油價讀與賭
沈雲驄（jessesam） 2008/09/01 08:39
石油上漲引發全球金融危機，許多人急著知道的卻是如何在危機中獲利。用「讀中帶賭」的習慣看油價，背後潛藏著不容輕忽的麻煩。
看在金融市場眼中，喬治亞與俄羅斯剛剛落幕的八月之戰，是場雙重的意外。一來，是沒有人預料到，雙方長期以來潛藏的矛盾，居然會趁著標榜和平的奧運舉辦期間攤牌；二來，俄羅斯是石油大國，喬治亞境內鋪著聯繫歐亞的重要油管，這場戰爭，居然沒有讓油價暴漲，害得那些在市場上狂賭油價會漲、紛紛下注的投機客們鎩羽而歸。
其實不只有投機客。從美國到台灣，這波石油危機與過去幾次危機最大的不同，就是當閱讀油價，愈來愈多人如今帶著一種「讀」中帶「賭」的心情。70年代那場石油危機爆發之後，政府也好，企業也好，都在關心石油的供需如何恢復平衡，人們在閱讀中企圖理解的是，該怎樣確保自己能取得更多能源、怎樣減少石油的消耗，避免危機重演。
但是這次，除了關心如何在生活中節約能源、節省開銷，看著危機步步進逼，更多人急著知道的，是怎樣在危機中獲利。這些人的心中同時都在問：油價會漲到多少？能源概念股能不能買？能源概念基金會不會賺？
這也就是為什麼，雖然幾年來出版市場上有多本跟石油有關的作品問世，但除了丹尼爾‧尤金的經典《石油世紀》之外，比較受到矚目、賣得比較好的，幾乎都跟投資有關。從高喊油價上100美元的《石油效應》，到進一步喊上200美元的《石油衝擊》，以及多本以能源概念為訴求的理財特刊，都抓住了人們這種讀中帶賭的心情。
問題是，石油市場並不如人們想像中的那麼容易預測。前陣子才不斷飆上歷史新高的油價，這陣子又快速滑落，別說一般散戶，就連華爾街上許多經驗老道的投機客都灰頭土臉，也讓我們看見，用「讀中帶賭」的習慣看油價，背後所潛藏不容輕忽的麻煩。
首先，沒有讀通就亂賭油價，對家庭財富的傷害，將遠高於報酬。就像那些滿懷發財期待走進賭場、最後卻一貧如洗的賭客，在石油市場上鎩羽的投機客，不是對自己贏的機率過度高估，就是壓根沒搞懂遊戲規則。石油怎麼生產的？怎麼運送的？全世界還有多少油？還夠用多久？答不出來，怎能期待自己賭對？雖然，康斯勒在《沒有石油的明天》中說，人類將「被石油的耗盡痛擊」，保羅‧勞勃茲（Pau l Roberts）也在《The End of Oil》中警告，石油的蘊藏量已經「敲響警鐘」，但多年來，從巴西到北極，新發現的油田、新發明的石油開採技術，卻不斷更新各種數據，油價也隨著這些數據的更新，在大漲與大跌之間不斷往返，誰說了準？
其次，石油目前為止仍是人類最倚賴的能源，半世紀來一場又一場的危機反覆在告訴世界：倚賴石油的風險正在提高，對人類的威脅也與日俱增。人們如今應該更關心的，可能不是短期的理財效益，而是長期的資產與經濟安全。倘若油價繼續維持目前的高檔，或是重演瘋狂飆漲的噩夢，你我的工作與生活會受到什麼樣的影響？又該如何因應？
面對這種情勢，埋首於投機市場中，一心只想著賭油價，企圖在漲跌之間賺到暴利，只會讓危機繼續坐大。傑瑞米‧瑞福金（JeremyR ifkin）在《The Hydrogen Economy》中，點出了能源與文明之間的關係，也提醒世人迎戰石油危機的重要性。如果沒有足以替代的新能源科技出現，他說，人類勢必得轉而仰賴更具污染力的能源，環境危機也將如骨牌效應般跟著惡化。
更重要的是，他呼應德國地緣政治學者恩道爾在《石油戰爭》中所說，石油是國際強權競相爭奪的資源，不管現有的石油蘊藏量還足夠讓人類用多久，可以確定，未來的地緣政治仍將繼續因石油而改寫。按照目前多個研究機構的預估，世界會有愈來愈高比率的石油，必須仰賴中東國家的供給。研究發現，20世紀的最後5年，美國與北海原油產區平均每年發現約114億桶，但在本世紀剛結束的前3年，則大幅滑落到只有68億桶。即便是最樂觀的預估，最慢約到了2020年，假如沒有新的替代能源出現，全球勢必更加倚賴中東石油輸出國家，倘若到時候西方國家與回教世界（特別是極端分子）的關係依舊如此緊張，想也知道，石油危機將會更加棘手。怎麼辦？
金融史上，油價向來是一面照映麻煩的鏡子。世界嚴重的麻煩（例如戰爭），往往伴隨油價的上漲；油價上揚，則通常也意味著人類的麻煩即將到來。政府也好，民間也好，都不能對麻煩視而不見，更不能輕率地下注豪賭油價，以為可以把麻煩丟給別人，自己則輕易地在投機市場上得到好處。
我們正「進入一個新的世界，」瑪格內莉在《無所不在的石油經濟》中說，就像「迷途的北極熊四處流浪，想要搞清楚腳下發生的地形變化。」想弄清楚，當然得繼續閱讀。至於賭，別鬧了。
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Mass Tourism
Don't Go There
The whole world has the travel bug. And it's ravaging the planet.
