京不特:标签盲从的状态

最近遇到一些学文学理论的丹麦年轻人在那里开口海德格尔闭口罗兰巴特,这让我又想到从前在网上看见自由主义标签盲从现象时所想到的一些东西。

本来,自由主义让我感觉到的是思想上的自由,但事实上在网络上,我不时会看见了一些中国自由主义门徒们(至少他们自称是自由主义者)的不自由心灵表露。在这里我可以举出两个例子。

一个年轻人在论坛上写了一篇关于自己对民主和自由的领会,可能是出自自己的直觉而不是得自书本的知识,也许能够让人觉得不全面,但是从他的经历出发,那都是一些闪烁的思想火花。但这时来了一个自称是自由主义者的网友,水瓶子晃荡晃荡响地教训那年轻人:你读过亚里士多德吗?你读过卢梭的契约论吗?你读过哈耶克柏林吗?在我读这个人的回帖时有一种感觉,就是这个人似乎就只知道这些人名书名,就拿来扯虎皮拉大旗。对自由民主的领会可以是一个人自己的心灵结晶,根本无须拿名人们的著作来作衡量尺度,这可不是八股式的读书考试。也许这位网友有自己所顶礼崇拜的历史名人,但试图以自由主义的名义而拿这些名人来压制别人,这样做就难免露出太多自己受专制主义熏陶而不能自拔的原本面目。

另一次,则是在我的一个博客页上,——在我努力回归到自己读哲学之前的思维状态而描述出自己最初对人的权利问题的思考时,马上就出现了一个忠实追随自由主义门户传承的网客来向博主强调“自由主义宗师对自由的定义”并指称博主“无知无畏”。这就让我感觉到交流上的艰难:我的努力是在这样的原始个人心灵回顾的文字中消灭掉一切名人名言而避免掉权威的误导,而这位老兄稍稍看了一些自由主义学派的书籍就以为所有世上的自由思想都必须按照他眼中的这些自由主义宗师们的教条来展开。他是我博中的网客,依据我自己的原则,我既没有训导他的权利,也没有教育他的义务,——既然他喜欢他心中宗师们的“定义”和“规则”,那么作为博主我能够做的就是给他送一个链接,链接到我在学院教育环境里所写的旧论文,那是哲学专业里引经据典以表明概念发展历史的枯燥阐述,与“一个人自身对世界和人生的直接领会”这一主题的关系并不大。这能够满足学术初入门者寻求去接触深奥表象的欲望,而且在那一类论文里有很多他所愿遵循的宗师圣言,虽然我不相信他能够读得懂,但是我相信他会很喜欢。

(当然这种“知道一点皮毛就以为皮毛是一切”并非罕见现象。这里涉及了一种因自己所获知识有限而又自以为是所引起的偏执。说实在话,我自己也曾有过类似的“状态”,如果我不说这是一种毛病,——比如说我自己二十年前对基尔克郭尔、黑格尔等等的阅读就是这样,只看了一些简介就急于为他们下结论。今天看起来可笑,但那时却自以为是得很。)

人生有限,书海无边,而具有不同人生观的作者在自己的书中给出不同的“人生哲理”。其实我们完全没有理由让自己去相信“书中所讲的道理当然就高于从自己心灵中找到的道理”。名人的话可以作为一种启迪,从正面或者从反面刺激或者引发你自己的思考,但不要将之当成训诫、当成至理。至于别人抬出名人名言或者主义标签来压人唬人,则更没有必要把它当一回事,至多你作为好心人可以告诉相关者可以去什么地方找到更多他所喜欢背诵的名人名言。有人能够把圆周率背到三百位,这也是一种能力。能够常常引述什么大师说过什么话,作为趣味消闲、作为类似于业余爱好的修养摆设,那还是值得以微笑报之的。

余世存:不依傍万有

我还记得我中学、大学的时候曾经想过这一类的问题,大学毕业后又想这个问题,我记得以跟舒芜先生的通信中谈到这个问题,舒先生回信说,人一辈子做不了几件事,能做好一两件事就不错了。我那时奇怪为什么他如此说,因为我们那时流行的观点,似乎一个人一生可以成就无限。后来才知道十年寒窗十年一剑之说并非虚妄。曾有教育说法,大意为一个人青少年时的学习是为人生储蓄,后来的人生都将从银行中取息受益;又说,一个人在35岁以前的经历都是为后来储蓄。两说是一个意思。读万卷书行万里路交四方友,都是为了一个至高的自己。只有如此看待人生,才不致异化得太厉害。

曾看到一个教授去年一年的工作清单,从编写书刊、到发表论文、到各地讲学,等等,平均起来,一天都快有一件事了。所以这次我在中山大学校园里忽然想做一句诗:在知识的流水线上生产、作业。

我们观察周围的成功人士,他们离我们都太远,像在台子上。甚至一些名望不错的知识分子也做悲壮状、做痛心疾首状、做正义状、做只会思考只在思考状,实在是未能回到真正的精神个性中来。我们完全明白,一个真正的人,他带给我们的温暖和亲切;你看孔子的童心、老子的幽默,都是极为个人的,他们很少端着,更不会道貌俨然。我们只要想想周围的那些活得健康的朋友,他们的平易情谊,是我们生活的保证之一。我们就明白,活出一个至高个性的社会意义。

编战略与管理的时候,我曾想找到一个能够究天人之际通古今之变的人为我说法,我跟不少学者教授联系,做朋友;以至于我的朋友说我不是名人,我只是”名人中的名人”.基本上,我算明白过来,人生成就跟青少年时期的志向有关。对我个人而言,可能还是做一个清醒的旁观者,这种旁观又不是冷漠的。周作人晚年实践古人至语:不作无聊之事,何以遣有生之涯?马克思所谓,人所具有的我都具有,人类的一切于我都不陌生。或消极或积极,其实都指精神的丰沛,那种不依傍万有的自性和创造力。我后来多次倡言的:个人的充分社会化和充分个体化。大致如此。

