太田述正コラム#3697（2009.12.10）
＜過去・現在・未来（続x18）＞
　記事の紹介です。
　
　米国人はますます神がかってきている、という衝撃的な調査結果が出ました。↓
　
　・・・ 24 percent of U.S. adults sometimes attend services of a faith different from their own. (That figure doesn’t include people who go for special events such as weddings and funerals or attend services while traveling.) ・・・
　・・・25 percent of about 4,000 U.S. adults surveyed believe in reincarnation, the rebirth of the soul in another body. Among Christians, the number drops only slightly, to 22 percent. ・・・
　Researchers asked specifically whether people believed in or had experience with the following: reincarnation, spiritual energy located in physical things, yoga as a spiritual practice, the evil eye, astrology, being in touch with the dead, consulting a psychic, encountering a ghost. About 65 percent expressed belief in at least one of them. ・・・
　Nearly half of those surveyed in August said they have had a mystical/religious experience, compared with 22 percent in a 1962 survey. The percentage who said they had interacted with a ghost doubled from 9 percent in 1996 to 18 percent this year. ・・・
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/09/AR2009120903712_pf.html
　もともと孤独でストレスが高かった米国人ですが、情報化社会の到来により、一握りのエリートと大多数の庶民との間の亀裂がどんどん深まり↓、庶民を中心に、彼等の孤独、ストレスが一層募ってきているということなのでしょう。
　・・・the big thing that’s changed is the cognitive revolution. Because of economic and technological change, there’s greater and greater demand for people who can manipulate ideas and abstractions ・・・
　It’s been bad for other groups ? men without advanced degrees, anybody without advanced degrees, people with decent but fungible mental skills.・・・
　・・・widening inequality, not only of income but of skills, as highly educated people marry each other and pass their skills to their kids.・・・
　Cultural norms are thus set by the lucky 20 percent. Everybody else (we’re Americans, we don’t acknowledge class differences) measures their lifestyle according to the standards set by those top 20. To get the bigger house (which now seems normal) or the multiple cars or the flat screen, they go into debt. Pretty soon, kablooie.
　As the economy recovers the upper middle class will probably be fine. This economy still rewards ideas with income. They will still have tremendous cultural capital, the ability to unwittingly set the norms everybody else must live up to. The consumption merry-go-round will begin again. ・・・
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/is-the-american-dream-over/?pagemode=print
　少なくともエリートはまだしっかりしているから国全体としては米国は当分大丈夫であるとも言い切れません。
　相対的国力が落ちるにつれて、新しい情報（知）を創造する力も、米国は相対的に急速に萎え始めているからです。↓
　・・・the new Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile loop underneath the Swiss-French border, had accelerated protons to energies of 1.2 trillion electron volts apiece and then crashed them together, eclipsing a record for collisions held by an American machine, the Tevatron, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.・・・
　Steven Weinberg, a physicist at the University of Texas in Austin, who won the Nobel Prize for work that will be tested in the new collider. Americans will work at CERN, but not as leaders・・・
　“There is also a depressing symbolism,” he added, “in the fact that the hottest new results in fundamental physics will for decades not be coming from our country.” ・・・
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/science/10collide.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
　しかし、そんな哀れな米国に、世界中が世界の安定と繁栄を確保する重荷を背負わせ続けているところ、せっかくオバマが大統領に選出されることで、一時的にファシスト国家への道から引き返した米国が、ペイリン前アラスカ州知事が次の大統領に選出されることで、再びファシスト国家への道を歩み始める危険性は決して否定できません。
　そうなれば、もう米国は引き返せなくなるかもしれないのです。
　ガーディアンには、ペイリン及び彼女の新著を徹底的にパロディ化したコラムが掲載され、英国人の、このような米国及び米国人に対する嫌悪の情がぶちまけられています。↓
　Going Rogue: An American Life　→パロディ化→Going Rouge, An American Embarrassment.
