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Taliban Continues to Create Onion-like Headlines (was: Militants Fed Up With Office Culture)


Rimbo

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Kahn.  Kahn.  Good luck to you both with your beheadings.  It was really great to meet you.

-Ah, the pleasure is all on this side of the rug, believe me.  

 

(days later)

Mohammed, what's happening?  Listen...

(interrupting) -Excuse me I've got a meeting with the Kahns 

Uh, nobody told me anything about a meeting with you and the Kahns.

-Yeah, they called me at my hut

 

Thank you for calling Talibtech, explosives receivable.  This is Nazia speaking.  Please hold this a moment. 

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Our Madrassas counselor used to ask us what you would do if you have a million Afghani$.  And invariably whatever your answer as, that should be your career.  Like if you said you wanted to fix up old suicide vests, you should be a suicide bomber.  

That question is bullshit to begin with.  If everyone listened to them, there'd be no goat shit shovelers because nobody'd shovel goat shit if they have a  million Afghani$.  

You know what I would do with a million Afghani$?  I would invest half of it in dried figs, and take the other half and give it to my friend UBL who works in international finance.  

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38 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

I'm trying to imagine a taliban staffed call center and I'm laughing so hard i can barely type. 

"Allah akbar, and thank you for calling the Taliban where we bring the jihad to you. This is Yosiaf, how may I shame you?"

His name isn't Yosiaf.  It's Steve

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Do you have some kinda treatment where can just zap me and I'll think I've been jihading all day or something?

That's not really what I do Mohammed, but the good news is...I think I can help you.  

(cut to final scene)

 

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there's not many more scenes we can adapt for our sick purposes.  But damn, this has been a fun ride based on a random article.  But a perfect embodiment of Surly.  We took one little nugget and created a whole world-building exercise that is fucking hilarious.  Despite most of us not knowing one another, we see each other through the looking glass of twisted humor.  I don't even know if we still have a Classics archive, and I am admittedly speaking through a pride of authorship, but we gotta save this one.  Perhaps even arrange it into chronological order based on the film (rearrange the posts).  

still one more plot arc we haven't tackled.  They're attempting to launder money from rounding maths from bank transactions like Superman III.  And oh look, an international terrorist organization who, in real life, uses micro transactions online and from the drug trade to pilfer a few cents here and there which accumulate into millions each year.  

you could also make a movie about the silly shit we concoct on here out of sarcasm and frustration that ends up becoming political reality.  Sometimes I think we're a simulation inside of the simulation.  

Also, they're destroying the fax machine with a cricket bat instead of a baseball bat for regional authenticity.  

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  • Chief : [noticing Abdul is depressed]  Abdul? I don't want to intrude, but you seem a little down.

    Abdul : Well,  Chief, it's about my job.

    Chief : Ah.

    [sits down with Abdul] 

    Ab : I'm having doubts about being in the Taliban. You know, it's not like how it is on the Internet. All I do all day is fill out forms and paperwork. I mean, this is what I do.

    Chief : [contemplates]  It's a point well taken, Abdul. But you must understand, although it's not exciting, it's a very important part of our work.

    AB : Yeah, but in all my times in the Taliban, I've never gotten to, like, chase a guy across a crowded city square. I've never... I've never hung on to that part of a helicopter. You know that part? Underneath the thing that it lands? Do you, do you know that part?

    Chief : Yes, I know that part.

    AB : I've never hung onto that. I've never even commandeered a vehicle.

    Chief : Now *that* sounds like a lot of fun.

    AB : And that's the other thing. You're too nice.

    Chief : I'm too nice?

    AB : Yeah, you're too nice. Why can't you be like Bin Laden on those recruitment videos? You know, when you come in, and you haul me into your office, and you bawl me out because you're sick and tired of defending my screwball antics to the Supreme Leader and threaten to behead me? Why cant you do that?

    Chief : Well, the truth of the matter is, I don't report to a Supreme Leader. I report to a committee. Some of whom are appointed, some elected, and the rest co-opted on a bi-annual basis. It's a quorum, so to speak.

