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?
SACSIS seeks to examine global issues, particularly as they relate to South Africa.
Mark Weisbrot -
President Obama’s re-election was never much in doubt, except perhaps briefly when he took a plunge after the first debate and we didn’t know where the bottom was. But by the end of the campaign, Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium was giving Obama a better than 99 percent chance of winning. Nate Silver of the New York Times, more cautious, put the odds yesterday at about 90-10 in favor of Obama.
Those who point to the popular vote as evidence of a very tight contest,...
John Feffer -
Back in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the countries of East-Central Europe all had a common vision. They wanted to join the Europe Community. Some wanted to join immediately; others wanted to join eventually. After half a century yoked to the Soviet Union, the people of this region saw membership in the common European home as a guarantee of democratic governance, economic prosperity, and social stability.
Twenty years later, membership in the European Union comes with no...
Alex Kane -
The Obama administration has developed a new strategy over the past two years that will institutionalize and expand what has become known as the “kill list,” or the list of terrorism suspects whose assassinations President Obama personally authorizes, according to a Washington Post report.
The administration even has a new, Orwellian term for the expanded “kill list”: the “disposition matrix,” which refers to the varied plans the administration has at...
Jake Johnston -
Over the past few decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has seen its staff level drop significantly at the same time as the amount of money under its discretion has rapidly increased. Over this time, USAID has stepped up its reliance on for-profit contractors to fill the void. The result, as Hillary Clinton stated in her confirmation hearing (USAID is part of the State Department), is that USAID has “turned into more of a contracting agency than an operational...
Mark Weisbrot -
On May 30, Dan Rather, one of America’s most well-known journalists, announced that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez would die “in a couple of months at most.” Four months later, Chávez is not only alive and campaigning but widely expected to win re-election on Sunday. Such is the state of misrepresentation of Venezuela – it is probably the most lied-about country in the world – that a journalist can say almost anything about Chávez or his...
Alexander Reed Kelly -
A bold experiment is under way in the world’s fifth-largest economy: As part of a recovery plan aimed at plugging a $48 billion hole in the French budget, leftist President Francois Hollande announced last week a 75 percent tax on the personal incomes of anyone earning more than $1.3 million a year, effective for two years beginning in 2013.
The decision has some of the country’s top earners, led in the media by cosmetics tycoon Jean-Paul Agon, suggesting that the new rules...
