By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

An international  platform for national upstarts to upstage each other – trained roosters clawing at each other in a cockpit surrounded by money bettors.

This comes every September when the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) holds what it calls High-Level Week and the General Debate.

Lame ducks can pretend to be roosters. For example, “I have a big decision to make”, President Donald Trump told the General Debate. “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?  Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly.”

Unnoticed outside the cockpit, there was a serious meeting between the Russian and US foreign ministers, Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio. Rubio’s official communiqué said how serious the meeting was by saying next to nothing.   Rubio’s earlier meeting with the Bolivian president was reported in a communiqué of 10 lines; with the Kenyan president, 9;  with the Italian foreign minister, 7; and with the Indian foreign minister, 6.   

In his press conference later, Rubio revealed nothing of what he had heard from Lavrov.  Instead, by repeating what Trump and Vladimir Zelensky have been repeating publicly and to each other,  ignoring Lavrov, Rubio aimed to conceal the change in Russia’s line which had been spelled out to the Americans.

This new thinking isn’t new for the Russians. But for Americans used to hearing President Vladimir Putin’s negotiators Kirill Dmitriev and Yury Ushakov do the  talking in private, it’s a problem Trump, Rubio and their associates have not been anticipating. They have been calculating on luring Putin to a summit meeting with Trump in Miami in mid-December, when the G20 summit conference is scheduled. Putin isn’t agreeing.

Rubio told the press after his meeting with Lavrov he’s not confident.  “That [meeting] hasn’t been discussed,” Rubio said. He was lying; Lavrov said so.  

“Look, the President of the United States,” said Rubio, “this President is willing to engage and meet with virtually anyone…In order to solve problems, you have to meet with people that you disagree with or the people that you might have some issues with.  So, we’ve invited President Putin to the G20.  We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage not just with the President but with other world leaders.  We hope that’s an invitation he’ll accept.  There’s an opportunity in December if that happens… the ideal would be a meeting in which there will be a result, an outcome, and a lot of that means there has to be a lot of work that goes into it beforehand.”   

Lavrov had just told Rubio what the Kremlin means by “beforehand work.”  Rubio hasn’t liked what he heard.

For a start, Lavrov told Rubio to his face that Trump will be a lame duck president in six weeks’ time, after the November 3 congressional election. “The parties also discussed preparation for the G20 events scheduled later this year,” Lavrov’s communiqué announced. That’s December 14-15, five weeks after the election. Lavrov and other Russian officials are waiting expectantly for that.  

“The Russian party,” Lavrov told Rubio, “emphasised the importance of normalising bilateral relations as soon as possible, in line with the agreements reached by the Russian and US presidents.” This is Lavrov’s reference to Trump’s summit meeting with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025, and the refusal since then on the American side, particularly by Rubio’s State Department,  to agree to any form of bilateral normalisation. Lavrov was telling Rubio that no deal with Trump has been honoured before Trump had lost any of his powers to his opponents in Congress, so no  deal can be expected after November 3.

Compared to the line Dmitriev and Ushakov have been telling the Americans that Putin has decided, Lavrov was saying there’s new thinking, new line.

In the podcast with Jamarl Thomas, recorded on Thursday morning, Washington, DC, time, the evidence is picked out of the cockpit noise from New York, and from the Lavrov communiqué explained word by word.

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by Editor - Thursday, September 24th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Greenland is to be the newest US and NATO drone and missile launcher against Russia.

According to the preamble of the agreement with Denmark and the Prime Minister of Greenland, signed by President Donald Trump on Tuesday (September 22), Russia is now an outsider in the Arctic region ruled by the US and NATO —   an “adversary” whose existence on land, sea, and air is a “strategic” threat and “security challenge”.

This Russian adversary in the region, but not of the region, is to be neutralized and counter-attacked by “planning, presence, exercises, and joint intelligence gathering.”

“Recognizing,” the treaty text declares,  “the irreplaceable role the United States military plays in the defense of the territory of Greenland now and in the future…[and] recognizing the security challenges in the Arctic and the High North posed by adversaries’ increased military activity and growing strategic interest in the region…[and] Recognizing the Parties’ shared interest in allowing the United States to have military access to the territory of Greenland to the extent necessary to defend the North Atlantic Treaty area, Greenland, and the American continent, including through establishment of a Golden Dome defense system,” Trump will now expand the US space war-fighting base on Greenland, build at least two new military bases, and establish an unlimited number of “unmanned military installations”.

