太田述正コラム#4139（2010.7.19）
＜皆さんとディスカッション（続ｘ897）＞
＜唯我独尊＞
＞哨戒艦「天安」沈没事件（コラム#4137）
　先日、キューバのカストロ前議長がTVに出演し熱弁をふるっています。
1. 哨戒艦撃沈はアメリカが画策
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20100713-00000571-san-int
問1）キューバの情報源は昔なじみのロシアでしょうか、それとも・・・
→片足を棺桶に突っ込んでるカストロが何を言おうと、まともにとりあっちゃいけません。↓
　What he said mattered so much less than the fact he said it, or said anything at all.・・・
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-castro-tv-20100713,0,6145649,print.story　（太田）
　カストロ前議長の熱弁を放送した日本のTVを見たところ、
2. アメリカがイランを攻撃すれば北朝鮮も即座に戦争を始める（関口宏司会による「サンデーモーニング」にて：７月18日放送 ）
→誰がそんなこと言ったのか知らないけど、米国が北朝鮮、中共に極度な低姿勢をとり始めた（コラム#4137）のは、イラン攻撃をして、それにイランが反撃した場合に備えるべく、朝鮮半島でも熱戦が勃発することを、当面絶対に避けようとしているから、という解釈は十分可能です。（太田）
問2）太田さんが述べられている「米・イスラエルによるイラン核施設攻撃が決行されるのは間近だ（コラム#4135）」について、日本政府は情報を得ているのでしょうか。また、この戦争によって誰が、どのような利得を得るのでしょうか？
→最後のご質問はお答えする必要ないでしょう。
　「イランを仮想敵国とする事実上のイスラエル・アラブ軍事同盟」を示唆した新聞記事（コラム#4133）を読んで下さい。
　なお、米国がイラン攻撃を事前に日本政府に教えるわけがありません。話がノーズロで漏れる虞れがある一方、見返りに何も得られませんからね。（太田）
＜太田＞
　
　アフガニスタンに関する下掲のNGO系の報告書を読むと、ペトラユーズ（ペトレイアス）的戦略が完全に破綻しているようにも見える。↓
　・・・The report by the Afghanistan NGO Security Office, which monitors trends in violence on behalf of aid organisations, said Nato’s counter-insurgency strategy was not showing any signs of succeeding amid rising violence, the unchecked establishment of local militias and a huge increase in attacks on private development workers across the country.
　It revealed that June marked a record for Taliban attacks – up 51% on the previous year to 1,319 operations.
　At the same time the number of civilians killed by both sides of the conflict rose by 23%, despite the efforts of Nato forces to avoid killing innocent bystanders. The organisation also said attacks on private development organisations working on projects designed to win the support of ordinary Afghans had shot up, with more than 30 workers killed in the first three months of the year.
　”We do not support the [counter-insurgency] perspective that this constitutes ‘things getting worse before they get better’, but rather see it as being consistent with the five-year trend of things just getting worse,” the report said.・・・
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/18/kandahar-us-military-taliban-afghanistan　
　しかし、この報告書について、米国の主要メディアは完全無視を決め込んでいる。
　そのことと、下掲の事実を踏まえると、むしろタリバン側が追い詰められている、と考えるべきだろう。↓
　・・・On Sunday, NATO officials said that they intercepted guidance from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar calling on his fighters to kill women and other civilians who cooperate with NATO forces. This directive from the secretive, one-eyed leader, is a departure from his earlier messages, which called for protecting Afghan civilians in order to not alienate the population from the insurgents.
　NATO officials said they intercepted Omar’s orders in early June.・・・
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/18/AR2010071800288_pf.html
　米タイム誌がエジソン特集を組んでいる。
　米国人が抱いている危機感、焦燥感をひしひしと感じる。↓
　・・・Invention and innovation have been quintessentially American pursuits from the earliest days of the republic. Benjamin Franklin was a world-famous scientist and inventor. Cyrus McCormick and his harvester, Samuel F.B. Morse and the telegraph, Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone ? the 19th century produced a string of inventors and their world-changing creations. And then there was the greatest of them all, Thomas Alva Edison.・・・
　Of the more than 530 Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry or medicine since 1901, more than 200 have been Americans.・・・
　Edison’s true genius lay in his ability to bring mass brainpower to the process of invention – and then to market the resulting devices with the deep pools of capital just forming in late 19th century America. The Menlo Park＜（, N.J.）＞ way, using a sizable cadre of skilled assistants with expertise in multiple fields, became the foundation for research and development as it is practiced in the U.S. and increasingly around the world.・・・
　＜ここからが、この特集を組んだ編集者が訴えたかったことだ。＞
　・・・while U.S. investment in R&D as a share of total GDP has remained relatively constant since the mid-1980s at 2.7%, the federal share of R&D has been consistently declining – even as Asian nations like Japan and South Korea have rapidly increased that ratio. China’s investments in R&D grew more than 20% a year between 1996 and 2007, compared with less than 6% annual growth in the U.S. At the same time, American students seem to be losing interest in science. Only about one-third of U.S. bachelor’s degrees are in science or engineering now, compared with 63% in Japan and 53% in China. Though the U.S. was once among the top countries in terms of the ratio of science and engineering degrees to its college-age population, it now ranks near the bottom among the 23 nations that collect that data. And while the U.S. awarded 22,500 doctorates in science and engineering in 2007, more than half of those went to foreign nationals, a proportion that has grown in recent years.・・・
　Clean power could be to the 21st century what aeronautics and the computer were to the 20th, but the U.S. is already falling behind. China, South Korea and Japan are set to invest more than $500 billion combined in clean technology over the next five years, while the U.S. is likely to invest less than $200 billion – and that’s assuming clean-energy legislation makes it into law.・・・
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1999143_1999200_1999163,00.html
　なお、この特集↑、下掲↓のような、米国における電気椅子導入の際のエピソードをとりあげたもの等、面白い記事のほか、エジソンがらみの写真集やビデオから成っているので、エジソン・テーマパークにでも出かけたつもりになって、読んだりご覧になったりしたらいかが。
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1999143_2002893_2002888,00.html 　
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太田述正コラム#4140（2010.7.19）
＜縄文モード・弥生モード論をめぐって（その３）＞
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