U.S. Backs the Hated Nepal Police
Posted by Mike E on February 15, 2011
During the long years of guerrilla warfare starting in the 1990s, it was the paramilitary Nepal Police who were often the most direct and brutal opponents of the revolution. This force was implicated in murder and rape. They hunted down political activists to kill and torture them. And they punished villages associated with the revolution. It was the police who were posted out in rural areas and conducted many assaults on the people. And it was this police force who was the target of the revolutionary movement — and was driven out of one provincial town after another. Now they form a bastion of the old power structure in the capital of Nepal.
Here is news that the U.S. government is financing a new Police Command Center in the capital of Nepal and promising ongoing support for this armed group.
We ask our readers to consider what this means: What is the U.S. wanting to strengthen within Nepal? What role will this new Center play in the sharp political struggles ahead? By what right does this foreign power intervene in Nepal to prop up such hated and discredited institutions? What does it mean that the heart of this U.S. aid is an effort to give these brutal police expanded countrywide communications? What should people in the U.S. do to oppose such actions by the U.S. government — in a country with a rare and ongoing popular revolution?
Help us expose U.S. counterinsurgency against the revolution in Nepal.
This article is from nepalnews.com
U.S. Assures Support for Nepal Police
Feb. 13, 2011: US Under Secretary for Global Affairs Maria Otero , who is in Nepal on a three-day visit since Saturday, helped dedicate the Nepal Police Command Centre, along with Chief of the Nepal Police Ramesh Thakuri and senior police staff, Sunday. She further assured support for Nepali Police in the future.
A statement issued by the US embassy in Kathmandu said the event at the Command Centre marked the culmination of an $850,000 information technology improvement project that began as a joint effort between the US and the Nepal Election Commission to improve communication around the country.
Under Secretary Otero said, “The U.S. Government has a robust partnership with the Nepal Police because we understand that improving law and order in Nepal and protecting Nepalis’ security are essential tasks for a country coming out of the insecurity of a long conflict. A strong and professional police force can be an immeasurable benefit in Nepal.”
She also mentioned that the United States looks forward to working with the Nepal Police authorities to identify areas of further collaboration in the coming days.
In addition to the Command Centre and similar communication improvement projects around the country, the United States has been funding the reconstruction of police posts that were destroyed during the conflict and offers a range of training programs to the Nepal Police including airport security, natural resource protection, counter-terrorism, international peace keeping, stopping human trafficking and respecting human rights.nepalnews.com
Vargold vonWerther said
Mao murdered 77 million, more than Stalin or Hitler. But I guess such evil is justified in the name of the revolution, right? Just a statistic, as Stalin said. You people have lost your souls. (Oh, that’s right, you don’t believe in a soul. Well, your soul exists whether you believe in it or not. When you cease to cherish beliefs, you may find the beginning of wisdom.)
Templeton said
LOL ^^^^^^^, 77million? that’s a new one…
green eye said
The biggest achievement of the chinese revolution was that the farmers could eat rice three times a day instead of one time in three days. You may delieve there is a soul, but do you also believe there is a stomach? Beacause billions of people starve dotay, and the socialist revolution is the pnly way for them.
Andrei Kuznetsov said
No, he killed 500 bajillion.
…Seriously, what does that have to do with Nepal at all?
t1201971 said
Baron Von Vargold, tip #7 of “40 Helpful Tips For Anti-Communists” might help you in your selfless quest for historical truth:
“7. Quote massive death tolls without regards to demographics or consistency. 3 million famine deaths? 7 million? 10 million? 100 million deaths total? You need not worry about anyone checking your work, which is good for you seeing that you probably haven’t done any.”
hari pathak said
history is eye witness for the torture and murder done on human being, either communist or imperialist America in iraq,afganistan war, history will calculate the exact statics for the loss. But as the so called democrats blame communist for killing the people why they do not see their history full of blood and injustice.