In addition, the US will take control over all land, sea, and air movement on and around the island; regulate and direct all building construction, mining and economic activities; and run special CIA and military force operations “to counter espionage in Greenland.”  US personnel will be under US law, not local law, and by incorporating the 1951 US-Denmark pact, “nothing in this Agreement is to be interpreted as affecting command relationships.”  

This means direct US military rule of Greenland as a Russia war-fighting platform to a far greater degree than has been possible for the US and the NATO allies to achieve to date in the Ukraine.

Russia as the lead adversary, but also China and other non-NATO states, are to be barred from a “persistent presence”, not only of military forces but of investment in “Particularly Sensitive Sectors or Activities in the territory of Greenland (including the Territorial Waters).”  Greenland’s dominant export is fish and crustaceans; China is the island economy’s most valuable destination for exports and source of imports. Russia-bound fish exports were stopped on orders from the Danish government in 2022, after the Special Military Operation. Tourism is Greenland’s second largest revenue earner; that is now likely to be overtaken by American military spending on new construction, maintenance of existing facilities, and personnel.   

If the Greenlanders object, resist, and vote themselves to be an independent state, they won’t escape the US empire.

“In case Greenland exercises its right to self-determination to become independent, the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark and the Government of Greenland shall together ensure that the independent Greenlandic state will (i) agree to remain in NATO, including by applying to become a member if necessary, and (ii) affirmatively assume, as from the date of independence, all of the rights and obligations of the Kingdom of Denmark specified in this Agreement, including any implementation agreements or arrangements between the Parties, as well as the Defense Arrangements.”  

This is how the Trump White House is advancing against the Kremlin despite Trump claiming himself that on the Ukraine war front, he is set to negotiate a “deal.”  In a press conference with Vladimir Zelensky on Tuesday, he claimed: “I think they’re going to make a deal and I don’t want to say what the deal is. We talk about it a lot, including with President Putin, and I think something’s going to happen.”  

In the new podcast on The Red Pill Diaries with Rasheed Muhammad, we elaborate new thinking on how the war is going on the Ukraine front, the Arctic front, the Polish front, in the western propaganda media, and in the pro-Russia podcasts. Click to view or listen: https://www.youtube.com/live/juHtMR5UBKI?is=-Smuddb5zjXJupw0 

Would an escalation of Russian drone and missile attacks on NATO targets outside the Ukraine contribute to the root-cause and long-term security objectives of the Special Military Operation?

Unlikely is the answer: the Polish example is spelled out of how the remilitarization of the economy,  the establishment of new US force bases, fabrication of Russian invasion threats, and ingratiation of Trump are  serving the political ambition of Radosław Sikorski – currently the foreign minister and most popular candidate for the prime ministry — to become the head of government at the Polish elections next year.  With comparable domestic political dynamics illustrated in Germany, France, and the UK, it is a mistake to predict that direct Russian escalation on targets in those countries would deter their governments, military industrial complexes, political parties,  and voters from the present course.

by Editor - Thursday, September 24th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Blind man’s buff is an old game of parlour warfare in which the combatants try to tag the blind one, the buffer, and then hide. If they are caught, they are out of the game. The buffer wins when he’s tagged them all out. Hiding in plain sight, making deceptive noises to disguise their positions, are common tactics for staying in the game.

At the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, all the allies in the war against Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea are playing the game. The blindfold is tied across the eyes of the mainstream media, and also President Donald Trump’s.

Vladimir Zelensky tagged him on Tuesday afternoon. “I hope that we will end this war,” he said in front of the press, “and President Trump will help us to end this war. And I think that we needed to do as quick as possible, before winter.”  

“Before winter. Big thing, before winter,” Trump fell for the tag.

Endorsing the Zelensky regime and its drone operations against the Russian hinterland,  Trump added: “I think they’re going to make a deal and I don’t want to say what the deal is. We talk about it a lot, including with President Putin, and I think something’s going to happen. But certainly, they are very good fighters. Really, they can be proud of themselves regardless. We’ll see what happens, but very, very capable people, very capable leadership.”

