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

“We had to destroy them to make them safe”: Orwell in Afghanistan

By GPF Global Policy Forum at Nov 18, 2010


Change Text Size a- | A+
The New York Times reported yesterday that NATO troops in Afghanistan have launched a widespread campaign to destroy abandoned homes and farms thought to be “booby-trapped.” As troops advance in newly won districts around the city of Kandahar, they are encountering buildings left heavily rigged with explosives by Taliban insurgents. In the name of safety, NATO has undertaken to systematically destroy almost every unoccupied home or unused farm building in areas where it is operating. Troops are using an impressive – and, some might say, disproportionate - array of tools including “armed bulldozers, high explosives, missiles and even airstrikes.”

According to the Times, the campaign has garnered widespread support from Afghan officials, and even part of the local population. The common wisdom is that there is no other way to get rid of the explosives and protect the population. In a twist that smacks of Newspeak, an Afghan official argues that “we had to destroy them to make them safe.” “Destroying to Save Lives” is the Orwellian title the Times has chosen for the slideshow illustrating the article. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is power, and destruction is protection.

These “house-borne improvised explosive devices,” as the troops have taken to call them, certainly represent a danger to both the US military and Afghan civilians. However, they are being used as an alibi to justify a wider campaign of destruction aimed at depriving the Taliban of hiding places and fighting positions. As the Times underlines, the US military is not only destroying homes, but also “tree lines where insurgents could hide” and “agricultural walls.”

This is eerily reminiscent of the strategy adopted by the US during the Vietnam war, when the military used massive quantities of Agent Orange to destroy forests and deprive the National Liberation Front guerilla of food and cover. The defoliation program was also aimed at driving the rural population away from the countryside to US-controlled cities, thus removing the guerilla’s support base.

The enemy has changed, but the strategy hasn’t. Nor have the justifications for it. Then as now destruction was presented as a necessary step for protection: if the communists take control of Vietnam / if Afghanistan becomes a safe haven for Al Qaeda, it will be the end of the civilized world as we know it. If what happened in Vietnam is any indication, apparently Afghanistan will only be deemed completely safe once it is totally destroyed.

Global Policy Forum
Global Policy in Brief
Loading_border