John Helmer: the G.O.A.T. of geopolitical analysis, recent events, and the power of branding as psychological manipulation.

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I want to start this post by stating a few things off-topic. I constantly praise Brian Berletic and John Helmer, and I respect them both very highly. However, in my opinion, John Helmer’s analysis is even better than that of Brian Berletic, though both are excellent.

I also want to say a few words about Alex and Alexander from The Duran. While I don’t agree with many of their views, I highly respect them both. I used to watch Alexander’s videos daily (but not Alex’s) back when I was still interested in the Ukrainian conflict. I remember Alexander often mentioning John Helmer’s Dances With Bears blog. At that time, I didn’t know who John Helmer was – now I’m his biggest fan.

Funny enough, I don’t watch Alexander’s videos nowadays because he spends too much time on the Ukrainian conflict, which no longer interests me. In my view, the war in Ukraine is already lost – it’s only a matter of time – so I don’t want to waste time on battlefield updates. Instead, unlike before, I now watch Alex’s videos everyday. They give me a sense of what Western propaganda is saying, which I consider a kind of daily update on the falsehoods the West wants us to believe.

Although I don’t watch Alexander on The Duran anymore, I still watch him on other shows – for example, his weekly videos with an Asian woman on the YouTube channel smalltownvoice1. Recently, I also found some excellent videos featuring both Alexander and Alex that I agree with 100%, which makes me very happy.

I don’t even know if Alex and Alexander ever read my posts, but I write them in the hope that they do and that I might have some small influence on them. Since both of those videos expressed views I completely agree with, it made me think I might actually have some influence on them.

Here are the videos I mentioned:

This video of Alexander, in which he talks about the left – and I mean the real old left, not today’s pro-corporate woke left – made me so happy, and I agree with almost 100% of what he says in it.

Here is a recent video from Alex that I found, and I 100% agree with it. It was excellent, and the most impressive part for me was the fact that he didn’t claim Ukraine is taking 10-to-1 casualties in favor of Russia. He didn’t confirm any casualty rates at all. Instead, he emphasized that regardless of the exact numbers, Russia is winning the war of attrition. I was very impressed that he didn’t fall into the trap of overhyping Russia, and I completely agree with his analysis in these videos.

I wanted to mention these videos because I often praise people like Brian Berletic, John Helmer, and Whitney Webb, while at the same time writing about points where I disagree with The Duran. That can give the impression that I don’t respect or agree with The Duran – but that’s not true. While I frequently write about differences of opinion between myself and Alex or Alexander, that doesn’t mean I don’t respect them or agree with them. In fact, I agree with Alex and Alexander on far more issues than I disagree with them. I usually write about points of disagreement simply to provide alternative views and perspectives, because there’s no point in just repeating everything they already say when I agree.

Now that this prelude is out of the way, let’s get to John Helmer – the G.O.A.T. of geopolitical analysis. In this post, I’m sharing two of his videos. The first is his most recent one, made after a meeting with European puppets. The second is an earlier one, recorded right after the Alaska meeting but before the European meeting. If you want to watch them in chronological order, start with the second video and then watch the first.

I’ll share a few quotes from these videos along with my comments, but I highly recommend watching them in full if you want to understand recent geopolitical events.

Let’s begin with the second video, which comes first in chronological order.

25:02

The clip we just saw is kind of non-committal about selling weapons. He says, “Look, if the Europeans want to buy our weapons and give them to Ukraine, we’re okay with that.” Hicks was actually, I thought, more assertive, and he basically said, “You need to drastically increase your military spending and you need to buy weapons, including from us, and give them to Ukraine so you will assume the responsibility for continuing that fight, whereas we will redirect our resources and efforts to the People’s Republic of China and other perceived enemies, for example, Iran.” I just can’t believe that people take seriously the idea that the Trump administration wants to stop the killing but is encouraging Europeans, even insisting—that’s the way I read Hicks’ speech—that they drastically increase their military spending, buy weapons from the United States, and then transfer them to Ukraine. How is that consistent with their stated desire to stop the killing in Ukraine?

The consistency is explained, Dimitri, if you accept the unstated U.S. position that the war has been lost and that nothing the Europeans can do will save the Ukrainian regime in Kiev. Hicks repeated the line in a speech last Thursday. I’ll read it out—it’s almost the same thing he said. But this wasn’t written by him; he is incapable. It was written by Colby Elbridge, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; that’s where the brains start and stop in the Pentagon. “Together,” and I’m reading looking down at my notes, “we can establish a division of labor that maximizes our comparative advantages in Europe and the Pacific respectively.” A division of labor. The U.S. will concentrate on a war with China. If the Europeans want to fight Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield, Vance and Hicks offer to sell them the weapons but not guarantee that they will win the war. They will lose the war.

But the Russian side is saying, “All right, we’ve heard that. This is a strategy of sequencing. You want to move on. We’ve told you that the primary causes of the war, the root causes, are the advance of NATO in order to destroy us, with the Ukrainian platform being a battlefield to destroy us. Therefore, we will give you a ceasefire. You prove to us that the war is over for you. You will not secretly facilitate the platform and call it a European war.” My Russian sources—well, we can entertain a lot of skepticism about that—but let’s understand how they think and why they think this was a good outcome and why it was so short.

The Russians think that the U.S. side has agreed to the incorporation of all four regions, plus Crimea. Second, some form of security guarantee that embodies the demilitarization of Ukraine from the Russian point of view and the protection of what’s left of Ukraine from a European and American point of view. And that might be, Hicks added in his speech, a non-NATO mission, which may have Europeans in it, and may have non-Europeans in it. The essential thing that’s left out is that it’s Vance’s job in England to convince the Europeans, starting with the British, that they better sign on to the terms that Trump and Putin have agreed to or they can face the war alone and lose it.

That’s the deal, if you like, is that Putin will let Trump off the hook for having lost the war. He will give him the grandstand for having won the peace. Both of these are nonsense; everybody knows that. But what Putin is quite right about is that Trump is the only possibility presenting itself in Washington D.C. for a solution that’s less destructive, less violent than the one the Europeans have in mind, than the one the mini-chancellor of Germany has in mind, and so on.

