Arthur, dear, why are you attacking this hapless young lad?  What makes you lump him in with the "Kangresis," or assume that he is in any sense antipathetic towards your beloved Maobadis?  Granted, your consistent pattern of churlish behavior on these forums is self evident, but I am honestly astonished that you would consider it worthwhile to attack one of the few NT columnists who might actually be inclined to agree with your Far Left lunacy at least half-way.

>> "Yes, the people feel that Maoists have more to contribute to building a new Nepal than any other political force."

Q.E.D. 

Blaise Pascal once coined, " Those who know do not speak, whereas those who know nothing blab and go on blabbing."

First things first! Where are those peace process and the new constitution of Nepal got to?

In ordinary parlance, Nepal needs them that badly, whereas her arch-nemesis do not."

C'mon, we have got to bulldoze the essentials before the gloss wears out whereby making Kathmandu the flashpoint of a new brawl and you all find yourselves on the hook. You have got to impose on punters 'haircuts' to safeguard them from dancing to the tunes of the baddies.

In essence, the Maoists will probably not do a lick of work. They are as usual just buying time to better organize themselves for an ultimate assault.

Realism, however, seems to be in short supply. NC and other splinter groups, mustn't let yourselves coddled by the tremolo and a sideshow of the Maoists' jinx, before things get really spooky.

How about raising the ante? You shouldn't play safe where only your audacity and chutzpa shall be crowned with success before you get away seeing your country retreating to gloom and doom.

Forget to be as snug as the dork next door who proclaims to have calculated the precise date and moment on which the world will end. In such desperate circumstances we very much require to know about the key to the future, if there is any. Our main helping hand and new insights into what's been happening are our faculty or smartness to make difference between knowledge and wisdom.

To be brief, what you learn each day by using your senses, experience or learning is called knowledge, whereas how you use and synthesize that knowledge for the well-being of others is called wisdom.

Someone may gather all the book knowledge about things but may lack wisdom to utilize the knowledge he accumulated so far. Which is why folks say you can gain knowledge by educating yourself but you can gain wisdom only by experience of life.

All told, the Nepalese tremendously need this experience of democratic regime to feel great to have at length respected the logical, ethical or social truths. For, understanding the logical implications of a situation, issue, fact of solution is prerequisite to quarrel our way headlong where pluses overshadow the minuses.

Last but not least, how's about using our gumption? If not we have already encountered our enemy and he is us.

>> It was an "attack" rather than merely a disagreement because of the extraordinary level of ignorance required for any Nepalese commentator to honestly compare the CPI(M) with the Maoists rather than with the UMLs. "  --Arthur

If you believe that such a "comparison" was being made, then I fear you may have missed the primary thrust of the article, which was to utilize the CPI(M) as a cautionary example for the Nepali comrades to not follow.  Given Prachanda's own oft-repeated hatred for revisionist communist parties, and the CPI(M)'s indisputable status as precisely that, I do not think the article's argument could possibly be construed as either an attack on the UCPN-M or as a direct comparison between the attitudes of the two parties.

>> "My reference to "even Kangresis" understanding better was not intended to lump the author with Kangresis but to underline the level of ignorance that would be required for the article to reflect an honest misunderstanding rather than complete dishonesty."  --Arthur

When an unapologetic Communist such as yourself presumes to call other people "ignorant," I have to wonder just how long it's been since you last took a scrutinizing self-introspective look in the mirror.  Your lengthy, tortuously-argued posts are a monument to the anesthetizing power of empty rhetoric: you argue the same points ad nauseum and continue to express honest astonishment than no one on these forums wants to give the Maobadi thugs the carte blanche you apparently presume is their due, whilst accusing other forum members of "stupidity" and "ignorance."

Physician, heal thyself!

>> "I would not be in the least surprised if you, as a foreign royalist, actually believe that such words indicate half way agreement with Maoists rather than a very typical and quite stereotyped form of opposition to them."  --Arthur

If you will be kind enough to scroll back up, you can see that I did not suggest such words expressed half-way agreement with the Maoists themselves, but rather with your own attitudes.  Perhaps this delightful young chap isn't the open Maobadi sympathizer you seem to expect him [and every other Nepali....] to be, but I fail to see how you could construe his argument as a "stereotyped form of opposition" to these unreformed terrorists who clearly have so very much to offer Nepal in the way of a sane and orderly future.

No, he clearly isn't a Maoist, though he is what Comrade Lenin himself would have candidly termed a "useful idiot."  Perhaps Arthur, at the very least, you can appreciate his article's utility on that basis alone?  After all, the Maoists could never have attained their present ascendancy in Nepali politics if Nepali journalism wasn't larded with silly-minded tripe such as this.

>> "But the reason I would not be surprised if you honestly believe that is simply that I don't expect you to have much grasp of the subtleties of Nepali politics or the position typically espoused by columnists in Nepali Times."  --Arthur

This, coming from you, is quite funny!  Your own understanding of Nepali politics is beyond naive, it is positively delusional.  You have told me in the past that you see no value to analyzing the "entrails of court opinions" to chart the C.A.'s legal mandate, and in another thread you have stubbornly refused to critically read the 1990 Constitution.  Not only are you ignorant of the subtleties of Nepali politics, Arthur, but you willfully dismiss them, preferring to predicate your arguments on your own preconceived theoretical notions rather than on facts or analysis.

