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 message back to life.  

In the interval, Jon Hellevig lived his productive life in Russia. He and I both wrote for The Russia Journal and he set many examples of disciplined investigation leading to fearless publication of the truth.  I salute him and his memory for what he achieved as an example to those of us who knew him and who live on.

In Soviet days, Russian reporters, editors and readers had shared an understanding of how to write and how to read the real message, the truth, between the lines of the printed text. This was a subtlety western readers have taken time to learn. The invention of the tweet struck with blunt force trauma; its unsubtlety came later. Then the US and the NATO allies opened the Ukraine front of their war against Russia in February 2014; the economic warfare sanctions followed the Ukrainian plot to down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014; the war on the Syria front escalated from September 2015; and the two Novichok operations were launched — the British one involving Sergei Skripal in March 2018, and the German one involving Alexei Navalny in August 2020.

In wartime, with Russia and the truth about Russia under the gun, you will understand me when I say I shall not allow my remarks to give aid and comfort to the other side. What I have had to say about domestic and internal Russian politics and the features of the Russian oligarchy are in print for all to read. There will be more to say — though not here, not today.

by Editor - Monday, September 6th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

If ever there was a man who displayed on his face the evil in his mind, it was Zbigniew Brzezinski (lead image, left),  the national security advisor for President Jimmy Carter (right) when the US plot to start the war against the Soviet Union on the Afghan front was hatched in  1979. “Now we can lure the Russians into the Afghan trap,” he wrote Carter in a secret note of February 1979. In July of that year he followed with the directive Carter signed in secret to supply arms to the mujahideen “to induce a Soviet military intervention”. In December 1979 Brzezinski told Carter: “we should not be too sanguine about Afghanistan becoming a Soviet Vietnam”.  Later he used to boast that had been precisely his intention and also his crowning achievement.

Brzezinski’s lips are sealed now because he’s been dead for four years.  

Carter is still alive. In 1979 he kept the evil on his mind secret behind the smile on his face. His lips are sealed now, since the retreat from Afghanistan began by the US Army, and after the rout last month in Kabul. The mainstream American press are not reporting they have asked Carter for comment, or that he has refused. Not even the alt-media investigators have pursued him.

But it’s already clear what Carter thinks. He believes he scored one of the wold’s great strategic victories; he is disgruntled that he has never received the public credit he thinks he deserves. In the words of one of the CIA men in charge of Afghanistan operations in 1979, Carter’s strategy was to wage the “fight [against] the Soviets that went on to win the final and decisive battle of the Cold War.”

A new book by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, just published, opens the story of what Brzezinski and Carter really did to start the US war in Afghanistan, starting with the assassination of Adolph Dubs, the US Ambassador in Kabul on February 14, 1979; his killing with four pistol shots to head in a Kabul hotel room, the book concludes, was part of the White House plot.

“Some unnamed Americans claimed the Soviets wanted Dubs out of the way so they could set up for their invasion,” Fitzgerald and Gould report. They go on to name the Americans, one an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Kabul, another a CIA agent.  “But the Soviets got along famously with Dubs because he wasn’t an anti-Soviet Russophobe like Brzezinski. There was also plenty of evidence to show the Soviets didn’t want to invade. They went on record with the U.S. embassy throughout the summer of 1979 trying everything to avoid it. And besides, the rules of the game made ambassadors virtually untouchable. There was no upside to killing one, and a big downside.”

The assassination of Dubs, Fitzgerald and Gould argue, “led to the Soviet invasion nine months later….Who would kill an ambassador? Not a rival superpower trying to get the American Congress to sign a nuclear arms deal they’d desperately needed. And certainly not a third-world backwater desperate for U.S. aid and recognition. Only someone trying to provoke retribution. And who would want that retribution? Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski blamed the Russians, but then Brzezinski always blamed the Russians… If it hadn’t been for the Dubs murder there would never have been a Soviet invasion.”

by Editor - Sunday, September 5th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

It was noticed after the first few years of the French Revolution that the population of goats were gorging themselves and then reproducing out of control. Napoleon tried to cull them to save the forests the goats were taking over, and thereby preserve the timber he needed badly for his navyto go to war with the British.

In the case of the Russian Revolution of 1991, the population of jackals continue to multiply out of control. The Kremlin has not found the method of controlling the domestic ones, not yet.  Russian voters will have something to say about this on September 19, Election Day  – especially by not casting their ballots.

In the meantime, it’s August, the month when goats dance in alpine pastures; jackals sleep through the day; and the sea cucumber goes into his seasonal hypometabolism, also called aestivation.   For August, when our Moscow office closes, these are our three options for spending the month until you will see us again.  

by Editor - Friday, July 30th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Catherine Belton (lead image, left), a reporter on Russia for the Financial Times and Reuters, was abandoned this week by her publisher, Rupert Murdoch’s (right) HarperCollins, and obliged to sign an out-of-court settlement in London with Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven of Alfa Bank and the LetterOne group.