Tagged by a British reporter, Trump said former Prime Minister Keir Starmer had been “too tough.” He then endorsed the successor, Andrew Burnham, to his face.  “I think he’s going to be good. I will say, he’s on your side very much…We are with you all the way, Mr. Prime Minister…[US-UK relations are] more up now than they were with your last prime minister.”  

Tagged to say why he doesn’t ban US exports of diesel to lower domestic prices, Trump played pretend. “Well, I’ve called for that too. I said, let’s not send out the diesel.”  That is not the presidential executive order that is required. The US oil lobby and Trump’s Energy Secretary are adamantly opposed to an executive order.  

In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, recorded on Tuesday morning before Trump’s afternoon meetings with Zelensky and Burnham, we discuss the game being played and take the blindfold off.  

The discussion anticipated Trump’s agreement with Denmark and Greenland for the new Arctic front against Russia.  “We are strengthening our common security, boosting our common deterrence, showing our adversaries who we are,” tagged Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, “and we are doing it together. Mr. President, you have been very clear, you don’t want adversaries to come too close…and with this deal, they are not. We are making sure that they will not be allowed to get any control or significant influence in Greenland. And we are making sure that more allies are present in the Arctic at the same time.”  

We were also broadcasting before Trump declared in his formal UN speech: “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?  Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East, or even the world. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to.”

“They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don’t realize is that I’m not running. I did that already and won in a landslide. We won in a giant landslide, and I’ll be here for two and a half years. The Republican Party is running and I’ll be helping them, but I am not running. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election. When it comes to Iran, it doesn’t even enter my mind.”

As all the taggers can see, Trump has knotted his blindfold tight.

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by Editor - Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

A new drone has appeared on the European battlefield.

With lightweight warhead and jet propulsion, it has almost unlimited range, and Circular Error Probability (CEP) of less than 10 millimetres. When it strikes the brain, it doesn’t kill or maim. It preserves the target’s motor functions but renders it senseless. That’s the battlefield medicine term for BS – brainwashed stupidity.

In statements just issued by Gennady Zyuganov (lead image, front), leader-for-life of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), and by Marine Le Pen (rear left) and Jordan Bardella (rear centre), leaders of the Rassemblement National (RN – National Rally), the leading opposition parties of Russia and France have announced to their voters that they should abandon their minds before they too are hit by new drones.

In his briefing on Monday on the results of the Russian parliamentary election, Zyuganov also warned Communist voters against skepticism and criticism — “not to distort the election results with shoddy work.”   

In a declaration to French voters which Le Pen and Bardella issued on Saturday, September 19,  they attacked Russia for escalating drone incidents in Germany, Poland and “several European countries”; for disinformation operations “seeking to make support for Ukraine appear as the cause of the escalation they themselves are orchestrating”; for “hostile action” “against the interests of France and the nations of Europe”, and “to directly or indirectly dictate our country’s policy through intimidation, threats, destabilization or psychological pressure”.  

This is the first such declaration by RN, which leads the current polls for the French presidential election next April with about 34%.  This is ten percentage points ahead of the French left coalition of socialists, communists, and greens, known as the Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front, NFP).

The switch to support remilitarization of Europe for permanent war against Russia is also taking place inside Germany’s leading vote-getter, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) led by Sven Tritschler (rear right), now deputy party leader.

In the new podcast with Pelle Neroth Taylor in Stockholm, the discussion provides headgear  protection against the new drone attacks and a brain health check for viewers and listeners. Click to start.  

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by Editor - Monday, September 21st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Nothing succeeds so consistently and so badly at changing the hearts, minds, and votes of people than bombing them.

It’s a conclusion that the 316 volumes of the US Strategic Bombing Survey of 1944-45  came to about the enemies of that time, the Germans and Japanese, very reluctantly.  

In announcing the victory of the United Russia party (Единая Россия, ER) after the weekend election, Dmitry Medvedev (lead image, centre*), former president, deputy head of the Security Council, and ER party chairman, made the point emphatically. “Over the past few days the enemy has made titanic, colossal efforts to undermine the outcome of the election. But as has been rightly said, this has only served to unite the voters, to unite our people. This, I suppose, is the most important outcome of the election.”  