But, as I've told you before, your own ideological predisposition doesn't make this the least bit surprising.  It's just a pity that you are so quick to go on the offensive instead of looking for possible bases of accord.  Is this the reason those Kasama kids don't like you hanging around their happy little sandbox anymore?

>> "The reasons that the CPI(M) was defeated in Bengal are the same reasons that similar fake "communists" have been defeated in Nepal. This includes the corruption, ideological bankruptcy and thuggishness which resulted in the Maoists waging war on the UMLs but which the article pretends is associated with the Maoists."  --Arthur

The traits listed above [corruption, thuggishness, and ideological bankruptcy] could apply with equal facility to any of the Communist parties in the subcontinent, whether revisionist or anti-revisionist.  The Maoists themselves have, in scarcely five years, managed to acquire all the besetting vices of the revisionist/establishment Communist parties even whilst maintaining their uncompromising revolutionary stance (and they have certainly not "abandoned the line of revolt," as the author foolishly claims).  Their daily extortions of helpless Nepalis, brutal and repeated violations of the all-but-failed Peace Process, and transparent eagerness to carve out politicial patronage do not allow them to claim any sort of moral high-ground over the CPN-UML and their ilk.

The fact that you refuse to see this suggests to me that you do not know very many, if any, Nepalis.

>> "By addressing the lesson to the Maoists instead of the UMLs the article demonstrated ignorance."  --Arthur

The author apostrophizes the Maoists in his pedantic little puff-piece because he apparently still holds out some hope for the Maoists to avoid the pitfalls of CPI(M) revisionist corruption and become the sort of pro-people revolutionary party he fatuously wishes for them to be. 

Ignorant?  Yes, but not for the reasons you presume it to be.

>> "Given the Maoists opposition to revisionist parties the defeat of the revisionist parties in West Bengal and Kerala could not possibly be construed as an occasion for lecturing Maoists. But it was so construed in order to lecture Maoists."  --Arthur

That is because, as I've mentioned above, the Maoists are eagerly picking up the venal habits of the very same "revisionist parties" you are quick to decry, even if they continue maintain an ideologically anti-revisionist stance.  Apparently even the hopelessly naive author of this article has noticed this development, which has been quite painfully obvious.

And, yes, it is silly for the author to lecture the Maoists.  You and I can agree on that, if little else.  This author's morally outraged cri de coeur will mean precisely nothing to the Maoists, whose actions have always been, and always will be, geared towards taking and keeping unrestricted power.  To this end they have made adroit use of the dual levers of revolutionary insurrection and the forging of political "popular fronts" - the author is grossly deficient in his analysis if he thinks that the Maoists' current utilization of the latter means that they have "abandoned" the former.

The Maoists will never "give up the gun," as the author pathetically begs them to do.  They cannot, and will not, abandon what has always been one of the indispensable levers of a Maoist-style Peoples' War.  Their capacity and willingness to revert to armed revolt is the trump-card that has enabled them to hold the rest of the country hostage for the past five years.  They would, quite frankly, be stupid to give that up.

>> "So do many other commentators here who hold the same opinion as you that Nepali Times are "useful idiots" fronting for Maoists because they use such stereotyped forms of "reasonableness" in their unrelenting opposition to the Maoists. This is a symptom of a very specific political outlook in Nepal which is hostile to any kind of reasonable agreement."  --Arthur

Please do try to bear in mind that being a "useful idiot" is not the same thing as "fronting for the Maoists," which would imply an active, willing, and deliberate role on the Maoists' behalf.  I do not think anyone on the Nepali Times' payroll, even the Junior Marx-keteer pictured above, is doing anything of the sort.

Kunda Dixit is no fan of the Maoists.  This is not to say, of course, that the Maoists haven't happily availed themselves of the analytical myopia which he, and others in Nepal's journalistic pantheon, have given abundant evidence of in the past five or six years.

And, Arthur, I am not quite prepared to stomach a lecture from an aficionado of militant Communism as to what is, or isn't, "reasonable."

>> "Articles in Nepali Times are seen as pro-Maoist when they are not as extravagently and hysterically anti-Maoist as would suit your tastes. Nepali Times authors tend to take the more typically "liberal" position of seeking the lion's share in a "reasonable settlement" and claiming that their Maoist opponents are "unreasonable" instead of claiming that their Maoist opponents are murderous monsters from outer space as so many of their readers would prefer to read." --Arthur

No, I do not think anyone, least of all me, would call the NT a "pro-Maoist" outlet.  I hope that I've already made this clear above.  As I've also said above, I do believe, as do others, that the deeply misguided and bafflingly naive support which the NT and other media outlets gave to the SPA/Maoist settlement of 2005/2006 has done incalculable damage to Nepal.

But yes, the Maoists are indeed "murderous monsters."  You seem so consistently shocked and appalled that people on these forums continue to maintain that attitude.  Again, this leads me to suspect that you haven't chatted with very many Nepalese.

You seem to be laboring under the mistaken impression that the NT is the epicenter of resistance to the Maoists.  If you are looking for an ideal arena for proselytizing to "reactionaries," I could suggest a few more promising pages than this one.  Mind you, I am only trying to be helpful.

I think we agreed earlier that any future confrontation will be in the cities. That is because the PLA and NA already neutralize each other, even though the agreement to merge them into one army has still been obstructed by people who treat the "misguided" agreement as though they had not been forced to accept it and as though the circumstances that compelled them to accept it no longer exist.