问题描述：
英语翻译
看这本书看得我快死了 老师逼得紧啊 谁能帮我找找书评 越长的越好（中文翻译也可） 感激不尽.我放少点儿 要是好了最后追加50分
看这本书看得我快死了 老师逼得紧啊 谁能帮我找找书评 越长的越好（中文翻译也可） 感激不尽.我放少点儿 要是好了最后追加50分
问题解答：
我来补答
这书最好自己看看,很震撼的.
书评作者：Author: Bonnie — Published: Jan 20, 2006
I've struggled to articulate my thoughts on Race Against Time, Stephen Lewis's discussion of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. The book is too important for me to not do it justice. It is a book that everyone should read, that everyone should be frustrated and angered by. It's a book that reminds you of the great gaping chasms between the world we live in and the worlds others live in and the world we want to live in. Every time I sit down to write about this, my words don't seem like enough, or else it seems like I am repeating and rehashing the things that I said before.
Let me start with this: Race Against Time is a devastating and uplifting book. It's a quick read, conversational, and its pleas to the wealthy world are eloquent and righteously angry. People should read this book. It matters.
Now, the context. Every year, the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, airs the Massey Lectures. In this series of lectures, some issue or idea is examined in detail by a distinguished lecturer. In 2005, Stephen Lewis joined such Massey Lecture alumni as Martin Luther King, Jr, Northrop Frye and Doris Lessing. His series of lectures, collected in Race Against Time, took place and were aired in November 2005. (The first in the series can be heard in Real Audio here.)
In the lectures, Lewis — UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, former Ontario MPP, diplomat, feminist, member of the Order of Canada — examines the UN's Millennium Development Goals, eight multinationally agreed upon goals designed to improve millions of lives by the year 2015. They include reducing poverty and hunger by half; providing universal primary education; increasing gender equality; significantly decreasing maternal and early childhood mortality; and halting, then reversing, the spread of AIDS and malaria.
Lewis is not optimistic about the world's ability to achieve these goals. And he is angry. Angry at the inaction of the United Nations, and at the broken promises of wealthy countries, particularly Canada.
Yet we are the only G8 country with successive and continuing budgetary surpluses. And our minister of finance, as a member of Blair's Commission on Africa, endorsed the target of 0.7 percent [of GDP to foreign aid] by 2015. It was the central recommendation of the commission report. How do you sign the report and then repudiate it upon your return to Canada? It's perverse; it lacks integrity.
And:
The prime minister says that there's nothing worse in internationalism than to make promises that are not kept: that's the real immorality, he argues. With respect, he's wrong. The real immorality is for one of the most wealthy and privileged countries in the world to fail to respond adequately to the life and death struggle of hundreds of millions of impoverished people.
As a reader, the sense of Lewis as a man of just outrage is overwhelming. His frustration always seems sincere; it percolates up, every sentence like lava from a sleeping volcano, hot with the threat of explosion. Again and again, he expresses his astonishment at what he has seen in Africa. He talks about a trip with Graça Machel, where she was the first to talk to two teenaged girls about their periods, and about villages where there are whole generations gone, and about visiting an income-generating project in Nambia:
I...was greeted by the sight of four young men making miniature papier mâché coffins for infants: tiny, light, plain. As they affixed silver aluminum foil handles to the coffins, they looked at me and said, with an admixture of pride and pain, "We can't keep up with the demand."
Yet, there is a tug-of-war within Lewis that asserts itself in the book, a battle between his anger and his recognition that he cannot be effective if he doesn't play the game. International diplomacy is not a simple. It is not direct. It is not enough to have moral rightness on your side, not if you don't want to be shut out of the process altogether. I felt strong tugs of empathy as Lewis discussed his frustration with the system and with himself:
When I visited Swaziland, I met at length with the king in private, and attempted to persuade him, with a combination of subtlety and argument, that the world was increasingly impatient, his people were decimated, and his behaviour was unacceptable. Then we held a press conference together and I held my tongue.
I have felt guilty about that to this day. Whom did it serve but the bloated ego of the monarch? So I've rationalized my actions: I've persuaded myself that it's not for me to do, that it should be done by UN officials with far greater authority. I'm merely a part-time envoy.
But I know my excuses for remaining silent in the face of such behaviour don't wash. And I don't understand why my UN colleagues are prepared to put up with the behaviour...
Look at what our silence hides: polygamy, which denigrates women and spreads the virus; early marriage, which directly violates UN conventions (ratified by Swaziland!); monumental extravagance in the face of pernicious illness and misery. It's alright to speak out about Darfur, about the Congo, about northern Uganda, but not about Swaziland? Conflict is indictable, but wanton death from disease is acceptable?
