By Stanislas Balcerac, Warsaw, and John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with When Radosław Sikorski was a Polish government minister, he was obliged to make an annual report to the parliament (Sejm) and a public record of his income and assets. For Polish  voters to learn whether his wife was being rewarded for influencing her husband in his official […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 27th, 2021
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Translated and introduced by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with In official testimony to the European Parliament last week, the European Union Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson, attacked Russia for “exacerbating the tight [supply] balance” and thus causing “the rising prices”. Responding to allegations against Gazprom, Simson promised an investigation. “We are looking into this claim, through our […]

by Editor - Thursday, October 14th, 2021
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By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, Boston*  @bears_with George Bernard Shaw once said if you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh otherwise they’ll kill you.

by Editor - Wednesday, October 6th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In November 2001—twenty years ago — I gave a lecture in Moscow entitled: “Stealing the Truth – How to Read, and Not to Read, the Press In Russia”. The text has been lost. I am grateful to Ajay Goyal, the organiser of the Hellevig Lectures, for inviting me to bring the […]

by Editor - Monday, September 6th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with It has been eleven years since the Levada Centre, the independent national polling organisation in Moscow, reported a survey of Russian attitudes towards the Palestinians and the Israelis. “We had such a poll in 2010,” Denis Leven, a Levada sociologist, said yesterday. “I can’t say exactly if we are going to […]

by Editor - Wednesday, May 19th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with There are a few kilometres of flat country between the Golan border of Palestine, occupied by Israel, and Damascus, capital of Syria – perfect visibility, no cover, optimum for Israeli air and artillery attack, and also for Syrian and Iranian drone counterattack. Between the occupying Israelis and the occupied Palestinians on […]

by Editor - Sunday, May 16th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with This is the way it is going. A veteran German source, whose family comes from Prussia and knows the history of wars on the Eastern Front very well, says that the Poles “are notoriously bad at bluffing. They threaten beyond their capacities. They invite trouble, and when it happens, they fold.” […]

by Editor - Wednesday, April 7th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with William Brumfield is an American university professor who has specialised in photographing Russian architecture before the Revolution, especially churches. His pictures are optimistic, not so much for the revival of the Orthodox God as for the recovery of Church property from before (lead image, right).  If one of Brumfield’s pictures could […]

by Editor - Thursday, March 11th, 2021
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Since the Gulf of Tonkin incident of August 4, 1964, off the coast of Vietnam,  the US Government has believed it has needed a lie, voted by a majority of the US Congress, to launch a war. Not since then has the Congress doubted, or the rest of us accepted, that […]

by Editor - Friday, December 18th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Until Christopher Steele (lead images, 1st and 2nd left) was introduced to Victoria Nuland in 2014, there had not been as penetrating a British spy penetration of US policymakers in Washington since 1943. That was when Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming, on orders from London, unbuttoned their flies and penetrated as many of […]

by Editor - Sunday, December 13th, 2020
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