First things first: Iran convicted University of Texas/Austin physicist Omid Kokabee of having "connections with a hostile government" (i.e., ours) back in 2012, after the Iranian government (despite its best efforts, which included denying Mr. Kokabee access to a lawyer until his trial began) couldn't make a charge of "colluding against national security" stick. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mr. Kokabee had long refused to use his expertise on behalf of the Iranian military and intelligence forces, even after being offered financial assistance to pursue his Ph.D. in Iran. More scientists ought to be like this fellow, but the government of Iran arrested him in 2011 as he was winding up a visit with family and then held him mostly in solitary confinement for the next year-plus, so you can see why so many of the world's scientists might not be their best selves. Mr. Kokabee is his best self, though, so Change.org helps you tell Iran's Supreme Leader to free Mr. Kokabee.
Meanwhile, S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, has passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is awaiting action by the full Senate -- but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn't yet permitted a vote on the bill, so the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell Sen. McConnell to put the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act to a full Senate vote. Maybe this kind of stuff just isn't that important to him, but he's got big responsibilities now, among them his stated aim to make Republican governance seem not all that scary, and so he should be fine with hearing from all of the American people about this, not just fat-cat elites in his home state. He might want to consider that if he can get a bill passed that reduces the deleterious effect of mandatory minimum sentences and eliminates solitary for juveniles, he can brag about it whenever Democrats complain that all he wants is chaos and disorder. It's a price I'm willing to pay to get more justice for more Americans.
Finally, the worldwide ivory trade is threatening the world's elephants with extinction, but more and more international online marketplaces (including Amazon and Google) are refusing to sell trinkets made with ivory -- Yahoo! Japan, where online ivory sales nearly quadrupled between 2010 and 2014, being a conspicuous exception. Scientists teach us that elephants are more than intelligent enough to know they're being massacred into nonexistence, and for what? We can now make durable materials in ways 19th century scientists would have called alchemy; losing the elephant from the face of the Earth forever ain't worth another ivory cane handle or another ivory carving of the Buddha or the Virgin Mary. Luckily for us, Yahoo! itself hasn't been doing well almost anywhere in its operations, losing money and hemorrhaging workers faster, even, than poachers can illegally kill elephants; Yahoo! sure could use a PR boost, or, at the very least, one fewer PR headache. Hence Avaaz helps you tell Yahoo! to disassociate itself from elephant poaching by forbidding ivory sales on its sites.
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