Can you help "Carpenter"?

Some of you have emailed me to ask about "Carpenter" and how he (yes, he is a "he") can be helped (he has not found any worth in many months, is is risking losing his home and he has no savings at all).

I emailed him and here is what I can share with you:

"Carpenter" is actually both a framing carpenter and a mason.  He has done stonework and carpentry both for many years now. He is 56 now.  He comes from a large family of tradesmen and he is a loyal and hard worker, raised on a dairy farm.  He and his bother built his home by themselves.  He live in central Virginia, near Unionville, about 35 miles from Fredericksburg and 45 miles north of Charlottsville.

As for what Carpenter has in his mind and soul, you can read it for yourself in his letter.

If somebody could help him find a job and, thereby, save his house, I would be forever grateful and absolutely filled with joy.

Friends, please, if you can - help.  This community has tremendously helped me many times already, let's see if we can help one of our own "other westerners"!

Email me with any offer and I will forward it to Carpenter.  Deal?

Many thanks and kind regards,

The Saker

A follow-up to my Open Letter

Dear friends,

First, the words "thank you" don't even begin to cover the gratitude I feel for the outpouring of support from all of you.  You have apparently also drowned out the haters who have suddenly turned very shy :-)

The crisis is far from over, but here are a few rapid items I need to share with you:

a) If you want to contact me to help with technical or financial issues or to offer you help in any way, please only use the following email address for this purpose:

thesaker@unseen.is

for all other purposes please keep using my main email vineyardsaker@gmail.com

b) Here is my public encryption key if you need to contact me securely:

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You can also download it by clicking here.

c) Those willing to donate can now get a beautiful handmade leather wallet as a thank you gift.  You can chose either of these options:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/216176943/vineyard-of-the-saker-georgian-ribbon?ref=shop_home_feat_3
https://www.etsy.com/listing/217525330/vineyard-of-the-saker-georgian-ribbon?ref=shop_home_feat_2
https://www.etsy.com/listing/217528371/vineyard-of-the-saker-georgian-ribbon?ref=shop_home_feat_1

d) if you donate for the webmaster or for legal costs, please make sure to write that in the "comments" to you donation.

I will spend most of the day tomorrow dealing with the fallout of the current crisis, but if I have the time, God willing, I will also post a substantiative analysis and commentary about the most recent developments of what is now clearly a "French September 11th".

Kind regards to all and, again, thanks a lot for your kindness and support.

The Saker

PS: IMPORTANT!! PLEASE POST YOUR COMMENTS ON THE NEW BLOG AND NOT HERE!!!  HERE ARE THE LINKS:

http://thesaker.net/

http://www.vineyardsaker.net/

Saker schedule update + 2 open threads

Dear friends,

Today Orthodox Christians like myself celebrate the Eve of the Nativity (aka "Christmas") and tomorrow will be a major feast day for us (Orthodox feasts always begin on the previous evening).

Icon of the Nativity

On Thursday I will have to spend the day on the road to drive my daughter to college so, God willing, I will be back only on Friday.   I have a hotspot in the van, but since cellphone coverage is spotty at best in the Florida boonies and 4G is rare, it might be hard for me to stay connected.

I will have the time to make a short post tomorrow morning with some good news to share with all of you.

Until then, please consider this post (and tomorrow's!) as "open threads" which I will try to moderate as best I can (but considering that I will attend long church services at night and that I also need sleep, please don't be too frustrated if it takes me longer than usual).

To those of you who celebrate the Nativity according to the Julian calendar I wish a joy-filled and peaceful day, and to those of you who do not, I also wish the exact same thing :-)

Kind regards, peace and cheers,

The Saker

Today meatspace won. See you tomorrow

Dear friends,

Today has been a really bad day in meatspace for me.
I need to bounce back and a night of sleep.
I will get back to you all tomorrow.
I have authorized all comments today (as I don't feel like reading them), including even one from a Ukie propagandist who wrote them with the hated CAPS on, but whatever - who cares?

I will try to get things rolling tomorrow.

