While the government continues to examine other possible options to rescue the 33 trapped miners in Copiapo in northern Chile, plans to drill have been delayed until this morning, Monday.

According to Andres Sougarret, the engineer in charge of the rescue, the drilling, originally to begin Sunday, was postponed to reinforce the ground so that it could support the 30-ton machine that will be used.

“We are reinforcing and we intend to start out with this machine in the early hours of Monday,” Sougarret told to the Chilean daily La Tercera.

Sougarret explained that the drill will create a duct 702 meters straight down that will end in the emergency refuge site of the San Jose Mine where the miners are currently trapped. He said that using this method it will probably take three to four months to get the men out.

In the meantime, Mining Minister Laurence Golborne confirmed that President Piñera has ordered the government to investigate approximately 10 alternative options that could shorten the rescue time, including one that would have the miners out by Chile’s Sept. 18 bicentennial celebrations. Some experts have already ruled this option out as unsafe and unrealistic.

“We think the rescue will take three to four months,” Golborne said. “But we are looking at other options because what is more important than time is not making a mistake. If it’s possible to do a safe rescue more quickly, we’ll do it.”

One option reported in the media over the weekend has been nicknamed “Plan B” and could have the miners out in two months. Rescuers would use a drill typically used to drill water wells, the Schramm T-130 drill currently at the Ines mine in Collahuasi. The machine can go to 700 meters and would drill a hole about 75 meters around, digging about 20 meters a day. Golborne has not commented on Plan B or any alternative plans under discussion.

Read more here.

Germany opens its business gateway into Central Asia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s presence at the Kazakh-German business forum in Astana on Sunday confirmed the European nation’s growing interest in the developing economy of Kazakhstan but also in that country’s immense energy resources. Merkel, in fact, noted that Kazakhstan was the fourth largest energy supplier in Germany.

“Germany can contribute a lot in Kazakhstan’s industrial modernization. Germany supports Kazakhstan’s intention to diversify economy and develop infrastructure as well as promote small and medium businesses”, Angela Merkel emphasized.

Kazakhstan and Germany have signed 34 agreements to the amount of 2 billion euros. First Vice Minister of Industry and New Technologies Albert Rau has made it public at Kazakh-German business forum in Astana today.

According to him, 700 enterprises with German capital operate in Kazakhstan presently. More than 300 businessmen from Kazakhstan and Germany took part in the forum.

Read more here.

Corporations are today the dominant institution in life, both at home and abroad. Their reach and influence and power are unexcelled, and perhaps unexampled in history. They enjoy the kind of omnipresence and omnipotence that made the Christian Church the dominant institution of the Middle Ages—only more so. In the Middle Ages there were two realms: the earthly and the spiritual. The Church was exalted above the earthly realm, which by and large went its way content with this hierarchical ordering of life that put a premium on spiritual things, and made the princes of this realm subject to the princes of the next. But for the corporation there is one, and only one, realm and rule: the Kingdom of Profit here and now.

The major differences between these two world-dominant institutions, the Church and the Corporation, are these: The Church exists for the sake of the individual,  while the individual, first and last, exists for the sake of the Corporation. The former strives to enhance life: the latter cares only  for profit, even at the expense of life. The former is mindful of the earthly battle between good and evil: the latter is mindful only of the battle for increasing profits. The one enhances and deepens life, to create a caring, loving community based on self-giving love: the other pursues profit, even to the point of destroying life and community. One strives to make men fit to meet their Maker : the other destroys men’s souls when engaged in the single-minded pursuit of profit at any cost. One is liberating: the other enslaving. One seeks Truth, Goodness, and Beauty: the other only Gain. One develops and fosters a person’s independence: the other demands radical dependencey. One is adjured to care for all of creation no matter the cost: the other cares only for the bottom line. One strives to incarnate radical goodness and love:  the other, legally, is bidden to be, and is in fact, radically  selfish and amoral.

Let us now praise famous men.

