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English to Chinese: Turkey lawmakers OK possible Iraq attack General field: Other Detailed field: Journalism
Source text - English Turkey lawmakers OK possible Iraq attack
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 11 minutes ago
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Parliament authorized the government Wednesday to send troops into northern Iraq to root out Kurdish rebels who've been conducting raids into Turkey. The vote removed the last legal obstacle to an offensive, but there was no sign of imminent action as the United States urged restraint.
Turkish leaders, under pressure from Washington and Baghdad, have signaled they would not immediately give the order to send in 60,000 soldiers, armor and attack helicopters into a region that has largely escaped the chaos of the Iraq war.
The crisis along the border, where the Turkish troops have massed since summer, has driven up oil prices along with tensions between Turkey and its longtime NATO ally, the United States.
President Bush said the U.S. was making clear to Turkey that it should not stage a major army operation in the Iraqi north, much of which has escaped the sustained violence and political discord common in the rest of Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Bush said Turkey has had troops stationed in northern Iraq "for quite a while," a reference to about 1,500 soldiers deployed for years to monitor the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, with the permission of Iraqi Kurd authorities.
"We don't think it's in their interest to send more troops in," he said.
While they now have the authority to strike at PKK bases used to stage attacks in Turkey, the country's leaders appear to be holding back in hopes the threat of an incursion will prod Iraq and the U.S. to move against the guerrillas.
The Turkish military, which had little success when it last carried out a major incursion into Iraq a decade ago with 50,000 soldiers, estimates 3,800 Turkish Kurd guerrillas operate from Iraq territory and 2,300 are inside Turkey.
As Parliament voted 507-19 to approve military operations against PKK fighters in northern Iraq over the next year, Turkey's government moved to explain its decision to its Arab neighbors, sending Foreign Minister Ali Babacan to both Egypt and Lebanon.
Oil prices surged briefly to a record $89 a barrel after the vote. Traders worry that any escalation in the conflict will cut oil supplies from northern Iraq.
Hours before the vote, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to say Iraq's government was determined to halt "terrorist activities" of the PKK on Iraqi territory, his office said.
A close aide to al-Maliki said later that the two leaders agreed the Iraqis should deal with PKK fighters based inside Iraq and the Turks would take care of guerrillas operating in Turkish territory.
President Sarkozy’s bumpy marriage with Cecilia, his partner of 20 years, appeared to have entered a terminal phase yesterday after the Elysee Palace failed to deny reports that the couple had legally separated.
According to Le Nouvel Observateur, a leading news weekly, both Sarkozys “went before a judge together at the end of the day on Monday, October 15, to make formal the separation procedure of the couple”. In another version, LCI, an all-news television channel, said that Mrs Sarkozy saw a judge alone on Monday morning. The judge later visited the Elysée to seek Mr Sarkozy’s counter-signature to a document, it said.
As France digested the apparent separation and possibility of divorce, legal experts questioned whether the President was entitled to alter his marital status while in office because his immunity barred him from involvement in any legal proceedings.
No officials or friends would confirm a split between Mr Sarkozy, 52, and the 49-year-old Premiere Dame, but the absence of any denials lent credence to reports over the past week that they had formally parted ways and were perhaps seeking divorce. Mrs Sarkozy, who was reunited with her husband last year after ten months spent with another man, has not appeared at an official event since July 14.
Mr Sarkozy has ordered a news blackout on what he and French traditionalists deem to be a private matter with no impact on the public interest. However some of his ministers have dropped hints about “the Cecilia problem”, as the media call the saga that has riveted France since Mrs Sarkozy vanished from the public stage in mid-July. “It is a private matter on which I can’t express myself,” Xavier Darcos, the Education Minister, said yesterday. He added: “I simply always find it painful to see that love can come apart but I don’t know anything.”
Senior insiders from the media have also been letting slip that separation is a fait accompli. L’Express news magazine reported yesterday on Mr Sarkozy’s new “solo” life as President. Christophe Barbier, its editor, wrote that “the Cecilia problem is currently being settled: any attempt to go back would be more ridiculous than happy”.
The President’s state of mind is the subject of widespread speculation because he had until recently proclaimed himself emotionally dependent on his wife.
Mrs Sarkozy has played a powerful role behind the scenes, acting for years as her husband’s gatekeeper and personnel chief when he was Interior and Finance Minister from 2002 to 2006. Several Ministers are said to owe their promotion to Mrs Sarkozy.
The Sarkozy marriage in 1996 followed a turbulent decade in which they lived together while divorcing previous spouses. Mr Sarkozy fell for Cecilia Ciganer, a former part-time model and university drop-out, when conducting her first marriage to Jacques Martin, a television celebrity. He was Mayor of Neuilly, the wealthy Paris suburb, at the time. Each had two children.
