Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Chinese city leading ‘red’ revival 中国“红潮”倒流再泛滥


China's Red Revival 中国“红潮”倒流再泛滥

View Photo Gallery — Chongqing, China, a sprawling municipality of 32 million people has embarked on a campaign to promote “red culture,” to remind residents of the glories of China’s Communist Party.

陈凯博客www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语 Kai Chen's Words:

中国的“红潮”再泛滥只说明了中国社会病入膏肓的“道德与意义的危机”。 “拥毛”与“排毛”在中共内部将会引起重大冲突:基点是中国社会/人们的无道德与无意义。 中国人的个体与群体认同正在受到上苍所赋的良知的不可回避的挑战。 中共党朝的非法性正在被人们加快地认知与传播。 毛泽东在世界人们的眼中的魔鬼的非人性罪犯性质与毛泽东在中国人们眼中的“合法基点性质”是中国党奴朝/中国的人们无法调和/中庸的死结。 中国党奴朝的末日不远了。

This Chinese "Red Revival" only demonstrates one thing - a deep and unsolvable crisis of morality and meaning in Chinese society. Those who propose "Mao worship" and those who want to rid of Mao will inevitably collide inside the communist leadership. Trying to find legitimacy and meaning of the current communist regime has become a paramount issue inside China. Each individual's identity as "Chinese" and as a human being has been severely challenged. Mao and the communist regime's anti-humanity crimes and their illegitimate nature have been fast recognized by the population, thus form the inevitable cause of huge social unrest. Conscience - God given to every human being, is being awakened slowly and surely. The Chinese communist party-dynasty's days are numbered.


---------------------------------------------------------------

Southwestern Chinese city leading ‘red’ revival
中国“红潮”倒流再泛滥


By Keith B. Richburg, Published: June 27

CHONGQING, China — With the approach of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China on July 1, the country is being swept up in a wave of orchestrated revolutionary nostalgia. Nowhere is that more so than in Chongqing, this southwestern Chinese mega-city of 32 million people that has become the capital of the “red culture” revival.

The local satellite television station recently stopped broadcasting sitcoms and now shows only “revolutionary” programs and news. Government workers and students have been told to spend time working in the countryside. The local propaganda department launched a “red Twitter” micro-blogging site, blasting out short patriotic slogans.

And in what seems like a throwback to the days of the Cultural Revolution, residents have been encouraged — or told — to read revolutionary books and poetry and to gather regularly in parks to sing old songs extolling the Communist revolution. A recent Sunday gathering, including a colorful, choreographed stage pageant, attracted an estimated 10,000 flag-waving people, many in uniforms and red caps and mostly organized by the party chiefs in their schools and factories.

The red culture campaign revival is the pet project of the local Communist Party secretary, Bo Xilai, a former commerce minister and son of Bo Yibo, a Mao contemporary who was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. In 2007, Bo was appointed to the top job in Chongqing, a sprawling provincial-sized city of almost 32,000 square miles — about the size of South Carolina — that before 1949 served as the wartime capital for the anti-Communist Nationalist (or KMT) regime.

In a rare, brief interview with foreign reporters, on the sidelines of a conference dedicated to attracting overseas investment to Chongqing, Bo defended the red culture campaign, saying, “We aim to encourage people’s spirits.”

Bo said his campaign has four aspects — reading Chinese and foreign classics, including the theories of Mao and other Marxist leaders; telling popular stories; circulating inspiring mottos (such as, “Serve the people with a full heart!”); and group-singing of revolutionary anthems. “We should spread these things more,” Bo said.

Many here, including Communist Party adherents, agree that this revival of revolutionary fervor is needed to instill a new sense of pride and common purpose, adding that they feared China’s decades-long rush to get rich has eroded the country’s moral bearings and created an ethos of unchecked materialism.

“When I sing red songs, I find a kind of spirit I never felt when singing modern songs,” said Zhang Chenxi, a third-year student at Southwest University here. “To surround yourself with material stuff is just a waste of time.”

Reminder of a violent history

For others, particularly those old enough to remember the bloodshed and chaos of the decade-long Cultural Revolution that began in 1966, the red culture campaign is an unwelcome reminder of one of the darker chapters of China’s recent turbulent history. The Cultural Revolution played out particularly violently in Chongqing, with clashes in the streets involving knives, heavy weapons and tanks.

“For people of my generation, it’s like a return to the Mao era,” said a 57-year-old lawyer who attended a middle school in Chongqing and asked not to be quoted by name speaking critically about Bo.

“I saw the beatings of the teachers by the Red Guards. It was horrible,” the lawyer said. “Young people may not recognize it. But for us who lived through it, how can we possibly sing?”

In June, Bo took his efforts to Beijing, with a 1,000-member Chongqing singing troupe, including small children and the elderly, performing red songs for audiences at several concert halls around the capital. Most senior party officials stayed away, but mid-level officials were in the audience.

Some critics said they were rattled by this apparent revival of Maoism and red culture, which seems to be gaining traction nationwide.

“To not forget history, we also have to remember the crimes committed during the Cultural Revolution, how they trampled on human rights, how Mao put all his colleagues who had been with him in the revolution in jail,” said legal scholar He Weifang in Beijing, who studied in Chongqing. “We cannot simply remember the beautiful parts of the history.”


Bo’s red culture campaign has been accompanied by a parallel effort to rid the city of Mafia-style organized crime. Called “strike hard,” the anti-crime campaign was aimed at rooting out Chongqing’s notorious criminal gangs, or triads, which blossomed over the years because of the city’s strategic location where the Jialing River meets the upper Yangtze River, creating a lucrative smuggling route.

No official numbers are available, but the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily reported in February that from the beginning of the anti-crime campaign until last September, 10,372 people were arrested and 1,000 sentenced to forced labor. Some lawyers and human rights activists have criticized the campaign, saying that the rights of defendants were trampled on. Some lawyers have also alleged that criminals were tortured to extract confessions.

China’s legal community was incensed when a prominent Beijing lawyer, Li Zhuang, was arrested and spent 18 months in jail, allegedly for coaching a gangster he was defending to give false testimony during his trial. He was released this month. Legal scholars said Li’s case cast a pall over all lawyers in China who might find themselves being prosecuted for helping their clients.

Rumors of national ambitions

Many here and in Beijing said the anti-crime sweep, like the red culture campaign, might be related to Bo’s national ambitions, including his desire to win a seat next year on the Communist Party’s powerful nine-member Politburo standing committee. Many analysts called Bo a likely candidate to replace Zhou Yongkang, who oversees the domestic security apparatus and will be retiring.

The “Chongqing model,” as it has been called in the local media, seemed to win an endorsement from the top when China’s leader-in-waiting, Vice President Xi Jinping, made a brief visit in December and applauded the city for “upholding socialist norms.” Other senior leaders have also traveled here to show their backing.

But Bo, in the interview, said he was not focused on creating a national model. “I study the problems of the place where I work,” he said. “So right now, I am just focused on the problems of Chongqing.”

Staff researcher Wang Juan contributed to this report.

Chinese Temples Singing in Praise of Communism 中国佛教徒唱红歌

《建党伟业》输出海外“曲残和寡”- 陈凯访谈 Communist Pollution Overseas


GM Sponsors Communist China Propaganda Film 美国通用公司赞助“建党伟业”


陈凯博客www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

《建党伟业》输出海外“曲残和寡”- 陈凯访谈
Communist Pollution Overseas


【大纪元2011年06月29日讯】

(大纪元记者刘菲美国洛杉矶报导)在中国的电影院纷纷为《建党伟业》开道之际,该片在6月24日起也开始在纽约、洛杉矶、旧金山等美国9大城市的华人区影院上映。然而中宣部这个试图把 “爱国主义”教育扩大到海外华人中的努力是不是也将重蹈其在国内的覆辙、成为大众的笑柄呢?

商业包装下的政治宣言

在中国大陆,不仅《功夫熊猫2》等好莱坞大片要为《建党伟业》让路,学校、企业、各政府机构也以发票等形式鼓励民众观看。但据《洛杉矶时报》载文分析,《建党伟业》在海外的前途远远不如在中国国内明朗:“《伟业》在海外发布代表了中国正在尝试拍出更加老练的电影,并且日益加紧输出其世界观。但有点讽刺的是,共产党在纪念其90大寿时如此热切参与《伟业》的拍摄,让人联想到共产国家的严密控制和盛大宣传。”

研究中国电影的南加州大学教授Stanley Rosen说:“不像好莱坞,利润和盈亏底线是最重要的,在中国,政治胜过一切……这是一个商业片尝试,但最终它是一个政治宣言。”

自我标榜反成自我讽刺

中国政法大学法学院副院长何兵在2011年的一次公开演讲中提到:“这是一个非常荒诞的时代,这个时代荒诞到什么地步呢?比如说:鼓励你唱革命歌曲,但是不鼓励革命;鼓励你看《建党伟业》,但是不鼓励建党。”

洛杉矶的中国民主党人郑存柱认为,何兵的话道出了中共的自我标榜反成自我讽刺的尴尬局面:“既然在北洋政府和国民党的所谓独裁时代,共产党能作为反对党成立,提出不同的看法,宣扬自己的主张,那么在共产党的社会主义民主国家,为什么却不允许反对党存在?”他以中国民主党党员在国内遭到抓捕为例说:“志同道合的人组织一个政党表达政见的在今天的中国还是不可能的,按照共产党的法律来说还是一种犯罪行为。”

一些看过电影的大陆民众在网上戏称:当看到影片中有共产党人游行高呼“结束一党专政,民主自由万岁!”的镜头时,心中涌动着建党豪情,兴奋得睡不着午觉,也想同电影里中共的缔造者们一起高呼“结束一党专政,民主自由万岁!”也有网友发出如下“警告”:《建党伟业》上映的时候是不是考虑打个字幕:“危险,请勿模仿。以下表演由专业人士完成,普通观众模仿可能会导致监禁或失踪。”

郑存柱说,中共这种专门用来歌功颂德愚弄百姓的宣传在大陆都受到民众嘲弄,在海外信息自由、没有单位发票、没人强迫观看的环境下,更难达到它预期的效果,“我的老家合肥为了迎接七一把芜湖路上的法国梧桐统一包上了红绸缎,创造‘红色主题街’的效果,但是网上一片骂声,都说这是一种脑残的人才做出的事情,浪费民脂民膏的举动,所以共产党很多愚蠢的做法不但起不到正面作用反而激起老百姓的反感。”

《一比十亿——通往自由的旅程》的作者陈凯说:“中共拍《建党伟业》本来用意是宣扬共产党的伟大、当前政权的合法性,但是由于其理论的自相矛盾、实践的自相矛盾,其任何宣传作品都很难有任何正向信息,只会让人们越看越觉得矛盾重重。”

陈凯:中共利用华人群体心态散发污染

传说耗资一亿人民币打造的《建党伟业》几乎囊括了中港台所有当红明星,包括刘烨、周润发、陈坤、董洁、周迅、范冰冰、刘德华、张震、吴彦祖、李沁、赵本山、陈道明、王力宏等多达170人,连已跻身进好莱坞名导之列的吴宇森也客串一角,而且据悉周润发、吴宇森和刘德华这样的大腕是放弃片酬参演。由于演员表中有众多外籍华裔明星,网友戏称这是 “一部由‘外国人’主演,教育中国人结党结社,明目张胆地煽动、并成功覆执政党的献媚大片”。

陈凯认为,华人明星蜂拥回国成为中共的御用艺人以及至今还有某些海外华人自愿去接受中共宣传的现象,显示中国文化中的重大误区:“这个误区就是,如果任何东西能使中国的形象在世界上提升,他们就认为是好的……中共之所以搞神七、奥运会、世博,就是因为共产党深深抓住了中国人群体认同的心态,然而每个个体却不能做出真假、是非、对错的判别。”他鼓励中国人学习李娜,培养个体意识:“当你不相信个体的道德感时,共产党就会利用你的群体心态在美国散发这些污染。”

2008年北京奥运前夕,为抗议中共践踏人权,陈凯曾在海外发起“奥运自由长跑”活动。“我在做自由长跑过程中,每到一地揭露共产党中共杀害八千万中国人的罪恶,从肃反、反右、大跃进到文化大革命到天安门事件到迫害法轮功……当我列举这些罪行时,下面的华人却说:建立政权还有不杀人的?从中你就可以看出中国人缺乏道德感,他认为杀人是可以的,只要把黄皮肤的形象提高就值。毛泽东也利用这个东西,宣称牺牲中国一半人口称霸世界……当你没有个体道德感时就很容易被这种政权操纵,变得群情激愤、热血沸腾。”

陈凯同时抨击华裔明星“拿着美国国籍到中国颂扬专制”的行为:“在美国自由环境中生活有安全感,可以不必承担在中国生活要承担的风险。但是这些在自由环境里怀有专制心态的人,因不愿付个体责任,受自由的保护却不能在自由环境中生活,宁愿到中国求得一官半职,利用腐败赚钱。中共也不惜重金聘用这些人,利用他们的天才,向中国普通民众做宣传。”


美东时间: 2011-06-29 00:45:30 AM 【万年历】
本文网址: http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/11/6/29/n3300600.htm

新唐人電視台 http://www.ntdtv.com

Monday, June 27, 2011

Dine at Your Own Risk in China 吃死吃活,没人负责 - 中国的食品大都有毒


Chinese Fake Rice 中国的假造大米中掺塑料

A worker is stopped from making rice dumplings at an unlicensed workshop in Beijing after the rice was found to be contaminated with sodium cyclamate, an illegal artificial sweetener. Tainted pork, toxic milk, fake eggs and other scandals have shaken Chinese consumers and officials. (AFP/Getty Images / June 27, 2011)

陈凯博客www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语: Kai Chen's Words:

在一个毫无个体道德责任、逃避个体选择的社会文化中,法律是毫无意义的: 谁犯法? 谁执法? 谁定罪? 谁存在? 这些是一个法制(Rule of Law 以法治政)的社会的先决与前提。 一个没有个体只有群体的社会是绝不可能建立法制的。 一个没有自由的社会也绝不会有个体道德感与责任感。

In a society where there is no individual responsibility, personal choice and freedom, law itself is meaningless: Who violates the law? Who writes the law? Who executes the law? Who is the judge/jury in the law? Who exists - individuals or the collective? These are the essentials/premises in a society governed by the "rule of law" against "rule by law". It is impossible to establish a society of "rule of law" without individual identity, choice and responsibility. It is impossible to have a moral and just society without first establishing the supreme value/worth of the individual.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

China wrestles with food safety problems
吃死吃活,没人负责 - 中国的食品大都有毒


From steroid-spiked pork to glow-in-the-dark meat to recycled cooking oil collected from sewers, a series of illnesses and scandals linked to tainted food has put officials on guard. But tougher measures have had little effect amid an official culture of secrecy.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

June 26, 2011, 5:35 p.m.

Reporting from Beijing— It was a wedding the guests would never forget. Everybody of consequence in the village had been invited to a banquet to celebrate the marriage of the son of one of the wealthiest families. Fifty tables groaned under a lavish spread of dumplings, steamed chickens, pork ribs, meatballs, stir fries, all of it exceptionally delicious, guests would later recall.

But about an hour into the meal, something seemed to be wrong. A pregnant woman collapsed. Old men clutched their chests. Children vomited.

Out of about 500 people at the April 23 banquet in Wufeng, 286 went to the hospital. Doctors at the No. 3 Xiangya Hospital in nearby Changsha, capital of Hunan province, blamed pork contaminated with clenbuterol, a steroid that makes pigs grow faster and leaner. Consumed by humans in excess quantity, it can cause heart palpitations, nausea, convulsions, dizziness and vomiting.

"It was as though he was poisoned," said a villager named Dai, whose husband was hospitalized for five days.

To eat, drink and be merry in China is done at a risk: Weddings increasingly end with trips to the emergency room. During the May Day holiday weekend, 192 people from two weddings elsewhere in Hunan fell so ill they had to be hospitalized.

Since 2008, when six children died and 300,000 were sickened by melamine-tainted baby formula, the Chinese government has enacted ever-more-strict policies to ensure food safety, including a directive last month from the Supreme Court calling for the death penalty in cases where people die as a result of tainted foods.

It hasn't helped. If anything, China's food scandals are becoming increasingly frequent and bizarre.


In May, a Shanghai woman who had left uncooked pork on her kitchen table woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that the meat was emitting a blue light, like something out of a science fiction movie. Experts pointed to phosphorescent bacteria, blamed for another case of glow-in-the-dark pork last year.

Farmers in eastern Jiangsu province complained to state media last month that their watermelons had exploded "like landmines" after they mistakenly applied too much growth hormone in hopes of increasing their size.

Such incidents cut to the quick of the weaknesses in China's monolithic one-party system. Chinese authorities are painfully aware that people will lose confidence in a government that cannot give them assurances about what they eat. They are equally aware that tainted foods could cause what communist authorities fear most: social unrest.

"Food safety concerns the people's interests and livelihoods, social stability and the future of socialism with Chinese characteristics," is how the Supreme Court put it in its notice last month accompanying the announcement of the death penalty.

The government's efforts are looking frantic.

Propaganda posters put up in recent weeks in Beijing restaurants show a clenched fist about to smash into a man in a chef's toque with the message, "Crack down on illegal additives!"

The mass poisoning at the April 23 wedding in Wufeng village prompted provincial authorities to decree that samples of ingredients must be inspected in advance for banquets with more than 100 people.

It's doubtful, however, that anybody will heed the regulation — China is famous for promulgating laws that are never enforced. There is no equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: A myriad of different agencies reporting to various ministries, including the Agriculture Ministry and Health Ministry, tend to kick responsibility from one to another. Offenders are not usually prosecuted until something goes badly wrong, as in the baby formula case, in which two people were executed.

The incentive to cheat is greater than ever before, with inflation at its highest level in nearly three years. Food prices in May were up 11.7% from last year, and flooding this month is expected to push them even higher.

"On the one hand, ordinary people pay more attention to food safety and nutrition, but on the other hand, whenever you see a big crowd at the market it is because something is on sale," said Luo Yunbo, dean of the food sciences college at China Agricultural University in Beijing.

Bigger, cheaper, faster is the name of the game.

To make some breeds of fish mature more quickly, aquatic farmers feed them ground-up birth-control pills, which cost virtually nothing because of China's strict limits on family size. In April, authorities in Hefei province busted businesses that were selling a glaze that makes pork look and smell like more expensive beef — bad news in a country with more than 20 million Muslims.

Until recently, directions were circulating on the Internet about how to make fake eggs out of a gelatinous compound comprised mostly of sodium alginate, which is then poured into a shell made out of calcium carbonate. Companies marketing the kits promised that you could make a fake egg for one-quarter the price of a real one.

Shanghainese love their steamed buns and were outraged this year to learn that the manufacturer of a popular brand was using dye to make cheap wheat buns look like the more expensive black rice buns. In the southern city of Dongguan, 17 noodle manufacturers were caught adding ink and paraffin wax to give their products the look and texture of more expensive varieties.

"We have a saying in China that 'food is the people's god,' so obviously it is very scary for ordinary people when things like this happen," said Xiao Andong, a veterinary feed expert with the Hunan Institute of Veterinary Feed Control. Xiao was one of the investigators in the wedding poisoning case, but he said tests were inconclusive because the food had been consumed by the time experts were called in.

Clenbuterol, the suspect in the poisoning, results in a larger, leaner pig that yields more expensive meat. Although it was banned in pig feed in the 1990s, it is still used under the name "lean pork powder," because lean pork commands about 60 cents more per pound than fatty pork.

"The profit margin is bigger than drug trafficking if you add the lean pork powder to the pig food," said Zhou Qing, an author and dissident, who has styled himself as China's equivalent of Upton Sinclair, whose 1906 novel, "The Jungle," exposed the horrors of the U.S. meatpacking industry.

In 2006, Zhou published a book about the Chinese food industry that would extinguish the heartiest appetite. He wrote about foods tainted with pesticides, industrial salts, bleaches, paints and, especially nauseating, imitation soy sauce made from clippings swept up from hairdressers' floors, sold for 5 cents per pound and sent to factories that extract from it an amino acid solution. Zhou wrote that fish farmers confessed to pouring so many antibiotics and hormones into their ponds that "they never eat the fish that they farm."

Although Zhou's book has been published in 10 countries — it sold 50,000 copies in Japan alone — it is not available in China. After failing to get the book in shops, receiving threats from police and getting beaten up by thugs, Zhou left China in 2008. He now lives in Germany.

"In China, the reflexive desire to cover up and hide has trumped transparency and the need to protect public health," said Phelim Kine, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The poor treatment of whistleblowers makes it nearly impossible for a consumer movement to take root. The Health Ministry went so far as to announce this month that it would set up a blacklist of journalists who were deemed to report irresponsibly on food safety issues.

Last year, He Dongping, a professor of food sciences at Wuhan Polytechnic University, in Hubei province, published results of an investigation into the recycling of discarded cooking oil, which was being scooped out of sewers outside restaurants, reprocessed and then sold at a fraction of the cost of fresh cooking oil. He found that one in 10 restaurants in his area bought the recycled oil, even though it was known to contain a carcinogenic fungus.

Afterward, the professor was reprimanded by the university and ordered not to speak again about cooking oil. Contacted this month, he hung up when told the caller was a foreign journalist.

Even victims are punished if they complain too loudly. Zhao Lianhai, an advertising executive who led a campaign for safer baby formula after his son developed kidney stones as a result of the melamine-tainted baby formula, was sentenced in November to 2 1/2 years in prison for "inciting social disorder."

As a result, people are often too frightened to speak up. More than a dozen who were contacted about their experience at the wedding in Wufeng begged not to have their full names used. They said their medical bills had been paid by the local government and the newlyweds' parents, who were connected to the local Communist Party branch. They said they never got answers about what had happened.

"We asked many times, but there were no answers. The doctors wouldn't say. So we stopped asking," said one woman, adding nervously before hanging up the phone, "Don't tell anyone I told you this."

barbara.1c

Nicole Liu and Tommy Yang of The Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.

China's Food Poisoning 中国的食物中毒是人为的

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong “苏联解体”的真实原因 - 缺少道德与意义感


The Collapse of Soviet Empire 苏联党奴朝的解体


陈凯博客: www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语: Kai Chen's Words:

“道德纤维”是粘结、编制一个社会的基点。 任何的专制社会都是靠强力压挤成的“奴体”。 里根的“邪恶帝国”的清晰道德审定加速了苏联的人们对自身所处的邪恶社会的理解。 我只希望今天的美国会有另一个里根对中国党奴朝作出同样的道德审定。

“Moral Fibers" are the essential element in forming a legitimate society. All despotic societies are formed by the external pressure from government's tyrannical power. They are thus not nations but slave states. Ronald Reagan's moral judgment toward USSR as "Evil Empire" accelerated the moral/spiritual awakening of the people in such a despotic society (USSR). I only hope today there will be another Ronald Reagan coming out to declare China as the "Evil Party-Dynasty".


-----------------------------------------------------------------

Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong
“苏联解体”的真实原因 - 缺少道德与意义感


*And why it matters today in a new age of revolution.

BY LEON ARON |JULY/AUGUST 2011

Every revolution is a surprise. Still, the latest Russian Revolution must be counted among the greatest of surprises.

In the years leading up to 1991, virtually no Western expert, scholar, official, or politician foresaw the impending collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it one-party dictatorship, the state-owned economy, and the Kremlin's control over its domestic and Eastern European empires. Neither, with one exception, did Soviet dissidents nor, judging by their memoirs, future revolutionaries themselves. When Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party in March 1985, none of his contemporaries anticipated a revolutionary crisis. Although there were disagreements over the size and depth of the Soviet system's problems, no one thought them to be life-threatening, at least not anytime soon.

Whence such strangely universal shortsightedness? The failure of Western experts to anticipate the Soviet Union's collapse may in part be attributed to a sort of historical revisionism -- call it anti-anti-communism -- that tended to exaggerate the Soviet regime's stability and legitimacy. Yet others who could hardly be considered soft on communism were just as puzzled by its demise. One of the architects of the U.S. strategy in the Cold War, George Kennan, wrote that, in reviewing the entire "history of international affairs in the modern era," he found it "hard to think of any event more strange and startling, and at first glance inexplicable, than the sudden and total disintegration and disappearance … of the great power known successively as the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union." Richard Pipes, perhaps the leading American historian of Russia as well as an advisor to U.S. President Ronald Reagan, called the revolution "unexpected." A collection of essays about the Soviet Union's demise in a special 1993 issue of the conservative National Interest magazine was titled "The Strange Death of Soviet Communism."

Were it easier to understand, this collective lapse in judgment could have been safely consigned to a mental file containing other oddities and caprices of the social sciences, and then forgotten. Yet even today, at a 20-year remove, the assumption that the Soviet Union would continue in its current state, or at most that it would eventually begin a long, drawn-out decline, seems just as rational a conclusion.

Indeed, the Soviet Union in 1985 possessed much of the same natural and human resources that it had 10 years before. Certainly, the standard of living was much lower than in most of Eastern Europe, let alone the West. Shortages, food rationing, long lines in stores, and acute poverty were endemic. But the Soviet Union had known far greater calamities and coped without sacrificing an iota of the state's grip on society and economy, much less surrendering it.

Nor did any key parameter of economic performance prior to 1985 point to a rapidly advancing disaster. From 1981 to 1985 the growth of the country's GDP, though slowing down compared with the 1960s and 1970s, averaged 1.9 percent a year. The same lackadaisical but hardly catastrophic pattern continued through 1989. Budget deficits, which since the French Revolution have been considered among the prominent portents of a coming revolutionary crisis, equaled less than 2 percent of GDP in 1985. Although growing rapidly, the gap remained under 9 percent through 1989 -- a size most economists would find quite manageable.

The sharp drop in oil prices, from $66 a barrel in 1980 to $20 a barrel in 1986 (in 2000 prices) certainly was a heavy blow to Soviet finances. Still, adjusted for inflation, oil was more expensive in the world markets in 1985 than in 1972, and only one-third lower than throughout the 1970s. And at the same time, Soviet incomes increased more than 2 percent in 1985, and inflation-adjusted wages continued to rise in the next five years through 1990 at an average of over 7 percent.

Yes, the stagnation was obvious and worrisome. But as Wesleyan University professor Peter Rutland has pointed out, "Chronic ailments, after all, are not necessarily fatal." Even the leading student of the revolution's economic causes, Anders Åslund, notes that from 1985 to 1987, the situation "was not at all dramatic."

From the regime's point of view, the political circumstances were even less troublesome. After 20 years of relentless suppression of political opposition, virtually all the prominent dissidents had been imprisoned, exiled (as Andrei Sakharov had been since 1980), forced to emigrate, or had died in camps and jails.

There did not seem to be any other signs of a pre-revolutionary crisis either, including the other traditionally assigned cause of state failure -- external pressure. On the contrary, the previous decade was correctly judged to amount "to the realization of all major Soviet military and diplomatic desiderata," as American historian and diplomat Stephen Sestanovich has written. Of course, Afghanistan increasingly looked like a long war, but for a 5-million-strong Soviet military force the losses there were negligible. Indeed, though the enormous financial burden of maintaining an empire was to become a major issue in the post-1987 debates, the cost of the Afghan war itself was hardly crushing: Estimated at $4 billion to $5 billion in 1985, it was an insignificant portion of the Soviet GDP.

Nor was America the catalyzing force. The "Reagan Doctrine" of resisting and, if possible, reversing the Soviet Union's advances in the Third World did put considerable pressure on the perimeter of the empire, in places like Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and Ethiopia. Yet Soviet difficulties there, too, were far from fatal.

As a precursor to a potentially very costly competition, Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative indeed was crucial -- but it was far from heralding a military defeat, given that the Kremlin knew very well that effective deployment of space-based defenses was decades away. Similarly, though the 1980 peaceful anti-communist uprising of the Polish workers had been a very disturbing development for Soviet leaders, underscoring the precariousness of their European empire, by 1985 Solidarity looked exhausted. The Soviet Union seemed to have adjusted to undertaking bloody "pacifications" in Eastern Europe every 12 years -- Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980 -- without much regard for the world's opinion.

This, in other words, was a Soviet Union at the height of its global power and influence, both in its own view and in the view of the rest of the world. "We tend to forget," historian Adam Ulam would note later, "that in 1985, no government of a major state appeared to be as firmly in power, its policies as clearly set in their course, as that of the USSR."

Certainly, there were plenty of structural reasons -- economic, political, social -- why the Soviet Union should have collapsed as it did, yet they fail to explain fully how it happened when it happened. How, that is, between 1985 and 1989, in the absence of sharply worsening economic, political, demographic, and other structural conditions, did the state and its economic system suddenly begin to be seen as shameful, illegitimate, and intolerable by enough men and women to become doomed?

LIKE VIRTUALLY ALL modern revolutions, the latest Russian one was started by a hesitant liberalization "from above" -- and its rationale extended well beyond the necessity to correct the economy or make the international environment more benign. The core of Gorbachev's enterprise was undeniably idealistic: He wanted to build a more moral Soviet Union.

For though economic betterment was their banner, there is little doubt that Gorbachev and his supporters first set out to right moral, rather than economic, wrongs. Most of what they said publicly in the early days of perestroika now seems no more than an expression of their anguish over the spiritual decline and corrosive effects of the Stalinist past. It was the beginning of a desperate search for answers to the big questions with which every great revolution starts: What is a good, dignified life? What constitutes a just social and economic order? What is a decent and legitimate state? What should such a state's relationship with civil society be?

"A new moral atmosphere is taking shape in the country," Gorbachev told the Central Committee at the January 1987 meeting where he declared glasnost -- openness -- and democratization to be the foundation of his perestroika, or restructuring, of Soviet society. "A reappraisal of values and their creative rethinking is under way." Later, recalling his feeling that "we couldn't go on like that any longer, and we had to change life radically, break away from the past malpractices," he called it his "moral position."

In a 1989 interview, the "godfather of glasnost," Aleksandr Yakovlev, recalled that, returning to the Soviet Union in 1983 after 10 years as the ambassador to Canada, he felt the moment was at hand when people would declare, "Enough! We cannot live like this any longer. Everything must be done in a new way. We must reconsider our concepts, our approaches, our views of the past and our future.… There has come an understanding that it is simply impossible to live as we lived before -- intolerably, humiliatingly."

To Gorbachev's prime minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, the "moral [nravstennoe] state of the society" in 1985 was its "most terrifying" feature:

[We] stole from ourselves, took and gave bribes, lied in the reports, in newspapers, from high podiums, wallowed in our lies, hung medals on one another. And all of this -- from top to bottom and from bottom to top.

Another member of Gorbachev's very small original coterie of liberalizers, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, was just as pained by ubiquitous lawlessness and corruption. He recalls telling Gorbachev in the winter of 1984-1985: "Everything is rotten. It has to be changed."

Back in the 1950s, Gorbachev's predecessor Nikita Khrushchev had seen firsthand how precarious was the edifice of the house that Stalin built on terror and lies. But this fifth generation of Soviet leaders was more confident of the regime's resilience. Gorbachev and his group appeared to believe that what was right was also politically manageable. Democratization, Gorbachev declared, was "not a slogan but the essence of perestroika." Many years later he told interviewers:

The Soviet model was defeated not only on the economic and social levels; it was defeated on a cultural level. Our society, our people, the most educated, the most intellectual, rejected that model on the cultural level because it does not respect the man, oppresses him spiritually and politically.

That reforms gave rise to a revolution by 1989 was due largely to another "idealistic" cause: Gorbachev's deep and personal aversion to violence and, hence, his stubborn refusal to resort to mass coercion when the scale and depth of change began to outstrip his original intent. To deploy Stalinist repression even to "preserve the system" would have been a betrayal of his deepest convictions. A witness recalls Gorbachev saying in the late 1980s, "We are told that we should pound the fist on the table," and then clenching his hand in an illustrative fist. "Generally speaking," continued the general secretary, "it could be done. But one does not feel like it."

THE ROLE OF ideas and ideals in bringing about the Russian revolution comes into even sharper relief when we look at what was happening outside the Kremlin. A leading Soviet journalist and later a passionate herald of glasnost, Aleksandr Bovin, wrote in 1988 that the ideals of perestroika had "ripened" amid people's increasing "irritation" at corruption, brazen thievery, lies, and the obstacles in the way of honest work. Anticipations of "substantive changes were in the air," another witness recalled, and they forged an appreciable constituency for radical reforms. Indeed, the expectations that greeted the coming to power of Gorbachev were so strong, and growing, that they shaped his actual policy. Suddenly, ideas themselves became a material, structural factor in the unfolding revolution.

The credibility of official ideology, which in Yakovlev's words, held the entire Soviet political and economic system together "like hoops of steel," was quickly weakening. New perceptions contributed to a change in attitudes toward the regime and "a shift in values." Gradually, the legitimacy of the political arrangements began to be questioned. In an instance of Robert K. Merton's immortal "Thomas theorem" -- "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequence" -- the actual deterioration of the Soviet economy became consequential only after and because of a fundamental shift in how the regime's performance was perceived and evaluated.

Writing to a Soviet magazine in 1987, a Russian reader called what he saw around him a "radical break [perelom] in consciousness." We know that he was right because Russia's is the first great revolution whose course was charted in public opinion polls almost from the beginning. Already at the end of 1989, the first representative national public opinion survey found overwhelming support for competitive elections and the legalization of parties other than the Soviet Communist Party -- after four generations under a one-party dictatorship and with independent parties still illegal. By mid-1990, more than half those surveyed in a Russian region agreed that "a healthy economy" was more likely if "the government allows individuals to do as they wish." Six months later, an all-Russia poll found 56 percent supporting a rapid or gradual transition to a market economy. Another year passed, and the share of the pro-market respondents increased to 64 percent.

Those who instilled this remarkable "break in consciousness" were no different from those who touched off the other classic revolutions of modern times: writers, journalists, artists. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, such men and women "help to create that general awareness of dissatisfaction, that solidified public opinion, which … creates effective demand for revolutionary change." Suddenly, "the entire political education" of the nation becomes the "work of its men of letters."

And so it was in Soviet Russia. The lines to newspaper kiosks -- sometimes crowds around the block that formed at six in the morning, with each daily run often sold out in two hours -- and the skyrocketing subscriptions to the leading liberal newspapers and magazines testify to the devastating power of the most celebrated essayists of glasnost, or in Samuel Johnson's phrase, the "teachers of truth": the economist Nikolai Shmelyov; the political philosophers Igor Klyamkin and Alexander Tsypko; brilliant essayists like Vasily Selyunin, Yuri Chernichenko, Igor Vinogradov, and Ales Adamovich; the journalists Yegor Yakovlev, Len Karpinsky, Fedor Burlatsky, and at least two dozen more.

To them, a moral resurrection was essential. This meant not merely an overhaul of the Soviet political and economic systems, not merely an upending of social norms, but a revolution on the individual level: a change in the personal character of the Russian subject. As Mikhail Antonov declared in a seminal 1987 essay, "So What Is Happening to Us?" in the magazine Oktyabr, the people had to be "saved" -- not from external dangers but "most of all from themselves, from the consequences of those demoralizing processes that kill the noblest human qualities." Saved how? By making the nascent liberalization fateful, irreversible -- not Khrushchev's short-lived "thaw," but a climate change. And what would guarantee this irreversibility? Above all, the appearance of a free man who would be "immune to the recurrences of spiritual slavery." The weekly magazine Ogoniok, a key publication of glasnost, wrote in February 1989 that only "man incapable of being a police informer, of betraying, and of lies, no matter in whose or what name, can save us from the re-emergence of a totalitarian state."

The circuitous nature of this reasoning -- to save the people one had to save perestroika, but perestroika could be saved only if it was capable of changing man "from within" -- did not seem to trouble anyone. Those who thought out loud about these matters seemed to assume that the country's salvation through perestroika and the extrication of its people from the spiritual morass were tightly -- perhaps, inextricably -- interwoven, and left it at that. What mattered was reclaiming the people to citizenship from "serfdom" and "slavery." "Enough!" declared Boris Vasiliev, the author of a popular novella of the period about World War II, which was made into an equally well-received film. "Enough lies, enough servility, enough cowardice. Let's remember, finally, that we are all citizens. Proud citizens of a proud nation!"

DELVING INTO THE causes of the French Revolution, de Tocqueville famously noted that regimes overthrown in revolutions tend to be less repressive than the ones preceding them. Why? Because, de Tocqueville surmised, though people "may suffer less," their "sensibility is exacerbated."

As usual, Tocqueville was onto something hugely important. From the Founding Fathers to the Jacobins and Bolsheviks, revolutionaries have fought under essentially the same banner: advancement of human dignity. It is in the search for dignity through liberty and citizenship that glasnost's subversive sensibility lives -- and will continue to live. Just as the pages of Ogoniok and Moskovskie Novosti must take pride of place next to Boris Yeltsin on the tank as symbols of the latest Russian revolution, so should Internet pages in Arabic stand as emblems of the present revolution next to the images of rebellious multitudes in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the Casbah plaza in Tunis, the streets of Benghazi, and the blasted towns of Syria. Languages and political cultures aside, their messages and the feelings they inspired were remarkably similar.

The fruit-seller Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation set off the Tunisian uprising that began the Arab Spring of 2011, did so "not because he was jobless," a demonstrator in Tunis told an American reporter, but "because he … went to talk to the [local authorities] responsible for his problem and he was beaten -- it was about the government." In Benghazi, the Libyan revolt started with the crowd chanting, "The people want an end to corruption!" In Egypt, the crowds were "all about the self-empowerment of a long-repressed people no longer willing to be afraid, no longer willing to be deprived of their freedom, and no longer willing to be humiliated by their own leaders," New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman reported from Cairo this February. He could have been reporting from Moscow in 1991.

"Dignity Before Bread!" was the slogan of the Tunisian revolution. The Tunisian economy had grown between 2 and 8 percent a year in the two decades preceding the revolt. With high oil prices, Libya on the brink of uprising also enjoyed an economic boom of sorts. Both are reminders that in the modern world, economic progress is not a substitute for the pride and self-respect of citizenship. Unless we remember this well, we will continue to be surprised -- by the "color revolutions" in the post-Soviet world, the Arab Spring, and, sooner or later, an inevitable democratic upheaval in China -- just as we were in Soviet Russia. "The Almighty provided us with such a powerful sense of dignity that we cannot tolerate the denial of our inalienable rights and freedoms, no matter what real or supposed benefits are provided by 'stable' authoritarian regimes," the president of Kyrgyzstan, Roza Otunbayeva, wrote this March. "It is the magic of people, young and old, men and women of different religions and political beliefs, who come together in city squares and announce that enough is enough."

Of course, the magnificent moral impulse, the search for truth and goodness, is only a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the successful remaking of a country. It may be enough to bring down the ancien regime, but not to overcome, in one fell swoop, a deep-seated authoritarian national political culture.

The roots of the democratic institutions spawned by morally charged revolutions may prove too shallow to sustain a functioning democracy in a society with precious little tradition of grassroots self-organization and self-rule. This is something that is likely to prove a huge obstacle to the carrying out of the promise of the Arab Spring -- as it has proved in Russia. The Russian moral renaissance was thwarted by the atomization and mistrust bred by 70 years of totalitarianism. And though Gorbachev and Yeltsin dismantled an empire, the legacy of imperial thinking for millions of Russians has since made them receptive to neo-authoritarian Putinism, with its propaganda leitmotifs of "hostile encirclement" and "Russia rising off its knees." Moreover, the enormous national tragedy (and national guilt) of Stalinism has never been fully explored and atoned for, corrupting the entire moral enterprise, just as the glasnost troubadours so passionately warned.

Which is why today's Russia appears once again to be inching toward another perestroika moment. Although the market reforms of the 1990s and today's oil prices have combined to produce historically unprecedented prosperity for millions, the brazen corruption of the ruling elite, new-style censorship, and open disdain for public opinion have spawned alienation and cynicism that are beginning to reach (if not indeed surpass) the level of the early 1980s.

One needs only to spend a few days in Moscow talking to the intelligentsia or, better yet, to take a quick look at the blogs on LiveJournal (Zhivoy Zhurnal), Russia's most popular Internet platform, or at the sites of the top independent and opposition groups to see that the motto of the 1980s -- "We cannot live like this any longer!" -- is becoming an article of faith again. The moral imperative of freedom is reasserting itself, and not just among the limited circles of pro-democracy activists and intellectuals. This February, the Institute of Contemporary Development, a liberal think tank chaired by President Dmitry Medvedev, published what looked like a platform for the 2012 Russian presidential election:

In the past Russia needed liberty to live [better]; it must now have it in order to survive.… The challenge of our times is an overhaul of the system of values, the forging of new consciousness. We cannot build a new country with the old thinking.… The best investment [the state can make in man] is Liberty and the Rule of Law. And respect for man's Dignity.

It was the same intellectual and moral quest for self-respect and pride that, beginning with a merciless moral scrutiny of the country's past and present, within a few short years hollowed out the mighty Soviet state, deprived it of legitimacy, and turned it into a burned-out shell that crumbled in August 1991. The tale of this intellectual and moral journey is an absolutely central story of the 20th century's last great revolution.


图:1991年8月19日,叶利钦在莫斯科向民众呼吁举行全国总罢工和大规模示威。12月31日,镳刀斧头旗在克里姆林宫降下,宣告苏联共产帝国解体。 (AFP)

陈凯博客www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语: Kai Chen's Words:

“道德纤维”是粘结、编制一个社会的基点。 任何的专制社会都是靠强力压挤成的“奴体”。 里根的“邪恶帝国”的清晰道德审定加速了苏联的人们对自身所处的邪恶社会的理解。 我只希望今天的美国会有另一个里根对中国党奴朝作出同样的道德审定。

“Moral Fibers" are the essential element in forming a legitimate society. All despotic societies are formed by the external pressure from government's tyrannical power. They are thus not nations but slave states. Ronald Reagan's moral judgment toward USSR as "Evil Empire" accelerated the moral/spiritual awakening of the people in such a despotic society (USSR). I only hope today there will be another Ronald Reagan coming out to declare China as the "Evil Party-Dynasty".


------------------------------------------------------------

前苏联崩溃:你知道的每件事都错了
Everything You Know is Wrong on USSR's End


【大纪元2011年06月26日讯】

美国《外交政策》最新一期发表文章分析了前苏联的崩溃,为何全世界出现集体性误判?当时的苏联经济停滞,政治管制严厉,从各方面看都没有急剧恶化;然而似乎是不经意的,从道德审视开始,“每件事都已经腐烂,必须做出改变”,一直到政治合法性遭到诘问,全民认知的剧烈转折,才促成了前苏联的崩溃,其中道德的复活才是精髓。

当时的名言:“谎言够了,奴性够了,怯懦够了。最终,我们要记住,我们都是公民。一个骄傲国家的骄傲公民”。“每件事情都必须以一种全新的方式开始。我们必须重新考虑我们的概念,我们的思路,我们对于过去和未来的看法......无法再像过去那样生活——那是一种无法忍受的耻辱”。

文章认为,如今俄国人再次愤怒,统治精英的腐败、新式审查制度、蔑视公共舆论,总统梅德韦杰夫称:不能在旧思维上建立新国家。或许俄国“道德”问诘再次来临?

前苏联革命 最出人意料的事件

这篇题为“关于苏联的崩溃:你知道的每件事都是错的”(Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong)的长篇文章说,每次革命都是一次惊奇。但上一次前苏联革命却可列入最出人意料的事件之列。

时间回到1991年之前,当时在西方,无论专家、学者、官员或是政客们,都没有预料到整个苏维埃联盟及其一党独裁制度,国营经济体,以及克里姆林宫对于国内和东欧帝国的控制会在一夜间分崩离析。自视为未来革命者的苏联国内异议份子,同样也没有预计到这一点。

1985年,当米哈伊尔‧戈尔巴乔夫成为总书记时,他的同代人完全没有预计到一场革命危机的到来。虽然围绕苏联体制中存在问题的规模和深度有着各种争论,但没人想到这些麻烦会危及体制的生命,至少不会这么快。

诡异灭亡 集体性误判

而这种普遍的短视由何而来?或许某些专家倾向于夸大苏维埃政权的能力和合法性?然而,另外一些几乎完全没有对共产主义持怀疑态度的人,也对其突然死亡感到困惑。

作为美国冷战战略的设计师之一,乔治‧凯南在《当代国际事务史》中回顾这段历程时,认为“很难有比它更加诡异和出人意料,甚至乍看上去有些难以理解的事件,先后以俄罗斯帝国和苏维埃联盟面目出现的一个强大国家,顷刻间便土崩瓦解,完全消失的无影无踪”。

1993年,美国总统罗纳德‧里根的顾问之一,理查德‧帕普斯在保守的《国家利益》杂志上,发表了关于苏联死亡的论文集,题目是《苏维埃共产主义的诡异灭亡》。

经济停滞明显 但慢性病并非置人于死地

实际上,1985年的苏联,与其十年前相比拥有类似的自然及人力资源。当然,其生活标准比绝大多数东欧国家低得多,更无法与西方相比。物资短缺、食品配给、商店门口的长队,以及剧烈的贫困都是顽疾。不过,苏联经历过比这远大得多的灾难,而且没有为此牺牲哪怕一点点对于社会和经济的控制,在这一点上它们从不让步。

在1985年,没有任何关键经济数据表明这个国家会面对即将到来的灾难。与1960和1970年代相比,从1981到1985年,该国GDP虽然缓慢下降,但仍保持平均每年1.9%的正增长。这种漫不经心但很难构成灾难的增长模式,一直持续到1989 年。

不错,经济的停滞明显,令人担忧。但正如卫斯理大学教授彼得‧洛特兰德所言:“说到底,慢性病并不必然置人于死地”。即便是研究革命爆发经济根源的专家安德斯‧阿斯兰德也指出,从1985到1987年,局势“没有任何变化”。

政治:几乎所有的异见人士都被羁押

文章说,在执政者看来,政治生态甚至有所改善。经过此前二十年对政治反对派不间断的镇压之后,几乎所有突出的异见分子都已被羁押,流放,强迫移民,或是死于劳改营和监狱之中。

这个国家没有表现出任何即将爆发革命的迹象,包括其他传统上被看作国家灭亡的根源之一——外部压力。恰恰相反,之前十年间,正如美国历史与外交学家斯蒂芬‧塞斯塔诺维奇所言,他们已经“实现了所有军事和外交目标”。当然,阿富汗看上去越来越像是一场长期战争,但对于拥有五百万人的苏军来说,这点损失不过是九牛一毛。

文章认为,美国也不是催化剂。如果可能的话,“里根主义”政策逆转了苏联在第三世界的优势,给帝国周边带来了相当大压力,比如阿富汗,安哥拉,尼加拉瓜和埃塞俄比亚。然而,苏联面对的这些困难远不致其崩溃。

为何走向灭亡?

文章说,当然,就苏联为什么会崩溃,有大量结构性推论——经济、政治、社会等等,然而当这件事发生时,这些理由却全部无法解释其为何发生。1985到1989年间,无论经济、政治、人口、以及其他结构性环境,都没有发生急剧恶化,那么,这个国家及其经济体系是如何突然间被大量善男信女看作可耻、非法和不能忍受, 以至于走向灭亡呢?

就像所有现代革命一样,俄国革命始于“上层”对于自由化的迟疑——其理由已经超越了对于经济的必要调整,以及让国际环境更加有利。毫无疑问,戈尔巴乔夫的创业思路有着某种理想主义色彩:想建立一个更加有道德的苏维埃联盟。

戈尔巴乔夫:开展对价值观的重估

虽然以经济改良为旗帜 ,但戈尔巴乔夫及其支持者无疑首先修补了道德,而不是经济上的错误。他们中的绝大多数人在公开谈论这场改革时,无不对精神文明的倒退,以及斯大林主义过往的腐败影响感到痛心疾首。

如此一来,历次大革命爆发前夜曾提出过的那些问题,便再次吸引人们绝望的寻找答案:什么是有尊严的生活?构成一个公正的社会和经济的只需是什么?一个合法与正派的国家是怎样的?这样一个国家,应与其公民社会保持什么关系?

“在这个国家,一层全新的道德空气正在成型”,1987年1月,在中央委员会会议中,戈尔巴乔夫讲话中指出。他当时宣布开放和民主化将成为这次俄式改革,或者说苏维埃社会重构的基础。“要开展对于价值观的重估,及对其创造性的反思”。后来,他回忆道“我们无路可走,我们必须彻底改变,与过去的失职行为划清界限”,他将其称之为自己的“道德立场”。

“够了!我们不能再这样生活下去。每件事情都必须以一种全新的方式开始。我们必须重新考虑我们的概念,我们的思路,我们对于过去和未来的看法......此时人们已经无法再像过去那 样生活——那是一种无法忍受的耻辱”,1989年的一次采访中,号称“开放教父”的亚历山大‧亚科夫列夫曾回忆。

外交部长:每件事都已经腐烂

在戈尔巴乔夫的总理尼古拉‧雷日科夫看来,1985年的“道德社会国家”有着“极为惊人”的特征:我们监守自盗,行贿受贿,无论在报纸、新闻还是讲台上,都谎话连篇,我们一面沉溺于自己的谎言,一面为彼此佩戴奖章。而且所有人都在这么干——从上到下,从下到上。

戈尔巴乔夫那个自由化小圈子的另外一名成员,外交部长爱德华‧谢瓦尔德纳则对普遍存在的目无法纪和腐败堕落痛心不已。据他回忆,1984-1985年冬天,他曾对戈尔巴乔夫讲到:“每件事都已经腐烂,必须做出改变”。

恐怖和谎言文化 全民排斥

文章说,早在1950年代,戈尔巴乔夫的先辈,尼基塔‧赫鲁晓夫也曾认为斯大林时代建立在恐怖和谎言基础上的建筑早已摇摇欲坠。但戈尔巴乔夫及其派别似乎相信,可以在保持政治可控的情况下拨乱反正。民主化,戈尔巴乔夫宣称,“不是一句口号,而是这场改革的精髓”。许多年后,他在采访中表示:

不仅在经济和社会层面,甚至在文化层面,苏联模式也已经失败。我们的社会,我们的人民,绝大多数受教育者,绝大多数知识份子,都排斥这种文化,因为它不尊重这些人,反而从精神和政治上压迫他们。

这场改革导致1989年革命,多半是出于另外一个“理想主义”理由:出于对暴力的深深厌恶,因此当改革的深度及规模超出他最初的预想时,他顽固的拒绝诉诸于大规模镇压。为了保护这个体系而采取斯大林式的镇压,是对他内心最深处某些信念的背叛。

一位著名记者,后来成为热衷开放先驱的亚历山大‧鲍文,在1988年曾写道,随着人民对腐败、无耻的偷窃、谎言,以及城市工作的妨碍越发“烦躁”,俄式改革的理想已经“成熟”。

政治上合法性遭到诘问

文章说,官方意识形态的信誉,此时正在迅速弱化,用亚科夫列夫的话说。新的认知为“价值观的转变”以及对于政权的看法改变做出贡献。逐渐的,政治上无懈可击的合法性开始遭到诘问。

在罗伯特.莫顿不朽的“托马斯定理”——如果人们把某种情景定义为真实,那么这种情景就会成为他们真实的结果——情形下,苏维埃经济的实际恶化在不久之后成为结果,并因此导致了对于这个政权的认知及评价的根本转变。

全民认知的剧烈转折

1987年,在一本苏联杂志上,一位俄国读者称在自己周围看到一种“认知的剧烈转折”。我们知道他是对的,这是首次从一开始就全程都有民意调查记录留存的大革命。

早在1989年末,第一界国民议会的公开舆论调查就发现,经过四代一档独裁统治,并且在独立党派仍然非法的情况下,竞争性选举和让俄共之外的独立党派合法化得到势不可挡的支持。1990年代中期,地区调查发现超过半数受访者认为,“一个健康的经济体”需要政府“允许个体按照自己的意愿行事”。

六个月后,一次全俄调查发现,56%受访者支持激进或渐进的市场经济改革。一年之后,赞同市场经济改革的受访者已经增加到64%。

与那些引爆其他经典现代革命的人相比,传播这类“认识转变”的人们并无不同:作家、记者和艺术家。正如亚历克西‧德‧托克维尔所言,这些男男女女“帮助创造了那些普遍的不满意识,那些凝固的公众舆论......并由此创造了对于革命变革的有效需求”。

因此,这是在苏维埃俄国。卖报亭前排队的长龙——每天早上六点就开始排起长队,每天的报纸两小时之内便被一扫而空——以及著名自由化报刊杂志的销量猛增,证实了话语权开始转向绝大多数开放论点作者。

