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Petition Tag - reforms
1. UK Disabled Community Against Welfare & Benefit Cuts 
The UK Disabled Community needs to send a clear and unequivocal message in one unified voice to call on the Coalition Government to see us all as equal members of society and not treat us as a tool to steal our disability benefits and services to bail out the Country in this time of Financial Crisis.
Can we set a precedence to get 1 million signatures so that the Coalition Government will have no option but to take note of us and not just ignore or deflect our arguments & comments and to stop building this climate of hate against disabled people.
Please leave a question for your Local MP to pose to the Coalition Government, which we will add to the Petition when we deliver it to No.10.
2. Canadians Against Bill C-61
Bill C-61 was created in the second Parliament session of 2008 by Industry Minister Jim Prentice. After Parliament went on vacation at the end of 2008, he said it would be revisited in the fall 2009 session. It will allow you to record TV shows for later viewing, and make one copy of previously purchased materials such as music or books for copy onto other devices.
However, it would be illegal to circumvent digital locks which DVDs, CDs, and other devices have, making these rights essentially useless. This bill limits the ability of universities to teach and research, as material that could be legally copied in paper format is not legally copiable when digitally encrypted.
Common actions such as copying movies for multi region DVD players, purchasing songs as a gift to be downloaded on the recipient’s device, backing up a computer with copyrighted material will also be illegal.
It would also not allow unlocking of cell phones, forcing consumers to acquire a new cell phone each time they switch a carrier. The bill makes it difficult for software developers to conduct innovative research. While it appears to give users rights by allowing a single copy of legally purchased materials, all those rights are negated by digital locks that producers of content can and do use. If material is illegally downloaded, this can mean a 500$ fine, and hacking digital locks can lead to a 20000$ fine.
3. What We See, What We Hope: Declaration of Solidarity with the Uprising in Greece
We want first of all to say a collective yes! to the uprising in Greece. We are artists, writers and teachers who are connected in this moment by common friends and commitments.
We are globally dispersed and are mostly watching, and hoping, from afar. But some of us are also there, in Athens, and have been on the streets, have felt the rage and the tear gas, and have glimpsed the dancing specter of the other world that is possible. We claim no special right to speak or be heard. Still, we have a few things to say. For this is also a global moment for speaking and sharing, for hoping and thinking together...
No one can doubt that the protest and occupation movement that has spread across Greece since the police murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos in Athens on 6 December is a social uprising whose causes reach far deeper than the obscene event that triggered it. The rage is real, and it is justified. The filled streets, strikes and walk-outs, and occupied schools, universities, union halls and television stations have refuted early official attempts to dismiss the social explosion as the work of a small number of “young people” in Exarchia, Athens or elsewhere in Greece.
What remains to be seen is whether the movement now emerging will become an effective political force – and, if it does, whether it will be contained within a liberal-reformist horizon or will aim at a more radical social and political transformation. If the movement takes the liberal-reformist path, then the most to be expected will be the replacement of one corrupt party in power by its corrupt competitor, accompanied by a few token concessions wrapped in the empty rhetoric of democracy. These would almost certainly be the smoke-screen for a reactionary wave of new repressive powers masquerading as security measures. Only radically democratic and emancipatory demands, clearly articulated and resolutely struggled for, could prevent this outcome and open the space for a rupture in a destructive global system of domination and exploitation. As we count ourselves among those who experience this system as the violent negation of human spirit and potential, we could only welcome such a rupture as a reassertion of humanity in the face of a repressive politics of fear.
Observing events in Greece and the official and corporate media discourse developing in response to them, we note the emergence of what begins to looks like a new elite consensus. The “violent unrest” in Greece, we are told with increasing frequency, is the revolt of the “700-Euro generation” – that is, of overeducated young people with too few prospects of a decent position and income. The solution, by this account, is to revitalize Greek society through more structural adjustments to make the economy more dynamic and efficient. Once all people are convinced they will be welcomed and integrated into consumer reality and rewarded with purchasing power commensurate with their educational investment, then the conditions of this “revolt” will have been eliminated. In short: everything will be fine, and everyone happy, once some adjustments have made capitalism in Greece less wasteful of its human resources.
We have seen this strategy before, in response to the uprisings in the suburbs of Paris and around the CPE “reforms” in France several years ago. Indeed, since the 1960s this has been the perennial, preferred strategy of power to all uprisings that show themselves unwilling to disappear immediately. Its functions are crystal clear: to channel the movement in a neutralizing liberal-reformist direction and to provoke divisions by means of lures and promises. Those who don’t take the bait are left isolated and can be safely targeted for repression.
We hope those in the streets and all those who sympathize with and support them in and outside of Greece will see through this strategy and expose and denounce it. We’re sure that there is much more at stake, and much more to be imagined, hoped and struggled for, than will be on offer in this neo-liberal sleeping pill. And we hope that, in the space opened up by the real rage and courage of people who have left passivity and hopelessness behind, this social movement will now organize itself into a durable political force capable of scorning such recuperative enticements.
Feb 10, 2006
The government's plans for free travel for over-60s from 9:30 Mon-Fri and all day weekends have created a £7.8M budget gap in Tyne and Wear. This has meant Nexus, the regions bus operator, has had to introduce a range of measures to aid this shortfall.
'£1.8m to be saved through the total withdrawal of the Teen TravelTicket. This will have an impact on about 10,000 pass holders in further education aged 16-18 who currently make an estimated five million journeys a year. As an example a student purchasing a four-weekly all zone ticket at £31.50 would have to pay £61.50. '
'...while there is a £7.3m shortfall for this area, West Sussex will receive £2m more than it needs to provide free bus travel for pensioners and Cambridgeshire £1.5m.'
Source http://www.nexus.org.uk/
5. Reforming Toledo City Government
The petition contains common sense reforms of our local government proposed by Toledo Citizens Organized to Bring Reform and Accountability.
These reforms will improve accountability, streamline government and empower the citizens of Toledo in their government.
6. Immigration Reform in the USA
We the undersigned are United States citizens and are registered voters, and hereby request that Congress pass these laws effective immediately regarding immigration reforms. These reforms are to promote loyalty and to ensure vested interest in the well being of our individuals and society as a whole.
