The International Research Society of Spinal Deformities (IRSSD) and its contribution to science

From the time of its initial, informal meetings starting in 1980 to its formal creation in 1990, the IRSSD has met on a bi-annual basis to discuss all aspects of the spine and associated deformities. It has encouraged open discussion on all topics and, in particular, has tried to be the seed-bed for new ideas. The members are spread around the world and include people from all areas of academia as well as the most important people, the patients themselves. Most notably, application of the ideas and results of the research has always been at the forefront of the discussions. This paper was conceived with the idea of evaluating the impact made by the IRSSD over the last 30 years in the various areas and is intended to create discussion for the upcoming meeting in Montreal regarding future focus: "We are lost over the Atlantic Ocean but we are making good time.

Vertebral rotation measurement: a summary and comparison of common radiographic and CT methods

Current research has provided a more comprehensive understanding of Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS) as a three-dimensional spinal deformity, encompassing both lateral and rotational components. Apart from quantifying curve severity using the Cobb angle, vertebral rotation has become increasingly prominent in the study of scoliosis. It demonstrates significance in both preoperative and postoperative assessment, providing better appreciation of the impact of bracing or surgical interventions. In the past, the need for computer resources, digitizers and custom software limited studies of rotation to research performed after a patient left the scoliosis clinic. With advanced technology, however, rotation measurements are now more feasible. While numerous vertebral rotation measurement methods have been developed and tested, thorough comparisons of these are still relatively unexplored. This review discusses the advantages and disadvantages of six common measurement techniques based on technology most pertinent in clinical settings: radiography (Cobb, Nash-Moe, Perdriolle and Stokes' method) and computer tomography (CT) imaging (Aaro-Dahlborn and Ho's method). Better insight into the clinical suitability of rotation measurement methods currently available is presented, along with a discussion of critical concerns that should be addressed in future studies and development of new methods

Bush the transnationalist: a reappraisal of the unilateralist impulse in US foreign policy, 2001-2009

This article challenges the common characterisation of George W. Bush’s foreign policy as “unilateral.” It argues that the Bush administration developed a new post-9/11 understanding of terrorism as a transnational, networked phenomenon shaped by the forces of globalisation. This led to a new strategic emphasis on bi- and multilateral security co-operation and counterterrorism operations, especially outside of Afghanistan and Iraq, driven by the perceived need to counter a transnational security challenge present in multiple locations. This (flawed) attempt to engage with transnational security challenges supplemented the existing internationalist pillar of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Highlighting the transnational realm of international relations and the ways in which the Bush administration was able to co-opt other states to tackle perceived transnational challenges also shows the high importance the administration attached to concerted action even as it frequented eschewed institutional multilateralism

The heart of empire? Theorizing US empire in an era of transnational capitalism

Contemporary critical theorising on US Empire tends to diverge in two ways. First, more traditional approaches tend to foreground the national basis of the USA's imperial project and the subsequent ongoing inter-imperial rivalry inherent between rival capitalist states and regions. A second ‘global-capitalist’ approach rejects the notion of US Empire and instead posits the transcendence of a nationally based imperialism in favour of an increasingly transnationally orientated state and global ruling class. I argue that both accounts fail in their singularity to capture the nature and role of the US state within a global political economy. Instead, I argue that the US state has long been both subject to and demonstrative of a dual national and transnational structural logic that seeks to enhance US national interests while reproducing a world order favourable for global capital as a whole. Crucially, the end of the Cold War and the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have exacerbated the tensions between these dual logics; these will potentially affect both the hegemony of American Empire and the future of international relations in profound ways

Why the end of the Cold War doesn't matter: the US war of terror in Colombia

Orthodox narratives of US foreign policy have been employed as uncontested modes of historical interpretation with US post-Cold War foreign policy in the Third World characterised by discontinuity from its earlier Cold War objectives. Chomsky's work adopts an alternative revisionist historiography that views US post-Cold War foreign policy as characterised by continuity with its earlier Cold War objectives. This article examines the continuities of US post-Cold War policy in Colombia, and explains this in terms of the maintenance of US access to South American oil, the preservation of regional (in)stability and the continued need to destroy challenges to US-led neoliberalism

Blood for oil? Global capital, counter-insurgency and the dual logic of American energy security

Abstract. The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq coupled with the increased militarisation of international relations as part of the ‘war on terror’ has led to the development of a ‘blood for oil’ thesis that posits the centrality of oil and the economic interests of US oil corporations to American intervention in the Third World. This article argues that this thesis, whilst correct in identifying the importance of energy to US intervention, is not sufficiently attentive to the dual nature of American resource interventions whereby the American state seeks not only to ensure US oil supplies but also to maintain sufficient oil supplies for the global economy as a whole. American intervention is thus driven by oil to a large extent, but in different ways to those commonly suggested by ‘blood for oil’ theorists. In contrast to this thesis I argue that recent energy security moves to diversify oil acquisition away from the Middle East towards new areas such as South America, the Caspian region and Africa continue to be subject to this dual logic. Moreover, counter-insurgency warfare is increasingly being deployed to insulate oil-rich states from internal pressures which is in turn having a profound effect on human rights, social justice and state formation in the global South

Terror, Capital and Crude: US Counterinsurgency in Colombia

As David Harvey argues, US policy relies upon processes of consent and cooperation in order 'to make the claim that it is acting in the general interest plausible to others, even when, as most people suspect, it is acting out of narrow self-interest. This is what exercising leadership through consent is all about'. In relation to Colombia the principal means for the forging of consent during the post-Cold War era has been the deployment of new discourses on the 'war on drugs', and now the 'war on terror', to secure consent for the use of coercion. The aim of this essay is to show, first, that the US has used counter-insurgency as the principal coercive means for the stabilization and defence of capitalism in Colombia; second, that inherent within this US coercive strategy in Colombia is the promotion of sectoral interests of transnational capital primarily concentrated in oil; and third, that internal to this process has been an attempt to make the coercive forms of US-sponsored terror seems necessary and acceptable

Terrorismo, petróleo y capital: la contrainsurgencia norteamericana en Colombia

Durante la Guerra Fría el gobierno de los Estados Unidos intervino en más estados en América Latina que en cualquier otro continente, con el financiamiento de la contrainsurgencia convertida en el instrumento principal de sus políticas coercitivas. Los responsables norteamericanos del planeamiento argumentaban que este tipo de “apoyo” a los estados aliados estaba diseñado para hacer frente a la influencia de la Unión Soviética mediante la destrucción de los movimientos insurgentes armados de izquierda, que eran retratados como instancias del expansionismo soviético. George Kennan, el arquitecto de la gran estrategia de contención norteamericana durante la Guerra Fría, explicó que para ocuparse del comunismo en América Latina la respuesta final “podría ser desagradable”, pero que EUA “no debía dudar ante la represión policial por parte del gobierno local”. Era mejor, explicaba a continuación, “tener un régimen fuerte en el poder que un gobierno liberal si es indulgente y está relajado y penetrado por los comunistas”