Daily News Digest October 19, 2023
SLB, Baker Hughes, Halliburton Primed for Middle East Boom A bevy of projects in the Middle East promises a boom in future revenues for SLB, Baker Hughes and Halliburton.
Behind the Current Gaza and Ukraine Wars — U.S. Oil Profiteers!: 2O21 Article: Energean Selects Halliburton for Offshore Israel Drilling Campaign Integrated Services Contract To Deliver Five Wells in Eastern Mediterranean Through Halliburton Consulting And Project Management Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL) today announced it was awarded an integrated services contract to execute a three to five well drilling and completions campaign for Energean, an independent E&P company focused on developing resources in the Mediterranean and the North Sea. The work follows a successful four well offshore drilling campaign that Halliburton previously executed in the Karish and Karish North gas fields. Halliburton will collaborate with Energean to economically and safely deliver exploration, appraisal, and development wells offshore Israel. The contract is for three firm and two optional wells to deliver all services including project management, directional drilling, drill bits, drilling fluids, cementing, solids control, wireline, slickline, completions, production enhancement, and subsea services.
Images of the Day:
Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”, is Still True for Today’s World!
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capitalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global Warming Over 5 Decades Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1. Austerity,2. Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!
Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
Always Remember: That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%, Only the 1% Voted For Austerity! The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1%, Who Profit From Austerity!! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.! Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Qu0te of te Day:
Casting the State of Israel in the role of preeminent victim is a bit like granting the status of victimhood to an assault rifle. — Selective Empathy Is Not Empathetic At All
PB: You know, Janine, I think you raise a really crucial point. And from the moment that this crisis, this particular crisis, erupted on Saturday morning, I’ve been worried about exactly that. I’ve been writing a lot, talking a lot about the success of our movement, the movement for Palestinian rights, how we have managed to change the discourse. It hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t been quick, but over the last 20, 25 years, we’ve seen an extraordinary shift, an enormous shift in the public discourse, a very significant shift in the media discourse—not as great as at the public level, but still—and the beginnings of a shift at the political/policy discourse level. It’s been huge. You have things like, if we look at the polls, in a recent poll, there was evidence that 25% of American Jews believe that Israel is an apartheid state. Thirty-eight percent of young Jews believe that, and 44% of Democrats said they think Israel is like apartheid. Those are huge shifts. They are huge changes. And I think that’s very key. . . .We see at the policy level, we saw in 2021 when Israel attacked Gaza, not even as bad as this, but in a horrific way that killed a number of people in Gaza in bombing, aside from the fact that several groupings of congresspeople and senators were demanding a ceasefire at a time when their own president, their own party was refusing to support a ceasefire. More important than any of those, I thought, was a group of 500 former Democratic campaign staffers, the people who had actually put Biden in office, who headed up the statewide and citywide campaigns, 500 of them signed off on an incredible letter that talked about 75 years of oppression against Palestinians, etc., and called for a ceasefire. One of the things I’ve been talking about a lot in the last few days is this notion that our understanding of history and our understanding of reality is shaped by when we start the clock. If we started the clock on Saturday morning, we would have one version of what happened, when those hundreds of Hamas fighters invaded Israel, broke out of the walled prison that was Gaza, and began to attack, not only military installations and military officials, but unfortunately attacked civilians as well, in a horrific way. That’s one narrative. The broader narrative, if we start the clock a week earlier, we would hear an entirely different thing of how things started. We could move the clock back. We could move back to the last attack on Gaza in 2021. We could move it back to the beginning of the siege of Gaza of 2006 and 2007. We could move it back to the beginning of the occupation of Gaza in 1967. So when we start the clock determines how we understand what we’re seeing in front of our own eyes. — CounterSpin interview with Phyllis Bennis on Gaza
Videos of the Day:
Environment:
One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%!
After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!
After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan is Ecoscialism or Ecocide!
Greta Thunberg Arrested in Direct Action at Global Fossil Fuel Summit in London “The elites of the Oil and Money Conference, they have no intention of transition,” Thunberg said ahead of her arrest. “Their plan is to continue this destructive surge of profits. That is why we have to take direct action.”
United States:
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford To Pay! Both Parties Support U.S. Capitalism’s Wars! (The Only War the Democrats Opposed was the Civil War!)
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both. — Louis D. Brandeis Quotes
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. MLK, Beyond Vietnam
Fireworks for Biden’s Visit!: Israeli Airstrike on Gaza City Hospital Kills at Least 500 People “This is genocide. This is a war crime,” a Palestinian Red Crescent Society representative said. An Israeli airstrike on the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City has killed more than 500 people, according to Palestinian health authorities and journalists on the ground. According to Al Jazeera journalist Maram Humaid, a spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported an initial estimate of 200-300 casualties. The health ministry has updated estimates to 500 people killed.
