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	Date	Author	Title ISSN 1923-7871
Bullet archive: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10			Send submissions to info@socialistproject.ca
1388.	March 27, 2017	BDS National Committee	BNC Statement on Israel’s Ongoing Campaign to Silence Omar Barghouti and Repress BDS
On the morning of Sunday, March 19, Israeli tax authorities barged into the home of Omar Barghouti, the prominent Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for the freedom, justice and equality of the Palestinian people. They detained and interrogated Omar and his wife Safa for 16 hours that first day. Omar is currently enduring a fourth day of interrogation.
1387.	March 23, 2017	Justin Podur interviews Joan Joy Grant Cummings	Women Rise Up Against Gender Violence in the Caribbean
On March 11, survivors of violence against women and their allies and supporters held marches in six Caribbean countries. Started by two Barbadian women, Ronelle King and Allyson Benn, the movement had the hashtag #LifeInLeggings. In Jamaica, one of the groups marching was the Tambourine Army, a movement of activists dedicated to eradicating sexual violence against women and girls. Some of the Tambourine Army are survivors themselves of sexual violence.
1386.	March 22, 2017	Caglar Dolek and Gulden Ozcan	Building Solidarity through Standing Up for Truth
The fate of the neoliberal Islamist project of authoritarian restoration in Turkey will be determined by an upcoming referendum on April 16 of this year. The referendum will be held under the conditions of a state of emergency in effect since the July 15 coup attempt last year. The regime's use of the putsch attempt to suppress all forms of dissent has quickly evolved into an overriding choice to make the state of emergency the permanent form of governance in Turkey. In this sense, the April 16 plebiscite on constitutional changes marks a defining stage in the politics of violent polarization and oppression under way for more than a decade.
1385.	March 20, 2017	Todd Gordon and Jeffery R. Webber	Profits, Coercion, and Resistance
An article published in Third World Quarterly in 2008 was our initiation into collaborative work on Canadian mining imperialism and the popular forms of resistance it systematically engenders in Latin America. The first seed. After a lengthy stretch of germination, this led almost a decade later to our new book, Blood of Extraction: Canadian Imperialism in Latin America. In the preliminary stages, when Blood of Extraction wasn't even yet a fully-fledged idea, Todd was working on the manuscript which would become Imperialist Canada, and Jeff was trying to map out the cycle of left-indigenous revolt in early twenty-first century Bolivia and the rise to the presidency of Evo Morales.
1384.	March 17, 2017	Joyce Nelson	Ignoring Chicago, Toronto Has a Big, Stupid Idea
Two weeks ago, the good folks of Toronto, Ontario learned that their elected officials at City Hall are considering selling off the Toronto Parking Authority - which operates dozens of municipal parking lots as well as on-street parking. It's a big, stupid idea that indicates our 'city fathers' apparently don't read, but also that they can't see through the latest scam being sold by some corporate lobbyist.
1383.	March 16, 2017	Asbjørn Wahl	Reactionary Working Class?
Large parts of the western working class now seem to gather around right populists, demagogues, and racists. They vote for reactionary and fascistoid political parties. They helped to vote the UK out of the EU and to make Trump president of the world's superpower number one, and they vote so massively for the far right political parties that the latter have government power in sight throughout several of Europe's most populous countries.
1382.	March 14, 2017	Sam Gindin and Herman Rosenfeld	The Crisis in the ATU: Labour Shoots Itself in the Foot
A sign of the tragic disarray of the Canadian labour movement is the extent to which its misadventures keep piling up. As the turmoil within the union representing the Ontario government's unionized employees (Ontario Public Service Employees Union - OPSEU) hits the press, the chaos continues in Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU). The 10,500 members in that local - over a third of the ATU's Canadian membership - operate and maintain Toronto's transit system, North America's third largest public transit system.
1381.	March 12, 2017	Alia Karim and David Bush	Striking York University Food Service Workers Win $15 and Fairness
On Monday March 6th, striking York University food service workers, represented by Unite Here Local 75, voted to accept their new contract. The workers went on strike for and won a $15/hour starting wage and fair working conditions. Their victory paves the way for workers right across the province to achieve $15 and fairness. The workers won major improvements to their contract in the nearly three week strike.
1380.	March 9, 2017	Ingo Schmidt	Chronicle of a Crisis Postponed: Italy After the Referendum
Matteo Renzi assumed the role of Italian Prime Minister on February 22, 2014 as the self-proclaimed rottamatore - the ‘demolition man’ of an inefficient system. After successfully passing a series of laws by means of this very system that lowered social standards, he failed in the attempt at a constitutional amendment that would have accelerated future measures designed to further degrade social standards.
1379.	March 7, 2017		Against the Blacklisting of Activists and Writers
The cancellation of a lecture by journalist Rania Khalek, who was invited to speak on the University of North Carolina (UNC) - Chapel Hill campus by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on February 27, 2017, raises important issues of tactics and strategy within movements for social change. The signers of this statement hold a range of views on Syria. Some agree with Khalek; others disagree - in some cases quite vehemently.
1378.	March 5, 2017	Stefan Kipfer	Projecting Shadows: France Before the 2017 Elections
In comparative context, France has long been a source of inspiration for lefties and revolutionaries due to its history of successful or failed revolution from 1789 to 1968 and due to its role as an inadvertent point of contact for anti-colonial movements, from the Haitian revolution to the era of decolonization in the 20th century. More recent cycles of mobilization - movements against neoliberalism from 1995 to 2010 and the mass marches and revolts against racism and police violence from the early 1980s to 2005 - kept French politics in the radical limelight.
