Review of Predictions For 2025 Prediction 1 – The Theatre of War Moves To Syria

Review of Predictions For 2025

Prediction 1 – The Theatre of War Moves To Syria

As I wrote in the addenda to this prediction, it was already confirmed by the time it was posted. The fall of the rotten Assad regime brought in an even more rotten and reactionary Islamist regime, as well as the inevitable chaos and communal conflict, as the country disintegrates, much as seen previously in Libya, and elsewhere. All to clearly, events appear to be following a well worn path, described previously in relation to the analysis of the Balkan Wars at the start of the 20th century, set out by Trotsky, and which led up to World War I. The rapidity of that fall probably took the Zionist state and US/NATO imperialism by surprise too, and that has led to a certain amount of sitting on their laurels during the last year.

The Zionist state quickly moved to colonise more land in Syria, as is its nature as a colonialist/imperialist state. The rapidity of the fall gave a certain amount of stability to the Islamist regime that took over in Damascus. Western imperialism, and its media mouthpieces which had previously noted the Islamist nature of the jihadists, quickly absolved it, much as all of the coverage of the corrupt and illiberal nature of Zelensky and his regime, prior to 2021, was quickly ditched when they sought to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

But, simply denying and attempting to hide the reality does not change it. The inevitable communalist and sectarian chaos is still unfolding in Syria. However much western imperialism tries to put lipstick on the reactionary, Islamist pig in Damascus, it does not change its nature, nor the contradictions that involves. Those contradictions have continually broken out inside Syria, as competing powers, using local communalist rivalries, jostle for influence. As with the aftermath of the Iraq War, it has also opened up space for a revival of ISIS in Syria, and it also has its own reactionary agenda. US imperialism, even in the last few weeks has seen its forces attacked by ISIS, giving it the pretext for more open intervention.

The front lines in the region have clearly shifted, just as, formerly, they shifted in Europe with the aggressive military expansion of US/NATO imperialism Eastwards, right up to Russia's borders, which inevitably provoked the military response into Ukraine by Russian imperialism, backed by its own imperialist bloc. Empires based on territorial expansion, created by military power, always become weaker, as they expand further. Its one reason that colonialism was superseded by modern imperialism, which rests, fundamentally, not on force, but on the power of industrial capital to conquer, by purely economic means, global markets, and, thereby, to exploit the global working-class, whilst offering it the prospect of rising living standards, security and the illusion of bourgeois-democracy/political freedom.

So long as US/NATO imperialism faced no real global economic competitors, the former dynamics gave it free rein, hence the rapid development of globalisation from the late 80's, into the 2010's. The petty-bourgeois moralism of much of the Left, meant it failed to analyse that expansion in Marxist terms, and, instead, simply presented it as being a continuation of the old forms of colonial imperialism that existed up to the 20th century, resting upon the use of military force. Whilst, of course, the use of overwhelming military might by US imperialism, in Vietnam, for example, gave credence to such a view, and certainly, in the 1960's, and early 1970's, facilitated a rapid growth of that petty-bourgeois Left, as it swam in the voluminous current of “anti-War”/Anti-Imperialist” protest, the reality was that force played only a subsidiary role in the expansion of imperialism, and globalisation in the post-war period. Indeed, as in Vietnam, the use of military force, more frequently proved itself to be inadequate, and even counter-productive. Imperialism has expanded rapidly in Vietnam, after the defeat of the US military.

The expansion of imperialism, of the dominance of monopoly capital, as Marx and Engels first described, and as Lenin later analysed, is a massively progressive development. Globalisation, the creation of an inextricably connected world economy, which that imperialism created in the 1980's and after, is, also, a massively progressive development. It is the fundamental basis, the creation of the material conditions required for Socialism. As Lenin put it,

““. . . State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs”.”

(Left-wing Childishness)

But, just as the reactionary, petty bourgeois moralism that has dominated much of the Left after WWII, saw monopoly capitalism as something to be opposed rather than welcomed, on a national basis, so too, it opposed globalisation. The reality of imperialism was that it expanded rapidly, much as industrial capitalism itself had done on a national basis, precisely because it was able to provide billions of labourers with higher living standards, even as it exploited them more intensively. It rescued billions of them from the idiocy of rural life.

Marx and Engels pointed out that large-scale, industrial capital, inevitably takes the form of socialised capital, which is the collective property of the associated producers, whether that is in the form of a cooperative or a joint stock company. It is, they note, the transitional form of property between capitalism and socialism. The struggle, by the end of the 19th century, even, was, therefore, not to engage in some moralistic, Sismondian opposition to the development of this monopoly capitalism, but to bring about the required extension of the democratic struggle from the political sphere to the industrial sphere, to engage with “the property question”, and to ensure that just as workers achieved political rights, so, now, they obtained their rightful democratic control, in each enterprise, over their collective property.

It is why they opposed the petty-bourgeois, moralism of Sismondi who sought to hold back the rapid development of industrial capitalism, and, later, opposed the petty-bourgeois, moralism of Proudhon and his followers, who sought to oppose the economic struggles of the workers in the trades unions, because they saw it as antagonistic to the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, whose interests they represented, with their reactionary, utopian views of a world of small commodity producers, a view also adopted by the Narodniks in Russia, and which also forms the basis of the Third Worldists/Maoists in the post WWII period. But, Marx and Engels, and later Lenin, whilst recognising the role that economic/industrial struggle plays in organising the workers as a class, also opposed the limitations on the further development of the class that Economism, trades union consciousness, also, involved. It is most clearly set out in “Value, Price and Profit”.

Huge amounts of political energy was wasted by the petty-bourgeois Left, in the last 70 years, opposing the expansion of monopoly-capitalism/imperialism, both within the national economies, and across the globe. Millions of former peasants and small commodity producers, however, flocked to the towns and cities in order to be exploited by global multinational corporations, and did so, not because they were forced, but because they saw the prospect of a much better standard of living. When the moralistic Left opposed colonialism, they were, in fact, pushing at an open door, and when, the old colonial empires collapsed, in the post-war period, they simply sought to continue as though the world had not really changed, understandably, as such a view implied a continuation of those mass mobilisations in which they had grown rapidly in the 50's, and 60's.

The progressive mobilisations, against colonialism and militarism, became reactionary mobilisations against monopoly-capitalism/imperialism, and its corollary of globalisation, which has raised productivity to unprecedented levels. The consequence is easily seen when the reactionary mobilisation against it, resulted in Brexit, for example. It has resulted in terrible economic consequences for the British economy, and for the living standards of British workers. A similar process is occurring, now, with the impact of Trump's Tariffs, in the US, which act as an additional drain on US profits. Similarly, the decision of EU leaders to boycott Russian energy has drained surplus value from European capital, and slowed its economy further, which will intensify as the EU pumps even more billions of Euros into funding the means of destruction to continue fighting the war against Russia.

Those that continued to frame their world view on the basis that the main enemy of US imperialism was China, failed, also, to recognise that, economically, it is the EU that continues to pose the biggest threat to US capital. Trump has simply been more open about it, just as he has also been more open in renaming the US Department of Defence to what it has always been, the Department of War. The period of US hegemony has ended, and consequently, the period in which it could expand its capital simply on the basis of the dominance of its capital, has also ended.

In the 1950's, for a short period, the central planning system in the USSR, faced with the need for a rapid industrialisation of its economy, outperformed its imperialist rivals. But, it never achieved the same performance as those rivals, when it came to the production of consumer goods, and the general living standards of its workers. So, although Stalinism was able to compete with US imperialism when it came to the production of capital goods, a lot of which, also, went into he production of military production, and competed with it, in terms of the space race, as well as the development of a science and technology, it never presented a challenge to US imperialism economically.

The idea that imperialism had to create welfare systems, and raise living standards of workers to prevent them being attracted to the offerings of the East is ludicrous. The border guards shooting people trying to escape were all on the Eastern side. The EU subordinated itself to US imperialism, not because it was economically challenged by Russia/COMECON, but, because, particularly in its devastated condition, it felt militarily challenged by Russia. Those conditions have gone.

