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[Servant Corps]

A brief background: The Maoists won elections in Nepal after a terrible civil war and their leader became Prime Minister (altough they had to face a parliament that had lots of non-Maoists, so they were in a coalition). However, the Maoist Prime Minister and the army got in conflict: a UN resolution mandated that the Maoist gurellias be integrated into the army, but the army leaders refuse to do so. The Prime Minister fired the army leaders, but the parliament decided to overturn the desicion of the Prime Minister (and the Maoists lost the support of their coalition partners), and so the Maoist prime minister resigned and launched a protest campagin in order to get its message across, and possibly push for the integration of the Maoist gurellias into the army.

Today, the Maoists finally won. The Parliament was unable to accomplish its goal of forming a consitution before its expiration, and in order to secure Maoist approval for extending the Parliament's term, the non-Maoist Prime Minister has resigned and the Maoists are now in talks to create a new coalition government.

As I am a anti-communist, I pay very close attention to Maoism. 

[Phmcw]

Mostly good news. Those maoist seems mostly ok compared to what was there before.
Let's hope i doesn't turn into that kind of communism again though.

[Duuvian]

"He's just a farmer," Tian said of Peng, as he picked food from his teeth. "He doesn't know what he was talking about."


Western propaganda as some would claim? Or is Maoism another form of feudalism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maoism

Maoism is based on a theory that the oppressed will rise up to support the Maoists because the Maoists oppose the non-oppressed. Hence the need for a continuing "revolution" against whoever happens to be the Maoist's enemy. Maoists acknowledge that eventually their own form of government will no longer be required at some point in the future. The trick is finding other things for the Chinese people to oppose within and outside of their own society, whether it be wealthy landowners or imperialist aggressors.

One thing to remember about China is that they were very badly manipulated and forced to take whatever agreements the imperialist powers of the late 1800s and early 1900s would throw at them, especially American, British, Russian, and Japanese. Maoism is a reaction of sorts to this and helps to explain their school of thought regarding nearly everything. They been used, and badly, by just about everyone, and now it's their turn to use everyone they can. By they I mean the party using the people. Sort of ironic, huh. It makes it so the oppressed become the oppressors within a generation.

For a most excellent book on how the Chinese evolved politically I recommend the book Twentieth Century China by O. Edmund Clubb. My copy was written in 1963 but it is a very neutral text. Anything resembling an opinion in my post is my own, I simply came up with it from information in the book.

Also, this made me sad:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Edmund_Clubb

Sounds like he didn't hate the commie bastards enough. His book is very well written and isn't the one sided piece of shit Joe McCarthy would have agreed with.

[Grakelin]

I remember 6  or 7 years ago (was it longer than that?) when Nepal was run by a ruling family and the Prince went crazy at a party and massacred everybody.

Maybe I'm remembering wrong.

EDIT Nope, I'm remembering right, though it was actually nine full years ago. I like that he was still proclaimed King while in a coma with a self-inflicted bullet wound. Apparently, the Nepalese let you be King even if you murder your dad.

[Aqizzar]

I remember 6  or 7 years ago (was it longer than that?) when Nepal was run by a ruling family and the Prince went crazy at a party and massacred everybody.

Maybe I'm remembering wrong.

No, you're remembering it totally right.  Prince Dipendra got all liquored up one night, and having grown bored of his normal liquored up nights of cruising Nepal and running people over, grabbed some fatigues and an M-16 and blew his family away, then tried to kill himself and almost missed.  He got part of his head, and died a day later.

Ninja'd by 24 fucking seconds.  That might be a new record.  Anyway, RE: Maoists - good for them.  Let's see how much they can screw up a tiny nation on top of a mountain who's greatest source of income (I assume) is rich Western idiot hikers and the TV crews that film them.

[Grakelin]

They're actually an agriculture-based economy which gets foreign aid from all over the place. Basic third world stuff.

[Servant Corps]

And now the Maoists accuse the government of breaking the power-sharing agreement.

Wonderful, just wonderful. [/sarcasm]

[ChairmanPoo]

I remember 6  or 7 years ago (was it longer than that?) when Nepal was run by a ruling family and the Prince went crazy at a party and massacred everybody.