At moments like these, it seems almost as if Lewis is calling himself to action along with Martin and Blair and Bush and Koizumi. Though Lewis was never a man without a voice, it's as though the lectures are the starting point of a new wave of activism, as he reaches the conclusion that none of us can afford to be silent.
It seems to me that those of us who care about the United Nations have an ethical responsibility to point out its failings and to suggest constructive alternatives. There is a tendency to think dissent should be contained or that self-censorship is to be applauded. I regard both as the last refuge of an intellectual wimp.
Lewis offers up more than admonishments and complaints. The final lecture/chapter focuses on what can be done to improve the situation in Africa and to move towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. He emphasizes the need for governments to make commitments to development — and to be held to those commitments. These commitments must also be genuine, and free of impossibly tangled strings. Lewis gives darts to the US for forcing NGO's receiving foreign aid to agree not to "support" prostitution; Brazil gets laurels for refusing to accept such a conditional donation, with its "ideological (read: fundamentalist) fiat."
Lewis believes in what governments could do, but he makes it clear that patience isn't a virtue when it comes to foreign aid.
In the circumstance of AIDS, there is no time for cerebral self-indulgence. The rich countries just won't deliver, and the poor countries can't deliver, and the dying increases exponentially.
Lewis advocates grassroots and corporate endeavours as more rapid responses to the AIDS pandemic. These include employer-sponsored programs to protect the health of the community of workers. He urges support for communities, including the unsung grandmothers who often face the burden of caring for dying children and orphaned grandchildren.
He advocates increased action by the UN when countries fail to live up to the agreements they have signed, such as those protecting the rights of children and women. Though he is unsure how an enforcement mechanism might work, he sees it as absolutely necessary: "Governments get away with it because no one cares enough to prevent governments from getting away with it."
Ultimately, Lewis seems to believe that it will be a monumental task to make the Millennium Development Goals when starting from here. The potential for failure, however, is seen as a reason to redouble the effort, rather than one to abandon hope. Lewis is an optimist who finds himself facing some of the worst circumstances, the worst human traits, and who continues to believe that it doesn't have to be this way. Lewis recognizes that every victory, no matter how small, will make the biggest victories seem feasible.
Success will demonstrate to the world that between daily misery on the one hand, and well-being on the other, there stands only the decision by the rich nations to share a tiny fraction of their wealth.
Lewis for all his fury has not abandoned hope. He nourishes it. In spreading his anger, he creates a red-hot glow of hope that will not be a extinguished.
书评作者：Author: Bonnie — Published: Jan 20, 2006
I've struggled to articulate my thoughts on Race Against Time, Stephen Lewis's discussion of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. The book is too important for me to not do it justice. It is a book that everyone should read, that everyone should be frustrated and angered by. It's a book that reminds you of the great gaping chasms between the world we live in and the worlds others live in and the world we want to live in. Every time I sit down to write about this, my words don't seem like enough, or else it seems like I am repeating and rehashing the things that I said before.
Let me start with this: Race Against Time is a devastating and uplifting book. It's a quick read, conversational, and its pleas to the wealthy world are eloquent and righteously angry. People should read this book. It matters.
Now, the context. Every year, the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, airs the Massey Lectures. In this series of lectures, some issue or idea is examined in detail by a distinguished lecturer. In 2005, Stephen Lewis joined such Massey Lecture alumni as Martin Luther King, Jr, Northrop Frye and Doris Lessing. His series of lectures, collected in Race Against Time, took place and were aired in November 2005. (The first in the series can be heard in Real Audio here.)
In the lectures, Lewis — UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, former Ontario MPP, diplomat, feminist, member of the Order of Canada — examines the UN's Millennium Development Goals, eight multinationally agreed upon goals designed to improve millions of lives by the year 2015. They include reducing poverty and hunger by half; providing universal primary education; increasing gender equality; significantly decreasing maternal and early childhood mortality; and halting, then reversing, the spread of AIDS and malaria.
Lewis is not optimistic about the world's ability to achieve these goals. And he is angry. Angry at the inaction of the United Nations, and at the broken promises of wealthy countries, particularly Canada.
Yet we are the only G8 country with successive and continuing budgetary surpluses. And our minister of finance, as a member of Blair's Commission on Africa, endorsed the target of 0.7 percent [of GDP to foreign aid] by 2015. It was the central recommendation of the commission report. How do you sign the report and then repudiate it upon your return to Canada? It's perverse; it lacks integrity.
