By John Helmer, Moscow The outflow of private and corporate capital from Russia is accelerating. Pressured by the cutoff of incoming investment and bank loans, the closure of Russian depositor bank accounts in Europe, and the threat of asset confiscation in the UK – all ordered by US sanctions with  threats of more to come […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 20th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow President Vladimir Putin has announced a change of Russian policy in Syria after disclosing it to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  when they met in Paris on November 11. Netanyahu has reported in Israel that what Putin said was “very important”. With Netanyahu, Putin was not accompanied by Russian officials […]

by Editor - Monday, November 19th, 2018
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By Marios Evriviades*, Athens Can a man gasping for breath as he is is forcibly suffocated with a plastic bag over his head,   articulate his survival problem multisyllabically with a medicalized request to which he invited his killers to consent? “I’m suffocating… Take this bag off my head, I’m claustrophobic”.

by Editor - Thursday, November 15th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow In medieval sheep-herding practice it was customary to hang a bell around a single sheep in the flock to alert the shepherd to where they were heading. The shepherd used to castrate the bellwether ram first, so his bell didn’t ring needlessly. Doubts about his leadership of the flock are natural. […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 13th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Australian head of state, a retired army general, has told an Australian reporter that when he was placed next to President Vladimir Putin (lead image, centre) during the centenary World War I armistice ceremonies in Paris on Sunday, he was sorry protocol disallowed his striking the Russian president . “It […]

by Editor - Monday, November 12th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow Sisto Malaspina was killed on Friday outside his Pellegrinis coffee bar in Melbourne, Australia. The police are calling it a terrorist incident related to the war in Syria. More than fifty years ago, Sisto taught me why nobody in Italy, or in the rest of the world, could make espresso and […]

by Editor - Saturday, November 10th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow The end of the Soviet Union, and the election in 1991, then re-election in 1996 of Boris Yeltsin as President of the Russian Federation, are usually depicted in Russia as a kind of election defeat for the Communist Party as well as of leftwing, socialist or communist policy.  Yeltsin’s destruction of […]

by Editor - Thursday, November 8th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow The President’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced on the eve of yesterday’s elections in the US that “there is no need to delude ourselves hoping that they will somehow clarify things [how Russian-US ties will develop]. So far, there is no definite trend towards normalizing relations.”   This morning, Konstantin Kosachev, head […]

by Editor - Wednesday, November 7th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow What better occasion can there be for a fresh assessment of Vladimir Lenin than  the November day when the Russian Government claims to be celebrating the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow in 1612, although most Russians regard the date as the anniversary – the 101st this year – of the […]

by Editor - Sunday, November 4th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow How many angels can dance on a pin has been an issue of dispute among churchmen for several hundred years. If their livings depended on the credulity of believers, the question would not have lasted as long. Even without divine intervention, the Russian Orthodox Church is a permanent motion machine in […]

by Editor - Thursday, November 1st, 2018
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