It’s this time of the month again – I am going to remind you all, as per your own instructions, that I badly need your donations to work on this blog. As I wrote a while ago,
Please don’t send me into the (informational) battle without ammunition!
Right how, the ammo is running out. At least mine is. While my adversaries enjoy billion dollar budgets!
Their budget and mine
So, friends, please do your part and pitch in!
Help me fight this informational war and keep everything in this blog 100% free.
Thank you,
The Saker
Sad too hear that your “ammo” is running out again. While I sadly cannot promise any donations in the near future, a general suggestion would be a new podcast. You haven’t done that in a while now, right? I always thought the podcasts were one of the best parts of this blog, even the disorganized ones where you just answer random questions coming in.
Best wishes
Zuzim
Yes, I am late with that. Wanted to do one last Wednesday, but I could not. I am aiming at the next Wednesday. No promises, but I will try!
Cheers,
The Saker
Saker, I have been on the blog since the spring of 2014. In my opinion, you alienated a lot of people with your sometimes rude comments. Including comments to me. Some catholics abandoned you. They believe in good works. Perhaps they have stopped contributing.
When people contributed, the money started coming in, and I understand your feelings, I have also been poor and I am poor now. Twice in my life I had nothing to eat. At one time I had to go 80 kilometers with my bike to get a meal. At another, I survived a fortnight on two-three dollars long ago in the 70-ties.
Where is Nora? What happened? Everything has changed on the blog. Many of us used to contribute links about Ukraine, but that is not the case anymore. The sitreps are very good, but the contributions of the regulars are not the same as before. You are a man of languages. “Tu sais bien ce que ce passe”.
I wish Russia was more organised on this matter, I feel like Russia is leaving the information war up to individuals, while USA and EU have massive propaganda machines and are funding troll armies to counter “Russian propaganda”, basically meaning the truth.
I feel like Russia is leaving the information war up to individuals
Well, they are trying, making their first baby steps. Russia Today is such a pretty good (I would argue) effort. The have also created a new agency called “Rossiia Segodnia” (which ALSO means “Russia Today” but not to be confused with RT) and they appointed a very smart woman (Margarita Simonian) at it’s head. But you have to realize one thing: until recently most of the Russian media was russophobic and pro-AngloZionist!. I realize that this sounds incredible, but it is true. So most of the Kremlin’s efforts were directed at the 5th column INSIDE Russia. They have pretty much won this battle, at least for the time being, so they are now starting to look outside.
But there are still *a lot* of 5th columnists. I can give you an example: Oksana Boyko. She runs a fairly good show on RT, but when I hear her speak her own mind on Russia talkshows I get horrified – she is either plain dumb or a typical 5th columnists. She parrots their propaganda for sure. And there are plenty more of such 5th columnists inside RT so those who are doing the right job (like Peter Lavelle) are nothing short of heroes who work in very difficult conditions.
The worst enemy of Russia has always *always* been the internal enemy. Russians handle external enemies rather well, at least the declared ones, but the internal ones have been the curse of Russia since at least the 16th century!
So yes, for the time being, individuals and small groups of people (like SouthFront) or Colonel Cassad are doing most of the “fighting” in this war while the Russian state with its huge resources stands by. Nevermind the Russian state! Gazprom alone could easily finance a huge information war and help the country which makes it rich. But, apparently, Gazprom simply does not care – it’s not in their “job description”.
Sad but true.
Cheers!
Yes, RT is good I think, altought I feel for some strange reason it has become more leftist lately, and I don’t mean “real left” but western version of leftism, culturalmarxist.. They often attack tradititonalist and conservative parties in W.Europe that are the only parties that are either pro-Russian or neutral to Russia.. An example is UKIP which is often attacked by RT while UKIP actually is the only party in UK that I know of that is neutral towards Russia..
Here is an example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykilyAm99rQ#t=1m20s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykilyAm99rQ#t=4m
Imho the concepts “left” and “right” don’t really apply in Russia, this is why both the hard Left and the hard Right can have sympathies for Russia. As for Russia herself, I am not sure that she feels very close to any European political orientation, but rather I sense a general sympathy for southern/Mediterranean Europe. If, in the future, a truly patriotic (but NOT nationalistic) anti-colonial European national liberation movement appeared, then Russia would definitely support it. But as long as Europe remains a US colony the Russians will not take it very seriously.