MLW said
modern rationality in china killed as much people as it “saved” the fact is that china like everywhere else was going to modernize and this would have put an end to the starvation on the fields and other feudal things, it could easily be argued that the Taiwan model would have worked out a bit better or as I see it been less worse(though I really don’t care to quantify suffering), more lip service to Japan and the US but overall probably a smoother process, I mean between Taiwan and China where would you rather be.
Mike E said
VV writes:
Don’t….
Feed….
The….
Trolls….
PatrickSMcNally said
> I mean between Taiwan and China where would you rather be.
That’s meaningless since the changes which occurred on Taiwan only happened because of the revolution on the mainland. This is sort of like arguing over whether you would rather live in Scandinavia during the 19th century or in France during the Revolutionary Terror. The Scandinavian monarchies did go through a number of reforms in a quieter way than France, and I think most people would be personally more happy with such an arrangement rather than with the upheavals that occurred in France. But it clearly was the French Revolution which brought about constitutional reforms that became accepted in Scandinavia. No French Revolution would mean no Scandinavian reform of monarchy. Likewise, the Kuomintang never offered any alternate model of how to deal with the feudal warlord class on mainland China. It was only after the Kuomintang had been driven into retreat on the small island of Taiwan that it became possible for land reforms to be quietly accepted by the surviving relics of China’s former landlord class. The most you can argue for is that China would have been better off if the warlord class on the mainland had accepted in 1911 what became undeniable on Taiwan after 1949, just like France would have been better off if the monarchy had begun determinedly enacting reforms in the early 1700s similar to what would be enacted in Scandinavia from 1814 onwards. This does not mean that either France or China ever had such an option.
MLW said
The movement of modernity is a lot bigger then france patrick and reform and revolution(the latter just as overrated as the former) are more closely intermingled then you think, the french salons for instance were made up of frenchmen like voltaire who went to britain and loved what they were seeing, a less reactionary feudal britain with a more liberal monarchy is what ultimately led to the overthrow in france which then as you point out led to changes in scandinavia, reform and revolution are conccurent in those examples,china could have just done what india did. I myself repeat the old adage ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’ from that I tend to go with a devil you know kind of approach to leviathan I would rather take on a decadent model of the ruling state craft than feed a new one which the 20th century is oh so guilty of, britain is as far away from a post capitalist society as france is and both have kicked feudalism out the door(formally at least)same is true of china and taiwan all I care is that I google with as limited amount of terror as possible.
PatrickSMcNally said
The bourgeois revolution started in England with Oliver Cromwell and its influence then spread to America and France, that’s certainly true. Still no reason to think that the French Revolution could have been side-stepped. You’re getting lost in the clouds when you use phrases like “The movement of modernity is a lot bigger…” On a sufficiently grand scale one can always brush aside details. It’s quite plausible that even without an abolitionist movement and without a civil war, slavery would have been abolished after another century or two simply as a consequence of economic modernization. That doesn’t mean that people were wrong to form an abolitionist movement, or to declare their support for a Union victory when war broke out.
> china could have just done what india did
Not really, and besides China has generally been better off than India at all times since the 1960s. SO India wouldn’t be a very attractive alternative. But it’s also false to simply speak of an “Indian option” in a general way for China, just as one can’t speak of a general “Scandinavian option” for France in 1789. Britain’s decision to withdraw from India the way it did was largely determined by the fact that Britain saw revolutions breaking out in China & Vietnam and the newly elected Labour Party decided that it would be wiser to withdraw rather than become embroiled in something like what France was getting bogged down in with Vietnam & Algeria. But if there had been no revolutions in China & Vietnam, then it’s much less likely that Britain would have agreed to withdraw from India without a fight.
MLW said
I’m not against speeding up the process pat which is what makes a revolution different from reform, the problem is revolutions go either way and if you do them do them right, I happen to think that statecrafted revolutions=fail, it is better to take on a fading feudal state then an emergent modern state, the french terror period was worse then the times just before 89, the fading feudalism in eastern europe was preferable to lenin/stalin and the same holds true for china which had it gone through some increasingly disinterested japanese imperialism(it got bad largely in reaction to the US attacking japan) combined with the nationalist tendencies would probably have ended up like taiwan today, I’m not cheerleading these things by any means, it’s simply preference for the devil you know.