Jack Welch retired from General Electric in 2001, having been its CEO since 1981. Under his leadership, GE developed from a $13 billion dollar corporation into one worth hundreds of billions of dollars, becoming in the process the second largest corporation in the world. And along the way Welch became famous. As one biography says, “…Jack Welch’s management skills became almost legendary. His no nonsense leadership style gave him a reputation of being hard, even ruthless but also fair when making business decisions.” He urged his managers to follow the “GE ethic of constant change and striving to do better.” The biography goes on to state that under Welch’s tenure each business under the GE (conglomerate) umbrella “was one of the best in its field.” Since retiring (amidst much praise and adulation from his peers and the media), Welch has penned a best-selling memoir “Jack, Straight From The Gut,” and now advises other Fortune 500 companies as well.

But this is only part of his biography: the other, seamier side is carefully hidden from view by both GE, Jack Welch, and the media.

In 2002, United For A Fair Economy, a corporate watch-dog, gave GE its “special lifetime achievement award” “for scoring the highest average rank across 10 bad (corporate) habits”, outdistancing second-place Enron (!) by an astounding 45%. Canadian law professor and expert on the corporation, Joel Bakan, writes that in only 11 years, from 1990-2001, GE had been charged with 47 “major legal breeches.” What kinds of things has GE done?

Between 1990-1994 GE was charged with 15 cases of fraud in Department of Defence contracts. In 1995 GE paid a $7.1 million dollar fine in a fraud suit for having sold thousands of jet engines to the military without complying with the military’s testing requirements. In 1997 GE pled guilty to defrauding the military out of  $10 million dollars for a battlefield computer system. In 1985 GE pled guilty to fraud and falsifying 108 claims on a missile contract. GE-designed nuclear reactors around the world have now been shown to have serious design flaws that imperil surrounding populations; this is also true of its boiling water reactors both here and abroad, with its threat of radioactive fuel rod contamination. GE has also been a “serial polluter” of PCBs and other chemicals at its many plant sites, contaminating both soil , gound-water, and rivers. GE was found to have built defective wiring and cables into 754 NYC subway cars. GE has had to pay a $100 million dollar fine for “unfair debt collection practices.” GE was found guilty of fraud and money-laundering in an unauthorized sale of jets to Israel. The list goes on and on. Clearly “striving to do better” and “being the best in one’s field” mean one thing to Welch and GE and quite another to the rest of us.

This is what makes corporations so dangerous and so evil. There is no ultimate accountability. They are in essence a law unto themselves, backed (and white-washed) by a media which it largely controls (eg, GE owns NBC) or influences through its power of advertising, and politicians to whom they have contributed money and so now “have great influence” with, and a largely pro-business judicial system.  So the buck literally stops Nowhere. Since the corporation legally has been defined as a “person,” only it—this non-existent “person”—by and large suffers the force of the law…and that almost always ends in fines. Which to a wealthy corporation like GE means exactly nothing.

Jack Welch has spent not a single day in prison—likely not even a single day in court. But if  you or I had repeatedly defrauded the federal government, engaged in serial, damaging pollution, not to mention money-laundering (inter alia), we surely would have suffered fully for it—and not only just seen the inside of a courtroom but also spent many years in federal prison!

With there being no real deterrence to crime, a corporation just adds up the “externalities”, as it calls them. If I break the law (it says), how much will I profit by it as against how much will it cost (if I get caught). A corporation’s modus operandi, or manner of operation, is done strictly on a “cost-benefit” analysis, leaving aside all concern for ethics, the environment, the worker, safety, etc.

What one ought to do is quite simply never considered,  only what will bring in the greatest profit.

So today we have this frightening specter of the most powerful institution in the world being a law unto itself, with the spiritual realm, and its imperatives for goodness and truth, not so much as even influencing, let alone determining, its policies , practices, or goals.

And unfortunately, society always pays in the end, exactly as we are now doing in the Gulf of Mexico— but the CEO nearly always retains his honor, his respect, and his good name—no matter what.

Let us now praise famous men.