Sorry about that, 

The Saker

Quick note to my readers + Open Thread

Dear friends,

Sorry for the long silence.  I am fine, just had some personal issues in meatspace to take care of, now I am back to normal and, God willing, I should have a Ukraine SITREP ready for you by the end of the afternoon.  Topic will include the Poroshenko speech, the latest "sellout" of Novorussia, the Minsk Memorandum, and the World Economic Forum's so-called "Ukraine Initiative".

Stay tuned and give me a few hours.  If you want, use this post as an Open Thread.

Thanks,

The Saker

PS: A reader just sent me this funny demotivator entitled "pure mathematics".  Enjoy!

Short news update about Juan

Dear friends,

I just wanted to let you know that I heard from Juan.  He is safe, very busy and exhausted.  So no SITREPs from him for a while.  But the main thing is that all is well with him.  I thought that I should let you know.

Kind regards,

The Saker

Important clarification about the future of this blog

Dear friends,

Some of you have expressed concerns that this blog will become "for paying members only" or that comments will be "for registered users only".

Let me put those fears to rest:  IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!! :-)

This blog will remain 100% free and anonymous commenting will not only be allowed, it will be encouraged.  No need to worry about that.  Donations to this blog will always remain 100% voluntary and optional.

One more thing: Amazon giftcard donations:  I received several donations via Amazon yesterday, unfortunately there is no way for me to thank those who have donated except by giving Amazon and the donors my private email address and identity.  So, I want to thank those who have donated here and apologize for not being able to do so in person.

I hope that I have reassured those who were worried about that.

Kind regards,

The Saker

A major blog upgrade is possible, but *only* with your help!

Dear friends,

You have seen me complain and moan about the fact that this a one-man-blog and that I only have 24 hours in a day for everything.  I won't repeat it all here, but the key problem is this: blogger does not allow for anything but a one-man-blog.  Let me explain

The current situation and the problems it creates

In order to have somebody helping me moderate comments, I would need to give this person my full credentials (username and password) to this blog.  To do so would be irresponsible not only because I never met any of those who kindly offered their help, but because even sending that kind of info by email is asking for problems.

I have the exact same problems with this blog's backups: at least two people have very kindly offered to help with this (https://wikispooks.com/VS/ and http://info.scoop.co.nz/Saker_Analytics ) but it is a pain to do for them because I cannot share my full credentials with them.  If I did, such a process could easily be automated.  I have also reserved several spots "just in case" (http://thesaker.ucoz.com/blog; https://thesaker.wordpress.com/; https://vineyardsaker.wordpress.com/) but they are all dormant because of the same problem: credentials.

As long as this problem is not solved, this blog will remain at the mercy of the good folks at Blogger/Google who could at any time receive a complaint from some less than well-intentioned people which would result in a shutdown.

Not good.  Not good at all.

A possible solution

I was recently contacted by 'M' who urged me to move my blog away from Blogger and to have it hosted on a Drupal server.  He wrote:

If you went with a Drupal based site, you could really streamline your posting process, incorporate other volunteers, and best of all, is page translation, so you can have the same site, with multiple different languages.  In addition, you could incorporate a monthly subscription, and maybe stratify the content, so paying members receive a first look, or have access to additional posts/material.

Now  while I do want to keep everything I do free and only rely on spontaneous donations, I do like the other ideas very much.  What I would really need is a system (WordPress or Drupal or any other as long as it is based on free and open source software) which would allow me to hand out limited credentials to other volunteers.  For example, it would be a HUGE help if, say, 2 persons took upon themselves to moderate comments.  Of course, such an upgrade would require the assistance of one (more more) webmasters to set this up and keep it running.  'M' already offered to do that, but I would feel better if this tasked was spread amongst at least 1 or 2 more webmasters who could help 'M' or replace him if he is sick, too busy or otherwise unavailable.  Or think of Mindfriedo's fantastic SITREPs.  Don't they deserve a better place than always squeezed between Ukrainian news?

When I look at the fantastic job of the French-speaking folks who are running the French-language version of this blog (at http://www.vineyardsaker.fr/ - check it out, they even are adding their own articles!!) I see how much can be achieved in a collaboration.