林 达:中日能否共用一本历史教科书

最近,中日两国外交部长参加亚太经合组织会议,就中日共同历史研究问题达成一致意见,正视历史、面向未来,开展中日共同历史研究,要通过两国学者对中日两千多年交往史(包括近代史以及战后关系发展史)的共同研究,加深对历史的客观认识,增进相互理解,争取在2008年发表研究成果。其实在将近半年前,中日韩三国学者合作、历时近三年编写的《东亚三国的近现代史》,已经相继在这三个国家发行。不过这本书基本上是民间行为,现在,得到政府支持的共同研究,是向这个方向又往前走了一步。

中日是亚洲邻近的两个大国,二战结束也已经60年。战后关系始终没有理顺,而如何看待历史,则是一个纠葛重点。这让我们想起世界上许多国家有过类似的历史宿怨,其中最典型的就是法国和德国。

法德两国因战争引出的宿怨源远流长。还记得我们小时候都读过《最后的一课》,堪称短篇小说经典。小说通过一个法语教师向孩子们的告别,描绘了法德边境争议地区民族、国家认同的困扰。法国教师告别,是因为法国输了战争,这一地区被划归德国,这些法兰西的孩子们一夜之间变成了德国人,学校的语文课要改教德语了。最后,法语老教师在黑板上写了他最后给孩子们的话:“法兰西万岁!”没有一个小孩子读这样的文章会不读得激动万分,更不要说法国小孩了。小说描绘的是阿尔□斯-洛林地区,这个地区在法德两国之间,被翻来倒去划了好多次了。就在这样的文学和教育中(当然也有德国那一面的),传承着民族历史记忆、爱国主义情操,也传承着一代代的历史恩怨。

就在中日韩三国学者合作编写的《东亚三国的近现代史》出版的时候,法德两国学者也推出了他们对历史的合作研究。他们走得更远,他们写的是今后两个国家共同的中学历史课本。虽是中学课本,内容却很详尽。《东亚三国的近现代史》只有20万字,而法德两国共同使用的高中历史教科书,仅今年5月先完成的高三历史部分,就厚达335页,分为四大章节,时间跨度是二战后至今的60年。内容涉及更多对历史细节的评价难度也就更大。有意思的是法德媒体在谈论合作编写历史的项目时,不约而同以日本为“反面教材”,他们都批评日本的学界与政界不愿面对历史,不愿意提及对其他民族的残害屠杀。

法德双方学者在整个编写过程中,对二战历史的理解大致相同。无论进攻波兰、占领法国或屠杀犹太人与吉普赛人,德国人都能坦然面对历史,早已不再回避自己国家对他国或其他族群的侵略与杀害。而法国学者也没有虚妄的民族优越感,不是只看到德国的历史问题,也能够正视自己的历史包袱,法国过去对殖民地国家的掠夺与压迫,甚至在民族自决的潮流里,法国原来的殖民地纷纷独立的过程,也都写入了历史教科书。不过法国人的自我认知也是经历反复的。去年,法国国会表决通过制定法令强制中学历史教科书中要写明,过去法国在外国,尤其在北非地区的殖民是具“正面意义的角色”。这个法令受到社会各界的强烈批评,最后,由总统提出撤销这条法令。殖民是一个历史过程,不管历史学家有怎样的不同观点,政府无权以法令强求。

历史书一般来说,总是涉及两个部分,一是事实,二是对事实的看法,也可以说观点。法德两国学者的处理方式也许值得借鉴。他们在发生观点分歧相互无法说服的时候,最后选择把双方的观点都列出,由两国读书的孩子们自己去判断。

可以料想的是,两个有过历史怨恨、对一些历史细节的认定和看法差别很大的国家,编制共同使用的教科书,相比学者合作写书,是一件更为困难的事情,却也是对两个国家未来更具深远意义的事件。这是真正在两个国家的一代代新人面前,对过去作一个了结,站在一个新的两国关系起点上,开始新的未来。

希望有一天,我们能够看到中日两国的孩子,使用中日两国学者共同编写的同一本历史教科书。

狄 马:丛林法则与全民公决

非洲草原上常年生活着一些流浪的狮子,这些狮子不属于任何狮群,一般是一到两个雄狮子,漫无目的地游走在别人领地的周围,随时寻找偷袭的机会。他们能通过气味和嗥叫声,判断出附近狮群所处的方位,以及狮王的身体状况。一旦听出他们年老色衰,或在警戒线之外,便会发动出其不意的进攻。胜利后会毫不犹豫地杀死该狮群所有的幼仔,并将老狮王留下的妻妾兼容并包;当然一旦战斗失利,他们就会被狮王咬死,阵亡,或者浑身布满血洞,一瘸一拐地离开。

如果侥幸取胜,作为新狮群的统治者,它必须励精图治,因为它深知在它领地的周围,徘徊着一批像它当年一样的觊觎者,随时准备侵犯它的王位。在这儿,没有什么是非对错可言,一切都是膂力和牙齿说了算。表面上看,老狮王是受害者,不仅身死国灭、江山易手,而且妻妾被夺、断子绝孙,作为狮子,为祸且有比这更惨烈的吗?但大家不要忘了,它当年正是用同样的手段对付他的前任的。

