by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Death can be a coincidence, but not in the Russian aluminium business. So when Dmitry Bosov died of a pistol shot at his home near Moscow on the evening between May 5 and May 6, and Anatoly Bykov was arrested by federal agents in Krasnoyarsk on May 7, everyone with well […]

by Editor - Tuesday, May 12th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Malcolm Turnbull is the most intelligent man ever to become Australian prime minister, and to have left office more stupid than he began. Among the governments south of the Equator, this is without precedent. Since Turnbull served as head of government for only three years, 2015 to 2018, when he was […]

by Editor - Tuesday, April 21st, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with If Pontius Pilate, Judas Iscariot and Joshua Barabbas had combined to produce the eye-witness book on the life and death of Jesus Christ, whose anniversary falls this month, it wasn’t heard of when it was newsworthy, in the first years of the first century AD; readers have been deterred from looking […]

by Editor - Thursday, April 16th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with For catching birds it’s old-fashioned child’s play to put salt on their tails. But fooling the bird in order to get close enough with the salt-shaker, before the bird takes off, is a job for grown-ups.   When it comes to catching fugitive bankers, money launderers and the families of corrupt […]

by Editor - Tuesday, April 14th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The High Court in London has the duty to set the standard for distinguishing between Russian honesty and chicanery (the British varieties too). But it lacks the power. If the court had that, the Prime Minister, the House of Commons, the Secret Intelligence Service, the BBC, Oxford University Press, and the […]

by Editor - Sunday, February 9th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The English read detective stories for the pleasure of unravelling the crime,  proving that even if there are perfect crimes, in the majority of cases the perpetrators don’t get away with them because the detectives are usually cleverer. That’s fiction. In real life,  Russian crimes are different. In the majority of […]

by Editor - Thursday, January 30th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with “We have overcome the situation when certain powers in the government were essentially usurped by oligarch clans,” President Vladimir Putin told the Federal Assembly last week. About  the overcoming part, his staff aren’t so sure. The week before, when asked to identify the guest list at Putin’s annual Christmas reception for […]

by Editor - Monday, January 20th, 2020
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In our last episode, Denis Diderot, the French philosopher in Paris, had sold his library to the Empress Catherine in St. Petersburg. For his bonus, he had received a ticket to meet and talk to Catherine directly. At their first meeting at a masked ball in the Winter Palace, Diderot […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 29th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Boris Dubrovsky (lead images), President Vladimir Putin’s governor of Chelyabinsk between 2014 and March 19, 2019, has long been at risk of lung disease, and he is now reported to be in a Swiss clinic for treatment. His prognosis is uncertain. More certain it is that Dubrovsky will not be […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 15th, 2019
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  By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Joe Biden’s campaign for president, as well as his defence against charges of corrupt influence peddling and political collusion in the Ukraine, are being promoted in Washington by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk (lead image, right) through the New York lobbyist, candidate adviser and pollster, Douglas Schoen (left). This […]

by Editor - Sunday, October 6th, 2019
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