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

Bust the AgBiz Trust

USDA and DOJ held antitrust hearings around the nation. The results are poor. Congress gutted the proposed revisions. We must call for the Obama Administration and Congress to support the 11 antitrust measures that were recently excluded by Congress under corporate pressure.... (More) Comments (0)

Talking Points: Farm Subsidies 2012

The Farm Bill is being written right now. The biggest issues of economic justice are those of the Commodity Title. This blog contains some key talking points to address the biggest issues and most common misunderstandings of the farm bill.... (More) Comments (0)

Revenue Insurance: 2012 Farm Bill

Revenue Insurance was included in the 2008 Farm Bill in a major way, in the ACRE Program and also in SURE. Now, as the 2012 Farm Bill is being debated and introduced into Congress, Revenue Insurance represents the main direction of further change to farm subsidy programs (in the Commodity Title of the Farm Bill). The "Primer" here is a collection of online articles that explain what's happening in a consistent way, that show some of who's doing what, and that provide a deeper, historical context for understanding this, the biggest issue in the 2012 Farm Bill.... (More) Comments (0)

Factsheet: Key 2012 Farm Bill Proposals

The biggest issues in the US farm bill, both domestically and globally, are those of the Commodity Title. Historically these are multitrillion dollar market management issues, hugely affecting sustainability, (crop rotations,) farm income, food prices, rural development, research, There are 3 key proposals available for farm and food justice advocacy. These are the Food from Family Farms Act of the National Family Farm Coalition, the Farmer Owned Reserve proposal of the National Farmers Union, and NFFC's bill to end the devastating dairy crisis. These proposals go far beyond trendy alternatives, such as subsidy caps and other subsidy reforms, which do not address the underlying problems.... (More) Comments (0)

Primer: 2012 Farm Bill

The biggest issues in the US farm bill, both domestically and globally, are those of the Commodity Title. Historically these are multitrillion dollar market management issues, hugely affecting sustainability, (crop rotations,) farm income, food prices, rural development, research, There are 3 key proposals available for farm and food justice advocacy. These are the Food from Family Farms Act of the National Family Farm Coalition, the Farmer Owned Reserve proposal of the National Farmers Union, and NFFC's bill to end the devastating dairy crisis. These proposals go far beyond trendy alternatives, such as subsidy caps and other subsidy reforms, which do not address the underlying problems.... (More) Comments (0)

Video: YouTube Vs My Channel

This video is about how my videos looked, FROM MY CHANNEL, prior to the change on March 7, when you ONLY saw, on my channel, the videos that I specifically choose, when you clicked on the icons. From my playlists, you ONLY saw other videos in the same playlist of mine, in order, and that stayed true? as the viewers who came to my site continued to make selections, more and more and more. Now, since March 7, having been trained to choose from the right, you quickly exit my channel, as I prove here. We all lose our viewers from our channels in this way. Whatever our topics, without awareness, OUR viewers quickly leave OUR channels.... (More) Comments (0)

Farm Bill Slides

The implications of the US Farm Bill for farm and food justice (or Food Sovereignty) are almost always misrepresented by USDA, academics, mainstream media, progressives and conservatives. These charts provide a corrective, a picture to show major missing stories in the fight for justice.... (More) Comments (0)

Corn Farmers Subsidized You

Corn farmers have received billions of dollars in subsidies as partial compensations for the lowering of farm prices in farm bills. Farm commodity prices do not self-correct to balance supply and demand, so price floors were used to prevent farm depressions and stimulate wealth. Since 1942-1952, corn price floors (and therefore prices) were lowered 1953-1995, then eliminated, drastically lowering corn farm income and US income from corn exports. Taxpayer subsidies, totally unneeded during the farm programs of 1942-1952, have compensated corn farmers by a small fraction of the amount corn income was lowered. The same applies to other major farm commodity crops.... (More) Comments (3)

Subsidy Recipients Aren't Farmers

Only a fraction of Farm Subsidy recipients are close to being full-time family-sized farmers, or even half of that size. Data on federal farm program Recipients is available at the Farm Subsidy Database compiled by the Environmental Working Group. EWG emphasizes that the "Top 10%" (of recipients) get most of the subsidies and the "Bottom 80%" get very small payments. In fact, however, by a Corn/Soybeans standard, only the top 10% of recipients are full time family-sized farms. The bottom half are only 3.3% of full time, or less (retired, dead, tiny). Only the top group can be validly called "farmers." Essentially the same holds if my standard (a small, 200-acre corn/soybean farm) is cut in half. EWG's analysis is wrong. Dead farmers who received less are not victims relative to family farmers who work full time.... (More) Comments (0)

Forgetting Farm Justice

The article, “Reform or Transformation? The Pivotal Role of Food Justice in the U.S. Food Movement,” by Eric Holt-Gimenez and Yi Wang, demonstrates some deep thought about the food movement and related movements. It has merit, but leaves out most of the farm justice aspect of the movement, which was the bigger part historically in the US. That then leads to less than adequate conclusions, as I show in this review.... (More) Comments (3)

Another Farm Bill Failure

Here's another detailed explanation of how a well meaning group fails to understand the farm bill Commodity Title. This time it's a "Liveable Future Blog" by a doctoral student at the Center for a Liveable Future at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.... (More) Comments (2)

Pathos in Social Change

This is a general introduction to my method of "prophetic" pathos as a process for social change. It's part of a series of "debriefing" blogs following the recent conference of the Community Food Security Coalition, and the US Food Sovereignty Alliance assembly.... (More) Comments (0)

Case Against CSPI's Food Day

While I strongly support the values of the Center for Science in the Public Interest's "Food Day," (October 24, 2011,) I find fault with the way they implement those values. I find that they misunderstand farm and food justice issues in the farm bill, leading them to present false information and analysis, and to advocate against their own values. An email response from a(n unnamed, by me here,) staff person working on Food Day illustrates specific ways that they misunderstand these issues, and I then respond to those specific misunderstandings.... (More) Comments (0)

Subsidy Rebuttal: US PIRG

Here's another of my critiques of farm subsidy myths. This one is US PIRG, which gives themselves a black eye.... (More) Comments (0)

Farm Aid, Food Justice

Farm Aid Founders Willie Nelson and Neil Young have taken strong stands on farm and food justice issues, especially economic justice. We see this in Neil's 1985 full page letter to President Reagan, in an article on rural wealth creation in which Willie features Eddie Albert, and in the documents of the Farm Aid Congress.... (More) Comments (0)

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