1377.	March 3, 2017	Marta Harnecker	Reading Marx's Capital Today: Lessons from Latin America
One hundred and fifty years ago, Karl Marx published his book Capital, an intellectual effort of great breadth, with the aim of revealing the logic of capitalist production and providing workers with theoretical instruments for their liberation. Having discovered the logic of the system, he was able to foresee with great anticipation much of what is happening in the world capitalist economy today. But, we cannot mechanically apply what is outlined in Capital to the current reality of Latin America.
1376.	March 1, 2017	Judith Deutsch	Militarism: Revolutionary Mothering and Rosie the Riveter
The women who mobilized the January global protest against Trump are upping the ante with plans for a one-day women's general strike. They focus on many appalling injustices and on the violence ignored by 'lean-in feminism': 'women in the formal labor market, women working in the sphere of social reproduction and care, and unemployed and precarious working women.' There are plans for further women's actions as part of broad coalitions in the next few months.
1375.	February 26, 2017	Nizar K. Visram	Western Sahara: An Albatross on African Union’s Conscience
At the 28th Summit meeting of the African Union (AU) held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 30 January 2017, Morocco's re-admission to the continental body generated heated discussion. At the end of the day the Kingdom of Morocco managed to win over sufficient member states on its side and it was allowed to join the fold unconditionally. Morocco left the Organization of African Unity (OAU), precursor to the AU, in 1984 after the OAU recognized the right to self-determination and independence for the people of the Western Sahara.
1374.	February 25, 2017	Pierre Beaudet	The Canadian Left and the Quebec Question: The Dilemma That Won’t Go Away
In September 2015, a fine document emerged from Canadian progressives around the Leap Manifesto. It expresses a broad will to transform the land around a wide platform of social, democratic and environmental transformation, away from the neoliberal ‘model’ that we endure and fight. The Manifesto started by identifying violence against the Indigenous Peoples and the non-response from the Canadian State facing climate change as a crime.
1373.	February 23, 2017	Sam Gindin	Bob White, Union Organizer, Union Leader
When I last visited Bob at his nursing home in Kincardine, a nurse politely pulled me aside to tell me that he no longer talked much but remained quite sociable. The deterioration in his condition was sad to hear, but I remarked that his retention of social skills was no surprise. ‘As a union organizer he had a natural sociability’. She lit up and excitedly whispered to a nearby nurse: ‘That explains it!’. ‘Explains what?’ I asked. ‘Well, the one thing he keeps telling us is: 'You know, all of you work really hard but don't get paid enough; you should get a union'.’
1372.	February 22, 2017	Paul Kahnert	Time to Fix Hydro 'Mistake'
Hydro in Ontario is a mess and rates are skyrocketing. The high number of people who have trouble paying or can't pay their Hydro bills is growing by the day. Businesses are leaving the province and/or refusing to locate here because of high Hydro rates. A group that is especially being ignored is small and medium business including farmers. On 19 November 2016, Premier Kathleen Wynne said she made a 'mistake on Hydro' and took 'responsibility for it.' But it wasn't just an accident that Hydro rates skyrocketed.
1371.	February 20, 2017	Marty Hart-Landsberg	Trump's Economic Policies Are No Answer To Our Problems
President Trump has singled out unfair international trading relationships as a major cause of U.S. worker hardship. And he has promised to take decisive action to change those relationships by pressuring foreign governments to rework their trade agreements with the U.S. and change their economic policies. While international economic dynamics have indeed worked to the disadvantage of many U.S. workers, Trump's framing of the problem is highly misleading and his promised responses are unlikely to do much, if anything, to improve majority working and living conditions.
1370.	February 16, 2017	Leonard Gentle	South Africa and the Changing Possibilities for the Left
With the claims that a new trade union federation will be launched in March 2017, it is appropriate to draw up a balance sheet of the labour movement in South Africa, and ask whether the optimism of many that a new Left force is going to be unleashed is justified. Or whether the possibilities for a force of revolutionary working class politics lie elsewhere. The period framed by the Marikana massacre of August 2012 and the December 2013 Special Congress of NUMSA, was one in which, so it seemed, a political rupture occurred.
1369.	February 14, 2017	Judith Deutsch	Unspoken Words: Nuclear War Provocations and Plans
During the election campaign there was a brief period of anxiety about Clinton or Trump taking possession of the nuclear code, with the power to eradicate our species at the push of a few buttons. But where has discussion, let alone mention, of nuclear weapons gone? An exception is the brief article by Robert Dodge in CounterPunch about the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists advancing the Doomsday Clock to 2 ½ minutes before the midnight of human extinction caused by nuclear war or climate change: 'Nuclear weapons are not even on the radar of our congress. Their phones are not ringing off the hook about nuclear weapons.'
1368.	February 11, 2017	Andrea Levy and Corvin Russell	Mapping the Canadian Left: Sovereignty and Solidarity in the 21st Century
If there is a single theme that has distinguished left politics in Canada and Québec at least since the 1960s, it is the aspiration to national sovereignty. For both the social-democratic and radical left in Québec, the pursuit of social justice is inextricably bound up with national liberation and the creation of a sovereign state emancipated from the colonial chokehold of the Canadian federation. Meanwhile, a considerable part of the left in English Canada for decades similarly conceived the liberation of the Canadian economy and foreign policy from domination by the superpower to the south as the starting point of any viable left project.
1367.	February 9, 2017	Teressa Rose Ezell	Black Snakes on the Move: U.S. Pipeline Expansion Out Of Control
A Lakota prophecy tells of a mythic Black Snake that will move underground and bring destruction to the Earth. The 'seventh sign' in Hopi prophecy involves the ocean turning black and bringing death to many sea-dwelling creatures. It doesn't take an over-active imagination to make a connection between these images and oil pipelines and spills. It's troubling enough that the growing 'Black Snake' has branched out at an alarming rate, forming a massive subterranean coast-to-coast web.
