太田述正コラム#3941（2010.4.11）
＜皆さんとディスカッション（続ｘ800）＞
＜唯我独尊＞
≫だけど、他の宗派に比べてカトリック教会関係者に特に性犯罪者が多いってことはないってさ。≪（コラム#3939。太田）
　宗教関係者の性犯罪なんて、とんでもありません。
　もちろん教育者も！（苦笑後爆笑）
　ところで宗教に関して。
　もしも現代の人間が、自分自身にとって都合の善し悪しに関係なく、すべての経験、見聞などを記憶しているとしたら、「神の存在」という命題に対し、どのような判断をしていくのでしょう。
　ちなみに、優れた頭脳に恵まれていると思われる宇宙飛行士の一部が、信仰心をより一層強くするケースもあるので、一概に判断はできないのでしょうね。
＜太田＞
　後段のご質問は漠然とし過ぎているので、お答えするのは控えます。
　前段のご感想は興味深いものです。
　コラム#3939でご紹介した記事の別の箇所に以下のように記されています。
　・・・the rate of ＜sexial＞ abuse by Catholic priests is not higher than these national estimates. ・・・
　・・・three quarters of abuse occurs at the hands of family members or others in the victim’s “circle of trust.”・・・
　A single predator priest with ongoing access to children might be responsible for an immense raft of abuse cases.・・・
　つまり、以下のようなことではないかと思われます。
　聖職者の（未成年者に対する）性犯罪率は男性全般の率よりは低いけれどかなりの高率なのは、教団が家族と並ぶ”circle of trust”であり、犯行が露見しにくい上に、対象たる未成年者が家族の場合よりも大量にいて性犯罪者にとって金城湯池であるため、性犯罪者たる聖職者が一人で大量に性犯罪を犯し、平均の率をはねあげるからだ。
　それでは、記事の紹介です。
　米国の大学・大学院への日本人留学生の激減ぶりは衝撃的だな。
　日本人の鎖国志向（縄文モード化）が極限化しつつある現れだ。↓
　・・・Once a voracious consumer of American higher education, Japan is becoming a nation of grass-eaters. Undergraduate enrollment in U.S. universities has fallen 52 percent since 2000; graduate enrollment has dropped 27 percent. ・・・
　Total enrollment from China is up 164 percent in the past decade; from India, it has jumped 190 percent. South Korea has about 76 million fewer people than Japan, but it now sends 2 1/2 times as many students to U.S. colleges. ・・・
　The skepticism extends beyond students. At big Japanese companies, many bosses don’t like what they see as the sometimes uppity and overly independent ways of American-educated young Japanese・・・
　When you combine a big decrease in the student population with a big increase in the number of Japanese universities and couple that with rising tuitions in U.S. colleges, you can understand why priorities have changed・・・
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/10/AR2010041002835_pf.html
　キルギスタン情勢のフォローです。
　ロシアと米国の立場の「逆転」、面白いなあ。
　なお、同国の米軍「基地」、活動を縮小してるだけで活動を停止してはいなかったんだね。↓
　・・・In a remarkable role reversal, Russia has positioned itself as a supporter of democratic reform and the protests that toppled this nation’s autocratic president, while the United States is increasingly viewed here as a cynical bully, backing a corrupt, abusive leader who refuses to resign. ・・・
　All flights transporting military personnel were suspended, but others — such as supply and refueling missions for operations in Afghanistan — were continuing on a case-by-case basis. ・・・
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040905354_pf.html
　今回のポーランド大統領機墜落が、1943年のポーランド亡命政府大統領機墜落事件の記憶を蘇らせている。↓
　・・・The ＜Katyn＞ massacre, and its subsequent history, is convoluted and complicated, he said. About 5,000 bodies were discovered in the area by the Nazis (thousands of other soldiers had been murdered in nearby camps and prisons, and Katyn has become the symbolic memorial site).
　The Nazis had used the original discovery in a way to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and the allies. The Soviets at the time denied their involvement and blamed the Nazis. According to Mr. Kennedy, in 1943 the Polish government in exile ? led by Prime Minister Wladyslaw Sikorski ? called for an independent investigation, which prompted Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to break ties with the Polish government.
　Less than four months after Mr. Sikorski’s request, he died in a plane crash in Gibraltar with 16 others, a coincidence that historians recalled on Saturday. Although conspiracy theories still abound about Mr. Sikorski’s crash・・・
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/layers-of-history-and-grief-in-katyn/?pagemode=print
　亡くなったポーランド大統領は、スゲえ肝っ玉太か人物だったのね。↓
　・・・As president, he was brave when he risked his life by flying to Georgia in 2008 to show solidarity with the Georgian people when they faced the land-sea-air invasion by Russia. Then, his plane was ordered by the Russian invaders to divert away from Tbilisi and he ordered the pilot to defy the Russian threats and land.・・・
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/10/lech-kaczynski-poland-crash
　先進国における肉食がいかにおぞましい暗部を持っているかを完膚無きまでに描いている書評。↓
　・・・Food turns out to explain everything, from the creation of society (how hunter-gatherers became farmers) to the exploration of the world (everyone including Columbus was looking for spices) to the soaring of the world’s population (the “green revolution” gave most of us enough to eat).・・・
　・・・Eighty per cent of Rwandans still farm, the same proportion as in Uruk, Mesopotamia, 5,500 years ago, but only about 1 per cent of today’s Americans and Britons do. ・・・
→人間の歴史も世界情勢も、食を中心として動いてきたし動いている。（太田）
　Factory farming（工場式農場経営） started in 1923, apparently by accident, we learn. The reputed inventor was Celia Steele, a Delaware housewife who kept chickens. As the story goes, she ordered 50 new birds, but 500 were delivered. Foer writes: “Rather than get rid of them, she decided to experiment with keeping the birds indoors through the winter. With the help of newly discovered feed supplements, the birds survived.” By 1935, Steele had 250,000 birds.
　・・・factory farming ＜is＞ “a system of industrialised and intensive agriculture in which animals ? often housed by the tens or even hundreds of thousands ? are genetically engineered, restricted in mobility, and fed unnatural diets (which almost always include various drugs, like antimicrobials).”
　Factory farming produces cheap meat in unprecedented quantities. Before Steele’s experiment, chicken was a rare luxury. A “chicken in every pot” was an American dream. Today, says Foer, the average American eats “the equivalent of 21,000 entire animals in a lifetime”, while spending an unprecedentedly small share of his income on food. The consequences are dreadful. Billions of animals experience horrible deaths after worse lives. Constantly sick, they give us our flu pandemics. They occupy and degrade nearly a third of the world’s land, use up and pollute water, and warm the planet. ・・・animal agriculture is the single biggest cause of climate change. It contributes 40 per cent more to global warming than all forms of transport combined. ・・・Someone who regularly eats factory-farmed animal products cannot call himself an environmentalist without divorcing that word from its meaning.・・・
→食用動物の大量飼育の歴史ってこんなに短かったのね。（太田）
　But what bothers ＜us＞ most is the cruelty to mammals, poultry and fish. This happens in secret, because factory farmers don’t allow visitors. ・・・
　Your cow spent almost all its life in a shed, burping methane that heats the planet. It was then slaughtered, often incompetently: it may have been still alive when its head was skinned and its legs cut off.・・・
　Your・・・chicken lived for six weeks, diseased and crammed so closely with other birds that it cracked several bones. After torture, came slaughter: the bird was shoved into a truck, taken to the slaughterhouse, and shackled upside down. It died screaming and excreting（脱糞する） on itself in terror. ・・・
→鯨等の野生動物の捕殺ばかり喧伝されているが、食用動物の屠殺がどんなに残虐なやりかたでなされているかってこと。（太田）
　・・・it’s all unnecessary. We could live at least as healthily without meat. Certainly, in rich countries, logic should impel us to close factory farms and turn meat back into a luxury food such as caviar and truffles, to be eaten on special occasions only. That would accord with our stated ethics. According to one poll・・・, 76 per cent of Americans say they care more about animal welfare than low meat prices. Yet we have made a collective decision to torture animals and the planet simply because meat tastes good. We can’t blame the factory farmers: they supply cheap meat because we demand it.
→肉食の度合いが先進国じゃ圧倒的に少ない方の日本は、この点じゃ胸張れるね。（太田）
　＜This＞ argument may not apply in poor countries. They may need more factory farms. After all, free-range chickens won’t feed 7bn people. It’s hard to tell hungry people to eat ethical meat. Moreover, eating meat per se is very defensible. As Samuel Johnson pointed out about 250 years ago, if we didn’t eat farm animals, we would cease to keep them and they would cease to exist. However, existing for six weeks in an excrement-drenched battery cage probably isn’t worth it.・・・
→最後は哲学的考察でした。（太田）
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/cb020a2c-435a-11df-833f-00144feab49a.html
————————————————————–
太田述正コラム#3942（2010.4.11）
＜ナポレオンを破ったロシア（その２）＞
→非公開