2008年7月28日星期一

大陆民众的“中华民国想象”

● 叶鹏飞

  随着两岸周末包机直航开放,大陆观光团从7月18日也开始乘坐包机赴台湾旅游,两岸民间人员交流进入了另一个新阶段。可以预见,双方民众将通过实际的接触,证实或打破彼此对对方的偏见、成见或美好想象,同时也可能因为误解而在接触过程中产生出新的偏见与成见。

  陆客赴台象征了两岸关系的改善,但也掩饰不了双方政治上仍然无法化解的基本矛盾。这不由得让人想起1980年代台湾相声表演的一个段子,说的是国军老兵回乡探亲,“父亲从来没有出国,第一次出国,就是回国!”

  据台湾方面的消息,大陆赴台旅游的民众对于有中华民国历史符号的景点最有兴趣,其中包括纪念蒋介石的中正纪念堂、纪念孙中山的国父纪念馆,还有桃园县蒋氏父子的慈湖陵寝等。此外,中华民国政治符号的总统府、文化符号的故宫博物院等也都是大陆旅客必游之地。

  两岸关系的改善,很大程度上归功于北京对台政策的改弦更张,逐步放弃传统的国共斗争党派立场,向民族认同的格局演变。在具体政策上,除了不再强调一个中国就是中华人民共和国,模糊主权争议外,对于国民党与国民政府的历史也采取更加客观的处理。

  早在2005年7月,大陆纪念七七卢沟桥事变68周年时,中国人民抗日战争纪念馆举办的“伟大胜利——纪念中国人民抗日战争暨世界反法西斯战争胜利60 周年大型主题展览”,出现了“国共合作共赴国难”的展览主题。这是配合当时国民党主席连战首次登陆,因而修正了中共传统上否定国民党的抗日角色,开始肯定国民政府没有对日本妥协,以及国军在正面战场上的贡献。

  新华网在该年做的网上调查也发现大陆民众早在官方立场改变前,已经发生认知上的转移。在回答抗战胜利的最重要原因是什么时,认为“中国军民团结一致,共同抗日,与侵略者进行了坚苦卓绝的斗争”的网民占48.46%;认为“世界反法西斯国家结成了反战联盟”占40.89%;认为“中国共产党在八年抗战中发挥了巨大作用”只有10.65%。

  国民党在大陆民众中的形象变好,除了官方为了统战需要而调整宣传口径外,也与互联网平台资讯流通便利,难以全面封锁,以及大陆民众对于现实政治与社会现象不满,转而对台湾民主开放环境产生心理投射脱离不了关系。

  网名“孙不二”的大陆网民在2004年建立“中国泛蓝联盟”,号称信仰三民主义,秉承孙中山与同盟会先烈的奋斗精神,不但主动成为中国国民党的精神党员,更利用法律途径在大陆进行维权行动。

  今年3月国民党通过民主选举重新执政,更进一步刺激了大陆民众的政治想象。大陆一位博客在选举成绩揭晓后撰文赞美说:“今夜,我们都是台湾人。”

这种正面意义的想象伴随着奥运前夕大陆言论的紧缩,又开始发生另一种变化。近期以来多个受欢迎的博客被封杀,各大网站论坛的言论自我审查升级,以及多名维权人士如协助汶川大地震罹难学生家长的黄琦因“非法持有国家机密”罪被正式逮捕、湖北异见人士杜导斌(网名“黄喝楼主”)缓刑改实刑,无不在互联网界引发激烈讨论。

  上述博客在另一篇博文里,还建议去台湾观光的大陆朋友“做一件有意思的事”:去总统府前举牌示威,写上“打倒台独”、“统一祖国”。

  他说:“你想一下,中国五千年历史,你什么时候可以那么轻松的到最高权力中心去行使你的天赋人权?”

