I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Kim Jong Il is about to croak and wants a better bargaining position for his successor (who he within the last week or two designated). Its his youngest son who is only 27 years old.
Kim Jong Il is actually less crazy than most people think. He is just good at bluffing so that the U.S. and other foreign countries will give him money to shut up. North Korea's nuclear program is really the only foreign policy barganing chip he has. And he knows his track record with the people in North Korea is just plain awful other than his nuclear enrichment program.
He's definitely causing a lot of problems recently though.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
