10 signs bin Laden's next door

ANALYSTS are trying to guess where Osama Bin Laden lived before he got to Abbottabad six years ago. I'm sure he lived next to me. My neighbours were so noisy they either had 50 children or were terrorists making homemade nuclear bombs (a uranium-235 centrifuge makes a racket). I'm not sure which is scarier. Probably the 50 children.
Anyway, Osama's more recent neighbors claim they had no idea he was there. Analysts are sceptical. But not me! I typed "neighbour shocked" into a Google search box and got 7,470,000 results. Neighbours are always shocked about something. That's what they're there for.
This is about to change. Snapscout is a dotcom start-up which will make getting your neighbour arrested easy and fun -- and you can even win prizes for doing so. The site encourages kids to record everything around them on cameras and upload it to Snapscouts.org.
The cartoon-heavy web page says: "Makes reporting a potential crime fun and easy. If you see something suspicious, Snap it! If you see someone who doesn't belong, Snap it! Not sure if someone or something is suspicious? Snap it anyway!"Participants can win "tons of cool badges and prizes." (Pakistan secret service agents, please note.)
The Snapscout people hope to turn a whole generation of children into camera-clutching spies, recording every incident. But kids are already doing that! These days I can't make a simple visit to the toilet without being recorded from three angles for live streaming on the Internet.
I put the site on my family computer's block list just in case it prompts my innocent children to become Snapscout crime recorders in my neighbour's shower, in the vault of the local bank, in the health club changing room, etc.
No, a much better strategy is to look for clues. Here are 10 reasons your neighbours might be the world's most wanted terrorists.
1) Their weekly grocery order list includes five kilos of rice, two kilos of vegetables and three tons of Semtex.
2) When kids accidentally kick a football over the fence, it gets "taken out" by a hidden anti-aircraft missile.
3) The Pakistan government's spies have detailed records on everyone in the town except these guys.
4) While English and math tutors visit most homes in the area, your neighbour's house has a visiting suicide bombing tutor.
5) Graffiti on the wall of the outside toilet says: "America is the Great Satan."
6) Letters received by teachers at the kids' school says "Daddy can't come to the parents evening because he is finalising a plan to blow western civilisation back to the stone age."
7) Instead of playground swings in the garden, there's a jumbo jet for "cockpit storming practice."
8) In scripture readings at the local temple your neighbour always crosses his fingers and skips the part beginning "thou shalt not kill."
9) Your neighbour tells you that he would only break his strict vegetarian diet for "George W. Bush's head on a platter."
10) Women from your neighbour's house buy baggy clothes from the boutique and ask: "Does this make my bomb look big?"

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