这使我想起中国近代史上的弱肉强食。清朝末年政治腐败,军备废弛,文化上更是抱残守缺、妄自尊大,等洋人用坚船利炮打得手足无措时,便只有跪地求饶,割地赔款一途,仅沙俄一国从《中俄北京条约》、《中俄瑷珲条约》、《中俄伊犁条约》三个条约中强取的土地就有150万平方公里之多,令此后的”爱国主义者”提起莫不血脉贲张、痛哭流涕,以为自有国以来以此耻为甚。可他们恰好忘了清朝的土地是怎么来的,难道是朱元璋的子孙作为生日礼物送给满人的?扬州十日,嘉定三屠,留发不留头,以及集顽劣、卑怯、荒唐、野蛮之大成的文字狱恰好说明它的土地也是抢来的。既然是抢来的,这就有了问题,即,先抢的是不是一定比后抢的高尚?做满人的奴才是不是一定比做沙俄的奴才舒服?如果把满清王朝比喻成一个强奸犯的话,强奸一次是流氓,强奸一辈子或几辈子是不是就成了合法丈夫?抢人肯定不对,这是一个小学生都知道的常识,但问题是,抢到手以后不加爱惜、任意毁坏和抢到手以后小心谨慎、倍加爱惜之间就有了坏和比较不坏的区分。注意,是”坏和比较不坏”,而不是好和坏,真理和谬误,正义和非正义的区分。

与非洲草原上的狮子一样,无论帝俄、日本、还是英法联军遵守的其实都是一种丛林法则。丛林法则不相信道德和眼泪。它只相信强力。具体到国家问题上就是,只有综合实力才是决定其他规则的规则。但丛林法则也是法则,中国人叫”盗亦有道”,它的核心原理就是”弱肉强食”,说好听点就是”优胜劣汰”。它的残酷性在于,抢不到手固然性命难保,但抢到手如不枕戈待旦、奋发图强则迟早有一天会身死国灭、祸及子孙的。因而,没有听说那个狮王沉湎酒色、不理朝政,腐朽得像嘉庆皇帝,懦弱得像宣统小儿,更没有听说那头狮子像毛泽东一样在狮群内部发动一场又一场运动瞎折腾。”落后就要挨打”这个粗浅的常识,中国人用了一百多年的时间才明白,而这是任何一只狮子、胡狼或野猫、野狗一生下来就知道的。可见这些明君、忠臣、文人、雅士的智商有时还不如一头走兽。

但丛林法则毕竟是丛林法则。它的野蛮之处在于,无论是帝俄还是满清都不会考虑生活在黑龙江以北150万平方公里土地上的人们,他们是否愿意被倒手转卖?他们的悲欢离合,他们的爱恨情仇,他们的憧憬与不幸、叹息和眼泪,压根不在他们的考虑范围之内。就像一头雄狮不会顾及前任狮王的遗孀是否情愿,它们的幼仔是否乐于被生吞活剥一样,这些”乱哄哄你方唱罢我登场”的沙皇、陛下、领袖、功臣对待土地上世世代代生活的”子民”,就像一个农民对待他承包田里的一窝蚂蚁一样冷漠无情。

有没有一种比较文明的,或比较不坏的制度来代替充满血腥和杀戮的丛林法则?有。那就是由”蚁民”自己来决定统治者及管理方式。这既可避免”蚁民”的身家性命随时倾覆之虞,同时也避免了大大小小的”狮王”们人亡政息之时肝脑涂地、妻小不保的悲剧。说简单点,就是以点人头的方式代替割人头的方式。比如,20世纪80年代发生在加拿大魁北克省的”独立公决”,就可以看作是这种历史嬗变的先声。魁北克省是加拿大东部的一个省份,面积154万平方公里,人口约占加拿大总人口的1/4,其中约82%的人讲法语,9%的人讲英语,另有9%的人讲英语和法语以外的语言。由于文化背景及历史的原因,英裔与法裔之间一直存在着较深的矛盾。聚集在魁北克省的法裔从70年代以来就一直试图摆脱加拿大,成立独立国家。

1976年11月,主张独立的”魁北克人党”成为魁北克省的执政党。他们提出要在加拿大联邦和魁北克省之间建立”一种新的平等的伙伴关系”,即政治上独立,经济上与其他地区保持联系的”主权——联系”方案。该方案出台后,舆论哗然,主张”统一”和”独立”的两派争执不下。1980年3月,魁北克省议会决定就”魁北克是否与加拿大成为主权的结合”举行全民公投。公投结果是赞成票占40.44%,反对票占59.56%。”独立运动”第一次遭到挫折。1982年,加拿大保守党执政,总理Brain Mulroney致力于修改《加拿大宪法》,对各省权限和修宪过程作了许多修订。8月间,各省省长在米奇湖畔商讨国是。结果只承认魁北克省的特殊社会地位,种族平等以及多元文化对加拿大的贡献等。此即《米奇湖协议》。但魁北克省政府认为,一个国家或地区的领导人及政府的组织形式,只有这片土地上的居民才有最后的发言权。因而他们没有单方面表示赞成还是反对,而是把是否接受”米奇湖协议”交给全省人民自己来决定。1992年10月26日,魁北克居民再次举行公投,公投题目是”你是否赞成根据《米奇湖协议》,来修改加拿大宪法”,结果赞成的占43.32%,反对的占56.68%。这表示魁北克人仍然不满联邦政府的体制。1995年10月,魁北克人党就”魁北克是否成为一个主权国家”举行了第三次公决。结果两派势均力敌,赞成的占49.42%,而反对的占50.55%,联邦主义者以微弱多数获胜。令人惊奇的是,投票期间,加拿大联邦政府除了在舆论上表示反对分裂,派出行政人员加入反对阵营以壮声威外,一任魁北克人民自己选择。

中国人说了许多漂亮话,《吕氏春秋》上就讲”天下者,天下之天下,非一人之天下也”,隋代大儒王通更提出了”不以天下易一民之命”(不拿一条百姓的生命来换取整个天下)的伟大主张,但这是书上的话,说说而已,实行在地上的却完全是始皇爷爷的那一套,所谓”百代皆行秦政制”。因而,对我们来说,魁北克将来的命运是”统”
还是”独”不重要,重要的是获得这种结果的方式。它完全超出了我们的制度想象力。我们习惯的是暴力的原则,即割人头的方式;可人家习惯的是投票的方式,即点人头的方式,区别之大正好比人与狮子。