So, that doesn’t mean that from an “empire,” “make America great again” point of view that the U.S. is abandoning NATO or abandoning the reinforcement and rearmament of Germany, the new redeployment of nuclear weapons all the way up the northern front, across the Arctic front, down the Far Eastern Front to the China border, not to mention the southern border with the war against Iran, the war against Palestine, and the war that the U.S. is beginning to develop in the South Caucasus in Armenia and Azerbaijan. And that doesn’t mean that from a Russian point of view that there’s any illusion about two things. One is that the U.S. is an expanding imperial state that threatens Russia; there’s no doubt about that. Two, that anything the U.S. signs can be trusted; there’s no belief there either.

But on the other hand, here’s a test of Putin and Trump, face-to-face for the first time with Trump being in power, to establish whether what he says is what he’ll do. And you heard the voice of the reporter before she asked the question about whether he would ask Mr. Putin to stop killing civilians. Before that, and by the way, Putin was speaking in English to Trump; he speaks pretty good English and he certainly understands English. The question was, “Are you ready for a ceasefire?” And that’s a crucial question which we’ve talked about before. The European demand was, as expressed by General Kellogg, representing Trump, who wasn’t allowed to be at this conference… There were other U.S. generals in Anchorage, General Cain from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General Grinke, the new Supreme Allied Commander of Europe. They were the generals, not somebody like Kellogg.

What is understood here is that the U.S. side has to prove that it’s walking away from this war definitively and that a ceasefire is something Russia is willing to offer with these conditionals. The immediate…

“When you talk about conditionals, I did not hear you mention the issue of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Is it your understanding from your Russian sources and information available to you that that’s part of this deal—that the United States will object to, veto, or obstruct Ukraine’s membership in NATO? Or have they, as you understand it, parked that issue?”

“No doubt about this. I just read it to you, exactly what he said on Thursday: ‘The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops deployed under a non-NATO mission.’ So, no question from a Russian point of view—if the U.S. is telling the truth, if the Secretary of Defense can be believed when he tells it to the NATO council—no NATO membership. But that’s a formality to the extent that a Ukrainian battle platform has been constructed without NATO membership, and that’s what the war is being fought to stop. So, I’m putting it to you that the Russian sources believe that Trump’s sincerity in agreeing to each of these provisions—no NATO, the incorporation of the four regions plus Crimea, security guarantees for Ukraine—and, very important, no secondary sanctions against India and China, no attempt to destroy the international oil trade, and the abandonment, the non-enforcement of primary sanctions against Russia. The sanctions war is to be relieved.

“Now, all of these things can’t happen all at once. They aren’t likely to be written down even now. But what happened in Anchorage was a test of one thing the Russian side, and particularly President Putin, was not sure about. What happens between, for example, Foreign Minister Lavrov giving Secretary of State Rubio a very clear set of terms and messages to take back to Washington? What happens? What happens when President Putin welcomes Mr. Vitkov in the Kremlin and gives him a very clear set of terms to take back to Washington? What happens? The answer: For the last month, what the Russian side has seen is on the one hand, Trump says one thing, and then within a few hours, he says another thing. He contradicts himself, as he did on the plane on the way into Anchorage. He said, ‘I want to see a ceasefire, an immediate one. I’ll be disappointed if it hasn’t.’ And then he also says at the press conference, ‘I’m not going to allow the Europeans to tell me what to do.’ The contradictions are obvious.

“So, what needed to happen was the Russian side said to Vitkov, ‘Okay, you take your message back, but we want to hear it from Trump. We’ll tell Trump what we’ve just told you, Mr. Vitkov, and we want to hear what he has to say. If you want a ceasefire, we’ll give it to you. But you give us an end of war for the U.S. That implies no more intelligence sharing for attacks on Russia, and no more arms supplies, direct or indirect.’ Now, that’s not yet clear. Therefore, the ceasefire isn’t yet clear. But what is clear, and it’s made very clear in the Hannity interview, is that Trump has agreed not to impose secondary sanctions on India and China. In the coming hours, he said weeks. Second, the issue of non-enforcement of primary sanctions is up in the air. So, we’re in a testing period.

“Now, why was the meeting so short? Because it was President Putin testing whether Trump could hear what he had to say. In a two-hour and forty-five-minute session, remember what happened and didn’t happen. It was scheduled according to Yuri Ushakov’s announcement on the Kremlin website, not on the White House schedule. There was to be a one-on-one round of talks—Putin, interpreter, Trump, interpreter. That didn’t happen. Instead, there was a three-on-three meeting. Trump didn’t want to be in the room, or couldn’t be in the room with Putin by himself. Instead, there was Rubio and Vitkov, and on the Russian side, Lavrov and Ushakov, and nothing else. There was to be an extended delegation. There were 16 U.S. officials, among them all the money men that Trump has hired as cabinet officers: Vitkov as an emissary, Lutnik as Commerce Secretary, Bessent as Treasury Secretary. These are all the men who want business and are willing and able to discuss the relief of sanctions for Russia. They’re all there, but they don’t participate. In fact, on the Russian side, their equivalent money man is Kir Ditriev, a representative of the oligarchs. Dimitri promotes himself at all these meetings, but he was utterly isolated, exactly as Lavrov organized in Saudi Arabia months ago. This time, Dimitri dematerializes in this meeting. What happens is, in two hours and forty-five minutes, you can subtract 30% of that for translation. You’ve got about an hour and a half, a bit more, for discussions. And guess who did all the talking? I mean, you heard Putin reading a speech for 8 out of 12 minutes. He knew—Putin knows, everybody knows—that Trump can’t sit still for more than about five minutes. And the body language analysis of what happens on his face, even in that press conference, is very interesting. He couldn’t cope with doing it one-on-one. Remember, he doesn’t read. He doesn’t have a very good grip on the terms. He knew “ceasefire” was in his head, but he needed the accompaniment of the two. So what you had was Putin stretching his patience beyond breaking. It’s beyond me to say that Trump said, “I’ve had enough of this. Let’s go home. We’ve agreed. I’ve listened to the guy. We’ll have a nice time, but I don’t need any more. I don’t want to have lunch in Anchorage. I don’t need my officials. If they want to make money, let them exchange their bribes. Let them enrich my son on the crypto companies in Dubai. All of that’s out of here. I’m going home.”

