WHY THERE CAN’T BE AN UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS TELEVISION HIT IN RUSSIA – TEFFI ILLUSTRATES

By John Helmer, Moscow

The grand house domestic serial which has been one of the staples of British television is quite impossible in Russia. That’s not because pre-revolutionary Russia lacked the aristo palaces and gilded families, or that nostalgia isn’t popular on television. It’s because the gap between the upstairs family and the downstairs servants was always too wide in Russia – and always too cruel.

It’s not different today. The recent promotion in London and republication of the stories and memoirs of Teffi (lead image), the short-story fabulist, memoirist, poet and playwright who left Russia for Paris in 1919, illustrates the point – and not much else. (more…)

OLEG DERIPASKA AND PAUL MANAFORT — THE HUSTLER GOT HUSTLED

By John Helmer, Moscow

Oleg Deripaska (lead image, left) is famous for snatching other people’s money and legging it.

The records of the High Court in London show what he did to Mikhail Chernoy (Cherney), Boris Berezovsky, and Roman Abramovich. Chernoy recovered $200 million in 2012;  click to open. 

Only two people have ever taken Deripaska’s money and legged it themselves. One was Anthony Louis, owner and editor of the Moscow Tribune,  the first English-language newspaper published in Moscow. Louis took several thousand dollars in exchange for shares to keep his paper afloat but never handed over the shares to Deripaska. The newspaper sank without trace in 2002.

In April 2008 Paul Manafort (lead image, right) took $18,938,400 from Deripaska in return for which he promised to invest up to $100 million in Ukrainian cable television and telecommunications companies. Manafort trousered the cash, or so Deripaska has alleged in court, as he  has been trying to get his money back. 

But Manafort’s hustle has been reported in US newspapers as an attempt to promote Kremlin influence in US elections, especially the one which put Donald Trump into the White House last November.  The evidence for the subversion claim is now being gathered by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and reported publicly by leaks of what his investigation has placed in evidence before a grand jury. These include CIA, NSA and FBI surveillance and wire taps of Manafort during the presidential election campaign – yes, during the presidential campaign — and afterwards. (more…)

ATLANTIC COUNCIL OF NEW YORK TOASTS CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER TRUDEAU WITH UKRAINIAN VODKA BOOSTED BY THE CANADIAN AND US GOVERNMENTS – BUT IS THAT THE PRAVY SEKTOR BANNER FLYING ON THE BOTTLE?

 

By John Helmer, Moscow

Her Majesty Raina the Queen Consort of the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan, and a Palestinian by birth, has announced that Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, is “a father, a feminist, a moral leader, a global citizen.” She was speaking at the Atlantic Council’s global citizenship awards  in New York on Tuesday evening.

As she presented the award bottle to Trudeau with a symbol of the world as a stopper, she introduced Trudeau as “the spirit that shines so very brightly in this northern star”. To help them swallow that, the audience was also presented by a commercial Canadian sponsor with glasses of another star spirit, Zirkova vodka.

That turns out to be a Ukrainian brew which its owner,  John Vellinga,  called after the Ukrainian word for star, zirka (зірка). It’s also a brew for which Trudeau’s predecessor as prime minister, Stephen Harper, helped to modernize a distillery in the Ukraine, plus zero import duties on reaching the Canadian border, plus endorsement from the US-financed, Kiev-based investment fund Horizon Capital, created with State Department money by Natalie Jaresko, US diplomat turned Ukrainian finance minister turned US official again, and her protégé, a Ukrainian-Canadian named Lenna Koszarny.  (more…)

PAINTING THE RUSSIAN SOUL INTO A CORNER AND HANGING IT ON THE WALL

By John Helmer, Moscow

You might say that Russian realism as the style of painting embodying the national spirit, came into its own with “Barge Haulers on the Volga” (lead image), the famous oddity painted by Ilya Repin over three years, 1870-73, following his graduation from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.  

