Enjoy Rendering!: Сборник текстов для перевода и реферирования. Батурина С.А. - 25 стр.

       Yet it will take years for Germany to match America and Britain.                               Spying on the Spies
Germans may inveigh against bureaucrats, but they have a soft spot for
state mollycoddling. In any case, over a third of the members of the fed-            Throughout the 1990s, Peru’s National Intelligence Service was
eral parliament are former civil servants, hardly likely to be in the fore-   synonymous with Vladimiro Montesinos, the sinister spy chief who
front of a campaign to cut bureaucracy. Even some businessmen are am-         spun a web of corruption and intimidation from the heart of the authori-
bivalent, for regulation can be useful barrier to competition. The suppos-    tarian government of Alberto Fujimori. Since July 2001, Peru has been
edly free market opposition has attacked government plans to loosen           governed democratically under President Alejandro Toledo, and Mr
laws protecting guilds of architects and craftsmen from competition.          Montesinos is now in jail. But the intelligence service remains in tur-
       The language of officialdom hardly helps. A recent example of          moil-just when once again Peru needs one.
cutting red tape was a law to speed up approval for building roads. Its              Last month, Mr Toledo sacked the service’s head, Alfonso
name: VerkehrswegeplanungsbeschleunigunVerkehrsweggsgesetz.                   Panizo, a retired admiral, the fourth man to hold the job in two years.
                                                                              His departure came after it had emerged that one of the president’s
      1. Vocabulary notes:                                                    phone calls had been tapped, and the tape of the call given to a scandal-
      1) red tape – волокита, бюрократизм                                     hungry television programme. Another television show then accused
      2) skirmish – схватка, столкновение                                     the intelligence service of spying on several awkward journalist. Mr
      3) strangle – подавлять, душить                                         Panizo denied the charges; his agents were simply trying to discover
      4) clodhopper – увалень, неповоротливый                                 who has leaking secrets to the media, he said.
      5) pollster – лицо, проводящее опрос общественного мнения                      The new intelligence chief is Daniel Mora, a retired general but
      6) folder – папка, проспект                                             also a member of Mr Toledo’s Peru Posible party (its secretary for eth-
      7) scrap – выбрасывать (за ненадобностью)                               ics, no less). His appointment has stirred controversy: opponents say
      8) inveigh – выступать против                                           that the intelligence service should serve the state, rather than the gov-
      9) soft spot – уязвимое место                                           erning party. But the bigger problem is that the service needs thorough
      10) mollycoddle – баловать, нежить                                      reform.
      11) ambivalent – двойственный                                                  Mr Montesinos still casts a long shadow. He turned the service
      12) officialdom – чиновничество, бюрократический аппарат                from a small group of academics and analysts into a lavish outfit
                                                                              packed with military men engaged in dirty tricks. Sophisticated moni-
       2. Statements for discussion.                                          toring equipment, some donated by America’s Central Intelligence
       1) Germans are fed up with forms and rules much more than              Agency to fight drugs, was diverted to political and commercial use.
Russians are.                                                                 Mr Montesinos routinely tapped the phones of politicians, journalists,
       2) Too many rules is bad for any economy.                              top businessman and judges; he even surreptitiously recorded some of
       3) It is easy to do business in Germany in a civilized way, for        Mr Fujimori’s private meetings.
business culture has had long history there.                                         Mr Toledo’s government has slashed the service’s budget and
       4) Germans are ambivalent concerning cutting their bureauc-            personnel (though in it still overstaffed). The perverse result is that
racy. Prove that.                                                             most of the monitoring equipment now seems to be in the hands of pri-
       5) Red tape in Russia. Could you give some examples?                   vate security companies, some run by former army cronies of Mr Mon-
       6) Business culture in Russia. Has it made any progress recently?      tesinos. In effect, telephone-tapping has been privatized; the results are
                                                                              leaked to pursue political vendettas.
      3. Give a summary of the text.

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