by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Between 1917 and right now in Russian history, it has been clear that the horse pulls the cart. That’s to say, the ideas people have, or the ideology of groups and the propaganda of media, churches, and governments are pulled along by their economic interests, by the class structure of the underlying society.

Not the horse in the picture. That’s the icon image, popularised in the Georgian Orthodox Church from the 11^th century, depicting St. George, patron saint of believers, spearing to death the Roman emperor Diocletian. Actually, Diocletian ruled the Roman empire from 284 until 305 AD, when he became the first emperor to resign voluntarily and retire harmlessly. Before that Diocletian, a professional soldier, did a lot of spearing of Gauls, Balkan tribesmen, and Persians, as well as Christians in Syria, before he decided to rusticate in his garden on the Adriatic.

The icon doesn’t represent what really happened. Long after Diocletian was forgotten, the icon has come to represent the victory of Orthodoxy over the anti-Christian empire. The icon image was mentioned last week by Andrei Ilnitsky, an advisor to the Russian Defense Ministry and lead ideologist for the United Russia party, in a speech to the Patriarch and President Vladimir Putin. According to Ilnitsky, St George represents Russia,  and the spearing of Diocletian represents what Russia is doing to the US empire on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Now — most precisely at the World Russian People’s Council meeting in Moscow on November 28 — Ilnitsky, the Patriarch, and Putin are reversing the order of history. It’s now the cart of Russian ideology pulling the horse of Russian forces into battle with the Americans.

“They are fighting with us,” declared Ilnitsky,    “for the way people think, for the way they perceive the world. Right now we are fighting a civilisational war for the future. It is this war that we are waging on the battlefields of our own. We will win and revive ourselves by being reborn, or our identity will be wiped out. This is exactly what happened in the Ukraine for thirty years before the start of the SVO [Special Military Operation].”

Putin went further than spearing the emperor. “Our fight”, he declared, “for sovereignty and justice is, without exaggeration, one of national liberation, because we are upholding the security and well-being of our people, and our supreme historical right to be Russia – a strong independent power, a civilization state. It is our country, it is the Russian world that has blocked the way of those who aspired to world domination and exceptionalism, as it has happened many times in history. We are now fighting not just for Russia’s freedom but for the freedom of the whole world.”  

This is the first time Putin has identified the doctrine of national liberation in ideological, economic, and in battlefield war against the US doctrine of hegemony and exceptionalism.

“We can frankly say that the dictatorship of one hegemon is becoming decrepit. We see it, and everyone sees it now. It is getting out of control and is simply dangerous for others. This is now clear to the global majority. But again, it is our country that is now at the forefront of building a fairer world order. And I would like to stress this: without a sovereign and strong Russia, no lasting and stable international system is possible.”   

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by Editor - Tuesday, December 5th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Salting the earth, ploughing a toxic chemical into farmland so that no food can be harvested again, was the invention of Abimelech, one of the tribal leaders of the Jewish people after they had invaded Caanan to create the Israelite kingdom,  and after the Israelite tribes had begun fighting among themselves.

Abimelech’s salting of Shechem is about three thousand years old. The Israeli use of depleted uranium ordnance supplied by the US, which invented depleted uranium as a “terrain-denial” weapon in 1943, is right now. The objective is the same as the Book of Judges 9:45  tells the story – genocide by making the land occupied by the Palestinians uninhabitable for the future.

Listen to Gorilla Radio tell the story of what the Israeli-US war aim is – and where it comes from in Jewish history.

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by Editor - Sunday, December 3rd, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

When President Vladimir Putin wrote a condolence on the death of Henry Kissinger (lead image), according to the Kremlin communiqué, the president said things in private to Kissinger’s widow which he left unreported to the Russian press.   

The Kremlin communiqué says: “Condolences over the passing of Henry Kissinger. Vladimir Putin offered condolences over the passing of Henry Kissinger to his wife, Nancy Kissinger. The message reads, in part: An outstanding diplomat, a wise and far-sighted statesman who enjoyed well-deserved respect around the world for decades, has passed away. Henry Kissinger’s name is inextricably linked with America’s pragmatic foreign policy, which played a pivotal role in defusing international tensions at the time and achieving crucial Soviet-American agreements that contributed to strengthening global security. I had multiple opportunities to talk face-to-face with this profound and extraordinary man, and I will certainly cherish the warmest memories of him.”  