The idea that Europe is militarily challenged, today, by Russia is hilarious. For four years, it has been bogged down in a war, just in Eastern Ukraine. True US/NATO imperialism has backed Ukraine massively to conduct its proxy war against Russia/China, including the use of its own special forces inside Ukraine, but China has likewise backed Russia, as it recognises that a defeat for Russia, would simply mean the war coming even closer to its own border, as US/NATO imperialism seeks to encircle it. A Russian military unable to quickly win in Eastern Ukraine, is not in any position to be considering any of the ludicrous schemes for an invasion of Europe that the western military-industrial complex propagandists are proposing, as a means of stirring up war fever, and justification for even more of workers taxes to be spent on war, rather than rebuilding shattered public services and infrastructure created by nearly two decades of austerity to pay for the bailing out of financial and property speculators.

We are told that Russia has been testing the West's borders with drones flying over various locations, and even Russian fighter jets. Maybe they have, or maybe they have not. That Lavrov invited European states to shoot down any Russian fighters actually over their territory, indicates where the balance of probability lies. The media continually refer to Russian jets or Russian ships near to British territorial waters, but near to is not inside. Given the expansion of NATO forces up to the Russian borders, it is clear what the context is.

US imperialism cannot simply expand on the basis of the dominance of its industrial capital any longer. The dialectic of that expansion is playing out. It is, now, the rising power of Chinese industrial capital that is asserting its dominance. So, US imperialism is led to resort increasingly to a defence of its global positions by military might.

Islamists Are Not Revolutionaries

In the media coverage of events in Syria, over the last week, the Islamists and jihadi terrorists have often been referred to as revolutionaries. Paul Mason, in his usual, sloppy superficial analysis, also, talks about the “Syrian Revolution”. But, Islamists are not revolutionaries, and what is happening in Syria is not a revolution.

A revolution is what happens when a society undergoes a revolutionary shift from one level of social development to a higher level of social development. As Marx and Engels describe, this “social revolution”, goes on behind Men's backs, driven by material conditions and social laws, just as the process of biological evolution occurs. The Law of Natural Selection drives biological evolution, and The Law of Value, drives social evolution. The Law of Value drives society to raise productivity, which drives technological development, which revolutionises the method and relations of production, which revolutionises the social relations that rest upon them.

These new social relations, drive a change in the political and juridical superstructure that rests upon them, as the state becomes the state of the new ruling class, and a new political regime arises, through which this new ruling class, acts to control that state. The establishment of this new political regime takes the form of a “political revolution”.

But, what is happening in Syria, much as happened previously in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, as well as previously in Iran, is not a revolutionary transformation, either socially or politically, but the opposite. It is a counter-revolution! Describing it as such, does not imply or require Marxists to, then, defend the Assad regime. We do not proceed on the ridiculous basis that our enemy's enemy is our friend. Nevertheless, we can also, on the basis of understanding the nature of Islamism, and looking at even recent history, also, conclude that, bad as Assad's regime was for workers, what replaces it is going to be much, much worse.

When the Shah of Iran's regime fell in 1979, Marxists could shed no tears over the removal of a brutal dictator, who had been put in place, and for a long time, kept in place, by US imperialism. On the contrary, many Marxists saw the popular revolt against the Shah, also, in revolutionary terms, and, to begin with, it had some potential to become such, though the relatively low level of capitalist development of Iran, made that problematic, without it being part of a much wider revolution in the region, including in what was, then, the USSR. And, this problem, did indeed, play into the reality that what transpired in Iran, was not a revolution, but, ultimately, a counter-revolution, as the Islamists under the leadership of Khomeini, seized control.

A social revolution requires that the social relations of production are revolutionised, and raised to a higher level. That did not happen in Iran, just as it has not happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya, and now in Syria. On the contrary, if anything, the established state-capitalist relations of production, have been set back, not only to the level of private capitalist relations, but to the conditions prior to that, those of petty-bourgeois commodity production and exchange, and the old Asiatic clerical despotism. As happened in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, even the bourgeois development that leads, via the bourgeois national revolution, to the creation of the bourgeois nation state, is reversed, as these competing petty-bourgeois, clericalist, semi-feudal forces cause the society to degenerate into fiefdoms, and warlordism.

A political revolution, requires, similarly, that the political and juridical superstructure, the political regime, be brought into line with the new social relations created by the social revolution. The British state became a capitalist state, around 1689, reflecting the fact that capitalist social relations had become dominant, but the political regime, did not become revolutionised until 1832, when the effects of the Industrial Revolution, had made that dominance overwhelming, and the bourgeoisie, backed by the industrial proletariat, imposed itself on the old landed aristocracy. Along the way, not only such political revolutions, but also political counter-revolutions, can occur, as with Thermidor in France, and in Russia.

However brutal the regime of the Shah, the reality was that it objectively developed the productive forces in Iran, as part of its role as an agent of US imperialism, and as imperialism invested industrial capital in that development. Primary concern with the political regime, and its brutality, rather than these objective material conditions, and social relations, is the method of moralists and liberals, not Marxists. The reality of Iran, since the Shah, is that it not only has replaced one brutal regime for another, but has also, via that regime, undermined the development of the productive forces, and social relations that had already arisen. It is not such a stark contrast as that which occurred with Pol Pot, in Cambodia, where an attempt was made to reverse capitalist development in favour of petty-bourgeois, peasant production, but, the principle is the same.

The reality of the Shah' s regime, as with that of the Baathists in Iraq and Syria, as well as that of Nasser in Egypt, and Gaddafi in Libya, is that these were “modernising” regimes, usually state-capitalist in nature – the regime in Afghanistan, prior to the Taliban was similar, as with that in Ethiopia - which, inevitably, given the conditions in which they existed, took the form of Bonapartism, just as, indeed, did the modernising regimes of Bismark in Germany, and Louis Bonaparte in France.

Indeed, given the material conditions in the Middle-East and North Africa, the lower level of development, and history of colonialism, the numerous cross-cutting cleavages of ethnicity, and religion, it was even more inevitable that modernising regimes would take this Bonapartist form. None of that has changed, and rather it has become even more intensified, as the descent into chaos in Libya, since 2011, has shown, and as the continued fragmentation in Iraq, despite the external unifying force of Iran, via the majority Shia population, demonstrates.

As I wrote some time ago, having flattened Gaza, and rolling over the rest of Palestine, and, now, having, also, flattened Lebanon, destroying Hezbollah, the Zionist state inevitably, turns its attention to Syria, which it already occupies in the Golan Heights, and which it has been intensifying its attacks upon, as with its bombing of Damascus, of its airports and airbases etc.

The fact of the attacks by the Islamists in Syria, at this time, was no coincidence immediately after the collapse of Lebanon, and destruction of Hezbollah. The Islamist forces are connected to Türkiye, but are descendants of Al Qaeda, and, in Gaza, Israel has also been giving such forces control, in relation to the distribution of what little aid gets in, as well as acting as general enforcers. Of course, Israel did the same thing, originally with Hamas, which it encouraged, as an opponent of Fatah, in Gaza.  As with Libya, HTS represents very few social forces, having around the same level of 17,000 fighters as that of the jihadists in Libya, in 2011.

Syria is now doomed to go through a similar period of chaos, disintegration and warlordism as that which has been inflicted on Libya, and Afghanistan. No doubt, many of those celebrating in the streets are themselves associated with those Islamist forces of reaction, as in Libya, many will also be people who are blindly welcoming the fall of one dictator, but without thinking about the day after, when what they face will be even worse. Others probably understand that it will be much worse, but are too fearful not to demonstrate their enthusiasm for fear of losing their heads, as many already have done in areas where the jihadists have taken over.

The situation in Syria is even worse than in Libya or Afghanistan. In Libya, US/NATO imperialism was able to carpet bomb the regime to destroy it, leaving the jihadis of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – who themselves had previously been fighting the US in Iraq – backed by the Gulf Monarchies, and their Special Forces, to sweep its remains from the ground. It didn't take long for that to descend into chaos and warlordism, but their were no other, external parties on the ground, and Libya, unlike Syria, was not occupied by, or on the border of Israel.

