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?
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene, in his inaugural budget speech, offers this piece of wisdom, “The challenge of governance is to choose wisely between competing alternatives.” This takeaway statement is as true of Minister Nene’s inaugural budget speech, as it is about each of his predecessors. However, underlying these choices is deep polarisation in South Africa.
On the one hand, mainstream commentators from financial institutions are praising a lower than expected...
Frances Coppola -
The Greek deal on Friday achieved two things.
Firstly, it confused everybody. Not much seemed to have changed since the angry meetings of the beginning of the week, and yet all the protagonists seemed to emerge happy.
Secondly, it allowed everyone to preserve their previous opinions. People who thought that Germany should win, thought it had; people who thought that Greece should win, thought it had. People who wanted Greece to stay in the Euro, thought it would; while people who wanted...
The Supreme Court of Iceland last Thursday upheld the convictions of four former banking executives charged with market manipulations. Iceland has now convicted the top officers of all three of its major banks. Associate professor of Economics and Law, Bill Black, says Iceland is one of the hardest places in the world to achieve the successful prosecution of banking executives. But, contends Black, if Iceland could do it, the U.S., with all the resources of the FBI and Justice Department,...
Fifty-three years ago, James A. White Sr. joined the U.S. Air Force. But as an African American man, he had to go to shocking lengths to find a place for his young family to live nearby. In this TED talk, He tells a powerful story about the lived experience of "everyday racism" — and how it echoes today in the way he's had to teach his grandchildren to interact with police. Against the backdrop of Michael Brown's killing in Ferguson and that of Eric Garner, White asks, as a...
Arthur Chu -
There was a lot to criticize about the “Saturday Night Live” 40th anniversary celebration–Jerry Seinfeld’s #SorryNotSorry joshing around about “SNL’s” 40-year history of whiteness, cringeworthy reminders of the show’s tendency to run dubiously funny gags into the ground, and the mystifying continued relevance of Sarah Palin.
So it was strange–though not surprising, for Internet junkies–that Kanye West came in for an avalanche of...
Spanish political party, Podemos, only became an official party last March, but a recent poll by El País found that 28% of the population supports it - enough to possibly win Spain’s next general election. Last May, Podemos surprised many by receiving 1.2 million votes and five seats in the European Parliament. The party grew out of the anti-austerity "indignados" movement that began occupying squares in Spain four years ago. Meet Podemos Secretary General, Pablo...
