CINA

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Gaza, Friday afternoon. Palestinian "resistance" fighters:

Palestinian "resistance" fighters - only 24 hours later:

While last Friday (12.26) in the morning Israel opened the border crossings to Gaza for about 100 trucks with humanitarian aid - fuel, food etc. - almost at the same time the Palestinian "resistance" organisations (IJ, PRC, incl. the "ruling" Hamas..) resumed their mortar and rocket attacks against targets in Israel and the Karni crossing. At the end of the day two Palestinian girls were killed - by "friendly fire" (i.e. rockets of the "restistance"..).

Meanwhile, at least since the end of the cease-fire (12.19), the "rulers" (Hamas) in Gaza and the other "resistance" organisations did everything to assure the Palestinians (and the rest of the world) that there will be no attack from Israel, despite almost daily rocket/mortar attacks against communities in Israel. Because: "Israel is weak..", "The Olmert gov't is complete powerless and impotent..", etc.

  
One example from last Thursday (12.25): "Barak won't dare attack," Abu Abir, the spokesman of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) told the Nazareth-based (Palestinian) newspaper Arb al-Dahel. "He and the Shin Bet (*) know what awaits them in Gaza. Should the IDF attack, Israel won't be able to sustain the Palestinian response even for a day."

And now?

Since almost 30 hours Gaza suffers constantly attacks by the IAF! Until now, according to al-Jazeera, nearly 300 people were killed and more than 700 injured..

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 vs.

6 : 1

"America outspends China on defense by a margin of more than six to one, the Pentagon estimates. In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today, compared to only 6 million in the United States. The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding.

   It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter.." (in "China’s six-to-one advantage over the US", Asia Times, 12.2) ^^ 

PS:
Yesterday's Guardian (UK) published following impressive report:
☞ United States - The Road to Ruin

Bye, bye..

..USA!!

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Last Sunday (11.30) NepalNews published following article:

CPN(M) introducing 'codes for simple living' for CA members

The Maoists are introducing code of ethics detailing 'simple lifestyle' for its Constituent Assembly (CA) members, reports Kantipur daily.

The daily reports that the codes include restriction on spending in mobile phones, vehicles and clothes.

Henceforth, the Maoist CA members would not be permitted to buy mobile sets worth over Rs 10,000. While central committee members will be allowed to keep three sets, the CA members will have to keep not more than two sets.

The code of ethics prepared by senior leader Post Bahadur Bogati also restricts Maoist CA members from buying foreign clothes. They will have to make do with domestic produce as far as possible.

Regarding the vehicle-type, the code says that they could buy relatively cheaper battery-run Chinese bikes.

The CA members will have to stay in groups and will have to use public transport. They are not allowed to take part in programmes held in star-hotels and not accept expensive gifts, among others.

The codes are being prepared amid criticisms that Maoist leaders were starting to lead opulent lifestyles opposed to their proletarian philosophy.

http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2008/nov/nov30/news01.php

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From today's Guardian (UK):

Protests over global recession

The governments of Turkey, Hungary and Iceland, three of the countries hit hardest by the global economic downturn, faced mass demonstrations against austerity measures yesterday.

11.29, Ankara (TR): Labour union (DiSK, KESK) demo for:

"Employment, Peace and Democracy - Workers' Unity!"

Thousands of Turkish workers clashed with police in Ankara (*), at a demonstration held by the two biggest unions (DiSK, KESK) to protest against a possible International Monetary Fund deal. The IMF is negotiating with Turkey on a loan to stem the impact of the global financial crisis on the country. Six police officers and several protesters were injured and are being treated in hospital, the state news agency reported.

The rising price of basic commodities such as gas, oil, wheat and rice has hurt consumers and the government is working on a stimulus package to curb rising unemployment, which is hovering at 10 per cent.

In Budapest, thousands of firefighters, teachers and other public employees demonstrated outside Hungary's parliament to protest against austerity measures.

To reduce the state budget deficit, the government plans to temporarily suspend or limit wage bonuses and pensions, among other steps.