“Bingo. This thing ends at top speed. Why? Because it was a test from the Russian side of what Trump could hear. It was a test for Trump of what Putin would say, and it was a test from Trump’s point of view: were the Russians to be relied on not to defeat the U.S. in Ukraine? That’s what he cares about. He doesn’t want to be the responsible president for an abandonment of Saigon. He doesn’t want to be the president for the abandonment of Kabul. He wants the Europeans—if they’re stupid enough to pay Trump to lose this war—to be blamed for themselves. And so he sent Vance. Why isn’t Vance there? Vance has been there and was announced to be the head of the delegation supporting Trump in the American press. He wasn’t there. And nobody in the American press deigns to tell us why he wasn’t. Well, you know where he was? He was “having a fishing holiday in the Cotswolds with the foreign minister, Lamy.” That’s not exactly a holiday, right?

“So, what Vance is doing—”

“Oh, no. Please, please continue your thought about Vance.”

“My reading of it is that Vance’s job is the important one. He doesn’t have to sit and listen. He can listen a bit longer than Trump. That was Trump’s problem; he had to sit and listen. The Russian people can sit and listen to Putin for four hours every December. It’s an incredible performance on the president’s part and an incredible performance on the Russian people’s part. But Trump doesn’t have five minutes of patience to listen. So, Vance’s really important job is to mobilize the British to lead the way in Europe for getting Zelenskyy on board for the implementation of a ceasefire that lets the U.S. get out of the war and brings the curtain down from a Trump point of view. Right? And that’s an exchange of signals of trust, which have yet to be proved. But this is how we started. This is why the Russian sources I’ve talked to through the night believe that this was a significant success for Putin, allowing a significant walk-away success for Trump, which they’re not publishing because if you look at the Western press, “Trump fails to get a ceasefire out of Putin.” Fail, fail, fail. No, not from a Russian point of view. But there’s obviously, after these years of distrust of the Americans advancing to destroy Russia, this is the best bet the Russians have got to stop that on one battlefield, without illusions about all the others.”

I love this part: “Let’s go home. We’ve agreed. I’ve listened to the guy. We’ll have a nice time, but I don’t need any more. I don’t want to have lunch in Anchorage. I don’t need my officials. If they want to make money, let them exchange their bribes. Let them enrich my son on the crypto companies in Dubai. All of that’s out of here. I’m going home.”

1:08:11

Well, there’s certainly that, but they’re playing constituency politics. They want to—yes, they may be losing on that battlefield—but they want to preserve the arms builders as constituents. They want to keep building and financing a war against an enemy. They want to preserve those votes in those regions, or all of those things. If we took each country—Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, the UK, the Netherlands—one by one, the constituencies would be different. But yes, they can’t suddenly say, “We see the light.” Why? Because their propaganda war has been won. There isn’t a single significant mainstream press in any of the European states that I can think of that’s anti-war. There’s no anti-war movement in the United States of a significant power the way there was during the Vietnam War.

So they’ve got to somehow preserve, differently from one country to another, and one political setup from another, an ability to avoid the blame for losing and somehow cope with the propaganda defeat. It can’t be a defeat because they keep saying that they’ve won. That’s right. I mean, you and I and our audience are in the unique position of not believing any of that stuff and finding it impossible to believe that people go on believing it. But the fact is, we’re the minority. What we believe and can argue and substantiate, as you’ve done, Dimitri, with your other guests on each of these fronts—what we can show—is not politically powerful in each of these states. We wish it were, but it isn’t.

This is saddening but unfortunately true: people watching the channel “Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris” – whose host is Greek, or at least based in Greece or Crimea, just like Alex – are a minority in both Europe and the U.S., just as viewers of The Duran are.

Now, let’s move on to the first video in this post, which is the more recent one, followed by the second video, which comes earlier from a chronological point of view.

0:16

Let’s start, John, with a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska. How did you find the meeting and what were the main points? We haven’t heard anything about the proposal. What was the proposal on the part of the United States that the Russian side said they were fine with? What happened during the meeting? What were the main points in your opinion to be considered?

Well, we have moved on quite a ways since that meeting, and we have to understand now what was agreed then in the light of what has happened since—the meeting with Zelenskyy and then the European leaders in the White House on Monday. It’s time for me to ask that all the young people leave the room, and anyone with a weak stomach whose gag reflex is the slightest bit weak should leave the room while we discuss what’s happening. What is happening, in general, is one of the most cynical, corrupt shakedowns the world has ever seen.

What we now know from Monday’s events—and then we’ll go back to your question about what President Putin agreed to and is about to have to deal with—is not demilitarization or the end of the war, but rather the remilitarization of the Ukrainian army, funded by the Europeans and paid to the United States. It’s a hundred-billion-dollar program of remilitarizing Ukraine behind a series of what are now called “security guarantees.” That’s the fig leaf; remilitarization is the program.