What the Russian intelligence services, General Staff, Foreign Ministry, and Russian historians  remember about Kissinger, and Putin’s relationship with him, has also not been reported. In the  official record of Putin’s communications with Kissinger, Putin himself has never acknowledged, let alone agreed with the official assessments of Kissinger by advisors led by Yevgeny Primakov, former KGB head, foreign minister, prime minister, and, like Kissinger,  of Jewish origin. They told Putin that Kissinger was an untrustworthy liar;  a violent schemer;  a hegemonic expansionist if he could get away with it – always dangerous for Russia’s security.  

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by Editor - Saturday, December 2nd, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Long before the British intelligence agency MI6  invented the story that Russian military agents had carried the nerve agent weapon Novichok into England, fired it at two Russians, and left it in a dustbin for a local scavenger to find, take home and kill his girlfriend, there was depleted uranium poisoning.

This is a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

In the past thirty years it has been used by the US, British, and Israeli armies in their wars against Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine (Gaza), Serbia, and recently against the Russians on the Ukrainian battlefield. As a US invention, however, depleted uranium dispersal as a gas to contaminate terrain for enemy soldiers has been acknowledged in secret since 1943.   

In the official military manuals, depleted uranium rounds are used because their metal concentration and intense heat burn their way through armour plate. In practice, they vaporise high concentrations of radioactive particles to cover large swathes of territory, civilian and military.

The US Department of Homeland Security defines a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) as “a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or other device that is intended to harm a large number of people.” DU harms a relatively small number of soldiers on a battlefield operating in tanks, other armoured vehicles, self-propelled artillery and reinforced  bunkers. DU  strikes a much larger number of people through the release of radiation downwind of the battlefield by penetrating their bodies, attacking their genetic codes, and triggering cancers, birth defects, miscarriages of the unborn, and premature death of adults.  

According to Homeland Security, it “works every day to prevent terrorists and other threat actors from using these weapons to harm Americans.” But when the US supplies its DU weapons to the Israeli and Ukrainian armies, it intends to cause this mass destruction by not caring for the harm they do — in fact concealing this harm, and publicly pretending DU ordnance is not what it is.

DU is a WMD by stealth. The US knows this because US and British soldiers who participated in the first battlefield use of DU shells and bombs, the war against Iraq in 1991, have been the long-term victims of their own weapons.

When the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) fire their DU shells and bombs into the buildings of Gaza, they are not aiming at Hamas tanks, armoured personnel carriers, or howitzer units – the Palestinian forces have none of those. Instead, the Israelis are aiming at the mass destruction of the Palestinian people, including those still unborn. The supply chain for this WMD includes the Cypriot, Greek, German and British governments.

In Gaza, and in the Ukraine, they are all witting participants in targeting a race of people for extermination, now and for the future.

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by Editor - Friday, December 1st, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

There is one way in which regional war against Israel can be waged by the Arab states, Turkey, Iran, Russia, even China to which Israel and the US are vulnerable; against which they cannot achieve a quick and conclusive end to Hamas and prevent a multi-front, long and ruinous war for Israel; and against which the Israelis and Americans cannot fight by a firepower escalation against the major states when Israel’s survival chances are far lower than the US will risk.

This is proxy war by swarm.

The Houthis have been practising this on a sub-swarm scale with modest drone and missile salvos aimed at Israel’s southern coastline, Eilat port, and vessel movement up and down the Red Sea, as well as one Israeli-owned vessel capture on November 19.   

This week Houthi missiles have also targeted a US Navy (USN) destroyer in the Gulf of Aden.  “Nov. 27 Sanaa time, two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi controlled areas in Yemen toward the general location of the USS MASON (DDG 87) and M/V CENTRAL PARK,” CENTCOM said. “The missiles landed in the Gulf of Aden approximately ten nautical miles from the ships.”  This alleged Houthi attack followed an abortive takeover the day before, aimed at the Israeli-owned tanker Central Park. The ship attackers were Somali pirates, not Houthi forces, the USN has told the US press.