Icelanders gathered outside their parliament to demand the resignation of the government they blame for leading their country into an economic abyss. Violence flared as protesters tried to storm a police station to free an arrested demonstrator. At least five people were injured.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/30/global-economy-turkey-demonstration

* Here some impressions from the "event" in Ankara, triggered by the repeated attacks of the riot cops against the demonstration:

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Although the following article about the GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS isn't the newest, it has been already published seven month ago (4.14) in the German bourgeois magazine Der Spiegel, but the main subject is still up to date. Particularly after last week's news that "Korea’s Daewoo Leases an Area Half of the Size of Belgium in Madagascar for Free" (*), as EcoWorldly headlined last Saturday (**)..

The Fury of the Poor

Around the world, rising food prices have made basic staples like rice and corn unaffordable for many people, pushing the poor to the barricades because they can no longer get enough to eat. But the worst is yet to come.

Fort Dimanche, a former prison in the hills above the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, is a hell on earth. In the past, it was home to the torture chambers of former dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier's death squads, the Tontons Macoutes. Today thousands of impoverished Haitians live in the prison's grounds, digging through piles of garbage for food. But even dogs find little to eat there.

On the roof of the former prison, enterprising women prepare something that looks like biscuits and is even called by that name. The key ingredient, yellow clay, is trucked in from the nearby mountains. The clay is combined with salt and vegetable fat to make dough, which is then dried in the sun.

For many Haitians, the mud biscuits are their only food. They taste of fat, suck the moisture out of the mouth and leave behind an aftertaste of dirt. They often cause diarrhea, but they help to numb the pangs of hunger. "I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," Marie Noël, who survives with her seven children on the dirt cakes, told the Associated Press.

The clay to make 100 of the biscuits costs $5 (€3.15) and has risen by $1.50 (€0.95), or about 40 percent, within one year. The same is true of staple foods. Nevertheless, the same amount of money buys more of the mud cakes than bread or corn tortillas. A daily bowl of rice is almost unaffordable.

The shortages triggered revolts in Haiti last week. A crowd of hungry citizens marched through Port-au-Prince, throwing stones and bottles and chanting, "We are hungry!" in front of the presidential palace. Tires were burned, and people died. It was yet another of the rebellions that are beginning to occur with increasing frequency worldwide, but which are still only a harbinger of what is yet to come.

Food is become increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is already unaffordable for many people. The world's 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night. This calamity is "one of the worst violations of human dignity," says former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Should we be surprised that despair often turns into violence? The food crisis afflicts the world's poor -- in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East -- like a biblical plague. Prices for staples like rice, corn and wheat, which were relatively stable for years, have skyrocketed by over 180 percent in the last three years. A bottleneck is developing whose consequences are potentially more severe than the global crisis in the financial markets. With nothing left to lose, people on the brink of starvation are more likely to react with boundless fury.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) addressed this global crisis at a joint meeting last weekend. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that exploding food prices threaten to cause instability in at least 33 countries, including regional powers like Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan, where the army has had to be brought in to protect flour transports. The crisis is helping radical Islamic movements gain strength in North Africa. There has been unrest in recent weeks in Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, the Ivory Coast and Cameroon, where the violence has already claimed about 100 lives.

There are several reasons for the food crisis:

The world population is growing constantly, while the amount of arable land is declining.
Climate change is causing a loss of agricultural land, irreversible in some cases, as a result of droughts, floods, storms and erosion.
Because of changing eating habits, more and more arable land and virgin forests are being turned into pasture for livestock. The yield per acre in calories of land given over to pasture is substantially lower than that of arable land.
The World Bank wants developing countries to introduce market reforms, including the abolition of protective tariffs, a move that often causes massive damage to local agriculture.
Speculators are driving up the prices of raw materials. The resulting high oil price leads to "energy crops" being cultivated instead of grain for food or animal feed.
Millions of people displaced by civil wars need food, and yet they themselves are no longer capable of producing food.

