As any other form of warfare, information warfare also needs funding. Please help.

Dear friends,

In the recent weeks the donations have fallen to almost *zero* even though the combined readership between the two blogs is comfortably over 50'000 a day.  Please help me to continue putting as many hours of work each day into the old and new blog and bring you the same quantity and quality of information and analyses.  As any other form of warfare, information warfare also needs funding.  Please help.

Thank you,

The Saker

Important clarifications about the new blog

Dear friends,

New blog presentation format:

A lot of you have emailed me to tell me that they don't like the "thematic" presentation used for the new blog and that you prefer a regular "chronological" one.  That is very simple to address:

If you prefer the "thematic" one use this link: http://thesaker.is/
If you prefer the "chronological" one use this link: http://thesaker.is/blog/ 

I think that with time you will see that having a choice of both is actually very helpful.  The thematic mode makes it far easier to research a topic while the second one makes it far easier to get the latest news.  I think that this flexibility is a huge improvement over the rigid "chronological only" format.

Delay between posts on the old and new blog:

Some have noticed that post appear hear before they appear on the new blog.  Correct.  I am learning the various options offered by WordPress and my webmaster helps me in the process.  So especially in the beginning, there will be a time lag between here (blogger is very simple to use, but also have very little functionality) and there (WordPress is extremely powerful but take a little bit of time to learn).

Moderation on the new blog:

Finally, moderation should improve massively.  I remind you that my moderation policy is spelled out here: http://thesaker.is/moderation-policy/

And just to clarify - my moderators (there are 10 of them) have a sole function to allow comments which are clearly in compliance with that policy.  However, they do not delete the others, but leave them to me to make the final decision.  In other words, don't blame them from not allowing a comment, if that happens - blame me.

The good news is that your comments should get posted much faster.  Also, there will be no software-controlled moderation and no obligation to sign up.

Comments:

Please do not post comments on this blog but only on the new one.  And please DO let us know what you like and dislike about the new blog by posting our opinions under this article's comments section:

http://thesaker.is/the-new-saker-blog-v3-is-now-ready/

That's it for now.

I hope to have a Ukraine SITREP ready in a few hours.

Cheers and hugs,

The Saker

New blog: request for comments

Dear friends,

I just want to invite you to share your comments about the new blog not here, but at the announcement post on the NEW blog.  That way our IT specialist can track what is requested instead of going through all comments everywhere.

Many thanks,

The Saker

Short message for some commentators

I would like the following commentators to email me:

Seamus Padraig
elsi
eimar clark

Please email me at vineyardsaker@gmail.com

Thanks!

The Saker

Message form the Saker + Open Thread

Dear friends,

a) The Saker needs to spend time with his veterinarian

One very sick Saker

My health issues have caught up with me yesterday and I still feel terrible.  I hope to feel better on Monday but in the meantime I have a favor to ask.  Please:

• Don't email me (unless this is a major emergency)
• Don't post questions here
• Don't expect more than reposts from other sources

I will reply to emails on Monday, okay?

b) SYRIZA

Okay, you win.  I will suspend judgment.  But if really Greece was not consulted, then Greece should now introduce an official protest.  Not in the media, but at the EC.  But okay, fair enough, I will suspend jdugement

c) Photo of Nazi goons

Guys, when I wrote "FSB agents impersonating Nazis" I was *jocking* for Pete's sake!  How can anybody seriously believe that I meant that?!  Valentin D: головой думать надо, а не.....,  а бабушке - привет!

Some dismissed it all under the heading "in any country or group you can find bla bla bla".  Yeah, except that these guys are from the Azov deathsquad, i.e. the junta's "Pretorian guard wannabes" who are now being disbanded, but not for human right violations or Nazi salutes, but for cowardice before the enemy.  Just like the last photo of Ukrainian Nazis was of cops, not just anybody.  I am not trying to prove that most Ukrainians are Nazi - they are not - but I am trying to illustrate that the stench of the Nazi ideology permeates the power base of the junta.

What the picture Photoshopped?  Oh come on...

d) Donbass news

So far so good.  As far as I can tell, if the "Debaltsevo cauldron" is not quite closed, is is almost and the still open segment is completely under Novorussian fire.  The Junta forces have taken huge losses (just as when the "Ialovaisk cauldron" was being formed).  The Junta forces are doing better north and east of the Donetsk airport where the Novorussian lost at least one, possibly two, villages.  Peski is still contested (as far as I know).  The big news is that the DNR and LNR have released a joint statement saying that they are willing to return to the negotiating table on the basis of the Minsk Agreements, but only if the current and actual line of contact is used to separate the forces.  In other words, they ain't gonna give back terrain which was won in hard battles.  Good for them.  Bottom line, the junta appears unable to break the resistance.

Okay, now I need to go back to recovering.

