Lis­ten:
MP3 One Seg­ment

Sup­ple­ment­ing pre­vi­ous broad­casts on the sub­ject, this pro­gram begins with a review of the Ber­tels­mann fir­m’s pol­i­cy of insur­ing a sub­stan­tial net return on total cap­i­tal expen­di­tures. Ber­tels­mann is the Ger­man media giant that stands astride Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing, along with the Von Holtzbrinck firm.

Mr. Emory feels this series is as impor­tant (or more impor­tant) than any work he has ever done. Fur­ther­more, he sug­gests regret­ful­ly and with all due mod­esty that the future of the human race may depend on the suc­cess­ful dis­sem­i­na­tion of this mate­r­i­al to oth­ers. The avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that Ber­tels­mann belongs to the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion, the eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal com­po­nent of the “Under­ground Reich”.

Where­as many Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions are in debt (despite ris­ing stock prices), Ber­tels­mann is in excel­lent posi­tion from the stand­point of net cap­i­tal earn­ings. The broad­cast exam­ines the slow rise of Barnes&noble.com in U.S. on-line book sales. Fifty-per­cent owned by Berts­mann, the firm is slow­ly gain­ing on Amazon.com. (Bol.com is the on-line sales divi­sion of Ber­tels­mann.)

Exam­in­ing the exo­dus of exec­u­tives from Barnes&noble.com, the pro­gram com­pares this phe­nom­e­non with events depict­ed in the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk. Osten­si­bly a nov­el, the book is believed by Mr. Emory to be a man­i­festo, a blue­print for what the “Under­ground Reich” is actu­al­ly doing.

Dis­cussing a Nazi takeover of the Unit­ed States in the mid-21st Cen­tu­ry, Ser­pen­t’s Walk pred­i­cates the event on the con­trol of the Amer­i­can opin­ion form­ing media by the descen­dants of the SS. This con­trol, in turn, involves “one cor­po­ra­tion gen­tly cud­dling up to” anoth­er and “munch­ing it up” like a giant amoe­ba. After the “cud­dling” and “munch­ing” are com­plet­ed, exec­u­tives are “pushed out” and “replaced” with the SS faith­ful. Mr. Emory spec­u­lates about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this may be going on with Barnes&noble.com.

Much of the rest of the pro­gram dis­cuss­es Ber­tels­mann and von Holtzbrinck­’s “cud­dling up” to oth­er com­pa­nies and pub­li­ca­tions, as well as high­light­ing von Holtzbrinck­’s appar­ent links to the Under­ground Reich. Note that this “cud­dling up” per­mits Ber­tels­mann and von Holtzbrinck to influ­ence media con­tent with­out actu­al­ly gain­ing total con­trol of the out­lets’ par­ent com­pa­nies.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Barnes & Noble’s on-line links to The New York Times; Ber­tels­man­n’s links to Pear­son PLC, pub­lish­er of The Finan­cial Times of Lon­don; Barnes&noble.com’s sup­ply agree­ment with Alib­ris (an on-line used book com­pa­ny that threat­ens to dom­i­nate that mar­ket); Ber­tels­man­n’s pro­posed merg­ing of its BMG Direct record club with Time Warn­er’s Colum­bia House; Ber­tels­man­n’s links with a half-dozen com­put­er firms to mar­ket on-line CD’s; von Holtzbrinck­’s part­ner­ship with The Wall Street Jour­nal (50% own­er­ship of that paper’s Euro­pean edi­tion); von Holtzbrinck­’s pos­si­ble employ­ment of for­mer SS man and Goebbels Pro­pa­gan­da Min­istry offi­cial Wern­er Nau­mann; Nau­man­n’s appar­ent con­nec­tions to the Bor­mann group. (Record­ed on 4/23/2000.)