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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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

In a new ruling read out in a Dutch courtroom yesterday, the judge presiding in the trial of allegations against the Russian state, military command and four named soldiers for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 revealed new details of the US evidence allegedly proving that a Russian missile caused the crash. The judge, Hendrik Steenhuis, then refused to allow the lawyers representing the Russian defence to cross-examine the man from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) who, Steenhuis now says,  signed his name to the evidence and has been sought for questioning. According to Steenhuis, questioning him would be “pointless”.

by Editor - Thursday, July 8th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Wiltshire police detective sergeant (retired) Nicholas Bailey is the only government witness of the alleged Novichok assassination attempt against Sergei Skripal to speak in public describing  what he saw and experienced directly. He is also the only figure to testify from the British government’s published indictment of two Russian military intelligence agents for attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

Until last week, that is.

Following a 74-minute podcast published on June 25, and then a 51-minute podcast on June 30, in which Bailey provided surprise evidence that he had not been poisoned by Novichok at all,  he announced last Friday, July 1, that his tongue is tied, lips sealed. Through his press agent Peter Davies, he said he “is making no further comment on this particular ongoing case at this stage.”

The registry at the High Court in London has also confirmed there is a public record that the lawsuit Bailey has threatened against the Wiltshire police has been filed for compensation of the long-term injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder, from his involvement in the Novichok affair. But there is no record the papers have been served, so the case hasn’t begun. 

by Editor - Sunday, July 4th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Each time former Wiltshire police sergeant Nicholas Bailey (lead image, right) tries to advertise his availability to tell his story for the Crown and for the money, he adds tiny details contradicting the official British government narrative that he was the victim of a Russian state attempt to use the Novichok nerve agent to kill Sergei Skripal on March 4, 2018.

He also adds volumes to the evidence that it was the fabrication of the Novichok story, and the deceit and camouflage Bailey has been ordered to portray, which caused what Bailey now describes as “grieving for my former self”, “griev[ing] for my job as well”, “everything crumbling around me”, “massive impact on my marriage”, “major setbacks”, and “[being] consumed by this upset and anger”. He is emphatic: “I don’t want to be known as the poisoned cop.”  

Bailey is selling pep talks to managers dealing with disgruntled employees with lines like “give yourself a break… be happy and content with what you’ve got and who you are”.  What his lawyers and PR agents are telling the Wiltshire police and the Home Office in London is that lying requires much more than the medical retirement pension Bailey was paid last year when he was invalided out of the force.  

by Editor - Wednesday, June 30th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Nicholas Bailey (lead image) is the detective sergeant of Wiltshire county police whom the British Government says was poisoned by Novichok when he turned the front-door handle of Sergei Skripal’s Salisbury town house on March 4, 2018. Last Friday from London, in a 74-minute interview with Andrew Coulson, former press adviser to former prime minister David Cameron. Bailey gave the longest witness testimony he has given in three years to what happened to Skripal; to himself; and to Dawn Sturgess when, according to British Government statements which began on March 8, 2018, the Kremlin and the Russian military intelligence agency GRU used Novichok in an attempt to kill Skripal.

Bailey’s testimony is evidence, a leading British toxicologist says, that the physiological and cognitive symptoms Bailey describes in detail were not those of a victim of organophosphate poisoning, much less military-grade nerve agent Novichok.  “Basically, every orifice that produces a fluid, or can leak a fluid goes into overdrive,” the source comments. “I think Bailey would remember that.”

Soundtrack and voice analysis by another source indicates that Bailey knows he is lying. “Bailey is a bad actor,” comments a theatre voice coach, “reading from a bad script.” If Bailey is telling the truth now, the sources say, he is talking proof that there was no Novichok then.

by Editor - Sunday, June 27th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The British Embassy’s Press Office has stopped answering its telephones in Moscow.  It is also refusing to respond to emailed requests like the name of the Embassy defence attaché, a naval officer, who appeared at the Russian Defence Ministry on Wednesday to listen to the official protest of HMS Defender’s 31-minute, 29-kilometre run into Russian territorial waters  that morning.  

It is in the small details that the meaning of the naval engagement off Cape Fiolent, Crimea,  can be found. In not lining up the small details so they corroborate the official interpretations, the British Government in London has demonstrated less competence than the Polish Government in Warsaw three months ago, when it sent fishing boats, a navy mine-layer and an anti-submarine patrol aircraft  against Russia’s Nord Stream-2 pipe-laying vessel, the Fortuna.   

In that episode, Warsaw’s defence ministry tweeted officially that “the Polish Navy does not carry out any provocative activities and carries out its statutory tasks in accordance with international law. M-28B Bryza aircraft regularly carry out patrol and reconnaissance flights in the Baltic Sea area.”

In this week’s episode, London’s Ministry of Defence tweeted:  “No warning shots have been fired at HMS Defender. The Royal Navy ship is conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law. We believe the Russians were undertaking a gunnery exercise in the Black Sea and provided the maritime community with prior warning of their activity. No shots were directed at HMS Defender and we do not recognise the claim that bombs were dropped in her path. As is normal for this route, she entered an internationally recognised traffic separation corridor. She exited that corridor safely at 0945 BST [11:45 Moscow time]. As is routine, Russian vessels shadowed her passage and she was made aware of training exercises in her wider vicinity.”

The wording of both communiqués was a combination of calculated imprecision and state  propaganda. But the words covered retreat under Russian counter-attack. It’s on occasions like these,  when the facts don’t match the words,  that retreat under fire means backfire. Like the Poles, the British lose by gaining nothing.  The Russians win by demonstrating effective defence of a red line.

by Editor - Thursday, June 24th, 2021
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By John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

When it comes to influencing how Russians will vote, the Anglo-American Navalny operation isn’t a patch on the Russian sense of humour. No amount of money which the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Anglo-American info-warfare units can throw at  Russians can compete, let alone overcome it.

But it is no joke that the President’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced this week that people who refuse to get vaccinated “pose a threat to others” and deserve to be punished. That’s almost two-thirds of the country, according to the latest Levada Centre poll.

What Peskov means is that popular resistance to vaccination is a threat to the pro-government vote for the national parliament on September 19.

by Editor - Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021
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