A Call for Justice for Palestinians and an End to Racist Discrimination on Campus and Beyond We, the faculty of the Cornell Coalition for Justice in Palestine, stand for Palestinian human rights, sovereignty, liberation, and the right to resist.
- On the eve of a genocidal ground invasion of Gaza, and in light of the refusal of Cornell University’s administration to recognize the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people, we unequivocally condemn the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, as well as the racism and Islamophobia that have shaped the narratives of the media, U.S. officials, and Cornell University administrators.
- While we abhor any targeting of civilians, our collective represents a diversity of views about the tactics of the Palestinian struggle. Yet we unite in unwavering opposition to apartheid and to the ongoing occupation, displacement, degradation, collective punishment, and slaughter of Palestinians.
- We recognize that the inability of Cornell administrators to utter the word “Palestine” or to acknowledge Palestinian suffering reflects the violence of erasure and the denial of human equality—the very premises of colonial oppression that have brought the world to this tragic moment.
- The essence of racism is that some people matter while others do not. The university’s uneven treatment of students and indifference to the pain of Arabs and Muslims is symptomatic of the racist logic that underlies settler-colonialism.
- Our Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, faculty, staff, and their families have watched the world enact inhumane violence, even as their very being has been denied.
- The racist and Islamophobic environment that both silences and neglects Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, and that limits their access to resources, also fuels the doxxing and harassment of members of those populations and their allies.
- The smothering of the dignity and aspirations of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, faculty, and staff betrays the “Freedom of Expression” ideal that Cornell administrators endlessly invoke. This double-standard mirrors the hypocrisy of Western powers that proclaim liberal democratic principles while gagging expressions of solidarity with Palestine.
- Building a just and democratic Cornell means combating the entrenched bigotry that renders invisible the grief and dignity of any member of our community.
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Sustainable solutions to the violence that engulfs Palestine-Israel must rest upon ending apartheid and occupation.
Why do US Politicians Target Gaza Civilians With Bloodthirsty Rhetoric, Greenlighting Ethnic Cleansing? Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) -In retaliation for Hamas’ vicious and brutal attack of October 7, Israel enforced a total siege on Gaza, denying its 2.3 million inhabitants access to electricity, food, water and fuel while bombarding its population with a massive aerial assault whose targets include mosques, schools, and hospitals. No humanitarian supplies, except for some fuel, have been allowed into Gaza for over a week. The situation in Gaza has reached the “level of genocide,” said Shawan Jabarin, head of the al-Haq rights group. “You wanted hell — you will get hell,” declared Israeli general Ghassan Aliyan. Israel ordered 1 million Gazans — mostly refugees descended from refugees — to evacuate the northern part of the strip, in advance of an inevitably bloody ground invasion. The only exit from Gaza — the Rafah border crossing into Egypt — was bombed by Israel and remains closed by Egypt as of Tuesday. The United Nations said that it considered the evacuation “logistically impossible.” Therefore, the Israeli expulsion directive looks like a fabricated cover to “excuse” the reckless endangerment of civilian lives, which violates international law.
Black Liberation/Civile Rights:
Applying The Iron Heel! — Worldwide Imperial Captialism is Attacking Democratic Rights for Their Unfettered Quest for and Safe Access to Oil and Gas Off the Coast of Israel and Gaza: Britain: The Establishment ss Palestine – Freedom of Speech Under Attack Across Britain, a movement has erupted in solidarity with Palestine. But this is being met with a repressive response from the authorities, as the ruling class looks to silence dissent and debate. Workers and youth must mobilise in defiance. The British establishment has immediately cracked down on attempts by workers and youth to show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, in a brazen and direct attack on freedom of speech. In a letter to senior police chiefs, Tory home secretary Suella Braverman urged officers to take action – and use the “full force of the law” – against protestors who wave Palestinian flags or chant certain pro-Palestine slogans. Those who dare to oppose Israeli imperialism have been accused of racism, with capitalist politicians and media outlets cynically conflating criticism of Zionism with antisemitism. At the same time, in yet another display of stinking hypocrisy, the Tories and their mouthpieces have denounced supporters of Palestinian freedom as ‘terrorist sympathisers’
Labor:
Economy:
Twice as Important IMF showdown with China in Morocco, This year’s annual IMF/World Bank meetings in Morocco are the most explicitly confrontational yet by US/NATO diplomacy toward China and its fellow BRICS+ allies. It is not really rivalry, because US neoliberal financial policy is so different from the aims that the BRICS+ countries have been developing at their own recent international meetings. At issue is not only what countries will be the major beneficiaries of future IMF and World Bank loan operations, but whether the world will back US unipolar dominance? Or will it start to move explicitly toward a multipolar philosophy of mutual support to increase living standards and prosperity? This is counter to the anti-labor austerity imposed by US demands, using these two organizations as arms of its New Cold War policy in an attempt to maintain a trade and investment system now widely seen to be dysfunctional and financially predatory.
