HIGGLEDY, PIGGLEDY

We here in Homeless Nation are stunned to learn of the recent higgedly piggedly hijinks in the international diplomatic community

What were we thinking of? Or rather, what were our fearless leaders who roost at Foggy Bottom thinking?

Foggy Bottom being what the United States State Department is called by the Inside the Beltway crowd. Foggy Bottom because it is located in Washington D.C., where it is foggy a lot as it once was a swamp. Ahem.

We only heard about the situation because one of those diplomats who created part of the muddled higgledy piggledy mess generated by the release of supposedly encrypted cables between Foggy Bottom and U.S. Embassies around the world to the news media, is right here. In Homeless Nation.

Pendleton Stanford Heddington IV. And Pendleton Stanford Heddington IV is on the lam

And he wants what every diplomat who is on the lam wants. Political asylum. And diplomatic immunity.

Political asylum is granted by a nation to a person seeking shelter from another nation if he has a reasonable fear of persecution in that other nation. That's another way of saying, he isn't exactly flavor of the month there right now.

Diplomatic immunity is listed as the number one tool in the diplomacy toolbox the U.S. State Department gives to all of those mostly Ivy League people who are sent abroad to other nations to practice the art of conducting negotiations with representatives of other nations, and to employ tact in order to gain a strategic advantage in a calculated and polite manner.

In other words, when dealing with the other nation's representative, lie through your teeth..and don't tell him he has spinach in his.

Well, we didn't know what to think at first. Political asylum? Diplomatic Immunity? What a concept in Homeless Nation. We don't even have a State Department. Or a cable machine.

But, ole' PinHead Pupster....yeah, we had to change his name. He insisted. And substituting Pin for Pen was ok, but the preppy in him just couldn't get with Puppy. So Pupster it is.

Well, PinHead, poor dear, was right in the thick of it when a lot of those cables were flying back and forth between his overseas U.S. Embassy post and Foggy Bottom.

And when the Swedish person from Wiki dropped the dime on the United States State Department, well, ole' PinHead wasn't fired. He was evacuated by a bunch of U.S. Marines aided with close air support, right ahead of a death squad which was making straight for his office at the the U.S. Embassy.

Seems a lot of foreign nations were very put out by the things PinHead and people like him were putting into their cables about the people they were sent there to employ tact with in order to gain a strategic advantage. Especially the cable about the Important Russian Guy allegedly having an uh, inappropriate relationship with the Italian Important Guy. Whoa.

Well, during the debriefing -which we needed to conduct in order to decide if the PinHead could stay - we needed to determine exactly why he had decided to come to Homeless Nation for political asylum and the necessity of diplomatic immunity on top of it.

We don't have a lot of Ivy Leaguers here. Anyway not yet. And we were a wee bit suspicious. After all he had been paid before to employ tact to gain strategic advantages. What if he was actually going to covertly mount a military coup here? Take us over and do things US embassies sometimes do in other countries to uh, level the playing field.

And Pinhead knew he needed to convince us of his sincerety, so he came clean. Seems the State Department gave him a list of the countries he could be sent to after a reasonable length of time on sabbatical, and the healing of the identity changing face lift.

PinHead was given a choice of either, (and we are NOT making this up, it's in the CIA factbook!)
Akrotiri; Vanuatu; Dhekelia; Lesotho; Burkina Faso; Clipperton Island, or Djibouti.

Well, we were not surprised. Given those choices, any pupster would have opted for the relative comfort of Homeless Nation. For one thing, we don't require a passport.

But we were still suspicious. And worried. Who would be looking for him? Was he hiding something? Was this all a plot to see if we had spinach in our teeth?

But Pinhead had something to trade for our asylum, and diplomatic immunity.

His diplomatic skills and tradecraft. And PinHead had done his homework on Homeless Nation.

And, as he diplomatically pointed out to us, we do have diplomatic situations with other nations. Situations which need the finesse of a fine, calculating, tactful, polite diplomat like Pinhead.

For instance, he could successfully deal with the situations with all of the little rogue nations within Homeless Nation.

We do have a growing problem here. A lot of different colors, and languages and lifestyles and personalities and agendas mixing it up together. And all of us being in the same boat, too. Whew. Sometimes, we start throwing more than cables at each other.

PinHead's solution is to start up his own Department of the Interior. Well, for that, we have to give him head knocking privileges. And we are taking that under advisement.

And then, he very tactfully and politely pointed out the diplomatic situations with surrounding nations. You know, the citizens who live right along side us, and do not recognize us as a sovereign entity. (His words not ours.)

Pinhead is going to open back channels to those surrounding nations.

Back channels is diplomacy lingo for unofficial channels of communications between states or other political entities used to supplement official channels, often for the purposes of discussing highly sensitive policy issues, and all the while, calculating the strategic advantages.

Like when a street puppy falls off somebody's porch and they're not supposed to be there anyway, who gets sued?

Or a street puppy is way too energetic washing a motorist's windshield for spare change, and it needs to be detertimed who was at fault for the vehicle hitting the fire hydrant if the vehicle was still moving.

Or when a street puppy falls into the river, like who has jurisdiction to pull him out?

Or, the street puppy panhandling issue. Oh brother, are we glad Pinhead is here. Wait until he sees the councilmen and and the commissioners he has to deal with. That alleged thing between the Russian guy and the Italian guy will seem like a cake walk.

Talk abut highly sensitive policy issues and strategic advantages!

Well, Ok, so we're going to give him a try out. PinHead is our new diplomat sans portfolio. Complete with political asylum, diplomatic immunity, back channels and all the other bells and whistles that come with important diplomatic postings.

And, while we're at it. We're going to suggest to Pinhead that, maybe he could throw a little of that diplomatic finesse and tact and politeness into persuading the nation of Djibouti to throw some foreign aid our way.

And we're no slouches here in Homeless Nation when it comes to international strategies. We'll let him know, if Djibouti doesn't come through with the dough.....well, diplomatic immunity or not, it's the nation of Burkina Faso for Pinhead!