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?
Visit the archives.
Glenn Ashton -
Antibiotic resistant bacteria have brought humanity to the dawn of a new era of medical uncertainty and risk. This has emerged through a simple evolutionary trend, where some of the most basic organisms on earth have managed to thwart our ingenuity over the course of slightly more than half a century.
Recent medical and scientific progress has extended human longevity well beyond the traditional biblical time-span of 70 years, across many parts of the world. One of the most important...
Six Iranian youth who danced in a YouTube video to the song by Pharrell Williams "Happy", were arrested by Iranian authorities. Following a public outcry, they have been released. But the director of the video is still being held in custody. What is all this about? Why were these kids arrested in the first place? Analyst Trita Parsi argues that there’s a cultural war going on in Iran. Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani is seen as a reformist with a softer stance on the...
Fazila Farouk -
Inequality is hard to avoid here in the most unequal country in the world, yet South Africa’s chattering classes have for a very long time done exactly that. Admittedly there are many titillating distractions, from our polygamous president engulfed in corruption scandals to the vulgar display of wealth by our black economic empowerment beneficiaries, there is much to keep the chins of the more established sections of South African society wagging in gloomy disapproval.
However, as...
Economists never in their wildest imagination anticipated a technology revolution whose productivity was so extreme that it is bringing marginal costs to near zero, making goods and services essentially free, abundant and beyond profit in the exchange capitalist economy. That's what's beginning to happen, argues Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends. We saw the zero marginal cost phenomenon sweep through the information goods industry when, facilitated by the...
Joeva Rock -
As the world remains transfixed by the kidnapping of almost 300 Nigerian girls, there have been increasing calls for international intervention in the effort to rescue them. But what many Americans don’t know is that the U.S. military has been active in the region for years. With the Iraq War over and the war in Afghanistan slowly ending, it is becoming increasingly apparent—from interviews with generals, recommendations from influential think tanks, and private conversations with...
Richard Pithouse -
Narendra Modi, a politician who combines a form of hyper-capitalism that produces fabulous wealth for some at the cost of ruination for many others with a narrow and dangerously chauvinistic form of hyper-nationalism, will soon take office as the new Prime Minister of India. The results of the election that bought Modi into office should give anyone who retains a naïve faith that democratic processes will always favour democrats, or that the assertion of nationalist sentiment from within...