What we are beginning to face is not just an acute bottleneck, but a worldwide, fundamental food crisis. It affects most of all the poor, who spend a disproportionately large share of their income on food and water. The crisis is so dire that it is obliterating any progress made in recent years in fighting disease and starvation.

With too many people and not enough agricultural land, a struggle for the distribution of the best farmland is taking shape that could turn into a new North-South conflict. "These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis," wrote US economist Paul Krugman recently in his regular column in the New York Times. "But there’s another world crisis under way -- and it’s hurting a lot more people."

Mexicans were the first to take to the streets, when they protested against higher prices for cornmeal, the basic ingredient in tortillas. Mexico can only cover a portion of its demand with domestic production. It imports the rest, mainly from the United States. Meanwhile, more and more farmers in the US are selling their corn to biofuel producers, who pay a higher price for the grain.

To avert further protests, Mexican President Felipe Calderón decided to increase government subsidies for corn, which were already high to begin with. But only countries that are relatively strong financially can afford this. In other countries, like Haiti, Bolivia, Algeria and Yemen, the lower classes have been hard hit by food-price inflation.

'People Are Dying Before Our Eyes'

In the Middle Eastern country of Yemen, people get by on an average of €1.18 ($1.86) per day. The government faces the challenges of a wave of refugees from Somalia, tribal warfare in the north and the constant threat of terrorism. Since February, wheat prices in Yemen have doubled and the price of rice and cooking oil has increased by a fifth. And since the end of March, people have died in Yemen in unrest over bread prices.

Within the last quarter, food prices have increased by 145 percent in Lebanon and 20 percent in Syria. "Even parsley, for which we paid almost nothing in the past, has suddenly tripled in price," complains one resident of the Syrian capital Damascus.

Iraq and Sudan, once the "bread baskets" of the Arab world, are nowadays dependent on the World Food Programme. More than a million people in Iraq and 2 million in Sudan's Darfur region require food aid. Life in Darfur, Sudan's western province, has always been difficult. The Sahara has shifted southward in the last four decades, while rainfall has declined dramatically. Yields of sorghum, the area's most important grain crop, have dropped by two-thirds.

The civil war in Sudan has made more than 2 million people in refugee camps completely dependent on food aid. Fields in the region have not been farmed for years. "People are dying before our eyes, while the world looks on," says Johan van der Kamp of the German aid organization Deutsche Welthungerhilfe.

Developing countries faced a similar challenge more than a generation ago, which led to the advent of the so-called Green Revolution. Through the use of fertilizer, pesticides and hybrid seed, farmers in developing countries were able to boost their harvests considerably. Some now believe that it is time to launch a second green revolution. The heads of research at agricultural conglomerates are convinced that genetic engineering could be the answer to the world's food problems. But the question is: how long would it take?

Food shortages have even become an important issue in affluent areas, like Dubai, where supermarkets have pledged not to raise the prices of 20 staple foods for at least one year. The goal, clearly, is to prevent dissatisfaction within the city's legions of Indian and Pakistani construction workers. Without them, the enormous hotels, museums and artificial islands with which Dubai is making such a stir in the world would not exist. Foreign workers are paid their meager wages in the local currency, the dirham, which is tied to the falling dollar.

The beneficiaries of globalization on the Gulf can ill afford food riots in the shadow of their skyscrapers and shopping malls. "The consequences of discontent, anger in the Middle East can be more geo-political than they may be elsewhere," Robin Lodge of the United Nations World Food Programme recently told the news agency Reuters. Nowhere is this truer than in Egypt.

Saad Ibrahim owns a small snack shop in Cairo in a neighborhood behind the Al-Azhar Mosque. He sells dishes like noodles and chickpeas in tomato sauce, and his shop is in a good location. Nevertheless, most of the faithful now walk quickly past his shop after Friday prayers. "I have fewer customers every day," says Ibrahim.

Last fall a ton of noodles cost about 1,500 Egyptian pounds, or a little more than €175 ($276). Since then, prices have tripled. Ibrahim blames the government for the price hike. "As an agricultural country," he says, "we could grow everything ourselves, instead of importing it for a lot of money."

