Expoitation.

 

         It is difficult to take your mind off the so called "cost of living crisis" because of the amount of suffering and hardship that will hit millions of ordinary people in this country and across the world. However, on examination you realise that it is not a "cost of living crisis", it is in fact an "exploitation crisis".
       For example, the wholesale price of gas is 37% cheaper than it was at its peak in March, but retail prices are 53% more expensive than they were in March. Meanwhile British Gas, during the same period, posted an increase of 411% in profits during that period. BP have just announced the highest profits in the company's history, approximately £7 billion. This little earner could mean that the BP CEO Bernard Looney will be in line for an obscene remuneration of £11.7 million. Though in this case we are the real "loonies" for accepting this daily plundering of our lives.
        Now hand on heart and say this is a cost of living crisis and we are all in it together. When will we wake up to the fact that we are being shafted day and daily by a group of billionaires, aided and abetted by the corporate world's minders, the state. They are two sides of the same coin, inseparable, licking each others backsides.

 A trade off!!

           Of course it is not a local problem, it is a world wide plundering and pillage of the ordinary people. For example EXXON's profits are stated to be $2,245.62 every second of every day. Where do you think all that money goes?

 

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Rip-Off.

         As we all face energy bills in the region of £4,000, and the political ballerinas spout how it is all the fault of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our energy companies are wallowing in unprecedented profits. Get your head round these figures and say, hand on heart, the prices are unavoidable.

         The two biggest energy companies in the UK, Shell and Centrica are both making a killing on the backs of your suffering. Take Shell first, for the three months April to June 2022, hauled in profits in the region of £10 billion. While suffering amnesia regarding the astronomical bills its customers are set to pay, Shell has promised its shareholders £6.5 billion in bonuses.
       Its pal in piracy, Centrica, came up with profits of £1.3 billion for the first half of 2022 and has promised its shareholders bonuses amounting to £59 million.
      So do you get the feeling that the Ukrainian situation is a bonus to these people, an opportunity to rip us off with vengeance, and that they are laughing at us as they slither their way to the bank.

        When will we ever learn, when will we finally say, enough is enough and bring this festering cancer of greed crashing down. A better world is there, it's in your hearts, you know how it would look, fairness, justice, humanity, mutual aid and the ability to see to the needs of all our people, we don't need corporate conglomerates, millionaires and billionaires, they are the parasites that destroy our lives.

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Crisis???

     

       So there's a cost of living crisis and EVERYBODY suffers, well not exactly. Petrol prices have rocketed, and it is all put down to those nasty Russians, no mention of the astronomical profits being made by the oil producing and refining companies. This section of the capitalist system, far from suffering due to this war in Ukraine have used it to shove profits through the roof. They are all making unimaginable profits and in private praying at the altar greed, that the war continues. They've never had it so good.
        This is just one example of how this system enjoys wars as they always benefit the rich and powerful. The same applies throughout the capitalist system. Emergencies, wars, famine and shortages are all a means to increase profits, a system based on exploitation of the many for profit for the few. This greed based system, this billionaires gambling casino, this insanity called capitalism will only end when wee the ordinary people decide we have had enough and organise to bring the whole stinking edifice crashing down. A better world is possible, just think of how you would like to see the world, a fairer world, a world based on compassion, humanity and justice, then make it happen. We have the numbers, we have the imagination, we have the skills, where is the will?

The following from Zero Hedge: 

 

 

         Amid soaring gasoline prices in the second quarter, the eight biggest independent U.S. refiners are set to report later this month a huge 652% sequential jump in their average earnings per share (EPS), according to estimates from investment bank Tudor Pickering Holt & Co cited by The Wall Street Journal.
        All refiners and all integrated oil and gas companies are set for a windfall of profits for the second quarter as U.S. gasoline prices soared to the highest ever on record of over $5 per gallon in early June.
        The biggest refiners are also expected to generate billions of cash flow from operations as refining margins are at their highest in many years.
        “We’re seeing margins twice as high as the golden age,” Charles Kemp, a vice president at energy consulting firm Baker & O’Brien Inc, told the Journal. Kemp was referring to the 2004-2007 period, when refiners booked massive profits, too.
        The largest international majors are also set for exceptional earnings at their refining businesses, thanks to high refining margins and fuel demand in the second quarter. Some of the largest international oil majors have already announced expectations of blockbuster earnings from their refining divisions when they report Q2 profits later this month.
          France’s supermajor TotalEnergies said last week that “Refining & Chemicals results are expected to be exceptional given the very high levels of distillate and gasoline cracks.” ExxonMobil said in an SEC filing in early July that the rise in industry margins is set to add between $4.4 billion and $4.6 billion to its Q2 results. At Shell, the refining margin nearly tripled in Q2 compared to Q1 and is expected to add between $800 million and $1.2 billion to the second quarter results of Shell’s Products division, compared to the first quarter 2022.
         Yet, the second quarter could have been the peak refining profits for some time as gasoline demand in the United States has weakened in recent weeks in response to high prices at the pump. Crude oil prices have also dropped from the recent highs of $120 a barrel as markets fear a recession is coming. 

