Thursday, October 25, 2012

Starbucks of Terror

MEMO

To:                All al-Qaeda franchises

From:            al-Qaeda Headquarters

Re:                The al-Qaeda experience

The following assumes that there is such a thing as al-Qaeda (as opposed to a bunch of hotheads with fertilizer, like Tim McVeigh), or if there was such a thing, if it was capable of, as the Australians say, organizing a chook raffle.  Or, al-Qaeda might be a mass of random angry people with access to explosives who want the geographicaly-challenged NATO to return to the North Atlantic.  Take your pick.
  1. Our organization has existed for over ten years, providing unequaled terror experiences.
  2. The al-Qaeda experience of 9/11 drew unprecedented attention to our brand.
  3. Following 9/11, there has been an exponential growth of al-Qaeda, with franchises established in Yemen, Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, Libya, Mali, Iraq, Syria, and Saskatchewan.
  4. We were kidding about Saskatchewan.
  5. The health of our business model mandates a uniform experience when clients encounter our brand ("client/brand disposition matrix"), and quality control ("QC") is therefore crucial.
  6. The need to abbreviate quality control as QC is, well ...part of the whole franchise thing.
  7. Vital elements of our business plan include:  xenophobia (the target market is white, preferably Anglo-Saxon although French is acceptable); willingness to die for customer satisfaction; Semtex literacy; current driver's licence; and an almost  fanatical devotion to the Pope. 
  8. About the Pope....
  9. We are currently recruiting nuclear physicists, longshoremen, and merchant seamen.
  10. Fluency in Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, English, French, Russian, Mandarin, Hebrew, German, and Greek will be an asset.