By Elizabeth BeckerSunday, August 31, 2008; B01
Did you manage to find someplace for your vacation this summer where you could get away from it all and immerse yourself in nature, or whatever it is that you like to do with a free week or two?
I didn't think so.
It's getting harder and harder. The world has shrunk -- and the tourist legions have exploded. The streets of Paris and Venice are so crowded that you can barely move. Cruise ships are filling harbors and disgorging hordes of day trippers the world over. Towering hotels rise in ever-greater numbers along once pristine and empty beaches.
Thanks to globalization and cheap transportation, there aren't many places where you can travel today to avoid the masses of adventure- or relaxation-seekers who seem to alight at every conceivable site. I used to love going back to my old haunt in a Himalayan hill station where, as a student in India in 1970, I climbed those steep, silent paths and watched langur monkeys swinging in the trees outside my window. No longer. Now, Moussurie is chock-a-block with tourist lodges, garbage and noise; the monkeys are fleeing.
This problem goes far beyond a veteran traveler's complaint that things aren't the way they used to be, or annoyance at sharing the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal with thousands of other photo-snapping tourists loudly asking questions in languages the locals don't understand. What's happening today is of another magnitude.
The places we love are rapidly disappearing. Global tourism today is not only a major industry -- it's nothing short of a planet-threatening plague. It's polluting land and sea, destroying wildlife and natural habitat and depleting energy and natural resources. From Asia to Africa, look-alike resorts and spas are replacing and undermining local culture, and the international quest for vacation houses is forcing local residents out of their homes. It's giving rise to official corruption, wealth inequities and heedless competition. It's even contributing to human rights violations, especially through the scourge of sex tourism.
Look at Cambodia. The monumental temples at Angkor and the beaches on the Gulf of Thailand have made that country a choice destination, especially for Asians, who spent $1 billion there last year. But the foundations of those celebrated temples are in danger of sinking as the 856,000 tourists who every year crowd into Siem Reap, the nearby town of 85,000, drain the surrounding water table.
Meanwhile, Cambodia's well-connected elite has moved to cash in on the bonanza, conspiring with police and the courts to evict peasants from their rural landscape, which is being transformed by high-end resorts catering to wealthy visitors. Cambodia's League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights is compiling files that bulge with photographs of thatched-roof houses being burned down while police restrain their traumatized owners. And at night along the riverfront in the capitol of Phnom Penh, the sight of aging Western men holding hands with Cambodian girls young enough to be their granddaughters is ugly evidence of the rampant sex-tourism trade.
All this came as a shock to me. I've been writing about Cambodia for more than 35 years, but I never considered tourism there a serious subject. But when I went back last November, I couldn't avoid the issue. In three short years, tourism had transformed the country. In every interview, the conversation wandered toward tourism, its potential and its abuses. When I went up to Siem Reap, I found the great hall temple of Angkor as crowded, as a colleague said, as Filene's Basement during a sale. Forget tapping into any sense of the divine.
I began researching the global tourism industry and why journalists have allowed it to fly under the radar. Newspapers, the Web and the airwaves are filled with stories celebrating travel; few examine the effects of mass tourism. As Nancy Newhouse, the former New York Times travel editor, told me: "We never did the ten worst [places to visit], only the ten best."
Most people can't imagine that tourism could be a global menace. Even the word "tourism" sounds lightweight. And travel has always been surrounded by an aura of romance. For centuries, beginning with the first tourists on holy pilgrimages, travel has been about adventure and discovery and escape from the pressures of daily life.
It wasn't until the end of the 20th century that tourism was added to the list of industries measured in the U.S. gross domestic product. And the results were a revelation: About $1.2 trillion of the $13 trillion U.S. economy is derived from tourism.
Tourism has become the stealth industry of the global era. According to the United Nations, the international tourist count in 1960, at the dawn of the modern era of air travel, was 25 million. By 1970, the figure was up to 165 million. Last year, about 898 million people traveled the globe, and the international tourism industry earned $7 trillion. (And those figures don't include people who vacation in their own countries.)
The U.N. World Tourism Organization was established as a special agency five years ago with
the twin goals of keeping track of the tourism industry and figuring out how poor countries, in particular, can take advantage of the tourist boom without causing their own ruin. Geoffrey Lipman, the assistant secretary general of the new organization, has spent his life studying the industry. "Tourism," he told me, "is arguably the largest cluster of industrial sectors in the world" and needs to be included in any international discussions about eliminating poverty or protecting the environment. If properly conducted -- maintaining respect for a country's environment and culture, providing local jobs and a market for local goods -- tourism, the United Nations believes, is easily the best way for a poor nation to earn foreign currency.
There are several promising examples of this philosophy at work. The nonprofit British National Trust offers tourist rentals in restored cottages and historic mansions and then uses the money to buy more land and properties to preserve and protect. The African nation of Namibia, meanwhile, has created what it calls "community-based tourism," which manages more than 25 million acres of wildlife preserves, opening much of the land to tourism -- hunting or photo safaris, birding and white-water rafting -- that employs local residents and has dramatically reduced poaching.
Most of the tourism industry, however, is heading in the opposite direction. Tourism is now responsible for 5 percent of the world's pollution, according to a recent study. Cruise ships are one of the biggest culprits. These floating hotels create three times more pollution per passenger mile than airplanes. Years of cruises have helped spoil the water of the Caribbean, which, according to the United Nations, absorbs half the waste dumped in the world's oceans. Now these ships are venturing into already fragile polar waters. Last year, Norway banned all cruise ships from visiting its region of the Arctic Circle.
