• The world’s biggest furniture retailer, Ikea, has for years sold children’s furniture made from wood linked to illegal logging in protected forests in Russia, an Earthsight investigation has found.
• The brand’s popular Sundvik children’s range are among the items likely tainted with illegal wood. Investigators estimate that shoppers around the world have on average been purchasing an Ikea product containing the suspect Russian lumber every two minutes.
• Using undercover meetings, visits to logging sites, satellite imagery analysis and scrutiny of official documents, court records and customs data, Earthsight traced wooden furniture on sale in Ikea stores around the world to forests in Siberia, finding that they were controlled by companies owned by one of Russia’s wealthiest politicians, Evgeny Bakurov.

This article originally appeared in Mongabay. Featured image: Evgeny Bakurov, one of Russia’s wealthiest businessmen-politicians, ranked 44th on a Forbes list of Russia’s highest-earning civil servants or legislators in 2019. Source: Forbes.ru / Earthsight

This article is from the blog buildingarevolutionarymovement.

This post provides a brief introduction to the current form of capitalism: neoliberalism. It includes sections on: neoliberal ideology; Governmentality – how neoliberalism governs, neoliberal government policies; how neoliberalism is a capitalist class project of domination; the history of neoliberalism in the twentieth century; and the three phase of neoliberalism in government since the 1980s.

Neoliberalism is a form of capitalism and liberalism. Neoliberalism is the most aggressive form of liberalism ever formulated. Liberals generally assume that being a “self-interested, competitive entrepreneur is the natural state for human beings, neoliberals know that it isn’t.” But the neoliberals still want people to behave that way. They achieve this by using the state and corporate power to make us act in that way, regardless of what most people want. [1]

A Guide for Resistance

By Carlos Zorrilla with Arden Buck and David Pellow

Resistance to mining is growing worldwide. Although extractive companies are powerful, they are also vulnerable.

About this guide

This guide is intended for leaders and organizers who can work with communities to carry out local actions, and who can also work at the regional, national, and international levels. It describes aspects of the mining process and the dangers your community faces when mining companies seek to operate in your community (Sect. 1), the many strategies you can use to fight back (Sect. 2 and Appendices A and B), examples of successful resistance by communities who fought back (Appendix C), and helpful resources in a companion volume (Supplement). Our hope is that with this guide, you too can succeed in protecting your community against these dangers.

Update from July 23, 2021 Contact: freejessicareznicek@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freejessrez Website: Supportjessicareznicek.com Featured image photo credit: Christina Yurena Zerr

Since sentencing Jessica has remained on house arrest at the Des Moines Catholic Worker, with her cat Noni who has offered constant comfort and solidarity. The United States Department of Justice has notified Jessica Reznicek that she is scheduled to report to Waseca, MN Federal Correctional Institution on Aug 11th at 2pm. Our hearts are filled with feelings of love and gratitude from all the requests to write letters of support to Jessica. Once she is in prison we will launch a letter writing campaign with all the information and directions on how to do so.

AUGUST 20 - 23, 2021 SEATTLE/TACOMA WASHINGTON

Sovereign Women Speak is a full weekend of women-only workshops, interactive circles, discussions, performances, and meals with a public protest on Saturday and a public conference on Sunday afternoon.

WHY WE ARE PROTESTING

Washington State is letting men into women’s prisons. One man, convicted of multiple sex crimes, was transferred to Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW), where he immediately raped a female prisoner.

Editor’s note: These kind of frankenstein experiments are another creepy example of this culture’s disconnection and total objectification of nature and our fellow creatures.

This article originally appeared in Counterpunch. Featured image: Plum Island. Source: kyselak – CC BY-SA 3.0 BYMARTHA ROSENBERG

Animal disease research in government or government-funded labs often flies under the public radar and it goes way beyond COVID-19 questions. For example few are aware of the existence of the U.S.’ Plum Island Animal Disease Center even though it is located in New York state near the northeast coast Long Island. During the Nixon era, bioweapons were developed there. Now the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service conducts gain of function-like research into vaccines and other countermeasures against foreign animal diseases like vesicular stomatitis virus, foot-and-mouth disease and swine fever.

Hurricane Sandy didn’t kill East River Park, but New York City is planning to. Featured image: New Yorkers protest plan to bulldoze a thousand climate-saving trees.

This article originally appeared in Climate&Capitalism.

by Elliot Sperber

If you live in North America, chances are you haven’t just seen the hazy skies blanketing much of the continent this week, but have been breathing the toxic air, too. Blowing in from the monstrous wild fires devouring the forests out west, it’s more than just a reminder that our planet can’t continue to swallow the pollution we’re pumping into it; more than a reminder, it’s a presence that’s killing us.

This is a press release from the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights.

Action filed against Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to Stop Diversion of 5 Billion Gallons of Water for Enbridge “Line 3” Pipeline.

WHITE EARTH, Minn. - On August 5, an action was filed in the Tribal Court of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, by Manoomin (wild rice), the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, and several tribal members, to stop the State of Minnesota from allowing the Enbridge corporation to use five billion gallons of water for the construction of the oil pipeline known as “Line 3.”

This article is from the blog buildingarevolutionarymovement.

This post describes capitalism as: an activity, the capitalist system, the phases of capitalism through history and that there are many capitalisms. If we want to get rid of capitalism, first we need to understand what it is.

Jeremy Gilbert, in his recent book Twenty-First Century Socialism, gives a good summary of what capitalism is. Most human societies through history have not experienced capitalism, as it only developed in the last few hundred years. It then spread around the world. Gilbert describes capitalism as:

• An Indonesian court has acquitted six villagers on the island of Bangka in a criminal case widely seen as an attempt to silence them by a company accused of polluting their village.
• Experts say the court ruling sets a precedent for future cases where environmental defenders are being censored, intimated and silenced through so-called SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) litigation.
• The villagers have since 2017 been fighting against a tapioca company, PT Bangka Asindo Agri, that operates near their community and produces waste that emits a pungent stench.
• The environment ministry has launched an investigation into the case and filed its own lawsuit against the company for unpermitted pollution; the company denies the charge and has lobbied parliament to intervene with the ministry to drop the case.

This article originally appeared in Mongabay.