And:
The prime minister says that there's nothing worse in internationalism than to make promises that are not kept: that's the real immorality, he argues. With respect, he's wrong. The real immorality is for one of the most wealthy and privileged countries in the world to fail to respond adequately to the life and death struggle of hundreds of millions of impoverished people.
As a reader, the sense of Lewis as a man of just outrage is overwhelming. His frustration always seems sincere; it percolates up, every sentence like lava from a sleeping volcano, hot with the threat of explosion. Again and again, he expresses his astonishment at what he has seen in Africa. He talks about a trip with Graça Machel, where she was the first to talk to two teenaged girls about their periods, and about villages where there are whole generations gone, and about visiting an income-generating project in Nambia:
I...was greeted by the sight of four young men making miniature papier mâché coffins for infants: tiny, light, plain. As they affixed silver aluminum foil handles to the coffins, they looked at me and said, with an admixture of pride and pain, "We can't keep up with the demand."
Yet, there is a tug-of-war within Lewis that asserts itself in the book, a battle between his anger and his recognition that he cannot be effective if he doesn't play the game. International diplomacy is not a simple. It is not direct. It is not enough to have moral rightness on your side, not if you don't want to be shut out of the process altogether. I felt strong tugs of empathy as Lewis discussed his frustration with the system and with himself:
When I visited Swaziland, I met at length with the king in private, and attempted to persuade him, with a combination of subtlety and argument, that the world was increasingly impatient, his people were decimated, and his behaviour was unacceptable. Then we held a press conference together and I held my tongue.
I have felt guilty about that to this day. Whom did it serve but the bloated ego of the monarch? So I've rationalized my actions: I've persuaded myself that it's not for me to do, that it should be done by UN officials with far greater authority. I'm merely a part-time envoy.
But I know my excuses for remaining silent in the face of such behaviour don't wash. And I don't understand why my UN colleagues are prepared to put up with the behaviour...
Look at what our silence hides: polygamy, which denigrates women and spreads the virus; early marriage, which directly violates UN conventions (ratified by Swaziland!); monumental extravagance in the face of pernicious illness and misery. It's alright to speak out about Darfur, about the Congo, about northern Uganda, but not about Swaziland? Conflict is indictable, but wanton death from disease is acceptable?
At moments like these, it seems almost as if Lewis is calling himself to action along with Martin and Blair and Bush and Koizumi. Though Lewis was never a man without a voice, it's as though the lectures are the starting point of a new wave of activism, as he reaches the conclusion that none of us can afford to be silent.
It seems to me that those of us who care about the United Nations have an ethical responsibility to point out its failings and to suggest constructive alternatives. There is a tendency to think dissent should be contained or that self-censorship is to be applauded. I regard both as the last refuge of an intellectual wimp.
Lewis offers up more than admonishments and complaints. The final lecture/chapter focuses on what can be done to improve the situation in Africa and to move towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. He emphasizes the need for governments to make commitments to development — and to be held to those commitments. These commitments must also be genuine, and free of impossibly tangled strings. Lewis gives darts to the US for forcing NGO's receiving foreign aid to agree not to "support" prostitution; Brazil gets laurels for refusing to accept such a conditional donation, with its "ideological (read: fundamentalist) fiat."
Lewis believes in what governments could do, but he makes it clear that patience isn't a virtue when it comes to foreign aid.
In the circumstance of AIDS, there is no time for cerebral self-indulgence. The rich countries just won't deliver, and the poor countries can't deliver, and the dying increases exponentially.
Lewis advocates grassroots and corporate endeavours as more rapid responses to the AIDS pandemic. These include employer-sponsored programs to protect the health of the community of workers. He urges support for communities, including the unsung grandmothers who often face the burden of caring for dying children and orphaned grandchildren.
He advocates increased action by the UN when countries fail to live up to the agreements they have signed, such as those protecting the rights of children and women. Though he is unsure how an enforcement mechanism might work, he sees it as absolutely necessary: "Governments get away with it because no one cares enough to prevent governments from getting away with it."
Ultimately, Lewis seems to believe that it will be a monumental task to make the Millennium Development Goals when starting from here. The potential for failure, however, is seen as a reason to redouble the effort, rather than one to abandon hope. Lewis is an optimist who finds himself facing some of the worst circumstances, the worst human traits, and who continues to believe that it doesn't have to be this way. Lewis recognizes that every victory, no matter how small, will make the biggest victories seem feasible.
Success will demonstrate to the world that between daily misery on the one hand, and well-being on the other, there stands only the decision by the rich nations to share a tiny fraction of their wealth.
Lewis for all his fury has not abandoned hope. He nourishes it. In spreading his anger, he creates a red-hot glow of hope that will not be a extinguished.
展开全文阅读