Clearly the situation in Novorussia is rapidly turning into a full-scale war and, as Juan always reminds us, it will get much worse before it gets better again. In this context, I believe that the "informational war" in which we are all participating is more important than ever. In this context, I have several good news to announce about the future of this blog:
1) The Vineyard of the Saker now available in Russian!!
The "French Team" have done something amazing: they have decided to create a Russian-language version of this blog:
"Виноградник Балобана - Обзор виноградника с высоты птичьего полёта"
There is no overestimating the importance of this development and I am immensely grateful to them for their initiative and efforts. They have asked me to post the following appeal:
The Vineyardsaker in Russian !! Call for help !I would be most grateful if all those of you who can translate from English and/or French into Russian would directly contact the "Russian Team" at editor@vineyardsaker.ru and speak with them. Your skills need to be the one of a specialist. We are not talking about translating Shakespeare or Villion into Russian here. What is important is to convey the information correctly and rapidly. This does not have to be a major commitment, even one short article a month would help. They/Novorussia/we/I need all the help they/Novorussia/we/I can get, so please help!
Looking at the international success of the site, we decided to launch a Russian version of it, giving a wider access to the Russian speaking audience. We need help to translate articles from English and eventually French to Russian. If you can help, please contact us at: editor@vineyardsaker.ru
The Vineyardsaker тоже на Русском языке!! Нужна помощь!
Учитывая международный успех сайта, мы решили запустить версию на русском языке, расширяя доступ русскоговорящей аудитории. Мы нуждаемся в помощи для перевода статей с английского и, вероятно, с французского на русский язык. Наши контакты: editor@vineyardsaker.ru
2) The Vineyard Saker blog soon to move to new servers
Thanks to the generosity of a few wonderful people, I will soon move this blog away from Blogger to much safer (and more flexible) WordPress servers hosted in Iceland. Thanks to the help of some tech-savvy friends, I will also be able to implement a few special security measures which I cannot detail here, but let's just say that this blog will become very survivable, even if the servers in Iceland come under attack. At a time when ANNA news' account has been censored on clearly specious grounds of copyright infringement, this kind of protection is clearly a "must":
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| YouTube shut down ANNA news |
I will fill you all out on the details as soon as they are hammered out, but that is a *major* improvement over the current situation.
3) The Saker's computers in a major upgrade
Again, thanks to the amazing generosity of a few wonderful people, I will soon move from my old and dusty (not to mention halfway dead) desktop to a much more powerful and capable machine.
These news really come at a good time because it really appears that the junta's war on Novorussia will be a long one and, as several of you have told me, we are not in for a sprint, but for a marathon.
In these outright nasty and ugly times, I am especially encouraged by the help I am getting from good people quite literally all over the world: Juan, Mindfriedo, Gleb Bazov and Auslander, of course, but also less frequent contributors like, recently, XXX in Austria or some of the regular commentators here whose interesting and most informative comments might as well make us call them "contributors". Then there are those who have offered me to help with translations and who have done a stellar job translating often long and difficult texts literally overnight! As I have mentioned before, I am getting a lot of top-quality technical help form real experts who are offering their time and expertise for free, and who even cover some costs out of their own pocket. As for the "French Team" - they are turning what used to be a one-man-blog into an kind of international franchise, something which totally amazes me. Last but most definitely not least, I have to especially thank the donors who have sent me one time contribution or regular monthly donations and which have made it possible for me to spent the typical 5-8 hours of my (putatively "free") time each day working on this blog. To all these friends I want to say the following:
Though I am sincerely and immensely personally grateful for your help, I want you to know that I fully understand that this is not about me. This is about our common cause, currently focusing on the events in the Ukraine, but really about the global resistance to empire on all its "fronts" and in all of its aspects. Yes, right now, the Ukraine and Iraq are probably the two most important flashpoints on the planet, but tomorrow this could become Lebanon, or Syria, or Kazakhstan or even France, Spain or Greece. And the resistance to empire is still active in Latin America even if it has received no attention on this blog simply due to my own physical limits. Judging from the constant stream of emails I am getting literally from all over the world (except China, for some reason), I truly know that the global world empire has met an equally global anti-imperial resistance. Thus, I see this blog, and the help it receives, as a tiny but not completely irrelevant contribution to this global effort. I think of it as "crowd-sourcing resistance" or "spontaneously self-organizing resistance" (any idea for a better descriptor?). Truly, as David Rovics put it so beautifully, we are everywhere!
Thank you to all, and thank you most for being out there!
The Saker
PS: I just wanted to mention here that the absolutely *stellar* work of the "French Team" has resulted in a most flattering in-depth review on the prestigious (French language) website DeDefesa.org. While the credit fully goes to the "French Team", I am also very honored and grateful.