Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A.

A Message adapted and updated from Mr. John Cleese:

To the Citizens of the United States of America:

In light of the strong possibility you are about to elect an elderly gentleman with a bad temper and a lady who thinks she can run foreign policy because she can see Russia from her house, as President and President-In-Waiting of the USA and thus to risk Life As We Know It for everyone else on the Planet, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy). She won't actually be in charge, but she'll greet foreign leaders as necessary and not put her foot in it or vomit on anyone at dinner.

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. He will choose someone who does not have his or her hand in the till and has significant experience in running Big Things. You have not had one of them for almost a decade and trust me, it is a big plus.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. They have given away too much of your money already to rescue incompetent business executives and soon your American Dollars will resemble Zimbabwean Dollars in total worthlessness. There is no free lunch you know. Although we originally let you get away with secession because King George was robbing you blind, recent events demonstrate that your present leaders are doing much worse things and unfortunately you have not noticed.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether more than half of you still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11. Information to the contrary will again be provided by the rest of the world and we request you read it this time and refrain from invading the wrong country ever again if you possibly can.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.

1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise.

Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. But we have a lot of Bank Holidays you will enjoy instead.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent.

Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

8. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables.
Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $9/US gallon. Get used to it. Your driving armoured cars to buy groceries is unnecessary, boorish and killing the planet.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

11. We will require that people running things, like your government, are at least moderately competent and not related by blood or bribes to those who benefit from their decisions. We know it makes you more cozy when your leaders know as little as you do, but, honestly, it is short sighted: you need doctors who know more about medicine, pilots who know more about flying and leaders who know more about leading.
12. We respectfully request you give up this notion that Politics is Entertainment, and that very complicated things can only be explained to you in less than fifteen seconds. If you wanted to have a democracy, honestly, you'd really need to have taken the time to understand things a bit more before you voted. And may I suggest the startling notion that politicians don't need to look good to do a good job? And it really is acceptable if they are a bit boring, so long as they do their homework. It's especially important if evidently you have not done yours. Poor old Al Gore. Poor old John Kerry. And by the way, are you happy now you chose a Governor for California based on his teeth?

11. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager.
South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them.

12. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

14. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first in their country. The six out of ten of you who don't own a passport will need to get one first.

15. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

16. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776). Although this will raise your taxes, remember that the Neoconservatives will no longer be robbing you blind and so your Dollars will stop shrinking. Didn't you know that inflation and government bailouts of huge companies were really paid for by you? We must do something about your educational system. What on earth is going on over there? Are you oblivious to the crushing debt you are leaving your children? You might as well throttle them now.
17. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season.

God Save the Queen. But at least God won't instruct your President to invade any more wrong countries.

Adapted from John Cleese.

Prince Bandar's Wild Ride

So Prince Bandar shows up at a bank and wants $2 million cash for "traveling expenses." The bank refused. Imagine being asked to scrape up $2 million in cash out of the bank's vault. Do they even have that much laying around at one time? He spends $17 million refurbishing one of his palaces.

"He is quoted in a recent biography saying that he personally flew $10m in a suitcase to Rome and gave it to a priest at the Vatican Bank, in order to covertly fund the Christian Democrats against the Communists in the 1983 Italian elections." See The Guardian article by clicking on the title to this post.

So why the scandal? Sure, the guy's a bit weird, but who cares? A British company, BAE, got a contract to build military weapons for Saudi Arabia. Apparently, as part of the deal, they have been sending $30 million to a bank account in the U.S. every quarter for at least 10 years as a bribe to the Saudi princes making the deal. Can you even imagine getting that kind of money EVERY THREE MONTHS? Bribing foreign officials has only just become illegal in Britain. And Tony Blair shut down the investigation because of "national security" reasons.

There's a lot of jobs in Britain being funded by Saudi military purchases. So they don't want to scratch too deeply on something silly like bribery.

Litvinenko Will Never Die

So Putin thought, "Hey, if Britain won't hand over Litvinenko, we'll just kill him in Britain!" Of course Britain is understandably outraged and now wants former Federal Security Service officer Lugovoi back in Britain to answer charges of murder. Russia is dragging its feet and is talking about a trial in Russia instead.

What were you thinking, Vladimir? What would you do if Russia was offering protection to someone and another country came in and killed him on your soil? You were supposed to learn this kind of thinking as a child. Remember? If you don't like being hit, don't hit others.

Iran's Hostage Strategy Worked

So now the truth is shook out. Iran took the British hostages so they could get their diplomats back. You may recall that the U.S. stormed an Iranian diplomatic facility and took some 'diplomats' as captives.

Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So Iran seized British marines and held them without access to British embassy officials. Just like the U.S. did to the Iranian diplomats. Then, after the U.S. released a diplomat and allowed Iranian officials to visit the other ones, the British marines were released.

So you get the point now, President Bush? Or do you need a picture? If you throw beer in someone's face, be prepared to have beer thrown back in yours.

Econo-Girl has always said that the Iranians are neither stupid nor crazy.

Free At Last! British Marines Go Home

Ahmadinejad released the British Marines "as an Easter gift to the British people."

With no sense of irony in sight, Dick Cheney muttered about not having the right to kidnap sailors. Would that extend to diplomats, too? Wasn't that the point Ahmadinejad was making?

Econo-Girl thinks that the Iranians have long kept sleazy actions under diplomatic cover, so she is not as outraged as others at the arrest of Iranian "diplomats." Still, the point was made, wasn't it?

