Dear friends,
A few days ago I posted an idea to create a network of “Saker correspondents”. Here is what I wrote:
I think that it might be extremely useful to create a group of “correspondents” of this blog. Here is what I mean by that:
I need local folks to go through the local Internet resources (not the big national news, those I parse myself) to seek out interesting stuff and then simply send me the links. Though a commentary or evaluation of these links could be helpful, the links alone would be helpful enough. Here are the languages which I can read more or less decently: very easily: French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and English, of course. With some difficulties Portuguese, and Dutch. Slowly and preferably with the help of a machine translator, I can also understand a text written in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Afrikaans, Slovak and Macedonian.
Also, there are four languages which I don’t know at all and with which I would really need a person willing to translate or even just summarize interesting articles in the local Internet (in order of priority): Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and Hebrew.
Should that work, my goal would be to completely bypass the AngloZionist media and to offer the readers of this blog information from the small news sources which are little known but which are trying hard to become more visible. Sure, we all know about RussiaToday, PressTV or TeleSur, but who knows what kind of interesting stuff is published on the local Internet in Omsk, Isfahan or Cochabamba?
Tlaxcala does a great job of translating “alternative” information in many languages and IPS tried to being local information sources. But for the former does not use local correspondents or specialize in English-language information while the latter has, shall we say, a “not always adequate political agenda” with some pretty darn big blind spots.
So here is my idea: if some of you are interested in becoming “Saker correspondents” we could have your just scan the local press in your area (it don’t need to be in Timbuktu – the local press in France or Romania might be very interesting too) and send me the links. I could then either publish the full article if it is worth it, or just post a few links so those interested can read it for themselves, or simply read the stuff myself to help me understand a region or a current event. If there will be Arabic, Chinese, Farsi or Hebrew speakers willing to be “Saker correspondents” then they would work somewhat differently: they could email me and say, “the local website has a reader’s forum where one guy just posted his impression after a 3 day trip to the town of X and he is describing something interesting. Do you want a summary or full translation?” Depending on the place, situation and source I would have to decide whether this is worth the correspondent’s effort.
Alternatively, you could bypass me completely and contact each other directly and jointly decide to try to get the local information sources to the English-speaking world, either through my blog or through any other outlet you like (God knows there are many very good ones today). Then my role would be just to help put you in touch with each other and then you could work without intermediaries.
Just think about it. All I know is that there are regular readers here from all over the planet, with lots of languages and excellent expertise and education. Not to flatter you all, but there is *a lot* of brainpower available which we could put together if you guys are interested.
As of today, I got replies from the following countries or regions:
- Hawaii
- Canada
- Scandinavian countries
- Balkan countries
- France
- French speaking Africa
- Benelux
- Germany
- Greece
- Italy
- Czech Republic
Which is pretty good, but I still have a DIRE NEED of the following regions:
- Latin America
- China
- India
- Afghanistan
- Pakistan
- Lebanon
- Israel
- KSA
- Far East Asia
- Central Asia
- Russia
- The Ukraine
- Maghreb
- Australia and New Zealand
- Turkey
- Iran
- Iraq
- Syria
- Korean Peninsula
- Vietnam
- Indonesia
- English speaking Africa
- Portuguese speaking Africa
- Japan
- United Kingdom
- Mexico
- Cuba
- Central America
So, please, if you live, come from, travel to, or are in frequent contact with any of those countries and if you can volunteer a little time each week to reply to a question, scan the local Internet, maybe translate a short article or check an information – please email me and let me know.
You can write to me using an alias, pen name or nick – I don’t need to know your real identity. If you would like to write sort articles about developments about you area of responsibility and if I find them to be interesting for this blog, I will publish them here and give you full credit for it under whatever identity you prefer.
I hope that many of you will reply and that we can set up a pretty decent network of correspondents.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
I’m sad to admit that while I can speak coloquial Egyptian Arabic, I can’t read it so I’m not much use for that. I can still read German, but you probably have much better qualified people for that. I guess I can still read Polish if I have to, but it would be a struggle and not sure if it will have much use.
Wish I could be more help.
Saker,
You’re forming an intel network to rival some small countries :-)
T1
Where do we send you the links?
