By John Helmer, Moscow Former Federation Council Senator and the Kremlin’s troubleshooter for Africa and maritime piracy, Mikhail Margelov (image left) has been appointed a vice president of Transneft, the state oil pipeline company. The October 29 announcement says Margelov “will be responsible for supervision of foreign economic activity and public relations.” Igor Dyomin, the […]

by Editor - Friday, November 7th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Edward Lucas, a reporter for The Economist in London, has found fault with the accuracy of the report that Anne Applebaum has been receiving unaccountably large sums of money for her stand on the Ukraine civil war and regime change in Russia. For the full story of Applebaum’s employment and payments, […]

by Editor - Thursday, November 6th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow From Arseny Yatseniuk’s point of view, the US election results could not have been worse for the not-Ukrainian-prime-minister-yet. Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president defeated when a minority of Ukrainians went to their ballot boxes on October 26, the US outcome is no better. This is because exit polls are reporting the […]

by Editor - Thursday, November 6th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Anne Applebaum has been paid unaccountably large sums of money, according to official yearly income declarations by her husband, the ex-foreign minister of Poland, Radosław Sikorski. According to the annual reports required of Polish Government officials and members of the Polish parliament, the Sejm, Applebaum received a US income of $20,000 […]

by Editor - Wednesday, November 5th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Fakery in allegiance to the truth. That was how Henry Luce, the proprietor of Time, Life, and the March of Time newsreels, described his coverage of the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Luce’s fakery even won an Oscar that year for “revolutionizing” the newsreel medium. Beside Luce’s photographer in Spain that […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 4th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow A top secret file of papers from Vnesheconombank (VEB) has leaked into the Moscow internet, disclosing a verbatim record of recent billion-dollar project reviews by the Russian state bank of last resort. The papers reveal that the multi-billion dollar Darwendale platinum mining project announced officialLy last month in Zimbabwe has been […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 29th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow The defeat by Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk of President Petro Poroshenko in the party voting at Sunday’s Ukrainian parliamentary election reveals a shift of voter sentiment no pollster predicted beforehand – neither the independent Ukrainian polling organizations in Kiev, nor the US Government-funded surveys. On the other hand, the independent Ukrainian […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 29th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow It is easier to know what’s inside a McDonald’s hamburger than inside the corporation’s financial accounts. That’s because the type font on the internet version of the corporation’s financial reports is so small, a magnifying-glass is required at the computer screen to decipher the text; even then computer programming by McDonald’s […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 28th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow United Company Rusal, the Russian aluminium monopoly, has announced it has won a judgement of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) confirming its shareholding control of the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (Alscon), the only aluminium producer in the west African state. The LCIA, Rusal claims, has defeated the Nigerian […]

by Editor - Sunday, October 19th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow “The genius of you Americans is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves.” That was Gamal Abdel Nasser addressing a CIA man he knew well, who’d been involved in a series of plots to assassinate Nasser, all hapless. The year was 1957; that’s 57 years ago. If […]

by Editor - Thursday, October 16th, 2014
No Comments »