Socialism Is For Weaklings or Economic Darwinism

This is what happens when you try to go from a state run institution to private type and have to actually compete in the marketplace.

There have been 22 suicides at the firm since the beginning of 2008 and 13 attempted suicides, according to labour unions.

The unions blame chronic restructuring and work pressure at France Telecom for the wave of suicides, saying that some staffers are being left behind in the firm's transformation from a staid government agency to a private company with profit targets and intense competition.

Here in this country we are trying to follow the French model, where everything is state run, while they are trying to go the opposite way with some serious consequences for those who have for so long lived on the teat of the government.

Why do we want the government to control all of our industries and businesses? In France they are like of bunch drug addicts going cold turkey, and unfortunately for some of them they just can't handle reality or responsibility.

'Capitalism Needs To Go Down'

This should be music to the ears of Comrade Obama.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ridiculed the G-20 summit's attempts to deal with the global financial meltdown, saying capitalism is in crisis and "has to end."

Speaking to Venezuelan state television late Thursday, Chavez said the United States and Britain are "the most guilty" for the financial crisis sweeping the globe because of the financial model "they've been imposing for years."

"It's impossible that capitalism can regulate the monster that is the world financial system, it's impossible," Chavez said. "Capitalism needs to go down. It has to end. And we must take a transitional road to a new model that we call socialism."

He need not worry. We're well on our way there.

Get Ready For More Congressional Hearings

Last week's socialist circus performances by Schmuck Schumer (Moron-NY) and Kameraden Madame Maxine Waters (Moonbat-CA) may well be soon eclipsed after they become aware of this. Bring it on.

Energy giants smell windfall from sulphur

A Kazakh worker pours liquid sulphur at the Tengizchevroil refinery. Large quantities of crude oil is produced at Chevron’s Tengiz project
An ugly waste product of oil refining has been transformed into a golden windfall for energy companies as demand for fertilisers drives the price of sulphur to unprecedented levels.

For decades oil refiners have struggled to shift stockpiles of the yellow chemical, which is used to make sulphuric acid, essential in the manufacture of fertilisers. Food shortages and higher grain prices are boosting demand for fertilisers, and in only a year the price of sulphur has risen more than tenfold from $50 a tonne to $500 a tonne, according to ICIS, the chemicals-pricing service.

The extraordinary surge in the price of sulphur is expected to generate windfall profits for some oil companies, notably Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron, as well as Gulf oil producers, such as Saudi Aramco and Adnoc, the Abu Dhabi national oil company.

“Shell is one of the most-efficient producers of sulphur,” Barry Clarke, a sulphur market analyst for Pentasul, said. Shell produces about 3.5 million tonnes of sulphur, much of it from its Canadian oil sands business, and its cost, Mr Clarke reckons, is merely the rail freight cost of getting the sulphur to a port, about $25 a tonne.

Mr Clarke agrees that sulphur, once a burden, could earn the oil industry billions this year. “It’s going to show up in the earnings of companies,” he said.

Congressional hearings to be announced in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

The price is expected to rise further with spot cargoes changing hands for as much as $700 a tonne. Demand for metals is also keeping sulphur bubbling, as sulphuric acid is used in the mining industry to leech metal from ore.

So large was the sulphur surplus a decade ago that mountains of the chemical were being formed, notably in Kazakhstan, where high-sulphur “sour” crude oil is produced in large quantities at Chevron’s Tengiz project. A spokesman for Chevron confirmed that the stockpiles were beginning to erode as the company was finding demand for more than the annual output from the Tengiz field.

“Last year we sold a record 2 million tonnes,” he said. “We sold 126 per cent of production.”

Chevron wants to raise output to 3 million tonnes, further levelling its stockpiles, and Shell has recently developed a separate global business, based in Canada, to market its sulphur output.

Patrick Romeo, general manager of sulphur marketing for Shell, said that the market was undersupplied. The reason for the extraordinary price surge, he said, is that sulphur producers cannot respond to price increases and produce more. Sulphur output is purely a function of the amount of “sour” crude oil and sour gas that is processed by refineries. Mr Romeo said: “There is not much you can do about producing more sulphur. We are trying our best to put everything we have in stock into the market.”

The cost of sulphur and phosphates, another essential fertiliser ingredient, is sparking protests from politicians in developing countries, such as India, where the Government subsidises fertiliser to keep costs down for poor farmers.J.S. Sarma, secretary to the government department of fertilisers in India, said that prices were abnormally high and not justified. “I would not be honest if I said that it is not putting a strain on [India’s] financial resources,” he said.

The estimated cost to the Indian Government of the fertiliser subsidy is $22 billion (£11 billion), more than double last year’s figure.