Now, what happened in Alaska had already been agreed for discussion and understanding on the part of President Putin and President Trump. I think we’ve said it before: what happened there was pre-programmed, in part at the meeting between Mr. Vitkov and President Putin in the Kremlin several days earlier, and in part in the communications that Foreign Minister Lavrov has had with Secretary of State Rubio over the past four weeks. The American side was much slower than the Russian side in spelling out the program, the official itinerary. But what we now know from the leaks that occurred on the American side subsequent to the meetings, and from the difference between the reality of the American schedule and the Russian schedule, is what was originally intended. Announced by Yuri Ushakov, President Putin’s assistant on foreign affairs, was a one-on-one meeting to be followed by an extended delegation meeting that would then have lunch, which would then be followed by a press conference. That was what Ushakov posted on the Kremlin website. It’s a good thing he did, because at no point did the White House release a schedule. Instead, what leaked through National Public Radio and a couple of other sources was a set of papers that had been left behind in a printer by a State Department official in too great a haste, forgetting that the program had been printed and then forgetting to take the original out of the tray. It’s a common mistake, but what it reveals is the following:

In the first place, the U.S. side didn’t trust Trump to meet with Putin alone. What was originally to be a one-on-one with consecutive interpreters—just interpreters, without electronics or recording, just note-taking plus consecutive interpreting—was to have lasted not less than 40 minutes, not a great deal of time, followed by the extended delegations. What then happened, according to the State Department program, was a three-on-three, and that was to have lasted a relatively short period of time. That’s Rubio, Vitkov, and Trump on the one hand, and on the Russian side, President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, and not Vitkov’s money-oligarch business counterpart, Kuriel Dmitri, but rather Yuri. Dmitri was entirely isolated from the Alaska meetings. The discussion of money, bribes, and business for which Dmitri and Vitkov are the negotiating counterparts was isolated from the central talks, but there was no extended delegation. The press conference, according to the State Department protocol, was to have lasted an hour. It lasted 12 minutes, eight of which was taken up by President Putin reading a pre-prepared script.

It’s very important that we understand that from a Russian point of view, what was essential to determine for President Putin was: Does Mr. Trump understand what the central Russian positions are? After all, he said as many times as he needed that he had to see and meet with President Putin to understand what the parameters are. He repeated what the parameters are, as if there had been no negotiation since February when they first had their first telephone call. It’s as if—and this is clear—President Trump does not read the term sheets. He does not understand the terms. He, however, has one or two slogans fixed in his head. On the way in, he had an “idée fixe”: “There must be a ceasefire, and I’ll be very disappointed,” he said as he flew into Alaska, “if there isn’t one.” On the way out, he had given up the notion of a ceasefire. What he subsequently agreed to do was that there would be a negotiation of a peace agreement, of which a ceasefire would be a consequence and a part, but a result of coming to agreement on a range of terms for peace. This then becomes the new “idée fixe” in President Trump’s head on his way out: “Peace agreement,” no longer “ceasefire.”

So, from a Russian point of view, it was essential for President Putin to address Trump directly, not on the telephone, face-to-face, in a context in which he could judge whether the American president understood what the Russian positions were. If so, then President Putin was prepared to make a range of compromises around the central objectives. Now, we’ll come back to the central objectives because they’ve taken a new form over the last day or two on the way there. And the reason I invited children to leave the room and have the elderly listeners check their gag reflex is that Melania Trump issued a letter about the children that was passed to President Putin. It was then rehashed yesterday by Zelenskyy, who presented President Trump with a reply to this letter. This is cynical, corrupt, and disgusting politics.

Why? Because it was paid for. This was a stunt, repeating the Ukrainian propaganda line about missing children. It’s a complete fake that the Russian side has failed, despite months of effort, to show to be fake. Why did Mrs. Trump issue such a letter? Well, she didn’t initially draft it. It combines two telltale signs of cynical corruption. One is Israeli, the other is Ukrainian, and they combine in the person of Zelenskyy. After all, if you care about children and you care about the United States’ commitment to the survival of children, Mrs. Trump might have referred to the U.S. contributions to the genocide of Gazan children, of Palestinian children, for the last months. The cynicism of this as a diversion from the Israeli genocide is too obvious, and there’s only one way that gets done at the White House level: it gets bought and paid for. That’s what that is. And that’s a sign of the level of corruption and cynical propaganda manipulation that preceded the round of meetings as Zelenskyy arrived in Washington with the European leaders. Then, the cynicism and the corruption get significantly bigger in scale.

Why do I say that? Because on the one hand, there is only one figure at the table—the mini-chancellor of Germany, the man whose political mandate has slipped below 24%. He is the only one to say publicly that there must be a ceasefire first. All the others, including Zelenskyy, have hinted that with the appropriate security guarantees around the map for a proportional redistribution of territories, there may be a peace agreement, but the conditionality attached to that is no longer “ceasefire.” It’s “President Putin must come and meet Mr. Zelenskyy,” with or without President Trump in attendance, but certainly a “troika” for purposes of organization and for holding hands at press time. Now, that’s the new conditionality, and the Europeans have verbally said they’re not sure that President Putin will dare, will have the courage to show up. But what’s on the table now reverses the understandings President Putin thought Mr. Trump had, correcting the idea of “no ceasefire, we will have a peace agreement.”

A peace agreement from a Russian point of view means, first of all, an end to the war. Second, it means no resupply of the Ukrainian military forces from NATO and U.S. stocks. Third, it means a halt to the intelligence sharing that makes it possible for the Ukrainians to go on attacking Russia, mostly U.S. satellite, fixed-wing, and drone intelligence gathering. Those three elements would be part of a peace agreement. But a peace agreement also means there’s no more martial law; it is no longer sustainable in Ukraine. Without martial law, the illegitimacy of a president ruling without elections has to be corrected. There must be elections. Therefore, there must be a regime change. Whether or not Zelenskyy would be reelected is another matter. Frankly, we have to admit Zelenskyy has the best chance of being reelected because the alternatives—General Zaluzhny, ex-president Poroshenko, and others—have much less public support and represent no significant change in line. So, a peace agreement carries all those political and military elements. Call them the fundamental objectives of the Russian special military operation: demilitarization and denazification. As for territory, this was not discussed in Alaska. It was, however, discussed in Washington yesterday.

