Dear friends,

I just spoke to our IT guru (Herb) and he told me that since the escalation in tensions around the Russian ultimatum to the West the number of pages served each day has doubled.  We serve about 175’000 pages each day.  That is a whopping 5+ MILLION pages per month (175’000*30.5=5’337’500).  I think that this is 2M above our previous record.

The truth is that the Saker blog has never been more popular than before.

Our servers are holding the load well and we are confident that the IT deployment we have is strong (we cannot go in details about the how, of course) but it does not come for free.  Let’s just say that redundancy is expensive.

Now, over the past months, weeks and, now especially days, I have been using all my time for only one purpose: to keep you all informed and offer you the best analyses I can.  I wish I could continue doing only this, but I can’t.

So, please excuse the interruption, but now that I have your attention, I have to use this opportunity to reach out to all of you and say the following:  friends, I need your help, now more than ever!

First, we need more moderators:

We are doing our best to have at least one moderator on 24/7.  That is both very hard to achieve, but also very important.  When we have ‘holes’ in our moderation schedule, comments are put on hold for hours at a time!  Herb and I are doing our best to moderate as much as we can, but please understand that we are both ALREADY swamped with work and that all the time Herb and I moderate is time where we are not concentrating on our key jobs: keeping our servers running and providing you with analyses.  So I will say this: please help us serve you!  We cannot keep doing it all at this pace.  Here are our most urgent time slots we need moderators for:

  • 2am-4am Monday-Friday EST (07:00-09:00 UTC)
  • 9am-12pm Monday-Friday EST (14:00-17:00 UTC)
  • 3pm-4pm Monday-Friday EST (20:00-21:00 UTC)

Unless we can fill these slots, comments will get stuck in these specific time slots.  That is just a fact.

If you can help, please email Herb directly at: saker-webmaster@yandex.com

Second, and I hate to bring it up, but we need your donations.

Yes, no war, not even an informational one, can be waged for free.  And our enemies have not only bought out quite a few previously “pro-Russian” websites, they have billions to try to silence us in all sorts of ways.

I don’t expect to match the “financial firepower” of the likes of Soros, but if each one of you contributed just one dollar a month, we would have more than enough not to just continue, but to expand our capabilities.  Even one penny from each one of you would actually make a huge difference.

While our readership is already huge, over the recent months and weeks it has doubled, yet our donations are down :-(

I get it – you are all much more interested in the tectonic changes taking place before our eyes and while you are happy to read what we post, you probably don’t realize the huge effort all of us here have been making to give you both factual information as quickly as possible and solid analyses as soon and as often as needed.  Some of us are quite exhausted to be honest.

Here is our dilemma: readership has exploded, our coverage gets a lot of positive reactions (in comments and emails) yet our donations are not up, but down.  Initially, I was thinking about a dedicated fund drive, but that won’t happen, not with the rapidly evolving international situation.  So here is my offer and request to you:  we will forgo doing any fundraising if you don’t forget to pitch in and help us serve you!

And need I remind you all that the Saker blogs SOLELY and EXCLUSIVELY depends on your 100% volunteer donation?  We have no ads, no pop-up, no special “members only” sections or articles.  None of that shit. Not only that, but with a few very special exceptions, all our articles are actually “written for the Saker blog”, we are not a news aggregator and we do not have fictional “guest authors” whose work, in reality, is simply taken off the net by some website and presented as “theirs”.  These are all ugly and dishonest methods we will never use.  That means that we must work much harder than all those who simply “fish” the Internet, repost and take credit.  We actually do the job ourselves.

But please do not punish us for not being like (almost!) all the rest!

We give you everything we got for free, and we entirely place our hope on you helping us in turn by financially supporting us.

Now, just to make things worse, these are bad times for a lot of our readers, the economic crisis has already hit the USA, Canada and the EU.  And I know that a lot of readers have very modest means.  So here is my maybe naive but heartfelt request to you all:

  • If means are limited and you “feel the squeeze”, do NOT send us any donations.  I really and sincerely mean that.  If you are religious, please say a prayer for us all.  If not, wish us luck and don’t feel bad about not contributing!  But please don’t contribute financially.  I really mean it.
  • If, however, you are financially comfortable (for whatever reason), then please heed the words of Saint Basil the Great who said “Oh mortal, recognize your Benefactor! Consider yourself, who you are, what resources have been entrusted to you, from whom you received them, and why you received more than others.  You have been made a minister of God’s goodness, a steward of your fellow servants.  Do not suppose that all this was furnished for your own gullet!  Resolve to treat the things in your possession as belonging to others“.  My direct request to you is this: please support our work and donate not only in your personal name, but also in the name of those who wish, but cannot donate because they don’t have the means to do so.

Yup!  I ask the “haves” amongst you to pitch in on behalf of the “have nots”!

And please remember that a donation which would make no difference to you could make a huge difference to us!

Is that naive? I don’t know.

You tell me or, better, show me!

Please click here: http://10.16.86.131/contact-and-donations/ to see the various ways you can support us!

In fact, you will prove me either right, or wrong, but in one way or another your actions will do the talking and give em a reply :-)

Last but not least, I need Russian speakers who read this blog to help me.

Here is what I specifically need them for:

  • Translations from Russian into English in general
  • Locate information (spontaneously and by request) on the Russian media and RuNet.  For example, there is a huge wealth of interesting info and commentaries on Telegram, yet I physically don’t have time to read the channels I signed-up to (over 100, all in Russian).
  • Machine translate important documents using Yandex (spontaneously and by request), then touching them up for bad mistakes and then send them to me.
  • I need Russian speakers to locate important videos and upload them to BitChute with, ideally, an English language transcript in the subtitles (best), or a transcript posted below (good), or with just a summary (still better than nothing).

If you can help, please email me directly.

Frankly, I am disgusted with the slow speed in which the Russians make not only translations available, but even Russian transcripts.  When I see the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website I want to weep.  The Kremlin website is not much better.  As for the Russian TV channels, not only don’t they translate, they file copyright complaints with YouTube if we translate and post their videos! That’s both sick and crazy!  And,  not to mention, self-defeating…

The sad truth is that like a lot of putatively “pro Russian” websites, a lot of pro-Kremlin YouTube channels are only in it for one reason: revenue.  And if we repost THEIR information, they don’t see that as free marketing, they only count lost pennies.

I have to say that my disgust with that entire attitude (my money is more important than my values) makes me sick with disgust.  Ditto for the lazy and unprofessional pace of official Russian translations.

So we can do more and we can even do better, but only if you (and by that I mean at least most of you) help us in one way or another.

Okay, I am done.  I will admit that I am somewhat nervous about all this, seems very naive or even delusional, but I like the idea of conducting our struggle in a totally different manner than most folks out there.  I also like the idea of no quid pro quo, only 100% voluntary support.

Basically, I chose to place my bet on the kindness and generosity of at least enough of my fellow human beings.  This has beautifully worked so far (15 years of blogging, surviving all those who wanted to silence me!) and I will continue to choose to hope that God will provide, through you or in some other way.

If you want to make a difference and help, now is the time.

Thanks to all of you,

Andrei