“Not really, and besides China has generally been better off than India at all times since the 1960s.”
Sure they could if you look at france and eastern europe the modernity they opted for eventually was the boring thing we have today, the france we know today in terms of democracy came about after the last napoleon died and it was about as spectacular as scandinavia, in easter europe obviously there is 1989-91, all that retoric about classless this and communist that was just that lenin and company ultimately did NOTHING to stop it, and of course it nearly happened in china in 89 and I suspect it is tending toward that anyway unless something bigger happens, 1949 modernity need not have applied in the first place and a lot less lives could have been lost.
The revolution I am looking for is a social and spiritual transformation and it cannot necessarily be tied to a singular event let alone a statist one.
PatrickSMcNally said
> the fading feudalism in eastern europe was preferable to lenin/stalin
That’s quite a stretch. If one just goes according to the simple demographics, Czarist Russia’s death rate was more than 30 per thousand in 1913 whereas mortality rates in the USSR by 1958 had reached the level of 8 per thousand. There’s no cause for seeing anything good about the Czarist era. The most one could argue for is that Russia (and Europe in general) would have been better off had the First World War been somehow avoided. If Europe could have somehow lasted through 4 decades of cold war peace from, say, 1905 (the Morocco crisis) up to 1945 then I imagine that by that time economic modernization would have occurred in some form. But that was precisely what Russia’s autocrats did not want, and this played a role in setting off WWI.
The Slavophiles in Czarist Russia had advocated for Russia the role as protector of the Slavic peoples. They had adopted this not simply as a maneuver against Germany, but as a way of cultivating Czarist Russia’s role apart from the West. It was these Slavophiles who urged Nicholas II in 1914 to mobilize the army, because they feared that a failure to back Serbia would ruin Russia’s credibility as the champion of Slavic peoples. Nicholas II himself was not inclined to mobilize the army at first, but he gave in to his advisors who pressured him by ordering a half-mobilization. That was what triggered the war and brought about the downfall of Czarist Russia. The choice which faced Russia from 1917 and thereafter was not about how to go back to before the war. It was a struggle between the White reactionaries and the Red revolutionaries, and the Whites deservedly lost.
> and the same holds true for china which had it gone through some increasingly disinterested japanese imperialism
That’s an interesting spin, “disinterested japanese imperialism…”
> the modernity they opted for eventually was the boring thing we have today
Boring as it is, the sweeping away of the old feudal order because of revolutions which occurred first in England and then spread to America and France. The developments in Scandinavia were just a fallout from what had occurred before.
> 1949 modernity need not have applied in the first place and a lot less lives could have been lost.
The general demographic trend in China shows that the revolution saved lives. There’s nothing to suggest that the steep improvements in China’s demographic trends of annual mortality rates going steadily downward would have been able to occur without a very drastic radical revolution across the whole country. What we have instead is people pointing to Taiwan, a small island economy where land reforms were enacted in the aftermath of the revolution on the main continent, an island economy that was deliberately granted favorable terms of foreign trade by the USA as part of the Cold War, and people try to suggest that this somehow represented an alternative model. It’s a very dishonest mode of argument.
MLW said
OK Patrick I should address this notion of better and worse before I get to anything else, in essence there is no such thing as a human condition in any generalized sense, for me when we are talking about conditions there has to be a sense of variability as opposed to a constant as well as situation context and specificity, anything other then that and you are trying to frame it all in some cumulative teleological exercise which for me is no better the religious prescriptions, when you break all down to starvation rates before and after such and such you are in essence assigning human conditions to some exercise of rational instrumentality which to me is just repugnant. Here’s the thing about places like pre maoist china or pre lenin russia or pre terror france to take into account, while they lived within a habitat that we in today’s age would not like, it was their habitat and there was a reality about it that has to be respected, the base among humans found ways to live in the same way that those today find ways to live, human suffering and happiness is relative to the day and it is not our place to take that away from them. What I think makes those fail revolutionary periods worse is that for a time there was a tremendous leap in imagination and people really did think things were going to get much better, when you have that taken away from you profound levels of disillusionment set in such as what Emma Goldman documented in Russia, that’s all I have to say there, so take that into account before you just throw out overly rationalized numbers.
