Dear friends,
Today I will begin with some very good news indeed.
New Serbian Saker blog
A new Serbian Saker blog has been added to our community. You can find it here:
The new Serbian Saker Blog Team can be reached at:
info [at] stepskisoko dot com
After all the two previous false starts, I hope that the “third time’s the charm” and I wish the Serbian Team all the best: friends, thank you for taking on such a difficult job!
Transcript of Podcast #7 available
Next, I am happy to report that thanks to the hard work of lady “A” the full transcript of the 7th (mobile) podcast is now available here: http://10.16.86.131/the-saker-podcast-no-7-mobile-podcast/
The plea: Don’t send me into battle with no ammunition!
Okay, I hate to bring this up, but since 88% of you, my readers, have a actually asked me to do so (and I apologize to the 12% who don’t want to hear about this), I will remind you all again that as any other form of warfare, information warfare also needs funding. As Marcus Tullius Cicero said in the 1st century BC, “the sinews of war are infinite money“. Alas, only the Empire seems to have “infinite money” right now. Here is what is happening on my side:
1) my plea for a “recurring monthly donation” has, frankly, been a failure. Only a few of you responded to it (a huge THANK YOU! to those who did).
2) even though the number of readers, the hours of work I put into this blog and, dare I say, the quality of the articles posted here are all going up, the actual donations are clearly going down (almost in free fall).
3) there is a small core of supportive individuals who are generously helping on a regular basis, but the vast majority readers are clearly not contributing.
Honestly? I don’t quite know what to tell you. I suppose I could place a bright banner in front of every article posted reminding people to donate, but I personally hate that kind of “visual harassment”. Or I could accept advertisements (I get plenty of offers!), but I also hate ads. I suppose that I could hide behind a “pay per view” wall, but I loathe that kind of methods too. So all that I can do is simply remind you of this basic reality:
Friends, I need you to help me fight this information war. Don’t send me into battle with no ammunition!
I will say that you will be getting your money’s worth. Just this week I will have a amazingly interesting interview with a person from China, a exclusive analysis by Ishchenko about the future of Russia, and in the near future, an Q&A with a Spetsnaz officer! Where else would you get that? And you will continue to get all the daily flow of exclusive translated content – all of it at no charge, with no adds and no “clever harassments”. If you are still unsure, go over the archives of the last couple of months and ask yourself where else you could get that, what this kind if information is worth to you and how important it is to resist the Empire’s information war.
Okay, so I said what I needed to say. Now you do what you think is right.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
@ The Saker,
Q; a[n] exclusive analysis…
R; I thought only [commercial] MSM has exclusive access to all the ‘exclusives,’ no?’
why?!
See my interview with a person in China tomorrow and tell me if the MSM would post that!
All the MSM offers is “intellectual prolefeed” imnsho ;-)
Cheers!
The Saker has exclusive access to such commenters as Bot Tak, Kat Kan, Uncle Bob, Penelope, and many other smart and knowledgeable people, from which a great deal can be learned, as well as the staff doing sitreps, etc. Not to mention those who write articles, and the translation links. You can’t find anything like that quality, or quantity, on MSM. This is a gold mine.
Done
Monthly payments done!
I used PayPal from my account last time and it did not provide recurring payments.
I used the link provided from The Saker this time and the recurring monthly box was available.
I’ve decided to send you roughly that amount of money I used to send to corporate media. Enjoy :)
Saker, I think you are the hardest working man in showbiz. I will send you one hundred American dollars.
The China interview will be interesting.
The focus of the empire seems to be moving from Ukraine and attacking Russia, to the pivot on Asia.
Apparently 6 new US bases in the Philippines. Philippines have just put up their hand to do a kamikaze over the Spratly Islands.
Colour revolutions are past their use by date, and refugees may be the new weapon of choice.
A thought I had was if you would consider offering classes/courses – say on Russian history, Russian culture, religion etc. Say a 10 week course with an hour long lecture each – + 1/2 hour of question/answer… The classes / courses would of-course have a price tag.
thank you so much Saker for this blog….you’re our best friend….please please everyone…think of it like a bag of groceries….how much does that cost ? Buy Saker and his family a bag of groceries every month….how can it get any cheaper ?
Dear Saker
First of all thank you very much for your invaluable work. I’m going to send you my donation this week.
More than seven months ago the legendary “I am swimming against a tsunami” – article appeared, in which the money problem has been addressed for the first time, and until today there is no real solution for this. Saker does a tremendous job here and invests a lot of time and energy. In return he asks for a financial contribution within the possibilities of each user. Although I have to count every euro, I decided in October to pay a small amount monthly. It’s a pity that I obviously belong to a minority. Of course all regular readers know the priceless value of this blog as a source of information and they should ensure that it is preserved.
Take the ad money. You can put it on auto and let Google pay you for the outstanding content you provide. Rarely is the donation route going to work and paywall will drop readership off the cliff.
Bless you!
Great news! How we use to say: “Treća sreća!”
Can you please ask the serbian team to make the articles available in latin characters (switchable lat/cyr)? There are many potential readers from other parts of ex-Yu who are not used to cyrilic, but would read the articles.
Sorry for not participating in donations, I’m in shortage too!
Dear The Saker and Community,
I stumbled on this today which I was unaware of and which many other people may not be aware of via Amazon gift card donations:
Amazon Allowances
You can give Allowances, both one-time and recurring Allowances.
Either give a one-time Amazon Allowance or create a monthly or weekly Amazon Allowance that adds funds directly to the recipient’s Amazon.com Gift Card balance. It’s an easy way to fund on Amazon without sharing your account or credit cards.
Anyway, thought it might be helpful. Saker, you may want to add this option to your donation page where you talk about Amazon gift cards as donations.
Rgds,
Veritas
Dear Saker:
I have been interested in your blog for a while now (it all started, of course, with the Ukraine crisis). I have to say that it has taken a “professional” jump when you started hosting the new website in Iceland. Anyway, sometimes I miss more of your personal analyses (which were the core of the old blog, or that’s how I feel it).
As well, and I am sorry to say this, at least one of your collaborators has a tendence not just to stick to the facts, and possibly not to analyze with enough prudence. Even, I found sometimes a tendence to label people and behaviours in a subjective, even propagandistic way. Even, I would label some of his writings (specifically, I am talking about SITREPS of that one collaborator) not as counterinformation, but as counterpropaganda. It sounds “fair”, but it is unappealing as well. I am just one reader, though.
However, there is that one saying: “eye for an eye, and the world will become blind”… and I guess we literally want to see: we want to see (and read) the naked truth.
I am not sure if some other people have felt the same. I just share this thought in case it could have a meaning to you, and an impact on the donation ratio, which is the root of your post.
Hope this helps.
My best wishes from Barcelona, Spain.
Just donated, and I agree with Mike H – Run the ads! You are in the land of filthy lucre, get some! We can easily route around the bull hocky. This site is a uniquely valuable source of information on a hidden world; “an enigma wrapped in a mystery” as the man said (approximately). and don’t worry about blegging; its just electrons in the ether and completely harmless…
Thanks!