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?
David Barsamian -
Vandana Shiva is an internationally renowned voice for sustainable development and social justice. She is a physicist, scholar, political activist, and feminist, and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize. She is also director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi. Author of many books, her latest are Earth Democracy and Soil Not Oil.
She spoke in New Delhi with David Barsamian, founder of...
Michelle Pressend -
Since the last World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial meeting took place in Hong Kong in 2005, the WTO Doha negotiations have remained at an impasse. Attempts to revive negotiations last year during the July 2008 mini Ministerial meeting failed.
In principle what the Doha Declaration agreed to in 2001 was meant to foster ‘development’ in developing countries and address the adverse impact of trade liberalization and deregulation.
Since then, Doha negotiations have been...
The Pinky Show expounds on the transition from colonialism to globalisation and the role of the free market in this evolution. Both bring about the same results, using different methods. While colonialism was about control through force, globalisation has found an easier way to create an underclass that is easily exploited by redefining relationships and influencing how people think. Bolstering the veneer of progress and civilization - media, technology, the law and education are used to...
'Battle in Seattle' is the story of the 1999 WTO Protest that took place on the streets of Seattle. The movie was written and directed by Stuart Townsend and stars South Africa's Charlize Theron. The official 'Battle in Seattle' movie premiered on September 19, 2008. Read a review of the movie here and visit the movie's official website here.
David Solnit -
What really happened at the 1999 WTO demonstrations in Seattle? On television, it looked like vandalism and random violence. On the streets, it looked like part festival, part uprising, part police riot. Now there’s a movie version. Activist and author David Solnit was there—organizing in the streets and speaking up on the set.
My stomach clenched the first time I heard that actor Stuart Townsend was making a mainstream movie about the 1999 shutdown of the WTO ministerial...
Glenn Ashton -
Looking at the annual gathering of G8 leaders, one could be forgiven for believing that the real reason behind these meetings is to address global concerns. But it is not. The G8 is nothing more than a meeting where a great deal of political posturing takes place to present the image of a sympathetic west.
Phantom aid is a neat concept coined by Action Aid to describe the kind of aid given to the developing world by Western powers. Action Aid’s clarification of the flow of...
