As Translated by Google.com:
Rand’s “war to save the market” too absurd
雷思海 Lei Sihai
Lei Sihai
According to French media, the U.S. think tank the Rand Corporation agency Department of Defense has submitted an assessment report on the assessment to launch a war to be passed on the feasibility of the current economic crisis. According to the report, with 700,000,000,000 U.S. dollars to rescue the market effect, it may not be used 700,000,000,000 U.S. dollars to launch a war, and the object of the war against Iraq in the past or Afghanistan, may be a great power.
It is undeniable that the war has always been to continue the political, economic and political foundation and the ultimate goal. Continuous deepening of the U.S. sub-loan crisis and economic recession, has developed to a certain extent, is likely to trigger war, the crisis in order to pass.
However, other countries, especially major powers to wage war, is not child’s play, even a superpower like the United States is no exception. First of all, the current inability of the United States has launched a large-scale war. Recently, the new U.S. security think-tank Center and the United States, “Foreign Policy” magazine, the U.S. military on active duty and retired military officers conducted a public opinion poll showed that nearly 90% of the active-duty and retired military officers believe, dragged down by the war in Iraq, the U.S. military Has quietened down considerably, 80% of the respondents believe that the United States at this time unable to re-launch another large-scale war.
Second, the United States has no moral cohesion, it is difficult to find allies in the war. 1991 In 1991 the first Gulf War, although the main U.S. military is fighting, but the money is in Japan and its allies in Western Europe. War allies to join not only the United States won the moral high, and obtained the help of a lot of money; but in 2003 the war in Iraq, the United States of the Western European allies France, Germany, none joined the opposition, the United States to bear the basic All of the costs of war and morally by the world media condemned for a long time.
This shows that although the strength of the United States is very powerful, and can not be changed with the development of human civilization and progress of the war. In today’s world, the United States to launch a financial crisis in order to transfer for the purpose of the war, and the same fascist war, will surely be cast aside all over the world, and to speed up their decline.
Third, the United States and a major power in any war, is bound to accelerate the rise of other powers. The United States is facing the worst situation is not limited to domestic, from other economies, the threat of the United States is most worried about. French President Sarkozy issued a “tear down the U.S. economy and rebuild the world economy” is aimed at overturning the U.S. economic hegemony, replaced by the European Union; Japan is also actively preparing for the Asian dollar zone in Southeast Asia replaced the United States ; By Russia for energy and military wings, ready to build a regional rubles; In addition, China has become a recognized leader in the new economic voice in Third World countries one after another.
In this case, the United States and any of the great powers of the war, will accelerate the rise of other competitors. The so-called “struggle between snipe and the clam grapple, Fisherman’s benefit”, in World War I and World War II, the United States are waiting for the two warring sides have huge losses when the final accession to the profit and thus able to achieve hegemony in the world today . Old Road here in the United States, also is not clear how this will be?
As a result, the United States think-tank of the “war to save the U.S. financial crisis” argument, may seem a threat to other countries, but is in fact a kind of “almost hopeless” feeling. And the financial crisis is a struggle between different interests, the world’s great powers in any war, would be a struggle for survival, whether Russia, China, India and Europe or the U.S. itself, will be involved in more than The interests of a more fundamental right to life for is the crux of the interests of any one of the major powers can not give up. Therefore, if the United States through other countries on the war solve the financial crisis in the nuclear age, does not have is operational, it will not work.
In the financial turmoil in the world, countries have to question the current U.S. hegemony as the main indicator of the international financial system, irrationality, the United States are allies in the European Union put forward the idea of returning to the Bretton Woods system. In the next month on the 15th of the global financial upcoming summit, the United States on the war and save the market, rather than real strategic options in the United States, the United States might as well be said to be a bargaining chip to increase the shout out. 国际在线-世界新闻报 International Online – News of the World
Original Chinese-Language Story at Sohu.com
(10/31/08)
* Story Highlights
* Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in Tennessee on Thursday
* McConnell cited 1993 World Trade Center attack shortly after Bill Clinton took office
* Also cited 9/11attacks less than eight months after George W. Bush took office
* McConnell said presidential candidates have received intelligence briefings
From Pam Benson
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The nation’s chief intelligence official warned Thursday that a new president’s first year in office is the most perilous time for the country.
“I would say the period of most vulnerability for the United States is the first year of a new president,” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told an annual conference of intelligence officials and contractors in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday.
McConnell cited the attack on the World Trade Center shortly after Bill Clinton took over the presidency in 1993 and the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, which occurred less than eight months after George W. Bush took the oath of office.
McConnell’s comments seemed similar to those made recently by Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, who was criticized when he suggested his running mate Barack Obama would be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in office. Biden referred to it as a “generated crisis to test the mettle” of Obama.
Republican nominee John McCain seized on Biden’s remarks, telling supporters, “We don’t want a president who invites testing from the world when the economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting two wars.” Obama’s campaign responded that Biden raised “the simple fact that history shows presidents face challenges from Day One.”
McConnell indicated that presidential candidates have received intelligence briefings with the focus mostly on terrorism. After the election, the new president will immediately begin getting a more comprehensive intelligence briefing — including details about operations and covert activities — that is provided President Bush each day.
McConnell said the president-elect’s excitement “is going to be dampened somewhat when he begins to focus on the realities of the myriad of changes and challenges we are going to face in the future.” One of those “challenges” include the prospect of an attack by a biological agent, which he said might “create casualties greater than 9/11.”
Source: CNN.com
You’d think the emergence of a fatal disease—especially one that can be spread without physical contact—would be a big story. Yet a threatening new form of tuberculosis called extremely drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB, has garnered almost no attention. That could soon change, with a new publicity campaign in 50 cities worldwide, centered on a series of dramatic pictures by photographer James Nachtwey and an Internet campaign at xdrtb.org. As the campaign shows, TB is not just an affliction of an earlier era. It still infects millions of people, killing about 1 in 6 of them. In the 1990s, there emerged a scary new version called multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). And now there is XDR, which is even harder to treat.
NEWSWEEK’s Anne Underwood spoke with Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the World Health Organization’s Stop TB Department, and Anna Cataldi, world ambassador for WHO’s Stop TB Partnership. Cataldi has served in the past as a U.N. messenger of peace for former Secretary General Kofi Annan, and as spokeswoman for UNICEF in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Why have we heard so little about XDR-TB? When did it emerge?
Anna Cataldi: It emerged several years ago. [The first official reports from the WHO and CDC were published in March 2006.] It didn’t get much attention because of all the publicity surrounding avian flu.
How many cases of XDR are there?
Dr. Mario Raviglione: We don’t know for sure, because the vast majority of countries have no sophisticated laboratory equipment to detect it. There are nine million cases of TB every year, including half a million cases of MDR. The general estimate is that about 10 percent of MDR cases are actually XDR. We’re talking 30,000 to 50,000 cases worldwide in the latest estimate.
Cataldi: Some of the first places where it was found were South Africa, where it is spread by miners who are migrants, and in jails in the former Soviet Union. But now there are cases in more than 40 countries. A few cases have been diagnosed in New York.
How high is the death rate?
Cataldi: In KwaZulu-Natal [South Africa], there is 90 percent mortality. Patients survive one to two months. There are no good drugs to treat it. That’s why it’s so dangerous. It could become much worse than SARS. If it spreads, it could turn into a deadly pandemic.
Raviglione: But the mortality rate isn’t entirely known. In other countries with more aggressive treatment protocols, mortality is more like 50 percent. In Peru, a study in the New England Journal of medicine showed a cure rate of 60 percent. That’s the highest anyone has achieved with XDR.
Read the rest of the story here at Newsweek.com
Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) can be cured in HIV-negative patients through individualised outpatient treatment, even in countries with limited resources and a heavy burden of TB.
