[1]
By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Bringing the war home was a powerful slogan of the American anti-war movement in the decade between 1965 and 1975, as the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army advanced towards their victory, forcing the White House to armistice terms in Paris in January 1973, and then to evacuation of Saigon in April 1975.
There is no anti-war movement in the streets of the US today. Instead, there are podcasts inside Americans’ desktops, telephones, and earplugs.
The US Army hasn’t begun cracking up as it once did on the battlefields of Hué, the Mekong Delta, and Saigon. The anti-US armies continue to advance – Russian forces across the Ukrainian battlefield, Iranian forces from the Hormuz Strait across the Arab sheikhdoms to targets inside Israel.
The politics for winning, losing, pausing, then resuming the 100-year war which the US aims to fight against the century-old enemies – Russians, Chinese, Arabs, Iranians, and the banana republicans of Central and South America – remain the same. Expressed in the Washington language of the present, this is the politics of the Fall budget review and the November midterm elections.
In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, the discussion focuses on the dynamics of war financing and electioneering for President Donald Trump and for President Vladimir Putin. To answer the question of what happens next in the false ceasefire and pseudo-peace negotiations in the Middle East and in Europe, we focus on money and votes – and what Trump, Putin and their political rivals think they must do to stop the loss of public confidence in their leadership, and in their own futures.
Click to view or listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVcXeOl-LSw [3]
[4]Left: first published in January 1974, the book has become an antique and is only available in the secondary market after the original readers have died: https://www.amazon.com/Bringing-War-Home-John-Helmer/dp/0029146003/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=john+helmer%2C+bringing+home&qid=1568010526&s=books&sr=1-1 [5]
Right: the original author is still alive and can be followed at no cost at this podcast link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVcXeOl-LSw [3]
Read more for a background reality check of the US-Ukrainian operations and the response of the Kremlin faction aiming to cut off the money supply for the Russian Army:
[6]Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ukraine-attacks-russian-energy-sites-what-has-been-hit-2026-06-01/ [7]
[8]“Total strikes on Russian oil assets reached at least 30 in May, the most in any single month since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The Yanos refinery, co-owned by Rosneft PJSC and Gazprom Neft PJSC, was struck three times. Lukoil PJSC facilities in Nizhny Novgorod and Perm were hit twice. The cumulative damage to output is severe. Analytics firm OilX puts May’s average Russian refinery runs at 4.58 million barrels per day, down roughly 700,000 barrels per day, or 13%, from a year earlier. A separate Bloomberg figure places volumes at 4.69 million barrels per day. Both are the lowest since October 2009. Strikes have halted or curtailed production at facilities accounting for roughly one-quarter of Russia’s total refining capacity and more than 30% of its gasoline output” -- https://thedeepdive.ca/russia-bans-jet-fuel-exports-through-november-as-drone-strikes-drive-refinery-output-to-16-year-low/ [9]
[10]Source: https://x.com/kadmitriev/status/2061017755835375850 [11]
NOTE: The lead image is the American cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast and published in 1876 during the vote-rigging fight between the Republican Party candidate for president, Rutherford Hayes, and Samuel Tilden, the Democratic candidate. Hayes lost the popular vote but won the presidency. Fraud, violence and racism in several southern battleground states decided the outcome. This sums up the story. [12] This adds [13] detail of the Hayes compromise – power for himself in Washington in exchange for Democratic race supremacism in the South.