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.
Saliem Fakir -
At times it’s hard to take at face value whether what is being said in ANC discussion documents is for real or just rhetorical flush.
The latest ANC buzzword is this notion of ‘the second transition’. The first transition, an ANC discussion document argues, is the consolidation of democracy (a coded way of saying consolidation of the ANC’s power).
The second transition is about social and economic transformation. To some it may sound like a new idea, but in...
Highlighting the birth of a truly global social movement against economic injustice, this superb documentary by Al Jazeera's Faultlines details the history of the Occupy Wall Street movement, clearly identifying its links to earlier occupations in Egypt and Spain.
According to Al Jazeera, Occupy Wall Street "has created a space in the American consciousness to believe in a different type of political power. One controlled, not by politicians or corporate money, but by people taking...
"There are six trillion cigarettes smoked every year worldwide. This is enough to make a continuous chain from the Earth to the Sun and back with enough left over for several round trips to Mars," argues Robert Proctor, Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University.
This also translates to 360 million miles of cigarettes depositing 60,000 metric tons of soot, cyanide and radioactive polonium into the lungs of smokers.
Cigarettes persist because of the enormous...
Robin Broad and John Cavanagh -
The statistics upon which most poverty elimination strategies are based are extremely misleading, and often steer experts toward the wrong solutions.
Now here is what sounds like a New York Times headline to celebrate: “Dire Poverty Falls Despite Global Slump, Report Finds.” That report would be a 6-page World Bank briefing note, the press release for which is titled: “New Estimates Reveal Drop in Extreme Poverty 2005-2010.” Echoes The Economist: “For the...
Michelle Pressend -
In June this year, the United Nations Conference of Environment and Development (UNCED) popularly known, as the Rio Earth Summit will commemorate 20 years. It was originally held in Brazil in 1992. You may recall that in 2002, South Africa hosted the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), so this year also marks WSSD+10, though it doesn’t seem to have the same prominence as Rio+20.
The Rio Earth Summit was one of the most significant global environmental gatherings as world...
Glenn Ashton -
While motorists feel the pain of the recent ascent of the oil price to near record levels, the underlying reality of rising oil prices has profound implications right across society.
Barring an unprecedented oil discovery, the world will never again see the return of cheap oil. Oil prices will certainly never return to the levels of the 1990s, or even the first half of the first decade of this century.
The rise in oil prices is the harbinger of a major restructuring of modern...