We lack information on what happened to a certain Mr. Andrew J.Hall, who a year ago was the head of the Phibro energy-trading unit of Citigroup. Considering the importance of his compensation, we certainly hope for him that he keeps the job for an n number of decades. Last August, his contract entitled Mr. Hall to net $100 million for his 2009 exertions. The problem was that Citigroup, the banking colossus his Phibro company belonged to, was losing so much money that the federal government was forced to rescue it with taxpayer’s dollars.

Consequently, the US Treasury Secretary instructed Kenneth Feinberg, a high caliber lawyer, to study how to reduce the nonsensical emoluments of upper officers of  corporations which public money saved from extintion. It was not rational that the man in the street would pay the exhorbitant largesses that in better times the ‘market laws’ assigned to some managers. Said managers – Mr. Hall not included- resulted very good at sinking the balance sheets of their corporations.

As aboveadmitted, we don’t know the  developments that followed the appointment of lawyer Feinberg. Then it appeared that regulating the earnings of some top bankers had become a first priority. The US Congress discussed ad hoc legislation, meant to curtail too high corporate compensations, in given cases: when profits and capital gains are only apparent or openly negative, so public money must be called to rescue companies that are ‘too big to fail’. However, it must be recalled that previous efforts  had to be abandoned, so executive pay rose to offensive highs.

Opponents of  regulation are numerous and combative: the American heritage supports them.  Shareholders whose dividends or even capitals are damaged by the enormous pay packages, tend to excuse overcompensated executives. The lust for dollars is thought to be a sacred birthright, one not to be infringed upon even when the aim is legitimate -protecting the American taxpayer. In fact, slashing taxes in recent years (the top federal marginal rate on the highest earners was 70% in 1980, it is 35% today) has not antagonized the public opinion. Capitalism triumphed on enemies as formidable as communism. Why should hypercapitalism be obstructed by the grievances of the middle-to-lower classes?

Nobody can say when, if ever, the man in the street will perceive the wrongness of some capitalist practices. The religion of the market and of the free initiative is weaker in Europe than in America. But even in the Old Continent top incomes reach  astronomical levels nowadays. Simply put, the man in the street accepts subjection to the moneyed minority. He respects the vested interests of the few. That’s reality: although not a smart one.

Rioting was reported in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby on Tuesday night as 50-60 youths pelted police with stones and set alight to a building, reports The Local.

“It is a war zone out here, it is raining stones”, said one witness who wished to remain anonymous to the Metro daily.

According to another witness a bus trying to enter the deprived area was forced to stop.

“Not a single window on the bus was intact,” an eye witness said.

Police were given an indication that something was afoot earlier in the evening as youths gathered on the streets equipping themselves with paving stones.

“They did all they could to attract our attention,” said Mats Brännlund at Stockholm police.

But police decided to react first when a building housing a mentor programme for young people in the area, burst into flames.

“We had to help the emergency services to get through,” Brännlund said.

In total around 20 police patrols with dogs were present in the area throughout the night as they tried to restore calm. Police vehicles were also subject to stone throwing.

“If you attack the police with stones and set alight to buildings then I would venture to suggest that it can be classified as rioting,” he said.

The fire services deployed 21 staff from three fire stations at the location, but none were reported to have been subjected to stone throwing.

A branch of the Nordea bank was attacked at around midnight with the local police station also the target of stone throwing youths. Two men were detained in connection with the police station attack.

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• Immigrant youths riot in Sweden (news.bbc.co.uk)

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Maybe our secular, common sense will assist us in understanding why the prospect of Mediterranean deserts producing electrical power seems convincing, while by the same prospect, if applied to the bulk of Sahara, it appears too visionary, even lunatic.

