Dear friends,

I have a few special categories of people I want to say goodbye to with a few short messages.  Here we go:

To my moderators

Friends, you all are truly the unsung heroes of this blog!  Your job was both 1) absolutely crucial and 2) totally thankless.  And you sure saw it all, from the most hate filled to the most hypocritical, to various degrees of AIs impersonating real humans, to organized troll campaigns – over the years our enemies truly gave us their very “best”.  And, in spite of having a long list of rules to base your decisions on, you had to use your best judgements over and over again.  And, of course, you got a steady stream of criticisms (censorship! censorship! censorship!), and hardly ever a simple “thank you”.  So now, I want to begin by you and express my immense gratitude for your superb contribution to the blog: while here and there a few drops did pass, thanks to you, about 98% of the mental sewer out there was kept away from our comments section.  I cannot adequately express how grateful I, and many others, are to you.  So I want to, one more time, simply tell you how grateful I personally am for everything you have done!

To my IT aides

Your work was behind the scenes, but it was crucial.  Be it the LAMP stack or WordPress itself, I could never have done it alone and you are, of course, also the unsung heroes of this blog!  Some of you have stood by the blog for *years*, and you have not only helped make the blog into the flexible instrument it was, you have also played a crucial role in keeping the blog going while under all sorts of attacks, including very sophisticated and determined ones.  You truly gave the blog your all, and you defeated both the (inevitable) technical problems and the determined attacks.  Again, I cannot thank you enough!!

To the various Saker haters out there

Yes, you also tried your very best to bring the blog down and to somehow “defeat” me.  Some of you tried to use the blog to gain some visibility.  Others attacked me for not agreeing with your stupid and cultish ideas (including various flavors of racism).  You insulted my guest authors, and you slandered me on other blogs.  And what did you achieve?  Absolutely nothing :-)

There is a saying out there: “the best revenge is a good life“.  This also applies to this blog which you have totally failed to affect.  I really have nothing else to say to you other than the few words above.  Come to think of it, I do: your ever attempt at bringing down the blog only made *you* smaller, more irrelevant and more worthy of pity.

To those who betrayed my trust

I have nothing to say to you.

To my Muslim and secular Jewish friends

Though you are Muslims and secular Jews, I think of you as my good Samaritans!  Though you always knew that I did not share your religious views (or your agnosticism) and you knew that I was a traditionalist Orthodox Christian, you helped me over and over again.  Not because you wanted to convert me to your views, but out of the loving kindness of your hearts!  Frankly, your kindness, generosity and compassion put to shame my own supposed “brothers” (by blood or by faith).  As a Russian saying goes, “not all brothers are friends, but all friends are brothers“.  I fully agree with this!

To my Orthodox brothers and sisters

With a few truly shining exceptions, you were mostly absent when I needed you most.  Some of you went as far as trying to silence me.  For you I have only a few truisms I want to share with you:

  • Neither ignorance nor hate are virtues (John 13:35).
  • It takes no courage to “fight” (in words only) our supposed “enemies” from the past history or from the other side of the globe since these supposed “enemies” cannot fight back.
  • It would take courage to struggle against the enemies of Christ and His Church, especially when they are in power above us; and no, “my country – right or wrong!” is not a Patristic aphorism.

I leave you with these words of Christ: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” (Matt 5:13)

The friends I cannot mention

Over the years, I had the joy and honor to be in contact with some well known public figures who asked me to keep our friendship private as revealing our friendship could hurt them, their efforts and even their families.  One such dear friend is not with us anymore, but I still cannot disclose his name (you are welcome to make guesses, but please keep them to yourselves and don’t post them here!).  To these dear friends, whether still with us or not, I want to express my love, admiration and gratitude.  I hope to see the day when I can name them.

To my many guest authors

This blog is as much yours as it is mine!  Your (fantastically diverse) contributions truly were they key factor which gave this blog its unique nature: a true diversity of views!  You agreed to write for this blog knowing full well that I posted articles from very different, sometimes mutually exclusive, point of views.  I am especially grateful to the various Marxists who agreed to contribute to a blog run by a “people’s monarchist” (I think that this concept – Народная Монархия – is a uniquely Russian phenomenon which I explain here under the “December 2015 addendum from the Saker”).  Likewise, I want to also express my gratitude to the many agnostics/secularists who agreed to contribute to a blog run by a traditionalist Orthodox Christian.  Last, but not least, I want to thank the various Muslim authors who agreed to contribute to a blog run by a Christian.  All I can say is that I hope that one day the world will be as appreciative of the “other” instead of hating him.  Your example is, I hope, an inspiration to many!

***

That’s it for today, I hope that I have not forgotten anybody.  If I have, I will try to correct this oversight before March 1st.

Now I have a few more things to share with you:

A new friend very kindly dedicated an article to me

Aleks, who is a new friend, has just written a very good piece on the prospects for World War 3 and he went as far as to dedicate it to me.  I am most grateful to him and I invite you to read this article here: https://open.substack.com/pub/bmanalysis/p/prospects-for-world-war-3-dedicated

Next,

Archiving issues

We are working on them, please be patient.  Our plan is to wait for the day the blog will be shut down and replace it with a single page with URLs pointing to the various locations which have agreed to host the blog.  I will keep the domain name http://10.16.86.131/ and that will be where you will find this list of archives.

And, finally

One more topic: “Israel”

When I stared the blog on blogspot (https://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/) in distant 2007, my very first article was about a Zionist conference in Israel (https://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2007/05/where-empire-meets-to-plan-next-war.html).  By the way, the Zionist attack on Iran which I predicted in that first article has still not happened, and I hope and pray that it never will.  But I think that the topic of “Israel” is one which I want to revisit one last time before I shut down the blog.  So while I won’t write any more analyses, you can expect one more post by me on the topic on what “Israel” means for the world.  Stay tuned :-)

That’s it for me for right now.

Love to all

Andrei