U.S. Ran Social Media Programs in Afghanista​n and Pakistan. In Cuba e-Brothel

U.S. Ran Social Media Programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Cuba, and others, The New York Times recently advertised. The United States built Twitter-like programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but like a similar program in Cuba, they were shut down for lack of money, officials said in anonymous SMS to Marquel, TPVs Times Social correspond?ent.

Marquel didn’t believe that this was a money issue. His contacts at the CIA, USIA, and FBI never, ever, lacked for money. They had all the other worldly issues. But never money. In fact when Obama ordered the agencies to tap every American’s emails forever, they took it out of petty cash. So Marquel had to visit the agencies. No one would talk. He didn’t think they would. He just wanted to spread the word around of his interest. After he was “escorted” (in New York we call it being “thrown out “) from his third agency, he went home and waited.

It didn’t take long. He was directed to a pharmacy and to ask for a prescription dose aspirin. That doesn’t exist but as soon as the pharmacist told me that with a laugh, I heard a ” pssst ” from one of the aisles. A dark man whispered, “look for me at the game tonight” and so there I was at the Garden, walking from row to row, avoiding guards, but no dark man. Well no, not that dark man. In an inspiration I looked to the ice. Maybe he was the first Afghan hockey player? It would’ve been in the news. But there was no dark man on the ice. Some passing vendor offered me a hot dog. I grabbed for it, looked up to thank him and there was my dark man!

We  made arrangements to meet after the game where we talked.

“So what can you tell me about this social media scheme,?” I asked.

“Everything, man, everything!” He said. “Everything except my name. They’re out to get me. My only safety is in getting the story out so they’ll no longer want me silenced.”

This was starting to make me nervous. This poor man’s life was in these hands. And these hands have dropped everything from ice cream cones, to infants, to the rear of my car when I loosened the jack while the mechanic was still underneath. That hurt. I felt sorry for my dark man. He was not in good hands. “You’re in good hands,” I told him.

“I’m so relieved. Make sure you don’t give out any identifying characteristics,” he said as his left eye twitched and his prominent Adams apple bobbed four distinctive times.

“Well,” I inquired, “would you call yourself an especially dark man?”

“No,” he said, “not especially, where I come from.”

“And where is that?” I asked.

“Let’s just say I’ve seen drones drop out of the sky,” he said.

“Close enough,” I said. “so tell me what you know.”

“I know everything. We started this Afghan twitter system. It was slow to start but eventually we had several hundred thousand, mostly young people.”

“What did it achieve? I asked.

“Well at first just small social conversations but then groups started, some even about peace. We gave some groups greater privacy. But we monitored everything.” He told me.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“We had all their sign up info. So we knew who everybody was.” He confessed.

“Did you abuse their trust?” I asked.

“Well yes and no. Sometimes when some of our guys were feeling a bit frisky, they’d look for some frisky feeling twitters. They’d meet up and have a good time.”

“That sounds like abuse. What did their families say?” I asked.

“Well usually we’d look for girls on their own. Bit if there was a father there, we would twit him and say he was wanted at a police station immediately on the opposite side of town.”

“Abuse ” I said.

“I guess so. I told them they were going too far. Eventually our guys had dated almost every single woman in the city. The girls discovered each other, the families were enraged, and several revenge murders were committed. That was the end of twitter Afghanistan.” He confessed.

“What about other operations? I asked.

“Well, same principle but different mistakes,” he said. “In Pakistan the guys ogled the girls online also but they were too far away and scattered to date.”

“So what was the problem? I asked.

“The guys would look for what they thought were suitable couples and tried to match them up.” He said.

“How’d they do that?” I asked.

“Sometimes they would just send fake twits to start things going, and if it took off, they’d continue to monitor it. At a certain point the goats got involved.” He said. “You would tweet the parents and send them a dozen goats. Our people in the field were used to delivering goats to all sorts of villages after collateral damage so it was no problem sending goats from unaware parents.”

“And the goats meant?” I asked.

“We didn’t know it but it meant they were engaged to be married! When our guys discovered that, they did it even more. We got at least fifty people married for about five hundred goats and a few tweets!” He cried out.

“So any problems there?” I said. It sounded romantic.

“Problems?” He asked, “I’ll say. We didn’t know it but at least half those couples belonged to different tribes. That means death!”

“What do you mean death?” I asked.

“Just what I said. The families would go across country, find the offending family, and cut their necks. Sometimes they’d meet coincidentally in the desert and kill each other so both families died. And now there’s like a hundred families purportedly at war because of it.”

“That’s horrible,” I said.

“Most of it was covered up with drone strikes. We would pass on fabricated tweets indicating the families were terrorists. End of story. End of tribe.” He said without emotion.

“What about some of the more advanced societies, like France, ” I asked, “I heard you had an operation there.”

“Of yes,” he said. “Most of us don’t speak French. Some guys said they did but it turned out they just wanted to meet some cute French girls.”

“So here you are, in the east somewhere running a French twitter without French speakers?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s how it was” he said, “but for a while it grew nicely. A lot of French girls want to practice English so our guys were pretty good at that. But remember we don’t speak that good English ourselves. I think we might have misled some people.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“I don’t remember much because I don’t speak any French, ” he said, “but I remember one of our guys tweeting that you don’t need preservatives for sex, just a good clean shower after. It turns out preservatives are what they call condoms there. “

“That could have caused serious consequences,” I added.

“Of yes,” he said, “the ones you don’t discover for nine months or so.”

“Or worse,” I added. He was silent.

” The worst was when we set up an Al Qaeba group, thinking we’d set up a sting or something. They were all invited to a posh restaurant in the 7 th, I think that’s a posh area. A hundred young recruits at an expensive restaurant. They had a great meal while someone spoke about Al Qaeda. The young people disconnected the microphones because it was bothering the meal. They were just there for the food!”

“Well that’s a happy ending,” I suggested.

“That wasn’t the end. The French police are too good. They waited till dessert was finished, very French of them, I thought,” he said, “then they raided them and locked them up. Their only excuse was this twitter that nobody could prove. So they suffered a lot of torture. But the French police were good. They discovered us. We tried drones but got no cooperation.”

“So the ending?” I asked curiously.

“Ten thousand euros apiece in compensation. That’s where the money came in. We had tons of money but the Obama administration said they didn’t want to pay a million euros to what they called dark people every time we fucked up. That’s the end of the story.”

Wow, I thought. You don’t read things like that in The Times very often. Plenty of money, actually, just not for dark people.

***

For racier stuff than Heathers on Broadway, follow Marquel @MarquelatTPV

TPVs CORRESPONDENT

U.S. Ran Social Media Programs in Afghanista?n and Pakistan. In Cuba e-Brothel