Lucy Lawless, Eco-Warrior

Actress Lucy Lawless and six Greenpeace activists have climbed an oil-drilling ship bound for the Arctic. The group is trying to prevent the ship, which is chartered by Shell oil company, from leaving port to drill five exploratory wells in the Arctic. The ship was due to leave port this weekend. From atop a 174-foot (53 meter) derrick aboard Shell Oil's Noble Discoverer in New Zealand's Port Taranaki. Lawless said she was taking direct protest action for the first time in her life to protest oil drilling and to draw attention to climate change. "I've got three kids. My sole biological reason for being on this planet is to ensure that they can flourish, and they can't do that in a filthy, degraded environment," she said. "We need to stand up while we still can." She's tweeting her protest. Follow along.

Today I’m taking direct action with GreenpeaceNZ in peaceful protest against Shell’s Arctic oil drilling  #savethearctic
— Lucy Lawless (@RealLucyLawless) February 23, 2012

UPDATE: Actress Lucy Lawless arrested in oil-ship protest.

My Favorite Protest Signs of 2009

My, there were a lot of folks protesting and tea-bagging this past year. Unless you’re at a die-in, then you’re gonna need a sign.

Give a Goat, Get an Mp3

Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn are Pomplamoose.

They've made several fun covers that they perform out of a SF Bay area home studio. They've pioneered a specific style of work dubbed the "videosong"

This Christmas they've collaborated with several other musicians on the song, Always in the Season. (Including one of my faves, Zoë Keating on Cello!) At the end of the song they'll explain what you can do to get a couple of free Mp3's and help out a family by giving a goat.

Quick, Go Give Fantasy Author Patrick Rothfuss Your Money

Last year, author Patrick Rothfuss and his fans across the Interwebs raised more than $100,000 dollars for his, and one of my favorite charities, Heifer International. Pat actually friended me last year on Facebook, and after you read his posts and his blog, you quickly learn, not only is he a fellow Midwesterner, but a really really kind and sweet man. Pat has has used his success since writing, The Name of the Wind, for much good and only bits of evil.

What’s that you say? You’d like to make the world a better place while simultaneously winning fabulous prizes?

Well today is your lucky day.

Heifer International is my favorite charity. It helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation. All over the world Heifer promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry.

They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.

(Are you ready? I’m so ready. Let’s do it.)

This year we’ve got a couple different options for donating.

Option 1 – The Lottery.

This is the option most people will want. It’s simple. You hop directly over to the page I’ve set up at Team Heifer, and donate.

When you donate using my page at team Heifer, two things happen.

1. Worldbuilders will match 50% of your donation. That means your ten-dollar donation becomes fifteen dollars. If you donate two goats, it becomes three goats. And so on.

2. You’ll be entered in the lottery.

After the fundraiser is over on January 15th, we’ll have random drawing for all the swag that’s been donated by authors and publishers over the last couple months. More than a thousand books, DVD’s and CD’s.

For every 10 bucks you donate, your name will get entered into the drawing once. If you donate thirty bucks, your name goes in three times. Think of it as buying tickets, if you like.

We’ve had *way* too many books donated for me to post them all up at once. It’s a prize-rich environment, with over a thousand books.

So I’ll be putting up a new blog full of donated books pretty much every day or so, just to keep people from being overwhelmed with all the awesome. Make sure to check back often.

Pat’s books, and the Golden Ticket

300 Books from Subterranean Press

A Plenitude of Signed Books [Coming Soon.]

A Plethora of Signed Books [Coming Soon.]

Cool Music [Coming Soon.]

A veritable Cornucopia of Signed books [Coming Soon.]

The Glory that is Joss Whedon [Coming Soon.]

Books from Gollancz [Coming Soon.]

Books from DAW [Coming Soon.]

Books from Bad Moon Press [Coming Soon.]

Books from Peter S. Beagle [Coming Soon.]

Last year, people donated over 53,000 dollars on the Team Heifer page, and I’m hoping this year we can do even better.

But let’s start off by trying to hit 10,000 dollars. That seems like a good place to begin, as our lovely sponsor has agreed to match 50% of the first $10,000 donated. Let’s all take advantage of their generosity, shall we?

