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

Freedom: a moral hypothesis

Is it a claim, or a thesis that is put forth as a kind of null hypothesis -- something that it is morally right to accept unless there is evidence against it? I think the latter. Thus take a debate about slavery, or women's rights. If Jones claims th... (More) Comments (459)

Public Expense & Private Profit

For computers, the period from development to commercially viable sales was about 30 years (depending on how you count). For the internet, it was also about 30 years within the state system before it was handed over, by a process that remains obscure, to... (More) Comments (25)

Bakunin, the death penalty & seeds of the future

Bakunin's point was, I think, pretty simple. Within the larger society, it is possible to build structures that capture hopes for the future. For example, free schools, or self-managed cooperatives (like South End press, or worker-run factories in Argen... (More) Comments (83)

Vietnam then, Iraq today

We can learn a lot from what happened in Vietnam. Protest was very slow in developing.  By the time it reached a significant scale in 1967, the highly respected (and rather hawkish) military historian and Vietnam specialist Bernard Fall was wondering w... (More) Comments (15)

US-UK relations

The general contours are pretty clear. The US effectively displaced Britain as world-dominant power during World War II, quite consciously -- there were mini-wars going on right through the conflict, and they continued afterwards, often in ugly ways. ... (More) Comments (33)

The Draft

My guess is that the Bush administration planners will not call for a draft. The military command, and the civilian leadership, learned an important lesson in Vietnam: you can't expect a citizen's army to fight a vicious, brutal colonial war. Their pr... (More) Comments (62)

State Terror v.s. Resistance

Of course, the sentiment will seem outlandish to those who take it for granted that we are entirely justified in grinding people under our jackboot, using violence to impose conditions in which the resources of a country are freely open to exploitation by... (More) Comments (13)

Speculation on Occupation

Will the effort succeed? I certainly have no basis for predicting, if only because I've been wrong about this all along. My guess was that the "war" would take a few days.  To my surprise, it lasted much longer, so much so that in the first few weeks t... (More) Comments (24)

Capitalism, an innovative and viable system?

First, nothing remotely like capitalism exists. Is the US economy, relying crucially on the dynamic state sector, a capitalist economy? But putting that aside, was it an argument in the 18th century to say that feudalism, absolutism, rule by Kings, slave... (More) Comments (161)

Striking Iran

My guess is that the US will not attack Iran, either directly or via Israeli mercenary pilots flying US aircraft (which would be called an Israeli attack). We do know that in the past year the US has provided over 100 advanced jet bombers to Israel, wh... (More) Comments (15)

Some election comments...

We have a fairly clear idea of what [Bush's] planners want, but what we can expect depends on circumstances, including those we create. That's what should concern us, not speculating about what we cannot know. The outcome was a disappointment, but th... (More) Comments (118)

The U.S., Brazil, & the Security Council

The question why the US has been mildly supportive of Brazil as a new permanent member of the Security Council, despite its left-leaning government, is a good one. We can only speculate, of course. My speculation is along these lines. It is not unlike... (More) Comments (11)

How to Fight Terrorists

In the case of crimes, the first steps are (1) determining who was probably guilty, apprehending them, and bringing them to a fair trial; and (2) attending to the background circumstances, and where there are legitimate grievances in the background, addre... (More) Comments (9)

Myth of the Liberal Media

The media delight in being portrayed as "adversarial," sometimes even going overboard in their efforts to subvert power. There are some remarkable examples, e.g., the Freedom House study of how the liberal crusading press lost the Vietnam war by lying ab... (More) Comments (46)

The Oil for Food Scandal

Long-time New York Times and Wall St Journal Middle East correspondent Youssef Ibrahim, who is quite knowledgeable, recently wrote that a large part of current revenues from oil are being siphoned off by the Allawi government and other Iraqi officials and... (More) Comments (5)

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