  一些网民则通过缅怀民国时代胡适等知识分子所代表的自由气息,来对比当下政府的言论环境。相信中国已经“错过胡适一百年”的知名评论员熊培云在其《思想国网站》中这样写到:“近日重读民国,无心作文……回到那个思想光荣的时代,环视目下思想、出版及社会组织等方面的不自由,回想这一百年,从中华民国到中华党国,读书人一生长叹。”

  大陆知识界的中华民国想象,还有一个生动的例子。一位大陆媒体从业员应邀带着一个来自台湾的国民党老军官去参观卢沟桥抗战纪念馆。老军官表示,他参观的目的是为了要解答自己心中一个长期的困惑:为何国军在八年抗战中牺牲300多万将士,其中有名可考的将军 200余名,最终却仍然丢掉了在大陆的统治?

  显然,光靠民族主义和爱国主义并不足以维系一个政权在人民眼中的合法性,当社会普遍感觉缺乏公平正义的时刻,就是“天命在即”的时刻。

2008年7月24日星期四

BIG BROTHER, BIG BUSINESS

Award-winning correspondent, David Faber examines the rapid advance of technology which allows companies to monitor our every move and record our most private personal information. Driving habits are being recorded; employees are monitored; shoppers and diners are observed and analyzed; internet searches are saved and used as evidence in court.

It is big business that collects most of the data about us. But increasingly, it is the government that’s using it.

The documentary takes viewers inside the FBI, the Border Patrol, police departments and schools to see how they are using biometric technologies to establish identity. There is also a rare look inside a little-known division of AOL that works solely with law enforcement requests for information about AOL’s members.

Faber also examines some of the downsides of the new surveillance society: a man whose cell phone records were stolen by his former employer; a women who lost her job due to mistaken identity; a man who discovered his rental car company was tracking his every move.

BIG BROTHER, BIG BUSINESS takes an enlightening and sometimes disturbing look at how the growth of the information society may be eroding the freedoms many people take for granted.


BIG BROTHER, BIG BUSINESS: VIDEO GALLERY


Play Video Big Brother Preamble
Wed. May 30 2007 | 2:00 AM [02:24]
We are living through a surveillance revolution empowered by technology. Who is watching you? Play Video Black Boxes for Cars
Wed. May 30 2007 | 2:05 AM [02:39]
Did you know...technology inside your car could be used to track you, or catch a criminal.


Play Video Cell Phone Secrets
Wed. May 30 2007 | 2:04 AM [02:02]
Private Eye veteran Ernie Rizzo explains how easy it is to obtain private cell phone records. Play Video Invasion of Privacy
Wed. May 30 2007 | 2:06 AM [02:29]
New York businessman Adam Yuzuk's tells us how his personal cell phone records were repeatedly stolen.

Unhappy America

Jul 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition
If America can learn from its problems, instead of blaming others, it will come back stronger

NATIONS, like people, occasionally get the blues; and right now the United States, normally the world’s most self-confident place, is glum. Eight out of ten Americans think their country is heading in the wrong direction. The hapless George Bush is partly to blame for this: his approval ratings are now sub-Nixonian. But many are concerned not so much about a failed president as about a flailing nation.

One source of angst is the sorry state of American capitalism (see article). The “Washington consensus” told the world that open markets and deregulation would solve its problems. Yet American house prices are falling faster than during the Depression, petrol is more expensive than in the 1970s, banks are collapsing, the euro is kicking sand in the dollar’s face, credit is scarce, recession and inflation both threaten the economy, consumer confidence is an oxymoron and Belgians have just bought Budweiser, “America’s beer”.

And it’s not just the downturn that has caused this discontent. Many Americans feel as if they missed the boom. Between 2002 and 2006 the incomes of 99% rose by an average of 1% a year in real terms, while those of the top 1% rose by 11% a year; three-quarters of the economic gains during Mr Bush’s presidency went to that top 1%. Economic envy, once seen as a European vice, is now rife. The rich appear in Barack Obama’s speeches not as entrepreneurial role models but as modern versions of the “malefactors of great wealth” denounced by Teddy Roosevelt a century ago: this lot, rather than building trusts, avoid taxes and ship jobs to Mexico. Globalisation is under fire: free trade is less popular in the United States than in any other developed country, and a nation built on immigrants is building a fence to keep them out. People mutter about nation-building beginning at home: why, many wonder, should American children do worse at reading than Polish ones and at maths than Lithuanians?
The dragon’s breath on your shoulder

Abroad, America has spent vast amounts of blood and treasure, to little purpose. In Iraq, finding an acceptable exit will look like success; Afghanistan is slipping. America’s claim to be a beacon of freedom in a dark world has been dimmed by Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and the flouting of the Geneva Conventions amid the panicky “unipolar” posturing in the aftermath of September 11th.