But what is new—and our audience must control the gag reflex because it’s so cynical and so corrupt—is an attempt to revive and rewire the war so that the Ukrainian military, plus the Germans, will be in a position to fight again in two, three, or four years. It’s kicking the can down the road, but down the road just long enough for Merz, Meloni, Starmer, Macron, even Stubb to no longer be in power. So, it’s their retirement, a very, very lucrative form of retirement on a constituency that can’t persuade the British, the French, the Germans, the Italians, or anyone else in Europe to pay for it. And yet, this table of weaklings, all of them with public approval below 25%, Meloni included, are jamming down the Russian position now to a series of security guarantees with no demilitarized zone—only a remilitarization of Ukraine to fight again. That’s what’s happening. And so, a very serious question arises.

The reason I begin with the Melania Trump cynically corrupt letter is that this new remilitarization is also cynical and corrupt. The $50 billion worth of U.S. arms to be financed through Ukraine and purchased from the United States. Second, a $50 billion commitment to investment by the United States in the construction of long-range attack weapons in Ukraine itself. Yes, long-range drones, but a new form of long-range attack against Russia, absolutely denying the possibility of a demilitarized zone and the protection of the new Novorossiya, the new Russian territories, or of the hinterland. So, what’s been achieved? Well, we’ll go on discussing that. But the contrast between today, Tuesday morning, U.S. time, and Friday afternoon in Alaska time is extraordinary. And for our audience to understand, the number of cynical, corrupt, political, and military surprises coming is one thing. We must have no doubt about that. The question is when and how will the Russian side, and principally President Putin, call this situation for what it really is.

I love this pre-phase made by John Helmer: “It’s time for me to ask that all the young people leave the room, and anyone with a weak stomach whose gag reflex is the slightest bit weak should leave the room while we discuss what’s happening.”

18:37

John, it seems that yesterday, during the talk between Europeans, together with Zelenskyy and Donald Trump, Donald Trump suddenly decided to talk with Vladimir Putin. That was right in your opinion, what was the issue?

Well, there’s no doubt that there was the call. It has been acknowledged on the Kremlin side. I believe it was a 40-minute call. Presumably, now President Putin and President Trump speak in English. What we know from an unguarded microphone during yesterday’s meetings, which has been picked up in the Russian press today—but I notice the incompetent American press didn’t hear the open microphone, which has been heard all over Moscow—is that Trump said to Macron, “You know, as wild as it might sound, Putin really wants to give me a deal.”

Now, let’s take everything with a pinch of political salt here and take account of Trump’s monumental incapacity to understand or even hear what other people are saying. He told Macron he thinks Putin wants to appease, ingratiate, and give Trump a deal. So, the answer to your question really goes to the problem of how Putin can respond on the telephone when Trump is trying to show that he’s doing everything possible to make it possible for Putin to give Trump the deal he wants. That’s the nature of this telephone exchange business.

Remember how the Russian side is dealing with this, because it’s quite unique; it hasn’t happened before. To be sure, we’ve not been at this level of war before. Before Alaska, President Putin put on an international display of consensus building with all of Russia’s strategic allies, with the sole exception of Mr. Peskov, the Iranian president. Everyone else was telephoned, and the Indian side had two meetings: a telephone call with Prime Minister Modi and a face-to-face meeting at the Kremlin with the Modi’s National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval. Since then, President Putin has called Prime Minister Modi again, and this week, a leading Indian delegation in Moscow will be Mr. Jaishankar, the foreign minister. So, at the top level, what Putin was able to show was that he is coordinating and collectively deciding how to deal with the Americans on the part of China, India, Brazil, South Africa, the Central Asian countries, Belarus, and North Korea.

Second, domestically, President Putin called in, roughly speaking, 21 officials, including intelligence chiefs and the chief of the general staff, General Gerasimov, before the meeting to say, “Okay, chaps, this is what we face. This is what I think. What do you think?” They went around the room. Of course, we don’t know exactly what was said. A certain number of people tell other people, who tell me and everybody else in the media, and the consensus is that there was consensus. That’s very important. President Putin is demonstrating he’s acting with a consensus that there are factional differences on how to handle the Americans. There is a consensus that there is nothing an American can say or do that is to be trusted, but that President Trump is the only opportunity available to Russia in the present situation and for the foreseeable future to reach an accommodation that’s in Russia’s national, military, and business interests.

Okay, so that’s what happened on the way into Alaska and on the way out: a similar process of consensus building. Now, there hasn’t been time for a consensus discussion among officials about what happened a few hours ago in Washington. That’s too soon. But what the Russian side can read is the leaked remilitarization plan that was in this morning’s Financial Times, leaked directly by Zelenskyy. They can read what Chancellor Merz is proposing for the remilitarization of Germany. And so from an intelligence point of view on the Russian side, from a military point of view on the Russian side, there’s a new urgency. “Aha,” says the Russian side, “now the president put it, you see, this is what they really aim to do now. They’ve accepted our line: no ceasefire without negotiations; negotiations first, ceasefire second. But they’ve substituted a peace agreement—that’s a war agreement—and they insist that you show up to shake Zelenskyy’s hand on the deal.” What’s to be done? That’s where we are right now.

There is one thing that worries me, and I’m not even sure John Helmer is aware of it. There are divisions within the deep state, which I hope to write about soon based on Whitney Webb’s work. I won’t go into detail here because it would take too long, but what I will say is this: one faction of the deep state is Israeli-based, connected to Trump and MBS in Saudi Arabia. Since Putin is close to both MBS and Trump – and also too close to Israel (as shown by the lack of strong condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza) – this suggests that Putin is aligned with the Israeli wing of the American deep state.

Added to this is the fact, as John has mentioned, that Putin did not call the Iranian president. This makes me think Putin may be considering sacrificing Iran. His closeness to Israel, Trump, and MBS (all tied to the Israeli deep state) also explains why Iran distrusts him. Many people dismiss this as impossible, arguing that Putin would never do such a thing, but this is based on a simplistic view of BRICS – that it’s one big happy family. In reality, there are serious divisions within BRICS. Let me explain some of them.

