THE ENTIRE justification for last Friday’s illegal bombing of Syria by British, US and French forces is falling apart rapidly as the truth emerges.
The lying narrative spun by May that it was an exercise in ‘humanitarian’ war designed to protect innocent civilians from the horrors of chemical weapons has been exposed for what it is – a complete fabrication designed to whip up war hysteria and lay the ground for further military attacks to destabilise the Syrian government at the point where it has been victorious over the jihadists who acted as imperialism’s proxy fighting force in the country. The fatal blow to May was delivered at the weekend by a report from the highly respected investigative journalist Robert Fisk.
Unaccompanied by any officials, Fisk wandered around the town of Douma, site of the alleged gas attack, talking to local people and interviewing a local doctor. Fisk writes: ‘There are many people I talked to amid the ruins of the town who said they had “never believed in” gas stories – which were usually put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups.’
Indeed, Fisk was struck by the way none of the people he spoke to were even aware that the alleged gas attack had taken place. The doctor he interviewed, Dr Rahaibani, who lives close by the site of the ‘attack’, provided the most coherent story of what had actually occurred. He told Fisk: ‘There was a lot of shelling (by government forces) and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.’
The White Helmets are not a civilian relief organisation as portrayed in the media but in fact only operate in areas controlled by the jihadists and they have a proven record of organising ‘false flag’ operations on their behalf. These same White Helmets, who left Douma alongside Jaysh al-Islam fighters, are the sole source for May’s allegations.
Despite all the hysteria generated by May, she has been unable to whip up the vast majority of the population who, unlike Labour right-wingers, refuse to place any trust in May and the Tories and simply want to get rid of them. This failure has led to an increasingly hysterical campaign to whip up support for war by pumping out lurid claims that Britain is about to come under a sustained cyberattack from Russia.
Earlier this week, GCHQ and the FBI issued an extraordinary warning that Russia had hacked millions of computers and was prepared to take down the entire infrastructure of Britain and the US.
Again, this is all secret information that can’t possibly be shared with anyone – we have to take it on trust. With the ruling class and the Tories baying for war in Syria and making war preparations against Russia, the outright refusal of the Labour Party to issue any call to bring down this government is treacherous.
At no point in the debates on the illegal bombings of Syria that took place on Monday and Tuesday did Corbyn call for May to resign. Instead, he whipped his MPs to abstain on the SNP vote on Monday night, a vote that could have been carried and would certainly have spelt the end for May. With May turning the House of Commons into a toothless talking shop, the working class are fed up with endless debates that change nothing.
The only way to stop May and the Tories in their drive to war abroad, a war that will necessarily be accompanied by an all-out war with the working class at home to pay for it, is to demand that the trade unions take action by calling a general strike to kick out May and go forward to a workers government and a socialist society.