The canvas depicts a team of burlaki towing a vessel through the Volga sandbars, its sail furled under a headwind strong enough to fill the sail of the barge on the far side of the river.  On the masthead the Russian flag is flying upside down, blowing from left to right. Up river in the distance, there is a motor vessel, its coal-fired smokestack blowing from right to left.   

The painting was commissioned,  paid for,  and hung on his palace wall by Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich Romanov (lead image, front right), son of Tsar Alexander II (ruled 1855-81); brother of Tsar Alexander III (ruled 1881-94), and cousin of the last Romanov tsar, Nicholas II (1894-1917). The duke, the Imperial Academy, and the intelligentsia of St. Petersburg and Moscow considered Repin’s work a portrait of the wretched conditions to which the Russian rural population was subjected, and thus a symbol of the fortitude of Russian people. According to Fyodor Dostovevsky at the time,   what he saw in the painting was “barge haulers, real barge haulers, and nothing more… you can’t help but think you are indebted, truly indebted, to the people.” The master was myopic, insincere, patronising. But note the term, real — we are coming back to it. (more…)

THE CENTRAL BANK’S DOMINOES — OTKRITIE BANK’S COLLAPSE FOLLOWED TRUST BANK ASSET RAID

By John Helmer, Moscow

The collapse of Otkritie Bank last month is the largest Russian bank failure since the collapse of National Bank Trust in December 2014.  The Central Bank rescue of Trust made inevitable the much more costly bailout of Otrkitie, announced a fortnight ago on August 29,   charges Ilya Yurov, the former control shareholder and chief executive of Trust, speaking from exile in the UK.  

The reason, according to Yurov, is “the dishonest and deliberately malicious actions of the management and shareholders of Otkritie Bank, and also, unfortunately, a number of officials of the Central Bank of Russia and the Deposit Insurance Agency.”   The state organizations, Yurov alleges,  “continue to adopt dishonest practices when initiating their processes of ‘financial rehabilitation’ or the prevention of bankruptcy of the Russian banks, which inevitably lead to the violation of the rights of customers and bank lenders,  and significantly worsen the situation of the financial industry as a whole.”

Bank analysts and investors in the Russian banks say the combination of failures reveals grave weaknesses in the Central Bank’s supervision. “The black holes in the Russian banking system are expanding,” believes a London banking source. “The more money the Central Bank lends to stop bankruptcy, the faster the cash disappears. Sooner or later, the falling dominoes will come down on [Central Bank Governor Elvira] Nabiullina [lead image] herself.”

Between December 2014 and May 2015 the Central Bank loaned Rb127 billion ($1.7 billion) to Otkritie for the takeover of Trust in what Russian bankers call a “sanitation” – a state funded bailout, administered by the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA)  which stops short of bankruptcy, court-ordered administration, or liquidation.

Then late last month,  after Otkritie depositors lost confidence in the bank and withdrew Rb693 billion ($11.6 billion)  from Otkritie accounts in June,  July, and August,   the Central Bank topped the senior management and board, froze transactions, and commenced fresh lending to preserve Otkritie’s solvency. In exchange for the new cash, the Central Bank now owns 75% of the bank’s shares. Over the coming weeks, from Rb250 billion ($4.3 billion) to Rb400 billion ($6.9 billion) will be the Central Bank bailout required, a deputy governor at the bank announced on September 1. 

Yurov has been charged in Russia with defrauding Trust, triggering the bank’s failure after related-party lending to a network of offshore companies, which Yurov controlled, drained the bank of its cash. Up to $1 billion has been reported as unaccounted for, if not exactly lost. Early this year two of Yurov’s subordinates at the bank were tried and convicted of embezzlement from the bank, using fake loan papers.  

In London and New York Yurov is counter-charging the now ousted chief executive and control shareholder of Otkritie, Vadim Belyaev,  and the next most powerful shareholder on the Otkritie board, Ruben Aganbegyan,  with conspiracy to attack Trust, push it into sanitation,  and withdraw Trust’s cash for themselves through Otkritie. Yurov is also accusing three Central Bank officials at the time of being participants in the cash-and-grab conspiracy.

