General Stakati: Crowd sourced, open marketplace bidding, are you kidding me? That technology was developed by proper capitalist companies to drive down wages and eliminate unions by having everyone log on to do specific tasks as private contractors bidding against millions of other private individuals. Private Ensign: Nevertheless General that seems to be the way in which this group operates. High Commissioner Bottomley: Group? Have we even established that it is a proper group behind all of this? Your government has warrantless taps on practically everyone of importance how is it that you have not identified these people especially if they are in computer contact. I’m also concerned that this idea of an egalitarian, disperse group will prevent us from finding the diabolical tactician that is obviously leading these attacks. Private Ensign: The messages must be sent in a type of code. We can’t figure it out because the code is obviously understandable to an endless variety of people operating in the region and possibly in Western countries as well. Senator Breitbark: Surely we can force PayPal to divulge their client list; for all that one of my colleagues calls the internet a series of tubes I think even he knows that the payment systems are fairly standardized and easy to subpoena. Private Ensign: Basically a task is set out and a price is given for achieving it and so far these tasks have shifted our war for oil into a war for womens’ rights. We don’t think that the payment comes from the US however, but more likely from a country set up to protect offshore banks and high income earners hiding their revenue for tax purposes. Senator Breitbark: But how long do they intend to continue with this insanity? Private Ensign: Our intelligence suggests that when we withdraw our troops they will withdraw also. They do not expect the Gharahani women to continue to fight for their rights after our withdrawal so the idea seems to be that our country has to achieve something out of what they call a useless, groundless illegal war and having a temporary feminist struggle is a sufficient use in their minds for our tax dollars. Senator Breitbark: I’m not convinced in the slightest. What group willingly gives up power without being forced to do so? Political Science Professor Hubert George: The idea of subversion and a limited engagement may be the source of their effectiveness. It is said that the Takistan were brought up in single-sex refugee camps with limited education and skill development and their only knowledge is of war and of imposing their restricted viewpoint on everyone around them. An opposing force to the Takistan that operates politically as its opposite in all respects except weaponry is modeling an operation and a future that its participants can justify ethically, politically and as warfare. It is subversive in that it uses existing structures of the eilte – off-shore banking, crowd sourced computing etc. Senator Callum: Sorry to be cynical but aren’t our targets being met in the suddenly winnable war? Three of the top Takistan chieftains were killed in the past month. General Stakati: I am not shedding any crocodile tears over those Takistan chieftains and I am not even aggrieved that they may not have been killed by our personnel but only by our equipment. What we have to discover is who is behind these attacks, how powerful are they, what do they really want and why some of our personnel seem to have memory loss on specific occasions. Governor Chillibibi: I cannot have entire schools of boys being poisoned b y these drone attacks even if it happens enroute to a Takistan chieftain assassination. Senator Callum: I don’t remember any such concerns being expressed by you and your staff when the Takistan was poisoning girls’ schools and killing working women. Governor Chillibibi: Those particular attacks were in defense of Takistan culture and religion even if they did not please your Western ideals. Imani Shiala: Our religion is not anti-woman at all; the Takistani and the other useless so-called men in border countries are deliberately misreading the sacred texts. It is no wonder this group is calling them the small penis countries on their maps. Our holy leader never treated women with disrespect or claimed that men could only feel themselves fully human by demonizing and subordinating women. Governor Chillibibi: Are you claiming responsibility for these attacks for one of your ridiculous feminist groups. Feminism is a Western construct. Senator Callum: Feminist warfare seems like a contradiction in terms to me. General Stataki: Feminists are hardly behind a drone attack Governor. They were unmanned and the poison gas was dropped on specific crowds in specific locations which must have been programmed into the computer in advance, with advance knowledge of the speed of the aircraft and the route that it would be taking . Governor Chilibibi: And also the tear gas that dropped on the crowds when those twenty adulturesses were being stoned. How can they get the precise locations and timing? Private Ensign: Google Earth? Senator Callum: If you were using your soccer stadiums for athletics instead of barbarism those stonings of yours