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 Guardian's Ewan MacAskill on Iraq

By Ian Sinclair at Mar 02, 2009


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Dear Mr MacAskill

I was interested to read your article today on President Obama's recent public statement on Iraq ('Six years after Iraq invasion, Obama sets out his exit plan', Guardian, 28 February 2009).

I note you describe the 2003 invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq as "the failed neo-conservative experiment to create a model Arab country that would be a beacon for the rest", and then later you refer to "the model democracy the neocons had envisaged".

Could you tell me what evidence you have that the neoconservatives were trying to create a "model democracy" in Iraq?  I ask because many people argue the US (and UK) have little interest in instituting democracy in Iraq, but rather are more interested in gaining control of the vast energy supplies in the region.  For example, a November 2005 Gallup poll of Baghdad residents found only 1 percent of respondents believed the US invaded Iraq to establish democracy, while 43 percent believed the US invaded "to rob Iraq's oil" (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/16/1068917671936.html).

With this in mind, perhaps in future articles you could refer to neo-conservative CLAIMS of wanting a "model democracy" in Iraq?  Surely you would agree this is a more neutral and accurate way of presenting the issue?

Also, in your article you refer to "tens of thousands" of Iraqi dead, and the accompanying graphic to your article uses the Iraq Body Count (IBC) figure of under 100,000 Iraqi dead.

Are you aware the IBC figure is calculated from cross-checked reports of violent deaths in English-language media, and therefore is likely to be a gross underestimate?  Could you tell me why you failed to mention the 2006 peer-reviewed Lancet survey, which estimated 655,000 Iraqis had died because of the invasion and occupation?  Surely this is a more credible source than IBC?

I look forward to your response.

Kind regards

Ian Sinclair

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