Spotlight on:

“Talk to the tail feathers”

The Circle of Intelligent Ducks is a massive, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by the Smiling Duck with an iron fist, and renowned for its enforced nudity. Its compassionate, cynical population of 4.42 billion are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, corrupt government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of the Environment, Religion & Spirituality, and Law & Order. It meets every day to discuss matters of state in the capital city of The Nest. The average income tax rate is 50%, and even higher for the wealthy. The private sector is almost wholly made up of enterprising fourteen-year-old boys selling lemonade on the sidewalk, although the government is looking at stamping this out.

Programmes of questionable content are shown at peak-hours, UFO sightings are listed daily in the morning news, the lowest age at which one can marry has been recently lowered to 12, and space shuttles regularly launch rubbish into space. Crime -- especially youth-related -- is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Intelligent Ducks's national animal is the duckling, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, its national religion is the Cult of the Smiling Duck, and its currency is the golden egg.

Intelligent Ducks is ranked 44th in the region and 53,898th in the world for Largest Basket Weaving Sector.