真實筆記

五月十一日，美國總统布殊(布希)接見了中國異見人士余杰，談信仰與中國宗教自由，當中自然大有玄機。

近年不少中國異見份子歸依基督教，但觀乎他們的言行，例如余杰一直大力主戰，並曾高喊建議美國以伊拉克模式來改變中國，我看他們更像歸依了布殊！

我在零四年十一月到美國採訪大選，順道解構布殊背後的基督教基本教義派力量，發覺他們正在推動以他們的宗教去改變中國的任務，而那些以為悟了道的中國異見份子，是投進了基督的懷抱，還是投進了布殊的懷抱，成為美國基督教基要派的馬前卒？

正當布殊背後的新保守主義與基督教基本教義派對中國"威脅"步步為營之際，他們是多麼需要馬前卒來為他們效命，推動他們的政治議程。今次布殊會見余杰等知名異見基督徒，其意圖可想而知。
基督倡議憐恤與慈愛，不容這批好鬥份子來挾持！

請參考以下一篇來自一位朋友的相關文章：

美國基督教民族主義崛起－聖戰在即？

除了以 Thank God for Tsunami & Katrina 聞名的 godhatesfags.com 後, 美國原來還有專招募年輕人的 BattleCry, 讀到其酷似法西斯主義的言論, 不由得心寒兼起雞毛......

BattleCry 這隊基督少年軍來勢可強勁得多, 真個有財有勢, 單在三藩市就有 25,000 年輕人參與集會, Detroit 有 35,000, 費城則有15,000, 齊齊向流行文化及藝術宣戰 (因為污染年輕人的心智), 誓將美國變成 Theocracy , 仲話要以 Bible 作為 literal 的 instruction book, 言論、行徑及狂熱程度與當年法西斯主義酷似, 有人直斥為基督教法西斯主義, 有人說只是偽法西斯主義但可能表示其影響會更加深遠。

令人最不安的是政教合一的傾向, 大會開始時宣讀布殊的祝賀信件, 仲話Thank God for Bush. 大會最後還邀請軍人和執法人員全副軍服登台, 嘉許他們為主而戰。

Franklin Graham 上台話入侵伊拉克就如聖經故事中 "taming Babylonians" 一樣, 仲話:“No souls can be saved without the shedding of blood. Blood must be shed!”

這可會令你想起希特拉少年軍還是紅衞兵? 咁就要慢慢看下去。相關資料好多, 慢慢看吧:

Positive Liberty comments

Battle Cry For Theocracy 共三篇文章: 1, 2, 3

Young Christian Soldiers 有詳細的分析

BattleCry 網頁

好奇怪，我每次採訪和平運動，站在前線的，大多是女性。上星期剛過的母親節，你想過甚麽？做過甚麽？在此，讓我們惦念失去兒子的母親，那些美國大兵的母親、那些伊拉克的母親、蘇丹的母親，兒子不知為何捲入戰爭而消失，美國的粉紅色媽媽跑到白宮前，高聲說：不要奪走我的兒子！
請參考: www.codepinkalert.org

把這個故事告訴你的媽媽！做媽媽的你也請一同來撫慰這批受傷的媽媽！
老吾老以及人之老，幼吾幼以子人之幼，媽吾媽以及人之媽！
只要說句：your pain is our pain！

一位認識多年的中國內地記者，到美國三年後，日前經香港返回內地，說希望能夠在內地游說有關單位辦一份《紐約客》。

　　我有點感慨，內地新聞行業諸多掣肘，但那裏的記者仍努力衝破種種限制，以能辦出一份優質新聞刊物為己任，反觀香港，我們卻樂於沉淪於黃賭毒的傳媒裏，歷久不衰。

　　講起《紐約客》，我向朋友表示有興趣認識該雜誌記者史蒙爾˙赫什（Seymour Hersh），並計劃到華盛頓時順道探訪他。

　　赫什在美國是位知名度極高的記者，算起來他快七十歲了。他在六九年揭開梅麗村大屠殺（My Lai Massacre），並取得普立茲獎後，繼續為新聞奮鬥至今，期間發表過無數一流調查報告，令我們進一步接近新聞真相，而他也充分發揮了監察角色。

