360 Articles
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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...
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360° Analysis / Abuja Inquirer / African Independent Television (AIT) / Insider Weekly / Nigeria / Politics / SSS / Arts & Culture / AfricaThirteen years have passed since democratic rule was installed in Nigeria. However, the country is still struggling to establish one core democratic value: media freedom. Change or Continuity? “In 13 years of democratic rule, the culture of democracy is still far from taking firm root in Nigeria. Its tenets are breached with sickening regularity….” “Since the return of democratic rule in 1999, the Nigeria police have scarcely shown that it is willing to play by the rules of democratic norms. It still applies bare-knuckle tactics where it is not called for.” The above words are those of editorial commentaries of the Guardian Nigeria and ThisDay, Nigeria’s...
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360° Analysis / Ambassador Mulford / defense / India / Indo-US Relations / military / Politics / United States / BRIC / Global SecurityIn March 2012, a letter written by then Indian Army Chief Gen VK Singh to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh listing out major deficiencies in the Army found its way in the media creating a flutter in the establishment and showing up starkly, the ‘hollowness’ that existed in the Army. “The state of the major (fighting) arms i.e. mechanised forces, artillery, air defence, infantry and special forces, as well as the engineers and signals, is indeed alarming,” DNA newspaper reported the General writing to the Prime Minister. The army’s entire tank fleet is “devoid of critical ammunition to defeat enemy tanks,” while the air defence system is “97%...
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360° Analysis / Angola / Benin / Egypt / Ghana / Iran / Lebanon / Libya / Nigeria / Politics / Sputh Africa / Syria / Tunisia / Village revolutions / AfricaGeorge Ayittey, president of the Free Africa Foundation compares the Arab Spring with Africa's village revolutions in the 1990s and explains what is needed to make democracy sustainable. After the Arab Spring erupted in North Africa in the spring of 2011, there was widespread speculation that it would spread to sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the unrest in the Arab world sparked sporadic street protests in Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Sudan and several other African countries. But they quickly fizzled — thanks to brutal crackdowns by security forces. Actually, sub-Saharan Africa’s “Village Revolutions” in the early 1990s pre-dates the Arab Spring...
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360° Analysis / Al Jazeera / Arab Spring / Arab Uprisings / Egypt / Islamism / Libya / Media / Morsi / Politics / Syria / Middle East / AfricaAbul-Hasanat Siddique and Casper Wuite, co-authors of The Arab Uprisings: An Introduction, talk about the political unrest in the Middle East, the Syrian Civil War, the globalisation of media, and the future prospects for the region. [Note: This article was cross-posted with Foreign Policy Blogs.] Is the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa home-grown or a Western-sponsored revolution for change? Abul-Hasanat Siddique: Home-grown. Seeing the uprisings in the region as Western-sponsored "revolutions" is far from reality. Firstly, that view sees the populations in the region as passive recipients. It also negates the Arab people, particularly its youth populations,...
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By Reza JFearing unrest and anti-government demonstrations similar to those after the 2009 election, the Iranian regime began cracking down on journalists and political activists this January. Arrests and newspaper bans are a normal part of a journalist’s life in Iran. It was always like this, even before the 1979 Revolution. However, since the controversial re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, media freedom has degraded significantly in Iran, which ranks 174th out of 179 countries on the 2013 Press Freedom Index. In recent months, the government has arrested ten journalists in a single night, raided newspaper offices, broken down the doors of journalists' homes, and arrested them...
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360° Analysis / bellicose rhetoric / China / DMZ / Kim Jong Un / Korea / Korean peninsula / Missile test / North Korea / Nuclear Missile / Park / Politics / Pyongyang / Tension / US / Global Security / AsiaAfter his first of four cultural diplomatic trips to North Korea, Michael Bassett discusses the interplay of rhetoric and reality in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. [View, In Picture: A Note From North Korea (Part 1)] I thought it was going to be a great risk for me to visit North Korea as an ex-soldier in the United States Army who had been deployed on the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ). The riskiness of the trip seemed even more threatening because the rhetoric of tension between the DPRK and the US and its allies in the region had escalated to a boiling point during my visit. When I returned to the DMZ, this time on the North Korean side of the border, I was worried...
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360° Analysis / Ahmadinejad / Iran / Israel / Nuclear / Politics / President Obama / Sanctions / United Kingdom / United States / Europe / Middle East / Global SecurityAmbassador Peter Jenkins analyzes the complexities of the Iranian nuclear dispute in light of the recent talks in Kazakhstan and evaluates the chances for progress. Readers who recall that four years ago a new US President seemed eager to defuse the West’s quarrel with Iran over its nuclear activities may wonder why we are all still waiting for white smoke. I am not sure I know the answer, but I have a hunch it has something to do with a lack of realism on one side and a profound mistrust on the other. The lack of realism is a Western failing. The US and the two European states, France and the UK, that still have the most influence on the EU’s Iran policy, ten years after the...