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.
Stefanie Krasnow -
From 2008 to 2014, insurrectionist activity has sequentially erupted across the globe, from Tunisia and Egypt to Syria and Yemen; from Greece, Spain, Turkey and Brazil to Thailand, Bosnia, Venezuela and the Ukraine.
In every instance, there was a tipping point: in Tunisia, it was Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation; in New York City, it was the Wall Street bailout; in Istanbul, it was a few threatened trees in Gezi Park; in Brazil, it was a 20-cent increase in transit fare. Today, the...
Saliem Fakir -
On the drive to Pudong International airport from the centre of Shanghai, which takes an hour, you sometimes do not see the sky and nature has long been filled with a concrete jungle so dense that this has become the hallmark of the Chinese growth miracle.
Behind this lies the intricacy of Chinese-style economic policymaking and politics. Often the way things work in China remains opaque for us foreigners given the language and cultural barriers.
One way of thinking of China is...
Alexander O'Riordan -
This weekend Crimea’s hastily organised referendum concluded as expected with an ethnically Russian majority population voting overwhelmingly to merge with Russia. The Western response of sanctions and punitive measures against Russia for its shamefacedly opportunistic occupation will prove in the long run to be largely bluster. There is no doubt the Kremlin is anxious to counter a growing Western-leaning politics in the region and to annex a strategically important part of Ukraine....
Norman Solomon -
The frontrunner to become the next president of the United States is playing an old and dangerous political game -- comparing a foreign leader to Adolf Hitler.
At a private charity event on Tuesday, in comments preserved on audio, Hillary Clinton talked about actions by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in the Crimea. “Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,” she said.
The next day, Clinton gave the inflammatory story more oxygen...
John Feffer -
The Cold War is history. For those growing up today, the Cold War is as distant in time as World War II was for those came of age in the 1970s. In both cases, empires collapsed and maps were redrawn. Repugnant ideologies were laid bare and then laid to rest, though patches of nostalgia persist.
Surely the Cold War has been consigned to the textbooks as irrevocably as the Battle of the Bulge. The Berlin Wall is in pieces. The U.S. president speaks of the abolition of nuclear weapons. The...
Mark Engler and Paul Engler -
Three years ago this month, the 82-year-old president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, stepped down amid historic protests against his dictatorial rule. News of his resignation on Feb. 11, 2011 marked the climax of an uprising that was quickly recognized as one of the most sudden and significant upheavals of the 21st century. As the New York Times reported, “The announcement, which comes after an 18-day revolt led by the young people of Egypt, shatters three decades of political stasis and...