　　本身為猶太裔的赫什，曾勇敢地揭發以色列核武實情，並撰寫成書－《The Samson Option》。當他在新書發布會提及書中會公開一個與英國有關的秘密，在場所有英國記者都不敢報道，直至有兩位英國國會議員率先在國會提問，大家才打破沉默。

　　這秘密也實在奇情。赫什在上述著作中，指英國《每日郵報》外交編輯戴維斯（Nicholas Davis）暗中提示駐倫敦的以色列大使館，以色列核武專家 Mordechai Vanunu 或已向《星期日時報》和《星期日郵報》洩露了以色列核武計劃，導致 Vanunu 給以色列特工綁架回國，其後被判十八年監禁，而《每日郵報》集團老闆 Robert Maxwell 和戴維斯亦落井下石，大肆抹黑 Vanunu。赫什指這兩位報界人士與以色列情報機構穆薩（Mossad）有密切關係。最後，戴維斯給 Maxwell 開除，而 Maxwell 不久亦離奇葬身大海。

　　赫什的膽識，踏入老年也沒有減退，年前他才揭開伊拉克阿布格來布監獄虐囚的醜聞。


赫什自六九年揭發越南梅麗村屠殺事件後，一直堅持監察者的崗位，到他於早前揭露巴格達阿布格萊布監獄虐囚醜聞，震驚世界，他一直被視為不可忽略的調查記者。有人指他敢於向黑暗咆哮，又有人指他火氣十足。在任何一個社會，都需要有這一類型的記者。

　　當我提出要相約赫什時，在紐約的朋友耍手兼擰頭。他說，赫什脾氣古怪，不容易與他溝通。朋友打趣表示，如果你硬要與自己過不去，便去找他吧，但要找他也不易。赫什不時受邀到大學演講，聽聞他一開口就不能停。電視台的主持亦很怕他，他會雄辯滔滔的令到主持無法插口，最要命的，就是節目經常要超時。

　　朋友說，他本也想找赫什暢談大事，但他所工作的哥倫比亞大學傳媒學院，院長指連他想約赫什亦不得要領，更何況是我們這些名不經傳的後輩？

　　但我則不認為這樣，人與人之間除了緣份外，還要看能否談得上，所謂「酒逢知己千杯少，話不投機半句多」。我對自己頗有信心，我一定可與赫什來一場有意思的對話。朋友聽後大笑，他指赫什近年變得愈來愈極端。去年年初，他又大爆美國已派出密探到伊朗蒐集可攻擊的核據點。赫什在他文章指出，他的消息來源是屬於很內部的情報，這包括國防部和中情局。

　　上月，他又在《紐約客》發表文章，題為「伊朗計劃︰總統布殊會否為了打擊德克蘭核武而開戰？」，文章滿是邏輯證據和內情，有興趣的讀者可到www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact
看看。即使我們不願相信，有些事情卻仍繼續秘密運作。

　　香港是多麼缺乏像赫什這樣的調查記者呢！

In response to the arugument put forward by the reader " York ", the following artilce may help us to know who is to be blamed for the disaester taken place in the third World. Of course, I don't mean the regimes of the third World themselves are innocent, but the West cannot claim their hands are clean too. The ghost of imperialism is still there, though it has taken a different form, as the other reader Ahchoi points out.


DERRICK Z. JACKSON
A lesson unlearned in El Salvador
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | April 26, 2006

First of two parts
AS AUXILIARY bishop of San Salvador, Gregorio Rosa Chavez wonders if the United States learned anything from its murderous meddling in his nation. He remembers reading a magazine article shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, about how Americans surround themselves with information but much of it ''frivolous and superfluous." He said the article talked about how such shallow knowledge leads to US foreign policy being based on the moment, ''only looking at our navel as if the world ended at the border with Mexico."

