seen Work­able” by Charles Gold­smith, Mar­tin Peers, Bran­don Mitch­ener; Wall Street Jour­nal; 11/13/2000; 9. A4.)

11. Views on how soon a Bertelsmann/EMI deal might be con­cluded dif­fer. Press reports first reported that the deal might be announced presently. (“Ber­tels­mann, EMI on Verge of Merger Deal” by Chuck Philips; Los Ange­les Times; 11/ 17/2000; p. C2.)

12. Later reports viewed the deal as being delayed. (“Reg­u­la­tory Fears Hin­der EMI-Bertelsmann Courtship” by Bran­don Mitch­ener and Philip Shishkin; Wall Street Jour­nal;11/24/2000; p. A9.) If, and when the deal goes through, the result­ing com­pany will be num­ber one in the world, replac­ing the afore­men­tioned Universal.

13. As is the case with the other broad­casts in this series, the infor­ma­tion in this one is to be under­stood within the con­text of the Serpent’s Walk sce­nario. This Nazi tract, pur­port­edly a novel, involves a takeover of the United States in the mid-21st cen­tury by the descen­dants of an SS gone under­ground. (Serpent’s Walk by “Ran­dolph D. Calver­hall”; National Van­guard Books; copy­right 1991; ISBN# 0–937944-05-X.)

14. “Build­ing up their eco­nomic mus­cle and buy­ing into the opin­ion form­ing media,” this under­ground Reich takes over the world. (Idem.)

15. Pre­vi­ous pro­grams in this series have detailed the hypoth­e­sis that, like a com­pan­ion National Van­guard pub­li­ca­tion, The Turner Diaries, Serpent’s Walk is actu­ally a blueprint/manifesto, as much as a “novel.” Knowl­edge­able observers will also rec­og­nize in the above sce­nario, the remark­able and deadly Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion, the under­ground com­po­nent of a 3rd Reich “gone underground.”

16. There is sub­stan­tial evi­dence that the Bor­mann group effec­tively con­trols “cor­po­rate Ger­many.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile by Paul Man­ning; Lyle Stu­art [HC]; copy­right 1981; p. 284; ISBN# 0–8184-0309–8.)

17. Bertelsmann’s his­tory and makeup sug­gest the prob­a­bil­ity that it is an SS/Bormann com­pany. (“Bertelsmann’s Nazi Past” by Her­sch Fis­chler and John Fried­man; The Nation; 12/28/98.) It should be noted that the afore­men­tioned arti­cle does not men­tion the Bor­mann group, but the infor­ma­tion pre­sented points in that direction.

18. Bertelsmann’s offi­cial his­to­rian, Dirk Baven­damm, has pub­lished books that are con­sis­tent with the view of World War II espoused by the SS char­ac­ters in Serpent’s Walk. (“Bertelsmann’s Revi­sion­ist” by Her­sch Fis­chler and John Fried­man; The Nation; 11/8/99.)