This cartoon is so nice and it explaining something about what happen now in ‘comic’ way…. try to compare it with O&G demand / market / speculation. This is an example only.
credit to the illustrator
Happy Chinese New Year to all my friends. We also have Malay New Year as well ma …… tapi dah lupus…. hehhehee
End of last year, I wrote that there will be some surprise in 2009…. and this is one of them…. thanks to Afiq (a.k.a. prince of Shaybah) for the link and update about this news.
Schlumberger announces loss of up to 1,000 jobs in North America, international cuts expected
Associated Press
Last update: January 9, 2009 – 5:36 AM
HOUSTON – Schlumberger Ltd. has announced a 5 percent reduction of its North American work force along with job cuts internationally, a spokesman for the world’s biggest oilfield services company said.
The move comes as other major oil field services companies, including Halliburton Co., are also weighing cuts after crude and natural gas prices dropped, leading oil companies to decrease spending on exploration and production in 2009.
Schlumberger’s cuts, which began this week, will eliminate up to 1,000 of the company’s 19,000 North American employees, including up to 100 of its 5,000 jobs in the Houston area, spokesman Stephen Harris said. Among the jobs being cut are administrative support positions, field operations personnel and contract workers, he said.
The company, with headquarters in Houston and Paris, is also cutting employees in other parts of the world, but details about those reductions were not yet available, he said.
“Dynamic changes in the energy market have had an impact, but it’s taken awhile to get to the ground level,” said Allen Brooks, an industry analyst, the Houston Chronicle reported Thursday in its online edition.
Oil field services companies staffed up in recent years as the price of crude rose toward record levels, approaching $150 a barrel just last summer.
However, the industry is being hit with a recent drastic drop in business and the ongoing global economic crisis.
Halliburton, the world’s second-largest oil services company, and Houston-based Baker Hughes, the third-largest services firm, have not announced specific cuts.
Last month, Bernard Duroc-Danner, chief executive of Weatherford International, the fourth-largest services firm, said job cuts would likely be unavoidable amid a sharp downturn in North American activity.
In December, Schlumberger hinted at current troubles when it warned that 2008 profits will be below analysts’ expectations.
“We have been consistent in our view that our results would be affected in the event of a severe global economic downturn, which we are now facing,” Chairman and Chief Executive Andrew Gould said then.
“However, we still maintain that in the longer term, the fundamentals of our industry are sound.”
“We have been consistent in our view that our results would be affected in the event of a severe global economic downturn, which we are now facing,” Chairman and Chief Executive Andrew Gould said then.
“However, we still maintain that in the longer term, the fundamentals of our industry are sound.”
…………………………………………………………………………………….
Moral of the story, learn about Sarbanes & Oxley if you want to be a good company and listed in NYSE…. Internal Control, P&L, IBT, etc…
(Finance mode sekarang)
Special Moment With Afee
To Afee,
This picture is a nice one and kind of ‘cute’ I think. The reason why I put this one…… because only you can understand it…. hehehehe
Your hubby
Manifa (PA-115)
KSA
Special VDO for KT election….. nice sajak… 
khas untuk oghang-oghang teganu kiter…. hehehehe
Dr Jemilah of Mercy Malaysia was reported in news that she already been able to pass through the border in Egypt-Gaza just now. I’m very proud of this lady and admire her for all of the good job that was done by her under the name of Mercy Malaysia.
And I put one of my things to do in future is to become one of the volunteer for Dr Jemilah team under Mercy Malaysia or anything related. InsyaAllah.
Thanks God IJN – Sime Darby was cancelled. I’m happy to hear that.
Found these pictures in http://pedulipalestina.blogspot.com. And it is really nice to put them here as part of the memory in Saudi Arabia….
Talked to some of my Egyptian friends why their government do not open the door in the border of Gaza as people in Malaysia condemned Egyptian government regarding this ….. one of them gave me a very surprise answer….., ” The main thing that Israel want is to let all the Palestinian people move and leave Gaza, so that, they can easily take over the whole Palestinian land. Due to this, by opening the border to let the people move out, Egypt will help Israel to achieve their mission. We don’t want to do this”. …… I hope this is true, but we need Eqypt to open the border so that the humanitarian mission can go to Gaza and help all the victim over there.
