HW Reading 2

CHARTISM: A PEOPLE'S PETITION TO PARLIAMENT

A The early decades of the 1800s are well known as a period of discontent and social unrest. The Industrial Revolution meant the decline of traditional rural communities and the growth of a working class urban population, particularly in the new industrial towns of the North such as Manchester. Living and working conditions for the urban factory worker were frequently appalling and gave rise to a number of movements aimed at bettering working class conditions. One such movement was Chartism, which aimed to present a people's charter, or petition for reform, to parliament. It had a number of aims, but first and foremost among them was the granting of universal suffrage or the vote for all men over the age of 21.

giai cấp công nhân thành thị Anh đầu thế kỷ 19 sống trong điều kiện khổ cực, thúc đẩy nhiều phong trào cải cách — nổi bật là Chartism, với mục tiêu hàng đầu là quyền bầu cử toàn dân cho đàn ông trên 21 tuổi.

B There had been several previous attempts in the early 1800s to build a solid working-class movement, most notably the attempt to establish a universal trade union known as the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union or GNCTU. In 1834, however, this trade union collapsed. The subsequent disillusionment led to a growth of interest in other possible ways of giving voice to the desires and grievances of the workers. In 1836, the London Working Men's Association was founded, led by William Lovett. Its aim was to reform parliament, and in 1838 it issued a charter demanding six political reforms, including universal suffrage. Most of these demands were to be taken up by the Chartist petitioners.

sau khi công đoàn toàn quốc GNCTU sụp đổ năm 1834, Hiệp hội London Working Men's ra đời năm 1836 với mục tiêu cải cách nghị viện — đặt nền móng trực tiếp cho các kiến nghị Chartist.

C So began the Chartist movement. Other centres of this movement were located in Birmingham, and in the north of England. In Birmingham, the movement was championed by Thomas Attwood, a banker who was interested in leading the movement for parliamentary reform in the Midlands, and Joseph Sturge, a wealthy corn merchant. The key figure in the north of England was Fergus O'Connor, at that time the editor of the newspaper The Northern Star.

phong trào Chartist lan rộng ra Birmingham (Attwood và Sturge) và miền Bắc nước Anh (O'Connor — chủ bút tờ The Northern Star), phản ánh quy mô quốc gia.

D In 1839, a Chartist National Convention assembled in London. The delegates talked of proclaiming a 'sacred month' or general strike, and collected signatures for a great petition. This petition was presented to parliament but it was rejected in the Commons by 235 votes to 46. Thereupon the National Convention proclaimed a general strike, but a week later cancelled the proclamation and ignominiously dismissed itself. The government meanwhile had taken action and additional troops had been sent to those areas where Chartism was strongest. Disturbances in Birmingham were crushed, and William Lovett was arrested. The only other Chartist rising occurred in Monmouthshire where a group of miners marched in Newport. Again, this Newport Rising was quickly crushed and its leaders transported for life.

kiến nghị lần 1 (1839) bị Hạ viện bác bỏ 235–46; Công ước đe dọa đình công rồi thụt lui; chính phủ đàn áp; Newport Rising bị dập tắt và lãnh đạo bị đày.

E In 1842, a second petition was presented to parliament but was again rejected by 287 votes to 49. A series of riots and strikes followed, most notably the Lancashire Plug Plot, where strikers went round the mills removing the plugs from boilers. Again, government troops moved in to crush all such disturbances and many chartists were arrested. William Lovett subsequently abandoned the cause, and Fergus O'Connor rose to prominence as the main Chartist leader.

kiến nghị lần 2 (1842) cũng bị bác bỏ 287–49; làn sóng biểu tình tiếp theo (Lancashire Plug Plot) bị đàn áp; O'Connor nổi lên thay Lovett làm lãnh đạo chính.

F In 1848, under the leadership of O'Connor, a third Chartist petition was drawn up, known as the 'Monster Petition'. It was intended to be taken to parliament in a large procession, but the government took elaborate military precautions, and the procession was forbidden to cross the Thames. It was therefore taken to parliament in three cabs instead. O'Connor had claimed that the petition contained five million signatures, but in the event, it was found to contain less than two million, and a great many of these were false. Parliament refused to discuss it, and the Chartist movement was discredited.

kiến nghị lần 3 — 'Monster Petition' (1848) — bị lật tẩy gian lận chữ ký (dưới 2 triệu thay vì 5 triệu); Quốc hội từ chối thảo luận, phong trào mất uy tín.