道德的复活才是精髓

文章说,对他们来说,道德的复活才是精髓。此时,苏维埃的政治经济体系并未要求得到彻底更新,社会准则也没有完全颠覆的要求,但在个体水平上,革命已经发生:俄国人品质的变化。

1987年,在《红十月》杂志一篇广为传颂的文章中,米哈伊尔‧安托诺夫宣布,“那么,我们身边正在发生什么?”人民必须得到“拯救”—— 不是因为来自外部的危险,而是因为它们“被他们自己,被那些道德败坏的行为扼杀了高贵的人类本性”。怎样拯救?通过初生的,不可逆转的自由化——不是赫鲁晓夫那短命的“缓和”,而是整个气候的改变。怎样保证这种改变无法逆转?首先,已经获得自由的人,将“对再次成为精神奴隶免疫”。

作为俄国改革开放的重要刊物,《红十月》在1989年2月的一篇文章中写到,只要“人不做告密者,不背信弃义,不言不由衷,无论他是谁,是什么名字,都可以从这个极权主义国家中拯救我们”。

当务之急是把人民从“奴隶”和“农奴”改造为公民。“够了!”著名二战小说家鲍里斯‧瓦西列夫宣布。“谎言够了,奴性够了, 怯懦够了。最终,我们要记住,我们都是公民。一个骄傲国家的骄傲公民”。

不能容忍自己的权利和自由遭到剥夺

水果小贩穆哈迈德‧布拉齐齐的自我牺牲,引发了突尼斯起义,那是2011年阿拉伯之春的起点,“尊严高于面包!”这是突尼斯革命的口号。

就像对苏维埃俄国那样。“无论‘不可一世的’集权政权为我们提供任何或真或假的好处,上帝赐予我们的尊严令我们不能容忍自己的权利和自由遭到剥夺”,吉尔吉斯斯坦总统奥通巴耶娃今年三月写到。“这就像魔法一样,无论男女老幼,或者有着不同的宗教和政治信仰,人民会汇集在城市广场,宣布自己已经忍无可忍”。

俄国人再次愤怒 “道德”改革再来临?

文章说,戈尔巴乔夫和叶利钦虽然肢解了一个帝国,但帝国思想的遗产让千百万俄国人接受了同样集权的普京主义,以及他“强敌环伺”和“俄国挺直膝盖”的主张。此外,斯大林主义的国家悲剧从未被完全清算和解,它正在俯视着整个道德事业。

尽管石油价格的高企和1990年代的市场经济改革为俄国千百万人民带来史无前例的繁荣,但统治精英的腐败行径,新式审查制度,以及对于公共舆论的公开蔑视,都已经促使社会的疏远和愤怒达到 1980年代的水平。

文章说,在莫斯科,只要花费几天时间与知识份子攀谈一下,或用更快的方式,浏览一下俄国人气最高的生活杂志博客,或是登录反对组织的站点,就可以看到那些1980 年代的警句——“我们不能再这样生活下去!”——重新成为人们的信条。自由道德的当务之急是重新焕发生机,而不仅仅是在民主活动家和知识份子的小圈子里流传。

梅德韦杰夫:不能在旧思维上建立新国家

今年二月,由梅德韦杰夫主持的自由主义智库——当代发展学会出版的一篇文章,可视作这位总统2012年参选的纲领:

过去,俄国需要自由,如今,俄国仍然需要自由......我们时代的挑战是对价值体系的彻底改革,打造新的认知。我们不能在旧思维上建立新国家。......一个国家,最好的投资是自由和法制。以及对于人类尊严的敬意。

从对这个国家过去与现在残酷的道德审视开始,知识份子对于尊严的寻求似乎同样在短短几年内挖空了强大的苏维埃政权,剥夺了他的合法性,终于在1991年 秋天,让这个燃烧殆尽的空壳粉身碎骨。

在二十世纪最后一次大革命中,这段关乎探索道义神话,绝对是其中最核心的一部份。

三天改变历史 前苏联崩溃回顾

1989年东欧各国民主浪潮风起云涌,共产党国家纷纷瓦解:11月9日柏林墙倒塌;11月17日捷克“天鹅绒革命”,以和平方式推翻捷克共产政权;12月25日,罗马尼亚共产独裁者齐奥塞思库被人民赶下台并判死刑。此时,共产帝国苏联也是危机四伏,摇摇欲坠。

1991年8月19日,一个由共产党强硬派组成的“紧急委员会”发动政变,软禁了当时主张改革的苏共总书记戈尔巴乔夫,并将坦克与军车开进莫斯科市中心,包围了莫斯科市政府与俄罗斯议会大厦。政变者宣布,戈尔巴乔夫的改革政策“已经走进了死胡同”,呼吁“恢复苏联的骄傲和荣誉。”

在巨大危机时刻,叶利钦通过广播向民众发表演说,呼吁举行全国总罢工和大规模示威,对政变予以回击。随后数十万苏联人民加入抗议的行列,上街示威与军队对恃。

叶利钦向苏军士兵喊话 :“你们已经向苏联人民发过誓,你们不能调转枪口对准人民。”在强大的民意面前,在人民的欢呼声中,坦克掉转了炮口,撤出了莫斯科。

强硬派的政变三天后破产,并永远改变了苏联的历史!叶利钦成为了国家英雄,他要求搁置共产主义者在俄罗斯的所有活动。几天后(1991年8月24日),戈尔巴乔夫辞去了苏共总书记职务,并解散了中央委员会。

1991年12月21日,原苏联的10多个加盟共和国代表开会,决定成立“独立国家联合体”。圣诞节那天,这个自1917年靠暴力夺取政权的苏维埃联邦正式瓦解。叶利钦成为俄国七十多年来第一位非共产党总统。

(责任编辑:孙蕓)

美东时间: 2011-06-25 21:56:54 PM 【万年历】
本文网址: http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/11/6/26/n3297587.htm

China's Red Flag by the White House 中共血旗升在白宫旁

Friday, June 24, 2011

China propaganda film to U.S. “建党伟业”(贱党萎业)已在北美华人聚集区上映


Mao the Biggest Murderer in Human History  毛泽东的反人类罪行-世界第一屠夫

华语系人们“受虐狂”心态的写照   Victims and Villains


陈凯博客www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语: Kai Chen's Words: 

中共党奴朝利用华裔人士的族群认同与崇尚强权拜金拜魔的腐败文化心态又开始了新一轮的毒品洗脑战。 我在此只希望那些良知尚存的华语系人们用你们个体的言行抵制专制的进袭。

The Chinese Party-Dynasty just started another round of brain-washing, having released the propaganda movie "The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party" in North America, targeting the Chinese-speaking population overseas.  I only hope those who still have some conscience in their hearts boycott such an evil and desperate attempt to corrupt human souls. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
China propaganda film to U.S.
“建党伟业”已在北美华人聚集区上映


China Lion Film Distribution will distribute the Chinese propaganda epic "Beginning of the Great Revival," previously known as "The Founding of a Party," in North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Helmed by Jianxin Huang and Sanping Han, and produced by China Film Group, pic was made to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party and is a companion piece to 2009's "The Founding of a Republic," about the 1949 revolution.

"Revival" stars some of China's biggest names, including Andy Lau, Daniel Wu and John Woo.
Film opens in China on June 16 and will be released the following day in North America, Australia and New Zealand.

"Beginning of the Great Revival" deals with the three phases of the setting-up of the Communist Party, which still runs China as a single-party state and has 78 million members.

The young Mao is played by Liu Ye, and the film is part of the Communist Party's efforts to present a modern image.

In North America the distribution partnership will enable the film to be showcased via China Lion's exclusive deals with AMC for the U.S. and Toronto as well as Cineplex for Vancouver and Consolidated Theaters in Hawaii.

"As well as being highly anticipated by our core Chinese audience in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver, and other key cities with large Chinese populations, the film will have the ability to cross over to a wider mainstream American audience interested in the historical background that the film portrays," China Lion CEO Milt Barlow said in a statement.

China Lion is a joint venture between prexy Jiang Yanming and Milt Barlow's New Zealand-based Incubate. It has a deal to distribute titles for some of China's leading studios including Huayi Bros., China Film Group, Golden Sun and Bona.

Pic has already generated controversy. Thesp Tang Wei, who was purged for her steamy role in Ang Lee's erotic thriller "Lust, Caution" but has been rehabilitated in recent months, was cast as Tao Yi, an early girlfriend of Mao's. However, Chairman Mao's grandson Mao Xinyu, a major-general in the People's Liberation Army, apparently intervened to have her cut out of the movie.

There was also some anger Stateside that the movie was being sponsored by General Motors, which was bailed out with government cash two years ago. Pic is being sponsored by Shanghai GM, which is GM's local partner but a separate company. The irony of Cadillacs being involved in a movie about the Communist Party says a lot about China today.

"Revival" is expected to make major waves at the Chinese box office after the huge success of "Founding," which was the top-performing Chinese movie two years ago. It's also a high-profile blast of nationalism at a time when the Chinese biz is booming, taking in $1.5 billion at the B.O. last year.
China makes dozens of propaganda films every year, but most of them fail to make a ripple beyond China's borders and are met with indifference by broader auds, even within China. "The Founding of a Republic" was of higher quality than the usual fare, however.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

从中国人100%有语法错误看汉语是低级语言 Impossible Grammar of Chinese Language


Bear Bile Farming in China 非人性的监熊取胆汁


陈凯博客www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语: Kai Chen's Words:

中国的文字与中文的语法是同出一徹的:它们都是主观的、虚无的、走捷径的文化心态的反映。 文字与语法的非客观又是与中国专制社会的无法律、崇强权的政治状态息息相关的。 无法的语言导致、强化了一个无法的社会与非法的政治 -- 用中文去写法律、认知自然与社会必然是一个笑话与奢谈。

Chinese language is the same as the Chinese grammar: They are all subjective, nihilistic short-cuts and make-dos. The subjective nature of the Chinese language is intrinsically tied to the Chinese despotism/tyranny. A subjective language necessarily leads to a society without laws and a polity without legitimacy -- using Chinese language to write laws and to learn about nature/natural law (to establish sciences) is an illusion and a joke.


--------------------------------------------------------------------

从中国人100%有语法错误看汉语是低级语言
Impossible Grammar of Chinese Language


(2011-06-21 23:21:11)

飞龙

在新闻<<汉语应用危机日显专家称若长期存在汉语会退化>>里. "中国人民大学贺阳教授在对该校部分学生进行测试时发现,66%的人存在信件书写格式问题,86.5%的人存在行文语气问题,另外让我们感到担忧的是有100%的人存在语法问题。"

存在语法问题的学生是中国人民大学的学生, 中国人民大学是中国重点大学. 里面的学生都是高素质的人才. 为了补充一个证据, 我们来看看韩寒的最近博文出现的一个语法错误. 韩寒的5.28博文<<游戏指南>>里有一句话, 是这样的."我如此散漫的性格也不适合参政,那就真的是误事了" 这句话错在哪里呢? 省略条件句. 完整的说法应该是这样的"我如此散漫的性格也不适合参政,如果我参政的话,那就真的是误事了" 按韩寒的说法, 那么他不参政才是误事了. (我是韩寒的忠实fans,无意攻击韩寒.) 韩寒是个文人,他自己说的, 文人是运用文字的高手,况且出现这些错误,那么100%的中国人使用汉语会出现错误, 那肯定是必然的了.


