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?
Leonard Gentle -
The world is tipping over into unknown territory. All the pundits are now starting to agree with US economist, Nouriel Roubini, famous for his prediction of the 2008 financial crash, that a second recession is inevitable. South Africa’s Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus has also added her voice to the chorus warning of another “Lehman type event.”
Since the last recession, the major governments have spent in excess of $24trillion bailing out the banks, dwarfing the money...
Oscar-winning filmmaker, best-selling author, and provocateur laureate Michael Moore talks about the growing "Occupy Wall Street" protests in Lower Manhattan, which he visited on Monday night. "This is literally an uprising of people who have had it," Moore says. "It has already started to spread across the country in other cities.
It will continue to spread. ... It will be tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people ... Their work ahead is not as difficult...
Glenn Ashton -
Humans certainly are an enterprising species. Problem is, our discoveries tend to result in unintended consequences.
People have now figured out that we may be able to repair or reduce our unintended impacts on the global climate by intentionally re-engineering it through a set of processes which have been collectively called “geo-engineering.” Besides the obvious moral considerations, there are serious practical concerns that geo-engineering has a high probability of making an...
Richard Pithouse -
When the Springboks are running rampant even a drab supermarket in a small town can take on a carnival air with excited conversation moving between people without regard to all the usual barriers. But the nation, as we all know, is riven with all kinds of fractures. For the ANC some of these fractures can be useful as it seeks to sustain its moral authority while electoral support declines, popular protest continues and internal battles escalate. But other fractures pose a real challenge to...
On Thursday, stock markets around the globe crashed again -- likely due to concerns about the crisis in Europe and perhaps profound concern about the growing recession around the globe.
Investors immediately started buying US dollars and American treasury bills. Thus, despite ongoing predictions about the crash of the US dollar, quite the contrary seems to be happening.
Helping to make sense of this latest development is Prof. Leo Panitch, author of the book, "In and Out of...
Saliem Fakir -
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations to be hosted in Durban later this year, with this round of talks commonly referred to as COP 17, must not be seen in isolation of the troubled waters gnawing at the knees of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs).
Things aren’t working like they used to or perhaps never really worked. The rupture between environmental values and economic growth has always been there and bodes ominously for the future...