孟 浪:11月25日目击:台湾北高市长选举狂潮下的台北另类文化风景

题记:2006年11月25日,离北高市长选举投票日只剩下14天了。在这个周末,选举海报狂潮四袭、助选人浪蜂拥的同时,具有基本健康公民社会形态的台湾政治中心城市——台北,仍然有着与中国大陆全然不同的文化风景,另类、刺激,又清新、可爱,饶有风趣。下为11月25日在台北的两场文化活动——”2006第五届牯岭街创意书活艺文街市”和”2006第五届台北国际娼妓文化节”现场记录的图片。
 
 
 
图一:文化老街牯岭街上的新生代——”断臂山”在台北。
 
图二:列宁、梦露、孙中山、格瓦拉和毛泽东,在文化街市上作为商品任人挑选。
 
图三:与市长选举狂热无碍的静静淘书乐
 
图四:台湾的先锋诗刊《现在诗》第五期11月25当日推出。图为该期公布的《现在诗》号召全世界诗人行动起来的文艺海报,左下角是台湾知名女诗人零雨。
 
图五:知名女诗人零雨(左一)、夏宇(左二)和知名出版家、唐山出版社负责人陈隆昊(右一)正在商议现场制作海报。
 
图六:击掌相和——支持性工作者除罪化的娼妓文化节晚会现场观众。
 
图七:性工作者和人权工作者在台上齐声高呼:”全世界性工作者联合起来!”
 
图八:台北市长候选人周玉蔻(左一)到场支持台北市性交易合法化。左二是勇敢站出来为自身权利呼吁的台北性工作者。
 
图九:号召开展”底层斗阵”以争取性工作者人权的年轻女大学生、研究生在台上助威。
 
图十:来自澳洲的性工作者Maria McMahon正表演行动剧《神圣的婊子》。
 
图十一:晚会主办者”日日春关怀互助协会”的人权工作者表演讽刺台北市长候选人郝龙斌(国民党)、谢长廷(民进党)的政治剧《选性与能》。
 
图十二:瑞典性工作者Rosinha Samboo的萨克斯风表演,奏出全球性工作者的哀艳心曲。
 
独立中文笔会独家图片

王 怡:有本事用电影写政论——电影《总统之死》

这部英国电影对政治言论尺度的挑战,摇晃了今年的多伦多电影节。10月底以来,开始在部分美国院线上映。导演以仿纪录片风格,虚构了现任美国总统布什,在2007年10月出席芝加哥商业领袖会议时遇刺身亡。警方的地毯式排查,渐渐把焦点放在一个现场被捕的叙利亚人,曾去过基地组织参加集训。一年后此人被判罪名成立。但电影中的独立调查暗示,真正的行刺者却极可能是一个参战伊拉克的美国大兵。几个特勤人员、白宫幕僚、CIA官员和嫌犯,一直端坐在采访镜头前铺陈整个故事,与电脑合成的纪录片场景穿插起来。将导演反战和反布什的政治立场,刻画得令人坐立不安。

从技术上说,这部电影达到了电影史上政治批评的颠峰。虚构的是未来的犯罪,落实的是现任国家元首,逼真的纪录片手法,完全使用政治人物的真实形象。连布什的头号政敌,一贯反战的民主党议员希拉里,也公开谴责这是一部丧失责任伦理的作品。

1981年行刺总统里根的约翰•辛克利,曾说自己看了马丁•斯科塞斯的《出租汽车司机》,爱慕年轻的朱迪•福斯特,才萌生此念。但这部电影不同,从法律上说,它的尺度已无限挨近了“挑衅性言论”或“煽动性言论”。若未来当真发生行刺事件,导演还能否受到美国宪法第一修正案(不得立法限制信仰和言论自由)的保护,就很难讲了。美国的各大院线和电视台出于法律和道义上的谨慎,都拒绝了这笔买卖。导演公开否认他的电影有可能怂恿犯罪,只不过他出席首映式时,特别聘请了几位私人保镖。

没本事的用FLASH“恶搞”电影,有本事的用电影“恶搞”政治。英美两国的电影界都有恶搞的传统,全世界声名远播的两个“恶搞”电影团体,一是英国的“巨蟒剧团”,60年代末就开创了嘲讽政治和宗教的“无厘头”风格。一个著名的段落是,有妇人走进理发馆,说我想剪一个撒切尔夫人的发型,于是理发师举起剪刀,将她的头齐着脖子剪断。在代表作《生命的意义》中,“巨蟒”则对基督教信仰作了也许是艺术史上最粗俗的反讽和嘲弄。

英国的普通法传统,有一种特别的“亵渎罪”。专门针对“任何对上帝、耶稣或《圣经》的侮辱性、辱骂性及庸俗下流的出版物”。反对基督教和否定上帝存在的观念会受到保护,但上述侮辱性言论,却可能被视为“对英国国教教义的亵渎”而被禁止。“亵渎罪”只适用于英国国教,对其他宗教信仰的亵渎性批评仍在言论自由之内。显然这违背了“非歧视性”的人权标准,但最近的欧洲人权法院还是容许了这一“被历史的铰链所束缚”的特例,它相信英国的法治传统有足够的信用,担保这一罪名不被滥用。

事实上,这一罪名已长达50年没被惊动了。“巨蟒剧团”从未因他们搞翻天的谩骂而惹过官司。十几年前,英国的穆斯林曾企图以此罪名控告《撒旦诗篇》的作者,英国法律大臣对穆斯林发表了一个声明,表示英国政府不会再利用这一罪名去保护信仰不被亵渎。他说,“宗教信仰自身的力量是反对嘲弄者和亵渎者最好的武器”。

世俗的政治就更是如此。第一次世界大战期间,美国出现许多反对征兵的宣传,大法官霍尔姆斯在宪法判例中提出了一个著名的限制言论自由的标准,若非某种言论引发了“明显和现存的危险”,就不应被禁止。他举了一个后人津津乐道的例子,“最严格的言论自由,也不会保护一个在剧场中谎叫失火,而引起恐慌的人”。照此标准,这部《总统之死》颇有些在剧场谎叫失火的嫌疑。这一原则把政府对言论自由的限制几乎缩到了最小,但仍然引起不断的批评。宪法学者米克尔•约翰反驳说,第一修正案是不能打折的,政治批评的言论自由,不应受到任何削减。