说汉语的人100%都会出现错误,显然不是人的问题了. 那就是语言的问题了. 所以说汉语是低级语言.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
论文致命---要求中国人写论文是不人道的

飞龙 (2011-06-24 02:41:55)

信息时报报道, <<中山大学博士论文未写好跳楼留下遗书称压力大>>一篇论文写不好的代价,竟等于一条生命!?这道令人匪夷所思的“等式”,却在中山大学北校区不幸成为事实。阿洋(化名)是中山大学在读博士生,明年就要毕业了。在旁人和父母眼中,他的人生履历写满“优秀”二字。可谁也没想到,昨日凌晨4时30分许,他竟以跳楼的方式为自己的生命画上了休止符。有知情人士称,阿洋是因为论文过不了关,压力大跳楼的。心理专家分析指,高知人群心理承受能力薄弱是事件背后的原因。

一. 杨振宁说过他用汉语写科学论文力不从心.

二. 中国古人写的大部分都是诗词歌赋. 古代中国人写的论文数量约等于0.原因是汉语是低级语言, 勉强胜任一般的交际交流,以及诗词歌赋,不能胜任科学论文的表达.这点你可以从中国古籍里找论文可以看出来.看你能找出几篇论文来?

三. 现代中国人的论文作业大部分都是抄袭的. 因为中国人写不出好论文. 如果中国人写出好论文了. 那么极大可能是使用英语表达出来的.


综上所述, 要求中国人写论文是不人道的.可以预见, 还会出现很多论文致命的个案. 这不是最后一个. god bless chinese.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

美国的建国原则和核心价值观 American Principles and Values


What's so great about Christianity 基督精神与价值


陈凯博客www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

陈凯一语: Kai Chen's Words:

我坚信人类的普世终极价值与人类的理性工具皆来自于God。 信仰与逻辑不是人的创造,而是人性中的元素。 只有信仰而没有理性/逻辑的社会一定是一个专制的社会(共产与伊斯兰专制就是例子)。 共产的“人间天堂”并不像人们所想是从理性/逻辑来的。 马克思主义的“人间天堂”说到底只是一个毫无理性/逻辑的虚无的信仰罢了。 然而“真实、正义、自由、尊严”的普世终极价值绝不是由理性/逻辑来的。 价值感只来自信仰,是不能用量与逻辑理性衡量的。 万有引力只决定苹果落在地上;万有引力解释不了苹果(生命、知觉与道德)的来源。 美国社会并不像Laotao(或安. 兰德)所讲只是建立在理性/逻辑上的。 美国社会是信仰与理性(基督精神与安. 兰德的个体价值)的完美结合。

I firmly believe that faith and reason are both from God, not from men. They are embedded in the very human nature when God created man. A society built only on blind-faith without reason/logic/rationality is nothing but a tyranny/despotism. Communist societies and Islamic tyrannies are only two examples. Communist "Heaven on Earth" is nothing but a nihilistic blind faith without any reason/logic/rationality. Marxism is nothing but a nonsense based on a nihilistic premise/faith of "perfect human society". However, human values, universal and eternal, can only be from faith alone and cannot be measured by science/reason/logic/rationality. Therefore they can only be from God. The law of gravity (a natural law only from God as well) can only determine the apple will always fall on the ground, but can never explain who created life, consciousness and morality (the apple tree).

American society is not like what Laotao or Ayn Rand believed, established on reason/logic/rationality alone. American society is a perfect combination and union of faith in God and reason/logic/rationality by men.


--------------------------------------------------------------------

美国的建国原则和核心价值观
American Principles and Values


2010-01-27 15:26:4Cool

——laotao

美国为什么如此的强大?如此强大的国家是按照什么样的原则建立起来的?这个国家的核心价值观、道德观是什么?这是值得全世界关注的巨大的秘密。

我的凯迪网上看到一个跟帖,至今记忆犹新,跟帖者是个坚定的反美分子,他说,要看美国好还是坏非常简单,只要你到美国驻华大使馆去向他们要一瓶矿泉水,看他们给你不给,如果不给,那就证明美国不把中国人当人,是邪恶的。

这个例子看起来很个别,但是却反映了不少人对于美国价值观的要求。你美国要是个好国家,你就要先天下之忧而忧,后天下之乐而乐,胸怀美国,放眼世界,自己饿得全身浮肿也要解放全人类。也就是这种党教育出来的价值观,让中国人用一张破席掩埋了饿死的亲人之后,还拖着浮肿的身躯紧跟伟大领袖支援世界革命。

很多人有一个思维定势:如果一种思想,一个人是好的,那其必须是利他的、无私的,先人后己的。所以有人认为,如果美国好,美国就应该无私奉献。美国不这么做,就证明其是不好的,是虚伪和邪恶的。

所以还有人认为,美国的价值观就是普世价值,美国就是人类的救星,我们应该等待美国的解放。

美国的价值观中肯定有普世价值,有很多善良的美国人肯定是按照普世价值观办事的。在道义上,也肯定是推崇普世价值的,但是道义和利益往往不能一致,在道义和利益冲突的时候,美国人中恐怕多数把利益放在前面,普世价值放在后面,而这多少人的投票权又决定着政府的决策。

所以,想让美国把美国以外的人的利益放在美国之上,指望美国免费给谁提供民主自由和富裕,是天真可笑的。除非和美国的利益一致,美国是不会有兴趣解放谁的。总统想干,国会还通不过呢。

我不满意美国政府的自私自利,不为其他国家和人民着想,但是又希望中国也有这样的政府。能够把自己国家和人民的利益放在首位。

有人说,美国那么好,那么富,为什么不开放边境让穷人去和他们一起过幸福生活呢?

可是,如果没有边界,恐怕连美国也一样的穷了。

更严重的是,如果美国的党和政府可以这样去实现全人类的伟大理想而不考虑老百姓的意见和利益,美国人也不愁饿得浮肿。权力为所欲为的恐怖,我们已经领教过了。

我可以很负责地说,导致美国富强的,决不仅仅是普世价值,还有更为核心的价值观和原则,这些价值观和原则是什么呢?

我觉得美国女哲学家安·兰德说得比较靠谱。

以下是我读兰德作品的笔记,请大家指教。

安·兰德在著作中不止一次论及美国的价值观、道德观和建国原则,并把这些问题的答案当作自己理论的重要论据。

安·兰德认为,美国制度的基础是基于对不可转让的个人权利的承认。美国的政治哲学是建立在人对于自己的生命、自由和追求幸福的权利基础上的,或者说建立在人只为自己存在的权利上的。这是美国隐含的道德观。从建国开始,美国就经历着其政治制度和利他主义道德之间的冲突。要么是基于理性的新道德,结果是自由、公正、进步,已及人在尘世的幸福,要么是利他主义的原始道德,其结果是奴役、蛮力、恐怖,以及牺牲的熔炉。

美国革命的理智前提是理性,是发挥人类理性的无限威力。美国建国时期的一位启蒙主义者曾经说过:所有世俗以及宗教的暴君的宏大目标……就是为了压制头脑中所有的高级活动,扼杀思维的能量,并通过这种方式使整个地球服务于他们自己的特殊利益。美国的制宪元勋们认为,人从本质上是理性的动物,无论是人还是别的什么东西都没有权利要求他盲目服从。由于人的本质的原因,应当允许他自由行使其理性,并在理性判断的指导下行动。人的行为的动机应该是追求幸福。因为财富的创造者是人而不是自然力,因此人有权拥有私有财产。这就是美国人主张的人的不可剥夺的权利。

大家都知道美国人的天赋人权的原则,这是美国开国元勋的创造,但是兰德认为美国开国元勋的天赋人权的观点是错误的,因为这样就把人的权利和对于上帝的信仰联系起来了。个人权利的原则并不是来自于或依靠于上帝是人的创造者这个想法。它来自人的天性,来自于人的大脑和生存的需求。

美国的核心道德观就是资本主义的道德观,这种道德观的前提是:人是自身的目的,而不是实现别人目标的手段,人必须为自己生存,既不为了别人牺牲自己,也不为了自己牺牲别人,人与人之间的关系就如同做生意一样,根据互惠互利的原则作出自愿的选择。这就是美国建国的道德前提:人对自己生命的权利、对自由的权利、追求自我幸福的权利。

美国的开国元勋在两种哲学基础上缔造了美国:首先,捍卫理性;然后是作为一种结果的个人主义的原则,承认人有追求幸福的权利,其幸福通过自身的思想和努力来达到。个人可以凭借自己的头脑,为了自己的利益自由行事。这就是美国的政治体系和资本主义的基础。

美国是什么?美国就是个个人主义的国家。个人主义将每个人都视为一个独立的、至高无上的实体,他拥有一种不可让渡的生命权,这种权利来自其作为理性存在的本性。每个人本身就是目的,而不是实现他人目的的手段。任何团体——社会、国家、种族或民族,都不能选出人之生命的任何部分属于它,从而进行处置。人的个人身份、道德价值和政治权利属于作为个体的人,而不是属于作为任何集体成员的人。

根据这些原则,美国建立了代议制的政府,使人们有权选择自己的代理人,亦即在自己国家的政府中代表他自己的人。政府因此而获得被统治者授权的正当权力。任何组织的行为和言论只能代表其成员,而不能代表其他人。任何组织都不可以成为一个人的代理人,除非得到这个人自己的承认和同意。美国人以“无代表叫纳税是奴役”的口号对抗英国的统治,而未经授权就代表则是奴役外加欺诈。

按照美国开国元勋的看法,美国人拥有生命、自由、财产和追求幸福的权利,这些合法的权利都是行动的权利(Kai Chen: Rights only come from God),而不是来自他人的恩惠。美国人的权利没有对他人设置任何义务,只是一种你不要干涉他人的消极义务。这种制度保证了你有机会去努力争取你想要的一切,但不会不劳而获地得到他人的施舍。这种制度允许你自由地思考、行动、生产并尝试从未尝试过的新事物,其原则产生作用的方式是鼓励劳动与成就,而惩罚消极。

资本主义为人们提供的不是伊甸园。

生命权并不意味着你的邻居必须为你提供食物和穿着,而是意味着你有权利通过艰苦奋斗去挣取自己的食物和穿着,意味着没有人可以强行阻止你为这些东西而奋斗。如果你得到这些,没有人可以偷去。你有行动的权利,你有权占有你的行动结果,还有权和别人交换。

如果一个社会把人当作被牺牲的动物,因他的美德而惩罚他,如果这是一个基于利他主义伦理学的社会,如果生活在这个社会中的代价是让人为了活命而放弃其他权利,那么这种社会对人的生命就毫无价值。

政府只拥有一种正确的、合乎道德的目标,那就是保护人(个体人)的权利,即保护人们免受暴力侵害;保护他们享受生命权、自由权、财产权以及追求幸福的权利。没有财产权,其他权利都不可能存在。


安·兰德1982年就去世了,这些文章写于上个世纪60年代,但是我们读起来,就像刚刚写的一样。

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"建党伟业"的演员国籍:(用自由捍卫弘扬专制的勇士们)

(陈凯一语:以下这些无耻的人们懂得如何用道德腐败走捷径赚容易钱,同时又不用承担腐败的代价与后果。 These immoral creatures below know how to use China's corrupt and criminal system to make easy money by taking a short cut.  Meanwhile they are at ease knowing they don't have to take any responsibilities and consequences of being immoral/participating corruption in China' criminal regime.) 


