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

Economy Wars: The Market Strikes Back

By Michael McGehee at Feb 11, 2009


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In a galaxy far, far away...

The planet Earth is being ravaged by an economic system called Capitalism that seeks to destroy the planet. Through an ideology plagued with fear, greed and a disinterest to consider the welfare of others above private and personal gain, companies like Peanut Corp. of America have continued their attack on their customers:

The owner of a peanut company urged his workers to ship tainted products after receiving test results identifying salmonella, according to internal company e-mails disclosed Wednesday by a House committee.

The company e-mails obtained by the House panel showed that Peanut Corp. of America owner Stewart Parnell ordered the shipments tainted with the bacteria because he was worried about lost sales.

Okay, this is beyond out of control. This is murder. Of all the reasons (wars of aggression for example) we should be lining the streets in protests and demonstrations and demanding with clenched fists that we put the house in order, this example gets to one of the most important issues: economic systems.

How long should we sit idly by and watch an economic system - Capitalism - that is completely and thoroughly anti-social while it destroys human lives and bankrupts the working class?

The issue is that a) there is an "owner" who is b) motivated more by "sales" than he is by the welfare of those who do the consuming. This is one of the chief problems with market systems: markets encourage participants to fleece others, and if necessary to accept a situation where an outbreak causes "600 illnesses, eight deaths and one of the largest recalls in history, more than 1,800 products pulled." (Let's not forget that the "market" for gold and diamonds has led to an unimaginable but real genocide of Africans.)

We need to be taking to the streets, occupying our politicians and corporate offices and demanding that we do away with private ownership of productive assets and that allocation be done through more social, transparent and democratic processes (i.e. participatory planning). While we are at it we should also address remuneration (i.e. paying workers based on the intensity and duration of their work) and division of labor (i.e. balanced job complexes).

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