Focal Points Blog

In India Book Withdrawal Sparks Criticism

Major Indian publisher capitulates to right-wing Hindu group.

By Ved Singh, March 3, 2014

Vishnu

A few weeks ago, Penguin India decided to remove from circulation and destroy any remaining copies of a 2009 book, The Hindus: An Alternate Anthology, by Wendy Doniger, an eminent scholar of Hinduism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. The decision sparked widespread outrage and criticism within literary circles in India and abroad.

Penguin India’s decision came after a three-year court battle over a 2011 lawsuit filed by the Shiksha Bachao Andolan (Save Education Movement), a right-wing Hindu group. The suit claimed that the book hurt “the religious feelings of millions of Hindus” and violated Section 295a of the Indian Penal Code, which makes “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class of citizens” criminally punishable.
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Africa’s Supposed Failure to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals

Some African economies would need to grow at the impossible rate of seven percent to meet the Millennium Development Goal for poverty eradication.

By Nathalie Baptiste, February 28, 2014

There are currently 7 billion people living on our planet. Some 80 percent, or 4.7 billion, of those people live on a meager $10 a day. The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population holds just 5 percent of global income, while the richest 20 percent holds 75 percent. The stark divide between the rich and the poor was addressed in a series of conferences and summits held by the United Nations that culminated in the United Nations Millennium Declaration in September 2000. From this summit the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were born.

The MDGs consist of eight broad goals that range from eradication of extreme poverty and achieving universal education to ensuring environmental stability and fighting diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS. The goals, agreed to by all the world leaders that attended the summit, are laudable—after all, eradicating poverty is one of our most pressing global issues—however, they are not free from criticism.
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Sochi Brought to Fore Not Just Russian Homophobia, But Islamophobia

Russia’s Olympic success and growth are meaningless if xenophobia continues to dominate its society.

By Sufyan bin Uzayr, February 26, 2014

Image Wikimedia Commons

The Sochi Olympics proved to be a big success — exactly what Russia wanted. Right from the opening ceremony itself, the entire event was a megalith in terms of popularity and success. If one wanted to catch a glimpse of Russia’s glorious past as well as its vibrant art, this year’s Winter Olympics were the thing to watch!

But the Olympics at Sochi were not without their share of controversy. Take, for example, the case of the Pussy Riot protest performance.

So success on one hand and chaos on the other. A mixed bag, probably?

However, Russia’s mixed bag had one key element missing.

The plight of the Muslims of Sochi.
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Is Assad Following the Pakistan Model?

Like the Pakistan military and ISI, Syrian President Assad may be aiding jihadists who operate on his own soil.

By Russ Wellen, February 25, 2014

Image Wikimedia Commons

In an article at Foreign Policy titled The Disappeared, James Traub reports on journalists who have been kidnapped in Syria, either by Islamist extremist rebels or by forces for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. At one point he was introduced to (emphasis added):

… Hamza Ghadban, a Syrian journalist. … He was convinced, as many rebel sympathizers are, that the regime has subterranean connections with the foreign jihadists. He told me that the ISIS camp in Aleppo had been unscathed until the jihadists decamped, while the next-door headquarters of the Tawhid Brigade, affiliated with the FSA, had been leveled by government artillery. In Raqqa, too, the ISIS base had not been shelled. It’s also widely believed that in the summer of 2012, Assad released from prison some of the Sunni extremists who had fought American troops in Iraq, and who may then have joined with foreign fighters to form ISIS. Those fighters now seem at least as preoccupied with dislodging moderate rebels from key checkpoints and northern towns as they are with fighting the regime.
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Calls for U.S. Military Intervention in Syria Re-surfacing

Once again, R2P — responsibility to protect — is being used as a pretext for attacking Syria.

By Coleen Rowley, February 24, 2014

Homs. Image Wikimedia Commons

On February 15 at FPIF Focal Points, Rob Prince wrote, “At a moment when the only viable path open to resolving the Syrian conflict lies in a negotiated settlement between the Assad government and the legitimate opposition, two colleagues at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies, Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel of the Center for Middle East Studies, have put forth an emotional and poorly conceived call for military intervention to resolve the escalating humanitarian crisis there” in a New York Times op-ed. Now Coleen Rowley, who you may remember for the service she performed for the nation as a post-9/11 FBI whistleblower, weighs in.

Cross-posted from the March newsletter of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 27.

