时间:2019-01-13 作者:英语课 分类:VOA标准英语2010年(三月)


英语课

A media rights activist 1 who defends political cartoonists who come under attack for their work says Muslims should try to better understand the western idea of free speech, even if they find the message offensive to their religion.


Police in Ireland earlier this month arrested seven people, including an American woman, in connection to what they say was a plot to kill Lars Vilks.


He's the Swedish cartoonist who an al-Qaida linked group wants killed for depicting 2 the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog.


Irish authorities tie at least some of the suspects to another American woman who U.S. officials say tried to recruit people for the assassination 3 plot.


That woman, Colleen LaRose, calls herself Jihad Jane, and is charged in the U.S. with conspiring 4 to give material support to terrorists.


Former U.S. State Department official  Robert Russell said he understands why Vilks' cartoon in 2007 offends some Muslims. "In Islam, pigs are considered haram, taboo 5, dirty. Many people don't understand in the West that also dogs are haram. Dogs are considered dirty and haram just like pigs," he said.


Russell heads the Cartoonists Rights Network International, and counts among his clients, cartoonists who have been imprisoned 6, tortured, even killed.


Russell says Vilks may have gone too far in making his point about freedom of speech, but those allegedly involved in a plot against him are even more misguided.


Russell collects drawings. He shows one of the first controversial cartoons published in the U.S. related to fears over Islam. "Bob Gorrell published this. Now this is not supposed to be the Prophet Muhammad. This is just a cleric. This is just any Islamic cleric, of course, with a bomb in his headdress," he said.


The picture looks similar to one of the cartoons of Muhammad published in Danish newspapers in 2005. That one showed the prophet with a bomb in his turban and lead to deadly riots. 


Russell says people angered by such cartoons should resort to freedom of expression themselves, not fatwas, or death threats. "I think the best advice I could have for Muslims is please exercise your freedom of speech as the cartoonist was exercising. Please exercise your own freedom of speech, take your own cartoonist to do some drawing and write articles and send them to the newspaper," he said.


Russell organizes cartoon events at college campuses across the United States. Here at American University in Washington, cartoonist Joel Pett shows how he draws U.S. President Barack Obama.


"Big ears, big old jug 7 ears like that," he said.


Pett says, cartoonists are essential to showing the lighter 8 side of life, especially in difficult times.  "The fact of the matter is you might as well laugh as cry and the tragedy that is the human condition invites sarcasm 9, invites irony 10, invites satire 11, invites laughter. What else are you going to do?"


Back at his home and headquarters in suburban 12 Washington, Russell says Muslims should  understand that western societies fought for specific rights during hundreds of years of war over religion. "We learned that a secularly 13 based freedom of speech guarantees access to everybody, by everybody and that no religious sensibility and no religious feelings should trump 14 the ability of the individual to express themselves freely," he said.


So, Russell says, even if in the Vilks case, he does not defend the particular cartoon in question, cartoonists around the world should keep their right to draw and provoke, and ask questions about the world we live in.

 