Several scientists and planners on both sides of the Mediterranean have started concentrating on the bold or wild hypothesis that the solar energy which overheats the Sahara can power ‘forever’ the whole of Europe. The Sahara is enormous: 3.32 million sq.mi. (8,6 million sq.km.). Its damnation, aridity, could produce an immense worth. With temperatures easily reaching 50° C., Sahara may be seen as an inexhaustible source of sustainable energy. Each square meter of that desert receives a constant average of 1,000 watts. The German Aerospace Center has calculated that one third of 1% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts would cover the total energy needs of the European continent; and that a Sahara area slighly larger than the Republic of Panama could yield as much energy as all the world’s power plants.

The futuristic scenarios inducted by some recent studies have generally been met with skepticism. The best motivated objection is that Sahara is too far from Europe. Its very immensity is an additional factor so the concept of redeeming some segments of the Earth’s largest desert is psychologically intimidating. But there is a fundamental fault in the Sahara dream: it’s thinking in terms of the power being carried entirely to Europe. Rather, the Saharan electricity scheme should develop parts, however small, of the Sahara itself. This does not amount to deny that the northernmost rim of Sahara, the one washed by the Mediterranean, will necessarily be the first to produce electricity destined to Europe.

Scientists and experts would be wise to study the possibility that, if Sahara solar energy is converted to power, said power be applied to draw water from wells in areas around it. Already fifty years ago, hydrological researches discovered a large (600,000 sq.Km.) layer of artesian water under the desert. Where internal pressure would not be strong enough to push the water up many thousands of meters, abundant electricity should one day permit boring and pumping at low or acceptable costs.

Another decisive circumstance is that the Sahara is not sand and rocks only. Prospecting for minerals started in earnest after WW2. In 1958, a lot of oil was discovered in Algeria, Libya and Egypt. Coal, too, was found, and mining followed soon in the Colomb Béchar district.

So, today northern Sahara is a very important producer of oil and gas. Refining, too, is considerable. Iron ore is mined and smelted in several areas, including the abovementioned Colomb Béchar. Copper, tin, manganese, haematite, tungsten, zinc, lead, antimony are present in several locations. The development of phosphates is well advanced. The phosphate deposit of Gebel Onk used to be, possibly still is, the most important in the world. It’s likely that new natural resources, or new uses of old ones, shall be discovered in the Sahara, both before and after the exploitation of solar power starts.

The next step could presumably be  the launch of irrigation programs in the vicinity of pumping stations, with villages and urban services. The success or failure of human settlements will probably depend, among other things, on the cultural traditions of the involved populations.  Clearly ,the present, meager desert inhabitants will not make the ideal farmers, as for millennia  oases only have known cultivation. Anyway, each of the countries which share the Sahara possess human masses to settle in the gradually developed districts. Possibly, the social, political, racial problems of future colonization may prove more difficult than the technological-economic ones.

Transportation, too, will prove very expensive. However, most sections of Sahara are flat, which will help. Electrified railroads will perhaps operate at low cost.

Massimo Calderazzi is member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to which many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.

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• Solar energy proving useful in the Middle East | Cooler Planet News (solar.coolerplanet.com)

A strategy by 18 African countries to develop a joint textile manufacturing chain will make products from the region more competitive in the world market.

The plan that aims at producing “garments manufactured in Africa” will see the value chain from the cotton seed to finished garments broken into stages and each assigned to different countries with a comparative advantage.

The new strategy by the Africa Cotton & Textile Industries Federation (ACTIF) is a departure from the current scenario where African countries have largely exported cotton to other continents for processing into clothes.

“We are only good at providing raw material without adding value. We should capture the entire value chain from the cotton seed to the shirt,” ACTIF chairman Jaswinder Bedi said.

Africa grows 12 per cent of the cotton in the world, out of which 95 per cent is exported in that form.

Players in the industry are looking into strategies of setting up factories in strategic parts of the continent to use up the tonnes of cotton grown in Africa to produce fabrics in huge volumes for the regional markets.

ACTIF programme manager Fred Kong’ong’o said the initiative dubbed “Brand Africa” hopes to take advantage of the East African Community Common Market and efforts towards regional integration.

He added that the manufactured garments would be promoted as products of an eco-friendly process from the farm to the time they leave the factory as clothing.

