The UK’s EU Referendum

LONDON — Members of the Driscoll family tend not to fight. If they do, it is over whose turn it is to vacuum.

Leslie Driscoll, 55, sells hot cross buns in an English bakery in London and addresses her customers with “love” or “darling”; her husband, Peter, 54, works as a floor layer; their daughter, Louise, a 19-year-old with dyed blue hair, is a barista in a hip coffee shop.

But last week, the Driscolls fell out. Badly. They had an argument so big they did not speak to one another for days, Leslie Driscoll said. Shortly afterward, her husband went off in a huff to see friends up north, in Derby.

The source of the family drama: whether Britain should remain part of the European Union, a process often referred to as “Brexit.”

With only days to go until the referendum on membership in the bloc on Thursday, polls suggest that the country is deeply split along socioeconomic and regional lines, with many older and working-class voters in England favoring leaving, and younger and better-educated Britons, and a majority of those in Scotland and Northern Ireland, favoring staying.

As the consequences of the choice come into focus for voters, tensions are bubbling. In the case of the Driscoll family, they are boiling over.

“I completely disagree with her,” Louise Driscoll said on a recent afternoon, looking at her mother squarely in the face as they sat in a cafe. “We shouldn’t be leaving, like, an organization that has helped us more than we could ever help ourselves if we were to go it alone.”

Louise is the only one in her family who wants Britain to remain. Her parents and her 80-year-old grandfather want out.

“This is a little island,” her mother said matter-of-factly, lighting up a cigarette and letting the ash fall on her glittery sneakers. “We should look after our own first. Charity begins at home.”

“But we are all people!” Louise said. “We should help each other.”

“It don’t work that way, darling,” her mother replied, shaking her head. “If you’re born here, you pass as English. I don’t care whether you’re black, white, green or blue, or purple with pink spots on — you’re English.”

Those born abroad, Leslie Driscoll said, “have got their own governments, their own parliaments, whatever.”

Up and down the country, the debate over Europe is pitting husband against wife, children against parents, sisters against brothers, divisions unlikely to be healed easily after the referendum is decided.

The debate over Britain’s continued membership in Europe has touched on issues as varied as immigration, terrorism, the economy, London’s housing shortage and the fate of the National Health Service.

Some of these issues, like immigration, are directly related to the European Union. Others, like the shortage of affordable housing, have little to do with it.

Yet those distinctions are blurring. For many, the referendum is as much a chance to register displeasure with the country’s direction as it is an opportunity to reject or embrace Europe. The stance of some voters is being shaped by personal experience and anecdote.

There is, for example, a widespread perception that European citizens are flocking to Britain, especially from Eastern Europe, to take advantage of its social welfare system. But Britain’s welfare system is not as generous as those of many other European nations, and fewer than 7 percent of immigrants receive benefits.

Louise Driscoll voted for the Green Party in last year’s general election and was appalled that her mother, traditionally a Labour voter, had opted for the anti-Europe, anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party. (“Sorry, I know I’m a bit antiquated — can’t help it, love,” Leslie Driscoll replied, somewhat sheepishly, after her daughter uttered an expletive.)

Louise Driscoll said she understood the pressures that immigration placed on schools and hospitals. But leaving the EU worried her, she said, because it risked wrecking the economy and making it hard for young people to secure employment. It took her eight months to find work as a barista, she said.

“If I wanted to work abroad, it would be a lot easier if England was in the EU,” Louise said.

Her mother suggested that Louise move to New York, possibly unaware of the paradox that this would make her an immigrant herself.

In what sounded like a final plea, she said: “At the end of the day, the EU is going to affect my generation more than it will affect your generation. So shouldn’t it be down to us to decide whether or not to stay?”

Her mother fell silent and was thoughtful.

“I am 55 years of age,” she said slowly. “I know — I appreciate that in 50 years’ time, you’ll be here and I won’t, and you’ll have to put up with whatever’s happened.”

She paused.

“But I still want out,” she said. “Sorry.”

http://cn.nytstyle.com/international/20160622/britain-eu-referendum-families/en-us/?_ga=1.225379929.230442792.1483887339

Structure of the Lead：

     WHO- England

     WHEN- 2016.06.22

     WHAT- go or stay in E.U.

     WHY- Freedom

     WHERE- England

     HOW- Vote

Keywords:

1. majority 大部分

2. tension 緊張

3. cigarette 香菸

4. parliament 議會

5. division 分配

6. welfare 福利

7. barista 咖啡店店員

8. plea 懇求

9. thoughtful 貼心的

10. appreciate 感謝

White helmets

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Eyes watering, struggling to breathe, Abd al-Mouin, 22, dragged his nephews from a house reeking of noxious fumes, then briefly blacked out. Even fresh air, he recalled, was “burning my lungs.”

The chaos unfolded in the Syrian town of Sarmeen one night this spring, as walkie-talkies warned of helicopters flying from a nearby army base, a signal for residents to take cover. Soon, residents said, there were sounds of aircraft, a smell of bleach and gasping victims streaming to a clinic.