Rosa Chavez wondered if the attacks would wake up the United States to look beyond the navel. He wondered if Americans would truly begin to ponder the question of ''Why do they hate us?" After the unprovoked invasion of Iraq under false pretenses in 2003, the answer was a terrible no.

''Pope John Paul called the war a 'defeat for humanity,' " Rosa Chavez said. ''The pope gave his condolences to the American people for Sept. 11. But we also needed to enter a new understanding that we are one world where we only have a future together if we get rid of barriers and walls. Preemptive war makes no sense . . . I worry the US will have to ask again, 'Why do they hate us?' "

Rosa Chavez was in Cambridge last week to receive the Romero Truth Award from Centro Presente, a Latino immigrant advocacy organization. The award is named for Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who was assassinated in 1980, presumably by a right-wing death squad. The assassination was part of a 1980-1992 civil war between leftist guerrillas and a US-backed right-wing government that resulted in at least 75,000 deaths and thousands more disappeared.

Rosa Chavez said Iraq means that El Salvador is a lesson unlearned. The Reagan and first Bush administrations gave the Salvadoran government $6 billion in economic and military aid during the war. Rosa Chavez and the Catholic church condemned atrocities on both sides but was often threatened by the government because its pleas for human rights for peasants were seen as too far to the left.

No amount of killings mattered to anti-communist hard-liners in Washington, not even the murders of four Maryknoll nuns from the United States and six Jesuit priests. One such hard-liner was then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Intelligence documents released in 1993 indicated that Cheney opposed attempts by members of Congress to withhold military aid to El Salvador during that government's slothful investigation of the murder of the priests. In a 1989 appearance on ABC's ''This Week with David Brinkley," Cheney claimed there was ''no indication at all" that the Salvadoran government or the army were involved.

Documents and soldier confessions in the mid- and late-1990s showed that the killings of the priests and nuns were directly tied to the military, and the Reagan administration suppressed and overlooked intelligence on state-sponsored terror links. As late as 1990, US military officers were training well-to-do Salvadorans linked to death squads.

A decade later, Vice President Cheney turned that legacy upside down, trumping up discredited intelligence to invade Iraq. In the 2004 vice presidential debate, he had the nerve to use El Salvador as an example of what would happen in Afghanistan and Iraq. He boasted, ''we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress. . . . And today El Salvador is a whale of a lot better because we held free elections."

This is after he refused to ''observe" how we sponsored so many of the 75,000 deaths over the 12 years of the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

Rosa Chavez, part of the religious vanguard that risked life for peace and elections, remembers a whale of a lot more than Cheney, enough to fear for the future of Iraq. He remembers US ambassadors denying witness protection and cruelly interrogating courageous people who came forward with information on the state-sponsored terror. ''It was really terrible because (US) politics were not based on values and human rights," he said. ''During the war, I had to receive many US delegations, and frequently I got the impression they really did not care about the people. It was painful.

''I would say the Salvadoran case is even worse than Iraq. In Iraq, the US sent its army. In the Salvadoran case, the arms came from outside, but the deaths are all Salvadorans."


DERRICK Z. JACKSON
In El Salvador, an invasion of American agriculture
By Derrick Z. Jackson | April 29, 2006

Second of two parts

WHEN THE US-backed government and military of El Salvador brutally repressed their people in the 1980-92 civil war that took 75,000 lives, Gregorio Rosa Chavez was one of those who pleaded to the outside world, ''We don't need bullets; we need beans."

Today, he still pleads for the beans.

To understand why, one can start with a 2003 article by the US Department of Agriculture, titled ''El Salvador Offers a Balmy Climate for US Agricultural Exports." Written as the United States pushed for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, it said, ''Some 20 percent of El Salvador's population regularly purchases US food items. . . . With more women joining the labor force and fewer domestic employees to assist in food preparation, the demand for convenience and fast foods is increasing. . . .

