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Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Anti-Empire >>

The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Army Sergeant Travis Decker Murdered His Three Children After Being Denied Mental Health Care at JBL... Sat Jun 07, 2025 04:52 | JBLM Whistleblowers
A corrupt military police force and incompetent Commander who denied emergency mental health care and crisis counseling to an American service member resulted in the murder of the sergeant's three young daughters

offsite link Gaza doctor grieves her nine children killed in Israeli strike Sun May 25, 2025 20:00 | imc
Israeli regime continues it's slaughter
'The children were completely charred'

Paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar was treating victims of Israeli attacks when her children were killed by an Israeli strike on their home

offsite link British doctors working in Gaza describe territory as a ?slaughterhouse? Sat May 24, 2025 00:23 | imc
There?s no food getting in so people are starving,? surgeon Tom Potokar says
British doctors working in Gaza have described the territory as a ?slaughterhouse,? where the patients they are treating are severely malnourished.

Plastic surgeons and orthopedic specialists from the UK are based at the Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis in the south of the territory.

Dr. Tom Potokar, a plastic surgeon specializing in burn injuries, has worked in Gaza 16 times but said this mission had revealed a level of destruction far greater than his last visit in 2023,

offsite link It is time to talk about the Out of Control Immigration. Mon Mar 31, 2025 22:12 | imc
For the last few years since the CV19 scamdemic undocumented immigration into Ireland has surged. No one is allowed discuss it because they do not want any rational debate about it. If you do you are labelled an extremist. However this out of control immigration is fully facilitated by the Irish government and the EU and the shady figure behind the Neo Con movement pushing for endless war, wokeism and globalist agenda.

offsite link [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End Israeli Apartheid & Genocide Thu Mar 06, 2025 22:35 | ipsc
Sat, 22 March 2025, 13:00 Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin 1
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, supported by over 150 Irish civil society organisations, has called another National Demonstration for Palestine on Saturday 22nd March.

The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm and finish outside the D?il on Molesworth Street/Kildare Street to bring our demands to the Irish government?s doorstep.

The Saker >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link News Round-Up Tue Jul 29, 2025 00:40 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Town Councillor Who Asked Questions About 300 Migrants in a Hotel is ?Reported to Police? for ?Stirr... Mon Jul 28, 2025 19:00 | Will Jones
Town councillor John Edwards, who asked questions about 300 Afghans put up in a local hotel, was "reported to police for stirring up racial hatred", and has also been placed under "investigation" by a "monitoring officer".
The post Town Councillor Who Asked Questions About 300 Migrants in a Hotel is “Reported to Police” for “Stirring Up Racial Hatred” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Something Fishy in Grimsby: A Museum Caught in the Woke Net Mon Jul 28, 2025 17:34 | Jack Watson
In Grimsby, Lincolnshire, something fishy is happening to the popular local Fishing Heritage Centre, says Jack Watson. The wokerati have decreed that it must be "decolonised" to make it more "diverse and welcoming".
The post Something Fishy in Grimsby: A Museum Caught in the Woke Net appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The Quiet Civil War Has Already Started Mon Jul 28, 2025 15:35 | Clive Pinder
When the Government stops listening, people stop obeying. That?s when the real trouble starts, warns Clive Pinder. The chasm between rulers and ruled means the quiet civil war has already started.
The post The Quiet Civil War Has Already Started appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The Media?s Complicity in Hamas Propaganda Mon Jul 28, 2025 13:00 | Will Jones
In the past week, an image of a desperately thin Gazan child has been splashed on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. What they miss out, says David Collier, is that the child has a serious genetic disorder.
The post The Media’s Complicity in Hamas Propaganda appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Russian Diplomat Drops a Bombshell: US Expected ISIS to Seize Damascus by October

category international | anti-war / imperialism | other press author Thursday February 18, 2016 23:13author by 1 of Indymedia Report this post to the editors

We are reproducing this article which is based on a report from London Evening Standard where the Russiam ambassador to UK reveals the Russians were told by the Western powers back in early summer of 2015 that after the US proclaimed a no-fly zone ISIS would capture Damascus by October 2015.

The importance of this article and revelation hardly mentioned in the mainstream media is how the planned actions of the USA would have directly supported the progress of ISIS and lead to further mass deaths. This is in addition to the direct involvement they already have in training and arming them through their proxies of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Indeed the recent huge wave of refugees into Europe are all from countries previously attacked or destablized by US policies.
ISIS's flag - flying by now over Damascus if Russia had not intervened
ISIS's flag - flying by now over Damascus if Russia had not intervened

The article is from Russia Insider and by Alexander Mercouris for Russia Insider: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/russias-ambassado...12860

Alexander Yakovenko, Russia’s ambassador to Britain, dropped something of a bombshell on Monday, though one that has gone completely unnoticed.

