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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On Syria, Robert Fisk says, “We’d like to see a democracy, wouldn’t we? But although the word ‘democracy’ has a bad taste and a ring in it for many Arab Muslims, for good reason. We’d like to see some kind of freedom and dignity, which is what Syrians originally asked for before the massive peaceful protests on the streets—they weren’t completely peaceful, but they were pretty peaceful—turned into armed militia, government forces battles....
Mandisi Majavu -
As Noam Chomsky once wrote, the vocation of “historical engineering” is as old as history. White liberalism has developed this vocation into a science, and one of the tools that liberals deploy when carrying out “historical engineering” is ethnic solipsism. This is why today the French revolution is globally recognised as an important historical event, whereas the Haitian revolution is not foregrounded in the study of the development of the 18th century social...
Chris Hedges -
LONDON—A tiny tip of the vast subterranean network of governmental and intelligence agencies from around the world dedicated to destroying WikiLeaks and arresting its founder, Julian Assange, appears outside the red-brick building on Hans Crescent Street that houses the Ecuadorean Embassy. Assange, the world’s best-known political refugee, has been in the embassy since he was offered sanctuary there last June. British police in black Kevlar vests are perched night and day on the...
Saliem Fakir -
Living with an electricity monopoly armed with a mandate to provide basic services can be a double-edged sword. If well run and efficient it can be a boon for consumers and the public in general. If poorly and inefficiently run, the aftershocks will hurt your pocket and eat at the tax base for a long time to come.
When a utility company holds a monopoly over power plants, the transmission of electricity and large parts of the distribution network, as South Africa's Eskom does, it pretty...
Jane Duncan -
As South Africa commemorates another World Press Freedom Day, this day will no doubt focus minds on Parliament’s decision to pass the controversial Protection of State Information Bill, or the Secrecy Bill. It will now be forwarded to the President for signing.
There are still many fundamental problems with the Bill, but it is greatly improved from previous versions. These improvements have shown that the most secretive sphere of government – the security cluster – is...
Humans invented the idea of hospitals in the 1780's, and it is time to update our thinking, argues Eric Dishman. "We have got to untether clinicians and patients from the notion of traveling to a special bricks and mortar place for all of our care, because these places are often the wrong tool and the most expensive tool for the job. And, these are sometimes unsafe places to send our sickest patients, especially in an era of super bugs and hospital acquired infections," he contends....
