Dear friends,A week has passed since I have placed a donation button on this blog and I feel that I ought to give you a short update on the donations received. A total of 65 people from 7 countries have made donations ranging from 2 dollars to 100 dollars. 2 people have chosen to make a “recurrent payment”. All this refers to donations made through PayPal. Only three people chose
Dear friends,For those of you who hate PayPal (which I understand!), I have just added a Flattr donation button (left column, right under PP button). Hopefully, and if I can find the time to read-up on it and wrap my exhausted brain around it, BitCoin will be next.Many thanks and kind regards,The Saker
Sorry to interrupt the flow of news with my personal headaches, but I just found out that PayPal had blocked donations because they wanted more information about me. I just got off the phone with them and they assured me that the account is now fully restored. Why they could not contact me *before* blocking donations they could not explain in any other way than “we are so sorry” (sigh,
Dear friends,If you take a look at the left of the page you will see the new “DONATE TO THE SAKER” button! I know that some of you do not like PayPal (neither do I), but that was the easiest and fastest option to set up. I will read up on BitCoin and try to offer that option as soon as possible.I thank you all again for making this suggestion
Dear friends,You guys are amazing, that is all I can say…. It is 0915 and already 53 replies telling me to go ahead. Okay, I yield. I will set up a contributions/donations system. All I can say is that I am immensely touched and immensely grateful.One small comment and then we will go back to the more important issues: some have suggested that I put ads on the blog. Guys,
Dear friends,First, I want to repeat what I said earlier today – I am amazed, awed and deeply moved by your very kind expressions of support for me and my blog. To say that I am grateful does not even begin to cover it. I thank you all for your kindness and support – I felt like I was surrounded by a crowd of friends and that is a wonderful
Dear friends,I just wanted to let you know that I have been reading your replies to my personal announcement with amazement and a deepest sense of gratitude. I shall post a substantive reply to what you have written as soon as I find a minute to do so, but right now the situation in the Ukraine is far more important, so that is why I will focus on in priority.
Dear friends, I have decided to take a short break for the torrent of news about the Ukraine to share with you an important development in the life of this blog: two days ago, last Thursday, the number of daily visitors to this blog has passed 10’000 to peak at an amazing 11’538 visitors! Now, some of them are webcrawlers, search engines, double visitors and my own, but the 10’000
Dear friends,I am frankly exhausted by the last few days in which I have used all my (so-called) “free time” to parse through the immense stream of often contradictory information coming out of the Ukraine while trying to make sense of it all. I really would need a few days to take care of personal and family issues which I have neglected. So for the next couple of days, and
Dear friends,A little less than one month ago, I published a small announcement here entitled “This has been a really amazing week for me – many thanks to you all!!” in which I mentioned that my article about Russia and the USA had been picked up and even translated by several websites and that I would now write an occasional column for the Asia Times. To my absolute amazement the
Wow! This has been quite a week for me. It all began soon after I published my rather long analysis “1993-2013: is the twenty years long “pas de deux” of Russia and the USA coming to an end?” which I wrote last Friday and published on Saturday morning. The funny thing is that I had originally only intended to deal with the issue of “Putin and public opinion at home
I am going to be gone for the next day (diving in some nice coral reefs!), but since at least one dimwit managed to accuse me of wanting to “destroy the planet with pollution” because of my post about the latest Greenpeace stunt I have decided to post this little reminder by Roger Waters, my absolute favorite composer and singer, about the world we live in: See you all on
Dear friends,Guess what I just found out – today the “Vineyard” as reached half a million page views! See for yourself: This is maybe not quite on par with google.com, youtube.com or cnn.com, but for the very modest blog of one lone guy its pretty good, no? And keep in mind that I make no money at all of this blog, that I have a job and a family to
Dear friends,I just wanted to touch base with you and let you know that the reason why this blog was relatively inactive recently was due to a mix of three factors: 1) I have had an rather insanely busy schedule and a few personal issues I needed to focus on. Things are better now.2) Most of the stuff in the news recently is boring beyond belief. For example, I cannot find
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Dear friends, This Sunday I will be leaving on holidays for a couple of weeks. I will be camping in a mountainous area with a very slow and sporadic GSM coverage which means that I should be able to read emails and approve/reject comments made once a day or so, but that is about it. I will not be able to make normal posts here or, even less so, write
Dear friends, Just wanted to let you know that I will be hitting the road from April 12th to April 22nd. I will be driving up and down the USA, something like 2’500 miles in 10 days, so while I will have an Android smartphone with me and while I will have access to a computer on a regular basis, I might take me longer than usual to reply to
Dear friends, Today I though I would turn to you to ask you for some assistance. Believe it or not, but I have a relative who sincerely doubts the fact that the West is behind the so-called “color revolutions”. Nope, she sincerely believes that all this is the expression of a “deep longing for freedom” by “the people”… For me this has never been even an issue, so I have
Dear friends, I am leaving tonight to take a few days off and spend some time in the Florida Keys with my family snorkeling and free diving (mostly in the waters of Key Largo & Marathon). God willing, we should be back on Tuesday evening (US EST; UTC -5). I will have my cellphone and N800 Internet Tablet with me, but I really don’t want to take a laptop. Of
Dear friends, I am going to be away from my computers for a couple of day. I will be on the road from tomorrow Thursday until next Tuesday. I will probably only be able to access the Internet via my smartphone and tablet so, barring some huge event, I will probably not post here or even answer emails. God willing, by next Tuesday all shall be back to normal. Besides,