Thirty-two million of Egypt's population of 80 million get by on €1 ($1.58) a day, and 16 million on even less. The price of cooking oil alone has risen by 40 percent within the last year. Inflation jumped to above 12 percent in February, and the higher cost of wheat has had an especially adverse impact.

"Aish baladi," a soft, round flatbread, is a mainstay of the Egyptian diet. The state has subsidized it for decades, which has helped to preserve calm. But for how much longer can this system function? The lines are getting longer in front of bakeries that sell the subsidized bread, as more and more Egyptians depend on government aid. Riots in recent weeks claimed at least 11 lives after corrupt bakers sold inexpensive, subsidized flour at high prices on the black market, triggering an angry response from the public.

Meanwhile, the government has slated $2.5 billion (€1.58 billion) of its new budget for bread subsidies. But providing cheap bread comes with its own bizarre consequences. Some farmers are already feeding bread to their livestock because of the exorbitant cost of animal feed. Raising cattle is a profitable business because rising incomes in some developing countries mean that more and more consumers can afford to eat meat. The new middle class in Delhi and Beijing is no longer satisfied with traditional diets high in foods like rice and lentils. But it takes seven kilograms of feed and vast quantities of water to produce only one kilogram of beef, which only drives up prices.

In Jordan, which has a modern system of agriculture, the cost of staple foods has increased by 60 percent within a year. "I can hardly sell my vegetables anymore," says Hussein Bureidi, a vendor who operates a stand near the Grand Mosque in the Jordanian capital Amman. "How can this go on?" King Abdullah fears a return of the 1996 food riots, when angry citizens clashed with police in the city of Karak.

In Algeria, the prices of cooking fat, corn oil, sugar and flour have doubled within six months. With the exception of an inadequate, 15-percent increase in salaries for civil servants, the government has done little to fend off what Radio Algiers called an "attack on our standard of living." Until now, oil and gas revenues have not been used to fund additional food subsidies. If this were the case, the government might find itself no longer able to service its foreign debt on time.

But India has the largest number of underfed people, about 220 million. Aptly enough, two international conferences on the food crisis took place in New Delhi last week. Jacques Diouf, the Senegalese head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), blamed the dilemma on rapid growth in demand in both China and India. The crisis, Diouf said, could expand into an unprecedented catastrophe.

China has close to a quarter of the world's population to feed, but only 7 percent of its farmland. A similar situation applies in India. This means that both countries must import food on a large scale, prompting many exporting countries to impose export quotas so that their own citizens are not suddenly forced to go without.

When Haiti's hungry poor went on a rampage last week, the United States closed its embassy there as a precaution. The incidents were also sufficiently alarming to British Prime Gordon Brown, who wrote a letter to his Japanese counterpart, Yasuo Fukuda, the current chairman of the G-8 nations. In the letter, Brown recommended that the international community endeavor to prepare a "fully coordinated response" to rampant hunger.

It would not come a moment too soon.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,547198,00.html

* About 1.3 million hectares, i.e. half of the arable land in Madagascar..
** Here you'll get some more informations about it:
☞ Daewoo to Buy Madagascar (Marmot's Hole, 11.20)
☞ Deal brings many jobs, but at what price? (Guardian, 11.22)

Related:
☞ Across globe, hunger brings rising anger (IHT, 4.18)

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Today's top story in the int'l media:
The report "Global Trends 2025" by the National Intelligence Council (NIC).
Following you can read The Guardian's (UK) article about it:

2025: the end of US dominance

• US intelligence: 'We can no longer call shots alone'
• European Union will be 'hobbled giant' by 2025
• Triumph of western democracy not certain

The United States' leading intelligence organisation has warned that the world is entering an increasingly unstable and unpredictable period in which the advance of western-style democracy is no longer assured, and some states are in danger of being "taken over and run by criminal networks".

The global trends review, produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) every four years, represents sobering reading in Barack Obama's intray as he prepares to take office in January. The country he inherits, the report warns, will no longer be able to "call the shots" alone, as its power over an increasingly multipolar world begins to wane.

