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. 

 

Visit ann arky's home at http://strugglepedia.co.uk    

The Veil.

          We live behind a veil that conceals society's true structure, vaguely concealing a system that talks peace but continually plans and executes wars, every one of their wars sheds the blood of ordinary people who gain nothing, the spoils go to the planners and perpetrators of these wars. All wars are for the rich and powerful, but they need the blood of the ordinary people to feed their messianic desires for more power, wealth and privileges. In the present economic system of insanity war is big business, the goose that lays the golden egg, the milk-cow that keeps on giving to the corporate/state military industrial complex.  

The Following from Act For Freedom Now:

 Against Militarism, For Social Revolution Everywhere!

Against their war, against their peace. 

Anarchists London 2022.

          For over a week now we have been placed, once again , in the position of an anxious spectator, exposed for once (in ‘real time’ through our personal devices) to the full horrors of the weaponries, technologies and industries which ordinarily are grinding behind the veil of ‘civilisation’.
          The whole political circus stops and only a few figures are left in the ring: an ‘enemy ‘ to fear and hate, an ‘ally’ to represent everything worth loving and striving for, and a ’cause’ to defend. The rest is bickering and bragging about specific measures.
          This alliance with power, where exploited and their exploiters join hands against an external threat, is the substance of ‘social peace’; it works just as well for Western detnocratic-oligarchies as it does for Putin. Crises and threats of this kind are indispensable for continuing the global war conducted by the forces of order, against those who they want to discipline and put to work .
         Terror, righteousness, pity, charity, grand existential rhetoric, and the guilty feeling of being ‘at peace’ in a ‘free country’- hey will do very well to keep our noses to the grindstone while they extract even more work from us with price rises covering energy, food, transportation and other basic needs.
          Even better, now they can blame it all on the enemy abroad! Every state is a ‘state of war’! Every technology they implement is a military technology. Every territory they mould and supervise is under hostile occupation- whether the hapless generals sit scrambling for advantage in the ‘situation room in silicone valley boardroom
          It is in this reality that we must intervene. Let’s break ranks! The practice of freedom is anathema to and can have NO COMMON GROUND with the capitalist and statist mafias, the oligarchs, bureaucrats and managers of all stripes. The only way to throw a barricade in the way of this evolving project of power is to spread social antagonism and attack against those responsible. We want to look each other in the eye, claiming our dignity and freedom not in the war between nation, but the social war.

 

 

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

Lies and Wars.

      I, like every decent human being with a shred of humanity, condemn the war in Ukraine. However I can't stomach the the phoney outrage at this slaughter in Ukraine, by the bosses of NATO and the nations that support that vast war machine. In this war in Ukraine, they report every building destroyed, every casualty, with crocodile tears, as if this is different from any other war, their memory doesn't stretch back enough to remember March 24th. 1999, when NATO unleashed a totally illegal vicious bombardment of Yugoslavia. 

The following extract from Struggle-la-Lucha:

        

  

       Exactly 23 years ago, NATO countries, without UN Security Council authorization, ordered their troops to bomb the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as part of an offensive operation named Allied Force, under the pretext of a supposed humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide” of Kosovar Albanians.
The air strikes lasted 78 days, beginning on March 24 and ending on June 10, 1999. During that time, more than 1,000 aircraft were used to drop more than 3,000 cruise missiles and about 80,000 tons of bombs on the territory of the Balkan country (which at that time consisted of Serbia and Montenegro). The number of dead, most of them civilians, ranges between 2,500 and 3,500 people. 89 were children, which means that, on average, NATO killed one child every day during the bombing. Some 10,000 people were seriously wounded. Most of the victims were Serbs.
     Both military and civilian installations were hit. Hospitals, bridges, oil refineries, power plants, political party headquarters, railways, schools and even the Chinese embassy in Belgrade were bombed.
      In total, NATO’s military intervention resulted in the destruction of 25,000 residential buildings, 450 kilometers of roads, almost 600 kilometers of railroads, nearly 40 bridges, 100 schools and kindergartens, 30 hospitals and 14 airfields. The material damage is quantified at about 100 billion dollars.

        Let's not forget America and its puppets' "Shock and Awe" on Iraq, savagery based on lies.