Click Here to Donate

Option Two: The Sure Thing.

Or, as I like to think of it, the Christmas Present option.

For those of you who aren’t interested in the lottery, I have some stuff you can just buy. All the proceeds will go directly to Heifer International.

Personalized books from Patrick Rothfuss.

Name of the Wind posters. [Coming Soon.]

Worldbuilders T-shirts. [Coming Soon.]

Option Three: Auctions.

This year we’ve decided to auction off some of the rarer items and specialized services people have donated.

We’ve got industry professionals willing to read your fledgling manuscript and give you feedback. We’ve got a limited edition Stardust ARC signed by Neil Gaiman and a copy of The Gathering Storm signed by Brandon Sanderson and the production team at Tor. We’ve got original manuscripts, software, and a rockstar’s guitar. Stay tuned for details.

Rare Books and Manuscripts. [Coming Dec 6th.]

Professional Editorial Advice and Critiques. [Coming Dec 13th.]

Miscellaneous cool. [Coming Soon.]

A Quick Plea For Sanity

Lastly, I’d like to ask everyone to please read the instructions/directions carefully before they donate.

I know you’re excited. I’m excited too. We’re going to raise some money, make the world a better place, and end up with big warm fuzzy feelings.

But here’s the problem. If you’re *too* excited, you’ll end up clicking buttons all higgledy-piggledy, forgetting vital steps and leaving things out. (Especially when buying things with Paypal) Then you’ll send me an e-mail that says something like: “I’m sorry, but I forgot to include my shipping address/t-shirt size/signing instructions. Could you please fix it for me?”

I know I’m bound to get one or two e-mails like this. No biggie. But each one is like a cold drop of water eroding my warm fuzzy feeling. If I get, say, a hundred, I’ll have no warm fuzzy left at all. I’ll be left with nothing but a cold prickly feeling.

You don’t want to give me a cold prickly, do you?

I’m sure you don’t. And I’m sure that you’ll read the instructions carefully.

FAQ.

Have questions about the fundraiser? Most of them are probably answered over in the FAQ. Even if your question isn’t answered, I talk about Batman a bit, so it won’t be a complete waste of your time.

And, just in case you missed it, here’s the link to the Team Heifer donation page.

Rock on,

pat

Special thanks to our sponsor: Subterranean Press.

(Huzzah for Subterranean Press! Double Huzzah!)

Head on over to Pat’s blog. The Worldbuilder fundraiser ends on January 15th, 2010

Pat Rothfuss photo: memesisvirtualis' photostream

My Two Cents

My comment on the Smaller Indiana thread - "Town Hall Meeting With Sen. Evan Bayh"

Your Hate Speech Today Will Be Brought To You By…

Until or unless there is a provable case that Glen Beck’s hate speech over the media may be causing concrete harms, he has myself and the First Amendment behind him. But do the corporations who sponsor his show want to become the face of hate and intolerance? I doubt it.

The Origins of Rumors

Hey, what if we were governed by a sinister foreigner masquerading as a native born American, a real life Manchurian Candidate advancing a perverse plan to cull the population of the elderly? That’s either a plot for a bad Hollywood thriller, or this week in the wingnut o sphere.

This is a podcast from last week, but is still Zeitgeist worthy.
8 min, 49  sec.

NPRs On The Media

Just Wanted To Say…

I hope it made you smile.
Link

I’m PBS3 Famous

Actually still not famous at all.

I just received this tweet from the PBS and Internet nightly news show World Focus.

I went over to the site and they already have the episode up that will air tonight. (Here in Indianapolis: 10:30 PM on digital WFYI.3.) They didn’t actually mention me, but quoted from this tweet I sent them as a reply to this one. No biggie, but it’s worth a blog post at least.

Elie Weisel Voices Words Many in the World Only Think

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT OBAMA, GERMAN CHANCELLOR MERKEL, AND ELIE WIESEL AT BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP

Weimar, Germany / June 5, 2009

Here, in it’s entirety, is Mr. Wiesel’s amazing words.

