I’m worried about Paris. I’m a nutritionist by trade, and a huge PH fan, and I feel I’m just sitting idly by while my idol half starves to death in a gulag. It is unbelievable that such cruelty and injustice is occurring right here on American soil. Both my brothers are in the Armed Forces, fighting in the war on terror. Is this the kind of freedom they’re fighting for? I think not.

Paris was always a beanpole and now from what I’ve been able to piece together online, she’s dropping weight like no tomorrow. A lot of bloggers are saying that Paris at first refused to even look at the prison menu. I say good for her! But eventually I guess, even the mighty Paris had to eat something.

Reportedly meals in her jail are served only twice in any twenty-four hour period. The most common meal is the prison-issue ham sandwich. Any PH fan knows she can’t stand ham sandwiches, and considers folks who eat them “low class.” I couldn’t agree more. I hope she gets more vegie meals, and maybe some whey to bulk up in there.

This story is hot off the presses. Thousands of students and teachers who were out protesting a new law in Greece that would govern the functioning of Universities were brutally repressed by police. Reports are coming in that the police repression is on-going, and the arrestees are having a hard time. This situation is still developing and more details are likely to emerge over the next couple of days…

On Thursday afternoon, the government began the process of voting on the new legislation despite a enormous public outcry. Students, teachers, and academics have been involved in an ongoing struggle since May 2006 with the government, which has included occupations of schools and faculties, strikes and several demonstrations.

Today, over 35,000 students, teachers, and academics flooded the streets of Athens to participate in a public demonstration surrounding the Parliament. In front of Parliament is where the police brutality began to come into play. Some of the demonstrators purportedly clashed with police while the air was then filled with asphyxiating and tear gass, and rubber bullets were shot. This broke up the march into several factions, and a random 100 or so demonstrators who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time found themselves found themselves beaten and subdued by heavy police force. Several more attacks followed to break up the crowd into even smaller factions, and police began beating teachers as well as the students. Many individuals fled the scene and hid in nearby buildings to escape the situation.

Reports from Athens police headquarters indicate that all of the 62 detainees will be considered as arrestees, 45 people have been taken to the hospital. The prosecutors are not allowing the detainees to meet with lawyers, and are preventing five injured detainees from seeking medical care at the hospital.

Rioting started in Thessaloniki city following a spontaneous solidarity march that formed in protest for the repression that had just taken place in Ahtens. Reports indicate that the riot police are spraying tear gas towards the university, and that students in the Tessaloniki Polytechnic Faculty are suffering. The university’s student radio is reporting that the tear gas has infiltrated the corridors, and that hundreds of students are trying to escape the gas, ducking into rooms or making their way on to the roof tops. 1 student has been reported to have been injured in Thessaloniki after having been hit by one of the police’s tear gas rockets.

The student radio is reporting that they feel as if they are facing only the first implications of the new legislation, and that many of the students and faculty feel as though they are now under a dictatorship.

Amy Berg, the Oscar nominated director of “Deliver Us From Evil”, a documentary of a pedophile priest, is now developing her first narrative feature film. Berg is collaborating with screenwriter Micky Levy on this project, which will be based on the true story of a girl who was taken from her family by the government.

Berg first met the woman (who wishes to remain anonymous) in 2002 when she was an investigative reporter for CNN. CNN, however, wasn’t interested in airing Berg’s segment with the woman. And now, several years later, she still hasn’t forgotten about the injustices experienced by the woman and wants to bring them to the big screen. Berg recently purchased the rights to the woman’s life story, and has begun working on the project.

The project will tell the story of the Yupi’K American Indian girl who as taken from her Alaskan family in the 1960’s by the US government, and was then sent to a series of foster care homes in a government sponsored “Americanization” campaign.

This week, the US will begin initial hearings for fourteen individuals that were transferred from secret CIA jails to the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp in Cuba. The trials are set to begin on Friday, March 9th, and amongst the detainees is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11th attacks. Noticeably missing from the trials, however, will be the press. The Bush administration made the decision to bar news media from being present at the hearings, closing off the hearings entirely.

The Associated Press, in a letter to Pentagon officials, criticized the decision to close off the hearings completely violates the Defense Department’s own regulations. And while they understand that some portions of the trial may need to be conducted without the press present, the AP notes that it is “an unconstitutional mistake to close the proceedings in their entirety.”

The purpose of the hearings is to determine whether a prisoner is an “enemy combatant”. If a prisoner is found to be an enemy combatant, the President may then designate him as eligible for a military trial. The first military trials are expected to begin this summer.