First, Iran does not trust Putin or Russia because of his closeness to MBS and Trump, who serve Israeli interests. Second, Putin does not fully trust China. Recently, on The Duran, someone claimed China did not help Russia in Ukraine simply because Russia never asked. I disagree – I believe China is playing a double game with Russia. For one thing, China still has not recognized the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia. Another example is the fact that the second Siberia pipeline was still not built.

I also heard – though from a pro-Western propaganda source – that a Chinese document suggested annexing eastern Russian territories if Russia were to collapse. While the source may be biased, I had already suspected China of having such plans. It would explain why China has not recognized Russia’s annexations and why the second Siberia pipeline was not built. The eastern parts of Russia are populated largely by people of Asian ethnicity, and China sees Russia as a European state with no rightful claim to territories in Asia. Naturally, China would want those regions for itself – and Russia knows this.

Additionally, China has been pressuring Russia on energy prices, since it has an alternative supplier in Iran. This competition between Iran and Russia for the Chinese market gives China leverage. If Iran were eliminated as a competitor, Russia could strengthen its position by making China dependent on Russian energy, thereby ending China’s “double game.” This creates an incentive for Putin to consider sacrificing Iran.

There is also the divide between China and India. China is the stronger power, but India wants to assert leadership in Asia and refuses to play a secondary role. This creates natural rivalry between them.

Now, these divides are being softened somewhat because of the aggressive actions of the Western “Capitalists of Evil,” led by America, which are forcing BRICS members to work more closely together. Still, the underlying divisions remain. And this is what worries me: because Putin is close to Trump and MBS, who represent Israeli interests, and because Israeli interests aim to destroy Iran, Putin may be willing to allow this. Doing so would strengthen Russia’s position against China by making China more dependent on Russian energy.

This would also explain why Iran does not trust Russia and why Putin has called all other BRICS members – but not Iran.

Now, let’s return to what John is saying.

25:25

John, when it comes to the security guarantees that Ukrainians are asking for, what is the mindset of the Russians, compared to what’s going on in Washington and in Brussels? What do they want? Will they overlap, or are there significant differences between the parties involved? How do you see these parties coming together and finding common ground?

Well, I don’t see the parties finding common ground at all. It’s impossible. Strategically impossible. However, it’s cleverly framed. Why do I say that? Because the Russian side has long been arguing, since the December 17, 2021, presentation of security guarantees—two treaties, one for the United States, and one for NATO—for mutual and reciprocal security guarantees for all of Europe and between Russia and the United States. Call that a plan for security guarantees.

From the Russian point of view—and it’s common sense—there must be mutual and reciprocal security. You can’t. Security is indivisible, another phrase the Russian side has often used since December 17, 2021. In other words, a framework for European security that reduces the risk of attack and the apprehension of a threat of attack on the European side and on the Russian side. If that’s not mutual, it’s not a security guarantee. It’s one-sided. It’s a preparation for redoing what we’ve just gone through.

Okay? To the extent that the Americans dismissed the December 17, 2021, treaties, they were never discussed by the Europeans. They were never allowed to be made public or discussed in the public media of the European states or the U.S. states. They were dismissed summarily. That put us on the road to war, and the war began a few weeks later.

Now, three and a half, almost four years later, we’re in a situation where security guarantees are suddenly brought to the surface by a combination of the European leaders and Zelenskyy, but they mean completely different things. It’s completely different. If you invest $50 billion worth of the latest U.S. and NATO long-range drone technology, and you site it between Kyiv and the Polish border with a range of hitting 5,000 kilometers eastwards, you are preparing a long-distance war against Russia, are you not? Is that a security guarantee? Not quite.

We’ve had a variety of European proposals. Starmer and Macron have spoken of a European reassurance force, which was always rejected, because the Russian position has been, “Look, you’ve been using the Ukrainian battlefield as a platform for a de facto NATO war against us. It’s a de facto NATO war against us. Let’s not kid ourselves about what’s happening.” Second, as you’ve been doing that to end this war, we’re not going to allow your men to remain in place to police a demilitarized zone. Demilitarization means the withdrawal of long-range heavy weapons.

The Ukrainians have come back and said, “We want Patriot missile systems, and we’re willing to buy them.” They’re not willing to buy them. They will borrow the money from Europe and Canada; they will never repay the money, and the U.S. will underwrite the loans and collect the cash, and the commissions will be carefully distributed. Okay, that’s a scheme. In theory, Patriot missile systems do not trouble the Russian side a great deal. They’ve been defeated wherever they’ve been in place. So, if the U.S. wants to place more Patriots around Kyiv or Lviv, the Russians can defeat them.

Let me just take a step back. From a Russian point of view, this is not the first time that President Putin has had to deal with how corrupt an American presidency is. It’s not the first time that it occurred to the Russian side to bribe the Americans for something that the Russian side wanted when things were a bit more cooperative. Between 2008 and 2009, General Motors was going broke in the United States, and the Russians and Germans—that’s Putin and Chancellor Merkel at the time—came up with a plan involving some major German workers’ unions and Sberbank, the state-owned national bank of Russia, and a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska. They came up with a scheme of buying the Opel and Vauxhall works—but principally the Opel German car division from GM—and developing a cooperative Russian-German car business based on Opel.

Bribes were paid to the Clinton family. I told the story in my book, The Man Who Knew Too Much About Russia. The bribes were identifiable; they were paid, and Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, left a record, which was subsequently revealed, of agreeing with Merkel and the U.S. ambassador to Germany that the U.S. would agree to the General Motors sale to Germany. And then she reversed herself, leaving Putin furious. That’s quite documented in the story I printed a long time ago, in 2008 and 2009. From then on, President Putin knew that Hillary Clinton was a corrupt, cynical, untrustworthy individual, and nothing Americans would ever offer, with or without bribes, would ever be honored.

Now, it’s a very serious problem. Bribe-offering and bribe-taking are pervasive in this world. This is nothing unusual. But for the Russians to conclude you can bribe an American but not rely on what they will do as a result began with Hillary Clinton in 2008-2009. What’s the difference now that Stephen Vitkov is the point person for the Trump family? From a Russian point of view, this is not exactly to be spoken of in public, but as I’ve just told you, the history of bribing Americans at the presidential level is a long, contentious, and bitter one.

