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 Obama administration appears to be pressing ahead with military strikes on Syria despite new obstacles at home and abroad. On Wednesday, an informal meeting of the United Nations Security Council failed to reach an agreement after Russia and China opposed any authorization of force in response to last week's alleged chemical attack by Assad forces in Ghouta. The Obama administration is expected to make public soon some of its intelligence on who exactly was responsible for the attacks,...
Richard Pithouse -
(T)he paranoid construction is … an attempt to heal ourselves, to pull ourselves out of the real "illness", the "end of the world", the breakdown of the symbolic universe.
− Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, 1991
Sdumo Dlamini recently informed listeners of a Jo'burg radio station that a multi-headed snake was slithering through South Africa fermenting dissent against the ANC. In the lead up to Mangaung...
Jane Duncan -
Any sensible person who has seen the film ‘Of Good Report’ will be scoffing at the Film and Publications Board's effective banning of the film on the grounds of child pornography. The film narrates the descent of its main protagonist, a school teacher, into madness, leading to his murdering three of the four main female characters. The scenes depicting the teacher having sex with one of his pupils is descriptive, but by no means explicit, which makes the accusation of child porn...
Last week Japan's nuclear watchdog said a toxic water leak at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has been classified as a level 3 "serious incident" on an international scale. But, Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear argues that this rating is far too low. He explains what Fukushima really means for the planet.
Presently there are large volumes of radioactive groundwater leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the site, bypassing an underground barrier built to contain it. Meanwhile there...
Wilful blindness is a legal concept, which means, if there is information that you could know and you should know, but you somehow manage not to know; the law deems that you're wilfully blind. You have chosen not to know, says, author, academic and entrepreneur, Margaret Heffernan in this TED Talk.
"You could see wilful blindness in the run up to the Iraq war," she argues.
Wilful blindness is rife in big corporations, Heffernan contends. In large corporations, when employees...
Frank Meintjies -
South Africa is battling the curse of inequality. Inequality impacts profoundly on other key issues, exacerbating social ills, eroding community cohesion, fanning societal conflict and, for us, injects a sense of urgency into next year’s national elections.
We are reaping the fruit of inequality. All the signs are that inequality in South Africa is linked to the high levels of violence, the type and frequency of xenophobic attacks, the pervasiveness of gender-based violence and...
