Write to Turkey's ruler pleading for freedom of assembly.

from Labourstart

The brutal crackdown on protests at the end of May in Istanbul's Taksim Square has shocked the entire world — and triggered a massive wave of protests across Turkey.

A coalition of organizations including trade unions has issued demands which trade unionists everywhere will support.

These include:

• free all those arrested;

• drop all charges against them;

• hold accountable those responsible for the police violence;

• and lift all bans on meetings and demonstrations.

Please click here to send your message of protest – and spread the word today.

Here is the letter Labourstart asks visitors to modify and send:

Prime Minister Erdogan

I support the demands of trade unionists and others in Turkey  that police violence against protestors must stop, that those responsible must be held accountable, that those who have been arrested must be freed and charges dropped, and that the ban on demonstrations must be lifted.

Yours truly,

Sign this letter on the Labourstart website

USW petition calls on federal government to help First Nations leaders address poverty on reserves.

from the United Steelworkers

It is deplorable and unforgivable that any person lives in poverty in a nation as rich as ours. That so many First Nations communities are without safe water or adequate housing is shameful. The government of Canada's ongoing lack of respect for Treaty Rights and for the human and democratic rights of First Nations and aboriginal people must be addressed.

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Abolition is no more complicated than reform, and more permanent.

from Democracy Watch

The Senate is unelected, unaccountable, unrepresentative, secretive, unethical and undemocratic — and a waste of your money.  Many senators have their jobs only because they are friends of, or did favours for, a Prime Minister.  They have their jobs (with you paying their salary) until age 75 even if they do little or nothing.   Democracy Watch argues that shutting down the Senate is the easiest, least costly, and best solution to frequent Senate scandals. Constant, repeated  attempts to clean up the Senate have failed for the past 145 years.

Click here to join with Canadians across the country who want to send a strong message to key politicians. Tell them that you want them to stop playing games and immediately take action to shut down the Senate!

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Omnibus Bill clause would revoke national broadcaster's arm's-length status.

from Sumofus.org

If Prime Minister Harper gets his way, the government will have more control over the CBC than it's ever had in the CBC’s 80-year history. This week, the Harper government snuck sweeping changes to the CBC deep into the last section of the budget — on page 109 — granting it disturbing powers to directly control and interfere with our national broadcaster.

Please sign and share our urgent petition to Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to keep their hands off our national public broadcaster.
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Traditional home remedy popular in impoverished Middle East and Asian communities.

from SumofUs

Nigella sativa — more commonly known as fennel flower — has been used as a cure-all remedy for over a thousand years. It treats everything from vomiting to fevers to skin diseases, and has been widely available in impoverished communities across the Middle East and Asia. But now Nestlé is claiming to own it, and filing patent claims around the world to try to take control over the natural cure of the fennel flower and turn it into a costly private drug.

In a paper published last year, Nestlé scientists claimed to “discover” what much of the world has known for millennia: that nigella sativa extract could be used for “nutritional interventions in humans with food allergy.” But instead of creating an artificial substitute, or fighting to make sure the remedy was widely available, Nestlé is attempting to create a nigella sativa monopoly and gain the ability to sue anyone using it without Nestlé’s permission. Nestlé has filed patent applications — which are currently pending — around the world.

Prior to Nestlé's outlandish patent claim, researchers in developing nations such as Egypt and Pakistan had already published studies on the same curative powers Nestlé is claiming as its own. And Nestlé has done this before — in 2011, it tried to claim credit for using cow’s milk as a laxative, despite the fact that such knowledge had been in Indian medical texts for a thousand years.

This isn't surprising, considering Nestlé has a long track record of not caring about ethics. After all, this is the corporation that poisoned its milk with melamine, purchases cocoa from plantations that use child slave labor, and launched a breast milk substitute campaign in the 1970s that contributed to the suffering and deaths of thousands of babies from poor communities.

But we also know that Nestlé is sensitive to public outcry, and that it's been beaten at the patent game before. If we act fast, we can put enough pressure on Nestlé to get it to drop its patent plans before they harm anyone.  But if we want any chance at affecting Nestlé's decision, we have to speak out now, while its patent claims are still under review.

Thanks for all you do,
Melanie, Claiborne and the team at SumOfUs.org
 

Tell Nestlé: Stop trying to patent a natural cure!

Don’t let Nestlé turn a traditional cure into a corporate cash cow.

Reference
Business Standard, April 4, 2013: Nestlé claims patent on medical use of black cumin or kalaunji
Third World Network (PDF), July 6, 2012:  Food giant Nestlé claims to have invented stomach soothing use of habbat al-barakah (Nigella sativa)