(SEE UPDATE BELOW)

Dear friends,

Executive summary: Help me work for you

Tis the season to be giving..” right? So here I am again asking you to help me continue my work for you.  Most of you know that, but for newcomers let me just stress the following: my blog is 100% ad-free, no obnoxious pop-ups, no paywalls, no special member-only content, not even copyrights!  Check at the bottom of the page, all the original contents of this blog are released under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license (which not only does not forbid copying, but actually encourages it!) so I think that it is fair to say that I am doing all I can to give and never put financial conditions to be able to access and use my work.  However, this model depends entirely on your voluntary donations.

Furthermore, please keep in mind that The Saker blog is not a news aggregation website. While I have special arrangements made with a very short list of authors (currently only Jeff J. Brown, Pepe Escobar and Alexander Mercouris ), I do not, as a rule, re-post materials already posted elsewhere on the Internet. I try to post exclusively original materials, at least in the ‘analyses’ and the ‘guest posts’ sections (the “watch list” section is specifically designed to repost external videos or documents which we find on the Internet, but not specifically submitted to us).  Which means that at a very minimum you get at least one weekly analysis from me and several guest analyses written specifically for this blog.  I can assure you that this is a lot of work, that this is exhausting work and, when I look at multi-billion dollar means of the Empire, a very lonely and discouraging work.  And to make things worse, as always, I am still struggling to pay my bills.  So, IF you can, help me.  If you are also struggling, then just say a prayer for me.

For the next couple of weeks I will place this announcement in the top “Saker analyses and interviews” section.  However, in order not to be obnoxious about this and not to deprive you from my analyses, I will still continue to write them, I will just temporarily move them down into the “guest analyses” section (I will place a special notice each time).

Speaking of the “Guest analyses” section: did you notice that it doubled in size is that I often now have not one, but TWO guest analyses on the same day?  Is that not a sign of you getting even more than before?

But now it is your turn to do your part in making this all possible.  Please help.

Announcements:

First, my 2nd book, “The Essential Saker II – Civilizational Choices and Geopolitics: The Russian Challenge to the Hegemony of the AngloZionist Empire” is about to come out.  I already saw the pre-production copy and it looks great and I think that you will like it.  Expect the official announcement very soon.

Next, the “Saker Community Q&A“.  Here we have a problem.  A number of you how have supported me by Patreon chose the “Hang out with TheSaker – AMA Style $5.00+ per month. Hang out with The Saker and ask him anything. Venue, Date and Time to be announced. Ask some fun questions and some serious questions in real time to our favorite Analyst” option.  The problem is that when my assistant, Amarynth, emailed you to suggest a date and time, only one of you replied.  Hmm.  I could, in theory, make it a public Q&A and invite everybody to participate, but we can count on the paid (Hasbara) or non-paid trolls to come and crash the event.  I need some kind of vetting process.  So, here is my suggestion: IF you are interested in participating in this event and IF you have contributed $5.00+ per month through Patreon then please email me and make absolutely sure to include this subject heading to your email “Q&A with the Saker participation request”.  I will give you until January the 20th to do that, that’s a full month.  And after that, I will organize the event with those who have made the request.  Now a technical clarification.  You will be able to join the Q&A either by videoconferencing (meaning you will need a webcam, a browser and halfway decent Internet connection), through an Android or iPhone app, or even by calling in by using an old fashioned telephone landline.  We will send you an email with all the technical details in due time.

Finally, as a short “state of the community” paragraph, I will say that I think that we are finishing this year in very favorable circumstances and that all-in-all we are doing very well (readership is stable at around 2-2,5 million pages served each month, but with a strong expansion of our “reach” as measured by the (admittedly unscientific) increase in interview requests coming from very different sources.  First and foremost I owe this to all the volunteers who have done a fantastic job making this blog possible.  A special heartfelt thank you to them all.

We still have a great need for more volunteers, especially moderators.  If you can help with translations from Russian into English, especially if you can subtitle Russian language videos with English captions, or if you can offer to moderate for a few hours each week, please contact me (at vineyardsaker@gmail.com) or Herb (for moderation at vineyard.mod_hs@unseen.is).

That’s it for me right now.  I wish you all a peaceful and joy-filled Christmas, New Year and Nativity.

Hugs and cheers,

The Saker

UPDATE DAY 1: ouch! maybe this is donor-fatigue, or maybe this is the *bad* time to ask for support as many other websites are doing it at the same time, but judging by the results yesterday I am in for a, exceptionally bad start.  This is partially mitigated by one very generous donation, but the low total numbers of people donating (20 total) is really very low, especially considering that this blogs serves about over two millions pages per month which, if my math is correct, is something like seventy to seventy five thousand pages every day.  I will be hoping for a better day today…

UPDATE DAY 9: first, thanks a to all those who did heed my appeal and have contributed.  This fundraiser will end on the 31st so, if you have not contributed yet, please do so now.  Let me begin the upcoming year, which promises to be filled with very real prospects of major wars, with all my energies focused on working for you and not having to worry about making ends meet.