Communists Against Communists

By Fresh Catteneo

It seems that sooner or later every organization, government, business or institution on Earth
will have an embassy in Second Life. Communism already does and it's located on the Red Strip. But after a brief tour of the location I grew more confused about Communism than ever before, mostly because of this exhibit (shown in the picture) of some Communist leaders, named "Communism's Greatest Hits". It can't be seen on the picture but inworld there are labels above the heads of each of these figures. Each label states the number of dead people the Communist leader is responsible for. Starting from the left: 2 million (name ?), 30 million (Mao Tze Tung), 2 million (name ?), 20 million (Stalin), 4 million (name ?). I don't know where these numbers are coming from but I do know about the Communist Party's history of killings from reading the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.

The people responsible for building the Red Strip apparently belong to a group called the Communists of SL. Both sides of the boulevard are crowded with a colorful mish mash of buildings, flags and roadsigns of all shapes, sizes and styles. It's a blend of Communism, Marxism, Leninism, and Socialism. It's not very clear who represents what and if these ideologies are consistent or contradict one another. But the main question that bothers me is that if the Communists of SL are aware that Communism has led to so much death and destruction, what keeps them going and why do they persist in nourishing and participating in this movement ?


Another problem:
The Red Strip is a perfect example of the architectual chaos that exists in SL. People build extravagant ultra modern sky high glass towers a few meters away from old, battered and dirty brick houses. Gigantic road signs are everywhere and strange statues pop out in the skyline. It's not very beautiful and disturbing to the eye. I can understand that buying land enables you to build whatever and however you like, but there should still be some architectual logic and order in the SL sims. What SL needs is a city architect:

This is responsible supervisory and professional architectural work involving the performance and/or oversight of a full range of architectural services (e.g., design, project evaluation, programming, schematics, construction cost estimating, preparing working drawings and specifications, contract bidding and administration, etc.) for City building and remodeling projects. The work also includes design, review and planning for the City’s space needs, developing policies regarding building construction and efficient building operation, supervising a staff of employees responsible for maintaining a number of City facilities, performing budget development and monitoring activities, and providing advice and assistance to other City agencies in the areas of expertise. The work is performed independently under the limited supervision of the Inspection Unit Director. http://cityofmadison.com/hr/jobspecs/Architect.htm