However, this plan faces stiff competition from secondhand clothes and imports that are preferred to the locally manufactured clothes.

The situation is further complicated by the high cost of manufacturing in parts of the region. Industry players want the government to create demand for locally manufactured garments.

Already, the government has indicated that it intends to buy uniforms for hospitals, the disciplined forces and other large users from local manufacturers.

Recently, Prime Minister Raila Odinga announced plans to roll out a stimulus package for the textile industry, besides implementing recommendations of a study conducted in 2005 for the industry’s revival.

About 41 textile factories have collapsed over the years, rendering about 400,000 people who worked there unemployed.

Mr Bedi said that it might prove necessary to establish a textile upgrading fund since the collapsed firms do not have up to date technology.

ACTIF intends to stage a workshop for fashion designers that will culminate in fashion shows in Nairobi this month as part of its launch in an effort to brand locally manufactured merchandise.

It is meant to showcase garments made in Africa besides fostering closer collaboration between fashion designers and garment manufacturers.

The event’s concept paper indicates that it aims at tapping into the potential of various African cultures and production of organic cotton products.It adds that similar strategies where fashion designers have been used to boost textile and apparel business has been successfully used in China, Turkey, India, South Africa and Mauritius.

According to ACTIF the high cost of power in Kenya has seen factories relocate to other countries in the region with lower costs. While Kenya levies US$0.24 per unit of power, it costs US$0.12 in Tanzania, US$0.04 in Egypt and US$0.03 in Ethiopia.

Read more here.

Italy has two intrinsic features affecting the cost (and quality) of life: Italy’s workers have the lowest salaries in the EU, but also face the highest prices in all of Europe. But above all else, the thing that costs Italians the most is petrol. Oil companies can raise prices for every little thing. As the price of oil per barrel increases, the price of petrol rises. Yet, in Italy, when the oil price per barrel drops, the price of petrol still remains high. In the past few days (even for the Easter holidays) the prices reached at €1.432/ liter for unleaded gasoline and €1.236/ liter for gas oil- unreasonably high prices that have raised the level of petrol in Italy to being the highest in Europe.

But is the blame for this situation only on the oil companies? Let’s see. In Italy there’s another big feature: taxes on gas. On every liter of petrol the Italian state earns the 70% in tax revenues. But what kind of taxes? These unbelievable taxes are used to repay even things that happened seventy years ago. For example we’re paying off the War in Abyssinia of 1935, the Suez crisis of 1956, the Vajont disaster of 1963, the Florence flood of 1966, the Friuli earthquake of 1976 and many more unfortunate events. Italy has the highest costing petrol in Europe because oil companies raise prices, and because of ridiculous and ancient taxes. The result: no one does anything and nobody says anything. The state collects and lets the status quo continue.

And meanwhile the gas increases and people pay. And pay more than anyone in Europe.

Read here.

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Former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, facing another 22 1/2 years in jail on charges that he stole more than $30 billion in oil, took the stand Tuesday for the first time in a year, sparring with prosecutors and playing to the crowd.

The hearing, in Courtroom No. 7 on the third floor of Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court, was packed with journalists and Khodorkovsky supporters.

At least a dozen people hoping to hear the start of Khodorkovsky’s testimony — which his lawyers promised would be lengthy — could not find seats and were forced to watch by closed-circuit television. The judge had previously blocked the video feed on fears that witnesses could hear earlier testimony.

Wearing a black shirt and coat, Khodorkovsky was led into the glass-and-steel defendants cage along with his former partner, Platon Lebedev, who was dressed in an Adidas track suit. They were accompanied by rifle-wielding guards who, despite the warm weather, were wearing large fur hats.

Khodorkovsky seemed to be in good spirits and flashed smiles at the crowd.

Once the pushing for seats on the courtroom’s narrow benches had subsided, the public began to notice a hint of petroleum in the air. A few moments later, the odor’s source became clear.

It was oil, the main subject of the long-lasting trial, and it was coming from the defendants’ cage.

