Thanks to loyal readers in Derbyshire for alerting the donkey to the Maoist Summer Camp in the Peak District on 4-8 July. Book early because the slots are getting filled up fast. The summer camp is being organised by Turkish Maoist comrades who say in a Yahoo group posting that it will be open to 'Maoists and their families, friends and sympathisers'. The purpose will be both political and social, and emerging trends within the international Maoist movement will be discussed and analysed.
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However, it looks like the Revolutionary International Movement, COMPOSA and Comrade Azad of the Indian Naxalites aren't all that enthused about the Maoist electoral victory in Nepal and have accused our very own respected Comrade Chairman of departing from the script. 'You're supposed to grab power by the barrel of the gun, not through elections,' Azad is quoted as saying. The Naxals are also shaking their heads in disbelief that the Maoists are going to lead the government in Kathmandu. The whole point about Mao's doctrine of perpetual revolution is that it's never over and, according to Azad, The Fierce One has broken that cardinal rule.
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Now that UNMIN is about to UNWIND and leave the People's Revolutionary International Convention Kendra (PRICK), it will free up space for the Constituent Assembly secretariat. Meanwhile, NYHQ is reportedly looking at retraction and reinsertion of peacekeepers for firefighting duties in the Gorkha Hill Council which has been reeling under an indefinite bund. After all, UNMIN is already there in Jhapa, a hop-skip-and-a-jump away from Siliguri.
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Maoist Minister of Deforestation and Landslides, Matrika Yadav has a knack for grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons. He also seems to have a fetish for padlocking people inside lavatories. Barely two months after locking his Nepal Army bodyguards in the urinal, he did it again this week by locking up the Lalitpur LDO in the arsenal. The positive side of Yadavsir's systematic decimation of Nepal's remaining forests is that the Maoists now have no jungles to go back to.
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So far, this country has been ruled mainly by octogenarians, but we are about to take a great leap forward if Ram Raja Prasad Singh becomes constitutional president. We will be entering the age of nonagenarians. Singh may be the front runner for president, but it's not his ripe old age of 90 that is his major liability, it's his name. Unless he drops 'Raja', I'm afraid we can't take him as a serious candidate. We've just got rid of one raja, we can't have another one.
The Ass is pleased to announce the result of this week's New Name Contest. The winning entry for renaming Gyane-swor is Prachande-swor.
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As the negotiations drag on at Baluwa-tar-tar-tar, it seems the main obstacle to finding a suitable president is not the deadlock between the Maoists and the NC, but the deadlock within the UML between proponents of Sahana-for-president and the Makunay-for-president lobby. And the most vociferous opponent of Girjau as president is not Awesomeji, as we may imagine, but Koirala-bashers Sher Bahadur, Gagan and Narahari.
No, sorry to disappoint some of you who thought two-time Fijian coup-maker Sitiveni Rabuka was here to be the compromise candidate for president. He's just visiting an orphanage run by friends.
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So the Regmi Peace Prize for this year has gone jointly to Jimmy Carter and Comrade Dreadful. Excellent choice. Carter got the Nobel for the Camp David Accord and working for Middle East peace, and 20 years later they're still fighting. Carter pronounced our April elections free, fair and lovely even before the final results were out, and even while his own field personnel had amassed data on systematic intimidation. And there is no one more deserving of the peace prize than Comrade Chairman because he was responsible for the war that allowed 15,000 Nepalis to rest
in eternal peace.
ass(at)nepalitimes.com
