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

589782

Sankaran Anand's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/sankarananand
Bio: Great work. Good luck! Test 123 Old znet abc (More)

All Anand Blogs

Iran, US and India

By Sankaran Anand at Dec 20, 2007


Change Text Size a- | A+

We now hear a lot about how Iranian madmen are on the verge of getting nuclear weapons and nothing less than WW3 is threatened. It may be helpful to investigate how committed President Bush really is to check non-proliferation of arms and nukes.
In August of this year, India and US agreed on a historic nuclear deal. A bit of background may be helpful and will enlighten the connection to Iran.
India (unlike Iran), a non-signatory to the NPT, conducted nuclear tests in 1998 and was sanctioned. But, in recent years, due to many considerations of power politics (including hopes of using it as a counterweight to China), India got a "one-time exception" to get fuel from the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
A few incidents and facts may be helpful to recall here:
a) In 2004-05, India voted against Iran (twice) at the International Atomic Energy Agency under enormous arm-twisting by the US.
b) India is in the process of increasing it's conventional arsenal (a 10-year defence deal with the US, deals with Israel and Russia). The US also sells arms to Pakistan.
c) India still has only 8 of its 22 reactors classified as "civilian". There's no guarantee that India will not use its fuel to develop more weapons. Certainly Pakistan and China will assume it will.
d) India, Pakistan and Iran are negotiating a "peace pipeline", a big project to get natural gas and tie the region together. The US is undermining the process by calling for, in no uncertain terms, for India to cut off ties with Iran.
Fortunately, the deal has run into difficult weather both internationally (because it blatantly undermines the NPT, effectively rewarding India for non-compliance) and more importantly, in India itself. The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, even though it initiated the proceedings, is now opposed on narrow technical grounds. The Left parties, which support India's coalition govt. from the outside, have threatened to withdraw support.
The recent incidents in Pakistan demonstrate once again the essential volatility of the South Asian region. One does not enhance peace, security and democracy by undermining efforts at regional and global reconciliation.

585483

By Plese, Theresa at Dec 30, 2007 06:41 AM

I\'m ill-informed but interested in the "peace pipeline" that you mentioned.  Could you elucidate Iran\'s and Pakistan\'s positions?

TP

Reply this comment

Loading_border