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 -
On June 3, 2009 Constitutional Court Judge, Albie Sachs, ruled in favour of a public interest NGO, Biowatch, in a case that tested how costs are awarded. The ramifications of the ruling will be far reaching for civic organizations and the defence of public interest causes.
The details of the judgement have been glanced at superficially and fleetingly in the mainstream media. They deserve a deeper appraisal.
If anything, the intent of the judgement is to cover ground wider than the nature of...
Manuel Garcia, Jr. -
The loss of Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-200 has raised many doubts among the flying public and even some aviation professionals about the safety of the newest generation of passenger airplanes. These new airliners have composite materials replacing metal for many structural elements and control surfaces, and they are reliant on computer-controlled flight and navigation systems.
The impetus for developing this new generation of airliners is the need to improve fuel economy so as to...
According to California Newsreel, this hard-hitting documentary, The Big Sellout, challenges current economic orthodoxy in contending that the dogmatic claims of the international business establishment for neo-liberal development policies are not supported by modern economic science. More importantly, it dramatically demonstrates how the implementation of these policies is having disastrous consequences for millions of ordinary people around the globe. Traveling throughout both the...
Glenn Ashton -
Apartheid South Africa was an arcanely bureaucratic, over regulated society. Through laws both petty and detailed, it regulated the lives of its citizens in ways that continue to affect us today. While we have cast off the chains of legalised racism we have not sworn off our national propensity to rely on centralised regulation through arcane legal structures to arrive at the collective goals we visualised when queueing to vote in 1994.
This reliance on the law, while perhaps necessary to...
Early on Sunday morning, 28 June 2009, 100 soldiers escorted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, from his bed to an airplane, which flew him to Costa Rica, in a military coup that is supported by the country's powerful political elite. The president wasn't the only victim of the coup. Some of his cabinet members were also kidnapped by the military. Inter Press Service reports that the coup was sparked because Zelaya planned to hold a non-binding popular referendum on Sunday, asking voters...
This Link TV report charges that Arab rulers from the region fear that the protests in Iran will serve as a reminder about democracy to their own populations. "Democracy in Arab countries goes only as far as the election booth. Democracy, however, is based on the education of change, civic institutions and human rights. Do these things exist in Arab countries? Do the Arab masses believe in these democratic principles? The answer is no," contends one commentator in this clip....
