by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with According to the Russian Constitution amendments adopted in 2020,  Vladimir Putin can run for re-election in 2030 and win another term until 2036, when he will be 84. The contest over the presidential succession may thus be postponed for another decade. Or else it is under way already. That’s one of […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 15th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with If you want to understand who is winning the American war against Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield, and also in the world’s commodity trade markets, you can start by calculating the life expectancy of a NATO-trained Ukrainian soldier on the front line, or of a NATO staff officer in a command […]

by Editor - Friday, October 11th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The Russian history of end-of-war negotiations for the capitulation of Germany and for the World War II peace settlement requires it to be understood now: it was the Red Army’s defeat of the enemy on the battlefield all the way to Berlin which preceded and which was the precondition for the […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 9th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Pokrovsk, in the northwestern corner of Donetsk region, is almost a Russian city again. Established as a minor Russian rail junction in 1880, it was badly damaged by the Italians and Germans who captured the city between 1941 and 1943, killing more than 8,000 Red Army defenders, 5,000 residents, and all […]

by Editor - Friday, October 4th, 2024
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By Gilbert Doctorow in Brussels*  @bears_with As a rule, on these pages I (Gilbert Doctorow, lead image) do not write critiques or responses to the writings of others, but today will be an exception.  A colleague in Germany sent me the link below to a remarkable essay by John Helmer which is too important to ignore. […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 1st, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with “The law is an ass” is an English expression of almost four hundred years of age. While credit for inventing the very first use of it has been argued over, there is no doubt that it was Charles Dickens in his Oliver Twist of 1838 who began the popularity of combining law […]

by Editor - Monday, September 30th, 2024
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by Slobodan Despot, Montreux, and John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with A plea bargain for the Russian Telegram owner Pavel Durov (aka Paul Du Rove, lead image lower right)) has been arranged in Paris with President Emmanuel Macron (upper right) by their common friend, Xavier Niel (upper left), a French internet billionaire with a history of his own  internet sex […]

by Editor - Sunday, September 29th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In the history of imperial conquest and rule of the Arabs – that’s Turkish, Italian, British, French, American, Israeli – decapitation of leaders has always been preferable to genocide of peoples because it’s much cheaper. Slavery, as the Portuguese empire first developed it, was the cost accountant’s solution to making genocide […]

by Editor - Sunday, September 29th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The last time an obscure official of junior rank named Vladimir Medinsky (lead image) was recorded officially as having words with President Vladimir Putin was on November 20, 2019.   At the time Medinsky was the Minister of Culture, and he was briefing Putin on one of his portfolio activities, the […]

by Editor - Friday, September 27th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with A short break.

by Editor - Monday, September 9th, 2024
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