    Abdul : A quorum?

    Chief : Yeah.

    AB : Chief, when I joined the Taliban, I thought I was going to be Bin Laden. But instead, I'm like... Samir from Initech.

    Chief : Hey. Somebody needs a hug!

Edited by ChickenSandwich
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"I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume, from 9-11." 

-Your radio is from our terrorist attacks on American from September 11th?  What the fuck Akbar?  You shouldn't have that, NATO could still find it.

"No, 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock in the morning."

-Oh like time of day.  Cool, cool.  Can you switch it over to that Ghazal station?  I love that stuff.

"Dammit Mohammed, they're all Ghazal stations! I know when you're messing with me."  

 

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avett-officespace.gif

Damn it feels good to be a Jihadi
A real Jihadi-ass Talib plays his cards right
A real Jihadi-ass Talib never runs his fucking mouth
'Cause real Jihadi-ass Talib don't start fights
And Talib always gotta high cap
Showing all his boys how he shot 'em
But real Jihadi-ass Talib don't flex nuts
'Cause real Jihadi-ass Talib know they got 'em

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And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Khaleq that if they move my camel one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Abdul-Hasib too, because they've moved my camel four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the jerboas, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Lee-Enfield to the M1917, but I kept my Lee-Enfield rifle because it didn't jam up as much, and I kept the bullets for the Lee-Enfield and it's not okay because if they take my rifle then I'll set the building on fire...

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23 hours ago, YGIFS said:

there's not many more scenes we can adapt for our sick purposes.  But damn, this has been a fun ride based on a random article.  But a perfect embodiment of Surly.  We took one little nugget and created a whole world-building exercise that is fucking hilarious.  Despite most of us not knowing one another, we see each other through the looking glass of twisted humor.  I don't even know if we still have a Classics archive, and I am admittedly speaking through a pride of authorship, but we gotta save this one.  Perhaps even arrange it into chronological order based on the film (rearrange the posts).  

still one more plot arc we haven't tackled.  They're attempting to launder money from rounding maths from bank transactions like Superman III.  And oh look, an international terrorist organization who, in real life, uses micro transactions online and from the drug trade to pilfer a few cents here and there which accumulate into millions each year.  

you could also make a movie about the silly shit we concoct on here out of sarcasm and frustration that ends up becoming political reality.  Sometimes I think we're a simulation inside of the simulation.  

Also, they're destroying the fax machine with a cricket bat instead of a baseball bat for regional authenticity.  

Havalah System. Talib version of Western Union.

Achmed says he sent the cash for poppy purchases, so we pull 1% via the Mullah and spend it on coke and chickens. What do you think Jalil? 

And not a Fax machine. A hummer. Or a former female secretary (too soon?) 

Edited by InkaUtexas
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Took me awhile, finally got it.  You mean like a Hummer that the Army left behind there?  I thought like the secretary gave somebody a blowjob out of wedlock and so they killer her because of her hummer.  Way to take it too dark, dude.  Sickie.  

Judges would have also accepted that in a master stroke of irony, the guys in the mailroom couldn't find any boxcutters to open up all the cartons of documents they receive.  THANKS A LOT BIN LADEN! 

Edited by YGIFS
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ABDUL AHAD
All right, Armineh, you wanna get everybody started there. (he gets a 
portion of Shir Berinj) Mmm. That is terrific. That is just terrific. I really, 
really appreciate it.

(A portion is handed to Muhammad.)

FARAH
Muhammad, don't be greedy. Let's pass it along and make sure everyone 
gets Shir Berinj.

MUHAMMAD
Can I keep it? Because last time I was told that -

FARAH
Just pass.

(He does so.)

MUHAMMAD
But this, this, it, it, it's a little Shir Berinj...

(Everyone gets a Shir Berinj and Farah gets the last one. Muhammad has to watch 
everyone enjoy their Shir Berinj.)
Edited by texasdago
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ROBERT
How come no one in this country can pronounce my name right? It's Win-ches-ter.  Winchester!