Beach erosion has been swift. After the South Asian tsunami in 2004, fishermen were told to move their homes away from the beaches, but luxury hotel chains with clout were allowed to rebuild near the water's edge. In the United States, the upswing in violent hurricanes hasn't put a dent in the number of vacation homes being built by the sea. "Essentially every tropical island is in danger," the National Geographic Society's Jonathan Tourtellot told me.
In poorer nations, unregulated tourist developments have put unbearable strains on scant resources, especially water. High-end tourists often waste more water in a day with multiple daily showers and toilet flushes than some local families use in a month.
Then there's the fear that over time, major tourist destinations will become virtual ghost towns. Residents of Venice went on strike last spring to block licenses for more hotels; the city of canals is now so expensive that many locals have been pushed out, helping cut the permanent population nearly in half. This summer, the British government issued a report on rural living that included a serious warning that the rich were buying so many vacation or second homes in the countryside that many local residents couldn't afford to live in their villages anymore.
But of all the ills brought on by mass travel, none is as odious as sex tourism. The once-hidden trade is now open and global, with ever-younger girls and boys being forced into prostitution. The Department of Justice estimates that sex tourism provides from 2 to 14 percent of the gross national incomes of countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.
The United States has taken a lead in attempts to eliminate sex tourism, but otherwise, it has stayed out of the tourism debate, mostly viewing tourism as a private matter. Now, however, says Isabel Hill, director of the Commerce Department's Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, the questions raised by mass tourism have become too large to ignore. She hopes that the United States, like so many European countries, will "recognize our limitations and how we have to regulate our resources."
Still, there probably won't be a U.S. secretary for tourism and the environment anytime soon. But don't be surprised if the next international agreement on climate change mentions the role of tourism, or if some countries start regulating tourism along with the environment, because the two go hand-in-hand.
In fact, you'd better hope that they do -- if you ever again want to find that cool vacation spot where you can get away from it all.
ehb47@msn.com
Elizabeth Becker, the author of "When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution," studiedmedia coverage of tourismat Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
The whole world has the travel bug. And it's ravaging the planet.
By Elizabeth BeckerSunday, August 31, 2008; B01
Did you manage to find someplace for your vacation this summer where you could get away from it all and immerse yourself in nature, or whatever it is that you like to do with a free week or two?
I didn't think so.
It's getting harder and harder. The world has shrunk -- and the tourist legions have exploded. The streets of Paris and Venice are so crowded that you can barely move. Cruise ships are filling harbors and disgorging hordes of day trippers the world over. Towering hotels rise in ever-greater numbers along once pristine and empty beaches.
Thanks to globalization and cheap transportation, there aren't many places where you can travel today to avoid the masses of adventure- or relaxation-seekers who seem to alight at every conceivable site. I used to love going back to my old haunt in a Himalayan hill station where, as a student in India in 1970, I climbed those steep, silent paths and watched langur monkeys swinging in the trees outside my window. No longer. Now, Moussurie is chock-a-block with tourist lodges, garbage and noise; the monkeys are fleeing.
This problem goes far beyond a veteran traveler's complaint that things aren't the way they used to be, or annoyance at sharing the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal with thousands of other photo-snapping tourists loudly asking questions in languages the locals don't understand. What's happening today is of another magnitude.
The places we love are rapidly disappearing. Global tourism today is not only a major industry -- it's nothing short of a planet-threatening plague. It's polluting land and sea, destroying wildlife and natural habitat and depleting energy and natural resources. From Asia to Africa, look-alike resorts and spas are replacing and undermining local culture, and the international quest for vacation houses is forcing local residents out of their homes. It's giving rise to official corruption, wealth inequities and heedless competition. It's even contributing to human rights violations, especially through the scourge of sex tourism.
Look at Cambodia. The monumental temples at Angkor and the beaches on the Gulf of Thailand have made that country a choice destination, especially for Asians, who spent $1 billion there last year. But the foundations of those celebrated temples are in danger of sinking as the 856,000 tourists who every year crowd into Siem Reap, the nearby town of 85,000, drain the surrounding water table.
Meanwhile, Cambodia's well-connected elite has moved to cash in on the bonanza, conspiring with police and the courts to evict peasants from their rural landscape, which is being transformed by high-end resorts catering to wealthy visitors. Cambodia's League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights is compiling files that bulge with photographs of thatched-roof houses being burned down while police restrain their traumatized owners. And at night along the riverfront in the capitol of Phnom Penh, the sight of aging Western men holding hands with Cambodian girls young enough to be their granddaughters is ugly evidence of the rampant sex-tourism trade.
All this came as a shock to me. I've been writing about Cambodia for more than 35 years, but I never considered tourism there a serious subject. But when I went back last November, I couldn't avoid the issue. In three short years, tourism had transformed the country. In every interview, the conversation wandered toward tourism, its potential and its abuses. When I went up to Siem Reap, I found the great hall temple of Angkor as crowded, as a colleague said, as Filene's Basement during a sale. Forget tapping into any sense of the divine.
I began researching the global tourism industry and why journalists have allowed it to fly under the radar. Newspapers, the Web and the airwaves are filled with stories celebrating travel; few examine the effects of mass tourism. As Nancy Newhouse, the former New York Times travel editor, told me: "We never did the ten worst [places to visit], only the ten best."
Most people can't imagine that tourism could be a global menace. Even the word "tourism" sounds lightweight. And travel has always been surrounded by an aura of romance. For centuries, beginning with the first tourists on holy pilgrimages, travel has been about adventure and discovery and escape from the pressures of daily life.