On Russia, only the anarchists mattered in that whole affair, everything that came after was a brutally emergent state that simply found other ways to control things, and more rational instrumentalist ways of keeping people alive if you could even call it that, between the reactionaries and the so called revolutionaries there is really not much to chose from, they both wanted power at the end of the day, at least the reactionaries were the decadent side of the equation making for easier pickings from the anarchy crowd, Lenin ushered in a whole new terrifying era of statist propaganda and control, when it came to the nazi state mechanics that followed you might as well give lenin and company the assist in terms of innovating controls of domination propaganda and control.
On revolution and reform again any objective analysis of history shows that the two inform each other there was no revolution in england remember though the line is blurred sometimes through various uprisings that don’t fully culminate. It helps I think to look at levels of top down violence in a given geography, Northern Europe for instance did not have as reactionary a feudal set of systems as Southern Europe and that can explain the more violent upheavals in the Mediterranean half, in Britain because of the horrible beginnings of modernity people tend to actually mythologize the pre modern era, I think this to some degree explains the love of property in that part of the world. Japan was not as historically nasty as China and the Japanese don’t have much bad things to say of the pre modern epoch as the Chinese, they also modernized in more quieter fashion during the Meji period which probably had an influence of Chinese history so in closing the quieter developments have just as much an effect as the loud ones. In terms of the profound change that I would like to see, I tend to see it more as a relaxing period of constraints, more gradual then a singular event, don’t get me wrong the latter can help, but you have no control of those events and they can go in the opposite direction, in essence when it comes to revolutions I have the same pessimism and disinterest as Camus and Stirner had of them, if they move the imagination of the other hand then you will have my attention.
In terms of comparing China to Taiwan, I think the point about violence holds true, Taiwan is an island with less people and a less violent history having said that if China had not gone on some false detour staining the words communism and revolution in the process I still think they would have been closer to what exists on that island now, the nationalists after all are that devil that you already know in the western part of the world.
PatrickSMcNally said
> while they lived within a habitat that we in today’s age would not like, it was their habitat and there was a reality about it that has to be respected
Respected by whom? Certainly not by the majority of Russians and Chinese who clearly supported a revolution. You’re simply imposing a retroactive romanticization of an earlier era backwards in time even when the actual people living in that time clearly did not subscribe to such.
> people really did think things were going to get much better
Actually things did get much better. There were many utopian hopes which people had and which were unrealistic in retrospect, there were also unnecessary purges which can not be justified merely by pointing to the general improvement in overall conditions. But that things did get better is a reality. Moreover, this is particularly important to note in light of the stupid “77 million” hoax which was spat out by the poster who began this debate. If the beginning post had tried making the claim that the purges of 1937-8 were somehow justified because the mortality rates among Russians were then about two-thirds of what they had been in Czarist times, then this would call for one type of response. There is no justification for those purges. But when someone tries regurgitating the silly “tens of millions of victims of Communism” hoax then that has to be evaluated separately.
> On Russia, only the anarchists mattered in that whole affair
Anarchists were unable to stop the Whites, who did indeed represent “the decadent side of the equation…” If the Whites had been a little bit brighter they would have followed a practice similar to the way the CIA funded the Congress for Cultural Freedom in an effort to create a non-Communist Left. Had the Whites done that then the Civil War might very well have had a different outcome, and perhaps Russia would have been better off. But in the circumstances the Red victory was clearly better than the Whites.
The anarchists themselves recognized their own limitations in July 1917 when they called for Lenin to seize power. This is the most common pattern among anarchists. I’ll very often see self-proclaimed anarchists promoting Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader. Anarchists have never been able to define a revolutionary program of their own.
