The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
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China's economic success has attracted much attention and curiosity about the drivers behind its steady growth. Orvell Schell, Director of the Centre on US-China Relations, describes the Chinese economy as a curious hybrid between certain highly “marketized” sections of the economy and state control.
There are big enterprises still owned and controlled by the government, but which operate more or less by market rules. Nevertheless, the state has a great deal more control ability....
WikiLeaks editor, Julian Assange, was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize gold medal for Peace with Justice at the Frontline Club on 10 May 2011.
Assange is now one of just four people to have been given the award. Nelson Mandela, the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso and a Japanese Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda are the only others to have received the medal in its fourteen year history.
Professor Stuart Rees, director of the Sydney Peace Foundation who addressed the audience at the awards ceremony...
On May 9th, Israelis poured onto the streets to celebrate the 63rd year of Israeli Independence. Weeks earlier, at the end of March the Israeli parliament passed the controversial Nakba Law, part of numerous laws termed as anti-democratic by the association for civil rights in Israel. This law bans the mourning of the Nakba, which Palestinians commemorate to mark their expulsion from Palestine during the 1948 war.
The Nakba means "catastrophe" in arabic and refers to the war...
Karoo residents and New Yorkers alike are concerned about their pristine environments and water resources being destroyed by natural gas drilling through the practice commonly referred to as "fracking."
While the South African Department of Mineral Resources is still considering Shell's application to explore the Karoo for natural gas, Americans too are highly concerned about a proposed fracking initiative about 100 miles north east of New York City.
According to one report,...
Does the internet actually inhibit, not encourage democracy?
This new RSA Animate presentation is adapted from a talk given by Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' - the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.
Exposing some idealistic myths about freedom and technology, Evgeny argues for some realism about the actual uses and abuses of the...
In Egypt over the weekend, 12 people died and more than 180 were wounded during clashes between Muslims and Christians in Cairo. Egypt’s army has said that 190 people were detained after the fatal clashes and that they will face military trials.
Saturday’s violence started after several hundred conservative Salafist Muslims gathered outside the Coptic Saint Mena Church in Cairo’s Imbaba district. They were reportedly protesting over a months-old allegation that a Christian...