BTW, I received an email from my old buddy , Azmin (www.abuhawa.com) regarding the Palestinian issue. It is a very good article and I don’t like to keep it only in my Inbox because a good article need to be shared with other people. Let read and think about it……..
Pay more attention to the genesis of the conflict, rather than the results of it
I refer to a letter entitled “Hamas to blame for Israel raids” and also an article in Malaysiakini column entitled “Malaysia is like Israel.”
Those articles just show how successful it is on the Islamphobia agend. While the Israeli military again bombs the starving and imprisoned population of 1.5 million Gazans, the world watches their plight live as Western media scrambles to explain and, in some cases, justify the ongoing carnage.
None of this is a surprise; the Israelis just concluded a global public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of some Arab states.
The media successfully portray the crisis that we see today as something that began 6-months ago when the peace truce was concluded between Hamas and Israel. The so-called truce was concluded by the Israel with the ulterior intention to isolate the Gazans from democratically-elected Hamas by blocking all essential supply to Gazans from food, medicine, clean water and even power generation throughout the peace truce period.
However, it was a plain failure by the Israeli. So, when the Hamas retaliates the blockade, the media then narrate the story that it is Hamas that start the war. The same picture was painted during the last Hezbollah-Israel conflict.
This is proven right from the author statement “Reports have indicated that Israel is retaliating for rocket attacks on their southern cities. They have also clearly spelt out their goals for these attacks. They will continue until the threats of rocket attacks on their cities are eliminated.”
On the so-called attacked on civilians, someone used to ask me to contribute to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that we should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the WEAK, such as the Native Americans 150 years ago, the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the Palestinians today, to answer.
Terrorism is a normative term which is used to describe what the ‘other’ does, not what ‘we’ do.
Powerful nations such as Israel, the US, Russia or China will always describe their ‘victims’ struggle as terrorism.
However, they fail to acknowledge as acts of terror the destruction of Chechnya, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the repression of Tibetans, and the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Normative rules and what is legal and permissible are determined by the powerful. They formulate the concept of terrorism in normative terms and make it appear as if a neutral court derived such definitions instead of the oppressors.
For the weak to resist becomes illegal by definition.
This excessive use of legal jargon actually undermines the fundamentals of what is truly legal and diminishes the credibility of international institutions such as the UN. The law becomes the enemy of those who struggle.
It becomes apparent that the powerful – those who make the rules – insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.
Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the natives, be they indigenous populations in North America or Palestinians in what are today Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Attacking civilians, then, becomes the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance in the face of overwhelming odds and imminent eradication.
The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that such violence will destroy or defeat Israel.
When the native population understands that there is an irreversible dynamic stripping them of their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can muster.
In 1948, when Israel was being established as a new state, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed.
Their lands were settled by colonists who even today deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world.
Israel, its allies in the West and some regional Arab countries have managed to corrupt the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and entice them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people.
This eventually neutralised and transformed the PLO into a liberation movement which collaborates with the occupier.
The focus then shifted to Hamas, a movement which won legislative elections nearly three years ago and thus became a target for the Israelis.
By enforcing an embargo and allowing Israel’s siege of Gaza, the world has effectively told the Palestinians that they are unfit for democracy.
By informing them that they are not free to choose the leaders they trust but must conform to the requirements set in place by others, the world community is only further isolating and radicalising the Palestinians.
Demonstrations across the world have expressed anger at Israel’s offensive
This radicalisation has increased several-fold as Israel pounds Palestinian infrastructure, saying it is solely targeting Hamas targets.
This is not true, however; Israeli forces have targeted Palestinian police forces, killing some such as Tawfiq Jaber, the chief of police – a former PLO official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza.
With the vestiges of security and order debilitated in successive Israeli military campaigns, chaos will prevail in Gaza. If Hamas is weakened it will not be a more moderate Palestinian group which will take the helm.
It will not be the weakened, corrupted and unpopular Fatah, but a more extreme group who have been persuaded through blockades and incessant Israeli attacks that compromise and negotiations with Tel Aviv are ill-fated.
