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?
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In the final episode of Al Jazeera's must see documentary, Meltdown, we hear about the sheikh who says the crash never happened; a Wall Street king charged with fraud; a congresswoman who wants to jail the bankers; and the world leaders who want a re-think of capitalism.
The financial crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing over 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the brink of insolvency.
Sheikh Mohammed...
In Egypt, at least two dozen people died on Sunday when the Egyptian military attacked a large gathering of Coptic Christian protesters. The violence broke out after a protest in Cairo against an attack on a church in Aswan province last week.
Democracy Now correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous was in Cairo and witnessed the killings. "Then the military attacked. They came rushing forward, beating anyone in their path. Then they started opening fire. The sound of gunfire filled the...
Mandisi Majavu -
Recently, Tokyo Sexwale, the Human Settlements Minister, announced that free housing for the poor has to have a “cut off date.” He argued that it is unsustainable to provide free housing to the poor “for a long time.” This is a far cry from the Freedom Charter’s spirit, which champions the principle that “All people shall have the right to live where they choose, to be decently housed and to bring up their families in comfort and security.”
The...
Richard Pithouse -
In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck's novel about the Great Depression, Tom Joad, the novel's central character, a man who has been made poor and who is on the run from the law, tells his mother in the climactic scene that: “I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got together....”
That wondering is a...
John Pilger -
The High Court in London will soon decide whether Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct. At the appeal hearing in July, Ben Emmerson, Queen's counsel for the defense, described the whole saga as "crazy." Sweden's chief prosecutor had dismissed the original arrest warrant, saying there was no case for Assange to answer.
Both the women involved said they had consented to have sex. On the facts alleged, no crime would have been committed...
Modern capitalism has reached the end of its rope, argues Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University. Capitalism cannot survive as a system and what we are witnessing now is a structural crisis of the system.
In Wallerstein's view, the structural crisis goes on for a long time. It started in the 1970's and will go on for another 30-40 years. It's not a crisis of a year or of a moment, its a major structural unfolding of a system and we are in transition to another...
