On a sunny and clear cold day in December 1990 (as I’ve mentioned before), I stood on a narrow path in the foothills northwest of Pokhara, Nepal.

A young self-described Maoist revolutionary fighter with a little book tried to explain to me in broken sentences and hand gestures why his village of comrades were in opposition to their King.

Militant opposition.

The conversation will never be forgotten because I can still vividly recall his blank stares when I probed for details, such as Russian influence. Lenin? Never heard of the man. Marx? Nope. Stalin who? Communist what?

He said he and his buddies just were into Mao 24/7 like it was the coolest thing possible.

This presented an interesting dilemma for me then, and even to this day.

Generally I find news reports saying the armed Maoist insurrection began in Nepal a decade after it really started.

The timing shift in public eyes probably has a lot to do with who was allowed to say what under a King; who was allowed any political voice, when and how.

In the case above, I was in the ground in rural Nepal specifically during a small window of time that the King had “abdicated” power. As the country dipped its toes into parliamentary rule and open speech, rural pull of young militant Maoist doctrine was underestimated if not ignored by (what seemed to be) Indian-dominated political processes.

I assure you Maoist guerilla doctrine was being settled far earlier than you will be told.

From where I humbly stood that day, teenagers developing heated political aspirations five or so years later should have not “surprised” Nepal’s government, along with a unique brand of militant troubles. Classic signs of Chinese competitive foreign policy had been rumbling for anyone willing to watch and listen.

With that in mind, here’s today’s big news out of Nepal.

The leader of Nepal’s former communist rebels was named the country’s new prime minister on Sunday…. Known by his nom de guerre Prachanda or “the fierce one,” Dahal led the Maoist communists’ violent insurgency from 1996 to 2006. The 10 years of strife left over 17,000 dead and eventually led to the abolition of the country’s monarchy.

There’s even an important political detail that caught my eye.

Dahal’s Maoist party has formed an alliance with the Communist Party of Nepal (UML), a party it has already aligned with in the past, alongside six others. The Maoist party and the UML used to be one party before splitting.

Do you see how he is framed as a former leader of Communist insurgency, before noting his Maoist party had to form an alliance with the Communists after they had split apart? I would argue these two were split far apart before forming an alliance, which failed.

Seeing the earlier and deeper roots of Maoists, the distance they have long perceived from Communism, and their persistence in opposition to social democratic monarchism… should help anyone today trying to do a regional analysis of influence.

This is Dahal’s third run at the PM role, incidentally, so maybe it’s time to start calling him the establishment instead of a rebel.

The buried lede in this story is how the death penalty is anti-democracy.

President Hakainde Hichilema, whose party was in opposition for over two decades, had promised that he would scrap the laws if elected to the top job.

“President Hakainde Hichilema has assented to the penal code of 2022 abolishing the imposition of the death penalty and the offence of criminal defamation of the president, which has been on the Zambian statute books since (the) pre-independence era,” presidential spokesman Anthony Bwalya said in a statement on Friday.

Human rights activist Brebner Changala said the decision was a “huge milestone in the removal of colonial laws that do not fit in the democratic dispensation of the country”.

It puts Black African leaders in stark contrast to the white African CEO of Twitter, since he arbitrarily terminates digital personas especially anyone critical of him.

Who predicted a world where an African country demonstrates far more innovative, egalitarian and progressive leadership than a backwards and chaotic silicon valley media company run by a coin operated tinpot dictator?

A new report looked at 11 fatalities by driverless systems over a few months (May to September).

One wasn’t a Tesla, but it also turned out to be a car that didn’t have driverless.

Oops, miscategorization.

The remaining 10 people were killed by Tesla engineering. As I’ve warned since at least 2016, crash investigations bring us to the same place: Elon Musk should be held liable for intentionally and systematically reducing road safety.

I think there’s a pretty clear pattern of bad behavior on the part of Tesla when it comes to obeying the edicts of the (federal) safety act, and NHTSA is just sitting there,” he said. “How many more deaths do we need to see of motorcyclists?”

[Center for Auto Safety’s executive director] noted that the Tesla crashes are victimizing more people who are not in the Tesla vehicles.

“You’re seeing innocent people who had no choice in the matter being killed or injured,” he said.

When a person is killed in a crash caused by a defective car, that manufacturer is liable.

Right?

Hello Ford Pinto?

After my 2016 BSidesLV keynote presentation I faced many people who said they thought Tesla was in a perfect loophole that the U.S. government would leave open — future leaning claims about safety “innovations” that weren’t true yet wouldn’t be regulated because profits.

Tesla shared its profits with politicians, to put it mildly.

At this point it is beyond obvious Tesla regularly lied to rapidly push known defective products that killed people; misrepresented hardware and software even when it posed grave danger to human life.

Tesla really should be banned from public roads.

Raj Rajkumar, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies automated vehicles, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Tesla was found to have had a high number of crashes involving its driver-assist systems. Tesla…stopped using radar in its system and instead relies solely on cameras and computers — a system that Rajkumar calls “inherently unsafe.”

To be clear, making a car that an engineering professor calls “inherently unsafe” is something unique to Tesla.

It falls further and further behind other brands, which have been rising to their safest records in history.

Take for example Nissan has dominated all time EV sales in the highly competitive and demanding Norwegian market (many more cars for more miles than Tesla), facing challenging roads in bad weather. Widespread adoption of Nissan’s innovative “assist” technology has resulted in zero crashes.

Nissan, with over 560,000 vehicles on the road using its ”ProPilot Assist,” didn’t have to report any crashes, the company said.

There’s no more excuse.

If the CEO of FTX can be charged with loss of assets, why can’t the CEO of Tesla be charged with loss of lives?