It wasn't until the end of the 20th century that tourism was added to the list of industries measured in the U.S. gross domestic product. And the results were a revelation: About $1.2 trillion of the $13 trillion U.S. economy is derived from tourism.
Tourism has become the stealth industry of the global era. According to the United Nations, the international tourist count in 1960, at the dawn of the modern era of air travel, was 25 million. By 1970, the figure was up to 165 million. Last year, about 898 million people traveled the globe, and the international tourism industry earned $7 trillion. (And those figures don't include people who vacation in their own countries.)
The U.N. World Tourism Organization was established as a special agency five years ago with
the twin goals of keeping track of the tourism industry and figuring out how poor countries, in particular, can take advantage of the tourist boom without causing their own ruin. Geoffrey Lipman, the assistant secretary general of the new organization, has spent his life studying the industry. "Tourism," he told me, "is arguably the largest cluster of industrial sectors in the world" and needs to be included in any international discussions about eliminating poverty or protecting the environment. If properly conducted -- maintaining respect for a country's environment and culture, providing local jobs and a market for local goods -- tourism, the United Nations believes, is easily the best way for a poor nation to earn foreign currency.
There are several promising examples of this philosophy at work. The nonprofit British National Trust offers tourist rentals in restored cottages and historic mansions and then uses the money to buy more land and properties to preserve and protect. The African nation of Namibia, meanwhile, has created what it calls "community-based tourism," which manages more than 25 million acres of wildlife preserves, opening much of the land to tourism -- hunting or photo safaris, birding and white-water rafting -- that employs local residents and has dramatically reduced poaching.
Most of the tourism industry, however, is heading in the opposite direction. Tourism is now responsible for 5 percent of the world's pollution, according to a recent study. Cruise ships are one of the biggest culprits. These floating hotels create three times more pollution per passenger mile than airplanes. Years of cruises have helped spoil the water of the Caribbean, which, according to the United Nations, absorbs half the waste dumped in the world's oceans. Now these ships are venturing into already fragile polar waters. Last year, Norway banned all cruise ships from visiting its region of the Arctic Circle.
Beach erosion has been swift. After the South Asian tsunami in 2004, fishermen were told to move their homes away from the beaches, but luxury hotel chains with clout were allowed to rebuild near the water's edge. In the United States, the upswing in violent hurricanes hasn't put a dent in the number of vacation homes being built by the sea. "Essentially every tropical island is in danger," the National Geographic Society's Jonathan Tourtellot told me.
In poorer nations, unregulated tourist developments have put unbearable strains on scant resources, especially water. High-end tourists often waste more water in a day with multiple daily showers and toilet flushes than some local families use in a month.
Then there's the fear that over time, major tourist destinations will become virtual ghost towns. Residents of Venice went on strike last spring to block licenses for more hotels; the city of canals is now so expensive that many locals have been pushed out, helping cut the permanent population nearly in half. This summer, the British government issued a report on rural living that included a serious warning that the rich were buying so many vacation or second homes in the countryside that many local residents couldn't afford to live in their villages anymore.
But of all the ills brought on by mass travel, none is as odious as sex tourism. The once-hidden trade is now open and global, with ever-younger girls and boys being forced into prostitution. The Department of Justice estimates that sex tourism provides from 2 to 14 percent of the gross national incomes of countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.
The United States has taken a lead in attempts to eliminate sex tourism, but otherwise, it has stayed out of the tourism debate, mostly viewing tourism as a private matter. Now, however, says Isabel Hill, director of the Commerce Department's Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, the questions raised by mass tourism have become too large to ignore. She hopes that the United States, like so many European countries, will "recognize our limitations and how we have to regulate our resources."
Still, there probably won't be a U.S. secretary for tourism and the environment anytime soon. But don't be surprised if the next international agreement on climate change mentions the role of tourism, or if some countries start regulating tourism along with the environment, because the two go hand-in-hand.
In fact, you'd better hope that they do -- if you ever again want to find that cool vacation spot where you can get away from it all.
