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?
Many people assume that it is much easier to move between social classes today than in the past. But new research by economist Gregory Clark, based on tracking family names across generations, reveals that mobility rates are lower than conventionally estimated, and that inherited advantage remains a deeply entrenched force. The fact that social mobility rates are so predictable at birth "should lead us to consider carefully how much inequality we want to permit in societies” and...
Richard Pithouse -
Some people love and desire people of the same sex. This is true everywhere and it has always been true. From Egypt, to India, Peru and Zimbabwe there is ancient art illuminating the consummation of the eternal and universal presence of homosexual desire. In the classic literature of China, reaching back hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, it is described as the passion of the bitten peach. Homoerotic desire is described, with joy, in classic Arab poetry written more than a thousand...
Dale T. McKinley -
In the spirit of John Lennon, imagine this near-future scenario.
It is 2016, the 20th anniversary of South Africa’s Constitution. Alongside all sorts of official festivities, a sizeable portion of the population is celebrating the recent decision by the Constitutional Court to declare the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act (No. 142 of 1992), a piece of legislation embedded in over a century of colonial, racist politics and wrapped in layers of ideologically and morally manipulated...
The first medical marijuana commercial has already debuted on major television networks in America. The advertisement was produced by MarijuanaDoctors.com, the only service that connects patients with physicians for medical marijuana recommendations. The advertisement appeared on American channels such as Fox, CNN, ESPN, Comedy Central, AMC, and Discovery.
The commercial, which represents a breakthrough for challenging conventional public perceptions about marijuana use, is being aired...
Norman Solomon -
The frontrunner to become the next president of the United States is playing an old and dangerous political game -- comparing a foreign leader to Adolf Hitler.
At a private charity event on Tuesday, in comments preserved on audio, Hillary Clinton talked about actions by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in the Crimea. “Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,” she said.
The next day, Clinton gave the inflammatory story more oxygen...
Privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian sees the landscape of government surveillance shifting beneath our feet, as an industry grows to support monitoring programs. Through private companies, he says, governments are buying technology with the capacity to break into computers, steal documents and monitor activity without detection. Journalists and activists, amongst others, have been targets of these programmes in countries that have purchased surveillance software.
Gamma is a German...
