Renowned German «efficiency» is opening up a grievous rift within the European Union in the wake of the Greek No vote to EU-imposed bailout austerity. Not only that. The famed Germanic mechanical methodology is threatening to tear Europe asunder from runaway financial debts - the very Europe that Berlin claims to be upholding.

The German government's steely insistence on Greek debt obligations without any financial relief is in marked contrast to a new softer, more accommodating attitude from France, Italy and Spain. No doubt the latter group are only too fearful that Greece's economic catastrophe is but a prelude for their own and a wider European social and political meltdown.

The day after Greece's landmark referendum, which saw a resounding No vote cast by over 61 per cent of the participating electorate, German Chancellor Angela Merkel held an emergency summit in Paris with French President Francois Hollande. Britain's Daily Telegraph reported that the two main principals of the EU bloc «clashed» over their differing response to the Greek people's mandate for an end to economic austerity.

Merkel, as with other German government officials, remains adamant, saying that Greece must continue to implement swingeing budget cuts and deep economic «reforms» such as wholesale privatisation of industries and other publicly owned assets. For Berlin, any talk of debt cancellation, or even partial relief, is out of the question.

Poland has issued an official apology for its right-wing MEP, who, in an ill-considered attempt to compare the EU policies to those of Nazi Germany, referenced an infamous Nazi slogan, "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer," in front of the EU Parliament.

Addressing the EU Parliament earlier this week during the debate on the German-led motion to introduce integrated ticketing for travel across EU borders, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, leader of the Coalition of Polish Republic's Renewal Freedom and Hope party, made a Nazi salute as a sign of objection to the German proposal.

Addressing the chamber in English, he lectured the EU lawmakers about diversity, pointing out that "all the time if there is voting, we are voting for the unification of everything."

Then, raising his hand in the Nazi salute he said: "This time it is, Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Ticket," in a play of words referring to "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer" (One People, one Empire, one Leader).

The incident caused an uproar in Polish and European media, forcing Poland's Foreign Minister to apologize in his country's name for the right-wing Polish MEP.

BRICS is gaining momentum as an increasingly effective organization and its New Development Bank is likely to become new source of funding for the current infrastructure gap, South Africa's Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies told RT.

There's a need for more development banks in the world involved in more developmental finance, the minister said on the sidelines of BRICS/SOC summits in Ufa. And there's a need to try to tap into more sources of capital while there's an infrastructure funding gap.

"I believe we will not be guided by mindless austerity which is causing enormous difficulties in some parts of the developed world," he said.

Speaking about trade and cooperation, the minister claimed BRICS are very interested in moving away from third countries' currencies as the need to convert into a third currency creates extra costs. The process of switching to domestic currencies involves discussions at central bank level, it's already happening and the member states are very interested in it, he added.

Ukraine increased deliveries of natural gas from Slovakia by 18 percent on Friday after failing to strike a deal with Russia's Gazprom for what would have reportedly been a significantly cheaper deal.

Ukraine stopped buying natural gas from Russia in July, after failing to agree a deal with Gazprom to extend the natural gas supply contract for the third quarter of 2015.

1. Ukraine refused to buy Russian gas at the price of $247.18 per thousand cubic meters.

2. According to Ukrainian media, the country pays around $360 per thousand cubic meters for natural gas purchased from EU countries

"Compared to yesterday, the request for and actual delivery of natural gas from Slovakian territory grew by 18 percent, from 13.6 million to 16.5 million cubic meters per day," he said. Belyayevsky added that natural gas for Ukrainian consumers is as of today being supplied solely through Slovakia.

Ukraine began buying natural gas from EU countries in 2014, after pricing conflicts with Russian gas supplier Gazprom. The gas Ukraine gets through the "reverse" pipelines of its western neighbors is generally the same natural gas it would otherwise buy from Russia, although at a greatly reduced capacity.

FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that US officials were able to stop terrorist attacks that were inspired by the Islamic State and planned for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, though few details were given about the plots.

Speaking with reporters at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, Comey attributed the lack of terror attacks to a string of arrests that local and government officials made in the weeks preceding Independence Day.

Nearly a dozen people were arrested across the US for allegedly trying to provide material support to the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) or preparing to carry out deadly attacks inspired by the extremist group.

"I do believe our work disrupted efforts to kill people likely in connection with July 4th," Comey said, according to Reuters.

