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.
A terrifying war is being fought in the digital world. Technology designed to soak up individuals' private communications is in constant development. In the age of cyber surveillance where does the boundary between private and public fall, if it still exists at all?
On the front line of this digital conflict are the Cypherpunks, the focus of Julian Assange's show, The World Tomorrow. Andy Muller Maguhn, Jeremie Zimmerman, and Jacob Appelbaum are all prominent web activists advocating the...
Richard Pithouse -
More than half of our young people are unemployed. For many of these people there is no formal route through which they can develop their energies and creativity and have them rewarded with a passage into autonomy and adulthood. Time becomes circular rather than linear and as life moves in descending and tightening spirals rather than up and forward, pain and panic set into the bones.
Some people are able to keep their spirits up with the support of family, friends and congregations that...
Jane Duncan -
Media freedom in South Africa has been receiving bad press recently, although most of the attention has focussed on threats to print and broadcasting freedom. Little attention has been paid to creeping censorship of the supposedly most democratic medium of all, namely the internet.
Over the past ten years, the government has developed a complex web of controls that has made internet censorship much more possible. Many legislative measures lie dormant, only to emerge when they are...
Award-winning journalist, filmmaker, author, professor Saul Landau has made more than 45 films and written 14 books, many about Cuba. His latest film is "Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up," about US support for violent anti-Castro militants. Landau joins Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! to discuss the history of the Cuban Five and US support for a group of anti-Castro militants who have been behind the bombing of Cuban airplanes, the blowing up of hotels and assassinations. Today...
Saliem Fakir -
Fracking has become so fractious that our Minister of Energy, Dipuo Peters, has even resorted to religious metaphors to sell the idea to the South African public.
She is reported to have said in parliament that she prays daily that the cabinet decision on shale gas exploration is positive. In a desperate attempt to create a saintly feel for fracking, she remarked:
"It would be wrong for us to not use the resources that God left us with. This is a blessing that God gives us,...
After an exhaustive study of Mahatma Gandhi’s works, scholar and activist Norman Finkelstein has written a new book about the principles of nonviolent resistance titled 'What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage'.
Finkelstein says, "I was curious to know, what did Gandhi mean by nonviolence, because, you know, on reflection, it’s not so obvious. And the first thing to say about it is Gandhi was not the kind of nonviolent pacifist that, for example, was...