G Despite the fiasco of the third petition, the Chartist movement gave expression to a number of proposals which were later adopted to produce a reformed parliamentary system. Universal manhood suffrage, the abolition of the property qualification, and a secret ballot all featured among the Chartists' demands and all of them were eventually granted. In essence, the demands of the Chartists were too far ahead of the times, and consequently, the government took very resolute action to control and suppress their actions. Doubtless, the contemporary essayist Thomas Carlyle expressed the fear of many MPs when he wrote, 'These chartisms are our French Revolution. God grant that we, with our better methods, may be able to transact it by argument alone.'

dù thất bại tức thời, Chartism tiên phong cho dân chủ hiện đại: quyền bầu cử toàn dân, bỏ phiếu bí mật đều được thực hiện sau này. Nhưng yêu cầu họ quá vượt thời đại nên bị chính phủ đàn áp mạnh.

AUSTERITY MEASURES

A Austerity measures are actions that a state undertakes in order to pay back its creditors. These measures typically involve slashing government expenditure and hiking taxes, and most of the time these are imposed on a country when its national deficit is believed to have become unsustainable. In this situation, banks may lose trust in the government's ability or willingness to repay existing debts, and in return can refuse to roll over current loans and demand cripplingly excessive interest rates on new lending. Governments frequently then turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an inter-governmental organisation that functions as a lender of last resort. In return, the IMF typically demands austerity measures so that the indebted country is able to curtail its budget deficit and fulfil their loan obligations.

thắt lưng buộc bụng = cắt chi tiêu và/hoặc tăng thuế để trả nợ. Khi ngân sách mất kiểm soát và ngân hàng mất tin tưởng, chính phủ cầu cứu IMF — nhưng IMF cho vay kèm điều kiện thực hiện các biện pháp này.

B A wave of austerity measures across Europe in 2010 has seen cuts and freezes to pensions, welfare and public sector salaries as well as hikes to some taxes and excises. The Greek programme attempts to narrow its budget shortfall from 8.1 percent of GDP in 2010 to 2.6 percent of GDP in 2014 primarily by freezing public sector incomes during that period and reducing public sector allowances by 8 percent. Additionally, VAT—the Greek sales tax—will be elevated to 23 percent, and excises on fuel, tobacco and alcohol are also subject to an increase. The statutory retirement age for women will be raised to 65, matching it with the current retirement age for men. These reforms have been deeply unpopular in Greece, prompting a succession of general strikes that have further dented the economy.

hy Lạp 2010 áp dụng gói lớn: đóng băng lương công chức, giảm phụ cấp 8%, tăng VAT lên 23%, tăng thuế rượu/thuốc lá/xăng, cân bằng tuổi nghỉ hưu nam–nữ. Kết quả: liên tiếp đình công.

C IMF-imposed austerity measures have been indicted for encouraging the deep recession following the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Starting from the early 1990s, international investors from wealthier countries such as Japan and the United States began pouring money into Southeast Asia, looking to make some quick returns, and the soaring economies of Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and others earned themselves the title "the Asian tigers". When things started to turn sour, however, the foreign investors panicked and retracted their investments en masse, decimating Asian currencies and turning millions of employees out of work. The IMF's role in the recovery was to impose austerity measures that kept interest rates high while driving down wages and labour standards at a time when workers were already suffering. According to one former IMF economist, these interventions on a global scale have caused the deaths of 6 million children every year.

IMF bị chỉ trích vì làm trầm trọng thêm khủng hoảng tài chính châu Á 1997: duy trì lãi suất cao + hạ tiêu chuẩn lao động khi người dân đã khổ. Theo một cựu kinh tế gia IMF, chính sách này gây chết 6 triệu trẻ em mỗi năm.

