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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

PARANOIA in the real world: Smiling flashmob 

Via Boing Boing, a blog post titled "Smile flashmob leads to criminal charges" recounts a recent incident in the former Soviet (and still totalitarian) police state of Belarus:
As you know, there were some tries to do some strictly non-political flash mobs in Minsk few months ago... but mobbers were attacked by the police like if they were on some political event.

Blogger anei_aka_kirian writes (in Russian) about Sunday’s “Smile” flash mob. It was very simple -- people were to come to central square and wander around smiling. Information was spread in usual way. There were nearly one hundred riot policemen near the square waiting for the mobbers. And… anei_aka_kirian visited the square with his girlfriend, both smiling. Policemen advanced to them, checked the passports, and then brutally took him to the bus, leaving his girlfriend behind. In the bus he was searched and his small knife was found. He had the official note of Ministry of Internal Affairs confirming that this knife couldn’t be considered as a weapon, and it was wrapped. Nonetheless, policemen considered the guy to be one of the organizers of this flash mob and brought him to local police department. There criminal case was opened, and anei_aka_kirian could be punished with three months in prison or more for illegal storing of cold steel, despite that official certificate.

It's surprisingly hard to imagine incidents that would draw equal condemnation in both our world and in Alpha Complex, the setting of PARANOIA. Today we despise this crackdown for obvious reasons; in Alpha Complex, The Computer would chastize IntSec for dispersing a gathering of citizens who were clearly happy!
Posted by: Allen Varney / 12:40 PM

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