 

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A Plan!!

Image courtesy of Chris Skinners Blog:

           Everybody agrees that we are heading for the harshest attack on our living standards in a generation or more, and most will appeal to our local lords and masters to sort it out. Of course to get your vote they will make all sorts of promises, but the truth is there is nothing they can do to avert this tsunami of poverty that is going to hit the ordinary people. The reason being is that it is not a local event, it is a world wide catastrophe, also it is not an unavoidable event some accident of fate, nor is it an act of God. It is a well thought out and planned set of circumstances, laid out at the last Davos gathering and engineered by the big boys in the financial Mafia. A world wide design to recapitalise the insane system of global capitalism. For years now the financial Mafia has been flooding the system with phony money at very low interest rates, Quantitative Easing, and the big business world jumped at the bonanza building up massive debts. Too much junk money floating around and too many over valued shares. To over come this problems for the Financial Mafia in this greed fest, the only answer they know is to raise interest rates.
         What will follow is mass defaults, bankruptcies, evictions and repossessions and raging inflation as business try to stay afloat. In the global corporate business world only the biggest and strongest will survive. What this translates into in our world of ordinary people, is unemployment, a slashing of social services, cost of living nightmare and the vicious claws of poverty visiting each and every home of the ordinary people. A tidal wave of physical and mental health problems, our kids potential stunted, a collapsing health service and failed education system, our elderly dying much earlier than they would normally.
 

        Appealing to the puppets of this system, our local governments is pissing in the wind, they are part and parcel of this nightmare as they are the managers of the system at our level, the puppets of the financial mobsters that control the global money system. Our only hope is solidarity of the ordinary people, across all borders of on this planet. To organise in bringing down this system of greed and profit for the few. Coming together to create that better world based on mutual aid, sustainability, respect for all humanity, freed from the profit motive and based on seeing to the needs of all our people. Time is running out, if the present set of circumstance does not get you angry and on the streets, your kids and grand-kids can look forward to a heritage of abject poverty in the midst of opulence. The choice is our, it is their world or it is our world, we are on opposing sides, there is no in between fence sitting, you fight or your surrender, you struggle for that better world or you capitulate to abject poverty, the life of a serf.

 The following is an extract, the full article is well worth a read.

 Deleveraging the bubble

           With the Fed now imposing a Quantitative Tightening, withdrawing tens of billions in bonds and other assets monthly, as well as raising key interest rates, financial markets have begun a deleveraging. It will likely be jerky, as key players like BlackRock and Fidelity seek to control the meltdown for their purposes. But the direction is clear.
           By late last year investors had borrowed almost $1 trillion in margin debt to buy stocks. That was in a rising market. Now the opposite holds, and margin borrowers are forced to give more collateral or sell their stocks to avoid default. That feeds the coming meltdown. With collapse of both stocks and bonds in coming months, go the private retirement savings of tens of millions of Americans in programs like 401-k. Credit card auto loans and other consumer debt in the USA has ballooned in the past decade to a record $4.3 trillion at end of 2021. Now interest rates on that debt, especially credit card, will jump from an already high 16%. Defaults on those credit loans will skyrocket.
         Outside the US what we will see now, as the Swiss National Bank, Bank of England and even ECB are forced to follow the Fed raising rates, is the global snowballing of defaults, bankruptcies, amid a soaring inflation which the central bank interest rates have no power to control. About 27% of global nonfinancial corporate debt is held by Chinese companies, estimated at $23 trillion. Another $32 trillion corporate debt is held by US and EU companies. Now China is in the midst of its worst economic crisis since 30 years and little sign of recovery. With the USA, China’s largest customer, going into an economic depression, China’s crisis can only worsen. That will not be good for the world economy.
         Italy, with a national debt of $3.2 trillion, has a debt-to-GDP of 150%. Only ECB negative interest rates have kept that from exploding in a new banking crisis. Now that explosion is pre-programmed despite soothing words from Lagarde of the ECB. Japan, with a 260% debt level is the worst of all industrial nations, and is in a trap of zero rates with more than $7.5 trillion public debt. The yen is now falling seriously, and destabilizing all of Asia.
        The heart of the world financial system, contrary to popular belief, is not stock markets. It is bond markets—government, corporate and agency bonds. This bond market has been losing value as inflation has soared and interest rates have risen since 2021 in the USA and EU. Globally this comprises some $250 trillion in asset value a sum that, with every fed interest rise , loses more value. The last time we had such a major reverse in bond values was forty years ago in the Paul Volcker era with 20% interest rates to “squeeze out inflation.”
        As bond prices fall, the value of bank capital falls. The most exposed to such a loss of value are major French banks along with Deutsche Bank in the EU, along with the largest Japanese banks. US banks like JP MorganChase are believed to be only slightly less exposed to a major bond crash. Much of their risk is hidden in off-balance sheet derivatives and such. However, unlike in 2008, today central banks can’t rerun another decade of zero interest rates and QE. This time, as insiders like ex-Bank of England head Mark Carney noted three years ago, the crisis will be used to force the world to accept a new Central Bank Digital Currency, a world where all money will be centrally issued and controlled. This is also what Davos WEF people mean by their Great Reset. It will not be good. A Global Planned Financial Tsunami Has Just Begun.

