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?
Stephen Zunes -
Editor's Note: You may also be interested in reading Stephen Zunes follow up article: "Iran's Stolen Election Has Sparked an Uprising -- What Should the U.S. Do?" There's also this superb must-read article by M K Bhadrakumar from Asia Times Online "Beijing Cautions US Over Iran." The article is extremely valuable for its demystification of internal Iranian politics and how the US consistently misreads this.
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It is certainly not unprecedented for Western...
Iran's presidential hopeful, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has "green power" as well as "girl power" behind him and a serious shot at winning what is turning out to be the most important election in the 30-year history of Iran's Islamic revolution. Mousavi is challenging current Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mousavi is an architect, an abstract painter, a former newspaper editor and has been described as "a very good manager." "Tehran rocks!"...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
Do individuals spend their money better than families? This foundational question in the design of income support programmes for the poor has not been robustly debated. Instead, the strong and robust debates have historically focussed on the possibilities of the universal provision of state income support through a Basic Income Grant (BIG).
During his inaugural State of the Nation address, President Jacob Zuma expressed ANC policy to mean that future expansion of the social grants...
In the wake of a rightward shift in European politics, Britain’s Gordon Brown seems to be losing his grip on the leadership of the New Labour Party, while his party itself appears to be losing the support of its traditional grassroots base. Al Jazeera's Riz Khan interviews two analysts to shed more light on the issue. *** RIZ KHAN: Hello and welcome. Is Britain's New Labour dying a slow death? British prime minister Gordon Brown and his party have seen some of the lowest poll ratings...
Democracy Now -
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama followed up his trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt with a visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany Friday, where 56,000 people were killed during World War II. Obama invoked his great-uncle who had helped liberate a Buchenwald prison camp and returned a haunted man here at home. He also strongly criticized anyone who denies the Holocaust and said Buchenwald, quote, “teaches us that we must be ever-vigilant about the spread of evil in our own...
Fazila Farouk -
Finland is known as the country with the best education system in the world. Since the year 2000, Finland has topped OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) ratings for the best education system overall. In 2008, Finland also joined Japan at the top of the leader board to produce the best science students in the world. Finland’s 15 year-olds are the most literate in the world.
Finland and South Africa are quite literally and figuratively, poles apart....