The British Hostages: What Iran Wants

The Chinese business newspaper The Standard floats a balloon that makes sense of Iran's actions in taking the British marines hostage. The U.S. did the same thing to Iran. We raided an Iranian diplomatic facility and captured Iranian diplomats, none of whom have been released.

Now the pair of kidnappings are being linked in the Chinese press. It seems that obtaining the release of the British hostages relies on the release of the Iranian ones being held by the U.S.

Tony Blair has been an avid supporter of the foreign policies of this misguided U.S. administration. Let's see if George Bush will do the same for him.

Econo-Girl has always maintained that the Iranians are neither stupid nor crazy. This "exchange of hostages" idea seems to bear that out.

The End of Guantanamo, The End of Bush, The End of Blair

A British resident, Bisher al-Rawi, has been released from Guantanamo Bay prison camp. He describes the hopelessness there in the article linked to the title of this post.

The significance of his statements have less to do with the allegations than with the implication that Tony Blair allowed British citizens and residents to be treated this way. No representation. No chance to refute the charges. Abusive and demeaning treatment before any terror connection has been proved.

A country is supposed to watch out for its people elsewhere in the world, not offer them up as political sacrifices to the ideology of an unthinking cowboy.

Tony Blair did not protect his citizens. Yes, some of them are rotters, no doubt. But a stinker will out in a fair process. There is no need for such lopsided handling unless there is an equal amount of doubt that there is enough evidence to convince an impartial observer of a detainee's guilt.

When the new British government arrives, do you think they will stay quiet about this? They will not. Just in time for the U.S. election, too.

Iran and Its British Hostages

The world has generally been confused by Iran's actions in taking British marines hostage. Why, after so nearly becoming engaged in a war with the U.S., would Iran choose to engage the U.S.'s number one ally so aggressively?

Here's an idea. The Iranian government is trying to get the new Iraq leaders used to the watery boundaries that the Iranian government wants. The Iranians are demonstrating clearly the boundary that will trigger a war and the boundary that they are willing to fight for.

After a time has passed, the hostages will be released. The message would have been conveyed to the Iraqis "Don't let your people go here or it will be considered close to an act of war."

What the Iranians may not be considering is that dramatic actions like these take on a life of their own. Once you do something like take hostages, the outcome cannot easily be controlled. Iran has seriously placed itself in a position to get attacked, this time led by Britain and supported by the United States. What the hell are they thinking?

Iran Captures British Soldiers

What does this mean? After Russia's public pressure for more money, Iran is Ahmadinejad is naturally feeling defensive. The whole ruse that Iran didn't pay the money to Russia for enriched uranium sounds bogus. The Iranians are neither stupid nor crazy. Of course they would pay. And if it was merely an matter of cash, the squeeze for more could have been made privately.

My suspicion is that Russia never intended to hand over the goods to Iran in the first place. They want to manufacture it and export it to other countries, to include Iran.

So that brings us back to the original question: what does this mean? Perhaps the Iranian military is not strongly controlled by Admadinejad. Perhaps a little taste of what we did to them, i.e., capturing the Iranian diplomats, helps set a boundary.

Can we be reasonably sure that the Iranians DON'T want a war with U.S. and Great Britain? Up until now, that has seemed the case. Of course, no one is talking about uranium enrichment now. That's probably the point of all this.

Iran and Nuclear Weapons: What Happened?

A few short days ago, Ahmadinejad was willing to negotiate about nuclear issues. Now he spits in the eyes of the United Nations again. With hope and baited breath, the western press adds a few paragraphs about dissent on the issue within Iran. What has happened?

From Econo-Girl's perspective, Britain's decision to withdraw troops from Iraq means that Bush will not get his little war with Iran. And of course, as soon as a loud-mouthed bully gets a little breathing room, he starts being obnoxious again, like he never was scared before. But scared he was.

And doubtless Admadinejad was a little jealous of all the stuff North Korea got for being a little cooperative. He wants some toys, too. But this entire episode demonstrates clearly that Ahmadinejad is not insane, and that he doesn't really want a war. So he's not stupid, either.

Litvinenko Will Never Die

Scotland Yard wants to continue its investigation into the murder of Litvinenko by going to Russia again, but this time asking the questions themselves. The Russians aren't too hot about this idea. But surely they couldn't expect that the British were going to let this one go. No one would.

After all, when Italy suspected the CIA of kidnapping people on its soil, not even killing them, didn't they convene a court to look at it? No nation is going to tolerate a foreign assassination on their soil.

Litvinenko will never die.

Brown vs. Blair on Terror and Iraq

Tony Blair has made Britain's alliance with the United States the hallmark of his foreign policy to a dizzying extent. In lockstep, you might say.

Blair's successor, Mr. Brown, has promised to change that approach.

Rather than increasing the number of troops in Iraq, Mr. Brown has promised to reduce them "by thousands." What this signals is not only a break with Tony Blair, but a distancing from Washington.

In Econo-Girl's opinion, it's about time.

How has it been to Britain's advantage to be so close to the U.S.? What did Tony Blair think they were getting out of it? It really is unclear.

The distance Mr. Brown proposes also comments on President Bush's leadership in Iraq and the war on terror in general. Not very favorable comments, that is. What Mr. Brown is saying is Mr. Bush's strategy has not worked. He is saying the world can expect different things from Britain in the near future.

Econo-girl eagerly awaits.