would be harder to pinpoint on a map and target. General Stakati: Is Ensign trying to be funny? Senator Callum: Not at all. We will be having congressional meetings on Panoramio and Google Street View later this week. Senator Callum: Once the satellites are launched the beneficiaries of the information they provide are not limited to the country doing the launches. Senator Callum: Stoning women is for barbarians and you did not even prove the cases against most of the women and the men involved had no charges brought against them. Governor Chillibibi: We cannot tolerate these attacks on our culture and religious beliefs. The students feel the loss of their schools as safe places keenly. Local leaders despite their protestations, are not all against the education of girls past the age of eight. Senator Callum: Even if we agreed to this plan we would need younger men as well. Not all feminists are going to fall for that older-man scenario and may prefer non-patriarchs. Imani Shiala: How many times do we have to say that these practices are not derived from our venerable religion at all. If you westerner Senator Callum would drill for you own oil or better yet move away from petroleum al together the inequality in our countries would decrease and these atrocities against women would decrease also. Pastor Iniqui: While I cannot condemn the attacks on those infidels overseas they have started to attack Christianity in the West. Imagine pushing through a law that says all members of anti-abortion groups have to adopt or fund orphanages without exception and further they are trying to remove the Old Testament from all religious teachings, from all political groups who style themselves as Christian political parties and even from the Bible itself. General Stakati: Settle down everyone, this is not the time or the place nor frankly are we qualified to settle religious disputes. While religion is part of the overall issue this meeting was called solely to discuss tactics against this group. Or even whether we are going to bother with them at all. The war has less and less political cover for it and tactically no outside force has ever won a war in this region to my knowledge. General Molonic: Please, please let’s get back to tactics. What about a sugar trap? Surely even feminists will fall for a handsome military officer and start telling “pillow tales”. General Benay recently lost his wife. He is a handsome man, with sandy coloured hair greying at the temples. He knows how to use his good-looks to his best advances, and was very useful in chatting up the neglected wives of politicians that were brought within his sphere of influence. He never allowed these relationships to cross over into inappropriate conduct but he went far enough to learn some vital state secrets from many of those women. We have another single General who is not as handsome, but knows how to display what charms he has to best advantage. He has shown little interest in pursuing women to the point of matrimony and I strongly suspect him of being gay due to the number of times certain political aides have tried to seduce him. However what he lacks in looks he more than makes up for in charm. He is also singularly fond of attention, and it is amusing to see him trying to decide at dinners whether he mingle with us guys or stay with the women who stroke his ego. His voracious appetite, His sandy-colored hair and his gait give him a wolfish appearance, and my daughters who are voracious readers of bodice-ripping romances assure me that he is quite attractive despite the question marks over his heterosexuality. Japanese Commissioner: While you plan has some merit, our intelligence suggests that we are talking about a kamikaze group. Senator Callum: Give me a break! Those people do not exist anymore even in Japan, your government is not allowed to send troops and your country is no longer even involved peripherally in this war. Private Ensign; Nevertheless Sirs and Madam, Missuses, ahem, the agents pulling off these hits do seem to disappear among the dead and dying; however our own intelligence suggests that the attacks are undertaken as banzai attacks – only potentially suicidal, and it may be that the lowest bidder is not chosen but perhaps a bidder who is terminally injured or mentally -spent. Imani Shiala: If your country treated its returning soldiers better I am sure they would prefer to return to their families and un-repossessed houses than engage in these behaviors. General Stakati: Let’s not get sidetracked into discussing housing bubbles and banking crises. Even if Comissioner Hiroshiminin is right about the banzai nature of this group there must be army insiders involved. Japanese Commissioner: I can call around to our computer experts and give them clear and concise directives to track down the source of this crowd sourced network. Our country cannot send troops but we are quite versed in computer technology. After all there are many computer networks and they typically intersect at many points even though they have divergent interests. The directives given to this group are coded but the actions taken are not done for free so those transactions must be traceable.