“I ask the court to observe this oil and well fluid,” Khodorkovsky said.

To the surprise of the judge and prosecutors, he produced two large jars, one containing crude oil and one containing well fluid — the mix of water, oil, drilling fluid and other substances that first comes out of the ground. Khodorkovsky, a chemistry graduate, began to explain that the substances are clearly different, and even visibly so.

In the first motion of his defense testimony, Khodorkovsky defined the word “oil” in Russian and asked for permission to conduct “an investigative experiment.”

The judge, Viktor Danilkin, was not amused and yelled that the fluids were not permitted in the courtroom, which he noted was packed and had only one door.

“Guard, get rid of that flammable liquid!” Danilkin yelled.

Court marshals removed the jars, providing him water instead. As they were leaving, Khodorkovsky noted that he was not giving his oil to the court.

“In this trial, the prosecution replaces the notion of ‘oil’ and the ‘right to possess,’” Khodorkovsky said, adding that he would like to show the difference to the court.

He went on to explain that Yukos had been buying the right to purchase oil from its subsidiaries, not the actual crude. “The oil … didn’t disappear anywhere,” he said.

“I’d like to offer that [prosecutor Valery] Lakhtin try dispose of this oil, represented by water in the case,” Khodorkovsky said.

Flustered, Lakhtin proceeded to flip through the Criminal Procedural Code before finding a passage saying that experiments in court were not allowed, drawing bursts of laughter from the audience.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, both sentenced in 2005 to eight years in prison for fraud and tax evasion, are now being tried on charges of embezzling more than $25 billion of the oil that they were convicted of not paying taxes on.

The case, like its predecessor, is widely seen by Khodorkovsky’s supporters as politically motivated.

Read more here.

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Russian, Chinese, French, Italian, Indian and other oil companies are among firms that have already expressed interest in investing in Uganda’s oil reserves estimated at 2 billion barrels to date.

A press statement from the State House recently said President Yoweri Museveni had met a delegation from Tullow Plc, led by Mr. Paul McDade, the Chief Operating Officer and Mr. Elly Karuhanga, the president of Tullow Uganda.
Tullow is the major oil explorer with oil fields in the Albertine Rift Valley 250 kilometres west of the capital, Kampala.

The statement said the Tullow Plc delegation was later joined by a group from the China National Offshore Oil Corporation which expressed interest in joining Uganda’s oil and gas sector by partnering with Tullow.

It quoted President Museveni as saying the “government will discuss all proposals by companies operating in the oil and gas sector adding that the country looks forward to welcoming prospective investors.

Earlier, Russian Lukoil also expressed its interest through its Vice President for Business Development, Mr. Andrei Sapozhnikov, who presented proposals to President Museveni.

“Sapozhnikov expressed interest in the oil exploration, refinery and the training of local manpower to facilitate the development of the sector,” a statement from State House said.

Lukoil, according to the firm’s website, is Russia’s second largest oil company and the second largest private oil company worldwide by proven hydrocarbon reserve. It is understood that Libyans and Italians have long had an interest in Uganda’s oil.

Earlier the London Sunday Times newspaper had reported that CNOOC was negotiating to buy 50% of Tullow’s holdings in blocks 1, 2 and 3A in the Albertine Graben at a US$2.5billion

Last week, Italian Eni SpA withdrew its offer to Heritage Oil and Gas Company for its 50% of shareholding in Blocks 1 and 3A after Tullow had exercised its pre-emption rights as partner to take over that share for US$1.5billion.

French oil giant Total was also reported to be in the running for Tullow’s stake. It had been a favourite with Tullow all along.

Sources close to the oil industry said contracting agreements in the oil industry are complicated.

“The process of getting oil contracts completed is a complicated business and people should not just jump to conclusions about company A or B getting this or that tuff,” the source said.

“It is, however, definitely a good thing if many interested firms make offers for Uganda’s oil.

Some of the firms making offers may be just rivals trying to spoil the market for other players, carrying on their rivalry here,” the source said.

Read more here.

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