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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.
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  • 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

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Zed Books's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/zed books
Bio: Zed is celebrating 30 years as one of the most distinctive voices in independent, progressive publishing. Over the last three decades we have published more than 1,000 titles. Each of these book... (More)

All Books Blogs

Books: US tribe sues beer makers for $500m over alcohol abuse

By Zed Books at Feb 10, 2012


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The Oglala Sioux Tribe are asking for $500m (£316m) for healthcare, social services and child rehabilitation.

Tribal elders say the lawsuit is a last resort after efforts to curb abuse through protests and policy failed.

On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation one in four children suffers foetal disorders caused by alcohol abuse.
 
The lawsuit, filed in the district court of Nebraska, targets Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide, SAB Miller, Molson Coors Brewing Company, MillerCoors LLC, and Pabst Brewing Company.
 
There was no immediate response from those firms.
 
'Notorious sales'
The lawsuit also names the nearby town of Whiteclay, Nebraska, which has four beer shops that sold nearly five million beer cans in 2010 despite having only about a dozen residents.
 
Alcohol is outlawed on the reservation and the nearest town which allows alcohol is 20 miles (32km) away, Mark Vasina, president of Nebraskans for Peace, told the Associated Press news agency.
 
The lawsuit alleges that beer makers and the shop owners knew the alcohol would be smuggled into the reservation for consumption or resale.
 
The legal documents allege: "The illegal sale and trade in alcohol in Whiteclay is open, notorious and well documented by news reports, legislative hearings, movies, public protests and law enforcement activities."
 
Meanwhile, Tom White, the lawyer representing the tribe, told the Associated Press news agency: "You cannot sell 4.9 million 12oz [356ml] cans of beer and wash your hands like Pontius Pilate, and say we've got nothing to do with it being smuggled."
 
The reservation has grappled with alcohol problems and poverty for generations, and the tribal council has said it hopes the case will help protect the community's youth.
 
"Like American parents everywhere, we will do everything lawful we can to protect the health, welfare and future of our children," Tribal President John Yellow Bird Steele told the Associated Press news agency.
 
The reservation, which is about the size of the state of Connecticut, includes Shannon County, the third poorest county in the US.
 
The median income in the area is $27,300 and almost half of the population is considered to be living below federal poverty standards.
 
The life expectancy in the community is between 45 and 52 years - the lowest in North America except Haiti - and far below the national average of 77.5 years.
 
Nebraska State Senator LeRoy Louden has said that after struggling with the problem for years, the state has introduced legislation that would impose restrictions - on the types of alcohol that can be sold and business hours.
 
BBC © 2012
 
To learn more about this lawsuit along with other topics affecting native populations, read The Politics of Indigeneity, available from Zed Books
  
                                        
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Sueing over Alcohol Abuse

By Phillips, Blair M. at Feb 12, 2012 14:21 PM

 I have a serious and destructive substance abuse problem(still) but am sober 32 years. I also have "some"  formal education which I completed  in Chemical Dependancy Councelling but do not work in the field. There are many ways to help people find the help they need. Now the article.
Sueing a alcohol, wine, beer or spirits manufacturer for producing a product that I purchased, consumed and developed the problem from is not their fault. I have the physical and mental make-up that is a "pre-dispostition" to developing a alcohol problem. But what if those manufacturers advertised  their product by using advertising that "knowingly induced me" to purchase their product when it was not in my best interest - then -  that is intent to cause substance abuse and serious harm.  Some time ago I read about an interesting documentary from the Media Education Foundation entitled," Deadly Persuasion" which is about advertisng of alcohol & tobacco. One interesting statement from the trailer was that the people who advertise the product(alcohol) advertise their product "primarily to"  004% of the population that can legally drink. Why? Because that 004% of the population consume 40% of the alcohol,wine, spirits and beer products produced and sold. Who are those 004%? Take a wild guess!  
In the last 15 years I have learned that Capitalism has no morals or ethics. Read Joel Bakans 2004 book,"The Corporation" or purchase the DVD of the same title.

My suggestion to the Oglala Sioux Tribe is  to educate yourselves on substance abuse and Capitalism and do your best in todays legal system but don't get your hopes up. In my opinion, education is the key!
Max
Dry date - January 28th/80 

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