Michael Roberts Facebook Blog:Since 2000, over 86% of annual American aid to Israel has funded military efforts. Annual foreign military financing grants from the United States represent about 16% of the Israeli military budget, All current military aid to Israel is part of the 10-year, $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed with the US in 2016. The MOU supports updating the Israeli aircraft fleet and maintaining the country’s missile defense system. The agreement commits $500 million in missile defense funding and $3.3 billion in other military funding each year from 2019 to 2028. It is the third agreement of its kind, following two signed during the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations. Unlike treaties, they are not legally binding, and do not require Senate ratification. Part of the American aid strategy in the Middle East and North Africa is maintaining Israel’s “qualitative military edge” over neighboring countries. This approach involves giving Israel first access to, or more advanced versions of, US defense technology. The United States committed over $3.3 billion in foreign assistance to Israel in 2022, the most recent year for which data exists. About $8.8 million of that went toward the country’s economy, while 99.7% of the aid went to the Israeli military. Israel received the second-largest amount of US aid in 2022 after Ukraine, where the US committed $12.4 billion. The two countries received 4.8% and 18.1%, respectively, of all US foreign aid granted that year. 
World:
Israel on Trial: The Lie of the West’s ‘Rules-Based’ Order In contrast to their hue and cry about ‘democracy’ and ‘self-determination’ in Ukraine, the Western powers have given Israel the go-ahead to raze Gaza to the ground. Once again ‘international law’ and the ‘rules based order’ are exposed as a hypocritical cover for the iron heel of imperialism. “If we allow a big country to bully a smaller one, to simply invade it and take its territory, then it’s going to be open season, not just in Europe but around the world.” In such terms did US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine back in August last year. Yet on Thursday – as nuclear-armed, Imperialist Israel continued reducing a tiny impoverished enclave to rubble – Blinken stood side-by-side with Netanyahu at a joint press conference and solemnly vowed: “You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself, but as long as America exists you will never, ever have to.” Yes, it is ‘open season’ in Palestine.
An International Law of Double Standards? There is a difference between an accurate historical context on the one hand, and on the other, propaganda repeated so often that it takes on a surreal life of its own. Alas, when it comes to the struggle of the Palestinians, Western politicians can’t tell the difference. Take for instance the statement issued on 9 October 2023 by the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States which reads in part: “We make clear that the terrorist actions of Hamas have no justification, no legitimacy, and must be universally condemned.” Unfortunately, as we will see, the terrorist actions the statement refers to are so common, so “normal” in the behavior of both Israel and the history of the five nations issuing this declaration, that their claim can only be a piece of propaganda underpinned by blatant double standards. Thus:
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The statement ascribes the incursions of Palestinian fighters into Israel on 8 October, and the resulting terrorism, to “Hamas” alone. In addition, the statement insists that Hamas “does not represent the aspirations of the Palestinian people.” OK. Then someone ought to explain why President Biden and the other four Western leaders so ardently “stand with Israel” in its ultra-lethal policy of collective punishment—Israel supposedly exercising “self-defense.” The near wholesale destruction of Gaza City and its 600,000 occupants certainly cannot be aimed only at Hamas. I am sure someone among the five leaders can squirm their way out of this difficulty, but the explanation will amount to sophistry.
- The observation that some of the violence associated with the Palestinian incursion was terrorism is no doubt accurate. The pictures now being made public of those terrorist acts have a remarkable resemblance to photos of the Israeli-inspired massacre at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in southern Lebanon. The recent Palestinian violence also had the character of being driven by emotions kept bottled up under high pressure for a prolonged time. In this regard, let us keep in mind that, historically, the violence of the oppressed tends to rise over time to the level of the violence of the oppressor. And certainly, the persecution-style policy practiced by Israel toward the Palestinians (putting the people of Gaza “on a diet” of rapid impoverishment) can also be readily interpreted as terrorism (or, at least, premeditated torture). In this way, it can be argued, the Israelis set the standard for the Palestinian’s violent reaction. . . .
Health. Welfare, and Education:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare