Monday, November 29th, 2010
Stephan: This is one of the reasons I do not think that financial stability in the near term is likely. This is not over, and it holds great political significance. If you are interested in the euro crisis this is a good statement of the situation.
Borrowing costs for Europe’s most indebted nations are at record highs as Ireland’s capitulation in accepting a bailout of its banking industry stokes concern that other countries also will have to seek aid.
The average yield for 10-year debt from Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy reached 7.57 percent today, a euro- era record. The average premium investors demand to hold those securities instead of German bunds widened to as much as 492 basis points, the highest level of 2010. The average cost of insuring against default by the five nations using credit- default swaps reached a record 517 basis points on Nov. 23.
‘It’s no longer taboo to speak about a restructuring,
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Monday, November 29th, 2010
DAVID LEIGH, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: I think that instead of treating this as a crisis, we should treat it as a random event that offers a chance to restructure the game. The smart strategic move would be to say, 'Yep, this is the raw material of our thinking. It's the truth Robert Mugabe is a nasty egomaniacal man. Afghanistan is irrevocably and impossibly corrupt by our standards, but it works for them. And if we looked at the cable traffic of other diplomatic services its candor would be much the same. So let's start from this truth and moved on from there. Akidoing this would do much to clarify what the United States is really about, and would force a new public conversation: Is this what we want our country to do?
The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year.
At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables – many designated ‘secret’ – the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN leadership.
These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world. But the secret dispatches, which were obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers’ website, also reveal Washington’s evaluation of many other highly sensitive international issues.
These include a shift in relations between China and North Korea, high-level concerns over Pakistan’s growing instability, and details of clandestine US efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.
Among scores of disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail:
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Monday, November 29th, 2010
KLAUS WIEDREFE, - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: It wasn't just that Bush, Cheney, Feith, Rice, Wolfowitz and others were criminally culpable for starting a completely unnecessary war, in spite of all attempts to dissuade them. It was their utter amateurish incompetence. I have just finished reading imperial Life in the Emerald City a book I commend to your attention. If you react as I did it will leave you with jaw dropping astonishment at how utterly mediocre these people were as statesmen, and strategists. With each revelation it becomes clearer and more irrefutable that through their decisions they have stripped America of over a trillion dollars and killed hundreds of thousands, including thousands of Americans, and wounded and maimed hundreds of thousands more. History I think will be merciless, and accountability in this lifetime would be very appropriate.
Thanks to James Spottiswoode.
A classified document obtained by SPIEGEL shows notes from a meeting between a top German diplomat and Condoleezza Rice just weeks before the Iraq invasion. It indicates steps by the German government to prevent the war and undermines claims in George W. Bush’s memoir that Gerhard Schröder indicated he would support the president should the US go to war.
Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer made every effort they could. The German chancellor and foreign minister spared no effort with their appeals, whether in public or private, in small groups or with the eyes of the entire world upon them. In the end, though, it was all for naught. Then-United States President George W. Bush wouldn’t allow anyone to change his mind. He was dead set on launching a war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and thereby bringing ‘freedom,’ as he put it, to the Middle East. It was a freedom that Bush described as ‘ God’s gift to mankind.’
Over time, however, this would-be gift from God has grown to become the biggest foreign-policy disaster in US history since the Vietnam War. The
war in Iraq
and its subsequent occupation has cost more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians and over 4,000 American soldiers their […]
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Sunday, November 28th, 2010
Stephan: Further data on climate change. And, of course, these are not without consequences, which we barely understand yet.
Climate change over the past 25 years is responsible for a temperature increase seen in more than 150 of the world’s largest lakes, new satellite data shows.
The results suggest an average warming rate of 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit (0.45 degrees Celsius) per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
Even small changes in water temperature can result in blooms of algae that can make a lake toxic to fish or result in the introduction of non-native species that change the lake’s natural ecosystem, the researchers say.
‘Our analysis provides a new, independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change over land around the world,’ said Philipp Schneider, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Schneider is lead author of the paper describing the research to be published on Nov. 24 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Schneider and JPL’s Simon Hook used thermal infrared imagery from satellites of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the European Space Agency. They focused on summer temperatures (July-September in the Northern Hemisphere and January-March in the Southern […]
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Sunday, November 28th, 2010
Stephan:
NEW YORK — November 23, 2010 — Contrary to widespread belief, patients with abnormal liver function who are given long-term statin treatment do not face an increased risk of liver disease, according to a study published online first and appearing in an upcoming print issue of The Lancet.
In fact, statins can improve liver function in patients with abnormal liver tests. Moreover, this study is the first to show a substantially greater cardiovascular benefit in patients with abnormal liver function tests compared with patients who have normal liver tests.
These findings suggest that statins are a safe and promising treatment strategy for patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
A rare adverse effect of statin use is increased levels of liver enzymes or serum transaminases like alanine aminotransferase (ALT). As a result, many physicians are reluctant to prescribe statins to patients with elevated ALT.
The safety and efficacy of long-term statin treatment in patients with NAFLD is unclear. Previous small and short-term studies in patients with raised ALT levels because of NAFLD have suggested that they are safe and improve liver tests and liver histology.
To provide more evidence, Vasilis Athyros, MD, Hippokration University Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece, and Dimitri Mikhailidis, MD, University College London, London, […]
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