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Lynching in Kenya
肯尼亚的私刑

A routine crime
犯罪已习以为常

Jun 18th 2009 | NAIROBI
From The Economist print edition

Mob justice is alarmingly common but few seem to mind
暴民的裁决普遍到骇人听闻，但好像没几个人在意

A LYNCHING took place recently outside an ironmonger’s shop in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. It was close to one of the city’s fancier shopping centres, early in the morning, with commuters streaming down the road on foot. A man had his mobile phone stolen but managed to lay a hand on the thief just long enough for the crowd to close in. His two accomplices waded in to rescue their man but the mob engulfed them. Stones rained down. Boulders crushed their heads and chests. Then the crowd moved on, became commuters once more, and the police removed three bodies.

近日，在肯尼亚首都内罗毕一家五金商店外，发生了一场私刑。该商店地处城市繁华的购物中心，当时正值大清早，上下班的人川流不息。一人的手机被偷，但他一只手托住了贼，正好让人群将贼围住。贼的两个同伙见状赶忙插手营救，但是暴民把他们仨都吞没了。石块如雨点般落下。巨大的石块砸碎了他们的脑袋和胸膛。之后，人群若无其事地继续前行，赶路上班去了。警察拖走了三具尸体。
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榕树下

Kim family saga: third and final act
金氏传奇：第三幕（终幕）
Jun 18th 2009
From The Economist print edition

North Korea’s dictator is on the way out; take aim at his successor
朝鲜大独裁者金正日渐行渐远，谁会是其继任者？

BRUTAL, pot-bellied and unpredictable: the same adjectives are always together on the larder shelf when editorial writers describe Kim Jong Il. But how helpful are they any more? There’s no quibbling over Mr Kim’s brutality. He runs his country like a gulag, and a Kim-made famine killed a twentieth of the population in the 1990s. As for pot-bellied, the description no longer holds, since, after a presumed stroke last summer, the Dear Leader looks frail, and as gaunt as his underfed subjects.

提到金正日，报刊社论主笔不约而同地用到这几个形容词：野蛮残忍、大腹便便、捉摸不透。可这几个词现在还适用吗？金正日的野蛮残忍毋庸置疑。朝鲜在他统治之下无异于一座集中营，20世纪90年代金氏政权治下的大饥荒夺去了朝鲜1/20人口的生命。至于金正日大腹便便，不再适用了，去年夏天中风之后，这位敬爱的领袖看起来虚弱不堪，骨瘦如柴，一如他食不果腹的子民们。

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Middle East & Africa

Israel and America

A test of friendship
友谊考验

Jun 11th 2009 | JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

Picking up the gauntlet thrown down by Barack Obama
奥巴马发飙,内塔尼亚胡接招…


Big bad Obama wants to blow their house down

IN AN interview before his address to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 4th, President Barack Obama urged honesty in the American-Israeli dialogue. “Part of being a good friend is being honest,” Mr Obama said. On June 14th it will be Binyamin Netanyahu’s turn. The Israeli prime minister is due to give his reply to Mr Obama’s unwelcome demands that Israel freeze settlements, accept the principle of the two-state solution and get on with negotiations with the Palestinians to bring it about.

6月4日,美国总统巴拉克.奥巴马在埃及开罗面向对穆斯林世界发表讲话. 而在此之前的一次访谈中,奥巴马敦促美以对话中应相互”坦诚”. “做为好朋友,坦诚相待是题中之义.”奥巴马说. 6月14日就要看本雅明.内塔尼亚胡的了. 奥巴马要求以色列冻结定居点修建,接受两国原则,同时与巴勒斯坦谈判以促成协议. 以色列总理即将就上述几点做出回应.

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Egypt’s pigs 埃及的猪

What a waste  
如此浪费

May 7th 2009 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition

Is it wise to kill the capital’s rubbish-ridding pigs?  
除掉首都的垃圾清理猪明智吗？

IN A city not much noted for efficiency, Cairo’s traditional rubbish collectors, or Zabbaleen, have long been something of a paragon. While failing to keep Egypt’s teeming capital very clean, the Zabbaleen, nearly all of them members of Egypt’s 6m-plus Coptic Christian minority, do an excellent job of processing waste. Trucking refuse to the half-dozen rag-picking settlements that ring the city, they carefully sift out recyclable glass, paper and plastic. The rest is fed to pigs.

在一个不怎么以高效率而著名的城市里，开罗的垃圾清理工，或者称为Zabbaleen（扎巴里人，阿拉伯语，意思是捡的垃圾的人），一直是了不起的劳动模范。Zabbaleen成员几乎都是信仰埃及基督教的Coptic（科普特人），埃及基督教是一个信徒刚过600万的少数教派。虽然不能保证这个埃及富裕的首都完全的清洁，但Zabbaleen垃圾处理工作，做的非常优秀。垃圾货运环绕城市居民区半打的垃圾回收点，他们仔细的挑选出可以循环再用的玻璃瓶子、旧报纸和塑料制品。余下的垃圾就喂给猪。
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[2009.4.16] One winner, many losers 一人功成万骨枯

Indonesia’s election results
印尼大选结果

One winner, many losers
一人功成万骨枯

 

Apr 16th 2009 | JAKARTA
From The Economist print edition

The president on course for re-election
总统连任指日可待

IN THE week after Indonesia’s parliamentary election on April 9th, the much-criticised election commission tabulated less than 7.5% of the estimated 123m votes cast. But five independent “quick counts”, based on samples of several thousand polling stations, produced almost identical results. So no surprises are expected.

4月9日举行的印尼议会选举结束一周后，饱受批评的选举委员会完成计票量只占了总共1.23亿张投下的选票中的不到7.5%。但是基于来自数千所投票站的样本的五家独立的“快速计票”却得出了几乎相同的结果。因此冷门是等不来了。

继续阅读“[2009.4.16] One winner, many losers 一人功成万骨枯”