经济学人-Murder in Libya

America and the Middle East

Murder in Libya

The world’s policeman must not retreat from the world’s most dangerous region; indeed America should do more

Sep 15th 2012 | from the print edition

FOR many Americans the killing of Christopher Stevens, their ambassador to Libya, this week crystallised everything they have come to expect from the Arab world. In a country where the West only last year helped depose a murderous tyrant, a Salafist mob attacked the American consulate in Benghazi, killing Mr Stevens and three colleagues. The trigger for this murder, the riots in neighbouring Egypt and the storming of the American embassy in Yemen? A tacky amateur video about the Prophet Muhammad that the Obama administration had already condemned. Why on earth, many Americans are asking, should the United States try to police a region, when all it gets in return is mindless abuse, blame for things it cannot control, and mob violence?

The slaying of Mr Stevens is hardly the only recent example of Arab dysfunction. Just to take the seven days prior to the killing: in Iraq scores of people were killed in bombings on one day and the vice-president was sentenced to death in absentia for alleged murder; in Yemen the defence minister survived an assassination attempt; in the Gaza Strip Israel killed six militants; in Tunisia extremist Salafists smashed up a bar that serves alcohol to the town where the Arab spring began; and most graphically of all, in Syria the death toll in the gruesome civil war continued to rise exponentially—to over 25,000.

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On the campaign trail Mitt Romney has been clobbering Barack Obama for being too keen on the Arab awakening. Many conservative Americans associate it with hostile Islamists, like the Muslim Brothers and their friends who now run Egypt and Tunisia, and see it as a threat to America’s ally, Israel. Americans of all sorts are nervous about being dragged into Syria and worried about Iran getting the bomb. They are fed up with being described as anti-Islam when their country is in fact far more welcoming to Shia Muslims than, say, Sunni Saudi Arabia is. With their troops now mercifully out of Iraq, their efforts to push the Israeli-Palestinian peace process going nowhere and shale gas reducing their dependence on Arab oil, surely it is time for them to leave the world’s least grateful people to make a mess of their lives by themselves?

This is a seductive narrative—and no doubt it will play even better on the campaign trail after Mr Stevens’s death (see Lexington). But it is deeply wrong in both its analysis and its conclusions. Many parts of the Arab world are in fact heading in the right direction. And in the parts that are not, notably Syria, the United States is more needed than ever.

From one lunatic to another

Begin with the killing of Mr Stevens. Armed jihadists were involved, but other aspects seem more accidental than symptomatic. One misguided extremist in America made the video, and another lot of misguided extremists in the Arab world picked on it. Far from encouraging the violence, the Libyan government deplored Mr Stevens’s murder (though Egypt was less clear) and Libyans

mourned a popular ambassador.

This underscores a much bigger point. The Arab spring, for all its messiness, is still broadly moving in the right direction. In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya tyrants have been replaced with democratic governments. These are more hostile to Israel than some of the dictators were, but just as in Turkey greater sympathy for the Palestinians reflects popular opinion (as democracies tend to). The Muslim Brothers hold unpalatable views on women, education and much else, but in government they have had to temper them because voters want jobs and bread on the table more than they want sharia law.

It will take many years, but these democracies promise eventually to embrace a style of government that is more like Turkey’s moderate, democratic Islamism than Iran’s harsh theocracy. At that point America would be spared its outsized role: Turkey and Egypt could emerge as effective regional powers and the Arabs could take more “ownership” of their problems.

But until then, America will remain essential to progress. Libya’s relative success, despite the murder of the ambassador, was largely thanks to American firepower at the start of the campaign against the Qaddafi regime. It was the State Department, in effect, that told Hosni Mubarak’s people that the game was up in Egypt. America is needed to put more pressure on the Gulf monarchies it supports to loosen up their political systems. And in the nascent Arab democracies, it can give vital economic support. Unemployment is rising in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, as governments struggle to replace the crony capitalism of the dictators. Small amounts of aid, especially if it is contingent on economic reform, could make a huge difference. If the Arab economies fail, the cost to the world of ever more angry young men being turfed out of work could be immense.

