Should not this article be moved to Prachanda? There are many political figures (especially revolutionaries, for the natural reason that revolutionaries must often run from the law) whom Wikipedia lists under their more familiar noms-de-guerre. Compare Malcolm X, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky... QuartierLatin 1968 22:11, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The article writes that Prachandas political line to a great degree is derivative of the peruvian Shining Path:
- quote -
It takes the strategy of Shining Path insurrection in Peru as an important point of reference, along with the Chinese Revolution.
- end of quote -
Here it looks as the Shining Path is even more important than the chinese revolution as a model for Prachanda/the nepalese Maobadi.
I have never been entirely comfortable with this.
From what I have read by and about the nepalese maoists, the source no. 1 for their political line is China under mao, no. 2 is the beginning of the Russian revolution about 1917. "Prachanda Path", their somewhat vague and contradictory official line from 2001 on, explisitely says that it is a merger of the chinese line of prolonged peoples war in the countryside (a maoist term) with the russian line of city rebellions.
In programmatic documents, the Shining Path doesnt appear as a source of inspiration at all.
However, it IS correct that Prachandas Party, the CPN(Maoist) and its forerunners (before the spring of 1995) made mutch propaganda about "the peoples war in Peru", especially before year 2000.
At the same time, it is clear that the nepalese maoists altso have made some critisisms of the Shining Path.
Now, there is a new interwiew with Prachanda from this autumn, where he explicitely critisises the Shining Path on several imporatant points.
The interwiew is posted HERE:
http://klementgottwald.blogspot.com/2006/08/interview-with-prachanda-hoist.html
The part about the Shining Path starts with lauding its "major role in inspiring us".
However, then he goes on to describe it as "left sectarianism" , "mechanical and one-sided thinking", "negating completely ... compromise or front ... against the main enemy", "idealizing Comrade Gonzalo as a supernatural leader who never makes a mistake" (Gonzalo is the indeed very autocratic leader of the Sendero Luminoso) "being unable ... to learn ... from the metaphysical mistakes of Comrade Stalin " etc etc.
Based on the word from the horses (Prachandas) mouth itself, which I guess should be supposed to be a primary source about the politix of the man, I find it hard to defend this formulation:
- snip -
Prachanda's extension of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to take specific account of Nepal's situation is known as the Prachanda Path. It takes the strategy of Shining Path insurrection in Peru as an important point of reference, along with the Chinese Revolution.
- snip -
Now my first comment is that I have not been able to find an exact comment about what really IS and what is NOT supposed to be "Prachanda Path".
My second comment is: WHERE - in what document, interwiew etc, - is the documentation that "Prachanda Path ... takes the strategy of Shining Path insurrection in Peru as an important point of reference"?
I cant find it used as a reference for Prachanda Path at all. And an IMPORTANT point of reference?
Again, I remind you that "Prachanda Path" was voted in as the CPN(M) line at a central comittee meeting during the spring of 2001. As far as I have been able to see, this was at the end of the period when the party used to say much about the "glorious peoples war in Peru" etc.
YES, the nepalese maoists used to say much about Peru during the 90s and even before. But, on the other hand, this was long before "Prachanda Path" was launched.
I personally know of NO mention of Peru or the Shining Path in any programmatic document about Prachanda Path. (I dont lay claim to have read everything available in english, not to mention nepali which I cant read at all. So references of this kind may possibly exist. However, I have not seen them).
So what is the documentation for this claim?
My suggestion is that the reference to Shining Path is taken out.
At the very least, it should be cut from the direct connection with "Prachanda Path". To put it in front of the chinese/maoist influence is clearly wrong.
Possibly, a solution may be to mention that Prachanda and the CPN(M) during earlier years used to make much propaganda about the war of the Shining Path in Peru, but that in more recent years, Prachanda has been criticising them.
Factually, Prachandas political tactics and Shining Paths are very different.
For instance, the nepali maoist rebellion started with a number of demands to the state, and allways made the propagandistic point that if the state would accept the demands, the war would be over.
The Shining Path never made any demands at all, exept that the state should capitulate.
The nepalese Maobadi has, as the article about Prachanda mentions, made extensive use of armistices and negotiations.
The Shining Path, as far as I know, never made any armistice, and was totally unwilling to consider any form of negotiation
etc.
