Crooked Bough News Round-up

— IRAN WAR CRACK-UP – CHINA DECLARES  “NON-ALLIANCE” WITH RUSSIA, KREMLIN ANNOUNCES “NO-TERMS” TELEPHONE CALL WITH PEZESHKIAN

 

at 3/12/26 12:46am

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Iran has made one point very clear to the United States. It will negotiate on terms for a “permanent peace” but not for a ceasefire. It will fight on against US troops if they land, against US bases in the Arab states, and against US vessels at sea; it will keep []

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— BONFIRE OF THE GRAND STRATEGIES – SO LONG NETANYAHU, TRUMP, MODI, XI, PUTIN

 

at 3/11/26 12:52am

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The caution which the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates showed in his method of argument by posing questions instead of answers didn’t protect him in the end from Athenian conviction and the death penalty. That old, scarred, but honourable soldier went to trial and lost. He was condemned for impiety – introducing []

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— INDIA APPLIES FOR, RECEIVES US REWARD FOR SUPPORTING WAR AGAINST IRAN – CHINA ANNOUNCES WELCOME FOR TRUMP ON MARCH 31  

 

at 3/9/26 12:18am

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The loss of confidence between Russia and India has been growing rapidly since Prime Minister Narendra Modi declaredhis support for Israel three days before the Israeli-American attack on Iran began with the assassination of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. To signal Russian hostility, Denis Anpilov, the Russian ambassador to India, went []

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— THE SINKING SHIP PROBLEM IN THE WAR OF US, ISRAEL, INDIA AND NATO VERSUS IRAN, RUSSIA AND CHINA

 

at 3/5/26 10:24pm

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The problem is that rats can leave a sinking ship but they cannot return if their ship has already sunk. They must surrender instead or drown. This must have been what President Vladimir Putin meant when he instructed his spokesman Dmitry Peskov to announce on Thursday afternoon, March 5: “Moscow has []

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— BLACK VALENTINE FROM GRU TO THE IRANIAN SECURITY SERVICES

 

at 3/4/26 9:38pm

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with A black valentine is a communication between intelligence services with a message that looks well-meant but is the reverse in fact. Between friendly, cooperating or allied intelligence services, like the Russian and Iranian, the black valentine is a criticism. A sharp one. Yevgeny Krutikov, a former Russian military intelligence (GRU) officer []

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— HOW RUSSIA COUNTS THE BENEFITS AND THE RISKS OF THE IRAN WAR

 

at 3/3/26 11:43pm

By John Helmer, Moscow@bears_with Russian oil and gas producers and the state, which taxes their revenues for the budget, will gain from the war on three conditions: if the closure of the Strait of Hormuz remains a short supply shock; if war damage to Arab and Iranian oil and gas fields, pipelines, port terminals, and []

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— THE KREMLIN ANNOUNCEMENT

 

at 3/3/26 11:11pm

By John Helmer, Moscow@bears_with The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has announced: “Even as we continue to highly appreciate those mediation efforts being provided by the United States we rely on ourselves only and it is us who defend our own interests.” As for the US “mediation efforts” – read Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner []

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— ON THE BRINK OF ISRAELI NUCLEAR ATTACK ON IRAN — TRUMP JUST SAID SO

 

at 3/1/26 2:58pm

By John Helmer, Moscow@bears_with In investigating war and peace, life and death, truth and lies, innocence and guilt, there is hindsight bias and there is confirmation bias. Hindsight bias occurs when, with the evidence of what has just happened, the investigator is sure he anticipated the outcome from the beginning and is convinced he knew []

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— WHAT IF RUSSIA AND CHINA HAD ANNOUNCED ON FRIDAY THAT THEY WOULD INTERVENE TOGETHER TO PROTECT IRAN AGAINST UNPROVOKED AGGRESSION, DEFEND INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE UN CHARTER, PREVENT REGIONAL WAR, MAINTAIN STABILITY IN GLOBAL ENERGY SUPPLIES

 

at 3/1/26 12:37pm

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with At about noon, Moscow time, on Friday February 27, the Russian Security Council met in a video session. The regular weekly meeting of the Councilis often at the end of the week. The Foreign and Defense Ministers, Sergei Lavrov and Andrei Belousov, and the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, []

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— THE UNEXPLAINED REASONS FOR INDIA TO HAVE MADE THIS OPERATIONAL,  STRATEGIC AND IDEOLOGICAL MOVE NOW  

 

at 2/28/26 12:12am

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with In order to understand what Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar did in Israel, start by reading Modi’s Knesset speech here. Then calculate the weight of these Indian numbers: There are 1.4 billion Indians; the Jews of India count for less than 5,000. The number of []

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— THE STD PROBLEM!