Looking ahead to 2025, the NIC (which coordinates analysis from all the US intelligence agencies), foresees a fragmented world, where conflict over scarce resources is on the rise, poorly contained by "ramshackle" international institutions, while nuclear proliferation, particularly in the Middle East, and even nuclear conflict grow more likely.

"Global Trends 2025: A World Transformed" warns that the spread of western democratic capitalism cannot be taken for granted, as it was by George Bush and America's neoconservatives.

"No single outcome seems preordained: the Western model of economic liberalism, democracy and secularism, for example, which many assumed to be inevitable, may lose its lustre – at least in the medium term," the report warns.

It adds: "Today wealth is moving not just from West to East but is concentrating more under state control," giving the examples of China and Russia.

"In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the state's role in the economy may be gaining more appeal throughout the world."

At the same time, the US will become "less dominant" in the world – no longer the unrivalled superpower it has been since the end of the Cold War, but a "first among equals" in a more fluid and evenly balanced world, making the unilateralism of the Bush era no longer tenable.

The report predicts that over the next two decades "the multiplicity of influential actors and distrust of vast power means less room for the US to call the shots without the support of strong partnerships."

It is a conclusion that meshes with president elect Obama's stated preference for multilateralism, but the NIC findings suggest that as the years go by it could be harder for Washington to put together "coalitions of the willing" to pursue its agenda.

International organisations, like the UN, seem ill-prepared to fill the vacuum left by receding American power, at a time of multiple potential crises driven by climate change the increasing scarcity of resources like oil, food and water. Those institutions "appear incapable of rising to the challenges without concerted efforts from their leaders" it says.

In an unusually graphic illustration of a possible future, the report presents an imaginary "presidential diary entry" from October 1, 2020, that recounts a devastating hurricane, fuelled by global warming, hitting New York in the middle of the UN's annual general assembly.

"I guess we had it coming, but it was a rude shock," the unnamed president writes. "Some of the scenes were like the stuff from the World War II newsreels, only this time it was not Europe but Manhattan. Those images of the US aircraft carriers and transport ships evacuating thousands in the wake of the flooding still stick in my mind."

As he flies off for an improvised UN reception on board an aircraft carrier, the imaginary future president admits: "The cumulation of disasters, permafrost melting, lower agricultural yields, growing health problems, and the like are taking a terrible toll, much greater than we anticipated 20 years ago."

The last time the NIC published its quadrennial glimpse into the future was December 2004. President Bush had just been re-elected and was preparing his triumphal second inauguration that was to mark the high-water mark for neoconservatism. That report matched the mood of the times.

It was called Mapping the Global Future, and looked forward as far as 2020 when it projected "continued US dominance, positing that most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US".

That confidence is entirely lacking from this far more sober assessment. Also gone is the belief that oil and gas supplies "in the ground" were "sufficient to meet global demand". The new report views a transition to cleaner fuels as inevitable. It is just the speed that is in question.

The NIC believes it is most likely that technology will lag behind the depletion of oil and gas reserves. A sudden transition, however, will bring problems of its own, creating instability in the Gulf and Russia.

While emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are likely to grow in influence at America's expense, the same cannot be said of the European Union. The NIC appears relatively certain the EU will be "losing clout" by 2025. Internal bickering and a "democracy gap" separating Brussels from European voters will leave the EU "a hobbled giant", unable to translate its economic clout into global influence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/20/barack-obama-president-intelligence-agency

Here you can read the complete NIC Report (pdf):
☞ GLOBAL TRENDS 2025: A Transformed World


Well, the report "predicts" also something about the "relationship" between N. and S. Korea in 2025..

Today's Korea Herald wrote about it following:

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From today's NepalNews:

Maoists to enter into fierce debate over two documents

After the meeting between party chairman and prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and his former mentor and senior party ideologue of Maoists Mohan Baidya ‘Kiran’ failed to produce any understanding, Tuesday, the central committee meeting of the party resuming from Wednesday is expected to witness stormy debate between the two camps.

