by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The opposite of comeuppance ought to be comedownance.  That’s when, instead of a negative outcome which the perpetrator has deserved, the outcome is positive but not what the perpetrator had planned or anticipated. This is now happening to Oleg Deripaska’s (lead image, left) aluminium monopoly Rusal, according to an announcement this […]

by Editor - Thursday, April 25th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In the last war which the Americans, British, and French fought against the Russians, they were all defeated and forced to run away. Now it’s happening again. But if Anna Reid, author of a new history of the Allied powers’ invasion of Russia and war against the Bolsheviks,  titles her book […]

by Editor - Monday, April 22nd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The first Dance with Bears appeared twenty-two years ago.  It began as a short commentary appearing once or twice a week. The title came from Astolphe de Custine, the greatest observer of Russia ever to be obliged to conceal what he was writing inside his hat, as the Russians he was […]

by Editor - Monday, April 22nd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Israel is rattled. It’s now up to Iran (lead image, left, President Ebrahim Raisi)  leader of the Arab resistance and warfighting alliance – Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah (Houthis), and the Syrian and Iraqi groups – to demonstrate that they can stop the genocidal schemes of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), and the […]

by Editor - Wednesday, April 17th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with On Tuesday afternoon the Kremlin announced that President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi “at the Iranian side’s initiative.” The Kremlin communiqué was posted at 1540 Moscow time.  What followed was reported by Raisi’s office at 1808 Tehran time. There was a lag of two hours […]

by Editor - Tuesday, April 16th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with No Russian military source will publicly express the line that Iran’s attack on Israel of April 14 was a strategic success, despite the tactical shortcomings. This is first of all because Iran is a strategic ally of Russia in its war against the US and NATO in the Ukraine, in Syria, […]

by Editor - Monday, April 15th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with It was a relatively bright day, November 21, 1920, when Vladimir Lenin, having won the civil war and driven off the American, British, French, Canadian, and Australian invasion forces, announced: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country, since industry cannot be developed without electrification.”   Come November […]

by Editor - Monday, April 15th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Triumphalism and self-promotion by US alt-media generals (er, colonels, majors, lieutenants) and Donald Trump contribute nothing of value to the Russian analysis of the Iran’s operation against Israel on Saturday night, April 13. That’s to say, analysis, not of who has gained, who has lost, but of what there is to […]

by Editor - Sunday, April 14th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Advertisements for replacements of Vladimir Zelensky aren’t unusual, even if he has disposed of almost all of them already. That leaves just one, Andrei Yermak, head of the Presidential Office —  prompter, grey eminence, comfort blanket of Zelensky in almost every significant move he has made since 2019– and now candidate […]

by Editor - Thursday, April 11th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Ice cream is ancient enough to have been demanded by at least three well-known emperors – Alexander the Great of Greece, Nero of Rome, and Charles I of England, all of them ill-fated. Ice cream, as we know it, doesn’t become easy to eat until it ceased to be plutocratic.  Refrigeration […]

by Editor - Monday, April 8th, 2024
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