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自分が読んで興味深く感じた英文記事を中心に取り上げる予定です

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TimelyなTime

 


当選すれば少しは大人しくなるのではと思ったら次々と驚くべき大統領令を出して混乱を引き起こしているトランプ大統領。「一体何を考えているんだ」と思うのは自然のことで、腹心Steve Bannonに関心が集まりどこのメディアも取り上げるようになっています。興味が出たトピックは色々読み比べてみるといいかもしれません。

雑誌Timeもカバーストーリーにしていました。どんな人物か興味ある方は是非。読んでみると引き起こした混乱も喧嘩上等的な確信犯なんですね。honey badger(蜜穴熊)を引き合いに出しているところです。

NATION
Is Steve Bannon the Second Most Powerful Man in the World?
David Von Drehle

Feb 02, 2017

The essence of the place could be found in a viral video that made its debut around the time of Bannon's takeover of Breitbart. Over a piece of old nature footage, a clever narrator commented on a single-minded beast known as a honey badger. Through bee stings, snakebites and other degradations, the animal never stops killing and eating. "Honey Badger don't give a shit," the narrator summed up. Bannon adopted the phrase as a motto.

Official Washington and its counterparts around the globe are struggling to understand just how much the honey badgers are now running the show. There is no doubt the badgers are starving for change and don't care if they get stung by swarms of pundits, incumbents, lobbyists and donors--not to mention foreign leaders and denizens of Davos. In fact, they seem to like it.

The capital was in a lather over the immigration order, with denunciations pouring in from Republicans and Democrats alike. Rumors swirled of resignations from the Trump White House, when Trump's policy badger, Stephen Miller, a Bannon ally, calmly stepped before the cameras. "Anytime you do anything hugely successful that challenges a failed orthodoxy, you're going to see protests," he told CBS News. "In fact, if nobody is disagreeing with what you're doing, then you're probably not doing anything that really matters in the scheme of things."


話題にしているhoney badgerのvideoはこれかもしれません。


雑誌Economistもトランプ政権をカバーに持ってきていますが、こちらは外交を中心にしています。America first and lastというタイトルは今のままだとアメリカのためにならないアメリカを後回しにすることになるといいたいのでしょうか。同じように混乱はトランプ支持者が望んでいることだと指摘している部分です。

America first and last
What the visa ban shows about American foreign policy
A divided nation seeks a divided world


THE cavalier view some members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle take of the chaos they have unleashed since January 20th has startled both their opponents and many of their Republican colleagues. It should not. The insiders are doing things that Mr Trump promised to do on the campaign trail, and that they have long wanted to see done. And if they are doing it in a way that tramples other people’s sensibilities, then all the better; it is what their supporters would want.

雑誌TimeはBannon生い立ちや経歴、考え方などをエピソードを交えて紹介してくれます。彼が影響を受けた本にThe Fourth Turningというのがあるそうです。successive generations have fallen into crisis, embraced institutions, rebelled against those institutions and forgotten the lessons of the past--which invites the next crisisという4つのサイクルをアメリカの歴史は巡っていて今がその大きな変革の時期に当たっているというのです。

Sometime in the early 2000s, Bannon was captivated by a book called The Fourth Turning by generational theorists William Strauss and Neil Howe. The book argues that American history can be described in a four-phase cycle, repeated again and again, in which successive generations have fallen into crisis, embraced institutions, rebelled against those institutions and forgotten the lessons of the past--which invites the next crisis. These cycles of roughly 80 years each took us from the revolution to the Civil War, and then to World War II, which Bannon might point out was taking shape 80 years ago. During the fourth turning of the phase, institutions are destroyed and rebuilt.
In an interview with TIME, author Howe recalled that Bannon contacted him more than a decade ago about making a film based on the book. That eventually led to Generation Zero, released in 2010, in which Bannon cast the 2008 financial crisis as a sign that the turning was upon us. Howe agrees with the analysis, in part. In each cycle, the postcrisis generation, in this case the baby boomers, eventually rises to "become the senior leaders who have no memory of the last crisis, and they are always the ones who push us into the next one," Howe said.
But Bannon, who once called himself the "patron saint of commoners," seemed to relish the opportunity to clean out the old order and build a new one in its place, casting the political events of the nation as moments of extreme historical urgency, pivot points for the world. Historian David Kaiser played a featured role in Generation Zero, and he recalls his filmed interview with Bannon as an engrossing and enjoyable experience.