From Tehran to Damascus

Helping the Arabs sort themselves out is not naive do-goodery; it is rooted in Kissingerian realpolitik. The Middle East is still the crucible of Islam: so much that affects American diplomacy around the rest of the world, from Pakistan to Indonesia, Nigeria, and even the suburbs of Paris, has its starting point here. It is the world’s energy centre: the Middle East still sets the price at America’s petrol stations (something that could be rapidly proved if Israel attacks Iran). And the region is home to many of America’s most committed enemies, including Iran.

In general, America should do more in the Middle East, not less. Two issues look especially neglected because of American domestic politics. One inevitably is the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The Palestinians are themselves divided; but America should vigorously point out that each new (illegal) settlement that

Israel builds in the West Bank makes it harder to make peace between Jews and Arabs. The conflict still enrages much of the region. Mr Romney’s electioneering on this, as on bombing Iran, has been especially crude.

The other issue is Syria. The number of dead is rising by as many as 200 a day, as fast as in the worst period in Iraq. So long as Bashar Assad remains free to kill with impunity, the slaughter will devour Syria and its people, sectarian hatred will eviscerate the country and its institutions and Syria’s poison will spread across the Middle East. Even now Jordan and Lebanon are under threat.

As our briefing this week makes clear, there is an alternative: to protect the Syrian people by enforcing a no-fly zone over their country. It is far from an easy decision, but depriving Mr Assad of his aircraft and helicopter gunships could save many thousands of lives. Bringing a swifter end to the fighting could yet give Syria a chance to emerge as a nation at peace with itself and its neighbours.

In the week of Mr Stevens’s killing, the idea of intervening in yet another Muslim country might seem far-fetched to many Americans. But if they think that today’s Libya is dangerous and violent, imagine what it would have been like were battle still raging (see article). The humanitarian and strategic costs of standing back from Syria would be even higher.

So it is with the entire Middle East. Ultimately, anti-American violence thrives under the tyrants and the dictators. Because the Arab spring promises to put the Middle East into the hands of the people for the first time, it offers a better future. There are no guarantees, but America has everything to gain from being at the heart of this great awakening.

from the print edition | Leaders

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The Brain Activity Map 绘制大脑活动地图 Hard cell 棘手的细胞 An ambitious project to map the brain is in the works. Possibly too ambitious 一个绘制大脑活动地图的宏伟计划正在准备当中，或许有些太宏伟了 NEWS of what protagonists hope will be America’s next big science project continues to dribble out. 有关其发起人心中下一个科学大工程的新闻报道层出不穷。 A leak to the New York Times, published on February 17th, let the cat out of the bag, with a report that Barack Obama’s administration is thinking of sponsoring what will be known as the Brain Activity Map. 2月17日，《纽约时报》刊登的一位线人报告终于泄露了秘密，报告称奥巴马政府正在考虑赞助将被称为“大脑活动地图”的计划。 And on March 7th several of those protagonists published a manifesto for the project in Science. 3月7日，部分发起人在《科学》杂志上发表声明证实了这一计划。 The purpose of BAM is to change the scale at which the brain is understood. “大脑活动地图”计划的目标是改变人们在认知大脑时采用的度量方法。 At the moment, neuroscience operates at two disconnected levels. 眼下，神经学的研究处在两个断开的层次。 The higher one, where the dimensions of features are measured in centimetres, has many techniques at its disposal, notably functional magnetic-res onance imaging, which measures changes in tissues’ fuel consumption. 在相对宏观的层次当中各个特征的规模用厘米来衡量，有很多技术可以使用，尤其是用来测量组织中能量消耗变动情况的核磁共振成像技术。 This lets researchers see which bits of the brain are active in particular tasks—as long as those tasks can be performed by a person lying down inside a scanner. 该技术可使研究人员找出在完成具体的任务时，大脑的哪些部分处于活跃状态。At the other end of the scale, where features are measured in microns, lots of research has been done on how individual nerve cells work, how messages are sent from one to another, and how the connections between cells strengthen and weaken as memories are formed. 而另一个度量的层次则要求用微米来测量各种特征，这一层次的研究很多都是关于单个神经细胞是如何工作的、信息在神经细胞之间是如何传递的以及当产生记忆的时候神经细胞之间的联系是如何得到加强和减弱的。 Between these two, though, all is darkness. 然而，位于这两个层次之间的研究还处于一片漆黑当中。 It is like trying to navigate America with an atlas that shows the states, the big cities and the main highways, and has a few street maps of local neighbourhoods, but displays nothing in between.