“Yurov is not a credible accuser,” a Central Bank veteran commented in Moscow. “As the old Russian saying has it, Вор у вора дубинку украл – a thief is stealing a bludgeon from another thief.” (more…)

BEGGARED FOR CHOICE – THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA’S 1917 REVOLUTIONS AS GUIDE TO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

By John Helmer, Moscow

President Vladimir Putin decided there shouldn’t be a centenary commemoration this year for either the February or October Revolutions of 1917.  Instead, he recommended confining the interpretation of the events to “experts”.  Before that, Putin confided publicly his opinion that the Bolsheviks had caused Russia to lose World War I by collaborating with Germany.   Never mind the view of the experts that the strongest source of public support the Bolsheviks had in 1917 was that they – unlike Tsar Nicholas  II, the Provisional Government which replaced him, Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, or the socialists – wanted to stop the war, and also the home front violence on which the tsarist order depended to rule. Thinking about that, however, has political implications for the present; that’s to say, for the presidential re-election campaign which concludes in seven months’ time, on March 18, 2018.  

Violence, inequality, foreign intervention, national elections, civil war – that’s a highly inflammable combination in Russia, still.  The president hasn’t wanted to add fuel to the flames, and that’s why there is no public commemoration of the Revolution this year. No debate among Russian experts either.

(more…)

CANADIAN FOREIGN MINISTER FREELAND HID LIGHT UNDER BUSHEL UNTIL TORONTO GLOBE & MAIL EXPOSÉ

By John Helmer, Moscow

A Toronto newspaper has revealed that Canada’s leading Russia hater, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, had a deal with George Soros (lead image) to write his biography after she had lost her journalist jobs at the Financial Times and Reuters,  and before she started her run for election to the Canadian parliament.

On August 16 the Toronto Globe and Mail reported Soros is a “close friend” of Freeland, and that with her he has “very great hopes for Canada”. Before she decided to run for parliament, the newspaper says Freeland had a “deal” for “a sort of authorized biography of George Soros”.  Soros’s spokesman in New York, Laura Silber, refused to answer repeated questions last week for clarification of the terms of this deal or the compensation Soros agreed with Freeland. (more…)

RED HAS TURNED YELLOW – THE GREEK AND CYPRIOT COMMUNISTS ARE FLYING A DIFFERENT FLAG IN THE UKRAINE WAR



By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Ukraine war is splitting the communist parties of Europe between those taking the US side, and those on the Russian side.

In an unusual public criticism of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and of smaller communist parties in Europe which have endorsed the Greek criticism of Russia for waging an “imperialist” war against the Ukraine, the Russian Communist Party (KPRF) has responded this week with a 3,300-word declaration:  “The military conflict in Ukraine,” the party said, “cannot be described as an imperialist war, as our comrades would argue. It is essentially a national liberation war of the people of Donbass. From Russia’s point of view it is a struggle against an external threat to national security and against Fascism.”

By contrast, the Russian communists have not bothered to send advice, or air public criticism of the Cypriot communists and their party, the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL). On March 2, AKEL issued a communiqué “condemn[ing] Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and calls for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Ukrainian territories….[and] stresses that the Russian Federation’s action in recognising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions constitutes a violation of the principle of the territorial integrity of states.”

 To the KPRF in Moscow the Cypriots are below contempt; the Greeks are a fraction above it.

A Greek-Cypriot veteran of Cypriot politics and unaffiliated academic explains: “The Cypriot communists do not allow themselves to suffer for what they profess to believe. Actually, they are a misnomer. They are the American party of the left in Cyprus, just as [President Nikos] Anastasiades is the American party of the right.” As for the Greek left, Alexis Tsipras of Syriza – with 85 seats of the Greek parliament’s 300, the leading party of the opposition – the KKE (with 15 seats), and Yanis Varoufakis of MeRA25 (9 seats), the source adds: “The communists are irrelevant in Europe and in the US, except in the very narrow context of Greek party politics.”