Generation Zeroという動画もYoutubeにありました。


そして"Our big belief, one of our central organizing principles at the site, is that we're at war."という考えに至っているようです。雑誌Economistの方では簡潔にまとめています。

Now I am the master
In 2014 Mr Bannon gave a remarkable address to a conservative conference at the Vatican. He described working-class communities betrayed by “people in New York that feel closer to people in London and in Berlin than they do to people in Kansas and in Colorado”. The corruption and greed of that rootless elite had caused a crisis in capitalism, Mr Bannon argued, “and on top of that we’re now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism.” His answer lay in the values of the “Judeo-Christian West”, in “strong countries and strong nationalist movements” and possibly in an accommodation with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Though he called Mr Putin a kleptocrat, Mr Bannon suggested that this might matter less than securing Russia as an ally against radical Islamists.

Mr Bannon has the trust of the president on foreign affairs. Witness the decision to give him a guaranteed seat on the National Security Council (NSC), enjoying the same access to that inner sanctum as James Mattis, the defence secretary, and Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state. A move that gives a political strategist privileges no longer enjoyed by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who only attends when the agenda touches his military portfolio directly, has been lambasted by foreign-policy grandees as “stone-cold crazy” and “entirely inappropriate”.


TimeとEconomistの違いを指摘しようとするならTimeはエピソードを盛り込んでストーリー展開するのに対して、Econmistはあくまで分析的に整理して伝えようとしているところでしょうか。TimeはBannonの服装についても取り上げています。彼がスーツじゃなくてジャンバー多いのも意識してのことのようです。

Bannon's life became a crusade against political, financial and cultural elites of all stripes. Bannon's philosophical transformation showed in his clothes: no one could look at his preferred uniform of T-shirts, cargo shorts and stubble and think Goldman Sachs.



Economistの社説では社説という意見表明する場でもありBannonを外せということを明言しています。

America’s president
An insurgent in the White House
As Donald Trump rages against the world he inherited as president, America’s allies are worried—and rightly so


What to do? The first task is to limit the damage. There is little point in cutting Mr Trump off. Moderate Republicans and America’s allies need to tell him why Mr Bannon and his co-ideologues are wrong. Even in the narrowest sense of American self-interest, their appetite for bilateralism is misguided, not least because the economic harm from the complexity and contradictions of a web of bilateral relations would outweigh any gains to be won from tougher negotiations. Mr Trump also needs to be persuaded that alliances are America’s greatest source of power. Its unique network plays as large a role as its economy and its military might in making it the global superpower. Alliances help raise it above its regional rivals—China in East Asia, Russia in eastern Europe, Iran in the Middle East. If Mr Trump truly wants to put America First, his priority should be strengthening ties, not treating allies with contempt.

政権内でも共和党内でも異論が出ているので、このまま突っ走るのは難しいのかもしれませんが、長引けば長引くほど影響は大きなものになりそうです。
スポンサーサイト



 

TIMEが選ぶ写真100選

 


今年の夏はシリアのアレッポでの爆撃での少年の映像が話題になり、映像の訴求力の大きさを再確認しましたよね。

このほど写真が発明された19世紀初頭から今日までで撮影された写真から影響力の大きなものを100選んだTIMEのプロジェクトがサイトで発表されています。年代別に見てみると時代の流れを感じるとともに写真によってその時代が印象付けられていることもわかります。各写真には200語から300語ほどの説明がついていて最近の写真には映像もあります。