Togrim, user of the norwegian wikipedia, 2006-09-29
"the autocratic leader"
This seems like blatant bias by a pro-capitalist, I suggest it be changed to simply "the leader". -- 70.191.145.250 14:24, 3 September 2005
The result of the debate was move. — Nightst a llion (?) 10:31, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm very strongly in agreement with
DanielM that this article should be at
Prachanda.
TJive and I have argued about this on each other's talk pages, and my position remains the same.
Quartier
Latin1968
18:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I have other things to worry about besides whether TJive is strongly suspect of my intentions. His position here is that Prachanda and Pushpa Kamal Dahal are similarly common names for this individual. Man, I keep up with this person, read something on it almost every week, and I can barely ever remember "Pushpa Kamal Dahal." He just is not generally referred to that way. If you look at the frequency of those terms in a search tool, let's try Altavista for example. 173,000 instances of Prachanda and 13,000 of "Pushpa Kamal Dahal." It is difficult for me to believe that TJive doesn't grasp this, and I don't think his reversions here are good faith edits. DanielM 00:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
All right then, I suppose it falls to me to motivate. [Bear with me TJive, you've heard my points, but this is for those just joining the discussion]:
Pushpa Kamal Dahal is rarely known by his birthname; instead, as a Maoist revolutionary, he is known by a nom-de-guerre, similarly to
Subcomandante Marcos,
Ho Chi Minh,
Joseph Stalin,
Leon Trotsky,
Vladimir Lenin,
Pol Pot, and many others who have adopted pseudonyms for dissident political purposes. In each of the cases named, Wikipedia employs the most recognizable nom-de-guerre. In Prachanda's case, this would be 'Prachanda'. My sense is that there are millions of people, in India as in Nepal, to whom the name Pushpa Kamal Dahal means nothing, but who would immediately recognize Prachanda as the name of the Nepalese Maoist leader. Internet searches, which can be expected to be biased towards richer countries and also Wikipedia knockoffs, remain nevertheless dramatically slanted towards Prachanda: Google gives 90,500 hits for Prachanda against 15,000 for Pushpa Dahal (I'm being generous by leaving out Kamal as an extra search term and omitting quotation marks) and 627 for P.K. Dahal. Yahoo gives 170,000 hits for Prachanda against 14,200 for Pushpa Dahal; the numbers on Altavista are similar. Google News search as of today gives 332 hits for Prachanda against 43 for Pushpa Dahal. Furthermore, a great proportion of the hits for Pushpa Dahal are articles that begin with the words "Comrade Prachanda, who was born Pushpa Kamal Dahal..." and then subsequently refer to him as Prachanda throughout the article.
Okay, watch our spot at
Wikipedia:Requested moves#2 February 2006. I sincerely hope we can keep personal insinuations out of this discussion.
Quartier
Latin1968
05:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I fully understand Quartier's rationale since "Prachanda" would be a more accessible name for anyone looking up info on him. However, there is a redirect from the "Prachanda" page to the "Pushpa Kamal Dahal" page so someone entering search details for either name is going to end up at the same article anyway! To be honest, I've never heard of either name for this fella, so for the simple reason above, and from a wholly neutral and open-minded perspective, I would be in favour of keeping the status quo. So I suppose that puts me in the oppose camp. However, just to be a bit flash, I've had a few more minutes to ponder on this subject and I think it should be moved. Why? Well firstly, if other revolutionaries go by their nom-de-guerre on wikipedia then maybe just to keep things tidy, this one should do the same. And secondly, just from reading the banter above, it would appear that Quartier's a wee bit more emotionally involved in the outcome of this than TJive who admits to being more or less unaffected by the outcome of this vote; so why don't we all be good wikipedian neighbours and support the change for someone who will definately be annoyed if the change isn't made. I hope you two can shake internet hands once the votes are in! No hard feelings, TJive, Brian 22:19, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea of being able to go to a few related subjects via links at this entry, but the big red box with many liks and a hammer & sickle emblem seems a bit over the top to me. It seems to me that we should have a traditional, simpler entry with some links at the bottom. Maybe a small, Communism in Nepal text box would be okay. Any thoughts? DanielM 10:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I removed the giant text box because it had limited relevance, took up an inordinate of screen space and was a distraction, and for the reasons discussed above. Additionally, one of the first wikilinks in the Prachanda article is for Communist Party of Nepal, so people can click right to that if they choose and get all the information in the text box. DanielM 10:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I have recently discovered from a RCPer that Prachanda wants to establish a socialist state after the creation of a multi-party democracy. He believes that a democracy must be established before moving forward into the next stage.
