by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Pandemic or no pandemic, misery always and everywhere craves company.    After he had been running a high fever with diarrhoea and other symptoms, scribbling notes on the progression of his illness —  London’s  typhus plague of 1623 —  John Donne not only wrote, famously,   “no man is an island,  entire […]

by Editor - Sunday, May 24th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with A London barrister named Michael Mansfield (lead image, left) and solicitor Irene Nembhard (top right) have moved one step closer to claiming a multi-million pound payment from the British Government on their allegation that the British intelligence and security services had been negligent in protecting Dawn Sturgess from a Russian state […]

by Editor - Thursday, May 21st, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with One day after Australia was defeated at the World Health Assembly in a joint effort with the Trump Administration to attack China, and after Beijing retaliated, calling the Australian Government a US puppet, a joke, and chewing-gum on China’s shoe, Australia has telephoned Moscow for help. In a call initiated by […]

by Editor - Wednesday, May 20th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with A coordinated attempt by the Australian and US governments to blame China for the corona virus, and to attack the World Health Organisation (WHO) for covering this up at China’s behest,  failed when the World Health Assembly (WHA) voted on Tuesday afternoon. The terms of the Covid-19 resolution adopted by the […]

by Editor - Tuesday, May 19th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with All the well-known plague novels make the same mistake. So unexpected, inexplicable, incurable, and comprehensively lethal was the plague for those telling its story, their conclusion has been that there can be no getting back to normal.   Not so in Russia. “Over the past week”, President Vladimir Putin declared last […]

by Editor - Sunday, May 17th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Cardiology doesn’t expire when people die of heart attacks. Just so, no one should expect that when a man dies of the corona virus, or hundreds or thousands of men, the sociology of their pre-existing health, race, ethnicity, income, education, ideology – in short, their class in the old- fashioned meaning […]

by Editor - Thursday, May 14th, 2020
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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 Roula Khalaf (lead image, right) is the only editor of a major London newspaper about whom next to nothing important is obvious, not even her name. She was appointed last year by Tsuneo Kita (left), chairman of Nikkei, the Japanese media group and owner of the paper, to succeed Lionel Barber […]

by Editor - Sunday, May 10th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with It’s embarrassing to be caught publicly with a case of the crabs, especially if you are a media celebrity. That is, unless you are in the business of selling your celebrity status to advertise other people’s crabs, not your own. This is the case of Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite from St. […]

by Editor - Wednesday, May 6th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with After the episode of the sermon by the Jesuit priest, blaming the plague on the sinfulness of his congregation – “a calamity has befallen you, my brethren; you have deserved it…no earthly power – not even, note this well , vain human science – can shield you from His hand as […]

by Editor - Tuesday, May 5th, 2020
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