Category: Freedom

A Pelican Love Story

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Its a story of rescue, heroism and love…..and it involves a pelican.
In Fife, Scotland a rescue worker, named Alexis saved a male pelican who had been found suffering from blood poisoning after it escaped from a wildlife park on the Isle of Man. She was the first to administer his antibiotics and put him to sleep for the night. He has been showing signs of a massive pelican crush ever since…..
“”He looks right into my eyes and puts on what I can only describe as a mating display, with his wings up and his head bowed down. He’ll walk over to me, snuggle in and preen me. He loves to take my hair or my hand in his mouth and he also plays with my shoelaces…..But it’s only me for some reason.”
When other workers enter he bites them, and no-one can feed him fish like she can.
The bird, nicknamed Romeo will return to his home back with the other pelicans soon. Alexis hopes he will get over her when he returns home with the other lady birds.

Psiphon Fights Censorship

Earlier this year we covered that Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto was creating some software called Psiphon that lets people bypass firewalls. Psiphone is designed to let people access sites that are blocked for censorship reasons like in China where there is a lot of online censorship.

“psiphon is a censorship circumvention solution that allows users to access blocked sites in countries where the Internet is censored. psiphon turns a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server capable of retrieving and displaying web pages anywhere.”

UN’s Declaration of Human Rights in 21 Languages

Oct. 24th is United Nations Day, and to celebrate LibriVox collected the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 21 Languages. You can download audio files of LibriVox volunteers reading the declaration at LibriVox.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly. It defines the fundamental rights of individuals, and exhorts all governments to protect these rights. The UN has translated the document into over three hundred languages and dialects. This audiobook includes readings in 21 languages, by LibriVox volunteers.”

The United Nations wants people around the world to remember that we are all humans and that we should all get along. Today many schools will celebrate the diversity of human culture.

In Costa Rica, UN day is a holiday, awesome!

Wikipedia Uncensored

wiki ballWikipedia is no longer being blocked in China! After refusing to cede to Chinese demands to censor the community made encyclopedia the Chinese government blocked access to wikipedia from within China.

Last week, Chinese-forums.com members discovered that the blocking of wikipedia has ended!

Hopefully Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft will learn that they don’t have to self-censor to get into China.

Ugandans Return To Peace Talks

Ugandan rebels have agreed to return to peace talks to end the country’s 19 year civil war. The Lord’s Resistance Army left talks recently after they claimed the army was surrounding neutral assembly points where the rebel forces had gathered. The army claimed they had done so after the rebel groups had began to leave the assembly points after a commitment to remain at the points until an agreement had been reached.

The two forces have been involved in one of Africa’s longest wars, both accusing the other of atrocities. The LRA, led by Joseph Kony, has long been supported by Sudan, causing the government to cut ties with this country.

The talks got back on track after rebels returned to the neutral assembly points and military convoys retreated. Said Martin Ojul, head of the rebel group; “The peace talks are on course, and we hope that we will come out with a solution.”