Two years after President Bashar Assad agreed to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons stockpile, there is mounting evidence that his government is flouting international law to drop cheap, jerry-built chlorine bombs on insurgent-held areas. Lately, the pace of the bombardments in contested areas like Idlib province has picked up, rescue workers say, as government forces have faced new threats from insurgents.

Yet, the Assad government has so far evaded more formal scrutiny because of a thicket of political, legal and technical obstacles to assigning blame for the attacks — a situation that feels surreal to many Syrians under the bombs, who say it is patently clear the government drops them.Two years after President Bashar Assad agreed to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons stockpile, there is mounting evidence that his government is flouting international law to drop cheap, jerry-built chlorine bombs on insurgent-held areas. Lately, the pace of the bombardments in contested areas like Idlib province has picked up, rescue workers say, as government forces have faced new threats from insurgents.

“People are so used to it, they know from the sound,” said Hatem Abu Marwan, 29, a rescue worker with the White Helmets civil defense organization, a note of exasperation creeping into his voice when asked to explain. “We know the sound of a helicopter that goes to a low height and drops a barrel. Nobody has aircraft except the regime.”

Prodded by the United States, the U.N. Security Council is discussing a draft resolution that would create a panel, reporting to the secretary-general, to determine which of the warring parties is responsible for using chlorine as a weapon, according to Council diplomats.

Syrian state media dismiss the allegations as propaganda, and the council remains divided and hamstrung. That leaves people like Abu Marwan, who has responded to nine suspected chlorine attacks, feeling abandoned.

“There is no law to defend us as human beings, this is what we understand from the Security Council,” said Abu Marwan, a law school graduate, weeping as he recalled holding a dying child in Sarmeen. “I didn't see in humanitarian law anything that says `except for Syrians.”'

In contrast to stronger toxins like nerve agents and mustard gas, chlorine is lethal only in highly concentrated doses and where medical treatment is not immediately available, making it more an instrument of terror than of mass slaughter. It is typically dropped in barrel bombs containing canisters that explode on impact, distributing clouds of gas over civilian populations, and is distinguishable by its characteristic odor.

So it falls under a kind of loophole. With many civilian uses, like purifying water or disinfecting hospitals, it is not banned under international law and thus was not on the list of chemicals Assad promised to destroy — though using chlorine as a weapon is forbidden.

The Security Council did condemn the use of chlorine as a weapon in Syria, in February. But with Russia, the Syrian government's most powerful ally, wielding a veto, there was no Council agreement to assign blame.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which monitors agreements on toxic arms, found that chlorine had been used “systematically and repeatedly” in three Syrian villages in 2014, and mentioned witness accounts of helicopter-borne chlorine bombs in its report. But it, too, lacked authorization to say who used them.

Alistair Hay, a toxicologist at the University of Leeds who has trained Syrians to collect environmental samples, called the attacks a “slap in the face” to the international chemical weapons convention that Syria had joined less than a year earlier. Syria signed under a Russian-American deal to avoid U.S. military strikes after sarin, a nerve agent, killed more than 1,000 people in insurgent-held areas near Damascus.

Frustrated with the Security Council's impasse over the issue, rescue workers and doctors are now working to bring evidence of chlorine gas attacks directly to the French, British and U.S. governments for testing. The aim is to give states a solid basis for action against the attacks, in the 

Security Council or through quieter diplomatic pressure, said James Le Mesurier, the British director of a nonprofit group, Mayday Rescue, which trains and equips the White Helmets, Syrian volunteers supported by the British, Danish and Dutch governments.

But investigators face difficulties. Chlorine dissipates quickly in the atmosphere and does not last in blood or urine, and residue stays in soil for just 48 hours, leaving little time to transport samples across borders. Also, Le Mesurier said, the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons differentiates evidence they collect themselves from evidence collected by rescue workers, categorizing the latter as circumstantial.

Three other Syrian doctors said the organization's rules resulted in valuable evidence they collected going unexamined.

One, who protects his identity with the nickname “Chemical Hazem” for his safety, said he reached one of the April 2014 attack sites, Tal Minnes, within hours, smelling bleach in the air. He smuggled samples from two victims to Turkey without waiting for border clearances. But he said the OPCW refused to accept an unexploded canister, which remains in Syria.

“The ultimate evidence of the regime's use of chemical weapons is gone,” he said, adding that no one seemed very interested in getting samples out of Syria. “We can't blame anyone who wants to follow the legal channels — but do any exist?”

http://cn.nytimes.com/world/20150507/c07syria/en-us/

Structure of the Lead：

     WHO- The Syrians

     WHEN- 2015.05.07

     WHAT- War

     WHY- ISIS

     WHERE- Syria

     HOW- 

Keywords:

1. chaos 混亂

2. aircraft 飛機

3. insurgents 叛亂者

4. allegation 指責

5. council 委員會

6. toxicologist 毒物學

7. dissipate 始逐漸消失

8. circumstantial 間接的

9. evidence 證據

10. regime 政府