AHMAD
At least your name isn't Ahmad Zamir.

ROBERT
Ahmad, there's nothing wrong with that name.

AHMAD
There was nothing wrong with it. Until I was about nine years old and 
that no-talent kuss ghol became famous and started winning Polar Music Awards.
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1 hour ago, YGIFS said:

Took me awhile, finally got it.  You mean like a Hummer that the Army left behind there?  I thought like the secretary gave somebody a blowjob out of wedlock and so they killer her because of her hummer.  Way to take it too dark, dude.  Sickie.  

Judges would have also accepted that in a master stroke of irony, the guys in the mailroom couldn't find any boxcutters to open up all the cartons of documents they receive.  THANKS A LOT BIN LADEN! 

Suck my goat American. I will take you down with this 

image.png.d735d3a05b51125f02da8658acd4625e.png

 

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  • Rimbo changed the title to Taliban Continues to Create Onion-like Headlines (was: Militants Fed Up With Office Culture)

Investors better get ahead of this, because as these guys hit mandatory retirement, they'll need a place to go....

Brings a new meaning to "The Villages" of Pakistan.

Bingo night will just hit differently there in Sun City / Kandahar. .

 

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TIL that the Taliban relies on WhatsApp for their government communications, but because of sanctions, they keep getting kicked off:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/17/world/asia/taliban-whatsapp-afghanistan.html

 

Quote

Late one night two months ago, a team of Taliban security officers assembled on the outskirts of Afghanistan’s capital to prepare for a raid on an Islamic State hide-out.

As the zero hour approached, the men fiddled with their automatic rifles while their leader, Habib Rahman Inqayad, scrambled to get the exact location of their target. He grabbed his colleagues’ phones and called their superiors, who insisted they had sent him the location pin of the target to his WhatsApp.

There was just one problem: WhatsApp had blocked his account to comply with American sanctions.

 

 

Quote

“The only way we communicate is WhatsApp — and I didn’t have access,” said Mr. Inqayad, 25, whom The New York Times has followed since the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

He was not alone. In recent months, complaints from Taliban officials, the police and soldiers of their WhatsApp accounts being banned or temporarily deactivated have become widespread, disruptions that have illuminated how the messaging platform has become a backbone of the Taliban’s nascent government. Those interruptions also underscore the far-reaching consequences of international sanctions on a government that has become among the most isolated in the world.

 

Quote

The United States has long criminalized any form of support for the Taliban. Consequently, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, scans group names, descriptions and group profile photos on the messaging app to identify users among the Taliban and block their accounts, according to a spokesman for the company.

The policy has been in place since U.S. sanctions were enacted more than two decades ago. Even when the Taliban were an insurgency, the ban handicapped some fighters who relied on the app because it catered to people with neither literacy nor technological skills; using WhatsApp’s voice message feature, they could send messages and listen to the verbal instructions from their commanders with the press of a button.

 

 

Spoiler

But over the past two years, the Taliban’s reliance on WhatsApp has become even more far-reaching as smartphone use has proliferated and 4G networks have improved across Afghanistan with the end of the U.S.-led war. As the Taliban have consolidated control and settled into governance, the inner bureaucratic workings of their administration have also become more organized — with WhatsApp central to their official communications.

Government departments use WhatsApp groups to disseminate information among employees. Officials rely on other groups to distribute statements to journalists and transmit official communiqués between ministries. Security forces plan and coordinate raids on Islamic State cells, criminal networks and resistance fighters from their phones on the app.

 

“WhatsApp is so important to us — all my work depends on it,” said Shir Ahmad Burhani, a police spokesman for the Taliban administration in Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan. “If there were no WhatsApp, all our administrative and nonadministrative work would be paralyzed.”

The use of WhatsApp among the Taliban’s ranks began during the war, as the app gained popularity worldwide and cellphone towers began sprouting up across Afghanistan. Today, experts estimate that around 70 percent of Afghanistan’s population has access to a cellphone. Like millions across the globe, Afghans depend on WhatsApp’s speed and flexibility to communicate with each other and the outside world.