ehb47@msn.com
Elizabeth Becker, the author of "When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution," studiedmedia coverage of tourismat Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
人在马华，心在安华
在巴东埔补选期间，接到一位朋友来的短讯：“马华助选员，人在马华，心在安华”。
的确，在补选的十天里面，国阵内的马华同民政党的党员是辛苦的，他们辛苦，不是因为为补选奔波，身疲力倦而苦。他们苦是因为看到巫统种族主义意识高涨，充满种族对立、挑衅。
巫统在补选期间，在马来甘榜，由巫青团主导，说什么槟城已经成为了新加坡共和国、马来人在槟州什么都没有了、说什么民联成立“猪内阁”、说什么反对开放UiTM、说什么华人是在这里寄居。真她妈！
总之，巫统就是这么张牙舞爪，在这种情形下，全力投入助选，不就是爪牙了吗？
我们拒绝成为张牙舞爪的爪牙，虽然说是人在马华，心在安华，这里的“安华”是心想如何“安华人的心”，此“安华”非彼“安华”也。
但是，以目前的情形看来，马华在过去“安华人的心”的做法可能已经不再适合了，过去“安华人的心”很多时候是在被动，特别是和巫统的关系很多时候是处于主从的关系。
马华不可以再这样了，我们要走自己的路，要真的向巫统说“NO”！
的确，在补选的十天里面，国阵内的马华同民政党的党员是辛苦的，他们辛苦，不是因为为补选奔波，身疲力倦而苦。他们苦是因为看到巫统种族主义意识高涨，充满种族对立、挑衅。
巫统在补选期间，在马来甘榜，由巫青团主导，说什么槟城已经成为了新加坡共和国、马来人在槟州什么都没有了、说什么民联成立“猪内阁”、说什么反对开放UiTM、说什么华人是在这里寄居。真她妈！
总之，巫统就是这么张牙舞爪，在这种情形下，全力投入助选，不就是爪牙了吗？
我们拒绝成为张牙舞爪的爪牙，虽然说是人在马华，心在安华，这里的“安华”是心想如何“安华人的心”，此“安华”非彼“安华”也。
但是，以目前的情形看来，马华在过去“安华人的心”的做法可能已经不再适合了，过去“安华人的心”很多时候是在被动，特别是和巫统的关系很多时候是处于主从的关系。
马华不可以再这样了，我们要走自己的路，要真的向巫统说“NO”！
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
从政者的道德
最近，老翁的“道德污点”论引起了广泛的讨论，我是支持他的论点的。
当然，反对他这个论点者把道德一分为二，提出了“公德”和“私德”论，简单的说，色情光碟只是私德，不影响担任公职。
在支持与反对声中，我想到了在英文中有一句子，叫者“MORAL HIGH GROUND”，翻译成为华文，应该可以说成“道德制高点”。
有道德污点者，不管是私德公德，又怎么会具备“道德制高点”来处理众人的事情呢？
在我国的政治体制里，不管是国阵还是民联，种族气氛浓、又少不了宗教色彩，很多棘手的课题，往往是被赋予“敏感”的标签，需要领袖关起门来私下解决，在这种情形下，参与私下解决问题的领袖的公信力就很重要了。
有道德污点者，即使是私德这方面，无论你怎么“漂白”也不会让人民觉的是有公信力的。
在民间，很久以来就已经有这样的一个流传，历任首相手头上皆握有其内阁成员的“X-FILE”，他就凭者手上的这张王牌，驾驭下面的内阁成员，让他们乖乖的听话。这些X-FILE只是在一个人的手上，就这么具有威力，那么请问当“污点”被烧成CD，广为流传，担任领袖者又有什么MORAL HIGH GROUND来面对同僚、属下官员、人民老百姓？
奉劝那些响往党职、公职高位者，学学陈群川，被私人业务案件缠身后，不只是引退，在往后更不问政事，这样才对嘛！
当然，反对他这个论点者把道德一分为二，提出了“公德”和“私德”论，简单的说，色情光碟只是私德，不影响担任公职。
在支持与反对声中，我想到了在英文中有一句子，叫者“MORAL HIGH GROUND”，翻译成为华文，应该可以说成“道德制高点”。
有道德污点者，不管是私德公德，又怎么会具备“道德制高点”来处理众人的事情呢？
在我国的政治体制里，不管是国阵还是民联，种族气氛浓、又少不了宗教色彩，很多棘手的课题，往往是被赋予“敏感”的标签，需要领袖关起门来私下解决，在这种情形下，参与私下解决问题的领袖的公信力就很重要了。
有道德污点者，即使是私德这方面，无论你怎么“漂白”也不会让人民觉的是有公信力的。
在民间，很久以来就已经有这样的一个流传，历任首相手头上皆握有其内阁成员的“X-FILE”，他就凭者手上的这张王牌，驾驭下面的内阁成员，让他们乖乖的听话。这些X-FILE只是在一个人的手上，就这么具有威力，那么请问当“污点”被烧成CD，广为流传，担任领袖者又有什么MORAL HIGH GROUND来面对同僚、属下官员、人民老百姓？
奉劝那些响往党职、公职高位者，学学陈群川，被私人业务案件缠身后，不只是引退，在往后更不问政事，这样才对嘛！
Sunday, August 24, 2008
再读这篇
Two Countries, Different Aims
By Shashi TharoorSunday, August 24, 2008; B02
It has become rather fashionable these days to speak of India and China in the same breath. These are the two big countries said to be taking over the world, the new contenders for global eminence after centuries of Western domination, the Oriental answer to generations of Occidental economic success. Some even speak of "Chindia," as if the two nations were joined at the hip in the international imagination.
But if anyone wanted confirmation that such twinning is preposterous, all they'd have to do is look at the medals tally at the Beijing Olympics. China ranks first, with a glittering stash of 47 gold medals. You have to strain your eyes past such stepchildren of the global family as Jamaica, Belarus, war-torn Georgia, collapsing Zimbabwe and even what used to be called Outer Mongolia before you stumble across my native India, in 50th place as of this writing with precisely three medals, one gold and two bronze.
This is no surprise. China has set about systematically striving for Olympic success since it re-entered global competition after years of isolation, but India has remained mostly complacent about its lack of sporting prowess. Where China lobbied hard for the right to host the Olympics within two decades of its return to the Games, India has rested on its laurels after hosting the Asian Games in New Delhi in 1982. This is widely believed to leave it even farther behind in the competition for Olympic host-hood than it was two decades ago.
Where China embarked on what its sports leaders call "Project 119," a program devised specifically to boost the country's Olympic medal standings (the number 119 refers to the number of golds awarded at the 2000 Sydney Games in what Sports Illustrated calls "the medal-rich sports of track and field, swimming, rowing, sailing and canoe/kayak"), Indians wondered whether they'd be able to crack the magic ceiling of two, the highest number of medals their giant country has ever won. Where China, eyeing the number of medals awarded in kayaking, decided to create a team to master a sport hitherto unknown to the Middle Kingdom, India didn't even petition successfully to have the Games include the few sports it does play well, such as polo, kabbadi (a form of tag-team wrestling) or cricket, which was played in the Olympics of 1900 and has been omitted ever since. Where China has maintained its dominance in table tennis and badminton and developed new strengths in non-traditional sports such as rowing and shooting, India has seen its once-legendary invincibility in field hockey fade with the introduction of AstroTurf, to the point that India's team failed to even qualify for Beijing.
