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?
A reflection on life and the arts from a progressive perspective. Here you will find social commentary on movies, the performing arts, issues of cultural significance and life in general.
Scott Barry Kaufman -
Four-year-old Heidi Hankins was all over the news earlier this year. According to the Daily Mail, she "has an IQ of 159 -- only one point below Albert Einstein's -- and has become one of the youngest members of Mensa." As her father has pointed out, she has always shown an intense need for intellectual stimulation, bursting at the mouth to speak at birth, acquiring vocabulary by the age of one, and voraciously reading through all 30 books in the Oxford Reading...
Foreign Policy in Focus -
Jon Stewart, the premier political satirist of his generation, is one of a kind. Or is he?
In this survey of the Global Stewarts, Foreign Policy In Focus goes around the world to find the comics who would be Jon Stewart. It’s an interesting mix: a surgeon, a superhero, a mimic. In some cases, Stewart would welcome the comparison. But at least in one case, that of a French anti-Semite, Stewart would meet the anti-Stewart.
In all cases, however, these global Stewarts are challenging...
Gillian Schutte -
In the wake of the many global revolutionary rumblings over the past two years I have been pondering the prospect of a mass women’s revolt against the male-owned beauty industry that mostly diminishes women to mere objects and creates untold conflict in our psyches. This industry, along with the mainstream media, is premised on beautyism and has employed a very effective tool of “othering” those who do not fit into the idealised picture of what is pleasing to the...
Anneli Rufus -
Asking friends for loans is like asking them for sex: Whatever happens, the relationship will never be the same again.
At this point in history, money holds such massive emotional baggage that asking "Can I have some of yours for a while?" or "Will I ever get it back?" are some of life's weightier questions.
And now, we the people -- underwater, unemployed and terrified -- are forced ever more into the position of borrowing and lending among...
Binoy Kampmark -
His comments are dangerous. He should stick to saving the world from aliens.
– Brooke Shields on Tom Cruise
The gossip columnists are compiling their ill-composed scribbles, and their latest find (or non-finding) is working out what is transpiring in the dissolution of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes union. Could it be an issue of parenting and religion? Was educating their 6 year-old child Suri central to their parting? "Many reports we are hearing is that Tom was very...
Gillian Schutte -
Over the past eighteen months there have been enough “Kaffir” slips of the tongue, from different echelons of White society, to prove that racism is alive and well and living on the tips of the tongues of most White South Africans. In many cases all it takes is a bit too much wine, a bump in the Spar or a little bit of fame and Eros from the rightwing, to let it slip. And the recent hanging of ‘The Spear’ in the Goodman Art Gallery is not really much different. ...
