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" Throughout history, it is the deep-pocketed madmen who tend to leave behind the biggest wonders. And while last month&amp;#039;s election of the New Seven Wonders of the World hints at this point -- the emperors who fed Christians to the lions in the Roman Coliseum were neither mild-mannered nor impoverished -- they&amp;#039;re basically positive tributes to mankind&amp;#039;s triumphant, enduring half. But what of the tyranny that drove men to produce such wonders? On some level, each of the New Seven is also a colossal monument to narcissism, either some ruler or some culture&amp;#039;s desire to go bigger and leave a mark that cannot be erased -- a sentiment not unlike the one held by some of today&amp;#039;s most ruthless dictators. With that in mind, we created the following list, celebrating those modern monuments from the totalitarian world that may or may not make it through the next coup. Check them out while you still can. Fist Crushing U.S. Fighter Plane, Libya Monument to President Laurent Kabila, Democratic Republic of Congo Lenin&amp;#039;s Mausoleum, Russia Monument to President Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan Mao Leading the Chinese People&amp;#039;s Liberation Army, China The Hands of Victory, Iraq Monument to the Founding of the North Korean Worker&amp;#039;s Party, North Korea  Fist Crushing U.S. Fighter PlaneTripoli, Libya  Whether it was naming himself &amp;quot;Brotherly Leader of the Revolution&amp;quot; or earning the title &amp;quot;Premier Terrorist Financier of the 1980s,&amp;quot; Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi&amp;#039;s need for attention has always erred on the side of gaudy. It&amp;#039;s no surprise, then, that the monument to the suffering of the Libyan people would take the form of a giant gold first crushing a U.S. fighter plane. In 1986, the Reagan Administration linked Gaddafi to the bombing of a German discotheque and, in retaliation, strafed Libyan military facilities and residential areas, killing 101 Libyans. After commissioning this sculpture, Gaddafi sought to lower his country&amp;#039;s profile by financing the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103.   Monument to President Laurent KabilaKinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo  It takes some serious dictatorial chutzpah to upstage Mobutu Sese-Seko, Africa&amp;#039;s most famous Big Man. But after Mobutu&amp;#039;s overthrow in 1996, Laurent Kabila managed not only to whittle the DRC&amp;#039;s diamond-rich economy away to nothing, but also oversaw the bloodiest conflict since World War II -- the DRC civil war -- in which almost 4 million people died. After Kabila&amp;#039;s assassination in 2001, his son, Joseph, took the reins and has maintained this affectionate monument to dear old dad.   Lenin&amp;#039;s MausoleumRed SquareMoscow, Russia  What list of totalitarian monuments would be complete without the pickled body of the Father of the Soviet Union? Since 1924, Lenin&amp;#039;s Mausoleum has brought millions of pilgrims in from around the world to pay their respects to the creator of the Soviet Secret Police and the &amp;quot;Red Terror.&amp;quot;   Monument to President Saparmurat NiyazovAshgabat, Turkmenistan  Though he was known to millions of oppressed Turkmen as the &amp;quot;Iron Ruler,&amp;quot; there was a little-known creative side to the recently deceased Saparmurat Niyazov. Take, for example, his rambling, two-volume autobiography that was made mandatory reading for the entire country. Or his decrees banning unsavory behavior, such as growing a beard, attending the ballet, or listening to your car radio. But perhaps his most innovative contribution to the misery of his subjects was the hundreds of memorials he designed in his own honor, many of which are all on the same strip in Ashgabat. (The cumulative effect of all this concentrated self-congratulation prompted Esquire contributor C.J. Chivers to call the sight &amp;quot;Stalin-Vegas&amp;quot; in a recent New York Times article.) Thanks to statues such as the one pictured above, citizens would always remember that Big Brother was not only watching, but also sketching in his spare time.   Mao Leading the Chinese People&amp;#039;s Liberation ArmyMausoleum of Mao Zedong, Tiananmen SquareBeijing, China  Among the sites you can visit at the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong -- besides Mao&amp;#039;s body encased in a crystal coffin -- is a stirring tribute to &amp;quot;The Great Helmsman.&amp;quot; This sculpture depicts Mao leading a group of starry-eyed proletariat and hailing the future. What lay ahead? Over 14 million starved Chinese in the Great Leap Forward and an untold number of political prisoners. And, recalling that you&amp;#039;re standing in the middle of Tiananmen Square, the visitor can almost swear he hears tanks rumbling somewhere in the distance...   The Hands of VictoryBaghdad, Iraq  For those who now find themselves wistful about Saddam&amp;#039;s Iraq, there are still plenty of monuments left to remind them of the good times. One of the biggest is &amp;quot;The Hands of Victory,&amp;quot; a pair of arches that constituted the military parade grounds for the end of the Iran-Iraq war. And what wasn&amp;#039;t there to celebrate about a trench war in which over one million people died and was declared a draw?   Monument to the Founding of the North Korean Workers&amp;#039; PartyPyongyang, North Korea  A contender for &amp;quot;Ugliest Building of the 20th Century,&amp;quot; this monument anchors what is reputed to be the most depressingly clean city this side of Omaha. Commissioned by Kim Il-sung, (father of Mr. Jong-il), the hammer and sickle represent the triumph of the workers and peasants while the much shorter brush symbolizes the success of intellectuals. Enough said. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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