XDR-TB has been reported in 49 countries throughout the world. This study shows that a comprehensive, ambulatory management program can cure more than 60% of HIV-negative XDR-TB patients in spite of numerous, prior unsuccessful TB treatments. This ambulatory model could be widely implemented in resource-poor settings.
The death sentence that too often accompanies a diagnosis of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) can be commuted if an individualised outpatient therapy program is followed – even in countries with limited resources and a heavy burden of TB.
A study conducted in Peru between 1999 and 2002 shows that more than 60% of XDR-TB patients not co-infected with HIV were cured after receiving the bulk of their personalised treatment at home or in community-based settings. The paper appears in the August 7, 2008 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
“It’s essential that the world know that XDR-TB is not a death sentence,” says lead author Carole Mitnick, instructor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). “As or even more importantly, our study shows that effective treatment does not require hospitalisation or indefinite confinement of patients.”
In some parts of the world, however, patients with XDR-TB and other drug-resistant forms of the disease are confined against their will in TB hospitals that resemble prisons, Mitnick adds.
Researchers from HMS, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Partners In Health, Harvard School of Public Health, and the Massachusetts State Laboratory Institute, along with Lima, Peru-based organisations Socios en Salud, the Peruvian Ministry of Health, and Hospital Nacional Sergio E. Bernales, had already demonstrated that aggressive, outpatient treatment could cure multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is resistant to two first-line anti-TB drugs. That pilot program has been adopted as a national endeavour by the Peruvian government.
A similar protocol was used for the recent study of XDR-TB, which is caused by TB bacteria that are resistant not only to the same first-line anti-TB drugs, but also to the two most important second-line drug classes.
A total of 810 patients with unsuccessfully treated tuberculosis were referred for free individualised drug treatment and additional services as needed, including surgery, adverse-event management, and nutritional and psychological support. Sputum culture and drug-susceptibility testing results, performed at the Massachusetts State Laboratory Institute in Boston, were available for 651 patients. Based on susceptibility results for 12 anti-TB drugs, clinicians developed regimens that included five or more drugs to which the infecting strains were likely to respond. Forty-eight patients had XDR-TB; 603 had MDR-TB. None of the XDR-TB patients were co-infected with the HIV virus.
At the end of treatment, 60.4% in the XDR-TB group were cured; 66.3% with MDR-TB were cured. The outcomes among XDR-TB patients were better than most reported from hospital settings in Europe, the U.S., and Korea, Mitnick says.
Frequent contact with healthcare workers afforded many benefits and was an important element of success. Daily, supervised treatment was delivered in patient homes and at community health centres. The community health workers ensured a high level of treatment adherence and promptly detected circumstances requiring additional attention, including adverse events. Psycho-social needs were also assessed continuously and addressed through a range of interventions.
“It’s important for people to understand that this ambulatory form of treatment exists, is successful, and can be widely implemented in resource-poor settings,” Mitnick says.
Community-based interventions also protect hospital patients and staff from transmission of TB and allow TB patients to remain with their families during this protracted treatment. If hospitals have to accommodate only those with serious medical needs, this intervention can be implemented widely, and earlier in the disease course.
The benefits would be profound, Mitnick says. In addition to reduced morbidity and mortality among patients, an epidemiologic impact could be expected: a decrease in the incidence of resistant TB has been reported only in places where universal screening and treatment for DR-TB are offered at first TB diagnosis.
“DR-TB is everywhere in the world it’s been looked for and it’s not going away without additional resources,” Mitnick says. According to a notice issued by the World Health Organisation this year, ever since it was first described in 2006, XDR-TB has been reported in 49 countries, including the United States. Approximately 1.5 million people are estimated to have MDR-TB, “but no one really knows how many have XDR-TB.” Expanded community-based delivery of improved treatment is essential to stem this epidemic.
Source:BizCommunity.com
