Knowledge is power, especially where your legal rights are concerned. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 laid down the following rules:

What Is Prohibited?

In the Sale and Rental of Housing: No one may take any of the following actions based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status or handicap:

* Refuse to rent or sell housing
* Refuse to negotiate for housing
* Make housing unavailable
* Deny a dwelling
* Set different terms, conditions or privileges for sale or rental of a dwelling
* Provide different housing services or facilities
* Falsely deny that housing is available for inspection, sale, or rental
* For profit, persuade owners to sell or rent (blockbusting) or
* Deny anyone access to or membership in a facility or service (such as a multiple listing service) related to the sale or rental of housing.

So whether you were looking for Boulder real estate or Miami real estate, you could rest assured that your rights are the same.

I was looking for a fun place to spend some time after high school. I wanted a place where I can expand my artistic skills. I was thinking some sort of graphics design school with an emphasis on high tech. I have been searching for places and one place stands out.

Its part of a larger school that does very high profile design tasks and has a lot of attention for it. It has a small and community-like campus and lots of happy students. It must be a good place for me. It is called Collins graphic design school.

I got a brochure in the mail from them and the graphics in the pictures were very detailed and bright. That is similar to the type of designs I like to do. I am going to give them a call and see what the admission fees are to start. I think this might be a fun school.

Police misconduct takes many forms. In hundreds of jurisdictions throughout America, police have been arrested and charged with rape. In many cases, the misconduct takes the form of false imprisonment. Intimidation is another common form of police misconduct.

Police brutality is so common that calling it “misconduct” is somewhat misleading. Calling it “police conduct” might be more accurate.

Whatever the form it takes, police misconduct must be addressed and corrected. The police have a very serious duty within society. Millions of people pay fines or are incarcerated on the word of a police officer alone. The authority they are entrusted with forces us to hold police officers to a high standard.

If you know of police misconduct, report it immediately. Report it to your local FBI or State Police office immediately.

In the year 2000 a group of young Lebanese-Australian Muslim men went on a spree of gang rapes that lasted nearly a month totaling four attacks and seven victims.

The victims were all in their late teens and Caucasian, indicating that the attacks may have been racially motivated hate crimes. The case took center stage on the Australian media and became a highly publicized affair for the time during the trials with people on both sides decrying racism on the part of the attackers and the media’s “sensationalist” coverage.

The attacks are believed to have been motivated by race and religion in that the attackers considered the victims to be indecent by not wearing a hijab (the headdress worn by some Muslim women) and therefore deserved to be raped. The attackers were also quoted by the victims some time after the trials as making such statements like “Aussie Pig” and “You deserve it because you’re an Australian”. The attacks reportedly involved retaining the victims against their will for several hours during which they were subjected to rape and degrading mistreatment by a number of different assailants. The girls were lured by their attackers, in some cases with offers of marijuana, and taken to locales were more collaborators awaited.

To this day however, Bilal Skaf, who orchestrated the attacks, maintains he was only involved in situations that were consensual. His composure during the trial was reported to have been uncooperative and has been charged with making a terrorist hoax while in imprisonment. Police recovered from his seized mobile phone a message that read,

When you are feeling down … bash a Christian or Catholic and lift up.

Another rape attempt was reported to have happened while the victim, 14 years old at the time, traveled by train. During her attack it was reported that the assailant received a phone call from a friend in which he told the caller,

I’ve got a slut with me bro, come to Punchbowl.

he girl managed to escape without being abducted.

The event has resulted in increased racial tensions within Australia involving residents of Middle Eastern decent, in particular Lebanese. The year 2005 saw the unfolding of the ‘Cronulla Race Riots’ in Cornulla, a beachfront suburb in Sidney. Members of the Muslim community felt that during the trials the media vilified the community as a whole for the actions of a few. Since September 11th the Muslim community in Australia has felt an increase in racial tension particularly after events such as the Bali Bombing and the Sydney Gang Rapes. “There was definitely more racism around after these events,” said Iman Eid, a student at NSW during an interview for The Sydney Morning Herald in 2004.

Members from their own community, who stand on the more conservative side of things, have not helped their cause. In late 2006 the most senior Muslim cleric in Australia suggested that the rape victims were to blame for the attacks.

If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside … without cover, and the cats come to eat it … whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her, no problem would have occurred.

