True, but I just found news of diaspora Nepalese based in Washington, D.C. marching in solidarity with the anti-monarchy movement: <blockquote>Diaspora Demands Democracy
Nepalis living in the US have conveyed solidarity to ongoing movement back home
Nepalis living in the surrounding area of Washington DC organized protest in front of US Parliament building. Pics courtesy: Nepali Post.
<http://www.blog.com.np/united-we-blog/2006/04/23/diaspora-demands-democracy-2/#more-557></blockquote>
That's a sign that (pace Fidel via uvj) nearly every Nepalese -- from the impoverished in the countryside, middle strata in Kathmandu, to those who have means to live overseas -- is saying that monarchy has got to go.
> I'm no fan of Maoism -- I think it's a cultish perversion of socialism. But
> again, my query about Nepal wasn't based on my personal political value
> judgment, since I'm not there. I just wanted to see what others here
> thought.
Well, Maoism is just a name. What's in a name? They took that name because the main Communist Party based in the urban areas didn't address the needs of peasants in the countryside. Aside from the strategy of people's war beginning in the countryside, though, what's going on in Nepal is very different from what happened in China.
The thing is that the movement right now is a _joint_ effort, not exactly led or controlled by Maoists except in the countryside.
And one of the points of their joint demand -- for a Constituent Assembly -- echoes politics in Venezuela, Bolivia, etc.
Three concerns would be whether the united front will hold after the King goes down, how Washington, New Delhi, and Beijing will respond, and what kind of economy Nepal can have. Venezuela has oil, and Bolivia has gas. What can Nepal sell to get foreign exchange? I have heard that their pot is the greatest in the world (Nepal being a hippy mecca back in the days) -- if there were any economic justice in the world, the Nepalese could get rich and high on that, but Washington would go apoplectic. :->
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>