So I am extremely interested in exploring that option.  But, that entails the following decisions and means:

How you can help

First, I need help in finding servers willing to host this blog.  Ideally, it would be in a country as safe as possible from imperial censorship.  'M' and I are thinking about Iceland (But that is not the only option).  'M' has found this:

https://www.1984hosting.com/product/vps/

Which for for 400 GB/ month, it is 7800 kr a month, which equates to about $70 a month.  Bandwidth appears to be a little more expensive over in Iceland. 

I am not sure in terms of GB/Month but in terms of hit per day I am steady at about 25'000-35'000 depending on the day (and the events in the Ukraine).  I would expect that number to substantially grow if this blog became more flexible and feature-rich.  In other words - we have to assume that bandwidth usage will be high and only grow.

What I have already done is purchased a domain-name for this "new and improved" blog just in case you - the readers - want it and want to help me make it happen: TheSaker.net (-: I chose the .net extension because I hope to turn this one-man-blog into a network of collaborators :-)

Such an upgrade would free time for me from administrating a blog to researching topics and writing analyses.  It would mean being able to accept the many offers of help I already have from volunteers which, so far, I had to turn down.  And it would mean offering a much more mature and feature rich blog to all of you.

Finally, I have also been getting some truly excellent submissions (and the amazing editors of the French mirror of this blog are now even offering to write and/or translate articles back into English for publication here!) and these submissions also would deserve better than being squeezed between a flood of other posts.  I would love to have a dedicated "SITREP" page and a dedicated "Guest post" page.

So here are my needs at this moment in time:

1) Servers: if you can host or pay for hosting a server in Iceland (or elsewhere) please let me know.
2) Webmasters: if you can help 'M' (with Drupal/PHP/Apache or other tasks) please let me know.

If you can help with any of this, please email 'M' at webmaster.vineyardsaker@gmail.com (with, if possible, a cc: vineyardsaker@gmail.com or vineyardsaker@mail.ru just so I know what is going on).

Donations - an idea on how to bypass PayPal

Also, I wanted to the following mention donations

First, I apologize for my delays (usually about one week or so) in replying and thanking for donations.  As usual, I have to chose between updating the blog with "hot" news or replying to donations and I always think "I will do that tomorrow".  I am sure you know the dynamic.  Anyway, I am truly immensely grateful for these donation which really help the blog, me personally and my family.

Second, it occurred to me that that those who hate PayPal (which I fully understand!) could send me an Amazon gift card by email. I could then use it to purchase items not only for my family, but for my frankly very outdated computers: at the very least I would badly need a new desktop (I wish you could *hear* the sound mine makes to see how close to "death" he is...) and a new laptop as mine are not only old, but also over-used.  I have an excellent monitor, so all I need would be the "tower" (the desktop itself) and a halfway decent laptop to use when on the go (which I do a lot). 

=>Also - you do not need to be in the USA to send me an Amazon giftcard<=  (just connect to Amazon.com from anywhere in the world!)

Also, if somebody wants to donate a specific item, you can send it to this address:

The Saker
PO Box 711
Edgewater, FL 32132-0711
USA

That's it for today.  The ball is, as they say, in your court.  If you can help me and 'M' make this blog a better source of information and, which is almost as important, a high quality and sane place for the free exchange of views and discussions - please do.  And if I am being too ambitious here, then I will continue to do the best I can with the means I have.

A huge and heartfelt "THANK YOU!!" to all of you and, especially, those who help me on this frankly difficult road.

Kindest regards,

The Saker

Reply to a reader's comment and some reflections on "spontaneous self-organization"

I just got a comment which I think warrants a reply as a separate post.  Here is this comment:

Please resume publishing ukraine sitreps in your morning. The Anna News published in your evening is already old news and is not what made this site so valuable and timely.