In Syria, Russia has a military base on the Mediterranean, which it will be keen to maintain, though, having established its old warm water naval base in Crimea, that is less imperative, now. That base is in an Alawite region, and the Alawites are likely to come under sectarian attack and face pogroms from the now dominant Islamist forces. The US, still has troops in Syria, and uses the Syrian Kurds as a proxy for its interests. But, those Kurdish forces are also opposed by Türkiye, which sees them as a threat in relation to its own Kurdish region, and their demands for a Kurdish state. The Kurds in Syria, as in Iraq, will be thrown under the bus by US imperialism, just as they strung the Palestinians along with talk about a Two State Solution.

Iran also has interests in Syria, although, with the destruction of Hezbollah, and collapse of Lebanon, those interests have mostly disappeared, along with it. Its main concern was to be able to ferry arms to Hezbollah. Now, that will become concentrated on Iraq, and so expect US imperialism to refocus its attention, there, in the near future too. Russia and China, will inevitably see their client in Iran, as weakened by these developments, and so expect them to shore up their support for Iran, with greater trade and investment, as well, as, of course, a much greater level of military support in air and naval defence systems, as the period of phoney war between US/NATO imperialism and Chinese~Russian imperialism continues and intensifies.

As Syria descends into a failed state, chaos and warlordism, the Zionist state will use the opportunity to invade and annex it further, using its standing line of a “right to self-defence”. But Syria is too big a bite for the Zionist state to swallow whole, and nor does it need to. The Zionist state only needs to clear sufficient territory to occupy, so as to create a large enough state to operate in, as it then, establishes normal relations with the surrounding Arab states in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf, which are already US client states.

The Islamists are not revolutionaries for another reason.  When the bourgeoisie undertook its revolution, it was, as set out above, based upon its capitalistic transformation of the relations of production.  When the proletariat undertakes its revolution, it is similarly on the basis of its transformation of the forces of production.  The Islamists, at best, are forced by reality to conserve the existing productive relations, whilst seeking to impose earlier social relations upon them, or else, at worst, seek to revert to those earlier productive relations themselves.

The bourgeoisie, whose social power resided, with their economic power, in the urban areas, mobilised the social forces brought into existence by the new productive relations, in the urban areas, to carry through their political revolution.  The industrial proletariat does the same thing, in relation to the socialist revolution.  But, what characterises the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, is that they lack any such centralised economic and social power, and as with the various peasant revolts, or the Peasant War, as undertaken by Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, or Castro, what they carry through is not a mass popular revolution, and certainly not a proletarian revolution, but simply a rural guerrilla war.  Such is the nature of the terrorism, and rebellion of the Islamists in Syria, as in Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Zionist State Extends Its War of Annexation

The Zionist state, in Israel/Palestine, has extended its war of annexation, as I said it would. Zionism, as a reactionary nationalist, racist and colonialist ideology, of itself is forced to continually seek to expand the territory over which it exercises its remit, much as European colonialism did in the Mercantilist period from the 17th to the end of the 19th century. But, the Zionist state, in Israel/Palestine, is not just such a reactionary nationalist/colonialist state, it is, also, an imperialist state, based upon large-scale monopoly capitalism, closely tied to the state, and to global imperialism, primarily US imperialism. It serves a similar purpose, for US imperialism, in the Middle East, that the Ukrainian imperialist state serves in Eastern Europe.

In both cases, the interests of EU imperialism coincide with that of US imperialism, and yet, also, differ from those of US imperialism. US imperialism is concerned with its global strategic hegemony, exercised via its huge military machine that dwarfs every other military on the planet, and via its NATO imperialist alliance, through which it, also, exercises its domination over those subordinate imperialist allies in Britain, the EU, Japan and elsewhere. It is concerned to limit and control the expansion of Chinese imperialism, and its imperialist alliance with Russia, and the other imperialist and sub-imperialist powers within BRICS+.

The Ukrainian imperialist state enables US imperialism to fulfil that function in Eastern Europe, using it as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, with an endless supply of Ukrainian workers blood, to keep Russia tied up on its western border. Its aim, though one it has not been successful in achieving, was to undermine Putin, and open the door to further insurgencies, within the Russian Federation itself, to break it apart, and, thereby, to put in place its own client regimes, much as it thought it had done with Yeltsin, so as to have access to the vast resources of Russia.

The Zionist imperialist state in Israel/Palestine, is used by US imperialism to check the growing influence of Chinese imperialism in the Gulf, and to an extent in North Africa, as well as the influence of Russian imperialism, with its historic links to Iran, Syria, and the role it is playing via the Wagner group in Sudan, Mali and elsewhere.

The interests of EU imperialism are somewhat different. EU imperialism is primarily concerned with creating, a large single market, which is why it created the EU in the first place. It seeks to continually expand the size of that single market, to meet the needs of capital in the EU, which must operate on an ever larger scale, to compete with the mammoth imperialist capitals in the US and China. But, a single market requires the states within it to all operate on the basis of common laws and so on, which requires them to be free of the kinds of corruption that many states in Europe suffer. Before, being allowed to join, states in Europe have had to go through a probationary period in which they became more aligned with the EU. It means that the EU could have closer relations with a range of states on its periphery, without them being EU members, and yet, from which EU imperialism gained advantages, as with its deals with Russia, for the supply of cheap oil and gas.

EU imperialism has gradually expanded its single market Eastwards, with Ukraine being the next state to be drawn into its orbit, though, as with Turkiye, it was never likely to gain membership of the EU any time soon, given its huge levels of corruption. The EU had the potential to continue that course of imperialist expansion via increased trade and cooperation, including with Russia, but such an expansion would not have been in the interests of US imperialism. It would have strengthened both EU imperialism and Russian imperialism, at the expense of US imperialism, and would have weakened the ties and subordination of EU imperialism to US imperialism. It is EU imperialism that has borne the cost of the imperialist war in Ukraine, not only via the huge costs of arms and other aid supplied to Ukraine, but also as a result of its reduced trade with Russia, and a huge rise in its energy and food costs resulting from its boycott and sanctions against Russia.

The effect of that on European workers, with social-democratic parties, and even sections of a social-imperialist “Left” backing such imperialist war, has provided the material conditions for a further expansion of the far-right, whose forces had already grown as a consequence of the 50% growth of the petty-bourgeoisie over recent decades.

The EU had, also, developed similar economic relations with the economies of MENA that they had done with the economies of Central Europe, following the collapse of Stalinism. That created a corresponding path of economic development, and eventual expansion of the single market into the Middle East and North Africa. It is again clear why such a development would not be in the interests of US imperialism, as it further strengthens EU imperialism, and establishes closer ties with those oil rich states that the US had dragged away from the old European colonial powers, after WWII.

The Iraq War, fought on the basis of an obvious lie about WMD, was fought by US and UK imperialism, and opposed by most of the EU, to the ire of the US. It led to chaos in Iraq, and rise of the jihadists, which spread into Libya and Syria, destabilising the region and its economic development, and along with it the relation to the EU. As with the war in Ukraine, it was the EU that bore the cost, not the US, as not only did it result in this economic dislocation, but large numbers of refugees found their way into EU countries, providing yet another bit of grist to the mill of the far-right.

But, as I wrote, some time ago, the interests of both US and EU imperialism coincide in seeing the need for the Zionist state in Israel/Palestine to deal once and for all with what it sees as the Palestinian problem. The EU, in order to get back to those kinds of relations it sought to develop prior to the Iraq War, and the chaos it spread across the Middle East and North Africa, needs Israel to establish “normal” relations with its Arab neighbours, as the basis of forming some form of common market. US imperialism, also, seeks such a development, because, with its client state, Israel, being the most powerful, and dominant state in any such common market, and with closer ties to the EU, it draws those states away from the growing influence of China and Russia.

The fact that the Zionist state has been able to cross every red-line supposedly put down by the Biden regime, with impunity, that it laughs in the face of “the international community”, and its “rules based order”, not only ignoring the rulings of that “community's” courts, the ICJ and ICC, but has done so with US backing, which has similarly supported the ridiculous claims that the courts rulings were a result of it being “anti-Semitic”, shows just how much the genocide being committed by the Zionist state is being done with the full support of US and EU imperialism. Its no wonder that when the reactionary nationalist regime of Starmer and Blue Labour, found itself losing Muslim members and voters, as a result of its own support for that genocide, it responded, in typically racist and colonialist fashion, by describing it as simply “shaking off fleas”!!!

