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Saturday, April 22, 2006 | Concessions in Nepal NOTE: Here is the mostly corrected version of yesterday's posting: http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/260041017.html WHILE I'm working on the astrology of the Nepal transition, such as it is -- King Gyanendra said yesterday that he would return the country to a constitutional monarchy, and has called for elections of parliament -- here is the video: http://snipurl.com/pjk9 -- and I'll post some recent information from Wikipedia. For those who are new to Wiki, the site functions as a news service as well, since it's an encyclopedia that's updated to the day and sometimes to the hour. Anyone can edit the entries. Rather than serving as a source of disinformation, this seems to keep the Wikipedia honest. But note that it has no one editor or a fixed editing staff with the final word; it is a collective process. When points are disputed, conversations about them, often quite intense, are taken to another area of the site which anyone can browse. Most Westerners don't know the circumstances under which Gyanendra, the King of Nepal, came to power. He was the brother of the sitting King Birendra. Birendra's son, Dipendra, is reported to have staged a murder-suicide on June 4, 1999 (just prior to the massive Aug. 11, 1999 grand cross-total solar eclipse) in which he is alleged to have killed most of the royal family before taking his own life. Gyanendra, third in the line of succession to the throne, survived the rampage because he was out of town. I saw a detailed BBC investigation on this recently -- it was the first I had heard of it -- with several accounts of the few surviving eyewitnesses, where there seemed to be absolutely no question about what happened. However, according to Wiki, the account is in dispute, but from what I have read the alternate theories don't carry a lot of weight. You can see this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyanendra Or this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipendra_of_Nepal Note the "disputed neutrality" tag at the top of the Dipendra article. Here is the latest from the entry on King Gyanendra: In April 2006 constitutionalists staged protests and strikes in Kathmandu against Gyanendra's direct rule. These protests drew support from journalists, lawyers, and other groups. The royal government responded by passing a curfew, which police enforced violently by beating protesters with canes or firing on them. The government's response drew condemnation from several countries including India and the United States. On April 21 Gyanendra announced that he would yield executive authority to a new prime minister chosen by the political parties to oversee the return of democracy. Here is the entry on the Nepalese general strike, from earlier this month. The situation is a bit more complex than people demanding back their constitutional rights versus a monarch who wants to keep direct rule. There is a Communist (properly, Maoist) insurgency that is attempting to take control of the country by both threats and actions of terrorism [link below]. The April 2006 Nepalese general strike was a general strike scheduled by forces opposed to the political crackdown under King Gyanendra to take place from April 5 to April 9, 2006 in Katmandu and other Nepalese cities. The Rebel Maoist forces called a cease-fire in Kathmandu valley for the time period in order to allow for peaceful protests. The general strike saw numerous protests, resulting in three reported deaths. A curfew was announced by the government on April 8, with reported orders to shoot protestors on sight. Despite this, small, disorganized protests continued. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2006_Nepalese_General_strike | ||||||
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