Is the world heading towards nuclear confrontation? If it is, no-one has told the Hang Seng Index, which – perhaps hardened by Hong Kong’s inundation with palm oil – opens today with a very mild and probably overdue touch of profit-taking.
Back in the days when grown-ups ran the world, North Korea’s formulaic ranting and contrived freaking-out was predictably wacky: a measured-if-apparently-extreme counterpoint to the calm and sober US/global leadership norms. Now the troll becomes the trolled. Kim Jong-un’s regime faces a self-regarding fantasist blurting threats, not merely of any ‘fire and fury’, but a sort ‘this world has never seen before’ – from one of his golf courses in New Jersey.
In a competition to be the most loopy, victory goes to the authentically, shockingly unexpected. North Korea is essentially backing down if all it can do is answer Trump with an even higher level of berserk shrieking-maniac tantrum stuff. The unimaginably scary scenario is that Kim suddenly goes statesmanlike, gets a proper haircut, and starts acting straight and moderate.
As a humanitarian gesture in these dark times – a preparation for Armageddon in the form of pickled eggs. Method: hard-boil, cool and peel the things, place them in a plastic bag, then massage them seductively with garlic, soy sauce, salt, vinegar, whatever, etc, but especially and mostly chili sauce (eg this), then leave in the fridge for a week…
I don’t think even pictures of your painful haemmorhoids will help you.
The real conflict in preparation is the US war on China.
North Korea, like Cambodia, will be a sideshow.
Kissinger is still alive to give advice! Good show.
Pip, pip!
Clearly, the calm and measured, “diplomatic” approach to N Korea has failed. It might have been better to avoid this challenge from the beginning, to hide one’s head in the sand and hope that something might turn up.
When one is dealing with the maniacs of this world, it may be advisable to stoop a certain amount towards their level. Have the US tried dirty tricks, I wonder? Eg creating health or security problems at the China-N Korea border so that they begin to blame each other?
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And you missed the significance of the SCMP splash about palm oil. They would never have given the story such attention when vegetable oil magnate Bob “Mitsubishi” Kuok owned the paper. He slashed and burnt forsts at will and even a story about suffocating Asian haze never mentioned his name.
SCMP. The self-censorship paper. As if we needed reminding. But you need reminding, obviously.