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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

Z

Justin George's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/movingpast
Bio: Hi, I live in Melbourne, Australia, and I think I first came across Znet courtesy of the linear notes of a Propagandhi album along time ago. Soon after that Michael Albert gave a talk at my univer... (More)

All George Blogs

Deceptions and Autobots

By Justin George at Jul 07, 2009


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Optimus Prime seems to be a supporter of the American Empire.

Along with racist stereotyping and sexism, the new Transformers film's glorification and sanitization of the US military is disturbing, all the more so when the film is set to be one of the biggest earners of all time, earning half a billion dollars in its opening week, marketed to children and young adults through a range of merchandising to ensure maximum profits for the corporate studios. One of the sequel's many flaws is the overt display of military power, specifically US military power. I would hazard a guess that a good portion of the film's budget was supplemented by the US military in exchange for the free commercial the film provides it. Deals like this are common in Hollywood- the filmmakers get to film military hardware which would otherwise be expensive to hire privately or unavailable (or create it over 18 months or more via computer graphics) in exchange for military advisers input/approval of the script (to ensure it doesn't look bad) and (much like Hasbro) glossy looking shots that sell the 'toys' and 'adventure' of the military to a worldwide audience of millions.

As a recent Variety fluff piece states, "A film like "Transformers" gets much of the access, expertise and equipment for a fraction of what it would cost to arrange through private sources, with the production on the hook only for those expenses the government encounters as a direct consequence of supporting the film (such as transporting all that megabucks equipment to the set from the nearest military base)."

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118005186.html?categoryid=1019&cs=1

In the film the hardware is given numerous 'hero' shots, scored with rousing music as the US military comes to the aid of the titular heroes. Throughout the second half of the movie it was hard to discern if the footage was military commercial stock or had actually been filmed by the director. The pervasiveness of the US military is on display- aircraft carriers and submarines patrol the oceans, surveillance and communication aircraft relay orders, satellites peer into happenings across the globe. The US military's own destructive 'robot' the Predator drone is also one display, along with tanks, guns, massive hovercrafts and other displays of might.
Its ironic that for entertainment we watch the US military rushing into the Middle East (in the film its Egypt) to stop an unreasoning evil from unleashing a weapon of mass destruction, while the horrible reality is largely absent from our screens and newspapers. Perhaps the film is an allegory on behalf of the writers but it's unlikely.

Another sad mockery in the film is that the the secret military facility of the Transformers, alien refugees, in the film is located on Diego Garcia, the little island whose citizens were removed by the British in the 1960s, at the request of the United States, so it could establish a military base on the tropical island. The Chagosians live like refugees in squalid conditions in Mauritius where they were dumped 40+ years ago, fighting to return to their homes on the archipelago.
The military base at Diego Garcia is reportedly used for flights as part of CIA kidnappings, the extraordinary renditions, of the 'War on Terror' where people are taken from their home countries and flown to a range of bases before being sent off for torture in another country or to the hell of Guantanamo Bay. Author and Journalist John Pilger has covered the continued injustice suffered by the Chagos islanders-

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1027.htm

The base is also used to support the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan where millions have suffered from violence or due to the destruction of essential facilities. Diego Garcia is just one of the many bases that form a network of military installations the USA has covered the globe with-

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21896

But like much of main stream media, whether its news or entertainment, the United States and its allies- fiction and non fiction alike- are presented as a force for good. Films like Transformers reinforce such narratives, using the military both in the story and behind the scenes, to create such an image. What it does is hide the ugly truth of US foreign policy, of what the real machines, those powerful war machines, actually do, what the military's key function is- to inflict violence. When it comes to the US military and Hollywood there indeed is more than meets the eye.

Person

Re: Deceptions and Autobots

By Dezin, Dominic at Sep 08, 2009 06:23 AM

Thank you for noting on the Chagos element in Transformers, I forgot it until I read your blog that part of it was filmed on Diego Garcia.

They were recently allowed to visit and tend graves but there has been no agreement on returning to their land(unfortunately) except as long as they wouldn't go back to Diego Garcia.

Authors in Britain have been keen to note the fact that parts of the islands have become environmental reserves but in no way does that justify the expulsions.

As someone of Mauritian background, the Chagos issue has meant a lot to me.

Dominic

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Re: Deceptions and Autobots

By Pishdadi, Shireen at Jul 07, 2009 20:40 PM

thank you for that information. i am horrified, though far from shocked to hear about the Chagosians.

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GI Joe

By McGehee, Michael at Jul 07, 2009 14:39 PM

hollywood made a GI Joe movie.

enough said.

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