Nobel Peace Prize 2008: Making A Case For Nepal (2)

Nobel Peace Prize 2008: Making A Case For Nepal

Top 10 Reasons

Nobel Peace Prize 2008: Making A Case For Nepal
Madhesi Movement Victory In Nepal
The First Major Revolution Of The 21st Century Happened In Nepal
Spread Democracy
Vision
Progressive Political Religion: No Place For Superpowers
Blueprint For DL21C: Party Inside A Party
Political Sci-Fi

(1) April Revolution 2006, Madhesi Revolution I in January-February 2007, and Madhesi Revolution II in February 2008. Together they go head to head in intensity with all the top revolutions of the world all the way to the French Revolution. In a country of 27 million - as many people as California minus the physical and communication infrastructure - during April 2006, a total of eight million people came out into the streets at one time or the other for 19 days to shut the country down completely. That included the Home Ministry bureaucrats who were supposed to be issuing orders to the police engaged in the repressions out in the streets.

(2) The two Madhesi revolutions passed the April Revolution in intensity. It was like the civil rights movement in America in the 1960s. Only it did it in a year rather than in a decade. This was a social justice movement that had the intensity and time capsule of a democracy movement. The Madhesis earned their own state inside a to be federal Nepal. The Madhesis did through nonviolence in a year what the Tamils have not been able to do through the most sophisticated violence over decades. The LTTE is the top terrorist group on the planet. Message to the LTTE: forget separate country, and forget violence, instead go for federalism and nonviolence. Go for nonviolent militancy.

(3) Nepal has not written its constitution yet. Elections to the constituent assembly have been held in April 2008. If Nepal can manage to become a federal, multi-party democracy of state funded parties, it will have become the top democracy on the planet. Between the April Revolution 2006 and its new constitution, Nepal will become the top country when it comes to exporting democracy.

(4) Iraq has 27 million people, Nepal has 27 million people. The neocon way to spread democracy is the disaster in Iraq. The progressive way has been in Nepal. The progressives in America will have to acknowledge the lesson from Nepal and then get behind in our quest for a total spread of democracy by 2020. (Spread Democracy)

(5) Iraq is on its way to costing America a trillion dollars. Nepal did not cost America a dime. Street action is where the action is. That is where the power is. The power is at the grassroots. Freedom rings in every human heart. You just have to help bring it out into the open.

(6) Nepal is the poorest country outside of Africa. A country's being poor does not mean it is not capable of a democracy movement. Nepal is proof.

(7) Nepal is also proof that a diaspora using the digital tools offered for free on the Internet can play a key role working from the safety of being outside the country in the grips of a military dictator. Everyone you need to spread democracy into the furthest corners of the earth lives right here in New York City. America need not spend trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan. All it needs to do is give voting rights in the city elections to everybody who lives in the city. The subsequent political mobilization will do the trick. We will have a total spread of democracy by 2020. (My Third World People Don't Get To Vote In This City)

(8) The Maoists of Nepal were the largest, deadliest armed ultra left group the planet saw since the end of the Cold War. You could have compared them to any armed group on the planet. At their peak they had 80% of Nepal's territory. They were headed to establishing a one party communist republic. The point being, the LTTE, the Hizbollah all are fair game. If there be sufficient political work in bringing them to peace, they too can be brought into peaceful politics.

(9) China is not going to become a democracy like America. Tibet is not going to become a separate country. Taiwan can not become fully independent. But if Nepal can become a multi-party democracy of state funded parties, it will be only a matter of time before India and China also go down that same route.

(10) And then it is only a matter of time before America also becomes a democracy of publicly financed elections. Democracy is one person, one vote. Anything else is an aberration.

Nobel Peace Prize 2008: Making A Case For Nepal
Madhesi Movement Victory In Nepal
The First Major Revolution Of The 21st Century Happened In Nepal
Spread Democracy
Vision
Progressive Political Religion: No Place For Superpowers
Blueprint For DL21C: Party Inside A Party
Political Sci-Fi

Awarding the Nobel 2008 to Nepal's peace process will be a major boost to the cause of democracy worldwide.

Sexism Bothers Me Directly

Sexism does not bother me because it bothers women, sexism bothers me directly, although women do factor in, how can they not?

Sexism bothers me because I am a progressive. You can't not be progressive on race and gender and still claim the progressive mantle. Progressives don't get uncomfortable talking race and gender.

I came to gender from the race angle. Early physicists studying electricity quickly realized magnetism is very related to electricity. My fascination with race quickly told me gender has so much in common with race. They are twin social realities.

The spectrum concept is my small gift to gender relations.

Barackface: The Spectrum On Gender
Barackface: Race, Gender, Progressive, Conservative Divides
Barackface: The Spectrum/Dialogue Concept Is Key To Power



I am for scientific progressivism. 10 is a good round number in science. It smells digital even.

1-10 is a gradation. It is designed to help progressives win elections. 1-10 is home to all views on gender. Each gradation is home to roughly 10% of the electorate. That is the idea. And so you can also have 10.1. That would be home to 1% of the electorate. Likewise you can dig further and label 10.1.1.

The good thing about using the spectrum concept to make progress on gender is you liberate it from identity politics and turn it into an issue politics. Men are also welcome. Making progress on gender is about building a progressive coalition of men and women.

If you build the spectrum good enough, you should be able to map gender as it exists not just in any one country, but also across the world.

Another advantage of the gender concept is that it is the least socially disruptive. Step one is mapping. Getting people to simply talk gender is a big achievement. Dee Dee Myers has come up with a book where she says the gender issues she dealt with as a college student are still the gender issues she deals with today. That is because gender has not been talked about. No talk, no progress.

Once people start talking and you map them as to where they stand on the spectrum then you can devise ways to nudge them on to the next level, to a higher plane of political consciousness.

I might see race and gender are related. But most white women don't. But you are not white, you don't belong in this conversation. When I look at you, I see race, I don't see gender. Curiously most white males see gender when they look at me. Like this guy at this bar on Saturday who takes one look at me and says he would like to throw his girlfriend off the balcony like in "Mortal Kombat." I am glad the girlfriend found that funny. That was supposed to be male bonding. Was it? "Sorry, I am not much into video games at all."

The spectrum concept is going to be especially useful to make progress on gay rights, something much more culturally charged. You got to get people talking and then you nudge them on to a higher plane of political consciousness.

Build the spectrum on every policy issue.