Siemens Code of ethics and practices: A tragedy Of the e-UROPEAN UNION

Image: A Siemens truck being used as a Nazi public address vehicle (1932)

Some choose to forget. Others do not. The Internet noosphere never. Siemens is being transformed from a telecoms hardware and services manufacturer and provider to an integral part of the global Big Brother conspiracy.

The Siemens scandal in Greece has reached a "dangerous critical mass" of exposure in the media, and has left no option to the German and Greek Governments but to sweep and hide the issue under a thick carpet in order to avert a major inter-european scandal eruption amidst the global financial storm and general elections in both countries. The story is well known and documented in the media so far.

Suitcases loaded with bribes of 100 million euro have changed hands between Siemens and a group of power brokers in Greece, at least with confessed officials from the Greek Socialist party's "PASOK" accounting department admitting it. Siemens has a strong corporate presence in Greece, and has won many of the big contracts from OTE, the major telecoms provider of Greece. During the socialist PASOK reign of two decades, Siemens was almost directly or indirectly the exclusive supplier of OTE. A one stop shop. The ethics and practices of Siemens concerning bribes, corruption, political entanglement, extortion and lately, global manipulation of international communications privacy laws and ethics with deep IP packet internet traffic voice and data stealing and alteration, seem to be a long tradition of business strategies build-in their corporate culture. For this German global electronics and telecoms giant, the Greek Siemens affair is not even close to be a tragedy. It is just another "regional event" amongst many others, exposed or buried in the legends of history. The local Siemens boss was carefully chosen to carry a double nationality, German and Greek. When the corruption story hit the streets in a big way in Athens, and the Greek authorities reached for him at his office for questioning, the boss was not there: he had already escaped in Germany seeking "civil" protection as a German citizen from the Greek police and public prosecutor. The "blind" German justice has ruled the expected: The Siemens boss was more German than Greek according to the German authorities analysis of his DNA, and therefore Germany could not handle a German citizen to the Greek authorities for his due explanations to the Greek state public prosecutor.

Just the tip of the iceberg. Media Silence and Darkness made everybody happy. Apart from the public opinion -at least in Greece. The emerging issue from this state sponsored manipulation and exploitation of the legal and financial system at both ends and at a wholesale level, from two members of the European Union, proves the inability and weakness of the EU administration in Brussels and Strasbourg to simply put things in Order according to the Law and satisfy the public need and demand for justice within the Union. Siemens is a strategic German global corporation born in Europe specializing in electronics and communication systems. The history of Siemens is unfortunately smeared with quite a few blemishes and wrongdoings since their incorporation back in the middle of the 19th century.
A quick reference on Siemens’ history is available at Wikipedia Extracts below, prove the continuous corruption practices and ethics that Siemens managers use in order to win tenders and contracts.

Siemens AG is Europe's largest engineering conglomerate. Siemens' international headquarters are located in Berlin and Munich, Germany. The company is a conglomerate of three main business sectors: Industry, Energy and Healthcare with a total of 15 Divisions. Worldwide, Siemens and its subsidiaries employ approximately 480,000 people in nearly 190 countries and reported global revenue of $110.82 billion as of 2008. Siemens AG is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since March 12, 2001. […]

Preceding World War II Siemens was involved in funding the rise of the Nazi Party and the secret rearmament of Germany. During the Second World War, Siemens supported the Hitler regime, contributed to the war effort and participated in the "Nazification" of the economy. Siemens had many factories in and around notorious concentration camps to build electric switches for military uses. In one example, almost 100,000 men and women from Auschwitz worked in a Siemens factory inside the camp, supplying the electricity to the camp.[…]

In the 1950s and from their new base in Bavaria, S&H started to manufacture computers, semiconductor devices, washing machines, and pacemakers. Siemens AG was incorporated in 1966. The company's first digital telephone exchange was produced in 1980. In 1988 Siemens and GEC acquired the UK defence and technology company Plessey. Plessey's holdings were split, and Siemens took over the avionics, radar and traffic control businesses -as Siemens Plessey.[…]

In March 2007 a Siemens board member was temporarily arrested and accused of illegally financing a business-friendly labour association which competes against the union IG Metall. He has been released on bail. Offices of the labour union and of Siemens have been searched. Siemens denies any wrongdoing.

In April 2007, the Fixed Networks, Mobile Networks and Carrier Services divisions of Siemens merged with Nokia’s Network Business Group in a 50/50 joint venture, creating a fixed and mobile network company called Nokia Siemens Networks. Nokia delayed the merger due to bribery investigations against Siemens.

In October 2007, a court in Munich found that the company had bribed public officials in Libya, Russia, and Nigeria in return for the awarding of contracts; four former Nigerian Ministers of Communications were among those named as recipients of the payments. The company admitted to having paid the bribes and agreed to pay a fine of 201 million euro.

In December 2007, the Nigerian government cancelled a contract with Siemens due to the bribery findings.

Siemens was part of a joint venture with Nokia in 2008 to provide Iran's monopoly telecom company with technology that allowed it to intercept the internet communications of its citizens to an unprecedented degree. The technology reportedly allowed it to use 'deep packet inspection' to read and even change the content of everything from "emails and internet phone calls to images and messages on social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter". The technology "enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it, to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes" expert insiders told the Wall Street Journal. During the post-election protests in Iran in June 2009, Iran's internet access was reported to have slowed to less than a tenth of its normal speeds, and experts suspected this was due to the use of the interception technology.(Very true, many such systems exist in the Middle East, China, and Arab countries-ed) The joint venture company, Nokia-Siemens Networks, asserted in a press release that it provided Iran only with a 'lawful intercept capability' "solely for monitoring of local voice calls".

This latest episode in Iran, is definitively a huge upgrade far surpassing the isolated “commercial contracts via bribes” entanglement of Siemens with political and government power structures around the globe. Dumping “smart black box” interception technology in Iran and therefore plugging such Orwellian “listening earposts” to the word wide web is illegal stealing, intercepting, sharing, monitoring, manipulating, and even altering the total information digital stream that flows through the global Internet cloud, whether it is e-newspapers, e-zines, websites, or simply all telephone traffic whether wireless GSM, fixed line, VoIP, or any forthcoming IP protocol. Such capability is beyond the commercial profit reasoning. It is a direct Big Brother operation, contrary to the founding principles of international telecommunications laws, ethics and practices and a fascist behind the scenes nihilism of the privacy of millions of citizens around the globe. The World Wide Web has no borders. Iran is an ideal location for such dark operations and data stealing. The Iranian Siemens affair is a global case by definition of the WWW, and Siemens seems to be on the road of becoming part of the new world order police state, a repetition of practices and ethics on the path of earlier corporate choices and practices seven decades ago, during the demise of the Weimar Republic, the rise of the National Socialist Party to power in Germany, the Third Reich, and the ultimate destruction of Europe. A tragedy for Europe with Siemens ante portas.