2011년 1월 12일 수요일
블로그 이전 후 첫 글.
2010년 12월 14일 화요일
나는 왜 어센지의 보석금을 송금했는가?
Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange
Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, the
lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented to the judge a
document from me stating that I have put up $20,000 of my own money to
help bail Mr. Assange out of jail.
Furthermore, I am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my
servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks
alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that
were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax
dollars.
We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now
dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002
had had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not have been able to pull
it off. The only reason they thought they could get away with it was
because they had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guarantee has now
been ripped from them, and I hope they are never able to operate in
secret again.
So why is WikiLeaks, after performing such an important public service,
under such vicious attack? Because they have outed and embarrassed those
who have covered up the truth. The assault on them has been over the
top:
**Sen. Joe Lieberman says WikiLeaks "has violated the Espionage Act."
**The New Yorker's George Packer calls Assange "super-secretive, thin-skinned, [and] megalomaniacal."
**Sarah Palin claims he's "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands" whom we should pursue "with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders."
**Democrat Bob Beckel (Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign manager) said about Assange on Fox: "A dead man can't leak stuff ... there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch."
**Republican Mary Matalin says "he's a psychopath, a sociopath ... He's a terrorist."
**Rep. Peter A. King calls WikiLeaks a "terrorist organization."
And indeed they are! They exist to terrorize the liars and warmongers
who have brought ruin to our nation and to others. Perhaps the next war
won't be so easy because the tables have been turned -- and now it's Big
Brother who's being watched ... by us!
WikiLeaks deserves our thanks for shining a huge spotlight on all this.
But some in the corporate-owned press have dismissed the importance of
WikiLeaks ("they've released little that's new!") or have painted them
as simple anarchists ("WikiLeaks just releases everything without any
editorial control!"). WikiLeaks exists, in part, because the mainstream
media has failed to live up to its responsibility. The corporate owners
have decimated newsrooms, making it impossible for good journalists to
do their job. There's no time or money anymore for investigative
journalism. Simply put, investors don't want those stories exposed. They
like their secrets kept ... as secrets.
I ask you to imagine how much different our world would be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Take a look at this photo.
That's Mr. Bush about to be handed a "secret" document on August 6th,
2001. Its heading read: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." And on
those pages it said the FBI had discovered "patterns of suspicious
activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings."
Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks.
But if that document had been leaked, how would you or I have reacted? What would Congress or the FAA have done? Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden's impending attack using hijacked planes?
But back then only a few people had access to that document. Because the
secret was kept, a flight school instructor in San Diego who noticed
that two Saudi students took no interest in takeoffs or landings, did
nothing. Had he read about the bin Laden threat in the paper, might he
have called the FBI? (Please read this essay
by former FBI Agent Coleen Rowley, Time's 2002 co-Person of the Year,
about her belief that had WikiLeaks been around in 2001, 9/11 might have
been prevented.)
Or what if the public in 2003 had been able to read "secret" memos from
Dick Cheney as he pressured the CIA to give him the "facts" he wanted in
order to build his false case for war? If a WikiLeaks had revealed at
that time that there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction, do
you think that the war would have been launched -- or rather, wouldn't
there have been calls for Cheney's arrest?
Openness, transparency -- these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt. What if within days of August 4th, 1964 -- after the Pentagon had made up the lie that our ship was attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin -- there had been a WikiLeaks to tell the American people that the whole thing was made up? I guess 58,000 of our soldiers (and 2 million Vietnamese) might be alive today.
Instead, secrets killed them.
For those of you who think it's wrong to support Julian Assange because
of the sexual assault allegations he's being held for, all I ask is that
you not be naive about how the government works when it decides to go
after its prey. Please -- never, ever believe the "official story." And
regardless of Assange's guilt or innocence (see the strange nature of
the allegations here),
this man has the right to have bail posted and to defend himself. I
have joined with filmmakers Ken Loach and John Pilger and writer Jemima
Khan in putting up the bail money -- and we hope the judge will accept
this and grant his release today.
Might WikiLeaks cause some unintended harm to diplomatic negotiations
and U.S. interests around the world? Perhaps. But that's the price you
pay when you and your government take us into a war based on a lie. Your
punishment for misbehaving is that someone has to turn on all the
lights in the room so that we can see what you're up to. You simply
can't be trusted. So every cable, every email you write is now fair
game. Sorry, but you brought this upon yourself. No one can hide from
the truth now. No one can plot the next Big Lie if they know that they
might be exposed.
And that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done. WikiLeaks, God bless
them, will save lives as a result of their actions. And any of you who
join me in supporting them are committing a true act of patriotism.
