2023-11-23
The following is an excerpt from “Japanese People! Wake Up!” by Masayuki Takayama, who is not only a journalist without equal in the postwar world but also a writer and artist without equal.
Asahi Shimbun’s Middle East Articles Are the Work of Translators Rather Than Correspondents
Interference by U.S. Democrats Is Praised as Democratization, but When Trump Does It, He Is Denounced!
A Government Collapses Following One Man’s Self-Immolation
Some years ago, the Islamic world of the Middle East was shaken.
The first country to be rocked was Tunisia.
Its history is ancient.
Its predecessor was the kingdom of Numibia, which provided the catalyst for the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Punic Wars.
Thus, with everything from a Roman-era colosseum to Islamic mosques and luxury resorts overlooking the Mediterranean, it had prospered as a summer holiday destination for Europeans.
Politics was stable as well, and Ben Ali pursued secular policies that loosened Islamic restrictions; women were freed from the chador, and wine could be drunk normally in restaurants.
Apart from a somewhat high unemployment rate, the country seemed far removed from political turmoil by any measure, but in December 2010, a young man’s self-immolation in a southern town triggered an unexpected upheaval.
According to reports at the time, a young man without a street vendor’s permit was reprimanded by an official at a morning market, and the vegetables he was selling were confiscated.
When he protested, a female police officer beat him severely.
In Xi Jinping’s China, this would have been an everyday occurrence, but what was slightly different was that the young man attempted self-immolation in protest, and footage of it was uploaded to social media, immediately setting off protest demonstrations.
Police officers suppressing the protests drew their guns, people were killed, and that, too, was uploaded.
With each passing day, the unrest expanded to an extraordinary degree.
As with the unrest in Hong Kong, the government used force to suppress it and imposed controls on reporting.
But from this point onward, Google played a role in spreading information.
Furthermore, the U.S. media reported on the events, the unrest became an international issue, and within about two weeks of the self-immolation, demonstrations were swirling through the capital, Tunis, as well; citizens turned into rioters and attacked banks and government offices, and public order had ceased to exist.
Just 28 days after the self-immolation, the government collapsed, and Ben Ali, who had ruled the country for 23 years, fled to Saudi Arabia.
American newspapers reported that “the dictatorship that had ruled the people for many years has been overthrown” and that “the people have brought the movement for democratization into bloom.”
What came to be known as the “Arab Spring” began here, shaking Egypt, which had appeared even more secure, bringing down the Mubarak government, and then spreading to Gaddafi’s government in Libya.
Hillary Behind the “Arab Spring”
Gaddafi had previously carried out the terrorist bombing of a Pan Am aircraft.
He was called the mad dog of the desert.
At the same time, he abolished antiquated Islamic practices and was also enthusiastic about women’s education.
Regarding one such practice, the system allowing four wives, he required a man to obtain his first wife’s permission before taking a second or subsequent wife, effectively abolishing this pernicious custom.
Even so, an anti-Gaddafi movement arose, and its members fought the government forces with more advanced weaponry than the government itself possessed.
Social media vilified Gaddafi, while the U.S. media relentlessly clamored for the overthrow of the mad dog of the desert.
NATO also cooperated in Libya’s democratization, and its air forces flew as many as 5,000 sorties.
It looked just like a war of retaliation for the Pan Am terrorist attack.
Thus, on October 20, 2011, seven months after the anti-government movement began, Gaddafi was killed in the far reaches of the desert.
American newspapers made a show of celebrating the success of the Libyan people’s democratization movement in overthrowing the dictator.
One reason the “Arab Spring” succeeded in country after country was the dissemination of information through social media.
Even when governments attempted to cut off information, Google and Facebook distributed it through alternative routes.
International news organizations such as CNN took an even greater interest and trumpeted “democratization.”
However, why the anti-government organizations possessed weapons and ground combat equipment superior to those of the governments remained a mystery, until an incident that would unravel it occurred a year after Gaddafi’s death.
That was the Benghazi incident.
It began when Islamic extremists set fire to the U.S. consulate general in Benghazi, killing three people, including U.S. Ambassador C. Stevens.
Why was the American ambassador there?
It was because “he was actually engaged in shipping weapons from Benghazi to anti-government organizations in Syria, where the next democratization movement had begun” (Soki Watanabe, “The Collapse of the American Democratic Party”).
In other words, the United States was behind the series of events known as the “Arab Spring.”
The incident brought to light that Secretary of State Hillary had been directing the operation using her personal email.
Eliminating Soleimani Was an Act of Conscience
The operation’s intention was to eliminate Middle Eastern leaders considered a nuisance.
Gaddafi and Assad were the targets, and the others were collateral damage.
Social media was used to incite riots and spread anti-government movements.
The U.S. media also provided support, and the necessary weapons were shipped in.
Indeed, weapons loaded onto a ship bound for Syria had also been seized by Lebanon.
Trump disliked this dirty interference in other countries by the U.S. Democratic Party and sought to bring America back to its original policy of nonintervention under the Monroe Doctrine.
Asahi Shimbun criticizes Trump as inward-looking, but that is merely a direct translation of the words of the American media, which had worked with Hillary and others.
The other day, that same Asahi condemned Trump’s tweet to Iranian citizens calling for the overthrow of the Islamic government—“I stand with you, who have suffered for many years”—as “a message inciting demonstrations” (correspondent Takashi Watanabe).
When Democrats interfere, it is praised as democratization; when Trump does it, he is denounced.
This Watanabe fellow would be better described as a “translator” than a “correspondent.”
In fact, 40 years ago, the United States used the same mechanism as the “Arab Spring” to bring down Iran’s Shah Pahlavi, who had sought to unite the Middle East and stand up to the Western oil majors, and brought about Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution.
It succeeded in crushing the Shah, but the revolutionary government imposed a reign of terror more brutal than North Korea’s.
People were whipped merely for drinking alcohol or eating dry-cured ham, while adultery and prostitution were punished by public execution.
It was the Revolutionary Guard that openly committed such outrages in Allah’s name.
Even the Islamic clerics could not restrain them.
In earlier years, they carried out the attack on the U.S. Embassy and arrested the Japanese ambassador; more recently, when Prime Minister Abe met with the supreme leader, they bombed a Japanese tanker.
And this time, they shot down a civilian airliner.
Trump had the conscience to reap what the U.S. Democratic Party had sown.
He eliminated Revolutionary Guard commander Soleimani and taught them that someone existed who could put a stop to them.
The fanatical religious government had lasted for 40 years, but he also conveyed to the citizens that it would not last forever.
That is the meaning of the tweet.
I would like correspondents to think a little when writing their articles, rather than simply translating.
(February 2020 issue)