J-Troops off to Iraq

[AssKissinger]

Hit It Girls

Koizumi has effectively staked his career on the dispatch in order to cement ties with Japan's most important security ally, the United States, at a time of rising concern about the threat from nearby North Korea's nuclear and missile programs

[Taro Toporific]

Hit It Girls

Koizumi has effectively staked his career on the dispatch

Japan media warned over Iraq missionAljazeera.Net / Friday 16 January 2004, 14:18 Makka Time, 11:18 GMT
Ahead of its most sensitive dispatch of troops abroad since World War II, the Japanese government has warned media not to "obstruct" its mission in Iraq or face a news blackout, a stance that has local critics fuming.
A letter to the media from the Defence Agency last week was labelled by critics as a reminder of Japan's wartime censorship, and an affront to the freedoms it pledged to help restore in war-battered Iraq.
"Japan's militant nationalism has gone, but the methods for controlling the Japanese media have remained," Teruo Ariyama, a journalism professor at Tokyo Keizai University, told AFP.
"The Japan Defence Agency will decide what information is safe or not and no one can inspect what the standard is," Ariyama said.

[Big Booger]

I bet the nationalists were out in droves last night partying it up, singing the old war time chants, with cheers of kampai and bonzai!

I can't believe they'd threaten the media... but then the US did the same thing.. in the name of "SECURITY".

It is getting absurd to think that governments can control us in this way.. why fight for freedom, if you have to destroy it in the process of the fight?