(more…)

IF IT SMELLS ALLURING, IT’S RUSSIAN – IN WARTIME L’ORÉAL (FRANCE) AND ESTÉE LAUDER (US) MAKE A BAD SMELL



By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The war plan of the US and the European allies is destroying the Russian market for traditional French perfumes, the profits of the French and American conglomerates which own the best-known brands, the bonuses of their managers, and the dividends of their shareholders. The odour  of these losses is too strong for artificial fresheners.

Givaudan, the Swiss-based world leader in production and supply of fragrances, oils and other beauty product ingredients, has long regarded the Russian market as potentially its largest in Europe; it is one of the fastest growing contributors to Givaudan’s profit worldwide. In the recovery from the pandemic of Givaudan’s Fragrance and Beauty division – it accounts for almost half the company’s total sales — the group reported “excellent double-digit growth in 2021, demonstrating strong consumer demand for these product categories.”    Until this year, Givaudan reveals in its latest financial report, the growth rate for Russian demand was double-digit – much faster than the  6.3% sales growth in Europe overall; faster growth than in Germany, Belgium and Spain.    

Between February 2014, when the coup in Kiev started the US war against Russia, and last December, when the Russian non-aggression treaties with the US and NATO were rejected,   Givaudan’s share price jumped three and a half times – from 1,380 Swiss francs to 4,792 francs; from a company with a market capitalisation of 12.7 billion francs ($12.7 billion) to a value of 44.2 billion francs ($44.2 billion). Since the fighting began in eastern Ukraine this year until now, Givaudan has lost 24% of that value – that’s $10 billion.  

The largest of Givaudan’s shareholders is Bill Gates. With his 14%, plus the 10% controlled by Black Rock of New York and MFS of Boston, the US has effective control over the company.

Now, according to the US war sanctions, trade with Russia and the required payment systems have been closed down, alongside the bans on the importation of the leading European perfumes. So in place of the French perfumers, instead of Givaudan, the Russian industry is reorganizing for its future growth with its own perfume brands manufactured from raw materials produced in Crimea and other regions, or supplied by India and China. Givaudan, L’Oréal (Lancome, Yves Saint Laurent), Kering (Balenciaga, Gucci), LVMH (Dior, Guerlain, Givenchy), Chanel, Estée Lauder, Clarins – they have all cut off their noses to spite the Russian face.

(more…)

THE WAR AGAINST FOOD – WHO IS TO BLAME



By Nikolai Storozhenko, introduced and translated by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

This week President Joseph Biden stopped at an Illinois farm to say he’s going to help the  Ukraine ship 20 million tonnes of wheat and corn out of storage into export, thereby relieving  grain shortages in the international markets and lowering bread prices around the world.  Biden was trying to play a hand in which his cards have already been clipped. By Biden.  

The first Washington-Kiev war plan for eastern Ukraine has already lost about 40% of the Ukrainian wheat fields, 50% of the barley, and all of the grain export ports. Their second war plan to hold the western region defence lines with mobile armour, tanks, and artillery  now risks the loss of the corn and rapeseed crop as well as the export route for trucks to Romania and Moldova. What will be saved in western Ukraine will be unable to grow enough to feed its own people. They will be forced to import US wheat, as well as US guns and the money to pay for both.

Biden told his audience that on the Delaware farms he used to represent in the US Senate “there are more chickens than there are Americans.”  Blaming the Russians is the other card Biden has left.  

(more…)

EXILE



By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The problem with living in exile is the meaning of the word. If you’re in exile, you mean you are forever looking backwards, in geography as well as in time. You’re not only out of place; you’re out of time — yesterday’s man.

