By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Football is the most popular sport Russians like to play and like to watch. Ice hockey comes second.

The connexion between football and ice hockey, apples and tomatoes is that Gennady Timchenko (lead image left) is the sanctioned oligarch who is now moving into domestic production of apples to substitute for imports; he has been a player, sponsor, financier and director of ice hockey clubs, associations, and stadiums in Russia and Finland.   Yevgeny Giner (right) has been the long established owner of the Moscow football club CSKA, a financial director at the Russian Football Union, and stadium builder;   he is now taking a position in tomatoes.

Why apples, why tomatoes, why now in Russia?

The reason is the war – and the way in which the US and NATO campaign to destroy the Russian economy is rebuilding it in directions and in sectors which the pre-war oligarchs had no wish, no incentive to consider.

By curtailing their freedom to export cash, capital, and assets outside Russia, the sanctions have forced the oligarchs to look for the right combination of investment factors in the domestic Russian market. Apples and tomatoes qualify for them because of the large and growing size of consumer demand; the relatively low level of domestic competition for market entry; and the determining role of the state in raising protection from imports, allocating low-cost land for production; and handing out budget cash to pay for borrowing, seed, fertilizer, and other purchases, machine leasing, tax relief, subsidized storage and transport to the point of sale – and price fixing. Traditional oligarch methods for consolidating assets, raiding and bankrupting small producers, and court corruption can flourish under the war emergency regulations administered by state planning committee apparatchiki. They have taken over where the state anti-monopoly and environment regulators left off.   

And so, by striking at Putin’s cronies, as the US Treasury and the Office for Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) call them, with their long-arm prohibitions, freezes, and threats of confiscation,  the warfighters are revolutionizing the domestic economy.

Think of this revolution as an apple a day to keep the oligarchs in play.  

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by Editor - Monday, February 27th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The brainwashing of the peoples of the NATO alliance is working much better with the British than the Americans. For the time being, Russia-hating is a peculiarly English phenomenon.

Almost half the Americans polled a month ago said they did not believe Russia was an adversary with whom the US is in conflict. The poll results were reported by a government-sponsored and financed think tank called the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), and the results published on February 22.  Asked to say which prompt statement “best reflects your view on what Russia is to your country”, 55% of Americans took the war-fighting option. However, 14% replied that Russia was “an ally that shares our interests and values” or “a necessary partner with which we must strategically cooperate”; another 16% of   Americans described Russia as “a rival with which we need to compete”; and 16% were non-committal, saying they “don’t know”.

Altogether, 46% of the national US sample refused to agree to the mainstream media line on Russia and the policy of the US Government and Congress.

By contrast,  the proportion of British respondents polled who agreed Russia is the enemy in the present war was about two-thirds – 65% — while the dissenters numbered only 35%. Northern Ireland was not included in the survey, and the Scots were under-represented.

The European country results have been manipulated by the ECFR think tank, casting doubt on the first conclusion it reported that “Europeans are united in believing that Russia is an ‘adversary’ or a ‘rival’”, and the second conclusion of “the growing hostility of Europeans towards Russians”. This rigging was managed by withholding the separate poll results for France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain, and over-weighting the influence of Estonia, Poland, Denmark, and Romania in the consolidated European Union (EU9) result reported.

Interpretation of the results by a group of academics at St Antony’s College, Oxford,  was paid for by US and German foundations which have published their anti-Russian views, like these: “Stiftung Mercator views the war against Ukraine also as an attack by Putin on European values, an attack directed against democracy, pluralism, freedom of opinion and freedom of the press throughout Europe.”  

Despite the message of the money, one-third of the EU9 respondents resisted, saying they believe Russia is either an ally or partner, and 20% refused to give the pollsters an answer – the largest non-committal response in the entire survey worldwide.

Even more hostile to the sponsors of the survey were Indians, Chinese,  and Turks. In India, where the surveys pressured respondents in face-to-face interviews, 80% insisted Russia is an ally or partner, and only 3% an enemy. In China, the opinion was almost identical — 79% and 5%, respectively. In Turkey 69% favoured alliance or partnership with Russia; 8% said Russia was an enemy; 5% said they didn’t know.

