Nepe wrote: "Good luck to you Royalists." ** I don't know who he meant by that characterisation, but one has come to accept that hurling adjectives and colorful names at those who dare question/challenge or even disagree with his ideas is one of Nepe's predictable debating tactics. (Nepe reminds me of kids who grow up being told how brilliant, how smart they are by all who around them With Nepe, there is never a room for doubt, never a room for grey areas or for ambiguities or even for ambivalence. He's certain about what he knows, and he wants to stop at HIS certainty . . .contradictory evidence be damned, and he waves what he knows as the truth, even if that meant painting others in a bad, caricatured light. When he can't get his deas across, especially to people who may not share his politics, he then tries to go for the laughs, attacking them personally. One example: Nepe's palpable anger about the fact that I -- unlike some his Sajha heroes of the past, whose errors he easily forgave because they happened to have sided with his ideology-- refuse to be a poster-boy for his brand of republicanism and prefer to weigh in with my own judgment is interesting. Faced with my 'obstinacy', what does Nepe do? After giving me an obligatory "gaali", he starts PREDICTING and FORECASTING -- as though he were some wise sage with a fool-proof crysytal-ball -- that I would turn into a hard-core republican someday. In other words, he assures himself that if Ashu is not in a repubolican camp yet, then he WILL be in future, and in that way, he tries to co-opt me whether I like it or not. I mean, how is one supposed to argue with, of all things, one man's predictions and forecasts about other people? Meantime, for all his high-talk about republicanism and unduly harsh judgements against others who don't share his views, he appears to have done NOTHING, NOTHING at all in the past few years -- except for waving some placards in a park in DC -- to put himserlf in harm's way. Then again, perhaps Nepe knows that it's easier to fight for principles from afar than to live up to them at home. **** The paradox. As things stand, what is Nepal right now? If you accept that Nepal is a democracy now, then, what was that "movement against regression" all about? If Nepal is a democracy now, what does that do to the validity of RWF's conclusion? BUT: If Nepal is NOT a democracy now, then why jump on Mohsin for stating pretty much what RWF stated in a different way? The point is that our discussions about democracy has become so muddled, so narrow, so self-serving and so alarmingly fundamentalist in Nepal that we don't demand that Mohsin explain why Nepal ranks just above North Korea and Korea in terms press freedom (despite all his propaganda), while we pounce on him for saying that Nepal might be heading towards an authoritarian rule. That's the paradox I find hard to reconcile with what I know about democracy. And, Nepe, for your information, one article that I have been forwarding to all my friends and acquaintances for the past several years with an aim to change their mind is this . . . so don't assume that I don't know a thing or two about democracy. -http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/jod/10.3sen.html ****** Finally, some of Nepal's "finest" intellectuals -- many of whom fought for democracy and what not -- are now begging the King to come and save the Royal Nepal Academy. Now, that's another paradox I find hard to understand. oohi ashu