sorry for the typo, indeed. and gerald may keep the step-ins.

keep your chin up and cheeri-o.

hetero:  I have a friend, gerald, and he would be insulted!

Correction: Most of the time nonviolence cannot be followed.  It has to lead—with its chin.

Question and further correction:  “... but it is indeed the preference of the decent and the just and the sane.”  What on earth is “indeed” doing in that sentence, hanging out there like a pair of Victoria’s undies all alone with nothing much else to do? 
  As to “the decent, the just and the sane”—more like “just barely decent, and not quite sane either.”
  Be seein’ ya.

gerald, no one should ever be bored by listening to the advocates of the wisdom
of non-violence.

unfortunately, the doctrine and practice has its limits and can’t always be followed,
but it is indeed the preference of the decent and the just and the sane.

hetero, better not to open up the subject of various and sundry national sins, embrogglios and confutations, conspiracies, entanglements and broo-ha-has.  There’s no end to it. And nobody ever wins!
My interest is in boring everybody to death with lectures on nonviolence. Now that’s rocket science!

well, it was amusing that the previous Kim used to send his goons out to steal
people for his personal amusement

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2821221.stm

of course, the crazy-asses NorKs kidnapped a couple of dozen other South Korean
and Japanese for even less amusing reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Japanese_citizens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_South_Koreans

hetero:  “No time!  No time!
  As to the counterfeiting prank—No need to countrefeit when you can steal.

in some ways it is all about the money…. as the North
Koreans are the world’s best and most prolific
counterfeiters of US currency….and we changed our
bills,in no small part,  due to their efforts.

http://tinyurl.com/kimcheat

read Lewis Carroll for enlightenment, g

Like I said, hetero, it’s all about money but it ain’t all about money—if you catch my drift.

Sorry, I don’t know what “marching with a hare” signifies.  Please enlighten me.  I must be coming from a different place?  Or what?

====“The state that Kim inherited in December after the death of his father Kim
Jong-il boasts a 1.2 million-strong military, wants to possess a nuclear weapon
and to develop the ability to hit the United States with it - the aim, critics say, of
the failed rocket launch.
Behind those ambitions are 23 million people, many malnourished, in an economy
whose output is worth just $40 billion annually in purchasing power parity terms,
according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, compared with South Korea’s
$1.5 trillion economy.”=====

http://tinyurl.com/thirdkim

gerard, the odds are that you’re marching with a hare here.

If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.  Try the odds of March ... ?

the odds of what?

hetero: ... so why up the odds?

hetero—... yet!

PH—- that we owe more per cap is far less important than that we HAVE assets
that dwarf our debt…...Nork is different ther.

as well, hunger in the US is not at all the same as hunger there….......we don’t have
famines that kill 4% of the population.

Part of my point was that the military IS the “gen pop” for all intents and purposes.  Same here to the extent that the MIC rules.

tic,

How is being hungry in N.Korea and America different?

The U.S. owes more per capita than the Norks do too.  Maybe if we gave them the aid we give israel they would be more compliant to our wishes.

gerard——- feeding the military and their families ahead of the gen pop is a
means of assuring the suppression of dissent by making the folks with the guns
have to obey orders so that their families may eat, not anything else. think it
through.

PH——the hunger in America is a failure on our part of our society,but not a
failure of the government to provide food resources sufficient to nourish the
population and prioritizing the bulk of the available food for government
functionaries and military personnel.
It just not the same.

we’ve also spent far too much on the military, but we’re not dirt poor like the
Norks

Since a large number of North Korean men are in the military, feeding the military may be keeping a large numer of people from going hungry—as in the U.S. Since the military guys are human, they probably share their food with their families. That’s even better. Or should they all die?
  North Korea is rabid, repressive and paranoid—something like the U.S. these days, except the U.S.. has more resources to work with, so they aren’t quite so rabid, repressive and paranoid.  But they are working on it.
  Without looking up the exact figures, I’ll bet our military budget (including the shit) represents rather more than theirs.  I could be wrong, but that’s my impression.
  And speaking of “ruling cliques”—quite a bit of our money seems to be working its way up into the coffers of our ruling cliques as well, so they have nothing on us there, either.
  Brass tacks:  They are a small, poor, scorned country on the defensive and will continue their present behavior until they are less scorned and made to feel defensive.  Countries feel.  People feel. And most of the time they act according to their feelings.  It is not smart for big countries to scorn little countries.

tic,

Without American and other countries largesse it sounds like you are describing israel.

America spends alot more borrowed money on the military and suffers hunger as well.

http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hunger-and-poverty-statistics.aspx

gerard—-North Korea has a rather rabid repressive and aggressively paranoid
government and it’s their own damn government that’s starving the people of the
country….it’s not us penalizing them and starving them. we’ve tried often to deal
with them.

that $850,000,000 for this shit represents 3% of their GDP. it’s representative of
the choices that the Nork regime makes. the food goes to the ruling clique and the
military. when we ship them rice and other grains, the sacks mostly end up in
storehouses for the military.

PatrickHenry (cont.) Reminds me of an ugly metaphor from my long-ago Indiana farm days:  The biggest hogs always step on the most chicks if they get loose.  (The “they” being deliberately ambiguous, probably to protect the little boy who was under the haystack fast asleep.)

PatrickHenry:  Precisely!

Reminds me of the Palestinian space agency.

P.S, No.Korea is a tiny proud nation with very limited possibilities.  U.S. is a colossus with unlimited possibilities.  If ever there was a time in history that called for a constructive reaching-out and an honest and gentle exercise of “noblesse oblige” it is in this case.
  U.S desperately needs to learn to develop some sense of what is appropriate and what is offensive in its diplomatic efforts. It has a long-time habit of flexing its muscles when it is inapproprriate to do so.  Other people resent that.
  Specifically, most of Obama’s reaction was fairly appropriate, not grandiose as U.S. usually sounds in similar cases.  The word “unimpressed” was probably n bit bent toward denigration. I might be wrong, but that’s my estimate of things.

Seems more than a little stupid, mean and counter-productive to penalize the half-starving people of Korea for the fact that their government wants to become an important part of the “family” of nations, respected membershiop in which seems to require a certain ability to “nuke” others if and when.