The genocide being committed, in Gaza most visibly, but also underway in the rest of Palestine, exposes the sham nature and hypocrisy of the calls for a two-state solution. The reality is that two states have existed in Israel and Palestine, but it provided no solution. The Palestinian state is recognised by 145 countries, representing 75% of UN members. What those who talk about a two-state solution mean is actually, US recognition of that state of Palestine, and of course, although US imperialism, itself, continually talks about such a solution being the only way forward, it continually prevents such a solution, by voting against recognition, and by continuing to support the Zionist state in refusing to accept the existence of such a state.

Palestine is a state, and another state, the Zionist state in Israel, has simply acted to impose itself on it, via its military might, a military might made possible by, and supported by, US and EU imperialism. The existence of a state, can no more provide a solution for Palestinians than could the existence of a state for Poland prevent Hitler's armies invading it, and annexing it! To believe otherwise, in the age of imperialism, is to believe in bourgeois-liberal fairytales. As Marx put it,

“They forget, however, that club-law too is law, and that the law of the stronger, only in a different form, still survives even in their “constitutional State.””

(A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy)

The Zionist state, with the full support of US, UK and EU imperialism, has carried out genocide in Gaza, it rapes and tortures Palestinians across the whole of Palestine, and publicly defends such rape and torture, and it backs and promotes Zionist settlers in annexing further Palestinian land in the West Bank, as it also, rapes and murders Palestinians to drive them from that land. As I wrote previously, it is carrying out a similar process of extermination of Palestinians to that conducted by European colonialists in the Americas, and Australasia. But, that is only the start of the planned annexations by the Zionist state, as I also noted. It is already beginning the process of expanding that war of annexation into Lebanon, and Syria.

For months, it has been attempting to provoke Hezbollah into a more overt attack, but without success. Its bombing of Beirut, which signifies a qualitative stepping up in those attempts, and the assassination, thereby, of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, was justified on the basis of a claim that Hezbollah had launched a missile strike on Majdal Hams, in the Israeli occupied, Golan Heights, which killed twelve people. There are a number of points to raise about that. Firstly, as the Syrian representative to the UK noted, the Golan Heights are Syrian, not Israeli territory. The Zionist state illegally occupies that territory, just as it has illegally occupied Palestinian territory. As an occupying force, the Zionist state has no right of self-defence.

Secondly, those killed, not only were not Israeli citizens, but Syrians, they also, were not Jewish citizens, but Druze Christians. In fact, when Netanyahu turned up in Majdal Shams, those Druze residents heckled him, and gave him a hostile reception, because they see him, and the Zionist state as the occupiers, and responsible for their plight. 

Hezbollah have also, from the start, rejected the Zionist claim hat they fired the rocket, and its not clear why they would do so. It has, however, given the Zionist regime a pretext to hugely expand its war in the region. Similarly, its assassination of Ismail Haniyeh while he was in Tehran for the inauguration of the new Iranian President, not only breaks international law, but also shows that the Zionist regime backed by US imperialism has no intention of negotiating a ceasefire, as it continues its genocide.

The Zionists are seeking to expand the war, and provoke a response from Hezbollah and Iran, in order to step up the scale of the war, and draw in US imperialism, which, as well as UK imperialism, has already been drawn into active military involvement, as well as providing the weapons required by the Zionist regime. Those claiming that US imperialism does not want such an escalation have not been paying attention. At every stage, they have claimed not to want an escalation of the war in Gaza, and yet, each red line crossed by the Zionist regime has resulted only in further backing, further arms, further justification of its actions, and more US and British war ships being sent to the region ready to back it further when such escalation occurs.

Why The Zionist State Bombed The Iranian Consulate In Damascus

The Zionist state has bombed the Iranian Consulate (part of the Iranian Embassy, and so sovereign Iranian territory), in Damascus.  As it stands right next to the Canadian Embassy in Damascus, this represented a significant risk, had its bombs gone astray.  The superficial reason for the strike was to take out a senior figure in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, stationed in the Consulate.  The Revolutionary Guard are part of the Iranian military, and state, and so legitimately stationed in the Embassy.  The action by the Zionist state is, then, clearly an act of war, as defined by international law.  However, as set out in other posts, international law is something that imperialist states, attached to the US, continually flout with impunity, illustrating the sham nature of bourgeois-democracy, and its rule of law.

The real reason for the strike, however, is quite different to that being proclaimed.  The US questioned about whether it had been given advance notice of the strike, conducted using US F-35 jets, a new batch of which have just been delivered to the genocidal Zionist regime, refused to comment.  They first said that they were opposed to any escalation in the region, but, then quickly denied that the Zionist strike did represent an escalation!

But, escalation is precisely what US imperialism, and its Zionist proxy requires, and is what the strike was intended to achieve.  US imperialism/Zionism has been frustrated by the fact that, despite previous bombings of Damascus, and other parts of Syria, drone attacks on Iranian military personnel, and increasing attacks on Lebanon, as well as into Iraq, they have not provoked any response from Iran or Syria.

Zionism has, for decades, ignored the decisions of the UN Security Council, and other global institutions, with impunity, because of its backing from US imperialism, and its European subordinates.  It will almost certainly be found guilty of committing genocide, in Gaza, but nothing will come of it, even compared to the actions being undertaken by the US and "the international community", i.e. US allies, against Russia, for its war in Eastern Ukraine, which most certainly cannot be classed as genocide, however, reactionary it may be.

Moreover, as noted in the previous post, however much liberals might want to see it happen, the imperialists in the US, UK, and Europe that are also guilty of genocide and war crimes, by supplying the weapons and munitions to the Zionists to undertake their slaughter against civilians, will also not face any such retribution, either, because they control the state, and the state is a bourgeois, imperialist state.  Nor, indeed, will the imperialist opposition politicians, such as Starmer, or the social-imperialists that have justified the genocidal actions of the Zionists, by lyingly bleating about the right of self-defence of the Zionist imperialist state, face any such retribution.

But, that does not mean that there is no consequence.  Day after day, the sham nature of bourgeois-democracy, and its claims about the rule of law, of an international rule based system, are exposed to billions of people across the globe, including, despite the role of the bourgeois media in acting as the propaganda arm of the imperialist states, in the US, UK, and Europe.  The functioning of bourgeois-democracy depends upon the majority being conned by the sham nature of that democracy, of them not seeing through its corrupt and corrupting nature.  But the dissonance between its claims and the reality seen by billions, each day, is now so great that the lie is falling apart.

At the very least, for the billions in the "global South", already disillusioned with western imperialism, and its history of colonial oppression, and exploitation, that acts as a pole of attraction to the rival imperialist camp of Russia/China/BRICS.  US imperialism/Zionism needs a distraction, and a further justification of its genocide against the Palestinians, and, as in the past, an attack on it by other Arab states would provide such a distraction, and justification.  Far from being opposed to an escalation of the war, in the region, that is precisely what the US and its subordinates requires, as the heat from its own masses intensifies upon it.

Any sizeable response from Iran, Syria, or Lebanon to the increasing attacks by the Zionist regime on them, would give US imperialism precisely the cover it is looking for to step up its own attacks on those Arab states, much as it has already done in attacking the Houthis, and its own strikes in Syria and Iraq.  If they have any strategic nous, the regimes in Iran, Lebanon and Syria will not allow themselves to be drawn in to that trap.  The masses in those countries should certainly oppose any such engagement, and instead, turn their attention to dealing with their own exploitation and oppression by their own ruling classes.  That class struggle, leading towards the Arab socialist revolution, holds the key to resolving the problems of the Middle-East.

Zionist State Expands War To Syria

As I predicted on Saturday, the Zionist state and its terrorist, war machine is using its war against Palestine to also launch wars against its Arab neighbours.  That is consistent with the racist, expansionist nature of the ideology that underpins Zionism, and the foundations of the Zionist state, from its creation.  

The Zionists have been eager to find some basis for attacking Iran for decades, and has done all it could to try to claim that Iran was behind last Saturday's attacks by Hamas, but without any success in doing so.  The Zionist state has occupied part of Syria, for the last fifty years, in the Golan Heights, in contravention with international law, and has now also launched air strikes on Damascus and Aleppo Airport.  The terrorist, Zionist state is emboldened in such acts because it knows it has the even bigger terrorist state of US imperialism standing right behind it, and can count on its Zionist agents in western democracies attempting to shout down any criticism of it, as being "anti-Semitism", which explains why that campaign was conducted in the British Labour Party. 