D Many economists consequently view austerity measures as a terrible blunder. John Maynard Keynes was the first to propose an alternative method, long before the Asian financial crisis. Governments, he attempted to demonstrate, could conceivably spend their national economy out of debt. Although logically implausible at first blush, this argument is based on the notion that recessions deepen from a persistent cycle of low incomes, low consumer spending and low business growth. A government can theoretically reverse this downward spiral by injecting the economy with much needed (albeit borrowed) capital. This is not equivalent to an indebted consumer spending further into the red, Keynes argued, because while the consumer gains no further income on that expenditure, the government's dollar goes into the economy and then partially boomerangs later on in the form of taxation.

Keynes đề xuất hướng ngược: chính phủ chi tiêu để phá vỡ vòng xoáy suy thoái (thu nhập thấp → tiêu dùng thấp → tăng trưởng thấp). Khoản đầu tư công quay lại qua thuế — khác hẳn nợ cá nhân.

E Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz follows up on this approach by noting that households across the world are currently burdened with debt. For businesses to grow, he argues, government and consumer expenditure must kick in first. Austerity measures lower the spending capacity of households, and are therefore considered under-productive. Another recipient of the Nobel Prize, Paul Krugman, points to the recent experiences of countries such as Ireland, Latvia and Estonia. Countries that implement austerity are the "good soldiers" of the crisis, he notes, implementing savage spending cuts. "But their reward has been a slump—and financial markets continue to treat them as a serious default risk".

Stiglitz và Krugman phản đối: chi tiêu chính phủ + người dân phải kích hoạt trước thì doanh nghiệp mới phục hồi được. Ireland, Latvia, Estonia là bằng chứng rằng 'lính ngoan' thắt lưng vẫn bị thị trường coi là rủi ro.

F In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron defended the necessity of austerity measures for his country by denouncing the frivolity of governments that ratchet up spending at a time the economy is contracting. This is in line with the counter-Keynesian viewpoint, known broadly as the neoclassical position. Neoclassical economists argue that business is "inspired" by fiscally conservative governments, and this "confidence" helps re-ignite the economy. A British think-tank economist, Marshall Auerback, questions this line of thinking, wondering if Cameron suggests governments should only "ratchet up spending when the economy is growing." This, Auerback warns, should be avoided because it presents genuine inflationary dangers.

Cameron bảo vệ thắt lưng buộc bụng (quan điểm tân cổ điển: tiết kiệm tạo 'niềm tin' cho doanh nghiệp). Auerback cảnh báo ngược lại: tăng chi tiêu khi kinh tế đang tăng trưởng cũng gây lạm phát.

GREAT MIGRATION

A Animal migration, however it is defined, is far more than just the movement of animals. It can loosely be described as travel that takes place at regular intervals—often in an annual cycle—that may involve many members of a species, and is rewarded only after a long journey. It suggests inherited instinct. The biologist Hugh Dingle has identified five characteristics that apply, in varying degrees and combinations, to all migrations. They are prolonged movements that carry animals outside familiar habitats; they tend to be linear, not zigzaggy; they involve special behaviours concerning preparation (such as overfeeding) and arrival; they demand special allocations of energy. And one more: migrating animals maintain an intense attentiveness to the greater mission, which keeps them undistracted by temptations and undeterred by challenges that would turn other animals aside.

di cư là hành trình định kỳ, xa, theo bản năng và đòi hỏi phân bổ năng lượng đặc biệt. Dingle xác định 5 đặc điểm: tuyến thẳng, chuẩn bị (ăn quá mức), duy trì tập trung cao độ vào mục tiêu lớn hơn.

B An arctic tern, on its 20,000 km flight from the extreme south of South America to the Arctic circle, will take no notice of a nice smelly herring offered from a bird-watcher's boat along the way. While local gulls will dive voraciously for such handouts, the tern flies on. Why? The arctic tern resists distraction because it is driven at that moment by an instinctive sense of something we humans find admirable: larger purpose. In other words, it is determined to reach its destination. The bird senses that it can eat, rest and mate later. Right now it is totally focused on the journey; its undivided intent is arrival.

nhạn biển Bắc cực từ chối thức ăn trên đường di cư vì bị dẫn dắt bởi 'mục đích lớn hơn' — hoàn thành hành trình trước khi ăn, nghỉ và sinh sản.

