美国政府关门影响期刊审稿 今天，收到一位美国审稿人的两封信, 一封说因为政府关门无法查看邮件，另外一封说审稿邀请信在政府关门期间收到，现在要处理政府关门期间累积的很多事情，没有时间审稿。 The Reviewer' two letters: 1. Not able to view my emails because of the government shutdown. I hope you have been able to find another suitable reviewer. 2. The request arrived during the government shutdown and thus was not able to see it. Because a lot of work has piled up during the shutdown I do not believe I have time to review th manuscript. I hope you were able to find a suitable replacement. 全球化让世界成为一个地球村，修高墙，设壁垒，搞贸易制裁，采取强硬措施让对手就范而不是通过友好协商解决问题，会让全世界地球村的村民都不好过。 本刊审稿人的最大群体来自美国，这波美国政府的关门, 加上ScholarOne稿件系统升级造成的一些问题，再加上各种高墙的存在，近期会对我们期刊造成较大的影响。
导演: 德文·格雷厄姆 主演: Matt Lynch / Sasha Andreev / Amanda Day 类型: 动作 / 短片 制片国家/地区: 美国 语言: 英语 上映日期: 2016-01-19 片长: 31分钟 IMDb链接: tt5354588 A devastating pandemic sweeps through New York City on Black Friday, and one by one, basic services fail. Within weeks, society collapses into chaos, and the government activates The Division, a classified unit of self-supporting agents. Leading seemingly ordinary lives among us, Division agents are trained to operate independently of command when all else fails. In Tom Clancy's The DivisionTM: Agent Origins, four newly activated agents must serve as civilization's last line of defense after a man-made virus devastates New York City. Based on the video game by Ubisoft®, this action-packed film introduces the world of The Division to fans of Tom Clancy movies. 下载地址： http://page92.ctfile.com/fs/SVu146515012 http://www.yimuhe.com/file-3016738.html
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzExNjM2NDky.html 英语口语常用句型-1 常用英语口语句型100 1. I'm an office worker. 我是上班族。 2. I work for the government. 我在政府机关做事。 3. I'm happy to meet you. 很高兴见到你。 4. I like your sense of humor. 我喜欢你的幽默感。 5. I'm glad to see you again. 很高兴再次见到你。 6. I'll call you. 我会打电话给你。 7. I feel like sleeping. 我想睡会儿。 8. I want something to eat. 我想吃点东西。 9. I need your help. 我需要你的帮助。 10. I would like to talk to you for a minute. 我想和你谈一下。 11. I have a lot of problems. 我有很多问题。 12. I hope our dreams come true. 我希望我们的梦想成真。 13. I'm looking forward to seeing you. 我期望见到你。 14. I'm supposed to go on a diet. 我应该节食。 15. I heard that you're getting married. Congratulations.听说你要结婚了，恭喜！ 16. I see what your mean. 我了解你的意思。 17. I can't do this. 我不能这么做。 18. Let me explain why I was late. 让我解释迟到的理由。 19. Let's have a beer or something. 咱们喝点啤酒什么的。 20. Where is your office? 你们的办公室在哪？ 21. What is your plan? 你的计划是什么？ 22. When is the store closing? 这家店什么时候结束营业？ 23. Are you sure you can come by at nine? 你肯定你九点能来吗？ 24. Am I allowed to stay out past 10? 我可以十点过后再回家吗？ 25. The meeting was scheduled for two hours, but it is not over yet. 会议原定了两个小时，不过现在还没有结束。 26. Tom's birthday is this week. 汤姆的生日就在这个星期。 27. Would you care to sit down for a while? 你要不要坐一会呢？ 28. Can you cover for me on Friday? 星期五能不能请你替我个班？ 29. Could you do me a big favor? 能否请你帮我个忙？ 30. He is crazy about Friends. 他对《老友记》很着迷。 31. Can you imagine how much he paid for that car?你能想象他买那车花了多少钱吗？ 32. Can you believe that I bought a TV for $25? 你能想象我只用25美元就买了台电视机吗？ 33. Did you know he was having an affair? 你知道他有外遇了吗？ 34. Did you hear about the new project? 你知道那个新项目吗？ 35. Do you realize that all of these shirts are half off? 你知道这些衬衫都卖半价了吗？ 36. Do you mind if I take tomorrow off? 你介意我明天请假吗？ 37. I enjoy working with you very much. 我很喜欢和你一起工作。 38. Did you know that Stone ended up marrying his secretary? 你知道吗？Stone最终和他的秘书结婚了。 39. Let's get together for lunch. 让我们一起吃顿午餐吧。 40. How did you do on your test? 你这次考试的结果如何？ 41. Do you think you can come? 你认为你能来吗？ 42. How was your weekend ? 你周末过得怎么样？ 43. Here is my card. 这是我的名片。 44. He is used to eating out all the time. 他已经习惯在外面吃饭了。 45. I'm getting a new computer for birthday present. 我得到一台电脑作生日礼物。 46. Have you ever driven a BMW? 你有没有开过宝马？ 47. How about if we go tomorrow instead? 我们改成明天去怎么样？ 48. How do you like Hong Kong? 你喜欢香港吗？ 49. How do you want your steak? 你的牛排要几分熟？ 50. How did the game turn out? 球赛结果如何？ 51. How did Mary make all of her money? 玛丽所有的钱是怎么赚到的？ 52. How was your date? 你的约会怎么样？ 53. How are you doing with your new boss? 你跟你的新上司处得如何？ 54. How should I tell him the bad news? 我该如何告诉他这个坏消息？ 55. How much money did you make? 你赚了多少钱？ 56. How much does it cost to go abroad? 出国要多少钱？ 57. How long will it take to get to your house? 到你家要多久？ 58. How long have you been here? 你在这里多久了？ 59. It feels like I've been here before. 感觉我以前来过这里。 60. How about going out for dinner? 出去吃晚餐如何？ 61. I'm sorry that you didn't get the job. 很遗憾，你没有得到那份工作。 62. I'm afraid that it's not going to work out. 我恐怕这事不会成的。 63. I guess I could come over. 我想我能来。 64. Is it OK to smoke in the office? 在办公室里抽烟可以吗？ 65. It was kind of exciting. 有点剌激。 66. I know what you want. 我知道你想要什么。 67. Is that why you don't want to go home? 这就是你不想回家的原因吗？ 68. I'm sure we can get you a great deal. 我很肯定我们可以帮你做成一笔好交易。 69. Would you help me with the report? 你愿意帮我写报告吗？ 70. I didn't know he was the richest person in the world.我不知道他是世界上最有钱的人。 71. I'll have to ask my wife first.我必须先问一下我的老婆。 72. I take it you don't agree. 这么说来，我认为你是不同意。 73. I tried losing weight, but nothing worked. 我曾试着减肥，但是毫无效果。 74. It doesn't make any sense to get up so early. 那么早起来没有任何意义。 75. It took years of hard work to speak good English. 讲一口流利的英语需要多年的刻苦操练。 76. It feels like spring。 感觉好像春天到了。 77. I wonder if they can make it. 我在想他们是不是能办得到。 78. It's not as cold as it was yesterday. 今天不像昨天那么冷。 79. It's not his work that bothers me; it's his attitude. 困扰我的不是他的工作，而是他的态度。 80. It sounds like you enjoyed it. 听起来你好像蛮喜欢的。 81. It seems to me that he would like to go back home. 我觉得他好像想要回家。 82.It looks very nice. 看起来很漂亮。 83. Is everything under control? 一切都在掌握之中吗？ 84. I thought you could do a better job. 我以为你的表现会更好。 85. It's time for us to say "No" to America. 是我们对美国说“不”的时候了。 86. The show is supposed to be good. 这场表演应当是相当好的。 87. It really depends on who is in charge. 那纯粹要看谁负责了。 88. It involves a lot of hard work. 那需要很多的辛勤工作。 89. That might be in your favor. 那可能对你有利。 90. I didn't realize how much this meant to you. 我不知道这个对你的意义有这么大。 91. I didn't mean to offend you. 我不是故意冒犯你。 92. I was wondering if you were doing anything this weekend. 我想知道这个周末你有什么要做。 93. May I have your attention, please? 请大家注意一下。 94. This is great golfing weather. 这是个打高尔夫球的好天气。 95. Thanks for taking me to the movie. 谢谢你带我去看电影。 96. I am too tired to speak. 我累得说不出活来。 97. Would you tell me your phone number? 你能告诉我你的电话号码吗？ 98. Where did you learn to speak English? 你从哪里学会说英语的呢？ 99. There is a TV show about AIDS on right now. 电视正在播放一个关于爱滋病的节目。 100. What do you think of his new job? 你对他的新工作看法如何？ 英语口语中最常用句型30个 我们都知道学习英语口语的关键是语音，然后是句型。有关英语口语句型，方向标英语网之前也介绍了很多。今天方向标英语网为大家编辑了20个英语口语中最常用的句型，希望大家可以经常练习这些句型，并熟练掌握： 1.People have a growing respect for something 人们对......越来越重视 2.Place a high value on something 人们重视、看中、珍爱某物 3.Sharpen ones edge 增强竞争力 4.Give sonebady the edge 是某人具有竞争力 5.Play a central role in 其重要作用 6.Something is beneficial(rewarding) 对.....有好处 7.As ....evolves 随着......的发展 8.Is becoming increasingly rital 变得越来越重要 9.Is becoming increasingly prevalent 变得越来越普遍 10.Generally speaking.......... 11.As we all know...... 12.Nowadays with the development of ....... 13.Peoples views on.......vary from person to person 14.Attitude towards...... 15.It is a proverb says....... 16.Have you ever thought that....... 17.These days we often hear about...... but is this really the case A recent studly provided that 18.Some people think that ...however other think that..... 19.Although the popular belief is that...a new survey indicates that.. 20.Although it is widely accepted that..it is unlikely to be true that. 21.It is one thing to believe that..it is quite another to say that.. 22.There are a variety of cause for this extraordinary growth in.... First.....second.....finally.... 23.I fully agree with the stutement that....the reason are chiefly as follows.... 24.Judging from all evidence we may safely draw the concldsion that.. 25.Frow what hava been discussed above we may say that...... 26.All the evidence supports a condusion that..... 27.It is therefore clear that..... So we must be aware of the importance of ....... 28.Since all of us have realized....why not....... 29.It is high time we put an end to .... 30.It is necessary that effective actions should be taken to prevent the situation...... 最常用的100個句型 1. I am writing to confirm /enquire/inform you… 我写信时要确认/询问/通知你… 2. I am writing to follow up on our earlier decision on the marketing campaign in Q2. 我写信来追踪我们之前对于第二季度营销活动的决定。 3. With reference to our telephone conversation today…关于我们今天在电话中的谈话。 4. In my previous e-mail on October 5…先前在10月5日所写的信… 5. As I mentioned earlier about… 如我先前所提及关于… 6. as indicated in my previous e-mail… 如我在先前的信中所提出… 7. As we discussed on the phone… 如我们上次在电话中的讨论… 8. from our decision at the previous meeting… 如我们在上次会议中的决定… 9. as you requested/per your requirement… 按照你的要求… 10.In reply to your e-mail dated April 1，we decided…回答你在4月1日写的信，我们决定… 11.This is in response to your e-mail today.这是针对你今天早上来信的回复。 12. As mentioned before, we deem this product has strong unique selling points in china. 如先前所述，我们认为这个产品在中国有强有力且独一无二的销售点。 13. As a follow-up to our phone conversation yesterday, I wanted to get back to you about the pending issues of our agreement. 追踪我们昨天在电话中所谈，我想答复你我们合约的一些待解决的议题。 14. I received your voice message regarding the subject. I’m wondering if you can elaborate i.e. provide more details. 我收到你关于这个主题的留言。我想你是否可以再详尽说明，也就是再提供多一点细节。 15. Please be advised/informed that… 请被告知… 16. Please note that…请注意… 17. We would like to inform you that…我们想要通知你… 18. I am convinced that…我确信… 19. We agree with you on… 我们同意你在… 20. With effect from 4 Oct., 2008…从2008年10月4日开始生效… 21. We will have a meeting scheduled as noted below…我们将举行一个会议，时间表如下。 22. Be assured that individual statistics are not disclosed and this is for internal use only. 请确保个人信息不会外泄且只供内部使用。 23. I am delighted to tell you that… 我很高兴地告诉你… 24. We are pleased to learn that… 我们很高兴得知… 25. We wish to notify you that… 我们希望通知你… 26. Congratulation on your… 恭喜您关于… 27. I am fine with the proposal. 我对这份提案没意见。 28.I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to join the workshop scheduled for 22-24 Nov,2008. 我很高兴地告诉你，你已经被同意参加2008年11月22-24日的研讨会。 29. We are sorry to inform you that… 我们很抱歉地通知你… 30. I’m afraid I have some bad news. 我恐怕要带来一些坏消息。 31. There are a number of issues with our new system. 我们的新系统有些问题。 32. Due to circumstances beyond our control…由于情况超出我们所能控制… 33. I don’t feel too optimistic about…我觉得不太乐观关于… 34. It would be difficult for us to accept… 我们很难接受… 35. Unfortunately I have to say that, since receiving your enquiries on the subject, our view has not changed. 很不幸地，我必须这么说，自从收到你关于这个主题的询问，我们的看法都没有改变。 36. We would be grateful if you could…我们会很感激如果你可以… 37. I could appreciate it if you could… 我会很感激如果你可以… 38. Would you please send us…? 可否请你寄给我们…？ 39. We need your help. 我们需要你的帮助。 40. We seek your assistance to cascade/reply this message to your staff. 我们请求你的帮助，将此信息传达给你们的员工。 41. We look forward to your clarification. 我们期待你的澄清。 42.Your prompt attention to this matter will be appreciated.您能立即注意此事，我们将非常感激。 43. I would really appreciate meeting up if you can spare the time. Please let me know what suits you best.如果您能抽出时间，我希望能与你见面，请让我知道您最适合的时间。 44.Please give us your preliminary thoughts about this.请让我知道你对于这件事情初步的想法。 45. Would you please reply to this e-mail if you plan to attend? 请您回信如果您计划参加？ 46.Please advise if you agree with this approach.请告知是否你同意这个方法。 47. Could you please let me know the status of this project? 请让我知道这个计划的进度？ 48. If possible, I hope to receive a copy of your proposal when it is finished. 如果可能，当你完成提案，我希望能收到一份复本。 49. I would appreciate it very much if you would send me your reply by next Monday. 如果能在下周一前收到您的答复，我将非常感激。 50. Hope this is OK with you. If not, let me know by e-mail ASAP. 希望您对此没有问题，如果不行，请利用电子邮件尽快让我知道。 51. Could you please send me your replies to the above questions by the end of June? 请您在6月份前答复我上述问题好吗？ 52. May I have your reply by April 1, if possible? 如果可能，我可否在4月1日前收到您的答复？ 53. If you wish, we would be happy to… 如果你希望，我们很乐意… 54. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. 请让我知道任何我可以帮得上忙的地方。 55.If there’s anything else I can do for you on/regarding this matter, please feel free to contact me at any time.对于这件事，如果还有任何我能帮得上忙的地方，请不要客气，随时与我联络。 56.If you want additional recommendations on this, please let us know and we can try to see if this is possible.如果关于此事你需要额外的建议，请让我们知道，我们会尝试看看是否可能。 57. I’m just writing to remind you of… 我只是写信来提醒您… 58. May we remind you that…? 我们想要提醒您… 59. I am enclosing…我附上… 60. Please find enclosed… 请查阅附件… 61. Attached hereto … 附件是關于… 62. Attached please find the most up-to-date information on/regarding/concerning… 附上關于某某的最新資料… 63. Attached please find the draft product plan for your review and comment. 附上產品計劃書的草稿，請審查及評價。 64. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me. 如果你有任何問題，請不要客氣與我聯絡。 65. I hope my clarification has been helpful. 希望我的說明是有幫助的。 66. Please feel free to call me at any time, I will continually provide full support. 67. Please let me know if this is suitable. 請讓我知道這是否恰當。 68. Looking forward to seeing you soon. 期待很快能見到你。 69. We look forward to hearing from you soon. 我們期待很快能得到您的回復。 70. Hope this is clear and we are happy to discuss this further if necessary. 希望上述說明很清楚，如有必要，我們很樂意再進一步討論。 71. I look forward to receiving your reply soon. 我期待很快能收到你的回復。 72. Looking forward to receiving your comments in due course. 期待在預期的時間收到你的反饋。 73. I’ll keep you posted. 我會與你保持聯絡。 74. Please keep me informed on the matter. 請隨時讓我知道這件事的發展。 75. For any comments/suggestions, please contact Nadia at 2552-7482. 任何評價或建議，請打電話2552-7482聯絡Nadia。 76. I would like to apologize for… 我想就…道歉… 77. I apologize for the delay in …對于…的耽擱，我深感抱歉。 78. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused. 對于產生任何不便，我們感到抱歉。 79. I am sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you. 對于造成你的任何不便，我感到抱歉。 80. I’m sorry about last time. 關于上次的事我很抱歉。 81.We apologize for not replying you earlier.對于未能早一點回信給你，我們感到抱歉。 82. I’m really sorry about this. 關于這件事，我真的很抱歉。 83. Sorry, I’m late in replying to your e-mail dated Monday, April 1. 抱歉，太遲回您在4月1日（星期一）發給我的郵件。 84. We apologize for the delay and hope that it doesn’t inconvenience you too much. 我們為耽擱道歉，希望不會給您帶來太多的不便。 85.Hoping that this will not cause you too much trouble.希望不會為您帶來太多的麻煩。 86.Sorry if my voice message is not clear enough.如果我的電話留言不夠清楚,我深感抱歉. 87. Thank you for your help. 謝謝你的幫助。 88. I appreciate very much that you… 我非常感激你… 89. I truly appreciate it. 我真的很感激。 90. Thank you for your participation. 謝謝你的參加。 91. Thank you so much for inviting me. 非常感謝你要請我。 92.Congratulations to all of you and thanks for your efforts.恭喜各位并謝謝各位的努力。 93. Your understanding and cooperation is greatly/highly appreciated. 很感激你的理解及合作。 94. Your prompt response will be most appreciated. 很感激你快速的答復。 95. Once again, thank you all for your commitment and support. 再一次感謝你的承諾及支持。 96. Thanks for your input/clarification/message. 謝謝你的投入/澄清/信息。 97. Any comments will be much appreciated. 對于您的任何建議，我將非常感激。 98. Thank you very much for everything you’ve done for me. 謝謝你為我做的一切。 99. I would appreciate your kindest understanding with/regarding this matter. 我很感激你對這件事情的理解。 100. Please convey my thanks to all the staff involved, they certainly did an excellent job. 請表達我的謝意給那些有關的同仁，他們真的干得很好。, 英语口语常用功能性句型及实例 1. 强调自己的观点： I won't write to him unless he writes to mefirst. I mean it./I’m serious。 2. 向别人提建议： I would advise you to get up earlier on Mondays, because there'salways a traffic jam。 You’d better to take a second think on the job offer。 If I were you, I would have deleted all those junk mails。 3. 表达偏好： I would like to take a walk rather than watch TV thisweekend。 I would rather stay at home than go shopping onsuch humid day。 I like apple pie more than pizza。 4. 表达不高兴： I wouldn't feel happy if you didn't come to my birthdayparty。 I don’t want to hear that from you anymore。 This conversation is over。 No comments。 Please leave me alone。 5. 表达高兴： I’m excited/thrilled to be invited as today’s honored guest。 You look like a gay dog! Today’s somebody’s big day! Today is a red letter day! What a nice surprise to meet you here! 6. 事不关己/不感兴趣/不理睬： Who cares? That’s none of my business。 Every time I meet Alice, she just gives me a cold shoulder。 7. 表达好恶： I'm(not) interested in joiningthe English corner。 That’s(not) my cup of tea。 I’m(not) a big fan of basketball。 I’m(not) a basketball-holic/work-holic。 I’m fond of travelling around。 I’m absorbed in the novel。 I can’t find any attraction here。 8. 吸引别人注意/引起话题： Guess what? Tom said hewon the $500,000 lottery! You’ll never know who’s won the election this time。 Does that ring a bell to you? 9. 警告讨厌的人： Don't over-do it。 You’ve crossed the line this time。 Leave me alone, please。 This should be the last time for that。 No trick! 10. 表示质疑/怀疑： I doubt whether Susan hasdone the homework by herself。 You can’t be serious。 Do you mean/Are you saying that Mary is splitting with her husband?That can’t be true! You must be kidding/joking! Are you crazy/insane? Are you out of your mind? What’s the problem of you! 11. 表赞同： You bet! I’m with you。 I’m on your side! You can say that again! I can’t agree with you anymore! 12. 表不赞同： I can’t say。 That doesn’t make any sense。 I won’t buy it。 13. 恭维别人： That’s very impressive! I’m impressed/ I’m impressed by all what you’ve done here。 It’s beyond my wildest expectation。 It’s more than fantastic! 14. 提出不同意见： No offense, but you lookbigger in that white suit。 Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think it’s the good time for you tobuy a new house。 Sorry, but I should say no on your plan。 15. 打断别人的谈话： Could you please give me aminute? Sorry to interrupt you, but the time is limited。 Ok, can we just skip that part? 16. 介绍突发情况： Hey guys, we need plan B。 Sorry to tell you in the last minute, but today’s meeting has beencanceled。 Sorry for the short notice, but the meeting has been canceled。 17. 表示遗憾： What a pity! It’s a shame that Bill has to resign。 18. 欢迎别人： We’re so glad to have youhere! Nice talking to you! You’re coming at the right time! 19. 表示提议： Let’s make it at 5 pmtoday。 Let’s call it a day。 20. 表示让步： Well, you’re the boss。 It’s up to you。 You have the final say。 Yes, I’m listening。 21. 和别人确认没听清的事情： Can you say that again, please? Do you mean that you want to go abroad? You’ve just said you want to quit the job, is that true? 掌握大量的英语句型对于提高口语水平是非常有帮助的，下面方向标英语网为大家精选了生活中最常用的60个句子。 一、 Greetings 问候语 1． Hello！ / Hi！你好！ 2． Good morning / afternoon / evening！早晨（下午/晚上）好！ 3． I'm Kelly．我是凯莉。 4． Are you Tom? 你是汤姆吗? 5． Yes， I am． / No， I'm not．是，我是。/ 不，我不是。 6． How are you? 你好吗? 7． Fine， thanks． And you? 很好，谢谢，你呢? 8． I'm fine， too．我也很好。 9． How is Lily / your wife / your husband? 莉莉好吗?/你妻子好吗?/你丈夫好吗? 10． She is very well， thank you．她很好，谢谢。 11． Good night，Sunny．晚安，珊妮。 12． Good－bye， Mike．再见，迈克。 13． See you tomorrow．明天见。 14． See you later．待会儿见。 15． I have to go now．我必须走了。 二、Expression In Class 课堂用语 16． May I come in? 我能进来吗? 17． Come in， please．请进。 18． Sit down， please．请坐。 19． It's time for class．上课时间到了。 20． Open your books and turn to page 20．打开书，翻到第20页。 21． I'll call the roll before class．课前我要点名。 22． Here！到！ 23． Has everybody got a sheet? 每个人都拿到材料了吗? 24． Any different opinion? 有不同意见吗? 25． Are you with me? 你们跟上我讲的了吗? 26． Have I made myself clear? 我讲明白了吗? 27． Could you say it again? 你能再说一遍吗? 28． Any questions? 有什么问题吗? 29． That's all for today．今天就讲到这里。 30． Please turn in your paper before leaving．请在离开前将论文交上。 三、Identifying Objects 辨别物品 31． What's this? 这是什么? 32． It's a pen．是支笔。 33． Is this your handbag? 这是你的手提包吗? 34． No， it isn't． / Yes， it is．不，它不是。/是的，它是。 35． Whose pen is this? 这是谁的笔? 36． It's Kate's．是凯特的。 37． Is that a car? 那是一辆小汽车吗? 38． No， it isn't． It's a bus．不，那是一辆公共汽车。 39． What do you call this in English? 这个用英语怎么说? 40． What is the color of your new book? 你的新书是什么颜色的? 41． How big is your house? 你的房子有多大? 42． How long is the street? 这条街有多长? 43． What's the name of the cat? 这猫叫什么名字? 44． Where's the company? 那个公司在哪儿? 45． Which is the right size? 哪个尺码是对的? 四、About Belongings 关于所有物 46． What's this? 这是什么? 47． It's an air－conditioner．这是空调。 48． Is this yours? 这是你的吗? 49． Yes， it's mine．是的，是我的。 50． Where are my glasses? 我的眼镜在哪儿? 51． Do you know where I've put my glasses? 你知道我把眼镜搁哪儿了吗? 52． Over there．在那边。 53． On the desk．在桌上。 54． Is this your pen? I found it under the desk．这是你的笔吗?我在桌下捡 的。 55． No． Mine is blue．不是。我的是蓝的。 56． Which is your bag? 哪个是你的包? 57． The bigger one．大些的那个。 58． The one on your right．你右边的那个。 59． Are these books all yours? 这些书全是你的吗? 60． Some of them are mine．一部分是我的。 中考英语写作中最常用的句型扩展收集 一、据…… It is said that 据说 It is reported that 据报道 It is suggested that 据建议 It is estimated that 据估计 It is proved that 据证明 It is learned that 据了解 It is acknowledged that 据大家公认 二、There is no…… There is no doubt that 毫无疑问… There is no need to do 没必要做… There is no point in doing 做某事毫无意义 三、表示喜欢和感兴趣 like / love doing enjoy doing be fond of doing 喜欢做… be keen on n. /doing热衷于做…… be big on n. /doing （俚语）热衷于做…… have delight in doing. 做……很高兴 prefer to do A rather than do B 宁愿做A也不愿做B prefer doing sth. to doing sth. be interested in doing = show/ take great interest in n / doing fall in love with 深深喜欢做某事 be addicted to doing 沉迷于…… can’t tear sb. away from 无法分开，痴迷 四、努力做… try to do努力做… strive to do 努力做… try one’s best to do = do one’s best to do 竭尽全力做… make efforts to do = make every effort to do 尽力做… do what sb can (do ) to do 尽力做… spare no effort to do 不遗余力的做… do what / everything sb. can to do 尽某人全力做… 五、打算做… / 计划做…/ 想要做 intend / plan to do 打算做… be going to do 打算做… decide to do 决定做… determine to do 决定做… be determined to do 决定做… make up one’s mind to do 下定决心做… want to do 想做… would like to do 想做… hope to do 希望做… expect to do 期待着做… wish to do 希望做… consider doing 考虑做… 六. 