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

GPF Global Policy Forum's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/Global Policy Forum
Bio:   Global Policy Forum or GPF, founded in 1993, is an organization seeking to promote accountability of international organizations such as the United Nations ... (More)

All Global Policy Forum Blogs

Profit at Any Cost

By GPF Global Policy Forum at Apr 28, 2010


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Eritrea is on the verge of political and economic collapse. Foreign mining companies provide a controversial life-line to this country's corrupt and increasingly repressive government, led by President Isaias Afewerki. The foreign companies - from Canada, Britain, China, Australia and Bermuda - are complicit partners in this East African country's unsavory politics and appalling labor conditions.

Like many African countries, Eritrea is laden with sought-after natural resources. Rich deposits of gold, silver, copper and zinc have attracted numerous companies from the global North. The mining companies are encouraged by Afewerki's low-cost requirements for mining rights. In neighboring Sudan and Egypt, the governments own fifty-percent and sixty-percent of mining rights respectively; whereas, in Eritrea state participation can be as low as ten-percent!
A more sinister issue lies at the heart of these foreign mining ventures: working conditions comparable to slavery.
Foreign mining firms rely on local labor - mostly subcontracted by government owned companies. These workers are "recruited" through a "national service" program - which controls a workforce that has risen to around 300,000. Those enrolled are paid a pitiful $12 a month. The foreign mining companies pay the government up to $300 a month for these workers, allowing Afewerki and his cronies to pocket the $288 difference.
The much-trumpeted "corporate social responsibility" of mining companies in Eritrea - like Nevsun Resources Ltd., Andiamo Exploration, London Africa, Zhongchang Mining and Sub Sahara Resources - is clearly nothing but veneer. There is nothing responsible about siphoning millions of dollars from a country in desperate need, supporting a corrupt and repressive regime and encouraging abhorrent labor practices.

Global Policy Forum
Global Policy in Brief
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