Forget "Chindia" -- the two countries barely belong in the same sporting sentence.
What has happened at the Olympics speaks to a basic difference in the two countries' systems. China, as befits a communist autocracy, approached the task of dominating the Olympics with top-down military discipline. It determined its objective, drew up a program, brought considerable state resources to bear, acquired state-of-the-art technology and imported world-class foreign coaches. India, by contrast, approached these Olympics as it had every other, with its usual combination of amiable amateurism, bureaucratic ineptitude, half-hearted experimentation and shambolic organization.
That's simply the way we are. It's the creative chaos of an all-singing, all-dancing Bollywood musical vs. the perfectly choreographed precision of the Beijing Games' opening ceremonies. If China wants to build a new six-lane expressway, it can bulldoze its way past any number of villages in the thing's path; in India, if you want to widen a two-lane road, you could be tied up in court for a dozen years over compensation payments. In China, the government establishes national priorities, then funds them; in India, priorities emerge from seemingly endless discussions and arguments among myriad interests, and funds have to be scrounged where they might. China's budget for preparing its athletes for these Games alone probably exceeded India's expenditure on all Olympic training in the last 60 years.
But where China's state-owned enterprises remain the most powerful motors of the country's development, India's private sector -- ducking around government obstacles and bypassing the stifling patronage of the state -- has transformed the fortunes of the Indian people. So it proved again in Beijing: The wrestlers, tennis players, boxers and weightlifters who made up the bulk of the Indian contingent, accompanied by the inevitable retinue of officials, returned with two bronzes among them, while the country's only gold -- in men's 10-meter air-rifle shooting -- was won by a young entrepreneur with a rifle range in his own backyard who had no help whatsoever from the state. Abhinav Bindra is, at 25, the CEO of a high-tech firm, a self-motivated, bespectacled sharpshooter and an avid blogger. He is, in short, a 21st-century Indian. At one level, it's not surprising that he should have won India's first individual gold in any Olympics since a transplanted Englishman competed in Indian colors in the 1900 Games. India is the land of individual excellence, despite the limitations of the system. In China, individual success is the product of the system.
My fellow Indians excel wherever individual talent is given free rein. The country has produced world-class computer scientists, mathematicians, biotech researchers, filmmakers and novelists, but the only Indian sportsmen who have worn the title of world champion in recent years have been a billiards cueist and a chess grandmaster.
Come up with a challenge that requires high levels of organization, strict discipline, sophisticated equipment, systematic training and elastic budgets, and Indians quail. This remains as true inside the Olympic stadium as outside it. When China built the massive Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, it created a 400-mile-long reservoir that necessitated displacing a staggering 1.2 million people, all accomplished in 15 years and without much fuss (except for the usual silenced naysayers and jailed malcontents) in the interests of generating electricity; in attempting its Narmada Dam project, aiming to bring irrigation, drinking water and power to millions, India has spent 34 years (so far) fighting environmental groups, human rights activists and advocates for the displaced all the way to the Supreme Court, while still being thwarted in the streets by protesters from nongovernmental organizations such as the Save Narmada Movement.
That is how it should be: India is a fractious democracy; China is not. China will win the Olympic medals for many Games to come. But India, perhaps, might win some hearts.
tharoor.assistant@gmail.com
Shashi Tharoor is a former undersecretary general of the United Nations and the author, most recently, of "The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century."
By Shashi TharoorSunday, August 24, 2008; B02
It has become rather fashionable these days to speak of India and China in the same breath. These are the two big countries said to be taking over the world, the new contenders for global eminence after centuries of Western domination, the Oriental answer to generations of Occidental economic success. Some even speak of "Chindia," as if the two nations were joined at the hip in the international imagination.
But if anyone wanted confirmation that such twinning is preposterous, all they'd have to do is look at the medals tally at the Beijing Olympics. China ranks first, with a glittering stash of 47 gold medals. You have to strain your eyes past such stepchildren of the global family as Jamaica, Belarus, war-torn Georgia, collapsing Zimbabwe and even what used to be called Outer Mongolia before you stumble across my native India, in 50th place as of this writing with precisely three medals, one gold and two bronze.
This is no surprise. China has set about systematically striving for Olympic success since it re-entered global competition after years of isolation, but India has remained mostly complacent about its lack of sporting prowess. Where China lobbied hard for the right to host the Olympics within two decades of its return to the Games, India has rested on its laurels after hosting the Asian Games in New Delhi in 1982. This is widely believed to leave it even farther behind in the competition for Olympic host-hood than it was two decades ago.
Where China embarked on what its sports leaders call "Project 119," a program devised specifically to boost the country's Olympic medal standings (the number 119 refers to the number of golds awarded at the 2000 Sydney Games in what Sports Illustrated calls "the medal-rich sports of track and field, swimming, rowing, sailing and canoe/kayak"), Indians wondered whether they'd be able to crack the magic ceiling of two, the highest number of medals their giant country has ever won. Where China, eyeing the number of medals awarded in kayaking, decided to create a team to master a sport hitherto unknown to the Middle Kingdom, India didn't even petition successfully to have the Games include the few sports it does play well, such as polo, kabbadi (a form of tag-team wrestling) or cricket, which was played in the Olympics of 1900 and has been omitted ever since. Where China has maintained its dominance in table tennis and badminton and developed new strengths in non-traditional sports such as rowing and shooting, India has seen its once-legendary invincibility in field hockey fade with the introduction of AstroTurf, to the point that India's team failed to even qualify for Beijing.