Ovid, the Roman poet who was sent into exile from Rome by Caesar Augustus, for offences neither Augustus nor Ovid revealed, never stopped looking back to Rome. His exile, as Ovid described it, was “a barbarous coast, inured to rapine/stalked ever by bloodshed, murder, war.” In such a place or state, he said, “writing a poem you can read to no one is like dancing in the dark.”

The word itself, exsilium in Roman law, was the sentence of loss of citizenship as an alternative to loss of life, capital punishment. It meant being compelled to live outside Rome at a location decided by the emperor. The penalty took several degrees of isolation and severity. In Ovid’s case, he was ordered by Augustus to be shipped to the northeastern limit of the Roman empire,  the Black Sea town called Tomis; it is now Constanta, Romania. Ovid’s last books, Tristia (“Sorrows”) and Epistulae ex Ponto (“Black Sea Letters”), were written from this exile, which began when he was 50 years old, in 8 AD, and ended when he died in Tomis nine years year later, in 17 AD.  

In my case I’ve been driven into exile more than once. The current one is lasting the longest. This is the one from Moscow, which began with my expulsion by the Foreign Ministry on September 28, 2010.  The official sentence is Article 27(1) of the law No. 114-FZ — “necessary for the purposes of defence capability or security of the state, or public order, or protection of health of the population.” The reason, a foreign ministry official told an immigration service official when they didn’t know they were being overheard, was: “Helmer writes bad things about Russia.”

(more…)

IN THE FOG OF WAR THERE’S THE GUTERRES CERTAINTY AND THE CADIEU CERTAINTY – GORILLA RADIO SEES THROUGH THE COVER-UP



By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Antonio Guterres is the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), who attempted last month  to arrange the escape from Russian capture of Ukrainian soldiers and NATO commanders,  knowing they had committed war crimes. He was asked to explain; he refuses.   

Trevor Cadieu is a Canadian lieutenant-general who was appointed the chief of staff and head of the Canadian Armed Forces last August; was stopped in September; retired from the Army this past April, and went to the Ukraine, where he is in hiding. From whom he is hiding – Canadians or Russians – where he is hiding, and what he will say to explain are questions Cadieu isn’t answering, yet.

(more…)

DID UN SECRETARY-GENERAL GUTERRES COMMIT A WAR CRIME AT AZOVSTAL?

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, is refusing this week to answer questions on the role he played in the recent attempt by US, British, Canadian and other foreign combatants to escape the bunkers under the Azovstal plant, using the human shield of civilians trying to evacuate.

In Guterres’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on April 26 (lead image), Putin warned Guterres he had been “misled” in his efforts. “The simplest thing”, Putin told Guterres in the recorded part of their meeting, “for military personnel or members of the nationalist battalions is to release the civilians. It is a crime to keep civilians, if there are any there, as human shields.”  

This war crime has been recognized since 1977 by the UN in Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention.  In US law for US soldiers and state officials, planning to employ or actually using human shields is a war crime to be prosecuted under 10 US Code Section 950t.  

Instead, Guterres ignored the Kremlin warning and the war crime law, and authorized UN officials, together with Red Cross officials,  to conceal what Guterres himself knew of the foreign military group trying to escape. Overnight from New York, Guterres has refused to say what he knew of the military escape operation, and what he had done to distinguish, or conceal the differences between the civilians and combatants in the evacuation plan over the weekend of April 30-May 1.May.

(more…)

THE LAST DITCH IS POLAND – RUSSIA’S PHASE-3 PLAN FOR WESTERN UKRAINE



By Vlad Shlepchenko, introduced & translated by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The more western politicians announce pledges of fresh weapons for the Ukraine, the more Russian military analysts explain what options their official sources are considering to destroy the arms before they reach the eastern front, and to neutralize Poland’s role as the NATO  hub for resupply and reinforcement of the last-ditch holdout of western Ukraine.

“I would like to note,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, repeated yesterday, “that any transport of the North Atlantic Alliance that arrived on the territory of the country with weapons or material means for the needs of the Ukrainian armed forces is considered by us as a legitimate target for destruction”.  He means the Ukraine border is the red line.