只加doing 作宾语的动词 finish, practice, enjoy, mind, avoid, imagine, fancy, suggest, avoid, 固定句型 look forward to doing 盼望做… keep on doing 坚持做… dream of doing 梦想做… can’t help doing 情不自禁地做… keep / stop / prevent sb. from doing 阻止某人做… be busy (in ) doing be busy with + 名词 忙于做… spend time / money (in )doing spend time / money on + 名词 花费时间做… have fun / have a good time / enjoy oneself doing 玩得开心 have trouble / have problem / have difficulty (in) doing 或 with + 名词 做…有困难 get used to/ be accustomed to doing 习惯做某事 devote to doing 奉献做…… 资料分享 英语口语常用句型 著 译 者： 罗伯特.雪隆 施孝昌 本书收集了最常用的106个句型，在“句型分析”单元，详细说明句型的正确用法、词意辨 每个句型都不只是生硬的一句，而是可以活用到任何场合、任何内容、任何会话的10句、100句。在“句型举一反三”单 元中，教给你如何把每个句型加以灵活运用。只要记住106个最常用句型，加上简单词义辨别，配合时代潮流的例句，就能脱口说出漂亮，地道的英语来。 1．What did you think of．．． (你认为……如何?) 2．It feels like．．． (它感觉上像是……) 3．May I．．．? (我可以……吗?) 4．What I don’t understand is．．． (我所不能理解的是……) 5．This is great．．．weather (这是个……的好天气。) 6．To start with,．．． (首先，……) 7．Really? (真的吗?) 8．Does he like．．．? (他喜欢……吗?) 9．what do you expect? (你还期望什么?) 10．I can’t．．． (我不能……) .11．It’s not．．．；it’s．．． (不是……的问题；而是……) 12．sounds like．．． (那听起来好像……的样子。) 13．really neat (真的很好) 14．How do you like it? (你还喜欢吗?) 15．too．．．to．．． (太……以致于不能……) 16．I didn’t know．．． (我不知道……) 17．getting．．．for．．． (获得……以作为……) 18．Where did you．．．? (你从哪里……呢?) 19．Would you like to．．．? (你想要……吗?) 20．I tried．．． (我试过……) 21．What are you doing? (你有什么活动?) 22．birthday is．．． (生日是在……) 23．Did you know．．．? (你知道……吗?) 24．was十p·p· (被别人……) 25，Will．．．? (会不会……呢?) 26，Can you．．．? (能请你……吗?) 27. It’s supposed to．．． (那应当是……) 28. I’ll have to．．． (我必须……) 29. be scheduled to．．． (排定日期……) 30．It really depends on．．． (那全看……情况而定。) 31．ended up．．． (最终是……) 32．You are right about．．． (你对……的看法是正确的。) 33．It’s not just．．，,though． (不过，那不仅是……而已。) 34．Is that why．．．? (就是这个缘故才导致……吗?) 35．I guess．．． (我猜想……) 36．What makes you．．．? (什么事让你……呢?) 37．I know what．．． (我知道……是什么。) 38．Can you imagine．．．? (你能想像……吗?) 39．enjoy．．． (很喜欢……) 40．You look．．． (你看起来……) 41．I heard．．． (我听说……) 42．What I really like is．．． (我真正喜欢的是……) 43．Maybe．．． (也许……) 44．crazy about．．． (对……很着迷) 45．Could you．．． (能否请你……) 46．Is everything．．．? (所有一切都……吗?) 47．I don’t have the foggiest idea．．． (我对……一点概念都没有。) 48．new one (那还是新闻) 49．trick （秘诀） 50. Anything I can．．．? (有没有什么我可以……的?) 51. what a．．．! (多么……的……啊!) 52. Belleve it or not,．．． (信不信由你……) 53. kidding (开玩笑!) 54. We met．．． (我们在……见过面。) 55. I thought．．． (我以为……) 56. It took hours to．．． (那用了好几个小时才……) 57. Did you hear about．．．? (你听说……了吗?) 58. sometime in．．． (在……的某个时候) 59．Where is．．．? (……在哪里?) 60. Itwill take some time to．．． (那需要一段时间，才……) 61. What about．．．? (你认为……如何?) 62．help．．．with (帮……忙) 63．How was．．．? (……还好吧?) 64．should be (应该是) 65．have十p．p．for．．． (已经……了) 66．I take it．．． (这么说来，我认定你是……) 67．It makes no sense to．．． (做……丝毫不可理解) 68．Let’s see what．．． (让我们试试能不能……) 69．There are a lot of．．． (有许多……) 70．should．．． (照理应该……) 71．Planning on．．． (计划做……) 72What．．．did you have in mind? (心里喜欢什么样的……?) 73．You’ve come to．．． (你算闯到……) 74．I’m sure．．． (我很肯定……) 75. I really need to．．． (我真的需要……) 76. sounds．．．enough (听起来够……了) 77. beat．．． (超越……) 78. It’s time to．．． (是……的时候了。) 79. Would you care to．．．? (你要不要……?) 80．My understanding is．．． (据我了解……) 81．I wonder if．．． (我在想是否……) 82．That’s the best．．． (那是最好的……；能力所及的) 83．It’s not as．．．as．．． (那不像……一样……) 84．Excuse me，．．． (对不起，……) 85．have．．．十p·p· (把……做了) 86．don’t know about that (认为不妥当) 87．I can’t believe．．． (我对……真难以置信。) 88．How．．．were you? (你有多么……呢?) 89．your position on．．． (你对于……的立场) 90．put in 9n appearance．．． (在……短暂露面。) 91．be available (有……可卖吗?) 92．I saw．．．saying．．． (我看到……写着……) 93．Which．．．? (哪一项……呢?) 94．I have．．．for．．． (我有……要……) 95．Here．．． (在这里) 96．same (相同) 97．get together．．． (聚在一起……) 98．a piece of cake (易如反掌) 99．How did you do on．．．? (你……的表现如何?) 100．Is it okay to．．．? (做……可以吗?) 10t．work (行得通) 162．not．．．until．．． (直到……才可以……) 103．Be．．． (务必……) 104．way too．．． (简直太……) 105．It involves a lot of．．． (那要牵涉到很多……) 106．in．．．favor (对……有利) 目前中国小学英语口语学习的现状就是平时学生所听、所想、所说的全是汉语，只有课堂才是学生接触英语的主要场地。英语口语的学习仅限于在小学英语每周的几节课中。因此，在课堂上用于学生练习口语，开口说英语的时间是少之又少。所以中国的小学生的讲英语的时间是非常少的。那我们就应该在课外给他们创造良好的学习环境，家长就应该做好孩子的partner，多和孩子进行英语口语对话，提高口语水平。下面就是给大家总结的小学阶段英语常用口语，家长可以做个参考。 1. Hello, … 你好。 2. Hi, … 喂，你好。 3. Good morning/ afternoon/evening. 早上/下午/晚上好。 4. How are you(this morning/afternoon/evening)? 你今天早晨/下午/晚上好吗？ 5. Fine, thank you/ thanks. 我很好，谢谢。 6. Not bad, thank you. 不错，谢谢。 7. Welcome back to school. 欢迎回到学校来。 8. Welcome to our school. 欢迎到我们学校来。 9. Happy birthday! 生日快乐！ 10. What’s your name, please? 你的名字是什么? 11. Your name, please? 你叫什么名字？ 12. My name is…/ I’m… 我的名字是…/ 我名叫… 13. This is Miss/ Mr/ Mrs… 这位是…小姐/先生/女士。 14. This is my friend. 这是我的朋友。 15. Come and meet my friends. 过来见见我的朋友们。 16. How do you do? 你好。 17. Nice to meet /see you. 很高兴认识/见到你。 18. Goodbye. 再见 19. Good night. 晚安。 20. How old is he? 他多大了？ 21. Thank you./ Thanks. 谢谢。 22. You’re welcome. 不用谢。 23. That’s all right. 没关系。 24. I’m sorry. 对不起。 25. Sorry, I don’t know. 对不起，我不知道。 26. Excuse me. 对不起，打扰一下。 27. Come in, please. 请进。 28. Have some bananas, please. 请吃些香蕉。 29. It’s time for the cakes. 该吃些蛋糕了。 30. May I come in? 我可以进来吗？ 31. Come in, please. 请进。 32. May I have yours? 我能吃你的吗？ 33. Can I have two cakes? 我能吃两个蛋糕吗？ 34. No, you can’t. 不，你不能。 35. Can I have one，please? 我能吃一个吗？ 36. Yes./All right. Here you are. 好的。给你。 37. Can I go with you? 我能和你一起走吗？ 38. Sure. 好的。 39. Do you know his telephone number? 你知道他的电话号码吗？ 40. Are you sure? 你能确定吗？ 41. Yes. I’m sure. 是的，我肯定。 42. Maybe he’s in theteachers’ office. 可能他在老师办公室。 43. We’re about the same age, I think. 我想我们大概年龄相仿。 44. Yes, you’re right. 是的，你是对的。 45. You’re wrong. 你错了。 46. I like …very much. 我非常喜欢…。 47. I like to draw pictures there. 我喜欢在那儿画画。 48. Me too. 我也是。 49. Can I help you? 我能帮你吗？ 50. Yes, a dress for my daughter. 是的，给我女儿买条裙子。 51. What do you want, a dress or a skirt? 你想要买什么？连衣裙还是短裙？ 52. How about the blue one? 这条蓝色的如何？ 53. How much is it? 多少钱？ 54. Fifty-nine yuan. 五十九元。 55. Excuse me, where’s the cinema? 请问，电影院在哪？ 56. Where’s the teachers’office, please? 老师办公室在哪？ 57. Excuse me, how can I get to the post office? 请问，怎么走才能到达邮局? 58. Can you show me the way to the bank, please? 你能告诉我去银行的路怎么走吗？ 59. It’s over there, near the Bank of China. 就在那儿，中国银行的旁边。 60. This way, please. 请这边走。 61. Sorry, I don’t know. You may go and ask him. 对不起，我不知道。你可以去问他。 62. What’s the time? 几点了？ 63. Excuse me, what’s the time, please? 请问，几点了？ 64. It’s time to get up/go to school… 到了起床/去学校的时候了。 65. It’s time for… 到了（做）…的时候了。 66. Look at the blackboard, please. 请看黑板。 67. Go and get him. 去把他找来。 68. Let me have a look, please. 让我看一看。 69. Let’s play a game today. 今天我们来做个游戏。 70. Now listen to me, please. 现在请听我说。 71. Can you look after my bag and clothes, please? 你能帮我照看一下我的书包和衣服吗？ 72. Yes. /All right./ OK./ Sure. 好的。 73. Look at his coat. 看他的外套。 74. Shall we go now? 我们现在可以走了吗？ 75. Let’s go to school. 让我们去学校吧。 76. Yes, let’s. 好的，走吧。 77. Let’s get some(red) flowers. 让我们来摘些（红）花。 78. Please don’t. 请不要。 79. Don’t turn off the TV. 别关电视。 80. Very good. 很好。 81. Great!/ That’s great. 太好了。/棒极了。 82. How nice! 多漂亮啊！ 83. How beautiful! 多美啊！ 84. It’s lovely. 它真可爱。 85. Oh, dear! 哦，天啊！ 86. Pardon? 对不起，请再说一遍。 87. Excuse me, would you please tell me…? 对不起，你能告诉我…？ 88. What can you see? 你能看见什么？ 89. Where are the balls? 球在哪儿？ 90. Look, they’re between the bags. 看，它们在书包中间。 91. What’s that on the wall? 墙上的那是什么？ 92. It’s a photo of my family. 是我们家的全家福。 93. There are some toy boats on the desk. 桌上有些玩具船。 94. Please give it to me . 请把它给我。 95. Who are they? 他们是谁？ 96. Their names are… 他们的名字是… 97. What’s your telephone number? 你的电话号码是什么？ 98. Shall we call her? 我们打电话给她好吗？ 99. What a clever boy he is! 他是个多么聪明的孩子啊！ 100. How beautiful the girls are！ 这些女孩多漂亮啊！ 电话常用英语口语 1. It's nothing important. 没什么重要事。 2. It's nothing urgent. Thank you ,good-bye. 没什么要紧事，谢谢您，再见。 3. I'll call her again. 我会再打给她。 4. I'll call back later. 我稍后会再打来。 5. Please ask Miss Chen to call me back. 请陈小姐给我回电话。 6. Could you tell her to call Carol as soon as possible? 能不能请她尽快打电话给卡洛？ 7. Ask her to call Carol at home after seven, please. 麻烦她在七点后打电话到卡洛家。 8. Can I leave a message? 我可以留言吗？ 9. Please have her return my call.请她回电话给我。 10. Could you ask him to to call me back? 可以请他给我回电话吗？ 11. Please tell her Carol called. 请告诉她卡洛找她。 12. Let me call back later again. Thank you. 我稍后再打电话来。谢谢你。 13. Please tell him to phone 2233-4455. 请他给2233-4455回电话。 电话答录机 This is a recording. I''m not at home now. Please leave a message after the beep. Thank you. 这是电话答录机。我现在不在家，请在"哔"的一声之后开始留言。谢谢！ (*: 电话答录机 是 telephone answering machine) This is Carol. Pleae give me a call when you are free. My number is 2244-6688. 我是卡洛。有空请回电话给我。我的号码是2244-6688. 对电话答录机留话时与一般留言无异，说出以下重点即可： 1. 来电者姓名 2. 来电时间 3. 来电目的 4. 联络电话或方式 英语交际常用口语句型 【常用英语口语 - 英语口语】 开门见山说分手 I want to break up. 我要分手。 It’s over. 我们缘分已尽。 Don’t call me anymore. 别再打电话给我。 There’s someone else. 我有了别人。 We’re not meant for each other. 我们命中注定不适合。 旁敲侧击说分手 I need some time alone. 我需要一个人过一阵子。 We’re better off as friends. 我们做朋友比较好。 You’re too good for me. 我配不上你。 You deserve a better man/woman. 你应该找个更好的对象。 听到或碰到很糟糕的事情时，你可以说： That’s terrible！ 好恐怖！ How awful！ 可怕噢！ That’s horrible/dreadful！ 好可怕/吓人！ What a nightmare！ 当情况坏到吓人时，你可以说： How terrifying！ 吓死人了！ That’s scary！ 真令人害怕！ How frightening！ 恐怖噢！ 当发生不可思议的事情，让你怀疑是灵异事件时，你可以说： How creepy！ 真令人毛骨悚然！ That’s spooky！ 阴森森的！ 直接杀价： That’s unreasonable！ I’d take it for （100.） 这真是卖得太贵了！如果（一百块）我就买。 How about （100）？ 卖（一百块钱）如何？ I’d buy this if it were cheaper. 再便宜一点我就买。 拐弯抹角地杀： Lower the price， and I’ll consider it. 价钱低一点我才会考虑。 It’s a little overpriced. 这标价有点贵。 I like everything about it except the price. 这东西除了价钱之外我都喜欢。 尔虞我诈地杀： I’ve seen this cheaper （in） other places. 我在别家有看过更便宜的。 I heard other stores were having great mark-downs on this item. 听说别家的这个东西在大减价。 If I buy more than one， will you give me a discount？ 多买一点有折扣吗？ 每天都该对自己跟别人说的话 You are great. 一般的用法： You’re great/errific. 你好棒/好厉害。 I admire you. 我佩服你。 You’re really cool. 你真酷。 You’re amazing. 你真了不起。 You’re awesome. 你真了不起。 完成一项任务后的说法： You did a great job. 你做得很好。 You really impress me. 你令我印象深刻。 You’re an outstanding individual. 你真是杰出人 人材。 You are a great asset to our company. 你是本公司的重要资产（台柱）。 九句最常用的道别语 一般的用法： Take care. 保重。 Later. 回头见。 So long. 再见。 Until we meet again （next time.） 下次见。 俏皮的说法： See you later， （alligator.） 回头见，（鳄鱼。）（英文的部份押韵） 约定下次见面时间的用法： See you tomorrow （next week， on Monday， etc.） 明天（下星期、下星期一……）见。 非常隆重的说法（或是开玩笑的说法）： Farewell. 再会。 异国风味的说法： Adios （西班牙文的“上帝祝福你。”） Hasta la vista！ 西班牙文的“下次再见。”） 何人都喜欢听好话，你的老板当然也不会例外。下面的句子你可以在合适的时候说说看，不过由此产生的任何后果我们可不负责任。 It’s really impressive the way you run this company. 您经营这家公司的模式真是令人印象深刻。 I look forward to coming to work every day. 我每天都迫不及待来上班。 You’re the best-dressed boss around. 您是这里穿得最有型的主管。 You’re my idol. 您是我的偶像。 I really admire your decision-making ability. 我很钦佩您的决策能力。 You’re too young to be a professor…… 您当教授实在太年轻了…… Could you autograph your book for me， please？ 能否帮我在您写的书上签名？ Your teaching is so inspiring. 您的教学真是让人如沐春风。 You look so much younger than my classmates’ moms /dads. 你看起来比我班上同学的妈妈∕爸爸年轻多了。 I don’t know. 我不知道。 I’m not sure. 我不确定。 Who knows？ 谁知道啊？ Don’t ask me！ 别问我！ It’s not certain. 还不确定。 Nothing is set yet. 事情都还没有定案。 It hasn’t been decided yet. 还没有决定呢。 It’s not clear. 事情还未明朗。 It’s up in the air. 情况还混沌未明。 It’s hard to say. 【网络综合 - 英语口语】： 奥运会的比赛场上，中国观众的“加油”声震天响。那么你知道英文中的加油要怎么说么？ 其实各位只要去看场比赛，就会发现go 这个词是老外们常用来加油的一个词，比如你喜欢休斯顿火箭队，你就是可以喊“Go Rockets! Go, go, go! Go Rockets, go!”在我们之前讲过的Bring it on 《美少女拉拉队》那部电影中，全国拉拉队大赛的时候，女主角就喊“Go Toros” 为自己的队加油。 所以你要给中国队加油的时候就可以喊“Go, China, Go!”当然我们汉语中的“加油”两个字似乎更是干脆利落，很有音韵感，所以也成了老外记者们翻译的难题，建议他们不如直接用音译好了。 有去看了奥运赛事的观众说加拿大体育迷们喊加油喊得是“Go！Can！Go！”，也算一语双关吧。 当然加油还有别的方式，比如美国人和英国人还会用喊国家名字的方式加油，比如：U、S、A！ 也有的来外会用唱本国国歌或是参加比赛队伍的队歌来加油。 如果是给某一个选手加油，那通常就是喊这个选手的名字。羽毛球男单决赛的时候，全场无数中国球迷齐喊林丹的名字，相信对林丹的士气也是很大的鼓舞，对李宗伟当然就是很大的打击了。 也有的外国球迷会喊一些象声词来加油，比如hurray 什么的。 比如“加油”这个日常用语，就有多个英语表达方式。至于用哪个比较合适，则要根据上下文以及说话对象等因素而定。 1. 看比赛时的“加油”怎么说？这个经常见到，用“Come on China!”，“Come on England”就可以了。 2. 看球连续喊“加油”。连续喊着“Come on China! Come on China!”听起来是不是有点别扭？所以喊：“Chi-na! Chi-na! Chi-na!”，有气势多了吧？ 3.“为……加油”英语怎么说？“Cheer somebody on”比较常用。例句：We cheered the players on.（我们为运动员加油。）“root for”也可以表示为……加油，例句：Our friends were all rooting for us.（我们的朋友都在为我们加油。） 4. 鼓励快要崩溃的朋友怎么说“加油”。这种情况下，跟汉语不同的是，英语没有一个方便、通用的说法，如以下两个例子： （1）——A: I still have 3,000 words to write of my essay. ——B: Good luck. （2）——A: I am going to have to work until midnight everyday this week.——B: Don't worry, it'll all be over soon. 5. 加油做某事。这个也没有通用的说法，通过例子来体会一下： （1）Up to now, everything is all right. More power to your elbow! 迄今为止，一切都好，加油干吧！ （2）I'll have to push on with my work. 我得加油工作了。 6.为汽车“加油”怎么说呢？“To refuel”或者“to fill up”最常用，如I need to find a petrol station to fill up the car.（我要找加油站，汽车该加油了。） 一种汉语意思在英语中往往呈现出多种表达方式，由此可见，学习一门外语不仅要掌握语音、语法、词汇和习语，而且还要知道持这种语言的人如何看待事物，如何观察世界；要了解他们如何用他们的语言来反映他们社会的思想、习惯、行为。实际上，学习语言与了解语言所反映的文化是分不开的。作为一种现代化远程教育培训机构，线话英语（ http://www.linewow.com/tyky ）通过电话英语教学方式，让学员足不出户就能切身体验西方国家日常生活中真实地道的英语口语语言环境，了解其文化风俗等背景知识，进而习得一口地道纯正的英语口语。线话英语外教在英语口语教学中很自然地将英语国家文化风俗等知识带入语言教授的课程中来，学员通过线话英语课程的学习，一方面扩大了知识面，另一方面对中西方文化之间的差异更为明了。这样就可以帮助学员消除因文化差异而产生的交流障碍，让他们知道在什么样的场合应当说什么话，提高语言运用的得体性。 除了具备一定的西方文化背景知识外，想要学会地道英语表达，离不开良好的英语环境和大量的英语口语实践。线话英语为学习者提供了一个学习地道英语的语言环境，只要通过电话或Skype，就有外教老师和你说英语，矫正你的发音，让你不再徘徊在错误发音的道路上渐行渐远。其次，线话英语采取的是外教与学员一对一的授课方式，保证每个学员与外教的交流时间，保证学习效果，有什么不会、不懂、说不好的地方随时可以提出疑问。每天与线话英语口语外教高密度交流，增加学生主动开口说英语的机会。最后，学员在轻松愉快的氛围中，每天花20分钟与线话英语外教一对一练习英语口语，亲身体验外国人在生活中的实际英语表达方式，将英语学习融入生活中，从而切实有效提高英语口语水平。 线话英语优秀的外教团队针对学员特点制定最佳个性化学习方案，让其科学高效提高英语口语技能。置身于线话英语纯正地道的英语环境中，你将收获英语口语最纯正的果实！
Rule of thumb: Wherever there is major legislation, trillions of dollars, and your well-being at stake, there will be claims driven by emotion instead of fact. Case in point: Health care. Here are three widespread health-care misconceptions I personally used to hold before digging into the facts. Myth: Europe has socialized medicine compared with a free-market system in America. Fact: By nearly any measure, the U.S. government spends more on health care than most European governments. Yes, most European governments offer universal health coverage, and the main health insurance system in America is private insurance. But the U.S. government spends a lot on health insurance for its elderly (Medicare) and poor (Medicaid), plus layers of other subsidies. It's actually bigger than the private sector. State, local, and federal governments spend about $1.3 trillion annually on health care, compared with less than $1 trillion from the private sector, according to David Leonhardt of The New York Times . Here's the real mindblower: The U.S. government spends more money per citizen covering a minority of its population than most European governments spend covering their entire populations: Source: OECD. These figures are adjusted for differences in the cost of living between countries, so it's truly an apples-to-apples comparison. There are other ways to view this. As a share of government spending, the U.S. spends more on health care than all European governments except Switzerland, according to the OECD. This chart is probably the most complete measure, showing government health spending as a percentage of GDP. It still puts the U.S. at above average compared with major nations that offer universal coverage: Source: OECD, Kaiser Family Foundation. It's pretty clear. Government health care in America is larger and takes up a bigger share of the economy than several countries we often tag with a "socialized" label. And it bears repeating: Government health care in America only covers a minority of the population, while other nations cover everyone. As Ezra Klein once said of these numbers: "This is serious pitchforks-and-torches stuff, if only people really understood it." And what about private coverage? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 65% of nonelderly Americans have private health insurance. By contrast, about 90% of French citizens carry private supplemental health insurance that covers payments not provided under the country's universal system. Myth: The U.S. health-care system is more efficient than other bureaucratic behemoths around the world. Reality: By most measures, America has one of the least efficient health-care systems in the world. Health economist Henry Aaron once remarked: Like many other observers, I look at the U.S. health care system and see an administrative monstrosity, a truly bizarre melange of thousands of payers with payment systems that differ for no socially beneficial reason, as well as staggeringly complex public systems with mindboggling administered prices and other rules expressing distinctions that can only be regarded as weird. Measuring the administrative costs for health-care systems is difficult and prone to undercounting. A good example: Some tout a slim 2% administrative cost for Medicare, but that doesn't include the cost of collecting premiums (done by the IRS) and a raft of billing work done by private contractors. A more complete measure of public health administrative costs in America is 6%, compared with a 4% average among OECD nations, according to McKinsey Co. Include the private market and it's worse. The measure for administrative costs used by the OECD -- the difference between insurance premiums and medical costs -- was $465 per recipient per year in 2004, compared with an average among OECD nations of $104, and as low as $15 a year in Sweden. The only country with higher administrative costs is Luxembourg. Focus on private insurers alone and it's pitiful. As Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid writes: U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money. One Motley Fool commenter recently explained the reasoning for forgoing health insurance by noting the appeal of "not contributing a dime to the $950,000 salary of an insurance or billing company vice president." It's a reasonable gripe. WellPoint 's ( NYSE: WLP ) CEO has been paid $63.5 million since 2007. Remember that next time your premiums go up. Myth: America's uninsured are cared for by churches, charities, and at last resort, emergency rooms. Fact: Put starkly, the uninsured face a 40% higher mortality rate than those with health insurance, even after adjusting for income, health status, body mass index, smoking, and alcohol use. In 2007, President George W. Bush said, "People have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." That's true for the most part. As part of law signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, hospitals with emergency departments that receive government funds, including Medicare (all hospitals, basically), are obligated to evaluate all patients and provide treatment until they're in stable condition regardless of ability to pay. This has become the de facto health-care system for millions of Americans. But it's hardly adequate. ERs must treat those who aren't in stable condition. Anything less -- say, preventive care -- can be off the table, and is often too expensive for the uninsured. Surgeon Atul Gawande recently wrote in the New Yorker : A vascular surgeon in Indianapolis told me about a man in his fifties who'd had a large abdominal aortic aneurysm. Doctors knew for months that it was in danger of rupturing, but since he wasn't insured, his local private hospital wouldn't fix it. Finally, it indeed began to rupture. Rupture is an often fatal development, but the man -- in pain, with the blood flow to his legs gone -- made it to an emergency room. Then the hospital put him in an ambulance to Indiana University, arguing that the patient's condition was "too complex." My friend got him through, but he's very lucky to be alive. Another friend, an oncologist in Marietta, Ohio, told me about three women in their forties and fifties whom he was treating for advanced cervical cancer. A Pap smear would have caught their cancers far sooner. But since they didn't have insurance, their cancers were recognized only when they caused profuse bleeding. Yes, the ER will see you if you're in dire need. But by then illness can have developed into a more complicated -- and expensive -- ordeal. Or to the point where it's too late. A 2009 study by a group of Harvard researchers published in the American Journal of Public Health reviewed a public health survey of 9,000 people in the 1980s. Following up in 2000 showed about 3% of the survey group had died. Even after controlling for age, income, weight, education, employment, tobacco and alcohol use, and physician-rated overall health, the researchers found those without insurance had a mortality rate 40% higher than those who did. Why is complex. There isn't one single reason. But a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation provides key insight: The uninsured are three times more likely to claim problems getting needed care than those who have insurance. "Over 40% do not have a regular place to go when they are sick or need medical advice, compared to just 9% of those with coverage," the report wrote. And that was in 2006, before the financial crisis. It's almost certainly higher today. All of these issues are complicated and can't be given enough attention in one article. But we know the system is broken. We also know, for the most part, what works and what doesn't. Many aren't in favor of current reforms, but no one should be in favor of the status quo.
Find out for yourself... http://news.yahoo.com/china-fund-turns-japan-amid-europe-fears-104921633--finance.html I wish the government will spend more money to control pollutions and to help rural areas, especially those underprivilegedyouths.
It’s a Monsanto Government by Burkely Hermann / June 5th, 2012 http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/06/its-a-monsanto-government/?dm_i=1ANQ,U0RC,6LPVRT,2GM1G,1 In the movie Inside Job , one person interviewed says the current U.S. government is now a “Wall Street government” because of the revolving door between the financial services industry and those that regulate the industry. This means that those in power are on the side of Wall Street. The same can be said for Monsanto, which is really a chemical company. Key figures in the regulatory bodies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) have, according to Rense.com , “held important positions at Monsanto” before working in those regulatory bodies or have held them “after their biotech related regulatory work for the government agency.” As a result, the government has become one with Monsanto in terms of favorable policy. The reason for this collusion was hinted at in Clifford D. Corner’s book, A People’s History of Science . Corner pointed out that government is often in collusion with those they are regulating. The problems of Monsanto have been highlighted by activists especially with the prominence of the internet in social activism. But, the real focus on genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically-modified (GM) food began a while ago. Simply, GMOs can be defined as new organisms created by altering DNA of existing organisms; an attempt to make an organism desirable. More and more people are concerned about GMOs because the effects on health are unknown, they could create super-bacteria, such organisms could be allergic to certain genes and it is possible all foods could become toxic. In the movie, Food Inc. , one farmer cleaned his seeds of GMOs (he grew non-GMO crops, but everyone around him had them) and was sued by Monsanto for supposedly violating their patent. In recent times, these problems have not been solved because of the revolving door with GMO companies. In the Obama Administration, connections with Monsanto have intensified. A U.S. government initiative published in 2010, the “ Southern Africa FY 2010 Implementation Plan ,” calls for “the need for increased cooperation … GMOs… through support of a harmonized regional bio-safety framework, standardized regional sanitary and phytosanitary… measures, and trade” including “national-level implementation of the harmonized system … increase trade and private sector investment in seeds across the region and allow smallholder access to improved seeds.” This would allow the American government to keep the revenues of GM crops growing from their revenue of about $76 billion in 2010, according to the April 2012 National Bioeconomy Blueprint. In March 2010, President Obama’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology talked about GMOs with 100 other observers from the public. More than a year later, in May 2011, Tikkun magazine criticized Obama for pushing the USDA to deregulate GM alfalfa and sugar beets in America despite court orders to the contrary, warning that since sugar beets are about “50 percent of the sugar Americans use in their coffee, cereals, and desserts” it would adversely affect Americans. Tikkun warned the Obama Administration that this deregulation will mean “the end of the organic meat and organic dairy industries.” The validity of the statement is unsure, but Tikkun still highlights a good point. Supposedly, according to the U.S. government , “oversight systems have been developed to identify and reduce any environmental risks that might be associated with …use ” but the question remains if the government can be fully trusted with that task. The Center for Responsive Politics questions that trust. One of their projects, OpenSecrets, wrote in a 2010 blogpost that “… a close… look at the FDA reveals a close relationship between FDA personnel and private sector professionals that represent big agricultural companies.” President Barack Obama has appointed several people who were related to such a big agricultural company, Monsanto. USDA Secretary Tom Vislack did not necessarily work for Monsanto, but he favored GMOs as Governor of Iowa (i.e. in 2002 he wrote a letter to biotech groups chastising them for not growing GM corn and was supported by GMO-front groups. The Organic Consumers Association, when it opposed Vislack’s nomination in November 2008 (who was consequently confirmed by the Senate), declared he was a shill “for agribusiness biotech giants like Monsanto.” A Washington Post article in March 2011 proved this point, noting that Vislack approved GM alfalfa and corn for being used for ethanol and approved GM sugar beets. This was a step back from his previous policy to broker an agreement between the organic food groups and the GMO lobby. However, the USDA under Vislack’s management has approved every single GMO-based crop: they haven’t denied a single one. Vislack wasn’t the only one who had a pro-GMO stand in the Obama Administration. Another nominee, Michael Taylor, clearly shows the connection of Monsanto and the national government. Taylor was a former attorney and vice president of public policy at Monsanto before he became the FDA Commissioner. In his position, according to Grist Magazine , he is a “kind of food czar of the Food and Drug Administration assess current food program challenges and opportunities, identif egulatory priorities, develop the FDA’s budget request for fiscal year 2011, implement new food safety legislation.” Other important figures, Islam Siddiqui who is the Agricultural Negotiator Trade Representative, and Lidia Watrud in the United States Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Effects Laboratory both worked at Monsanto prior to their jobs (Siddiqui as a lobbyist and Watrud as a former biotechnology researcher). Roger Bleachy, the director of the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIDA) from October 5, 2009 to May 20, 2011, was previously the director of the Monsanto Danforth Center. NIDA claims to “advance knowledge for agriculture, the environment, human health and well-being.” Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is tied to Monsanto! She was a Monsanto counsel when she worked at the Rose Law firm because she represented them among many other corporate interests. The revolving door in the Obama Administration is small compared to the corruption in Congress by Monsanto. OpenSecrets wrote last month that they spent over “$1.4 million lobbying Washington… and spent about $6.3 million total last year, more than any other agribusiness firm except the tobacco company Altria.” This is not a good sign for a country that is supposed to value democracy. But as privileged “Founder” James Madison pointed out in Federalist 10 , “the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail.” There is hope, however, in Federalist 51 (also written by Madison) that “the more powerful faction… wish for a government which shall protect all parties, the weaker … the more powerful.” In this case, Monsanto does not wish for a government to protect all parties. For them, a pro-GMO government would be their interest which is enforced by the fact that they are “the most powerful faction” and can “be expected to prevail.” Proposed legislation written by anti-GMO legislator Dennis Kucinich to label GM foods has not been received well in Congress. Grassroots petitions telling President Obama to cease corporate influence of the FDA, ten petitions on Change.org against Monsanto (ranging from 10 to about 25,000 supporters), and more than one million people petitioning the FDA to label GMOs have been equally unsuccessful. The reason for these unsuccessful efforts is because the political process is awash with Monsanto money. According to OpenSecrets , the company has “access to members of Congress who are likely to be key in shaping the final legislation” especially through its PAC, theMonsanto Citizenship Fund, which has spent $383,000 this cycle. The PAC has importantly given $20,000 to Oklahoma Republican RepresentativeFrank D. Lucas, the chairman of theHouse Agriculture Committee, meaning that “no farm-related legislation is passed without his say-so.” In addition, a top-ranking Democrat in the same committee, Minnesota RepresentativeCollin Peterson received $13,500 from the PAC. Overall $77,500 has been given by this PAC to 17 other “members of the House agriculture committee, or their leadership PACs.” If this isn’t enough, Monsanto has lobbied for numerous bills in its interest, since it is a chemical company. Also it met with bureaucrats and other governmental officials as a way to lobby the government to their bidding. In terms of contributions, Monsanto usually gives more to Republicans than Democrats ($105,000 to House Republicans and $40,000 to House Democrats, $26,000 to Senate Republicans and $16,000 to Senate Democrats) but this still means that the company is hedging its bets. Monsanto is playing the same card as corporations back in the Nixon Administration by giving money to both sides so that they will have friends in Congress. The “friends” of Monsanto are numerous. The state of Missouri has the highest concentration of these “friends,” according to the Center for Responsive Politics . Five Congressmen, Republican Vicky Hartzler ($2,000), Democrat Emanuel Cleaver ($3,500), Republican Billy Long ($1,500), Republican Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) ($5,000), and Democrat William L Jr. Clay, (D-MO) ($10,000) all received money from Monsanto, with Democrat Clay with the highest amount, $10,000 given to his campaign coffers. Thirty-five other representatives received money from Monsanto including House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. In the U.S. Senate, thirteen members received contributions. Three of those members were from Missouri, two were from Nebraska, and the other eight were from Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Idaho, Hawaii, Iowa, Mississippi, Indiana, Montana and Pennsylvania. Some of these thirteen members included Senators Ben Nelson, Claire McCaskill, Orrin Hatch, Dick Lugar, Bob Casey, and Max Baucus, a mix of Democrats and Republicans. Combined together, there are 48 “friends” of Monsanto in Congress (13% of the Senate and 8% of the House). This small group of Congress members may seem insignificant, but this group of politicians constitutes a powerful lobby in the halls of the national legislature. Many readers may be disillusioned and feel powerless with Monsanto’s extreme influence. But there is hope. Occupy Monsanto, which was formed in early 2012, declared “Monsanto is contaminating our political process” and formed a “ Genetic Crimes Unit ” (GCU) to “protect America from genetically modified foods.” In March 2012, the GCU assessed if members of Congress and their staff had committed “genetic crimes” and declared that “Congress is genetically modified” in conjunction with “Occupy Monsanto” protests nationwide and in four other countries. The international online hacking justice group, Anonymous, followed in these efforts by shutting down Monsanto.com. They conducted this action in solidarity with farmers “and food organizations denouncing the practices of Monsanto according to the Organic Common Sense Blog . Anonymous also demanded Monsanto’s contamination, attempted bribing of foreign officials, hijacking of United Nations Climate Change negotiations, bullying of small farmers and infiltration of anti-GMO groups (among other demands) stop immediately. According to the online group, the reason for the prudence in this matter is because Monsanto has engaged in “oppressive business practices” that include following other big agricultural companies by preying “on the poorest countries by… rescu ” the farmers and the people with GMO crops and chemical pesticides.” These practices result in drastic change in the farmer’s income. Finally, Anonymous tells all citizens “to stand up for these farmers… your own food.” The worldwide 99% can stand with corporate giants, stand with those fighting Monsanto or do nothing. If a person wants to do something, they should push their country to sign the Cartegena Protocol on Biosaftety which lessens the threat of gene transfers from GMOs to their wild relatives. If someone lives in the United States, they should push the government to ratify the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture , which limits genetic materials that agricultural companies can patent and affirms the right of farmers to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds. In the end, the 99% of people worldwide should follow the advice of the black hip-hop/rap group, Public Enemy, and “fight the power!” by assisting the efforts of Occupy Monsanto. Burkely Hermann, a online Maryland activist, has been interested with politics since 2007, when he wrote a persuasive essay against the Iraq War. Now he runs numerous blogs across the internet in order to educate the public on international, local and national topics. Read other articles by Burkely . This article was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2012 at 8:00am and is filed under Activism , Agriculture , Corruption , Democracy , Food/Nutrition , GMO , Obama , Occupy movement .
4个月前曾遭美国政府禁止发表的两项流感病毒研究，其中一项论文经修改今天终于发表在《自然》杂志。另外一项研究则有望不久之后发表在《科学》杂志。请看CBC有关报道。 Man-made bird flu paper published after controversy For some, affair raises questions on ethics of creating risky versions of virusThe Associated PressPosted: May 2, 2012 3:51 PM ETLast Updated: May 2, 2012 3:46 PM ET Four months ago the U.S. government sought to block publication of two studies about how scientists created an infectious form of bird flu. Now a revised version of one paper is seeing the light of day with the U.S. government's blessing. The revision appears online Wednesday in the journal Nature. S cientists have worried that as flu virus strains mix in nature, they could produce a deadly bird flu that transmits easily, setting the stage for a pandemic. (Sushanta Das/Associated Press) It's the near-conclusion to a drama that pit efforts to learn how to thwart a global flu epidemic against concerns about helping terrorists create bioweapons. The second paper, which is more controversial because it involves what appears to be a more dangerous virus, is expected to be published later in the journal Science. For some experts, the affair underscores a more basic question about whether creating potentially risky versions of bird flu is a good idea. "Clearly, research like this can be beneficial" for dealing with the bird-flu threat , said Dr. Eric Toner of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's biosecurity centre. But there's the question of calculating risk versus benefit, he said. "If we're taking a highly lethal virus and making it more transmissible, it's a tough judgment …These sorts of decisions should be made in advance of the research being done, not when the papers are ready for publication." The bird flu that has spread among poultry in Asia for several years now can be deadly, but it rarely sickens people. And people generally catch it from chickens and ducks, not from other people. Scientists have worried that as virus strains mix in nature, they could produce a deadly bird flu that transmits easily from one person to another. That could set the stage for a flu pandemic. The new studies come from two teams of scientists, one in a U.S. lab and another in the Netherlands. They created virus strains that spread easily among ferrets, which were used as a stand-in for people. The researchers wanted to study what genetic mutations helped the virus spread. That way scientists could identify such red flags in wild viruses and act quickly to avoid potential pandemic, as well as test vaccine and drugs. The journals Nature and Science each planned to publish one of the studies. Weapons blueprint? But the federal government, which funded the research, asked the scientists not to publish details of their work. Officials were worried that the full papers would give bioterrorists a blueprint for creating weapons. That led to a wide-ranging debate among scientists, many of whom argued that sharing details of such work is essential in fighting the threat of dangerous viruses. Both teams eventually submitted revised versions of their research to a U.S. biosecurity panel. That group and, later, federal health officials agreed to support publication. For one thing, the panel said, it would be difficult for others to do harm using the data provided, and for another, scientists had good reasons for publishing the results. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the research being reported Wednesday, said last month that the changes to his paper "were mainly a more in-depth explanation of the significance of the findings to public health and a description of the laboratory biosafety and biosecurity." He and colleagues essentially created a hybrid of bird and human flu viruses, and identified mutations that let it spread through the air between ferrets. None of the infected animals died. The researchers also found evidence that existing vaccines would protect people against the hybrid. The researchers said they didn't know whether the four mutations they identified would make a bird flu in nature more transmissible. But they said the results should help scientists find other such mutations and understand what makes bird flu spread in people. More transmissible virus The other paper reviewed by the committee, from a team headed by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is going through peer review at the journal Science. The committee had more concerns about this paper, recommending publication of key parts by a split vote, versus its unanimous support of publishing all of the Kawaoka paper. One difference is that while Kawaoka basically added a bird flu portion to an ordinary human flu virus , Fouchier's team made a bird flu virus more transmissible through mutating it. Kawaoka's approach appeared to produce less risk, Paul Keim, acting chair of the federal biosecurity advisory panel, told a Senate committee recently. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/05/02/bird-flu-censorship.html
Wang,F.Gu, Q. Construction of an evaluation system for information openness of local governments. Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2011:28–49. Evaluating government openness is important in monitoring government performance and promoting government transparency. Itis necessary to develop an evaluation system for information openness of local governments. In order to select evaluation indicators, we conducted a content analysis on current evaluation systems constructed by researchers and local governments and the materials of a case study on a local government. This evaluation system is composed of 5 first-tier indicators, 30 secondtier indicators and 69 third-tier indicators. Then Delphi Method and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) Method are adopted to determine the weight of each indicator. At last, the practicability of the system is tested by an evaluation of the local government of Tianjin Binhai New Area, which has been undergoing administrative reform and attempting to reinvent itself in the past 5 years.
原来不知道，国家对稀土出口看来是有严格的管理的。 按说也正常呀～～ 现在是60天的 最后通牒 。。 Complaints Over China's Rare Earth Export Policies Get Serious China's tight grip on the trade in rare earth minerals has angered other governments for years. More than 95 percent of the world's supply of rare earth minerals is mined there. And over the past few years, its government has reduced exports of these minerals, giving domestic companies an edge and leaving foreign companies scrambling for alternatives. The United States, the European Union, and Japan have all recently signed a formal “request for consultations” with China at the World Trade Organization (WTO). If the matter isn’t resolved in 60 days of consultations, the complaint will turn into a legal case that will be heard by the WTO dispute settlement panel. That could lead to tariffs and trade war. --------- 刚看到戴老师博客里的中文： http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=spaceuid=99360do=blogid=547494
http://www.postdocjobs.com/?gclid=CND8ttXUiq4CFexV4godO1p45A PostdocJobs.com (or Postdoc.com) is the first niche recruiting channel to bring together recent Ph.D.s, professors, research institutions and other employers to find a good match. Over 1,000 universities, companies, research institutions and government agencies worldwide use our service for recruiting talented postdocs and scientists. Each month, over 100,000 Ph.D.s visit our website and seek postdoctoral opportunities. Jobs posted on our website are normally viewed 2,000 to over 5,000 times. PostdocJobs.com's vision is to be the premier source for employers to hire postdocs, research associates and scientists, and for recent Ph.D. graduates to find post-doctoral positions in their professional careers. When you advertise your jobs on our website PostdocJobs.com , your ads will also appear on our career network sites: UniversityJobs.com and ScienceJobs.Org .
DAVOS, Switzerland—German Chancellor Angela Merkel, sharply criticized for her government's prescriptions of austerity as a cure for the euro zone's sovereign-debt crisis, said labor-market reforms and greater European integration also were needed to correct flaws in the makeup of the common currency. But in a speech formally opening the World Economic Forum, she gave no sign that Germany would be willing to pour more resources into the euro zone's inadequate bailout funds —a boost viewed by many analysts as essential to combat a debt crisis that has threatened to spread to Italy and Spain. She warned against putting faith in such vehicles. Ms. Merkel's speech was closely watched to see if she would open the way to new approaches to dealing with the debt crisis. She didn't. The crisis, now in its third year, is dragging on amid worries that a messy default by Greece could unleash a new wave of instability; talks on Greek debt restructuring continued Wednesday in Paris. Though immediate pressure on the currency area has been lifted by European Central Bank action to provide euro-zone banks with huge volumes of three-year liquidity, few analysts believe that alone is sufficient to finally settle the turmoil. Senior European officials said on Tuesday that lifting the
Samuel P. Huntington Chapter One: The New Era in World Politics On January 3, 1992 a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow. Two weeks earlier the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Russian Federation had become an independent country. As a result, the statue of Lenin which previously graced the stage of the auditorium had disappeared and instead the flag of the Russian Federation was now displayed on the front wall. The only problem, one American observed, was that the flag had been hung upside down. After this was pointed out to the Russian hosts, they quickly and quietly corrected the error during the first intermission. The years after the Cold War witnessed the beginnings of dramatic changes in peoples' identities and the symbols of those identities. Global politics began to be reconfigured along cultural lines. Upside-down flags were a sign of the transition, but more and more the flags are flying high and true, and Russians and other peoples are mobilizing and marching behind these and other symbols of their new cultural identities. On April 18, 1994 two thousand people rallied in Sarajevo waving the flags of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. By flying those banners, instead of U.N., NATO, or American flags, these Sarajevans identified themselves with their fellow Muslims and told the world who were their real and not-so-real friends. On October 16, 1994 in Los Angeles 70,000 people marched beneath "a sea of Mexican flags" protesting Proposition 187, a referendum measure which would deny many state benefits to illegal immigrants and their children. Why are they "walking down the street with a Mexican flag and demanding that this country give them a free education?" observers asked. "They should be waving the American flag." Two weeks later more protectors did march down the street carrying an American flag--upside down. These flag displays ensured victory for Proposition 187, which was approved by 59 percent of California voters. In the post-Cold War world flags count and so do other symbols of cultural identity, including crosses, crescents, and even head coverings, because culture counts, and cultural identity is what is most meaningful to most people. People are discovering new but often old identities and marching under new but often old flags which lead to wars with new but often old enemies. One grim Weltanschauung for this new era was well expressed by the Venetian nationalist demagogue in Michael Dibdin's novel, Dead Lagoon: "There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly be forgiven." The unfortunate truth in these old truths cannot be ignored by statesmen and scholars. For peoples seeking identity and reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential, and the potentially most dangerous enmities occur across the fault lines between the world's major civilizations. The central theme of this book is that culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world. The five parts of this book elaborate corollaries to this main proposition. Part I: For the first time in history global politics is both multipolar and multicivilizational; modernization is distinct from Westernization and is producing neither a universal civilization in any meaningful sense nor the Westernization of non-Western societies. Part II: The balance of power among civilizations is shifting: the West is declining in relative influence; Asian civilizations are expanding their economic, military, and political strength; Islam is exploding demographically with destabilizing consequences for Muslim countries and their neighbors; and non-Western civilizations generally are reaffirming the value of their own cultures. Part III: A civilization-based world order is emerging: societies sharing cultural affinities cooperate with each other; efforts to shift societies from one civilization to another are unsuccessful; and countries group themselves around the lead or core states of their civilization. Part IV: The West's universalist pretensions increasingly bring it into conflict with other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China; at the local level fault line wars, largely between Muslims and non-Muslims, generate "kin-country rallying," the threat of broader escalation, and hence efforts by core states to halt these wars. Part V: The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies. Avoidance of a global war of civilizations depends on world leaders accepting and cooperating to maintain the multicivilizational character of global politics. A Multipolar, Multicivilizational World In the post--Cold War world, for the first time in history, global politics has become multipolar and multicivilizational. During most of human existence, contacts between civilizations were intermittent or nonexistent. Then, with the beginning of the modern era, about A.D. 1500, global politics assumed two dimensions. For over four hundred years, the nation states of the West--Britain, France, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Germany, the United States, and others--constituted a multipolar international system within Western civilization and interacted, competed, and fought wars with each other. At the same time, Western nations also expanded, conquered, colonized, or decisively influenced every other civilization (Map 1.1). During the Cold War global politics became bipolar and the world was divided into three parts. A group of mostly wealthy and democratic societies, led by the United States, was engaged in a pervasive ideological, political, economic, and, at times, military competition with a group of somewhat poorer communist societies associated with and led by the Soviet Union. Much of this conflict occurred in the Third World outside these two camps, composed of countries which often were poor, lacked political stability, were recently independent, and claimed to be nonaligned (Map 1.2). In the late 1980s the communist world collapsed, and the Cold War international system became history. In the post--Cold War world, the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural. Peoples and nations are attempting to answer the most basic question humans can face: Who are we? And they are answering that question in the traditional way human beings have answered it, by reference to the things that mean most to them. People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against. Nation states remain the principal actors in world affairs. Their behavior is shaped as in the past by the pursuit of power and wealth, but it is also shaped by cultural preferences, commonalities, and differences. The most important groupings of states are no longer the three blocs of the Cold War but rather the world's seven or eight major civilizations (Map 1.3). Non-Western societies, particularly in East Asia, are developing their economic wealth and creating the basis for enhanced military power and political influence. As their power and self-confidence increase, non-Western societies increasingly assert their own cultural values and reject those "imposed" on them by the West. The "international system of the twenty-first century," Henry Kissinger has noted, ". . . will contain at least six major powers--the United States, Europe, China, Japan. Russia, and probably India--as well as a multiplicity of medium-sized and smaller countries." Kissinger's six major powers belong to five very different civilizations, and in addition there are important Islamic states whose strategic locations, large populations, and/or oil resources make them influential in world affairs. In this new world, local politics is the politics of ethnicity; global politics is the politics of civilizations. The rivalry of the superpowers is replaced by the clash of civilizations. In this new world the most pervasive, important, and dangerous conflicts will not be between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but between peoples belonging to different cultural entities. Tribal wars and ethnic conflicts will occur within civilizations. Violence between states and groups from different civilizations, however, carries with it the potential for escalation as other states and groups from these civilizations rally to the support of their "kin countries." The bloody clash of clans in Somalia poses no threat of broader conflict. The bloody clash of tribes in Rwanda has consequences for Uganda, Zaire, and Burundi but not much further. The bloody clashes of civilizations in Bosnia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Kashmir could become bigger wars. In the Yugoslav conflicts, Russia provided diplomatic support to the Serbs, and Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and Libya provided funds and arms to the Bosnians, not for reasons of ideology or power politics or economic interest but because of cultural kinship. "Cultural conflicts," Vaclav Havel has observed, "are increasing and are more dangerous today than at any time in history," and Jacques Delors agreed that "future conflicts will be sparked by cultural factors rather than economics or ideology." And the most dangerous cultural conflicts are those along the fault lines between civilizations. In the post--Cold War world, culture is both a divisive and a unifying force. People separated by ideology but united by culture come together, as the two Germanys did and as the two Koreas and the several Chinas are beginning to. Societies united by ideology or historical circumstance but divided by civilization either come apart, as did the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Bosnia, or are