I am quite surprized at the factual errors in this article. Among other things, it said:
I have corrected this.
However, there are more errors.
Why isnt this article more factually accurate?
All the best, Togrim, 2006-06-02
Dear Daniel
Either we havent been reading the same text or I dont understand english (which is possible, it isnt my native lingo.) So let me describe how I understand this, answering in your order:
Point 4) Daniel. heres your claim:
Here is what I read in the (then) article (copied from the articles history) and later corrected:
- quote -
On November 22 2005 Prachanda released a "twelve-point agreement" that enumerates CPN (M) political positions and claims to identify areas of agreement between the Maoists and seven more conventional Nepali political parties.
- end of quote -
My comments: The wrong points here are:
Wrong: The two sides, the NKP(M) and the 7-party alliance, BOTH released this document. The impression given is that this was something that came from Prachanda as a person, NOT from the two main nepali sides.
In norwegian use the "" would signify that it WASNT really a 12-point agreement, but something that somebody SAID (maybe incorrectly) was a 12. point agreement. So it would be understood as a way of trowing doubt on the claim that this REALLY was an agreement between two sides. Is this different in english?
The impression given here is that this "agreement" contained the maoist positions - but only CLAIMED to identify areas of agreement between the CPN(M) and the seven. So, again, trowing doubts on wether this REALLY represented the wiews of TWO sides.
This is, in my opinion (and, frankly, in the opinion of the western press, which wrote extensively about it) a misrepresentation. The document DIDNT "claim" to represent agreement on a number of points, it DID represent some agreements (and even at least one or two disagreements, as far as I understand it!) which both sides agreed on.
I read the text above as implying, more or less, that this was sometning the maoists had made, which contained their policies, and some "claims" about agreement with the 7.
Which was very far from correct. I remind you that this 12. point document now has been voted on and accepted as a part of the present parliaments (ie the reinstated 1999 parliaments) plan of action.
So was I totally wrong when I criticised this description of the very real 12-point agreement?
Well, this was my error. However, to explain why I made that error: The original formulation in the article gave me (at least) the impression, that the 12 points unecvivocally contained maoist POSITIONS, while referring to the agreements as something doubtful.
I find my error, which was made in a rapidly and roughly written and unpretentious discussion posting, rather small, as compared to the errors in the wikipedia article, which was presented to the world as a factual information about a nepalese political event.
Nobody expects everything on the debate pages to be a collection of pure and exact truths. However. a number of our readers really believe that what stand in the wikipedia ARTICLES is true.
Point 3) Daniel.
On the question of "periodic unilateral ceasefires".
Here is what the article said:
Periodically, Prachanda has announced unilateral ceasefires that are not reciprocated by the Royal Nepalese Army.
My comment:
No, he hasnt. He has done that ONCE: In september 2005, after the 7-party alliance asked for it.
Since 2001, there has been 4 long, national ceasefires:
Prachanda answered it after a few days.
which confirmed it in parliament some days afterwards.
How ONE unilateral ceasefire can be in any way PERIODIC, I really cant understand.
Then you have this weird little comment, i quoute Daniel:
- quote Daniel -
You say why wasn't it reported that the parliament accepted the Maoist armistice but that only happened a month ago. Nobody got to it yet or it wasn't seen as so critical. Why didn't *you* report it if you are so fired up about it?
- end of quote -
Excuse me, here you quote ME wrong. I didnt ask you WHY you didnt mention that parliament confirmed Prachandas latest ceasefire: "You say why wasn't it reported that the parliament accepted the Maoist armistice ..." I just POINTED OUT that it was confirmed in parliament, which the article didnt mention, TO CLARIFY THAT THIS WAS NO ONE-SIDED CEASEFIRE!
My point is that the april armistice was in no way UNILATERAL, (it was accepted by the govt side BEFORE the parliament formally voted on it), and the Nepalese Royal army DEFINITELY had to "reciprocate". NO WAY this can be used to argue for these "periodic unilateral ceasefires". Dont you see this?
3 RECIPROCAL ceasefires RECIPROCATED by the nepalese royal army, ONE unilateral NOT reciprocated by the nepalese army, HOW does this become "periodic" announcements of UNILATERAL and NOT reciprocated ceasefires?
So is the article WRONG OR NOT?