Cheers!
Left and right doesn’t mean much in the US either, or anywhere else in a consistent sense for that matter. It’s actually fairly amusing that people try to describe world politics in terms of just one dimension — a line — and not even such things like the 2D Political Compass, much less more complete representations of political spectrum.
Here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16PF_Questionnaire#Raymond_Cattell.27s_16_Personality_Factors
we see one of the various personality trait classifications with 16 types, and this is for just one person, much less a collective in a political grouping.
http://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/273/the-6-political-personality-types lists 6 political traits —
but does not cover even economics, theory of government, and a host of other things.
For the most part political science metrics involving these things is about as sophisticated as an common electric toaster, if even that.
re: “The worst enemy of Russia has always *always* been the internal enemy. Russians handle external enemies rather well, at least the declared ones, but the internal ones have been the curse of Russia since at least the 16th century!”
Sounds like a worthy topic for a post or two. It is a bit much to ask for amateur volunteers to fight the professionals the West has in NGOs, media, and so on. It is doubly hard for those of us who are not Russian to compete with the Russian fifth column as they know the language, culture, and history so well.
My take is a lot of the old media fifth column and liberals haven’t changed. It is just that they would be unemployed if they didn’t pretend to be patriotic these days. If and when circumstances change, they will change rapidly. Russia needs a purge, not a facelift.
Freedom Rider: U.S. Pushes Russia Towards War “Antagonizing Russia is riskier than paying jihadists to take over Libya.”
A recent New York Times editorial with the grandiose title, “The Fantasy Mr. Putin is Selling,” claimed that president Putin has a “willingness to brandish nuclear weapons.” There was no mention of America’s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002. Not content to tell one lie the Times then criticized Putin for “aggressive behavior, including pouring troops and weapons into Kaliningrad, a Russian city located between NATO members Lithuania and Poland.” Of course, Russia has every right to arm its own territory. The Times also neglected to mention that the American military are positioning weapons and holding training exercises in Ukraine, Poland, Romania and the Baltic states that border Russia. It seems that those provocations are not deemed worthy of mention.
The New York Times and its counterparts always play this role. They cozy up to president Obama as they have with all his predecessors and support any and all of their mischief. Far from being a voice of information for the public, they do the bidding of the powerful and are accessories to their crimes.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/freedom_rider_u.s._pushes_russia_towards_war
I enjoy your blog. I have put (what I can of) my money where your mouth is. Thanks for your work.
NJP
I thought about info war after your 80% calc the other day.My take is that all the countries in immediate danger should arm themselves with the cheapest,reliable phone movie cameras and know how to use them.sites for up load can be provided easily enough,and then take shots/vids of every insurgent move in to their country .thousands of vids should provide some good propaganda that the ‘heads’ can work with.It needs to be upped by the power of ten at least.
Done
During the past 4 months I have donated to the cause. It pains me to read that you cannot get a steady enough stream of money from readers to do your job without worrying about finances.
I do not understand why you are so against advertising on your site. Would it not make your life easier and you could devote your time and energy to the content of this site? You could choose what kind of advertising you are willing to accept, no?
It would give me great pleasure to click on as many ads as time would allow me each and every time I’d be visiting the Vineyard, knowing that you would get paid.
Best wishes and many thanks for what you are doing.
If 100 of your followers would or could donate $10 per month, that would amount to $1000 unless my math is wrong! I’m sure there are enough subscribers here in the US of A that could do that! And it’s easy via paypal. Come on guys and gals! What are you waiting for, for the Saker to fold his wings and fly away?
An unendorsed promulgation from Jim of Olym
Almost the funniest thing in Russian media is that rabid American Zionist Russophobe, Vladimir Posner, who poses as a Russophile. What a poser. Talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Not to Russians, who see through his sorry ass and have hated him for decades and think he is a total joke, but to a western audience that buys into his fake Russophilia. What a sham artist. He loves Russian music, art and literature, etc,. (and he loved the jail known as the Soviet Union), he just hates Russians.
Anyway, Gazprom needs to get a clue. Don’t they know that all western MSM is sponsored by Big Oil? And then, any media personality or journalist who is anybody in the west is CIA or MI6. But poor Peter Lavelle gets singled out and accused of being a Kremlin mouthpiece.