TNT Radio’s War of the Worlds programme broadcasts to provide the breaking news and  analyses which the Don’t Knows of Europe and North America need to hear, before making up their minds. This is also information unpaid by the war-fighting governments of the NATO alliance, and by the German foundations committed to continuing the Wehrmacht aims of 1939. The broadcast is also an opportunity for the Irish and Scots to pull their ears out of Westminster’s hands.

This week the breaking news on microphone reveals the evidence of how and why the Kremlin gave US President Joseph Biden s safe-conduct pass to Kiev, with the caution that the Russians could give no “security guarantees” against an attack on Biden from Ukrainian fanatics afraid of a sell-out by Washington.

Listen also as the terms for an armistice and partition of the Ukraine are revealed in the Chinese Government’s twelve-point proposals for a political settlement of the war, released on Friday morning.

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by Editor - Sunday, February 26th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

An article by Lucy Komisar on the film “Navalny” was republished here at Komisar’s request on February 22.

Komisar has requested its removal after she received an email from Diana Schemo, an ex-New York Times reporter.

This is a new story of what was famously called, almost a century ago, La Trahison des Clercs. 

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

For the first time in the century of US warfare against Russia, a sitting US president has requested and received a formal ceasefire and  safe conduct  pledge (propusk) from the Kremlin in order for him to visit a third country.

President Vladimir Putin signed his authorization for the pass before it was transmitted to the Oval Office in Washington last Friday morning,  according to the New York Times, “when the president gathered with a handful of top advisers in the Oval Office and consulted with others by phone.”    

The newspaper also reported the Russian terms required Biden’s signed undertaking in advance that no US military or civilian aircraft would enter Ukrainian airspace during the 24-hour duration of the safe conduct pass. The New York Times confirmed this detail, claiming “American military planes were spotted hovering in eastern Poland near the border during the trip, but officials said they never entered Ukrainian airspace out of concern that it would be taken as the sort of direct American intervention that Mr. Biden has avoided.” 

CBS News has reported the National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, as confirming the application to the Kremlin and the receipt of the reply several hours before Biden agreed to make his trip to the Ukraine. “’We did notify the Russians that President Biden would be traveling to Kyiv,’ Sullivan told CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes. ‘We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes. And because of the sensitive nature of those communications, I won’t get into how they responded or what the precise nature of our message was, but I can confirm that we provided that notification.’”  

This is the first time White House officials have publicly confirmed accepting Putin’s word on a diplomatic, military, or security issue.

Biden responded in Kiev with a personal attack on Putin: “Putin thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided,” Biden said. “He thought he could outlast us.  I don’t think he’s thinking that right now.  God knows what he’s thinking, but I don’t think he’s thinking that.  But he’s just been plain wrong.  Plain wrong. And one year later, the evidence is right here in this room.  We stand here together.”  

The record of the White House-Kremlin exchange for Biden’s propusk also reveals Putin’s willingness to accept Biden’s word. But four days later on February 21, in his speech to the Federal Assembly, Putin declared:  “The concepts of honour, trust, and decency are not for them…[nor] of [their] total, unprincipled lies.”  

The Russian press has not reported the Putin propusk. But there is speculation in Moscow the clash of public statements and the contradiction between them and the private safe conduct agreement are a sign of secret negotiations on armistice terms  between the Americans and Russians, which Biden also promised Putin to put to Ukrainian officials in Kiev.  

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Dutch Government didn’t intend to close its investigation of the MH17 shoot-down with the public report and press conference of the Joint Investigation Team on February 8.  That was a curtain raiser. It is definitely not the final curtain.  

The Dutch are continuing their European Court of Human Rights case against Russia which Prime Minister Mark Rutte started in July 2020.  

The Dutch are also joining with the US and the European Union to prepare what they say will be an international criminal tribunal against Russia, sponsored by either the United Nations or by the European Commission. This scheme was first announced by the European Commission president, the German Ursula von der Leyen, on November 30 last.   The scheme was explicitly promoted last week in Germany by US Vice President Kamala Harris and the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky.  

The court proceedings to date and the von der Leyen proposal have created a tangle of illegalities, conflict of laws, and contradictions between what the Dutch judges have claimed to be the law in their guilty convictions in the MH 17 case, and the judgement of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in their innocence verdict when the killing of civilians was done by the United States Air Force.  