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Leopard seals share their suppers 豹海豹会分享它们的晚餐 Bad news if you are a penguin 假如你是一只企鹅，这真是个坏消息 Leopard seals resemble their terrestrial namesakes in two ways.They have polka-dot pelts.And they are powerful,generally solitary carnivores that are quite capable of killing a human being if they so choose—as has indeed happened once,in2003,when a British marine biologist was the victim. 豹海豹与生活在陆地上的同名动物（豹）有着两点相似之处。其一，它们的皮毛上都有着圆点花纹。其二，它们都是强大的独栖性食肉动物，只要它们愿意，是完全有能力杀死一个人的——正如2003年真实发生的那样，当时一位英国海洋生物学家就成了受害者。 Curiously,though,there have also been reports of leopard seals behaving in a friendly manner towards people—apparently trying to present gifts,in the form of prey,to divers. 但奇怪的是，也有报道称豹海豹对人类表现得十分友好——它们很显然把猎物作为礼物赠送给了潜水员。 Until now,there has been no explanation for this philanthropy.But work just published in Polar Biology by James Robbins of Plymouth University, in Britain,suggests that what the seals are actually looking for is a dining partner.

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Japanese commuters try new ways to deter gropers 日本通勤族尝试用新方法防止性骚扰 Victims are fighting back with apps,badges and invisible ink 受害者正在用应用程序、徽章和隐形墨水来反击 Throughout her20s,Yayoi Matsunaga was groped,almost daily,on packed rush-hour trains going to and from work.Three decades later,she discovered that her friend’s daughter was being molested on her commute to high school. 在松永弥生20多岁的时候，她几乎每天都会在上下班高峰拥挤的列车上被人骚扰。30年过去了，她发现她朋友的女儿仍会在上高中的通勤路上被人骚扰。 The teenager,after fruitless talks with the police and railway companies, decided to hang a sign from her bag that read:“Groping is a crime.I will not cry myself to sleep.”The groping stopped immediately. 在与警方和铁路部门交涉无果后，这名女孩决定在她的书包上挂一个牌子，上面写着：“性骚扰就是犯罪，我不会暗自哭泣的。”效果立竿见影。 Inspired,Ms Matsunaga launched a crowdfunding campaign in2015to create badges with the same message.They proved as effective as the sign: nearly95%of users stopped experiencing groping on public transport, according to a survey.

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Autism? 自闭症 Why it's not “Rain Woman”? 为什么它不是“雨女” Women have fewer cognitive disorders than men do because their bodies are better at ignoring the mutations which cause them? 与男性相比，患有认知障碍的女性较少，因为她们自身的身体能更好的忽略导致认知障碍的基因突变 AUTISM is a strange condition. Sometimes its symptoms of “social blindness”(an inability to read or comprehend the emotions of others) occur alone. This is dubbed high-functioning autism, or Asperger's syndrome. Though their fellow men and women may regard them as a bit odd, high-functioning autists are often successful (sometimes very successful) members of society. On other occasions, though, autism manifests as part of a range of cognitive problems. Then, the condition is debilitating. What is common to those on all parts of the so-called autistic spectrum is that they are more often men than women —so much more often that one school of thought suggests autism is an extreme manifestation of what it means, mentally, to be male. Boys are four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls are. For high-functioning autism, the ratio is seven to one.?

