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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The first medical marijuana commercial has already debuted on major television networks in America. The advertisement was produced by MarijuanaDoctors.com, the only service that connects patients with physicians for medical marijuana recommendations. The advertisement appeared on American channels such as Fox, CNN, ESPN, Comedy Central, AMC, and Discovery.
The commercial, which represents a breakthrough for challenging conventional public perceptions about marijuana use, is being aired...
Privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian sees the landscape of government surveillance shifting beneath our feet, as an industry grows to support monitoring programs. Through private companies, he says, governments are buying technology with the capacity to break into computers, steal documents and monitor activity without detection. Journalists and activists, amongst others, have been targets of these programmes in countries that have purchased surveillance software.
Gamma is a German...
A new expose by Mother Jones magazine may shock anyone who drinks out of plastic bottles, gives their children plastic sippy cups, eats out of plastic containers, or stores food with plastic wrap. For years, public campaigns have been waged against plastic containing bisphenol-A (BPA), a controversial plastic additive, due to concerns about adverse human health effects caused by the exposure to synthetic estrogen. But a new investigation by Mother Jones reporter Mariah Blake has revealed...
Following the overthrow of the government of Ukraine, Russia occupied (some say invaded) strategic locations in Crimea on February, 28. Nevertheless, Russia has had a military presence in Crimea (a province of the Ukraine) for more than a decade. On Thursday this week, the Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. The issue will be put to a public referendum in the next 10 days. Meanwhile President Vladimir Putin has indicated that Russia has no...
“The way we rate national economies is all wrong,” says rating agency reformer Annette Heuser. With mysterious and obscure methods, three private US-based credit rating agencies - Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch - wield immense power over national economies across the globe and the outcomes can be catastrophic. Presently there is complete lack of transparency about how ratings agencies rate countries and companies.
But what if there was another way?
In...
A new global study that examined protests in 87 countries, including South Africa (SA), found that the highest number of protests takes place in the developed world and the main grievance of protesters is economic injustice. In recent years, SA too has experienced a wave of protests. Is SA part of this global surge in protests or is there something else driving the phenomenon in our country? Trevor Ngwane, a doctoral student and Soweto activist who has done important research on the issue,...