之后霍尔姆斯和最高法院逐渐修正了“明显和现存危险”的标准,到70年代,这位大法官发表了一个更著名的论述,他提出“观念市场”的概念,说人们如果信奉某种思想,就应该相信“思想具有使其自身在市场竞争中被人接受的力量”。如果市场体制中存在一只“看不见的手”,那么观念市场也同样有一只“看不见的手”。谁不相信这一点,谁就会忍不住使用强制力。而不相信这一点的人,其实并不相信自己所宣称的真理。

1978年,一些新纳粹在居住了几千名犹太人集中营幸存者的社区,高举纳粹标志进行示威。结果美国最高法院认为这不算“挑衅性言论”,这些令人厌恶的家伙有权这样做。就像根据真实案件改编的电影《性书大亨》中,色情杂志的老板佛林特,用一幅色情漫画辱骂天主教的教会领袖。他的律师在最高法院中宣称,我极其讨厌我为之辩护的这个家伙,但我更讨厌一个在思想领域使用强制力的政府。所以我要为他辩护。法治的基本精神,就是在流氓面前保持克制,所以大法官们说,佛林特可以用这种方式表达他对道德价值的藐视。

就这样,电影慢慢成了一种写政论的方式,或者严肃,或者恶搞。迄今为止,在银幕上被好莱坞杀害的美国总统,大概已超过历届总统的总和。也许当总统在银幕上被杀死,自由就在银幕下被成全。拍这部电影真的很奢侈,看着也很奢侈。他们有宪法第一修正案,但我们有盗版。

比“巨蟒”更恶搞的电影团体,是美国的“南方公园”。他们交替使用动画和真人秀,用淫秽粗鄙的方式,对一切政治和宗教信念进行亵渎。最近的碟市,还有另一套“南方公园”几年前嘲讽布什的肥皂剧。辱骂第一夫人是“高级妓女”,已算是剧中比较文明的语言。迄今为止,南方公园也没惹上任何官司。

但不被政府强制,并不等于在道德上免于被谴责。曾主演《刺杀肯尼迪》的凯文•科斯特拉,在公开批评这部电影后,越发的令我尊敬。他说,虚构一位总统被杀的真相,和诅咒现任总统被杀,是完全不同的。电影全然不顾布什及其家人的感受。凯文说,“如果你是他的妻儿、父母和亲人,你就知道这部电影无法令人接受。不管我们如何评价它,是喜欢它还是嗤之以鼻,这是做人的基本原则,但却被导演抛弃了”。

说这么多,最后一句回到了常识。

2006-11-14

──《观察》首发 

武宜三:利特维年科死了,《大公报》趁机恐吓

—-施君玉的《一个叛逃间谍的悲剧下场》想说什麼?

【主题:中国共产党是苏联共产党用卢布催生并豢养出来的,所以大多数中共党人都对苏联一徃情深。他们对苏联的解体,无不如丧考妣;如今,又就把感情移植到俄罗斯和普京身上了。】

一,《大公报》为抢救利特维年科提供了帮助?

俄罗斯一个名叫利特维年科的叛逃间谍“神不知鬼不觉地遭人下毒,在全世界的目光下默默离开了人世”,党的喉舌幸灾乐祸,一面说着风凉话,一面趁机恐吓自己友,以稳定军心。刊登在2006年11月25日《大公报》的施君玉《一个叛逃间谍的悲剧下场》文章说:“可悲的是,人们关心的头号问题并不是他的生死命运,各国也没有为抢救他而提供什麼帮助,『是谁对他下了毒手』反而成了人们关心的头号问题。”

那麼,中国共产党、《大公报》和施君玉同志是否发扬了革命人道主义救死扶伤,为他的俄罗斯叛逃同志送医送药了呢?如果中国共产党、《大公报》和施君玉同志插手了利特维年科的抢救过程,那麼中国共产党、《大公报》和施君玉同志就要对利特维年科之死负上某种程度的责任,也成了“下了毒手”的嫌疑分子。如果也不曾出手救援,那麼施君玉同志不也成了“可悲”的而且更加可耻的“人们”了。

二,英国亏待了利特维年科?

施君玉说:利特维年科於二○○○年成功逃到英国,寻求避难。对英国和西方而言,利特维年科无疑是送上门来的一条大鱼,谍报意义上的价值非同小可。“然而,耐人寻味的是,这位俄国大间谍足足等了六年之后,於死前一个月才获得英国国籍。而且,英国方面似乎也没有为他提供特别的保护。”

然而的“然而”,中国共产党便能为它的特务和投奔者“提供特别的保护”吗?施君玉同志如果不健忘的话,请回忆一下中共怎样厚待奉毛泽东之命与日伪勾搭的特务头子潘汉年和杨帆?陈布雷的女儿陈琏、胡适之的儿子胡思杜,投奔共产党后有什麼好下场?

放弃了在英国优厚待遇的周世昌,一家人回到“伟大社会主义祖国”后,落得什麼下场?老舍也是从英国回去的,他受到了怎样的保护?一九四九年从香港游回去的徐铸成、宋云彬、马寅初等许多条大鱼,下场又如何?

