DPRK, DPRK, DPRK, DPRK

The new 'in' word is DPRK. When conversing with people about the state of the world, an Iraq conversation, say, then toss in a sentence like 'this DPRK thing has me so freaked out.' DPRK, of course, is the acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It's troubling because the United States appears to have secured a withdrawal from the nuclear brink by Kim Jong-Il and his communist friends, but t a massive price. Apparently, they're giving them something like a billion tons of oil or something like that. Like, lots of the stuff.

And they are now not officially on the axis of evil any more. Presumably Iraq has also now been removed from the axis, which leaves Iran, really, as a Point of Evil. An evil constructs go, a point really isn't all that bad. I mean, everyone knows that there's evil in the world, and to identify one point of evil as more important or offensive than the next, well, that's almost racist, isn't it?

Now here's the other thing. Bush has consistently referred to two groups in his presidency. The first, the axis of evil, is now a point. The second, the Coalition of the Willing, is decidedly frosty now, but I guess with the Brits still committed to Afghanistan and Iraq, remains a coalition. Question is, should the other countries be put into a box - one, for example, where we could place DPRK. They're certainly not going into the good guys box - the Coalition. Even for a squillion tons of oil I doubt we're going to see Kil Jong-Il's boys taking on Moqtada Al-Sadr any time soon. So I guess we could call the middle ground the Alliance of the Distinctly Average. We're not evil (just like Google), and we're not good either - at least not to the point of invading Iraq (or Iran for that matter - that will probably need a Coalition of the Coerced). We're just kind of OK.

Did anyone mention rendition? Oh no, here we go.