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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with There was a time when Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was President of Iran (1989-97) and he despatched from his personal office secret intelligence-gatherers to Moscow. That was during the Yeltsin administration, when there was no love lost for Iran inside the Kremlin wall. So Rafsanjani’s advisors came under cover of merchants […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Novichok is the notorious warfighting poison which has killed no one but fooled everyone. At least that’s how British Government officials, their scientists, chemical warfighters, policemen, media reporters, and trailing after them all, their judges, intend the story to be told.  Theirs is the story of the assassination, ordered by President […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In a single line expressed through a reporter, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov has explained the defeat of Syria as a tactical withdrawal in preparation for the “military conflict with NATO, and in the next 10 years. So, Russia right now needs solutions that will ensure at least a long-term balance […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Imagine the history of a bank written by the driver of the getaway car used by a gang of holdup men after their heist. Then imagine the driver and his gang are religious fundamentalists convinced that what they are doing is God’s mission to reform the banking business by introducing daylight […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Diogenes of Sinope (lead image, centre), the still famous philosopher of ancient Greece, had an unusually long and exceptionally miserable life between 412 and 323 BC.  There’s no telling whether he inherited the profits of his father’s money manipulation business, but by the time he was captured by pirates,  enslaved,  and […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Quoting Mark Twain, President Vladimir Putin has made his first public statement on Syria during his Direct Line broadcast on Thursday. “Whoever wants to imagine Russia weakened…I want to recall the famous man and writer, who once said: ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’”   During four and a […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In the English-language media markets it is impossible for any journalist, editor, publisher or owner to be more corrupt, more of a liar, more of a fraud, and more of a success at selling all three than Rupert Murdoch. That was until the mass media at which Murdoch excelled were superseded […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with President Vladimir Putin gave a party rally speech in Moscow on Saturday in which he omitted to mention seven of the eight domestic issues most troubling Russian voters – inflation; high interest-rate caused stagnation in the economy; corruption;  low quality education;  poor public health care; terrorism; and illegal immigrants.   He […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The illustration of power coming out of the barrel of a gun is from a comic book. Contemplating the reality of Russia’s position in Syria, no one in a position to know believes in cartoon captions,  the credibility of the gun, or the direction in which the horse is now running. […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The defeat of the Russian army in war discredits, not the soldiers who fought and died, but the commander-in-chief and the generals who were in command. Defeat on the battlefield also destroys Russian military honour as a political force in the country, just as its opposite, victory on the battlefield,  threatens […]