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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It started off as a slow news day, and a routine update on the state of the Free World Order with NSA Director General Baxter. But then the news broke of startling revelations from the fearless paladin of adversarial journalism, guardian of civil liberties, journalist Glen Greenwald, concerning a shadowy spying program called PRISM. Who is behind these revelations, and how should we view them? How will the Authorities, and the Corporations implicated, respond? Join Robert Foster for a...
WikiLeaks is playing a central role in helping National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden apply for political asylum in Ecuador. Michael Ratner, an attorney for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, praised Ecuador for standing up to the United States. "They’re trying to bully other countries, not only by pulling his passport away so that he can’t travel, but by saying, 'Send him back to us. Don't take him in. There’ll be consequences,’" Ratner says....
In 1985, architect Paul Pholeros was challenged by the director of an Aboriginal-controlled health service to "stop people getting sick" in a small indigenous community in south Australia. The key insights: think beyond medicine and fix the local environment. In this sparky, interactive talk, Pholeros describes projects undertaken by Healthabitat, the organization he now runs to help reduce poverty - through practical design fixes - in Australia and beyond. A large proportion of...
Many of the millions of Brazilians who were lifted out of poverty in the last decade are included in the formal economy - that's very much to the credit of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor Lula - but the basic structures of the way life works in Brazil still have not changed. That's what the current wave of protests in Brazil are all about, argues Julia Michaels, founder and editor of Rioreal blog. Even though President Rousseff comes from the left, her government...
"Lots of people live under bridges," a Johannesburg judge said after a group of people was evicted from a building. Three days after their eviction, a young woman gave birth to a baby. She was found living under a bridge with her newborn. When lawyers appealed to a judge to allow the group back into the building on the grounds that women, children and a newborn were living under a bridge, the judge chose to protect the rights of the property owner over the rights of the vulnerable...
Moderate cleric and former nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rouhani has won the recent Iranian presidential election. Iran's new president is urging greater engagement with the West, but will the West reciprocate. What will America's response to Iran's nuclear programme under a moderate leader be? Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, authors of a new book, 'Going to Tehran', which challenges all the conventional wisdom about Iran and its nuclear programme, argue that Iran would like to engage...
