By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Existentially speaking — which means whether to live and let live, to do or die — how far from a mortal enemy is far enough? In between the one and the other outcome, is there anything but a no man’s land?  

Carthago delenda est – “Carthage must be destroyed” – was a Roman strategic aim 2,200 years ago. It was regularly repeated in his public speeches by Marcus Porcius Cato in his advocacy of putting an end to the Punic Wars by destroying the Carthaginian adversary entirely, not just militarily, so that it could never rise again to challenge Roman power. The opposition slogan was Carthago servanda est – “Carthage must be saved”. Its author, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum, meant don’t rule by force if it can be avoided;  instead conserve lives, resources, power.  

Cato was a politician; Corculum was a soldier. The political strategy of doing what you can because you can, and as a warning to everyone else, won out; Cato is remembered even now; Corculum is forgotten.  This is not because imperial history repeats itself, but because the history is always written by people aiming to stay on the winning side: they don’t know any better until the empire has been lost and their retainers with it.

In the evolution of the Russian war aims, former president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, stood up for the Cato line last week. “Ukraine will disappear”, he declared. “Now it’s time to say how Ukraine will disappear, and also what will then be the risk of a resumption of the war in Europe and in the rest of the world.” Medvedev also left open the Corculum option after the Cato option in his last line. “We may be temporarily satisfied with the second option, but we need a third one.”

Because Russia is the only functioning democracy on the two sides of this war, where military tactics and war aims are openly argued in parliament and the media, the debate between the Cato delenda war aim, and the Corculum servanda war aim is an active one. Sworn to destroy President Vladimir Putin, the Russian army and economy, the US, European and western allies misinterpret this debate to be vacillation and vulnerability. Dialectically speaking, this encourages the Cato line faction in Moscow at the expense of the Corculum line faction.  In this way the US and NATO axis provokes its own defeat.  

This process has taken the war well beyond the 300-kilometre range of some of the US, French or British weapons which have been deployed and fired to date. The debate over the 300-km westward defence line was winding up in Russia, not beginning, when winter started  last year.   

Medvedev made this official last week, following the intensification of artillery, rocket, and drone attacks on Russian cities, including Moscow. This week the governor of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, went further. Then yesterday President Putin (lead image, left) tried to pull Gladkov and Medvedev back in line —  that’s the Corculum line, not the Cato line.

by Editor - Tuesday, May 30th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The man in the frame is General Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

There are no insignia on his jacket, zipped tight to his chin. His torso and legs are concealed beneath the desk which also accommodates a computer screen without keyboard or mouse; and a pen held between the general’s right thumb and index finger, upside down and useless. Patriotic slogans have been pasted to the wall. A wall socket accommodates a thick communications cable routed along the base of the wall, but not visibly connected to the two telephones. There are ten unopened water bottles on display, six plastic cups. A single piece of paper on the desk reveals no date. The general is able to say a dozen scripted words and raise his left hand.

He is not dead from the Russian missile attack which had caused his disappearance until this video clip was published on Thursday evening to dispel what the Ukrainian introducer called the mystery and the Russian propaganda of  Zaluzhny’s death. The clip proves the opposite of this  intention. The general is visibly unwell and is no longer capable of commanding the Ukrainian forces.

by Editor - Sunday, May 28th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

“He was not a nihilist for nothing!”

This is one of the funniest, and at the same time one of the saddest lines written by Ivan Turgenev in Fathers and Sons, the novel of his which preserves its contemporaneity through the Russian revolutions better than any other classic of Russian literature.

Appearing to come out of the stream of consciousness of one of story’s characters, the line is also an irony of Turgenev’s — and if you understand that he meant nihilist as a synonym of Russian, it is a warning of great philosophical force for right now. Right now is a synonym for June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded to destroy the Russians; and for June 24, 1812, when Napoleon tried the same. Those two names can’t be synonyms for Biden because the German and the Frenchman weren’t demented or led by psychopaths.

by Editor - Sunday, May 28th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

This is a primer on the way the wind has been blowing since the Ukrainian ammunition  stockpile was blown up at Khmelnitsky in the early hours of May 13.