Both Prachanda and Kiran have registered separate political report at the meeting, which started on Monday.

While Prachanda’s document backs consolidating the federal democratic republic through usage of terms like transitional republic, Kiran has come out, unequivocally, with a proposal to go for people’s republic through people’s revolt.

This is said to be the first time that party chairman Prachanda has faced such a serious challenge over his leadership from within his party.

The central committee meeting is taking place ahead of National Cadres’ Conference slated to begin from Thursday. The conference is expected to finalise the party’s strategy in current situation.

http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2008/nov/nov19/news02.php

Related article:
☞ Kiran counters Prachanda.. (NepalNews, 11.17)

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Asia Times (HK) published today following article about the latest developments in the D.F.R. Nepal:

Prachanda's multiparty pickle

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon's visit to Nepal, scheduled for the end of the month, might give Prime Minister Prachanda an enhanced sense of the international acceptability of the interim coalition government he has been heading since mid-August.
 

Ban's arrival, however, comes amid widespread skepticism within the country about Maoists' sincerity to remain committed to multiparty democracy. Such doubts have presented a formidable challenge to Prachanda's leadership.
 

While this challenge does not pose any immediate threat to the Prachanda-led government, conflicting ideas and arguments emanating from some of his senior comrades have made even the credulous public suspicious of the true intentions of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

A strong case is being made through media debate that a revolutionary party cannot be expected to be satisfied until the country becomes a "people's republic". Abolishing the monarchy and replacing it with a republican democracy is definitely a step forward, says senior Maoist leader Mohan Baidya, also known as "Kiran" and widely considered to be Prachanda's mentor.

"Our objective is to establish a people's republic which is yet to be accomplished," a newspaper quoted him as saying. Kiran is said to belong to a group that is opposed to softening the position held throughout the insurgency years. Meanwhile, Baburam Bhattarai, number two in the party hierarchy, is said to be emerging as the leader of a faction in favor of political flexibility.
 

Prachanda appears to be in the middle, and there is speculation that he intends to give communism a Nepali look suitable to the 21st century. "It can't be the photocopy of Mao's Maoism," he told Janadisha newspaper on Friday, in reference to China's Mao Zedong.
 

"We have walked into the era of competitive politics and have embarked on the project of federal structure," Prachanda added. "Mao's scheme was based on a unitary structure".

The main reason behind recent public outcry is that the Maoists could impose one-party rule, drawing inspiration from countries like China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea or Zimbabwe. Prachanda believes his visits to India and the United States (at the UN in New York) have helped to dispel doubts in the West that because of their background of violence, the Maoists would try to place Nepal under a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Prachanda has emphasized that all the Maoists are opposed to is the parliamentary form of democracy. His contention is that since the parliamentary format has failed to address people's woes in countries like India and Britain, it is not worthwhile to retain in Nepal. He once praised the French model in which the executive branch - or presidency - conducts the show. He has not mentioned the American model, perhaps because it would amount to appeasing the world's imperialist power.

It is unclear whether Prachanda's initiatives have actually helped remove persisting fears about Maoist intentions. On the domestic front, the party leadership seems to have mobilized intellectual support to convince the public that the system the Maoists want to establish will not be one-party rule.
 

One such intellectual, Professor Manik Lal Shrestha, argued in an article printed in the official Gorakhapatra newspaper on Sunday that "people's democracies" prevalent in countries like China, Korea, Laos and Vietnam are not actually single-party dispensations. In other words, Shrestha does not see any harm in the Maoists taking Nepal in that direction.
 

Quoting from Maoist literature, Shrestha has advanced a contention that, like China, Nepal's new people's democracy would have to be based on cooperation rather than having opposition parties.

Similarly, the federal structure Prachanda has been advocating has been a controversial issue from the beginning. And the point of contention is centered around a scheme to create federal units on the basis of ethnicity. Since the country is known for its mixed population and diversity, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to relocate particular ethnic groups from one region to another.
 

