Long-term action items
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Support the Appel de Blois, which calls for an end to laws that censor views on historical events.
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The fish species you should avoid eating. Either they are endangered or catching them is very destructive.
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Support the Atheist Bus Campaign, putting ads for atheism on buses in London.
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Britons, support no2id.net, which campaigns to block the imposition of national ID cards.
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Buy a printer which does not report your activities to the police.
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Support the National Initiative for Democracy (
http://Vote.org).
* Personal ways to reduce climate change.
We cannot assume that personal voluntary changes will suffice, so treaties and laws are needed as well.
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http://hfopi.de A project to plan a world order that would be good for people.
Also, see the Simultaneous Policy.
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After reading this, I have a suggestion: to denounce the term "piracy" as a propaganda smear when applied to copying and sharing. (See words to avoid.)
A crucial part of rejecting the term is never using the term yourself. Another crucial part is explaining frequently that it is propaganda, that you reject it, and that that is why you don't use it.
* Choose tap water rather than bottled water.
(I only get bottled water in the US when I am going to take a long bus ride.)
* Sign the petition to the UN Secretary General to call on China to free the Panchen Lama, who has been a political prisoner for over a decade.
* Support the campaign for Net Neutrality. This campaign does not go far enough; it has adopted too narrow a definition of "neutrality". Net Neutrality ought to include rejecting discrimination based on what system or application the user is using.
* Support the campaign to repeal the overbroad "authorization for use of military force", adopted by a panicky congress in 2001, which gives Bush carte blanche to start wars anywhere.
* With new US passports designed insanely with an RFID, this article discusses good and bad methods for making it stop disclosing your personal information.
* Buy fair trade goods.
* Boycott Coca Cola Company for using paramilitaries to murder union organizers.
* Support the National Union of Journalists' boycott of Yahoo.
* Support Amnesty International's campaign against Internet censorship.
* Donate to Gush Shalom's campaign for food and medicine for occupied Palestine.
* Support the Identity Project, which opposes ID card requirements in the US.
* Boycott Blu-ray and HD-DVD.
* US citizens: sign the new Not In Our Name statement, and publicize it so that others will sign. You can also donate to Not in our Name.
* Request your Secure Flight Secret File
* Boycott Harry Potter Books
* Sign the petition to legalize peer-to-peer sharing in the US.
* Protest Bush by buying gas from Citgo.
* Sign the petition asking Canada to give refugee status to Americans who escape from the Bush forces.
* Sign the petition for independent inspection of voting machines in the US.
* Support the campaign to help local independent businesses by buying from them rather than from chain stores.
* Support conscientious objectors in Israel.
* Build RFID-zappers for yourself and for your friends.
* In the US and Mexico: establish butterfly gardens to help migrating monarch butterflies survive.
* Don't publish papers with the IEEE! As the IEEE rejects public-domain papers, let the public reject the IEEE. See
http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html.
It is not surprising to me that an official whose title includes the term "intellectual property rights" would act in the grasping, greedy fashion reported in that page. The term is propaganda, and interferes with clear thinking about the various disparate laws it lumps together. In general, anyone who uses the term is either trying to confuse you, or confused himself.
* Get even for 9/11: support gay marriage!
People will say, "That makes no sense--what does one have to do with the other?" Which provides a chance to explain:
We don't know who the perpetrators are--perhaps Muslim fanatics, perhaps Christian fanatics (supporters of the Bush regime), perhaps both. It is tricky to get even with people when you can't identify them. How can we do it in this case?
Both of those groups hate gays and oppose gay rights. Thus, supporting gay marriage offers us a way we can be sure to make the perpetrators miserable, whoever they were.
* There is a boycott of Caterpillar--the company that makes the bulldozers Israel uses to knock down Palestinian homes.
* Support Senator Boxer's campaign to pressure oil companies to stay out of ANWR.
I'm annoyed by the gratuitous suggestion that you say that the ANWR wilderness was "god-given", which presumes absurd views on the nature of the universe. I suggest editing out that part of the letter.
* US voters, support Kucinich's campaign to create a Department of Peace which would encourage nonviolent solutions to international problems.
* In France, people are vowing to boycott the record companies due to the laws that they are lobbying for.
* Evidence of wide-ranging and persistent FBI misconduct, including sheltering murderers, shows that other instances of alleged FBI misconduct, such as the fabricated evidence against Leonard Peltier, deserve fresh investigations. Sign this petition.
* US citizens: you can sign your name to the campaign to repeal part of the U.S.A. P.A.T. R.I.O.T. Act. This would make the police once again have to get search warrants before they can get information from bookstores or libraries about what you have read or borrowed.
This is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough. The PAT RIOT act was extended in December 2003 to give the police equally easy access to many kinds of transaction records about you. The PAT RIOT act attacks your freedom in other ways, too, and not all of them will expire in 2005. See
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/.
* Israelis who refuse military service in the occupation of Palestine have trouble supporting their families. Yesh Gvul is asking for donations of funds to help these families. (The idea is that this will help more people decide to refuse.)
* Support the call for a Nobel Prize in Sustainable Development.
* Citizens of Europe: sign the resolution that demands a voter-verifiable audit trail for electronic voting machines.
* Please sign the petition against unsafe computerization of elections and careless purging of voter lists.
* Support federal medical marijuana legislation.