''Generally, people living in urban areas consume more bread and meats than tortillas and beans. Urban Salvadorans are very familiar with US-style food, and most US fast-food franchises have outlets in El Salvador. Food courts in shopping malls are popular and viewed as a perfect place to socialize. . . . US foods such as hot dogs and hamburgers are preferred by the younger generation."

Rosa Chavez, the auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, said this is not his idea of globalization.

''It is taking away our identity," he said last week in Cambridge, where he received an award from the Latino immigration advocacy group Centro Presente. He spoke through an interpreter. ''I talked to a girl recently who was born in the US but whose parents are from El Salvador. She told me that she felt at home on her first visit to El Salvador because she saw McDonald's. I see it as a symbol of how globalization promises so much economically, but impoverishes us by stealing our soul. Right now, the culture of globalization is more about having stuff just for pleasure, hedonism, and power."

El Salvador was the first nation to implement CAFTA, which was not surprising because of our continued long reach into its affairs. It has adopted the dollar as its national currency. President Tony Saca won office in 2004 with haunting support from the United States. US envoy Otto Reich -- notorious for his covert propaganda in Iran-Contra -- warned Salvadoran journalists that he was ''concerned" what a leftist presidency would do to the ''economic, commercial, and migratory relations with the United States."

El Salvador is the last Latin American nation to still have troops in Iraq, 380 of them. Its reward is an invasion of American agriculture. Under CAFTA, tariffs are eliminated on one of the staples of fast food, frozen fries. Tariffs on red beans, black beans, and peas will be phased out over 15 years. ''We are going to have many peasants who do traditional Salvadoran farming who will be driven off their farms and forced into factories because of American goods," Rosa Chavez said.

In return, President Bush says Salvadorans will benefit with cheaper and better US goods and industrial investments. But 48 percent of the people remain in poverty, the cost of living has gone up, and the gap between rich and poor is widening, according to data from the Congressional Research Service and even the US Agency for International Development. That poverty would be worse if Salvadorans were not receiving nearly $3 billion a year in remittances from relatives in the United States. That cash accounts for 17 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, according to the State Department.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 28 percent of adults in El Salvador receive remittances from the United States. During the civil war, the United States spent an average of about $500 million a year to prop up a regime that a United Nations-sponsored truth commission judged responsible for 85 percent of the deaths. Today, we give a mere $40 million a year to help that country come to life.

Rosa Chavez called this a ''diabolical cycle." Many Salvadorans fled the instability at our hands to work in the United States at high legal risk, often on dangerous jobs and at poverty wages to provide the high life for Americans and a higher life for Salvadorans at home.

''Globalization might help some people," Rosa Chavez said, ''but we also have Salvadorans in the US who never buy new clothes, go to the worst schools, and who send money home to people who purchase the most expensive shoes, and shop for the biggest televisions in the malls in El Salvador. It ends up being poor dollars sent by poor people, and for what?"

原來，當我們為香港恒生指數不斷上升至萬七點而興奮、又或為阿扁出訪拉美途上處處踫壁而大發議論之際，北非阿拉伯地區蘇丹竟然肆無忌彈上演大屠殺，這令我想起盧旺達九四年的悲劇，說甚麽全球化，在香港新聞上卻看不見、聽不到一個字有關蘇丹的屠殺事件，我為我們的泠漠與無知不寒而慄。

我們可以做甚麽？我想，至少可以上www.savedarfur.org 綱站，了解情況，留言，為他們打氣，甚至加入簽名行動。這個行動由George Clooney 發起。

《油激暗戰》男主角George Clooney剛從蘇丹回來，旋即在華盛頓記者俱樂部高調舉行記者會，悲憤慨歎蘇丹新一輪的血腥衝突，是二十一世紀第一場最嚴峻的人道災難，呼籲美國國民關注，並聲言會利用他的知名度推動蘇丹和平。

