The Ukraine has once again refused to fulfill the request of the Russian energy monopoly "Gazprom" for the transit of 99,2 M cubic meter of gas, the Russian information agency "Novosti" reported Friday.

Novosti are quoting the spokesperson of the Ukrainian "Naftogaz" Valentin Zemlyansky.

Zemlyansky confirmed that the transit of Russian gas through the Ukrainian territory remains impossible.

"Our answer is the same as the one from yesterday: a technology agreement first, gas transit second," the spokesperson declared.

In the mean time there is growing frustration with both countries among European officials.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is due to meet Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Germany on Friday, warned that Russia could damage its reputation as a reliable energy supplier if the dispute continued.

It is little known that the country of Ukraine contains much of the storage and trasmission infrastructure that feeds NG from Russian (GazProm) gas fields to European customers.

This story confirms that it is the Ukraine that is holding up NG from being supplied to Europe. Holding Europe hostage while the western MSM is vilifying Russian and Putin.

Preamble
The United States of America and Ukraine:

1. Affirm the importance of our relationship as friends and strategic partners. We intend to deepen our partnership to the benefit of both nations and expand our cooperation across a broad spectrum of mutual priorities.
2. Emphasize that this cooperation between our two democracies is based on shared values and interests. These include expanding democracy and economic freedom, protecting security and territorial integrity, strengthening the rule of law, and supporting innovation and technological advances.
3. Stress our mutual desire to strengthen our relationship across the economic, political, diplomatic, cultural, and security fields.

I wish to examine, however, if other parties might benefit from this dispute. It would be a simple matter to plan this dispute and to predict Russia’s response.

It is highly probable, therefore, perhaps 90 per cent probability, that the US has offered inducements for Ukraine to disrupt gas transit to the EU in order to create insecurity about Russian supplies and gain support for its Afghanistan war. This would be very easy. One million dollars each in the Swiss accounts of, say, 20-40 key politicians and officials and Ukraine’s performance is guaranteed. And cheap. Paul Craig Roberts, who was assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, says that in post he learned that simply giving cash is the preferred means of getting other countries, including Europe, to do what the US wants.

Gazprom says all transit of Russian gas to Europe through Ukraine has been stopped. The move was proposed by the company CEO, Aleksey Miller, and agreed to by Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Gazprom says that Ukraine has shut all four pipelines which send gas to Europe, causing several countries to run out of fuel. But Ukraine claims that Russia stopped delivering all gas to Europe through its territory on Wednesday morning.

Outside, the temperature plummeted to minus 12. Inside, the gas stopped flowing to homes in some of Europe's eastern cities in the dead of night and stayed off all day while the thermometer stayed below zero.

Tens of thousands living on the shores of the Black Sea were the first to feel the bitter impact of Russia's dispute with Ukraine over gas payments on the coldest day of the year.

With even icier conditions forecast for this week, the gas flow from Russia dried up during the day to nine countries, leading Bulgaria and Slovakia to consider declaring states of emergency and others to warn that just a few days' reserves remained.

Italian president and media baron Silvio Berlusconi said today that he would use his country's imminent presidency of the G8 group to push for an international agreement to "regulate the internet".

Speaking to Italian postal workers, Reuters reports Berlusconi said: "The G8 has as its task the regulation of financial markets... I think the next G8 can bring to the table a proposal for a regulation of the internet."

I'm not sure about you, but this seems like a terrific new leader for the EU - an Austrian School economist who believes in liberty and sovereignty, and agrees with the majority of the citizens of the world that all these bailouts are the wrong way to solve problems we are facing.

DETAILED INFORMATION on the web pages people view will be retained for possible future criminal investigations if telecommunications operators comply with a letter from the Garda Commissioner.

The request for real-time web-browsing information - the content or the web address (URL) of every web page browsed by users of mobile handsets, palmtop devices or 3G modems - goes beyond the European Union's data retention directive, which the Government intends to implement as a statutory instrument.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that it has obtained evidence suggesting that Georgia may have committed war crimes during its attack on South Ossetia in August. The BBC says it gathered the evidence during the first unrestricted visit to South Ossetia since the conflict.

Describing Georgia’s military assault as ‘reckless’, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said he had raised the ‘war crimes’ allegations with the government in Tbilisi.

Last June, in a national referendum, voters in Ireland rejected the European Union Lisbon Treaty, which was, said opponents, merely a rehashed version of the EU Constitution that had gone down to defeat in 2004. Now, the powers that be in Brussels, headquarters of the European Union, have announced a new effort aimed at "educating" Irish voters for another run at the treaty.

"You will vote for the treaty, dammit!"

President Sarkozy is set for a showdown with Angela Merkel today after infuriating the German Chancellor with the launch of a €100 billion (£80 billion) French sovereign investment fund that he exhorted other European governments to copy.

Brushing aside Berlin's qualms, Mr Sarkozy yesterday outlined plans for the fund as part of a programme to strengthen public sector control over private business. He also promised €175 billion of direct state investment in the economy, over and above the sovereign fund, in the next three years.

he widow of Joerg Haider believes the far-right Austrian politician's death in a car crash may not have been an accident and has saved his body from cremation for a second post mortem, a Vienna newspaper has reported.