アメリカ人の視点からの100選ですがどうしても日本の話題を探してしまいます。日本関連は硫黄島の星条旗と長崎の原爆が選ばれていました。

Mushroom Cloud Over Nagasaki
Lieutenant Charles Levy
1945

Flag Raising on Iwo Jima
Joe Rosenthal
1945

冒頭のシリアの写真では空爆をしたロシアが敵役になりましたが、第二次世界大戦時にはまさに日本がその役割を担いました。その写真もこの100選に入っていました。

Bloody Saturday
H.S. Wong
1937
The same imperialistic desires festering in Europe in the 1930s had already swept into Asia. Yet many Americans remained wary of wading into a conflict in what seemed a far-off, alien land. But that opinion began to change as Japan’s army of the Rising Sun rolled toward Shanghai in the summer of 1937. Fighting started there in August, and the unrelenting shelling and bombing caused mass panic and death in the streets. But the rest of the world didn’t put a face to the victims until they saw the aftermath of an August 28 attack by Japanese bombers. When H.S. Wong, a photographer for Hearst Metrotone News nicknamed Newsreel, arrived at the destroyed South Station, he recalled carnage so fresh “that my shoes were soaked with blood.” In the midst of the devastation, Wong saw a wailing Chinese baby whose mother lay dead on nearby tracks. He said he quickly shot his remaining film and then ran to carry the baby to safety, but not before the boy’s father raced over and ferried him away. Wong’s image of the wounded, helpless infant was sent to New York and featured in Hearst newsreels, newspapers and life magazine—the widest audience a picture could then have. Viewed by more than 136 million people, it struck a personal chord that transcended ethnicity and geography. To many, the infant’s pain represented the plight of China and the bloodlust of Japan, and the photo dubbed Bloody Saturday was transformed into one of the most powerful news pictures of all time. Its dissemination reveals the potent force of an image to sway official and public opinion. Wong’s picture led the U.S., Britain and France to formally protest the attack and helped shift Western sentiment in favor of wading into what would become the world’s second great war.



相当有名な写真のようでWikipediaで項目が立っているほどです。日本人としてはプロパガンダ写真として捉える傾向が強いようです。

(Wikipedia)
「上海南駅の赤ん坊」とは、第二次上海事変中の1937年8月28日に日本軍に爆撃された上海南駅[2]で王小亭によって撮影された、傷つき泣き叫ぶ赤ん坊のモノクロ写真である[3][4][5]。『ライフ』誌の1937年10月4日号に「1億3600万人が見た海外の写真」として掲載された[1]。アメリカの世論に大きな影響を与えた一方で当時から演出写真ではないかとの疑惑が出されるなど論争にもなっている。

当時の雑誌ライフを見ることができますが、102ページ目にあるところを考えると大々的にプロパガンダを打ち立てようと言えるかは疑問です。冒頭はThe AMERICAN LEGION TAKES NEW YORK CITYとパレードの写真を掲載しているほどですし。。。。しかもキャプションを見ると雑誌掲載時で有名になっていたので話題になっている写真を紹介しただけという感じもします。

THE CAMERA OVERSEAS:136,000,000 PEOPLE SEE THIS PICTURE OF SHANGHAI'S SOUTH STATION
After 16 Japanese bombing planes had flown home, Aug.28,H.S.("Newsreel")Wong, famous Hearst cameraman, was first to reach the dreadful scene at the Shanghai South Station. He got this picture- of-the-week--a Chinese baby amid the wreckage. A print of it was sent through International News Service to all Hearst newspapers, totaling 25,000,- 000 readers, and to 35 non-Hearst paper totaling 1,750,000. It went in a mat reproduction to 800 other papers in the U.S., totaling 4,000,000. To foreign newspapers International distributed the same picture, adding another estimated 25,000,000 readers. In the "News of the Day" newsreel, the sequence containing the baby was seen by some 25,000,000 movie-goers. Movietone News bought it, showed it to another 25,000,000. Together both newsreels are showing it to another 30,000,000 movie-goers abroad. This Chinese baby's potential audience: 136,000,000.


