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Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto that studies digital threats to civil society, discovered that at least 65 people linked to the Catalan pro-independence movement were targeted or infected with Pegasus spyware made by the NSO Group between 2017-2020. This scandal has led to the firing of Paz Esteban, Spain’s spy chief.

In May 2022, Boeing announced it would be moving its headquarters out of Chicago after a city investigation and a successful direct-action campaign organized by “Boeing Arms Genocide,” a Black-led, youth activist group. Just weeks prior, the organizers also succeeded in blocking the company from getting a $2 million tax break from the city.

55% of Boeing’s revenue comes from weapons sales.

The Court of Appeal, the second highest in the UK, has ruled that it will hear a lawsuit, filed on behalf of 200,000 victims, against Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP) for the collapse of the Fundão tailings dam in Mariana city, Minas Gerais state in southeastern Brazil.

Fast food chain McDonald’s has more outlets in France than any other country in Europe. In 2013, there were 1,300 McDonald’s in France that generated €4.4 billion in revenue for the company. After McDonald’s was caught evading taxes between 2009 and 2020, the company agreed to pay the government of France €1.25 billion to avoid prosecution.

Caught red handed

Employees of an Apple sales outlet in Towson, a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, voted to unionize in June 2022 to become the Big Tech company’s first unionized store in the U.S. This is part of a larger movement across the country, with workers at many companies like Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s expressing their interest in joining a union.

Clover Group’s Brilliant Alliance Thai factory in Samut Prakan province used to manufacture lingerie for brands like Lane Bryant, Torrid, and Victoria’s Secret. Over a third of the workers were women aged 45 and older and many had worked at the factory for over a decade. The owners abruptly shut down the factory in March 2021 and fired 1,250 workers. After a successful campaign, Victoria’s Secret agreed to lend the owners U.S. $8.3 million to pay severance to the workers.

In October 2004, an oil leak from a Shell pipeline caused long-lasting damage and contamination in the village of Goi in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. In 2008, a group of affected Nigerians filed a lawsuit against Shell and SPDC, its Nigerian subsidiary, in the Netherlands, with the help of Friends of Earth Nigeria and Milieudefensie. In January 2021, the court ruled in their favor.

In December 2021, residents of the Westside mobile home park in Durango, Colorado, received a notice that their park was up for sale. Although the park residents owned their own homes, they did not own the land on which their homes stood. 

Knowing that when mobile home parks are sold, residents often face either eviction or significant rent increases, the residents decided to raise the money to purchase the park themselves.

Tendele Coal opened the Somkhele coal mine in 2007 in the uMkhanyakude district of the South African province of Kwa-Zulu Natal. The mine activities have contributed to water scarcity, water contamination, destruction of the local landscape and noise pollution. In addition the company has failed to properly relocate local people despite promises to do so.

Ever since London-based Brazil Iron acquired mining rights in Chapada Diamantina, Piatã, Bahia, in 2011, two Quilombola communities home to 150 families, have been dealing with explosions, water contamination and damage to their crops. Quilombolas are descendents of escaped enslaved Afro-Brazilians that live in Quilombo settlements. Now the company wants to expand operations from 600,000 tons of ore per year to 10 million tons a year.

UK-based activist group called Palestine Action, founded in 2020, is seeking to shut down all current UK locations of Elbit Systems over its role in Israeli attacks on Palestine.

Why is Palestine Action doing this?

Workers have been organizing to form unions at:

Tribal women from Andhra Pradesh, India, are standing up against a mining company, Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Granites, aiming to destroy their only livelihood: cashew trees which they have been cultivating for years.

Over 1,000 scientists from 25 different countries staged protests during the week of April 4-9 following the release of the new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC).

The protesters, who call themselves the Scientist Rebellion, sought to "highlight the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis."

An email titled “Why gas increase is good for hiring”, sent out by Wayne Pankratz, an executive director of operations for Applebee’s franchise Apple Central LLC, detailed how inflation and soaring gas prices are a great opportunity for lowering employees’ wages.

In late March 2022, workers at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, voted on whether or not to unionize.

On April 1st, the election results were announced and the final vote count was 2654 “yes" and 2131 “no".

This marks the first time US workers have successfully voted to form a union in Amazon's 27-year history.

A Starbucks store in Buffalo, NY successfully voted to unionize at the end of 2021, becoming the first coffee shop in the chain to become part of a union. This created an unprecedented wave of unionizing efforts among Starbucks workers across the US. 

“Signing up to work at Amazon is strangely easy, it really isn’t much of a hiring process. Liam*, a 34-year old worker in the city of Edmonton in the Canadian province of Alberta, told CorpWatch. “You just have to put your name and SIN number [Social Insurance Number] on the internet and you’re hired.”

“The company wants to weaken us, undermine our strength and impoverish our fight, it wants to kill us slowly, leave us starving like it does with the Xingu River and the fish that inhabit the waters of the rivers.”

   - November 2022 letter from the council of the traditional peoples of the middle and lower Xingu River.