Dear friends,
All in all 2016 has been an excellent year for our community and we are entering 2017 with a great deal of hope, not only because 2017 could truly be a historical year, but also because in spite of some difficult moments (such as the hijacking and subsequent de-recognition of the German Saker blog) our community is doing exceptionally well: we are involved in all the levels of the struggle against the Empire, we are collaborating with many good people outside our community, and our work is widely circulated and often quoted on the Internet. As for those who tried to harm us, they completely failed and then subsequently basically disappeared into oblivion. As the French say, les chiens aboient, la caravane passe.
We made some major changes into our IT architecture. I don’t want to go into the details, for obvious security reasons, but I will just say that we have made our servers much more redundant. Even better, we have also made the blog much faster (did you notice?). We expect to make even more progress in that direction. All of this work is entirely due to the absolutely fantastic work of Herb, our webmaster, whose efforts, kindness, patience and generosity cannot be overstated. He is a rather modest and low-key person, but I think that he really deserves to be call the hero of our community as I can tell you for sure that without his work I could never, ever have made our machines run as smoothly as they do now. Herb – THANK YOU!!!
The other big news is that we are making progress on the “History of the Orthodox Peoples” project. A large tea of researchers has been assembled and we hope to make an official announcement about the start of our project on February 1st of this year, in just a couple of weeks. I think that you will be very impressed with what we have developed. You need to be patient just a little longer to get all the details :-)
Okay, now the money issue. To be honest, the end of the year has been rather calamitous for me and I am barely making ends meet again. The bank account is as low as it ever was. Furthermore, the fact that we got more and better hardware for our computers means that the monthly bills for our servers have gone up.
Alas, while my costs have gone up, our readership increased, donations are down.
As I always do when asking for support, I want to draw your attention to two unique features of this blog:
a) This is not a news-aggregator as most other blogs/websites out there. While I do have specific agreements with specific authors (Alexander Mercouris, Pepe Escobar) to repost their analyses on the blog, the vast majority of the very high quality guest posts you read here are original analyses, not reposts. The only “reposts” of sorts which we do here are in the “speeches and statements”, “interviews”, “war news” and “watch list” sections which are specifically designed for that purpose. But the main analytical sections (“Analyses” and “Guest Posts”) are all original, as are the SITREPS.
b) I have no obnoxious pop-ups, no paywalls and, above all, no advertisements. Not only that, but I provide all the original contents of this blog under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). Compare that with those who copyright everything and threaten you with lawsuits if you reproduce anything they post!
So, original and high-quality contents given to everybody absolutely for free.
Frankly, just look at what I have posted since the beginning of the week and ask yourself if you could find that quality of analysis elsewhere, and completely for free?!
You can see why, in turn, I completely depend on your support and generosity.
So please help, make it possible for me to spend more time working for the blog and resisting the Empire than on my “regular” job. Your support is the “ammo” that I need to go into “battle”!
Please help!
Thanks in advance, kind regards,
The Saker
Hello Saker, I have been enjoying your fantastic blog for about a year now, since I discovered it. I certainly recognize the quality of the material you publish and I have a great deal of respect for you to have started this excellent blog in the first place.
Unfortunately, I am in a tough financial spot myself, but I am thankfully on my way toward better financial times. When I do get on my feet I plan to set up a monthly donation to this blog so that it may continue to deliver to us this highly valuable material.
Thank you Saker, and I also want to thank the many highly intelligent and informed commentors who participate in the discussions in the comments section.
Long live The Saker!
Paypal done. Come on guys and gals let’s get this support thing rolling!
Somehow I’m stuck on rhyming couplets.
Did I hear Saker needs additional bullets?
I find much value in the analysis and rants,
So I’ll pledge a couple of Ulysses S Grants.
If readership if growing, so must aggregate support,
So back the Saker, not US News and World Distort.
Yup, very much appreciated. Fortruss, sputnik, russian spring etc so ssssllllooooowww these days to upload.
Herb, thank you for your efforts & God bless!
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Someone pass the hat around the cafe’s last straggling raznochinintsi rabble. They have deep pockets, rubles at the bottom . . .
Friends.
Those of you that live in the US (or elsewhere) where it is possible to donate small amounts on a regular basis to this community without high costs, please consider doing so.
For my own part, that is not possible and/or practical, which is why I prefer to donate somewhat larger sums of money at irregular intervals.
Unfortunately I cannot do that at this moment due to other obligations and promised support for other people.
I will though donate a somewhat substantial amount late June at the latest.
Take Care
Kent
One problem is PayPal. Because of where I am located I need to use PayPal for donations. I always check “make monthly” when I make the donation but it rarely sticks for alternative media. After many tries, it’s finally stuck for Paul Craig Roberts and Wayne Madsen. But for all the other donations, such as the Saker, it only goes through as a one-time payment. Just a glitch, I’m sure. Although no monthly payment for a commercial product (Netflix….:) ) has ever had this problem.