Long-haired freaky people need not be socialists

North Korea's communist government is waging war against men with long hair, calling them unhygienic anti-socialist fools, and even leader Kim Jong Il has trimmed his famous bouffant locks.

The hair campaign comes as North Korea's dictatorship struggles to tighten its control over information, monitor its population and dictate cultural tastes. It is directing men to wear their hair "socialist style," deriding shabbily coifed men as "blind followers of bourgeois lifestyle."

Somebody needs to tell the Bush=Hilter crowd that a new look has been ordered and for all those aging men who are losing their hair Uncle Kim feels your pain:

The hair campaign, which began in October and is dubbed "Let's trim our hair according to socialist lifestyle," requires that hair be kept no longer than five centimetres. But the state trendsetters allowed an exception: old men can grow hair up to seven centimetres to hide balding. The campaign claims that long hair hampers brain activity by taking oxygen away from nerves in the head.

That really could explain a lot.