Since this is not the first time that I get that kind of comment I feel that I need to remind everybody of the following:

First, this blog is a "one man show" (with now some most valuable help from "Juan" and Mindfriedo).  Besides the blog I have a life which includes a family (a wonderful wife and three beautiful kids), a full time job and a graduate thesis (in theology) to write (which I have completely neglected since the crisis began).  I am not a robot and I therefore also "indulge" in such "luxuries" as eating, sleeping, and sometimes (though now very rarely) reading or exercising.  For all that I have 24 hours max.  Over the past months I have spend about 5-9 hours per day working on this blog (just answering emails takes me several hours each day).  I do understand that the SITREPs are important, but I cannot do more than what I can do.  Sorry.

Second, Juan and Mindfriedo are not robots either, but human beings with their own lives.  Neither of them are a "one man news agency".  There is a reason why AP or Reuters hire lots of people: one guy cannot do it all.  If one of them is "late" with a SITREP one day, please accept this gracefully and remember that they don't get a single cent for their huge work.

Yesterday's ANNA's news bulletin missed the subtitles for the 2nd half.  Well, I did not feel like I had the moral right to email them to let them know simply because I do not know the circumstances which made them fail to provide the full captions and when I posted the video I thought "let's be thankful for what they did produce" rather than frustrated by what they missed.

I ask for the same understanding here.  For example, please understand that if I miss a nasty comment it is because I have to read through (or skim through) and moderate hundreds of comments each day (I often have to do that while waiting at a light in the car).  And when I am not fast enough, I get angry posts accusing me of censorship.  I won't even go into the "typos" thing (though I very much thank the person who counted the 4000+ words of one of my analyses produced in a few hours and who said that a few typos in the middle are to be expected).

So forgive me, but I will miss bad comments, I will be late with analyses and SITREPs, I will have tons of typos, I also will have days when I am literally in physical pain from anguish and rage over what is going on.  Often I am exhausted and I "go on fumes" so I am get really sick and tired of smug commentators picking at this or that word, expression or "meme" I should not have used.  If they don't like what I do - let them do it better themselves.  I can only do as much as I can do.  Sorry, I am only human.

The French blog mirror is up!

On the good side of things, besides the fantastic help of Juan and Mindfriedo, a group of French-speakers got organized by themselves, without any help from me, and organized a French-language mirror of this blog.  You check it out here:

http://www.vineyardsaker.fr/

Now THAT is truly *fantastic* help and I want to express a heartfelt MERCI DE TOUT COEUR LES AMIS!! to all those involved (Needless to say, they are also all volunteers who do that work on their "spare" time!).

I am still in desperate need of a "translations manager" would could take over the task for organizing and producing translations, especially of videos (transcribed or, ideally, subtitled and uploaded).  I now have (in theory) at least eight Russian->English translators on standby and one Ukrainian->Russian but I literally do not have the time to contact them, see who is available, split up the work, coordinate it, put it all together, etc.  It might sound incredible, but I really do not physically have the time to do that.  So they are all standing by, waiting.

I also have roughly 50 correspondents worldwide who have expressed their willingness to help this blog, and some have sent me some excellent information, but I simply do not have the time to stay in contact with most.

The only way to really help me and this blog is spontaneous self-organization like the French-speakers have done: if you have an idea on how to help this blog - just do it. Likewise, if you have an idea on how to help the people of Novorossia and Auslander's refugees - also just do it.  I personally will gladly use this blog to inform others of your efforts like I did for Auslander's initiative or like Yuri Dia Konov did by offering his books to donors.  Lastly, if you have any ideas on how to increase, organize or coordinate the donations to this blog,  I sure would be grateful for them.  Every penny I get here is one I don't have to get elsewhere.

As for the daily Ukraine SITREP - yes, I will get to it as soon as I can.  I will try to produce one by tomorrow morning.  But if I am late with that, please forgive me.

Kind regards and many thanks,

The Saker

Several important announcements about the Saker blog

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

But the numbers don't tell the full story.  Because I maintain a "Saker's friends" low-volume mailing list, which I use from time to time to draw the attention to a post or make an announcement, I know for a fact that there are quite a few very well known personalities who read this blog and who would immensely benefit from being able to get some crucial documents/videos translated into English.

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,
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)

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. 

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!

Personal announcement: rules, housecleaning and contact info request

To the small number of obnoxious monomaniacs amongst you who are totally obsessed with WWII, Hitler and Jews: this blog is *NOT* a historic blog about these topics.  Is that so hard to understand?  Today I had to trash something in the range of 20-25 comments all about race, Jews, Hitler, etc.  This has got to stop and you are clearly not understanding it the nice way.  This is a blog for educated adults, not a Kindergarten and I am spending too much time playing Kindergarten co.  So now I have to be not nice.  Let me repeat again:

1) Unless the topic is Hitler, I will tolerate no more comments about Hitler.
2) Unless the topics is Jews, I will tolerate no more comments about Jews.
3) Unless the topics is WWII, I will tolerate no more comments about WWII.
4) Any comments using the word "race" (which is a fiction) goes to trash.
5) Any comment in CAPITAL LETTERS (which is screaming) goes to trash.

There has been a very long thread on Christianity and Islam under my recent post "Non-political interlude: reply to two posts (religions haters please skip this one!!)" which stayed in that comment section for which I am very grateful to all those who participated in the discussion.  Likewise, should I ever post something about Jews, WWII or Hitler, you are all welcome to post provided you do not post racist nonsense for which I frankly have no more patience.  Criticize Jews or anybody else if you want, but as soon as you call them a "race" your comment goes to trash.
-------
Also - I recently received a donation from Canada sent by a lady whose initials are "Е.Е.Ц".  I would like to tell her the following: Вы мне не послали Ваш адрес но я все же хотел бы Вас поблагодарить за помощь и поддержку.  Если не трудно, то сообщите мне пожалуйста Ваш электронный адрес.  Заранее спасибо!
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And since this post has no real topic, I leave you with a funny Russian demotivator whose caption I translated and which is as good a summary of the current "clash of civilizations" as any.

Kind regards to all,

The Saker

Personal announcement: three short items

Dear friends,

I have to leave the house for most of the day, but I want to tell you the following before I do so.

1) I am desperately looking for a full English translation of the statement made by Igor Strelkov about the lack of men volunteering  for combat duties in the Donetsk region.  He made it either on Sunday or on Saturday.  It's about 10 min long when read in Russian.  If you see it, please email me the text or send me the link.

2) My recent "religious interlude" post was just that.  An interlude.  So, to the great relief of those who are not interested by religious issues, I will not have the time to reply to all the comments (sorry!), but I leave you in good hands as there are some *extremely* knowledgeable Orthodox Christian and Muslim commentators/posters in this thread to whom you can submit any questions or comments you might have on this topic.

3) I am following the events in the Ukraine and I am preparing a SITREP to be written up ASAP.  The bottom line right now is: too early to call.  The situation is extremely complex and fluid and I would urge everybody to avoid jumping to conclusions at this point.

FYI - If/when I don't post and only moderate comments it is usually because I am "mobile" (driving in my van for work) and while I can do that while waiting in the car or on a red light, I cannot post full-length articles.  However, I have a hotspot in the car and an (awesome) Asus Nexus 7 (2014) tablet with me.  I can watch TV channels like RussiaToday, PressTV or TeleSur (especially Russian and Ukrainian ones), I can stream radio and I can read so I am always keeping myself informed.  What I cannot do is reply to emails or comments.  Please keep that in mind if I appear to be slow to reply.

With a new SITREP hopefully out soon, many thanks and kind regards,

The Saker

Personal announcement: When it rains it pours...

Dear friends,

I am sorry to say that I am sick yet again, this time with some Florida food poisoning.  In fact, I am writing this in bed on my tablet.  I have a few requests to submit to you:

1) Sobcors: please stop using the sobcor email list as a discussion list.  Please ONLY use it to contact your REGION'S sobcors to get in touch and/or coordinate work.
2) Please, at least while I am sick and cannot moderate comments effectively, stop discussing the topics of Hitler and Jews.  First, I am bored to tears with this topic and, second, it appears to always draw racist and simply stupid comments.
3) Again, at least while I am sick - can we please stick to the topic of the events in the Ukraine?!

And just for the record: I have no objection to discussing Jens and/or Hitler, but not all day, every day, on every post and no matter what the original topic is.  Let us please stop this obsessive-compulsive focusing on only these two (admittedly important and interesting) topics.

Sorry for being sick again, I hope to feel better by tomorrow, kind regards,

The Saker

Personal announcement: I am catching up

Dear friends,

Since some of you were worried, I just wanted to let you know that all is well except for my usual problem of being one person doing too many things.  The situation in the Ukraine is too fluid to say much right now anyway.  I expect to write up an evaluation of the results of the referendum by tomorrow morning.

For the rest of today I will try to catch up with unanswered emails, reply donors which I did not have the time to thank and the Saker correspondent project.

I ask for your understanding and wish you all a great day!

Cheers,

The Saker

PS: please feel free to use the comments section below to discuss anything you want.

Short personal annoucement

Dear friends,

Two small points:

a) I am sick with a nasty stomach flu and I am spending most of my time in bed.  I hope to get better by tomorrow. Until then, this affects my ability to reply to emails, moderate comments or write.  I apologize for that.
b) I have done a poor job enforcing the rule that comments must be respectful.  This has to change.  So from now on, any comment which is disrespectful to any other person posting here or insulting to any nationality, ethnicity, culture or religion will be tossed in the trash bin.  I apologize for having allowed many insulting comments to be posted here in the past week or more.  This is an example of what from now on I will not allow:

Ok priest/ Imam or whatever you think you are, it might be better for you to target a more vulnerable crest, an easier prey to digest, because I'm very willing, ready and able to engage the likes of you on my own terms. Don't they teach you con artists to avoid the real thing or risk exposure? I've noticed you preaching from your high perch in several posts here and I've held my fire too, but if you feel bold enough to try me, then by all means let's open that portal and settle this. Just remember, I don't play by your rules. P.S- With regards to your lord and his teachings on pigs and pearls, you better save those fairy tales for your sheep because I for one, never understood why such a silly and obvious advice would be considered "wise" by any one with an iota of common sense. Who in all of history, besides maybe your lord, would even contemplate feeding pearls to pigs? And why with all the worlds Ailments would the son of god waste his time amongst men giving advice no one needed or asked for. I doubt your lord ever even authored such an idiotic statement, you know like the tale of the sun standing still, so a few ignorant Jews could more efficiently murder and pillage their hapless victims, it is obvious that either Moses was ignorant of physics, or the scribe/ monk who pretended to be recording his thoughts was. Same principle applies here, some lying historian of a monk probably wrote his ideas on swine and pearls and presented it to the credulous sheep as heavenly wisdom. No wonder Putin is striving to keep his serfs under the thumb of the priesthood, keeps the serfs both holy and ignorant, which serves your purposes as well as his equally. You still care to school me priest?

Finally, comments which contains sentences IN CAPS or which have no interest whatsoever will also be tossed to the trash bin.

Kind regards,

The Saker

Personal announcement: New moderation policy plan adopted

Dear friends,

The following comments moderation policy has now been adopted:

1.  Comments must contribute to the interest of a thread, a post or of the blog.  Just venting or totally inane comments will not be allowed.
2.  Comments must be respectful. Criticisms are welcome, but they must be fact based on logically outlined.  Name calling does not qualify.
3.  Off-topic comments are allowed, but have to offer something of interest to the readers. For example the recent posts about MoA are of interests to many, even if off-topic, thus they should stay.

The main intention for me is not to censor any form of speech, but to make it interesting and enjoyable for people to read the comments and participate in an intelligent exchange of ideas.

Now I need to tackle a more complex issue: racist comments.

I must begin by stating what I subjectively consider to be racist for the purpose of this blog:

1) the idea that humans differ from each other in essence.
2) the idea that your genetic makeup restricts your freedom of choice.
3) the expression of irrational hostility to an ethnic group or race.
4) the denial that all humans are equally precious to God or that some humans deserve a special status not granted to others.

And, just to clarify, here are a few examples of what I do not consider racism:

1) Criticisms of religions, tribes or ideologies because a person has to make a choice to belong to a religion, tribe or a political movement.  Thus it is absolutely legitimate to criticize Judaism, the Jewish tribal identity or Zionism.  It is, however, not legitimate to criticize somebody born Jewish just for that fact.  Nobody chooses his/her ethnicity.
2) The opinion that races are different in certain aspects; saying that Blacks have a lower IQ then Whites is a hypothesis which must be proved or disproved based on facts.  Facts, whatever they are, are neither racists nor non-racist.  They just are.
3) It is not racist to state that one is of the opinion that Italians and Greeks tend to be louder than Norwegians, it is not racism to state that Hungarians are taller than the Japanese or that Argentinians are more musical than Iraqis.  In all these cases what is being asserted is that races, nations, ethnicities are different in some aspects, but not in essence.
4) It is not racist to say that the gas chambers were never used to kill Jews, that Stalin was about to attack Germany when Hitler preempted him with his own attack, or that the Turks never committed a genocide of Armenians.  These are historical topics which should be freely investigated and either affirmed or disproved, not censored.

(Just for the record and to be clear: I endorse none of the examples I have given above to illustrate my point)

In other words, there are race or ethnicity related opinions which can be controversial or which some of us mind find offensive, but which still are part of the realm of legitimate speculation and investigation. 

For the purpose of this blog I will try to stick to a narrow definition of racism because I do want to avoid censorship of ideas as much as possible.

Frankly, I will try to use common sense first and foremost.  I think that for 99.9% of you this should make no difference at all.  But a few trolls, freaks or paid provocateurs will now be shown to the door.

Many thanks and kind regards,

The Saker

One more thing about the "Saker correspondents" project - USA correpondents

Dear friends,

I realized that I was missing on a good opportunity here to involve some correspondents from the USA.

While I myself currently live in the USA, I think that I might very much need the help from US correspondents, but not from this or that state or region, but from different specializations.

While it makes little sense to compare Fox News in San Diego and Boston, the USA can be very diverse in terms of professional strata.  What I would be very interested in is in those amongst you who have a professional or personal interest in the following area of study:

• US Fiscal & Monetary polices
• US Foreign Policy
• Congressional Politics
• Big Corporations
• Banking, Credit, Insurance
• Investment, capital venture, hedge funds
• US foreign investment
• US foreign aid
• US Navy
• US Army
• US Air Force
• US Marine Corps
• Military academies
• Intelligence agencies
• US Space programs
• US international trade
• IMF
• World Bank
• Defense industry
• Diplomacy
• "Democracy promotion" (NED & Co)
• Energy (oil, nuclear, etc.)
• Ecology
• Imports/Exports

etc (too many to list)

Basically, I am interested in the "big stuff" which involves lots of money and, therefore, special access to power.  I am also interested in the instruments of power themselves.

Important note:

Now, this might be obvious, but I have to state this very clearly here: I do not want anybody with any current security clearance (no matter how low) applying for this project and I want to make it absolutely clear that the only source of information I will accept is publicly available information.  I am am mostly looking retired professionals, students, sharp hobbyists, public journalists or reporters, academics, etc.  If somebody ever sends me anything classified even at a very low level I myself will immediately inform the authorities.  That is common sense and basic self-protection.  I do not need any trouble with Uncle Sam.  I need 100% transparency and 100% legality.  Nothing less will do.  I don't like this regime, but I will not disobey its laws.

This being made clear, I also believe that somebody smart kind find out what he/she wants by using open source information.  It its classified, it is of no interest to me.  What I am after is a good understanding of how the US functions, its system, evolution, the factors which affect it.  You get the idea.

If you have a passion for, say, the World Bank or the US aerospace industry, you probably read specialized magazines and you probably visit specialized websites.  Magazines or websites which I do not read.  Then you can definitely help me out.

So, same concept as geographical correspondents, but applied to professional areas of expertise.