MR. WIESEL: Mr. President, Chancellor Merkel, Bertrand, ladies and gentlemen. As I came here today it was actually a way of coming and visit my father's grave -- but he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky. This has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.

The day he died was one of the darkest in my life. He became sick, weak, and I was there. I was there when he suffered. I was there when he asked for help, for water. I was there to receive his last words. But I was not there when he called for me, although we were in the same block; he on the upper bed and I on the lower bed. He called my name, and I was too afraid to move. All of us were. And then he died. I was there, but I was not there.

And I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will -- in America, where I live, or in Europe or in Germany, where you, Chancellor Merkel, are a leader with great courage and moral aspirations.

What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure. Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place, where people will stop waging war -- every war is absurd and meaningless; where people will stop hating one another; where people will hate the otherness of the other rather than respect it.

But the world hasn't learned. When I was liberated in 1945, April 11, by the American army, somehow many of us were convinced that at least one lesson will have been learned -- that never again will there be war; that hatred is not an option, that racism is stupid; and the will to conquer other people's minds or territories or aspirations, that will is meaningless.

I was so hopeful. Paradoxically, I was so hopeful then. Many of us were, although we had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on culture, to give up on education, to give up on the possibility of living one's life with dignity in a world that has no place for dignity.

We rejected that possibility and we said, no, we must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But again, the world hasn't. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.

Will the world ever learn? I think that is why Buchenwald is so important -- as important, of course, but differently as Auschwitz. It's important because here the large -- the big camp was a kind of international community. People came there from all horizons -- political, economic, culture. The first globalization essay, experiment, were made in Buchenwald. And all that was meant to diminish the humanity of human beings.

You spoke of humanity, Mr. President. Though unto us, in those times, it was human to be inhuman. And now the world has learned, I hope. And of course this hope includes so many of what now would be your vision for the future, Mr. President. A sense of security for Israel, a sense of security for its neighbors, to bring peace in that place. The time must come. It's enough -- enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It's enough. There must come a moment -- a moment of bringing people together.

And therefore we say anyone who comes here should go back with that resolution. Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories here not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary, a sense of solidarity that all those who need us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere who say the 21st century is a century of new beginnings, filled with promise and infinite hope, and at times profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task, which is to improve the human condition.

A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel, The Plague: "After all," he said, "after the tragedy, never the rest...there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate." Even that can be found as truth -- painful as it is -- in Buchenwald.

Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me to come back to my father's grave, which is still in my heart.

Ordinary people saved Superman's house

Ordinary people saved Superman's house. Best-selling novelist Brad Meltzer started the charitable organization Ordinary People Save the World in an effort to raise enough money to restore the home where Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.

Our goal was to raise $50,000 to work on the outside," he said. "In the end, we raised $101,000. So work is now going on in the inside as well. It was just beautiful. For me, especially with all the petty infighting that goes on in comics, this was the best everyone-together victory in the comic book world in a long time."

Meltzer said his main motivation for saving the house was simply the history. "Joe Shuster's house was in such bad condition, they had to knock it down. We didn't want that happening to the Siegel one," he said. "And luckily, friends like Jim [Lee], and Neil [Gaiman], and Brian [Bendis], and Jeph [Loeb] and Geoff [Johns], and so many others thought the same. They donated the best stuff. We just had the site."

As a result, the Siegel house will have an official ribbon-cutting ceremony this summer to unveil the restored home to the public.

Now that the Siegel project has exceeded Meltzer's expectations, he's hoping to continue the work of Ordinary People Change the World by raising money for a new cause.City Year.

For more details about City Year, visit OrdinaryPeopleChangetheWorld.com and watch the video.

To Tame the Savageness of Man and Make Gentle the Life of This World

Forty-one years ago today, April 4, 1968, Bobby Kennedy, on a campaign stop in the inner-city of Indianapolis, Indiana told a mostly African-American crowd of Martin Luther King's Jr's death & helped ease one city's pain.

Turn out. Take action.

Turn out. Take action. For World Wildlife Fund's Earth Hour!

On March 31, 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney's energy consumption
by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for a year.

Now the movement is global...

