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

Ian Sinclair's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/iansinclair
Bio: I am the author of the book 'The march that shook Blair: An oral history of 15 February 2003', published by Peace News Press: http://peacenews.info/node/7085/march-shook-blair-oral-h... (More)

All Sinclair Blogs

Email to Bret Stephens about his article 'Why Iraqis back McCain'

By Ian Sinclair at Jun 25, 2008


Change Text Size a- | A+

Dear Mr Stephens
 
While visiting New York recently I read your column in the Wall Street Journal entitled 'Why Iraqis back McCain' (17 June 2008).
 
In your article you state "Iraq... will be praying for a McCain victory" in the forthcoming US Presidential elections. You seem to base this argument on your talks with "four key provincial Iraqi leaders" because you were unable to phone "1,000 Iraqis to get their views on Obama-McCain".

However, although you were unable to survey Iraqi opinion, are you aware that many opinion polls have been conducted in Iraq since the 2003 US-UK invasion? And while I am not aware of a question specifically about Obama and McCain, several of the opinion polls do ask about the general public stances of the two Presidential candidates - that McCain will continue the occupation until the war is won, while Obama seems to favour a withdrawal of US combat troops.
 
For example, a secret poll conducted by the British Ministry of Defence in October 2005 (and subsequently leaked to the Telegraph newspaper) found 82 per cent of Iraqis were "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1023-01.htm). In September 2006 an opinion poll for WorldPublicOpinion.org by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland found that a large majority of Iraqis71 per centsaid they would like the Iraqi government to ask for U.S.-led forces to be withdrawn from Iraq within a year or less (http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/250.php?nid=&id=&pnt=250&lb=brme). A March 2007 opinion poll by D3 Systems found 77 per cent of Iraqis believed the United States was playing a negative role in Iraq.
 
There are many other polls that consistently show a large number of Iraqis are opposed to the presence of US-UK forces, and would like to see US-UK troops withdraw as soon as possible.
 
With this in mind, I find your conclusion that "Iraq... will be praying for a McCain victory" very strange. Were you aware of the many opinion polls taken in Iraq since the 2003 invasion when you wrote this?
I look forward to hearing from you.
 
Kind regards
 
Ian Sinclair

Person

Re: Email to Bret Stephens about his article 'Why Iraqis back McCain'

By Cacioppo, Jonas at Jun 28, 2008 20:30 PM

I\'d like to add that, as I recall, Stephens -- by "the Iraqis" -- was referring to the four government ministers in Baghdad he said he spoke with.

Reply this comment


Person

By Cacioppo, Jonas at Jun 28, 2008 14:41 PM

WSJ editorialists live on another planet. It certainly isn\'t the "reality-based community." By the way that had to be the most candid moment of this horrendous administration, when the NYT\'s Ron Suskind quoted an anonymous Bush aide as saying that their opponents live in this terrible place called the \'reality-based community\'. I got a copy of the WSJ yesterday; in another McCain opinion piece, John Fund writes: "On many core issues, the country still leans right of center." That\'s absurd. It is factually untrue; but again you have to remind yourself that these people do not care about facts. It doesn\'t matter that public opinion polling consistently demonstrates that -- on "core issues" -- American public opinion is to the left of the Democratic-Republican consensus and mainstream media. I\'m borrowing the particular phrasing from Chomsky but I think it\'s accurate, looking at data from PIPA (Program on International Policy Attitudes at U-Md) and also from the Chicago Center on Global Affairs -- I think that\'s the name.  The trouble is that the big-name pollsters like Gallup are paid-only if you want all the data.

Reply this comment

Loading_border