A great writer who was dying of cancer once told a television interviewer, days before his death, that he had decided to call his cancer Rupert. The reason, he said, was that the media proprietor Rupert Murdoch represented a cancer that was destroying the media world.

The remark had both a particular and a general point. The writer was English, and he detested Murdoch’s influence on the London-based media, including newspapers, television and books that Murdoch’s companies have controlled for many years.

The general point was that the creativity of writers and journalists is always antithetical to proprietors like Murdoch. If countries and cultures allow proprietors to determine what is published, creativity will dry up; language itself will be corrupted; ideas will become propaganda; and media work will become hack work. (more…)

by John Helmer - Monday, February 19th, 2001
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PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin rides into the Apec summit in Brunei this week on a wave of foreign-policy successes his predecessor Boris Yeltsin never enjoyed. But, if you listen to the Russian and Western press, you would never know it.

“”What was the cause of the fire in the Moscow television tower?” is the question in the latest Russian joke.

This is a reference to the accidental blaze that knocked out Moscow’s television- and radio-transmitting complex on Aug 28. The disaster, which kept Muscovites from seeing the main television networks for several days and delayed resumption of some radio broadcasts for weeks, killed two members of a fire-and-rescue team. (more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, November 16th, 2000
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THERE is an old Russian saying that if you drink, you die. And if you don’t drink, you die. So it’s better to drink.

If that was the choice facing Russian policy towards last week’s events in Belgrade, the Russian parliament was first to point out that President Vladimir Putin’s endorsement of Kostunica’s election was worse than death.

Was Putin’s action a sign of vacillation and weakness under foreign pressure, as his domestic critics are now claiming? And does the Russian action in conceding to the Yugoslav opposition, headed by Vojislav Kostunica, mean international pressure can also succeed in bringing down other governments close to the Kremlin, such as the Belarus government headed by Alexander Lukashenko? (more…)

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 11th, 2000
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It is recorded in the Analects Of Confucius that Yuan Xian once asked Confucius about the virtue of benevolence and the four vices, “”insisting on winning, boastfulness, greed, and harbouring bitterness”.

Confucius acknowledged it was extremely rare for people to be without these vices. But whether they are also benevolent, he said: “”I cannot tell.”

The meetings this week between Russia’s and China’s presidents, Mr Vladimir Putin and Mr Jiang Zemin, are the first in a decade, when the leadership of the two countries can be said to be looking genuinely for the basis of mutual benevolence. (more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 18th, 2000
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When Russia’s leadership thinks seriously, strategically, about Greece, not very much comes to mind, except a faucet. To the Russians, Greece is the tap at the Mediterranean end of a Russian oil pipeline. For President Vladimir Putin and his Security Council, it is far better for Russian economic and regional security, if that tap is turned by Greek hands, not Turkish ones.

This is the big difference between Putin and his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin; and between the current Russian prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, and former prime minister Victor Chernomyrdin.

Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin were silently persuaded and (according to some evidence) bribed to support the Turkish oil pipeline, and drag their feet on implementing the Greek alternative. During President Costis Stephanopoulos’ recent visit to Moscow, the Russians made clear they think differently. They are now impatient to make the technical decisions, build the pipeline and open the tap. (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, July 7th, 2000
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Many things can make a person greater than he or she really is, except time.

Time activates the bacteria that strip the flesh off the bones, until only a forensic pathologist can detect the tiny signs of individuality; and even they add up to nothing more than a catalogue of pain and death.

Time unravels the outcomes of all endeavours. The maddest passions, the wildest exploits, the most ruthless ambitions, the most victorious strategy – all lose their genius in time.

I was brought up on the reverse. I read, and accordingly was certain, that mankind produced heroes whose deeds outlived themselves. Even small deaths, the ones we as schoolboys used to stand at attention to remember twice or three times a year, defied time. The evidence of that was surely that we were standing there saluting, wasn’t it?
(more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, December 24th, 1999
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By John Helmer

In 1833, four years before his wife’s flirtation caused the death, in a duel, of Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, he wrote her a warning letter.

“You like it when the dogs trail after you like a bitch in heat,” Pushkin said bluntly. “All you have to do is make sure everyone knows, ‘I love it’. That’s the whole secret of flirting. As long as there’s a trough, the swine will find it.”

When President Boris Yeltsin, his daughter Tatiana Dyachenko, his chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, and his successor-to-be, Vladimir Putin, were discussing recently what to do to assure their futures, they thought they could play the part of the alluring wife, Natalia Goncharova — at least to the financial oligarchs of Russia, to the proprietors of the media, and also to Russia’s voters. All they had to do, they decided, was to fill the trough. The pigs were certain to follow, they thought.

But what if they were mistaken, and it turns out they have chosen the ill-fated part of Pushkin?
(more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, August 10th, 1999
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“I never did understand the difference between a cannon and a culverin,” the Empress Catherine II once said to one of her generals.

“There is a big difference,” he replied, “which I will now explain to Your Majesty. The cannon, you see, is one thing, while the culverin is quite another.”

“Ah,” said Catherine the Great. “Now I get it.” (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, July 9th, 1999
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It was an unlaughing German who said, more than a century ago, that when history repeats itself, it returns the first time as tragedy; the second time as farce.

The Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov recently released his state-financed film about the Russian army between the defeat by the British and French in the Crimean War of 1854-56, and the defeat by the Japanese in the war of 1904-05. Mikhalkov’s lesson — if Russian officers acted more like American women, they would have been more victorious — might be the stuff for a tragedy. But the audience of The Barber of Siberia thinks it a farce. (more…)

by John Helmer - Saturday, July 3rd, 1999
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The only thing more stupid in politics than a stalking horse is a stalking ass, as Sergei Kirienko is proving by his campaign against Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

Don’t get me wrong -I am very fond of the donkey family, in their place.

Aesop thought the same when he told the fable of the ass who had clothed himself in the skin of a lion. This he wore around the countryside, frightening all the animals, until he came on a fox.

“You would have scared me too, for certain,” the fox told the ass, “if I hadn’t already heard you bray.” (more…)

by John Helmer - Sunday, June 13th, 1999
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