Peter Bolton

As The Canary has extensively reported, the ongoing war in Yemen has seen Saudi-led forces commit atrocity after atrocity. But on 21 January, the Saudi dictatorship appears to have reached a new low in an attack that killed scores of civilians.

Given that Saudi Arabia is the US’s second biggest ally in the Middle East, its conduct in the war exposes the US’s brazen double standards when it comes to human rights. The war itself, meanwhile, stands as a testament to the US’s shameless use of proxy wars to further its own geostrategic interests.

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As The Canary has consistently reported, the US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela has been degenerating into an increasingly pathetic and embarrassing spectacle. Now, in one final gasp of desperation, Juan Guaidó has called for a fresh round of protests next month. But it looks like he and his dwindling band of followers’ hopes of toppling the government will soon be dashed. Because there are now growing calls for his prosecution for crimes including treason.

Washington and its mouthpieces in the corporate-owned media will surely crow that this somehow constitutes ‘proof’ of the Venezuelan government’s authoritarian nature. But the reality is that the US is, if anything, even less tolerant of the kind of behavior that its proxies in Venezuela have engaged in as part of their attempt to seize power.

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As The Canary extensively reported during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, figures from the Conservative Party, the Labour right, and the establishment media orchestrated a transparently politically-motivated smear campaign against him. Their weapon of choice was employing a litany of bogus accusations of antisemitism to paint the lifelong anti-racism campaigner as some kind of bigot.

The purpose of the campaign was straightforward – they sought to derail his chances of becoming prime minister and distract attention from his (widely popular) policy proposals. Their motive was equally straightforward – they rightly feared the threat that a Corbyn-led government would pose to the status quo and their own political and economic interests. Now, one of the major players in this campaign has admitted that its whole underlying premise was false all along.

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Presidential elections in Honduras have resulted in a decisive victory for the race’s socialist candidate. This puts to an end over a decade of US-backed right-wing rule and offers hope for a better future for the beleaguered Central American nation.

But that hope should be tempered by the fact that Honduras has suffered from years of US intervention. In Latin America, meddling from the northern hegemon is a lingering threat for any country that refuses to bow to its power. Washington will likely soon be looking for ways to undermine this new government if it fails to uphold US economic and geostrategic interests.

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The publication of the Panama Papers in 2016, and then the Paradise Papers in 2017, revealed a huge amount of information about how the world’s ultrarich avoid tax and hide their wealth from regulators and public scrutiny. Now, an even bigger treasure trove of documents has been leaked to journalists. And as with the previous two leaks, amongst those implicated include some of the world’s most powerful political elites.

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The US Congress just passed a bill to give Israel another whopping hand-out for military spending. And – as would be expected – it passed with a huge majority of both Republicans and Democrats. We shouldn’t be surprised. As The Canary has pointed out on numerous occasions, in the US there is essentially a bipartisan consensus for unconditional support for Israel.

Around the same time, the Labour Party in the UK showed that it still has some claim to be a supporter of Palestinian rights. In spite of its current (increasingly beleaguered) Blairite leadership, the party appears to still have a largely left-leaning membership as well as an active, albeit small, left faction amongst its MPs. And that shows just how isolated the US is on this issue when compared to one of its main European allies.

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As The Canary extensively reported, throughout Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, the corporate-owned press, Tories, and the Labour right alike targeted him with a vicious and protracted smear campaign. This campaign employed bogus accusations of antisemitism to try to derail his radical political project. This was one of the factors that led to Labour’s defeat in the 2019 UK general election, which in turn led to Corbyn’s resignation as party leader. But even now that he’s stepped down, the antisemitism smear campaign shows no signs of abating. Indeed, it has now morphed into a wider movement to attack the left more broadly. This includes, in particular, critics of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.

The latest instalment in this sorry saga is a column in a right-wing US newspaper penned by a British comedian. It both represents a new low and highlights how the left will be the continual target of false accusations of antisemitism for the foreseeable future. We must continue to stand up to these pathetic and spurious attacks if we have any chance of rebuilding a movement for radical change.

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