1366.	February 7, 2017	Yogi Acharya	Toronto Mayor’s Housing Policies Costs Lives
Eighty people have died in the last two years as a direct result of homelessness in Toronto. That's one homeless person dying every 10 days. In 1985, people fighting homelessness started keeping track of these senseless, and entirely preventable deaths. Since that time, they've recorded over 800 deaths - lives sacrificed in service of a perverse economic logic that demands ever more cuts from the destitute and grants ever more comforts to the rich.
1365.	February 6, 2017	Jamie Partridge	How Postal Workers Removed the Staples
'We Won! The U.S. Postal Service and Staples deal is over!' proclaimed the headline on the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) website. A three-year battle against the outsourcing of living-wage, union postal jobs to the low-wage, nonunion Staples ended January 5 when USPS management informed the APWU that the 'approved shipper' program in Staples Office Supply stores will be shut down by the end of February 2017.
1364.	February 2, 2017	Alain Savard	A Terrorist Attack on Muslims in Quebec
On Sunday night, a young, white, French-speaking, Quebec-born man opened fire inside of a Quebec City mosque, killing six Muslim worshipers and injuring 25. The six victims were first-generation immigrants who had lived in Quebec for years, some for decades. The shooter, Alexandre Bissonnette, had expressed anti-immigrant positions online and was a fan of Donald Trump in the U.S. and France's far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen.
1363.	January 31, 2017	Labor Network for Sustainability	How Labor and Climate United Can Trump Donald Trump
Donald Trump and his congressional Republican allies have taken control of the U.S. government. The result threatens to be devastating for both labor and the climate - not to mention immigrants, African Americans, Muslims, women, children, the elderly, the disabled, LGBTQ people, and many others.
1362.	January 27, 2017	Patrick Bond	Will Washington's New Pro-Moscow, Anti-Beijing Gang Drive a Wedge Through the BRICS in 2017?
The weeks following an underwhelming Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) mid-September summit in Goa and the United States presidential election in November have unveiled ever-widening contradictions. Thanks to blatant corruption, presidential delegitimation has reached unprecedented levels in both Brazil and South Africa; while ruling-party religious degeneracy in India also included an extraordinary bout of local currency mismanagement; and sudden new foreign-policy divergences may wreak havoc in China and Russia.
1361.	January 25, 2017	Cyrus Bina	Homecoming to Nostalgia: The Inauguration of Donald J. Trump
When the entire arsenal of impulsive and aggressive foreign policy is deployed in absolute desperation and without accomplishment by a declining power unaware of its imminent demise, first it resorts to self-aggrandizement and spectacle, and then suddenly and viciously turns on itself through self-flagellation and serious self-mutilation.
1360.	January 23, 2017	Joan Sangster	Canadian Women Marching in Washington
A friend's daughter set out on January 19th from Montreal for Washington to join American protests timed to coincide with the inauguration of Donald Trump. She may not know that she is marching in a long Canadian tradition of cross-border feminist solidarity going back to a 1913 suffrage demonstration, also timed to coincide with a presidential inauguration.
1359.	January 21, 2017		Women's March on Washington
January 21 is set to be the day of one of the largest protests in recent U.S. history, the Women's March on Washington. The widely-publicized protest is expected to dwarf the numbers at Trump's inauguration, as three times more busses are registered for the Women's March than for the inauguration.
1358.	January 20, 2017	Pierre Beaudet	A Critical Week for the World Social Forum
It all began right here in Porto Alegre in 2001 when this city in the south of Brazil became a major site of popular mobilization. Influenced by the Workers' Party (PT), unions were, along with popular movements, at the forefront of a proactive political effort that included the support of the left within the Catholic Church, inspired by liberation theology.
1357.	January 17, 2017	Toby Leon Moorsom	Canadian Aid to Africa under Justin Trudeau
The Canadian government under Justin Trudeau is attempting to alter the narratives about our country's relationship with the African continent. Be aware the initiative is largely ideological chimera void of concrete action, but even worse, it is blatant hypocrisy. The purported 'new agenda' for Africa began with a trip to Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia by Foreign Affairs minister, Stéphane Dion in November of 2016.
1356.	January 16, 2017	Anonymous Tube Worker	London Underground Workers Relaunch Fight Against Cuts
The following contribution from a transit worker - and an activist in the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), refers to an ongoing series of strikes and protests against the management of the Underground's adoption of lean production, an austerity-driven program of restructuring called 'Fit for the Future.' The program involves layoffs of over 1,000 workers, and work re-assignments which amount to extra work, without any proper compensation.
1355.	January 13, 2017	Henry A. Giroux	Militant Hope in the Age of Trump
The United States stands at the endpoint of a long series of attacks on democracy, and the choices faced by the American public today point to the divide between those who are committed to democracy and those who are not. Debates over whether Donald Trump was a fascist or Hillary Clinton was a right-wing warmonger and tool of Wall Street were a tactical diversion.
1354.	January 11, 2017	Charles Smith interviewed by Rankandfile.ca	Electoral Reform and Labour
The federal Liberal retreat from their big flashy promise of electoral reform has definitely killed the Trudeau honeymoon. Meanwhile, Prince Edward Islanders narrowly voted for electoral reform but Premier MacLauchlan has decided to ignore the results, leading to an angry protest of hundreds in Charlottetown. Electoral reform seems pretty easy to support if you want greater democracy, but things get pretty murky once you go into detail.
1353.	January 9, 2017	Sam Gindin	The Power of Deep Organizing
The profound defeat of the U.S. labour movement over the past three to four decades is usually measured by the loss of things that workers once took for granted like decent wages and benefits. A less quantifiable but ultimately more decisive indicator is the retreat from possibilities. By extension, the labour movement's renewal (or reinvention) is inseparable from reversing, through effective struggle, this lowering of expectations.
