- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow Toward foreign enemies, for the first time in a generation, Russian officials have suspended talk of warnings, serious consequences, gravest consequences, red lines, cross-hairs,  and proportionate response;  they have allowed force to speak instead.     This supersedes the evidence of position, manoeuvre, prior communication, and international law, details of which are […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow With a recently reported circulation of almost 300,000, Private Eye of London is the largest-selling serious affairs magazine in the United Kingdom; it is also the last investigative publication in the country in which truth is the standard.  Its editor, Ian Hislop, is paid to clown on British Broadcasting Corporation radio […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow A British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) film, broadcast on Thursday evening, has presented the first direct evidence of Wiltshire Police Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, the investigating officer who  inspected the home of Sergei and Yulia Skripal about eleven hours after they were exposed, allegedly to the nerve agent Novichok sprayed on their […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow The US and the UK have claimed that Interpol’s vote yesterday for a retired South Korean policeman to be the new president of the global police organization was a convincing defeat of the Russian candidate who was rejected by a two-thirds majority of Interpol’s member states. “Blow to Russia” headlined the […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow The outflow of private and corporate capital from Russia is accelerating. Pressured by the cutoff of incoming investment and bank loans, the closure of Russian depositor bank accounts in Europe, and the threat of asset confiscation in the UK – all ordered by US sanctions with  threats of more to come […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow President Vladimir Putin has announced a change of Russian policy in Syria after disclosing it to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  when they met in Paris on November 11. Netanyahu has reported in Israel that what Putin said was “very important”. With Netanyahu, Putin was not accompanied by Russian officials […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By Marios Evriviades*, Athens Can a man gasping for breath as he is is forcibly suffocated with a plastic bag over his head,   articulate his survival problem multisyllabically with a medicalized request to which he invited his killers to consent? “I’m suffocating… Take this bag off my head, I’m claustrophobic”.

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow In medieval sheep-herding practice it was customary to hang a bell around a single sheep in the flock to alert the shepherd to where they were heading. The shepherd used to castrate the bellwether ram first, so his bell didn’t ring needlessly. Doubts about his leadership of the flock are natural. […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow The Australian head of state, a retired army general, has told an Australian reporter that when he was placed next to President Vladimir Putin (lead image, centre) during the centenary World War I armistice ceremonies in Paris on Sunday, he was sorry protocol disallowed his striking the Russian president . “It […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow Sisto Malaspina was killed on Friday outside his Pellegrinis coffee bar in Melbourne, Australia. The police are calling it a terrorist incident related to the war in Syria. More than fifty years ago, Sisto taught me why nobody in Italy, or in the rest of the world, could make espresso and […]