During the war, Taliban fighters took photographs when they attacked government outposts and shared them on WhatsApp with their superiors and the insurgency’s media wing, said Kunduzi, a commander in the Taliban Army’s Second Regiment, who preferred to go only by his surname because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. “WhatsApp was a simple tool, and sending videos and photos via email used to take a lot of work and time,” he added.

Since the Taliban seized power, the popularity and accessibility of WhatsApp among the group’s ranks has grown rapidly. Former Taliban fighters began using their smartphones around the clock, no longer afraid that Western forces could use the signal to track or target them in drone strikes, they say.

As thousands of former fighters took up new posts as policemen and soldiers in major cities that were now under Taliban control, they also gained access to proper cellphone stores.

One recent afternoon at a cellphone shop in central Kabul, the capital, a dozen Talibs crowded onto wooden benches, waiting for their service tickets to be called. Since the new government began doling out salaries to Taliban fighters turned government employees, cellphone providers have been overrun with new customers. Many vendors can no longer keep up with the demand. Across Afghanistan, stores have reported shortages of SIM cards and have had to turn customers away.

Sitting in the waiting room, Muhammad Arif Omid, 21, fiddled with his paper ticket in one hand and his Samsung smartphone in the other. Originally from Helmand Province in the south, Mr. Omid bought his first cellphone and SIM card around four years ago — back when doing so was a days- or weekslong effort.

“We were living in the mountains — we couldn’t go to the shops in cities to get a phone or SIM,” he said. Instead, Talib fighters had to track down secondhand dealers in rural provinces under the movement’s control or give money to a relative to shop for them. Nowadays, he says, getting a nice smartphone and data plan is easier than ever.

But the cat-and-mouse game of shutting down accounts has become a headache for officials in the Taliban administration — an almost daily reminder that the government they lead is all but shunned on the world stage.

No foreign government has formally recognized the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. The U.S. government’s freeze on billions of dollars of assets belonging to the Afghan central bank has hindered the economy. Travel bans have kept Taliban leaders from meeting some dignitaries abroad. Some social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube appear to have interpreted the sanctions more loosely and have allowed Taliban members to use their platforms, but the country’s most popular messaging app is technically off-limits.

“We have one group of 50 people belonging to the Islamic Emirate, and 40 to 45 WhatsApp numbers in it have been blocked,” said Abdul Mobin Safi, a spokesman for the police in Takhar Province, in northern Afghanistan, referring to the Taliban administration as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Mr. Safi has been among those barred — a move that caused him to lose around 10 gigabytes of data, including old photographs and videos from the war, and the numbers of many of his colleagues.

“It’s like I have lost half of my memory,” he said. “I’ve faced a lot of problems — I lost the numbers of reporters, of everyone.”

Still, many who have had their accounts shut down have found workarounds, buying new SIM cards and opening new accounts, and turned the ban more into a game of Whac-A-Mole.

About a month after Mr. Inqayad, the security officer, was unable to reach his commanders during the night operation, he begrudgingly bought a new SIM card, opened a new WhatsApp account and began the process of recovering lost phone numbers and rejoining WhatsApp groups.

Sitting at his police post, a refurbished shipping container with a hand-held radio, Mr. Inqayad pulled out his phone and began scrolling through his new account. He pointed out all of the groups he is a part of: one for all of the police in his district, another for the former fighters loyal to a single commander, a third he uses to communicate with his superiors at headquarters. In all, he says, he is a part of around 80 WhatsApp groups — more than a dozen of which are used for official government purposes.

He recently purchased a new unlimited data plan that costs him 700 afghanis a month — about $8. It is expensive for his budget, he says, but worth it for the app.

“My entire life is on my WhatsApp,” he said.

 

 

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13 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Can you imagine the compulsory sexual harassment seminars at the Taliban Corporation?

They're the government now, so it's more like Parks and Rec than Office Space. Except they're all Ron Swanson, and Leslie Knope was beheaded in Season 1 for daring to speak.

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