1352.	January 6, 2017	L. E. Melin, Franklin Serrano	Brazil's Neoliberal U-Turn: Wishful Thinking in the Face of Class Antagonism
Since reaching its zenith in 2010, the Brazilian economy has suffered a remarkable reversal of fortune. Despite official protestations to the contrary, however, Brazil's afflictions turned out to be of its own making, as it so often proves to be the case. The origins of the contraction of Brazilian GDP in 2015-2016 by nearly 7.5% can be traced back to the economic policies implemented during President Dilma Rousseff's first administration.
1351.	January 4, 2017	Leo Panitch interviewed by Arun Gupta	The Trump Way
In the runup to November's presidential election, commentators from across the political spectrum predicted a round defeat for Donald Trump, not least because of the palpable disgust he elicited from elites. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was the recipient of a number of moneyed defections from the Republican Party and soaring capitalist confidence. Arun Gupta spoke to Leo Panitch about Trump's economic agenda, his relationship to transnational elites, and how neoliberalism's crisis could mean revitalization for the Left.
1350.	January 2, 2017	John Clarke	Basic Income: Progressive Dreams Meet Neoliberal Realities
Up until now, the concept of Basic Income (BI) has enjoyed a greater history of being proposed than of being implemented. We may well be approaching a period, however, when this changes. The Ontario Government is holding consultations on setting up a BI pilot project. The Legislature in another Canadian Province, Prince Edward Island, has agreed to test out a version of BI. Pilot projects are also impending in Finland, the Netherlands and Scotland.
1349.	December 30, 2016	David Bush	Debating Syria Productively
The debate over Syria on the Left is toxic. I pulled together 13 points about the situation in Syria I hope can be useful in framing the discussion in a more productive way. The ultimate goal of these discussions in Western countries should be to have a clearer idea about how to strengthen antiwar movements to stop the madness of imperialism.
1348.	December 29, 2016	Judith Deutsch	Syria and the Antiwar Movement
The enormity, complexity and fall-out of the Syrian war calls for urgent attention. Current events in Aleppo bring to the fore the unreliability of information and dichotomous political positions that contribute to obstruction and paralysis in the antiwar movement. Conflicting reports make unclear the number of civilians and fighters who have been evacuated, their condition, their political beliefs, their situation as refugees in Idlib, the civilian toll perpetrated by all sides.
1347.	December 26, 2016	Sungur Savran	Sheikh Bedreddin: A Greco-Turkish Communist Internationalist Avant la Lettre
The press reports that during a visit to Western Thrace, where a sizeable Turkish minority lives, Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister, evoked the name of Sheikh Bedreddin, praised him and said that he should be a source of inspiration for all of us today. So, who is this Muslim sheikh whom a nominally leftist Greek Prime Minister, avowedly atheist, recommends as a source of inspiration to all Greeks, irrespective of their religion? A most ticklish remark at first sight. We should be thankful to Tsipras for having raised the topic, hastening to add that he personally, given his record in office, is absolutely unfit for inspiration by the grand old man.
1346.	December 23, 2016	Sid Shniad	Lessons from Richmond, California
It seems that we are condemned to live in interesting times. Decades of neoliberalism and austerity, capped by the election of carney barker Donald Trump as president of the United States. Of course, there have been glimmers of hope. The Occupy Movement, Idle No More and Black Lives Matter showed people fighting back against burgeoning inequality, the continuing effects of colonialism, and out of control police violence. Recently, the Bernie Sanders campaign gathered incredible numbers of enthusiastic supporters by addressing people's economic and social concerns in a straightforward manner.
1345.	December 21, 2016	Henry A. Giroux	War Culture, Militarism and Racist Violence Under Trump
When history repeats itself with a vengeance, it generally signals a crisis of memory, historical consciousness and civic literacy. The ghosts of the past disappear in a comforting somnolence and a deadening market-driven culture of consumption, privatization and individualization. As a mode of moral witnessing, memory withers, lost in forms of historical and social amnesia that usher in the dark clouds of authoritarianism, albeit in updated forms.
1344.	December 20, 2016	Stefan Kipfer	Paris in Transit: A Few Snapshots
In early December 2016, the Paris region suffered from the most intense bout of small particle pollution in a decade. Anticyclonic weather (cold air under a cover of hotter air undisturbed by wind) trapped pollutants. These came for the most part from car traffic (including diesel-powered beasts), ammonia-emitting intensive agriculture, some industrial emissions and a spike in pollutants from residential heating (90% of which emanating from the relatively few wood-fired ovens).
1343.	December 19, 2016	Stephen Maher	Against Liberal Nostalgia
'Restore our democracy' has become a mantra among American progressives. Populist writers are desperately trying to shake people from their passivity amidst mounting political and ecological crisis. But in crafting a vision of a better future they often appeal to idealized, romantic notions of America's past.
1342.	December 16, 2016	Irvin Jim	NUMSA Statement on its 10th National Congress
South Africa's biggest trade union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, held its 10th National Congress from 12-15 December 2016 in Cape Town. This statement was written on 7 December. This ‘Workers’ Parliament’ could not be meeting at a more critical time for the world working class in general and the South African working class in particular.
1341.	December 15, 2016	Himani Bannerji interviewed by Mahdi Ganjavi	Ideology, Anti-Colonialism and Marxism
Himani Bannerji is a professor in the Department of Sociology at York University, Toronto. Her research and writing life extends between Canada and India. Her interests encompass anti-racist feminism, Marxism, critical cultural theories, and historical sociology. Mahdi Ganjavi is a Ph.D. student at the department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, OISE/University of Toronto.