Radiation measurements in the western Ukrainian city appear to have risen sharply on May 13 and 14, indicating that British-supplied depleted uranium shells for anti-tank warfare had been detonated. The radiation-level spiking caused by the release of the depleted uranium (DU) has been denied by Ukrainian officials.  

US media reported on May 15 that “while not all of the facts and information about the multiple strikes on Western regions of Ukraine have been fully established, there are several elements to the viral conspiracy narrative that are provably false, misleading or lack evidence.”  “While Newsweek could not rule out the possibility that the ‘depleted uranium’ shells provided by the U.K. had been stored there, past reports about the nature of these munitions put a big question mark over that claim.”

Newsweek endorsed Ukrainian government agency claims. “Energoatom, the National Nuclear Power Company of Ukraine, said in its official Telegram channel that ‘the radiation level at the industrial site [in Khmelnitsky] and in the surrounding regions is at a level corresponding to the normal operation of power units and does not exceed natural background values.’”

A statement by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeated the Ukrainian government claim without publishing independent radiation measurements of its own. The IAEA was reported by Newsweek as having “poured cold water over the claims. “The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency today that there have been no measurements of elevated levels of gamma radiation in the country’s western regions in recent days,” a representative of the international body told Newsweek in an email.”  

Social media from the region have indicated a rapid exodus of the population in the vicinity of the blast.  Anti-radiation measures have been introduced for the residents of the Ternopol region, which neighbours Khmelnitsky to the west.  

The wind has been blowing northwest into Poland since, and raining. The Polish state Atomic Energy Agency (PAA) has been reporting radiation-level spiking since May 15. The highest measurements have been reported at Lublin and Krakow in the south, and then Gydnia, a port on Poland’s north coast.

On May 19 in Moscow, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Security Council, said the “elimination [of the Khmelnitsky stockpile] has caused a radioactive cloud that is now moving towards Western Europe. An increase in radiation levels has already been registered in Poland.”   Patrushev was repeating what the PAA had already confirmed.

by Editor - Monday, May 22nd, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

There is a grave risk that in three weeks’ time US and NATO forces will attempt direct combat against Russia.

The operational plan is to strike from Romanian airspace in the south and the Baltic states in the north, in camouflage of the NATO exercise called “Air Defender 23”,  and under cover of US F-16 fighter aircraft purportedly operated by Ukrainian pilots but fuelled, directed, and guarded by more than two hundred US and NATO aircraft, including the most advanced US air war fighter, the F-35.  

“This [is] the largest deployment exercise since the foundation of NATO”, according to the cover story published by NATO headquarters. “   Commanded at US bases in Germany, ostensibly led by German officers, a Bundeswehr “fact sheet” claims “100 [US] Air National Guard aircraft from 35 different states will make the leap across the Atlantic to participate in Air Defender 2023. In addition to the world’s most modern jets, the F35, more than 20 different types of aircraft and Airmen from 24 nations will practice air warfare operations together over Germany, but also over eastern Europe on the NATO border. Among them Eurofighter, F18, F16, A10, [Saab] Gripen jets.”  

Including the Ukrainian regime in Kiev as one of “our partners in East and South-Eastern Europe”, the German military announcement says “we want to promote collective defense of common values (freedom, democracy, prosperity) – attack on one NATO nation is an attack on responsiveness of airpower – Allied air forces are first responders.”

Camouflaging US direction of the combined NATO attack operations from the Ramstein base in Germany, headquarters of the allied air command in Europe, are two parallel operations.  “Two NATO exercises, RAMSTEIN DUST for NATOs Deployable Air Command and Control capability, the DARS,  and RAMSTEIN GUARD for Electronic Warfare are linked into our exercise.”     

