North Korea today announced that it would freeze all nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in exchange for food aid. Under normal conditions this could only be taken as something to be handled with the most extreme skepticism (in other words “complete bullshit”).
But there’s a New Generation in charge up at the castle, and we haven’t seen much of him yet other than a hunchbacked silhouette in a window. Maybe – maybe? – Jr. does not want to live walled up in the castle forever. Maybe, just maybe, he and the rest of the crew might rather be fabulously rich instead.
“Today’s announcement represents a modest first step in the right direction. We, of course, will be watching closely and judging North Korea’s new leaders by their actions,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday before the House Appropriations Committee.
In return for the moratorium on nuclear activities at this key site, the United States has agreed to a package of 240,000 metric tons of nutritional assistance to North Korea.
It is possible. From Pyonyang you can see the prosperity that could have and could still be yours more clearly than Sarah can see Putin from the porch where she tortures butterflies with flaming splints and her voice.
North Korea could out-China China if they decide that being the rectum of the global body politic might not be the best Five Year Plan. A small nation like that, with a rich and generous Siamese twin to the south, Pyongyang could out-East-Germany Berlin if they wanted to.
Who knows? We certainly cannot see from here, and the Secretary of State is right to express a surplus of doubt. If they are going to come out of their cave and claim their Lamborghini’s, we want to be careful to train them not to use them for the old passtime of running over peasants.
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