By Gary K. Busch, London The most frustrating aspects of the media coverage of the current efforts to suppress the forces of Daesh (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria is that there is a dearth of ‘joined-up’ thinking behind most of the analyses. There is a lot of eyewitness reporting of daily events in the countries, […]

by Editor - Thursday, December 3rd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow A generation ago, a Greek prime minister, whom the Soviet Politburo in Moscow underestimated, defeated a Turkish attack on Greek territory. That was Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou; the victory was the battle of the Aegean of March 26, 1987. Before that, no Russian had defeated a Turkish attack for more than […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 24th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Otkritie Bank has received Rb157 billion from the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) and the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) to rescue Trust Bank from bankruptcy. It is the second largest bailout in Russian bank history for what may be the longest lasting and most expensive bank fraud by its shareholders. But […]

by Editor - Monday, November 23rd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow The three Russians with the largest fortunes in California are Mikhail Lesin, Leonid Lebedev, and Mikhail Abyzov. Lesin, a former government minister and Kremlin advisor on mass media, was found dead in a Washington, DC, hotel room on November 6; his death is being investigated by the homicide squad of the […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 17th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow If it wasn’t for a Russian, Americans wouldn’t be able to lick large lollipops. Samuel Born – it isn’t known what his original Russian name was – emigrated to the US at the end of the 19th century. There he invented an apparatus he called the Born Sucker Machine. Its function […]

by Editor - Friday, October 30th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Between buying his bank from Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2004 and losing it to the Central Bank of Russia at the end of December, 2014, Ilya Yurov, chairman of National Bank (NB) Trust, made a fortune. How much of it he has kept for himself, at the expense of his depositors, shareholders […]

by Editor - Monday, October 12th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow “I wish I had sent one more helicopter to get the hostages,” former US president Jimmy Carter said at one of his farewell appearances in Atlanta recently, “and we would’ve rescued them, and I would’ve been re-elected.” Compared to his predecessors and successors Carter was intellectually superior. He also didn’t suffer […]

by Editor - Thursday, October 8th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Samvel Karapetyan (lead image) had a fortune last week of $4.6 billion. This, according to profiles in Forbes Russia, he made all by himself from Russian property development. The dollar number puts Karapetyan at No. 26 on the ladder of fortunes in Russia, where he lives and works; number 1 in […]

by Editor - Monday, September 28th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Something funny happened to the clown in the laundry. When he went in, the pockets of his pants were empty. When he came out, they were overflowing with money. “What kind of washing detergent do you use here?” he asked. Not even under the circus big-top, with a troop of elephants […]

by Editor - Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Smelting aluminium is a dirty business, so it’s every smelterman’s dream to recuperate on a tropical island far from the Big Smoke. Denis Island, for example, three balmy degrees south of the Equator in the Indian Ocean. And so, once upon a recent time, Oleg Deripaska (lead image), control shareholder of […]

by Editor - Monday, September 21st, 2015
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