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?
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How did the financial crash in Iceland inspire the Spanish Indignados and Occupy Wall Street movements? Why did the Arab Spring in North Africa end with Islamists running Egypt? How did the peaceful movement against a dictatorship in Syria degenerate into an all out civil war?
World famous Spanish sociologist, Manuel Castells, best known for his research on the information society, communication and globalization, talks about the emergence and characteristics of new social movements around...
John Capel of the Bench Marks Foundation talks about the efforts of his organisation to widen the scope of the Marikana Commission of Inquiry (also known as the Farlam Commission), such that the investigation goes beyond and behind the killings of the 34 striking mineworkers, which shocked the world last year, to the socio-economic root causes of the strikes in the Rustenburg mining belt.
A study by the Bench Marks Foundation, first released in 2007 and later updated in 2011, shows huge...
On Syria, Robert Fisk says, “We’d like to see a democracy, wouldn’t we? But although the word ‘democracy’ has a bad taste and a ring in it for many Arab Muslims, for good reason. We’d like to see some kind of freedom and dignity, which is what Syrians originally asked for before the massive peaceful protests on the streets—they weren’t completely peaceful, but they were pretty peaceful—turned into armed militia, government forces battles....
Humans invented the idea of hospitals in the 1780's, and it is time to update our thinking, argues Eric Dishman. "We have got to untether clinicians and patients from the notion of traveling to a special bricks and mortar place for all of our care, because these places are often the wrong tool and the most expensive tool for the job. And, these are sometimes unsafe places to send our sickest patients, especially in an era of super bugs and hospital acquired infections," he contends....
Widespread protests have erupted in Bangladesh after the collapse of the Rana garment factory complex claimed more than 370 lives, mostly of young women who were forced to work in a factory that was illegally constructed and known to be unsafe. The tragedy is considered to be the deadliest accident in the history of the garment industry.
The working conditions of Bangladeshi garment workers are among the worst in the world. Garments are produced for Western retailers, who, it...
The U.S. military has acknowledged for the first time the number of prisoners on hunger strike at the military prison has topped 100. About a fifth of the hunger strikers are now being force-fed. Lawyers for the prisoners say more than 130 men are taking part in the hunger strike, which began in February.
One of the hunger strikers is a Yemeni man named Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel. In a letter published in The New York Times, he wrote: "Denying ourselves food and risking death every...