Eric Holder has gone back to work for his old firm, the white-collar defense heavyweight Covington & Burling. The former attorney general decided against going for a judgeship, saying he's not ready for the ivory tower yet. "I want to be a player," he told the National Law Journal, one would have to say ominously.

Holder will reassume his lucrative partnership (he made $2.5 million the last year he worked there) and take his seat in an office that reportedly - this is no joke - was kept empty for him in his absence.
The office thing might have been improper, but at this point, who cares? More at issue is the extraordinary run Holder just completed as one of history's great double agents. For six years, while brilliantly disguised as the attorney general of the United States, he was actually working deep undercover, DiCaprio in The Departed-style, as the best defense lawyer Wall Street ever had

In a previous article on Oilprice, I questioned whether western sanctions imposed on Russia were being regularly breached by E.U. and Asian companies, noting that sanctions only work if all countries unite behind them.

In June, the Financial Times reported that only one year after being imposed, the sanctions are eroding. It seems that government and business policies are pulling in opposite directions, despite the sanction regime being clear on the activities that are banned, as explained by Forbes:

"Last July ('14), the E.U. banned its companies from signing any new financing deals with Russia. In September, the E.U. placed even more restrictions on Russia's access to E.U. capital markets. The sanctions state that individuals and corporations from the E.U. are banned from providing loans to five major Russian state-owned banks, including Sberbank and VTB Bank, and the three state owned energy companies, of which Gazprom tops the list.

The September sanctions, which went into effect on the 12th of that month, said that companies could no longer provide services related to the issuing of financial instruments, including broker relationships.

In addition, certain services necessary for deep water oil exploration and production, arctic oil exploration or production and shale oil projects in Russia were also banned."

ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change - seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm's own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial.

The email from Exxon's in-house climate expert provides evidence the company was aware of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its bottom line, over a generation ago - factoring that knowledge into its decision about an enormous gas field in south-east Asia. The field, off the coast of Indonesia, would have been the single largest source of global warming pollution at the time.

"Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia," Lenny Bernstein, a 30-year industry veteran and Exxon's former in-house climate expert, wrote in the email. "This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2," or carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change.

Amnesty International (AI) has teamed up with Forensic Architecture of Goldsmiths, University of London, launching The Gaza Platform, a digital mapping tool that can be used to collate, map, explore and analyze patterns in attacks on Gaza during last summer's brutal Israeli military offensive against the tiny blockaded enclave.

AI's press release announcing the launch states the "purpose is to help push for accountability for war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law." The platform is an extraordinarily ambitious collaboration and is available to anyone, researchers, journalists, and activists alike.

On 15 August 2007, the BBC headlined "Wikipedia Shows CIA Page Edits," and Jonathan Fildes reported that, "An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organizations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries." I.e.: What the CIA doesn't like, they can (and do) eliminate or change.

More recently, on 25 June 2015, an anonymous reddit poster, "moose," listed and linked directly to 18 different news reports, in such media as New York Times, Washington Post, Telegraph, Mirror, Guardian, and Newsweek, reporting about wikipedia edits that were supplied not only by the CIA but by other U.S. Government offices, and by large corporations.

That person opened with a news report which implicated Wikipedia itself, "Wikipedia honcho caught in scandal quits, defends paid edits," in which Wikipedia's own corruption was discussed.

Most of the other news reports there concerned unpaid edits by employees at CIA, congressional and British parliamentary offices, the DCRI (French equivalent of the U.S. CIA), large corporations, self-interested individuals, and others.

One article even concerned a report that, "All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) changed a Russian language version of a page listing civil aviation accidents to say that 'The plane [flight MH17] was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers'."

Basically, wikipedia has been revealed to be a river of 'information' that's polluted by so many self-interested sources as to be no more reliable than, say: "New York Times, Washington Post, Telegraph, Mirror, Guardian, and Newsweek."

And that's not reliable at all. For example, everybody knew in 2002 and 2003 that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling WMD "Weapons of Mass Destruction," because they had read it in such 'news' sources as that. Consequently, even when wikipedia links to those sorts of articles, it can be propagating lies.

After all, The New York Times and Washington Post were stenographically 'reporting' the lies from the White House as if those lies were truths (not challenging them at all); so, the fame of a publisher has nothing to do with the honesty (the integrity and carefulness) of its 'news' reporting.

Stenographic 'news' reporting isn't news-reporting; it is propaganda, no matter how famous and respected the 'news' medium happens (unfortunately) to be. Some of the most unreliable 'news' media have top prestige.