By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The yanko and jingo-centric podcasters are being overtaken by the political realism of events. This is forcing a change of calculation in how the apparently powerless can and do defeat the apparently omnipotent without beating their chests, flogging their backs, or putting their adversaries’ heads in baskets. Bribery of President Donald […]

by Editor - Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Nuri al-Said, the long-serving but ill-fated Iraqi prime minister of the 1940s and 1950s, once said that you can rent an Arab but you can’t buy him. On July 15, 1958, he ended up shot by an Iraqi Army coup, buried, dug up, and his corpse mutilated as it was dragged […]

by Editor - Monday, February 2nd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Realism in politics is M +V+ B = P. That’s to say: Money plus Votes plus Bullets equal Power.  The equation is simple arithmetic – everyone can count.   But almost everyone can count on missing one or more of the variables —  usually all three of them —  so power is very […]

by Editor - Sunday, February 1st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with On January 27 President Donald Trump (lead image) announced: “In June, we obliterated Iran’s nuclear capacity in Operation Midnight Hammer. You saw that. People have been waiting for 22 years to do that, and we were right at the end. They were about a month away from having a nuclear weapon. […]

by Editor - Friday, January 30th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The Trump Administration and its NATO allies are clear: They will escalate their war against Russia at sea, deploying their navies to enforce trade blockades, ship sabotage and seizures, and the closure of sea lanes, and to launch “pre-emptive” attacks before their targets can defend themselves. This is sea war to […]

by Editor - Thursday, January 29th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with For the first time since the negotiations to end the Ukraine war began, President Vladimir Putin has sent as the chief Russian negotiator a General Staff officer and military intelligence chief, Admiral Igor Kostyukov. The two Russians who have been closest to Putin, Vladimir Medinsky and Kirill Dmitriev, are not at […]

by Editor - Sunday, January 25th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with It is possible that after four hours of talking until almost 4 in the morning, Yury Ushakov, the Kremlin equivalent of the US National Security Advisor, was so tired he omitted to report in his read-out a novel part of the negotiations. Ushakov’s read-out runs for 730 words; it was posted […]

by Editor - Thursday, January 22nd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with In all large criminal gangs – racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations (RICO) as they are termed in US law  – there is always the mouth that talks tough; the pocket which collects the money; the gun that’s the enforcer. The mouth is the most expendable so long as the pocket keeps full […]

by Editor - Wednesday, January 21st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with A quarter of a century ago, President Vladimir Putin explained to President George W. Bush the way the warfighting world really works. “There is a contradiction between a new, young, aggressive financial Islamic capital and the old one,” Putin said.  “In reality, it is a financial issue. Religion is secondary. The […]

by Editor - Tuesday, January 20th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Revealed for the first time in public is that President Vladimir Putin believes that international terrorism of the radical Islamic type is not the result of Middle Eastern conflict or of regional poverty or of Great Power proxy warfighting. Rather, he thinks it is a form of competition of the Marxist-Leninist […]

by Editor - Sunday, January 18th, 2026
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