Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (16040)	3/5/2003 6:48:20 PM
From: Patricia Trinchero	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 25898

I'm not a psychic............I am a supporter of diplomacy. THere are plenty of avenues that can be found upon which we can build alliances..............to start off we should put a plug into the mouth of your President that has alienated and antagonized half the world. Use the duct tape you all bought last week to tape up Bush's mouth so he will stop spewing forth the inflammatory rhetoric.

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (16040)	3/5/2003 7:44:53 PM
From: Volsi Mimir	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

So at what point will it be our last option with N Korea? Will it take a Nuclear strike as they have threatened? Nope Somebody just has to poison his ass. At banquets on the train, the dictator reportedly told guests that he was serving them "celestial cow." In fact, it was one of his favourite dishes: roast donkey. GLOBE AND MAIL, December 4, 2002)=20 Dear Leader's excesses revealed By GEOFFREY YORK Wednesday, December 4, 2002 =96 Page A1=20 BEIJING -- Even as millions of his subjects were starving, North Korea's eccentric dictator rumbled through the Siberian wilderness in an armoured train, dining on fresh lobster and sipping Bordeaux and Burgundy wines flown in specially from Paris. After consuming his gourmet food with silver chopsticks at lavish four-hour banquets on the sealed train, Kim Jong-il joined a group of nubile young "lady conductors" in a rousing chorus of Soviet propaganda songs. This bizarre portrait is provided in a new memoir by General Konstantin Pulikovsky, a senior Russian official who accompanied the North Korean strongman during much of his train journeys through Russia in 2000 and 2001. The book, Orient Express, gives new details of the two train expeditions, which provoked violent anger from frustrated Russians who were forced to wait for hours as the police evacuated train stations and cleared highways to guarantee an old-fashioned Stalinist welcome to the Dear Leader and his 150-person entourage. "Kim Jong-il can be called a gourmet," the book says, describing his meals on the train. "It was possible to order any dish of Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and French cuisine."=20 The reclusive dictator sniffed contemptuously at the quality of the Siberian meat dumplings offered to him in the city of Omsk. "What kind of pelmeni are these?" he asked indignantly, according to the book. "They should be big, boiled and in broth." In another episode, the memoir says Mr. Kim developed a fondness for the brown bread at a restaurant in the Russian city of Khabarovsk. So he ordered 20 loaves to be flown back to Pyongyang so that he would have fresh Russian bread when he returned home. Starvation among the ordinary people of North Korea, meanwhile, has been growing steadily worse in recent years. Many have been forced to eat grass and seaweed. Even as the latest news of the dictator's luxurious lifestyle was leaking out yesterday in the new memoir, the United Nations was making an emergency appeal for more than $200-million (U.S.) to prevent further cuts to North Korea's food rations. Millions of people, perhaps a quarter of North Korea's 22 million people, are in danger of dying if they don't continue to get donated food from the UN World Food Program. Rations have been reduced sharply this year because of a drop in donations from Japan and the United States in the aftermath of North Korea's admission that it had developed nuclear weapons and sent secret agents to kidnap Japanese citizens. Gen. Pulikovsky was in a good position to witness Mr. Kim's peculiar behaviour. As the Kremlin's top representative in the Russian Far East, he welcomed the dictator and accompanied him at the beginning of both train journeys. Together, they sang Soviet songs such as Across the Wild Steppes of the Trans-Baikal Region and On the Hills of Manchuria. North Korean officials seemed terrified of their leader when they met him, he wrote. "As they entered, they bowed deeply, and stood like that until the commander gave them a barely visible signal that they could straighten up," the book says. The unauthorized memoir has provoked a diplomatic protest from North Korea. But it merely confirms the strange rumours that have spread widely since Mr. Kim made his visit in 2000. Mr. Kim, who is said to be afraid of flying, spent 24 days on the marathon 9,600-kilometre train journey, his first visit to Russia. Among his entourage were 25 bodyguards, two food-tasters and 10 sniffer dogs. At banquets on the train, the dictator reportedly told guests that he was serving them "celestial cow." In fact, it was one of his favourite dishes: roast donkey. Throughout his Russian tour, he cancelled and added events on unpredictable whims. In Moscow, he called off meetings with Communist Party officials and instead opted for a long sauna at a luxury hotel. In St. Petersburg, he cancelled a visit to a communist-revolutionary museum and instead toured a brewery.