subjected to intense strain, as is the case with Ukraine, Nigeria, Sudan, India, Sri Lanka, and many others. Countries with cultural affinities cooperate economically and politically. International organizations based on states with cultural commonality, such as the European Union, are far more successful than those that attempt to transcend cultures. For forty-five years the Iron Curtain was the central dividing line in Europe. That line has moved several hundred miles east. It is now the line separating the peoples of Western Christianity, on the one hand, from Muslim and Orthodox peoples on the other. The philosophical assumptions, underlying values, social relations, customs, and overall outlooks on life differ significantly among civilizations. The revitalization of religion throughout much of the world is reinforcing these cultural differences. Cultures can change, and the nature of their impact on politics and economics can vary from one period to another. Yet the major differences in political and economic development among civilizations are clearly rooted in their different cultures. East Asian economic success has its source in East Asian culture, as do the difficulties East Asian societies have had in achieving stable democratic political systems. Islamic culture explains in large part the failure of democracy to emerge in much of the Muslim world. Developments in the postcommunist societies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are shaped by their civilizational identities. Those with Western Christian heritages are making progress toward economic development and democratic politics; the prospects for economic and political development in the Orthodox countries are uncertain; the prospects in the Muslim republics are bleak. The West is and will remain for years to come the most powerful civilization. Yet its power relative to that of other civilizations is declining. As the West attempts to assert its values and to protect its interests, non-Western societies confront a choice. Some attempt to emulate the West and to join or to "bandwagon" with the West. Other Confucian and Islamic societies attempt to expand their own economic and military power to resist and to "balance" against the West. A central axis of post--Cold War world politics is thus the interaction of Western power and culture with the power and culture of non-Western civilizations. In sum, the post--Cold War world is a world of seven or eight major civilizations. Cultural commonalities and differences shape the interests, antagonisms, and associations of states. The most important countries in the world come overwhelmingly from different civilizations. The local conflicts most likely to escalate into broader wars are those between groups and states from different civilizations. The predominant patterns of political and economic development differ from civilization to civilization. The key issues on the international agenda involve differences among civilizations. Power is shifting from the long predominant West to non-Western civilizations. Global politics has become multipolar and multicivilizational. Other Worlds? Maps and Paradigms. This picture of post--Cold War world politics shaped by cultural factors and involving interactions among states and groups from different civilizations is highly simplified. It omits many things, distorts some things, and obscures others. Yet if we are to think seriously about the world, and act effectively in it, some sort of simplified map of reality, some theory, concept, model, paradigm, is necessary. Without such intellectual constructs, there is, as William James said, only "a bloomin' buzzin' confusion." Intellectual and scientific advance, Thomas Kuhn showed in his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, consists of the displacement of one paradigm, which has become increasingly incapable of explaining new or newly discovered facts, by a new paradigm, which does account for those facts in a more satisfactory fashion. "To be accepted as a paradigm," Kuhn wrote, "a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted." "Finding one's way through unfamiliar terrain," John Lewis Gaddis also wisely observed, "generally requires a map of some sort. Cartography, like cognition itself, is a necessary simplification that allows us to see where we are, and where we may be going." The Cold War image of superpower competition was, as he points out, such a model, articulated first by Harry Truman, as "an exercise in geopolitical cartography that depicted the international landscape in terms everyone could understand, and so doing prepared the way for the sophisticated strategy of containment that was soon to follow." World views and causal theories are indispensable guides to international politics. For forty years students and practitioners of international relations thought and acted in terms of the highly simplified but very useful Cold War paradigm of world affairs. This paradigm could not account for everything that went on in world politics. There were many anomalies, to use Kuhn's term, and at times the paradigm blinded scholars and statesmen to major developments, such as the Sino-Soviet split. Yet as a simple model of global politics, it accounted for more important phenomena than any of its rivals, it was an essential starting point for thinking about international affairs, it came to be almost universally accepted, and it shaped thinking about world politics for two generations. Simplified paradigms or maps are indispensable for human thought and action. On the one hand, we may explicitly formulate theories or models and consciously use them to guide our behavior. Alternatively, we may deny the need for such guides and assume that we will act only in terms of specific "objective" facts, dealing with each case "on its merits." If we assume this, however, we delude ourselves. For in the back of our minds are hidden assumptions, biases, and prejudices that determine how we perceive reality, what facts we look at, and how we judge their importance and merits. We need explicit or implicit models so as to be able to: 1. order and generalize about reality; 2. understand causal relationships among phenomena; 3. anticipate and, if we are lucky, predict future developments; 4. distinguish what is important from what is unimportant; and 5. show us what paths we should take to achieve our goals. Every model or map is an abstraction and will be more useful for some purposes than for others. A road map shows us how to drive from A to B, but will not be very useful if we are piloting a plane, in which case we will want a map highlighting airfields, radio beacons, flight paths, and topography. With no map, however, we will be lost. The more detailed a map is the more fully it will reflect reality. An extremely detailed map, however, will not be useful for many purposes. If we wish to get from one big city to another on a major expressway, we do not need and may find confusing a map which includes much information unrelated to automotive transportation and in which the major highways are lost in a complex mass of secondary roads. A map, on the other hand, which had only one expressway on it would eliminate much reality and limit our ability to find alternative routes if the expressway were blocked by a major accident. In short, we need a map that both portrays reality and simplifies reality in a way that best serves our purposes. Several maps or paradigms of world politics were advanced at the end of the Cold War. One World: Euphoria and Harmony. One widely articulated paradigm was based on the assumption that the end of the Cold War meant the end of significant conflict in global politics and the emergence of one relatively harmonious world. The most widely discussed formulation of this model was the "end of history" thesis advanced by Francis Fukuyama. "We may be witnessing," Fukuyama argued, ". . . the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." To be sure, he said, some conflicts may happen in places in the Third World, but the global conflict is over, and not just in Europe. "It is precisely in the non-European world" that the big changes have occurred, particularly in China and the Soviet Union. The war of ideas is at an end. Believers in Marxist-Leninism may still exist "in places like Managua, Pyongyang, and Cambridge, Massachusetts," but overall liberal democracy has triumphed. The future will be devoted not to great exhilarating struggles over ideas but rather to resolving mundane economic and technical problems. And, he concluded rather sadly, it will all be rather boring. The expectation of harmony was widely shared. Political and intellectual leaders elaborated similar views. The Berlin wall had come down, communist regimes had collapsed, the United Nations was to assume a new importance, the former Cold War rivals would engage in "partnership" and a "grand bargain," peacekeeping and peacemaking would be the order of the day. The President of the world's leading country proclaimed the "new world order"; the president of, arguably, the world's leading university vetoed appointment of a professor of security studies because the need had disappeared: "Hallelujah! We study war no more because war is no more." The moment of euphoria at the end of the Cold War generated an illusion of harmony, which was soon revealed to be exactly that. The world became different in the early 1990s, but not necessarily more peaceful. Change was inevitable; progress was not. Similar illusions of harmony flourished, briefly, at the end of each of the twentieth century's other major conflicts. World War I was the "war to end wars" and to make the world safe for democracy. World War II, as Franklin Roosevelt put it, would "end the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries--and have always failed." Instead we will have "a universal organization" of "peace-loving Nations" and the beginnings of a "permanent structure of peace." World War I, however, generated communism, fascism, and the reversal of a century-old trend toward democracy. World War II produced a Cold War that was truly global. The illusion of harmony at the end of that Cold War was soon dissipated by the multiplication of ethnic conflicts and "ethnic cleansing," the breakdown of law and order, the emergence of new patterns of alliance and conflict among states, the resurgence of neo-communist and neo-fascist movements, intensification of religious fundamentalism, the end of the "diplomacy of smiles" and "policy of yes" in Russia's relations with the West, the inability of the United Nations and the United States to suppress bloody local conflicts, and the increasing assertiveness of a rising China. In the five years after the Berlin wall came down, the word "genocide" was heard far more often than in any five years of the Cold War. The one harmonious world paradigm is clearly far too divorced from reality to be a useful guide to the post--Cold War world. Two Worlds: Us and Them. While one-world expectations appear at the end of major conflicts, the tendency to think in terms of two worlds recurs throughout human history. People are always tempted to divide people into us and them, the in-group and the other, our civilization and those barbarians. Scholars have analyzed the world in terms of the Orient and the Occident, North and South, center and periphery. Muslims have traditionally divided the world into Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, the abode of peace and the abode of war. This distinction was reflected, and in a sense reversed, at the end of the Cold War by American scholars who divided the world into "zones of peace" and "zones of turmoil." The former included the West and Japan with about 15 percent of the world's population, the latter everyone else. Depending upon how the parts are defined, a two-part world picture may in some measure correspond with reality. The most common division, which appears under various names, is between rich (modern, developed) countries and poor (traditional, undeveloped or developing) countries. Historically correlating with this economic division is the cultural division between West and East, where the emphasis is less on differences in economic well-being and more on differences in underlying philosophy, values, and way of life. Each of these images reflects some elements of reality yet also suffers limitations. Rich modern countries share characteristics which differentiate them from poor traditional countries, which also share characteristics. Differences in wealth may lead to conflicts between societies, but the evidence suggests that this happens primarily when rich and more powerful societies attempt to conquer and colonize poor and more traditional societies. The West did this for four hundred years, and then some of the colonies rebelled and waged wars of liberation against the colonial powers, who may well have lost the will to empire. In the current world, decolonization has occurred and colonial wars of liberation have been replaced by conflicts among the liberated peoples. At a more general level, conflicts between rich and poor are unlikely because, except in special circumstances, the poor countries lack the political unity, economic power, and military capability to challenge the rich countries. Economic development in Asia and Latin America is blurring the simple dichotomy of haves and have-nots. Rich states may fight trade wars with each other; poor states may fight violent wars with each other; but an international class war between the poor South and the wealthy North is almost as far from reality as one happy harmonious world. The cultural bifurcation of the world division is still less useful. At some level, the West is an entity. What, however, do non-Western societies have in common other than the fact that they are non-Western? Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, Muslim, and African civilizations share little in terms of religion, social structure, institutions, and prevailing values. The unity of the non-West and the East-West dichotomy are myths created by the West. These myths suffer the defects of the Orientalism which Edward Said appropriately criticized for promoting "the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, `us') and the strange (the Orient, the East, `them')" and for assuming the inherent superiority of the former to the latter. During the Cold War the world was, in considerable measure, polarized along an ideological spectrum. There is, however, no single cultural spectrum. The polarization of "East" and "West" culturally is in part another consequence of the universal but unfortunate practice of calling European civilization Western civilization. Instead of "East and West," it is more appropriate to speak of "the West and the rest," which at least implies the existence of many non-Welts. The world is too complex to be usefully envisioned for most purposes as simply divided economically between North and South or culturally between East and West. 184 States, More or Less. A third map of the post--Cold War world derives from what is often called the "realist" theory of international relations. According to this theory states are the primary, indeed, the only important actors in world affairs, the relation among states is one of anarchy, and hence to insure their survival and security, states invariably attempt to maximize their power. If one state sees another state increasing its power and thereby becoming a potential threat, it attempts to protect its own security by strengthening its power and/or by allying itself with other states. The interests and actions of the more or less 184 states of the post--Cold War world can be predicted from these assumptions. This "realist" picture of the world is a highly useful starting point for analyzing international affairs and explains much state behavior. States are and will remain the dominant entities in world affairs. They maintain armies, conduct diplomacy, negotiate treaties, fight wars, control international organizations, influence and in considerable measure shape production and commerce. The governments of states give priority to insuring the external security of their states (although they often may give higher priority to insuring their security as a government against internal threats). Overall this statist paradigm does provide a more realistic picture of and guide to global politics than the one- or two-world paradigms. It also, however, suffers severe limitations. It assumes all states perceive their interests in the same way and act in the same way. Its simple assumption that power is all is a starting point for understanding state behavior but does not get one very far. States define their interests in terms of power but also in terms of much else besides. States often, of course, attempt to balance power, but if that is all they did, Western European countries would have coalesced with the Soviet Union against the United States in the late 1940s. States respond primarily to perceived threats, and the Western European states then saw a political, ideological, and military threat from the East. They saw their interests in a way which would not have been predicted by classic realist theory. Values, culture, and institutions pervasively influence how states define their interests. The interests of states are also shaped not only by their domestic values and institutions but by international norms and institutions. Above and beyond their primal concern with security, different types of states define their interests in different ways. States with similar cultures and institutions will see common interest. Democratic states have commonalities with other democratic states and hence do not fight each other. Canada does not have to ally with another power to deter invasion by the United States. At a basic level the assumptions of the statist paradigm have been true throughout history. They thus do not help us to understand how global politics after the Cold War will differ from global politics during and before the Cold War. Yet clearly there are differences, and states pursue their interests differently from one historical period to another. In the post--Cold War world, states increasingly define their interests in civilizational terms. They cooperate with and ally themselves with states with similar or common culture and are more often in conflict with countries of different culture. States define threats in terms of the intentions of other states, and those intentions and how they are perceived are powerfully shaped by cultural considerations. Publics and statesmen are less likely to see threats emerging from people they feel they understand and can trust because of shared language, religion, values, institutions, and