More seriously, the article give a wrong impression of the entire Nepalese negotiation process. There has been more than one year of ceasefires since 2001, most of them agreed on by two parts, and the royal army had to respect every one of them exept for the 2005 unilateral one.
The ceasefires have sometimes been initiated by one side, sometimes by the other. It was the nepali govt that initiated the first one, and it seems it had tried to get it in place at least from the year 2000.
However, the article would give the hapless reader the impression that here was this weird guy Prachanda, who now and then proclaimed ceasefires that the army didnt take seriously.
Am I clear enough now?
Point ::2), Daniel:
You wrote:
You criticize the article for saying that Prachanda released the 12-point agreement, but why don't you click on the reference and go criticize nepalnews.com because they also said this?
My answer: Because the nepalnews.com article is misquoted by you. Since you make a point out of my inexact quotation of the wikipedia article, putting in the two words MAOIST DEMANDS, I think i am entitled to mention that both you and the original article make an incorrect statement about Prachanda, namely that he "released" the 12-point agreement.
He didnt, and neither does the nepalnews.com article claim so.
Here is what nepalnews.com writes:
Not a word about him "releasing" the agreement. What he did, was to make a comment on the agreement in his statement, and in this comment he quoted the 12 points. The nepalnews.com then used prachandas statement as a source, because they got it before they got the simple 12 points.
As a pro journalist, i dont find this very strange. This was a breaking story, and a very big breaking story in the world and especially in Nepal. Here were these secret negotiations, and India was - quite surprizingly - involved. Something was going on, but exactly what? When the 12 points were made official - first, thru leaks to the press - there was a race to get hold of them. The press-savy Maobadi used their chance to be the first who got it in the hands of nepalnews, wrapped in a Prachanda statement (which got that published and extensively quoted, too). And nepalnews, as good press guys, of course published an unoficial translation immediately.
The writer of the article misunterstands this and interprets this as meaning that this was "released" by Prachanda, and even that the alleged "agreements" are thus maybe doubtful. However, there were at the same time several different versions (mainly because there were slightly different unoficcial translations) which confirmed that this was no maobadi ploy or fabrication. And more than 1/2 year afterwards, there is as far as I can see, NO REASON to let this rather serious misunderstanding stand uncorrected.
And even if you HAD been correct, and the nepalnews.com HAD written that this agreement was "released" by prachanda? Well, then it would have been an error in ONE, DATED source article. I dont see why it is my duty to expose an error in the source, even if the article had quoted a wrong source? (but then, the source wasnt wrong, it was the writer of the wikipedia article who MISQUOTED and MISUNDERSTOOD a source.)
point 1) Daniel.
Nice that we agree on the King. I still happen to think I got the 3 others right too.
However, the article still states the - well, excuse the word, but isnt it right? - rubbish about the "periodic unilateral ceasefires".
- quote -
Periodically, Prachanda has announced unilateral ceasefires that are not reciprocated by the Royal Nepalese Army.
- end of quote -
How come? Is there some kinda point of pride that the article MUST contain uncorrect stuff?
Let me give you another error in the present article:
- quote -
On February 4, 1996 Prachanda and Bhattarai gave the government, led by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, a list of 40 demands, threatening civil war if they were not met.
- end of quote -
Well no - Prachanda didnt! And this was because the statement was made ONLY by Bhattarai, NOT by Prachanda, because the uprising was officially made by the Samyukta Janamorcha Nepal, and NOT by the CPN(M). This fiction continued for a number of years, statements about the "peoples war" used to come from Bhattarai and the SJM, because Prachanda and the CPN(M) were seemingly not involved.
There are SOME statements made by Prachanda, some by Bhattarai, some by both togheter. The CPN(M) has a SYSTEM here, and its interesting to try to GET IT RIGHT, if you wanna understand what these quys are up to.
I have written a lot of Nepal in the norwegian wikipedia. Errors are unavoidable, but I have at least pulled them out whenever Ive found them. I am amazed at the numbers of elementary errors there are in the much larger english wikipedia when it writes about Nepal. Wrong dates and years, wrong descriptions of parties splitting and merging, wrong facts about political processes. Supposedly, you should have more and better resources. You definitely have many more readers, so your greater errors have much more effect than our smaller ones.