1340.	December 14, 2016	Donatella della Porta	Referendums and Social Movements in Italy and Europe
Matteo Renzi's recent attempt to constitutionally embed neoliberalism and simultaneously legitimize and secure his tenure as Prime Minister via a referendum on proposed changes to Italy's postwar constitution failed spectacularly after sustained mobilization by ordinary Italians.
1339.	December 12, 2016	Youngsu Won	South Korea's Historic Candle Light Protests Bring Down President Park
On December 9, Parliament voted in favor of a presidential impeachment by 234 votes to 56, with 7 invalid votes and 2 abstentions. Over 30,000 protesters were present to celebrate the impeachment. The votes in favor of impeachment exceeded what was expected, though it was slightly lower than the 81 per cent support for impeachment among public opinion.
1338.	December 8, 2016	AJ Withers	Boycotting Apartheid
On December 1st, 2016, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario officially condemned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to end Israeli apartheid. Ontario Conservative MPP Gila Martow, who introduced the motion, likened the BDS campaign to the Ku Klux Klan. Both the Liberal and Conservative parties supported the motion; only five New Democrat Party Members voted against it. But, this isn't the first time that Israel's occupation of Palestine has been raised at Queen's Park.
1337.	December 7, 2016	Iron and Earth	Workers’ Climate Plan Four-Week Report
Sometimes in this vast and complicated world, it's easy to feel a bit lost and hopeless. It can be hard to see progress or positives in the face of so much struggle. But I find if I focus things inward and think about the community with which I work to put renewable energy on the map, my mood changes. Drastically.
1336.	December 6, 2016		South Korean Protests Growing
For the sixth straight weekend, hundreds of thousands of Koreans came out in Seoul (and with other Korean cities estimates approaching 2 million people on the streets) to demand the resignation of President Park Geun-hye. These are the largest demonstrations in South Korea since the pro-democracy movement of the 1980s.
1335.	December 1, 2016		Global Climate Justice Movements Refuse to Be Overshadowed by Election of Climate Change Denier
We the undersigned organizations, networks, and movements gathered in Marrakech at COP22 issue the following collective statement in support of communities and movements around the world in response to Donald Trump becoming President-Elect of the United States of America and its potentially devastating implications for the cause of climate justice.
1334.	November 29, 2016	Heather Whiteside	The Canada Infrastructure Bank: Theft by Deception
Both the Liberal government and its Advisory Council on Economic Growth are head-over-heels for the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB), announcing with fresh-faced enthusiasm that it will be an innovative route for augmenting infrastructure finance, a flywheel of institutional capital participation, and an economic stimulus boon for the middle class. Beyond the euphoria is deception; there are no sunny ways to be found here, only shadowy figures and cloudy rationale. Let's decipher the fraudulent hype.
1333.	November 23, 2016	Joanna Misnik	Turning It Around: Long-Term Organizing in the U.S.
The U.S. just elected a new 'leader of the free world.' Both he and his opponent Hillary Clinton ran their entire campaigns with persistently high rates on disapproval from the public. Fully 12 million people who voted for Trump stated they had an unfavorable attitude toward him. But the South Carolina Klu Klux Klan held a gala celebration and Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing National Front in France, jumped for joy.
1332.	November 18, 2016	Richard Fidler	Solidarity With the People of Syria! Build the Antiwar Movement!
David Bush's article 'Syria and the Antiwar Tradition,' in the November 3 issue of The Bullet, is a commendable attempt to debate what antiwar activists in Canada and other 'Western' countries should be saying and doing about the current war in Syria. In that country, the rebel cities that rose up four years ago in revolt against the brutal Bashar al-Assad dictatorship are now under a genocidal siege, bombed and assaulted from the air by Assad's military, aided and abetted by Russian fighter jets and bombers.
1331.	November 16, 2016		Two Takes on Remaking the U.S. Left
It seems obvious to me that there is no way that we can deal with the enormous economic, social, and environmental problems facing this country without making radical changes in the economic system, and we've got to be honest about that. I believe that democratic socialism is the appropriate framework for making those changes, and we should be upfront about our beliefs...
1330.	November 15, 2016	John Clarke	Ontario’s Austerity Government Sets Basic Income Trap
The Ontario Government's Adviser on Basic Income (BI), Hugh Segal, has released his much heralded discussion paper, 'Finding a Better Way,' that sets out his proposals for a lengthy BI pilot project. If the experiment he advocates is put into effect, it will run parallel to the deliberations of a Security Reform Working Group that will be considering changes to the present social assistance system in the province, rather than replacement to it.
1329.	November 11, 2016	Herman Rosenfeld	Ford Unifor Agreement Ratified -- Voted Down at Oakville Unit, Local 707
As bargaining between Unifor and the Canadian branches of the Detroit Three automakers came down to the last company, Ford, the signs were pointing to an emerging resistance to decades of concessions. Amid general opposition on the shop floor, leaders at the biggest Ford local were openly opposing the pattern the union had bargained with General Motors and Fiat Chrysler (FCA). But at the October 31st deadline, the Unifor locals reached a tentative agreement with Ford, based on the pattern.
1328.	November 10, 2016	Henry Heller	Protesting the Capitalist University
The University of Manitoba is on strike. Since 1st November, more than 1,200 faculty members took to the picket line to protest the lack of funding for education, a need for workload protection and safeguarding for fairer tenure and promotion procedures, in addition to addressing several job security issues for instructors and librarians.
1327.	November 8, 2016	James T. Brophy, Margaret M. Keith, Michael Hurley	Violence Against Healthcare Workers: A Canadian Experience
According to healthcare workers interviewed this past year by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU)/Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the health and wellbeing of the individuals devoted to caring for our health seems to be increasingly at risk from angry, frustrated, or out of control patients. Their experiences are chilling. Every one of the 150 registered practical nurses (RPNs) from across Ontario attending a conference on violence in Kingston in January, 2016, reported that they have been assaulted at work.