C Reaching some gravelly coastline in the Arctic, upon which other arctic terns have converged, will serve its larger purpose as shaped by evolution: finding a place, a time, and a set of circumstances in which it can successfully hatch and rear offspring.

mục tiêu của hành trình là đến bãi biển Bắc cực để sinh sản thành công — mục đích được định hình bởi tiến hóa.

D But migration is a complex issue, and biologists define it differently, depending in part on what sorts of animals they study. Joel Berger, of the University of Montana, who works on the American pronghorn and other large terrestrial mammals, prefers what he calls a simple, practical definition suited to his beasts: 'movements from a seasonal home area away to another home area and back again'. Generally the reason for such seasonal back-and-forth movement is to seek resources that aren't available within a single area year-round.

Berger dùng định nghĩa thực dụng: di chuyển giữa hai khu vực sinh sống theo mùa và quay lại — mục đích là tìm nguồn lực không có quanh năm ở một nơi.

E But daily vertical movements by zooplankton in the ocean—upward by night to seek food, downward by day to escape predators—can also be considered migration. So can the movement of aphids when, having depleted the young leaves on one food plant, their offspring then fly onward to a different host plant, with no one aphid ever returning to where it started.

di cư không chỉ là hành trình xa: zooplankton di chuyển theo chiều dọc hằng ngày, rệp chuyển sang cây chủ mới — đều được coi là di cư.

F Dingle is an evolutionary biologist who studies insects. His definition is more intricate than Berger's, citing those five features that distinguish migration from other forms of movement. They allow for the fact that, for example, aphids will become sensitive to blue light (from the sky) when it's time for takeoff on their big journey, and sensitive to yellow light (reflected from tender young leaves) when it's appropriate to land. Birds will fatten themselves with heavy feeding in advance of a long migrational flight. The value of his definition, Dingle argues, is that it focuses attention on what the phenomenon of wildebeest migration shares with the phenomenon of the aphids, and therefore helps guide researchers towards understanding how evolution has produced them all.

định nghĩa của Dingle chi tiết hơn Berger: 5 đặc điểm giúp thấy điểm chung giữa các loài rất khác nhau (linh dương đầu bò và rệp), từ đó hiểu tiến hóa đã tạo ra hành vi di cư như thế nào.

G Human behaviour, however, is having a detrimental impact on animal migration. The pronghorn, which resembles an antelope, though they are unrelated, is the fastest land mammal of the New World. One population, which spends the summer in the mountainous Grand Teton National Park of the western USA, follows a narrow route from its summer range in the mountains, across a river, and down onto the plains. Here they wait out the frozen months, feeding mainly on sagebrush blown clear of snow. These pronghorn are notable for the invariance of their migration route and the severity of its constriction at three bottlenecks. If they can't pass through each of the three during their spring migration, they can't reach their bounty of summer grazing; if they can't pass through again in autumn, escaping south onto those windblown plains, they are likely to die trying to overwinter in the deep snow. Pronghorn, dependent on distance vision and speed to keep safe from predators, traverse high, open shoulders of land, where they can see and run. At one of the bottlenecks, forested hills rise to form a V, leaving a corridor of open ground only about 150 metres wide, filled with private homes. Increasing development is leading toward a crisis for the pronghorn, threatening to choke off their passageway.

pronghorn di cư giữa Grand Teton (mùa hè) và đồng bằng (mùa đông) qua hành lang hẹp với 3 điểm nghẽn. Phát triển nhà ở tư nhân đang đe dọa bịt đường đi sống còn của chúng.

H Conservation scientists, along with some biologists and land managers within the USA's National Park Service and other agencies, are now working to preserve migrational behaviours, not just species and habitats. A National Forest has recognised the path of the pronghorn, much of which passes across its land, as a protected migration corridor. But neither the Forest Service nor the Park Service can control what happens on private land at a bottleneck. And with certain other migrating species, the challenge is complicated further—by vastly greater distances traversed, more jurisdictions, more borders, more dangers along the way. We will require wisdom and resoluteness to ensure that migrating species can continue their journeying a while longer.

các nhà bảo tồn nỗ lực bảo vệ hành vi di cư (không chỉ loài và môi trường), nhưng gặp khó vì không kiểm soát được đất tư nhân và biên giới nhiều quốc gia.