Maybe I'm remembering wrong.

EDIT Nope, I'm remembering right, though it was actually nine full years ago. I like that he was still proclaimed King while in a coma with a self-inflicted bullet wound. Apparently, the Nepalese let you be King even if you murder your dad.

Or so the official version said. There were conflicting versions of the event (including one that painted it as a freak accident involving a SMG). And it's worth noting that this all-too-convenient accident did off with the country's monarch and all his offspring, and thus delivered the throne to Lord Voldemort Lord Gyanendra, the prince's evil uncle, reputed to be a hardline conservative.
I dont think one needs to have read Hamlet (or watched the Lion King, I guess), to at the very least raise an eyebrow at the sequence of events.

[Servant Corps]

The Maoists has won again...strength to strength...

[Servant Corps]

A Maoist has been appointed to the Home Ministry of Nepal today...while another Maoist-aligned Cabinet Minister is accused of kidnapping and murdering a man in 2005. And by accused, I mean an criminal case has opened against this individual in 2008.

The Maoists are still terrorists. But the process has begun to remove them from that list, which is good, because if the United States remove this major political party from a list of terrorist groups, we will have won a major victory in the War on Terrorism. Until we do this though, we have to contend with the fact that the Nepali Maoists is a part of the Nepali government, and the only terrorist group to be in a political coalition at this moment (Hezbollah is technically in the Lebanese opposition), which is clearly a horrible blow for the US.

[Lagslayer]

Wait a sec, I'm confused. I've never heard of these "Maoists" before this thread, so please bare with me. So the Maoist party in Nepal is against anyone in a position of power. This means whenever they get in power, they support the people who are not in power to overthrow their own people in power now. So essentially they run on the platform of pitting their own people against eachother (except against those at the very top, of course)... and it works? Correct me if I'm wrong.

[nil]

Communists aren't necessarily opposed to power itself.  They're opposed to power based on private ownership of the means of production: factories, shares of stock; pretty much anything that gives you money without requiring any work on your part if you own it.  Among communists, Maoists are much more on the "ends justify the means" side, being perfectly willing to use particularly coersive methods and institutions against capital/ism.

[Nikov]

Wait a sec, I'm confused. I've never heard of these "Maoists" before this thread, so please bare with me. So the Maoist party in Nepal is against anyone in a position of power. This means whenever they get in power, they support the people who are not in power to overthrow their own people in power now. So essentially they run on the platform of pitting their own people against eachother (except against those at the very top, of course)... and it works? Correct me if I'm wrong.

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

INGSOC

[RedKing]

Clearly all part of a conspiracy to corner the world's supply of yak butter, fomented by their evil overlords in Mosc...umm, no, they're not Communists anymore. In Beiji....no, while they call themselves Communists, they're more like authoritarian hyper-capitalists. In Pyongy....wait, do they even have an economic ideology? Or an economy?


Kathmandu may now be the dark heart of the worldwide Communist conspiracy.   



In all seriousness though, this is not the dire crisis that some (who are apparently stuck in the 1960's) would like to make it out. There have been Maoist/Marxist insurgencies and/or strong political parties in that part of the world for a few decades (the Naxalites and CPI in eastern India, the CPB in Bangladesh, and Prachanda's UCPN(M) in Nepal). If you look at the average incomes, literacy rates and living conditions in that region, it's not hard to understand why. Life is very difficult and most eke out a living in subsistence agriculture. It stands to reason that they would support an ideology that focuses on rural agriculture over urban development and does away with royalty living in opulent seclusion.

And if the history of far-left groups over the last fifty years has taught us anything, it's that you don't need to do much to make them collapse. Wait two weeks, and somebody will get their panties in a bunch over losing a committee vote and will then split off a new faction. They're about as bad as Baptist churches in that respect.

[Phmcw]

I'm curious about them. Let's see how it goes without the cold war.

@Redking : give me an example of communism that hadn't to fight a foreign force when it established communism, and maybe you'll understand why I'm interested. It's hard to establish a peaceful, democratic regime when everyone in the world is trying to interfere.Beside Cuba didn't collapse and you can hardly say that USSR "naturally collapsed". And there is China, of course.