振り返ってみると70年前と同じようなイメージで我々は揺さぶられていることになりますが、「やらせ」だけで大きな流れを作れるほど簡単ではないでしょう。このプロジェクトについて語っている部分でThere is no formula that makes a picture influential.とありますがまさにその通りだと思います。

About the project

There is no formula that makes a picture influential. Some images are on our list because they were the first of their kind, others because they shaped the way we think. And some made the cut because they directly changed the way we live. What all 100 share is that they are turning points in our human experience.

 

“A second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament!”

 
TIMEのカバーストーリの最後に出てきた“A second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament!”という言葉。アメリカ大統領やアメリカの歴史に詳しい人ならすぐに誰のことを語っているのかわかるでしょう。FDR、ルーズベルト大統領のようです。

What a President Needs to Know
Jon Meacham July 14, 2016

Of course, Trump believes he too has that special something. Clinton will beg to differ. One of her chief arguments will be that Trump lacks the temperament to be President–a point that evokes an ancient anecdote familiar in the literature of the presidency. On Wednesday, March 8, 1933, the newly inaugurated 32nd President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, called on retired Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The two men chatted a bit–Roosevelt asked about Plato, whom Holmes was reading–and he sought counsel on the crisis of the Depression. “Form your ranks–and fight!” Holmes advised. After the President left, Holmes was in a nostalgic mood. “You know, his Uncle Ted appointed me to the Supreme Court,” Holmes remarked to a former clerk. The Justice then added, “A second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament!”

Historians still debate whether Holmes was referring to T.R. or FDR, but the story is often cited to underscore the significance of a President’s disposition. Temperament is one of those terms that brings Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography to mind: We know it when we see it. Or in this case, feel it. The word derives from the Latin meaning “due mixture,” and one Oxford English Dictionary definition calls it “a moderate and proportionable mixture of elements in a compound.” Discerning temperament is more a question of intuition than of clinical perception. It is, to be sure, a fraught enterprise. And at this moment in history, there is no common agreement on just what qualities are best. Still, Trump’s temperamental failings include his oft-indulged instinct to bully and turn petulant when someone–reporters, opponents, whole regions of the world–gets under his skin.


雑誌を読むことはいろいろな知識を入れられるので英語学習者にとってありがたい素材なんですよねえ。あと面白いところはそのバリエーションも味わえるところ。数年前の記事ですがオバマ大統領の弱腰外交を批判する際にa first-class intellect but second-class temperamentという言葉が使われていたようです。

President Obama: a first-class intellect but second-class temperament. Really?
Presidential choices are often so constrained by factors outside their control that temperament has little bearing on whether presidents succeed or not.

By Matthew Dickinson, Decoder contributor OCTOBER 28, 2014

President Theodore Roosevelt, the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, possessed “a second class intellect, but a first class temperament.” (Some historians think Holmes was describing TR’s nephew Franklin, but no matter.) If pundits are to be believed, President Obama suffers from the opposite condition: He has a first-class intellect, but a temperament that, as recent events indicate, seems ill-suited to acting with the urgency and decisiveness necessary to deal with crises both home and abroad.

こういうバリエーションを楽しむためにも有名どころの逸話は知っておいた方がいいんですが、英語学習者はなかなかそういうところまでいかないようで。。。

 

(再掲)スタイルを持たないスタイル

 
2012年にDavid Adjayeをブログで取り上げていました。彼の考えに共感を持っていることもあり再掲させていただきます。雑誌TIMEを通して知ることのできた人です。

TIMEの別冊STYLE & DESIGNに新進気鋭の建築家David Adjayeが特集されていました。最初のお目当ては映画『インセプション』にも出ていたマリオン・コティヤールだったわけですが、彼女のお陰でこんな建築家がいるのかと勉強になりました(笑)

アップルのようにブランド力をつけることが今重要なこととされている感じですが、David Adjayeさんの特徴は特徴がないことだそうです。もちろん、このようなスタイルは建築界でも珍しいようです。

But the most remarkable aspect of David Adjaye’s enormous success is that his work is not easily identified as David Adjaye’s. In an era when branding is key, when the quickest route to recognition is through being easily recognized, Adjaye’s buildings are not. He has no trademark like Frank Gehry’s giddying swerves or Renzo Piano’s elegant lightplay. Adjaye’s creations have few family likenesses.