This has been the lesson since the Italian empire launched the first air bombing against the Libyans in 1911, followed by the French empire in Syria and Morocco, the British empire in India, Afghanistan,  and Iraq, and then against the Russia (with poison gas munitions) in 1919.   Now it’s the US empire against Iran and Israel against Gaza.

But in the latest versions, this isn’t strategic bombing at all – not the application of air weapons for the deterrence, destruction and defeat of the warfighting capacities of the target state. Instead, it’s exterminism – the destruction of the people on the other side by decapitation and genocide.

This exterminism has always been the tacit objective of bombing by the empires aiming to take territory and its resources, eliminate the people on the ground and in the way. Imperial bombers like Winston Churchill, Arthur Harris, his chief of Bomber Command, and Curtis LeMay, the US Strategic Air Command chief, were explicit in their advocacy of exterminism.

The failure of exterminism in the mouths and warfighting operations of Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, their western allies, financiers and armourers, isn’t readily admitted now. In time it will be. But Trump’s miscalculation over this weekend – implemented in Kiev by the Anglo-American staffs advising and assisting the record swarms of drones attacking Russia during the three-day election – this is too obvious to miss.

Trump missed it. He spent Friday and Sunday striking golf balls.  He also had a telephone conversation with Vladimir Zelensky on Sunday: “An important conversation, and we got through a lot,” Zelensky announced. “We agreed to meet in New York, and this meeting could change a lot. There is diplomatic momentum.”    Trump’s approval of the escalation of attacks on Russian targets is implied in this Washington report.  

Trump also tweeted that he has redesigned his “Triumphal Arch” into a firing platform “to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage. There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World. Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, D.C., IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all!”  

This is also what the US and NATO are redesigning for the Ukraine – exterminism reversed, a firing platform like nowhere in the world, a permanent warfighter against Russia without a people.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, there were US and NATO-guided 1,951 drone and 8 cruise missile attacks on Russia September 19-20, and were shot down; no count of the additional number of drones striking targets has been reported.  This is a one-night record for Churchill-Harris-LeMay type warfighting operations against Russia. Roughly one-quarter of the drones were fired at Moscow.

The Russian polling results realised — after the count of two-thirds of the ballots — indicate that voter turnout has risen to 56.7%; this is well ahead of the pre-election pollster forecasts of between 51% and 53%. It is a 10% increase over the pre-war State Duma election in 2021; a 20% increase over voter turnout in the Duma election of 2016. United Russia (ER) has increased its proportional vote to 57.7%, up 16% on the last election. The leading opposition party, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), has fallen by 27% to 13.8%. The aggregate vote of the four main opposition parties is 35.8%; this compares with 39.2% in 2021.

The extent of voter opposition to Kremlin domestic policies has not diminished. But under enemy attack, the Russian voter has endorsed the priority of military escalation. “In order to disrupt the democratic expression of will by the citizens of the Russian Federation in the elections to the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Kiev regime attempted a large‑scale attack on the territory of the Russian Federation on September 19 and 20 of this year, using UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle] and Flamingo cruise missiles…The attempt at a large‑scale attack on Moscow failed. The enemy did not achieve its goals. In response to attacks by the Kiev regime on civilian facilities on Russian territory, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will continue and intensify strikes with precision-guided weapons against military facilities in Kiev.”  

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by Editor - Sunday, September 20th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

From which direction does the sun come up each day?

That was one of the questions in the battery of tests which was  used on patients to diagnose the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. An answer confusing east and west was a symptom of that brain disease.

The question comes up today as a test of that other brain disease, equally terminal, known as brainwashing.

Israeli mappers, assured that their god placed them in his chosen land in the middle of the world, are uncomfortable with the regional term “Middle East” because it places them uncomfortably surrounded by their enemies, the Arabs, the Iranians, and the Turks.  The alternative term, “West Asia”, is also discomfiting because it places god’s holy land offside —  as if the Jewish god were residing in Beijing,  Delhi or Washington, DC, and was looking askance when the wars were fought that put,  and continue to keep,  Israel on the map.

For the time being, the gods who reside in those imperial cities insist on keeping the term “Middle East” in English, 中东 (Zhōngdōng) in Chinese, and मध्य पूर्व क्षेत्र (Madhya Poorv Kshetra) in Hindi.  

