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Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

583275

Joe Emersberger's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/joeemersberger
Bio: Joe Emersberger was born in 1966 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada where he currently lives and works. He is an engineer and a  member of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union. (More)

All Emersberger Blogs

A Quibble with Glenn Greenwald Over Libya

By Joe Emersberger at Jun 11, 2011


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I have a small disagrement with Glenn Greenwald (whose work I can't praise highly enough) over his latest about the war in Libya.

In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war 
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/06/11/libya/index.html 

In response to Greenwald I say

1) US puppets sometimes drive a hard bargain behind the scenes (i.e tweak 
the boss's nose a bit). Francois Duvalier did a lot of this - and the US did
toy  with the idea of deposing him for this reason- but they didn't. I
don't see the  kind of "pain in the ass" behaviour Gaddafi demonstrated being
the major driving  force behind the war though I don't deny it was a factor.

2) The Arab Spring was showing up the complete irrelevance of western 
military might for any liberatory purpose. Militarization is crucial to the West
for numerous reasons and they will jump at any chance to pass off their
military  might as a force for good. Of course they will not do this by
driving Israel out  of Palestine - or Saudi Arabia out of Bahrain. The West will
choose targets that  make sense from its imperial point of view. Gaddafi was
a disposable and  annoying employee. However, I think it is wrong - based on
what Greenwald presents - to  suggest Gaddafi's rule posed any serious or even
significant threat to Western  interests.

Instead, I would argue Gaddafi's(seemingly) imminent collapse provided an 
irresistible opportunity for the West to restore credibility to the idea of 
"humanitarian intervention" which has taken a severe beating in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. Of course, the fact that Gaddafi was a pain in the ass, and easy
to  demonize (without need for much lying) contributed to making this an 
irresistible opportunity.

You can't steal/control foreign resources - or maintain incredibly bloated 
military budgets at home - if you can't use your military. The West has a
huge  incentive to jump at anything that looks like a good opportunity to use its
military.

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