PARIS — Patrick Lozès has a dream: One day France’s black citizens will enjoy the equality granted them under law. ‘To be black and proud – that’s not being anti-French,’ says Mr. Lozès, whose vision challenges France’s colorblind model of assimilation. ‘It’s simply theliberation of a people who don’t see themselves reflected in their country’s public life – in its theater, television, medicine, and universities – except in negative images.’ It is not an accident that Mr. Lozès’s words often contain echoes of Martin Luther King Jr. and other luminaries of the American civil rights movement. The African- American struggle for racial equality has been his prototype for France’s first national black lobbying organization. His group, called the Representative Council of Black Organizations (Le Conseil Représentative des Associations Noires, or CRAN), was founded in late 2005, just after widespread rioting in the suburban ghettos populated largely by the families of African and Arab immigrants. The riots were not the motivation for creating CRAN, according to Mr. Lozès. But they gave the group immediacy, momentum, and a high public profile. Its leaders have spent the past months holding conferences, setting up committees, and building a grass-roots […]
Inmates from Washington state prisons in the US are 13 times more likely to die within the first two weeks of their release than other people of similar age, sex and race. The most likely cause of death at this vulnerable period of a former inmate’s life is drug overdose, followed by suicide, heart disease, and homicide. This research is published in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study was led by Dr. Ingrid Binswanger of the Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Colorado at Denver, and the team included Dr. Marc Stern of the Washington State Department of Corrections, and other scientists from Seattle. The scientists conducted a retrospective cohort study on 30,237 former inmates who left prison in the period July 1999 to December 2003. They used data from prison records and linked it to the National Death Index. They compared the figures with those on Washington State residents, using data from the large epidemiological databases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The results showed that 443 of the former inmates had died during a mean follow-up period of 1.9 years after release, […]
The old strategy has been repackaged and it is just as unlikely to succeed. Worse, it demonstrates that this Administration still doesn’t understand the conflict in which it is engaged. In an op-ed piece in the Las Vegas Sun published 18 October 2001 I noted the necessity to define the war. To this date, the opposition defines the parameters of the conflict and the US responds. That is a fundamentally flawed policy. At the heart of the matter is that the conflict is not about Iraq, or any other territory for that matter. Still, we cling tenaciously to the anachronistic concept of wars based on geographic boundaries. The ongoing struggle is about religion and irreconcilable competing belief systems. It did not start with Saddam or when the US led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003, rather the genesis dates back thirteen hundred years. The impetus for this strife was exacerbated over a century ago when the Europeans divided up the Middle East at the end of the Ottoman Empire. The prime concern for establishing borders was interests of the European countries, not those of the inhabitants of the area. As […]
From a new analysis of a human skull discovered in South Africa more than 50 years ago, scientists say they have obtained the first fossil evidence establishing the relatively recent time for the dispersal of modern Homo sapiens out of Africa. The migrants appeared to have arrived at their new homes in Asia and Europe with the distinct and unmodified heads of Africans. An international team of researchers reported yesterday that the age of the South African skull, which they dated at about 36,000 years old, coincided with the age of the skulls of humans then living in Europe and the far eastern parts of Asia, even Australia. The skull also closely resembled skulls of those humans. The timing, the scientists and other experts said, introduced independent evidence supporting archaeological finds and recent genetic studies showing that modern humans left sub-Saharan Africa for Eurasia between 65,000 and 25,000 years ago; probably closer to 45,000 to 35,000 years ago for Europe. Until now, however, paleontologists had been frustrated by the absence of fossils to test the hypothesis of most geneticists that the people of sub-Saharan Africa and in Eurasia at that time were one and the same […]
Surfing the Web all night when you should be finishing an assignment that’s due … yesterday? You’re not alone. About 15 to 20 percent of the general population are procrastinators, with up to 90 percent of college students filling that bill. Now, a recent study reveals some causes of the foot-dragging phenomenon and what dooms New Year’s resolutions to failure. ‘Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task,’ said lead researcher Piers Steel of the University of Calgary. Procrastination can do more than set your work or school record back a notch. The daily delay can also drain your wallet. A survey by H&R Block found that waiting until the last minute to file taxes costs people an average of $400 because of rushing-caused errors, which totaled $473 million in overpayments in 2002. Why dawdle? Steel analyzed more than 200 past studies on procrastination, dating back to the 1920s through 2006. He found a strong link between impulsiveness and the ‘I’ll-do-it-tomorrow’ phenomenon. The research is detailed in the January issue of the journal Psychological Bulletin. Impulsive people value today far more than tomorrow. ‘So they […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