> there was no revolution in england
Certainly there was. How do you think Charles I lost his head? At most one may note that monarchy was eventually restored. In fact, it was restored twice in 1660 and 1689. But even France had a restoration in 1815. Although the English monarchy has since persisted, that doesn’t erase the revolution from history.
> Japan was not as historically nasty as China and the Japanese don’t have much bad things to say of the pre modern epoch as the Chinese
The Meiji era itself was brought about as a response to western colonialism. The Chinese feudal order proved less able to adapt. But the Japanese monarchy’s decision to modernize was not just motivated by enlightenment. It arose as a rational response to western imperialism.
> the quieter developments have just as much an effect as the loud ones.
I doubt that anyone would disagree with that. What is emphatically false is when people attempt to selectively point to instances of reform as if they represent an inherent rebuttal to those revolutions which have occurred. South Korea is a good example of that. In the period 1945-50 there was a civil war within the south between the peasants and landlords. US advisors sought to encourage a land reform, but were not able to achieve this since the southern aristocracy was too stubborn. It was the northern invasion which enacted the land reform and broke up the old estates. By doing this the DPRK actually made possible the later economic success of the ROK. Even then, it wasn’t until the 1980s that the ROK actually began to roar ahead. As late as the 1970s the DPRK’s economy was running in front of the ROK. In achieving this economic success the ROK was granted exceptionally favorable trade terms by the USA, because it was regarded as a frontline of the Cold War. The majority of Third World states were never given the same trade opportunities and this is why the ROK is meaningless as an example for such states to try to follow. The ROK was also allowed to enact measures of planning in its economy which would normally result in a CIA coup if done by Social Democrats like Jacobo Arbenz. This allowance was also driven by the Cold War, since it was understoof that an ROK success story was more important than rigid adherence to free market doctrine. Then in the 1990s Boris Yeltsin cut off the supply of oil which DPRK agriculture had depended on and when combined with severe droughts this led to a famine. Somehow Cold War propaganda has managed to convert the famine caused by Yeltsin’s capitalist restoration into a “Communist famine” when the blame for this really rests, apart from weather, on Yeltsin’s capitalist restroation. Now from today’s perspective I don’t think anyone would dispute that the ROK is a much better place to live than the DPRK. But it would be altogether dishonest to frame the history as if Korea as a whole in 1945 somehow could have had the option of simply going the way that the ROK eventually did. Had there been no Cold War and no North Korean invasion of South Korea then South Korea today would at best be in the state of Guatemala. One can’t diagnose the South Korean success story apart from the DPRK, the Korean War, and the Cold War.
> if China had not gone on some false detour staining the words communism and revolution in the process I still think they would have been closer to what exists on that island now
Neither China or Taiwan would ever have come close to gaining the position which they hold in world trade today had there been no revolution. Taiwan, like South Korea, was deliberately given favorable trade terms and allowed to enact measures of state-intervention in its economy which would normally lead to the overthrow of Social Democrats like Salvador Allende. Had there been no revolution on the mainland then Taiwan would never have gained this position. When Deng Xiao-ping began opening China for foreign investment and capitalist restoration this also created a similar incentive for western capitalists to want to encourage such trends by offering favorable trade terms. You’ll notice how eastern Europe was simply railroaded after 1991 without any similar terms of trade being offered. That was precisely because, although Deng clearly began restoring capitalism after 1978, the maintainence of a formal “Communist Party” in power meant there were still concerns among western imperialists that China might revert once more to an attempt at building socialism. At this point today that’s clearly a thing of the past. But had there been no revolution then China would never have achieved the trade status which the restored capitalism in China today has.
MLW said
I’m not romanticizing anything pat I’m simply pointing out that human aspirations are relative to the day, when people think about betterment they do not think in rationalized terms of how many of us are starving today on a general scale, the underlying point is that feudalism had just as much a grounded habitat as modernity today, sure people want to better themselves and their surroundings that’s always going to be the case, the mistake is to line draw and say this time is better then that time, its all contextual, people live lives in whatever era conditions have a context not a generality.