Read the full article HERE:

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Proxy War.

 

         While every ordinary person in this country is feeling the effects of this massive drop in living standards and are crying out for some sort of relief, our lords and masters tell us there is no money tree and we will just have to suffer until the economy grows. No money for hospitals, social services, education, no money for the homeless, but it can find money to support the war in Ukraine. The UK is giving £2.5 billion in military aid and £1.5 billion in economic aid to Ukraine. Where is that money coming from? Most of it is coming from government departments "under-spend", no questions of why so much money was not spent by government departments when everybody in the country is calling out for support. This flow of money to Ukraine was also supplemented by robbing the Scottish and Welsh governments budgets to the tune of £95 million. Complaints by those two governments were met with, "these are exceptional times". They are also exceptional times for every ordinary person in this country, but that can be ignored as the UK try hard to look like a big imperial power, in this imperialist struggle for the survival of the supremacy of the Western imperialist world domination. Make no mistake, the Western powers will keep this fight going until the last Ukraine is dead, and if it looks like they might lose, then they will eagerly sacrifice the European population in their desire for world dominance.

        They are trying to create the illusion that it is Ukraine that is fighting this war, utter bullshit. Ukraine may be supplying the cannon fodder, but the West is supplying the fire power and backing it up with more and more, highly destructive weapons.  

Image courtesy of Follow the Money:

 

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Picket.

 

Show Your Anger By Solidarity.

         The largest rail strike in 30 years or so and all the media can spout is inconvenience to such an such a group. Of course there will be inconvenience during a large strike, the question we should ask ourselves is, why are they on strike, and the answer is obvious, living standards. At the present time all the ordinary people in this country are suffering the biggest drop in living standards in a generation. With that comes real hardship, evictions, fuel poverty, food poverty, ill health and the lives of our kids stunted, our elderly dying earlier than they should. Mean while the rich and powerful repeat their only answer, and it is pie in the sky for you and I, “we must grow the economy”. In other words we have to suffer so that the corporate parasites can increase their profit margins, we have to suffer so that shareholders will get fat unearned bonuses. There is no “cost of living crisis”, there is an exploitation crisis. The broken, fractured, crumbling capitalist system needs to be re-capitalised, the only way the parasite class know how to do this is squeeze the public dry. You are suffering so that the corporate world can gain some capital in to the system to try and kick-start back into life, the whole rotten system, all to their advantage.
         So yes, we will be inconvenienced by the rail strike, but instead of falling for the state/corporate bullshit and fabric of illusions, join the strikers on the streets support them in your communities, show your anger at the injustice that is being heaped on you and your families. Their fight is our fight. We are all going to be hit by this latest tsunami of austerity and it repercussions, while the corporate parasites stuff their coffers with stolen capital, stolen from you and I.

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Our World.

                                                  

                                                Tinsel Cities.

In the city of tinsel and bright lights
midst the playthings of the rich
just beyond the champagne bubble
out of earshot of the butterfly people
in the dark shadows where no one looks
there you’ll find poverty and destitution
dance a macabre dance of survival.
In Mammon’s city of grand illusions
where rivers of wealth feed frivolity
in its twisting dark and musty lanes
where the light of hope seldom shines
an army of the living dead sweat and toil
polishing the tinsel, changing light bulbs
refilling the champagne bottles
nothing must stop the flow of frivolity
or the butterfly people will die.