n.活动分子,积极分子
  • He's been a trade union activist for many years.多年来他一直是工会的积极分子。
  • He is a social activist in our factory.他是我厂的社会活动积极分子。
描绘,描画( depict的现在分词 ); 描述
  • a painting depicting the Virgin and Child 一幅描绘童贞马利亚和圣子耶稣的画
  • The movie depicting the battles and bloodshed is bound to strike home. 这部描写战斗和流血牺牲的影片一定会取得预期效果。
n.暗杀;暗杀事件
  • The assassination of the president brought matters to a head.总统遭暗杀使事态到了严重关头。
  • Lincoln's assassination in 1865 shocked the whole nation.1865年,林肯遇刺事件震惊全美国。
密谋( conspire的现在分词 ); 搞阴谋; (事件等)巧合; 共同导致
  • They were accused of conspiring against the king. 他们被指控阴谋反对国王。
  • John Brown and his associates were tried for conspiring to overthrow the slave states. 约翰·布朗和他的合伙者们由于密谋推翻实行奴隶制度的美国各州而被审讯。
n.禁忌,禁止接近,禁止使用;adj.禁忌的;v.禁忌,禁制,禁止
  • The rude words are taboo in ordinary conversation.这些粗野的字眼在日常谈话中是禁忌的。
  • Is there a taboo against sex before marriage in your society?在你们的社会里,婚前的性行为犯禁吗?
下狱,监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 )
  • He was imprisoned for two concurrent terms of 30 months and 18 months. 他被判处30个月和18个月的监禁,合并执行。
  • They were imprisoned for possession of drugs. 他们因拥有毒品而被监禁。
n.(有柄,小口,可盛水等的)大壶,罐,盂
  • He walked along with a jug poised on his head.他头上顶着一个水罐,保持着平衡往前走。
  • She filled the jug with fresh water.她将水壶注满了清水。
n.打火机,点火器;驳船;v.用驳船运送;light的比较级
  • The portrait was touched up so as to make it lighter.这张画经过润色,色调明朗了一些。
  • The lighter works off the car battery.引燃器利用汽车蓄电池打火。
n.讥讽,讽刺,嘲弄,反话 (adj.sarcastic)
  • His sarcasm hurt her feelings.他的讽刺伤害了她的感情。
  • She was given to using bitter sarcasm.她惯于用尖酸刻薄语言挖苦人。
n.反语,冷嘲;具有讽刺意味的事,嘲弄
  • She said to him with slight irony.她略带嘲讽地对他说。
  • In her voice we could sense a certain tinge of irony.从她的声音里我们可以感到某种讥讽的意味。
n.讽刺,讽刺文学,讽刺作品
  • The movie is a clever satire on the advertising industry.那部影片是关于广告业的一部巧妙的讽刺作品。
  • Satire is often a form of protest against injustice.讽刺往往是一种对不公正的抗议形式。
adj.城郊的,在郊区的
  • Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America. 效区的商业中心在美国如雨后春笋般地兴起。
  • There's a lot of good things about suburban living.郊区生活是有许多优点。
现世的,俗界的; 长期的,长久的; 不朽的; 一世纪一次的
  • Ours is a secular society. 我们的社会是个世俗社会。
  • We live in an increasingly secular society. 我们生活在一个日益非宗教的社会。
n.王牌,法宝;v.打出王牌,吹喇叭
  • He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
  • The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手,作为他的王牌。
学英语单词
AC-B
Ache and Pain
aerial pingpong
Aladdin's ring
aurous bromaurate
autonomous jurisdiction
back at the farm
backspace mechanism
bad endings
bird species
bit intervals
Burki
calibration time
cambells
cefriti
Cephalaspida
cheeped
cidariplura nigrisigna
clevis joint
critical point
double ribbon agitator
encumbering
enormous great
experimental model school
federal discount window
first saloon passenger
focusing conditions
fuel cycle costs
geared traction machine
gravitics
gravity anchor
half-cell reaction
hardened and tempered
helical waveguide
hereditary hydrocephalus
heterocercal
hidden city
high temperature materials
homedebtor
hook-shaped
image-
inartificial
indoor ventilation
jarringly
lactalase
lateralling
lead-base white metal linings
lesdar
line-printing
local focal length
monochaetia desmaytia sacc.
mordaciids
Mr. Right
multi finality
Nachalovo
natroxalate
nylon tube
oriented real hypersphere
paper technology
partan method
pension insurance
petrol-pump
phenylamine acetosalicylate
phoma glumarum ellis et tracy
piping flow sheet
placcntal barrier
ploes of the heaven
polarde
Polyphaga Sp.
power system element
principal axis of strain
Puccinia lysimachiae
pulse radar
put one's right hand to something
recorded-music
regular closed subset
reguli falsi
reinforceable
reverse osmosis desaltinating
rocket belts
run-time storage organization
scabicides
scintillation coincidence spectrometer
searching AND/OR graph
semaphore casting
semen bank
sequential similarity detection algorithm
setling
shoe-in
situatedness
sleaziness
so that
soulfully
stemmatological
tell it to the judge
three-eyed
train rear end air pressure feedback
udad
vogueish
waivure
workest
Xiphisteridae