As to the whites, history was not on their side it was bigger then just the anarchists, from the moment Rasputin died they were pretty much fucked and before that even it ultimately came down to who or what would replace that rule, another form of rule or perhaps no rule at all, something that was a potentiality within the whole geography of eastern europe not just the anarchists, the best thing those Jacobin retreads could have done was not exist, but alas novelty is novelty. As to the anarchists, some probably fell for lenin’s tricks though in 1917 he was spouting somewhat libertarian statist rhetoric if you could call it that, and there were the more consistent amoung the anarchos who could see through it, the mistake won’t be made again I assure you. The support for nader and company is retarded but it’s in a non revolutionary time by historically stale anarchists, I see it as a stasis sign of the times, I or the smart ones don’t support those political clowns and I certainly don’t support the equivalent who are trying to appropriate a revolution for political ends.
In terms of the point on england the point is that historically they and scandinavia tended towards precedent more then total upheaval, at the end of the day england and france are as far from communism as any other place that had revolutions or not.
As for the last points on korea and taiwan, you’re basically crying foul that bourgeois historical might was not fair, cry me a river, I could care less about who ultimately wins or loses in the game of leviathan, the point is that taiwan and south korea to most people have turned out more preferable in contemporary times, the details leading up to that don’t concern me a great deal, north korea lost historically, boo hoo might makes right at the end of the day did people in china really have to go through a reincarnation of the jacobin period, it’s not really about revolution being more necessary then reform, it’s about revolution making things worse just as they are about to get better, when people are forced into great leaps to their death when aspirations before are so high then a slowly fading feudalism indeed is probably more preferable, at the end of the day if north korea or china eventually become like japan and south korea then what will have been the point of those revolutions, I really don’t see much of a difference anyway between socialism and the capitalism we have today, its all modernity you can’t distinguish the two the way you can feudalism and modernism, now a return to a classless stateless existence on the other hand would be a qualitative leap of human novelty, and nothing alienating in between need happen.
PatrickSMcNally said
> I’m not romanticizing anything pat I’m simply pointing out that human aspirations are relative to the day
The fact that so many Russians called for revolution in one form or another showed that their aspirations did demand much more than what Czarism had to offer. The aspirations of that day were for a revolution.
> the mistake is to line draw and say this time is better then that time,
If someone is going to promote foolish hoaxes like Solzhenitsyn’s “66 million” or the “77 million” which the poster Vargold tossed out then one is obligated to very methodically check the data for evidence of such.
> what would replace that rule, another form of rule or perhaps no rule at all
That’s real romanticism. The Czarist economy broke down and urban populations were left stranded without a source of food. The first task of any urban authority was to begin organizing food requisitions that could feed the urban populace, and this did require a state structure. There was never an option of “no rule at all…”
> at the end of the day england and france are as far from communism as any other place that had revolutions or not.
Of course! These were bourgeois revolutions! No one has ever disputed that. The Communist Manifesto was not written until 1848. You seem to now writing the bourgeois revolutions out of history as not real revolutions. That was certainly not how they were perceived at the time.
> taiwan and south korea to most people have turned out more preferable in contemporary times, the details leading up to that don’t concern me a great deal
To be able to argue that Taiwan & South Korea have shown that revolutions were unnecessary in 1945 then you would have to be concerned with such details.
> revolution making things worse just as they are about to get better
There’s no evidence that anything was ever about to get better in the absence of a revolution. That’s your own illusory construct. It was revolution which made things better.
> if north korea or china eventually become like japan and south korea
It’s worth emphasizing that this extremely unlikely. Japan itself has had a stagnant economy in the last two decades. The economic success which Japan achieved after WWII, and which South Korea began to reach in the 1980s, was always bound to the US market. The decline of the US economy today creates a pressure for such countries to either attempt to bail out the US economy or else to seek new markets, with new rivalries and problems. The global crisis of capitalism today is not something which can be wished away.