The following extract from Open Democracy: 

Baghdad ablaze on the first night of the Shock and Awe coalition bombing

| Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix / Alamy Stock Photo 

          Since the invasion, Iraq Body Count has recorded between 185,000 and 209,000 civilian deaths as a result of violence. The number grows to 288,000 when combatants are included.
        The coalition alone has killed over 24,000 Iraqi civilians, and that number grows to 33,000 when we include those killed by Iraqi state forces.
        During the 2003-2017 period, Iraq Body Count recorded the killings of over 7,000 Iraqi children, among them 932 are attributed to the Islamic State, while twice as many were killed by the US-UK coalition. Estimates suggest that over 7,400 Iraqi children have been killed up to 2021, with over 1,000 deaths attributed to the Islamic State, and twice as many killed by the US-UK coalition.
        The mass killings of Iraqis commenced on 19 March 2003, with the ‘shock and awe’ bombing of Baghdad. Millions sat transfixed before their TV screens, watching as bombs and missiles exploded. The reports came with the warning that they contained flashing images. True enough, the sky over Baghdad flashed orange and golden, the sounds of war filling our ears. The narrative of terror that began that day was to last for years: terror from the sky, terror on the ground, terror from the foreign soldier, terror from one’s neighbour.
        The victims were people from all walks of life: shepherds, fishermen, construction workers, street cleaners, doctors, clerics, journalists, politicians, policemen, housewives… killed as they walked, slept, drove, or changed a tyre.
        Images of the last 20 years include wooden coffins, bodies in white shrouds, the names and faces of those killed – some smiling in old photographs – and many blown-out cars. There are also stories of heroes, like 18-year-old vendor Ahmed Draiwel, who picked up a bomb and ran with it, away from the busy market, in Sadr City in March of 2007. He was the only one who died when it exploded.
       Thousands of civilians have been killed each year, since the night of the flashing images. At its peak, the terror claimed 29,027 in 2006; at its calmest, 902 in 2020. but 18 years on, the deaths continue.

       We must stand against all wars, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Palestine, no matter where, and bring down the system that ferments wars and profits from wars. Wars are savagery that produces wealth and power to a powerful and privileged few, paid for by the blood of ordinary people, who play no part in these barbaric power games except as cannon fodder.

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

War & Profit.

         The West owes the rest of the world a profound apology and reparations, for centuries the West has invade, plundered, and pillaged territory after territory. In its earliest days the imperialists, always marauded across the planet under the false flag of bring civilisation, democracy or freedom to primitive people. As time went on the reasons for these bloody campaigns changed, it was regime change to free a persecuted people, to remove an evil dictator. Then along came the war on terror, which necessitated exporting terror to other countries, and with modern weaponry our brand of terror massively outstripped the supposed terror we were supposed to be fighting, and the bloodshed usually lasted for years. Try and grasp the amount of death and destruction we visited on the people of Vietnam, of course it was for their own good, to save them from evil. There are times of course when the various western factions fight each other as they squabble of who owns what part of the plunder planet, WW1 and WW2. The latest bloody escapade of the West "fighting terrorism" is Afghanistan, 20 years of terror and bloodshed foisted on a country, 20 years of our young being killed, maimed and in some dreadful cases suicide. All the political ballerinas will be pontificating, with a mixture of wringing hands and pointing fingers, crocodile tears and idiotic answers to what we should be doing, have done and who to blame.
        Why do we do it? Certainly not for the well-being of the ordinary people of that unfortunate country of Afghanistan. It is all about economics, a small cabal of very rich and powerful people make billions from war. Creating ever greater and more sophisticated destructive weapons, and every time one of these inhuman instruments of death and destruction is exploded, the military come running to order more. Wars reap riches to the rich and powerful, there is always more money for war, yours and my money. Thanks Loam for the video link.

    I scribbled the following lines away back in 2001 at the start of the illegal invasion of Afghanistan. 

FOREIGN POLICY.

Listless eyes, lifeless face
motionless body with hanging limbs
carried by a mother fleeing
foreign policy’s vicious whims.

No toys, no laughter
no playing in the sun,
a short pitiful life;
an Afghan child, 2001.

No plans, no choices
no hope by any name,
collateral damage
in the big players game.

 

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

Why The UK State Loves War.

       Why is the British state so in love with war? Well it is all to do with money flowing into shareholders bank accounts. The UK is now the worlds second biggest arm exporter, the arms industry in the UK is massive, and the state will always promote, support and assist, big business. The arms industry is nothing if there are no wars. We in the UK now sell more weaponry than China, Russia, or France, without brutal conflicts across the globe our exports would fall. Like all big corporations, the arms industry is not at all fussy to whom they sell their death products. Two thirds of British arms exports go to the Middle East, an area that is awash with death and destruction. An area where sanity and compassion would do its damnedest to reduce the amount of destructive weaponry sloshing around. With a cavalier attitude the arms industry, with the British state’s blessing, sells weaponry to most of the countries listed as “not free” on the report “Freedom in the World” by Freedom House. The UK state also gives its blessing to the arms industry’s sales to 22 of the 30 countries on its own human rights watch list. 

    With our booming arms industry we are pouring fuel onto the explosive conditions in the Middle East, aiding and abetting despot regimes, but what the hell, its is simply a matter of equating lives with profits, and to the state and its corporate buddies its a no-brainer, people are expendable, profits mean power and wealth. Can anybody find any rational argument for continuing this festering cancerous system of capitalism. The world is being brutalised, poverty is endemic and unimaginable wealth flows continuously into the hands of a small army of greedy, cold blooded, pampered parasites. All this with the states blessing and protection. When will we ever learn?

 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk