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
Dear Saker,
1. Have you considered GoDaddy.com
https://www.godaddy.com/
Let me know if you are interested in it?
2. Can you please explain more how does a Amazon Gift Card works?
3. Do Amazon.com, Newegg.com, Rakuten.com ship to P.O.Box?
Best regards,
Mohamed.
@Dear Mohamed:
GoDaddy’s quality is terrible and not at all what I need.
The Amazon giftcard is simple. You go to amazon.com click on “gift cards” on top of the page (in blue), select “by email” and then fill the blank fields. You indicate my email address and that’s it.
PO Boxes: Amazon does, as far as I can tell, ship to PO Boxes, but not wine (which I don’t need anyway) and not huge objects. For Newegg.com, Rakuten.com I think that key is to NOT use the UPS or FedEx but regular US mail (USPS).
If you want to send something big (say a large desktop) email me and I will get a physical email address if needed.
Kind regards,
The Saker
For blog, wordpress is best, easy to configure, easy to moderate, easy to make some user moderator with limited access, for example, just to check and moderate comments. Have great collection of free themes, so you dont have to design new…
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Consider prq.se and riseup.net. SE-based prq is the gold standard in hosting controversial speech. The US-based riseup activist collective might offer free hosting. Both of these entities are committed to free speech, and they both have legal teams to back that up, and they are for real. Check it out.
Further, maybe run a mirror in Russia and also make it available as a Tor hidden service.
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Privet Sokol,
I have almost no money and depend myself on donations (which stopped, the more political I got). It all developed from my own OpenSolaris UNIX distro, OpenSXCE.org . The worse the situation in Syria and Ukraine was getting, the more political links to videos and blogs like yours I started to post on my OpenSXCE blogs and twitter accounts, that had actually been intended to stay strongly technical and realted to OpenSource UNIX software development.
https://www.facebook.com/OpenSXCE
https://twitter.com/martinbochnig
http://opensxce.blogspot.de/
and https://twitter.com/opensxce
If you need a UNIX that most likely contains no NSA backdoor, then OpenSXCE is your choice. I say “most likely”, because there were some encumbered binaries that Sun/Oracle never offered as src code. You also need tobe warned, that alledgedly EVERY(!) dsl modem/router always opens a hidden second connection, no matter what you do. And engineer found out about that and posted detailed steps for verification, about a year ago. And even if you encrypt stuff, be aware that even pro-empire technical news sites such as http://www.theregister.co.uk reported repeatedly, that the NSA has “bought” extra intended vulnerabilities in even the best OpenSource algorithms.
NEVER FORGET THIS!
Whatever, to the blog options, I simply wanted to bring another option onto the table: Instead of using any pre-configured service, what about running one or more Amazon AWS EC2 cloud servers with LinUX, where you can install your own blogging software and in fact HAVE NO censorship (in theory at least)? I think from the censorship perspective, plus in terms of reliability, uptime, balanced bandwith, volume in GB per month and all this it would definitely be cheaper than anything else! And if they in fact happen to censor you, then you simply upload a backup version of your VM to a new account and it may take a while again, until they block you (if at all). Only as an idea. What about that?
Thank you for your valuable work!
Stay strrrrrong!
Regards from Soviet East-Berlin
%martin
Hello Saker for cheap web hosting for your site people in Europe are very fond of one.com based in Denmark available in English and independent of the US gangsters, and very cheap
http://www.one.com/en/
You are absolutely right to get independent of CIA-Google blogger which shuts down dissidents and you may well be hit soon. Archive your stuff here as Goog will erase it overnight. You know Goog was set up with CIA money … and so was Wikimedia. The criminal prosecution of Goog and Wiki in the EU is about to hit in a much bigger way, given how they are engaged in mass fraud of EU citizens and companies, here is an EU police-prosecutor file on Wiki and Goog crimes in the EU, somewhat focused on the Wiki fundraising fraud (given they are an arm of the CIA, ‘Trojan horse’ to insert lies) but with lots of material on Goog’s attack on dissidents to the US in Europe … really it is just crazy to use Goog servers – Good luck
CIA Wikipedia-Google fraud EU police report
http://homment.com/FB3PjBQ2DF
Your blog is great and I’m not sure that it really requires a major upgrade. Whatever you decide, please be careful with the choice of moderators. I believe that it is common procedure to infiltrate blogs by assuming the role of a benevolent moderator, who in fact is a paid troll.
These might be well-trained experts, whose goal to discredit and to erode the blog might not be come immediately clear. They could, for example, just exaggerate a little bit their task as moderators by deleting a few too many comments. This could frustrate some of your loyal readers and it would make your blog open to accusations and rumors of censorship. In addition, they could find more or less subtle ways to instigate quarrels, for instance by using fake identities… I’ve seen such things happening about ten years ago in blogs on the Iraq war. Sometimes a “one-man show” is not such a bad thing.
Thank you for your invaluable work.
I think Iceland (Niceland) is the best bet and by the middle of next month I should be able to send you a quarter of the hosting fee.
Leaving google yes but as a previous poster mentioned, adding partners is tricky. Find a new location, and if you add partners, put them on the lie detector first.
The Russian state should pay you generously to produce this fine site. Seriously.
Saker,
A potential problem: sites on any .net / .com domains exist at the mercy of the U.S. Government. You can look up recent legal precedents involving shutdowns of .com/.net sites that had never been registered or run in the U.S.
To be protected from US censorship, you’d have to not only HOST elsewhere, but also register and name the site explicitly tying it to an independent jurisdiction. All the .com’s, .net’s and .org’s are no good. I am not an expert, but I’ve seen recommendations for Switzerland (.ch domains) – a relatively independent country when it comes to censorship. Some say .se is also ok.
The next worry is DOS attacks. Here, I’d defer to other people’s expertise, but I know there are commercial DOS protection services out there.
@Anonymous:domain names and DDOS attacks
Very very good points. I will mention them to ‘M’.
Thanks!!!
The Saker
It’s really sad to see that Russian leadership doesn’t appreciate the thousands or millions of people from abroad who understand what is going on in this world. How else can you explain the fact that, while US is founding hundreds of NGO’s in Ukraine alone, Russia is not able to identify and help at least a few famous websites that support her stance.
We have here the courageous Saker, who is forced now to ask for donations from his readers, while Russia sits on half a trillion in US dollars as reserve currency.
If I was face to face with Putin and Lavrov at this moment, I would have told them a few straight words, despite the respect and aura of saints that they have. I consider it it’s their PERSONAL FAULT that millions of ordinary ukrainians, Dobass people and Russians have no clue about the real financial system of the world, who sits at the root of most conflicts from the last 200 years (which further will help them understand how they are being used as pawns). Yes, mr. Putin, is personally guilty for not spreading the word of truth across the world, for being so complacent and for keeping his nation in ignorance (as the tzars also did) !!!
The official websites like RT, RIA-Novosti and VoiceOfRussia are ridiculous too many times (despite making some childish and timid attempts to speak the truth). They should have encouraged and supported officially all the ones who want to wake up people across the world. They should have provided links to other websites and offer server space for people like the Saker or brother Nathanael. This is why, sometimes, I suspect Putin and Lavrov as being controlled opposition, but I really hope I am wrong.
I’ll stop here, but my advise to the Saker would be to get in touch with iranian PressTV, with brother Nathanael, with Godron Duff and Ron Paul.
Forget about the official Russian leadership for the moment, they are still in delusional state and a deep comatose. Let them salivate at the useless dollars that Gazprom is getting, instead of helping this world with facts and just cheap lipservice !
DDoS protection should be handled by the hosting organization. It may be wise to stay away from Typepad. They seem to be particularly susceptible to them. MoA, for example, uses it and has been taken down several times in recent months.
@ Martin Bochneg 22 June, 2014 20:52 You are absolutely right to get independent of CIA-Google blogger which shuts down dissidents and you may well be hit soon.
I can confirm informally what Martin said about Wikipedia. The independent journalist and former NSA US Navy employee Wayne Madsen has been one of many targets of theirs. Wikipedia pages for ‘ex’ CIA like Paul Goble are watched like hawks, if you try anonymously to make any changes the super editors, who in Goble’s case all hail from Estonia (gee I wonder why, quality IT talent that loathes Russia cheap) will cut out any attempts to create a ‘criticisms’ section of Goble’s entry. Whereas Madsen or anybody the Establishment doesn’t like is nothing but a criticism or smear page with only the most minimal biographical facts and all favorable commendations or service records of Madsen’s in the 1980s NSA where he observed massive, brazen Israeli spying are airbrushed out (I mention the Israeli spying thing pre-Pollard because this may account for why the Danish origin American Madsen doesn’t like Israel very much). The same went for my one anonymous attempt to edit Walter Isaacson’s page to mention his ‘we must not be outcommunicated by our enemies’ deep freeze Cold Warrior remarks back in 2010, which he later clarified to mean he wasn’t talking about RT or CCTV (yeah right) but the Taliban. If Wikipedia is not Agency run it might as well be via PR firms and mysterious super editors who make sure anti-Establishment types like Madsen are defamed while easily documented, linkable facts and videos about Establishment figures including those with CIA links are kept out of the picture.
I hope I can make another point about how Putin is almost the only person identified with Russian position today. This is extremely bad strategy when you compare it with the American one. It really make Russia look like a dictatorship. Here is why: with a few minor exceptions all the important words and facts come from Putin and 3-4 other guys around him (Lavrov, Peskov). This is unlike USA, where we have a broad spectrum of characters doing the talking (McCain, Psaki, Nuland and so many other senators). Obama comes from time to time with some sentences. What this creates in the mind of a normal person is the idea of Russia being under the foot of evil Putin, while USA speaks with all their political spectrum. The job of the western massmedia becomes much easier: they only need to focus on destroying dictator Putin.
What he should do is to stay in the shadow as much as possible and only come up with really critical speeches about potentially unleashing the full might of Russian army against the satanic forces.
Putin should not even talk directly with Poroshenko. Even with Adolfina Merkel he should talk through some foreign minister representative (after all the back-stabbing that she did recently).
Putin did a big mistake by going to Normandy. He should have send some general from the Russian army.
Putin and Russians need to learn a little bit more about psychology of the masses.
I’m being very harsh because I feel this whole story is sleeping from their (Putin&Co) control and somehow they don’t get it, despite the fact that many claim a genial strategy is being laid down.
@GBLMK I do understand your anger and unhappiness with Putin’s current cabinet. One day or another I ask these very things myself. Why did they silently play the 9/11 muppet show and partnered with NATO in the so called “War against Terror”. Same with HIV/Aids, if it is true that it is a hoax to limit population growth. Same with the western Big Pharma Cancer industry. And so on and so on, you name it. On the other hand I still trust Putin. And I hope he is playing Chess in a method as smart as imaginable. We have to ask ourselves, WHAT WOULD HAPPEN, if rt.com suddenly published all these things? Maybe tomorrow we had a Maidan on Red-Square and that would be the End. The population is uneducated and stupid. It will destroy yourself if you out of a sudden tell them the truth. They won’t believe you … They rather enjoy “living” (err zombie’ing) in the Matrix.
I agree, this video should be in EVERY CHILD’s schoolbook around the globe: None dare call it conspiracy: Origin of evil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FosVI_XNhVc
But it is a fight against windmills. You cannot imagine how hard just I for my few Cents tried to bring the TRUTH to at least a douzen folks. To old (once good) classmates, co-workers, stundent fellows etc etc etc.
The result is _devastating_ .
Here is maybe some proof, that the Russian government is either not asleep or at least finally waking up: US is militarizing Ukraine to invade Russia. Sergei Glazyev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWT5HM_NMlI
As for PR and finanzing paid information agents I fully agree with you. To me it doesn’t make sense, why Russia has alsomost no PR and no NGO’s outside its own borders. On the other hand again: Maybe that’s like when Slobodan Milosovic decided, he has the TRUTH on his side, and hence doesn’t need a lawyer.
Because the TRUTH speaks for itself.
If they would only have 1 NGO in US or DE, or just one paid blogger, what do you think how long it would take, until the Zionazi MSM would make a big show about it, 10 hours per day on every TV channel and in every paper?! The fact is, they even do this, DESPITE the fact, Russia doesn’t pay us …
See this dirt, only for today: Putins Luegen (Putins LIES): http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/der-kreml-und-die-wahrheit-putins-luegen-13002460.html
You know, it makes no sense for Russia to set up any paid posters or Pro-Russian NGO’s.
I think you will agree, it is much more effective to leak phone conversations (Nuland, Pyatt, Tymoshenko, Kolomoisky) and now today: Despite “Giving Americans A Blow Job”, Polish Foreign Minster Says “US Alliance Is Worthless” http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-22/despite-giving-americans-blow-job-polish-foreign-minster-says-us-alliance-worthless
I trust Putin and Lawrow.
Look in their eyes.
p.s. Domain names and DDoS: Al this can be pointed to any Amazon clod VM.
E.g. http://www.opensxce.org/201405/i386/5.11/ sits also just in such a VM
DDoS should be quite properly prevented by Amazon’s security framework.
I also wonder, how can a page like http://www.globalresearch.ca stay online and the Professor alive! If you don’t know http://www.globalresearch.ca check them out and contact them for help.
I read their articles for many years.
%martin
GBLMK said…
I hope I can make another point about how Putin is almost the only person identified with Russian position today.
@GBLMK: It appears you still have a Western TV set? I gave mine away for free in 1998. What do you think whose’ fault it is, that only Putin get’s depicted as “Mad-Man” in western Presstitute media?
Take the time and watch live meetings at the UNSC. Then you see no Putin. But the problem is: In the West nobody ever sees any coverage of these UNSC meetings, unless the US wants to start another Balkanization somewhere …
Is that Putin’s fault?
In western TV, if for a rare situation ever anything get’s shown from Russia, they show you drunk jobless or old Babuchkas. Never young girls. In Ukraine it is vice versa.
No tell me: What can Russia do about it?
The world’s MSM is in the hand of 6 to 7 individuals.
Bonus: Here is another good freedom fighter, although he was once adviser to president Reagan: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/
%martin
Saker:
> Re. Blog platform
wordpress.com provides those abilities you seek:
Multiple Contributors
Multiple Languages
Paypal Donations
This could allow for keeping the costs, your independence from increased complexity innerent to 3rd parties under better control. Three keywords: regular backups + easy replication + distributed mirrors.
> Re. Donations/Supscriptions
“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.”
I think the work and information you provide is priceless given its public interest. While I would never blame you for following the suggestion, I will very much disencourage any kind of “stratify(ing of the) the content” against a “subscription”. Keep in mind the interested are as much oppressed in regards to information as they are in having their ends-meet, I think it would defeat the purpose.
I could suggest instead, as an incentive for additional donations from readers, a full transparency approach. Specifically:
> Permanent Donation area
> Donation Button access
> Show current amount of donations (reset every week/month)
> Donation amount per amount of hours logged authoring posts / research / etc.
> Expected target of donations amount deemed fair for your effort
Just some ideas that could be experimented with.
I hope I can make another point about how Putin is almost the only person identified with Russian position today. This is extremely bad strategy when you compare it with the American one. It really make Russia look like a dictatorship. Here is why: with a few minor exceptions all the important words and facts come from Putin and 3-4 other guys around him (Lavrov, Peskov). This is unlike USA, where we have a broad spectrum of characters doing the talking (McCain, Psaki, Nuland and so many other senators). Obama comes from time to time with some sentences. What this creates in the mind of a normal person is the idea of Russia being under the foot of evil Putin, while USA speaks with all their political spectrum. Concur with this 100% Russia needs new spokespeople preferably attractive and female with very good English. This will badly hurt the Establishment’s efforts to make Russia = Putin and Putin = Russia. Look how badly Syria Girl aka Mimi Al-Laham with her one YouTube channel and Twitter feed hurt the neocons/FSA movement to bomb Assad! Sure RT deliberately put up brunette ‘news babes’ to compete with Fox News ‘blondes news babes’ (sorry if I’m being sexist here Nora but the visual circumstantial evidence is overwhelming). But it will take a lot of individual YouTube channels mirroring a Russian or Donbass patriot’s account to succeed and build on it. Plus having a ‘Donbass Girl’ as a regular guest on alternative media shows telling the American public that listen to these programs by the 100s of thousands what’s REALLY going on will freak out the Cliff Kincaids, Michael D. Weiss’ and other Establishment hacks/Uncle Sugar sock puppets big time.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4unV5BVmWubfAF0Al_AVdw
http://hubrisofboz.blogspot.com/2013/01/who-is-mimi-al-laham-syrian-girl.html
Maybe it’s good strategy for Russia to not finance any propaganda outside her borders. And let common people hit the financial walls with their heads until there will be nothing left from their brains, or let them be swindled non-stop until they become complete vegetables and homeless: Russia thinks that is much better alternative than preemptively educating them. OK let it be), Ukraine is just a clear example of where this can lead (do you really think that if the people from there would have been more financially educated, they would have killed their own cousins ????). Things like securing a web-server or providing links on their official websites are not that hard or expensive and cannot be used negatively by any western mass-media. Too bad there are only a handful of people across the globe that spread the truth: and most of them are not Russian and are not getting any help from Russia, despite the fact that they have so many hopes set on Putin !
Unfortunately, I can say for a fact Putin and Russia seem to give less than a fuck about the entire Orthodox population from EasternEurope (there are some countries who are fully Ortohodox but are being now completely destroyed by EU). There were so many things throughout the last few years of complete devastation of these countries by EU that Russia could have done to stept in.
Yet, the feeling is that they are too arrogant to give a fucking shit about their religious cousins. SAD!!!!!
Hi Saker. Would love to help if I can. Other than your site I’ve read Zero-Hedge for years. As long as I’ve been following ZH (5 years now) they’ve had a team of writers-managers putting out terrific stuff. They were bought-out in the past 18 months or so. Some MSM or another. I don’t pay as much attention to reading the articles. Mostly I skim. But the comment section is superb. Like your site — I learn so much from other commenters. ZH has an intelligent and knowledgeable readership. They don’t suffer fools — or trolls — well. It’s a site which is followed by TPTB and therefore an important consensus building, driving, influencing and “pulse-taking” platform.
Frankly, TRUTH needs an outlet. That’s what you fulfill. Doesn’t mean everything is perfect — or that some stuff isn’t mis-communicated. But the heart and soul of this site is YOUR desire and passion for TRUTH. As long as you stay true to that you’ll have a growing readership and a base of contributions. The commentary is really important. That’s the piece you need to nurture and development — as much as the articles. If you have a good comments section — they won’t shut you down — they’ll try to buy you out. And you can take that to the bank. My 2 cents. AGS
Hello Saker,
The fact that you alone monitor comments is to me the most rewarding feature of this blog site. I hope you will continue to do so.
I plan to send you a cash donation and, yes, a bottle of Vitamin B50 Complex. When under stress, or doing intense intellectual work, the brain becomes quickly depleted of B Vitamins. These nutrients are essential for proper brain function, including boosting the efficiency of neurotransmitters and promoting cellular energy. For anyone under mental stress, the benefits of a B50 supplement can be felt within minutes. Everyone involved in the fight for Novorossiya needs to be aware of this fact.
Thanks again for your valuable work.
Saker,
I am technology-impaired but just read on some Russian news site (I thought it was ITAR-TASS but can’t seem to re-locate the article) that Russia plans to replace all of its American software for its military bc of fears of backdoor NSA spying. The two Russian products they will be using are named in the article — aaand, of course, I have no idea whatsoever if any of this is the least bit relevant!
In the orthodox culture, at least, there is a thing when someone big and strong like a bull comes home with a bloody nose because he had too many hesitations and thoughts about fighting back to a smaller guy: even his own family will be pissed and call him retard idiot for not standing up at the right moment. They might also say he deserved worse than a bloody nose !
I really hope Russia doesn’t come in that position with regards to her allies, although I am afraid some are actively thinking along these lines. I would be extremely careful about the opportunistic spirit of Chinese people and their capacity to hide true feelings: please check how many business connections they actually have with american companies.
The Russian leadership should really think serious about what they are doing and WHEN they are doing it: miss the window opportunity and you are doomed forever. A lot of damage took place already because they didn’t wipe out the nazi leadership of UKR at the right moment during a blitzkrieg operation.
If USA was in the place of Russia, we would have talked at “past tense” about people like Yazeniuck, Turchynov, Yarosh … (just think how quick Gaddafi & sons were eliminated in plain sight).
Might imposes respect and desire to join, it’s just human nature !!! In politics, like in real life, the strong ones are being chosen to rally-around by the weaker ones (it’s simply called realpolitik).
When you read RT or Itar-Tass, the feeling you get is that Russia is almost asking for pity from the international community. Even Somalia had more vertical spine and courage to fight back !!!
Russia, please stop trumpeting about all the snap military drills. Do it quietly for your own real purpose and not for cheap PROPAGANDA, if you really mean business. The more this gets on the news, the more I think Russians are big mouth talkers in this game.
If Russia is not up to the stakes at play (and a leadership position in this huge worldwide struggle), they should be more honest and give some clear hints to the people reading these kind of blogs.
Then, we all should start thinking about plan B and pick another hero after Putin.
Have a site with 1984.is – and am very happy.
How can globalreasearch and dear good Chossudovski in Canada survive?
Because they are no threat to the Empire’s power.
Nor is the Saker, presently. However his ambition to enhance his impact may very well become threatening.
Punters who actually comprehend the power of prayer should pray for divine blessings upon his ardent good works. Without religious reverence we deserve no deliverance.
Saker, there is something you can do as long as you’re on blogger, I mean, until you’re ready to transfer the content to another better place.
If memory serves me -long time I don’t blog- I think there is the possibility of opening up several other pages within your blog, which can be used for different subjects. You may want to check it out in the settings section.
Same for the possibility of a partial authorization for some tasks like comment moderation. If so, it would be indicated in the setting section too.
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Those asking for Russia to intervene military in the Ukrayne should read the article linked below (1), showing one issue – among the many running behind the curtains at the level of the state – that we are not aware of, but Putin and his team are. Nowadays the economy of any country is intertweened with the global one.
So, if Russia sends troops in the Ukrayne, the USA and the countries she gets to armtwist will impose economic and financial sanctions on Russia, her assets will be frozen, what would seriously affect her, or could even bring her down. True that she won’t go down alone and will bring others along with her in her fall, but those others would be european countries for the most part, and by now we all know what the USA feels and thinks: “F… the EU”. And f…ed it will be, since the euro-bureaucrats have NO political stature at all, none of them.
What has me astounded are the huge amounts of money that Russia and China hold in US assets, as if the USA deserved any trust at all, and as if they were friends forever rather than enemies, despite they having very clear that the fastest and best manner to finish off with the rogue empire, its wars, and its abuses is to stop feeding the (ponzi-scheme) US dollar. Not an easy nor a fast task, thus I’m afraid we’ll have to endure the reckless US empire for a while.
(1) http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_06_22/Gazprom-strategy-swapping-dollar-bonds-for-gas-pipelines-7413/
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The Maidan troll brigades, who have started losing the fight over the #Ukraine hashtag on Twitter and certainly have lost it for all hashtags related to Donbass, have started attacking pro-Russia or anti-Kiev fascist expats, claiming their followers are ‘fake’ or a sudden spike in 20,000 Twitter followers after an Irishman appeared on Russian television is fake. Looks like it’s all the same State Dept. or CIA funded crew — the psycho dwarf Theiner, some random dude who tweets as ‘Silver Surfer’ in Miami, FL and of course the ‘ex’ NSA social media warriors at the U.S. Naval funded with my taxpayer dollars Banderastan War College.
The barracks-theocratic-usurper-occupier-ziofascist-state has gone wild
http://rt.com/news/167712-idf-raid-rt-explanation/
http://rt.com/news/167724-israel-syria-airstrikes-targets/
American Kulak,
You’ll get no criticism from me on the brunette “news babe”, AK, you’re just stating fact. I just think Russia in general and Putin in particular are not into marketing and trying instead to present a new model. Otoh, all those phone leaks come at very interesting times… Adding to the current imbroglio in Poland — and getting Sikorski — I think was a brilliant move. But even if official Russian media are about as agile as an antiquated battleship, documentation, documentation and more documentation of every dastardly deed in Dombass is the most important thing that can be done, other than making sure it’s subtitled and distributed, STAT. And it’s the people of Donbass who need to be doing it, really, don’t you think?
Saker,
I’m delighted you made that comment about French Saker — they did a terrific job! It really is just superb. Anyone here who reads French will be delighted, and informed of various issues I, for one, knew nothing about.
But I’d also like to follow Vasco de Gama’s suggestion that you not stratify the content via subscription — isn’t the idea to get more people educated and involved? So why restrict people who may not have the money but certainly have the need to know? Your blog could turn into a closed club instead of the wonderful, and wonderfully informative, place it is now.
Dear Saker, why not simply use LiveJournal? It is really easy on LiveJournal to set up a “Community” that allows various people to post, to set up (or revoke) moderator privileges, etc. You won’t have to give any personal information to anyone.
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faq/cat/comm-manage.html
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faq/78.html
I realize that LiveJournal is not used much in the Western world any more, but it remains the most popular blogging platform in Russia. Maybe this is one of the reasons. (anyway, it shouldn’t be an issue since logins from other sites can work on LJ as well)
Dear Saker,
Ditto on the very good suggestions by Martin from East-Berlin and others have suggested about a new blog platform.
If I may add two points:
(1) You probably know this, but it’s worth repeating. Even if the underlying OS is totally secure and running on a trusted dedicated hosting service, only you should get access to the command line. Any moderators you enlist get access to the CMS only.
(2) Right now, each daily post on your blog attracts comments on many different topics and in no particular order. Some are pretty random. Would it be possible to have some kind of forum, so that people who want to discuss a topic in greater detail could do so there, while the comments on the new articles could remain “on topic”?
Thanks.
wordpress.org is used by many thousands of people for blogging, and allows the owner to provide selected/trusted (registered) members with the ability to moderate postings (edit, delete or transfer to another thread). 87 themes available from http://www.elegantthemse.com.
I’ve heard, however, that WordPress security against attackers is less than optimal. Also not sure if one’s blog can be hosted on a non-US server. Hosting on a server in one of the non-US FiveEyes (such as .au) is maybe not a good idea, though I’ve never heard of such a site being taken down (though presumably the craven Abbot govt. would do whatever the US govt. tells it to).
Michael McDonnell said, “How can globalreasearch and dear good Chossudovski in Canada survive? Because they are no threat to the Empire’s power.”
The widely-respected (among a minority of the US and European population) cultural critic Terence McKenna used to say: “In the US you can say anything you like, as long as less than 5% of the people take any notice. More than 5% and you’re in trouble.”
Even if more than 5% of people in the US read GlobalResearch, and the many other websites exposing, e.g., the ridiculous 9/11 official story, the US’s plans for world domination, and the US moon landing hoax (still widely believed), and even if they’re convinced by the evidence that the Anglo-Zionist Empire is evil, they mostly just sigh and then go back to life as usual (TV, FaceBook, football, family, work, church, etc.). It will take a major social/financial collapse for them to understand (if they ever do) that the US leadership from Ronald Reagan to Obama has been and remains in league with the devil.
The Europeans, however, are (in general) both more intelligent and better informed, and such websites (though still mostly in English) could help to convince the Europeans that their continued voluntary subordination to the demands of the US and NATO is likely to prove suicidal.
GBLMK said… “””””Russia, please stop trumpeting about all the snap military drills. Do it quietly for your own real purpose and not for cheap PROPAGANDA, if you really mean business. The more this gets on the news, the more I think Russians are big mouth talkers in this game.”””””
Ok, we will know more in a few weeks.
It is your _assumption_, that this is nothing more than “Russian Propaganda”. The question remains: IS IT A FACT?
Believe me, like you I sincerely *hope* and *pray*, Russia will finally help Donbass! Maybe the “trumpeting about all the snap military drills” does serve a purpose: To confuse all the enemy’s spy satelites. If NATO posts its next daily pseudo-proof satelite images, Moscow can say” Well, we told you so, that’s our drill, not more.