The publisher has agreed to admit there was “no significant evidence” for Belton’s allegations of KGB connections in the early careers of Fridman and Aven; and that she had failed to check her claims with Fridman and Aven before publishing them. “HarperCollins and [Belton] recognise and regret that comment was not sought earlier from Mr Aven and Mr Fridman… and to apologise that the subject was not discussed with them prior to initial publication.”

HarperCollins will publish this statement within a week of the High Court issuing its order. Three months ago, the publisher had announced it “will robustly defend the claim and the right to report on matters of considerable public interest”.  The publisher has now  agreed to remove Belton’s allegations against Fridman and Aven from new printings of the book, Putin’s People:  How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West.

The hardcover edition was published in April 2020 in the UK; the following June in the US. The American publisher is a subsidiary of the German Holtzbrinck publishing group, which produces the anti-Russia newspaper Die Zeit.  The paperback edition of Belton’s book has not yet been published, delayed indefinitely by the London court action and by the publishers’ loss of confidence in Belton’s veracity. 

by Editor - Wednesday, July 28th, 2021
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By Mikhail Kuvyrko, Moscow — translated from Russian*
  @bears_with

Entire sectors of the Russian economy have managed to earn huge amounts of money recently –and all thanks to the crisis caused by the coronavirus. Who has benefited the most from what is happening, will this cash flow continue in the future and what will the coronavirus excess profits be spent on as a result?

by Editor - Monday, July 26th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Two Dutch nationals, David Petraeus and Sandra Roelofs (lead image, centre), were involved in the US planning of an invasion of the Donbass region, eastern Ukraine, in the days running up to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, when 193 Dutch and 38 Australians were among the 298 passengers and crew killed.  

Petraeus, a US Army general and director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2011-November 9, 2012), is a Dutch citizen by law because his father, Sixtus Petraeus from Friesland, was a junior officer in the Dutch merchant marine at the outbreak of World War II. David Petraeus was awarded a Dutch knighthood in 2010 and is celebrated by the Dutch as “the most visible Dutch American personality on the national and international scene”.

Roelofs, Dutch by birth in Zeeland, became the wife of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (left) in 1993, and she has remained his collaborator in open political as well as clandestine operations in Georgia, Ukraine, and the US since then.

In the early days of July 2014, when the Ukrainian forces of then-President Petro Poroshenko were launching their US-directed offensive in the Donbass, Petraeus met Saakashvili at the latter’s home with Roelofs in New York to discuss a military operation which Saakashvili then discussed with Poroshenko. Last week, speaking on Ukrainian television as a member of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government, Saakashvili broke his silence to reveal partial details of the military plan.  

Did either or both of them engage Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s (right) government before July 17, 2014, in readiness for Rutte’s promotion of the NATO force invasion plan immediately afterwards? Rutte’s involvement in that plan was first revealed by the Dutch press on July 25, 2014.

by Editor - Tuesday, July 20th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Last month the Russian metals and mining oligarch, Alexei Mordashov (lead image, left), took a spectacular  pratfall in front of the international money markets. Not even hand-holding by Citigroup, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, and Bank of Montreal could save him from the public embarrassment.

On June 3, Mordashov and the banks announced his intention to sell shares in his goldmining company Nordgold (Nord  Gold PLC) on the London Stock Exchange, telling investors that future demand and the price of gold, and hence the profitability of Mordashov’s company, are bound to be  boosted because of “possible inflationary pressures in the medium term from an exceptionally low interest rate environment and the possibility of currency revaluations, including U.S. dollar depreciation”.

On June 22, Mordashov got a Nordgold executive to announce the share sale was cancelled for the foreseeable future. His reason was that “acceleration in expected interest rate rises have created significant uncertainty and volatility in the resources sector, in particular impacting gold and gold equities. Nordgold has determined that it would therefore not be sensible to pursue an IPO at this particular juncture.”

If inflation was good reason for buying shares in Mordashov’s business at the start of the month, and then in less than three weeks Mordashov’s reason for not selling the shares, then Mordashov has made a fool of the market and a liar of himself. “That has to be bullshit,” responded a leading London mining analyst, who believes Mordashov’s vanity is to blame for imagining his shares would fetch a higher value in the market than share-buyers are willing to pay; and also Citigroup, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Bank of Montreal and the other bankers and brokers involved who were “too afraid to give him good advice on pricing.”

There is one thing more laughable in this episode than that.  This is the effort which the Russia-warfighting media in London – for the first time combining Rupert Murdoch’s Times newspapers with Ian Hislop’s Private Eye —   to make the failure of the share sale attempt appear to be an act of “British policy towards Putin and Russia’s rich”, in the words of Private Eye — as symbolic as the voyage of HMS Defender across the Crimean red line on June 23,  the day after Mordashov and his bankers took their tumble.

by Editor - Sunday, July 18th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Here’s a serious question:  how should the European Union (EU) address the challenges posed by the Russian-Turkish partnership?