三,背离“行规”下场悲惨

施君玉恐吓说:背离“行规”下场悲惨。施君玉同志竟以谋人寺护法头陀自居了!你看他对家法行规何等烂熟:“间谍是一个特殊的行当,它的职业特点决定了就是要为政治服务,为国家利益效劳。但是,利特维年科虽然投身了间谍这个职业的『黑洞』,却不愿接受『黑洞』内的行事规则,其结果必然是悲剧性的。就其性质而言,利特维年科的行为,与一个神父强奸一名少女没有本质区别。也就是说,他做了一件他这个身份最忌讳的事情。如果想对自己的国家表达反叛,他大可不必进入间谍这个『职业黑洞』,而选择其他与国家抗争的方式,就像一个好色的男人不该当神父一样。利特维年科正是违反了间谍这个职业的『行规』,因此他的悲惨下场带有一定的必然性。”

看来,施君玉们要死心塌地地为黑社会主义黑洞鞠躬尽瘁、与宪政和民主为敌到底了。

四,中共党人的俄罗斯情结

中国共产党是苏联共产党用卢布催生并豢养出来的,所以大多数中共党人都对苏联一徃情深。他们对苏联的解体,无不如丧考妣;如今,他们又把感情移植到俄罗斯和普京身上去了。领土可以给俄罗斯,金钱可以给俄罗斯(“购买”潜艇、米格机、战略轰炸机及其他军火、天然气),绝密情报可以给俄罗斯(请俄军来中国联合演习、免费赠送大量军事机密)等。

看《大公报》、施君玉们怎样落力为俄国洗脱暗杀利特维年科的嫌疑吧:“有关利特维年科的中毒过程,英国媒体连日来众说纷纭。自利特维年科住院起,国际上就认为是俄罗斯派特工对他下了毒,但立即遭到俄方强烈否认,俄方表示愿意配合英国展开调查。至今,英国医学专家连利特维年科中的什麼毒都无法搞清,至於下毒的真相更是扑朔迷离,相信将永远成谜。”

但从“背离『行规』下场悲惨”和“一个叛逃间谍的悲剧下场”这两句话看,《大公报》、施君玉又在暗示利特维年科死於被背叛的俄罗斯手上。真是做得神来又做鬼,这不又出卖了俄国亲人吗?

--新世纪新闻

Feather in the Storm

Feather in the Storm
A Childhood Lost in Chaos

Written by Emily WuEmily Wu Author Alert and Larry EngelmannLarry Engelmann Author Alert

Category: Biography & Autobiography – Personal Memoirs; History – China; Political Science – Communism & Socialism
Publisher: Pantheon
Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Pub Date: October 2006
Price: $35.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-42428-1 (0-375-42428-8)

About this Book

It is my hope that this memoir may serve as a reminder and a memorial to all of the children who were lost in the Chaos, Emily Wu writes at the beginning of Feather in the Storm.

Told from a childs and young girls point of view, Wus spellbinding accountwhich spans nineteen years of growing up during the chaos of Chinas Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolutionopens on her third birthday as she meets her father for the first time in a concentration camp. A well-known academic and translator of American literary classics, her father had been designated an ultra-rightist and class enemy. As a result, Wus family would be torn apart and subjected to an unending course of humiliation, hardship and physical and psychological abuse. Wu tells her story of this hidden Holocaust, in which millions of children and their families died, through a series of vivid vignettes that brilliantlyand innocentlyevoke the cruelty and brutality of what was taking place daily in the world around her. From watching helplessly as the family apartment is ransacked and her father carted off by former students to be publicly beaten, to her own rape and the hard labor and primitive rituals of life in a remote peasant village, Wu is persecuted as a child of the damned.

Wus narrative is poignant, disturbing and unsentimental, and, despite the nature of what it describes, is filled with the resiliency of youthand even humor. That Emily Wu survived is remarkable. That she is able to infuse her story with such immediacy, power and unexpected beauty is the greatness of this book. Feather in the Storm is an unforgettable story of the courage and silent suffering of one small child set in a quicksand world of endless terror.

This gripping and moving memoir of a courageous young girl growing up during the Cultural Revolution points up the fantastic atrocities committed by Mao in the name of progress.
Nien Cheng, author of
Life and Death in Shanghai
BR>
With passion, candor and restraint, Feather in the Storm tells a young girls story of growing up in a violent, revolution-battered China. It reveals the terrible suffering of its people, some of whom perished and many of whom survived. This rich, unique, heartbreaking narrative is about human cruelty, foolishness and decency, and is ultimately a testimony to indomitable human tenacity and vitality.
Ha Jin, author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award

up Emily Wus stories have appeared in both Chinese and American publications. She is one of the featured subjects in the film Up to the Mountain, Down to the Village. She lives with her two children in Cupertino, California.

Larry Engelmann is the author of five previous books, including Daughter of China. His writing has appeared in many publications, including American Heritage, Smithsonian, and the magazines of both the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. He lives in San Jose, California.

An Evening with Author Emily Wu

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library
150 E. San Fernando St. – 2nd Floor, Room 225/229
(408) 924-4489
Wed, Nov 29
6:30 PM – 9:30 PM



Author and translator Emily Wu will read from her new book. A book signing will follow. For more information, please contact Mitch Berman at (408) 924-4489.

Stop That Foolish Singing This Minute!

Stop That Foolish Singing This Minute! Mary Poppins Would Be Appalled

Published: November 20, 2006

In the late summer of 1926, when P. L. Travers was 27  the age she later imagined for her seemingly ageless creation, Mary Poppins  she set out on a pilgrimage to see William Butler Yeats in Dublin. But this aspiring young poet first asked a boatman to take her across the lake Lough Gill, to the place described in Yeatss poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

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From left, Julie Andrews, Matthew Garber, Karen Dotrice and Dick Van Dyke in the 1964 film Mary Poppins, which made children of adults.

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Broadway Review: Meddler on the Roof (Nov. 17, 2006)

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P. L. Travers in 1966. A devotee of W. B. Yeats in her youth, she later created the Mary Poppins books.

The boatman did not know anything about the poets version of the isle with its bee-loud glade. To locals, he sneered, the place was known as Rat Island.

But, according to Valerie Lawson, the author of a recent biography of Travers (Mary Poppins, She Wrote), the young devotee insisted on going despite a threatening sky. In the driving rain Travers found not the poets small cabin” nor the boatman’s rats, but an island covered with red-berried rowan trees. She carried off as many branches as she could as an offering for Yeats, and arrived at his door in Dublin, soaked and bedraggled, her arms laden with branches and berries.