Bankruptcy of the Blair-rights

By going to war in Syria without parliamentary approval, Theresa May provided the Blair-rights with a perfect way of getting themselves off the hook, if they chose to take it. Even if they really did feel morally bound to support liberal intervention in Syria, in the debate yesterday, they had the opportunity to display party unity, and party loyalty, by focussing their attack on the undemocratic, authoritarian nature of the government's total disregard of parliament. Instead, it was obvious that, rather than seeing May's action as a means of getting them off the hook, they saw it as a stab in the back, because it denied them, once again, of the opportunity to focus their ire on Jeremy Corbyn, rather than the government. But, the bankrupt Blair-rights hatred of Corbyn and of the party he leads, meant they could not help themselves. Instead of focussing their attack on the Tories authoritarian, and undemocratic actions – as even the Liberals and SNP were able to do – the Blair-rights still used the opportunity to attack Corbyn and the Labour Party. Some of them even went beyond attacking Corbyn over the principle of engaging in yet another illegal war, and eagerly jumped into bed with their ideological soulmates of the Tory Party, to also justify the government's undemocratic action of ignoring parliament. 

How these people ever found themselves stumbling into the Labour Party in the first place is, at first sight, hard to fathom. However, as my old friend Mick Williams, long ago, described such people, who shared a position with him as Labour Councillors on Stoke City Council, they are people who treat politics in the same way they treat catching a bus. It really doesn't matter to them whether they catch a red bus or a blue bus. The only thing determining their decision is which bus takes them, personally, to where they want to be going, faster and more cheaply. It is, in fact, why such people so easily move from a red bus of Labour to a pink bus of the SDP, or a yellow bus of the Liberals, and indeed why they move from a blue bus of the Tories to the red bus of Labour, and vice versa, if it suits their personal career prospects. It's why such people are again talking up the prospect of joining with their Tory and Liberal soulmates about creating yet another centre party, with the backing of multi-millionaires, and the Tory media. 

Well, to mix metaphors, and what is a metaphor if it can't be mixed, it's time we told these parasites that their free ride on the gravy train is over. If they want to waste their time, and millionaires money, on a doomed experiment in creating a new centre party, the sooner they go the better. It will do little better than the existing centre party – the Liberals – whose fortunes have been in steady decline since 2010, and in even more rapid decline since Corbyn became Labour Leader, and began to offer British workers a clear alternative. But, it's clear that the Blair-rights like Chris Leslie and Mike Gapes et al, who could not help themselves, yesterday, in venting their spleen at Corbyn, rather than the Tories, are an openly organised party within a party, operating inside the PLP. Its time party members told them to go, and go now. We should not do what the old right did, when their authoritarian, bureaucratic politics led them to expel party members, via the party machine, rather than confront them in ideological debate; we should simply exercise the principle of basic democracy to deselect these wreckers. Past experience shows that that will be enough, because such careerists, once they no longer are provided with their free lunch, will quickly move to fresh pastures, in search of other suckers to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed. 

The actual debate in parliament was abysmal, as was to be expected for a debate that was as useful as any other example of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Whilst the Blair-rights simply used the opportunity to attack Corbyn rather than the Tories, the Tories themselves simply stood up one after another to repeat the same few words, only occasionally arranged in a different order, to slap the government on the back. All such comments whether from the Blair-rights, or from the Tories – and the two were mostly indistinguishable – were marked by total vacuity, and a sickening lack of any critical thought about what they were supposed to be analysing or responding to. All of their comments were so rigidly adherent to the idea that there could be no alternative possibility but that the vile Assad regime was responsible for a chemical attack in Douma, and that the only possible response to it, was to bomb Syria, that they could have been speeches given by North Korean Deputies, in some other context. 

The way that the Tory MP's swerved around the idea that their hostility, and claim to be acting to provide humanitarian relief was hollow, given their failure to act in the same way against the humanitarian disaster created by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, or by Israel in Gaza, indeed that they have provided the weapons and military advisors for Saudi Arabia, was sickening. They claimed that the situations were different because Saudi Arabia and Israel were slaughtering and maiming men, women and children with the massive use of conventional weapons, not chemical weapons! In actual fact Saudi Arabia and Israel have also used white phosphorus munitions too, but the point is that the Tories distinction between chemical weapons and the massive use of conventional weapons shows that the argument in relation to chemical weapons is merely a pretext. 

In fact, the Tories allies in the various Jihadist groups such as Al Nusra have also been shown to use chemical weapons including chlorine gas. So much for the idea that it can only be used by someone who has helicopters or aircraft. And, we were asked to accept without question that any chemical attack in Douma had, in fact, been made from the air.  But, the fact that these jihadist groups have used chemical weapons has not stopped the US and UK continuing to support them, as their agents against Assad. Indeed, in the past, both the US and UK not only supported Saddam Hussein, and his use of chemical weapons against Iran, in the Iran-Iraq War, but they provided him with the chemical weapons for him to use, and advised him of how best to use them! 

It was, after all the Tory icon, Winston Churchill, who in relation to the rebel Afghans said, 

"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes...[It] would spread a lively terror."

And the depleted uranium munitions that Britain and the other NATO powers use, continue to reside in the soil and water courses for decades after they have been used, causing grotesque mutations and deformations of babies, just as did the hundreds of tons of Agent Orange dropped by the US on Vietnam. 

Depleted Uranium as used in the munitions used by NATO
stays in the soil and water courses for decades, resulting in
grotesque genetic defects, and abnormalities in babies for
decades after its use.

Any real humanitarian would be equally appalled at these actions and sentiments expressed by the liberal interventionists of democratic imperialism, as they are at the actions of vile dictators such as Assad or Putin. But, the Tories and their soulmates amongst the Blair-rights cannot express such hostility, and basis humanitarian concern, because for them, their fake sentimentalism and moralism is nothing more than a pretext for them to engage in yet another illegal war, to promote the global strategic interests of British imperialism, as it clings to the apron strings of Trump, and US imperialism. 

They, of course, have no concept that the real answer to dictators such as Assad or Putin comes not from their bombs and bullets, which act only to consolidate such people in their position, by giving them an external threat against which to rally their people, but is to forge a link between the workers of Britain, France, the United States and elsewhere with the workers in Russia, Syria, Iran and so on, for a common struggle to overthrow all of our leaders, and the oppression of capitalism that those leaders impose on us. When the Stalinists and Social-Democrats sought to support democratic imperialism against Hitler prior to World War II, Trotsky wrote, 

"Fascism is a form of despair in the petit-bourgeois masses, who carry away with them over the precipice a part of the proletariat as well. Despair as is known, takes hold when all roads of salvation are cut off. The triple bankruptcy of democracy, Social Democracy and the Comintern was the prerequisite for fascism. All three have tied their fate to the fate of imperialism. All three bring nothing to the masses but despair and by this assure the triumph of fascism.... 

"The democracies of the Versailles Entente helped the victory of Hitler by their vile oppression of defeated Germany. Now the lackeys of democratic imperialism of the Second and Third Internationals are helping with all their might the further strengthening of Hitler’s regime. Really, what would a military bloc of imperialist democracies against Hitler mean? A new edition of the Versailles chains, even more heavy, bloody and intolerable. Naturally, not a single German worker wants this. To throw off Hitler by revolution is one thing; to strangle Germany by an imperialist war is quite another. The howling of the “pacifist” jackals of democratic imperialism is therefore the best accompaniment to Hitler’s speeches. “You see,” he says to the German people, “even socialists and Communists of all enemy countries support their army and their diplomacy; if you will not rally around me, your leader, you are threatened with doom!” Stalin, the lackey of democratic imperialism, and all the lackeys of Stalin – Jouhaux, Toledano, and Company – are the best aides in deceiving, lulling, and intimidating the German workers... 

"The Czechoslovakian crisis revealed with remarkable clarity that fascism does not exist as an independent factor. It is only one of the tools of imperialism. “Democracy” is another of its tools. Imperialism rises above them both. It sets them in motion according to need, at times counterposing them to one another, at times amicably combining them. To fight against fascism in an alliance with imperialism, is the same as to fight in an alliance with the devil against his claws or horns... 

