Insight Plus - Part 12 – International security | Текст песни

• Тексты песен
• Insight Plus
• Part 12 – International security

Группа Learning Engllish. Транскрипт:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/webcast/scripts/insight/tae_insight_12_05bs_081009.pdf

Clip
News stories [full transcript is not available]
Gary: In this series, we’re considering the major themes that appear in BBC World
Service news programmes. Today’s “big story” is international security. We’ll
focus on some of the issues and, of course, the language behind the topic.
Rupert Pengelley is technical editor for Jane’s Information Group – an
organisation that publishes information about defence operation, technologies
and transport. The group produces publications such as: “Jane’s Defence
Weekly”, “Jane’s Fighting Ships”, “Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft” … and one
of its newer titles is “Jane’s School Safety Handbook”.
Rupert Pengelley lives in South-West London, and I took a short train journey
to meet him to get some expert advice.
Clip
Train
Clip Rupert Pengelley
Gary: Now as part of my preparation for our interview today, I did a search on the BBC
News website. I typed in the word “weapon” and got some 2,071 search results. Is there any
way, first of all, that we can categorise the kinds of weapons that appear in the world, and are
reflected in news stories?
Rupert: I think the … obviously… the kinds of weapon that immediately come to mind are
rifles, and you know artillery pieces … if you like, the conventional weapons. But what you
see mostly are so-called small arms. These are the type of weapon you can carry in your
hands. But weapons, of course, take many different forms, information itself is regarded as a
weapon to the extent if you can influence somebody to do what you want them to do by
bombarding them with either threats or with information that would lead them to the
conclusion that it would be silly to resist, then that war of words has done the fighting for you.
But at the other extreme, of course, you get so-called weapons of mass destruction, which are
loosely taken to mean nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, which are those which are not
readily aimed at particular points. Their effect is rather too wide-ranging, much more widely
ranged, ranging than an artillery shell, for example.
Gary: You referred earlier to “conventional” weapons, and another term I’ve heard is “nonconventional”
or “unconventional” weapons – what exactly do we mean by those? Is it to do
with nuclear and chemical and biological weapons?
Rupert: That’s a very difficult one. Conventional weapons are those which have existed down
the ages – meaning rifles or machine guns or canon of one kind or another. It's extended to
include aircraft with their bombs and so on. But, unconventional weapons, ironically, tend to
mean, terrorist weapons … or can mean terrorist weapons … those which are made up of
everyday items from the High Street. You could describe that as an unconventional weapon.
But it can also mean, as you’ve suggested, chemical or biological weapons.
Gary: Rupert Pengelley from Jane’s Information Group. More from him later.
The area of definitions was a good starting point when I spoke to our Defence
Correspondent, Jonathan Marcus. My first question for him was about the
phrase “international security”. In the context of our World Service news
bulletins, what does “international security” mean?
Clip Jonathan Marcus, BBC World Service Defence Correspondent
I think people listening to our news are clearly going to hear a lot of stories that deal with, for
example, fighting in Iraq. They’re going to hear stories about the spread of so-called weapons
of mass proliferation – that’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and of course the very
long range missiles that are used to carry those weapons. They’re going to hear a lot of stories
about what people refer to as international terrorism.
Clip
George W. Bush [full transcript is not available]
...