Now the world seems very multipolar. Europeans no longer worry about American ascendancy. The French, some say, understood the Arab world rather better than the neoconservatives did. Russia, the Gulf Arabs and the rising powers of Asia scoff openly at the Washington consensus. China in particular spooks America—and may do so even more over the next few weeks of Olympic medal-gathering. Americans are discussing the rise of China and their consequent relative decline; measuring when China’s economy will be bigger and counting its missiles and submarines has become a popular pastime in Washington. A few years ago, no politician would have been seen with a book called “The Post-American World”. Mr Obama has been conspicuously reading Fareed Zakaria’s recent volume.

America has got into funks before now. In the 1950s it went into a Sputnik-driven spin about Soviet power; in the 1970s there was Watergate, Vietnam and the oil shocks; in the late 1980s Japan seemed to be buying up America. Each time, the United States rebounded, because the country is good at fixing itself. Just as American capitalism allows companies to die, and to be created, quickly, so its political system reacts fast. In Europe, political leaders emerge slowly, through party hierarchies; in America, the primaries permit inspirational unknowns to burst into the public consciousness from nowhere.

Still, countries, like people, behave dangerously when their mood turns dark. If America fails to distinguish between what it needs to change and what it needs to accept, it risks hurting not just allies and trading partners, but also itself.
The Asian scapegoat

There are certainly areas where change is needed. The credit crunch is in part the consequence of a flawed regulatory system. Lax monetary policy allowed Americans to build up debts and fuelled a housing bubble that had to burst eventually. Lessons need to be learnt from both of those mistakes; as they do from widespread concerns about the state of education and health care. Over-unionised and unaccountable, America’s school system needs the same sort of competition that makes its universities the envy of the world. American health care, which manages to be the most expensive on the planet even though it fails properly to care for the tens of millions of people, badly needs reform.

There have been plenty of mistakes abroad, too. Waging a war on terror was always going to be like pinning jelly to a wall. As for Guantánamo Bay, it is the most profoundly un-American place on the planet: rejoice when it is shut.

In such areas America is already showing its genius for reinvention. Both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates promise to close Guantánamo. As his second term ticks down, even Mr Bush has begun to see the limits of unilateralism. Instead of just denouncing and threatening the “axis of evil” he is working more closely with allies (and non-allies) in Asia to calm down North Korea. For the first time he has just let American officials join in the negotiations with Iran about its fishy nuclear programme (see article).

That America is beginning to correct its mistakes is good; and there’s plenty more of that to be done. But one source of angst demands a change in attitude rather than a drive to restore the status quo: America’s relative decline, especially compared with Asia in general and China in particular.

The economic gap between America and a rising Asia has certainly narrowed; but worrying about it is wrong for two reasons. First, even at its present growth rate, China’s GDP will take a quarter of a century to catch up with America’s; and the internal tensions that China’s rapidly changing economy has caused may well lead it to stumble before then. Second, even if Asia’s rise continues unabated, it is wrong—and profoundly unAmerican—to regard this as a problem. Economic growth, like trade, is not a zero-sum game. The faster China and India grow, the more American goods they buy. And they are booming largely because they have adopted America’s ideas. America should regard their success as a tribute, not a threat, and celebrate in it.

Many Americans, unfortunately, are unwilling to do so. Politicians seeking a scapegoat for America’s self-made problems too often point the finger at the growing power of once-poor countries, accusing them of stealing American jobs and objecting when they try to buy American companies. But if America reacts by turning in on itself—raising trade barriers and rejecting foreign investors—it risks exacerbating the economic troubles that lie behind its current funk.