According to Pentasul, the world produces about 47 million tonnes of sulphur annually, but the world’s ravenous demand for food is telling the sulphur market that 49 million tonnes is needed. Meanwhile, the opening of new mining projects adds further pressure on demand, creating huge price spikes.

Shell is confident that the price surge is temporary, and the company is developing products, such as sulphur-based concrete, anticipating a future surplus. It said: “There will be more sulphur in the market in the longer term and it will be overproduced as the world uses more unconventional oils, such as oil sands. Unconventional oil means more sulphur.”

Desperate to find a link to global warming climate change further perpetuate his hoax, al-Gore was unavailable for comment.

Via TimesOnline

He's Played On Their Fears!

Once again, al-Gore is cashing in on the fears of the Leftisphere; fears that he has carefully crafted over the years.

Gore Joins Major Venture Capital Firm
Al Gore announced Monday he's joining Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capital firm to guide investments that help combat global warming.

Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last month for his work on climate change, joins Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as it and dozens of other venture firms expand into so-called "clean-tech" investments worldwide.

The former vice president, who starred in the Academy Award-winning global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," is expected to be a high-profile, active partner at Kleiner Perkins. He's already a senior adviser to Google Inc. (GOOG) and a member of the board at Apple Inc. (AAPL) Alliance for Climate Protection, the advocacy group he co-founded, is based in Palo Alto.

Gore said he'll donate 100 percent of his salary as a Kleiner Perkins partner to the advocacy group, which focuses on accelerating policy solutions to the climate crisis. He would not disclose the amount. "It's one of the benefits of not being in the public sector anymore," he said in an interview.

Accelerating policy solutions is also known as propaganda. And what about his profits from carbon credits?

Also Monday, Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr announced he's joining the advisory board of Generation Investment Management, the $1 billion investment firm that Gore founded with David Blood, who previously managed $325 billion in assets out of Goldman Sachs' London office. Doerr is one of Silicon Valley's most outspoken clean-tech advocates.

Clean technology encompasses alternative fuels, water purification, renewable energy and recycling programs and other eco-friendly initiatives, as well as products ranging from electric cars to microbes that search for oil in seemingly tapped-out wells.

North American and European venture capitalists invested $1.9 billion in clean-tech companies in the first half of 2007, a 10 percent increase from the first half 2006, according to Ann Arbor, Mich.-based trade group Cleantech Network.

Last year, Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins earmarked $100 million of its $600 million investment fund to startups that work on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The firm expects to dedicate one-third of new funding to clean tech by 2009.

In 2005, Kleiner Perkins named former Secretary of State Colin Powell a "strategic limited partner," but the moderate Republican hasn't played a prominent role in the firm's affairs.

For years, Gore, 59, has been good friends with Doerr, a former Intel Corp. (INTC) salesman who became a billionaire thanks to early investments in startups such as Netscape Communications, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Google.

They palled around together so much in the 1990s that fellow venture capitalist and former InfoWorld editor Stewart Alsop II created spoof political buttons that said "Gore and Doerr in 2004."

Via The AP

Interesting timing. Very interesting.

Spokesthingys from the Propaganda Ministry of the People's Revolutionary Republic of Koslamistan were unavailable for comment. Perhaps it's the new reality - al-Gore the eeeevil capitalist - that's caused their tofu to spoil.

Das Kapital Didn't Stick

Deals in Balkans, Vietnam and Russia highlight firms' growing influence abroad

The nation’s energy companies are successfully elbowing out competitors to expand their interests across Central and Eastern Europe. ČEZ, the country’s dominant energy utility, made history last month with the largest-ever foreign investment by a domestic company, at 1.4 billion euros (39.6 billion Kč/$1.9 billion). It beat the record set in March by Zentiva, the largest generic drug manufacturer in the Czech Republic, of 460 million euros.

The deal is a joint venture with Elektroprivreda Republika Srpska (ERS) to modernize the Gacko I power plant and construct a new coal-fired power plant, Gacko II, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ČEZ will own a 51 percent stake in the enterprise, called Nove Elektrarne RS (NERS), which is also the largest direct foreign investment in the Serb Republic.

“The planned investment into the construction of the plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina is another step toward the fulfillment of our vision of becoming the leader in the electricity market in Central and Eastern Europe,” Martin Roman, ČEZ’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.
It is the company’s fifth foreign agreement. ČEZ has already acquired three distribution companies and the Varna power plant in Bulgaria, a majority stake in the distribution company Electrica Oltenia of Romania and two Polish power companies, Elcho and Skawina.

Capitalism trumps the others at any time and any place; limp-wristed neocoM theories and practice notwithstanding.