经济学人

China in Laos Busted flush How a Sino-Lao special economic zone hit the skids May 26th 2011 | BOTEN, LAOS | from the print edition ?Tweet ? Soon all this will be jungle again AT HOME and abroad, China is a byword for fast-track development, where yesterday’s paddy field is tomorrow’s factory, highway or hotel. Less noticed is that such development can just as quickly go into reverse. Golden City, in Boten, just over the border from China in tiny Laos, is a case in point. When a Hong Kong-registered company signed a 30-year, renewable lease with the Lao government in 2003 to set up a 1,640-hectare special economic zone built with mainland money and expertise, Golden City was touted as a

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The dash off cash 挥金如土 Rich countries must start planning for a cashless future 发达国家必须开始为无现金的未来做计划 For the past3,000years,when people thought of money they thought of cash.From buying food to settling bar tabs,day-to-day dealings involved creased paper or clinking bits of metal. 在过去的3000年里，每当提起钱，人们总会想到现金。从购买食物到酒吧吧台结算消费，日常交易用到的都是皱巴巴的纸币或叮当作响的硬币。 Over the past decade,however,digital payments have taken off—tapping your plastic on a terminal or swiping a smartphone has become normal.然而，过去十年间，数字支付已经兴起——在终端上刷卡或刷手机已经变得平常。Now this revolution is about to turn cash into an endangered species in some rich economies.That will make the economy more efficient—but it also poses new problems that could hold the transition hostage. 如今，这场革命即将要把一些发达国家的现金变为“濒危物种”。数字支付能够让经济更高效，但同时也带来了一些可能会阻碍经济转型的新的问题。 Countries are eliminating cash at varying speeds.But the direction of travel is clear,and in some cases the journey is nearly complete.In Sweden the number of retail cash transactions per person has fallen by80%in the

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We are all digital labourers, helpingmake possible the fortunes generated by firms like Google andFacebook, the authors argue. 其中作者认为，我们就是所有数字的劳工，帮助像谷歌和脸书这样的公司创造财富。（fortunes命运，幸运，富有）Ifthe economy is to function properlyin the future—and ifa crisisoftechnological unemployment isto be avoided—we musttake accountofthis, and change the relationship between biginternetcompaniesand theirusers. 在未来经济运转良好的情况下，如果想要避免工业发展带来的失业危机，我们必须着眼于这件事情，并且改变大型互联网公司和他们用户之间的关系。 Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting better all the time, and stands poised totransform a host of industries, say the authors 作者说，人工智能势头一直越来越好，势必（准备）改变一大批工业。 But, in orderto learn to drive a carorrecognize a face, the algorithmsthatmake clever machines tick（滴答，拟声词，表示机器运作）mustusuallybe trained on massive amountsofdata. 但是，为了做到自动驾驶和人脸识别（主语是AI），使智能机器运作的法则必须经常用非常大量的数据进行测试。Internetfirms gather these data from users every time they click on aGoogle search result, say, orissue a command to Alexa.

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经济学人杂志双语阅读 Consumer spending in Asia：Shopaholics wanted Consumer spending in Asia亚洲消费状况 Shopaholics wanted 购物狂时代该来了？ Jun 25th 2009 | HONG KONG From The Economist print edition Can Asians replace Americans as a driver of global growth? 亚洲人能够代替美国人做全球经济的发动机吗？ ASIA'S emerging economies are bouncing back much more strongly than any others. While America's industrial production continued to slide in May, output in emerging Asia has regained its pre-crisis level (see chart 1). This is largely due to China; but although production in the region's smaller economies is still well down on a year ago, it is rebounding in those countries too. Taiwan's industrial output rose by an annualised 80% in the three months to May compared with the previous three months. JPMorgan estimates that emerging Asia's GDP has grown by an annualised 7% in the second quarter. 时下亚洲新兴经济体们的恢复势头比其他任何国家都要迅猛。在美国工业生产继续下滑的5月，亚洲新兴国家的产出已经回到了它们危机前的水平(见表一)。这很大程度上要归功于中国，此外尽 管该地区较小经济体的生产比去年仍有所下降，但最近这些国家也