Be part of this historic event. Tomorrow, Saturday March 28, 2009, 8:30 pm local time

World Wildlife Fund is asking individuals, businesses, governments and organizations around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour – to make a global statement of concern about climate change and to demonstrate commitment to finding solutions.

In Indianapolis:

Green Piece Indy is hosting an Earth Hour celebration at South Bend Chocolate Cafe on Monument Circle from 7:30-9:30 p.m. Watch an Earth Hour countdown to 8:30 in front of the Indianapolis Power & Light building. Other businesses and individuals throughout Indianapolis are challenged to join IPL and South Bend Chocolate Cafe in going dark in support of this event

Source: earthhourus.org & Nuvo.net

The New York Yearly Meeting of Quakers Read Their Minute on Torture.

The New York Yearly Meeting of Quakers put a minute together on torture and then made a video of people reading it.

Yeah, I Teared Up, So?

Pete Seeger, his grandson (left) and "The Boss" Bruce Springsteen singing and leading thousands in "This Land is Your Land" at Sunday's Concert for Barack Obama's inaugural concert. I'm so happy he lived to see this. God bless him.

Human Rights Day: Happy 60th Anniversary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights animation

THE UNIVERSAL Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10th, 1948, is 60 years old today. It is a deeply auspicious anniversary, given how the document has inspired intervening generations and remains "a common standard of achievement for all people and all nations", as its preamble states. Article 1 eloquently explains why this should be:

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood".

In the preamble to the UDHR governments committed themselves and their peoples to progressive measures to secure the universal and effective recognition and observance of the human rights set out. The chairman of the drafting committee, Eleanor Roosevelt, supported the adoption of the UDHR as a declaration, rather than as a treaty, because she believed it would have the same kind of moral influence throughout the world as the United States Declaration of Independence within the United States. This was a prescient insight. Even though it is not formally legally binding, the declaration has been adopted in or influenced most national constitutions since 1948. It also serves as the foundation and benchmark for international treaties and national laws and international, regional, national and sub-national institutions protecting and promoting human rights, including the European Union.

The declaration became even more influential after the end of the Cold War brought a more genuine universality to bear on human rights. Those events also accentuated abiding dilemmas between sovereignty and intervention, individual, collective and state rights, the correct balance between legal, political and socio-economic freedoms and between different cultural traditions. Part of the genius of the declaration is that it has been able to withstand such conflicting interpretations, as well as the glaring contradictions between the rights it proclaims and the everyday reality of oppression still suffered by so many of the world's peoples.

Eleanor Roosevelt also asked where universal human rights begin and provided the following answer:

"In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world".

The National Trust for Historic Preservation Presents A Vision for the Obama Administration

Citing unprecedented economic and environmental challenges, The National Trust for Historic Preservation has presented President Elect Obama's team with a policy platform exploring the uncertain future of Preservation of Public Lands, the Environment, Stewardship and Funding.

Spying on Pacifists, Environmentalists and Nuns

From: The LA Times, By Bob Drogin
December 7, 2008

Reporting from Takoma Park, Md. — To friends in the protest movement, Lucy was an eager 20-something who attended their events and sent encouraging e-mails to support their causes.

Only one thing seemed strange.

"At one demonstration, I remember her showing up with a laptop computer and typing away," said Mike Stark, who helped lead the anti-death-penalty march in Baltimore that day. "We all thought that was odd."

Not really. The woman was an undercover Maryland State Police trooper who between 2005 and 2007 infiltrated more than two dozen rallies and meetings of nonviolent groups.

Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by "Lucy" and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database -- and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency.

Among those labeled as terrorists: two Catholic nuns, a former Democratic congressional candidate, a lifelong pacifist and a registered lobbyist. One suspect's file warned that she was "involved in puppet making and allows anarchists to utilize her property for meetings."

"There wasn't a scintilla of illegal activity" going on, said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit and in July obtained the first surveillance files. State police have released other heavily redacted documents.

Investigators, the files show, targeted groups that advocated against abortion, global warming, nuclear arms, military recruiting in high schools and biodefense research, among other issues.