It was not clear from the media reports whether the Sarkozys might have applied for a formal legal separation or initiated divorce proceedings. Most divorces in France are now “no fault” actions by mutual consent. These require only one visit to a judge quite late in the procedure.
Chinese to English: Distributive justice General field: Other Detailed field: Economics
Source text - Chinese Distributive justice
How can the distribution of social goods in a society be just? Utopian visionaries throughout history have given answers to this question and, to the extent to which these answers varied, have set off ideological controversies as well as wars. Questions that need to be settled by dogma or force, however, are liable to have no answers at all. Presumably it is this insight that has led many sober-minded students in the fields of sociology, economics and political science to abandon the question of how distributive justice can be realized, replacing it with the question of why the belief in distributive justice is illusory.
Posed from this perspective the question gains complexity as well as openness. There may be many answers. None of these answers can claim to be the ultimate one but, summed, they may contribute to our understanding of the forces inhibiting or facilitating distributive social justice.
I attempt to address one of the many aspects of the illusion of distributive justice, focusing on the conceptual distinction between realizing vs. perceiving distributive justice. Distributive social justice is liable to be 'illusory' on both accounts. It can be illusory because, contrary to the beliefs we may have, it may be impossible for the distribution of social goods to be just regardless of what we do. For instance, the 'impossibility theorem', according to which collective social welfare functions cannot be determined, is directed towards the destruction of this type of illusion. Distributive justice, however, can also be illusory because the perception we have of it does not mirror reality adequately.
There is a certain causal relationship between the perceptual illusion and the illusory feasibility of distributive justice. Because if we perceive social distributions as just, even though this is not what they are, then nobody will attempt to strive for change. Thus we are left with distributions that are unjust for ever. That is, 'false' perceptions of distributive justice have social consequences that render the realization of distributive justice impossible.
Translation - English 分配公平
社会怎样才可以达到社会产品分配公平呢？历史上的空想家们曾经对这个问题做出过回答。但是，这些答案在一定程度上各有不同，而且还引发了意识形态上的争议和冲突。然而，要用教条或武力来解决的问题，都不可能有最终的答案。也许是因为有这样的认识，社会学、经济学和政治学领域很多理智的学生都不去过问分配公平是怎么实现的， 而是考虑为什么相信分配公平是幻想。
从这个角度看，这个问题既具有开放性，又有复杂性。所以，它也许有多个答案，但没有一个是最终的。总的来说，这些答案却有助于我们了解哪些因素可以抑制或促进在分配上求得社会公平。
对分配公平的幻想含多个方面。我试图找到其中一个的答案，就是从概念上区分实现和感知分配公平。分配社会公平是虚无缥缈的，有两个原因。不像我们期待的那样，不管我们怎么做，社会产品都不可能实现公平分配，只能是虚幻的。例如， 根据“不可能性定理”，集体社会福利函数是不确定的，那么，这就是在打破这种类型的幻想。不过，分配公平也可能是一种假象，因为我们对它的认识不能充分地反映社会现实。
感性的幻想和分配公平的幻觉可能性是有一定的因果关系。因为，如果我们认为社会分配是公平的，即使不是真正意义上的，那么就没有人会试图去争取改变现状。因此，我们只能永远认为分配是不公平的。这就是，对分配公平的“错误”看法会导致社会普遍认为：实现分配公平是不可能的。
Chinese to English: Global Warming Detailed field: Environment & Ecology
Source text - Chinese Global Warming
We are now faced with a momentous challenge: global warming. The steady deterioration of the very climate of our very planet is becoming a war of the first order, and by any measure, the U.S. is losing. The U.S. produces nearly a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases each year and has stubbornly made it clear that it doesn't intend to do a whole lot about it. Although 174 nations ratified the admittedly flawed Kyoto accords to reduce carbon levels, the U.S. walked away from them. While even developing China has boosted its mileage standards to 35 m.p.g., the U.S. remains the land of the Hummer.
The rub is, if the vast majority of people increasingly agree that climate change is a global emergency, there's far less consensus on how to fix it. Industry offers its plans, which too often would fix little. Environmentalists offer theirs, which too often amount to naive wish lists that could cripple America 's growth. But what would an aggressive, ambitious, effective plan look like—one that would leave us both environmentally safe and economically sound?
Halting climate change will be far harder than even that. One of the more conservative plans for addressing the problem calls for a reduction of 25 billion tons of carbon emissions over the next 50 years. And yet by devising a coherent strategy that mixes short-term solutions with farsighted goals, combines government activism with private-sector enterprise and blends pragmatism with ambition, the U.S. can, without major damage to the economy, help halt the worst effects of climate change and ensure the survival of our way of life for future generations. Money will get us part of the way there, but what's needed most is will.
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