Dear friends,
Recent events have forced me to take some important decisions which I have to share with you now.
First, from now on, the Saker blog shall not post any texts or videos from the four organizations which the US Treasury has declared “disinformation outlets controlled by Russian intelligence services”. These are:
- SouthFront
- NewsFront
- The Strategic Culture Foundation
- InfoRos
I want to stress that in my opinion these organizations did absolutely nothing wrong and that accusation is as false as all the other accusations against Russia since 2013. I therefore apologize to all of them for having to take this decision.
The US government, however, feels otherwise and it is not my role to interfere in these issues. Please understand that I am a guest of the United States (a “legal alien” in their terminology) and this morally obliges me to act as a guest and obey all the current US laws, irrespective of my personal assessment of these laws.
Furthermore, from now on, I will post no articles or videos which will discuss internal US politics (US foreign policy is fine). By “internal US politics” I mean the struggles between the Dems and the GOP, issues of voting, election outcomes, etc. Since the line is blurred, I will decide on a case by case basis.
Again, not only is it not my role as a foreign guest to interfere in internal US politics, and the Saker blog is mostly focused on international relations anyways.
Also, the Saker blog and its philosophy (see here for a sampling: http://10.16.86.131/blogs-philosophy/) was always anti-war and anti-violence. The moderators always intercepted any attempts to call for violence, without even the need for a special rule about this, this was common sense. I just want to mention here that from today on even indirect or “humorous” “suggestions” for even limited violence of any kind will from now moderated even more strenuously than before.
And, finally, since I am doing some “Spring house cleaning” I have also decided to add a new rule to the moderation rules (which can all be found here: http://10.16.86.131/moderation-policy/). This is the full text of the new rule:
21) I am now also banning any advocacy of the following ideologies: 1) National-Socialism (Nazism, Fascism) 2) Wahabism (Takfirism) 3) Zionism (rabbinical “Judaism”, aka “Phariseism”) and 4) Latin Christianity (Papism, including the propaganda of the so-called “Marian apparitions” including the Fatima hoax). These are all messianic ideologies with a fantastic propensity (and, I would argue, a proven record) for deception and violence. Frankly, I consider them all evil and even demonic in nature. Discussion and criticism of these ideologies remain allowed, but direct attempts of advocacy/propaganda is from now on banned. Adherents of these ideologies are welcome to conclude that I am a “censoring tyrant” who is afraid of their “truth” – that is quite fine by me since I truly don’t care about their opinions anyway. If they don’t like it – let them open their own blogs :-) From now on, any attempts to peddle these ideologies on the Saker blog will result in 1) the comment being removed and 2) the author permanently banned.
There might be some amongst the reader who, for whatever reasons, will disapprove of these decisions. To them I can only say the following: it is my profound conviction that these decisions are correct and that I had no other choice in the matter. I am sorry if you feel otherwise.
Finally, I also have to ban comments under this announcement. Again, I feel that this is the right thing to do but I cannot discuss this here. I apologize for that.
However, feel free to email me with any (reasonable) comments, objections or suggestions (don’t bother with the usual hate mail).
Again, I ask for everybody’s understanding for the decisions I had to take and for the fact that I cannot go into any discussions about the motives that made me take these decisions.
Friends, I don’t like this any more than you do, but this is my “new normal” and going into deep denial will only make things worse.
Kind regards
The Saker
