摘要：下面是小编整理的一些，欢迎阅读!
1.Good morning. Today, January 13th is the anniversary of the publication of a famous letter by the French writer Emile Zola to the President of France. This letter, written in 1898, demanded justice for Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer languishing on Devils Island for passing military secrets to the Germans. Zola told the President that the case against Dreyfus was a tissue of lies concocted by the French military and based on false testimony. It ended with a string of denunciations: Jaccuse. I first heard about the Dreyfus affair when I was doing history ‘O level but it wasnt until last summer that I really understood what it was about – and that was when I read Robert Harriss treatment of it in his novel, an Officer and a Spy.
Harris tells the story from the point of view of the Head of French Counter Espionage, George Picquart.
He was no supporter of the Jews but he came to see that the evidence against Dreyfus was weak and he conducted an investigation of his own.
It was Picquart who identified the real traitor, Ferdinand Esterhazy. But nobody wanted to know.
In an atmosphere of casual anti-semitism the shame of truth was simply unendurable.
National pride and honour was at stake. Military officials tried to engineer the killing of Picquart, eventually he was sacked and disgraced. The evidence that would have exonerated Dreyfus was suppressed. The military had public opinion on their side. The government, the Catholic Church and the press were united in their determination to find Dreyfus guilty. Zolas letter, though, could not be ignored. He was eminent, he was influential, he exemplified the values of the Republic. You cannot bury truth, he said. The case split France into two opposing camps. Finally Dreyfus was summoned back re-tried and released. Loyal, as ever, to France he lived to fight in the First World War.
Robert Harriss treatment of the Dreyfus scandal helped me to see how easy it is for institutions and governments to protect themselves from inconvenient truths. We like to feel that we are on the side of virtue and most of the time we expect the truth to conform our assumptions. But truth is not prejudiced. It confronts us in the sheer otherness of the other who lives differently, believes differently and has a different vision of reality from our own. We can opt for a superficial acceptance which is only half meant, an acceptance which all too often breaks down under pressure; or we can return to our own spiritual sources and strive to be more honest, to deepen our moral vision. My own faith urges me to see in the face of the stranger, the face of God that is most unfamiliar and that I most fear; but it is also the face that I most need.
2.Dear Mark,
You dont know me. My name is Robert Yung CHOW, a very small user from Hong Kong, and I would like to share with you our experience. We opened a Media/News/Publishing fan page called HKG Pao this month, and immediately strange things began to happen.
On the first day we opened our Page, d our first post after seven hours. Within the next two hours, two more posts were d, making it three on the first day. The following morning, the fourth post was d. We put up a total of 18 posts during the first 24 hours and four were d, a ratio of 22%. The deletions happened both in our front end (Timeline) and our backend (Insight).
Now one would think we must have done some pretty offensive stuff, like insults to religion, pornography or worst. I would like to give you a brief rundown of what were in the posts:
The first post d was a piece authored by me explaining why I decided to start the web media called HKG Pao. The 800 word article had already been published in a newspaper, and was posted in my own fan page, as well as shared by a few sites the day before. No problem there. The picture we used was one featuring my not too attractive face, and which was approved by for use as an ad, and it is still being run on .
The second post d was a financial analysis on a listed company which just announced a profit warning. The picture used consisted of images of the major shareholder (an important political figure) and the CEO. Nothing offensive there except it may not please the company and its management, but what financial analysis on a profit-warned company ever did.
The third post d was an announcement for a voting to select the most popular faces of a political movement. The accompanying picture contained images of about 13 people, just head and shoulder shots. Nothing indecent there.
The fourth post d was a published newspaper article and we poked fun at a student leader who became the nominal head of 90,000 college students in Hong Kong by getting just 37 votes. What democracy, we asked. The image used was the students head and shoulder shot at a press conference.