Yeats, it is said, was touched. But one can just imagine what Mary Poppins might have said — not the family therapist who just parachuted in on her umbrella in the new Broadway show with her spoonful of sugar, beaming smile and her questionable assertion that “anything can happen if you let it” — no, not that harridan of happiness. Rather, the real Mary Poppins, the one Travers brought to life in a series of books that began appearing in 1934 when it was already clear that a poetry career was not going to materialize at her front door.

That was the Mary Poppins who, when one of her charges tried to hug her, said, “Kindly do not crush me, Michael! I am not a Sardine in a Tin!”; the Mary Poppins who often had a look of “fury,” who “snaps,” and “sniffs” and “retorts.” That Mary Poppins “never wasted time being nice.”

She might have even found Travers’s boatman rather enchanting with his dose of somber realism. And if, opening the door in Yeats’s place, she had come face to face with her own Creator, with dripping hair, berry juice stains, snippets of bark in her clothing, and her mouth hanging open, Mary Poppins might have sent Travers off spit-spot.

It is worth recalling that version of Mary Poppins, since among her many esoteric magical powers seems to be an ability, in whatever medium, to reflect a culture’s views about the very nature of childhood and adulthood.

The 1964 Disney movie “Mary Poppins,” for example, treated adulthood as if it should be another form of childhood. Mary Poppins’s job, after teaching the Banks children that any job can be fun if you pour enough sugar over it, is to teach their father that the right dose might even dissolve the job altogether. Mr. Banks learns that the British Empire, its banks and many other manifestations of authority should be undermined, or at least taken less seriously. Life would be better if parents allowed themselves to dance like chimney sweeps and fly kites in the park. They shouldn’t just pay more attention to their children; they should become more like them. The movie’s liberatory spirit is, of course, out of the heart of the 1960s.

The new Broadway show is ostensibly darker, showing that children too have their flaws. But again it is the parents who need the healing. At first Mr. Banks praises “precision and order,” endorses social climbing and applies rigorous standards as a bank manager. He ends up learning that social climbing doesn’t pay and that it is far better to approve loans for a kind factory builder who boasts of having no collateral other than his workers, than for a selfish oaf who simply plans to make money. Eventually everyone is convinced by Mary Poppins that anything is possible if you let it, nothing is ever set in stone, and that everyone should have fun and do good works. They join forces in a paean to this narcissistic cartoon of liberalism.

These are totally unrealistic fantasies, of course, and give neither adulthood nor childhood its due. Travers had different notions, though they too could be peculiar. She sought personal liberation, for example, in the bizarre cult of the 20th-century mystic George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff , with its self-effacing discipline and visions of esoteric self-knowledge .

With Mary Poppins, though, she turned that mystical conception into a domestic one, and actually made it more compelling. Mary Poppins regularly opens a door into dimensions outside ordinary space and time for the benefit of her charges: a star from the Pleiades constellation comes to Earth in the form of a girl, a statue of a Greek god comes to life to play with Jane and Michael, an ancient crone grows fingers made of barley-sugar. Mary Poppins herself seems a creature of the heavens temporarily brought to Earth.

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N. E. Middleton Artists’ Agency, from the book “Mary Poppins, She Wrote,” Simon & Schuster

Mary Shepard’s illustration of Mary Poppins with the characters Jane and Michael Banks in Valerie Lawson’s biography of P. L. Travers.

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The children always end up wondering, “Could we have imagined it?” They wonder, because outwardly Mary Poppins is not a mystical fantasist. “Quick March into the Park!” she snaps in one story. “And no meandering!”

Forget about encouraging curiosity in children: “She never lets me say anything!” Michael complains. “Ask no Questions and you’ll be Told no Lies,” Mary Poppins insists.

She is a stickler for manners and discipline. She speaks in homilies and clichés, with many capitalizations and extensive exclamation points : “Handsome is as Handsome does!”

She is a caricature of the most authoritarian form of adulthood; she is outraged by any suggestion that things might be otherwise.

Eventually the children learn that “Appearances are Deceptive.” They learn, that is, that there is a split between the inner life and outward appearance, between the magic of Mary Poppins and her thoroughly adult facade. This is not a reflection of hypocrisy. Both realms are necessary. Authority, order, precision — mocked in the film and on Broadway — are intertwined with her magic.

In part this reveals how children perceive adulthood. Children are asked to submit to formal restrictions they don’t fully grasp; they see exaggerated manifestations of responsibility and authority. Yet underneath the adult exterior they also sense strange, half-threatening and half-alluring forces that promise a realm of magical freedom. Travers captured that double vision — that confusion and melding of realms — that makes childhood so powerful.

That is where the film and Broadway show come to rest, fully endorsing a childish vision of freedom, rejecting much of everything else. But in the books that isn’t possible. Discipline is required for the magical realms to be revealed; it is what makes freedom possible. Without the one, there is meaningless fantasy; without the other, there is heartless rigidity. It is their combination that gives the fullest vision of both childhood and adulthood.

It is what allows Mary Poppins to work her magic. It also allows Yeats to turn Rat Island into Innisfree. He longs for the place, hearing “lake water lapping with low sounds, even while I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray. They are like sounds from a primal childhood, heard, as by Travers and Poppins, in the deep hearts core.

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The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov

The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov

Joshua Rubenstein and Alexander Gribanov (eds.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. 422 pages.

