I always got a sketchy vibe from Lou Pearlman, the man who created the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync. But I never knew Pearlman was flat out evil. Pearlman was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in federal prison after admiting to fooling thousands of investors out of their life savings, amny of which were friends and retirees in their 70s or 80s. Yes, the daddy of boy bands swiddled his friends out of their life savings. Pearlman received the maximum 25 year sentence for scamming roughly $300 million from investors and banks since 80s. Disgusting.

Sadly this isn’t the first time some creep has manipulated elders out of cash. To learn more about financial elder abuse and help prevent it  and visit http://www.bewiseonline.org

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Human Rights Watch released a new report called Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and Race in the United States which found that blacks are arrested and imprisoned for drug-related crimes at a much higher rate than whites, although whites commit more drug offenses.  The report says that a black man is 12 times more likely to be sent to prison for a drug offense than a white man and a black woman, five times more likely than a white woman.

To learn how to stop this and other offensive actions that undermine our human rights visit http://hrw.org/ 

And read the full Targeting Blacks report at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/us0508/

Sylvester Stallone and Rambo are symbols of machismo, testosterone, fighting, shooting, punching, and… international human rights activism? To the people of Myanmar (Burma), who are living under an oppressive military junta, Rambo has become the poster boy for the pro-democracy movement, which, ironically, is non-violent, peaceful and largely Buddhist.

Nothing proves the democracy-inspiring potential of the film more than the Burmese Government’s decision to ban the movie, and the Burmese people’s decision to risk going to jail by downloading and burning dvds of the international blockbuster hit. Even the US Campaign for Burma applauds the film for its realistic representation of the brutality of the junta. SPOILER ALERT:

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