In the past 60 years, Israeli leaders have toed the line that ‘the only language Arabs understand is force’.
However, it is Israel that has routinely used violence to solve problems. During the 2002 Arab Summit in Beirut, the Arab League collectively offered Israel a framework to end the bloodshed and move towards a comprehensive regional peace deal. Israel responded by invading Jenin and killing hundreds.
Last month, Fatah launched a media campaign to revive the 2002 peace initiative, but this, too, has been answered with Israel’s extreme brutality.
A Zionist Israel is no longer a viable long-term project. Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two-state solution impossible.
There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with a fundamental question – whether to ensure the peaceful transition towards an egalitarian society in which Palestinians are given the same rights as Jews.
History has shown that colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and accept one state for both people, and the Jewish colonists will be forced to leave.
And remember that, colonized power will never be able to erase the memory of the native.
…………….. Qunut Nazilah untuk Palestine (peringatan untuk semua)
Eye to Eye
Look into my eyes
And tell me what you see
You don’t see a damn thing,
’cause you can’t possibly relate to me.
You’re blinded by our differences.
My life makes no sense to you.
I’m the persecuted Palestinian.
You are the American red, white and blue.
Each day you wake in tranquility.
No fears to cross your eyes.
Each day I wake in gratitude.
Thanking God he let me rise.
You worry about your education
And the bills you have to pay.
I worry about my vulnerablelife
And if I’ll survive another day.
Your biggest fear is getting ticketed
As you cruise your Cadillac.
My fear is the tank that just left,
Will turn around and come back.
America, do you realize,
That the taxes that you pay
Feed the forces that traumatize
My every living day?
The bulldozers and the tanks,
The gases and the guns,
The bombs that fall outside my door,
All due to American funds.
Yet do you know the truth
Of where your money goes?
Do you let your media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth that no one knows?
You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of Zionists
I’m terrorized in my own land
And I’m the terrorist?
You think you know all about terrorism
But you don’t know it the way I do.
So let me define the term for you.
And teach you what you thought you knew.
I’ve known terrorism for quite some time,
Fifty- four years and more.
It’s the fruitless garden uprooted in my yard.
It’s the bulldozer in front of my door.
Terrorism breathes the air I breathe.
It’s the checkpoint on my way to school.
It’s the curfew that jails me in my own home,
And the penalties of breaking that curfew rule.
Terrorism is the robbery of my land.
And the torture of my mother.
The imprisonment of my innocent father.
The bullet in my baby brother.
So America,don’t tell me you know about
The things I feel and see.
I’m terrorized in my own land
And the blame is put on me.
But I will not rest,I shall never settle
For the injustice my people endure.
Palestine is OUR land and here we’ll remain
Until the day OUR homeland is secure.
And if that time shall never come,
Then they will never see a day of peace.
I will not be thrown from my own home,
Nor will fight for justice cease.
And if I am killed, it will be for Falasteen.
It’s written on my breath.
So in your own patriotic words,
Give me liberty or give me death.
Writer: Gihad Ali
a support for Palestinian huminity- 2009
by kakikiri
Salam to all readers (macamla ramai sangat yg intai blog dia )….
Wishing you all a happy new year of 1430 Hijriah and 2009 Masihi. No matter it is Hijriah or Masihi, the time goes by very fast and we are a step closer to the end of the life. What should we do with the fact that we are not well prepared for that? I don’t know but I care…. The world became so small with the name of globalization and information technology, but if the world is so small, then how small is ourself? hehehehe…
Happy new year…. semoga tahun-tahun yang mendatang membawa seribu makna yang mendekatkan kita pada yang Esa, bukan dilarakan dengan kehidupan dunia…. oh, Ya Rahman, hamba-Mu ini banyak dosa…. ampunkanlah dosa-dosaku yang lepas ya Allah, ya Rabbul Jalil…
BTW, as UK now is snowing, and it is a winter as well in Saudi, my blog now also kind of snowing….. hehehehe
Erm, before i forget….. I dah decide dah…. I crossed 2008 in my wallpaper and put 2009 with some additional stuff…. let ‘rock&roll’ 2009 with some ’songs’ that make us different from yesterday and make us special from other people.
2009.....here I come
kakikiri