In this month’s declaration by BRICS, there is only one reference to the “Global South”. On the map for global southerners that should replace the Middle East as the Midcentre – that is, east of the Mediterranean (this “Middle Earth” term hasn’t been replaced yet);  south of Central Asia, north of Africa, equidistant between Europe and America. Instead, the BRICS declaration in English presented  the Middle East and West Asia as equivalents:  “We express deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in Middle East/West Asia .”   

The Russian geopolitical term, Ближневосточный регион (blizhnevostochny region) means the near east, as distinct from the far east (Дальний Восток, Dalniy Vostok), which for Russians includes India, China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea. At the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a fortnight before the BRICS summit, the Russian for “Near East” was used in the final declaration reference to the Middle East. “West Asia” (Западная Азия) is nowhere in Russian.

Everyone is agreed that the sun continues to come up in the east, but the gods of the empires don’t agree.  On September 1, President Vladimir Putin called them, not gods, but “sharks of imperialism”.  But not even the Russian Communist Party, which originated the term in the expressions of Lenin and Stalin, has quoted or discussed Putin’s mention since he said it.

Still, if it’s the sharks who are trying to change the map of the war fronts, then Russian resistance, self-defence,  and allied defence against the geographical expansion of the exterminating armies and navies of the US and Israel —  “knocking the teeth out of the sharks”, as Putin recommended —  should refer to the sharks of the Middle East and the Blizhny Vostok (Ближний Восток).

In the new podcast with Fiorella Isabel and Vanessa Beeley, recorded on Friday morning Middle East time, we plot the shark tracks on the map, and discuss what is to be done to knock their teeth out.

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by Editor - Friday, September 18th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When President Donald Trump blames Vladimir Zelensky for the diesel crisis in the US, he is more than scapegoating the wrong man. He is revealing he has no October Surprise – no peace deal for the Russia-Ukraine war, no peace deal with Iran,  no peace deal with Yemen – to save his majority in the US Congress on November 3.

Asked by a reporter on September 13 if  the Russia-Ukraine war “could end sooner”, Trump was evasive, replying: “The problem I have with Ukraine and Russia is that, you know, a lot of the diesel comes, diesel oil comes, and that’s the one where there’s a, a big up, uh, it comes from Russia. And the Russia just, uh, plants are being hit by Ukraine. And I’ve asked President Zelensky not to hit the diesel plants, refineries.”  

Trump was repeating himself. The day before on September 12, he had said: “Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. Wait a minute. You want, can I talk? Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel ’cause he’s causing a shortage of diesel fuel. This isn’t done by the Middle East, this is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine. So, uh, we spoke to Mr. Zelensky about it. There are plenty of other targets. Don’t hit diesel fuel because that’s hurting, that’s hurting the world. We don’t want him to hit diesel fuel.” 

Zelensky ignored him, encouraged by his US target intelligence advisers, his CIA and Pentagon liaison officers.  

On September 15, the Ukrainian General Staff announced they had carried out a  new drone strike on the Syzran oil refinery in Samara.  It was the fourth such attack this year on Syzran, a regional fuel producer owned by Rosneft.

As Russia had stopped diesel exports on July 8, and the volume of diesel produced at Syzran is small, the Ukrainian strike will have no impact on falling diesel inventories and accelerating diesel prices in the US. Nor can Trump’s public blame for Zelensky save him from the rising tide of votes against the Republican candidates, especially in Senate battleground states which are super-sensitive to the cost of diesel like Maine and Alaska.

One reason for Trump’s failure is that the world’s largest exporter of diesel is the US itself.   His  scapegoating conceals his protection of war and price profiteering on the part of the lead US diesel refiners and exporters – Marathon, Valero, Phillips, and ExxonMobil. They have been exporting diesel abroad in preference to selling it at home because the price profit is greater.  Their share prices are zooming as a result – Marathon by 128% in the year to date; Valero by 152%, Phillips by 102%, and ExxonMobil by 51%.

The second reason is that Iran by halting oil tanker shipments out of the Persian Gulf at Hormuz, and Ansar Allah by doing the same to Saudi shipments out of the Red Sea at Bab el Mandeb, have cut an even larger share of the diesel export market globally than the US share – fractionally, about one-third compared to one-seventh.