1326.	November 6, 2016		ALBA Social Movements in Canada Condemn the Attacks Against Brazil's Landless Workers’ Movement
On the morning of November 4th, 2016, Brazilian military and civilian police used violent force to storm Brazil's, Landless Workers Movement's (MST) Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF) in Guararema, outside of Sao Paulo in Brazil. According to several witnesses, the police stormed their way into the facility by forcing their way through the main gate shooting live bullets, and threatening people.
1325.	November 4, 2016	Sean Sweeney	Standing Rock Solid with the Frackers
If anyone were looking for further evidence that the AFL-CIO remains unprepared to accept the science of climate change, and unwilling to join with the effort being made by all of the major labour federations of the world to address the crisis, the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) provides only the most recent case in point. Taking direction from the newly minted North American Building Trades Unions (NABTU) and the American Petroleum Institute (API), the federation stood against the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribal nations.
1324.	November 3, 2016	David Bush	Syria and the Antiwar Tradition
There is major disorientation on the left in many Western countries when it comes to Syria and about how antiwar activists should respond to events on the ground in Syria and Iraq. The highly complex nature of the Syrian war involving a multitude of foreign states and non-state actors would, in the best of times, present the left with a real challenge to find political clarity. The fact that this is occurring precisely when the antiwar movement in countries like Canada and the United States are relatively weak only adds to the confusion.
1323.	November 1, 2016	Sam Gindin	Misreading the Historical Moment
Deep economic crises, as opposed to the regular ups and downs of capitalism, have played a special role in the history of autoworkers. Since the auto industry emerged as a mass production industry about 100 years ago, there've been three such economic crises and each, in different ways, both threatened and tested workers. The first was the Great Depression. In spite of the economic conditions, autoworkers found the courage and creativity to confront the largest corporations in the world.
1322.	October 31, 2016	Bill Murnighan	Unifor and Big Three Bargaining: A Response to Gindin's 'Different Ways of Making History'
In his essay of October 17, 2016, 'Big Three Bargaining: Different Ways of Making History,' Sam Gindin provides an intriguing analysis of current negotiations between Unifor and the Detroit Three automakers. Beyond agreeing with his points about tough pressure on auto workers, there is not much room for agreement on his portrayal of the issues, the economic and industry context, or the outcomes of negotiations to-date. And there are serious factual concerns around his analysis of autoworkers’ earnings.
1321.	October 29, 2016	Leo Panitch	What is Really the Matter with CETA?
Canada's Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland's sense of amour propre was clearly dented last week when the latest talks to salvage the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union and Canada appeared to fall apart in face of the refusal of the Belgian regional parliament in Wallonia to accede to the Belgian government's support for it.
1320.	October 27, 2016	Bruce Allen	Fighting the TPP: Niagara Labour Organizes
I want to take this opportunity to present a short overview of local activity in Niagara in response to the TPP. It will emphasize in particular the leading role which the Niagara Regional Labour Council (NRLC) has played in this activity. The first actions to show opposition to the TPP were initiated last autumn. They essentially came from outside of the labour movement.
1319.	October 25, 2016	Panagiotis Sotiris	The Crisis of European Integration and the Challenges for the Left
The elephant in the room is now visible to everyone. All the developments of the past years, from the extreme violence and cynicism of the 'memoranda of understanding' imposed upon Greece to the decision of the British referendum in favour of Brexit, point to the same direction: the deep crisis of European Integration. It was supposed to be the most advanced example of economic and political integration and the first successful introduction of a single currency in such a broad area. It presented itself as a paragon of stability and human rights. Yet the reality is very different.
1318.	October 21, 2016	Frederic Heine and Thomas Sablowski	The Future of the Euro Area
The unequal development of the countries of the euro area since the outbreak of the crisis is causing increasing friction that threatens to tear the monetary union apart. Contrary to what many critics of the monetary union suggest, responsibility for this development lies not alone with its internal structure, but is rather a general feature of capitalist development.
1317.	October 19, 2016	Andrew Jackson	Is 'Postcapitalism' On the Horizon?
Paul Mason is a leading British economic journalist, currently a columnist for The Guardian. He is also a long time left political activist. His new book, Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future is a challenging, sometimes obscure, sometimes brilliant, eminently worthwhile read, and an optimistic take that the left might, once again, be marching in tune with the forces of history. Mason is, to say the least, highly original and idiosyncratic. His book is partly addressed to the orthodox Marxist left, endorses and builds upon the labour theory of value.
1316.	October 17, 2016	Sam Gindin	Big Three Bargaining: Different Ways of Making History
Canadian autoworkers have long been pace setters in the Canadian labour movement and as soon as its most recent agreement with General Motors was ratified, Unifor (the successor in 2013 after the merger of CAW and CEP) laid claim to that agreement's ‘historic’ status. It has now also been ratified by the Chrysler workers, but at the Ford assembly plant in Oakville – now the largest auto facility in the country – it's pretty hard to find any enthusiasm for the outcome of this latest bargaining round. If this agreement is indeed historic, it may be so in a sense quite different than the leadership's bravado declaration intended.
1315.	October 13, 2016	Asbjørn Wahl	Brexit and the Crisis of the Left
The British majority in favour of leaving the EU (Brexit) was surprising, even shocking, to many. The discussion runs high on both the result and the causes. The confusion seems to be extraordinarily high on the left, in Britain as in the rest of Europe. In reality, the result of the referendum reflects an EU in existential crisis, while the discussion reflects a Left in deep political and ideological crisis.
