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E-NEWS BULLETIN 26 January 2018 Links to present possibilities

SOUTH AFRICA

A victory for the #SJC10 & democracy: Gatherings Act declared unconstitutional

sjc at courtOn Wednesday, 24 January 2017, the Western Cape High Court withdrew the criminal convictions of the ‘SJC 10’ protesters, who staged a peaceful protest outside the City of Cape Town in 2013. The court declared section 12(1)(a) of the Regulation of Gatherings Act unconstitutional: this is the provision that makes it a criminal offense to convene a gathering without giving notice to the authorities. sjc.org.za/


hugh masekelaRIP Hugh Masekela: A true South African legend

With the passing of Hugh Masekela, another of South Africa’s true legends has left us. It was announced on Tuesday by the musician’s family that 78-year-old Masekela had succumbed after a long battle with prostate cancer. dailymaverick.co.za/


ngidiNo compensation for man after work accident

Ntongenzani Ngidi from KwaSithebe in Mandeni, north of Durban, is finding it difficult to look after himself as well as his family following a work injury he got in August at Tufbag. groundup.org.za/


nehawu logoNEHAWU rejects the establishment of a single Catchment Management Agency and calls for the resignation of the Director of Labour Relations

The proposed establishment of a Catchment Management Agency will invite the contracting of private construction companies to build dams and water reticulation infrastructure, to the exclusion of the state-owned company according to NEHAWU. cosatu.org.za/

INTERNATIONAL

It’s Time to Call Economic Sanctions What They Are: War Crimes

The record of economic sanctions in forcing political change, from those imposed on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to the current embargo on North Korea, is dismal, but as a way of reducing a country to poverty and misery it is difficult to beat. counterpunch.org/


Inequality gap widens as 42 people hold same wealth as 3.7bn poorest

jeff bezosAs the World Economic Forum convened in Davos, Oxfam released a report revealing that billionaires had been created at a record rate of one every two days over the past 12 months, at a time when the bottom 50% of the world’s population had seen no increase in wealth. 82% of the global wealth generated in 2017 went to the most wealthy 1%. theguardian.com/

The Oxfam report declares Capitalism a ‘crime against humanity’, as if underlining the findings of a 2016 exposé by the National Minimum Wage Research Initiative at Wits University that reveals the widening income inequality between executives and workers’ pay by multinational corporations Shoprite, Naspers and Steinhoff. iol.co.za/


Locked Up for Reading Books at Chinese university

Police stormed into a student reading group at the Guangdong University of Technology and arrested six participants, ultimately charging two of them for “gathering crowds to disrupt social order”—a charge increasingly leveled by Chinese authorities against feminists, labour activists, striking workers and bloggers over the past five years. chuangcn.org/


Why Are American Prisons So Afraid of This Book?michelle alexander

A book by Michelle Alexander that explores the phenomenon of mass incarceration, has sold well over a million copies, but for the more than 130,000 adults in prison in North Carolina and Florida, the book is strictly off-limits. nytimes.com/


mex textThe First Mobile Phone Network for Indigenous Communities in Mexico Is Under Threat

Indigenous Community Telecommunications, the first and only such service provider that facilitates affordable mobile phone and Internet services to rural areas of Mexico, might be forced to stop operating after the national regulator demanded the network pay one million pesos (more than US$50,000) for the radio frequencies it uses. globalvoices.org/


turkish pulp fictionTurkish Garbage Collectors Open Library Full of Discarded Books

A public library that is full of books that were originally destined to be put into a landfill has been opened by Turkish garbage collectors in the country’s capital city of Ankara. News of the library has spread and now people have begun donating books directly to the library, rather than throwing them away. forreadingaddicts.co.uk/

PALESTINE

Sima Vaknin-GilMeet the spies injecting Israeli propaganda into your news feed

For the last two years, a former intelligence officer has been running Israel’s global war against BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. electronicintifada.net/


Examining ‘Ten Myths about Israel’, by Ilan Pappe

pappeA just solution to the dilemma of Palestine will, Pappe argues in his new book, only be achieved if we stop treating the mythologies he sets forth as truths: “Palestine was not empty and the Jewish people had homelands; Palestine was colonized, not ‘redeemed’; and its people were dispossessed in 1948, rather than leaving voluntarily. mondoweiss.net/

Local news from Khayelitsha, East London, Port Elizabeth, Alexandra and Orange Farm in English and isiXhosa


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NEW TECHNOLOGIES / NEW FORMS OF LABOUR

Catcher canteenWorkers at Apple supplier Catcher in China describe harsh conditions

At a Catcher Technology Co. manufacturing complex in the Chinese industrial city of Suqian, about six hours’ drive from Shanghai, workers stand for up to 10 hours a day in hot workshops slicing and blasting iPhone casings for Apple, handling noxious chemicals sometimes without proper gloves or masks. sfchronicle.com/


michael moritzAn influential Silicon Valley investor said that talking about paternity leave is a sign that society is becoming ‘unhinged’ and China is winning

Venture capitalist, Michael Moritz has argued that Silicon Valley employees spend too much time pushing for benefits like time off and paternity leave, while their Chinese counterparts are forging ahead by working 12-hour days. businessinsider.com/

lemniscateArtificial Intelligence: the impact on employment and the workforce

In the long run we will witness certain roles and jobs becoming less and less relevant, and finally obsolete. But, Artificial Intelligence will have a supportive role to humans — empowering the human factor to perform better in handling complex and critical situations which require judgement and creative thinking. hackernoon.com/


Restoring Net Neutrality

Who owns the Internet? The answer in the USA is “We all do”! The Internet research and invention was paid for by US taxpayers and then turned over to the private sector, becoming the basic platform today for our entire economy and society! http://3blmedia.com/News/Restoring-Net-Neutrality

EDUCATION

sal khan addresses staffAn online academy to educate anyone in world for free? A digital panacea for the state of public education

In the past 10 years, the online academy has grown exponentially, with more than 62 million registered users as well as some who don’t register, and more than 1 billion video views. The academy is used in more than 190 countries and the content translated into 18 languages. sfchronicle.com/

MEDIA

Alternative Media And Selling Out

caitlinin my young alternative media career I’ve been handed many clear-cut and undeniable cues that if I want to make it big and start pulling in the big bucks, I’ve got to ride the wave of mainstream politics. medium.com/

See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income

What does it look like when someone in Sweden brushes their teeth or when someone in Rwanda makes their bed? Anna Rosling Rönnlund sent photographers to 264 homes in 50 countries to document the stoves, bed, toilets, toys and more in households from every income bracket around the world. See how families live in Latvia or Burkina Faso or Peru as Rosling Rönnlund explains the power of data visualization to help us better understand the world. TED Talk