"The struggle against fascism demands above all the expulsion of the agents of “democratic” imperialism from the ranks of the working class. Only the revolutionary proletariat of France, Great Britain, America, and the USSR, declaring a life and death struggle against their own imperialism and its agency, the Moscow bureaucracy, is capable of arousing revolutionary hopes in the hearts of the German and Italian workers, and at the same time of rallying around itself hundreds of millions of slaves and semi slaves of imperialism in the entire world. In order to guarantee peace among peoples we must overthrow imperialism under all its masks. Only the proletarian revolution can accomplish this." 

(Phrases and Reality, Writings 1938-9) 

And as the heads of the Commonwealth meet in London, the sentimental outpourings of the Tories, and their Blair-right sycophants is even more sickening. It is the same British imperialism that kept millions of the people in those commonwealth countries in chains for centuries, and inflicted gruesome torture and suffering on them. Only a few decades ago it did the same thing in its brutal suppression of the Mau-Mau in Kenya. Ironically, even minutes before the “debate” on the war inflicted on Syria, parliament was discussing the plight inflicted on people of the Windrush generation, who have been put into British concentration camps, awaiting deportation to the Caribbean, simply for not having the right papers to prove they have a right to be here. We have the way the people of the Chagos Islands have been treated by British imperialism in its desire to assuage the needs of US imperialism, but which the media will have little time for in the next few weeks, and which the Tories will no doubt be anxious to avoid having discussed. 

No doubt, as the Tories seek to establish the British Empire 2.0, as they disastrously take Britain out of the EU, they will also be keen to have those former colonial slaves forget about the torture and indignity inflicted upon them by Britain, and its Tory rulers, including Britain's military action to prevent even peaceful protest to bring about that end. It was after all, once again that Tory icon Winston Churchill, who not only advocated the use of poison gas, but who also proposed rounding up the supporters of Gandhi and machine gunning them, and whose proposals for Gandhi himself was that he, 

"ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back.". 

It was Churchill who, as well as Hitler, proclaimed 

"the Aryan stock is bound to triumph". 

It was Churchill, who when 14,000 black Africans died in British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War, wrote only 

“of his "irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men" . 

It was Churchill who said, 

“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion”, 

and when 3 million Bengalis were starving to death, and British officials begged Churchill to send food supplies to the area, Churchill refused. He complained that it was their own fault for "breeding like rabbits", and also said the plague was "merrily" culling the population. That same attitude had been taken by the British Tory government which refused to allow food supplies donated by British workers to be distributed freely during the Irish famine, because they said to do so would undermine the free market! 

So forgive me for failing to join with the utterly disgraceful Blair-rights in allowing the Tories to get away with shedding the crocodile tears, and their sickening talk about torture, chemical weapons, and their humanitarianism. 

The Pretext For War

Over the last week, the media has stepped up its propaganda campaign to support war in Syria by the US, UK and France. As with the justification for all such foreign wars, where a sovereign state is to be attacked, even though that state has undertaken no offensive action against the states launching the war against it, some other pretext for the war has to be created. Typically, that pretext has been some kind of pre-emptive action, on the basis of some secret information known only to, and which can only be made available to the states undertaking the pre-emptive strikes, or else is to assuage some supposed humanitarian crisis. 

Intervention on the latter basis is always problematic, for any state wanting to justify such a war, because, at any one time, there are always several such situations existing across the globe, equally meriting some kind of intervention, which leaves the states undertaking the military strikes having to explain why they have intervened in this particular instance rather than any of the others. Given that, it can usually also be demonstrated that the states undertaking the military strikes are themselves allied with other forces, across the globe, who are themselves guilty of creating such humanitarian crises, the use of such a pretext for war, can be easily seen to be a thinly veiled excuse, to disguise the real intention of undertaking the war. For example Trotsky that with the atrocities committed by the so called “liberal intervention” in the Balkans, or as can be seen today with the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinians, or Saudi Arabia in Yemen, or indeed, the chemical weapons usage by the western backed jihadists of Al Nusra et al, in Syria. The atrocities committed by the liberal interventionists in Iraq, at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere also illustrate the point. 

But, to use the other pretext of a pre-emptive strike, to prevent an actual attack by a foreign power, is also problematic. It is always kept as a background possibility, which is how the retention of nuclear weapons has been justified, including today as a supposed deterrent against a threat coming from say North Korea, although no one, can provide any sensible reason as to why North Korea would ever want to launch a nuclear attack against Britain, out of the blue, other than in conditions where North Korea had itself somehow been threatened, previously by Britain! The threat of such an imminent attack was used by Blair to justify the Iraq War, with his claim that Iraq was within 45 minutes of launching an attack on British forces in Cyprus; a claim that was quickly shown to be nonsense. Using this kind of pretext for an attack requires that the domestic population has been primed to feel a high degree of apprehension of a foreign threat, so that as Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan, they are prepared to relinquish their own liberty, and hand over absolute power to the sovereign, to protect them from such threats. 

The Iraq War demonstrated the problem here, which is that not only was the 45 minute claim quickly shown to be nonsense, but the further pretext for war, that Iraq had WMD, capable of being put into warheads fired with only 45 minutes warning was also shown to be completely false, despite an assurance being given by all of the intelligence services of the belligerent powers that they were 100% certain of that fact! Using the pretext of humanitarian intervention, has, therefore, become the preferred means of belligerent states justifying their wars against foreign sovereign states. But, to do so, given the experience of Iraq, and of Libya, domestic populations have to be softened up, and bombarded with propaganda to ensure that there is no doubt in their mind that what is being fed to them is an unquestionable truth. That is the reason that Jeremy Corbyn's refusal to give 100% uncritical support for the line that the government was putting out over the Salisbury poisonings, brought down an avalanche of invective against him, even though, within a matter of a week, his caution had once again been vindicated.

What Did You See?

As in the case of the Schripal's, I start from a position of intense hatred of Putin's regime in Russia, and so a propensity to accept that anything it is accused of, it is probably guilty of. Certainly, I have no reason to give Putin and the Kremlin the benefit of the doubt on anything. I start from the same attitude to the vile regime of Assad in Syria. But, just because I have no sympathy for these vile dictators, does not mean that I, therefore, have some derived sympathy for their opponents. My enemy's enemy is not my friend; often they are merely just my more immediate enemy! That is certainly the case in relation to Theresa May's government, and the same applies in relation to US workers with Trump, and quite visibly in France at the moment, with the anti-working class, Thatcherite government of Macron engaged in its attacks on French rail workers. Given the lies told to British workers by May's government, and their attempts to avoid parliamentary scrutiny to hold them account for those lies, for example, in relation to Brexit, my immediate enemy is not Assad or Putin, but May, Johnson and the rest. Whilst they complain about chlorine gas poisoning in Syria, they are quite happy to impose chlorine washed chicken on British consumers, after Brexit, to assuage their friend Trump.

As with the Schripal case, therefore, although I have no reason to give Assad the benefit of the doubt, nor am I prepared to simply accept the claims of May, Trump or Macron, let alone of the jihadists of Al Nusra, fighting Assad. Probably, like most people seeing the images on TV screens of children in distress in Douma, and absorbing the narrative of the news channel, I started from the assumption that such a chemical attack had occurred. The only question then being who was responsible. Again, I have no reason to give Assad the benefit of the doubt in such a question, even though it has been shown many times that Al Nusra have also had possession of chlorine gas, and have used it in attacks against their opponents.

However, my wife who has little interest in politics had a different impression. She was paying no attention to the background narrative, and only saw the images as she looked up from her Sudoku book. What she saw was something different; she saw a lot of people who appeared to be panicked, as a result of people rushing around them spraying them with water, and shoving Ventolin inhalers in their mouths – often inadvisably, given the age of some of those involved. Only later after I saw reports from staff at the hospital, that they were unaware of any such chemical attack, but that members of Al Nusra, who were still at that time in control of Douma, had swept into the hospital, shouting about a chemical attack, creating panic, and then dousing people with water, etc., before disappearing again, did I look at the images repeated on the news several times, with a different eye. Looking at it again, I too now see something different.  

