I have some important issues to bring to your attention:
1) Domain names:
We are trying to fix the domain name problems and also making some major changes in our IT architecture. As of right now, please note that the following Saker Blogs are still functioning normally:
French Saker: http://lesakerfrancophone.net
German Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.de/
Oceania Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.co.nz/
Latin American Saker: https://vineyardsakerlatam.wordpress.com/
the following Saker Blogs are down due to domain name problems which I hope will be resolved soon:
Italian Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.it/
Russian Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.ru/
=>Please note that these domain names are temporary and will be changed in the future.
2) Popularity vs Donations:
The number of visitors to this blog is at an all time high - just under 70'000 a day! See for yourself on this blogger dashboard screenshot made this morning:
But donations have almost stopped.
So please click on that PayPal button on the left and show your support for this blog's effort with your donation.
3) Structural Changes in the Saker Community: the SCEC and SALLC
Following the recent crisis I have decided to make two major changes in the way the Saker community will be organized.
First, I have decided to hand over the responsibility for community-wide decisions to what I call the "Saker Community Executive Committee" or SCEC. This is a small group of people whom I fully trust who will from now on be in charge of issues such as accepting new blogs into the Saker community, making key decisions about our IT architecture or deal with domain name issues. After much thinking I have decided that the membership of the SCEC must remain confidential and known to me only. This is first and foremost to protect the SCEC members but also to make this key component of our community a much harder target to hit then myself. Besides, if you, the community, have trusted me in the past with the management of the community, then you can logically also trust those whom I have chosen to deal with these issues from now on. Just to make clear: the SCEC will have no say in the way each individual Saker blog is run (each blog will retain its full editorial and organizational independence) and the SCEC will only deal with community wide issues. In fact, the only person for whom this will be a major change is me, the Saker, as I will be able to focus on blogging and writing analyses rather then deal with technical/administrative issues.
Second, the corporation "Saker Analytics, LLC" or SALLC has now been formed. It will have an "in house council", a US based lawyer who has agreed to help SALLC, the SCEC and myself on a pro bono basis. I shall share his name with all of you in the near future, but for the time being let's call him "spoonful". "spoonful" will help the SCEC with domain name issues and he will advise me on a new copyright policy for the blog.
4) New copyright policy for the blog: CC-BY-SA 4.0
For a number of legal reasons I cannot continue to post everything and anything without thinking about the copyright issues which might be involved. I wish I could, but I cannot. During the latest crisis I was threatened with a lawsuit not once, but twice, and even though this threats did not involved copyright issues, I have to assume that the folks out there who hate me and the Saker community (there are a lot of them, believe me!) will resort to all sorts of dirty tricks to try to shut us down, including frivolous copyright lawsuits. On the advice of "spoonful" I have decided that as soon as the new blog is back up, all my original contents will be published under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). This is also what I will recommend to guest authors. As for external materials, they will remain under their original licenses.
Summary:
The crisis which hit me and the rest of the community was definitely a very bad one much worse then I can say here, believe me. I have had to deal with betrayals, slander, blackmail, threats, sabotage and an amazing amount of hatred. Still, I also have to admit that I myself have been naive and way too trusting. For all my life I have many many mistakes, but at least I never made the same mistake twice. And this time around, I had to make a painful "lessons learned" exercise, helped by some wonderful friends, and a few crucial things will now change:
1) We will built redundancy on all levels of our community. From now on, no level will depend on a single individual, not the community, not the individual blogs and not the IT architecture.
2) We will de-personalize the community: it will still be "The Saker Community" but not "The Saker's Community" meaning that my community-wide "footprint" will shrink in size making personal attacks on my much less lucrative for those who hate me.
3) We will harden the community making all forms of attacks (political, technological, legal, etc.) much harder.
With these changes I hope to go back to my primary role as a simple blogger and to trade my "community leader" hat for a far more modest, and better fitting, "community founder" hat.
Various people have tried to bring down myself, this blog and our community. God willing, their efforts will eventually result in the opposite effect and we will all bounce back much stronger than before.
The Saker
PS: if no major crisis erupts between now and then, I hope to resume the podcast in February (if only to remind you folks to donate - hint hint).