Political Strife Erupts in Second Life

covert.c writes "A real-life drama in the political world has spilled over into the virtual, as the Second Life headquarters of France's controversial Front National political party fell to violent protesters. The anti-FN activists, who had armed themselves with slogans, placards and weapons, leveled the digital buildings occupied by Front National. Second Life is often home to established political and social movements. It seems logical that opposing forces would also choose to make SL their stage."

Comments

Amazing

[drinkypoo]

Wikipedia makes them look like a sort of "wind back the clock" party. I'm amazed that they were even willing to have a headquarters in second life. They seem to be very protectionist and provincial. Their general delegate was suspended from his professorial position for five years for historical revisionism. The founded had to pay 1.2M francs (~200k Euros) for the same sort of thing, claiming the Germans' occupation "hadn't been so inhumane". (I don't agree with this lack of freedom of speech in France, but they're kind of a nasty country anyway, with cops wearing masks so they can't be identfied in court and the like.) I mean, Le Pen would actually like to evict all non-european immigrants from France. I don't think doing your best to evict them from second life is actually wrong. FN has basically declared war, and at the same time diluted the name of my favorite Belgian arms manufacturer. I say string 'em up! (digitally)

That's sort of interesting about the buildings

[MattGWU]

The FN must have given up and left. You can't 'level the digital buildings'. There's very little, if anything, you can do to other peoples objects in SL, and certainly not on their own land. The landowner or the person in charge of the land group must not have been there, paying attention, or clued in to his own power to disable object rezzing, disable scripts, disable push, disable flight, ban, freeze, eject, etc etc. And that's just the built-in land tools, and not even getting into third-party security systems, which would be more difficult to overwhelm with numbers than a human op (The comparison of an SL parcel owner to an IRC op is apt in terms of power over their domain).

Re:That's sort of interesting about the buildings

[FishWithAHammer]

Technically untrue. There are ways to overload someone else's parcel and cause things to de-rez. There are also other ways that I wouldn't talk about because they violate the TOS.

And there's no way to stop someone from dropping on THEIR land and dragging it to yours.

Re:I'll have to disagree with you.

[Anonymous Coward]

100 cars a night are being burned? Didn't that stop long ago?
Doesn't France have the highest birth rate in the EU? Last I saw it was the only EU nation with actual population growth when you subtract immigration.
Hasn't every study of France's muslim population shown them to be the best integrated of any Western nation? Even the US.
The most recent study I saw showed French muslims being less anti-semitic than the average American as well!

To me what you wrote reads like the hyperbole of the stereotypical anti-immigration demagogue. You can change the subject from muslims to any other immigrant group in any other country at any other point in history. They used to say the same thing about the Poles. In the US they said the same thing about the Irish. There is no reason why the muslims will not be like every other immigrant group. It's absurd to think they will ever take over the country, France especially because it is so radically secular. The idea that any religious group would be able to impose a theocracy on France is a joke.

Re:I'll have to disagree with you.

[vakuona]

Birth rate dropping below replacement rate causes havoc with most countries social security systems and pensions, which were mostly built under the assumption that populations will remain stable or increase slightly for it to actually work. So unless the developed countries want to accept even more immigrants than they do already, (no complaining here, I am an immigrant myself - legal of course), then they better start having enough kids to replace their current populations.

So unless you want to wake up one morning and find out that your pension promise is now worth nothing, you bloody slashdotters should be going out and getting laid a little more, and making babies. In the name of science (what science?) of course. Hey wait, what am I doing here?

Re:Pink Floyd

[mr100percent]

jihadunspun, a right-wing site, is disregarded by most Muslims. They're incorrect. Forcible conversion is NOT allowed in Islam, since the Quran says "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256). God does not accept insincere conversions, so forced ones do not count.

Besides, India was ruled by Muslims for centuries, but is 85% Hindu today. No mass-forcible conversion ever took place. Spain was ruled by Moors (Muslims) for 700 years, yet allowed Jewish people greater freedom of religion than Christian Europe did, giving them synagogues and allowing them in university. It was known as the "Golden Age of Judaism" by historians, and only ended when the Spanish Inquisition kicked both Jews and Muslims out of Spain. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, and no Arab or Muslim army ever reached it, the millions converted through non-violence and missionaries and trading with Muslims.

The terrorists are pretty bad in a lot of ways, but they're not demanding conversion or death. Don't forget how they killed hundreds of Muslims on 9/11.