 

at 2/26/26 12:26am

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with President Vladimir Putin has an STD problem, according to sources in a position to know. That’s Succession Testing Day – September 20, when Russian voters will go to the polls to elect a new State Duma. Between then and now, Kremlin political strategists believe they must stop the downward decline they []

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— INDIA ANNOUNCES ITS SEPARATE PEACE WITH ISRAEL

 

at 2/25/26 2:49am

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Before the last of the great Arab strategists was murdered by the Americans, British and French – that was Muammar Qaddafi in October 2011 – he met with an Indian delegation at Sirte, in the Libyan desert. This is what the Indians recordedQaddafi telling them: “Imperialism does not want India as []

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— NARENDRA MODI IS MAKING THE MELIAN MISTAKE

 

at 2/24/26 2:59pm

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Imperialism in the mind happens when a superiority complex turns into a national pathology of racial supremacism and is carved into stone tablets as the constitution of the Chosen People, Make American Great Again, the Final Solution, etc. It always comes a cropper. Almost two and half thousand years ago, the []

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— THE NEW NAVALNY POISON – THIS SWEDISH DISINFORMATION IS A BRITISH LIE

 

at 2/23/26 8:49pm

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The Swedish Government has admitted it has no direct evidence of the cause of Alexei Navalny’s death – only British Government hearsay. In a series of email exchanges last week, the Swedish Foreign Ministry has revealed that its military laboratories and scientific establishments have not received post-mortem samples of Navalny’s tissues. []

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— THE PUTIN PLAN FOR CUBA AND THE CASTRO FAMILY – MORE GORBACHEV, DEFINITELY NOT KHRUSHCHEV

 

at 2/20/26 1:13am

By John Helmer, Moscow@bears_with President Vladimir Putin will not run the gauntlet President Donald Trump has established around Cuba with the Russian Navy to escort Russian-flagged tankers delivering crude oil and petroleum products to Havana. When Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla sat down in the Kremlin on Thursday to ask for more “solidarity, firmly []

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— THE BUG IN THE NAVALNAYA FROG POISON STORY

 

at 2/19/26 12:09am

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The Ecuadorian Poison Dart frog, Epipedobates anthonyi,doesn’t produce the deadly epibatidine poison out of personal spite. Indigestion, more like. According to British toxicologists, epibatidine is refined by the frog’s innards from precursor chemicals, also toxins, which come from the flies, ants, beetles, and other bugs which live in the same environment []

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— THE PESKOVITES ARE DESPERATE AS PUTIN PLACES HIS BIGGEST BET

 

at 2/17/26 9:31pm

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Constipation causes desperation in middle age; incontinence causes desperation in old age. The Peskovite faction in Moscow is showing political desperation, and also the symptoms of its age. The public attacks by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the points of the plan for US-Russia economic concessions endorsed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry []

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— STAB IN THE BACK

 

at 2/15/26 11:34pm

By John Helmer, Moscow@bears_with President Vladimir Putin has given instructions to accept the Trump Administration’s demand that in exchange for lifting sanctions against Russia, US capital must return to Russia on preferential terms as soon as possible. For the new round of negotiations in Geneva later this week, Putin has replaced Admiral Igor Kostyukov, the []

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— THE FIVE SURPRISES BREAKING ON THE WAR FRONTS

 

at 2/12/26 11:45pm

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with 1. Jeffrey Epstein’s failure to develop any business or political connection to the Kremlin or Russian oligarchs.2. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s open break with Kirill Dmitriev’s negotiating strategy with the US; indirect criticism of President Vladimir Putin.3.Escalation of the US war at sea against Russian oil trade, sea lanes, and tankers, []

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— POPEYE AND THE ANCHORAGE FORMULA – KREMLIN NEEDS MORE THAN SPINACH TO FIGHT THE US AT SEA

 

at 2/11/26 12:11am

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Made public for all to see, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has just declared that escalation of the US war at sea against Russia’s trade routes and shipping fleets is the “opposite” of the Anchorage formula which President Vladimir Putin and his spokesman insist is still “fundamental [to] move the settlement []

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— WHY THE WITKOFF-KUSHNER ATTACK STRATEGY IS BEING REPLACED BY US COMMANDERS WHO SAY BATTLEFIELD DEFEAT REQUIRES TACTICAL WITHDRAWAL

 

at 2/9/26 12:51am

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with When you are the fastest growing tree on the street, every dog in the neighbourhood will try to lift his leg on you. When the tree is Indian, the American dogs express their resentment. They are Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Howard Lutnick, Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, and Stephen Miller. They also []

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As of 3/12/26 8:09pm. Last new 3/12/26 1:44am.