The Pentagon states that the hearings will be closed to the media to protect national security interests that could be compromised by statements made by the detainees. However, others don’t quite believe that that is the true reason behind barring the media. According to Scott Horton, chair of the international law committee of the New York City Bar Association, what they are really concerned about is that “these 14 will open their mouths and say what was done to them. They were tortured and mistreated, and that fact is classified secret, which just shows you the perversity in which this whole process is traveling.”

Not only will no press be allowed, but the detainees are also not allowed to have an attorney present, placing the legal burden on the detainee himself to demonstrate that he is not an enemy combatant. Classified evidence that the US military uses against the detainees is not revealed to them, which makes the possibility of them proving themselves innocent nearly non-exsistant.

Just this week, French officials passed a law that makes it illegal for anyone other than professional journalists to film real-world violence and distribute the images on the Internet. The supposed purpose of the law is to put a stop to a new fad in France called “happy slapping.” While the name implies something less than violent, the reality is that “happy slapping” is the act a bunch of thugs and gang members going around and assaulting random, innocent people and filming it for distribution on the web.

While it is admirably that they wish to put a stop to such heinous acts of violence, the manner in which they are trying to accomplish this is severely hampering free speech. Sure, it bans the filming and distribution of “happy slapping”, but it goes much further and would make it illegal for a non-journalist to film, for instance, the recent riots in France or even videos of police brutality.

Imagine you witness a horrible police brutality on the streets of France, and you just happen to have a camcorder with you. Under old law, you could have filmed it and the victim would have some visual proof that would surely help their case. But now, under the new law, France discourages and even punishes citizen journalists for taping such acts of violence. Sure, an eyewitness testimony is helpful in such cases, but nothing beats visual proof.

This new law is troubling. I doubt it will stop the violence from occuring; the gangs will still go about beating random people, and they’ll probably even still video tape it. But what they might not do is share it with people through sites like YouTube. However, just because we can’t see the crimes happening, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means that now police will have a harder time tracking down the videos and finding out who is involved in the crimes. While the law makes it harder for cops to track down the criminals, it does make it easier for them to commit acts such as police brutality and penalize those who try to expose them.

The treatment of the United States’ war veterans is beyond appalling. Despite the billions and billions of dollars that is being spent on the war in Iraq, soldiers have faced equipment and food shortages, and have seen their benefits cut. And then while they’re doing the honorable thing serving in Iraq and come home after having been wounded, soldiers face deplorable conditions in military hospitals.

In recent weeks, the Washington Post revealed the truly disgusting state of affairs at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Soldiers who stayed there in the past have spoken up, as have visitors to the center, and even some staff members.

Walter Reed is often the first stop for many American servicemen returning home with war-related injuries. You would assume that the medical center would be a top-of-the-line treatment facility with all of the best rehabilitation and treatment available. However, such an assumption was proven to be entirely wrong as Walter Reed was revealed to be a place where soldiers endured filthy and unsanitary environments, rampant drug use, and less-than-adequate medical care. Upon hearing this news, the nation was shocked, and at the same time embarrassed.

What makes this even more worse is the fact that top officials were informed of the problem and did absolutely NOTHING to stop it. It disgusts me that this country would send these soldiers into war expecting them to risk everything, and then upon their return having been injured, they are treated like low-life scum. Instead of supporting the troops, the government turned their backs on them, and for that they should be ashamed and punished.

The Canadian province of Quebec has stated that the US state of Michigan is guilty of enforcing laws that fail to live up to the standards of human decency. This is resulting from Michigan’s Zero Tolerance drug laws. The law, which has been called the harshest in the nation would put a first time offender behind bars for life, without parole, for possession of 650 grams of cocaine or more with intent to sell.

This law is part of the ‘mandatory minimums’ system of drug enforcement that is popular in many US states. That a first time offender can be jailed for that length of time without parole is not only unbelievable it is also immoral and inhuman.

The law was apparently introduced to target Drug Kingpins, but a rational look at the policy clearly points out that this law is actually aimed at low-level dealers. Most of whom will obviously be young people living in inner-city slums and the like. Here is a list of the graded mandatory minimum sentences:

If this policy truly were aimed at major drug dealers the minimum amount for life in prison would be set much higher as drug kingpins are unlikely to deal in amounts which could easily be carried by one person in a small bag.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: The truest measure of a society is how it treat’s it’s prisoners.