{"id":1338,"date":"2006-08-29T16:07:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-29T16:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/08\/29\/115686496235839182\/"},"modified":"2006-11-27T16:53:51","modified_gmt":"2006-11-27T16:53:51","slug":"koizumi-dictators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/08\/koizumi-dictators\/","title":{"rendered":"Koizumi and dictators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Considering that Japan&#8217;s own Tony Blair, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Junichiro_Koizumi\">Junichiro Koizumi<\/a>, is due to step down as Prime Minister in a few weeks, it&#8217;s hard to know what impact his current <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/asia-pacific\/5294196.stm\">sucking up to murderous Central Asian dictators<\/a> will have on the constitutionally pacifist nation&#8217;s future foreign policy.Nonetheless, the fact that any supposedly liberal, westernised democracy would even consider attempting to build closer relations with the perpetrators of last year&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/May_2005_unrest_in_Uzbekistan\">Andijan massacre<\/a>, or a state which routinely employs <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/backgrounder\/eca\/uzbek-aug\/torture.htm\">threats of bottle-assisted anal rape<\/a> in an attempt to silence political opponents, is concerning to say the least.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> More in-depth analysis of Koizumi&#8217;s trip from the always top-notch <a href=\"http:\/\/neweurasia.net\/?p=637\">Registan<\/a> (and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.registan.net\/?p=6621\">part 2<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.registan.net\/?p=6622\">again<\/a>) and <a href=\"http:\/\/neweurasia.net\/?p=637\">neweurasia<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Considering that Japan&#8217;s own Tony Blair, Junichiro Koizumi, is due to step down as Prime Minister in a few weeks, it&#8217;s hard to know what impact his current sucking up to murderous Central Asian dictators will have on the constitutionally &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/08\/koizumi-dictators\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rest-of-the-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}