(i.e. which email?)
I note that you exclude 49 of the 50 of the USA. Probably a good idea.
I take Latin America (portuguese and spanish).
Regards,
NoName
@Lysander: no worries, just keep posting your comments here and that will be already excellent, you are one of the oldest and very best around here :-)
@T1: not quite – I want this to be 100% open sources only, so that is a big difference.
@Anonymous & everybody: you can write to me at vineyardsaker@gmail.com or vineyardsaker@mail.ru (whichever you prefer)
@Anonymous: I note that you exclude 49 of the 50 of the USA. Probably a good idea.
Well, I live in the USA myself, but what I could need is a “specialized USA”, folks willing to scan the specialized press for me, such as policy journals, military magazines, websites, blogs, etc. Are you interested?
@NoName: please email me at either one of these vineyardsaker@gmail.com or vineyardsaker@mail.ru. Thanks A LOT!
The Saker
Buenas noches,Saker and followers,
Les leo desde hace muy poco en que me trajo aquí un artículo- entrevista a tres autores ( entre los que estaba The Saker )analizando la situación en Ucrania, publicado en el sitio Rebelión-org, pero original de Tlaxcala. Me gustó mucho el análisis, claro, directo, y acertado, en mi opinión. Escribo en castellano porque en inglés me costaría un buen rato, ya que hace tiempo que no lo hago. Disculpen. Como el blog está en inglés y suelo venir por aquí casi todos los días, cuando me familiarice otra vez un poco con el idioma, intentaré escribir en inglés, si tengo algo que decir, claro.
Saker, me gustaría saber si necesita algo de medios españoles, por si le puedo ser útil.
Hi Saker,
You have missed out a small country in Southeast Asia – haven for the filthy rich. The people there call themselves “Sinkies,” mostly clueless. One of the ten richest and most expensive country in the world
http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-richest-countries-map.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/travel/most-expensive-cities/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_cities_for_expatriate_employees
News?
How about some non-news?
Something you have known for a long, long time. Or at least you felt it so deeply in your bones that you knew it was true without anyone having to tell you.
But seeing it in cold statistics is…well…there it is…you don’t have to just know it, you can see it in cold hard numbers.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/nobody-cares-what-you-think-unless-youre-rich
“
In a simple model of democratic politics, there are three basic drivers of political decisionmaking:
◾The collective opinion of average citizens
◾The collective opinion of the affluent
◾The lobbying of interest groups
But which of these really matter? Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page studied 1,779 policy outcomes over two decades and came to a pretty simple conclusion: the collective opinion of average citizens doesn’t matter a whit:
“
It is not America and Americans acting on the world stage. It is the money driven Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex.
Slightly OT, but per Saker’s theme about promoting peace and dialogue between Shi’a Muslims and the Orthodox Christians, here is a Press TV video story about the Armenian church in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province near the Armenian border:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl-lzIlsDAw
Christ is Risen and peace unto all the world! XB
Crimea compared with Gibraltar in this elaborate Dutch piece by Thomas vonder Dunk. http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/6178/Thomas-von-der-Dunk/article/detail/3638512/2014/04/20/Von-der-Dunk-Poetin-profiteert-van-meten-met-twee-maten.dhtml
“We are going to lose eastern Ukraine if we continue as we are going,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, the ranking member of the Senate foreign relations committee, on Sunday. “Our foreign policy is always a day late and a dollar short.”
“I don’t think Putin really believes we are going to punish them,” said Corker. “We have helped create the problem and to leave them alone is unconscionable.”
As the good Senator rightly admits: “we have helped create the problem”
Greetings from Singapore:
Godspeed President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov
We need 3 signatures to hit 600!
Rgds
Mario Medjeral
Hi Saker Again –
I usually read sources from all over the world, primarily in English, but I know you can’t see everything, so just let me know where to send the links or the articles and I will be glad to help as much as I can, school work permitting.
sbc
Good stuff here if it isn’t already in the blog roll:
http://02varvara.wordpress.com/page/2/
Some items about Ukraine for today.
1 – ARD Monitor (Germany’s 60 Minutes) – Who were the Kiev snipers?
In German with English subtitles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDPJ-ucnyPU
For those who doubt, here’s the official website.
