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.

Greece is the pearl of Mediterranean, the place generations of foreigners from Lord Byron to Graves to Fowles have fallen in love with. From philosophy to feta, from history to yoghurt, from poetry to honey they provided the example to follow. Their priests preserve the pristine faith; their fighters defeated Mussolini; their Helen is the epitome of female beauty. They also make lousy wine called retsina and listen to loud dreadful music called bouzouki so we would temper our Hellenophilia.

Now they have given us another example to follow: how to beat banksters at their own game. The spectacular victory of the Syriza government in Greece at the national referendum was quite unexpected: the polls wavered between an indecisive result and straightforward support of the EU plans around 51:49. However, the Greeks strongly confirmed the mandate of the government. The main problem was and remains the Syriza's resolve and determination.

The ruling party took an unnecessary risk while calling for referendum, for they had already won the elections under their own slogans just a few months ago. This implied their wobbliness, as if they would prefer to lose and pass the hot potato to somebody else. Moreover, they did not try to win the referendum: no campaign for NO, no media coverage of demos for NO. Did they wish to lose or to win with a slightest possible margin? Possibly. The Greek people rejected the stratagem and called upon them to proceed.

Now it is the business of the government to organise a smooth and fast Grexit from the Eurozone and switch to the new Drachma. A really decisive government would leave the EU and NATO, turning the tables completely. Refusing the bailout is good but not enough.

As the 10th anniversary of the most deadly terrorist attack ever to be carried out in Britain - the 7/7 attacks on the London underground and transport systems - is recalled, UK policy has since made the prospects of another 7/7 more, not less, likely.

The 30 British victims of the most recent Islamist terrorist attack in Tunisia are a damning indictment of Britain's efforts to combat terrorism in the ten years since the 7/7 attack took place in London - an tragedy which claimed 52 lives and left 700 people injured. Indeed, the massacre in Tunisia is proof that rather than another major terrorist attack in Britain being less likely today, ten years on from 7/7, it is more likely. The British Government's ill-planned and ill-conceived interventions in the Middle East over the past decade, combined with the campaign of demonization that has been rolled out against Muslims at home, has fanned the flames of radicalization rather than the opposite.


Ever since embarking on the disastrous and illegal war against Iraq in 2003, members of the British establishment have consistently denied any connection between UK foreign policy and the rising tide of Islamist extremism and terrorism at home and abroad. There can only be two explanations for such a denial - madness or mendacity. Many would suggest that it's a case of both.

Whatever the reason, the truth cannot be denied: UK foreign policy and efforts to combat terrorism have not merely failed, they have failed catastrophically, in the process endangering British citizens at home and overseas, large chunks of which are now no-go areas for tourists or people visiting.

In a result that should surprise no one, the Greeks voted to reject European demands for additional austerity measures as the price for providing funds to allow Greek banks to operate. There are three reasons this should have been no surprise. First, the ruling Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza party, is ruling because it has an understanding of the Greek mood. Second, the constant scorn and contempt that the European leadership heaped on the prime minister and finance minister convinced the Greeks not only that the scorn was meant for them as well but also that anyone so despised by the European leadership wasn't all bad. Finally, and most important, the European leadership put the Greek voters in a position in which they had nothing to lose. The Greeks were left to choose between two forms of devastation — one that was immediate but possible to recover from, and one that was a longer-term strangulation with no exit.

The Europeans' Mistaken Reasoning

As the International Monetary Fund noted (while maintaining a very hard line on Greece), the Greeks cannot repay their loans or escape from their economic nightmare without a substantial restructuring of the Greek debt, including significant debt forgiveness and a willingness to create a multidecade solution. The IMF also made clear that increased austerity, apart from posing an impossible burden for the Greeks, will actually retard either a Greek recovery or debt repayment.

The Greeks knew this as well. What was obvious is that austerity without radical restructuring would inevitably lead to default, if not now, then somewhere not too far down the line. Focusing on pensions made the Europeans appear tough but was actually quite foolish. All of the austerity measures demanded would not have provided nearly enough money to repay debts without restructuring. In due course, Greece would default, or the debt would be restructured.

Since Europe's leaders are not stupid, it is important to understand the game they were playing. They knew perfectly well the austerity measures were between irrelevant and damaging to debt repayment. They insisted on this battle at this time because they thought they would win it, and it was important for them to get Greece to capitulate for broader reasons.