This week, the Chinese government dramatically curtailed the democratic rights of Hong Kongers by imposing onto the territory a new ‘National Security Law’. One way or another, the regime is desperate to end the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle, and gain the same control over Hong Kong and its population that Beijing exercises over the country as a whole.

Rinat Akhmetchin, the Mayor of Norilsk, an industrial city in Russia, has been charged with negligence following a catastrophic oil spill from a local power plant. The spill has been ongoing since 29 May, with over 20,000 tonnes of diesel seeping into the surrounding soil and waterways. On 4 June, the Kremlin issued a state of emergency in Norilsk. The city is situated in Siberia, inside the Arctic Circle, where the local ecology is already severely disturbed due to some extremely worrying symptoms of climate change: a product of the irrational, rotten capitalist system, which is placing the planet in peril.