Ridley's Believe It Or Not--March 18, 2014:  Trust everyone enjoyed wearing the green and had a safe and sane St. Patrick's Day and are now frantically praying to the basketball gods and filling out your brackets, men and women. Go Stanford and especially may all men's teams become triskaidekaphobiacs at the thought of playing the Cinderella team of the year, 13-19 Mustangs of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Managed to find these holidays of dubious note and compared to St. Patrick's Day definitely second tier to go with the factoids and quote.

              1. Anniversary of National Oil Expropriation-- celebrated in Mexico commemorating the seizure by the Mexican government of its domestic oil industry in 1938 by President Cardenas.

              2. National Biodiesel Day--celebrating the continued drive (no pun intended) to free the world of fossil fuels, not celebrated by members of OPEC but good news to farmers watching the price of their crops going to biodiesel production instead of the dining room table going up.

              3.  Gallipoli Memorial Day--celebrated by the Turks but not by Britain and the ANZACs marking the sinking of three battleships out of a naval armada seeking to move into the Black Sea to bombard Constantinople due to a surprise minefield. The loss lead to  the amphibious invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli (great movie of same name with a young Mel Gibson running faster than his heavy smoking habit would indicate)  which if the British general in charge would have shown an ounce of drive would have knocked Turkey out of World War I and may have lead to an earlier defeat of Germany and Austria-Hungary and maybe just maybe might have delayed the fall of the Tsar in 1917 to the Communists and today rid the world of having to face Putin.

On this day in:

              a. 1942 in one of this nation's less stellar moments, the War Relocation Authority is created to move thousands of Japanese-American citizens into internment (aka concentration) camps as a result of the hysteria following the surprise attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor.

              b. 1959 in a true "Aloha" moment President Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation admitting Hawaii as our 50th State.  In the days before bill signing photo ops with multiple pens signed without the presence of Hula dancers swaying to the music of Don Ho with the aroma of leis enjoyed by all.

              c. 1974 before we had even heard of biodiesel, OPEC, other than Libya, ended the 5 month oil embargo against Japan, Europe and the United States due to the support of the United States of Israel in the Yom Kippur War in October of 1973. Talk about a wake-up call which as we continue to stall on Keystone XL and hinder fracking which is still ringing unanswered by Washington today.

         Lessons not learned are lessons history repeats even today in Ukraine, dependent on Russian gas as is Europe: "A lasting lesson of the crisis years is the power of markets and their ability to adjust to disruptions, if government allows them to...  Without it (development of oil shale and tar sands, not biodiesel), the world would be looking at higher oil prices, there would be talk of a possible new oil crisis, and no doubt Americans would once again start seeing images of those gas lines and angry motorists from 1973."  Daniel Yerkin chairman of IHS Cera in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street on the 40th anniversary of the 1973 oil embargo. Sadly, in the fad of fixation of global warming and climate change, we are still not listening.

      Please enjoy the 140 character poems on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet and join almost 140 growing followers and please follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs--click on links below. www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for poems on the Mustangs going to the Dance with a losing record; to honor Cindy Abbott, a half blind 54 year old mother suffering from a rare disease who competed in last year's Iditarod until forced out with a broken pelvis after 600 miles; on Bode Miller and the human spirit; for Cupid on Valentine's Day; to honor Cory Remsburg to join a great collection of my poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy. Go to Rhymes On The Newsworthy Times for poems Guinness backing out of sponsoring St. Patrick's Day Parade in NYC; on Jolly's upset win over Sink in the House's 13th District of Florida this Tuesday; USS Coronado doing a little whale watching of Dana Point; China's red line on war in Korea; De Blasio's payback to his union contributors by attacking charter schools; Rutgers' faculty despicable attempt to ban Condi Rice from being a commencement speaker; the holiday creep of St. Patrick's Day; the crash of a Malaysian Air flight; Obama's need for vacation time as Ukraine crisis unfolds; Newport Beach's assault on recovery homes, including the Ohio House; food fight between Issa and Cummings as Lerner takes the 5th again; Sally Jewell, Department of Interior, telling the residents of King Cove, Alaska to take a hike in placing wildlife over their lives; on students protesting Keystone XL as the world's largest oil producer militarily occupies the Crimea: the banning the wearing of the American flag on Cinco de Mayo to join numerous other comments on news events always in rhyme of course.

©March 18, 2014 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet

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