In a piece in the print edition of the London Evening Standard defending Russian policy in Syria he made the following extraordinary disclosure:

“Last summer we were told by our Western partners that in October Damascus would fall to IS (ie. the Islamic State – AM).

What they were planning to do next we don’t know. Probably, they would have ended up painting the extremists white and accepting them as a Sunni state straddling Iraq and Syria”.


The summer – when these conversations between the Western powers and the Russians allegedly took place – was the time when the US was in discussions with Turkey and Jordan about setting up a no-fly zone and safe havens in Syria.

I discussed in this article how “no-fly zone” is today simply a euphemism for a US bombing campaign.
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/how-russia-pursue...11013

What Yakovenko is therefore in effect saying is that the US was planning in the summer to start a bombing campaign to overthrow the government of Syria in the knowledge that this would result by October in the victory of the Islamic State and its capture of Damascus.

Russia Insider has previously explained that it was to stop the US proclaiming a no-fly zone – i.e. commencing a bombing campaign aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government – that Russia intervened in Syria.
http://russia-insider.com/en/military/how-russia-checke...10248

The fact Yakovenko says the US told the Russians this would result in the Islamic State capturing Damascus by October explains why the Russians felt they had to act as they did.

Is Yakovenko however telling the truth?

The first thing to say is that the British and US governments have not denied what he is saying.

That however is not conclusive. It is not difficult to see why the British and US governments might think that in light of the incendiary nature of what Yakovenko is saying denying it would simply give his comments more publicity if they denied them and that the better approach is silence.

If so, then the fact Yakovenko’s comments have been almost entirely ignored shows this approach has worked.

Is Yakovenko however senior enough to know the details of the discussions that took place in the summer between the Russians and the Western powers as he says?

The answer to that question is almost certainly yes.

Though London is no longer the most important diplomatic posting for a Russian ambassador in Western Europe, it remains an important posting, and any official appointed to be Russia’s ambassador to Britain is by definition a senior official whom Moscow will ensure is kept well-informed.

If there were discussions of the sort Yakovenko says, he would almost certainly have been fully briefed about them.

What Yakovenko says is also consistent with things we know.

In the summer – having just captured Palmyra – the Islamic State was on a roll, making it not implausible that it might reach Damascus by the autumn.

The Syrian army in the meantime had suffered a succession of heavy defeats, and had been forced to withdraw from Idlib province.

In light of all this, in the context of a US bombing campaign, it is not implausible the US was telling the Russians in the summer that the Islamic State would seize Damascus by October.

As for the US’s discussions about setting up a no-fly zone and safe havens, there was nothing secret about those, and they were openly acknowledged.

Why however would the US tell the Russians that they expected the Islamic State to seize Damascus by October?

That is not a difficult question to answer.

No-one in the early summer thought there was any likelihood the Russians would intervene militarily in Syria. The US probably thought it was not risking anything by telling Moscow its military plans and what their likely consequences would be.

Probably what the US expected was that the threat of a bombing campaign leading to the seizure of Damascus by the Islamic State would terrify Moscow and persuade the Russians to force Assad to stand down, which has been the US objective all along.

In that case the US seriously underestimated the Russians’ resolve and their willingness to act to prevent what the US was threatening from coming to pass.

Overall Yakovenko’s disclosure makes sense, and is therefore probably true.

What it shows is how reckless the US’s Syrian policy had become.

At the very time the US was pretending to fight the Islamic State it was in fact preparing steps that it knew would facilitate its victory.

Even if this was intended as a diplomatic play it was an extraordinary thing to do.

The families of US victims of jihadi terror would surely feel betrayed if they were ever find out about it, whilst it is not difficult to imagine the consternation and recriminations in Washington when the Russians unexpectedly pre-empted the US strategy by intervening in the way they did.

As for the people of Damascus – spared not just US bombing but rule by the Islamic State – and the people of Europe – who would have faced a far bigger refugee flood if what Washington was telling the Russians had come to pass – they both have reason to be grateful to the Russians for making sure that things turned out otherwise.

Related Link: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/russias-ambassador-uk-drops-bombshell-us-expected-isis-seize-damascus-october/ri12860
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