　[結論]
　・・・if the American people are as stupid as I think they are, it’s Palin for president in ’12!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/08/going-rogue-sarah-palin-digested
　ニューヨークの本屋では、ペイリンの新著は、ヒットラーの『我が闘争』のような鼻つまみの際物扱いをされているようですが、ニューヨークタイムスは、ホントにペイリンが大統領になりかねないと、恐怖に戦いているかのようなコラムを掲載しました。↓
　・・・The vice-presidential candidacy just happened to her; her account of it reads like an extended “what-I-did-on-my summer-and fall-vacation” essay. For many politicians, family life is sandwiched in between long hours in public service. Palin wants us to know that for her it is the reverse. Political success is an accident that says nothing about you. Success as a wife, mother and citizen says everything.・・・
　It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety.・・・
　Wherever you are, you better watch out. Sarah Palin is coming to town.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/sarah-palin-is-coming-to-town/?pagemode=print
　
　お前はどう思ってるんだって？
　オバマの後、ぺイリンが大統領になれば、属国の日本の奴隷根性が骨の髄まで染みこんだ大部分の日本人のうちの多くが、とてもじゃないけど、こんな大統領をいただくような宗主国に日本の安全保障を委ねるわけにはいかないことを身にしみて悟って、日本の「独立」に賛成してくれるに違いない、と思うので、今度はペイリンを大統領にする運動を立ち上げたいと考えてます。
　マジかって？
　大マジでさあ。
　結果的に、米国特集のようになってしまいましたが、最後に一つだけ米国以外の記事です。
　私にとって懐かしいエジプトで、同国がサッカーのワールドカップ出場を果たせなかったことが、エジプト人達を叩きのめしています。↓
　・・・Of all the events in contemporary history, it is the soul-shattering military defeat of 1967, when Arab armies lost land to Israel, that some Egyptians have pointed to for comparison as the nation struggles to come to terms with the debacle that followed their loss to Algeria in a soccer game.・・・
　“The comparison with 1967 has a specific significance, the defeat of ’67 weakened Egypt as a country and within the Arab world,” said Hassan Nafa, a political scientist at Cairo University. “It broke Egypt.”・・・
　Egypt thought it would beat Algeria and earn a World Cup berth for the first time in 20 years. It approached the contest more like a nation going to war than to a soccer game.
　When it lost and Egyptian fans left the stadium, many said they were chased down and harassed by Algerians, and some suffered minor injuries. But, most of all, they said they were deeply offended and left feeling helpless.
“How can Egypt, the Arab symbol of strength, be humiliated like this in the streets of Khartoum?” asked Ahmed Tarek, 33, who runs an Egyptian advertising agency in Sudan. “And if we are really a strong country, why aren’t we doing something about it? Nobody had ever insulted the Egyptians to this degree. This issue revealed so many things, it woke up the people.”・・・
　“The leader who uses power and oppresses his citizens and forges their will in elections cannot convince anyone when he speaks about the dignity of the citizens,” wrote Alaa al-Aswani, the best-selling author and social critic in the Nov. 24 issue of the newspaper Shorouk.
　Instead, people focused on domestic failings that until now were largely tolerated, or swallowed: A ferry that sank leaving 1,000 Egyptians lost at sea; universities ranked among the worst in the world; an Egyptian border guard killed by the Israelis; Egypt’s longtime culture minister losing to a Bulgarian as the new leader of Unesco; and now Algerians desecrating the Egyptian flag.・・・
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/world/middleeast/10egypt.html?hp=&pagewanted=print　
　　エジプトが再生するには、何と言っても、英国からの独立後、エジプトから事実上追放してしまったギリシャ人、ユダヤ人、トルコ人、英国人等（及びその子孫）を呼び戻すことです。
　そのためにも、ムバラク独裁政権の打倒は欠かせません。
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太田述正コラム#3698（2009.12.10）
＜国際連合の生誕（その１）＞
→非公開