culture. They are much more likely to see threats coming from states whose societies have different cultures and hence which they do not understand and feel they cannot trust. Now that a Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union no longer poses a threat to the Free World and the United States no longer poses a countering threat to the communist world, countries in both worlds increasingly see threats coming from societies which are culturally different. While states remain the primary actors in world affairs, they also are suffering losses in sovereignty, functions. and power. International institutions now assert the right to judge and to constrain what states do in their own territory. In some cases, most notably in Europe, international institutions have assumed important functions previous!! performed by states, and powerful international bureaucracies have been created which operate directly on individual citizens. Globally there has been a trend for state governments to lose power also through devolution to substate, regional. provincial and local political entities. In many states, including those in the developed world, regional movements exist promoting substantial autonomy or secession. State governments have in considerable measure lost the ability to control the flow of money in and out of their country and are having increasing difficulty controlling the flows of ideas, technology, goods, and people. State borders, in short, have become increasingly permeable. All these developments have led many to see the gradual end of the hard, "billiard ball" state, which purportedly has been the norm since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and the emergence of a varied, complex, multilayered international order more closely resembling that of medieval times. Sheer Chaos. The weakening of states and the appearance of "failed states" contribute to a fourth image of a world in anarchy. This paradigm stresses: the breakdown of governmental authority; the breakup of states; the intensification of tribal, ethnic, and religious conflict; the emergence of international criminal mafias; refugees multiplying into the tens of millions; the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction; the spread of terrorism; the prevalence of massacres and ethnic cleansing. This picture of a world in chaos was convincingly set forth and summed up in the titles of two penetrating works published in 1993: Out of Control by Zbignew Brzezinski and Pandaemonium by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Like the states paradigm, the chaos paradigm is close to reality. It provides a graphic and accurate picture of much of what is going on in the world, and unlike the states paradigm, it highlights the significant changes in world politics that have occurred with the end of the Cold War. As of early 1993, for instance, an estimated 48 ethnic wars were occurring throughout the world, and 164 "territorial-ethnic claims and conflicts concerning borders" existed in the former Soviet Union, of which 30 had involved some form of armed conflict. Yet it suffers even more than the states paradigm in being too close to reality. The world may be chaos but it is not totally without order. An image of universal and undifferentiated anarchy provides few clues for understanding the world, for ordering events and evaluating their importance, for predicting trends in the anarchy, for distinguishing among types of chaos and their possibly different causes and consequences, and for developing guidelines for governmental policy makers. Comparing Worlds: Realism, Parsimony, and Predictions Each of these four paradigms offers a somewhat different combination of realism and parsimony. Each also has its deficiencies and limitations. Conceivably these could be countered by combining paradigms, and positing, for instance, that the world is engaged in simultaneous processes of fragmentation and integration. Both trends indeed exist, and a more complex model will more closely approximate reality than a simpler one. Yet this sacrifices parsimony for realism and, if pursued very far, leads to the rejection of all paradigms or theories. In addition, by embracing two simultaneous opposing trends, the fragmentation-integration model fails to set forth under what circumstances one trend will prevail and under what circumstances the other will. The challenge is to develop a paradigm that accounts for more crucial events and provides a better understanding of trends than other paradigms at a similar level of intellectual abstraction. These four paradigms are also incompatible with each other. The world cannot be both one and fundamentally divided between East and West or North and South. Nor can the nation state be the base rock of international affairs if it is fragmenting and torn by proliferating civil strife. The world is either one, or two, or 184 states, or potentially an almost infinite number of tribes, ethnic groups, and nationalities. Viewing the world in terms of seven or eight civilizations avoids many of these difficulties. It does not sacrifice reality to parsimony as do the one- and two-world paradigms; yet it also does not sacrifice parsimony to reality as the statist and chaos paradigms do. It provides an easily grasped and intelligible framework for understanding the world, distinguishing what is important from what is unimportant among the multiplying conflicts, predicting future developments, and providing guidelines for policy makers. It also builds on and incorporates elements of the other paradigms. It is more compatible with them than they are with each other. A civilizational approach, for instance, holds that: * The forces of integration in the world are real and are precisely what are generating counterforces of cultural assertion and civilizational consciousness. * The world is in some sense two, but the central distinction is between the West as the hitherto dominant civilization and all the others, which, however, have little if anything in common among them. The world, in short, is divided between a Western one and a non-Western many. * Nation states are and will remain the most important actors in world affairs, but their interests, associations, and conflicts are increasingly shaped by cultural and civilizational factors. * The world is indeed anarchical, rife with tribal and nationality conflicts, but the conflicts that pose the greatest dangers for stability are those between states or groups from different civilizations. A civilizational paradigm thus sets forth a relatively simple but not too simple map for understanding what is going on in the world as the twentieth century ends. No paradigm, however, is good forever. The Cold War model of world politics was useful and relevant for forty years but became obsolete in the late 1980s, and at some point the civilizational paradigm will suffer a similar fate. For the contemporary period, however, it provides a useful guide for distinguishing what is more important from what is less important. Slightly less than half of the forty-eight ethnic conflicts in the world in early 1993, for example, were between groups from different civilizations. The civilizational perspective would lead the U.N. Secretary-General and the U.S. Secretary of State to concentrate their peacemaking efforts on these conflicts which have much greater potential than others to escalate into broader wars. Paradigms also generate predictions, and a crucial test of a paradigm's validity and usefulness is the extent to which the predictions derived from it turn out to be more accurate than those from alternative paradigms. A statist paradigm, for instance, leads John Mearsheimer to predict that "the situation between Ukraine and Russia is ripe for the outbreak of security competition between them. Great powers that share a long and unprotected common border, like that between Russia and Ukraine, often lapse into competition driven by security fears. Russia and Ukraine might overcome this dynamic and learn to live together in harmony, but it would be unusual if they do." A civilizational approach, on the other hand, emphasizes the close cultural, personal, and historical links between Russia and Ukraine and the intermingling of Russians and Ukrainians in both countries, and focuses instead on the civilizational fault line that divides Orthodox eastern Ukraine from Uniate western Ukraine, a central historical fact of long standing which, in keeping with the "realist" concept of states as unified and self-identified entities, Mearsheimer totally ignores. While a statist approach highlights the possibility of a Russian-Ukrainian war, a civilizational approach minimizes that and instead highlights the possibility of Ukraine splitting in half, a separation which cultural factors would lead one to predict might be more violent than that of Czechoslovakia but far less bloody than that of Yugoslavia. These different predictions, in turn, give rise to different policy priorities. Mearsheimer's statist prediction of possible war and Russian conquest of Ukraine leads him to support Ukraine's having nuclear weapons. A civilizational approach would encourage cooperation between Russia and Ukraine, urge Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons, promote substantial economic assistance and other measures to help maintain Ukrainian unity and independence, and sponsor contingency planning for the possible breakup of Ukraine. Many important developments after the end of the Cold War were compatible with the civilizational paradigm and could have been predicted from it. These include: the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia; the wars going on in their former territories; the rise of religious fundamentalism throughout the world; the struggles within Russia, Turkey, and Mexico over their identity; the intensity of the trade conflicts between the United States and Japan; the resistance of Islamic states to Western pressure on Iraq and Libya; the efforts of Islamic and Confucian states to acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; China's continuing role as an "outsider" great power; the consolidation of new democratic regimes in some countries and not in others; and the developing arms competition in East Asia. The relevance of the civilizational paradigm to the emerging world is illustrated by the events fitting that paradigm which occurred during a six-month period in 1993. * the continuation and intensification of the fighting among Croats, Muslims, and Serbs in the former Yugoslavia; * the failure of the West to provide meaningful support to the Bosnian Muslims or to denounce Croat atrocities in the same way Serb atrocities were denounced; * the unwillingness of Russia to join other U.N. Security Council members in getting the Serbs in Croatia to make peace with the Croatian government, and the offer of Iran and other Muslim nations to provide 18,000 troops to protect Bosnian Muslims; * the intensification of the war between Armenians and Azeris, Turkish and Iranian demands that the Armenians surrender their conquests, the deployment of Turkish troops to and Iranian troops across the Azerbaijan border, and Russia's warning that the Iranian action contributes to "escalation of the conflict" and "pushes it to dangerous limits of internationalization"; * the continued fighting in central Asia between Russian troops and mujahedeen guerrillas; * the confrontation at the Vienna Human Rights Conference between the West, led by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, denouncing "cultural relativism," and a coalition of Islamic and Confucian states rejecting "Western universalism"; * the refocusing in parallel fashion of Russian and NATO military planners on "the threat from the South"; * the voting, apparently almost entirely along civilizational lines, that gave the 2000 Olympics to Sydney rather than Beijing; * the sale of missile components from China to Pakistan, the resulting imposition of U.S. sanctions against China, and the confrontation between China and the United States over the alleged shipment of nuclear technology to Iran; * the breaking of the moratorium and the testing of a nuclear weapon by China, despite vigorous U.S. protests, and North Korea's refusal to participate further in talks on its own nuclear weapons program; * the revelation that the U.S. State Department was following a "dual containment" policy directed at both Iran and Iraq; * the announcement by the U.S. Defense Department of a new strategy of preparing for two "major regional conflicts," one against North Korea, the other against Iran or Iraq; * the call by Iran's president for alliances with China and India so that "we can have the last word on international events"; * the new German legislation drastically curtailing the admission of refugees; * the agreement between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk on the disposition of the Black Sea fleet and other Issues; * the bombing of Baghdad by the United States, its virtually unanimous support by Western governments, and its condemnation by almost all Muslim governments as another example of the West's "double standard"; * the United States' listing Sudan as a terrorist state and indicting Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and his followers for conspiring "to levy a war of urban terrorism against the United States"; * the improved prospects for the eventual admission of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia into NATO; * the 1993 Russian presidential election which demonstrated that Russia was indeed a "torn" country with its population and elites uncertain whether they should join or challenge the West. A comparable list of events demonstrating the relevance of the civilization paradigm could be compiled for almost any other six-month period in the early 1990s. In the early years of the Cold War, the Canadian statesman Lester Pearson presciently pointed to the resurgence and vitality of non-Western societies. "It would be absurd," he warned, "to imagine that these new political societies coming to birth in the East will be replicas of those with which we in the West are familiar. The revival of these ancient civilizations will take new forms." Pointing out that international relations "for several centuries" had been the relations among the states of Europe, he argued that "the most far-reaching problems arise no longer between nations within a single civilization but between civilizations themselves." The prolonged bipolarity of the Cold War delayed the developments which Pearson saw coming. The end of the Cold War released the cultural and civilizational forces which he identified in the 1950s, and a wide range of scholars and observers have recognized and highlighted the new role of these factors in global politics. " s far as anyone interested in the contemporary world is concerned," Fernand Braudel has sagely warned, "and even more so with regard to anyone wishing to act within it, it `pays' to know how to make out, on a map of the world, which civilizations exist today, to be able to define their borders, their centers and peripheries, their provinces and the air one breathes there, the general and particular `forms' existing and associating within them. Otherwise, what catastrophic blunders of perspective could ensue!"
Fungus could wipe out Philippine bananas By Agence France-Presse Monday, October 10, 2011 A disease that has ravaged banana plantations across Southeast Asia could wipe out the Philippine industry in three years unless the government finds a cure, a growers’ group warned Monday. The disease, called Fusarium wilt, is caused by a fast-spreading fungus that kills the plant, said Stephen Antig, executive director of the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association. “So far, it has already infected 1,200 hectares (2,950 acres) of banana plantations locally, although that figure can go higher,” Antig told AFP. “If we can not contain this and it remains unchecked, then in less than three years our banana industry will die.” The Philippines is the second biggest exporter of bananas in the world behind Ecuador with about 70,000 hectares of plantations, according to the association. The banana sector is also the country’s fifth largest export industry, directly employing 280,000 people, it said. “Losing this industry will have a huge impact on our economy,” Antig said. The Philippines exports the Cavendish variety of banana, which is the most popular type around the world, according to Antig. He said the disease wiped out the then-popular Gros Michel bananas in Central America and the Caribbean in the 1960s. The disease also destroyed Cavendish plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia in the 1990s. Traces of the fungus were found in controllable levels in the Philippines five years ago, Antig said. But a more virulent type of the fungus emerged last month and quickly began spreading through plantations in the southern region of Mindanao, where most of the country’s banana exports come from, he said. Antig urged the government to fast-track the creation of a research institute to enable local growers to develop a fruit variety that is resistant to the disease.
向大家推荐了解一下美国环保署的政府公开计划（U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Open Government Plan 1.0 ,下载地址 http://www.epa.gov/open/EPAOpenGovernmentPlan.pdf ） 在新上线的EPA 政府公开网址上（ http://www.epa.gov/open/ ），美国环保署署长Lisa P. Jackson说道：The success of our environmental efforts depends on earning and maintaining the trust of the public we serve. The American people will not trust us to protect their health or their environment if they do not trust us to be transparent and inclusive in our decision-making. To earn this trust, we must conduct business with the public openly and fairly. ... In short, we will let more sunlight into our Agency. 该网址（ http://www.epa.gov/open/ ）为公众提供了一个了解、参与EPA的平台。公众可以通过该网址、 www.Data.gov 以及 www.Geodata.gov 和 www.epa.gov/datafinder 得到高质量的环境数据。最新公开的数据包括Toxic Chemical Substances Inventory、Chesapeake Bay Program Water Quality Database 、ToxCast Phase I、Toxics Release Inventory Chemical Hazard Information Profile (TRI-CHIP) Dataset 以及New Mapping Tool for Enforcement Cases等。 美国环保署在面向公众开放、鼓励公众参加交流方面做了很多事情。如环保署长Jackson公布了她的twitter账号 http://twitter.com/lisapjackson ，在 http://www.epa.gov/lisa 上公开她的日程、会议等。还有一些其他人员也公开其工作日程安排在 http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/Calendars?OpenView )。 EPA在与公众的交流方面还有一些web 2.0的新方式，如 ? Greenversations blog: http://blog.epa.gov ? Facebook: www.facebook.com/EPA ? Twitter: http://twitter.com/epagov Flickr： http://flickr.com/usepagov Youtube： http://youtube.com/usepagov Email： opengov@epa.gov
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