Forget "Chindia" -- the two countries barely belong in the same sporting sentence.
What has happened at the Olympics speaks to a basic difference in the two countries' systems. China, as befits a communist autocracy, approached the task of dominating the Olympics with top-down military discipline. It determined its objective, drew up a program, brought considerable state resources to bear, acquired state-of-the-art technology and imported world-class foreign coaches. India, by contrast, approached these Olympics as it had every other, with its usual combination of amiable amateurism, bureaucratic ineptitude, half-hearted experimentation and shambolic organization.
That's simply the way we are. It's the creative chaos of an all-singing, all-dancing Bollywood musical vs. the perfectly choreographed precision of the Beijing Games' opening ceremonies. If China wants to build a new six-lane expressway, it can bulldoze its way past any number of villages in the thing's path; in India, if you want to widen a two-lane road, you could be tied up in court for a dozen years over compensation payments. In China, the government establishes national priorities, then funds them; in India, priorities emerge from seemingly endless discussions and arguments among myriad interests, and funds have to be scrounged where they might. China's budget for preparing its athletes for these Games alone probably exceeded India's expenditure on all Olympic training in the last 60 years.
But where China's state-owned enterprises remain the most powerful motors of the country's development, India's private sector -- ducking around government obstacles and bypassing the stifling patronage of the state -- has transformed the fortunes of the Indian people. So it proved again in Beijing: The wrestlers, tennis players, boxers and weightlifters who made up the bulk of the Indian contingent, accompanied by the inevitable retinue of officials, returned with two bronzes among them, while the country's only gold -- in men's 10-meter air-rifle shooting -- was won by a young entrepreneur with a rifle range in his own backyard who had no help whatsoever from the state. Abhinav Bindra is, at 25, the CEO of a high-tech firm, a self-motivated, bespectacled sharpshooter and an avid blogger. He is, in short, a 21st-century Indian. At one level, it's not surprising that he should have won India's first individual gold in any Olympics since a transplanted Englishman competed in Indian colors in the 1900 Games. India is the land of individual excellence, despite the limitations of the system. In China, individual success is the product of the system.
My fellow Indians excel wherever individual talent is given free rein. The country has produced world-class computer scientists, mathematicians, biotech researchers, filmmakers and novelists, but the only Indian sportsmen who have worn the title of world champion in recent years have been a billiards cueist and a chess grandmaster.
Come up with a challenge that requires high levels of organization, strict discipline, sophisticated equipment, systematic training and elastic budgets, and Indians quail. This remains as true inside the Olympic stadium as outside it. When China built the massive Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, it created a 400-mile-long reservoir that necessitated displacing a staggering 1.2 million people, all accomplished in 15 years and without much fuss (except for the usual silenced naysayers and jailed malcontents) in the interests of generating electricity; in attempting its Narmada Dam project, aiming to bring irrigation, drinking water and power to millions, India has spent 34 years (so far) fighting environmental groups, human rights activists and advocates for the displaced all the way to the Supreme Court, while still being thwarted in the streets by protesters from nongovernmental organizations such as the Save Narmada Movement.
That is how it should be: India is a fractious democracy; China is not. China will win the Olympic medals for many Games to come. But India, perhaps, might win some hearts.
tharoor.assistant@gmail.com
Shashi Tharoor is a former undersecretary general of the United Nations and the author, most recently, of "The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century."
必读这篇
August 24, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Melting Pot Meets Great Wall
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Beijing
The Olympics may just be a sporting event, but it is hard not to read larger messages into the results, especially when you see how China and America have dominated the medals tally. Both countries can — and will — look at their Olympic successes as reaffirmations of their distinctly different political systems. But what strikes me is how much they could each learn from the other. This, as they say, is a teaching moment.
Call it: One Olympics — two systems.
How so? You can’t look at the U.S. Olympic team and not see the strength that comes from diversity, and you can’t look at the Chinese team and not see the strength that comes from intense focus and concentrated power.
Let’s start with us. Walking through the Olympic Village the other day, here’s what struck me most: the Russian team all looks Russian; the African team all looks African; the Chinese team all looks Chinese; and the American team looks like all of them.
This is especially true when you include the coaches. Liang Chow, the coach of the Iowa gymnast Shawn Johnson, was a popular co-caption of China’s national gymnastics team in the 1980s before he emigrated to West Des Moines. The U.S. women’s volleyball team was coached by a former Chinese player, Jenny Lang Ping, when it defeated China a few days ago. Lang, a national hero in China, led the Chinese team to a gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It would be like Michael Jordan coaching China’s basketball team to a win over America.
The Associated Press reports that there are 33 foreign-born players on the U.S. Olympic team, including four Chinese-born table tennis players, a kayaker from Britain, seven members of the track-and-field team — as well as Lopez Lomong, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan’s civil war, who was resettled in the U.S. by Catholic Charities, and Leo Manzano, the son of an illegal immigrant Mexican laborer. He moved to the U.S. when he was 4 but didn’t gain citizenship until 2004.
It is amazing that with our Noah’s Ark of an Olympic team doing so well “that at the same time you have this rising call in America to restrict immigration,” said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. “Some people want to choke off the very thing that makes us strong and unique.”
China could learn something from our Olympic team as well: the power that comes from a strong society, woven together of many strands from the bottom up. For instance, it’s hard to drive around Beijing these days and not enjoy the thinned-out traffic and blue sky — which are largely the result of China ordering drivers off the roads and closing factories — and not wonder how these can be sustained after the Olympics. Many Chinese I have spoken to have asked: How can we keep this? Now that we have seen how blue the sky really can be, we don’t want to give it away.
