Today, Oil company Royal Dutch Shell reported a record annual profit for a UK-listed company of $22.94bn. This comes on top of similarly outrageous profits previously posted by other major oil exploration companies. Exxon Mobil for example made a staggering $36.1 billion in 2005. Where do these vast sums of money come from? Check your bank balance, that might give you a clue.

What should really make you indignant however is the fact that there was no real reason for the price increase. Oh sure, we are all told that "market volatility" and "demand from China" or "Hurricane Katrina" has pushed the price of oil through the roof, but they are just lies. It seems that the powers that be have been busy amassing as much personal wealth as possible, and at the same time doing their best to impoverish the average citizen, in preparation for the real smack down - economic collapse - which is coming to a large Western Capitalist economy very soon.

To top it all off, two nights ago in his PDSOTU (Presidential Dire State Of The Union) address, Bush chastised Americans about needing to cut back on energy consumption and dependency on oil, which was a subtle way of informing the American public that further fraudulent fleecing-by-oil-price is on the agenda. When it happens, Bush will be able to say, "see, I warned you!" and hope that no one suspects that he and his money-grubbing cronies have manufactured the whole thing.

It is clear that Bush and Co. have a vested interest in defending these huge oil company profits. You see, government tax on car gas is calculated as a percentage of gas price. The higher the government-linked oil companies push the gas price, the more money is sequestered into government coffers - money that will then be used to equip state thugs with the latest "non-lethal" crowd control weapons for when people start to really feel the pinch and try to exercise their non-existent Democratic rights.