EVEN MORE BIZARRE THAN YOU THINK

Apparently, North Korea is even more bizarre than we think. According to StrategyPage here are some other incredible antics of the Dear Leader's regime:

Forget the Missiles, This is Even More Bizarre
July 5, 2006: While everyone's attention was focused on North Korean missiles, the real story is the North Korean economy. It continues to fall apart, and more North Koreans are unhappy about that. Worse yet, more North Koreans are finding out how badly they have been screwed by their leaders. Meanwhile, North Korean officials engage in even more bizarre behavior. For example, food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on. In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It's no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem. If the North Koreans appear to make no sense, that's because they don't. Put simply, when their unworkable economic policies don't work, the North Koreans just conjure up new, and equally unworkable, plans.

Fausta notes that Cindy's dear leader cheered the North Koreans on their missle launches. Not only that, but Hugo is rushing to make a deal with his North Korean counterpart. Cindy must be so proud.

However, the StrategyPage article reminded me of the peculiar kind of psychotic delusionas that separate North Korea from reality:

In the spring of 1845, Karl Marx wrote, ". . . the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations." Marx's idea was that a change in the "ensemble of social relations" can change "the human essence."

In June 2004 the communist North Korean government issued a statement to its starving citizens recommending the consumption of pine needles. Pyongyang maintained that pine needle tea could effectively prevent and treat cancer, arteriosclerosis, diabetes, cerebral hemorrhage, and even turn grey hair to black.

Tragically, human nature isn't at all as advertised, and neither is pine needle tea. According to the U.S. State Department, at least one million North Koreans have died of famine since 1995.

Marx's theory of human nature, like Kim Jong Il's theory of pine needle tea, is a biological fantasy, and we have the corpses to prove it.

Kim Jong Il's theories of what belongs to him and how much attention he should be getting from the world, are also the kind of fantasies indulged in by individuals who are onvinced they are the center of the universe.

Kim, Chavez, and don't forget Ahmadinejad -- three thugs (stooges?) vying for Mr. Big in the world. And all of them are more than willing to create a lot of corpses to make their fantasies come true.