Last week's News

News article for the week of 10/30/05.

France at Risk of Losing Surrender Monkey Title
By, Grey Politics

The world was stunned today as it was announced that France surrendered a mere two hundred and fifty two times in the past twelve months, the lowest since records began in 1920, and beating the previous record of two hundred and sixty seven in 1942, when the Germans said “Stop it, we get the point already”.
In the past year France has surrendered to the usual (Germany, England, Spain, a buttered apple and date muffin, Enrique Inglecias and a Gelatinous Cube), the slightly odd (Penguins, the Vatican, a bagel in the shape of Mother Theresa’s face, Buddha and a small grove of Californian Pines growing in Australia), and the plain weird (Ted Turner).
However officials admit that they failed to keep track of the surrenders correctly, leading to duplicated paperwork, artificially inflating expectations on this year’s Surrender Monkeyage. This would indicate that France surrendered to world opinion (for only the fifth time in history). However as one more does not make enough of a difference this has been tallied to the next surrender year’s total to give France an early start.
Most other nations remain unconcerned, with natural disaster, national security and the Sudoku craze being of greater importance.
Only the European Union is truly concerned, with most new members viewing the surrenders as a regularity, adding predictability and stability.
And besides, if France surrenders then the rest of the Union doesn’t really have to.
Consequently attention has turned to Belgium, also known as “France-lite”. With fifty surrenders in the past eighteen months Belgium is not even a blip on the surrender radar compared to France, or even Italy (steady at 111 per year).
However Belgium is seen as a more preferential replacement for reasons of location, language and culture.
Belgium has remained relatively silent on the issue, though sources close to the government claim that assuming the French surrender mantle is one of several options being explored.
The nearest competition to Belgium is generally recognised as Quebec (France-bitter) as Italy lacks credibility due to their inherently unstable government.
Internationally there is some opposition, no European nation wishes to see yet another title passed to the Americas after Brazil stared gaining Eurotrash points.
Within Quebec there is some opposition, for the first time the phrase “We’re not that French” is being passed around.
For its part France has lowered its surrender threshold, and awarded favoured conqueror status to The Disney Corporation, The Beatles (alive and dead) and anyone wearing a pointy helmet.
The world remains on watch.