Official News - page 1

RIGELLIAN RIOTS WREAK HAVOC

by Dot Matrix

After my short visit to Occyland last week to report on the warping of the space-time continuum, it was back to Rigel 4 to join the rest of the embedded news reporters and wait for the long-anticipated riots to kick off - which they finally did on Thursday. At last, I was able to spring into action and carry out my newsdroidly duties.

I walked out of the hotel in which the representatives of the media had been hanging about to find chaos on the streets of Rigel 4, as outraged citizens took to the streets to protest about the neglect of the planet-owner, Pugwash. Having held back their anger for some weeks out of respect for Bella and concern for her health, when the citizens' resentment finally bubbled over it caused a spectacular conflagration.

This normally placid population had had enough, and it didn't take more than a few well-chosen words of propaganda from agitators to whip them up into a violent frenzy. Once the inner rioter was released, the mob needed no encouragement to chuck missiles through windows, to overturn vehicles, and to storm the offices of official organizations.

Then the violence escalated and, as a hopelessly overmatched police force tried to restore order, vandals and arsonists hurled Molotov cocktails into buildings, doing enormous amounts of damage.

On that first day, miraculously, nobody died, but the mayhem took its toll on the economy, with a Ministry of Pensions building being demolished and a stockpile looted, its entire stock of antimatter being removed by thieves. The worry, of course, is that those that purloined the stock will be unable to handle this dangerous substance safely - who knows what will happen should the magnetic containment fields fail and the antimatter come into contact with matter?

As morning broke, things calmed down a little, so I spoke to some of the citizens to find out just what they thought about the rioting.

A well-known CEO, who has several factories on Rigel 4, was very disgruntled and explained just why he was dissatisfied with Pugwash. "She has acted as an absentee landlord - taking no responsibility for the citizens or the business community that keep this planet going. We hardly ever see her, and when she does show up, she doesn't bother to fine-tune the exchanges or do anything useful."

A citizen told us, "I used to like it here, but recently conditions have worsened. Everything is breaking and not getting fixed - look at the holes in these roads! And the hospital waiting lists are getting longer. That Pugwash isn't bothering the maintain the place. She treats this world as a cash cow, milking it for groats to fund her luxurious lifestyle. You can't just ignore the needs of a population, otherwise they are going to rebel eventually - and this is the result."

But not everyone agrees. A local waitdroid said, "Rigel 4 is a good place to live and these people don't know when they are well off. Any of the citizens who don't like it here are welcome to bugger off to another planet. But they should see some of the dumps out there - I've travelled the Galaxy and I know. Lumps of rock with no natural resources, iceballs, volcanic worlds, not to mention those damn beach planets where the sand gets into everything... Rigel 4 is a paradise in comparison, believe me."

At some point during the rioting, Pugwash did put in an appearance and we managed to get a few words with her. She had no sympathy whatsoever with the grievances of her populace, and didn't seem all that concerned about the damage the riots had caused. "Hey, chill out," she said. "It's no big deal. Sure, I'm a hands-off kinda PO but I warned everyone when I took over the management of Rigel that I wouldn't be interfering. There's even a big notice on the LP telling all visitors that they build here at their own risk. So nobody has any grounds to whinge about it now."

Without Pugwash taking action, the riots continued and, outraged at the laidback PO's lack of response, they came up with a way to get her attention - hackers siphoned a large amount of groats out of the planet's treasury, leaving her with far fewer funds with which to repair the damage. But still she refused to act, and even now, I can see teams of looters helping themselves to stocks of goods held on the planet, and burning down third party warehouses.

The fear is that this unrest will not remain contained on this one planet. Word of the Rigellian revolt has spread throughout the Galaxy, and citizens on other planets have been following the actions of the green-skinned agitators avidly. Planetary rulers everywhere should take this as a grim warning that they cannot simply exploit the population of their planets and expect no repercussions. Engineers should either see to the needs of their people - or beef up security and keep things under tight control - lest they want to see the events of the past few days mirrored on their planets.

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