Nicholas Sarkozy is now blaming the Irish Prime Minister, Brian Cowen, for igniting a bank deal crisis.
I am Irish and think that the Irish Government plan was about as stupid as you could possibly get but, when Nicholas Sarkozy stands up and pretends to be the bastion of Economic Sagesse, well excuse me, I gotta have my say as this galls me.

Brussels - Russia should be allowed to join the European Union in the coming years, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday. "I consider Russia to be a Western nation. So my project is that the Russian Federation should become a member of the EU in the coming years," Berlusconi told Italian reporters on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels.

Berlusconi's comments on Russia's EU aspirations were not new, but they nevertheless raised eyebrows in Brussels.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
Saturday, Oct 18, 2008

If we are to believe the Washington Post, French president and current EU leader Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to save us from nameless “freewheeling bankers and traders” who get the blame for the current economic crisis.

From George Ure's UrbanSurvival.com:

A sharp-eyed reader in Germany is piecing it together this way:

"Hi George,

Cliff's accuracy is amazing! Not only did he predict correctly the current financial crash, but also his prediction of the three unwanted guests is on the spot - at least for one "guest".

He spoke of "an ['accident' (real or claimed)] which causes a [derailing]. This last may be in the political realm."

The UK government implemented anti-terror laws to freeze the estimated £4 billion worth of British financial assets in a failed Icelandic bank, it has been revealed.

The freezing order against Landsbanki, which owns failed internet bank Icesave, was issued under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act.

The move threatens to drag down British-Icelandic relations to their lowest point for over three decades, with Gordon brown announcing legal action against Reykjavik authorities yesterday to recover depositors' money.

DOZENS of British councils risk losing hundreds of millions in taxpayers' money held in Iceland's stricken banks as shockwaves from the tiny nation's financial collapse reverberate across Europe.

As councils across Britain began contemplating the prospect of raising taxes and cutting services to cover their losses, the two countries squared up for a diplomatic row over Iceland's refusal to refund the deposits.

08/10/08 "CSM" -- -Tskhinvali, South Ossetia - In a speech before the United Nations last month, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili implored world leaders to set up an international investigation to find out the truth about the war in South Ossetia.

I couldn't agree more. But I think the results of an honest investigation would reveal a very different "truth" than what President Saakashvili claims.

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The credit crunch deepened in Europe as government leaders pledged to bail out troubled banks and protect depositors.~~snip~~

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who convened the Oct. 4 meeting, called for a global summit ``as soon as possible'' to implement ``a real and complete reform of the international financial system.'' He said ``all actors'' must be supervised, including credit-rating firms and hedge funds. Executive-pay systems must also be reviewed, he said.

Many of us in the US are focused on our own woes. But this is a global credit crisis. In today's Outside the Box, we take a look at the currency markets, which are in an historic upheaval and also look at what is going on in Europe. I suspect that Europe is in for a period of much distress, as the world begins to deleverage That is why one government after another will back the deposits of banks within their countries, for otherwise capital will flee to countries like Ireland and Germany which ARE guaranteeing the deposits for all banks in their borders. .

Iceland is on the brink of collapse. Inflation and interest rates are raging upwards. The krona, Iceland's currency, is in freefall and is rated just above those of Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. One of the country's three independent banks has been nationalised, another is asking customers for money, and the discredited government and officials from the central bank have been huddled behind closed doors for three days with still no sign of a plan. International banks won't send any more money and supplies of foreign currency are running out.

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The euro had its biggest one-day drop against the yen since its debut in 1999 as the deepening credit crisis prompted European governments to pledge bailouts for troubled banks while stopping short of coordinated action.

We face extreme danger. Unless there is immediate intervention on every front by all the major powers acting in concert, we risk a disintegration of global finance within days. Nobody will be spared, unless they own gold bars.

Civil liberties groups fear that the new police database, called Edvige, would significantly erode rights to privacy.

Although governments regularly gather and store data about citizens, Edvige would include information about the youngest members of society.

"These people could be filed starting from the age of thirteen with a very large amount of data on their life, on their relatives, on their friends, acquaintance…everything," says Meryem Marzouki from the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS).

Central bankers and officials in Iceland are locked in economic bailout talks this weekend, as Gordon Brown attempts to convince European leaders to back a £12bn fund for small businesses across the Continent.

Property lender Hypo Real Estate (HRE) (HRXG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) fought for its life on Saturday after German banks and insurers pulled out of a state-led 35 billion euro ($48.5 billion) rescue program stitched together only days ago.

The news is a fresh blow for the global financial system struggling to master an unprecedented crisis of confidence and poses a political challenge for the Berlin government, which has been fighting efforts to arrange a pan-European bank bailout.

The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy are meeting in Paris to try and forge a common approach to sort out the European economy. But actions from the leaders can’t come soon enough for many European citizens - they’ve been feeling the pinch for a while.