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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with According to the Unified Rules of Boxing issued by the US Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports, when the bell sounds for the end of each round, there is a “rest period” before the boxers resume their fight, or one retires too hurt to continue. The ceasefire between Israel and […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with When Muhammad Ali famously demonstrated the rope-a-dope strategy in the Zaire title bout  against George Forman in October 1974, he allowed Foreman to start attacking him against the ropes in Round 3. By Round 7 Foreman had exhausted his punching strength. In Round 8, Foreman dropped his guard, and Ali counterattacked […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with It was just before high noon in Moscow on Thursday, June 19, when President Vladimir Putin initiated his telephone call to President Xi Jinping of China. A read-out by Putin’s foreign policy assistant, Yury Ushakov, followed almost immediately.   Xi did not authorize his summary for twenty-four hours until the Chinese […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Exaggerating the true fact to mean the false factoid is SOP (standard operating procedure) in information warfare. It’s to be expected from President Donald Trump (lead image, right) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and their intelligence chiefs (centre), military officers, and media supporters. The truest of the facts in the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The plan to attack Iran, force regime change in Teheran, decapitate and disarm Iranian forces, and partition the country into ethnic autonomies is nothing new.   In August 1941 British and empire forces (Indian, Australian) acted in coordination with Soviet forces to occupy the country, ostensibly to prevent the Shah of […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with There are no flies on President Vladimir Putin. That’s an expression which originated in the fly-blown goldrush mines of Australia in 1840 and then moved with the flies to the goldrush mines of California a few years later. Literally, it means a man who is too quick for a fly to […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The Oreshnik Moment was first coined on June 1 here  and then discussed in the Reason2Resist podcast on June 3.  It’s a period of time – it’s not a prediction of the counter-attack which the Russian General Staff will launch against the June 1 drone attack on the bomber element of the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Today is the Russian national holiday which President Boris Yeltsin first introduced to celebrate himself and whitewash the crimes he committed against the country. For reminder today, a kindly reader has found a series of interviews on Yeltsin and his crimes, which I first recorded in my study on Kolobovsky pereulok, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with President Donald Trump believes – because his opinion pollsters tell him – that pre-emptive attack wins the battleground. That’s to say, the battleground states in US elections. Federalizing California state firefighting troops and ordering them with US Marines – 5,000 of them so far — into action in Los Angeles is […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953, lead image) was a serious comedy.  It ends without the outcome the characters had been waiting for so they decide to hang themselves, but they can’t find enough rope. “Well, shall we go? Estragon says to Vladimir in the concluding dialogue of the play. “Yes, let’s go”, […]