Against proxy war by swarm the US is currently monitoring Hezbollah along the Lebanon coast by long-range Northrop Grumman drones launched from the US airbase at Sigonella, Italy.  At the same time, for safety sake, the USS Gerald Ford and its escorts have withdrawn more than a thousand kilometres westward, out of Hezbollah missile range. The Ford squadron is now reported to be under way in the central Ionian Sea continuing westward.  

The USS Eisenhower and its escorts, however, are now moving into firing range of Iranian drone and missile attack, and also long-range Russian Kinzhals, as the USN force has passed through the Hormuz Strait sailing northward on what the Navy press statement says is its mission “to enter the waters of the Arabian [sic] Gulf as the Strike Group continues to support USCENTCOM missions [to] patrol the strategic waterway, located [sic] on the southeastern Arabian Peninsula, to ensure freedom of navigation.”  

These operations of the US Navy (USN) and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) indicate they are meant to deter Iran from using their long-range missiles against Israeli targets. They remain sitting ducks for long-range Russian attack.  

But the USN-IDF combination is incapable of deterring, let alone defending against proxy swarms of either unarmed balloons or civilian motor yachts – unless they attack and destroy them. The futility of doing that with violence, as the IDF has done before, is the weapon the Palestinians hold – of winning the war by not losing,  and in the process to demonstrate that Israel is a US-NATO protectorate for race hatred and genocide.  

The impotence of the US Air Force was demonstrated in February of this year in its protracted engagement against a single high-altitude, unarmed “spy balloon” from China.  Greek sources have reported speculation of a balloon swarm in support of Hamas; there has been no press reporting of this yet.

On November 21 the Turkish and Arab media reported that “approximately 1,000 international boats will gather in Turkiye on Wednesday [November 22] before heading toward Gaza to break the Israeli blockade…In an interview with Turkish news website, Haber7, Volkan Okcu, one of the organisers of the protest, indicated the boats will carry 4,500 people from 40 countries, ‘including anti-Zionist Jews’. Among the 1,000 vessels would be 313 boats filled with Russian activists, and 104 filled with Spanish activists, he said. Only 12 Turkish vessels will join the flotilla…The maritime convoy is set to make a first stop in Cyprus before continuing toward the Israeli port of Ashdod. Some participants in the flotilla will also reportedly take their spouses and children on board.”  The same report has appeared here  and here.

In an Israeli newspaper version of the same story, Okcu was quoted as saying: “The Zionist regime seems to have no chance to repeat the Mavi Marmara incident…The vessels sail under the flags of the US, UK, Luxembourg, Russia, Germany, Spain, Poland, and many other countries…The moment we enter Gaza’s territorial waters, [Israeli forces] can only search us or tow us to their ports, and impose fines, but will not be allowed by international law to raid the convoy in international waters, the way they assaulted the Mavi Marmara in 2010. [Israel] would pay a heavy price for attempting any crazy action against such a large international peace fleet.” That was published on the morning of November 21.

A week has now elapsed without the flotilla materialising in Turkey, and without a sign in Moscow that more than 1,200 Russians are aboard the reported 313 vessels with Gaza as their destination. Moscow sources refuse to discuss the operation openly amid signs that if there has been Russian government and military backing for the proxy swarm, there is now a Kremlin veto on the operation, at least for the time being.  

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by Editor - Thursday, November 30th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

It was the US strategy for dismembering the Soviet Union, and then destroying the surviving Russian part, to install individual politicians and formations of economic assets controlled by Washington. The first chosen was Boris Yeltsin; then his prime minister Yegor Gaidar and chief of staff Anatoly Chubais; and then the oligarchs who emerged from the 1996 presidential election campaign controlling almost everything that counted.

Yeltsin’s removal and replacement by Vladimir Putin in 2000 was another US operation through the oligarchs.

When they began to lose control of the reviving Russian military, and the Army took tighter control of Putin, the US methods for the destruction of Russia accelerated across the border with the Ukraine.  As this US military strategy has now led to the near-total destruction of the Ukraine, and of everything the US and NATO have put on the battlefield, there remains for the US its last Russian card to play. This is the oligarch card.

