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

583275

Joe Emersberger's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/joeemersberger
Bio: Joe Emersberger was born in 1966 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada where he currently lives and works. He is an engineer and a  member of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union. (More)

All Emersberger Blogs

Monbiot and the Left Wing "Genocide Belittlers"

By Joe Emersberger at Jun 14, 2011


Change Text Size a- | A+

This is pathetic indeed from Monbiot - but no longer as unexpected.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/13/left-and-libertarian-right?commentpage=last#end-of-comments

Outside fascistic circles, who disagrees that anyone is entitled to debate the facts about anything?

Note how Monbiot hides behind official truth in the case of Srebrenica. No need to expose exactly what Ed Herman said that was false or refute any argument made that was illogical. That would take effort. Easier to just assume that anyone who questions the official story is an irrational - and presumably immoral - denialist.

Note, however, how the numbers of Iraqis killed in the war, or the numbers of indigenous peoples killed by European colonialism is VERY questionable. There exists no official number in these cases that no one is supposed to dare question. In these cases anything goes. Go ahead and debate.

If Monbiot want to ASSUME the official story about Srebrenica (or Rwanda) is accurate then that - of course - is his right. He may even be correct. However, without seriously engaging with Herman's arguments, disparaging him the way he does is inexcusable. Its cowardly. Smearing people (like Medialens) who merely defend Herman's right to question the official story is even worse.

Herman may be wrong (I'm not at all sure - especially about Srebrenica). The issue isn't just how many people died but HOW they died in about a two week period when there was major combat going on between different sides. When you also consider that people like former US Republican senator Bob Dole have run the ICMP (which Monbiot cites as if it were a neutral scientific body) then there is certainly a rational basis for doubt. There is no rational basis for a knee jerk disparagement of a writer like Ed Herman.

We can't study everything in detail, and we all forced to make certain assumptions. However, what Herman is suggesting - that the West has inflated particular massacres - is hardly a far fetched notion without historical precedent. 

Glacier_k_256

Shame on Monbiot

By Keller, Keith at Jun 18, 2011 21:21 PM

I hadn’t realized that Monbiot had sunk this low. Imagine, quoting the ICMP to challenge Ed Herman! According to his link, the ICMP was set up by Clinton in 1997, and was/is run by US government apparatchiks in what appears to be a never ending propaganda mission. The US/NATO assault on Yugoslavia was an imperial intervention, pure and simple. Germany started the ball rolling, and the US took over. “Humanitarianism” played no part whatsoever. Just witness the destruction of Serbia, its infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, TV stations, etc., along with the use of depleted uranium ammunitions. Once the fighting was over, forensic teams went in, but had trouble locating bodies in all of the “mass graves.” But the propaganda continues as history is manufactured. Two books on the destruction of Yugoslavia for those interested are “Fools Crusade” by Diana Johnstone and “To Kill a Nation” by Michael Parenti. As for George Monbiot, it appears as if he aspires to become (or already is) Christopher Hitchens drinking buddy.

Reply this comment


Img_0341

Re:

By Kaushik, Raghav at Jun 18, 2011 13:05 PM

Regarding the Srebrenica massacre, there is the core issue of what the actual number of deaths was. If Herman and Peterson challenged that in face of contrary evidence, that is an error. Of course as you say, these are facts to be debated, so the tone of Monbiot's critique was of course inappropriate.

There is the larger issue of using the label "genocide": assuming there were 8000 deaths, should we debate whether the massacre was a genocide.

I think we should. Just to pick one example, as Chomsky points out in one of his older articles, there are similarities between Srebrenica and Fallujah. However, no one calls what happened in Fallujah a genocide.

Reply this comment

Loading_border