By John Helmer, Moscow
MiningMaven of London, published by Malcolm Palle, is a leading source of analysis for the global mining, minerals and metals markets. It is also an antidote for the mind and pocket-blowing reporting of the Financial Times, Bloomberg, the Murdoch press, and the Guardian. If you are ready to bet against what they tell you, this broadcast is for you.
By John Helmer, Moscow
Almost everyone goes to bed at night. Some get up to urinate. The older, less continent ones can’t get up easily, so they urinate on themselves. If properly cared for, they do so in what is known in the geriatric product market as roll-ups.
A small minority arrange to be urinated upon by others, though not usually on the bed they aim to sleep in. This may be an erotic pleasure for you, a perversion to the next man. The name for it is Golden Showers. If conducted between consenting adults, it’s not a crime. Paying for it may be a crime, depending on the local law on procuring. In the Russian criminal code it’s not a felony but a misdemeanour with a fine so small it usually isn’t enforced by the police; certainly not in expensive big-city hotels.
A claim is being widely reported in the US media which supported Hillary Clinton for president that President-elect Donald Trump paid for at least two ladies to urinate on the bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel of Moscow. A former British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) agent named Christopher Steele has reported the episode in a memorandum dated June 20, 2016, because he was paid by a US client to do it; and also because he was paid to speculate that the Russian Security Service (FSB) filmed it, and has been blackmailing Trump ever since.
Trump has responded that Steele is a “failed spy”. That is not an impetuous tweet. It’s the assessment of both US and British intelligence agencies, including MI6, for which Steele worked undercover in Moscow between 1994 and 1996. His cover was blown; he was evacuated; and as British intelligence sources report this week, Steele has been unable to enter Russia for a decade. “No Russian with official links and knowledge would risk communicating with Steele for fear of being detected by Russian counter-intelligence,” said an intelligence source in London, Said another: “I met [Steele] a couple of times and thought that for a relatively undistinguished man who never made very senior rank he was a smug, arrogant s.o.b. So I don’t work with him. The description of his being the top expert on Russia in MI6 is bollocks. ”
The story of the Obama-Trump bed, according to Steele, comes from 2013. Another story, the one of the Putin bed on which Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had sex with a prostitute in Rome, dates from 2009. The true part has been verified with a tape the lady made of Berlusconi boasting about the source of the bed as he exercised himself on it. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Putin then and now, says the Trump-Obama bed story is “a complete fake. It’s total nonsense.” But about the Putin-Berlusconi bed, he said at the time: “We reject this information. I am not in a position to explain.” In short, that bedtime story may be true. (more…)
By John Helmer, Moscow
Chrystia Freeland, a leading figure in the Ukrainian and Canadian campaigns against Russia, was promoted last week in Ottawa to become Canada’s foreign minister. She is now one step away in her plan to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, sources in Ottawa, Washington, and Moscow report.
There was a hitch in the plan, though. Freeland had been hoping for a senior ministry when Trudeau took power in November 2015. Instead, he gave her the low-ranked international trade portfolio to keep her out of Canada as often as possible. Freeland then counted on Hillary Clinton to win the US presidential election last November, in order to persuade Trudeau she had better relationships in the coming Washington administration than the incumbent foreign minister, Stéphane Dion. The election of Donald Trump, with whom Freeland has no relationship and no agreement either, disappointed but didn’t deter her.
Trudeau has also accepted the Freeland scheme, and also for a Clinton reason. Trudeau will be safer in the prime ministry, Ottawa sources believe, if Freeland follows the Clinton role model into public acrimony, private hysteria, then defeat. (more…)
By John Helmer, Moscow
Three years ago precisely, on January 12, 2014 – just before the Anglo-American war against Russia began in earnest — we reported that the Moscow School of Management at Skolkovo was publishing what it called a market atlas of the jobs and professions which will be newly needed by the year 2020, and those to be needed no longer. One of the new ones was what the Skolkovo atlas called a cyber-cleaner (кибердворник). This is a specialist in removing from the internet and all digital data archives whatever information someone pays to have cleaned or deleted entirely, and its substitution with what the specialist is paid to put there – fake news, kompromat, disinformation, PR, advertising, fraud. One of the professions the cyber-cleaners will replace, according to the atlas, is journalism. (more…)
By John Helmer, Moscow
It’s been 412 years since the last foreign-arranged regime change that worked at the Kremlin — if briefly, and if you don’t count Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton. .
False Dmitry I (lead picture) was, to start with, the stooge of the Polish king and the Pope. Dmitry – aka Yury Otrepiev, aka Monarkh Grishka – had a few ideas of his own, one of which is still in the Kremlin drawer. That’s an alliance of Christian Europe against the Turks. Dmitry I was assassinated by the Muscovite oligarchs of the time. Then False Dmitry II, pretending to be the first, appeared on the Polish border, claiming the assassination had been fake news. He too was hacked – er, dismembered — as was Marina, the lady who had been wife, mother and co-plotter of both ill-fated schemes.
But she may have survived. Her descendants are tweeting in Washington at this very moment. And in Warsaw, London, and NATO HQ in Brussels. They oblige us to be on the alert for their False Dmitry schemes. Only the New Year will show for sure how many False Dmitry’s there are, and besides them, what is true, honest, real.