If you are interested, please drop me an email confirming that you have no current security clearance and a short bio or description of your interests.

Many thanks in advance and kind regards,

The Saker

Update on the "Saker correspondents" idea

Dear friends,

A few days ago I posted an idea to create a network of "Saker correspondents".  Here is what I wrote:

I think that it might be extremely useful to create a group of "correspondents" of this blog.  Here is what I mean by that:
I need local folks to go through the local Internet resources (not the big national news, those I parse myself) to seek out interesting stuff and then simply send me the links.  Though a commentary or evaluation of these links could be helpful, the links alone would be helpful enough.  Here are the languages which I can read more or less decently: very easily: French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and English, of course.  With some difficulties Portuguese, and Dutch.  Slowly and preferably with the help of a machine translator,  I can also understand a text written in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Afrikaans, Slovak and Macedonian.
Also, there are four languages which I don't know at all and with which I would really need a person willing to translate or even just summarize interesting articles in the local Internet (in order of priority): Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and Hebrew.
Should that work, my goal would be to completely bypass the AngloZionist media and to offer the readers of this blog information from the small news sources which are little known but which are trying hard to become more visible.  Sure, we all know about RussiaToday, PressTV or TeleSur, but who knows what kind of interesting stuff is published on the local Internet in Omsk, Isfahan or Cochabamba?
Tlaxcala does a great job of translating "alternative" information in many languages and IPS tried to being local information sources.  But for the former does not use local correspondents or specialize in English-language information while the latter has, shall we say, a "not always adequate political agenda" with some pretty darn big blind spots.
So here is my idea: if some of you are interested in becoming "Saker correspondents" we could have your just scan the local press in your area (it don't need to be in Timbuktu - the local press in France or Romania might be very interesting too) and send me the links.  I could then either publish the full article if it is worth it, or just post a few links so those interested can read it for themselves, or simply read the stuff myself to help me understand a region or a current event.  If there will be Arabic, Chinese, Farsi or Hebrew speakers willing to be "Saker correspondents" then they would work somewhat differently: they could email me and say, "the local website has a reader's forum where one guy just posted his impression after a 3 day trip to the town of X and he is describing something interesting.  Do you want a summary or full translation?"  Depending on the place, situation and source I would have to decide whether this is worth the correspondent's effort.
Alternatively, you could bypass me completely and contact each other directly and jointly decide to try to get the local information sources to the English-speaking world, either through my blog or through any other outlet you like (God knows there are many very good ones today).  Then my role would be just to help put you in touch with each other and then you could work without intermediaries.
Just think about it.  All I know is that there are regular readers here from all over the planet, with lots of languages and excellent expertise and education.  Not to flatter you all, but there is *a lot* of brainpower available which we could put together if you guys are interested.

 As of today, I got replies from the following countries or regions:

• Hawaii
• Canada
• Scandinavian countries
• Balkan countries
• France 
• French speaking Africa
• Benelux
• Germany
• Greece
• Italy
• Czech Republic

Which is pretty good, but I still have a DIRE NEED of the following regions:

• Latin America
• China
• India
• Afghanistan
• Pakistan
• Lebanon
• Israel
• KSA
• Far East Asia
• Central Asia
• Russia
• The Ukraine
• Maghreb
• Australia and New Zealand
• Turkey
• Iran
• Iraq
• Syria
• Korean Peninsula
• Vietnam
• Indonesia
• English speaking Africa
• Portuguese speaking Africa
• Japan
• United Kingdom
• Mexico
• Cuba
• Central America

So, please, if you live, come from, travel to, or are in frequent contact with any of those countries and if you can volunteer a little time each week to reply to a question, scan the local Internet, maybe translate a short article or check an information - please email me and let me know.

You can write to me using an alias, pen name or nick - I don't need to know your real identity.  If you would like to write sort articles about developments about you area of responsibility and if I find them to be interesting for this blog, I will publish them here and give you full credit for it under whatever identity you prefer.

I hope that many of you will reply and that we can set up a pretty decent network of correspondents.

Many thanks and kind regards,

The Saker