You may think that this kind of critisisms of details are nitpicking. But i mean, whats the REASON to write about details if you dont take care in getting the details right?
all the best
Togrim, user of the norwegian wikipedia, 2006-06-28
Should not this article be moved to Prachanda? There are many political figures (especially revolutionaries, for the natural reason that revolutionaries must often run from the law) whom Wikipedia lists under their more familiar noms-de-guerre. Compare Malcolm X, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky... QuartierLatin 1968 22:11, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The article writes that Prachandas political line to a great degree is derivative of the peruvian Shining Path:
- quote -
It takes the strategy of Shining Path insurrection in Peru as an important point of reference, along with the Chinese Revolution.
- end of quote -
Here it looks as the Shining Path is even more important than the chinese revolution as a model for Prachanda/the nepalese Maobadi.
I have never been entirely comfortable with this.
From what I have read by and about the nepalese maoists, the source no. 1 for their political line is China under mao, no. 2 is the beginning of the Russian revolution about 1917. "Prachanda Path", their somewhat vague and contradictory official line from 2001 on, explisitely says that it is a merger of the chinese line of prolonged peoples war in the countryside (a maoist term) with the russian line of city rebellions.
In programmatic documents, the Shining Path doesnt appear as a source of inspiration at all.
However, it IS correct that Prachandas Party, the CPN(Maoist) and its forerunners (before the spring of 1995) made mutch propaganda about "the peoples war in Peru", especially before year 2000.
At the same time, it is clear that the nepalese maoists altso have made some critisisms of the Shining Path.
Now, there is a new interwiew with Prachanda from this autumn, where he explicitely critisises the Shining Path on several imporatant points.
The interwiew is posted HERE:
http://klementgottwald.blogspot.com/2006/08/interview-with-prachanda-hoist.html
The part about the Shining Path starts with lauding its "major role in inspiring us".
However, then he goes on to describe it as "left sectarianism" , "mechanical and one-sided thinking", "negating completely ... compromise or front ... against the main enemy", "idealizing Comrade Gonzalo as a supernatural leader who never makes a mistake" (Gonzalo is the indeed very autocratic leader of the Sendero Luminoso) "being unable ... to learn ... from the metaphysical mistakes of Comrade Stalin " etc etc.
Based on the word from the horses (Prachandas) mouth itself, which I guess should be supposed to be a primary source about the politix of the man, I find it hard to defend this formulation:
- snip -
Prachanda's extension of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to take specific account of Nepal's situation is known as the Prachanda Path. It takes the strategy of Shining Path insurrection in Peru as an important point of reference, along with the Chinese Revolution.
- snip -
Now my first comment is that I have not been able to find an exact comment about what really IS and what is NOT supposed to be "Prachanda Path".
My second comment is: WHERE - in what document, interwiew etc, - is the documentation that "Prachanda Path ... takes the strategy of Shining Path insurrection in Peru as an important point of reference"?
I cant find it used as a reference for Prachanda Path at all. And an IMPORTANT point of reference?
Again, I remind you that "Prachanda Path" was voted in as the CPN(M) line at a central comittee meeting during the spring of 2001. As far as I have been able to see, this was at the end of the period when the party used to say much about the "glorious peoples war in Peru" etc.
YES, the nepalese maoists used to say much about Peru during the 90s and even before. But, on the other hand, this was long before "Prachanda Path" was launched.
I personally know of NO mention of Peru or the Shining Path in any programmatic document about Prachanda Path. (I dont lay claim to have read everything available in english, not to mention nepali which I cant read at all. So references of this kind may possibly exist. However, I have not seen them).
So what is the documentation for this claim?
My suggestion is that the reference to Shining Path is taken out.
At the very least, it should be cut from the direct connection with "Prachanda Path". To put it in front of the chinese/maoist influence is clearly wrong.
Possibly, a solution may be to mention that Prachanda and the CPN(M) during earlier years used to make much propaganda about the war of the Shining Path in Peru, but that in more recent years, Prachanda has been criticising them.
Factually, Prachandas political tactics and Shining Paths are very different.
For instance, the nepali maoist rebellion started with a number of demands to the state, and allways made the propagandistic point that if the state would accept the demands, the war would be over.
The Shining Path never made any demands at all, exept that the state should capitulate.
The nepalese Maobadi has, as the article about Prachanda mentions, made extensive use of armistices and negotiations.
The Shining Path, as far as I know, never made any armistice, and was totally unwilling to consider any form of negotiation
etc.