1314.	October 11, 2016	J. F. Conway	The Arctic Voyage of the Crystal Serenity
Capitalism's four-century obsession with finding a more profitable route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is finally satisfied. The voyage of the Crystal Serenity through the Northwest Passage proclaimed the route open for routine, if still risky, commercial shipping. The ship left Vancouver on 10 August 2016, arriving in New York on 16 September.
1313.	October 10, 2016	Michael Skinner	Fifteen Years of Occupation: Afghanistan Since the Invasion
7 October 2016 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. Many Western leaders claimed the invasion, dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom, was a humanitarian intervention to liberate Afghans and especially Afghan women and girls from the brutal Taliban regime. However, the evidence demonstrates the results have been anything but humane or liberating. The people truly liberated by the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan are the wealthy investors in the military-industrial complex and those betting on successfully extracting Afghan resources and developing the infrastructure of the New Silk Road.
1312.	October 7, 2016	David Camfield	Getting Ready for the Tory Storm in Manitoba
No one has a crystal ball that allows them to foresee precisely what's going to happen as the new Tory government of Manitoba really gets down to business in the months ahead. But there are some things we can be pretty sure about. The Tories will claim that it's vital to curb provincial government spending to reduce Manitoba's deficit and move toward balancing the budget. In reality, there's no deficit crisis.
1311.	October 5, 2016	Peter Rossman	Unpacking CETA
The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), like other looming mega-treaties, is a comprehensive vehicle for expanding the scope of transnational investment by rolling back the capacity of governments to regulate in the public interest. The attack on democratic governance is not restricted to the notorious Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which privileges transnational capital by creating a parallel legal system exclusive to transnational investors. The invasive claims of transnational investors permeate the entire treaty.
1310.	October 3, 2016	Sergio Bologna	The Perfect Storm of Logistics
Analysts have been waiting for the perfect storm for a long time, and it has finally arrived. If you look at it a little bit closer, it is a shocking but fascinating sight because it allows you to see the essence of logistics, its true nature. They call it 'the physical Internet,' and when you see it you truly realize what globalization means. It happened in the container shipping sector: The world's seventh largest shipping company, the Korean company Hanjin, went bankrupt. Overburdened by $4.5-billion in debt, it has not been able to convince the banks to continue their support.
1309.	September 30, 2016	John Clarke	Disabled People Give Lead In Fight Against UK Austerity
I recently had the enormous honour of representing the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) at a week of action and international conference, organized from September 4-10 by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) in the UK. This was another step in building a close working relationship between our two organizations. It was also fascinating and inspiring to see disabled people, not merely participating in the struggle against austerity but actually giving a powerful and decisive lead to the entire movement.
1308.	September 27, 2016	Planka.nu	The Traffic Hierarchy
Mobility and class are deeply entangled. Not only because one's potential for mobility often has to do with one's economic position, but also because a society built on today's mobility paradigm – automobility – directly contributes to growing economic and social differences. A society which puts the car on a pedestal quite obviously favours motorists. Another obvious fact is that white high-income and middle-aged men are an over-represented group among motorists.
1307.	September 23, 2016	Maxime Benatouil	France and the Struggle over Labour Reforms
The so-called Labour Law, passed en force by the French government on 20 July, is the most serious attack against the 'Code du Travail,' already undermined for the past thirty years. A short historical overview is necessary to better grasp the destructive scope of this law, promoted and enforced by a socialist government – cruel irony! Struggle over Labour Reforms in France The Labour Code is a compilation of regulations giving structures to the relationship between employees and employers at the national level. It emerged after the shock of the 1906 catastrophe of Courrières, Northern France, where 1099 miners lost their lives.
1306.	September 20, 2016	Irvin Jim	South African Workers Mobilize to Challenge Neoliberal Policies
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) Special National Congress in December 2013 resolved: 'There is no chance of winning back the Alliance to what it was originally formed for, which was to drive a revolutionary programme for fundamental transformation of the country, with the Freedom Charter as the minimum platform to transform the South African economy.' Recent events have fully vindicated this view.
1305.	September 16, 2016	Ilan Pappé interviewed by Alejandra Ríos	Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine
The context is the phenomenon of settler colonialism: the movement of Europeans, because they felt unsafe or endangered, into non-European areas in the Americas, Africa, Australia and Palestine. These people were not only seeking a new home, but also a new homeland. Namely, they had no wish or plan to come back to Europe. The only problem was that the lands they coveted were already inhabited by other people. In most cases, their solution was the genocide of indigenous people. In two cases, the solution was different: apartheid in South Africa and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
1304.	September 13, 2016	Matthew Corbeil	Why We Shouldn't Pay $1-Billion for the Ring of Fire
Hyped as 'Northern Ontario's oil sands,' the Ring of Fire mineral deposit is inching closer to development. Noront Resources, which now holds 75 per cent of the active mining claims in the area 400 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, has recently announced plans to begin mine construction in 2018. Developing North America's largest chromite deposit, the company claims, will create 'jobs, growth and long-term prosperity for Northern Ontario.'
1303.	September 11, 2016		Corbyn's Manifesto on Digital Democracy
Technological advancements have transformed our daily lives, and politics is changing too. The issues may not change that much – people want decent housing and decent jobs, they want access to education and opportunity, they want thriving public services and a society which works for the millions not just the millionaires. But the terrain on which opinions are formed is changing.
1302.	September 8, 2016	Lee Sustar	Are Chicago Teachers Headed Toward a Strike?
A three-cornered battle between a budget-slashing mayor (Rahm Emanuel), a union-busting governor (Bruce Rauner) and determined teachers (CTU) could result this fall in the second public school strike in Chicago in four years. At the center of the battle is an effort to force Chicago teachers to pay the equivalent of 7 per cent of their base pay in additional pension costs, reversing an agreement made with the Chicago Teachers Union in lieu of a raise.