One law for the US and the NATO member states to prosecute and to judge; quite another law for Russia, China and India to defend. The Axis versus the Tricontinental Alliance.

This is what the Dutch and ICTY verdicts have already demonstrated. The doctrine of “functional co-perpetration” the Dutch prosecutors and judges called it in the MH17 case.  They meant guilt by association – that’s association with Russians — when the evidence of association was fabricated in secret by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the Dutch prosecutors, and tested in secret hearings in front of secret judges. The chain of evidence custody, admissibility, cross-examination of witnesses without duress or bribery, and proof beyond reasonable doubt – the legal standards required in the courts of civilized states – don’t exist across the line of contact between the Axis and the Alliance.

Repeating the doctrine, making Russia and Russians (Chinese, Indians) synonymous with culpability in war crime – this is the intention and future plan of politicians like Rutte,  von der Leyen, and Harris.  The immediate outcome is that across the front lines of the war in Europe, there is no law. Not even the law of war and the Geneva Conventions.

In such a state of international lawlessness –- aka “the rules-based international order” in Axis-speak — there are lies to justify paying for the guns to open up and to identify their targets.

Listen now to Gorilla Radio, unpaid, unarmed, but with the swiftness of a nerve agent in reaching the brain, as Chris Cook opens each of the big lies, and the discussion reveals the truth.  

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by Editor - Monday, February 20th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow, and George Eliason, Donetsk
  @bears_with

Seymour Hersh, a US journalist, has just broadcast his defence of a plan by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to sabotage President Joseph Biden’s re-election campaign before it gets under way.

In a German video podcast from Germany, Hersh has made a string of telltale mistakes of fact at the same time as he has attacked those journalists who have been following up his report of February 8, investigating errors Hersh has been asked to correct in his follow-up. Instead, according to Hersh’s new publication, he and his sources have “le[ft] enough breadcrumbs for them to be able to write as a couple already have, ‘Oh this couldn’t have happened because…’ So we took care of them.” Click to read:   Min. 14:45.

The reporters whom Hersh took care of, those who have published endorsements of his initial report, have been misled.

Hersh concluded the new interview with his personal endorsement of CIA sources who, he reports,  have criticized Biden and his White House and State Department allies “for choosing to keep you [Germany] cold for their short-range political [re-election goals]… That horrified [them].” Hersh added:  “I’m talking about people who are intensely loyal to the United States. Intensely loyal. And they understand – and in the CIA it is understood… even in that community it’s appalling that he [Biden] chose to keep Europe cold” (Min 31-32).

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by Editor - Sunday, February 19th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Kinetic lesson learning is a euphemism for what military and political commanders learn from mistakes, miscalculations, misjudgements, and misfortunes – their own, and their adversary’s. Kinetic is the newspeak; lesson learning, if it happens, is the reality.

A NATO military veteran has reviewed General P.R. Shankar’s detailed assessments of the Ukrainian war published yesterday.  The Indian artillery expert’s analysis has been appearing regularly in the Indian media. But Indian military experience has not been getting the attention it warrants in the North American and European press; there a handful of Swiss, German,  and US officers have been pitting their expertise against the mainstream media line.

The NATO military veteran’s views follow without editorial comment. The illustrations have been added for reader reference.

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 15th, 2023
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P.R. Shankar, Madras, with John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Indian Army has had more warfighting experience than the other world Powers on battlefields similar to the conditions of the Russian Special Military Operation against the NATO lines in the Ukraine. The Indian generals have also won more victories victories than the others with the combination of heavy artillery, tanks, infantry manoeuvre,  and air power now engaged between Russia and the US and NATO allies.

Coming out of this experience is a deep reserve of analyses and discussions, some of them open and public, by Indian officers who are now retired from active duty but who continue to advise and teach, and assist in the lessons which the Indian forces believe they must learn facing hostile states to the north and the west, as well as insurgency threats inside the country, and spilling over the eastern border.

To begin to understand how the Indian military views the war in Europe, Lieutenant General P.R. (Ravi) Shankar (lead image, right) has agreed to answer a series of questions. Shankar retired from the Indian Army as Director General of Artillery in October 2016.  Last July, he wrote a comparison between the Kargil War, won by Indian forces against Pakistan in May-July 1999,  and Russian operations in the Ukraine beginning on February 24, 2022.

