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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

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

Rory Carroll – a stopped clock hoping to be right for once about Venezuela

By Joe Emersberger at Oct 04, 2012


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You could write small book about all the fibs and distortions in Rory Carroll’s latest article on the upcoming presidential election in Venezuela.
 
Carroll wrote essentially the same lenghthy article in 2008. Then, as now, he claims everything in Venezuela is basically falling apart because of the Chavez administration and that it has finally caught up with Chavez. Reporting like that hardly sets Carroll apart from the rest of the international press. However, he had been unusually prolific while he was based in Caracas for the "left leaning" UK Guardian. Between 2006  until January of 2012, Rory Carroll's output represented about 75% of what the Guardian published about Venezuela.
 
In the 2012 version of his 2008 article, Rory Carroll wrote
 
“Some polls give the president a wide lead, others show him trailing”
 
Similarly, it is true that “some“ people say Elvis is dead while “others” say he is alive. Some people say the world is round, others say it is flat. I imagine the Guardian editors will let Carroll’s remark stand for being accurate in the same way those two statements are accurate.
 
In reality, there is no way to look at the polls and honestly report them as being inconclusive as Carroll does. His dishonesty on this point is very representative of the way he has reported about Venezuela over the years. 
 
Five of Venezuela's seven major pollsters put Chavez decisively ahead (i.e. with a double digit lead),  Only two of them say the election will be close. One of them projects a razor thin Capriles victory.
 
As Erik Sperling has shown, one of those major pollsters putting Chavez ahead, IVAD, has one of the most impressive track records. It has accurately predicted Chavista victories but also a defeat in a 2007 constitutional referendum. IVAD's latest poll shows Chavez with an 18 point lead going into the Sunday’s election.
 
Datanalisis, another of the seven major pollsters, has had a tendency in years past to publish very dubious results favoring the oppostion months before a vote but then quickly align itself with other polsters as elections near (thereby salvaging its credibility). Datanalisis shows Chavez with 10 point lead.
 
In contrast, as Erik Sperling discusses here, the only major pollster (Consultores 21) predicting a Capriles victory, has a very poor track record. 
 
It is not hard to imagine how Rory Carrol and most of the international press would report the poll results if they were reversed for Capriles and Chavez. The headlines you’d see written are “Polls show Capriles headed for Landslide Victory”. 
 
Rory Carroll is like a stopped clock hoping to be right for once. It could theoretically happen, but the odds are very much against him. 
Person

Venezuela? Really?

By Canter, Dennis at Oct 06, 2012 14:48 PM

Articles like this are the reason why I cancelled my financial support for ZCommunications.  Who cares about political minutiae in Venezuela?

I was originally drawn to ZCommunications by Michael Albert's talks about Parecon, but over time I realized that it is little more than an debating society.  The content on this site has little relevance to the real world and the people who live in it.

I'm sorry for being such a jerk, but it's frustrating to see this resource going to waste on the ramblings of academic wonks.

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Person

Re: Venezuela? Really?

By Carroll, Lee at Oct 08, 2012 00:08 AM

Hey Dennis, here's some reasons to care, according to the Guardian (UK):

"With Venezuela sitting on the world's largest oil reserves and Chávez a leading figure in the resurgence of the political left in Latin America, the vote will have an impact on the global economy, energy supplies and regional geopolitics."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/07/venezuela-voters-chavez

Beyond those things, I agree--this is not important, except maybe to the people who live there. 

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Re: Venezuela? Really?

By Andrews, John at Oct 07, 2012 10:03 AM

What do you actually advocate, Dennis? Ignorance of foriegn affairs? Ignorance per se?

I would have thought that any so called progressive would be interested in Venezuela. Here is a country, and a continent, that, in the past, had only one function - to service the capitalist elite; a country, and continent, transformed by the likes of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and previously Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Salvador Allende and Jacobo Arbenz.

And how Latin America works is of no interest to you? Have you read Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galleano?

Okay, so you've withdrawn your funding from Z-Comms; your choice, but what were you expecting? 

Please don't accuse Joe Emersberger of being an academic wonk; he is a tireless fighter for progressive causes and has a day job as an engineer!

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