Reparations

The only words missing from this story are, "....or we'll nuke you":

Cash-strapped North Korea has demanded the United States pay almost $US65 trillion ($75 trillion) in compensation for six decades of hostility.

The official North Korean news agency, KCNA, says the cost of the damage done by the US since the peninsula was divided in 1945 is estimated at $US64.96 trillion....

KCNA said the figure includes $US26.1 trillion arising from US "atrocities" which left more than five million North Koreans dead, wounded, kidnapped or missing.

The agency also claims sixty years of US sanctions have caused a loss of $US13.7 trillion by 2005, while property losses were estimated at $US16.7 trillion.

The agency said North Koreans have "the justifiable right" to receive the compensation for their blood.

.....or they'll shed all of ours.  Hey, who they hell do they think they are, a Big Labor union pension fund?  Besides, Kim jong-Il has light years to go before he drags the Hermit Kingdom as far to the left as the Purpleshirts reside.

Seriously.  Public employee union pensions are a $130 trillion unfunded liability sitting (natch) off the feds' "official" books.  The NoKos only want half of that.  So that either makes the latter comparative rightwingnuts or they've got a lot to learn from their American ideological counterparts about the fine points of sheer avaricial, piratical greed.

I'm sure Captain Open Hand will be willing to go to Pyongyang and talk it over with Comrade Kim - in the interests of "peace".  He'll just get the $65 tril from British Petroleum.  Shoot, Tony Hayward probably had that much spare change in his office sofa.