Week's End - The Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony

Unless you've been under a rock (man, I hope not), you know that the ceremony was today but that the award could not be given. Liu Xiabao was not allowed to be there as he's in prison for 11 outrageous years. Those who have been in contact with his wife Liu Xia have not heard from her in at least 3 days. It's believed that she is under house arrest.

The last time a Nobel Peace Prize was not handed out was 1936. Guess who nixed that one? You can watch the video on the Nobel Organization page, here. By the by, today is International Human Rights Day & Amnesty International's Write for Rights campaign runs through the 13th. Wherever you are, you can do something without joining anything. A letter with a stamp. That's it.

Sadly, I can't have comments on these posts due to spamming.

(The lovely holiday candle photograph is by Aimee White)

Chimes of Freedom

The Nobel Peace Prize 2010 was awarded to Liu Xiaobo "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China".

Note: It's not you, I've turned off comments on this post. Reason at bottom in italics.

Liu Xiaobo was sentenced on 25 December 2009, the day after a two-hour trial and more than a year after he was first detained. Articles he wrote about the June 1989 pro-democracy movement were also cited in his verdict as evidence of “inciting subversion”.

Amnesty International has campaigned for his release, along with that of other activists who signed Charter 08 including Liu Xianbin, who was arrested in June.

Several other signatories of Charter 08 have asked to share the responsibility with Liu Xiaobo and a group of senior Communist Party members have questioned the legality of Liu Xiaobo's sentence.

Former president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel and Nobel Peace Price Laureate the Dalai Lama were among those who supported the nomination of Liu Xiaobo for the 2010 award. Vaclav Havel co-wrote Charter 77, the 1977 document calling for respect of human rights in Czechoslovakia on which Charter 08 was modeled. (Amnesty International website)

Note: Comments are turned off for this post, as they are permanently on Julie's innocent leetle blog. The spam level reaches heights of absurdity whenever something like this appears. Yes, even on theese leetle blog. I'm still searching for photography attribution; I have had it in a file for months & did not save with info. It's just perfect, to me, though & so I dug it off a CD of pix. (Update - photograph by Ricardson Williams via flickr)