Those pissed off by the redrawn map of the Middle East may appreciate the implicit payback in the following. A Russian academic is ardently predicting that the U.S. will break apart from internal pressures in 2010, with six pieces falling under different spheres of influence, the Wall Street Journal reports, and Russian state media — no friend of the U.S. — is eating it up, giving Igor Panarin, who’s been making this prediction for a decade, lots and lots of screen time. Personally, I think the idea is risible, if not outright bonkers — even if the U.S. were to break apart in the near future, I don’t think it’d do it like this — but it’s interesting in a “how others see us” kind of way. Via all sorts of places, such as BLDGBLOG, Cartophilia, Gadling and io9.