July 2012

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67 Minutes of Shame: Homophobic Hate Crimes Go Unnoticed

Picture: Gillian Schutte Gillian Schutte - “Africa your silence is loud! Speak out against patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia.” So reads one of the many sloganed T-shirts worn by LGBTI rights protestors at the “Say No to Hate Crimes” picket at the Library Gardens yesterday. Other’s read:  “My Sexuality, My Choice”, “Phansi Holomisa!” and “Zuma – your silence is killing our brothers.” The gardens are decorated with bright pink hard hats and gay...

Vandana Shiva on the Problem with Genetically-Modified Seeds

Picture: As seen on BillMoyers.com Video Inspired by Einstein, Vandana Shiva, became a nuclear physicist, but turned her attention to food security and environmental issues early in her career. Much of her work focuses on protecting indigenous seeds. Shiva takes a strong stand against genetically modified seeds, which are "more costly and leave local farmers deep in debt as well as dependent on suppliers. Shiva, who founded a movement in India to promote native seeds, links genetic tinkering to problems in our ecology,...

The News in Transition: How our Networked Society is Changing the News

Picture: www.techmagnews.com Video "Journalism is really being remade all the time," says leading new-media academic, Adrienne Russell, who examines the underlying cultural changes that reflect the new news reality. A new style of networked journalism has taken shape in the larger media landscape based on new products, tools, new players and sensibilities. While the rise of the web and the fall of newspapers has heightened anxieties about the watchdogging role of journalism, Russell argues that journalism is also...

On Corruption

Picture: millard92/Flickr Richard Pithouse - Corruption in South Africa is not nearly as ubiquitous as it is in countries like India or Italy. But it is becoming an increasingly ordinary part of the texture of every day life. It is certainly a serious issue and its certainly obscene that even state projects with as urgent a social function as providing school books and housing to the poor are taken more seriously in some quarters as opportunities for personal enrichment than as collective social obligations. Its equally obscene that...

Obama's Scramble for Africa

Picture: Barack Obama/Flickr Nick Turse - They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s “spice road” has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks.  Instead, it’s a superpower’s superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel, food, and military equipment through a growing maritime and ground transportation infrastructure to a network of supply depots, tiny camps, and airfields meant to service a...

The Dangers of Crying Wolf on Press Freedom

Picture: NS Newsflash/Flickr Jane Duncan - Recently the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications held the third in a series of public hearings on print media transformation. Many in the print media industry have been sceptical about the Committee’s motives in calling the sector to account on this issue, and understandably so.   Coming in the wake of the African National Congress's (ANC) threat of statutory regulation, as well as the Protection of State Information Bill, sections of the industry read these...