By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In the cartoon,  Mighty Mouse was always on the defensive, repelling attacks from wicked aggressors, cats, for example, or dogs.   When the cartoon first began in 1942, the words of the theme song were also defensive:  “Mr. Trouble never hangs around, When he hears this mighty sound: ‘Here I come […]

by Editor - Sunday, September 29th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Among Russian oligarchs, Alexei Mordashov (lead image, centre) holds two records. One is for empty promises: he has never told the whole truth in public or when he has visited President Vladimir Putin (right) for private conversations about his business plans and the Russian state interest. Mordashov’s other record is […]

by Editor - Monday, September 23rd, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Whoaaa Neddy! Another hack has gotten out of the stable of American exceptionalist historians of Russia. Actually, this one, Eleonory Gilburd, is a Russian-born, US educated and employed hack of the Soviet Jewish emigration like Keith Gessen, Masha Gessen  and Yury Slezkine. Russian exiles with axes to grind.    They […]

by Editor - Sunday, September 22nd, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Sergei Frank (lead image, right) is being removed from control of Sovcomflot, the Russian state tanker company and one of the largest oil and gas transporters in the world.  Frank is the only senior Russian state official to have been judged by the British courts to be dishonest and vindictive […]

by Editor - Tuesday, September 17th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with It was Aristophanes who said you can’t teach a crab to walk straight. Lenin wasn’t talking about crabs when he recommended taking one step forward, two steps back. This summer, when President Vladimir Putin last talked to Gennady Timchenko about his family’s crab business, he said he was revising the […]

by Editor - Monday, September 16th, 2019
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  By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with On Friday afternoon in Sochi, President Vladimir Putin kept Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waiting for three hours, and then publicly endorsed him for re-election. Putin’s endorsement was unconditional: he could have warned against Netanyahu’s election pledge, revealed last week, to annex the West Bank of Palestine, but he […]

by Editor - Sunday, September 15th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In high state politics there’s a difference between the morons and the psychopaths – between Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau on the one hand, John Bolton and Chrystia Freeland on the other. The  difference is in the ability to count the fingers on one hand.  Bolton has been removed because, […]

by Editor - Friday, September 13th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Russia has been warning Cyprus (lead image, left) for months to beware the risks and consequences of offering its offshore oil and gas to US companies in exchange for promises of a US military protectorate against Turkish invasion. So far the American response (lead image, centre – Secretary of State Michael […]

by Editor - Monday, September 9th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Cover yourself. When it’s raining, you can’t borrow somebody else’s umbrella for shelter. In September 1938, the umbrella of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain became the symbol of his foolishness in accepting Adolph Hitler’s terms for the takeover of the Sudetenland, then Czechoslovakia,  as “peace for our time” (lead image, […]

by Editor - Monday, September 9th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Repeating lies over and over makes old-fashioned Joseph Goebbels-type propaganda. Repeating lies, then contradicting them; moving them from one government-paid think-tank to another; footnoting a new lie to an older version; quoting policemen and gangsters saying fatuities; adding slang and the words of pop songs—this is still Goebbels-type but  stretched […]

by Editor - Sunday, September 8th, 2019
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