Long story short: tell big corporations to divest from Myanmar's military, tell France to reject an Arctic drilling scheme, tell President Biden to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, fire two notorious Social Security Administrators, regulate "forever chemicals" in our drinking water, and support international sanctions against Erik Prince for plotting to overthrow the government of Libya. Lots to digest, I know, but you can accomplish all of these aims easily by using the email and petition links in the following paragraphs.
Are there bigger armed whiners than Myanmar's military? They didn't like the election results, so they overthrew the government -- no, they really overthrew the government, plus if you protest this coup, they murder you. They want us to see them as big and strong and tough but I will always see them bawling, in diapers, stomping their feet. Sadly, they don't act in a vacuum, because big fossil fuel corporations like Chevron and Total support the government of Myanmar to the tune of over $1 billion annually, which motherlode now goes to the military, since it now controls the government. Gosh, what ever should these corporations do? I kid, of course -- they should stop sending money to the illegitimate bunch of crybabies now calling themselves the government of Myanmar. Sum of Us provides the petition.
Hey, speaking of Total: they want to drill for gas in the Arctic ocean, and what's more, France's President, Emmanuel Macron, has been criticizing the project in public while green-lighting it in private! Yikes, I hope he doesn't wonder why he loses his next election in about a year! You know what people hate even more than being told they have to stay indoors? When politicians say one thing and do another! Even in these post-modern times, the eternal verities still hold! Naturally, this Arctic drilling project will both unleash yet more pollution and threaten the lives of indigenous folks, but if we all bring the Big Stick of Bad PR, we can strangle this thing in its crib. Sum of Us provides this petition, also.
If you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to get back into the Iran nuclear deal the Obama Administration negotiated in 2015 (uh, during which he was Vice President), then both Win Without War and Daily Kos still help you do that. Why? Because it was working before Donald Trump trashed it, and it can work again. Does it seem like Iran's asking for more this time? Doesn't mean they should get it, and doesn't mean they're going to get it! It's like the world doesn't understand what "negotiation" is. Granted, that could be at least partly because Tha Bush Mobb demanded that Iran accept all their demands "before negotiations can begin." But surely we don't need to behold ourselves to any Republican orthodoxy. (President Biden's phone number, as you may recall, is 202.456.1111; you can call him about Iran and the next three items, if you like.)
Social Security Works helps you tell President Biden to fire Andrew Saul and David Black from our Social Security Administration. Why? Because they're trying to destroy Social Security from within, that's why! Because Donald Trump put them there to do just that! Always they deliberately sabotage our government and then say see? Government doesn't work! Like we're all not watching or something. Messrs. Saul and Black did eventually release that data our IRS needed to get stimulus checks out to seniors, but they only did that because we wielded the Big Stick of Bad PR against them. Maybe we should get some people in our government who don't need to be browbeaten into doing the right thing. We deserve it, after all.
Consumer Reports helps you tell President Biden to regulate the notorious plastic chemical PFAS, a chemical found in far too many things that doesn't break down very easily in our bodies or in our air and water (hence the moniker "forever chemicals"). Why not tell our Congressfolk to pass a law getting rid of PFAS, an act even these notorious Congressfolk have warmed toward in the past? Because our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) already has the authority, under the Clean Water Act, to regulate PFAS chemicals, and the EPA works for us. We don't even need to get all George Carlin ("you're a public servant -- go get me a glass of water!") on them. They can just make sure the glasses of water we get ourselves don't have so many toxins in them.
Finally, Win Without War helps you tell President Biden to support international sanctions against former Blackwater/Xe CEO Erik Prince. Not for bilking our government out of all that money being private contractors in Iraq, or for overseeing the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007, or for being Betsy DeVos's brother -- just for offering to give weapons and mercenaries to a would-be dictator seeking to overthrow the government of Libya, in violation of international law (which does-so matter, despite right-wingers' notions that it shouldn't). America's gotten in enough trouble for doing that, but having private citizens do it would be so, so much worse. We can make our government account to us, but we'll have a harder time making Erik Prince account to us -- unless we enlist our government to help us in that aim.
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