PUTIN' PUTIN DOWN

Hillary Clinton’s comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler may have opened a Pandora’s Box for  Cold War revivalists, conspiracy theorists and political gossippers.

So here’s my beginners list of 10 eerie parallels between Put. And Hit.:

*Highly charismatic heads of state,

*Masters of national propaganda machine,

*Little tolerance for political opposition,

*Tapped into national yearning for a return to glorious Empire of previous century and earlier,

*Rewrote national constitution to extend power grip,

*Held power in shakey economic times,

*Hosted an Olympic Games,

*During which chided for anti-progressive stance on social issue (Aryanism; gay rights),

*Swift early military campaigns explained as “annexation” (Sudetenland; Crimea)

*Trying to reacquire border territory lost in aftermath of prior war (WWI “punitive” settlement; Cold War).

World Cup Soccer: US Hopes to Tar and Feather British

Dunce Cap Fits BP Well

The huge Dunce Cap placed over the erupting BP (aka British Petroleum) oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has been partially successful. The Dunce Cap is a better fit than anything else BP has tried. That said, the wound is still hemorrhaging.

Enter: World Cup Soccer--US Hopes to Tar and Feather the British in Showdown Saturday.

The British are heavy favorites, having more internationally experienced players. But the Americans have youth and enthusiasm on their side.

The US also has a history of surprising victories over the Redcoats--such as the stunning 1950 win by a score of 1-0.

On top of that, the US will be playing with the anger of a nation behind them. This, of course, is because of the tremendous devastation wreaked on the US Gulf Coast this spring by British Petroleum's massive Oil Spill.

A US soccer fan says he hopes "that when the American players hit the field they'll run circles around the Brits--make 'em look like they're mired in muck, like all those pelicans of ours."

One fan says that if any other country had spewed-out all of that oil, many Americans would consider it an act of war or terrorism. But this Euro-trashing of the Gulf Coast has been gotten away with. The perpetrators are predominantly White and English-speaking, not like your typical profiled enemy or terrorist.

A fan of the American Tea Party agreed that it would be fun to see the British humiliated in a Revolutionary victory. "People might think that we'd be pro-water-fouling, given our history, but actually we're more pro-waterfowl. The Audubon Society has some very influential chapters in Massachusetts."

Sarah Palin is rumored to have quipped that if she'd ever caught Vladimir Putin drilling for oil off the Alaska Coast, she'd have shot him in the buttocks with a crossbow.
Afterwords
How it turned out: 1-1 tie--a "moral victory" for the USofAers.   The most likely tar & feathering would have been by British fans of their owngoalie who let an easy shot get by him. 

BP Followup
A BP robot has evidently knocked the Dunce Cap off the well head! The company's CEO could not be reached for comment as he was busy unwinding from a nerve-wracking yacht race over the weekend. A BP spokesman said they'd likely try to put the Dunce Cap back on. It was unclear whether the robot, which reportedly had said "Woops, my bad!" would be asked to play any role in the retrofitting.

Lost in the Gulf of Mexico

Odd Things: Paradise(s) Lost
Has anybody else noticed the strange similarity between fact and fiction in the news. It's a real "synchronicity"!

5/23/10: in TV's most awaited show in recent memory--Last Episode of Lost (TV's top drama--filmed in Hawaii)--the focal point was a large stone plug in the Earth that was pulled out by the character Desmond--releasing a large amount of radiant energy--and subsequently put back in by the show's lead character (Jack). The plug site was deep in a cave, accessed by a running brook including a waterfall estimated at 50-100feet.

This aired about 5 weeks after the tragic Gulf of Mexico Oil Rig Disaster that is the leading news story of the year in US. Most nights the networks lead with it in their evening news and the situation only worsens. The oil company has been unable to plug up the oil-spewing hole on the gulf floor--about 500 feet below sea level--or effectively clean up the mess. Nothing they've tried (steel condom, drinking straw, toxic dispersant, blame game, mud pies) has worked very well--as of 5/30.

In the finale of Lost, the heroic plugging/unplugging is seen as pivotal to the islanders as they eagerly ask one another "did it work?" or state "it worked" or "it didn't work." There was another important hole in the ground in an earlier episode this season. One or more of the characters fell/jumped down into it in order to pull some sort of lever that had something to do with blowing the island up (The show was notoriously hard to pin down).

Of course, the final episode of Lost was surely written and probably filmed prior to the oil eruption. You'd almost think--wishfully--that the oil blowout was part of another plot twist. But, alas, the show is over, while the reality of the Big Spill gets more horrible every day.

World Government Democracy: Regional System Proposal

An Open Letter to Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Great Britain and Barack Obama, President of the USA (Both of whom have called for a stronger, more effective U.N.)

World Government Regional System Proposal

Gentlemen:

The recent Copenhagen climate talks struggled to arrive at any definitive agreement on a matter of great importance to the entire world. The proceedings were full of posturing, finger-pointing and half-hearted promises.

A simple way to form a world governing board would be to give equal weight to each major region of the world. This arrangement should balance the democratic flavor of the UN General Assembly with the leadership character of the UN Security Council.

To arrive at the delineation of regions, it's sensible to model after existing organizations of voluntary affiliation meant for economic, social, cultural, scientific, and diplomatic purposes These include: The African Union (AU), The League of Arab States (AL), The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), The Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARI-COM), The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), The European Union (EU), and The Organization of American States (OAS).

A careful balancing of a variety of factors leads to something like this for regional groupings of the Earth:

* AmericA—Canada, Greenland, the USA mainland, Bermuda and Mexico.

* LatinA--The Americas from Belize south through Ecuador, including Brazil, and the Islands of the Caribbean.

* ArgenticA--South America from Peru south through Chile/Argentina (all but Brazil), the Falklands and the continent of Antarctica.

* EuropA--Iceland, Scandinavia, The British Isles, most of mainland Europe, Turkey and the Canaries.

* UrsA—Most of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

* ArabianA--Coastal Africa from Mauritania east through Somalia, and the Sinai Peninsula north through Syria and Iraq.

* AfricA--The continent except for part in ArabianA, and Madagascar.

* WestAsiA--India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran and most of the "-stan" lands.

* EastAsiA--China and the members of ASEAN.

* OceaniA--Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.

* JaponicA--Japan, the Koreas, northeast Siberia and Alaska.

That's 11 regions, 6 votes for a majority.

Captain Countries
No individual country within any given region should have more than 50 percent of that region's vote input. The likely 50%ers are USA, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, India, China, Japan and Australia. The regions of AfricA, ArabianiA and EuropA would be coalition-oriented from the get-go. Beyond the 50% rule, the allotment of voting percentages within each region would be guided by formula involving population, land size and value, and other factors.


Such a world governing board would derive strength from the strength of its regions, and would serve as a stepping stone to Earth's inevitable entry into larger realms. If we're going to one day officially interface with extraterrestrials, it helps to have our terrestrial situation in decent order.
　
Demographics
(Aspects considered in delineating regions include: geography, economy, population, affiliation, ethnicity, belief systems, history, culture, language, geo-politics, diversity, leadership, etc.)