Dear friends,
You probably have noticed that the daily SITREPs have been coming in with some irregularity recently. This is due to the fact that two of my research assistants – Raskolnikova and Duff – have had to stop their activities. One of them is facing some personal difficulties while the other one has simply disappeared. The good news is that Scott will now become my senior researcher and Baaz, who until now was doing the Sunday weekly SITREPs, will become a research assistant. Scott and Baaz will now work together, possibly with more research assistants, to reorganize the flow of SITREPs on this blog.
If you are interested in working with them, please drop me an email at vineyardsaker@gmail.com.
I want to sincerely thanks Raskolnikova and Duff for all the excellent work they did for this blog and I wish them all the best.
Finally, we have been working on a major reorganization of our Translations Team and the Russian Saker blog and I will give you all the details about this in the near future.
Kind regards to all,
The Saker
Scott and Baaz are great, sad to hear about Duff and Raskolnikova.
Scott’s brilliant sense of humor and incisive (and highly appropriate) sarcasm is just the best.
Where/how do you get talent like this team? Amazing that these folks are volunteers.
As general query from a reader’s PoV: Any idea what the new format will look like?
Thank you so much, Saker, for putting together such a great team, and for the idea of doing Sit-reps. They’re tremendously useful both for the information and for their ability to spur thinking. It is obvious that preparing them must be very time-consuming and we are all grateful for every one of them, and I’m sure we don’t quibble about the intervals between them.
Good luck to Duff & Raskolnikova. And thank you Scott for still being there.
Regards to all,
Penelope
Thanks to everyone on the Saker team for all the hard work. I realize it must often feel like a Sysiphusian task, but it is truly appreciated and checking into the blog is a daily pleasure!
This unrelated to the Saker’s announcement , but worth to read
http://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/2015/07/its-really-very-simple.html#more
Saker, I’m really curious why you say on your last podcast that you think ISIS has partially slipped the control of their creators/handlers. Since they are receiving mercenary payment and supplies thru Turkey & Jordan, how is independence from the hands that feed them possible?
The report of a no-fly zone in Syria which Veritas posted is really concerning.
7/24/15 http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/07/24/421691/Turkey-US-Syria-nofly-zone-Erdogan-Davutoglu-ISIL — Hurriyet daily
“Disappeared” . . . .that always takes on rather sinister connotations in a war zone, where I take it the disappeared one is. Hope they are safe & that the dropping-out-of-sight hasn’t been hazardous to their health – that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, one not involving actual bodily harm to them or theirs.
Off Topic but an “interesting” turn of events in Syria re Turkey bombing inside Syrias borders. Isn’t it strange how we, safely thousands of miles from the bullets, bombs and deprivation of these war zones, are able to use such descriptions as “interesting” when describing events that will have caused misery at the very least and possibly far worse to so many totally innocent people. I wonder how the world would be geopolitically if the North American land mass had been situated in such a way as to facilitate the bombing and/or occupation of said land mass. I’m certain the US appetite for war & mayhem would’ve been greatly reduced if they’d been on the receiving end of what they so easily dish out to others, always under cover of R2P, International Law & the oldie-but-a-goodie, spreading democracy !!
That’s sad news about Raskolnikova and Duff. I found their sitreps to be very useful and informative. I hope things turn out well for them in their personal situations. Duff and Raskolnikova, thanks for all your work.
I’m looking forward to the Scott-Baaz sitrep collaboration, as both are excellent at finding interesting material.
Agree
I agree Chris O how it would concentrate their minds if some essential or indispensable person or powerful entity decided that it was legal and desirable to save core values by eliminating persons of interest by eviscerating them and any foolish enough to be in the same place any place in their home country by drones. The good old USA would maybe jerk awake. The only downside might be they would go insane and over react. No they have done that already. Or maybe they will listen to reason. Yeah right.
OT…doesn’t Putin look like a strong friend in this photo ?
http://www.rt.com/business/310841-russia-oil-gas-syria/
Thanks, Saker, Scott and Baaz for the great reports. And the moderators.
Sad to hear about Duff and Raskolnikova – best wishes to both for their mighty effort.
The Saker team are actually making a difference — where so many (like me) sit on the sidelines just wishing we could make a difference.
Sorry to see we will be missing those sitreps, and hope the authors make out alright.
OT
I just found this — impressive material, much of it about things we have been discussing.
There is something for most everyone in the list of videos, from 2015:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAR_6-tD7IZXcDr7nS614CSaxVrps9fQA
re:publica
sessions in English
Channel with full list — and conferences since 2011
And what can “disappeared” mean? I mean, I hope he is just off for a while, not taken by a new Gestapo…
All the best to Raskolnikova and Duff – thank you for all your help.
Thanks Scott and Baaz for continuing your excellent work.
Rgds,
Veritas
You saved me having to ask..
I hope both Raskalnikova and Duff are ok – I will certainly miss their work. Maybe this is temporary and they will return?
Scott and Baaz fortunately are equal to the task.
I shall continue to do my bit along with other posters to post links that I believe are useful and compliment their work.
I check your page frequently. There is no way I could be a translator as I am not an artisan with languages. But I do have a suggestion. With articles in a language other than what the intended audience is, if the article can be displayed on a web browser then try connecting to it with Google Chrome. Simply right click on the screen and select the language you wish to see the article translated into.
Generally this does a reasonably good job. If you are hiring people to do translation work it might be a bit cheaper to do a quick translation with Google Chrome and have your staff proof reading to clear up errors in meaning of awkward phrasing in the language so translated into.
Good luck with your work.
Mervyn