The video on the following page is in German only. Skip to 11:00 for the segment in question.
The written transcript is on this page. Use google translate for a translation.
http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/sendungen/2014/0410/maidan.php5
2 – Ukraine: Poland trained putchists two months in advance | “Caught red-handed”
The Polish left-wing weekly Nie (No) published a startling witness account of the training given to the most violent of the EuroMaidan [1] activists.
According to this source, in September 2013, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski invited 86 members of the Right Sector (Sector Pravy), allegedly in the context of a university exchange program. In reality, the guests were not students, and many were over 40. Contrary to their official schedule, they did not go to the Warsaw University of Technology, but headed instead for the police training center in Legionowo, an hour’s drive from the capital. There, they received four weeks of intensive training in crowd management, person recognition, combat tactics, command skills, behavior in crisis situations, protection against gases used by police, erecting barricades, and especially shooting, including the handling of sniper rifles.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article183373.html
3 – Anonymous Releases Email Allegedly Detailing Western Backed False Flag in Ukraine
A post was made on the Russian website ‘Live Journal’ on Wednesday, March 12, 2014, by a profile titled Андрей Споров (Andrey Sporaw), containing documents detailing a corrupt plan between “US Army Attache Assistant in Kiev Jason Gresh’ and ‘a high ranking official from Ukrainian General Staff Igor Protsyk’, to conduct a series of attacks on Ukrainian military bases to ‘frame up the neighbor’, or in other words, create a Ukrainian false flag event and blame it on Russia.
An Anonymous hacker responsible for the info says-
“We have hacked e-mail correspondence of US Army Attache Assistant in Kiev Jason Gresh and a high ranking official from Ukrainian General Staff Igor Protsyk.
It appears that they are planning to conduct a series of attacks on Ukrainian military bases in order to destabilize the situation in Ukraine.
Particularly, Jason Gresh writes to Igor Protsyk that it’s time to implement a plan that implies “causing problems to the transport hubs in the south-east of Ukraine in order to frame-up the neighbor. It will create favorable conditions for Pentagon to act”, says Jason Gresh.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/04/20/anonymous-releases-email-allegedly-detailing-western-backed-false-flag-ukraine.html
Hi. I could help with the Mexico area. I am Mexican living abroad (in Scandinavia, so I have a pretty good idea whats going on over there.
Hi Saker:
I read Chinese news everyday and can help with Chinese translation.
Headlines in China have been getting more and more interesting for the past years as the US empire crumble, especially this year, China had just seized a large Japanese transportation ship and demanded overdue payment from 78 years ago (in war times). and Russia had sent jets to circle Japan for 6 days in a row.
We are seeing history in the making, this is a very interesting time to live in.
Friend From China
The former chess champion and, judging from appearances, current lunatic, Garry Kasparov is in Australia at the moment. The local ‘multi-cultural’ station, SBS, whose editorial stance is reminiscent of Fox News, had an interview with Kasparov on the news tonight. K, who now resides, appropriately enough, in Ustashaland aka Croatia (where the neo-fascists must be overjoyed to see the descendants of their old allies back in power in Ukraine)was in fine, hysterical form (why are these chess champions so often so highly-strung). Putin is Hitler, time to fight blah, blah, blah. All grist to the mill. The war-drive against a nuclear power is quite fascinating, really. Perhaps it’s the way they intend to do away with the excess population no longer required. Beats me.
Saker,
Until you get exactly what you’re looking for, you might find some useful stuff on my blog.
:-) Ragnar
http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php
@EVERYBODY: If you are interested in my “Saker correspondents” project, then please do not reply here, but send me an email at either vineyardsaker@gmail.com or vineyardsaker@mail.ru.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
Dear Saker,
I am Debanjan from India and I would love to contribute as “Saker correspondent”.
I am a student of software engineering and I would love to contribute towards this venture of yours.
Please can you let me know the terms and conditions of this one ?
Take care
Debanjan
@Debanjan: If you are interested in my “Saker correspondents” project, then please do not reply here, but send me an email at either vineyardsaker@gmail.com or vineyardsaker@mail.ru.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
Have you ever lived in Russia?