If you watch the movie "Blood Diamonds" starring Leo Caprio, you will see how the civil war in Sierra Leone in Africa was played out by warlords who used gun-toting child soldiers to kill their enemies. Shift the scene to Nepal. Imagine, now, a bunch of private 'soldiers' who are in their teens, wielding sticks, knives and khukuris, kidnapping business people with all sorts of excuses and then beating them senseless in the name of the revolution. Meantime, Prachanda looks on with his deranged smile, like some crazy uncle. Tomorrow, he will come up with a nice excuse and lie shamelessly again -- folling the media, and seducing the rest. And the entire pantheons of Nepali Civil Society simply do NOT have the balls to take on the Maoists' atrocitries, preferring, as they do, the easy target . . . of further kicking a defeated, defanged and demoralized king, when the rate of returns of doing so is very low at this point. oohi ashu