 “Artillery is winning the war for Russia at this point in time,” Shankar wrote.   “Similarly in the period May-July in 1999, artillery won the war for India by pulverising Pakistani defence to smithereens in Kargil. The Indian artillery fired over 2,50,000 shells, bombs, and rockets during the Kargil conflict. Most of these were fired in an approximately 10-15 days period of intense fighting. 9,000 shells were fired on Tiger Hill alone when it was regained. During the peak period of assaults, on an average, each artillery battery fired over one round per minute for 17 days continuously. The Pakistanis were simply and overwhelmingly OUTGUNNED!  Such intense firing was seen only after the Second World War. After that war, it is only now in Ukraine that such intense firing is being witnessed. In fact, the Ukraine and Kargil wars bear a similarity of the Gunner stamp on the battlefield.”

“The importance and value of artillery has been reinforced manifold in the Ukraine war. The terrain conditions during the Kargil War in the Himalayas were almost like the muddy ‘Rasputitsa’ conditions in Ukraine.”

Shankar graduated from the National Defence Academy Khadakvasala, and from several higher Indian staff colleges and the US Navy’s Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey. Over his 40-year career he held many high command, staff and instructional appointments in the Army, and led Indian planners in the modernization of domestically produced artillery, including 155mm gun projects like the Dhanush howitzer,   the ultra-light M777 howitzer,   and the K9 Vajra;  as well as rocket and missile weapons such as the Pinaka,  and the BrahMos .  

Following his retirement, Shankar became a professor in the Aerospace Department of the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras.

Follow General Shankar at his website and Twitter.

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by Editor - Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Dutch police have just released US satellite photographs (lead images) purporting to reveal Russian truck transporters of BUK missile units at Millerovo and Kursk on July 18 and July 20, 2014, just hours and days after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

The new evidence, kept secret until now, confirms the US and NATO satellite capability to have recorded the scene of the MH17 shoot-down, before the alleged Russian missile launch; during the missile trajectory and detonation;  and in the minutes which followed when the aircraft cockpit, fuselage, engines and other parts were falling to earth.

The US satellite infra-red, photographic and other records of the July 17 evidence have never been revealed, however.

The two US satellite photographic images for July 18 and July 20 have now been published  as part of a final Dutch government attempt to show that the BUK missile battery and radar unit known as a BUK TELAR (transporter erector launcher and radar) had been withdrawn from the Ukraine across the border into Russia, after the alleged firing at MH17.

In the new presentation, however, the Dutch admit the satellite evidence has proved nothing. “In summary, the investigation was unable to establish what happened to the TELAR after it arrived in Russia,” the JIT now says.

By admitting this now, the Dutch, and indirectly the US Government, are intimating that their satellite evidence of the MH17 incident also proves nothing. In other words, there is no evidence from either the US or NATO that a Russian missile was fired at MH17, destroying the aircraft and killing all 298 people on board.  US officials who have claimed otherwise have been lying. The media reporting of these claims has been false.

Proof of nothing, when concealed, is evidence of cover-up.

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by Editor - Sunday, February 12th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In a single strike with a new naval weapon on Friday (lead image, left)  Russian forces have stopped the French plan to deliver tanks to the Ukrainian battlefront; triggered the replacement of Moldova’s prime minister; and tightened the siege on Odessa, accelerating the choice the city residents will make between Kiev  and Moscow.  

“The time has come for me to announce my resignation”, Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita (centre) said in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital, explaining that she had been unable to “manage so many crises caused by Russian aggression”.  

At almost the same time, over the Bering Sea off the Alaska coast, the White House and Pentagon announced that US fighter jets had shot down a small, unarmed object in the sky. The shoot-down, they said, followed after land, sea and aerospace defences had failed to identify the target after tracking it for 24 hours. “We have no further details about the object at this time,” US Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press briefer, revealed, “including any description of its capabilities, purpose, or origin.  The object was about the size of a small car.”  

The news of the two military operations and their strategic significance are analyzed in the first broadcast of “War of the Worlds”, the new TNT Radio show (right) by George Eliason and John Helmer.

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by Editor - Sunday, February 12th, 2023
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