A friend of mine claimed that two train companies were bidding on the project for a high speed rail from LA to SF. One had far superior technology and its train system could reach speeds that were much higher than the other, and could offer its technology at roughly the same price. Unfortunately, this company was complicit in Nazi war crimes. Now because of this, political correctness, and some kind of Jewish influence in politics, the inferior train system is probably the one that is going to get built.
I will state upfront that I feel that my friend has some anti-Semitic tendencies, so I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of the details here are inaccurate. But which, if any?
Your instincts are correct. As usual, the situation is very complex. I’m not sure how much of this is the one company attempting to bad mouth another to gain an edge and how much is “Jewish influence in politics.”
Funny how the state will accept bids from companies which have polluted the environment, defrauded investors, and fail to meet OSHA safety standards…but if they were tangentially involved in a pogrom which took place over SEVENTY YEARS AGO, oh noes!! That’s BAAAAAD!
(Sorry for the rant, but it really does irk me that the Holocaust gets special treatment, while all other historical genocides are completely ignored…anybody remember Armenia?)
The bill – which Schwarzenegger vetoed – would not have banned a Holocaust-related firm from bidding, but only required that one disclose its involvement in the Holocaust.
There’s a similar law or ordinance in varous American locales requiring disclosure of a firm’s connection to slavery. Ah, here’s an article about them. Not a genocide strictly speaking, but in the same ballpark.
Given all the mergers that occur over the years, the thorniness of applying such a requirement to 18th and 19th Century slavery, in contrast to the 20th century Holocaust, is clear.
As an example (and IIRC), Canadian National Railway falls under such laws because they bought the Illinois Central in 1998-99, and the Illinois Central bought a bunch of Southern railroads post-Civil War. In other words, a railroad that for many decades operated in a country that never had slavery is a “slave-connected firm” because it bought what had during the Civil War been the quasi-state railroad of a free and majorly pro-Union state, which had bought railroads in slave states after slavery had ended. IMHO, that borders on absurdity.
Especially since the people currently in charge weren’t even born when the Holocaust ended, let alone slavery.
Now, if said company was currently involved in funding terrorism, or aiding & abetting current genocides like the one in Sudan, that should definitely be taken into account.
I do not know what article you read, but the one that Ex_Chemist linked to says quite clearly that the bill in question seeks to prevent California doing business with SNCF, “the French national railway company” (“national,” here, means state owned, by the way) on the grounds that during WWII, when France was occupied by the Germans, their trains were used “to transport people to concentration camps.” So yes, this guy Blumenfield clearly is trying to put some of the blame for the holocaust on the French: he wants to punish the French of today (the French nation, which collectively owns this company) for what the Nazis forced their ancestors to do 60 years ago. I think that is well worth an eyeroll.
That’s a real stretch in a lot of ways. Don’t get me wrong, this proposed law was ridiculous but making a company do some disclosure isn’t really punishing them and having a company owned by the Government of France do some disclosure isn’t blaming the French. The guy who runs the company said, and I believe him, that they already go beyond what the proposed law would have required anyway.
As a Jew, I too have to give a :rolleyes: to this crap. I don’t blame modern Germans for the Holocaust and I certainly don’t even consider the French as the smallest part of this.
To me, this very dumb bill was clearly an effort from one group of bidders to get another company (or possibly group of companies) effectively disqualified from the bidding. Yes, I understand that having to make a statement about WWII involvement wouldn’t automatically get the French company disqualified, but let’s be honest. If one company has a statement in their proposal that says “oh by the way, we also supplied the trains the Nazis used to transport the Jews to the concentration camps”, and the other doesn’t, how can they possibly get picked even if their price is lower? I presume the losing company would protest and start a witch hunt against the evaluation board members saying the California high speed rail initiative and it’s members support the Nazis! Even if the SNCF hated the Jews and actively participated in this 60-70 years ago, I hardly think you can blame the current corporation for their grandfather’s twisted line of thinking.
Of course, this same kind of crap happened in reverse back in the late 1990s IIRC with Titan (now L-3 Communications) when they wanted to put satellite-based phone systems in larger villages within one of the African nations and were up against the French company EADS as their main competitor. I don’t remember the exact country involved, but it was one that basically required bribes to government officials in order to win contracts. The U.S. has something called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) that does not allow U.S. companies to make ‘bribes’ to get business, though it does allow ‘grease payments’ which are essentially small bribes. So the ‘grease payments’ started as normal and then EADS made a large and public bribe to the African government. Titan (a U.S. company) tried to match and beat it, and then EADS reported them for FCPA violations (which don’t apply to French companies), so Titan had to drop out of the bidding.
SNCF currently holds the speed record for conventional (not MagLev) high-speed rail. But this is a trainset specially modified for the world record attempt.
Currently the fastest scheduled train is the Wuhan-Guangzhou railway in China. They originally used trains made in Japan and Germany, but their newer trains are built in China.
Anyway, it seems very strange that California is objecting to the SNCF involvement in WWII, when the two other major high-speed rail systems were developed by state-owned railway companies of Germany and Japan.
More ironic is the fact that the US Gov’t allowed actual Nazis live here to work on our rocket programs in the 50’s.
That said, California isn’t objecting to SNCF’s involvement in WWII. The law, which didn’t pass, only asked that any bidders disclose their involvement, whatever it might be.