Freedom

The Lennon Files

- Agasel

An historian has finally received the remaining FBI documents on John Lennon, that were kept secret for decades.  Jon Wiener obtained 10 pages detailing the intense scrutiny Lennon received from the FBI.  Lennon.jpg

One report describes how two prominent British leftists tried to persuade Lennon to finance “a left-wing bookshop and reading room in London”, but Lennon gave them no money.

Another page states that there was “no certain proof” that Lennon had provided money “for subversive purposes.”

Wiener told the L.A. Times, “Today, we can see that the national security claims that the FBI has been making for 25 years were absurd from the beginning.”

Wiener had originally asked for the documents in 1981, a year after Lennon was killed.  The FBI originally provided some files showing how closely monitored he was from 1971-1972.  The rest were not given, for reasons of national security.  In addition, the Freedom of Information Act was declared to not apply.

Wiener sued the U.S. government and received some of the documents in 1997. In 2004, a judge ordered the FBI to hand over the remaining 10 pages.

Milblog Project

- Adam Clare

Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops, known as Valour IT, tries to help wounded American soldiers psychologically recover from battle by blogging. Regardless (or irregardless if you’re Dubya Bush), of what you think of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Terror, humans who are injured still need support to heal their wounds. You can read about the success the program has had at the MediaShift blog at PBS.

“It started last year when Army Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss injured both his hands and wanted to get back to blogging. His blog readers pitched in for Dragon Naturally Speaking software, and he and another blogger, FbL, put together Valour-IT and have raised more than $330,000 with two online Veteran’s Day fundraisers fueled by milbloggers.”

More About Gore!

- Vanessa King

Last night I saw An Inconvienient Truth for the first time and I was inspired to write about it today. This movie is incredible! I believe that anyone who has the slightest interest in the subject of the planet burning up into oblivion HAS TO SEE THIS FILM! Even if you haven’t taken an interest before. This is not left wing, political mumbo jumbo. It is well laid out, well articulated and completely informative.

My initial concern with watching the film was that it might leave me feeling depressed and hopeless. While it did present incredible evidence toward the truth of our planet and its fate, it also leaves the viewer with an empowered sense of hope…..That being said, I don’t usually push things on people. But I really feel ok in saying PLEASE WATCH THIS MOVIE!!!holidaycard_earthlarge.jpeg

Visit http://www.climatecrisis.net/ for more information on how you can make a difference. Also, http://www.nativeenergy.com is a great site in support of wind energy and other renewable, less impacting energy sources. You can even buy someone a holiday card that decreases 1 ton of pollution by contributing to new wind projects that will reduce Co2! We can make a difference guys!!!

 

 

A Pelican Love Story

- Vanessa King

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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

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

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.”

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