Humanity has certainly entered an alarmingly dangerous time and we should all be fearful for the future, but not only because of the Trump ascendancy and the rise of hard right around the globe but because of how the U.S. has been arming itself over the past period. In his last defense budget, for example, Obama, without much public notice being taken of it, assigned $1.2-trillion to 'improve' their nuclear weapons and missile system, an unimaginable amount by any standard.

The strike -- labor’s most powerful weapon against capital, except maybe sabotage--is disappearing even more rapidly than unions, which is saying a lot. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning that there were 15 work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers in 2016. That’s 1 above the average of the past five years, and down 96 per cent from the average of the late 1940 and 1950s.

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.

In 1917, not only those parties engaged in insurrectionary revolution but even those committed to gradual reform still spoke of eventually transcending capitalism. Half a century later social democrats had explicitly come to define their political goals as compatible with a welfare-state variety of capitalism; and well before the end of the century many who had formerly embraced the legacy of 1917 would join them in this.

The crisis of the EU is multifaceted and has visibly deepened during the last year. The British referendum on EU membership and the vote in favour of Brexit have only been the most explicit symptom of the disintegrative tendencies. The core-periphery rift in the euro area has continued. The arrival of a large number of refugees from the war-torn areas of the Middle East has resulted in acrimonious conflicts in the EU on the question who should take care of them.

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.'

Reconcile with Indigenous peoples. Make elections fairer. Invest many more billions in public transit and green infrastructure. Take climate change seriously. Those are just a few of the things that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party committed to in the lead-up to the 2015 election, offering up a fairly stark contrast to the decade of reign by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. And on Oct. 19, 2015, almost seven million Canadians voted for that Liberal platform. In his victory speech, Trudeau spoke of 'real change' and 'sunny ways' and 'positive politics.'

From Peruvian literature to Soviet military history, Catalan independence to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, there are, it seems, very few subjects on which Pablo Iglesias does not have an enthusiastic opinion. But wide as the scope of his interests and knowledge is, his immediate focus is on the Podemos congress this weekend, an event that will determine the direction of the anti-austerity party he leads and, very possibly, make or break his political career.

The title says it all. The Koch Brothers, ALEC, and all of their Republican puppets have chosen Iowa as the next battleground in their war on the working classes. Statehouse Republicans looking to one up Wisconsin Legislation, have introduced HF 291 and SF 213 to gut the public sector rights of collective bargaining. The proposals as written strip workers of ALL mandatory subjects of bargaining, except for wages. But wages too, are restricted to cost of living, or 3 per cent, whichever is less.

Unfortunately, for many who have followed Marx in name and others who never pretended to do so, there is only one product - the change in circumstances, the change in the object of labour. The second product - the change in human beings, the change in the subject of labour - is ignored. This presentation by Michael Lebowitz was recorded in Athens, Greece, 14 January 2017.

Late on February 2, the Amalgamated Transit Union International trusteed the Toronto-based ATU Local 113. The 10,000 members of Toronto’s TTC transit workers union awoke to the news that their elected leadership, headed by President Bob Kinnear, had been ousted. The initial news reports painted this as an attack on local Canadian autonomy by a big American labour union. The Sun even went so far as to decry the trusteeship as an American 'invasion.'

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.

On February 13, 2017 in honour of Black History Month, the Canadian Labour Congress is launching 'Working While Black', an educational and interactive webinar series for workers of colour and allies. The series will celebrate the contributions of Black activists and organizers in Canada, strengthen solidarity across movements, and build skills and knowledge for confronting anti-Black racism in workplaces and communities today.

Resistance is breaking out all over: the women’s marches, the immigration airport protests and the defiant Sally Yates, the State Department mass dissents, the battle for the Supreme Court, with much more to come. But where are we going? Are we simply calling for a return to the pre-Trump status quo of runaway inequality, the largest prison population in the world, inadequate and costly health care, unjust immigration policies and accelerating climate change? Or do we have a new vision for America?

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.

Torontonians pay some of the highest prices in the world for a monthly public transit pass, according to a study from a European moving company. Movinga contacted transport offices around the world to find out the cost of a monthly public transit pass. Only London, Dublin, Sydney and New York City are more expensive than Toronto.

The Women’s March earlier this month may be viewed by future historians as the inauguration of the popular resistance to Trump as well as the resurrection of feminism as a collective political project. The character of that resistance, and of this renewed feminist energy, will still have to be shaped in the months and years ahead.

Just published, a new Special Issues of Alternate Routes 2017. The global financial crisis launched a prolonged period of austerity that continues to play out in the urban arena. Much needed investments in public transit, affordable housing, aging infrastructure, and social services elude municipalities constrained by low taxation regimes and interurban competition. Reductions to employee compensation have also been a stated aim of municipal austerity.

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.

'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.