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?
Saliem Fakir -
What do secret declassified documents from the Clinton era tell us about the future of climate negotiations?
While a great hope hung on the Copenhagen Climate Summit, right up to the end, the meeting was bogged down with uncertainty and controversy.
There were no targets, no binding agreements and there was no real money to show. Some governments didn’t even bother with the requirements of science or the immorality of not acting with urgency.
Denmark’s inability to play...
Dale T. McKinley -
Even if the meanings we give to measurements of time are most often overblown, there is something about the mark of a new decade. In the case of South Africa, 1990 marked the beginning of the end of the apartheid system, ushering in a period pregnant with new hopes, possibilities and dreams. When 2000 rolled around it heralded not only a once in a lifetime turn of a century but carried with it the delayed weight of majoritarian expectation of an age of progress and plenty. So what are our...
Israeli repression against human rights activists has increased since Palestinian civil society started pushing for the adoption of the Goldstone Report, the Real News Network reports. It is believed that the repression is planned. Night raids, kidnappings and arrests have led to the detention of many prominent human rights activists in recent months. Israel currently holds 7,122 Palestinian political prisoners in detention. Since its occupation of the West bank in 1967, Israel has set up...
Jane Duncan -
Debates about the controversial Public Services Broadcasting Bill have focussed on proposed changes to the South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC) funding model, as well as attempts by the Department of Communications to exercise undue control over the SABC and the community media sector, ostensibly to ensure that the sector meets developmental state objectives. To this end, the Department requires the SABC to '[support] rural development, particularly in the areas of agriculture, job...
Gilad Atzmon -
James Cameron's Anti-War Film
Avatar may well be the biggest anti-war film of all time. It stands against everything the West is identified with. It is against greed and capitalism, it is against interventionism, it is against colonialism and imperialism, it is against technological orientation, it is against America and Britain. It puts Wolfowitz, Blair and Bush on trial without even mentioning their names. It enlightens the true meaning of ethics as a dynamic judgmental process rather than...
Noam Chomsky recently delivered the 5th annual Edward Said Lecture at Columbia University. According to Chomsky, Said's greatest achievement as a literary critic was to put imperialism at the centre of western civilization. Said comprehensively uncovered and explored the different manifestations and impact of imperialism. Chomsky's lecture highlights events that opened the way to the famous unipolar moment that led to unchallenged US global hegemony 20 years ago -- the fall of the...