(more…)

THE MATLIN PLOT, THE BROWDER PLOT AND THE NEW YORK TIMES PLOT



By Lucy Komisar,  New York*
  @bears_with

Here’s a story the New York Times has just missed.

US politicians and media pundits are promoting the targeting of “enablers” of Russian oligarchs who stash their money in offshore accounts. A Times article of March 11   highlighted Michael Matlin, CEO of Concord Management as such an “enabler.” But the newspaper missed serious corruption Matlin was involved in. Maybe that’s because Matlin cheated Russia, and also because the Matlin story exposes the William Browder/Sergei Magnitsky hoax aimed at Russia.

(more…)

YELLOW COAL, THE FUEL MADE OUT OF RACE HATRED — MAY DAY MESSAGE FROM SIGIZMUND KRZHIZHANOVSKY, 1939



By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In 1939 a little known writer in Moscow named Sigizmund Khrzhizhanovsky published his idea that the Americans, then the Germans would convert human hatred into a new source of energy powering everything which had been dependent until then on coal, gas, and oil.

Called yellow coal, this invention originated with Professor Leker at Harvard University. It was applied, first to running municipal trams, then to army weapons, and finally to cheap electrification of everything from domestic homes and office buildings to factory production lines. In Russian leker means a quack doctor.

The Harvard professor’s idea was to concentrate the neuro-muscular energy people produce when they hate each other.  Generated as bile (yellow), accumulated and concentrated into kinetic spite in machines called myeloabsorberators, Krzhizhanovsky called this globalization process the bilification of society.

(more…)

IS CAESARISM THE PROBLEM, THE SOLUTION, A FANCY DRESS COSTUME, OR A PROPAGANDA CARTOON?



By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In imperial history there is nothing new in cases of dementia in rulers attracting homicidal psychopaths to replace them.  It’s as natural as honey attracts bees.

When US President Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke on October 19, 1919, he was partially paralysed and blinded, and was no longer able to feed himself, sign his name, or speak normally; he was not demented.

While his wife and the Navy officer  who was his personal physician concealed his condition, there is no evidence that either Edith Wilson or Admiral Cary Grayson were themselves clinical cases of disability, delusion,  or derangement. They were simply liars driven by the ambition to hold on to the power of the president’s office and deceive everyone who got in their way.  

The White House is always full of people like that. The 25th Amendment to the US Constitution is meant to put a damper on their homicidal tendencies.

What is unusual, probably exceptional in the current case of President Joseph Biden, not to mention the history of the United States,  is the extent of the president’s personal incapacitation; combined with the clinical evidence of psychopathology in his Secretary of State Antony Blinken;  and the delusional condition of the rivals to replace Biden, including Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Like Rome during the first century AD, Washington is now in the ailing emperor-homicidal legionary phase.  But give it another century or two, and the madness, bloodshed, and lies of the characters of the moment won’t matter quite as much as their images on display in the museums of their successors craving legitimacy, or of successor powers celebrating their superiority.  

Exactly this has happened to the original Caesars, as a new book by Mary Beard, a Cambridge University professor of classics, explains. The biggest point of her book, she says, is “dynastic succession” – not only of the original Romans but of those modern rulers who acquired the Roman portraits in marble and later copies in paint, and the copies of those copies, with the idea of communicating “the idea of the direct transfer of power from ancient Romans to Franks and on to later German rulers.”

In the case she narrates of the most famous English owner of a series of the “Twelve Caesars”, King Charles I — instigator of the civil war of 1642-51 and the loser of both the war and his head – the display of his Caesars was intended to demonstrate the king’s self-serving “missing link” between his one-man rule and the ancient Romans who murdered their way to rule, and then apotheosized into immortal gods in what they hoped would be a natural death on a comfortable bed.

With the American and Russian successions due to take place in Washington and Moscow in two years’ time, Beard’s “Twelve Caesars, Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern”,  is just the ticket from now to then.

(more…)
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