         Everybody knows that the ordinary people are facing a crushing blow to their standard of living. The media and the various state mouthpieces keep telling us that this is a crisis and we are all in it together. Of course this is utter bullshit, yes it is a crisis, but a crisis of capitalism, created by capitalism. However the cost of this crisis is being passed onto the backs of the ordinary people. The crisis is simple a squabble between the various power blocks that control the world's resources as they each try to expand or defend their grip on their slice of the ever diminishing planet's resources. This bloody squabble is going to create shortages and to maintain their profits, the various corporate juggernauts are simply passing that extra cost on to the ordinary people. We will suffer while the billionaire parasite class continue in their plundering and pillaging of the Earth's resources and fattening their ever growing bank accounts. Increased prices does not equate with increased cost of production, This parasite's squabble creates shortages, but instead of decrease in income, they simple put the price up to protect their sacred god, "profit".
         We, the ordinary people of the world are being forced to pay for this inherent malaise in the capitalist system, the need for ever increasing profits. We will pay for it in the privatisation of our public assets, the closing of amenities, failing health services, crumbling education system, and of course the stratospheric rise in prices for the every day necessities of life.

                                                 Image courtesy of The Herald.

           We can accept this crushing burden and allow the system to try to sort itself out by means of wars and ever increasing austerity for the majority and greater wealth, power and privileges for the few. We can knuckle under and play the role of the subservient humble citizen and pass a heritage of poverty and submissiveness onto the next generation. Or we can stand up and take what we have earned and that is everything ever made on this planet. we created it all, the wealth and the necessities, by our sweat, blood and tears. We do not owe the corporate parasites anything. Our response must be anger, anger that spills over onto the streets, the parasites will not give up their privileged positions of power and wealth without a fierce struggle. There is no alternative, it is our world, or it is their world, there can be no compromise. We are, at this moment in time, living with their compromises, poverty and hardship for the majority, privileges, power and wealth for the few. 

 WE THE LABOURING MASSES.

 We the people have, every brick laid,
have fed the world with sweat and spade,
every instrument played in every band
created by the skill of the craftsman's hand.
We made every truck and every load,
our toil our effort every winding road,
every ship that ever sailed the sea,
our power our imagination made it be.
Cities and towns large and small,
our labouring hands fashioned them all,
every home, every spire,
luxury mansion or humble byre.
No matter what dreams the mind might spawn
without labour's hand, never see the light of dawn,
without labour's strength and labour's skill,
we would be foraging beasts in a jungle still.

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Anger!

 

Image courtesy of Telegraph.

 

     Day by day, drip feed by drip feed, we the ordinary people of this country learn the force of the kick in the teeth we are about to receive from this capitalist system. The latest detail is the rise in interest rates. It might not seem much, but could be enough to push those on the edge over into the poverty bin. Mortgages could increase, interest on you credit card, any future HP you might feel you need to take on, any loans you may find yourself forced into, will in all probability cost you more.
       Of course the big one is the increase in energy bills, that thing that no home can live without. The increase is going stratospheric. No matter the sticking plaster or paracetamol the government offers, it will not be any where near enough to eliminate a massive increase to your bills.
      Then there is inflation in general, sending food prices, among other day to day necessities, through the roof. Trying to put food on the table never mind trying to cook it, will an impossible task for thousands. Just to add a little bit more pain to that kick in the teeth, those working families who are at the moment just about managing, will now be hit with an increase in National Insurance, over and above those just mentioned.
This July 2021, before this latest attack on living standards of ordinary people.  

Glasgow.

Image courtesy of The Big Issue.

 

            Now, if that sort of unjustified pain doesn't make you angry, what will? This pain is being planned and administered by millionaires, who will probably be unaware of what their energy bills are and care even less. Some will take off to their luxury extra home somewhere in the warm sun, or take their yacht to the Mediterranean for a wee break. They will have no need what so ever to change their way of living, they live in a land of plenty. They don't feel that pain, they administer it, without a care in the world.
       So you are angry, who will you direct you anger at, the local council, mere pawns in the game, who are legally bound to do the dictate of the government. So the government, well they are just the managers of the system, they follow the instruction of the financial Mafia, that is where the power lies. That gang of mobster who go under different flags, but belong to that one clan, the corporate financial Mafia. The main gangs being the IMF sometimes called the International Monetary Fund, but in reality, the Internation Mankind Fuckers, the ECB, know as European Central Bank, real name Eternal Money Bastards, and the Davos Club, the place where the rich and powerful meet up to decide the best way to exploit the world's people and resources to create greater profit to be split among themselves. They all come together under the banner of corporate capitalism. Until we smash that organisation, we are at the mercy of the financial Mafia. 

      Take what you get or fight back. Organise your communities in conjunction with other communities, not to ask nor demand, please can we have some more, but to take control of you communities resources, in solidarity with all other communities. Every brick, every house, every boat ever built was built by your hands, every piece of equipment every item transported was made and transport by you, it all belongs to you. Take it and use it to service our own people and see to the needs of all our people, with no place for profit, CEO and shareholders bonuses. It's yours by the sweat and blood of you and you forbearers. Nothing is gained by self contained anger, show it, direct it, along with solidarity, it is your righteous weapon.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info