Soon a daily "Iraq SITREP" on the Saker blog!
Dear friends,
Many of you have probably noticed that one of our regular readers and commentators, Mindfriedo, has been posting very interesting updates about the situation in Iraq. In fact, his posts were so interesting that I have asked him to "upgrade" them to full SITREPs to be posted alongside Juan's and mine. Mindfriedo has agreed to do so and, God willing, his SITREPs should begin appearing here today or tomorrow.
A huge "thank you!!!" to Mindfriedo for agreeing to keep us all informed.
An apology for being mono-thematic
I want to use this opportunity to apologize to all those who might be frustrated with the fact that this blog, which used to be multi-topic and cover resistance to empire everywhere, has turned into a 99% Ukraine-centered one. I can only offer two explanations for this: first, I do believe that what is happening in the Ukraine is, at the moment, by far the most important flashpoint on the planet and that the outcome of this conflict will decide the future of Russia and, therefore, of the entire "Eurasian project" and, second, I am only one man doing it all on my so-called 'free' time i.e., what is left after I am done with my regular job, my family (wife and three kids) and my studies (which I have totally neglected since the conflict began). I am barely able to run this blog as it is now (I am late on replying to emails, I am late on backing up this blog, I am late on getting translations done, etc.) and I end up literally lacking sleep. I simply *cannot* deal with other topics right now. However, I am exhausted, but not blind and I understand that what is happening now in Iraq is absolutely huge. Likewise, there are many other flashpoints and conflicts which would deserve coverage here which are not getting it simply because this is still very much a "one man show".
So, again, I want to express my immense gratitude to Juan and Mindfriedo for their literally invaluable help because I sure could not do what I do without their help!
Note to Saker Correspondents and Translators:
Guys, I have not contacted you in a while simply because I was too busy and also because the blog is primarily focused on one region right now (Russia/Ukraine). But I appreciate you being on "standby" - thank you.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO RUSSIAN SPEAKERS:
I don't know if any of you have the time and desire to help with this, but I am badly in need of a "translation coordinator". Right now, in theory, there are eight of you "Saker Russian-English translators", but in reality it has been very hard to get you to react or to organize a collaborative effort between you. In fact, the latest translation for this blog has been done by two volunteers ('G' and 'M') who are not even officially part of the Russian translators team. And yet, if I had to name the one thing which this blog needs most at this point I would say the ability to rapidly translate from Russian into English, especially videos. Ideally, we would need to set up the following capability:
1) a "translations manager/coordinator" to whom I could send out translations requests.
2) a group of Russian->English translators who could split up the work and get it done in a short time (their work being coordinator by the "translations manager").
3) a person capable of subtitling a video and uploading it to YouTube, DailyMotion or any other media hosting side with embedding capability.
This would make it possible for me to send out a translation request and get back the code needed to embed the translated and subtitled video in the blog.
I want to insist that this is an extremely important job because the current "lukewarm" war between the AngloZionist Empire and Russia is first and foremost an informational war. The US propaganda machine gets away with murder because of the language barrier and because the "other side's" point of view is simply ignored. The role of the blogosphere is HUGE here. In France, for example, the videos of Alain Soral get more hits than official French TV channels! Now, my modest blog is not quite there, not by a long stretch, but I do get anywhere between 30'000 and 35'000 hits per day which is not bad for a one man blog. And since some of my detractors have accused me of lying about this, here is a recent screenshot to prove this:
 |
| click to enlarge |
Now I am fully aware that this is a job which should be done by well-paid professionals, but what can I do if RT, Regnum, RIA-NOVOSTI and the rest of them do not understand this? Even the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is extremely slow in its translations! These guys clearly don't "get it". Yesterday I was trying to find a transcript or a subtitled video of Gazprom's CEO Alexei Miller's very important statement about the Ukrainian issue and I found *nothing*. This is insane: even the multi-billion dollar giant Gazprom does not know how to get its message out! And it's not only a Russian problem - Hezbollah has still not arranged for a rapid and high quality translation of Hassan Nasrallah's speeches into English (translations of his speeches and the subtitling of his videos are still made by volunteers!). The sad reality is that the "public information" of the Resistance to the Empire desperately *sucks*. That is sad, but true. Both Russia and Iran are awash with money and yet they don't seem to be able to organize even a halfway effective professional translation and information service.
Anyway - all this is to say that if we could set up a "translations/subtitling committee" run by a dedicated "translations manager/coordinator" we could really make a difference. However, I personally cannot do it and unless somebody spontaneously decides to make this happen it simply won't. I wish this was not a "one guy blog" but a well financed group of full-time professionals working together, but so far no philanthropist has offered to finance such an effort so "crowd-sourcing" and relying on idealist volunteers is my only option.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO FRENCH SPEAKERS:
A French lady, Claude, has asked me to pass on the following information to all of you:
Dear Saker,Again, Claude has my deepest gratitude and I obviously full support for her idea. Now, as the expression goes, the ball is in "all of y'alls" (as they say in Florida) court.
Several people like me have already translated some of your posts in French and wonder if something more formal could be implemented. The goal would be to avoid spending time translating an article while somebody else is already doing it, or when not knowing what to do with the translation. Personally I have already translated three of your posts and sent them to the site "Comité Valmy". They published two of them but not the third one, then I stopped translating.
Some time ago you asked for correspondents in various parts of the globe. Several were French/French-speaking and I was the only one to live in France, so I feel I must take some initiative if I want your blog to be more widely known to the French public. I am not particularly eager to do this and I’ll be happy to leave the initiative to whoever wants to take it. But, if nobody wants to do it, I’ll be willing to take the initiative.
What I have in mind is:
* a site named for instance vineyardsaker.fr with a wordpress blog on it. It is easy with wordpress to have several authors.
* a button on your blog with "French" written on it, linked to this blog.
* a minimum of dedicated persons translating your posts, with a well implemented schedule
* an agreement of some of your commentators to write comments, in French or in English on this blog. In English with a few words of French, as for instance what Nora did when she wished you "bonnes vacances". A blog without comments doens't inspire a real confidence, and it will take some time to build up a French readership together with commentators.
* may be, if you could give some of your time to this site, a French actualisation of what you wrote in the sidebar. This would be very important and wouldn’t take much of your time.
Things are becoming truly horrible in Novorossia. They are horrible everywhere. As you said, we are already in a "lukewarm war" and this war is been fought not only by arms but also by words. So, if you say "Aux armes, citoyens", this has to be understood as an appeal to allow people to understand what is really going on. A translation of your blog should be done in every European langage, since the UE is playing an important role and makes all what is possible to hide it.
Thank you for making my proposal available to your readers.
Best wishes,
Claude (contact email: claude.roddier@orange.fr)
If any of you are inspired and interested to help with these tasks, please take the initiative and go right ahead with it, just like Mindfriedo did: he did not even bother emailing me about it - he just began posting his SITREPs in the comment section and I ended up emailing him to ask for his permission to "upgrade" his reports to a full "official" status of "post". This is by far the most effective way to go about these things: just do it :-)
Of course, if I can help in any way (putting you in contact, giving advice on anything, etc.) please feel free to email me as long as you do not expect me to organize things because I simply cannot do so myself due to a lack of time (I estimate that work on this blog already takes anywhere between 4-9 hours per day depending on the events).
Last but not least, thank you all for your understanding and support. They keep me going through the hardest and most discouraging times.
Kind regards to you all, my friends and readers,
The Saker
PS: I have been late in thanking some of you for your donations and I apologize for this. I am still late in catching up with my emails due to my couple of days off last week. I will catch up with that ASAP. Again, my apologies!