Reviewed by John Ehrman

Since the early 1990s, the opening of intelligence archives in the United States and Eastern Europe has done much to enhance our understanding of the operations of intelligence agencies during the cold war. A major exception to this trend, however, has been the files of the Soviet KGB. For a brief period following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, researchers gained limited access to the files. The most notable result was Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassilievs controversial book on Soviet espionage, The Haunted Wood (1999)[1]but the doors soon slammed shut, and much of what we know about the KGB still comes from memoirs or unorthodox sources, such as Vasiliy Mitrokhins archive. Most of these materials, moreover, have dealt with the KGBs activity abroad and have not shed much light on the services role in repression at home. But the publication of one small group of KGB documents, reports on the Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, are helping to close this gap. The documents contained in The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov were originally given to his widow, Elena Bonner, by the Russian Foreign Counterintelligence Service and supplemented by additional KGB documents from communist party and state archives. In publishing 146 of them, Joshua Rubenstein and Alexander Gribanov provide a long-overdue look at the inner world of the KGB and how it served the Soviet leadership.

An important point to understand from the start is that the books title is somewhat misleading. The KGBs files on Sakharov and Bonner, some 583 volumes of raw reports compiled by the Fifth Directorate on surveillance and operations and from informants, were ordered destroyed in 1989.[2] What Rubenstein and Gribanov present, instead, are translations of 146 finished KGB memos and reports on Sakharov, often signed by the chairman of the KGB and submitted to the Central Committee or individual Soviet leaders, and have survived in other files and archives. Based on the nonstop monitoring of the dissidents activities, the documents provide a chronology of Sakharovs development as a dissident and the growth of the opposition movement in Russia. This is the story from the Soviet leaderships point of view, and it shows the combination of alarm and confusion in the Kremlin as leaders struggled to understand and limit the phenomenon. The documents are not easy reading, for they are in the formal, ponderous style of the communist bureaucracy, but they give an excellent insight into the minds and workings of the dictatorship.

At the time of Sakharovs first public expression of dissentthe publication in the West in 1968 of his essay Reflections on Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedomthe KGB did not know what to make of him. Sakharov was, after all, one of the Soviet Unions leading physicists, and he had been showered with honors. The KGB, not realizing that Sakharovs essay was the result of a gradual disillusionment with Soviet society rather than an imulsive act, at first hoped to bring him back to orthodoxy. “To prevent him from committing politically harmful acts, we believe it would make sense of one of the secretaries of the Central Committee to receive Sakharov and conduct an appropriate conversation with him,” recommended KGB Chairman Yuriy Andropov in June 1968. (90)

The reluctance to condemn Sakharov, however, brought problems of its own, as the KGB noted that “government circles in the USA” might misread the Kremlin’s silence as an endorsement of his views and wrongly assume that Soviet foreign policy was shifting. (94) In 1970, with Sakharov becoming more radical and building contacts with other dissidents, Andropov recommended the installation of listening devices in his apartment to “discover the contacts inciting him to commit hostile acts” and prevent “individuals hostile to the Soviet state” from exploiting his name. The monitoring, which eventually included physical surveillance, break-ins and thefts, and reporting by informers, continued until Sakharov’s death in 1999. (99)[3]

The KGB, continually unable to comprehend Sakharov’s dissent, could only view his actions through the prism of its Bolshevik and Chekist past. As a result, KGB officials not only saw him as the tool of foreign conspiracies but often managed to detect multiple plots working together. In December 1975, Andropov reported that “bourgeois propaganda is actively exploiting [Sakharov’s statements] for purposes of subversive activities against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.” (207) Soviet anti-Semitism reinforced these themes, as when Andropov declared in 1973 that Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were “offering their services to reactionary imperialist and especially Zionist circles.” (166) Shortly after President Jimmy Carter sent a letter of support to Sakharov, Andropov claimed that “ideological centers and Zionist organizations have involved the new Carter administration” in Sakharov’s subversion. (223) The KGB also often ascribed Sakharov’s dissent to the malign influence of Elena Bonner. Her views, wrote Andropov in 1980, “not only are based on her hostile attitude toward the Soviet system but also conform to the recommendation of intelligence services in the USA.” (255)

Nonetheless, the KGB understood very clearly the threat that Sakharov and other dissidents posed to the Soviet system. Along with bafflement and paranoia, the reports make clear the leadership’s fear that Sakharov’s influence could grow among the Soviet people. In February 1973, after the journal Literaturnaya Gazeta printed the first official public criticism of Sakharov, Andropov told the Central Committee that the article had been a mistake. Such attacks, while ideologically correct, should not be repeated because they “encourage the antisocial activities of Sakharov” and increase the interest of “hostile elements inside the country” in what he had to say. (139)

The fear increased as Sakharov’s stature in the West grew. Easing the pressure on Sakharov and other dissidents was unacceptable, wrote Andropov at the end of 1975, because any relaxation would lead to the creation of an “organized underground for purposes of overthrowing Soviet authority.” (210) It was the fear that Sakharov would become a rallying point for opposition to the Soviet regime that led the Politburo to order his exile to Gorky in 1980 and, in 1986, caused KGB Chairman Viktor Chebrikov to keep opposing Sakharov’s return to Moscow. (317)

Much of this will be familiar to anyone knowledgeable about Soviet politics or the history of the USSR’s security services. Indeed, it is hardly news that the KGB viewed the world through a distorting lens of ideology, paranoia, and anti-Semitism. The greatest value of The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, however, lies not in what it says about the past but, rather, about the future. Unlike the states of Central and Eastern Europe, the KGB and its successors did not go through radical cutbacks and purges in the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead, many of the KGBs people and practices are still in place, and now, with Russia sliding into authoritarianism under the rule of a former KGB officer and his cronies, the security services are again increasing their power, prestige, and resources. With the publication of the Sakharov documents, we may have a chilling glimpse of events to be repeated and files yet to be compiled.


Footnotes:

[1]See the following review, reprinted from a classified issue of Studies in Intelligence (1998) or see James E. Nolan Jr., American Ghosts in Soviet Files, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelli­gence 12, no. 2 (June 1999): 22730.

[2]For information on the destruction of the files, see Elena Bonner, My Secret Past: The KGB File, New York Review of Books, June 25, 1992.

[3]Sakharov told the story of his gradual break with the Soviet system and his persecution by the KGB in Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs, trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Knopf, 1990).