Zcom_simple

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

72

Justin Podur's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/justinpodur
Bio: Justin Podur is a writer and editor for ZNet (www.zmag.org), part of Z Communications, an alternative media organization dedicated to political analysis and support for movements for social change.... (More)

All Podur Blogs

Amu the film

By Justin Podur at Feb 13, 2007


Change Text Size a- | A+
Last night I went to the preview screening of the Toronto opening of Amu the Film. It was a treat because the director, Shonali Bose, and the producer were there for Q & A afterwards. It is actually a very clever political film because it is very strong and honest as a film and the politics are not at all contrived. The opposite is true, in fact: the politics are conveyed through a very human story that is also a very political story. I won't get into the plot or spoil it, since it is a suspense film and a detective story. But this is a good place to talk about the politics of this political film. This is a detective story in which the detectives are a couple of youths. No state-sponsored police piecing together the story here, and that stands to reason, because it is the state that is the criminal. The political events the characters deal with, decades later, are the pogroms against Sikhs that took place in New Delhi in 1984 after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. The film is an indictment of the state, because the pogroms that occurred could not have occurred without the active organization of the state. Politicians provided electoral lists and organized mobs to pull Sikhs out of their homes and kill them. Police stood by or participated in the killing. And decades later there has been no justice. Instead, the killers and organizers walk in impunity, after thousands of people were killed. Impunity, Bose understands, is a recipe for the repetition of atrocities. And a very similar pattern of state-organized terror and massacre occurred in Mumbai in 1992-1993 after activists from the Hindu right party destroyed the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. The Mumbai riots altered the demography of the city and set the stage for bombings and brutal gang violence that continues today, and is documented remarkably in Suketu Mehta's book on Mumbai, 'Maximum City'. It happened again in Gujarat in February 2002, just about five years ago now, starting with the burning of a train and culminating in a series of massacres of several thousand. One of the most searing political essays ever written is Arundhati Roy's article on this Gujarat pogrom. Bose refers to this, again cleverly and subtly, in Amu. Bose leaves no doubt that these events were not 'communal riots' between religious communities, but state-orchestrated terrorism serving very specific political agendas. She has another message as well, and that is a celebration of the courage of the people who resisted, who hid people from the killers, who risked their own lives to save others. This kind of courage was rampant in India in these moments, and Bose's film celebrates some of those who showed it. Finally, by putting the film out there, Bose is making her own attempt to fight impunity, to prevent us from forgetting who committed these atrocities and who they served. India will continue to be distorted by this kind of violence until the truth, and justice, are served. Bose's film is a step in that direction, and she has had no favours from the Indian authorities in taking that step. The censors cut parts of her film, and whether people see the film or not will depend on grassroots efforts. Watch it, get others to watch it, discuss it.
Person

Great Film..

By Kulvirgill, Kulvir at Feb 15, 2007 09:05 AM

I was at the preview as well on Monday and have to say its one of the best films I've ever seen, addressing a topic that has been covered up for over 20 years.

Reply this comment


Person

FYI, a harrowing account of

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 13, 2007 23:32 PM

FYI, a harrowing account of the '84 riots. Another movie from that part of the world deserving a wider viewership--partly on the communal theme--is Ghare Baire, one of Satyajit Ray's masterpieces.

Reply this comment

Loading_border