The problem for China, though, is that environmentalism is a bottom-up movement in the rest of the world. While it requires a strong government to pass regulations from the top, it also can’t work without a strong, independent civil society acting as a watchdog, spotlighting polluters and suing businesses that do not comply. China can be green for the two weeks of the Olympics from the top down, but it can’t be green for the next 20 years without more bottom up.
That said, there are some things we could learn from China, namely the ability to focus on big, long-term, nation-building goals and see them through. A Chinese academic friend tells me that the success of the Olympics is already prompting some high officials to argue that only a strong, top-down, Communist Party-led China could have organized the stunning building projects around these Olympics and the focused performance of so many different Chinese athletes. For instance, the Chinese have no tradition of rowing teams, but at these Games, out of nowhere, Beijing fielded a women’s quadruple sculls crew that won China’s first Olympic gold medal in rowing.
The lesson for us is surely not that we need authoritarian government. The lesson is that we need to make our democracy work better. The American men’s basketball team did poorly in the last Olympics because it could not play as a team. So our stars were beaten by inferior players with better teamwork. Our basketball team learned its lesson.
Congress has gotten worse. Our democracy feels increasingly paralyzed because collaboration in Washington has become nearly impossible — whether because of money, gerrymandering, a 24-hour-news cycle or the permanent presidential campaign. And as a result, our ability to focus America’s incredible bottom-up energies — outside of sports — has diminished. You see it in our crumbling infrastructure and inability to shape a real energy program. China feels focused. We feel distracted.
So, yes, America and China should enjoy their medals — but we should each also reflect on how the other team got so many.
Op-Ed Columnist
Melting Pot Meets Great Wall
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Beijing
The Olympics may just be a sporting event, but it is hard not to read larger messages into the results, especially when you see how China and America have dominated the medals tally. Both countries can — and will — look at their Olympic successes as reaffirmations of their distinctly different political systems. But what strikes me is how much they could each learn from the other. This, as they say, is a teaching moment.
Call it: One Olympics — two systems.
How so? You can’t look at the U.S. Olympic team and not see the strength that comes from diversity, and you can’t look at the Chinese team and not see the strength that comes from intense focus and concentrated power.
Let’s start with us. Walking through the Olympic Village the other day, here’s what struck me most: the Russian team all looks Russian; the African team all looks African; the Chinese team all looks Chinese; and the American team looks like all of them.
This is especially true when you include the coaches. Liang Chow, the coach of the Iowa gymnast Shawn Johnson, was a popular co-caption of China’s national gymnastics team in the 1980s before he emigrated to West Des Moines. The U.S. women’s volleyball team was coached by a former Chinese player, Jenny Lang Ping, when it defeated China a few days ago. Lang, a national hero in China, led the Chinese team to a gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It would be like Michael Jordan coaching China’s basketball team to a win over America.
The Associated Press reports that there are 33 foreign-born players on the U.S. Olympic team, including four Chinese-born table tennis players, a kayaker from Britain, seven members of the track-and-field team — as well as Lopez Lomong, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan’s civil war, who was resettled in the U.S. by Catholic Charities, and Leo Manzano, the son of an illegal immigrant Mexican laborer. He moved to the U.S. when he was 4 but didn’t gain citizenship until 2004.
It is amazing that with our Noah’s Ark of an Olympic team doing so well “that at the same time you have this rising call in America to restrict immigration,” said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. “Some people want to choke off the very thing that makes us strong and unique.”
China could learn something from our Olympic team as well: the power that comes from a strong society, woven together of many strands from the bottom up. For instance, it’s hard to drive around Beijing these days and not enjoy the thinned-out traffic and blue sky — which are largely the result of China ordering drivers off the roads and closing factories — and not wonder how these can be sustained after the Olympics. Many Chinese I have spoken to have asked: How can we keep this? Now that we have seen how blue the sky really can be, we don’t want to give it away.
The problem for China, though, is that environmentalism is a bottom-up movement in the rest of the world. While it requires a strong government to pass regulations from the top, it also can’t work without a strong, independent civil society acting as a watchdog, spotlighting polluters and suing businesses that do not comply. China can be green for the two weeks of the Olympics from the top down, but it can’t be green for the next 20 years without more bottom up.
That said, there are some things we could learn from China, namely the ability to focus on big, long-term, nation-building goals and see them through. A Chinese academic friend tells me that the success of the Olympics is already prompting some high officials to argue that only a strong, top-down, Communist Party-led China could have organized the stunning building projects around these Olympics and the focused performance of so many different Chinese athletes. For instance, the Chinese have no tradition of rowing teams, but at these Games, out of nowhere, Beijing fielded a women’s quadruple sculls crew that won China’s first Olympic gold medal in rowing.
The lesson for us is surely not that we need authoritarian government. The lesson is that we need to make our democracy work better. The American men’s basketball team did poorly in the last Olympics because it could not play as a team. So our stars were beaten by inferior players with better teamwork. Our basketball team learned its lesson.
Congress has gotten worse. Our democracy feels increasingly paralyzed because collaboration in Washington has become nearly impossible — whether because of money, gerrymandering, a 24-hour-news cycle or the permanent presidential campaign. And as a result, our ability to focus America’s incredible bottom-up energies — outside of sports — has diminished. You see it in our crumbling infrastructure and inability to shape a real energy program. China feels focused. We feel distracted.
So, yes, America and China should enjoy their medals — but we should each also reflect on how the other team got so many.
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