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

1

Michael Albert's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/malbert
Bio: Michael Albert is a founder and current member of the staff of Z Magazine as well as staff of Z Magazine`s web system: ZCom (www.zmag.org). Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His po... (More)

All Albert Blogs

Inquiries

By Michael Albert at Jul 11, 2004


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Recently many people are asking why did the U.S. government ignore various indicators leading up to 9/11 that perhaps something horrible would happen if there weren't changes in U.S. policies. Okay…I suppose it isn't an entirely unreasonable question. And similarly for wondering how come the media was so obtuse to the events. But to put this question into some proportion, how about considering a different one: Why did the U.S. government ignore the uncontested testimony of virtually every relevant aid and human rights organization on the ground in Afghanistan that to bomb that country post 9/11 would risk the lives of literally millions of Afghan civilians. When we then did bomb in order to delegitimate international law, show that we are a violent rogue nation, and initiate a worldwide campaign that would increase terrorism but also help redistribute power and wealth toward elites, why didn't media run headlines saying things like – U.S. risks killing millions of Afghans to avoid legitimating the World Court? It seems to me that the first question about 9/11, even explored honestly which it isn't in our political system, of course – palls in importance next to the second one. An analogy might help. Suppose there was some soul-searching in Al Qaeda. They decide to hold hearings about some disturbing concerns that have arisen in their camp. What they query is why their intelligence operatives were unable to find sufficient information to more fully harm the Pentagon with the third plane, or why they didn't have better advance information on the scale and targeting of the post 9/11 U.S. bombing of their outposts in the Afghan countryside. What they fail to ask is why they knocked down the buildings and killed thousands of civilians and why in their eyes it was worth not only the immediate carnage but also the calamity that predictably befell them thereafter. Most people would probably agree that even though its questions were interesting, the bias of the hypothetical Al Qaeda inquiry went beyond self serving to obtusely amoral and vile. Isn't the same true of the bias of our inquiry?
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