Passive Resistance |
The Resistance estimates that 70% of all prisoners currently detained by the WEC
are imprisoned for political (as opposed to felonious) activity. The penal colony
on Luna reflects these proportions. Furthermore, even those prisoners who were
convicted for crimes against person or property have little reason to be loyal
to the WEC. Since, as has been pointed out above, the Lunar conscripts outnumber
Lunar citizen/partners by more than three to one, it is obvious that the Resistance
has a tremendous pool of potential recruits on Luna. Unfortunately, the Security Cartel is not inefficient in its task of controlling prisoners. There have been prisoner riots both in the mines and in the conscript barracks - at least three in the last five years have been confirmed by Resistance intelligence. The Security Cartel is quite merciless in controlling such outbursts. In the three known incidents, one was controlled by simple force of arms, while the other two (one in the barracks, one in the mines) were controlled by sealing off the area, then withholding life support. In all three cases prisoner casualties were at or near 100% in the area. Likewise, the flow of information and goods in and out of the conscript population is effectively controlled. This does not mean that there is no access to the prisoners whatsoever - every large-scale prison in human history has succeeded in evolving some sort of black market with the outside, regardless of all security precautions. However, SecCart is normally able to keep such exchanges well below the threshold necessary for effective, organized operations. A few operations have been successfully coordinated through the prison population, but logistics and intelligence factors make such operations difficult to coordinate and unacceptably risky, except in the most extreme necessity. The Resistance is, however, far from dead among the conscripts. There is a highly efficient, if subtle, �passive resistance� dedicated to undermining WEC authority and productivity. This conscript effort is largely coordinated independently of the external Resistance effort, due to the logistical difficulties noted above. The informal conscript resistance can and does undertake minor industrial sabotage and even occasional anti-personnel actions against specific security cartel targets. However, the primary function of the passive resistance is to simply ensure that cooperation and production among the conscripts remains at the absolute minimum possible without arousing active LMC retaliation. Although precise estimates of the passive resistance�s efforts are extremely difficult to derive from available data, a tentative estimate of a 10% to 20% reduction in productivity has been calculated. This means that, without the passive resistance, the WEC�s current �Di-Cor crisis,� (a 7.9% deficiency in worldwide Di-Cor demand) would probably not exist. |