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Disney Star Wars, Disney and myth-making How one company came to master the business of storytelling FROM a galaxy far, far away to a cinema just down the road: “The Force Awakens”, the newest instalment of the Star Wars saga, is inescapable this Christmas. The first Star Wars title since Lucasfilm, the owner of the franchise, was acquired by Disney in 2012 for $4.1 billion, it represents more than just the revival of a beloved science-fiction series. It is the latest example of the way Disney has prospered over the past decade from a series of shrewd acquisitions (see article). Having bought Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, Disney has skilfullycapitalised on their intellectual property—and in so doing, cemented its position as the market leader in the industrialisation of mythology. Its success rests on its mastery of the three elements of modern myth-making: tropes, technology and toys. From Homer to Han Solo Start with the tropes. Disney properties, which include everything from “Thor” to “Toy Story”, draw on well-worn devices of mythic structure to give their stories cultural resonance. Walt Disney himself had an intuitive grasp of the power of fables. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, is an avid student of the work of Joseph Campbell, an American comparative mythologist who outlined the “monomyth” structure in which a hero answers a call, is assisted by a mentor figure, voyages to another world, survives various trials and emerges triumphant. Both film-makers merrily plundered ancient mythology and folklore. The Marvel universe goes even further, directly appropriating chunks of Greco-Roman and Norse mythology. (This makes Disney's enthusiasm for fierce enforcement of intellectual-property laws, and the seemingly perpetual extension of copyright, somewhat ironic.) The internal mechanics of myths may not have changed much over the ages, but the technology used to impart them certainly has. That highlights Disney's second area of expertise. In Homer's day, legends were passed on in the form of dactylic hexameters; modern myth-makers prefer computer graphics, special effects, 3D projection, surround sound and internet video distribution,

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来源于https://www.wendangku.net/doc/3113012848.html,/wordpress/（The Economist《经济学人》中文版）和https://www.wendangku.net/doc/3113012848.html,/（《The Economist》《经济学人》中文版） 11月10, 2008 [2008.11.08] 美国大选：无限期望 America's election：Great expectations NO ONE should doubt the magnitude of what Barack Obama achieved this week. When the president-elect was born, in 1961, many states, and not just in the South, had laws on their books that enforced segregation, banned mixed-race unions like that of his parents and restricted voting rights. This week America can claim more credibly that any other western country to have at last become politically colour-blind. Other milestones along the road to civil rights have been passed amid bitterness and bloodshed. This one was marked by joy, white as well as black (see article). 相信无人质疑奥巴马于本周取胜的重要意义。这位新总统出生于1961年，那时美国很多州的法律都要求强化种族分离、禁止像奥巴马父母那样的跨族通婚、限制选举权利；这些不仅限于南部地区，而出现在全国范围内。从本周开始，美国可以更加自信的宣称：任何其他的西方国家都变得有些政治色盲了。在通向民权的道路上，其它里程碑似的重大历史事件都是在痛苦与血泊中通过的；而此次总统选举则以愉快著称，受到了包括白人及黑人在内的全国选民的称赞。 Mr Obama lost the white vote, it is true, by 43-55%; but he won almost exactly same share of it as the last three (white) Democratic candidates; Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry. And he won heavily among younger white voters. America will now have a president with half-brothers in Kenya, old schoolmates in Indonesia and a view of the world that seems to be based on respect rather than confrontation. 奥巴马丢掉了大约43%-55%的白人选票，这是不争的事实；但他与过去三位白人民主党候选人–克林顿、戈尔和肯尼迪–得到的白人选票几乎相同。同时，他在年轻一代的白人选民中取得了重大胜利。这位新总统有一个同父异母的兄弟在肯尼亚，有老同学在印尼，他的世界观似乎建立在尊重而不是对抗的基础之上。 That matters. Under George Bush America’s international standing has sunk to awful lows. This week Americans voted in record-smashing numbers for many reasons, but one of them was an abhorrence of how their shining city’s reputation has been tarnished. Their country will now be easier for its friends to like and harder for its foes to hate. 这很重要。在布什治下，美国的国际声誉降到了糟糕地步。本周美国选民的投票数量突破了历史纪录，其中原因很多，有一个就是他们对曾经辉煌无比的城市形象已然黯淡无光而感到愤恨。现在他们的国家将会更易赢得朋友的喜爱，而不易引起敌人的仇恨。 In its own way the election illustrates this redeeming effect. For the past eight years the debacle in Florida in 2000 has been cited (not always fairly) as an example of shabby American politics. Yet here was a clear victory delivered by millions of volunteers-and by the intelligent use of technology to ride a wave of excitement that is all too rare in most democracies. Mr Obama showed that, with the right message, a candidate with no money or machine behind him can build his own.