1301.	September 5, 2016	Evert Hoogers, Donald Swartz, Rosemary Warskett	Labour Day: Signs of Renewal?
Labour Day Weekend is upon us, and many union activists and their families will be out marching and picnicking, joining with brothers and sisters from other unions in a show of solidarity. While their participation is heartfelt there is no doubt many of them are asking what is there to celebrate? There are a few recent victories but not enough to prevent workers from concluding that the current Labour movement is in crisis.
1300.	September 4, 2016	Sam Gindin and Herman Rosenfeld	Bargaining Over Corporate Investment: Innovation or Trap?
Ever since the sit-down strikes of the 1930s, the cycle of ‘Big Three’ auto bargaining has been a major economic and political event, an indicator of the progress of the class struggle in North America. If such interest has sagged of late, it charged back into the news with the aggressive declaration of Unifor's president, Jerry Dias, that winning new investments for Canada is at the top of the union's agenda in its current bargaining round with General Motors (GM), Ford and Chrysler.
1299.	September 2, 2016		The Importance of the September 2nd General Strike
Since India embraced what trade unions call the LPG route to growth (that is liberalization, privatization and globalization) in 1991, the country has seen 16 general strikes. And the 17th all India workers’ strike falls on September 2nd. The last general strike, observed on 2 September 2015, saw participation from nearly 150 million workers – that's half the population of the entire U.S., or more than the combined population of the UK, Canada and Australia.
1298.	August 31, 2016	Brian Ward	Standing Up At Standing Rock
Some 1,000 Native American activists from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and across the country faced off against police and security forces protecting the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline project. Dozens of people have been arrested and assaulted by police while attempting to stop the project, and many more continue to risk arrest to protest the pipeline. The Dakota Access pipeline, which is being built by Energy Transfer Partners, is planned to stretch 1,172 miles from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa, before ending in Illinois.
1297.	August 30, 2016	Phil Hearse	Turkey's Move into Syria: Challenging the Kurds, Overthrowing Rojava
Turkey's incursion into northern Syria on 24 August was flagged up as a move to drive the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) out of the border town of Jarabulus. But that is just a cover: Turkey's not very secret major objective is to crush the 50,000-strong Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Unit) militia, and overrun the three autonomous Kurdish dominated areas, collectively called Rojava by the Kurds.
1296.	August 25, 2016	Michal Rozworski	How Not To Fund Infrastructure
Recycling is supposed to be a good thing, so when the federal Liberals quietly announced that 'asset recycling' would be part of their strategy for meeting their much-ballyhooed infrastructure promises, not many eyebrows were raised. They should have been. Asset recycling is an obscure code word for selling our public goods for private profit. It's privatization by another name.
1295.	August 23, 2016	J. F. Conway	The Working Class: Saskatchewan's Political Orphan
We all suffer from the absence of working class politics. We are smothered in the business-oriented, neoliberal 'consensus' instructing us to reconcile ourselves to 'the new reality' -- rollbacks in social welfare and universal publicly funded programs; huge tax cuts to business and the rich, driving up public debt and enriching finance capitalism; an end to secure employment and guaranteed benefits;
1294.	August 19, 2016		Razem: New Left in Poland
There was no real left party in Poland. There is the so-called Socialist or post-Communist party, which is just bureaucrats of the late Communist government that became the new establishment after the transition – basically neoliberal, socially conservative, not leftist at all, but they took the place of the left in the country and our objective was to re-open that space.
1293.	August 16, 2016	Kyla Sankey	What Happened to the Pink Tide?
When the ‘pink tide’ of left-leaning governments first rose to power on the back of anti-neoliberal protests across Latin America in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the initial reaction from the Left was euphoric. Striving to move beyond the 'there is no alternative' mantra, many pinned their hopes on what seemed to be a new wave of actually existing alternatives to neoliberalism. Amidst the revolutionary fervor of social forums, solidarity alliances, and peoples’ councils, it appeared an epochal shift was underway, which Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa optimistically dubbed 'a genuine change in the times.'
1292.	August 12, 2016	Kyle Bailey	Lessons of the 2015 CUPE Local 3903 Strike
It has now been over one year since the end of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 3903 strike at York University in March 2015. This strike began when 3,700 teaching assistants, contract faculty, graduate assistants and research assistants voted to walk the picket lines. The decision came just days after a historic strike vote by 6,000 teaching assistants and other student academic staff in CUPE 3902 Unit 1 at the University of Toronto.
1291.	August 11, 2016	Sabrina Fernandes	Censorship is Back in Fashion in Brazil
Lately, it's been common to say that the 'right has come out of the closet' in Brazil. More precisely, the authoritarian, fascist right, has done so and very publicly for that matter. The revolutionary potential of June 2013, even if convoluted and smeared by depoliticization, held enough of a threat to require immediate hegemonic renewal, especially at the ideological level.
1290.	August 8, 2016	J. F. Conway	Wall: Sky Darkens for Sunshine Premier
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall had already broken one promise even before he called the election: 'We didn't make a lot of election promises, but we made one significant one – to keep Saskatchewan strong' – unless, of course, you embrace that old bromide, 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' The post-election sky of the Sunshine Premier has darkened as the spectre of economic collapse haunts him.
1289.	August 5, 2016	David Camfield	Work Life: What's At Stake At Canada Post?
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is currently engaged in collective bargaining with Canada Post. Unlike in previous rounds, the contracts of both the Urban bargaining unit (covering about 42,000 workers) and the unit of some 8,000 Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers are being negotiated simultaneously. This is a rare case of a public sector union not only trying to defend its past gains but also to change the nature of the work its members do.
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