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?
Samuel Grove -
Sami Ramadani is a senior lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan University and has been an active participant in campaigns against Saddam's regime and anti-imperialist struggles for many years. In an in-depth interview, he spoke to Samuel Grove about the dynamics of the conflict in Syria, arguing that democratic resistance to Assad's brutal regime has been eclipsed by reactionary forces, backed by Western and Gulf states, with potentially momentous implications for the Middle...
Jane Duncan -
It was June 16, 1992. A number of us had been to hand out pamphlets at a rally to commemorate the events of the day in 1976, as we generally did on that day. I returned home in the afternoon, and decided to phone my mother to discuss a favour I needed to ask of her. I phoned her at 3.30pm, when I knew she would be home.
She did not answer the phone. I tried several times after that, and still she didn’t answer. A small voice in my head told me that something was wrong, as her...
A terrifying war is being fought in the digital world. Technology designed to soak up individuals' private communications is in constant development. In the age of cyber surveillance where does the boundary between private and public fall, if it still exists at all?
On the front line of this digital conflict are the Cypherpunks, the focus of Julian Assange's show, The World Tomorrow. Andy Muller Maguhn, Jeremie Zimmerman, and Jacob Appelbaum are all prominent web activists advocating the...
Richard Pithouse -
More than half of our young people are unemployed. For many of these people there is no formal route through which they can develop their energies and creativity and have them rewarded with a passage into autonomy and adulthood. Time becomes circular rather than linear and as life moves in descending and tightening spirals rather than up and forward, pain and panic set into the bones.
Some people are able to keep their spirits up with the support of family, friends and congregations that...
Jane Duncan -
Media freedom in South Africa has been receiving bad press recently, although most of the attention has focussed on threats to print and broadcasting freedom. Little attention has been paid to creeping censorship of the supposedly most democratic medium of all, namely the internet.
Over the past ten years, the government has developed a complex web of controls that has made internet censorship much more possible. Many legislative measures lie dormant, only to emerge when they are...
Award-winning journalist, filmmaker, author, professor Saul Landau has made more than 45 films and written 14 books, many about Cuba. His latest film is "Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up," about US support for violent anti-Castro militants. Landau joins Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! to discuss the history of the Cuban Five and US support for a group of anti-Castro militants who have been behind the bombing of Cuban airplanes, the blowing up of hotels and assassinations. Today...