> I really don’t see much of a difference anyway between socialism and the capitalism we have today
Many east Europeans would disagree very strongly with you there. Sometimes this can even lead to romanticizations of its own. Past polls in Romania have shown more than half the people stating that life was better under Ceausescu. I wouldn’t normally cite Ceausescu as the example of a good socialist, but the Romanians polled have clearly noted a difference.
MLW said
Patrick I really don’t care about numbers, its just ideological abstract measuring of projected human suffering and well being, I know that millions died enough to make stain the term communism probably for all time to some degree or another.
Of course the Russians wanted revolution, eventually a human historical habitat becomes either boring or unbearable, but it is a habitat just like what we have today which is itself about to become unbearable.
What do we do about break downs patrick? let the chips fall where they may, the problems in essence go back to the loss of skill and self determination that the march of civilization has brought on, we have to determine our own lives again collectively contextually and most importantly individual, this means that people in urban areas will have to adapt, this could have happened in russia, people could have realized that there will be no more forcing about the countryside, perhaps the emergent technological solution would have been that permaculture was invented earlier in a revolutionary period, political solutions never work, they either delay the problem or the rationalize some structure of death and misery to acceptable levels which people sadly get used to again, there are no political solutions only technological ones and this is best left to emergent non prescribed actions.
On England perhaps I should have said modernity is more or less equal, its the same point.
I’m not suggesting that revolutions were not necessary to some degree when it comes to korea and china, its the type of revolution that is the problem, if it was not something authentic then it should at least have been the more settled modernity that has more or less won out, the marxist modeled modernity has=ed epic fail, this modernity is the last one we will EVER see, the counter modernity of your ideology which will forever fail cost more lives then it saved, in a sense patrick what I’m saying is if you don’t have something that is truly post modern/civilized and it appears to be on the losing side of history then just get with the program, the market classical based bourgeois model appears to be what people want, not the prescribed planned variety, you have to have something that basically absorbs the excessive tendencies of humanity, sure its coming to an end in japan and everywhere else, but what replaces has to be seriously novel and different then what your type tends to prescribe, there’s no going back to the 18th century but there is especially no going back to the 20th
As for eastern europeans its a tragic circumstance of wanting to jump back into the frying pan now that you can’t take anymore fire which you wanted to escape to begin with, I think deep down they want something more then both
Green Red said
A neighbor brought this piece of news to my attention from the 20th
I do not claim to believe it a bit but, it is my responsibility to keep Ka s posted in my simple way
LA Times written
Nepal caught between China and India
Beijing pours money into the Himalayan country, a historical buffer between the two giant rivals, worrying New Delhi.
By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times
February 20, 2011
Reporting from Katmandu, Nepal —
A recent recording making the rounds in Nepal featured a Maoist party leader speaking to a man with a Chinese accent. During the 12-minute tape, the Chinese voice offers $6.9 million to bribe 50 Nepali legislators for help in forming a Maoist-led government that would favor China over India.
Whether the tape is genuine, whether the voice is really that of a Chinese official and whether India’s intelligence wing released it as part of a propaganda exercise haven’t been established.
But the tape reinforced a long-standing view in Nepal: The strategically located, landlocked nation of 30 million people is a playground for its two giant neighbors. A “delicate yam between two boulders” is the way King Prithvi Narayan Shah summed it up as far back as the 18th century.
Early this month, after 17 attempts to name a prime minister, reflecting Nepal’s political paralysis, Jhalnath Khanal was picked for the post. Among the many challenges facing the new leader is balancing relations with the two neighbors.
“My government will deepen and strengthen the relationship with both” India and China, Khanal said shortly after his election. . “I haven’t decided yet” which country to visit first.
For much of its history, Nepal has been heavily influenced by India. Four million Nepalese work in India. And a long, porous border, shared religious traditions and a common history under the British Empire have bound the two.
Contact with China was long impeded by the 30,000-foot Himalayan peaks to the north.
But an ascending Middle Kingdom is changing the equation, making India anxious.