陈凯歌 - 美国
陈红 - 美国
甄子丹 - 美国
刘亦菲  - 美国
陈冲 - 美国
邬君梅  - 美国
顾长卫  - 美国
蒋雯丽 - 美国
宁静 - 美国
王姬  - 美国
童安格 - 加拿大
蒋大为  - 加拿大
徐帆 - 加拿大
陈明 - 加拿大
张铁林 - 英国
韦唯 - 德国
沈小岑 - 澳大利亚
李连杰 - 新加坡
斯琴高娃 - 瑞士


一群外国友人,不远万里,来到中国,拍中国的历史大戏,这是一种怎样的精神?

这是一种国际主义精神,是一种毫不利己,专门利人的奉献精神!

这是一群高尚的人,一群纯粹的人,一群有道德的人,一群脱离了低级趣味的人;一群有益于人民币的人。

让我们把这种道德继续发扬、继续宣传,我们要让更多的人认识这帮国际友人!

The Chinese Awakening 中国人正在苏醒


China's Riots against Authority 中国当前的动乱

JUNE 21, 2011

陈凯博客www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

The Chinese Awakening
中国人正在苏醒

Wall Street Journal - Opinion


Migrant workers rioted in Xintang, Guangdong province, earlier this month. Signs of protest against Communist Party control.

"The big question is whether dissent will turn into unrest. A spate of recent violent incidents has revealed that Chinese society is not as stable as the government claims. But a better indication of how the political ground is shifting is the way that the Party and business elites are hedging their bets."

The Chinese Communist Party is 90 years old on July 1, and by way of celebration propaganda chief Li Changchun has ordered the official media to step up "patriotic education." Tickets to see the latest star-studded Party epic, "Beginning of the Great Revival," are being distributed to the masses.

Much of this hoopla doesn't register in the public consciousness, or is derided when it does. Yet for six decades the Party has succeeded in enforcing its world view by repetition and, more critically, preventing anyone from presenting alternative values.

That may be changing. Indications are emerging that dissenting voices are gaining traction in the public square. For instance, ordinary Chinese are running for election in local legislative bodies that are usually rubber-stamp bodies filled with reliable worthies chosen by the Party.

A similar trend briefly emerged in the early 2000s, but the authorities were largely able to intimidate or co-opt the challengers. This time crude measures are only encouraging more candidates to emerge. As in the Middle East, young, white-collar urbanites angry about corruption, inflation and poor governance are less cowed by threats.

Another difference is that the candidates are gaining such a large following that detaining them risks causing a wider societal backlash. The rise of social media is a contributing factor. When the major Web portals sprang to prominence a decade ago, authorities hired tens of thousands of censors and commenters to control the debate, with some success.

Now microblogging sites such as Sina Weibo are further speeding up communication, allowing celebrity "thought leaders" to broadcast their ideas to tens of millions before the censors can respond. As of March last year, Sina's service had only five million users. In the first quarter of 2011, the number passed 140 million and is still climbing.

The government has blocked Western sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and the Chinese equivalents maintain in-house censorship operations that obey government orders on what must be taken down. But the instantaneous nature of microblogging combined with user ingenuity in substituting alternative words for blocked phrases makes it more difficult to control.

One of the first independent candidates was Liu Ping, a laid-off worker who announced her candidacy in April. Jiangxi province officials harassed her and refused to allow her to run. That inspired others around the country, including a popular blogger with three million Weibo followers, to throw their hats into the ring.

Officially, anyone who has not been convicted of a serious crime can run for the local People's Congresses. Coercion has always worked in the past to deter outsiders from participating. But the new breed of candidates is setting out to expose the contrast between the letter of the law and the Party's tools of control, so coercion plays into their hands.

The big question is whether dissent will turn into unrest. A spate of recent violent incidents has revealed that Chinese society is not as stable as the government claims. But a better indication of how the political ground is shifting is the way that the Party and business elites are hedging their bets.

While hot money continues to flow into China in anticipation that the yuan will rise in value, the rich in China are moving some of their money out. A recent survey by Bain consulting and China Merchants Bank found that investment abroad has doubled annually since 2008. And 27% of individuals with more than $15 million in assets had already acquired a foreign passport, while another 47% were considering obtaining one.

The growing ferment is a reminder that the Communist Party's founding in 1921 followed the May Fourth movement two years earlier, which mobilized the country's youth to fight for democracy. That movement's ideals continue to resurface despite the Party's claim that its version of "people's democracy" superceded them. The Party still has the power to put down incidents of unrest, but the Chinese people are stirring against the injustices of dictatorship.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Street Heat in China 中国的街头暴乱


Riots in China 广东增城暴乱


陈凯博客www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

Street Heat in China
中国的街头暴乱


Posted by Matt Gurney on Jun 20th, 2011

Over the last few months, the world’s attention has understandably been focused on the events rocking the Middle East. The West has been kept busy with diplomatic efforts in Egypt and the Gulf states, with a war in Libya, and the possible descent of Syria, a major geopolitical player in Middle Eastern politics, into civil war. While the world has been watching the Arab world, however, other oppressed peoples have also been rising up.

No doubt to the surprise of many, this includes slow but steady reports of mob violence in major Chinese cities. China continues to present itself to the world as a superpower in waiting, as a country ready to stand alongside the United States as joint masters of the world. But unless they can get their social problems under control, though they might not follow several Arab regimes into disgrace and exile, they certainly will struggle to command the international legitimacy they clearly crave.

China is a country obsessed with being seen to be powerful, and constantly worries about losing face. Examples abound. China’s hosting of the 2008 Olympics, for which no expense was spared, was a coming-out party for all the world, showing that China had arrived. Before the party began, China carefully gave its capital city of Beijing a makeover, deporting laborers, erecting modern facades to conceal old neighborhoods, investing billions in new sports facilities, and virtually shutting down major industrial regions so that the infamous smog Beijing is known for would clear out. Even spitting in public was banned.

China has also pursued a manned space program, aggressively sought to develop (some might say colonize) Africa, and recently announced it will soon launch an aircraft carrier. The carrier, Chinese officials note, is intended to showcase China’s power. “All of the great nations in the world own aircraft carriers — they are symbols of a great nation,” Lieutenant General Qi Jianguowas said while announcing the carrier. And, of course, the growing economic power of China cannot be understated.

But all these admitted triumphs, carefully stage-managed by a Chinese regime eager to impress and fearful of international embarrassment, are threatened by the protests sweeping the country. The causes of the protests differ from place to place. Some are religious, others, ethnic (sometimes it’s unclear where one begins and the other ends). Many protests concern Chinese citizens feeling that they have been unfairly compensated for land now being used for industrial or commercial ventures that are making other people rich. Some seem to be simply based on the clash of interests between China’s pampered ruling class and its hundreds of millions of poor. But whatever their cause, the protests reveal plainly that despite China’s financial and military might, it is a country facing serious issues.

The latest report of mass violence emerged last week from the city of Zengcheng, and reportedly began after security guards beat a pregnant migrant worker. This sparked a riot, with migrant workers attacking government buildings. China has responded with overwhelming force, sending in troops, extra police and armored vehicles into areas beset by violence. They are not necessarily seeking to crush the protests, but to smother them with a display of power. They are also apparently willing to make concessions to the mob — the firing of corrupt officials, replacing unpopular local leaders, and the like. It’s the classic carrot-and-stick approach: Yes, we understand your frustration and will remove this crooked cop, they might say, while also moving thousands of paramilitaries with heavy weapons into the city in case the conciliatory gestures aren’t enough.

Perhaps more interesting is how they present these incidents to the outside world: They don’t, and they do their best to prevent people from learning about it via the Internet, both in and outside China. Entire cities, home to millions, have all searches for their name blocked by Chinese Internet censors as a way of preventing anyone from searching for news about the violence. And the consequences for speaking to foreign reporters are clearly understood. A recent CNN report about violence in a Chinese industrial city noted that local citizens with first-hand knowledge of the violence knew better than to speak with foreign media.

But simply covering up the problem won’t be enough to make it go away. China is becoming a victim of its own success. Its rapid growth over the last several decades has seen enormous internal migrations of people needed to work in new industries far from their homes. These workers often face housing shortages and low wages, but are daily faced with the reality that millions of other Chinese have ascended to a comfortable middle-class life or become outright millionaires thanks to the low-paid work of these armies of migrants. These migrants are young, disenfranchised, living in highly dense communities and can see no realistic hope for a brighter future. In other words, they share much with the millions of Arabs who rose up against their ruling Middle Eastern regimes over the last several months.

The Chinese are clearly aware of the risk, even going so far as to ban sales of jasmine because of its symbolic link to the Middle East uprisings. China is also the world’s most prolific censor of the Internet, and seeks to prevent disaffected youth from mobilizing in online forums (to be sure, the tech-savvy youth also use the Internet to fight back against the regime). These methods, along with generous applications of raw physical violence, might well be enough to keep the regime on top of any mass protest movement the likes of which have toppled several Middle Eastern leaders. In this, they’ll be aided by hundreds of millions of Chinese who have benefited from the current system and would be just as threatened by a mass uprising as the leadership.

But while the regime may survive, it will not thrive. China can host sporting events, send probes to Mars and launch a dozen aircraft carriers. But nothing will speak to the credibility of the regime like its inability to prevent their own citizens from rioting in the streets week after week, month after month.

Matt Gurney is a columnist and editor at Canada’s National Post. He can be reached on Twitter @mattgurney.