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"War On Terror" Board Game Confiscated In UK
An anonymous reader writes "The board game The War On Terror is a satirical game in which George Bush's 'Axis of Evil' is reduced to a spinner in the middle of the board, which determines which player is designated a terrorist state. That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word 'Evil' stitched onto it. Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava 'could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act.' Balaclavas are freely sold all over the place in the area." Schneier has blogged this stupidity, of course.
All too often Police confuse "fighting crime" and "protecting the peace" with authoritarian "because I said so and I have a gun" mentality.
I refrain from a rant, but the more police I meet, the more I hate the police.
One of which is that this is great publicity for the game and will surely increase sales.
I wonder how much did the board game creators paid the police 'confiscate' the game? Talk about cheap advertising.
They need the "Police in free country crack down on their own people for idiotic reasons and abusing their authority thereby turning free country into a less-free country thereby aiding the terrorists" card.
Why would you wear a dessert on your head? I mean I can see it if the game was like "Spin the bottle" or something of that ilk...
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
Because when I think 'hijacking an airplane', I think about wearing a balaclava with the word EVIL stitched to my head.
This was a raid (of uncertain provenance) on a protest outside a power station. The other items seized are "knives, chisels and bolt cutters". It seems to me that the police took the balaclava under the quite reasonable assumption that someone was going to put it on and break into the station using some of the tools. That it was part of a board game is entirely incidental.
If the police seize a pack of ladies' stockings from your home, that's absurd. If they seize a crate of ladies' stockings, bank plans, and a toy gun from your car outside a bank, that's reasonable.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Here's the thing: a bunch of people were protesting by chaining themselves to gates and generally impeding operations at a power station. The police came along, hauled them off, and took away the tools they were using. Knives, chisels, bolt cutters, and balaclavas.
It's got nothing to do with balaclavas being illegal, any more than bolt cutters are illegal. It's got nothing at all to do with the game itself. It's the fact that the masks were being used in the process of shutting down a power station.
Did anybody spot that most of the article was dedicated to describing the game and its distribution hopes, as if it were a game review, while the confiscation itself got just a single sentence in the article? This is a fucking advert. The creators, from Cambridge, heard about it, and got their mate at the local paper, in Cambridge to write about it as a favour. This is a local paper, and the event the article is supposed to be talking about happened in Kent, 100 miles away.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The UK police are a serious threat to liberty, and I say this as someone who used to work for them.
They are monumentally petty, generally taking the view that who they arrest should be based on who they don't like the look of rather than who has done something wrong, and then sort out the crime they are to be charged with later.
A common method is to approach people whose appearance suggests poverty (normally written down as "looking suspicious), and intimidating them until they do something that could be construed as resisting arrest or assaulting the officer, then haul them away and throw them in a cell.
They then whinge about having to do loads of 'paperwork' which basically translates to 'its difficult to pin crimes on everybody we haul in'. Having been on the paperwork end of policing I can safely say that if someone has be caught for a specific crime (rather than hauled in for wearing a tracksuit and leaned on) then it isn't hard to get them convicted.
The majority of policing in the city I worked in (where I saw every file that went through the local magistrates court, albeit briefly in most cases) consisted of protecting the property of city businesses, banging up drunks, and bullying chavs.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Technically the spinner is a munition, developed specifically for US intelligence.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Shhhh ... he hasn't figured that out yet. :-P
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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Straight Talk Express, here I come!
Your brain is not a computer.
The official site seems to be slashdotted, but there's plenty of info at the Board Game Geek entry for the game.
This isn't about police confiscating some stupid board game, which TFA practically reads like an advert for.
This is about far more widespread use of police powers to harass and intimidate demonstrators protesting the planned construction of a new coal fired power station near Kingsnorth in Kent.
There was a large, week long "climate camp" attended by around 1000-2000 people near the site. Police used intimidatory tactics such as blanket stop and search of anyone approaching the site (with confiscation of such dangerous items as penknives, children's crayons, and apparently board games) there were night-time raids on the camp, confiscation of food supplies and bicycles, low flying helicopters over the camp at night, etc. etc.
On the final day of the "camp" there was a march to the gates of the existing power station, after about an hour at the gates the police announced via megaphone from a helicopter that the march would be over at 1 pm; and threatened the use of dogs and riot batons against anyone who remained, as well as arrest under section 14 of the public order act.
Some people did break into the power station in an attempt to make their point, I don't want to pretend that no laws were broken, but the protest was entirely non-violent. The police response was disproportionate, and designed to intimidate protesters rather than uphold the law.
All in all the police spent some £3 million intimidating a group of entirely peaceful, and largely law abiding people exercising their democratic right to protest.
The powers granted to the police under recent criminal justice and terrorism legislation passed by the Labour government are sweeping, and disturbing for anyone who believes in little things like freedom of assembly. Most people don't really realise the extent of it until they do something the government disapproves of, the media don't really make a fuss, and so public protest is practically non-existent. Given the total lack of public awareness of or response to these incidents I think it's likely things are going to get far worse for anyone who dares challenge authority in Britain. That's what we should be talking about, not making light of the situation by focusing on some inane story about a board game.
After digging some more, I'd like to redact at least part of my argument in my post, "context context", above. The Independent's version of the story explains in more detail, and in particular how the authors of the game came to realise it had been taken in the raid.
Following a series of raids on the climate change camp near Kingsnorth power station, officers displayed an array of supposed weapons snatched from demonstrators: knives, chisels, bolt cutters, a throwing star â" and a copy of the satirical game, which lampoons Washington's "war on terror".
Okay, making off with the balacalva, I get it. Maybe taking the board game as well, because it's a whole set, sure. Making off with them, then displaying the board game as part of the success story?! Are you kidding me? At what point does "satirical board game" become a serious part of the investigation?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
There's an interesting documentary on the subject called V For Vendetta.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)