The third reason is related: as both Russia and China are withholding their diesel exports for the protection of their domestic markets, India, the second largest refiner and exporter of diesel after the US, is determined to import as much Russian and Iranian crude as it can get past the US and NATO sanctions. Even so, the principal Indian refineries are already running at well over their production capacities: they cannot produce more. The US and NATO war against Russian tankers on the high seas and the US threat of secondary sanctions against India for buying Russian oil will have to be suspended.  

In this way,  Trump’s wars are not winning abroad but they are defeating him at home.

The October Surprise, the term of invention in US politics for swinging undecided voters in the last weeks before November Election Day,  remains a Trump White House hope, supported in statements from Kiev  and also from Moscow.

 In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, aired on Monday afternoon ET, we discuss why this time round,  Trump’s vulnerabilities and the number of wars he is fighting make a surprise unlikely to be a rescue.

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by Editor - Tuesday, September 15th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Summit meetings are always circus rings. BRICS India 2026, just concluded in Delhi, is no different from BRICS Brasil 2025 nor from BRICS China 2027.

There’s another political constant. The BRICS summit leaders, especially President Vladimir Putin, President Xi Jinping, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, aim to be a combination of ringmaster and elephant, never the clown.

But here’s the political variable, the counter-factual, the What-if question:

If BRICS were an anti-imperialist collective, as Putin recently emphasized for Russia to “knock the teeth out of the imperialist sharks”,  what should the new BRICS Declaration have said, and on the evidence of what the Declaration did say and didn’t, who has turned out to be the ringmaster, the elephant and the clown?

From the point of view of the audience – that’s you — is there a difference between them?

In the new Reason2Resist podcast, recorded on Monday morning, Moscow and Athens time, Dimitri Lascaris and I go beyond the clowning – smiles and hand-holding – and record what the ringmaster announced and what the elephant did with his feet.

We also record whose teeth are getting knocked out on the Ukraine war front, the Persian Gulf front, the Yemen front, and the Lebanon front, and we make a dental count of the teeth remaining inside the jaws of President Donald Trump and his allies, Mohammed Bin Salman, Marshal Asim Munir, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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by Editor - Monday, September 14th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Starting at 10:30 Moscow, Athens and Beirut time on Saturday morning, Dimitri Lascaris hosted the Reason2Resist podcast to discuss the Ansarallah defeat of Saudi air and ground forces at the Bab el Mandeb gateway to the Red Sea, the Saudi coastline, and Egypt’s lifeline, the Suez Canal.   

Not since the British, French and Israeli forces attacked Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and the Suez Canal in July 1956,   and took the shipping artery for themselves,  has there been a comparable strike in the Middle East, only this time it’s the anti-imperialist forces which have won the tactical and strategic victory.   

Seventy years ago, the Soviet Politburo warned it was ready to intervene on the Arab side with naval, air, rocket, and nuclear forces. The Kremlin was backing Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s president and figurehead for Arab nationalism throughout Middle East, for control of the Canal.

A week ago on September 1, President Vladimir Putin warned that “the collective West, for its part, was assigned a specific definition in the Soviet era, which remains current to this day – the sharks of imperialism…if anyone attempts to drag us down the food chain and devour us, to consume us, they would be well advised to expect their teeth to be broken. And Russia stands ready to do precisely that, despite the insatiable appetites and ever-sharpening teeth of these sharks.”  

Beware of imperialist sharks dressed in tuna fish suits, and vice versa — the podcast warns.  

The discussion ran for just over an hour, concluding at 11:40 Moscow time. At that time the BRICS leaders, including Putin, President Xi Jinping of China, President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, and Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince representing the United Arab Emirates were meeting to finalize their statement of agreement and sink their differences.

At 13:50 Moscow time (16:20 Delhi time), the Kremlin released the statement. Titled “the New Delhi Declaration: Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”, it runs for 140 paragraphs and over 54 pages in Russian.    The official English-language version was published by the Indian External Affairs Ministry.   