The sanctions war began in March 2014 and has been running against Russia’s strategic economic assets and its technological capacities to wage war against the US.   It has aimed at the Russian oligarchs, not because they are Putin’s “cronies” – as the US Treasury regularly refers to them — but to compel them to take sides with Putin and the Army, or against them.  This is the oligarch trap – and for the time being only a few have fallen into it: Mikhail Fridman and his partners, Pyotr Aven and Alexei Kuzmichev of the Letter One group of banks, supermarkets, energy, and communications; Oleg Tinkov of the Tinkoff bank; and Arkady Volozh of the Yandex group are the most obvious casualties.   Oleg Deripaska isn’t more loyal to the state than to the oligarchy, but he hasn’t fallen into the American trap because US sanctions against him began much earlier.

At Putin’s annual dinner for the oligarchs, the president appears to cater, they appear to kowtow, in a public ceremony of loyalty which means less of that, and more of favour than either of them lets on. In this year’s ceremony, there were eighty at the table – three state officials plus Putin, and 76 oligarchs, the largest number in the nine-year record of the dinner. But unlike the earlier dinners, the Kremlin and the oligarchs are keeping secret not only what was said, but also the names of the invitees.  For the oligarchs who are already sanctioned by the US and the NATO allies, this secrecy is no benefit. The secrecy instead is for the domestic political purpose of concealing the terms on which the oligarchs will continue to dictate the state’s economic priorities, and prevent the state recovering the assets the oligarchs have been stealing from the beginning.

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by Editor - Tuesday, November 28th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Mistakes are what we are taught to make. Recognizing and correcting them are what we learn on our own. Repeating mistakes after recognizing them for what they are – that’s what a dunce does.

In this most intimate of memoirs, John Helmer tells the story of his life, his mistakes and misfortunes. In the retelling of his sex life, his political defeats, his financial losses, and more besides, the reader is invited to laugh and then to pass the severest of judgements. But can they match what Helmer reveals has been tried or done to him already?   

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by Editor - Sunday, November 26th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Between Guy Fawkes Day and Thanksgiving, a short break to complete the new book.

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by Editor - Monday, November 6th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Religious fundamentalists think that because God is on their side – more, that God has Chosen Them to be His People — they can leave it to Him to keep tabs on history, remember the lessons of the past, count the years, tote up the gains, costs,  and losses.   So long as God doesn’t issue any red alerts or insolvency notices during their prayers, when the Chosen People get up they can concentrate their minds and resources on preparing for the future. When the murder of a million or two Palestinians is the future which the Israelis and Americans are concentrating on now, it’s obvious that they and their God have not been re-reading the Melian Dialogue, if He did in the first place.

That’s Sections 84 to 116 of Book Five of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, which he wrote over twenty years of the war, from 431 to 411 BC, leaving off before Athens and its army were defeated and lost everything they thought they had won.

It was in 416 that the Athenian army laid a starvation siege to Melos; then when the Melians surrendered, the Athenians murdered every man and enslaved every woman and child. After that, the Athenian empire of Melos lasted just eleven years before the Athenians were driven off the island by a Spartan force the Hellenes had become too weak to resist. The German empire of the island didn’t murder as many; they were driven off after just two years, from 1943 to 1945.

What Thucydides has reproduced in his book is the argument for genocide if you think you are strong enough to get away with it.  

Its main point — the most remembered today of the lines from the book — is the Athenian declaration: “When these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they must.”  

This is what US President Joseph Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are insisting upon. It’s what Biden means to demonstrate with his fleets in the eastern Mediterranean, northern Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf.  

This is slaughter of everybody in Gaza because the Americans and the Israelis have the power,  for the time being.

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by Editor - Monday, November 6th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the coming winter phase of the Russian offensive in the Ukraine, the electric war will be run quite differently from the way the first electric war was directed last winter.

The impact on the Ukrainian grid and on the country’s and military’s capacities to cope will be  more destructive than a year ago. The reason for this, Ukrainian sources have been saying publicly and Russian military assessments now confirm, is that most of the money which the US,  the European Union,  and the World Bank have provided Kiev officials over the past nine months to repair, reconstruct, and prepare the country’s power generating and distribution system for the coming winter has been stolen.

The US and NATO command and control centres inside the country for running the war will be operating in the dark, not only because of the precision of the Russian missiles and drone operations, but because of the corruption of the Ukrainians. They understand that defeat and capitulation are coming; they are running away with the loot before it’s too dark, too late.

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by Editor - Saturday, November 4th, 2023
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