In the meantime here are the English language sources I recommend:

FortRuss: http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/
SouthFront: https://www.youtube.com/user/ygfront
Kazzura: https://www.youtube.com/user/wintersodomy (I know, weird choice)
Russia Insider: http://russia-insider.com/en
Colonel Cassad in English: http://cassad-eng.livejournal.com/

and, of course, the rest of the Saker community: 

PLEASE BOOKMARK THE NEW DOMAIN NAMES

French Saker: http://lesakerfrancophone.net
German Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.de/
Oceania Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.co.nz/
Latin American Saker: http://vineyardsakerlatam.wordpress.com/
Italian Saker: http://sakeritalia.it/

Okay, that's it for me.  Please give me some time to get my health back in order and, in the meantime, please consider this as an OPEN THREAD.

Kind regards and many thanks,

The Saker

Important blog news: we are getting stronger, much stronger

Dear friends,

I have some important issues to bring to your attention:

1) Domain names:

We are trying to fix the domain name problems and also making some major changes in our IT architecture. As of right now, please note that the following Saker Blogs are still functioning normally:

French Saker: http://lesakerfrancophone.net
German Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.de/
Oceania Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.co.nz/
Latin American Saker: https://vineyardsakerlatam.wordpress.com/

the following Saker Blogs are down due to domain name problems which I hope will be resolved soon:

Italian Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.it/
Russian Saker: http://www.vineyardsaker.ru/ 

=>Please note that these domain names are temporary and will be changed in the future.

2) Popularity vs Donations:

The number of visitors to this blog is at an all time high - just under 70'000 a day!  See for yourself on this blogger dashboard screenshot made this morning:

But donations have almost stopped.

So please click on that PayPal button on the left and show your support for this blog's effort with your donation.

3) Structural Changes in the Saker Community: the SCEC and SALLC

Following the recent crisis I have decided to make two major changes in the way the Saker community will be organized.

First, I have decided to hand over the responsibility for community-wide decisions to what I call the "Saker Community Executive Committee" or SCEC.  This is a small group of people whom I fully trust who will from now on be in charge of issues such as accepting new blogs into the Saker community, making key decisions about our IT architecture or deal with domain name issues.  After much thinking I have decided that the membership of the SCEC must remain confidential and known to me only.  This is first and foremost to protect the SCEC members but also to make this key component of our community a much harder target to hit then myself.  Besides, if you, the community, have trusted me in the past with the management of the community, then you can logically also trust those whom I have chosen to deal with these issues from now on.  Just to make clear: the SCEC will have no say in the way each individual Saker blog is run (each blog will retain its full editorial and organizational independence) and the SCEC will only deal with community wide issues.  In fact, the only person for whom this will be a major change is me, the Saker, as I will be able to focus on blogging and writing analyses rather then deal with technical/administrative issues.

Second, the corporation "Saker Analytics, LLC" or SALLC has now been formed.  It will have an "in house council", a US based lawyer who has agreed to help SALLC, the SCEC and myself on a pro bono basis. I shall share his name with all of you in the near future, but for the time being let's call him "spoonful".  "spoonful" will help the SCEC with domain name issues and he will advise me on a new copyright policy for the blog.

4) New copyright policy for the blog: CC-BY-SA 4.0

For a number of legal reasons I cannot continue to post everything and anything without thinking about the copyright issues which might be involved.  I wish I could, but I cannot.  During the latest crisis I was threatened with a lawsuit not once, but twice, and even though this threats did not involved copyright issues, I have to assume that the folks out there who hate me and the Saker community (there are a lot of them, believe me!) will resort to all sorts of dirty tricks to try to shut us down, including frivolous copyright lawsuits.  On the advice of "spoonful" I have decided that as soon as the new blog is back up, all my original contents will be published under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).  This is also what I will recommend to guest authors.  As for external materials, they will remain under their original licenses.

Summary:

The crisis which hit me and the rest of the community was definitely a very bad one much worse then I can say here, believe me.  I have had to deal with betrayals, slander, blackmail, threats, sabotage and an amazing amount of hatred.  Still, I also have to admit that I myself have been naive and way too trusting.  For all my life I have many many mistakes, but at least I never made the same mistake twice.  And this time around, I had to make a painful "lessons learned" exercise, helped by some wonderful friends, and a few crucial things will now change:

1) We will built redundancy on all levels of our community.  From now on, no level will depend on a single individual, not the community, not the individual blogs and not the IT architecture.
2) We will de-personalize the community: it will still be "The Saker Community" but not "The Saker's Community" meaning that my community-wide "footprint" will shrink in size making personal attacks on my much less lucrative for those who hate me.
3) We will harden the community making all forms of attacks (political, technological, legal, etc.) much harder.

With these changes I hope to go back to my primary role as a simple blogger and to trade my "community leader" hat for a far more modest, and better fitting, "community founder" hat.

Various people have tried to bring down myself, this blog and our community.  God willing, their efforts will eventually result in the opposite effect and we will all bounce back much stronger than before.

The Saker

PS: if no major crisis erupts between now and then, I hope to resume the podcast in February (if only to remind you folks to donate - hint hint).