FutureNews

Volume XIII
Issue 7
July 2010

Job Prospects Bleak
for Former Terrorists
By Sam Sawyer
International Correspondent

(New York, N.Y., Sept. 11, 2005) -- What can an ex-terrorist do to make an honest living these days? Not much, according to 5-year international job forecast figures released here today at the new World Trade Center.

"For the fourth consecutive year, we're projecting a zero growth increase in jobs suitable for individuals trained as terrorists," announced a spokesman for the International Occupational Outlook Organization. "Most of these individuals possess absolutely no useful skills. Employers generally have few openings for applicants whose resumes list such abilities as flying an airliner into a building or bulk mailing Anthrax spores to their enemies."

Not that the world hasn't tried to find a niche for former terrorists since the market for terrorism was effectively ended by a coordinated international effort. For a brief time, grocers hired those especially skilled with box cutting knives as stock boys, but they proved far too volatile to keep on the job whenever conversations entered the realm of religious beliefs.

Room was also made for them in the demolition industry. That job market came to an abrupt halt when former terrorists began using their break time to take down buildings they found offensive.

"You could put hard hats on them," said an industry spokesman, who asked to remain unidentified, "but you just couldn't do much to clear up their thinking processes."

In addition to their lack of marketable skills, former terrorists have been held back by the social stigma attached to their former occupation by civilized society. Nobody, it seems, wants a former terrorist in the neighborhood, even if he had managed to buck all odds and become gainfully employed.

"Once a terrorist, always a terrorist," declared a Midwestern homeowner, who spoke on condition of being unnamed. "If one moves in, our property owners association will burn him out. Our volunteer fire department will come and hose down any nearby homes, but they won't put a drop of water on that a------'s place while it burns to the ground."

No where is the current employment situation for former aspiring terrorists more obvious than at the now defunct Osama bin Laden Memorial Academy of Terrorism, located in large, but extremely tattered tent in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan.

"We were forced to close two years ago after we received only one applicant and he turned out to be profoundly developmentally disabled," said the former academy headmaster, who asked that his identity be kept secret. "Virtually all of our funding dried up with the disbandment of the academy alumni association in 2002. We finally called it quits when our 2003 homecoming festivities were attended by only three academy graduates, all wearing Disney character disguises."

What's left on the table for today's homeless, jobless former terrorist population? A check with an ex-terrorist student living on the streets of New York revealed some surprising areas of endeavor.

"I get crash test dummy job last spring," reported ex-terrorist Alfred "Al" Qaeda, speaking through an interpreter who refused to reveal his name. "It no good long. I laid off after tenth crash when testers could not tell new hurts from old."

Qaeda next found work as a temporary pedestrian safety island for a street construction company, but that job ended with the project. Since late August, he has been working as a speed bump at an area high school.

"It very painful," Qaeda confessed, "so I tell kids when I come back home to blanket tent 'no hug, please, daddy have rough day.' It good have steady pay check, though."

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