Dear friends, I was hoping to be able to cope with all the work I have (fulltime day job plus at least 6 hours per day on blog-related issues) but I am slowly “sinking” while the inbox is growing a lot faster than the outbox is shrinking. This is important because a lot of you are emailing me for all sorts of reasons, and I am grateful for these emails
Dear friends It’s over, Dorian never made landfall (at least not in Florida) and we are now out of danger. We are pretty exhausted though, so while I will be back at my keyboard on Friday, don’t expect a flurry of long analytical articles :-) Also, please take it easy with the emails, I will have tons to catch up to anyway, so please keep it to a minimum for
Dear friends Very quick update: big news, Dorian (finally!) turned to the north and, even better, he weakened down to a (still very powerful) CAT2 hurricane. See for yourself: The only down side is that the wind field has expanded, which they always do when a hurricane weakens. All in all, we are safely hidden inside a sturdy building and we are cautiously optimistic. Hugs and cheers, The Saker
Dear friend, Since Dorian is now a terrifying CAT5 I wanted to quickly update you on my situation. In the last 48 hours the projected track of Hurricane Dorian has changed quite a bit, see for yourself: The good news is that Dorian is projected to most likely remain offshore, though that is by no means certain! The bad news is that it is now a CAT5. That is a
Dear friends, As many of you know, I only use GNU/Linux for all my computer needs, from my desktop to my Android phone. In fact, I have not used any Microsoft products since 2000, almost 20 years ago. But now there is an entire list of software which I (and a few family members) need to run which run only on a Windows platform. So I have finally decided to
Dear friends, I just wanted to let you know that I am sorry for being unable to work on the blog for the past week. The trip to bury my mother has turned out to be even harder than I feared. I am leaving tomorrow morning and, God willing, I should be back home on Wednesday. A huge thank you to Scott and Herb for holding the fort in my
Dear friends, I will be away form home from Sunday the 14th through Wednesday the 25th. I will have my Android smartphone and my Chromebook with me, so I should be reachable. Still, this will be contingent on where exactly I am, and the trip will include some very remote locations, and on the coverage of my cellphone provider and motel wifis. This will impact my ability to respond to
Dear friends, I am exhausted, I feel sick (flu?) and I have a backlog of things I need to attend to, including at least two interviews for the blog which I am sure you will find most interesting (teaser: one will feature a Q&A with a very interesting and well-known US politician) I need to pace myself, so I will be taking a few days off. Maybe until next Monday.
Dear friends, It looks like next week East-Central Florida might get a most unwelcome visitor: Hurricane Erika. At this point in time, this is by no means certain, the system might weaken and peter out and it might turn into another direction, but so far it looks like it is coming directly towards yours truly: So far there is definitely no reason to panic, but this is a good time
Dear friends, I will be gone all day Friday 13th so enjoy your open thread. As for me, I plan to spend a day deep in the Florida wilderness alone with my wife (my wife and nature are my two addictions which I need to ‘fix’ in order to avoid severe withdrawal symptoms) Open thread below :-) Cheers and hugs, The Saker
Some of you have emailed me to ask about “Carpenter” and how he (yes, he is a “he”) can be helped (he has not found any worth in many months, is is risking losing his home and he has no savings at all). I emailed him and here is what I can share with you: “Carpenter” is actually both a framing carpenter and a mason. He has done stonework and
Dear friends,Today Orthodox Christians like myself celebrate the Eve of the Nativity (aka “Christmas”) and tomorrow will be a major feast day for us (Orthodox feasts always begin on the previous evening). Icon of the Nativity On Thursday I will have to spend the day on the road to drive my daughter to college so, God willing, I will be back only on Friday. I have a hotspot in the
Dear friends,Sorry for the long silence. I am fine, just had some personal issues in meatspace to take care of, now I am back to normal and, God willing, I should have a Ukraine SITREP ready for you by the end of the afternoon. Topic will include the Poroshenko speech, the latest “sellout” of Novorussia, the Minsk Memorandum, and the World Economic Forum’s so-called “Ukraine Initiative”.Stay tuned and give me
Dear friends,I just wanted to let you know that I heard from Juan. He is safe, very busy and exhausted. So no SITREPs from him for a while. But the main thing is that all is well with him. I thought that I should let you know.Kind regards,The Saker
Dear friends,Some of you have expressed concerns that this blog will become “for paying members only” or that comments will be “for registered users only”.Let me put those fears to rest: IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN!! :-)This blog will remain 100% free and anonymous commenting will not only be allowed, it will be encouraged. No need to worry about that. Donations to this blog will always remain 100% voluntary and optional.One
Dear friends,You have seen me complain and moan about the fact that this a one-man-blog and that I only have 24 hours in a day for everything. I won’t repeat it all here, but the key problem is this: blogger does not allow for anything but a one-man-blog. Let me explain The current situation and the problems it creates In order to have somebody helping me moderate comments, I would
I just got a comment which I think warrants a reply as a separate post. Here is this comment: Please resume publishing ukraine sitreps in your morning. The Anna News published in your evening is already old news and is not what made this site so valuable and timely. Since this is not the first time that I get that kind of comment I feel that I need to remind
Soon a daily “Iraq SITREP” on the Saker blog!Dear friends,Many of you have probably noticed that one of our regular readers and commentators, Mindfriedo, has been posting very interesting updates about the situation in Iraq. In fact, his posts were so interesting that I have asked him to “upgrade” them to full SITREPs to be posted alongside Juan’s and mine. Mindfriedo has agreed to do so and, God willing, his
To the small number of obnoxious monomaniacs amongst you who are totally obsessed with WWII, Hitler and Jews: this blog is *NOT* a historic blog about these topics. Is that so hard to understand? Today I had to trash something in the range of 20-25 comments all about race, Jews, Hitler, etc. This has got to stop and you are clearly not understanding it the nice way. This is a
Dear friends,I have to leave the house for most of the day, but I want to tell you the following before I do so.1) I am desperately looking for a full English translation of the statement made by Igor Strelkov about the lack of men volunteering for combat duties in the Donetsk region. He made it either on Sunday or on Saturday. It’s about 10 min long when read in