しかし、David Adjayeの大きな成功の一番際立った側面はDavid Adjayeというものが容易には見いだせないことなのだ。ブランド化することが重要になっている時代に、容易に判別できるようにすることが手っ取り早く認知される時代に、Adjayeの建築はそうではないのだ。彼にはトレードマークといえるものがない。フランク・ゲーリーにはめまいがするほどの脱線があり、レンゾ・ピアノには優美な遊びがあるのと対照的だ。Adjayeの作品にはグループ化できるような類似点がほとんどない。



STYLE & DESIGN FALL 2012
Sign of The Times
David Adjaye resists adopting a trademark style. That hasn't stopped him from becoming one of the biggest brands in architecture
By BELINDA LUSCOMBE | @youseless | September 11, 2012

個人のsignatureを前面に出すのではなく、iconic, historic or monumentalを求めないあり方が彼の特徴のようです。何もアップル的なものをどんな業種にも求めればいいわけではないようですね。

“I don’t think there is one way of typically describing his work,” says British artist Chris Ofili, with whom Adjaye often collaborates. “His is a very fertile breeding ground.”

“Among my generation, the idea of signature seems a bit outdated,” says Adjaye. (He is based mainly in London, but Time interviewed him in his New York City office on the outskirts of Chinatown.) For Adjaye, the notion of an architectural movement that plants its avatars all over the globe is, just like colonialism, over. “We want to take a different position and try styles that are responsive to different parts of the world,” he says.

Adjaye is an architect who does not seek to be iconic, historic or monumental, yet those are the exact qualities of his biggest client: the Smithsonian Institution. He is the chief design force behind the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), currently under construction in the last vacant spot on the National Mall next to the Washington Monument. As probably the most significant public American edifice of the decade, it’s a building that calls out for a robust design vision.



このようなスタイルは、タンザニアに生まれて、13歳からロンドンで暮らした経験が影響を与えているのかもしれません。

But few would argue that Adjaye isn’t the right man for the job. Born in Tanzania, one of four sons of a Ghanaian diplomat and a stay-at-home mother, Adjaye spent his childhood crisscrossing continents and cultures before landing in London at the age of 13. “What’s great about having an international education is that you learn to negotiate difference and wildly varying opinions,” says Adjaye, who was in the midst of arguments among Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, animists and atheists from a very young age. “You realize early on that negotiation is part of life.”

The young Adjaye also encountered many types of buildingsfrom slum dwellings to huge mosques, from regimented colonial cities and imposing embassies to more organically aggregated African metropolisesduring his father’s postings in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Uganda. It gave him an appreciation for different materials, forms and human-edifice interactions. “I don’t make references from my childhood in a conscious way,” he says. “But I think the places I saw as a young child profoundly affect my sense of atmosphere, light, geography and people. Those things are hardwired into my system.”

Adjaye, long comfortable in disparate cultures, is also fluent in multiple design languages. He got his most important formal architectural training at London’s interdisciplinary Royal College of Art, where he rubbed shoulders with car designers, photographers and painters as well as other architects.


