PARANOIA

Singapore newspaper Today describes the way beleaguered Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, which has endured 12 employee suicide attempts and ten deaths in the last five months, has redressed the problem: by requiring employees to sign oaths not to kill themselves:

Workers have reportedly been told to sign letters promising not to kill themselves and even agreeing to be sent to psychiatric institutions if they appear to be in an "abnormal mental or physical state for the protection of myself and others." [...]

But workers spoke of long hours, harsh supervisors and low pay. A 21-year-old employee from Guangxi province said she worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. "The atmosphere inside our workplaces is so stifling and depressing that we're not allowed to speak to each other for 12 hours or you'll be reproached by your supervisors."

But there was no shortage of people trying to get through the factory gates, with about 8,000 job applicants every day during the hiring season.

Foxconn's Shenzhen factory has 330,000 workers, so its suicide rate this year is in line with China's reported suicide rate of 13.9 per 100,000 (1999 figures) -- which, itself, isn't grossly higher than the US suicide rate of 11.1 per 100,000 (2005 figures). Maybe the non-suicide oath should be a checkbox on each year's tax return.

On Paranoia-Live.net, Operation Ironside, aka "The Trial," is now proceeding in all its Kafkaesque glory. Good luck to defendant Adam-R-LON, assuming he is deserving of said fortune; otherwise, die, Commie scum!

After an entirely planned and predictable downtime that, despite treasonous rumors, did not last a full four years, the Secret ULTRAVIOLET Diaries have returned. As before, these entries present the confidential spew of several Paranoia-Live.net High Programmers -- currently Jazzer, Phial, and CPUreaucrat -- all brought to you through unauthorized access by traitorous hacker Alpha One.

Obviously reading these Secret ULTRAVIOLET Diaries entries is horrible, unforgivable treason, so we thought you ought to know about them so you can assiduously avoid them.

Very little is as precious, as important to PARANOIA's good health as a steady supply of Actual Play reports of fun game sessions. Loyal citizen Insertname has posted one of these rare treasures, "Spin War," on the RPG.net Actual Play forum. Read and enjoy his account, then consider posting one of your own!

Labels: actualplay

Via efforts coordinated through an RPG.net forum thread, citizen Adam-R alerted High Programmer Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick to the recent downtime. Thanks to good work by High Programmer Takyn-U-RUN, the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net, is now back to normal, for certain definitions of "normal" specified in CPU Central reference documents classified ULTRAVIOLET. Jazzer reports, "I am writing a full and 100% reliable account of events to be posted soon, including an outline of the trial of citizen Adam-R on a charge of Uncredible Treason. Sign up now to be part of the jury!"

The May 10, 2010 New Yorker features Malcolm Gladwell's "Pandora's Briefcase," about the World War II intelligence maneuver "Operation Mincemeat" (memorably recounted in Ewen Montagu's 1953 book The Man Who Never Was) and the larger implications of spycraft:

[I]n Peter Ustinov’s 1956 play, “Romanoff and Juliet” [...] a crafty general is the head of a tiny European country being squabbled over by the United States and the Soviet Union, and is determined to play one off against the other. He tells the U.S. Ambassador that the Soviets have broken the Americans’ secret code. “We know they know our code,” the Ambassador, Moulsworth, replies, beaming. “We only give them things we want them to know.” The general pauses, during which, the play’s stage directions say, “he tries to make head or tail of this intelligence.” Then he crosses the street to the Russian Embassy, where he tells the Soviet Ambassador, Romanoff, “They know you know their code.” Romanoff is unfazed: “We have known for some time that they knew we knew their code. We have acted accordingly—by pretending to be duped.” The general returns to the American Embassy and confronts Moulsworth: “They know you know they know you know.” Moulsworth (genuinely alarmed): “What? Are you sure?” [...]

In the nineteen-sixties, Angleton [James Jesus Angleton, head of the CIA's counter-intelligence division] turned the CIA upside down in search of KGB moles that he was sure were there. As a result of his mole hunt, the agency was paralyzed at the height of the Cold War. American intelligence officers who were entirely innocent were subjected to unfair accusations and scrutiny. By the end, Angleton himself came under suspicion of being a Soviet mole, on the ground that the damage he inflicted on the CIA in the pursuit of his imagined Soviet moles was the sort of damage that a real mole would have sought to inflict on the CIA in the pursuit of Soviet interests.