So, why should President Putin, at this point in time, having demonstrated a level of sincerity and openness to President Trump such that Trump thinks Putin wants to give him a deal—why should the Russian side believe the U.S. side will deliver anything other than remilitarization, in which the Trump family pockets commissions and in which the outgoing administrations of Macron, Merz, Meloni, and Starmer, and those individuals, receive hefty retirements?

The part about Putin and Merkel working together fits perfectly with what I’ve been saying about the deep cooperation between Germany under Merkel and Russia under Putin. Germany’s plan was to make Europe independent from America, but this ultimately failed because Merkel also wanted to turn Europe into a German neocolonial project, as I explained in a previous post. Those who follow my posts should know what I mean.

I recently heard, in my opinion, nonsense stories about Merkel supposedly hating Russia. That is completely absurd and contradicted by evidence I’ve already shared. For example, Stephen F. Cohen spoke about how Merkel complained about America’s treatment of Putin, and in Putin’s famous 2007 Munich Security Conference speech (with AI-translated video I provided), he thanked Germany under Merkel for helping Russia and for improving Russia’s credit rating.

I also shared a video of Klaus Schwab bragging that both Merkel and Putin were part of the World Economic Forum’s Young Leaders program, meaning they were both groomed by the WEF. This explains their cooperation. It also explains why the NSA spied on Merkel – so she could be compromised and pressured into switching sides and joining the American deep state.

What we saw was essentially a struggle between the European deep state and the American deep state over Europe’s independence. Merkel being spied on by the NSA was proof of this fight – a fight the European deep state ultimately lost. I’ve explained this in earlier posts, so those who follow me should already be familiar with this background.

36:10

Well, you’re making two points, and I think they’re good ones, Nima. First, this process takes time, and from the Russian, American, and European points of view, taking time is a benefit to all. Remember, one of the things that was agreed upon between President Putin and the Indian and Chinese leadership was that Putin would do his level best to persuade Trump not to introduce secondary sanctions as he threatened last week. The deadline is gone; President Trump has announced no secondary sanctions, though I might come back to this in two, three, or four weeks.

So, the idea is… the false idea, remember, that Stephen Vitkov kept assuring Iran: “So long as we keep talking on a peace agreement, there will be no attack.” The position now is, as you said, all of these remilitarization schemes require time: time to produce, time to buy, time to deliver, and time to install.

These schemes also require a map, an agreement on where Russian territory ends—the de jure as well as de facto Russian territories: Crimea, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Donetsk. They need to define where the beginning is, where the end is, and where the westernmost border facing Ukraine is. What is then demilitarized between that line and, let’s say, Kyiv? This is what we’ve described for months now as a demilitarized zone with various forms of verification: satellite verification, drone verification, inspection, infantry inspection, and so forth. Behind the demilitarized zone, whose shape and depth still have to be worked out and agreed upon, there is the rump Ukraine, which has the security guarantees plus the reinvestment and the resupply.

Now, from a Russian point of view—and I’m certainly reflecting sources who will hear what they’ve been telling me—they need time to rearm as well. They need time to restructure Russia’s fighting forces, not only for this battlefield but for the northern front (from Ukraine, north through Poland, up through the Finnish border, and across the Arctic to the Far East), not to mention the southern front, which is now highly unstable with the American-Israeli attacks on Iran and the American-Israeli penetration of Azerbaijan and Armenia. All of these things require time.

They also require goodwill. We are not talking about goodwill here. There is none; there can be none, not with a cynical, corrupt, multi-billion dollar rearmament deal. Just to give everyone an idea of what $50 billion of rearmament for Ukraine and another $50 billion of investment means, the amount of money and scale… You will have heard—and we’ve talked about it before—that President Trump keeps repeating that the U.S. spent $320 billion under Biden for the last three years of war, and that the Europeans paid $100 billion. These numbers are false.

A special inspector general of the Pentagon produces a public report every six months or so, showing exactly how much money has been spent. We’ve talked about it on your program in the past: the amount of money spent by the United States on and in Ukraine is less than $80 billion over three years. So, a reinvestment of $50 billion over roughly the same period is roughly the same as has already been spent. In that sense, we are going to war again, remilitarizing. But there’s another $50 billion of investment in weapons manufacturing. That’s brand new, and it would be guarded from Russian air attack, of course, because it would be part of a so-called “security guarantee peace agreement.” Plus, there’s the $50 billion rearmament plan of Germany, which is intimately connected not only with the Ukrainian battlefield but with the Polish battlefield, the Baltic states’ battlefields, and going northwards through Finland. So, in fact, the amounts of money are now greater than have been spent since the special military operation began.

With this scale of remilitarization, rearmament, and going back to war, yes, you’re right: it takes time. Time is what all sides want. The problem is Russia is advancing. Russia has the military initiative. Russia can, by reopening the electric war campaign, destroy the capability of the Ukrainian forces to continue to fight. Why stop now and give up the operational, tactical, and ultimately strategic benefits on the battlefield? Why not fight to the capitulation of the Ukrainian army and dictate a set of terms that will be more readily verifiable for the time ahead? Why tolerate remilitarization? Wouldn’t that sacrifice everything that’s been fought for since February 2022?

So, yes, you’re right, Nima. Time is what all sides want, including all Russian allies. Time is what the Americans want. The Pentagon strategists have been arguing for war sequencing. “We need time to reorient our forces,” say Elbridge Colby and the Pentagon operations and strategy planners, “so as to reorient toward China.” We will let the Europeans handle the war in Europe, and we will profit as best we can. That’s not an abandonment of the U.S. doctrine of hegemony; it’s a sequencing of priorities based on time. So, everybody would like time.

