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Our Man In A Coup

One sometimes correspondent here has found himself in Nepal during the Royalist coup and has sent some dispatches which I have been permitted this afternoon to release to you all which I do anonymously though you may figure it out as I am not much of a secret secret spy. Here is most of his first dispatch:

Am alive and well. No fear. Sitting in the Kathmandu Valley for now…If things get worse, of course, then I’ll start looking for the helicopter out, but all well at present.

Rest assured, I am well. Please don’t spread this e-mail around to anyone of an official or media nature, as I’m using a connection that HM the King has not found out about and therefore not cut off. And I
should hate to get the good people allowing me to send this short missive into trouble.

You will all have heard of the palace coup that took place on Feb. 1st – the King has declared a state of emergency, locked up the politicians, and suspended all constitutional rights which were not already suspended except for habeas corpus, in declaring a national
state of emergency. He has promised to restore multiparty democracy within three years, after having dealt with the Maoist insurgency and restored order in the kingdom. Here is my take on it – I’ve quizzed various people about what they think about it all, and distilled their opinions into a coherent narrative. There are two questions for consideration:

1. Is King Gyanendra sincere?

I wonder – he has always been hostile to liberal democracy – he did not favour his late brother’s decision to grant a constitution. Though he pledged to respect the constitution when he ascended to the throne, he dismissed Parliament in 2002 and has been unable (or unwilling — not sure, given that there is no effective government control of the country outside the KTM Valley) to hold elections for a new one since then. Given the state of the politicians – they are corrupt, and have been unable to form a stable national government or war cabinet in the two and a half years they’ve had since Parliament was dismissed – I tend
to sympathize with the King. He has locked down all the bank accounts, too, in order to take back the money that various ministers have embezzled from the treasury.

2. Assuming that he is sincere in his statements, can he get the job done?

Of this, I’m also not sure. The Royal Nepalese Army, invaluable as they’ve been in keeping civil order in Kathmandu, is armed with WWII-era weaponry. HM will have to re-train his whole army, possibly with American assistance, in order to re-take his country. I fear
that he may be going the way of Tsar Nicholas II, after he took personal command of the army in 1915, in that he will be held personally responsible for any failures in future. Essentially, the King is gambling his throne on his ability to restore order and to restore the state. Whether he can get the job done is unknown.

The mood among the largely well-educated crowd I know is surprisingly upbeat. They value law and order, and think that the present situation could not go on. One effect: the Maoists called for a three-day bandh (gen’l strike) from 2-4 Feb, and nothing happened – people went about their business as usual, instead of being cowed by threats from Maoist goons. So, this is a good thing in their minds. BBC World and CNN International were restored by the evening of the 1st and so I got to watch some of the international coverage (and to see Pres. Bush’s State of the Union address – v. exciting stuff).

Went to a wedding on the 1st and 2nd – and the reception is this evening – for a childhood family friend of mine. (You know me from my year in Halifax – “state of emergency” = “time to go out and party”. Martial law a bit more serious than hurricane or big
snowstorm, but the principle’s the same.) Was very interesting — the royal wedding was a Chetri (sp?) wedding, whereas this one was a Brahmin one. More or less similar, except that the Army “brass” band this time included two drummers, two saxophonists, two clarinet players, a guy with a tuba, and two bagpipers. (The pipes are quite popular in S. Asia — I think there are more here than in the UK, actually. Saw some pipe band stuff on TV for celebrations of Republic Day in India, which I found rather humourous.) Indian news stations are censored here right now, as are the Nepalese ones – there apparently is an army major at every channel monitoring what can go out – for six months, they say. As much as I value order, though, I think that the extraordinary measures the King has taken will backfire on him. One simply cannot
arrest all the politicians, no matter how corrupt they are, and the Constitution, though it should not be a suicide pact, should not simply be suspended at will. I mean, what’s the point of having one, then? (But he didn’t want it, of course.)

…I’ve had the opportunity to see a coup up close and live through it – I’ve always wondered what it would have been like
to be living in a St. Petersburg suburb in October 1917…

Paul Weller: Studio 150

The brother must read the old blog once in a while as, after posting about The Jam back in December, I received a copy of that band’s lead singer Paul Weller‘s latest CD, Studio 150 for my Christmas pressy. A covers album, more Style Council cool than the anger of The Jam, it’s dandy dandy dandy. Weller covers “The Bottle” with a backing of 1974 Jethro Tull art-rock flute with some of the left over waa-waa guitar from Shaft that are floating around the universe: [wma, 3.0 MB]. His voice is perfect for this style and sounds about two decades of two packs a day from his pissed teen sound of “Eton Rifles” or “A Town Called Malice”. Recall thinking every time a new album by the Jam came out how his voice got closer and closer to singing. He’s pretty much there now.

Thinking about the voice of someone covering a Gordie Lightfoot tune is a bit strange for anyone exposed to CBC’s weekness for him but Weller’s approach to “Early Morning Rain” [wma, 3.6 MB] is right, not so much reverential as honest. I’ve always thought that Lightfoot’s 1960s Canadian camp keener voice made some of the good liquor and fast women ideas a little fake. Weller’s got crap on his boots and a hangover when singing this one to me. Nice touch on the pretty authentic Ontario folkie fiddle for a Londoner’s set recorded in Amsterdam. In fact, the instrumentation is some of the best stuff about this album. The organ in “Early Morning Rain” at the end, the clarinet in “One Way Road”, the flute and waa-waa in “The Bottle”, the disco strings in “Thinking of You”. The Modfather, he cleans up well in a three piece suit and is the only human who could get away with wearing a canary yellow Faire Isle sweater in the presence of Pete Townsend.

Hans really needs to buy this one.

Buy This Book


Walter the Farting Dog

This book, by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, is the apex of a certain type of subversive kid’s book that busts up our four and six year old. At the heart of its subversion, it makes Mom or Dad say “fart” about twenty-seven times before the light in the kids’ room goes off. It is perhaps the sort of book that creates two classes of people and, in a better world, would be a generally accepted gift for all occassions and a coffee table regular.