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“I see Delhi as both confused and nervous,” said Bhekh B. Thapa, Nepal’s former foreign minister.
China’s footprints are widely evident.
Beijing is building a $1.9-billion railroad from the city of Lhasa to the Tibet-Nepal border that may eventually reach Katmandu. Chinese trade, aid and infrastructure projects are pouring in.
“Now China is the goose with the golden eggs,” said Kesang Tseten, a Katmandu-based documentary filmmaker.
Nepali politicians traveling to Beijing are tripping over one another as China funds Nepali police training, border control, roads, even garbage trucks.
“The new China is flexing its muscles in line with its economic might,” said Kanak Mani Dixit, Katmandu-based editor of Himal Southasian magazine. “It’s also trying to rattle India.”
India has traditionally viewed Nepal as a buffer against China, with which it lost a war in 1962. Last month, India arrested three Chinese for allegedly sneaking into India and taking pictures of strategic installations. Beijing denies that they are spies.
One key barometer of China’s growing clout here is Katmandu’s treatment of exile Tibetans, who number about 20,000 in Nepal. After unrest spread across the Tibetan plateau in March 2008, Beijing leaned heavily on Nepal’s Tibet policy.
The number of Tibetan refugees crossing into Nepal from China after 2008 fell to about 500 annually from 3,000 a year, as China provided money, equipment and training to Nepal to tighten the border, analysts said. In a leaked U.S. cable released by WikiLeaks in December, an unnamed source said China paid bounties to Nepali border guards who handed Tibetans over to China.
“The pressure has become very hard on the Nepal government,” said Trinlay Gyatso, the Dalai Lama’s de facto representative in Nepal. “There’s no reason Nepal should be a puppet. It’s a sovereign nation.”
In February, three ballot boxes used for Tibetan community elections were seized by police in riot gear, the International Campaign for Tibet reported. This followed a similar confiscation in October as Tibetan exiles here were voting for the self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, India, an exercise exiles said had taken place here 14 times since 1960 without incident.
In June, three Tibetans were arrested, transported by helicopter to the Chinese frontier and handed over to Chinese border officials, the same activist group reported. Two landed in Chinese jails.
The fate of seven other refugees arrested by Nepal authorities in October and nine detained last month isn’t known.
Last week U.S. Undersecretary of State Maria Otero expressed concern to Khanal over the problems faced by Tibetan refugees in Nepal. The prime minister reportedly responded that Nepal would deal with the issue in line with the views of its immediate neighbors, China and India.
India has long enjoyed a significant voice in Nepal’s politics. New Delhi was instrumental in brokering a 12-point agreement in 2005 under which the Maoists eventually put down their guns, ending a 10-year civil war.
But some say India’s voice has become more strident and highhanded of late, perhaps in reaction to China’s growing influence.
Late last year, stones and shoes were thrown at the motorcade of India’s controversial envoy to Nepal, Rakesh Sood, during a charity event in northern Nepal. India demanded an apology, calling the incident a “gross violation of diplomatic norms.”
Even as China and India jockey, however, both giants share interest in stability, albeit for different reasons, some analysts said.
India is concerned that its Maoist insurgency, known as the Naxalites, could link up with its Nepali cousins or use Nepal as a base, said Binod Bhattarai, an analyst and columnist at large. And China wants to put a lid on any free-Tibet activism in Nepal.
Nepalese say some foreign meddling is inevitable with such huge neighbors. When caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal said in October that he wouldn’t let foreign powers interfere in internal matters, Nepal’s Telegraph newspaper called it the “best joke of the month.”
All the while, Chinese money continues to pour into Nepal, accompanied by Chinese influence and pressure.
“The trouble is, we’re right next door to the dragon,” said Kunda Dixit, publisher of the Nepali Times. “We feel the dragon’s fire on our backside.
“China’s clout is so big. No Western countries are really standing up to them; how do you expect tiny Nepal to do it?”
mark.magnier@latimes.com
Special correspondent Rajneesh Bhandari contributed to this report.
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