Having suffered with asthma for more than 60 years, I am quite familiar with all of the signs that people display when then are struggling for breath, which is what would be expected where someone has suffered from a chlorine gas attack, which acts to dissolve lung tissue, which is why if you are using the most common household form of chlorine – bleach – you should ensure that you do so in well ventilated conditions. Actually, the most common form of chlorine in the home is salt – sodium chloride - but its not usually going to be emitting chlorine gas. Looking at the oft repeated TV images, I have not seen any evidence of those involved showing any indication struggling for breath, in the way asthmatics will be familiar with. Indeed, nor was their any sign of the other symptoms of chlorine, such as people rubbing their eyes and so on.

Now this could simply be that the TV images do not show the full extent of such symptoms, and the reports about hospital staff reporting that the TV images had been staged by members of Al Nusra, may itself be propaganda put out by the Assad regime, but I have no reason to believe the claims of one side or the other in that respect. And, the fact that British journalists like Robert Fisk are now uncovering a different story, strengthens my conviction that such skepticism is justified.  Certainly, as even some British military specialists have said, given that Assad has effectively won this war, and can more effectively achieve its aims by using devastating conventional weapons, that hypocritically, the West does not object to, its hard to see exactly what benefit, as opposed to the obvious costs, Assad might obtain from using chemical weapons!

What Purpose?

And, the fact that its argued that Assad used Chlorine in this attack, begs the further question of what purpose the attacks on his facilities were supposed to achieve. I heard some people who clearly were prepared to back the government without any thought this morning on the TV, assert that the bombing would seriously damage the potential to produce chemical weapons. But, every military expert knows that it will not. The whole point about chlorine is that it is readily available. It is produced from one of the most abundant compounds on Earth. It is nearly as easy to produce chlorine for use as gas, as it is to produce bleach. Of course, the claim that chlorine was used as the chemical weapon is useful for those wanting to make such a case, because its not difficult to ensure that chlorine can be found in soil samples, and given that no one knows what was actually in the inhalers that were indiscriminately being forced into people's mouths, it would not be difficult to ensure that non-lethal doses could result in blood samples subsequently providing indications of chlorine inhalation.

If the purpose of the bombing was to prevent the creation of chlorine, or to destroy chlorine stocks, it is then clearly pointless, because any facility capable of producing bleach can probably quickly produce the chlorine required to use as poison gas, and can do so in huge quantities.

But, the US, UK and France had waited a week before launching this bombing, and even then, aware that any such strike that killed Russian troops would be likely to provoke an immediate response, gave them prior notice of where the strikes would occur, so that the impact is likely to have been minimal. The real purpose here was not to deal with chemical weapons, or to provide any kind of humanitarian relief, but is merely to assert the continued right of the US, UK and their allies to intervene militarily, anywhere in the world they choose, in order to promote their global strategic interests. It is to put Russia on notice that they will not allow it, and Iran to create their own stable sphere of influence from the Gulf to the Mediterranean.

Overlapping Interest

Of course, in practice, there are many other factors involved here. Various groups with axes to grind, such as Al Nusra, who have become the vehicle for western imperialism to attack Assad, and thereby Russia, like all such forces, are able to utilise the concept of humanitarian relief to mobilise military action in their support. Because, such groups are given the impression that all they have to do is to shout “atrocity”, in order to garner a military intervention to give to them the military victory, their own forces and support within the country cannot provide, they are, of course, given an incentive to organise such false flag operations, so as to generate such intervention. With mobile phones, and modern computer software, it becomes very easy for such groups to fabricate images that appear to paint a particular scenario to support their claims, and they have repeatedly been shown to have done so. The jihadists have become extremely adept at using such methods, and to flood social media with these images, to create a groundswell of support for their claims. Where such Jihadists, as with Al Nusra are in alliance with the West, such methods become even more powerful, though it also means that their western backers lose control of their actions, which can go beyond what they might themselves want.

In the present context, we see Theresa May's government desperate to distract attention from the disaster of Brexit. That doesn't mean they created these events for that purpose, but the art of such politics is to utilise events where possible to your own ends. For May, too, with the knowledge that outside the EU, Britain is no longer as useful to the US, as it once was, there is a strong incentive to suck up to Trump in even more sycophantic style where possible, and that is what May has done from the start. Similarly, Macron notes that with Britain outside the EU it can no longer play its historic role as the US agent inside the bloc, and so that job becomes vacant. With Germany the dominant power in the EU, Macron sees, a chance to re-establish the glory of Imperial France, by supplanting Britain as the US's oldest and closest ally.

But, all of these various factors that at one time reinforce, and at another counter the coalition of interests, that are continually shifting, are simply a part of the dynamic and dialectic of war that has been seen many times in the past. It only demonstrates that we are once again treading that old path to death and destruction, and it will not be halted by simply assigning a privileged role to one set of combatants over another, to the so called liberal interventionists over the authoritarians – especially as, as always happens in such circumstances, the liberal interventionists themselves are led to become authoritarians, so as to avoid scrutiny and accountability – but only by the workers of all countries recognising their common interest, and standing up to their ruling classes, whether they wear the mask of democracy or dictatorship.

"Those working class “leaders” who want to chain the proletariat to the war chariot of imperialism, covered by the mask of “democracy,” are now the worst enemies and the direct traitors of the toilers. We must teach the workers to hate and despise the agents of imperialism, since they poison the consciousness of the toilers; we must explain to the workers that fascism is only one of the forms of imperialism, that we must fight not against the external symptoms of the disease but against its organic causes, that is, against capitalism."

(Trotsky, “Anti-Imperialist Struggle is key to Liberation”)

Yet Another Illegal War

British government's clearly have not learned the lesson of the illegal war in Iraq in 2003. Theresa May, has learned some lessons, but the wrong ones. She learned the lesson of Cameron, in 2013, of the danger of going to Parliament to seek approval, and thereby risking the humiliation of not getting it. So, as she has done over Brexit and other issues, she chose the route of the authoritarian, and simply ignored Parliament, denying it of a say. That may have had short term tactical benefits, but will have longer-term costs. She learned the lesson of Blair and the Iraq War, by quickly publishing the legal grounds on which she launched the war on Syria, but Blair had good reason for not doing so. It is that the grounds can then be challenged. The legal grounds on which May says she has gone to war in Syria, is basically to relieve an immediate humanitarian crisis. It is clearly bollocks, and exposes her straight away to the charge of engaging in an illegal war, and the potential, therefore, that UK military personnel might be subject to war crimes charges. But, the use of such a justification, has much wider implications.

Humanitarian Intervention

The idea that bombing Syria is an act of humanitarian relief is ridiculous. It is made even more ridiculous by considering a number of other facts. 

• The supposed chemical attack in Douma occurred on 7th April. A week earlier.
• Britain has reneged even on its minimal commitment to take in humanitarian refugees from the Syrian conflict.
• Britain provides the Saudi regime with weapons, and military advisors, which are used to inflict a severe humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and the same weapons have been provided by the Saudis to the various Islamist groups fighting in Syria, including Al Nusra, which is backed by the West, and which has been shown itself to have used chemical weapons, including the use of Chlorine gas.
• There are more than a dozen similar conflicts across the globe where humanitarian crises exist, including that inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians, and yet there is no suggestion that the answer to these humanitarian crises in any sense resides in bombing the places where those crises are being endured! 

But, the short-term convenience of using this ridiculous claim of humanitarian relief has wider ramifications. If Iran, or Russia, or some other power, for whatever strategic reason, decided to use this argument to launch air strikes against Saudi Arabia, to provide humanitarian relief to the Yemenis, suffering a humanitarian crisis, then Britain and the US would have little to complain about. Similarly, if Iran or some other power were to launch air strikes against Israel, to provide humanitarian relief to Palestinians, being murdered every day on the border, by the IDF, then again the US and UK could have little to complain about. After all, the US and UK complain that they have been pushed into this action because Russia has vetoes resolutions at the UN Security Council, but for more than half a century, the US has routinely vetoes each and every UN Resolution that was in any way critical of Israel. The US has vetoed UN Resolutions critical of Israel, 43 times! 

When NATO invaded Kosovo in 1999, to provide support for the murderous, criminals of the KLA, who had provoked ethnic conflict in between Kosovan Serbs and Albanians, it led to an ethnic cleansing of Kosovan Serbs, and prepared the ground for Kosovo to be separated from Serbia. It created a precedent, which allowed Russia to use the same argument for intervening in South Ossetia, in 2008. 

