[Peace-discuss] gallows humour

[C. G. Estabrook]

Helpless Britons appeal to France for "regime change"

Hermé Gaspin, Paris correspondent, BNN, 28 February 2003

A group of British dissidents has appealed to France to invade the United
Kingdom and bring about regime change. According to a spokeswoman at the
Elysee Palace, French President Jacques Chirac received the request in a
letter from a group of British exiles and "pro-democracy activists"
calling themselves the "Free United Kingdom Movement" or FUKM, for short.
BNN obtained a copy of the appeal in full:

"Dear President Chirac, On behalf of the people of the United Kingdom, we
appeal to you to help our suffering and once proud nation rid itself of a
leader who defies the wishes of his people and is trying to drag our
country into a bloody and senseless war of conquest against a distant
nation that has done nothing to us.

We have evidence that this leader has made a strategic alliance with the
leader of a fanatical foreign cult that is bent on world domination. This
cult is commonly known as "The Superpower." For years, The Superpower has
been building bases all over our country, where it trains men in fighting,
including how to drop bombs on civilians in distant nations from far above
them. It is also stockpiling weapons of mass destruction in our country,
including nuclear missiles. We are afraid that our leader and The
Superpower he serves will drag us into a holy war.

The international community and the United Nations Security Council are
trying to stop this war, but our leader and The Superpower say they will
simply disregard international law and do whatever they want. They disdain
the will of the world, as well as our own will.

Our desperate efforts to change this leader's course have come to naught.
Millions of people came into the streets, and all our leader said was that
if they did not go along with his war plans they would have blood on their
hands. Our brave religious leaders, including the heads of the Anglican
and Catholic Churches have appealed to our leader, and told him his path
is immoral. He is defying them too, although he claims to be a religious
man. Yesterday in our largely rubber-stamp parliament, more than one
hundred and twenty members of the leader's ruling party dared to vote
against him, and yet still he carries on pushing us to war.

President Chirac, we are a small nation with many needs. Although we once
tried to rule the world, we realized it wasn't for us. Today we have the
highest rate of child poverty in the European Union. We can't even run our
trains on time, and too often they fall off the tracks killing many
people. Why is our leader spending billions of pounds on the folly of war?

We desperately need democracy. Above our leader is an unelected "monarch"
who spends billions of pounds on palaces all over the country, money that
should be used on the needs of the people. Instead of moving democracy
forward, our leader wants to roll it back. He has rejected calls for free
elections for something we call the "House of Lords" and he insists on
filling it with his appointed cronies. We no longer have the cherished
right to remain silent in criminal proceedings. Almost every move we make
is watched by closed circuit television cameras. President Chirac, we have
many other problems as well. For example, our police have been found to be
"institutionally racist" by human rights organizations. We have more
people in prison per capita than any country in Europe (though not as many
as The Superpower which imprisons millions of its people, mostly the poor
and the non-white, in vast work camps.)

With this grim situation before us, we feel we have no choice. We must
appeal to the people of Old Europe, to immediately assemble a coalition of
the willing to disarm our leader, expel the foreign cult and its horrible
weapons, and to help us put in place a truly democratic republic. Please,
President Chirac, act at once, before it is too late!

Signed,

"Free United Kingdom Movement" (FUKM)

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