“What’s great about having an international education is that you learn to negotiate difference and wildly varying opinions”(国際的な教育で素晴らしいところは、様々な、そして大きく違う意見と折り合いをつけていくことを学べることです)とか“You realize early on that negotiation is part of life.”(折り合いをつけていくことが人生の一部だと早くから気づくのです)と語っているところが印象的です。我々日本人にとってもますます必要になっていくスキルですよね。



Adjayeさんにとっては、個人のスタイルを完成していくことを目指さないことは、無責任な態度ではなく、その反対で社会と深くかかわるためであると言っています。“For me, the business of being an architect is not about perfecting one’s style but about a very profound engagement with society.”(私にとって、建築家であるという本分は、自分のスタイルを完成することではなくて、社会と深くかかわることなのです)という言葉は力強いです。


While it’s too simplistic to say Adjaye’s designs are African, there’s something southern hemispheric about his eclectic use of materials, decoration and structure. It’s less perfect and more resourcefulmore particular to the humans who will use it and adapt itthan much Western architecture. Adjaye’s style may be slippery, but his approach is not. “For me, the business of being an architect is not about perfecting one’s style,” he says, “but about a very profound engagement with society.”

For his sometime collaborator, the Danish-Icelandic sculptor Olafur Eliasson, the trademark of Adjaye’s work is that it transcends trademarks. “David managed to develop a signature which is not just about style,” he says. “Human nature is his inspiration.”


Appleのようなブランド確立型がいいのか、Adjayeさんのようなスタイルにしばられないやり方がいいのか、これは一般論として語るのは無意味かもしれませんね。
 

What power always does is reveal

 
舛添都知事のような政治家を見ていると思い出すのは作家Robert CaroのWhat power always does is revealという言葉。権力は常に腐敗をするわけではなく、権力を握ることでcleanseすることもあると言っている点も興味深いです。まあ彼は単に威張りたかった、偉くなりたかっただけのようですね。そういう人は業者も扱いやすいでしょう。

(昔のブログ記事の再掲)
下記の動画は雑誌TIMEの著者に聞く10の質問と言うコーナーです。権力と言うと"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."という言葉が有名ですが、Power can cleanse as well as corruptやPower corrupts, but you say power also reveals.という側面についても語っていたのが興味深かったです。



(2分あたりから)
One of my favorite lines in your book is that you say “Power corrupts, but you say power also reveals.” I wonder if you could explain what you mean by that.
Sure. Power as you see in my books in the cases someone like Sam Rayburn or in Power Broker Alfred E. Smith. Power can cleanse as well as corrupt. Al Smith is a henchman, a rutheless for Tammany Hall. Till he becomes a governor, then he goes to Tammany Hall and he says “You must free me. What you must do now is to pay a social welfare legislation for our people”. That’s an example of cleansing.

What power always does is reveal. Because when a man or a woman has enough power to do eactly what they want. Then we know what it is that they really wanted all along.

And then Johnson who had voted against Civil Rights legislation so many times that he was the guy who put that through. So you are suggesting that’s what he had always wanted.

That’s a perfect example: Power always reveals. When he was in college, he took time offf to earn money teaching Mexican kids. In Congress he voted against civil rights legislation many times. But when he became President, he told an aide, "I'll tell you a secret. I swore to myself that if I ever had the power to help these kids, I would do it. Now I have the power, and I tell you something. I intend to use it."

インターネット時代にじっくりと書いていくことについて答えている部分もなかなか深い答えだったのでご紹介します。I always have to write stories on what I still had questions that I wanted to ask.やTo me, time equals truth. The more facts you manage to obtain, the closer you will come to whatever truth there is.という言葉は、30年以上もかけてジョンソンの伝記を書いている彼がいうからこそ重みがあります。

(4分45秒あたりから)
I wonder what you think of the speed and brevity of the information age in which we now live?

Well, it’s very foreign to me. You know, to me, when you said why did you leave journalism, it’s because I always have to write stories on what I still had questions that I wanted to ask. To me, time is truth. To me, time equals truth. I mean, there is no one truth, but there are an awful lot of objective facts, and the more facts you manage to obtain, the closer you will come to whatever truth there is. That’s something you can do in writing books. It’s not really something you can do in daily journalism.


Yutaがヒラリーさんに期待するのは彼女の本心は弱者保護などに関心があるからと信じているからです。まあどうなるかわかりませんが。。。
プロフィール

Yuta

Author:Yuta
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