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By John Helmer, Moscow If you want to understand Russian politics, watch the tomato talk to power. President Vladimir Putin rolled out the red carpet for Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, last month, and it was announced that the Russian ban on Turkish food imports will soon be dropped. But the Russian tomato trade doesn’t […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot and its chief executive Sergei Frank (lead image, right) have been ordered to pay “tens of millions of dollars” in punitive compensation to exiled shipowner, Yury Nikitin (left). A UK High Court judgement late last month concluded a record 11-year litigation by condemning Frank’s dishonesty […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow When Hillary Clinton (lead, left) was US Secretary of State in 2009, she proved she could lie to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel; keep secret her hostility towards Russia even in her secret staff emails; and take money in her back pocket for an $8 billion deal between the US, Germany […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow

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By John Helmer, Moscow This is the season for bears to be good to the bushes. When bears eat berry seeds, they pass straight through and on to the forest floor, where, packaged in a warm pile of manure, they can germinate. Where I’m going, summer is for berry-eating, so you’ll have plenty of manure, […]

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Chris Cook with John Helmer, Victoria, B.C., Canada Click to listen Gorilla Radio is broadcast weekly by Chris Cook on CFUV 101.9 FM from the University of Victoria, British Columbia. The radio station can be heard here. The Gorilla Radio transcripts are also published by the Pacific Free Press. For Chris Cook’s broadcast archive, click […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow All law students in England, meeting the law of torts for the first time, used to study Scott v Shepherd. That was a case decided in 1773 in which a man in a marketplace was struck in the face by a lit firework that put out his eye. The legal rule […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow With just days before lawsuit deadlines expired last month, a Sydney, Australia, law firm has filed a new compensation claim on behalf of a victim of the Malaysian Airline MH17 crash of July 17, 2014. The new case, filed in the Australian Federal Court on July 5, targets the airline on […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Coming soon to a Moscow office building, shopping mall, or warehouse near you, nothing and noone at all. According to a new report on Russian real estate market conditions through March 31 by the Moscow office of Cushman & Wakefield, the current vacancy rate for Class-A offices is almost 29%; for […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The Financial Times of London has replied in defence of its reporting on Sergei Pugachev (lead image, foreground), a Russian businessman on the run from a UK High Court conviction and two-year prison sentence. In the Moscow evening, following yesterday’s publication on the Pugachev case, two emails were despatched, a long […]