Togrim, user of the norwegian wikipedia, 2006-09-29
"the autocratic leader"
This seems like blatant bias by a pro-capitalist, I suggest it be changed to simply "the leader". -- 70.191.145.250 14:24, 3 September 2005
The result of the debate was move. — Nightst a llion (?) 10:31, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm very strongly in agreement with
DanielM that this article should be at
Prachanda.
TJive and I have argued about this on each other's talk pages, and my position remains the same.
Quartier
Latin1968
18:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I have other things to worry about besides whether TJive is strongly suspect of my intentions. His position here is that Prachanda and Pushpa Kamal Dahal are similarly common names for this individual. Man, I keep up with this person, read something on it almost every week, and I can barely ever remember "Pushpa Kamal Dahal." He just is not generally referred to that way. If you look at the frequency of those terms in a search tool, let's try Altavista for example. 173,000 instances of Prachanda and 13,000 of "Pushpa Kamal Dahal." It is difficult for me to believe that TJive doesn't grasp this, and I don't think his reversions here are good faith edits. DanielM 00:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
All right then, I suppose it falls to me to motivate. [Bear with me TJive, you've heard my points, but this is for those just joining the discussion]:
Pushpa Kamal Dahal is rarely known by his birthname; instead, as a Maoist revolutionary, he is known by a nom-de-guerre, similarly to
Subcomandante Marcos,
Ho Chi Minh,
Joseph Stalin,
Leon Trotsky,
Vladimir Lenin,
Pol Pot, and many others who have adopted pseudonyms for dissident political purposes. In each of the cases named, Wikipedia employs the most recognizable nom-de-guerre. In Prachanda's case, this would be 'Prachanda'. My sense is that there are millions of people, in India as in Nepal, to whom the name Pushpa Kamal Dahal means nothing, but who would immediately recognize Prachanda as the name of the Nepalese Maoist leader. Internet searches, which can be expected to be biased towards richer countries and also Wikipedia knockoffs, remain nevertheless dramatically slanted towards Prachanda: Google gives 90,500 hits for Prachanda against 15,000 for Pushpa Dahal (I'm being generous by leaving out Kamal as an extra search term and omitting quotation marks) and 627 for P.K. Dahal. Yahoo gives 170,000 hits for Prachanda against 14,200 for Pushpa Dahal; the numbers on Altavista are similar. Google News search as of today gives 332 hits for Prachanda against 43 for Pushpa Dahal. Furthermore, a great proportion of the hits for Pushpa Dahal are articles that begin with the words "Comrade Prachanda, who was born Pushpa Kamal Dahal..." and then subsequently refer to him as Prachanda throughout the article.
Okay, watch our spot at
Wikipedia:Requested moves#2 February 2006. I sincerely hope we can keep personal insinuations out of this discussion.
Quartier
Latin1968
05:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I fully understand Quartier's rationale since "Prachanda" would be a more accessible name for anyone looking up info on him. However, there is a redirect from the "Prachanda" page to the "Pushpa Kamal Dahal" page so someone entering search details for either name is going to end up at the same article anyway! To be honest, I've never heard of either name for this fella, so for the simple reason above, and from a wholly neutral and open-minded perspective, I would be in favour of keeping the status quo. So I suppose that puts me in the oppose camp. However, just to be a bit flash, I've had a few more minutes to ponder on this subject and I think it should be moved. Why? Well firstly, if other revolutionaries go by their nom-de-guerre on wikipedia then maybe just to keep things tidy, this one should do the same. And secondly, just from reading the banter above, it would appear that Quartier's a wee bit more emotionally involved in the outcome of this than TJive who admits to being more or less unaffected by the outcome of this vote; so why don't we all be good wikipedian neighbours and support the change for someone who will definately be annoyed if the change isn't made. I hope you two can shake internet hands once the votes are in! No hard feelings, TJive, Brian 22:19, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea of being able to go to a few related subjects via links at this entry, but the big red box with many liks and a hammer & sickle emblem seems a bit over the top to me. It seems to me that we should have a traditional, simpler entry with some links at the bottom. Maybe a small, Communism in Nepal text box would be okay. Any thoughts? DanielM 10:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I removed the giant text box because it had limited relevance, took up an inordinate of screen space and was a distraction, and for the reasons discussed above. Additionally, one of the first wikilinks in the Prachanda article is for Communist Party of Nepal, so people can click right to that if they choose and get all the information in the text box. DanielM 10:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I have recently discovered from a RCPer that Prachanda wants to establish a socialist state after the creation of a multi-party democracy. He believes that a democracy must be established before moving forward into the next stage.
I am quite surprized at the factual errors in this article. Among other things, it said:
I have corrected this.
However, there are more errors.
Why isnt this article more factually accurate?
All the best, Togrim, 2006-06-02
Dear Daniel
Either we havent been reading the same text or I dont understand english (which is possible, it isnt my native lingo.) So let me describe how I understand this, answering in your order:
Point 4) Daniel. heres your claim:
Here is what I read in the (then) article (copied from the articles history) and later corrected:
- quote -
On November 22 2005 Prachanda released a "twelve-point agreement" that enumerates CPN (M) political positions and claims to identify areas of agreement between the Maoists and seven more conventional Nepali political parties.
- end of quote -
My comments: The wrong points here are:
Wrong: The two sides, the NKP(M) and the 7-party alliance, BOTH released this document. The impression given is that this was something that came from Prachanda as a person, NOT from the two main nepali sides.
In norwegian use the "" would signify that it WASNT really a 12-point agreement, but something that somebody SAID (maybe incorrectly) was a 12. point agreement. So it would be understood as a way of trowing doubt on the claim that this REALLY was an agreement between two sides. Is this different in english?
The impression given here is that this "agreement" contained the maoist positions - but only CLAIMED to identify areas of agreement between the CPN(M) and the seven. So, again, trowing doubts on wether this REALLY represented the wiews of TWO sides.
This is, in my opinion (and, frankly, in the opinion of the western press, which wrote extensively about it) a misrepresentation. The document DIDNT "claim" to represent agreement on a number of points, it DID represent some agreements (and even at least one or two disagreements, as far as I understand it!) which both sides agreed on.
I read the text above as implying, more or less, that this was sometning the maoists had made, which contained their policies, and some "claims" about agreement with the 7.
Which was very far from correct. I remind you that this 12. point document now has been voted on and accepted as a part of the present parliaments (ie the reinstated 1999 parliaments) plan of action.
So was I totally wrong when I criticised this description of the very real 12-point agreement?
Well, this was my error. However, to explain why I made that error: The original formulation in the article gave me (at least) the impression, that the 12 points unecvivocally contained maoist POSITIONS, while referring to the agreements as something doubtful.
I find my error, which was made in a rapidly and roughly written and unpretentious discussion posting, rather small, as compared to the errors in the wikipedia article, which was presented to the world as a factual information about a nepalese political event.
Nobody expects everything on the debate pages to be a collection of pure and exact truths. However. a number of our readers really believe that what stand in the wikipedia ARTICLES is true.
Point 3) Daniel.
On the question of "periodic unilateral ceasefires".
Here is what the article said:
Periodically, Prachanda has announced unilateral ceasefires that are not reciprocated by the Royal Nepalese Army.
My comment:
No, he hasnt. He has done that ONCE: In september 2005, after the 7-party alliance asked for it.
Since 2001, there has been 4 long, national ceasefires:
Prachanda answered it after a few days.
which confirmed it in parliament some days afterwards.
How ONE unilateral ceasefire can be in any way PERIODIC, I really cant understand.
Then you have this weird little comment, i quoute Daniel:
- quote Daniel -
You say why wasn't it reported that the parliament accepted the Maoist armistice but that only happened a month ago. Nobody got to it yet or it wasn't seen as so critical. Why didn't *you* report it if you are so fired up about it?
- end of quote -
Excuse me, here you quote ME wrong. I didnt ask you WHY you didnt mention that parliament confirmed Prachandas latest ceasefire: "You say why wasn't it reported that the parliament accepted the Maoist armistice ..." I just POINTED OUT that it was confirmed in parliament, which the article didnt mention, TO CLARIFY THAT THIS WAS NO ONE-SIDED CEASEFIRE!
My point is that the april armistice was in no way UNILATERAL, (it was accepted by the govt side BEFORE the parliament formally voted on it), and the Nepalese Royal army DEFINITELY had to "reciprocate". NO WAY this can be used to argue for these "periodic unilateral ceasefires". Dont you see this?
3 RECIPROCAL ceasefires RECIPROCATED by the nepalese royal army, ONE unilateral NOT reciprocated by the nepalese army, HOW does this become "periodic" announcements of UNILATERAL and NOT reciprocated ceasefires?
So is the article WRONG OR NOT?