In design since the start of the Russian Special Military Operation in February 2022, this plan of US and NATO air operations against Russia follows the defeat of the Ukrainian ground forces at Artemovsk (Bakhmut) and the strategic defeat of the US Patriot missile system at Kiev by the Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile on May 16.

The use of NATO exercises to conceal active attacks on Russian targets was first demonstrated last September when the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up following the BALTOPS naval exercise.  More recently, on May 13 a US-directed ambush of Russian aircraft was rehearsed  when an Su-34 fighter-bomber, an SU-35 air-defence escort, and two Mi8 helicopters were hit simultaneously and downed in Russian airspace,  over Bryansk region.  

by Editor - Saturday, May 20th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Evidence from the US Air Force (USAF) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released in federal court this week ahead of a bail hearing for Jack Teixeira, the junior airman accused of leaking top secret Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) briefing papers, reveals that Teixeira was under close surveillance and official investigation from September 2022 through February 2023. That is six months before he allegedly printed out the JCS documents, and then published photographs of the papers on a social media site.

The new USAF and FBI evidence records Teixeira pocketing handwritten notes of what he had been reading; there is no evidence of his being able to print out copies of the documents.

The court hearing, held on Friday afternoon May 19 in US federal district court in Worcester, Massachusetts, ended in a ruling by Judge David Hennessy to deny bail for Teixeira and keep him in prison while his state trial is prepared.  “The danger he poses to the community is a grave one,” Hennessy said during the 45-minute hearing. “Court states the relative law with respective to this matter,” the court clerk has recorded in the case docket. “Court grants the Government’s motion for detention, ordering the Defendant detained, and states reasons therefore.”

 “The decision was a victory for the government, which is seeking to send the strongest possible message to potential leakers”, the New York Times reported from the courtroom.  

The evidence revealed by the government , which the newspaper and every other mainstream and alternative medium in the US are failing to report, demonstrates the opposite.

by Editor - Friday, May 19th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

This is a tale about whales and Russians. In the telling, it has surprised even its author. A university professor from Oregon, he belongs to that seagoing pod which, like the North Pacific right whales,    is a seriously endangered species right now — that’s the American exceptionalists.

Ryan Tucker Jones’s book, Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling, was published this month.  It has yet to be noticed in the Russian press. One reason is that the history of Soviet whaling and Russian fishing is no secret at all in Russia. The second reason is that the secret Russians know about Greenpeace and other campaigns against whaling that are part of the long US war against Russia is not one Jones has recognised, nor does he appreciate the damage these protests have done to the ecological protection groups of Russia in their domestic battle with the Russian oligarchs. Instead, he endorses what he calls the Greenpeace plan “to hit more directly at the Soviet economy” when that organisation moved on from campaigning against US and French nuclear bomb testing to  targeting not only Soviet whaling in the North Pacific, but also Soviet fishing.  

The final reason is that the way Jones tells his story in a fashion that ironizes, sarcasticises, and misrepresents the whaling story, turns out to be blubber that has been cut up,  boiled,  and coloured into margarine for the last time to be spread on Russian toast in the mornings. That’s exceptionalism for you.

by Editor - Wednesday, May 17th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It’s  unlikely Vladimir Zelensky has read Oscar Wilde’s well-known maxim: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”

But for the idea that Ukrainian officials can draw more profit, and lose fewer of their countrymen on the battlefield, by making a flurry of tactical manoeuvres in several directions imitate a strategic offensive, and a successful one at that —  this is a scheme which is  neither great nor mediocre. It is also not flattery.  

It’s an attempt by the US officials giving Zelensky his running orders – Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, National Security Advisor Jacob Sullivan,  and Joseph Biden,  declared candidate for re-election as president – to create the appearance of what they told the New York Times is “their best hope…to make substantial gains… which could give [Ukraine] more leverage in any negotiations.”  

On May 12, in the first day of their scheme, 1,725 Ukrainian men were killed on the Donbass front. This is the worst day’s military casualty rate since the US coup in Kiev launched the war in February 2014.