The Tory apologists, including the Tory media have tried to justify the government's action, and its abandonment of any pretext of democratic accountability by a number of equally spurious arguments. They tried to argue that there was not time to recall parliament. Nonsense. The chemical attack, if there was one, occurred on 7th April. If it was fine to wait a week before responding to it, why could parliament not have been recalled during that period, and why could any such action have not waited another few days, given that parliament is back tomorrow, and the OPCW have started their investigation in Douma today? 

They have tried to argue that what has been undertaken was only a limited, precise surgical strike, and not an act of war. Niall Paterson on Sky News today, argued against Richard Burgon that this was not an act of war, for example. Really? So, if tomorrow, some other country launches 120 Cruise Missiles against Britain, will Paterson say, “Oh never mind, its not an act of war”?! Incidentally, on believing the word of the state, according to the Russians 70 of the 110 missiles were shot down, whereas according to the US/UK/France, none of the missiles were shot down. If that is the case, then its surprising that 110 successfully delivered cruise missiles, “shiny, new and smart” caused such relatively little damage. 

They have tried to justify the action by claiming that there were no civilian casualties. That's like saying that a drunk driver should get off in court, because although they were driving drunk, they managed not to kill anyone on their way home! The fact is that although the action was clearly intended to be an exercise in public sabre rattling, and the Russians appear to have been told in advance where and when the strikes would occur, to try to avoid Russian casualties, in such cases, such events do occur. For goodness sake, there have been plenty of examples of “friendly fire” where troops fighting on the same side have been killed. There has already been around 200 Russian mercenaries killed in Syria, by strikes undertaken by the US and its allies. Moreover, the bombing of supposed chemical weapons storage and production facilities makes the claim of humanitarian assistance even more ridiculous, because surely the likely consequence of any such bombing is to release dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere, water courses and so on, with devastating effects on local civilian populations. If chemical weapons are to be destroyed, it should be done safely and systematically, as the joint action of the Russians and US did in 2013.

The Dialectics of War

Tim Marshall speaking on Sky News today decried the idea that this action was going to lead to World War III, but his analysis fails to understand what is really going on. It is formalistic, and fails to understand the dynamic and dialects of war. When yesterday, I wrote that World War III had started, I clearly did not mean that the US/UK/France were about to start shooting at each other, and dropping bombs and missiles on one another. The process and dynamic of war simply does not operate in that way. Ask someone when World War I started, and they will say 28th July 1914. Similarly, ask someone when World War II started, and they will say 1st September 1939. However, the truth is that both of these world wars actually started long before then. The world wars were, in fact, a series of regional conflicts, that became embroiled and entangled, with conflicting and combining interests resulting in a series of shifting alliances, which was then combined into a more or less global conflict. 

The First World War could potentially be traced back to 1905, with the Russo-Japanese conflict. It certainly encompasses the Balkan Wars. Similarly, World War II did not start on 1st September 1939. The foundations of it go back to Japanese expansion into China in the 1920's and 30's, the Japanese adventures in Mongolia, which were halted by Zhukov at Khalkhin Gol, not to mention Italy's adventure into Abyssinia, Germany's expansion into Austria, Czechoslovakia, and their support for Franco in Spain etc. 

The lesson of all these instances is not that, which the liberal interventionists proclaim, which is what they have argued in relation to Hitler's expansion into Czechoslovakia, the failure to intervene in Spain etc., that its necessary for liberal democracies to intervene at an early stage to oppose dictators – the same argument has been put forward since the 1930's by the petit-bourgeois Third Campists – but is the very opposite. The lesson is that when the working classes of these countries fail to oppose their governments, when they allow them to get away with the idea that they are intervening, for humanitarian purposes, they have already lost their moral purpose; they have abandoned their historic mission, and tied themselves irretrievably to their own ruling class, and thereby to its own class interests. 

The foothills of World War III could probably be traced back to the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam having been the US's front man in the Gulf, in its proxy war against Iran, had failed to deliver. He was set up. The US Ambassador told him that his argument with Kuwait, over the latter supposedly stealing Iraqi oil, was not concern of the US, were he to take action over it. The rest is history. The working-class in the US and Europe failed to hold their governments to account, as they asserted their right to flaunt international law, and to invade a sovereign state without themselves being attacked. Flush with that success, and with the USSR an increasingly distant memory, and the Eussian economy on its knees following the implementation of Hayeckian and Friedmanite economic theory, the US and its allies began to press home their advantage in strategically weakening a still heavily nuclear armed Russia. 

The EU pushed East, expanding into the former Warsaw Pact countries, moving ever closer to the Russian border. NATO contrary to the assurances it had given to the Kremlin also expanded Eastwards right up to the Russian border, in the same way that Germany had done in the 1930's. Of course, when the USSR had dome something similar in the 1960's, by placing missiles on Cuba, it was forced to remove them, under threat of starting World War III, by John F. Kennedy. The US also formed a string of alliances with various dictators in the former Soviet Republics on Russia's southern flanks, having no concern about humanitarian relief for their peoples from the dictators who boiled their opponents in oil. 

By 1999, NATO was also confident enough to wage an actual military campaign against Russia's long time allies in the Balkans, in Serbia. But, in order to do so, they required a pretext of humanitarian intervention. The US had been a long time ally of Osama Bin Laden, who was financed and supplied to provide the forces to fight the USSR in Afghanistan. Bin Laden was then enlisted to make contacts with the KLA. At that time they were just a small criminal gang, but with CIA funding, and training they were able to begin organising attacks on Kosovan Serb villages, which then provoked ethnic conflict between Kosovan Serbs and Albanians who for decades had lived peacefully side by side. As the ethnic conflict escalated, it had the desired effect for the KLA, of provoking a military response from the Serb dictator Milosevic, in defence of Kosovan Serbs. That provided the pretext for NATO to begin bombing Serbia. 

According to British General Michael Jackson, the US told him to get to Pristina airport and stop the Russians taking it, even if he had to fire on them to do so. Jackson refused, recognising that to have done so would have led to an open conflict with Russia. He told Wesley Clark,  

"I'm not going to start the Third World War for you". 

The fact that the working classes of the US and Europe failed to hold their governments to account for these actions, and indeed that the leaders of some of those working classes, were the governments that undertook the war (the fact that some Third Campist groups supported them in doing so, is rather irrelevant, as these groups are themselves irrelevant) is the dynamic that has created the conditions for the gradual slide into World War III. It enabled those same imperialist powers to wage war on Iraq, with disastrous consequences, and then to wage war on Libya with even more disastrous consequences, and the only reason they have failed to do the same thing in Syria, is the fact that the Russians already had military bases there, and the Assad regime had support from Hezbollah in Lebanon, whilst the disastrous adventure in Iraq had led to thousands of Jihadists flooding into Iraq and Syria, so that a multi-faceted civil war was opened up. Instead, the US and its allies channelled their support for anti-Assad forced via their Gulf allies, and via covert means using the CIA and other intelligence services, and special forces acting covertly across the Turkish border into Syria. 

As it becomes increasingly clear that Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have effectively won this war, and as Turkey starts to draw closer to Russia, thereby cutting off some of the possibility of continuing that covert action across its border – indeed Turkey has its own battle to fight against the US's Kurdish allies in Syria – the US and its allies need other means of intervening in Syria, if only to maintain a condition of chaos there, so as to prevent a Russian/Iranian/Syrian and Turkish alliance from obtaining a strategic foothold from the waters of the Gulf through to the Mediterranean. Moreover, given the Chinese backing of the Iranians, any such restoration of stability in Syria, could result in rapid economic reconstruction financed by Chinese investment, a resolution, and example of nation building that the US and its allies have everywhere failed to achieve following the destruction caused by their wars. 

In terms of the dialectics of war, there is a point where this process of conflict across a wide area becomes a transformation of quantity into quality. The fact that the US/UK/France were prepared to risk open confrontation with Russia, in launching this attack on Syria, is an indication that such a point has been reached. It does not mean that it is irreversible. When a ball starts to roll down a hill, the roll starts at the top, not at the point where it has picked up such a degree of momentum that it cannot be stopped.