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What went wrong IN RECENT months many economists and policymakers, including such unlikely bedfellows as Paul Krugman, an economist and New York Times columnist, and Hank Paulson, a former American treasury secretary, have put “global imbalances”—the huge current-account surpluses run by countries like China, alongside America’s huge deficit—at the root of the financial crisis. But the IMF disagrees. It argues, in new papers released on Friday March 6th, that the “main culprit” was deficient regulation of t he financial system, together with a failure of market discipline. Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's chief economist, said this week that global imbalances contributed only “indirectly” to the crisis. This may sound like buck-passing by the world’s main interna tional macroeconomic organisation. But the distinction has important consequences for whether macroeconomic policy or more regulation of financial markets will provide the solutions to the mess. In broad strokes, the global imbalances view of the crisis argues that a glut of money from countries with high savings rates, such as China and the oil-producing states, came flooding into America. This kept interest rates low and fuelled the credit boom and the related boom in the prices of assets, such as houses and equity, whose collapse precipitated the financial crisis. A workable long-term fix for the problems of the world economy would, therefore, involve figuring out what to do about these imbalances. But the IMF argues that imbalances could not have caused the crisis without the creative ability of financial institutions to develop new structures and instruments to cater to investors’ demand for higher yields. These instruments turned out to be more risky than they appeared. Investors, overly optimistic about continued rises in asset prices, did not look closely into the nature of the assets that they bought, preferring to rely on the analysis of credit-rating agencies which were, in some cases, also selling advice on how to game the ratings system. This “failure of market discipline”, the fund argues, played a big role in the crisis. As big a problem, according to the IMF, was that financial regulation was flawed, ineffective and too limited in scope. What it calls the “shadow banking system”—the loosely regulated but highly interconnected network of investment banks, hedge funds, mortgage originators, and the like—was not subject to the sorts of prudential regulation (capital-adequacy norms, for example) that applied to banks. In part, the fund argues, this was because they were not thought to be systemically important, in the sense that banks were understood to be. But their being unregulated made it more attractive for banks (whose affiliates the non-banks often were) to evade capital requirements by pushing risk into these entities. In time, this network of institutions grew so large that they were indeed systemically important: in the now-familiar phrase, they were “too big” or “too interconnected” to fail. By late 2007, some estimates of the assets of the bank-like institutions in America outside the scope of existing prudential regulation, was around $10 trillion, as large as the assets of the regulated American banking system itself. Given this interpretation, it is not surprising that the IMF has thrown its weight strongly behind an enormous increase in the scale and scope of financial regulation in a series of papers leading up to the G20 meetings. Among many other proposals, it wants the shadow banking system to be subjected to the same sorts of prudential requirements that banks must follow. Sensibly, it is calling for regulation to concentrate on what an institution does, not what it is called (that is, the basis of regulation should be activities, not entities). It also wants regulators to focus more broadly on