The complete video:

This is a story that has been getting a lot of coverage this week but I’d like to just give a brief summary for those who don’t know about it. During the run up to the Iraq war there was a lot of noise being made about Saddam Hussein supposedly purchasing Yellowcake Uranium from Niger. The CIA among others asserted that this intelligence was faulty and probably bogus, but even so Vice-President Dick Cheney believed it and wanted it included front and center as a justification for war with Iraq.

Senator Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate these claims. He found nothing, came back and reported his findings, which were swiftly dismissed by Cheney and his cohorts. Wilson subsequently wrote an Op-Ed article for the New York Times entitled, “What I didn’t find in Niger.” This ruffled Cheney’s feathers to say the least. Exactly what happened next is still under investigation, but somehow the fact that Wilson’s wife was an undercover CIA operative was leaked to the press.

It is a federal offense to unmask a CIA operative, so once this information hit the newspaper an investigation was started by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. His investigation led him to Libby as one of the sources for the leaked info. Libby denied being the leaker and tried instead to mislead Fitzgerald in his investigations. This led to Libby’s conviction for obstruction of justice, not the leak itself. The bigger question now is who orchestrated the leak. The common practice when trying to solve a crime is to look for who had the motive, in this case all fingers point to Cheney himself. This thinking is also shared by Fitzgerald who is reportedly preparing a case against Cheney. If this case goes to trial it will be very interesting indeed and may sound the death knell for Bush’s shaky administration.

For more insight into this issue read former CIA analyst Ray McGovern’s column : Why Cheney Lost it When Joe Wilson Spoke Out

By John Scott

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.

Last week two Florida teenagers, age 16 and 17, were were prosecuted for producing, directing and promoting a photograph featuring the sexual conduct of children. The kicker of it all is that the individuals featured in the photos were each other. Under Florida law it was perfectly legal for the two teens to engage in sexual intercourse, but apparently documenting the act was just too much.

Confused? Let me explain. The two children were prosecuted on the basis of Florida’s child pornography laws, which are in existence to protect children from being exploited. In this case, neither of the two were exploited. They willingly engaged in a sexual act, and both willingly photographed the incident. The photos were never made public. The boy emailed a photo to the girl, and the girl emailed a photo to the boy. They didn’t do anything wrong in my opinion!

I’d be willing to bet that this whole ordeal was the result of an overprotected, somewhat crazy parent of one of the teens. Otherwise, how would anyone have found out? It’s time for parents to get realistic. Teenagers have sex, and that likely includes your own little angel. Publicly humilating and punishing them for something that is natural is sickening and wrong. And just as wrong as that is the state and the courts that actually try cases like this. The pornography laws are in effect to stop the 50-year-old perverts from exploiting children, not to stop teens from having consensual sex and taking photos of it.

In late 1998, Amnesty International issued a report in which they expose how the United States justice system incarcerates more children than any other country in the world. Amongst their findings in the report are that approximately 200,000 children per ear are prosecuted in general criminal courts, with an estimated 7,000 of those held in jail before trial. Over 11,000 children were also currently being housed in prisons and other adult correctional facilities.

When we think of children being tried as adults, we tend to think of a sociopathic or antisocial child that has committed some kind of extremely violent act. But the reality of the situation is very different. More than half of children whose cases were transfered out of the juvenile courts were charged with non-violent offenses.

Sure, the US is a large country, but proportionately the US still puts far more children behind bars than any other country.

Jason Zeidenberg, policy analyst with the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, said:

“The US puts more of its children behind bars than any other nation on earth. To give you a comparison, the U.S. has more than five times the number of incarcerated children as India, a country of nine hundred million people.”

Zeidenberg went on to describe how the incarceration of children affects their future prospects and liklihood of re-offending:

“Children who have been incarcerated are three times more likely to re-offend within the next year as children who are sentenced to alternatives to incarceration. Such alternatives can include counseling, community service, reparations and a whole host of others. Also, all of these alternatives are much less expensive than incarceration.”

Even more startling in the Amnesty International report is a description of the treatment of children who are incarcerated. They are not treated with kid gloves, and in fact, the use of solitary confinement is a very common practice with youth offenders. Amnesty International’s study also pointed to a study conducted in 1992 which found nearly 89,000 cases in which a child was palced in solitary confinement for more than 24 hours.

Children who end up in juvenile jail far worse off than their counterparts who receive some kind of alternative treatment, but those who find themselves in adult instituations find themselves in an even more bleak situation. These children in adult institutions are five times more likely to be raped, three times more likely to be beaten by staff, and eight times more likely to commit suicide than are children in juvenile institutions.

If you are intersted in reading the report, you can find it here in their feature section on Juvenile Justice.