How much time is necessary to “kick the can down the road”? And how much security do you gain over the period of time in which the can rolls away? Well, I think I’ve just said more or less enough to ask, and it’s a Russian decision that has to be made in the next few days. After all, Merz and others have said Putin has to make up his mind to meet Zelenskyy in two weeks. The Russian side is hinting, “Actually, no, we’re not going to be bound by time. We’ve got working groups at work to come up with terms for discussion if there’s to be a meeting with Zelenskyy. So if and when the working groups have done their job and we’ve agreed on terms, then there can be a meeting with Zelenskyy.” In the very short term, the next two weeks, we’ve got to see what the Russian side says the terms are and if there is a clear Russian position on remilitarization, because that’s what Trump really means.

Now, this part is really interesting to me regarding how much has been spent on this conflict. What John is saying is completely different from what we hear from many other sources, and since John’s analysis and track record are so strong, I suspect he may be right. This makes things very interesting and gives us a completely different perspective on how to view the situation – one that, in my opinion, is closer to the truth than what most analysts claim.

56:05

John, before wrapping up this session, we had Donald Trump, before being elected, talking about how he cares about the United States, “Make America Great Again,” and yes, talking all about the United States. And you’ve seen Donald Trump during the last six months, and do you feel that Donald Trump has somehow changed his mindset regarding his strategy? Because before coming to power, it was all about the United States. But it seems to me, as time goes by, those ideas are fading away, and he’s somehow looking after American hegemony. You’ve mentioned Azerbaijan and Armenia; you’ve mentioned the situation with Europe. I would argue he said it just two weeks ago he was bragging about sending weapons. Europe is buying the weapons to continue the conflict in Ukraine, and they’re him for that. You know, it’s not about “Making America great again;” it’s all about “Making the American hegemony great again.” Do you think that this would be the main agenda for the next three years that he’s going to be in power in Washington?

Well, it’s one of the main public policy or foreign policy items on his agenda, yes. First, don’t lose; always seem to be a winner. Second, keep beating a propaganda drum on how much money you’re pulling into the United States. I mean, as I said when we began, we need to control our gag reflex. The more you look at Trump’s language, the more you look at the disabilities of somebody who simply fabricates and who, in fact, can’t read and who sees pictures and who recites slogans—this is not a mind. This is something less than a mind applied to making money, making power, making votes, and doing that as effectively and as quickly as he can with the circle of people around him. That’s how I see it.

It’s a fundamental fallacy from a presidential vote-counting point of view to imagine that you can translate this kind of what he calls “winning wars” or “peacemaking” into votes. The polls keep showing that he’s wrong about that, so he can’t keep making that mistake. That’s a mistake that will be tested at the midterm elections next year. But the Democratic Party is no serious opposition at the presidential level, not yet. Next year, at the midterms, they don’t need a national leader; they need to win at the local level, which is what they’ll do. And what they’ll do is different on the Jewish issue and the genocide issue from the Ukraine war issue. The Ukraine war issue was not a significant political vote-getter or vote-loser during the previous presidential election or the one before it. So, Trump keeps repeating an election tactical mistake. He’ll correct it in time, but it doesn’t matter, in my view. It doesn’t matter what he says. He’s getting richer and more powerful personally, as his wife just did with that children’s letter, as his sons are doing.

The scale of enrichment of the family that the Trumps are engaged in dwarfs anything that Hunter Biden and his father did in Ukraine. The two probably accumulated—the Burisma scandal that I reported on years and years ago in which Hunter Biden was involved—somewhere between $5 and $20 million. That’s small change to Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Melania Trump. Small change. You have to add a digit or two, another zero. The level of family enrichment is a magnitude greater. But the press is not there. I mean, I don’t take the New York Times seriously. Nobody should. We don’t even need to criticize the New York Times anymore, or the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post. The U.S. media are incapable now, and they never did an investigative job properly. They discredited themselves on “Russiagate,” so we don’t need to rehash that. The podcast audience knows what we’re talking about.

I think we shouldn’t exaggerate that President Trump has a mind. What we should focus on is the calculations behind the slogans, and I think we’ve shown today that what they’ve got coming next is a scale of self-enrichment the likes of which the United States hasn’t seen before.

This part relates to my title regarding branding. If I remember correctly – though I’m not entirely sure – on one of The Duran programs it was said that Biden is a deeply corrupt president, while there was no mention of Trump’s corruption.

My God – Biden’s Burisma scandal is just normal corruption, like with every president. Meanwhile, Trump and his family were selling NFT trading cards of Trump, physical Trump cards, Trump shoes, his own crypto coin, Melania’s own crypto coin, even a Trump mobile phone and mobile phone plan. If I remember correctly, the Qataris even gave Trump an airplane  worth millions. This level of Trump corruption dwarfs anything Biden and his family did. If Biden is a deeply corrupt politician, then Trump is a SUPER MEGA ULTRA HYPER CORRUPT POLITICIAN!!!

So don’t talk to me about Biden’s corruption while ignoring Trump’s. That’s just part of the brainwashing and propaganda behind branding. Trump is branded as the “president of the working class,” while in reality he cut taxes for oligarchs and corporations, imposed tariffs (which are a form of regressive tax that hurts the working class), and undermined the welfare and social security systems – again hurting the working class. Yet he is still branded as a “working-class president.” That’s branding, and it has nothing to do with reality.

The same applies to his image as a “peace president.” In reality, he enabled Israel to commit genocide, escalated conflict with Iran to the point of bombing it, and now he’s trying to start a war with Venezuela to plunder its oil for the benefit of our Western Capitalist Empire of Evil. Yet he is still branded as a peace president – again, branding that has nothing to do with reality.

Meanwhile, many people remain influenced by this brainwashing through branding, talking as if Trump truly cared about the working class or genuinely wanted peace, all while ignoring his massive corruption.

Thanks to everyone who stuck with me until the end of my post. And, as always… 

“Knowledge will make you be free.”

― Socrates

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“Knowledge isn’t free. You have to pay attention.”

― Richard P. Feynman

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“Freedom is not free, you need to pay attention.”

― Grzegorz Ochman

Please pay enough attention, or we will all be screwed. God bless you all.