Period.
I stand today in absentia with Julian Assange in London and I ask the
judge to grant him his release. I am willing to guarantee his return to
court with the bail money I have wired to said court. I will not allow
this injustice to continue unchallenged.
P.S. You can read the statement I filed today in the London court here.
P.P.S. If you're reading this in London, please go support Julian Assange and WikiLeaks at a demonstration at 1 PM today, Tuesday the 14th, in front of the Westminster court.
명문!
2010년 12월 8일 수요일
2010년 12월 6일 월요일
트위터 백업2
흠... 아무래도 새해의 목표는 Anger Control이 될듯. --;;;
2010년 11월 25일 목요일
생각해보면 좀 이상한 거.
지구상에서 가장 많은 나라의 언어로 꾸란을 번역해 열심히 보급하고 계시는 국가가 사우디 아라비아라는.
2010년 11월 16일 화요일
의사소통의 어려움
의사소통 자체가 어려울 수 밖에 없는게... 본심을 알아달라고 이야기해봐야... 그 자체가 감정이기 때문에 이전에 가지고 있는 감정에 의해 굴절되어 받아들이게 된다는 것. 객관적으로 뭐 어쩌구 해봐야 인간의 뇌가 감정으로 처리를 하는데 어쩔 것인가?
책 번역하면서 자기들 딴에는 최선을 다 한다는 미군들이 아프칸 사람들이 중요시하는 부분들을 때로 개무시했다가 복구하기 위해 노력하는 모습들을 보면서... 서로 다른 남이 서로 다른 목적으로 움직이는 것은 '당연히 어렵고' 같은 목적이라고 하더라도 끊임없이 교감하지 않으면 어느 순간인가에는 갭이 좀 많이 벌어질 수 밖에 없는게 아닌가란 생각이 들었는데...
오늘 트위터에서 문과와 이과가 싸우는거 보니까 더 그런 생각이 들더란...
이거 트위터에 올려놓을까 했는데... 어떤 사람들은 존나리 비웃을거라는 생각을 하니 올리지도 못하겠더라. 어쩌리. 내 업인걸.
2010년 11월 6일 토요일
시간되면 번역해놓을 것.
David Cameron says the ‘nasty party’ that castigated people like me has changed. I’m not buying it
J.K. Rowling
I’ve never voted Tory before, but . . .” Those much parodied posters, with their photogenic subjects and their trite captions, remind me irresistibly of glossy greetings cards. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more general elections have in common with the birthdays of middle life. Both entail a lot of largely unwelcome fuss; both offer unrivalled opportunities for congratulation and spite, and you have seen so many go by that a lot of the excitement has worn off.
Nevertheless, they become more meaningful, more serious. Behind all the bombast and balloons there is the melancholy awareness of more time gone, the tally of ambitions achieved and of opportunities missed.
So here we are again, taking stock of where we are, and of where we would like to be, both as individuals and as a country. Personally, I keep having flashbacks to 1997, and not merely because of the most memorable election result in recent times. In January that year, I was a single parent with a four-year-old daughter, teaching part-time but living mainly on benefits, in a rented flat. Eleven months later, I was a published author who had secured a lucrative publishing deal in the US, and bought my first ever property: a three-bedroom house with a garden.
I had become a single mother when my first marriage split up in 1993. In one devastating stroke, I became a hate figure to a certain section of the press, and a bogeyman to the Tory Government. Peter Lilley, then Secretary of State at the DSS, had recently entertained the Conservative Party conference with a spoof Gilbert and Sullivan number, in which he decried “young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list”. The Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood, castigated single-parent families from St Mellons, Cardiff, as “one of the biggest social problems of our day”. (John Redwood has since divorced the mother of his children.) Women like me (for it is a curious fact that lone male parents are generally portrayed as heroes, whereas women left holding the baby are vilified) were, according to popular myth, a prime cause of social breakdown, and in it for all we could get: free money, state-funded accommodation, an easy life.
An easy life. Between 1993 and 1997 I did the job of two parents, qualified and then worked as a secondary school teacher, wrote one and a half novels and did the planning for a further five. For a while, I was clinically depressed. To be told, over and over again, that I was feckless, lazy — even immoral — did not help.
The new Labour landslide marked a cessation in government hostilities towards families like mine. The change in tone was very welcome, but substance is, of course, more important than style. Labour had great ambitions for eradicating child poverty and while it succeeded, initially, in reversing the downward trend that had continued uninterrupted under Tory rule, it has not reached its own targets. There remains much more to be done.