According to the Financial Times, this killing didn’t happen. Instead, the headline reads: “Ukrainian counter-offensive takes shape with the first gains around Bakhmut.”  The Washington Post announced likewise: “How Ukrainian forces denied Russia victory in Bakhmut by Victory Day”.  The New York Times repeated:  “Ukraine’s Advances Near Bakhmut Expose Rifts in Russian Forces”.  According to this propaganda, these successes were bloodless on the Ukrainian side.

A NATO forces veteran observes: “An entire regiment has been destroyed. This is cynical trading in flesh.

by Editor - Sunday, May 14th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the war against Russia, Penny Wong (lead image, left) , the Australian Foreign Minister, has done more fighting with her feet than with her mouth.

Last August 5, at a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers in Cambodia, Wong walked out during a speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, declaring through a spokesman:  “Minister Wong could not sit through Lavrov’s attempt to justify the murder of innocent Ukrainians.”   

When Australians fighting on the Ukraine side of the front are killed, Wong chooses to say nothing at all.

At least four Australian soldiers had been reported in the Australian media to have been killed by the end of last December; at least of one of them had been serving in the Australian Army. To evade Australian law prohibiting Australians from combat in  foreign mercenary units, three were classified as medics. In each death Wong’s ministry announced it was providing “consular assistance to the family”.  

By the end of February, the number of Australian KIA (Killed in Action) was still at four.   

Last week, Boris Rozhin’s Telegram site, known as “Colonel Cassad”, announced details of the death of a fifth Australian and the wounding of an American. They were shot while travelling together in a civilian car in an unidentified location.  

When the combat death of the fifth Australian was announced on May 6 by the Russians, Wong was asked to confirm his name and state of origin, and also to provide a count of Australians killed in the war so far. Wong’s spokesman said “we’re looking into your query.” Wong and her aides then went silent, and have refused to answer several follow-up emails.

It’s a silence of lambs trying to dissemble in wolves’ clothing.  

by Editor - Wednesday, May 10th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The pro-war English writers supporting the arming of the Ukrainians with depleted uranium ammunition* have no brains.

The anti-war English writers opposing depleted uranium ammunition have no spines.

Has the kingdom of the English ever been so self-deluded on the page and so depleted on the battlefield?  

Yes once, four hundred years ago, when King James I sent the first ambassador to the Mughal empire of India ruled by Jahangir ((lead image, left and right) to exchange gifts and threats for exclusive trading rights. The ambassador was Sir Thomas Roe (left), between September 1615 and February 1619.  But Roe spent most of his years in India squatting over the toilet bowl with chronic dysentery and complaining to his friends at court in London and to his superiors at the East India Company at his lack of cash to impress the Indians and his lack of force to coerce them.

To solve these problems when Roe was upright, he plotted piracy at sea, sabotage and extortion  on land against the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish and French —  and a protection racket against the Indians which they dismissed with a laugh.   This is how the English empire began in India – with a dysenteric bang. It is still ending with a dysenteric whimper. In between, a great deal of English shit which they turned into Indian gold.

Now that King Charles III has his own Indian for prime minister in London, Rishi Sunak (right), he is also plotting to replace India’s prime minister,  Narendra Modi,  at next year’s election in New Delhi. But that’s a story for another time.

For the time being, the new king has been compelled to remove the Koh-i-Noor diamond from the queen’s crown during last week’s coronation; that’s because Modi is demanding its return.

The announcement from Buckingham Palace didn’t admit the king’s hand had been forced by the Indians. “Some minor changes and additions,” according to the king’s spokesman, “will be undertaken by the Crown Jeweller, in keeping with the longstanding tradition that the insertion of jewels is unique to the occasion, and reflects the Consort’s individual style.”

The diamond remains locked up in the Tower of London; Modi hasn’t got it back yet.

by Editor - Tuesday, May 9th, 2023
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