Everybody goes through bad times. Some learn from the problems they have caused themselves, and come back stronger. Some blame others, lash out and damage themselves further. America has had the wisdom to take the first course many times before. Let’s hope it does so again.

2008年7月18日星期五

FBI celebrates 100 years

From Justice Producer Terry Frieden
CNN
Decrease font Decrease font
Enlarge font Enlarge font

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Only one of the nearly 2,000 guests who attended the FBI's 100th birthday party Thursday was alive when a handful of investigators formed what was to become the world's premier law enforcement agency.
Walter Walsh, 101, was among the notables at Thursday night's FBI birthday party.

Walter Walsh, 101, was among the notables at Thursday night's FBI birthday party.

"I'm older than the FBI," said 101-year old Walter Walsh, who fought the mob as an FBI agent in the 1930s and '40s. The FBI says Walsh is its oldest living former special agent.

Walsh is among the thousands of special agents who contributed to the investigations and arrests upon which the FBI legend was built. Walsh personally arrested Doc Barker, son of the infamous gangster Ma Barker. Walsh was wounded in the 1937 shootout that killed Al Brady, then the nation's most wanted criminal.

Today, Walsh said that he was happy to be able to attend the festivities and that he was flattered his service is still remembered.

Among other guests at the party honoring a "Century of Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity" were the three living former FBI directors, William Webster, William Sessions and Louis Freeh. Plaques of appreciation were presented to the three men who had led the FBI through a long and sometimes troubled transition from the J. Edgar Hoover era to a modern intelligence agency largely aimed at spies, terrorists and international criminal networks.

FBI Director Robert Mueller recounted to the gathered throng at the National Building Museum in Washington how the bureau's missions had changed over the decades. This was not an occasion to dwell on the controversies and failures that have blemished the FBI's reputation.
Don't Miss

* FBI at 100: From Al Capone to al Qaeda
* FBI gives glimpse inside real 'CSI'
* Mafia feels heat from feds, crime rivals
* FBI gallery:

Mueller marveled that what began as a band of 34 detectives, accountants and civil rights investigators in 1908 blossomed into a powerful force of more than 30,000 agents and support staff with a global reach.

"J. Edgar Hoover would have been proud," Mueller said.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who was made an honorary special agent, echoed the sentiment as he heaped praise on the FBI's storied history.

"You and your cases are the stuff of Hollywood legend," Mukasey said. "You have inspired generations of children who have grown up dreaming of joining your ranks."

But Mukasey noted that the bureau had not been viewed so promisingly in its infancy. Six months after its creation, then-Attorney General Charles Bonaparte made only a brief reference to his new band of special agents.

"The consequences of the innovation have been, on the whole, moderately satisfactory," Bonaparte wrote.

The snickers changed to applause as Mukasey then declared that in a century the FBI "had gone from 'moderately satisfactory' to absolutely extraordinary."

All About Federal Bureau of Investigation • Crime

Drive Loss of Path Redudancy Procedure

STEP 1.) Clear Drive Channel Counters via SMClient:
.
Troubleshooting > Run Diagnostics > Drive Channels > Clear Error Counts
.
STEP 2.) Clear RLS Counters via SMClient:
.
Troubleshooting > Run Diagnostics > Read Link Status > Set Baseline
.
STEP 3.) CLEAR Enclosure data & SOC data.
.
RUN THE FOLLOWING SHELL COMMANDS ON
BOTH CONTROLLERS.
.
ld watchdogSuspend
fc 90
fcAll 90
clearEnclPage81 22
clearEnclPage81 34
clearEnclPage81 46
clearEnclPage81 10
socClearSYMbolErrorStats
watchdogResume
unld "Debug"
.
.
STEP 4.)
.
Fail HDD Encl \Slot
.
STEP 5.)
.
Unseat HDD Encl \Slot.
.
STEP 6.)
.
Wait 60 seconds.
.
STEP 7.)
.
Reseat HDD Encl \Slot
.
STEP 8.)
.
Check SMClient & confirm Encl \Slot is logging into both Drive port 2 & 4.

归档