Who better to answer this than a Romanian paid for by one of George Soros’s Open Society units, the NATO Defence College, Freedom House of Washington,  and the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) in Warsaw; in short, sworn enemies of Russia. And who better to assist in the answer than a woman from the Finnish Foreign Ministry; and a Bulgarian whose paychecks come from a Soros-funded think-tank in Sofia, the Atlantic Council in Washington,  and an EU-funded council led by Carl Bildt, whose pockets have also been lined by the sworn Ukrainian enemy of Russia and robber of the Rossiya Insurance Company, Victor Pinchuk.  

In warfighting it’s always prudent to anticipate surprise attack, in order to deter or combat it. But this triplet of Russia warfighting enemies are entirely predictable. There is no deterring them, however.  All into the Valley of Death, they rode – as the last allied charge against Russian guns was poetically described:

Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.*

Admit blunder is not what Euro-American propagandists do, nor do they die in their charge against Russia’s defences. Their take-home pay inures them to the ignominy of defeat.  

by Editor - Wednesday, July 14th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

We are in a state of lawlessness when the law courts defend lies; convict and imprison the innocent, extradite the persecuted; abandon, ignore or cancel the authority of parliament and the constitutional rights of individuals; and issue propaganda justifying killing between states and peoples.

The books whose covers are illustrated describe on the right side of this page illustrate exactly how this has been done to promote the war against Russia in the courts of the US, the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia. At the direction of the government in Ottawa, the Canadian courts are following in lockstep.   

The books were written to prove, first of all, what isn’t the truth and can’t be the truth. This isn’t quite the religious doctrine cut into the wall of the main lobby at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), nor of the biblical gospel: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

The key to the CIA’s version is the first word “and”. It means that by the time you cotton on to the truth which the CIA intend you to believe, you are already brain dead.

In the Novichok cases reported in Skripal in Prison, the British Cabinet Office and Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) have perfected the unusual formula of taking the body of someone already brain dead; reviving it and then killing it again with a poison fabricated at Porton Down; and then announcing the cause of death to be a Russian assassination weapon which had been embarrassingly missing for several weeks after the Prime Minister accused the Russian President of chemical warfare, attempted murder, etc.

Just how unfree that truth is proving to be is Wiltshire Police Detective Sergeant Nicholas Bailey’s story. But he’s not the only one to reveal the truth by telling lies.  In this week’s Gorilla Radio podcast, retelling the courtroom stories of Julian Assange, Dawn Sturgess, and Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 will help resuscitate the brain, or inoculate it if yours is still alive and sparking.  

by Editor - Monday, July 12th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) never told Dutch prosecutors and investigating judges in the MH17 investigation that he had seen US satellite pictures of the firing of a BUK missile at the aircraft and the detonation which destroyed it in the air above eastern Ukraine seven years ago, on July 17, 2014.

Instead, he told a junior member of his staff, Army Colonel Kenneth Stolworthy, to give the Dutch a paper “summary” that “reflects the American intelligence community’s considered opinion” that “Russian led separatist fighters and Russian military personnel or a combination of the two” were responsible for the attack which killed all 298 passengers and crew on board. The summary Stolworthy was told to assemble came down to him from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), a committee reporting to the DNI the intelligence it gathered from all US intelligence sources, resolving – if it could – the different measures of opinion each of them expressed.

The NIC reported upward to DNI; DNI issued his order downward to Stolworthy with NIC’s script for the Dutch, minus the details.

Stolworthy was selected because he was not an intelligence officer himself; because he had no expertise in satellite imaging; because he was so junior his name was unknown; and because  what he wrote to the Dutch was deniable by his superiors if the Dutch challenged his veracity or if there was a leak.  Stolworthy was ordered to speak to no one, especially not the Dutch.   

In advance agreement between senior officials of the Obama Administration and Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government in The Hague, the Dutch agreed to accept the DNI script and not to press for the satellite images. Rutte also agreed to keep that more secret than the US evidence itself because he knew there were no US satellite images.  Rutte knew this because he had been told so by the head of the Dutch military intelligence agency Major-General Onno Eichelsheim.  

The chairman of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC), Greg Treverton, at the time the third-ranking official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the official in charge of assembling “the American intelligence community’s considered opinion”, now says “we worked on the shoot-down, but I don’t recall any specific request for information from the Dutch.”

According to Treverton, speaking two days ago, “Ken Stolworthy was, I think, a deputy National Intelligence Manager, so he did work for the DNI”. He “could have represented US intelligence to the Dutch though I don’t have any notes or memory of any such contact”.

by Editor - Sunday, July 11th, 2021
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