{"id":257,"date":"2007-01-14T06:44:34","date_gmt":"2007-01-14T02:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=257"},"modified":"2007-01-14T06:48:07","modified_gmt":"2007-01-14T02:48:07","slug":"bad-idea-recycled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/257\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Idea Recycled"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to most of the major news sources, North Korea is considering breeding giant rabbits<\/a> from Germany to help feed its starving population:<\/p>\n

A German pensioner who won a prize and worldwide fame for breeding his country\u2019s largest rabbit \u2014 Robert, a 10.5kg (23lb) bruiser the size of a dog \u2014 has been offered an unusual opportunity to exploit his talents overseas.<\/p>\n

Karl Szmolinsky has been given a contract by North Korea to supply giant rabbits to help to boost meat production in the reclusive Communist country, which is suffering severe food shortages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kim Jong Il is not the first despotic communist leader to have the idea of breeding rabbits to stave off the starvation which communism inevitably brings.\u00a0 In 1932 Nikita Khrushchev found himself as deputy to Mikhail Kaganovich and effectively running Moscow.\u00a0 As William Taubman explains in his book Khrushchev: The Man and His Era<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(page 90):<\/p>\n

Moscow’s working class, allegedly the apple of Stalin’s eye, was going hungry in 1932, and with his legendary concern for their welfare, the great man “suggested the idea of raising rabbits for food”.\u00a0 Naturally Khrushchev was all for this plan and worked zealously to carry out his instructions.\u00a0 Almost every factory, plant and workshop started raising rabbits to help stock its own kitchen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Needless to say, the idea was a flop, although I doubt Khrushchev put it to his boss quite like that.\u00a0 I have also no doubt that the latest North Korean attempt is being touted in the DPRK as the brainwave of Kim Jong Il and not the 75 year old idea of his father’s\u00a0mentor.<\/p>\n

As an aside, another of Stalin’s brilliant ideas for alleviating food shortages in the Soviet Union was to introduce the\u00a0Pacific giant crab to\u00a0European waters, specifically the Barents Sea.\u00a0 Whilst these spiky crustaceans did little to\u00a0silence the rumbling of Soviet bellies, they did\u00a0adapt remarkably well to Europe and they now number more than 10 million<\/a> and are slowly marching their way down Norway’s coast destroying all manner of marine life in their path.\u00a0 Rumours that I have relocated to Sakhalin to collaborate with their leadership in their imminent invasion of the United Kingdom are completely unfounded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to most of the major news sources, North Korea is considering breeding giant rabbits from Germany to help feed its starving population: A German pensioner who won a prize and worldwide fame for breeding his country\u2019s largest rabbit \u2014 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}