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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

671784

Oyeshiku Carr's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/obcarr
Bio: Oye holds an MA in History and a PhD in Comparative Modern African Politics from Boston University.  He writes and blogs on contemporary African politics as well as on issues of US national se... (More)

All Carr Blogs

Ferraro's Obama Moment

By Oyeshiku Carr at Mar 13, 2008


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Geraldine's Ferraro's comment that "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position" suggests that the fact Barack Obama is the current democratic front-runner is at best an aberration or at worst an injustice.  Mrs. Ferraro made a similar comment during the 1988 democratic primaries when she said of democratic presidential aspirant Jesse Jackson, "If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race."  Mrs. Ferraro's proclivity for viewing what has historically been an electoral weakness as strength only makes sense if one believes that Senator Obama's ascendancy is due to some type of cathartic affirmative action moment.
How precisely are we, who believe in the possibility of a country that can transcend the confines of our racial history, supposed to interpret Mrs. Ferraro's comments (present and past).  A Wall Street Journal opinion on March 13, suggests that Mrs. Ferraro's "remarks reveal little more than a firm grasp of the obvious" but when did being Black become a virtue in American politics?  Since the end of reconstruction there have been only 3 Black senators (2 from the state of Illinois and 1 from Massachusetts), no Blacks on a major party presidential ticket, and only 3 Black state governors (if we include New York State's recently elevated Lt. Governor David Paterson).  By contrast there have been 35 women senators, one woman (Mrs. Ferraro herself) on a presidential ticket and 29 women governors.           
So what exactly is Mrs. Ferraro's problem with Senator Obama's race?  I think that she, like many women of her generation who grew up during the era of women's liberation, embrace a deterministic framework of social change.  Just as women received the right to vote before Blacks and were earlier senators and vice-presidential nominees, she believes that a woman deserves to be president before a Black man.  After all, there is an order to things.
            The Economist has referred to Senator Obama as "the most talented politician of his generation."  Given that racial classifications still play a role in American politics the wonder is that Senator Obama has achieved so much in spite of being Black rather than because of it.

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Shenanigans

By Carter, Joseph at Mar 17, 2008 03:39 AM

Justin my Opinon it is all strategy. Just a week ago Hillary could not go on National TV without almost crying and lashing out and last night I saw her on there smirking and grinning like a cat.

The entire shenanigan was somekind of ploy by the Clinton campaign to take the Luster away from the Obama side of the race. I swear that this is all I heard about for three days on CNN and every other news channel. I hope this does not wear Obama down before he gets a chance to be president.

Somehow Clinton has gotten the Republiklan noise machine to start working for her and Ferraro did not mind to give up what little credibility she had left to bring things to a head.

Maybe if McPain makes it to the White house we will see a Vice President Clinton?

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