As rebels in the past decade, Maoists followed the slogan of making the residents of the southern Terai plains free from the alleged exploitation of hill-dwellers. The Maoist leadership realizes that it can't backtrack from its public pledge - but others see this whole idea as a suicide mission.

Narayanman Bijukchhe, president of a party of workers and peasants, has described a Maoist plan to create a province for the Newar ethnic and linguist group within the Kathmandu valley as "fatal". (The valley has three of the 75 administrative districts in Nepal.)

Jhalanath Khanal, general secretary of the Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) party, a rival of the Maoists, accuses the Maoist leadership of promoting a "devastating concept", namely that of transforming the entire southern Terai flatlands into one federal unit. Terai shares borders with some Indian states including West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

And the demand from Terai has already encouraged Nepal's northern Himalayan belt, bordering China's Tibet, to seek autonomy. Analysts say excessive zeal for self-determination might lead to the breakup of the country.

Which among the nine communist parties currently in existence is the real party of communists? Answers differ, depending on a variety of claims. Except the party of workers and peasants, others have their names qualified with additional tags in parenthesis, such as Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), Communist Party of Nepal ( Unity Center ) and Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist).

Some of the Maoist leaders claim that since they are the largest party among the communists they can afford to give up the "Maoist" tag.
 

Senior leader "Kiran", however, is against this proposition. "It is our identity, not a tail or a tag," he told Nayaa Patrikaa newspaper on Tuesday. He is more concerned about the possible negative influence of greater flexibility, replacing revolutionary determination. Rightist opportunism, he fears, can dilute the entire process Maoists faithfully launched in 1996.
 

The other major challenge confronting the Maoist leadership is the issue of integrating Maoist soldiers, numbering nearly 20,000, into the national Nepal Army.
 

The army leadership initially resisted the idea of inducting politically indoctrinated cadre into the national military, but with the formation of the Maoist government the army's voice has lost its sting. The new defense minister, Rambahadur Thapa or "Badal", seems conspicuously determined to create a "national army" through the combination of the two existing armies.
 

But he faced a direct confrontation on Monday, when two of the ministers from the coalition publicly opposed the idea of integration, saying that if the Maoist forces joined the national army, Nepal would lose its entire territory in the southern flatlands of Terai. Interestingly, this voice of dissent from Terai became much louder after Rambahadur Thapa returned from an official visit of China.

Ian Martin, who heads the UN's special mission in Nepal, also believes that the ongoing peace process cannot be complete as long as two separate armies exist. The government's plan to set up a special committee to sort out the thorny question has yet to be implemented.
 

Prachanda appears to be in a dilemma: he knows he cannot ignore the plight of soldiers who have been sheltered in UN-monitored camps for months. Media reports from various cantonment sites indicate growing resentment against the political leadership. One report referred to preparations for an open revolt against Prachanda.
 

He is under pressure to act fast and decisively. He can persuade the Nepal army chief, General Rookmangud Katawal, and some senior officers to agree for integration without any pre-conditions. But will the junior officers, who have fought Maoists in the field, obey their commanders without question?
 

In an emerging scenario, disgruntled army officers may create a totally different situation, the Drishti newspaper reported on Tuesday quoting an unnamed senior army officer.
 

If an interim constitution can be defied by political parties, it can also be ignored by non-political actors.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JJ23Df02.html

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1. We always should keep in mind that..

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Considering the current "finanicial crisis" the governments of the USA, UK and Germany are planning to subsidize the main "suffering" banks with 2,2 trillion dollars..

$ 2,200,000,000,000!!!

At the same time, according to International Food Policy Research Institute/IFPRI ("The Challenge of Hunger 2008") almost 1 billion..

1,000,000,000!!!

..people worldwide have not enough to eat..(*)

 
Alone in Afghanistan, according to Oxfam, in the coming winter likely 1 million..

1,000,000!!!

..children will starving to death!

Yeah, that's exactly the reason why the "Capitalism has to survive!" (^^)

* Related:

☞ The Fury of the Poor (Spiegel, 4.14)