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

Ian Sinclair's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/iansinclair
Bio: I am the author of the book 'The march that shook Blair: An oral history of 15 February 2003', published by Peace News Press: http://peacenews.info/node/7085/march-shook-blair-oral-h... (More)

All Sinclair Blogs

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”: British and NATO forces ‘turning a corner' in Afghanistan in 2011, 2010, 2009, 2007 etc

By Ian Sinclair at May 16, 2011


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“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” – Milan Kundera
 
2011– ‘In his office on the first floor of Isaf's heavily fortified headquarters in Kabul, [General James] Bucknall [a British Coldstream Guards officer who is second in command of the International Security and Assistance Force], a veteran of Iraq, Northern Ireland and the Balkans, concedes that this is "the most complex and demanding theatre I have ever worked in. But he sets out why he thinks a corner has now been turned, nodding to the surge in American troop numbers that has made it possible. We have halted the insurgents' momentum. And in some areas where we have really applied resources we have regained the initiative. We have successfully removed a number of safe havens in Afghanistan, some of which the insurgents have held for a long time, particularly around Kandahar. We have also removed substantial munitions, far greater than we ever have before.’ (Nick Hopkins, ‘Afghanistan: Advances made, but country stands at perilous crossroads’, Guardian, 11 May 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/10/afghanistan-crossroads-taliban-military).

2010– ‘Nick Clegg said Nato's military campaign in Afghanistan was "turning the corner" today as he made a surprise visit to the troubled country.' ('Afghan campaign turning the corner, says Nick Clegg, as Oxfam withdraws from remote area', Guardian, 31 August 2010, http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/31/afghan-campaign-corner-nick-clegg?cat=world&type=article)
 
2009– ‘There is this absurd notion that you can't win a counter-insurgency. I have studied the last 12 British counter-insurgencies, since 1900, and we did manage to achieve a peace of some sort in every one of them, most recently Northern Ireland. We've always had this awful period of getting things very badly wrong before we seem to turn the corner, and I think that's what is happening now. It would be crazy to give up now.’ - Colonel David Benest, retired Parachute Regiment officer, who served as a British counter-insurgency adviser in Kabul (‘Britain's future role in Afghanistan: Six experts give their view’, 16 November 2009, Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/16/afghanistan-uk-policy-view-experts)
 
2007– ‘Yet despite the presence of thousands of Taliban fighters, and some tough fighting still ahead, British military commanders in Afghanistan say they believe they have turned a significant corner. In recent months they have succeeded in pushing the Taliban back and keeping them out of a few strategic areas. At the same time, they say, popular support for the insurgents is eroding' (Carlotta Gall, 'British forces beat back Taliban', New York Times, 5 August 2007, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2007-08-05/news/0708040185_1_helmand-taliban-nato-forces)
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