And so, dear readers, it’s our New Year wish that your eyesight will stay as discerning and sharp as the tip of our pen.
By John Helmer, Moscow
Alexei Mordashov (lead image, top left), the mining and metals oligarch, promised President Vladimir Putin (centre) that in future he would stick to investing in Russia. “We did a great deal of work abroad,” he told the President, “but came to the conclusion that our future lies primarily in Russia, in the Russian market, and our production here is most efficient. We sold the North American division and are focusing almost entirely on our Russian assets.” That was on January 19, 2015.
Mordashov was back in front of Putin at the Kremlin this week, telling him on December 19: “I would also like to ask you not to reduce the level of your cooperation.” What Mordashov didn’t tell Putin was how much he has invested in Canadian goldmining over the past year, and how much more, according to Russian and Canadian sources, he is planning to invest next year. That may come to $400 million if a gold prospect in French Guiana, owned by a Canadian mining company, turns out to be El Dorado when a report Mordashov is preparing on the exploration results and gold value is due to be released next March. (more…)
By John Helmer, Moscow
President Vladimir Putin hosted his annual supper for the largest holders of capital in Russia on Monday evening. Compared to his table in December 2015, he added 15 extra seats, and for the first time men of little capital have been invited. Representatives of small business and even one Moscow house builder with a reputation for destroying city heritage sites were seated too. With a first-time invitation to sit down also came rehabilitation for Sergei Frank, chief executive of the state shipping company Sovcomflot, whose business practices have been judged by the British High Court, Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court to be dishonest.
Putin’s address was shorter than usual. “Despite the unfavourable situation on the global markets and in the political sphere,” he said, “we have indeed seen changes for the better. We have succeeded in stabilising the situation in the economy. This is a clear and evident fact today. We need now to set in place a strategy for confident growth, and this is something we can achieve together. Of course, there are still many outstanding problems and many reasons for dissatisfaction. There is still much to change and improve in order to feel more confident. But at least we all agree what we need to do, how we need to do it, and what timeframe is realistic.” (more…)
By John Helmer, Moscow
The Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo, which was reported last week as the principal lender to Rosneft’s €11 billion share sale, has announced it has played an advisory role, not a lending role, and it is still in the “assessment phase” of the transaction — without a commitment to lend money.
On December 7, Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin told President Vladimir Putin “we will receive the first money transfers from our foreign investors in the next few days”. Rosneft announced at the same time “the acquisition of the Rosneft stake will be financed with investors’ own funds and will also involve debt financing. Investors’ equity in the acquiring vehicle will amount to EUR2.8 bn. The bulk of debt financing will be provided by Banca Intesa Sanpaolo.” Glencore, the Swiss trading company which is one of the two reported foreign share-buyers, alongside the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), announced in parallel that “Glencore will commit €300 million in equity and QIA will commit €2.5 billion in equity to the Consortium with the balance of the consideration for the acquisition of the Shares to be provided by non-recourse bank financing, principally by Intesa Sanpaolo S.pA..”
On Monday afternoon, at the bank’s head office in Milan, Intesa Sanpaolo issued an 11-line statement claiming there is no loan, financing or investment agreement by the bank for the Rosneft transaction, at least not yet; and that the bank’s “possible participation in the operation is conditional, first of all, on total support for the sanctions system adopted by the EU and US towards entities of the Russian Federation.” The bank also said it has so far done no more than act as advisor to Rosneftegaz, Rosneft’s parent shareholder, “which has not been subject of any sanction.”
In Moscow Sechin was asked through his spokesman, Mikhail Leontyev, to respond to the bank’s announcement. “How do you square this position with the Rosneft and Glencore statements of last week, confirming the bank as the principal lender to the deal?” Sechin and Leontyev refuse to answer.
(more…)
By John Helmer, Moscow
The old Russian expression from sword-fighting days was “Scars adorn the man” (ШРАМЫ УКРАШАЮТ МУЖЧИНУ – lead image, top). But in the Russian pun (А ШМАРЫ УКРОЩАЮТ — lead image, bottom), do prostitutes “tame” the man? Appearances can be deceiving but not us.
Website attacks have intensified since the report last week of Igor Sechin’s Rosneft share transaction. Russian reporters attempting to cover the story by questioning the Swiss authorities about Glencore’s agreements, and Bank Intesa Saopaolo’s purported financing of the deal, say they have been ordered off the story by their managing editors. Italian and Swiss reporters will be publishing shortly. New York and Washington colleagues, Yves Smith and Alex Floum, have republished the story so that it can survive intact.
The info-warriors have left scars on the website’s reflexes and illustrations which will take time to remove. For the time being, they don’t obstruct the sense. You be the judge, and let us know.
By John Helmer, Moscow
Captain Bear to bear artillerymen: “If they know enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, let them eat curds and honey. I told you, curds with a ‘c’. Now look what you’ve dropped on them.”
Sanitary notice for readers: if there’s a problem reading the latest news-breaking stories at www.johnhelmer.online, try johnhelmer.online. For password, open bible at the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 7, Section 15, and click.
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Jan | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