　　不知他如何推動？蘇丹劫難從沒有停止過，最近由於蘇丹西部達爾富爾（Darfur）地區再起風雲，最殘暴的仇殺又在世人面前上演，嚇得聯合國慌忙開會，恐怕會是另一場盧旺達式大屠殺，令聯合國一再蒙羞。

　　記得發生於九四年盧旺達的一場上百萬人大屠殺，聯合國反應遲緩，至今仍然成為話柄。今次不敢怠慢，急忙與安理會成員國開會商討對策，這不外乎加派維和部隊，又或進一步向蘇丹制裁。

　　蘇丹的廝殺早於半個世紀前開始，如果要追溯因由，應從五六年蘇丹結束英國殖民統治成為獨立國家說起。

　　獨立後不久，蘇丹即陷入內戰，以游牧為主的阿拉伯黑人和以務農為主的非阿拉伯黑人，他們為爭奪土地和水源，而鬥個你死我活。

　　到後期蘇丹南部發現石油，卻給政府操控，只把石油利益惠及阿拉伯財閥，並給指控暗地資助阿拉伯黑人民兵大開殺戒。南部兩個主要反政府武裝組織「公義平等運動」簡稱JEM，和「蘇丹解放運動」，簡稱SLM，以武力抗爭，他們大多是非阿拉伯黑人基督徒。

　　蘇丹的衝突為甚麼停不下來，我於年前曾在此討論過。有一點我想再提提，就是國際傳媒把蘇丹悲劇簡單描述為種族與宗教派系仇殺，即阿拉伯裔 vs 非阿拉伯裔，穆斯林 vs 基督徒，但其實只要有到過蘇丹，都會知道，當地穆斯林與基督徒本可和平共處，如今他們同是受害者，只不過最初獨裁政府與財閥民兵勾結，謀取最大利益，因此，沒有公義與民主，和平便不可實現。


當勞動節來臨，黃金周開始，為香港帶來一個賺大錢的憧憬之際，華盛頓那邊廂，荷里活明星 George Clooney 卻在同一時間展開「拯救達爾富爾」的游說行動，他的魅力引來一大批群眾聚集，聆聽他訴說這被喻為二十一世紀第一場的大屠殺。

　　三十萬人！這個數字雖然只及盧旺達一百萬人大屠殺的三分之一，但，發生在蘇丹西部地區達爾富爾（Darfur）的三十萬人屠殺事件，足已使二十一世紀蒙羞，而最蒙羞的則可能是我們這群安逸的香港人，因為香港資訊自由發達，卻不是有很多人獲知達爾富爾正在上演屠殺悲劇。

　　○四年香港國際電影節挑選了 《盧旺達大酒店》（Hotel Rwanda）上演，座無虛席，不知香港觀眾觀看過後，有何感想？

　　盡管這部電影仍有不足之處，但它卻有力控訴了全世界對盧旺達大屠殺的冷漠和袖手旁觀，眼巴巴讓一百萬人就這樣給殘殺！

　　電影裏，一位西方記者拍攝了屠殺過程，盧旺達人感謝他說，希望盧旺達的慘劇可透過他的片段，使世人知道，繼而採取行動，那他們便有救了。

　　可是，該記者卻無奈地回答，西方觀眾看後，可能會呼叫「太恐怖了」，然後繼續進食他們的美餐。至於西方政客，他們會盤算，為盧旺達說話會為他們帶來選票嗎？

　　George Clooney 呼籲美國人關注達爾富爾的大屠殺，美國選民應對總統表示，他們知道這個世界，正在發生甚麼事情，而他們投下一票時，會考慮到候選人的外交政策，能否彰顯公義！當然，這個想法太天真了，大部分選民，包括我們這邊廂，只有眼前自己的利益。

　　試想想，如果有香港記者在追訪中國領導人出巡時，問的不是「你支唔支持香港特首呀？」，而是「你會否支持國際干預蘇丹大屠殺？」，那將是多麽一個令人振奮的場景。