360 Articles
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360° Analysis / Arab Spring / Bassem Youssef / economy / Egypt / Freedom of Conscience / Mohammed Morsi / Muslim Brotherhood / Political Oppression / Politics / Sarah Eltantawi / Supreme Constitutional Court / Middle East / AfricaThe performance of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in government has at best been mediocre. The Muslim Brothers have used the chance they have been given to entrench their own rule, argues Sarah Eltantawi. As I write this, a Coptic cathedral in Cairo's Qalioubiyya has been attacked by masked gunmen during a funeral for victims of an earlier sectarian clash. If you had told me one year ago that I would be writing such a sentence about Egypt, I would probably not have believed you. It is not that there hasn't been a long and worsening problem with sectarian attacks in Egypt – we only need to remember the horrific attack on the church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve, 2010-...
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360° Analysis / Abdo Rabo Mansour Hadi / Al Islah / Ali Abdullah Saleh / Arab Spring / Gulf Cooperation Council / Houthi rebellion / Political Transition / Politics / Southern secession / Yemen / Middle East / Global SecurityPolicies from abroad currently ignore pre-2011 political conflicts while exacerbating the political divide emerging from the intra-regime Yemeni conflict of 2011. A myopic approach during the transition process further expands the space for militants to operate under new growing alliances. This is the first of a two part series. On April 10, 2013, Yemen’s transitional President, Abdo Rabo Mansour Hadi, issued Presidential Decree No. 104/2013, making the most significant changes to date under the existing agreement to restructure the armed forces. Hadi’s decree was well received by people around the country and Yemenis abroad via social media networks. In particular, people were...
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This is the final article in the three part series: Pakistan Beyond Bomb and Burqas. It examines the Loom Workers’ Strike in Faisalabad, and how it challenges hegemonic discourses on Pakistan dictated by the War on Terror. Read part one of the series here. Faisalabad and its adjoining district Jhang are the hub of hardline Islamist movements Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Sipah-e-Sahaba (SS) which repeatedly target and direct popular agitations towards members of the Shia sect. The Faisalabad Loom workers’ strike, however, questions the potency and legitimacy of these sectarian divisions in everyday life. During this time, ordinary workers began to question such divisions...
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By Glenn CarleDespite the financial crisis, a diminishing birth rates and seemingly unsustainable welfare states, Glenn Carle believes German leadership might offer a solution for structural reform in Europe. It is easy to say that Europeans should have more sex. Demography is destiny, after all, or so it has seemed for millennia, and what could be better than sleeping your way to world power? Existential Crisis Over the next 40 years the European Union faces an existential crisis of epic proportions; its fertility rate -1.58 in 2012 - will remain below replacement levels and its already strained ratio of four workers to every pensioner will deteriorate to an unsustainable two to one by the...
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360° Analysis / Education / India / Manmohan Singh / Politics / BRIC / Global Change / AsiaIndependence to India, amongst other things, gave a boost to the education system in terms of the number of institutes that came up. But the concern over the quality of education catered in these institutions still troubles the policy makers. Nelson Mandela’s words describing the power of education as a weapon that can change the world finds truth in any society. In India, education system has been given its due share over the past decades. The number of institutions that have been established after 1990 has been unprecedented. This expansion on the other hand has concealed within itself several key issues ranging from quality to the access of such education. School Education Ever...
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360° Analysis / Family / Gandhi dynasty / India / Indira Gandhi / Politics / Rahul / Sonia Gandhi / Global Change / Global Security / AsiaBy Saroj ChadhaEvents come and events go. Some events are more talked about before they take place while others give the luxury of discussion in hindsight. Rahul Gandhi’s speech at Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) falls in the later category. Did the speech and Gandhi scion leave a positive impact on industry captains? Did he renew confidence and optimism in an otherwise dull and gloomy industrial environment prevailing in India? Was there some hint of a road map that he visualized for the nation to get the economy back on its feet? There are many such questions that need urgent answers. The consensus is that he failed to deliver any answers or specific measures that the industry would expect...
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360° Analysis / Belarus / Media Freedom / Politics / Turkmenistan / Uzbekistan / Europe / BRIC / Arts & CultureMore than two decades after the fall of the USSR many of its former republics failed to establish a democratic and open media landscape, ranking among the worst in media freedom indexes. At a Minsk café on a blustery day just before New Year’s in 2010, Franak Viačorka hesitated before switching on his phone. The former journalism student was on the run from the Belarusian authorities for organizing and blogging on antigovernment demonstrations that erupted after the disputed December 19 presidential vote that saw the reelection of the man who had occupied the seat for the previous 16 years, President Aleksandr Lukashenko. Viačorka called his father on Skype via his cell phone...
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360° Analysis / India / Politics / Rape / sexual violence / Social Attitudes / BRIC / Arts & Culture / AsiaThe recent public outcry against the treatment of women in India is a song we’ve heard too many times before. Karl Marx once famously said that history repeats itself “first as tragedy, then as farce”. The gang-rape atrocity of a 23-year old woman in Delhi on 16 December 2012 for the most part appears nothing but a “tragedy”. The brutality of the incident in Delhi and the public mourning of that woman’s tragic death has set Indian society on a path on introspection of the treatment of women and on a mission to change the country’s legal system’s inefficacy in reporting and prosecuting sex attacks. The uncomfortable truth for India and Delhi,...
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360° Analysis / Ari Katz / Counter-Piracy measures / Global Piracy / Maritime Technology / Naval Collaborative Approach / United States / Europe / Africa / Global Security / Asia / Science & Technology / OceaniaBy Ari KatzSynergizing resources and technology from private and public stakeholders, can produce more effective and cost efficient counter-maritime piracy measures. With both sequestration and tensions ramping up in Asia, experts project that countering maritime piracy will take a back seat to the Asia rebalancing and other more existential US foreign policy issues. Unfortunately, this rationing of focus has the potential to undermine and reverse a recent downward trend in maritime piracy incidents, particularly along the Somali coast. However, with piracy still costing the world economy $7 to $12 billion a year, fiscal challenges should ideally spur innovative efficiency, rather than obstructive...