The propaganda that continues to flourish for war on Syria shows many Americans fail to understand the problems posed by “US Empire-building” believing it to be an altruistic force, toppling other governments and starting wars for the good of all mankind. Two recent articles in the New York Times (NYT): “Use Force To Save Starving Syrians” and “U.S. Scolds Russia as It Weighs Options on Syrian War” are typical of the concerted efforts underway to ramp up US military intervention despite overwhelming opposition voiced by Congress and the American public thwarting Obama’s plan to bomb Syria announced in late August last year.
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U.S. Got Caught in a Vicious Circle With Afghan President Karzai’s Brother, Ahmed Wali

The author had a ringside seat to how the surge in Afghanistan only increased Ahmed Wali Karzai’s leverage, thus increasing U.S. need for his support.

By Inge Fryklund, February 22, 2014

Ahmed Wali Karzai, assassinated in 2011

Most commentary about Secretary Gates’ Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War has focused on his pithy comments about members of the Bush and Obama Administrations, but I found the more important story in a message he may not have intended. At a Sept 3, 2010 meeting in Kandahar with Brigadier General Nick Carter, discussing the local power broker, Ahmed Wali Karzai (AWK), President Karzai’s half-brother, Carter said that

… for the foreseeable future, the choice facing us was between a theocracy run by the Taliban or a “thugocracy” run by the likes of AWK. He said that working with AWK offered the best way to show results quickly against the Taliban. [Gates] told Carter that ‘if working with AWK helped keep our troops alive and succeed in their mission, then that’s no contest.’

This heads-down focus on the immediate fight, devoid of political or social context, goes a long way towards explaining the failures of our longest war.
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Why Did Sister Megan Rice Ask for a Life Sentence?

Was it a bid by the Transform Now Plowshares activist to become a martyr to disarmament?

By Russ Wellen, February 20, 2014

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Yesterday I posted that the Transform Now Plowshares Three were sentenced for their infiltration and protest at the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on July 28, 2012. CBS News reported Sister Megan Rice’s response to her three-year sentence.
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Sister Megan Rice Invokes Briar Patch Privileges

The Transform Now Plowshares protesters who infiltrated the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex were sentenced yesterday.

By Russ Wellen, February 19, 2014

Beating swords into plowshares

“Only please, Brer Fox, please don’t throw me into the briar patch.”

The Transform Now Plowshares Three were sentenced for their infiltration and protest at Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on July 28, 2012. I guess it could have been worse. CBS News reports (emphasis added):
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Ukraine Still Can’t Escape Long Arm of Russia

Russia’s President Putin may have induced Ukraine’s President Yanukovych to crack down violently on protesters.

By Russ Wellen, February 19, 2014

Ukraine President Yanukovych and Russian President Putin. Image Wikimedia Commons

Calling the scene in Independence Square, Kiev, “apocalyptic,” Andrew Higgins and Andrew Kramer of the New York Times reported on the demonstrations yesterday, during which 25 demonstrators were killed by the Ukrainian riot police, known as the Berkut. They write that what “began as a peaceful protest in late November against” Ukraine President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s “decision to spurn a trade deal with Europe and tilt toward Russia became on Tuesday a pyre of violent chaos.”
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Obama Seeks to Avoid “Clash of Civilizations” Between China and the West

Samuel Huntington wrote: “In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of the Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.”

By Keith K C Hui, February 18, 2014

President Obama and China’s former President Hu Jintao.

The opinions expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Foreign Policy in Focus.

On the next day after President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union (SOTU) 2014, which did not mention anything about the tension in East Asia, not even the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Tokyo-based The Diplomat published an article to ask whether Obama “has abandoned the Pivot to Asia”¹:

… he couldn’t make room for even a sentence in his speech … his neglect of these issues … brings the rebalance to Asia into question.²

While the disappointment and frustration within the hawkish camp are understandable, Obama’s silence on East Asia as well as two exact same headlines with respect to the SOTU in Army Times and Navy Times — “Obama emphasizes diplomacy to strengthen security” — indicate that the incumbent master of the White House has made a wise move to prevent a disastrous “clash of civilizations.”³ In his renowned 1997 book of the same name, Samuel P. Huntington sees the states in “the West” as a civilization group sharing among themselves such core values as democracy, pluralism, individualism, rule of law and Christianity; some other civilizations, such as the Muslim and the Chinese, however, do not appreciate these values and tend to resist them.^{4
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