"It was unconscionable conduct," said Democratic state Sen. Brian Frosh, who is backing legislation to ban similar spying in Maryland unless the police superintendent can document a "reasonable, articulable suspicion" of criminal activity.

The case is the latest to emerge since the Sept. 11 attacks spurred a sharp increase in state and federal surveillance of Americans. Critics say such investigations violate constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and assembly, and serve to inhibit lawful dissent.

In the largest known effort, the Pentagon monitored at least 186 lawful protests and meetings -- including church services and silent vigils -- in California and other states.
The military also compiled more than 2,800 reports on Americans in a database of supposed terrorist threats. That program, known as TALON, was ordered closed in 2007 after it was exposed in news reports.

The Maryland operation also has ended, but critics still question why police spent hundreds of hours spying on Quakers and other peace groups in a state that reported more than 36,000 violent crimes last year.

Stephen Sachs, a former state attorney general, investigated the scandal for Gov. Martin O'Malley -- a Democrat elected in 2006. He concluded that state police had violated federal regulations and "significantly overreached."

According to Sachs' 93-page report and other documents, state police launched the operation in March 2005 out of concern that the planned execution of a convicted murderer might lead to violent protests.

They sent Lucy to join local activists at Takoma Park's Electrik Maid, a funky community center popular with punk rockers and slam poets. Ten people attended the gathering, including a local representative from Amnesty International.

"The meeting was primarily concerned with getting people to put up fliers and getting information out to local businesses and churches about the upcoming events," the undercover officer reported later. "No other pertinent intelligence information was obtained."

That proved true for all 29 meetings, rallies and protests that Lucy ultimately attended. Most drew only a handful of people, and none involved illegal or disruptive actions.
Using the aliases Lucy Shoup and Lucy McDonald, she befriended activists. "I want to get involved in different causes," she wrote in an e-mail, citing her interest in "anti-death penalty, antiwar and pro-animal actions!!!"

Max Obuszewski, a Baltimore pacifist who leads antiwar protests, said Lucy asked about civil disobedience, but didn't instigate any. "She never volunteered to do anything, not even hand out leaflets," he said. "She was not an agent provocateur."

Greg Shipley, a state police spokesman, said that no one in the department had been disciplined in connection with the spying program. Lucy, who has not been publicly identified, would not consent to an interview, he said.
The surveillance, Shipley said, was inappropriate. And the listing of lawful activity as terrorism "shouldn't have happened, and has been corrected."

Most of the files list terrorism as a "primary crime" and a "secondary crime," then add subgroups for designations such as antiwar protester.

Some contain errors and inconsistencies that are almost comical.

Nancy Kricorian, 48, a novelist on the terrorist list, is coordinator for the New York City chapter of CodePink, an antiwar group. She serves as liaison with local police for group protests, and has never been arrested.

"I have no idea why I made the list," she said. "I've never been to the state of Maryland, except maybe to stop for gas on the way to Washington."

Josh Tulkin, 27, a registered lobbyist with the Virginia state Legislature, is cited under "terrorism -- environmental extremists." Tulkin was deputy director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group that claims 15,000 members and regularly meets with governors and members of Congress.

"If asking your elected officials a question about public policy is a crime, then I'm guilty," he said.

Barry Kissin, 57, a lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2006, heads the Frederick Progressive Action Coalition, a group that works "for social, economic and environmental justice," according to his police file. Their protests "are always peaceful," it added.

He was labeled "Terrorism -- Anti-Government."

Nadine Bloch, 47, runs workshops for protest groups that seek corporate responsibility and builds huge papier-mache puppets often used in street marches. Her terrorism file indicates she participated in a Taking Action for Animals conference in Washington on July 16-18, 2005.
Animal rights, Bloch said, is one of the few causes she doesn't actively embrace. Besides, she was attending an educators conference in Hawaii that week as a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"This whole thing," she said, "is so absurd."

Via: A post on Wendy Gonaver's Facebook page. Wendy, a Quaker, had her own dust-up in California earlier this year, it was resolved amicably. Photo: Flickr user laverrue

Prop 8: The Musical!

Petitions Are More Powerful Than You Think