This is not to say that there have not been real innovations to help lone-parent families. First, childcare tax credits were introduced by Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor, which were a meaningful way of addressing the fact that the single biggest obstacle for lone parents returning to work was not innate slothfulness but the near-impossibility of affording adequate childcare.
Then came Sure Start centres, of which there are now more than 3,000 across the UK: service centres where families with children under 5 can receive integrated service and information. Unless you have previously grappled with the separate agencies involved in housing, education and childcare, you might not be able to appreciate what a great innovation these centres are. They link to Jobcentres, offering help to secure employment, and give advice on parenting, childcare, education, specialist services and even health. A National Audit Office memorandum published last January found that the overall effectiveness of 98 per cent of the childcare offered was judged to be “good or outstanding”.
So here we are, in 2010, with what promises to be another memorable election in the offing. Gingerbread (now amalgamated with the National Council for One Parent Families), keen to forestall the mud-slinging of the early Nineties, recently urged Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg to sign up to a campaign called Let’s Lose the Labels, which aims to fight negative stereotyping of lone parents. Here are just a few of the facts that sometimes get lost on the way to an easy story, or a glib stump speech: only 13 per cent of single parents are under 25 years old, the average age being 36. Fifty-two per cent live below the breadline and 26 per cent in “non-decent” housing. Single-parent families are more likely than couple families to have a member with a disability, which gives some idea of the strains that cause family break up. In spite of all the obstacles, 56.3 per cent of lone parents are in paid employment.
As there are 1.9 million single-parent votes up for grabs, it ought not to surprise anyone that all three leaders of the main political parties agreed to sign up to Gingerbread’s campaign. For David Cameron, however, this surely involves a difficult straddling act.
Yesterday’s Conservative manifesto makes it clear that the Tories aim for less governmental support for the needy, and more input from the “third sector”: charity. It also reiterates the flagship policy so proudly defended by David Cameron last weekend, that of “sticking up for marriage”. To this end, they promise a half-a-billion pound tax break for lower-income married couples, working out at £150 per annum.
I accept that my friends and I might be atypical. Maybe you know people who would legally bind themselves to another human being, for life, for an extra £150 a year? Perhaps you were contemplating leaving a loveless or abusive marriage, but underwent a change of heart on hearing about a possible £150 tax break? Anything is possible; but somehow, I doubt it. Even Mr Cameron seems to admit that he is offering nothing more than a token gesture when he tells us “it’s not the money, it’s the message”.
Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say “it’s not the money, it’s the message”. When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron’s only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is “get married, and we’ll give you £150”, he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation.
How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life’s necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3am? Half a billion pounds, to send a message — would it not be more cost-effective, more personal, to send all the lower-income married people flowers?
Suggestions that Mr Cameron seems oblivious to how poor people actually live, think and behave seem to provoke accusations of class warfare. Let me therefore state, for the record, that I do not think it any more his fault that he spent his adolescence in the white tie and tails of Eton than that I spent the almost identical period in the ghastly brown-and-yellow stylings of Wyedean Comprehensive. I simply want to know that aspiring prime ministers have taken the trouble to educate themselves about the lives of all kinds of Britons, not only the sort that send messages with banknotes.
But wait, some will say. Given that you have long since left single parenthood for marriage and a nuclear family; given that you are now so far from a life dependent on benefits that Private Eye habitually refers to you as Rowlinginnit, why do you care? Surely, nowadays, you are a natural Tory voter?
No, I’m afraid not. The 2010 election campaign, more than any other, has underscored the continuing gulf between Tory values and my own. It is not only that the renewed marginalisation of the single, the divorced and the widowed brings back very bad memories. There has also been the revelation, after ten years of prevarication on the subject, that Lord Ashcroft, deputy chairman of the Conservatives, is non-domiciled for tax purposes.
Now, I never, ever, expected to find myself in a position where I could understand, from personal experience, the choices and temptations open to a man as rich as Lord Ashcroft. The fact remains that the first time I ever met my recently retired accountant, he put it to me point-blank: would I organise my money around my life, or my life around my money? If the latter, it was time to relocate to Ireland, Monaco, or possibly Belize.
I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.
A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.
Child poverty remains a shameful problem in this country, but it will never be solved by throwing millions of pounds of tax breaks at couples who have no children at all. David Cameron tells us that the Conservatives have changed, that they are no longer the “nasty party”, that he wants the UK to be “one of the most family-friendly nations in Europe”, but I, for one, am not buying it. He has repackaged a policy that made desperate lives worse when his party was last in power, and is trying to sell it as something new. I’ve never voted Tory before ... and they keep on reminding me why.
© J. K. Rowling, 2010
전문번역된게 있었음;;;
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