It is interesting for example, that one of the announced troops movements shall be from Rostov to Siberia. (I needed to search the article for details). This now permits for troops to move near the border and Mosow can say it is just part of the trumpetet drills. My hope is, that these drills are already the start of more. On the diplomatic side Moscow has to behave as if Poroshenko’s so called “Cease Fire” offer contains any 0.1% of good intentions by Kiev. It is important to limit even worse western MSM hatered propaganda against Russia, than already. It is already the very same level of AntiRussian hatered, as during WW2. Here todays version: Hotel-Video zeigt Russen, wie man sich benimmt (Hotel-Video shows Russians HOW TO BEHAVE!!!) http://www.welt.de/reise/nah/article129365543/Hotel-Video-zeigt-Russen-wie-man-sich-benimmt.html
Whatever, I’m a communist. But I PRAY that Russia will finally rescue Novorossyia (and henceforth: ITS-VERY-SELF)
Nora said “””””But I’d also like to follow Vasco de Gama’s suggestion that you not stratify the content via subscription — isn’t the idea to get more people educated and involved? So why restrict people who may not have the money but certainly have the need to know? Your blog could turn into a closed club instead of the wonderful, and wonderfully informative, place it is now.”””””
From my own experience with (the lack of any) OpenSXCE.org funding I need to warn the Saker and I need to absolutely agree with Nora. As you can read here, I desparately tried to get any funding for my work since 2005. See here: http://opensxce.blogspot.de/2014/06/for-last-time-my-nato-friends.html
“FOR THE LAST TIME my NATO-friends: NO DONATIONS —>> NO MORE OpenSXCE!!!”
And what happened: *NOTHING*
I took the site opensxce.org offline for 3 days, but the only donations I got then (and since then) was 5 EUR from Holland and 20 EUR from Sweden. Then I was in a mood to close down the site forever, but at the end decided to open it again, for free. Crowd funding doesn’t work for projects that are really worth it. It only works for shit like Kony2011. The reason: It only works if the MSM and Hollywood “stars” make propaganda for it, or at least not against it. That’s why it is so difficult to fight against the MSM as long as we don’t have the power, to shut down all western MSM and replace them with AHHA news.
Someone mentioned that .net/.com domains are at the mercy of US government and .ch was recommended. Remember when they went after wikileaks – for quite some time wikileaks.ch was indeed the only domain it was reachable under.
I recently heard Annie Machon point that out as the reason that her website is under a .ch domain. I just did a whois on that domain and found that it is hosted at webstyle.ch.
They have reasonable sounding offers here. Notice there’s no bandwidth limit and the BASIC hosting seems to be good enough for your goals. The prices are in Swiss Francs which stands at $1.11 at the moment.
I was using CMS (drupal, spip, etc.) for years.
If you have not a few hours a day of IT specialist to invest… just DON’T consider going to that. You need to backup, make the upgrades (CMS, PHP, PHPbb i tak dalle), fix the bugs, reconstruct databases after attacks and much more.
The blogs plateforms are free from these major bores.
I use WordPress for a while now, and there’s different categories from reader to full admin.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/
I was using CMS (drupal, spip, etc.) for years.
If you have not a few hours a day of IT specialist to invest… just DON’T consider going to that. You need to backup, make the upgrades (CMS, PHP, PHPbb i tak dalle), fix the bugs, reconstruct databases after attacks and much more.
The blogs plateforms are free from these major bores.
I use WordPress for a while now, and there’s different categories from reader to full admin.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/
Dear The Saker,
I am no IT/Web expert but dd notice on the news recently this company in Switzerland:
https://protonmail.ch/
and this article about Switzerland:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/8/prweb11018384.htm
So maybe this is one jurisdiction to look at – even for your emails.
Rgds,
Veritas
One other hosting company you might consider is PRQ in Sweden. They have hosted Pirate Bay and Wikileaks and so have shown not to be afraid of some controversy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRQ
http://www.prq.se/?intl=1
However, I agree with Klod Petrovic and others that your fear of government intrusion seems a bit excessive and that it is doubtful whether the extra effort is worth it. You do have a point with the extra options that you want to add. But that might be achieved with some Blogger competitor too.