More seriously, the article give a wrong impression of the entire Nepalese negotiation process. There has been more than one year of ceasefires since 2001, most of them agreed on by two parts, and the royal army had to respect every one of them exept for the 2005 unilateral one.
The ceasefires have sometimes been initiated by one side, sometimes by the other. It was the nepali govt that initiated the first one, and it seems it had tried to get it in place at least from the year 2000.
However, the article would give the hapless reader the impression that here was this weird guy Prachanda, who now and then proclaimed ceasefires that the army didnt take seriously.
Am I clear enough now?
Point ::2), Daniel:
You wrote:
You criticize the article for saying that Prachanda released the 12-point agreement, but why don't you click on the reference and go criticize nepalnews.com because they also said this?
My answer: Because the nepalnews.com article is misquoted by you. Since you make a point out of my inexact quotation of the wikipedia article, putting in the two words MAOIST DEMANDS, I think i am entitled to mention that both you and the original article make an incorrect statement about Prachanda, namely that he "released" the 12-point agreement.
He didnt, and neither does the nepalnews.com article claim so.
Here is what nepalnews.com writes:
Not a word about him "releasing" the agreement. What he did, was to make a comment on the agreement in his statement, and in this comment he quoted the 12 points. The nepalnews.com then used prachandas statement as a source, because they got it before they got the simple 12 points.
As a pro journalist, i dont find this very strange. This was a breaking story, and a very big breaking story in the world and especially in Nepal. Here were these secret negotiations, and India was - quite surprizingly - involved. Something was going on, but exactly what? When the 12 points were made official - first, thru leaks to the press - there was a race to get hold of them. The press-savy Maobadi used their chance to be the first who got it in the hands of nepalnews, wrapped in a Prachanda statement (which got that published and extensively quoted, too). And nepalnews, as good press guys, of course published an unoficial translation immediately.
The writer of the article misunterstands this and interprets this as meaning that this was "released" by Prachanda, and even that the alleged "agreements" are thus maybe doubtful. However, there were at the same time several different versions (mainly because there were slightly different unoficcial translations) which confirmed that this was no maobadi ploy or fabrication. And more than 1/2 year afterwards, there is as far as I can see, NO REASON to let this rather serious misunderstanding stand uncorrected.
And even if you HAD been correct, and the nepalnews.com HAD written that this agreement was "released" by prachanda? Well, then it would have been an error in ONE, DATED source article. I dont see why it is my duty to expose an error in the source, even if the article had quoted a wrong source? (but then, the source wasnt wrong, it was the writer of the wikipedia article who MISQUOTED and MISUNDERSTOOD a source.)
point 1) Daniel.
Nice that we agree on the King. I still happen to think I got the 3 others right too.
However, the article still states the - well, excuse the word, but isnt it right? - rubbish about the "periodic unilateral ceasefires".
- quote -
Periodically, Prachanda has announced unilateral ceasefires that are not reciprocated by the Royal Nepalese Army.
- end of quote -
How come? Is there some kinda point of pride that the article MUST contain uncorrect stuff?
Let me give you another error in the present article:
- quote -
On February 4, 1996 Prachanda and Bhattarai gave the government, led by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, a list of 40 demands, threatening civil war if they were not met.
- end of quote -
Well no - Prachanda didnt! And this was because the statement was made ONLY by Bhattarai, NOT by Prachanda, because the uprising was officially made by the Samyukta Janamorcha Nepal, and NOT by the CPN(M). This fiction continued for a number of years, statements about the "peoples war" used to come from Bhattarai and the SJM, because Prachanda and the CPN(M) were seemingly not involved.
There are SOME statements made by Prachanda, some by Bhattarai, some by both togheter. The CPN(M) has a SYSTEM here, and its interesting to try to GET IT RIGHT, if you wanna understand what these quys are up to.
I have written a lot of Nepal in the norwegian wikipedia. Errors are unavoidable, but I have at least pulled them out whenever Ive found them. I am amazed at the numbers of elementary errors there are in the much larger english wikipedia when it writes about Nepal. Wrong dates and years, wrong descriptions of parties splitting and merging, wrong facts about political processes. Supposedly, you should have more and better resources. You definitely have many more readers, so your greater errors have much more effect than our smaller ones.
You may think that this kind of critisisms of details are nitpicking. But i mean, whats the REASON to write about details if you dont take care in getting the details right?
all the best
Togrim, user of the norwegian wikipedia, 2006-06-28