Read this final BRICS document in retrospect now of the podcast discussion of the shark paragraphs. These were identified and quoted as Paragraphs 19, 25 and 26 of the document which had been negotiated by the BRICS foreign ministers last May, along with what were footnoted then as “member reservations”.   Indian officials were reporting there were still arguments over the wording of these provisions in the overnight and morning hours before the summit leaders convened in the early afternoon, local time.   

In the outcome, Paragraph 19 of May 15, 2026, opposing Trump Administration war sanctions against Russia and Iran, secondary sanctions against India, China and other states trading with Iran and Russia, and President Donald Trump’s personal tariff wars, has turned into Paragraph 22 of the final BRICS communiqué. There has been no significant change.

Paragraph 25 of the May version, discussed in the podcast, has now turned into Paragraph 33 without significant modification of meaning. The BRICS attack on Israel’s genocide has been preserved.

Paragraph 26 of the May document had supported “unifying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under the Palestinian Authority, and reaffirmed the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine. They called on the international community to support the Palestinian Authority in undergoing reforms to fulfil the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for independence and statehood.”  This wording was an unusual intervention in internal Palestinian politics in support of the Fatah faction and the head of the Palestine National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas been received officially many times in Moscow; Hamas officials were received in Moscow in October 2023, just after the Gaza war began, and in January 2024.

Abbas had been promoted by the UAE in the May BRICS foreign ministers’ document. But because this was hostile towards Hamas, Iran opposed it.  Iran has now succeeded in removing the paragraph altogether.

In May Russian negotiators had agreed to drop references to the Ukraine war which had been included in last year’s BRICS summit agreement. In the multiple references to terrorism in the new BRICS agreement, India included specific identification of the Pakistan-backed attack in Kashmir in April 2025, which triggered Operation Sindoor, India’s short and successful war against Pakistan. However, there was no Russian mention of Ukrainian war terrorism nor Iranian mention of Israeli and US war terrorism.

The Russians joined the Iranians in attacking Israeli, Turkish,  and American occupation of Syria since December 2024: “[Para 31] They urged Syria to firmly oppose all forms of terrorism and extremism and take concrete actions to respond to concerns of the international community about terrorism. They further reaffirmed the necessity of the withdrawal of occupying forces from Syria.”  

There was no expression of BRICS solidarity with Iran in its defence against the US, Israeli and Gulf sheikh attacks. Days earlier on September 1, that had been agreed in the declaration of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit meeting in Kyrgyzstan “condemning the military strikes on the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran…[and] reaffirming  their support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Putin had also expressed Russian solidarity in his meeting with Pezeshkian at the SCO summit. He said then: “Russia is standing in full solidarity with the people of Iran. We admire your courage and resilience in your fight for your national interests. Please convey my regards and words of sincere support to Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei… During this difficult period, we try to render the necessary support to you. We have discussed your needs with you and continue to provide the goods and commodities you require.”  

Sources in Delhi deny that hostility between Iranian and Indian officials since Modi and Foreign Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar declared themselves on Israel’s side in the war last February,  has continued into the Delhi meetings. “The Iranians are very comfortable with the Indians”, one source has claimed. The Indian media have published a picture of Modi holding Pezeshkian’s hand in a Delhi photo op.  

Modi’s communiqué after meeting Pezeshkian in Delhi revealed that he is withholding the solidarity with Iran he had agreed to when he signed the SCO declaration. In Jaishankar’s version of the new meeting with Iran’s president,  the war against Iran was described as “challenging circumstances”. This communiqué repeated India’s support for the code phrase,  “safeguarding freedom of navigation and commerce, and the safety and well-being of seafarers”   — that’s the US and NATO line against Iran on the Strait of Hormuz.

Click to view or listen to the podcast.

by Editor - Saturday, September 12th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Broadcast live today from 07:15 Eastern Time (US), click to watch or listen:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIk6TSrF-OA 

The two documents that are now the pointers for the outcome of the BRICS summit on Saturday are the Foreign Ministers’ statement of last May 15 and the Bishkek Declaration of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), issued on September 1.  For the time being, there are only two publications of the Bishkek Declaration, one in Russian and one in Chinese. There is no official English translation; the translation discussed in the podcast with Jamarl can be read by podcast viewers through an auto-translation.

by Editor - Friday, September 11th, 2026
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