Revealed: UK household energy debt hit record high even before price hikes

Thursday, 4 August 2022 — Open Democracy

Official Ofgem data shows millions of electricity and gas users in arrears for the first quarter of 2022

caroline m.jpg

Caroline Molloy 

New official figures show nearly 3.5 million gas and electricity accounts are in arrears

A record 3.4 million gas and electricity accounts were in debt even before the April price hike, new figures quietly released by Ofgem reveal.

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EU economies are down on their knees

Tuesday, 5 July 2022 — Indian Punchline

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L), at a meeting with Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu, revealed proposals of army commanders in Ukraine “for the development of offensive operations”, Moscow, July 4, 2022

On July 1 at the White House, US President Joe Biden made a startling disclosure that “the idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, is not likely in the near term.”

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This Ain’t Putin’s Price Hike: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Sunday, 13 March 2022 — Caitlin Johnson

by Caitlin Johnstone

Listen to a reading of this article:

Higher fuel and food prices are a sacrifice I’m prepared to make in exchange for a greatly increased likelihood of nuclear armageddon.

Let’s be clear: you’re not paying more for necessities to punish Putin and save Ukraine, you’re paying more for necessities to fund an economic war of unprecedented scale geared toward collapsing Russia to help secure US unipolar domination of this planet.

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Go to hell, Shell

26 November 2021 — New Frame

The explosion of rage in South Africa in response to the multinational company exploring for oil and gas in the ocean off the Wild Coast is entirely justified.

The corporate drive for profit frequently takes the form of a psychopathic monomania. But among the many horsemen of the corporate apocalypse, Royal Dutch Shell has a particular record of infamy.

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Afghanistan: between pipelines and ISIS-K, the Americans are still in play

11 November 2021 — TheAltWorld

US trained and armed Afghan security forces are joining ISIS-K, which makes the US ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan look more like an American ‘repositioning’ to keep chaos humming.

Something quite extraordinary happened in early November in Kabul.

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Is Kashmir a US Trap to Confront Russia and China?

20 June 2020 — Global Research

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), founded in 2001 by the Shanghai Five (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) and to which Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan were later added would be the ALBA and Iran countries hard core of resistance to world hegemony of the United States and Great Britain. Consequently, the avowed objective of the United States would be to dynamite this organization, having Balochistan, Kashmir and Xinjiang as scenarios for its destabilizing operations.

Ever More Complex EU Gas Pipeline Geopolitics By F. William Engdahl

4 May 2019 — New Eastern Outlook

Israel plans to construct the world’s longest underwater gas pipeline together with Cyprus and Greece to carry Eastern Mediterranean gas on to Italy and the EU southern states. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has just endorsed the project. It will run smack up against a competing Turkish-Russian gas pipeline, Turk Stream, against a potential Qatari-Iran-Syria pipeline, as well as de facto undercut the Washington attempt to get more US LNG gas to the EU to reduce Russian dependency.

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Why the Revolution Will Not (but Must) Be Televised By Jim Naureckas

19 December 2017 — FAIR

People's Climate March, New York City, 2014 (cc photo: South Bend Voice)

(cc photo: South Bend Voice)

It’s long been clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic climate disruption on a scale that threatens human civilization, we need to leave vast amounts of fossil fuels in the ground. Environmental writer Bill McKibben pointed out the math in a crucial 2012 article for Rolling Stone (7/19/12): To minimize disaster, about 80 percent of the carbon already discovered by private and state-owned energy companies has to be left alone—to be treated as useless rock, not precious resources.

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The European Union in Crisis. The Geopolitics of Russia-EU Pipeline Corridors By Tony Cartalucci

14 July 2014 — Global Research

When the special interests who created and direct the agenda of the European Union disagree with member states, the true nature of this supranational enterprise becomes painfully apparent – one of dictatorial special interests pursing regional policy that benefits none of its individual member states. No example of this can be clearer than the dispute that has emerged over the construction of Russia’s South Stream natural gas pipeline set to run through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, and Italy.

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Pushing Ukraine to the Brink By Mike Whitney

11 July 2014 — Counterpunch

“The unipolar world model has failed. People everywhere have shown their desire to choose their own destiny, preserve their own cultural identity, and oppose the West’s attempts at military, financial, political and ideological domination.” – Vladimir Putin

“While the human politics of the crisis in Ukraine garner all the headlines, it is the gas politics that in many ways lies at the heart of the conflict.” – Eric Draitser, Waging war against Russia, one pipeline at a time, RT

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The US is attempting to organize a redistribution of the European energy market By Petr Lvov

6 June 2014 — New Eastern Outlook

67567Once the current and illegitimate authorities in Kiev, in their most insolent manner, ceased hiding the fact that they were being backed by the United States, they immediately began reneging on their payment obligations for Russian gas supplies. It became obvious that the motivation behind Washington’s provocation in the Ukrainian crisis, along with their EU satellites, was to weaken Moscow and pursue their global military and political objectives with an even more ambitious goal – the redistribution of the global gas market; a market where Russia still holds a leading position. The option to use Saudi Arabia and plummeting oil prices, as President Reagan and the Saudi King did 30 years ago with the USSR , failed during Obama’s recent visit to Riyadh. For this reason Washington has now begun a large-scale offensive on the gas front. However, the American arsenal of features for these purposes is very limited.

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The future visible in St Petersburg By Pepe Escobar

29 May 2014 — Asia Times

THE ROVING EYE

The unipolar model of the world order has failed.
Vladimir Putin, St Petersburg, May 22

In more ways than one, last week heralded the birth of a Eurasian century. Of course, the US$400 billion Russia-China gas deal was clinched only at the last minute in Shanghai, on Wednesday (a complement to the June 2013, 25-year, $270 billion oil deal between Rosneft and China’s CNPC.)

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Washington‘s Shale Boom Going Bust By William Engdahl

12 May 2014 — New Eastern Outlook

To read the headlines, it seems that the USA has emerged out of the blue to the point of becoming the world’s oil and gas production giant. All thanks to the Shale Revolution. Recently President Obama made various noises that the US could solve the Ukraine gas dependency on Russian gas because of the spectacular growth of extracting natural gas, and more recently, oil, from shale rock formations across the US. There’s only one thing wrong with this picture—“It ain’t gonna happen…”

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Sanctions on Russia’s Energy Sector: Shale Gas ‘Fracking’ Will Invade Europe? By Timothy Alexander Guzman

29 March 2014 — Global Research

Fracking will be “good for our country,” was a statement made by British Prime Minister David Cameron at a recent Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague according to the UK based news agency The Guardian. Cameron believes that the fracking industry will have the public’s support since reliance on Russia’s energy sources will be halted if sanctions are imposed due to the political crisis in the Ukraine. The Obama administration is also proposing a joint US-EU trade deal with its European partners that would reduce Europe’s dependence on Russia’s energy resources. The Guardian reported Cameron’s statement regarding shale gas fracking in Europe:

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U.S. Prepares to Gas Russia Into Submission By Glen Ford

20 March 2014 — Black Agenda Report

The U.S., now number one in oil and gas, is preparing to destroy Russia’s economy. “Washington will move to crush, or at least seriously disrupt, Russia under its ‘sanctions as war by other means’ machine, by targeting its energy exports, while simultaneously boosting the foreign markets for U.S. natural gas.”

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